Google image search results for landart when sorted by red orange yellow and green respectively

I love it when google improves its image search results, especially when my images float up to the top. (Sorting image search results according to their color is only available for google.com, the rest of the world is going to have to wait). vi.sualize.us is the site that helped my images climb in the google results. And vi.sulize.us is still the best place to go if you looking for landart images on the web.

I've linked the screenshots to their relevant search results, which will probable stay similar for a week or longer.

My landart has floated to the top of yahoo image search!

This picture of mine was recently 'faved' almost fifty times on http://ffffound.com (here's the link) which resulted in an enormous traffic increase for the original image on flickr, which, in turn, resulted in better ranking for my image in the yahoo image search results for landart. So I am very very pleased with myself, but also a little mystified; why is it that the images that I am most proud of are half as popular as this kind of thing? Don't get me wrong, I like this image, its just that i've done stuff literally ten times as good, but sometimes it would seem as if i'm the only one who thinks so...

Cultural Confinement according to Robert Smithson

I never understood american landart. Smithson and the rest of them were too abstract for me, although I thought that maybe I could change my opinion if I could ever go and see what they had done onsite. But I recently stumbled accross an excellent article about the beginning of land art in america which quoted Smithson, and I was most impressed by what he had to say so I went looking for more and here's what I got;

"Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition , rather than asking an artist to set his limits. Artists are expected to fit into fraudulent categories. Some artists imagine they've got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control. Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is. Museums, like asylums and jails, have wards and cells- in other words, neutral rooms called "galleries." A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world. A vacant white room with lights is still a submission to the neutral. Works of art seen in such spaces seem to be going through a kind of esthetic convalescence. They are looked upon as so many inanimate invalids, waiting for critics to pronounce them curable or incurable. The function of the warden-curator is to separate art from the rest of society. Next comes integration. Once the work of art is totally neutralized, ineffective, abstracted, safe, and politically lobotomized it is ready to be consumed by society. All is reduced to visual fodder and transportable merchandise. Innovations are allowed only if they support this kind of confinement."

That is far and away the best critic of galleries I have ever come accross. It makes me want to read more.

this is the poster for an exhibition i will be participating in.

Curated by Carol Zakaluk.
October 17-25, 2008.
Opening Reception Friday, October 17, 5-9 pm.
Author's Talk Wednesday, October 22, 5-8 pm.
Gallery Hours : Daily noon - 6 pm.

'green' exhibition @ havenarts.org

i never thought so much would happen this year: first the 'nature art symposium lehnin', and now, at the end of the week, an exhibit in the haven arts gallery in nyc! (not to mention my productive visit to england)

ironic that i set myself 'green' goals at the beggining of this year, without guessing that i would participate in a 'green' exhibition.

green goals

even if the heaviest snow of the winter was two weeks ago spring is definately here in berlin and my goal is to do more work in green. green is my favorite colour, and although i have done quite alot of work in green i've hardly ever accomplished anything in spring. last spring i did a couple of 'snake' motives which i am really pleased about, but they were not green, one of them was almost black and white.

what i really need to do is something as simple as this;

(this was done by andy goldsworthy)

my images have made it into the top row of google image search results for landart!

thanks to picasaweb :)

i read about how uploading images to picasaweb gets better google image search results, and that was the primary reason for using picasaweb. using picasaweb after using flickr is about as frustrating as opening a tin can without a can opener, and after uploading two dozen images more than a year ago, i went back to using flickr and almost forgot about picasaweb until i found my images at the top of the search results in one of my routine landart image searches about a week ago.

evolution

things are looking up. three years ago i did a longish snakey piece using pieces of poplar twigs laid out on concrete. i always knew i would come back to it, and last year i did. its about all i did in the way of landart last year, but its progress none the less!

i did the two in the middle in the spring of last year while i was visiting my brother in willoughby ohio, and the one on the right last fall about a mile or so from where i'm writing this.