Storm King Wavefield at Storm King Art Center

When you visit Maya Lin's Wavefield at the Storm King Art Center, do not climb on the wave hills.

The waves, by the way, look at their best from the crest, with a sea of people on them like a flotilla of human jetsam lifted by the rising seas. Only you must walk in the troughs of the waves, not surf on the tops.

Maybe we could just have fun with our art and let future generations decide if they want to keep em' or let them rot. Why keep the fingerprints off something no one's going to want fifty years from now anyway?

Chris Burden "What My Dad Gave Me"

Chris Burden may be well known for:

1. Having someone shoot him for a performance piece called "Shoot".

2. Creating the single greatest ever work of art, a dangling ton of rock and model train track called "Medusa's Head". This fact was confirmed by the independent critical analysis by myself and my brother Tim. Both analyses included the exclamation "Dude!"


Chris Burden pays homage to his engineer father with the title of his six story high erector set skyscraper. It stands near and echoes the shape of Rockefeller Center. I took young Irving way out of the way to see it, carrying him on my back across Midtown like a Silverback Ape. I got a little choked up telling him what the sculpture was called. We thought it was really cool and he asked if he could get build a smaller version of it with his own Erector set.



Thank you again, Chris Burden.

David Byrne "Playing The Building"

Dropped in on David Byrne's Playing The Building installation in the old Battery Maritime Building in NYC on Saturday. There was plenty of stroller parking. It was free and we slogged over despite 100 degree heat that kept no one away. What this David Byrne fellow up to? Something ironic yet genuine? Arty but not alienating?

Intriguing concept- rigging up a building to an old organ to make it "play". Pipes become FLUTES. Radiators become CLANKY THINGS. Columns become metal things. Something somewhere becomes a LOUD ENGINE SOUND.

Listened to a endless line of hipsters play the same song on the building. All sounds from homemade instruments fall into three catagories: "tweet!", "thud!" and "crash!" also "ping!"