Interview at TTR Online Video Magazine

Alexis McCrimmon interviewed me about ROY G BIV Gallery and ImageOhio 13 for TTR Online Video Magazine.

Other News:

* Maximum Rock and Roll published a guest column, "So You Want to Name Your Punk House?," by me in their January 2013 issue.
* I'm available for studio visits during the lead-up to ROY's 2014 exhibition season call-for-entries. Email me at James@roygbivgallery.org.
* ROY G BIV Gallery is now on Instagram.
* The Lantern's Shelby Lum wrote about Sara Drake and Dina Kelberman's ROY exhibition; the Dispatch's Chris Yates covered ImageOhio 13.
* Madeline Roth wrote about the Monster House on her blog.
* I'm speaking at the Urban Arts Space on February 23rd about Mark Beyer's reverse plexi paintings.
* My birthday party is tomorrow (2/7/2013) at Skylab. DJs Alexis Speier and Jackie Speier will be spinning iPhones.

A JPEG of the MRR article is after the jump.

Aidan Koch: Trophy Room

Skylab Gallery's current artist-in-residence is Portland-based artist, cartoonist, and illustrator Aidan Koch. Koch's exhibition Trophy Room will have a one-night opening on June 29th from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. 

Following the reception is a dance party with music by DJ Detox.

This event is free, all ages, and BYOB.

Skylab Gallery's artist-in-residence program is made possible through support from the Greater Columbus Arts Council.

Koch will also be giving an artist talk at 7:00 p.m. at the Wexner Center for the Arts on June 26th.

Other News:

* I featured David Berezin's stock-photo still lifes on Beautiful/Decay.

* David Leighty drew this Monster House group portrait.
* Caitlin McGurk on the Fantagraphics blog.

* Nasty Habit recorded a demo.

* A Saintseneca video.

* Known plagiarist tries to write, finds it doesn't suit him.

* Rolling Stone covers Against Me! singer's transition.

* ROY G BIV's Emerging Artist Series has a member artist page.

Party Pics

Party Pics

Jack Rammuni - 666etwood Mac

                                                 Jack Rammuni.

Jack Rammuni, my next-door neighbor, posted pictures to accompany my poem "666etwood Mac," the title of which I shamelessly lifted from something he wrote in the Monster House's kitchen last year. 

Black Cloud: Monster House Artifacts

This month-old post about the Monster House on Black Cloud is hilarious, to me at least. Apparently if you want something to stick around for four years you should write it in chalk - and/or on a novelty check. 

Another blogger speaks re: "No encores in punk rock." I hope it becomes the new "No second-acts in American life." 

Amelia / Pheramones Split Cassette Repress

Repressssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

The Amelia / Phermones split cassette was 'repressed' a few months ago. This second edition has a beautiful blue hued cover. It was drawn by Maryn Jones and printed by Shout Out Loud Prints. I believe you can order this tape for three to four dollars from shop@shoutoutloudprints.com.

Amelia was a band I played bass in. We sounded like this.

Pheramones sounds like this.

Gift Cycle

Gift Cycle from Sarah Sandman on Vimeo.

I just stumbled upon this video while redoing my CV for an application. It's from a cross-country art/gift/exchange/bicycling tour that the Mahan Gallery (RIP) hosted in the summer of 2008. The idea was that the cyclists would hand deliver pieces of artwork from one city's artists to another city's, leaving a semblance of a gift economy in their bikes' wake. Colleen conscripted me to participate as part of my internship duties. I gave the gift cyclists, Sarah Sandman and her collaborator, a Gulabi Gang collage and picked out a strange Pepto-Bismol themed screen-print for tradesies. It hung in the downstairs bathroom at the Monster House for a year or so until I felt it was ugly. Sandman and her partner took portraits of each participating artist with their artwork covering their face. I wish I could find mine. It's twirling somewhere in the internet aether, I'm sure.

Journal Of Radical Shimming On The Monster House

Former Monster House inmate Cassandra Troyan has published an article in The Journal of Radical Shimming on the political potentialities and realities of The Punk House as iterated by The Monster House in Columbus, Ohio. It starts with an evocative retelling of "The Cinnamon Life" night, moves on to our statement of purpose, details the going-ons inside the house, and ends with a "but what does it all mean, really?" sentiment cut with a "but it's pretty good anyway if you think about it" feeling. The article is after "the jump."

The article was based on this conversation Cassandra had with me last winter.

Free copies of The Journal of Radical Shimming #9 can be found in CCAD's Canzani Center.

The First Three Years Of The Monster House

Ryan J. Shirtless summer.

For the past three years I have lived in the Monster House, a DIY punk house in Columbus, Ohio. I co-founded the Monster House with Pat Crann, Austin Eilbeck, Ryan Eilbeck, Jeff Love, Kristina Markey, Matt O'Conke, Joe Scarbro, Dylan Taylor-Lehman, and Nick Wong. A few weeks ago the last three original roommates - besides me - left. And, as of this week, I'm moving out as well. A group of our friends still living at the Monster plan to continue hosting shows and events. On October 8th, Apache Dropout, Landlord, Reverse The Curse, and Cody Troyan are performing there.

After "the jump" is a list of every performer who occasioned the "stage" at the Monster House in the last three years. 400 different performers have played over 150 shows booked by over 20 promoters. The list is representative of the Columbus punk scene as well as the national DIY touring circuit from 2007-10.

More than 30 people paid rent at the house during this time span.

Reading Two Poems At The Monster House 9/22/10

This is a video of me reading "One-of-everything" and "This Angry Silence."

Paul Baribeau At The Monster House 9/17/10

It's missing a few songs. Download here.

Manners Flyer Monster House 9/22

I made this flyer yesterday for the show at The Monster House on September 22nd. 

Manners, Etc at Monster House September 22nd

On September 22nd I will be speaking poetically at the Monster House. Also performing: M A N N E R S, a one man band from Portland, Maine; Time and Temperature, Val Glenn playing entrancing top of the pops from Columbus, Ohio; What Gives, Ryan Starinsky, Josh Hoey and Austin E.'s basement pop band also from Columbus; and further poetry by Emma N. Young, a poet from New England. 

A rumor circulating about this show is that Ryan Starinsky and I may or may not debut a one-woman play entitled, Woman on Corner, Five Dogs. Off, off-Mad-Lab-like. 

Monster House shows are run on a donation basis, are all ages, and start at nine. The Monster House is located at 115 W.10th Ave. near The Ohio State University campus in Columbus, Ohio.

Lightningyingyang at the Monster House 8/27/10

Lightningyingyang is Maryn Jones on vox & hops, Ryan Eilbeck on guitar & hair ties, and Austin Eilbeck on drums & ying-yang tees. One might inarticulately describe it as "Delay-in-sophomore-year-of-art-school-in-black-lipstick-and-angst-and-totes-pist-re-life."

There is a banner involved. Costuming is in the mix. John Steinbeck audio samples are listed as probable. The chorus in one song seems to repeat, "Dry-humping in high school."After that description it's obviously redundant to say it's good, but to be clear, it is good.

Do It Together Fest 2010

Each year since 2007 my Monster House roommates Richard Wehrenberg and Matt Scheuermann have organized a DIY punk festival called "Do It Together Fest" in Kent, Ohio. This year's iteration takes place over September 10th & 11th at The Vineyard and at Professor's Pub.

Wehrenberg, a renowned poet as well as an accomplished DIY promoter, said, "It's going to be pretty cool, I guess."

Scheuermann, of Punknews.org's band/record of the year, The Sidekicks, said, "It's your typical fest."

But would your typical fest have Tao Lin, author of Shoplifting From American Apparel and the forthcoming Richard Yates, fly in to read, slapping himself or his publisher with "mad" fees, and staying with Jordan Castro + Jordan Castro's parent(s) for four days in Solon, Ohio? Would your typical fest do that?

No. It's the most internet-literature-DIY-punk fest in the world. Or, at least, more so than Berea Fest.

Also out of the norm: rumored "awesome" after show will feature the debut of underground hip-hop sensation, Monstrosity. The first in the wave of 3rd floor hip-hop acts that call The Pocket home. Soon we will have something to rival St. Catherine's incipient "Spy Girl" scene.

Full DIT Fest schedule after "The Jump."

Yikes! Reunion Set At The Monster House

Download an MP3 of the set here.

MONSTER HOUSE YARD SALE 6/5/2010

Entrepreneurship is the rumored heart and soul of the capitalist enterprise and therefore the ostensible lifeblood of our nation.

The "yard sale," as it is popularly known, is a reenactment and metaphor, based in nostalgia, for an utopian (as in no place) American entrepreneurship/citizenship.

We can think of the yard sale as saying, "Yes, I am American - I have a yard, my own piece of America. And I have objects, objects which I am free to include in the free-market."

It is in the hollow and temporary union of these two drives - economic and political, free-market and "free personhood," that we can understand what Americans think it means to be "American" - even as the true foundation of the American economy in the 21st century belies the notion that the individual has any agency in its machinations.

What we are selling and where after "The Jump."

Monster House 5/9/10

Stream of Pink Houses' and Slugging Percentage's sets. First is Pink Houses then click through for Slugging Percentage.

Or Download:
Pink Houses: mp3
Slugging Percentage: mp3

What Gives at Monster House 4/26/10

What Gives is Josh Hoey from Serious Geniuses on bass, Austin from Delay, Welcome to Concrete and Lose The Tude on drums and Ryan Starinsky from Amelia, Slugging Percentage and Letters on guitar.

This is a recording of their first show. Download here.