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Lovely Daze is a collection of artists’ writings and artworks published twice a year in limited editions. The second issue, “Take A Stroll,” inspired by presocratic philosophers, takes a fleet away from daily routines through earth, water, and air.

publisher/editor/designer ~ charwei tsai
editors ~ kelly carmena, lesley ma, and sabrina shaffer
copyright ~ lovely daze, spring 2006

CONTRIBUTORS

AZRA AKšAMIJA is an artist and architect based in Cambridge, USA. Since fall 2004 she has been affiliated with MIT as a Ph.D. student in the Department for History Theory and Criticism of Art and Architecture (AKPIA). She graduated from the Technical University Graz, Austria in 2001, and received her M.Arch from Princeton University, USA in 2004. Her work has been widely published and exhibited in venues such as the Generali Foundation Vienna (2002), Biennial de Valencia (2003), Graz Biennial of Media and Architecture (2003), Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig (2003), and Liverpool Biennial (2004).
http://web.mit.edu/azra/www/Research.htm

JESSE ALEXANDER is co-founder of CrumleyAlexander creative agency, and the sole proprietor of JeromeJerome silk scarves. His works have been exhibited at Bergdorf Goodman, Printed Matter, Gavin Brown, the nac in Portland, Youngblood Gallery in Atlanta, Saltworks in Atlanta and a nondescript venue in Los Angeles.
www.crumleyalexander.com www.jeromejerome.com

DIMITRIOS ANTONITSIS was born in 1966, Athens, Greece. He had solo exhibitions in New York, Athens, Italy, Germany. He is a keen observer of the most insane pockets of society and himself. According to his personal trainer ‘he is the ultimate modern man, tormented by the painful awareness that his pleasures are finite, but his needs infinite.’ Every summer he curates an international art show at the old school of the island of Hydra, his most favorite place on earth.

AARON BENNETT is an art teacher in Cambridge, MA. He recommends Finn Comforts as the best overall walking shoes. They’re totally worth the money.
www.crystalunderstanding.com

THE BREAD&PUPPET THEATER was founded in 1963 on New York City’s Lower East Side by Silesian-born sculptor and choreographer Peter Schumann. After a four-year residency at Goddard College, the Theater moved to their permanent home on a farm in Glover in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont in 1974. Until 1998, an annual performance known as Our Domestic Resurrection Circus was held at the farm in late August, drawing crowds of up to 40,000. Now the Theater produces a lively ongoing summer season from June through the end of August with the help of an internship company. During the rest of the year, The Bread&Puppet Theater tours its indoor shows and massive outdoor spectacles in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. Their pageants have a broad theme-oriented appeal to large non-elite audiences. They address social, political, and environmental issues, or simply the common urgencies of our lives.
www.breadandpuppet.org

KELLY CARMENA made another rock cake today.

ALEX DODGE is a New York based artist working in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He recently had his first solo exhibition at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in Williamsburg. His work concerns the fragility and transitory nature of personal experience, working in a wide range of materials and processes. His works are in numerous private collections in the US and Europe. He co-curated the exhibition “Greater Brooklyn” with Glen Baldridge at CRG Gallery in New York, a show devoted to unrepresented artists living and working in Brooklyn.
www.alexdodge.com

JUAN CARLOS DONADO is a Colombian writer.

SARAH DUNBAR is a student at MIT’s School of Architecture. Before coming to MIT, she collaborated with Logan Billingham on an art and music project, Cat Pants – channeling the feline mind for all to appreciate.
www.sarah-dunbar.com

MAX GLEASON graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2002 with a BFA in sculpture. For the past three years he has worked in New York City in the film and television industry, both in art departments and post-production capacities. He continues to work as a painter and video artist at his studio in Williamsburg. His paintings, sculptures, and video works have been exhibited in New York, Providence, Boston, and Atlanta.
www.maxgleason.com

BUTT JOHNSON does not exist. If he did, however, he might spend his days playing Nintendo on his computer and his nights listening to books on tape. He would also probably live and work in Brooklyn, New York.
www.buttjohnson.com

AUDE JOMINI is a Swiss artist who relocated in the US in 1993. She lived in Boca Raton, Florida, before attending Rhode Island School of Design. Aude has participated in group exhibitions in West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Providence, Brooklyn and New York. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work utilizes the American built environment as a starting point; to create alternate constructions within the pictorial plane; or to denounce and emphasize certain social issues arising in the spaces and landscapes inhabited.

PALI KASHI is an artist living, working, and showing in New York. She has always had a deep yearning sensation to become a gypsy.

IAN KAZANOWSKI is an Architect. Born 1979 in the United States, currently a resident of Brooklyn, NY. His drawings are his tools to create large scale constructed works. His work focuses on the conceptual gradation of visual interests and occupational needs.

CATALINA LEóN was born in Buenos Aires in April, 1981. She started painting in 1998, but just for a short time. She really started in 2001 and spent some time in the Prilidiano Pueyrredon Fine Arts School, IUNA in 2002 where a very close friend of hers, Mariana López, became her teacher. In 2003, she was selected to participate in the Workshop Programa de Talleres para las Artes Visuales CCRRojas – UBA / Kuitca, a grant for young visual artists and studied with Guillermo Kuitca for two years. She currently lives and works in Buenos Aires.

MARIANA LóPEZ is an Argentinean painter who lives and works in Buenos Aires. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2005 and had solo shows in Argentina and recently in New York.
www.dabbahtorrejon.com.ar

LESLEY MA looks forward to the LD2 launch, her next brunch, and working on her own zine this summer. She misses chitchatting with Charwei at the studio.
www.tastingsalon.com

ZOë MENDELSON creates drawn and painted dreamscapes occurring on walls, inside antique furniture and museum-style cabinets. With conflicting roots in children’s illustration, botanical and erotic drawing, her dislocated narratives play off intimations of desire with sensations of disgust and discomfort. She has exhibited widely in Europe, with recent solo shows at Galerie Schleicher + Lange, Paris (2004, 2006), Rokeby, London (2005); Millais Gallery, Southampton (2005); Mogadishni, Copenhagen (2006) and Galerie Kapinos, Berlin (2006). Zoë teaches at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design and lives in London.
www.zoemendelson.co.uk

PAPER RAD is based in Easthampton, MA and Pittsburgh, PA. They make music, cartoons, installations, and comics, and often take their show on the road. They recently finshed a book called BJ and Da Dogz, and they have a website with many cool files called “www.paperrad.org.”

CRISTINA RODRIGUEZ is a Colombian designer/artist living in New York. She received her BFA in industrial design from Rhode Island School of Design and is currently extending her studies in fashion design at Parsons School of Design. As long as she can remember, she has obsessively kept journals and sketchbooks to record everything from people to places to ideas.
www.crwork.net

SABRINA SHAFFER continues to contribute (and greatly enjoys the conversation resulting from) her adverse evaluations of Charwei.
www.otabo.com

CHARWEI TSAI’s apartment in the East Village is still very messy even though she has a lot of time on her hands now. But the artist has a good life and looks forward to her next exhibitions on the island of Hydra in Greece where Leonard Cohen hangs out and at Singapore’s first Biennale. Her fortuneteller says that 2006 is even a luckier year than 2005. It is a little hard to believe, but it seems to be true indeed.
www.charwei.com

SU-MEI TSE is an artist based in Luxembourg and Paris. She uses different media (videos, photographs, installations, objects…) in function of the core idea she wants to express. Sound, rhythm, and music are also important components in her work, which is characterized by a placing in suspension, moments of silence and an invitation to a degree of introspection. Su-Mei’s work has been exhibited at the 50th Venice Biennial, at the Sao Paolo Biennial, at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, Casino, Forum d’Art Contemporain in Luxembourg, and BMoCA in Kinmen, Taiwan.

JORDAN WOLFSON was born in New York City on October 9th 1980. He currently lives and works in both NYC and Berlin Germany. Recent exhibitions include the 2006 Whitney Biennial, Kunsthalle Zurich, Yvon Lambert Paris, Uncertain States of America at the Astrup Fernely Museum of Modern Art.
www.jordanwolfson.org

ANDREW JEFFREY WRIGHT is a current and founding member of Philadelphia’s Space 1026 art space. He has a BFA in animation.
www.space1026.com

DIEGO YTURBE is an artist based in Mexico. After a long stroll around the world, he left his rigid and structured civil engineering background to explore the lawless world of art. His last work was about the hospitality that he received throughout his journey and it was exhibited at Mas Arte Contemporaneo, México City. Diego and the visual artist, Guillermo Roel, are co-founders of an experimental art center in Oaxaca, México, called “estudio 11011.” Diego is currently working on the construction of a winery at Valle de Guadalupe in Baja, California. He is not pouring concrete anymore but is sculpting a thousand square meters of experimental land walls.

Lovely Daze is a collection of artists’ writings and artworks published twice a year in limited editions. The first issue, “a day in New York when nothing happens,” is divided into three sections based on the different mental states that make up the artists’ day: dream, reality and daze.

Prompted by my experience living and working for the Arts in New York, Lovely Daze is the synthesis of two opposing mentalities.

The first sprouted from a joint discovery with a like-minded friend, Kelly, of a fruition of life outside of the commonly accepted notions of accomplishment and productivity. Together, we came to an empirical understanding of the subjectivity of success, and the artlessness of slaving to attain such intangible subjectivity. Both unemployed at the time, we indulged in a mentality devoted to the wonderment of our ever-present state of vitality and the goodness of those around us. The esoteric bliss that we invented led to the naming of the publication and the theme of this inaugural issue.

The second polarizing mind-set, which instigated the realization of this publication, is derived from my current employed life working for an ambitious and established artist. Encouraged to produce as much as possible, as quickly as possible, and constantly being recognized or criticized for the level of my contribution to what is believed to be the greater good, (namely the contemporary art world), I am driven to become more conscious of an exoteric life outside of familiar habits and faces.

My cumulative experience, of both being an artist and working for an artist, merged two conflicting perspectives and gave rise to the goal of Lovely Daze: To provide a platform for young artists to present, first hand, their writings and art. Rather than resorting to the prevalent trend of encouraging young artists to shock with the hopes of instant recognition, the publication aspires to explore conversely how their theories substantiate their practice, and their thoughts corporealize through writing and making art.

The selection of works is based on the artists’ ability to develop their creative practices integrally in the areas of techniques, aesthetics, and concepts… and admittedly, it is also based on my personal admiration.

~charwei tsai

publisher/editor/designer ~ charwei tsai
editors ~ kelly carmena, lesley ma, and sabrina shaffer
copyright ~ lovely daze, autumn 2005

CONTRIBUTORS

JESSE ALEXANDER runs very fast and he runs Overtime and Understand design studio, Crumley Alexander creative agency, and Jerome Jerome apparel line all from his home in Brooklyn. He had contributed to publications including Knit Knit and Arktip and exhibited at Bergdorf Goodman, Printed Matter, Gavin Brown, the nac in Portland, Youngblood Gallery in Atlanta and a nondescript venue in Los Angeles.
www.overtimeandunderstand.com

CORY ARCANGEL is a computer artist whose work is concerned with technology’s relationship to culture and the creative process. He is a founding member of BEIGE, a group of computer programmers and enthusiasts who recycle obsolete computers and video game systems to make art and music, and a member of RSG (Radical Software Group). Cory’s work has been exhibited at the American Museum of the Moving Image, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
www.beigerecords.com

AARON BENNETT is a musician/artist/art teacher. He is the lead singer of the band, Crystal Understanding, and is considering to join the MIT Spouse Club. Aaron loves cats.
www.crystalunderstanding.com

KELLY CARMENA made rock cake today.

LYNNE CHAN is an artist living in New York. Her character JJ Chinois is a media and performance based project whose highlights include performances at Kathy’s Nut Hut in Milwaukee, and the Cacti and Succulent Society of Tulsa.

JULIA CHIANG currently lives and works in Brooklyn. She has exhibited in New York and abroad and has been an artist-in-residence in Beijing, The Henry Street Settlement, and the Vermont Studio Center. She is currently one of The Creative Center’s artist-in-residence at Mount Sinai Hospital.

BRIAN CRUMLEY was born in Guam. Living in New York for ten years, he is a self-taught visual contortionist, bending his will around abstractions of form and function, testing the limits of his ability in a prolific variety of creative outlets. Flying high on the winds, floating in water, and rolling through grasses, on a familiar journey to the unknown.
www.crumleynewyork.com

FLAVIA DA RIN is an Argentinean artist who lives and works in Buenos Aires. Fla studied at the Prilidiano Pueyrredon Fine Arts School (IUNA) and attended the Guillermo Kuitca`s Workshop Programa de Talleres para las Artes Visuales CCRRojas – UBA / Kuitca, a grant for young visual artists from 2003 to 2005.

JUAN DONADO is a Colombian writer.

SARAH DUNBAR is an artist/designer/architect currently pursuing a masters degree in architecture at MIT. She is also the lead singer of the band, Cat Pants.
www.sarah-dunbar.com

VICSON GUEVARA is a graphic designer born in Philippines, raised in Taiwan, and now lives in New York. He studied fine arts at UC Berkeley. He can’t live without his i Pod and his dog, Tyson.

RONALD GERBER lives in Leipzig, Germany. His goal is to uncover the beliefs, realities and truths that lie behind the masquerades that people show. For him, producing art is the best way to pursuethis research.

MAX GLEASON graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2002 with a BFA in sculpture. For the past three years he has worked in New York City in the film and television industry, both in art departments and post-production capacities. He continues to work as a painter and video artist at his studio in Williamsburg. His paintings, sculptures and video works have been exhibited in New York, Providence, Boston and Atlanta.
www.maxgleason.com

PATRICK HENRY is a 25-year-old artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. He creates emotive, representational drawings based on his experience touring with punk bands during the past three years. His experience with raw youth culture contributes to the bold, animalistic mark making and imagery nescessary to portray the complexities of being a kid in America.
www.tapesrecords.com/patrickhenry.html

BAPTISTE IBAR was born in France in 1977. He immigrated to the US at the age of seven in 1984. Attended Rhode Island School of Design and received a BFA in Painting in 2000. His paintings are in private collections ranging from Mexico City to New York to Paris. In 2005, Baptiste completed a set of twelve paintings to be featured in Michel Gondry’s upcoming film, The Science of Sleep.
www.baptisteibar.com

JAPANTHER is a a four-year-old terror of a lo-fi rock group. Recent work with Dan Graham and his Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty puppet rock opera inspired them to make their own punk puppet opera. The resulting Dump The Body In Rikki Lake features eleven-foot puppets by Dan Luce, drawings by Devin Flynn, UFO and Sadu 907, video by Elisabeth Arkhipoff, lighting by Eugene Tsai and puppeteering by Ken Berman and Sarah Frechette.
www.japanther.com

AUDE JOMINI is a Swiss artist who relocated in the US in 1993. She lived in Boca Raton, Florida, before attending Rhode Island School of Design. Aude has participated in group exhibitions in West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Providence, Brooklyn and New York. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work utilizes the American built environment as a starting point; to create alternate constructions within the pictorial plane; or to denounce and emphasize certain social issues arising in the spaces and landscapes inhabited.

DANNY KOHLER was born in Washington D.C. and raised along the east coast of the US. He recieved a BFA from Pratt Institute in 2002. He currently lives and works in Atlanta where he supplements his income as a master cheesemonger.

JUSTIN LOWE received a MFA from Columbia University in 2004 and a BFA from Hampshire College in 2000. He currently lives and works in New York. Selected exhibitions include Collecting Pictures in the Brain Hotel at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City, Dwellings at the Brooklyn Public Library, Passage and Greater New York at PS1.

LESLEY MA studied the history of science at Harvard University and received her MA in museum studies at New York University. She finds pleasure in all things ephemeral.
www.tastingsalon.com

LILIANE PHUNG is a French-Vietnamese painter who works and lives in Paris. She graduated from L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 2005 and her selected exhibitions include J’en Rêve at Fondation Cartier and The Carpenter Show at Galerie Alain le Gaillard in Paris.

BRADLEY PITTS is an artist with two degrees in aerospace engineering. He grew up in Manhattan and currently lives in Brooklyn. In January, 2006 he will move to Amsterdam to start a two year residency at the Rijksakademie.
www.bradleypitts.info

CRISTINA RODRIGUEZ is a Colombian designer/artist living in New York. She received her BFA in industrial design from Rhode Island School of Design and is currently extending her studies in fashion design at Parsons School of Art.
www.crwork.net

JULIAN SEIDL lives and works in New York. She graduated from Hampshire College in 2000 in art and photography. Selected exhibitions include On The Beach at Printed Matter, and The Image-World at the International Center of Photography in New York.

SABRINA SHAFFER is a Taiwanese-American shoemaker and writer, whose main contributions are her criticisms of Charwei.
www.otabo.com

CHARWEI TSAI is a Taiwanese artist living in a messy apartment in New York. Formerly acclaimed for her impressionable sense of lethargy and implausible presence of an absent mind, while producing Lovely Daze, Charwei officially became a self-inspired workaholic. Her first and only exhibit happily debuted at the Fondation Cartier in Paris in 2005 (a very lucky year).
www.charwei.com

SETH WEIDER is an illustrator/artist and to the publisher’s knowledge, works and lives in Maine. Seth has not been seen or heard of since 2002. In fact, he remains to be the only contributor unaware of this publication due to a failure to be contacted via email. However, his benign personality is assumed not to get the publication into any sort of copyright troubles.

JIA ZHANG was born in Beijing. Jia likes to leave places and things behind and find things that are left behind. She doesn’t like to own things except for memories and a song to play in her head.

Special thanks to grandma, mom, dad, sis, kesuke, aunts + lots of cousins. tina, sarah, ama, bebe, angelita, sofia, bobo, ronnie+duke+gang, yulin, leif, andrew, chris liu, jason, yonatan, alex, shunyi, ad, ido, lewis, danielle, naoto, kris, rene, tsuyoshi, johnathan, ganden, henry the cat, printed matter + max, cai studio, yng, p.s.1, fondation cartier and obviously, all the contributors.