Anyone interested should check out my interview in 15 Bytes. Shawn Rossiter spent more than an hour with me (and Asher) at the Rose Wagner discussing everything from my personal art philosophy to how I got started painting. He is extremely careful in his coverage of the Art scene in the Salt Lake area to be as neutral and un-biased as possible, and I think he gave me a pretty fair shake. I have done interviews in the past in which I was grossly miss-quoted and information was actually fabricated by the author in order to fit their agenda. There is none of that here.

The show at the Rose Wagner will be up another 3 weeks (until October 27^th when it all heads to San Francisco). It turned out really well and is worth a look if you are in the neighborhood. I recommend dinner and a tasty adult beverage at Sqatters Brew-pub across the street before or after enjoying the Art.

Yesterday was the second anniversary of the Ansari X-Prize win for SpaceShipOne and its crew, a major turning point for private spaceflight. As you can probably guess from Bryan’s ‘How Far We’ve Come’ we are greatly inspired by the idea of humankind’s exploration of space. Two plus years ago, Quent Cordair hosted a reception for the president and founder of Xcor Jeff Greason and his company and we were lucky enough to meet him and hang out for the evening. He gave Bryan a bit of guff over using a NASA spaceshuttle as a prop in the painting. :) The Economist posits a bright future for private space exploration in a recent article: Rocket Renaissance.

The Ansari family have been busy since that time. Here is a link to Anousheh Ansari’s Space Blog. She is the first private female space explorer and completed her first mission only a few days ago. Her blog catalogues her experience from prior to takeoff, her eight days aboard the International Space Station, and landing. It is a heartfelt and enthusiastic read, despite some unfortunate commenting. Also, the X-Prize Foundation has announced its new contest, a $10 million dollar Archon X-Prize for Genomics for development of rapid genome sequencing.

Update: Samizdata mentions another competitor ‘Starchaser’ based in Britain in this article. And there’s a new $2M competition for an analogue to Nasa’s Lunar Lander that is debuting this month in Las Cruces, New Mexico? Using a three dimensional track in the sky, said to be, “like Formula 1 on steroids”. Hmmm… sounds pretty cool!

Tate Britain’s famed Turner Prize exhibition will begin tomorrow exhibiting the work of the four shortlisted artists that had the best shows during the past year. Of this year’s submissions, The Guardian concludes: “Not so shocking - there’s even a painter“! Follow this link if you’d like to see a slideshow of this year’s contestants, but I thought I’d provide a few words on the four artists, lifted from The Guardian’s own description and completely (almost) editorial free.

First we have Tomma Abts, a German painter of age 38, whose work, “begins with no preconceived idea. The forms in the painting are not meant to symbolise anything or describe anything outside the work…” and a jury member mentions that, “She’s been grafting away in this same format for a good decade.”

Second, Mr. Phil collins, age 35, who, “uses video, photography and live events in his work, often visiting politically sensitive regions.” For one of his works “he invited 40 people to sit silently for Hollywood-style screen tests for a non-existent film.”

Third, (and my personal fav) is Rebecca Warren, 41, “whose large female figures made from unfired clay are both sexual and grotesque. Judging panel member Margot Heller, director of the South London gallery, said the works of women with “humungous knobbly breasts and enormous bobbly buttocks” were “unlike anything you’ve seen before”. They take a “playful prod at the male modernist canon”, almost ridiculing the work of the likes of Degas and Rodin. “They combine wit, intelligence and art historical references in a uniquely individual style.”
(Say ‘humungous knobbly breasts and enormous bobbly buttocks’ with a British accent to do it justice.)

Fourth and finally, Mr. Mark Titchner, who, “creates hybrid installations from all manner of sources. His work incorporates wall paintings, light boxes, digital animation and sculpture. He is also, arguably, the most difficult to grasp.”

Of course we won’t know who will win until December, but apparently the odds are on the painter.

For an amusing and very candid review of what life is like as a Turner Prize juror, please read Lynn Barber’s, “How I Suffered for Art’s Sake“. Of visiting the art gallery shows in order to find her nominations, she has this complaint:

“Many of them were shut; a lot were simply unfindable, even with a map. (It is part of the mystique of ‘edgy’ galleries to hide in warehouses and lock-ups with no visible means of ingress.) Vyner Street in Hackney is supposed to contain a dozen galleries but even after a year I only found six. On the other hand, I did once see Keanu Reeves in Vyner Street admiring an artwork in the Modern Art gallery, a blue, plastic rectangle, I seem to recall, that looked like a Formica offcut and cost 20 grand. Reeves described it as ‘almost Kleinian’, which is artspeak for blue.

Seeing Keanu was about the only consolation for my long, lonely treks to the East End. At first, my friends were keen to accompany me, but they all tried it once and never again. The general reaction was incredulity that we’d driven through traffic jams for two hours in order to see a show consisting of three slabs of concrete and a tyre.”