alex bootcamp

I just hear that marie osmond's son killed himself in Hollywood. I would like to offer my services to rich and famous depressed americans. For only 1,500 per month I will take you under my wing and help you find meaning and happiness. You get to live with me in my crappy one bedroom apt. and you will get up everyday at 5:30 and go get me a new york post and redbull and then we go running. No whining allowed. I will take you out drinking in a serious dive bar and learn you about art and humanity. I will teaqch you how to work your ass off 7 days a week and pray to god your paintings sell. I will teach you self worth and how to amke it on your own without a rich parent wiping your proverbial heiny. I will get you in shape teach you to be maniacally driven and how to deal with such matters as when you fall behind on bills etc. call me up at 1 800 genius and I will save you from commiting suicide in your parents beverly hills condo.

accidental art

the best art is accidental art, art that is not meant to be art at all. I sometimes look at subway walls or a random pile of tires in the snow. The reason I do not make abstract art or conceptual is I am not talented enough to compete with accidents, life or god. This is why must abstract art looks forced and weak. I have seen better puke stains on east village sidewalks than I have from the abstract depressionists. They make me sick.

goldfish

relationships sometimes take on the feeling of swimming around in a plastic bag.

vision of the day

Out of my train window I saw kids in the projects building a snowman. It was a nice vision, a fleeting one. I often think about the ten million things you see in your life that pass by hardly noticed and forgotten an hour later. The memory often requires extreme pain or joy to remember an event or at least to put the old yellow hi-liter on it. Everything else falls to the ground like a snowflake, lost among a million other visions or thoughts...train blog

words of the day

there is nothing sadder nor a thing more dangerous than a man who doesnt know himself.

gardega said that

snow

I never get bored of the snow. I am like a kid when it snows. The only good thing about winter is the snow. I like central park in the snow. All humans should walk through the snow in winter in central park at least once. Snow creates a space in the mind not unlike the act of creating art. it takes you out of the grind a bit and into a wondereland of the soul. Unless you are racing a deadline and then painting is going poorly then painting is a worse hell than a root canal. My saint mural is delivered next friday. Will photograph it! That was a brutal piece that dragged on forever.

look vs seeing

there is a huge difference between looking and seeing. You can look without seeing but the reverse is not true. Seeing is really knowing what is in front of you. Looking is merely mentally acknowledging what is in front of you. An artist must see, not look. Seeing is the visual equivalent of smelling the roses. I prefer seeing the roses.

look vs seeing

there is a huge difference between looking and seeing. You can look without seeing but the reverse is not true. Seeing is really knowing what is in front of you. Looking is merely mentally acknowledging what is in front of you. An artist must see, not look. Seeing is the visual equivalent of smelling the roses. I prefer seeing the roses.

good times

Here was a fun evening at Nobu in NYC. I think saki was the drink of choice this night. Here is me and some great friends including the famous NYC detective / "one tough cop" bo dietl. I try to avoid pics of me after more than three drinks but what the hell...It was summer and party time...

life cant be all painting alone in a studio---but it can be 90% painting

alone in a studio.

memory lane is a fine place but you dont want to spend too much time in the past.

Bernie in hell hotsauce

I am selling my hot sauce I again. I just ordered more. It is hard to keep so many plates spinning in the air. I am very proud of my world famous hot sauce and I forget at times how good the sauce is. The idea was pure gardega genius and madoff is where he belongs, hell.

10 dollars per limited edition bottle.

rembrandt

not much to say about rembrandt. Perhaps the greatest of all time, what can you say about him? just look, that is enough.

always help the blind

if you see a blind person crossing the street you should always go out of your way to help them. Vision is a great gift and I cant imagine being blind. It is my only fear in life, blindness.

global this

I just spent the majority of this winter running around chasing my tail through the streets of NYC if I hear one person tell me about global warming I will push them into the east river and let them swim through the pollution to the nearest iceberg. My bones are still cold and wont thaw until may. I wished I had al gores layer of thick blubber to protect me but all I have is a peacoat.

global this

I just spent the majority of this winter running around chasing my tail through the streets of NYC if I hear one person tell me about global warming I will push them into the east river and let them swim through the pollution to the nearest iceberg. My bones are still cold and wont thaw until may. I wished I had al gores layer of thick blubber to protect me but all I have is a peacoat.

alex reads the post

Today in the NY Post: a woman is sentenced to prison for leveling false rape charges against a man that sent him to jail for years. If I was the judge I would sentence her to the exact amount of days in the same prison the falsely accused got. "is any killer worth more than his crime?"

self reliance

when I was eight I read emersons essay on self reliance and it rewired my brain forever. It was then I figured out that I would never let another entity be it a parent a government or a friend figure out for me what was best for me. When I die I will have my boots on and they will have been sewed and cobbled by me and they will be worn and tattered. The only thing I am sure of is that one day they put you in a box in the ground. Until then I will live my own way regardless of how maddening it is to those around me. All around me are the spoonfed masses who have chosen a life path hewn out by the hands of another or (even worse) by the boney hand of fear. Often, a well meaning parent can send you down a path to ruin as midway one realizes it was not your own choice and it is too late to turn around. In freudian terms the parent must be defeated in order to become a hero. The umbilical cord is the most dangerous of nooses. You can be 40 and still tangled in the psychic web of controlling parents and if you are, then god bless you.

thought of the day

your conscience doesnt abide by majority rule.

nanny state

no more brownies allowed at bake sales in NYC schools. We live in a nanny state. Things like this are done for one reason, to acclimate the sheep into being told what to do. Make sure you smile when you get your radioactive body scan at the airport. By telling people what they can or cannot eat be it salt or trans fat is simply the tip of the iceberg. Soon the green police will search your home and look for incandescent bulbs. The tv will keep you warm and calm and free from such worrisome thoughts. Your thoughts and opinions will all be provided for you by a square box. It is called programming for a reason. alex thought at 5:29 am.

moblie street blog by gardega

Gods greatest mistake was making procreation fun and easy. Everyday millions of stupid people spawn millions of stupid offspring. Trailer parks are full to capacity. Procreation should be hard, it should be a rubicks cube for a fingerless man. Genius seldom spawns dali and leonardo and raphael all left no tadpoles in the gene puddle. Yet a walk down the streets of a major city and I meet people too dumb to close their mouths lest a stray fly my enter therein.

alex

joseph campbell

often on sundays I fire up my J.C dvds. They are magic and help me get into the art space. He was a genius. you tube him and buy his dvds and turn off sports.

Ill believe it when I see it

I have a hard time with seriously rational people. Life is not rational. We should not be here. Shopenhauer said infamously that life should not exist. On a quantum level life is beyond strange, it makes alice in wonderland look like mr. rogers. There are many dimensions and matter is empty space, it is in actually just potential. Time is an illusion and reality is as well. To me it often seems that hardcore rationality is the last refuge of the ignorant. alex said that.

st. somewhere

I am fried to the gills with work. 7 days a week for a few years without a vacation, pedal mashed to the floor on the great "art highway" Its quite insane, I think it hurts the brain. Tattered and torn and tired and worn. Wouldnt mind a warm beach with barefeet a sketchbook and some wine.

st. somewhere

I am fried to the gills with work. 7 days a week for a few years without a vacation, pedal mashed to the floor on the great "art highway" Its quite insane, I think it hurts the brain. Tattered and torn and tired and worn. Wouldnt mind a warm beach with barefeet a sketchbook and some wine.

mobile blog

I am playing around with the idea of mobile blogging. Short inspirational ideas in small synaptec bursts. This in addition to my regular diet of longer visual based blogging and so forth and so on etc ad nauseum...

bald eagles

I have had two sightings of bald eagles on the hudson. I am now constantly scanning for them. I cant explain but it is such a thrill to see one flying. Damn fine creature! methinks

alex thought of the day

If you have a day job and you dont smoke are you allowed to just go stand out in the cold every couple hours in front of your building?...just thinking...mobile blog

tiger woods

if I had tiger woods money I would have built a japanese style house and created the most amazing japanese gardens in all of america. I would spend my days reading about art and painting watercolors and taking care of my garden. Why is money wasted on such foolish asses?

rapture

people dont really want meaning in life. What people really seek is rapture, the deep feeling of being really alive. This is what people want.

blind since birth

I helped a blind man across the street yesterday. I asked him if had been blind since birth, he said yes. I asked him if he has his own idea of what colors are. He said he had no idea. I was depressed for 5 hours after that.

genius

in order to fund my 12 women project I need a lot of funds. I spent weeks thinking about it for hours and the brain of gardega came up with an idea so brilliant it will be international in its scope and the media will eat it it up like vultures on a carcass they will pick through the genius of my mental landscape. viva gardega and my new idea. it will be international in ten days there is much to be done!

genius

in order to fund my 12 women project I need a lot of funds. I spent weeks thinking about it for hours and the brain of gardega came up with an idea so brilliant it will be international in its scope and the media will eat it it up like vultures on a carcass they will pick through the genius of my mental landscape. viva gardega and my new idea. it will be international in ten days there is much to be done!

thought as i am walking

All great artists are "of their time" they reflect the world they live in. We live in schlocky times. should I make schlocky art?

gardega in the daily news

I was stopped on ths streets of NYC yesterday and interviewed about cab drivers and cell phones. My two cents is printed on page 38 of todays Daily News.

gardega

I am a true american mutt. I have german blood, scotch irish, american indian and some russian on my dad's father's side. I found out recently for the first time what happened to my fathers great grandfather and why he fled russia. It is a story I had never knew but it is so fantastic it is fitting for the craziness that has been life. One day I may share the info. It involves assassination plots and czars and much oddness. It all adds up, alex, it all adds up..methinks...

on a side note I had such an amazing dream last night that I got out of bed at three and wrote the entire thing down for an hour in story form as I was finishing my computer decided to shut itself down to update the system and it didnot bother saving my story. I have a photographic memory of things I write so I will re-write it today. When I sell my first woman painting I will burn all my computers in a bonfire on the hudson river and buy a mac. I hope bill gates chokes on a tofu burger.

update

I was filmed by a film crew yesterday painting a large canvas. It is for a website that is launching in a few months. It is weird to paint in front of people but in the end it all worked out. I had some red wine and got to work. In real life I pace around and drop stuff and knock things over and make a mess but for the film I was calm and seated and painting like a calm professional. It will be nice to have some video of the work as I never had any except poor quality stuff I made myself.

gardega in the news

My chicken is alive and well--I have heard it through the grapevine.

gardega update

I have re-launched www.tendollarart.com (the site that put me on the universal art-map) I
am selling all my art including drawings and sketches and studies to fund my 12 women project. I am completing 12 paintings of women that require a lot of time and a lot of money. I have cut my sleep to 4 hours a night and I am going to post progress shots and when each piece is finished I will sell prints to fund the next one. The originals will not be for sale until all the paitnings are completed and I have a show of them in NYC or California. Any support (purchases) will be much appreciated as I will put the money into the project that requires models, costumes photgraphers and a lot of supplies.

update by gardega

Here is a sneak peek of my first photo session for my series of 12 women. I am very happy with results and we took over 600 photos. This doll is 100 years old and the model was a little afraid of her. I love the doll. I am really ready to start painting my first one. I have never done more prep-work and leg work for a series of art.

gardega update

I have not died, I have been caught up putting together models, a photographer and a costume designer for my first in a series of 12 women. These will be my masterpieces (hopefully) and I am really excited to paint them. There is the usual fear as well but I thrive on fear and my skin is thick like tree bark. Here is a photo a fan sent me from georgia...global warming is alive and well in georgia..This reminds me of the artist Sisley who painted impressionist snowscapes..I have a fondness for his work because it is kind of sad like most of my work. I delivered a 6 x 5 foot "davinci riff" portrait yesterday to a friends restaurant. I am "kinda sorta" on a food art-kick lately but I am now focused on 12 women. Thanks for the photo, jim. Lately I have been getting requests from india to teach people glass etching via the interent..not a bad thing, the internet. I can teach a stranger in bangladesh how to make art...god bless living in interesting times. I am soon going to be doing a fundraising show to raise money for a man who needs facial surgery to remove a birth-deformity. I need a plastic surgeon, as well so if any are reading this you can email me at alexgardega@gmail.com. I will trade you one of my "bestest" pieces if you would help me! As usual I am all over the place but it works for my nervous system and it keeps me up early and working late. One day I will find a women who is willing to deal with my eccentric nature until then I am married to my work.

mobile blog by gardega

The man who invented the frisbee died! here is the joke I made about it. They are going to bury him on a roof. That is an original gardega joke and it was free..no charge so if you thought it unfunny you dont get your money back.

mobile blog by gardega

here is what my tombstone will say "too weird to die"

sorry for the typos

my last entry is riddled with typos. I did that on purpose to drive queen bee crazy. I will proof read from here on..mobile blogging aint easy!

gardega update mobile blogger

I read the new today, oh boy. Today i read about alec baldwin attempting suicide and I read about alexander mcqueen killing himself. what the hell is wrong with people? i was so broke yesterday i gave my last dollar to a man qith a facial deformity on the street. he handed me a printed the read "life is an act of courage" I hung the card on my wallas t night and after I gave the guy my last buck i found out I made 4,000 dollars. welcome to my life. stay positive and if you have money and you are depressed I truly feel sorry for you. if I can afford the art supplies I need then I am happier than a pig in mud. There have been many times in my life when I couldnt afford to eat but I always kept my faith in art. Never give up, ever.

cell photos--by gardega

I call these my motion blurs. I take them out the train window. This is the mighty hudson river. I saw a bald eagle flying over the hudson yesterday and I wont forget it.

bald eagle

I saw a bald eagle flying up the hudson river today. probably the coolest thing I have ever seen. kind of changed my perspective on my entire day.

words of the day

when i was here I all I wanted to be was there and when I was there all I could think about was getting back to the jungle.

words of the day

I dont need to fight, to prove Im right and I dont need to be forgiven.

the who

words of the day

I dont need to fight, to prove Im right and I dont need to be forgiven.

the who

geometry

I recently figured out that the geometric layout of washington dc correlates directly to the geometry of Raphael's school of athens. The geometric layout of washington dc was the work of a french freemason. this leads me to wonder if raphael (the greatest artist of all time had masonic influences.) i know little about masonry but we do share a common love. Geometry. I carry a compass in my bag with me so i can study geometry when i have free time. maybe i am crazy or weird but if you dont study geometry then i dont consider you a true artist. art without geometry is toast without butter----dry and tasteless. the reason modern art is empty is that it has no connection to geometry, to the sacred roots. i am typing this in mauds tavern with a mimosa in front of me so forgive the typos. some people are bothered by my typos. im not because i dont have to read my own gibberish.

moblie blog by gardega---afterimage

I keep an american flag over my bed so I can stare at it then i look at a white wall and see the revers of it because its visual memory is burned into my retinas and brain. this effect is called an after image. you can try it...stare at an object then close your eyes and open them and stare at a white wall.

my favorite photo

this is my only photo I ever liked. It is my artist friend marshall arisman with a buffalo. It was for a magazine article I wrote.

sneak peek

This is about 6 foot by 6 foot and it is a real chore..it is a small view of a much larger piece I am behind my deadline on.

I make breakfast

If I ever have guests I make them breakfast. I only have guests about once a year so I dont make a lot of breakfast. If I am alone it is a redbull. I cant cook well but I make a mean french toast.

winter sky over hudson

I am big at taking photos of clouds. I could care less about the photo itself, I think in terms of something I can use in a painting one day. I am using this for a backdrop of one of my 12 women paintings.

The Tea Party

The tea party movement was started by people who did not want wars, wanted smaller govt, less taxes and more freedom. It has now been co-opted by idot fools like sarah palin and glenn beck..all good things get rusty and corrupted.

media junkie

Today I read the new york post, the daily news, the new york times and the wall street journal. I read them all cover to cover and very carefully. I also came home and listened to talk radio and watched the news cycle on CNN and Fox news. I am a true media junkie. Now I am listening to alex jones at www.prisonplanet.com talk about the corrupt media. I had an argument with a friend a year ago about the govt I asked him what his sources were, what papers he reads. He told me he doesnt read the newspapers. He does watch fox, though. In order to cut through the matrix of propoganda you have to read everything you can and distill it and spit out the lies.

If I was a car

most artists I know if they were a car would be a prius, an environmentally happy little smug thingy that looks good for your neighbors. Me, I would be a 1973 Cadillac with a trunk load of toxic oil paints in the trunk and early rolling stones on the radio and a flask of whisky hidden under the seat and my neighbors would fear me.

I have no heat

my apt has no heat or hot water. The funny thing is I live in such another world that it doesnt bother or phase me. Maybe my landlord will fix it today. I am not sure. I wont call him. Maybe someone else will ---cold showers wake me up.

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams will have heart surgery today after checking in to a U.S. hospital in an undisclosed location.

The premier of Newfoundland is coming to NYC for heart surgery.

let me say that again, The PREMIER of Newfoundland is coming to NYC for heart surgery..in fact his surgery is today..so much for Canadian health care....

pictures of alfred kubin

it is my goal to bring the art of alfred kubin into the mainstream consciousness. Most people do not know his work but I am helping to bring him from the dark light of obscurity into your eggshell mind. Here is a wonderful way to view his work.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Pictures%20of%20Alfred%20Kubin%20art&go=&form=QBIR&qs=n

Ticking traps

My blog has been light on art and so heavy on hot air that al gore would be proud of me but have no fear I will be posting art soon. I have a masterwork I am working on (one of my 12 women) and it takes time. My brain is full of fire and ideas and they are building up like the octomoms belly and soon all the children of genius will spill onto the carpet like candy from the universal pinata. People love to steal my ideas but I just keep making more and you can copy gardega but you cannot be gardega any more than you can be gardega. The thing I most proud of my life is that I have steered clear of a 1,000 traps that have ensnared others I have known. I have danced on the traps, even touched my toe into them but I knew they were dangerous and I could hear them ticking while my comrades are now trapped in the same traps with the one foot nailed firmly to the floor of one bad decision and will forever circle their days into some psychic drain. Traps are often hidden and some come in happy packages with a bow. I remain free, I remain gardega.

an ounce of prevention--a pound of obscure..

BMW Picks Jeff Koons for Next Art Car

My friends used to work for jeff koons. They used to paint his paintings for him. I cant say much bad about him because he was a nice guy. Mark Kostabi is also a nice guy and Julian Schnabel is a nice guy (I met them all). I may disagree sometimes with their take on art but when it comes to meeting them they make it hard to hate them personally. I would honestly rather be friends with a renaissance creature like caravaggio even if he was a complete ass because I could learn about art and technique.



By PHIL PATTON

At a sparkly art world party in Manhattan last night, BMW announced that artist Jeff Koons would create the next car in the company’s Art Car series.

Mr. Koons will be the 17th artist in the program, which began in 1975 and has employed leading artists, including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella and Jenny Holzer. Most of the artists have painted on BMW cars (both road cars and racecars). The last Art Car, Olafur Eliasson’s “Your Mobile Expectations: BMW H2R Project,” from 2007, was covered in ice and had to be viewed in a room that was cooled to subzero temperatures. Some BMW executives grumbled at its inaccessibility.

Jeff Koons.

The announcement of Mr. Koons was made in a festive event at the artist’s huge studio in Chelsea. Mr. Koons stood with Jim O’Donnell, president of BMW North America. Also attending were the architect Richard Meier; Adam Weinberg, director of the Whitney; Richard Armstrong, director of the Guggenheim; and Klaus Biesenbach curator of the Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1. Star chef Thomas Keller, of French Laundry and Per Se fame, did the canapés.

BMW said that Mr. Koons, who turned 55 last month, had expressed an interest in participating in the program in 2003. Mr. Koons said he drove BMWs 20 years ago while working in Munich, Germany, and came to appreciate them.

Mr. Koons’s Art Car design will not be seen until later this year, but it will probably go beyond applying patterns and colors. Much of his work is based on heroic or mock heroic versions of mundane and kitschy objects. He came to art world attention in 1985 when he put basketballs in a tank and vacuum cleaners in a glass case. He is known for such works as gilded porcelain sculptures of Michael Jackson and his chimpanzee Bubbles and oversize, metallic versions of balloon dogs. He and his extensive staff, sometimes compared with Andy Warhol’s factory, have also created huge works like 43-foot high topiary puppies, displayed outdoors in several locations, including at Rockefeller Center in 2000. In 2007, Hanging Heart, a piece based on colored Mylar balloons, was sold by Sotheby’s in New York for $23.6 million, a record price for the work of a living artist at the time.

Not all of Mr. Koons’s work is the sort of art likely to be displayed in a BMW dealer lobby. He has produced prints and lifesize figures of his own nude figure engaged in sex acts with the pornographic film star Ilona Staller — stage name Cicciolina — whom he married in 1991 and later divorced.

On the other hand, Mr. Koons for a time supported his art career with a day job as a Wall Street trader, so he may understand BMW’s audience quite well.

raw data

The scientists involved with the global warming scandal at the university of east anglea (or some such name) have admitted that they destroyed all the raw data. Scientists are never supposed to destroy the raw data, it is supposed to be made avaiable for peer review. Even I know that you save your raw data (and I am just a dumb artist.) Maybe they ran out of file cabinets and instead of paying for a new one they spent all the money on paper shredders. Even a high school earth science teacher understands you save your raw data. Throwing away your raw data is sketchy.



here is a related article.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece

modern art

Here is the kind of hip gallery art I will never understand. I am not smart enough to get it. I am just a dumb painter. If I was smarter perhaps I could see the genius of such conceptual items. The good things is that they are all different and never look the same. Think of all the skill in building a box with a TV on the outside of it. I bet this artists is a genius with a pencil and can draw like Rembrandt but the artist got bored and said I am going to build a black box with a tv on the outside and maybe some weird objects inside like old newspapers! GENIUS!

a lot is two words

IT IS NOT ALOT---- IT IS A LOT..THIS DRIVES ME CRAZY TO SEE IT AS ONE WORD. THOUGHT I WOULD SHARE THIS. I AM THE KING OF TYPOS AND BAD GRAMMAR BUT I NEVER MAKE THIS MISTAKE.

marathon

I sold a painting to a client last night which means I did my customary bottle of red wine celebration and then some and now my brain hurts..no rest for the weary--big day in NYC and its cold. My brain wants a warm beach and a big cold drink---one of these days. I need a break--- its been years on end running full steam...I need to recharge the batteries and not think for a week. art is a marathon and it never ends.

new blog

I have a blog built into my website now! I will use both blogs until I decide which one best suits my needs.

www.gardega.com


(click on blog link)