Recently by Mark Staff Brandl

An update on one of my newest paintings.

One of those morph things, but it works beautifully with the art. I am feeling pensive and somber due to the nearness of too much death. This fits.

Brian Sherwin, artist and art blogger has interviewed me, the EuroShark for his website, myartspace>blog. Sherwin, originally from Illinois and now living in California, has conducted and published a series of interviews with visual artists including William T. Wiley and others. You can read his piece with me here.

Also new --- a short video interview with me in German on youtube here.

A Bad at Sports Basel Art Fair Overdose!

The intro and outro are extra creepy this week. Highlights(?) include Duncan talking about some fantasy involving wearing tight short shorts and Teena McClelland!!! Tom Burtonwood interrupts the recording by shooting rubber bands. Chaos!

After Richard and Duncan are done making a mess of things, the real pros come in and present a fantastic report from Basel.

Lamis El Farra, emerging artist, and the EuroShark Mark Staff Brandl, seemingly perennially emerging black sheep artist, traverse and discuss the entirety of the King of Art Fairs, Art Basel. Yes: the Fair Itself, Art Statements, Art Unlimited, Scope, and the Solo Project. They only missed Liste and Print Basel. Sorry, but all the rest was already enough. Of course they were at the VIP opening (ahem) and managed to talk to more people than you can shake a stick at: artists, gallerists, museum directors, curators, critics, art magazine editors, fair organizers, all the hangers-on, ...er..., important elements of the international artworld.

Link to the podcast on BaS.

Music video from Chicago's The Handcuffs, whose songs you've heard on MTV's "Laguna Beach," "The Hills" and "8th & Ocean;" A&E's "Rollergirls;" the soundtrack of the Sundance Award winning documentary "The Education of Shelby Knox" and more. The song for this video, "Can't Get the Girl (Without the Good Stuff, Baby)" appears on the band's debut CD "Model for a Revolution."

This Week on Bad at Sports Duncan and Amanda talk to Rachel and Ed "Edmar" Marszewski about Proximity Magazine. A wonderful interview about a great project. With Sharkforum, Bad at Sports, The Art Letter and now Proximity (and some other blogs too), we just might get some appreciation for the depth of the real Chicago artscene going.

The show also features a short segment on the interesting Spudnik printmaking location.

Listen here.

In a great post on his blog, photographer Dawoud Bey raises some very Sharkpack-like questions about how to circumvent the decided lack of appropriate institutional support:

"Within the past week here in Chicago there have been no less than two panel discussions on race and art production. More specifically these panel discussions (with vocal audience exchanges) looked at black art and black art production, or as yesterday's panel at the University of Chicago (in conjunction with the exhibition Black Is/Black Ain't) was entitled, "Post Black: There and Back Again." Thursday night's program at the Experimental Station, which was organized by Theaster Gates as part of the "Representations" series on culture, politics, and aesthetics, was entitled "Black Enough?"

Both of these gatherings were lively, engaging, and variously informative, and provided a much needed forum for the airing of ideas that usually take place away from the light of public discourse."

I want to post ---as a blog --- a comment I put up over on Bad at Sports. I know most, yet not ALL of our two publics overlap. I was very enthused by the roundtable discussion Duncan MacKenzie and Lori Waxman had with Kathryn Hixson and James Yood.

They brought up some very important points, as did several commenters including Pedro Velez and our own Shark. ...

Historic Blockbuster Store Offers Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past

1995: A year in the life of artist Eugene J. Martin. Part I.



The widow of the late US artist Eugene J. Martin, Suzanne Fredericq, has put up a beautiful series of videos dedicated to the paintings and drawings of her husband.

This is Part I of a 2-part series showing abstract paintings (acrylics on canvas) created by visual artist Eugene James Martin in 1995 in Washington D.C. Video clip montage by S. Fredericq, filmed in Lafayette, Louisiana (LA).