Matress Factory

I spent a fair amount of time looking at a some of the past and permanent installations at Matress Factory. It's too bad most of the images are so small because it's hard to see what is going on in most of the shots. Most of the pages for specific installations have some decent descriptions about the installations, though, and you get a basic idea of what it might be like.

I think my favorite gallery on the site is the page for Greer Lankton. I like the whole set up of the exterior of the installation because it literally houses the piece inside of the space in which it was assembled. Inside the little house there is a room that is decorated with pieces of the artists personal collection of handmade dolls, pictures, etc. The room is arranged in a meaningful way to the artist, and the viewer gets a really interesting perspective on her ideas and interests in her work. The whole installation seems to be especially important because it was the last installation that the artist worked on before her death and serves as a reminder about her life.

Nick Cave

Wow, it's been 2 weeks since my last post. That's lame! I guess I sort of forgot about this blog entirely. Well I don't have much to share this time with sculpture related stuff, but I guess I'll use this post to share some music that I've been getting really into lately. A friend turned me on to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds a few months ago, and I think his career is really interesting. This group has a huge catalog of music, and I've been working my way through a lot of stuff. Some of it is pretty sweet, but there is quite a bit that just isn't my style

Nick Cave started his career with The Birthday Party, then went on to form Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. He's also worked on a number of other projects including Grinderman. Here's a few songs that range over a big chunk of his career.

The first song is called Nick the Stripper. Super dark and gritty and raw. This song is pretty representative of what The Birthday Party sounded like in the early 80's. This isn't the stuff that got me hooked on Nick Cave, but it's pretty cool to see what he was doing when he first started.

So here's Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. 8 years after the previous video. This song is pretty upbeat compared to the rest of the tracks off the album, but you can see the style has changed quite a bit.

This is The Weeping Song off of The Good Son album. It's really the only song on that album that I like, but it's much more representative of what the Bad Seeds sound like now. uhh,, and by 'now' I mean like 20 years ago when it was recorded!

This last one is called Stagger Lee from the album Murder Ballads. This was the album that got me hooked on Cave from the beginning and I've been listening to it for months now. I really enjoy going over the whole catalog of Cave's works and paying attention to the long steady transformation his music has gone through. I also really appreciate his dark sense of humor. Hope you enjoyed [at least some of] the music!