Full Circle

   New Astroknot drawing 2013, for Shooting Gallery solo show in 2014 Life is a trip you guys and gals.  Three years ago pretty much to date I was sitting exactly where I am right now working on my website, getting ready for a couple big shows coming up in the spring exactly as I am right now.  I was sober at the time, but a couple relapses away from real sobriety as some would say.  I was digging my heels in and grinding my teeth and typing furiously at press emails and blog posts and copying and pasting show descriptions in art site calendars like FecalFace.com and Impose magazine.

Panels for my exhibition at the SFMOMA Artist Gallery 2013

I was still a virgin to Hi-Fructose and Juxtapoz and was with my girlfriend (now ex-girl) at the time who lived a block from the cafe on Mason & Washington that I am typing from.  I had opened Unstoppable Tomorrow Vol.1 at Old Crow with Chris Burch and D Young V not 20 days before, and was freaking out as my show Past From the Blast was coming up at Queens Nails in just two months.  Life felt electric and on fire, and as I sit here typing this for you to read it still feels electric and on fire, a bit more so now to be honest.  The intensity is different, the short term gratification has given way to long term hustle and a much bigger vision and state of mind, which coincidentally demands a much deeper, and fully sustaining sort of internal electric source and fuel for a much hotter and longer lasting fire.

Piece for Unstoppable Tomorrow Vol.1 in the works...2010

The world and the gods have been good to me as I have continued to dig in my heels, hoist up my sleeves, make, write, draw, copulate, glue, talk, laugh, cry, hunker down, take little breaks, get excited and continue to explore this epic world we live in together.  It really blows me away at how funny this moment is and how special it is as French lounge music plays in the background and the cable car dings and roars by with its San Francisco history soundtrack following it everywhere it moves.

Skull and handle bars detail from The Great Debate Sculpture in the studio 2012

I am really lucky and really grateful to have made it past that moment three years ago.   It proved to be very much a major hurtle, a major proving ground for where my life would go.  I had fought and surrendered my way to a new type of life so different than the one I had become accustomed to for so many years, and it really was those events in 2010 and 2011 and the people who remained in my life and the new ones who became a part of it that shaped the path for where I am going now.

Flyer for Unstoppable Tomorrow Vol.1 2010

I have never had disdain for the holidays, and I am lucky for that.  So as I sit here and sun is going down and I can here the kids outside and the parents in the Chinatown meets Jackson Heights area of San Francisco, I can only imagine how many stories I am surrounded by.  All those stories give me energy.  All those stories to build the fabric of what so many of us create from.  Bus drivers, business women, art school kids, swaggy street kids, skateboarders, old chinese ladies with 20 plastic produce and dim sum filled bags, the crazy man on the block with the cart of hoarded newspapers, yuppies, tourists, wanna be thugs, real gangsters sitting in their blacked out Mercedes' with the windows down dragon tattoos wrapping around their arms with cigarettes in their mouths, new parents pushing strollers, old parents of every race with their grown up kids in town for the Holidays, they all pass through leaving freeze frames of motion and character in my mind.

Past From the Blast 2011

This post goes out to the ether.  To the powers at work outside of our tangible vision that make the movements of the universe ebb and flow.  To all the artists in the Bay and New York and Japan, to the South, Europe and beyond. The world is happening all over all the time.  I am glad this moment in the massive fabric of time has happened for me where I can suddenly have a sort of deja vu memory trip.  A moment where I can sit in the same place I was three years ago fighting for my life in a very different pair of shoes, and where I gathered my energy for a great Hadouken and went for it.

Makenzi James from a modeling shoot for painting reference images 2013

It feels good to sit here right now and look back on all that has happened in the last three years and be thankful as Christmas is approaching that I have the capacity to work hard and stay creative and dig deep within myself to contribute what I can to this world of ours.  Much love to everyone! IPD, 57, RTS, The Basement, Screwed Arts, Doppel, and every one that is busting that ass and making it happen. #makeworkson

Bright on Time Collaborative installation piece with Koutaro Ooyama of Doppel at Spes-Lab 2013

SFMOMA X JOHN FELIX ARNOLD III...

...was so amazing!  It feels incredible to have my first real museum exhibition up and running!!!!!  Thank you to Alfonso Cosio and Renee De'Cosio for helping to make this a reality.  To D Young V, Dylan Pembleton, G.U.T.S., Jaysonik, Micah at 111 Minna, Rachel and John at Fecal Face, Nastia at Hi-Fructose, and everyone, especially my parents, who came out and supported!  "In Memory Of..." will be up for three months at 147 Minna Street in the SFMOMA Windows on the side of the building! Please go and check it out...a proper opening post is coming...thanks you all. -John Felix Arnold III

Onward!

Man, life comes at you fast.  I feel like yesterday I had just gotten back from Japan and I was trying to get back in the swing.  In what feels like no time I have grown a lot as a person and an artist, I have walked through a lot of things with my head still attached and my feet still on the ground (loosely lol), and am still completely charged and stoked about the future and my present being on this planet with all of ya'll.  I am getting really amped up about the SFMOMA project coming up, largely because I received a studio visit and real deal critique from Renee DeCosio (program director for the SFMOMA Artist Gallery) who came through with the awesome Alfonso Cosio recently.  Man it was the best, most honest, intriguing, to the point, helpful, and explorative, no kid gloves critique I have had in a longgg time (since Pratt actually).  It gave me some new juice to make an incredibly in depth new series for the first installment of the SFMOMA windows in June (also part of the Yerba Buena Alliance art walk) where I am really exploring some foundations, the origin and the architecture of the Astroknots, and by doing so really revisiting and dealing with a lot of things that were going on when I first moved to California in 2006.  I have really dove deeply back into process and am exploring some of my core basics and letting things happen without a presumed outcome again.  I am quite honestly the happiest I have been making art in a long time in creating these new pieces and the series that I see coming from it.

With amazing art work generally comes a lot more under the surface.  Of course this comes at a time when things in my personal life are pretty intense, yet I do feel my feet are still planted firmly on the earth.  It is amazing to feel such a sense of presence and compassion for things happening that I am involved with that the old me would have reacted to out of serious personal fears and insecurities, but rather now see how I can help and how I can maintain my balance in the face of some heavy stuff.  To everyone in my life right now I say with huge words, I love you all and you are all very dear to me, thank you all for being you and exploring life here with me and not being afraid to get real with those you care about.  And to finish this one off, I am going to Japan for my residency in less than two months.  I will be doing a six day meditation pilgrimage before I get to work in Tokyo for three weeks!  It's going to be, as Kenichi Minami from Ken South Rock says, a Huge Volcano!

Work For SF MOMA June 8th...

 

I stand before you today to tell all of you how excited it makes me to say this.  If you have been following my sparse internet presence as of late, you have heard hints here and there of the news that I am going to be featured in the SFMOMA in downtown San Francisco.  The SFMOMA Artist Gallery (their more contemporary and larger artist representation wing located at Ft. Mason) is in charge of curating the windows that face Minna St. and Natoma St. on the sides of the Museum itself in Downtown San Francisco.  After making a personal goal years ago to myself of getting my work featured in these windows someday, it is happening.  I have them for a year, and the first installment in a four part saga that runs from June 2013-June 2014 begins this June 8th.   Beyond my wildest dreams this has become a reality.

This above shot is from my Birthday Performance Art Show at LeQuivive Gallery in Oakland January 16, 2013.

I will be running my programming in the three window bay units on Minna St. and using the Natoma side here and there as a background for performance work and possibly for intimate special engagements and explorations in new installation environments from the world of Unstoppable Tomorrow.  The three pieces for the first installment of the Minna St. windows are complete.  I may add some smaller relics and mixed media pieces to the windows as the date moves closer, but for now, these are the pieces.   Two are brand new, and both as of yet un-named fully, and the third is in fact from July 2011.  It is called Event Elation and has only been shown once here in the Bay Area (it was out of my grasp for a year due to unforeseen issues with a curator but is now happily back in my hands).  So without further adieux here are images of these 8'x4' Mixed Media on Wood Panel Pieces!!!!

SF Weekly Article and New Updates.

So first and foremost I would like to thank Kate Conger at SF Weekly for doing an awesome article and interview on yours truly and the world of "Unstoppable Tomorrow".  It feels really good to open up about some of the finer and darker points of my life that has sculpted my art making to what it is today!  She is a great writer, really made me dig deep and I do thank her for the opportunity to do this piece.  It feels good to spill your guts sometimes in print.  Here is a link, click on the image below...

Lastly, I have amazing news.  I will be doing a residency at Spes-Lab in Tokyo in April of 2013, and then when I come back it is time to do my first installation of a year long program of the SFMOMA windows in downtown San Francisco.  More on this to come!!! Things are looking good!