JUSTIN "JUSTIN PASZUL" PASZUL BLOG

2009-09-11T19:00:00.001-04:00

A series, continued.

2009-02-01T02:14:00.002-05:00

Three more drawings in the series begun in the last posting.

top: “Monument spire grasping for the heavens but fingering instead the periphery of earthly despair.”
middle: "…and yet the blight spreads to another continent."
bottom: "Redaction diaspora"

All three of these are 11" x 14" and were drawn with micron pens and two of them with Sharpies also.
More to come soon!

A (new) drawing.

2009-01-29T01:50:00.004-05:00

I did this drawing today with an assortment of five colored Micron pens and a fresh sheet of white 11 inch by 14 inch paper, first while watching an episode of the television program Peep Show, and after that while listening to this week's NPR podcast of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me.
When I was done, I couldn't think of a good title, so I thought of a terrible title, "Clusters of monument clouds twirling & intertwining all through the night."
Then I scanned it (in two parts, digitally reassembling them afterwards), and uploaded it to the internet. And here it is!

Some daily drawings I've been doing lately.

2009-01-25T23:20:00.003-05:00

Small works show fall 2008.

2008-12-09T17:59:00.004-05:00

It's that time of year again. The biannual (more or less) Montserrat Small Works Show. All pieces 6x6, all pieces ten dollars, all pieces pen on paper. December 11 at the Bear Gallery, I don't remember the address and I have no idea what time the sale is. I should probably look into these details, huh. I'm not sure why the green is so blurry either, they look fine everywhere else but in Blogspot. Weird.

Return to activity.

2008-10-02T04:13:00.003-04:00

Oh blog! It's been too long. Post-graduation funks & what-all. So it goes, but I'm back now at least.
Started doing a daily drawing project for a site started by some friends, 'take three daily.' Five people making drawings every day, posting them less often than that though. A book and/or show in conclusion. Visit often!
Here's a couple of my first drawings. More to follow.

[ top: starship malfunction (essay portion)
middle: free-flow median curve adjustment
bottom: the steeplejack's geosynchronous nightmare ]

Two old drawings.

2008-04-30T16:33:00.004-04:00

Turned my camera on for the first time in months today (I finally found the batteries for it). There were a few pictures on the card that I had never uploaded, of a few drawings that I no longer have.

top: The slow heat death of the universe (phase one).
bottom: Grasp firmly the hand of god.

The top image is a detail of a drawing that is now in the possession of Mr E. Scott, I unfortunately have no pictures of the entire drawing (it was way too big to take a decent picture of with my shitty old camera). The bottom was made for the 3rd Small Works Show, last spring. It was the second of a small series I was making for a while (and may return to someday soon) of weird schematic layouts and nonsense Russian text. I don't remember who bought this one. I wish I did.

Gallery goings-on.

2008-04-26T22:04:00.000-04:00

Some great things happening at the Montserrat galleries this month.

First, in the Montserrat Gallery, is the All-Senior Show, which I have a new piece in (which was originally for a cat-themed open call but I decided to put it in this show instead). This image is not my piece, it is just the postcard for the show, it is a piece by my good friend / roommate, M. Kahan. The show has a guest juror / prize award winner person, who is Camilo Alvarez, director of Samson Projects in Boston's Thayer St. gallery district. It's up from May 3 to May 25.

In the Carol Schlosberg Gallery is Eye of the Storm, a show of work created by the incredible Julie Mehretu during her MacArthur Fellowship in 2005. It's up from April 29 to May 29.

Finally, in the 301 Gallery is a the final senior thesis show of the year, which I have been helping to install all day as a favor to two of the people in the show, J. Havens and A. Sutter, two pretty excellent people / artists. It's up from April 28 to May 2.

Mass MoCA weekend.

2008-04-20T17:56:00.001-04:00

Went to Mass MoCA & Williams College Museum of Art yesterday. Solid set of shows at each; Mass MoCA had Spencer Finch's What Time is it on the Sun? (which is going down today, I'm happy I finally got the chance to see it), Jenny Holzer's PROJECTIONS in the large hangar gallery, a huge sculpture and five or six paintings by Anselm Kiefer, and Eastern Standard: Western Artists in China, which included some photos and videos by Edward Burtynsky, among many other artists. Williams' main show and the reason we stopped by was Julie Mehretu's City Sitings, a huge collection of her very large-scale recent paintings (her show at Montserrat is going up this week, I can't wait to see the pieces that are going to be in it.)

Spencer Finch, 2 Hours, 2 Minutes, 2 Seconds (Wind at Walden Pond, March 12, 2007)
This was one of my favorite pieces of Finch's: a series of fans stacked and set up in a semi-circle, recreating an exact breeze he felt one day at the location / date in the title. Most of Finch's work is along these lines; using filtered & carefully manipulated light sources to recreate the exact light of a specific place or time; a series of a hundred pastel drawings in which Finch tried to remember and recreate the exact shade of Jackie O's pillbox hat; and many drawings of remembered skies, darknesses and clouds. A lot of his work doesn't translate well to the museum setting, being as process-centric and conceptual as he is the end result is rarely a compelling, interesting visual object. The process itself is the piece, the search for remembered environments and minutae through artistic, non-traditional means. While the room filled with the same exact color and intensity of light Finch saw once may not be a room one would sit in and study as a visual piece of art, the very fact that Finch has recreated a nontangible memory through tangible means is what makes the work so compelling.

Jenny Holzer, PROJECTIONS
I don't even know how to describe this piece. It's just something that has to be seen in person. One of the most amazing, monumental, beautiful pieces of art I've been able to see in person. Mass MoCA has a video on their site which gives a taste, but it's nothing like actually being there. It's up until this fall, so I'm definitely going to try to go at least one more time.

top: Edward Burtynsky, bottom: Anselm Kiefer

Both the Western Artists in China and Anselm Kiefer exhibitions were full of good work (well, some good work and some pretty bad, but isn't that usually the case) as well and worth checking out, but I really don't have as many strong opinions on them and don't feel like writing about them.

Julie Mehretu, Stadia II
The final highlight of the day was Julie Mehretu's show at Williams College Museum of Art. I could go on and on for hours talking about exactly why and exactly how much I love her work, but I'm not going to. It was the first time I'd seen any of it in person, and the immense difference from reproductions in books to the huge, wall-sized works was astounding. I could easily spend hours staring at each one, getting lost in the infinity of tiny details and swirls of color and superimposed universes of architectural plans and building layouts. Mehretu is easily one of the best visual artists working today, and these paintings proved it. I can't wait for her speech at graduation, and hopefully will get to meet her.

Olde Man Tardigrade strikes again.

2008-04-18T04:01:00.001-04:00

A drawing I did a year or two ago for a Children's Book Illustration assignment, Olde Man Tardigrade has made another appearance on the internet today, welcoming visitors to the UNC Biology department's tardigrade website.

He was last seen last October on Dark Roasted Blend, as part of a post all about the magical world of the mighty tardigrade.

This reminds me I need to get back to work on that water bear children's book.

Excuses, excuses.

2008-02-13T03:53:00.004-05:00

It's been a while again, blog, time for another post. I haven't really been getting as much work done lately as I'd have liked to, I've been struggling to find a new direction to take for the past few weeks. I think I may have found it though, prototypes are underway even now (okay maybe not right now but you know). So to bide some time before that all gets documented and blogged upon, here are two drawings previously undocumented and unblogged-upon. One is from last spring, and I'm not really sure what it is all about. The other is from last week and I know a bit more of what it is about than the first one, but neither are directions I see myself taking in the time being and so they will remain unelaborated on, except for that the second one has probably my worst title yet. Here they are. I hope you like them. I sort of like them.

[top] Fig. 6 (handshake worksheet)
[bottom] Intersection no. 1 (junction 23b anomaly investigation, 0430 hrs)

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Additionally, it is snowing, and that should mean one of several things should be happening. Namely, Slowdive, Galaxie 500, or the Cocteau Twins. Myself, I'm listening to Galaxie 500, after having Iceblink Luck by the Cocteau Twins on repeat a good ten or eleven times. Snowy night are perfect for this kind of music.

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A little bit of nothing.

2008-01-04T03:19:00.000-05:00

I guess I should put up a new post or something, huh. With all of those holidays, and graduating (and thus having no more studio space), and moving to a new apartment, I have not done any art things in quite a while. Hopefully I'll be getting back into it soon, once I get a decent work space set up in my new place. So this post really is not much of anything. Oh well. Sorry about that.

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In other news, I just watched Marie Antoinette and it was one of the worst things I've ever seen. What the fuck. Good thing Steve Coogan was in it or else it would have been a complete waste of time instead of just an almost complete waste of time.

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Emerging Lines.

2007-12-17T00:24:00.000-05:00

So hey! I have work in a gallery in New York City, it is called the TemporaryGallery and the show is called Emerging Lines, and there are four other people in the show other than myself, and two of these people are my good friends Ebenezer Kling and Bea Modisett, and the other two people are Jessica Williams and Danny Coeyman. The gallery is located in the Lower East Side at 102 Allen Street, and everyone that can go should definitely go. The opening is this Wednesday, the 19th, from 6-9 pm.

Senior show.

2007-12-05T10:40:00.000-05:00

So maybe I should put up some pictures from my senior thesis show? It came down this past Friday and I've had the pictures sitting here on my hard drive for even longer than that, so maybe this would finally be a good idea. Then hopefully in a few days I will have actual decent pictures of the work from the show. Once I find someone with a camera willing to let me borrow it or to take them for me. So yeah. Here we go.

I had seven pieces in total, four big ones plus the diptych and two small one-sheet drawings. My drawings don't really come out well in these pictures because from that distance and with my shitty camera all of those pen lines just disappear. But at least it's some sort of document.

The show was called Human Presence, which I never really agreed with from the start, but since I couldn't think of anything better, I just went with it. And the reception went great, there were many people who said many nice things, everyone seemed to really enjoy it. Plus there was a great deal of delicious food.

Now that the first snow has happened this winter, I only seem to want to listen to Slowdive anymore. I am completely okay with this.

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an apology / life / a drawing

2007-11-23T12:42:00.000-05:00

I have been neglecting this blog for almost a week now, falling into that same trap that happens every time I start one of these here things. I am home for break until Sunday, and have no new images to show. But my show is up! Everything was installed successfully this past weekend, the show looks (mostly) great, at least I am satisfied with my pieces. I have seven drawings in there, several of them are very recent and probably only seen by a few people. I got the huge 8 1/2 foot drawing done in time, and that looks wonderful up on the wall (next time I hang it I should really get some plexi, though, even though that will cost a lot).

On Sunday night I saw the band Om, with Grails (decent) and Jack Rose (amazing) opening, at the Middle East. Om was incredible, and refused to stop playing at 12:30 or whenever bands stop at the Middle East, even after all the lights were turned back on, and eventually even after the power to the amps were cut and the crowd herded out by pissed-off Middle East staff. It was a pretty great show, all in all.

Monday I purchased a bunch of books at Beverly Public Library's annual book sale, 31 total for 12 dollars. I found a bunch of old Russians (I think I ended up with three Tolstoys, two Dostoievskis, two Nabokovs and a Chekhov), two Tom Robbins, two Aldous Huxley, a book of plays by Sartre, and a few more assorted things. I wish I had gone on the first day rather than the third, though, I'm sure I would have ended up spending at least twice more.

Also, here is an older drawing, from September sometime. It is not in my show. I will have installation photos sometime early next week.

Study of the effects of dark matter matrices upon opposing elements (2007, 22" x 30")

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Also, come to my opening! It is this Wednesday! 301 Cabot Street gallery, Beverly MA, 6pm - 8pm. There will be food, and there will be artwork, and there will be awkward (maybe some not-awkward too) mingling and small-talk.

two sketches.

2007-11-15T23:34:00.001-05:00

Taking a Pop-Tarts & Earl Grey break from the giant drawing that is consuming my life right now (pictures of that coming soon, when it is done & hanging at my thesis show thing Saturday). So here are two more drawings, more recent ones, which are basically just little small sketches that inspired the entire new direction I have taken in the past month. There was a third one but I gave it away and forgot to document it. Oh well.

Radial telemetry (top) / Stellar cartography in the year 1776 (bottom)

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two summer drawings.

2007-11-13T22:27:00.000-05:00

Months-old paintwater on paper (~ 5.5" x 7"), with pen. A random stylistic tangent I have not gone back to again (maybe someday?) They're supposed to go side-by-side, but I can't figure out how to make that happen.

Geodesic solar flares, pts 1-2

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I have listened to the album They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glittering World of the Salons by the Swirlies five times in the past day and a half. This album is incredible. The early/mid 90s were easily the best years for 'indie' rock music, with a few exceptions aside it's all been downhill from there.

two drawings.

2007-11-12T17:37:00.000-05:00

Two drawings on old tan construction paper, one from this summer, one from several days ago.

Hyperspace wave-pool theory of economics (top) / Starship malfunction no. 3 (bottom)

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My thesis show goes up in less than a week now. I am still not okay with this. I have enough work, sure, but I still have a few things I want/need to get done by Saturday for it. Mostly, a huge 8.5' x 3.5' sheet of paper which I have as of yet not found a work-place large enough to fit. I don't have anything outside the show to do for this week though, so all should be well.

second post.

2007-11-08T11:28:00.000-05:00

(Relatively) new drawings. On oddly-constructed found panels, with pen lines on found cut paper. Inspired by elements of a collaboration done with Adria Sutter over the summer, & expanded. About 10 x 10 or so each.

Stellar Migration, Pts. 1 & 2

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first post.

2007-11-07T18:21:00.000-05:00

I bought a nice classy hardcover 2-volume boxed set of Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust today while thrift-shopping with an artist who is doing an installation in the gallery involving cheap green plastic things (which we were technically thrift-shopping for). I have been meaning to dive into this book (s) for several years now and I think this will finally give me an incentive.