These photos are part of an ongoing series entitled "Falling Houses".

The Photos were taken at an abandoned house in Illinois with a curious story. 
​In the 1980’s the couple who lived there, two women, disappeared. They were the owners of the house and the adjacent land which they farmed. A few locals claimed they had moved to somewhere in Ohio. Attempts to find them were never successful. They took nothing with them, even the clothes in their closets were all still there. Unopened mail was sitting on a desk in the living room. The piano had handwritten sheet music sitting ready for a performance. 
As time went by the house began to deteriorate and was eventually broken into by local teenagers. 
At some point a local farmer told me about the house and its mystery.  With his story in mind and real anticipation I went there. It was almost exactly as he described it albeit with some obvious vandalism. As I walked around to the back of the house I saw the back door was open. I stepped in to find the kitchen left in a state that appeared the owner would return at any moment. The kitchen table was set for four. Pots and pans were on the stove. An apron was draped over the back of a chair. Who were those forgotten expected guests in this silent abandoned house? 
A sudden rustling sound in the next room startled me and I cautiously peered around the doorway into the living room. A crow was sitting on the sill of a small broken window and quickly flew off as I approached. While everything was dust covered the house was for the most part fully intact. 
Over the course of a few years I went back each season to photograph the decline of the home and the destructive results of ongoing teenage angst. Each time I went the deterioration was obvious and I was struck by a sense of real sadness at what I saw, a life stopped and crumbling. To this date no one has ever discovered what happened to the owners. Eventually the vandals burned the house down. Nothing remains. 

 
As time went by I returned to the house many times before it was destroyed and began to gather objects and place them in what was basically  assemplabges. The Dada TV is one of those.
​Click to enlarge.

In an article in Huffington Post entitled "The Resurrection Of Boris Lurie And The NO!art Movement" Lisa Paul Streitfeld makes a clear case for the importance Lurie's No!Art movement.
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"Lurie’s art, misunderstood and condemned (when it wasn’t utterly neglected), carries a single-minded integrity of purpose missing from art today — negation screaming out against the inauthenticity of the marketplace and the art world system that supports it."

"Lurie was a concentration camp survivor whose art is a response to the the loss of his mother, his sister, and childhood sweetheart in the face of human cruelty and indifference."

We came back this week from a great trip to Chicago. Of course we had to visit the Art Institute and the National Museum of Mexican Art to get our art fix. Our third always inspirational visit was to the Museum of Science and Industry. 

The Art Institute needs no real introduction if you have visited it. It contains a wealth of art that is astounding. It's current special exhibit is the works of Auguste Rodin. 

The National Museum of Mexican Art is an incredible example of combining art, history, and political dissent from Mexican artists. Our first visit was last year and we were stunned by the quality of work that is presented. If you find yourself in Chicago don't miss this great museum.

The Museum of Science and Industry with its changing exhibitions is a wonder of technology from the past to the present and for me artistically inspiring. 

Fluxing My Fluxus- Video Collage
Video Clips I took at the Museum
​Music - ArtotemArt

I created this animation and video a few years ago when I was working with Mark Watts, Alan's son on a project involving petroglyphs. Mark very graciously gave me an incredible library of books, recordings, and other media regarding his father. I then started putting together presentations reflecting the material. Below is one of them. In it Alan gives us a pertinent warning about technology.
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Alan Watts on Technology
Narration - Alan Watts
Animation and Music by ArtotemArt & Artotems Co.
​Note: The background of the video is based on the city of Hermosillo, Mexico. A favorite hangout for me.

If the wrong man uses the right means the right means work in the wrong way.
​Chinese Proverb

"Like Dada, jazz made its first impact during the Great War and overflowed the banks afterward, making the twenties roar. For a while, many took
​jazz and Dada to be two faces of the same thing." Jed Rasula
From the book "Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century"​

Coltrane Collage
Neo Dada video collage by ArtotemArt
​Music - John Coltrane

While you are here check out...
​ Jono El Grande's  "Neo Dada" Album on Amazon"

Tribute to Hans Arp & Tristan Tzara 
Video Collage
Music bt ArtotemArt
​Lyrics by Hans Arp

​
​Visualize the Changing visualizations,
49
Feasting on geospatial cents,
53
Sowing real with new  connections,
48
Remarkable.

​T​An Incomplete List of Backyard Species from Illinois

Mammalia
Groundhog (Marmota monax)
Raccoon (Procyon lotor)
Fox Squirrel (Sciurus niger)
Prairie Vole (Microtus ochrogaster)
Short-tailed Shrew (Blarina brevicaudia)
Virginia Opossum (Didelphis virginiana)
White-footed Mouse (Peromyscus leucopus)
Chipmunk (Tamias striatus)
Coyotes (Canis latrans)
White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus)
Red Bat (Lasiurus borealis)
Big Brown Bat (Eptesicus fuscus)
Eastern Cottontail Rabbit (Sylviligus floridinus
Stray People (Homo sapiens unfamiliaris)
Stray Cat (Felis silvestris catus)
Stray Dog (Canis lupus familiaris)

Insecta Lepodoptera
Monarch (Danaus plexippus)
Question Mark (Polygonia interrogationis)
Common Sooty Wing (Pholisora catullus)
Meadow Fritillary (Boloria bellona)
Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor)
Gray Comma (Polygonia progne)
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus)
Cabbage White (Pieris rapae)
Clouded Sulphur-Orange Sulphur (Colias philodice-Colias eurytheme)
American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis)
Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui)
Buckeye (Junonia coenia)
Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta)
Viceroy (Limenitis archippus)
Mourning Cloak (Nymphalis antiopa)
Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos)

Amphibia
American Toad (Bufo Americanus)
Gray Treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis)

Sauropsida
Plains Garter Snake (Thamnophis radix)
Common Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis)

Aves
White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinenis)
Red-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta Canadensis)
Tufted Titmouse (Parus bicolor)
Black-capped Chickadee (Parus atricapillus)
Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis)
Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglotto)
Baltimore Oriole (Icrrus galbula)
Great Horned Owl (Bubo virginianus)
Barred Owl (Strix varia)
Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus)
Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura)
Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus)
Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)
Fox Sparrow (Passerella iliaca)
White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis)
House Sparrow (Passer domesticus)
Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina)
American Tree Sparrow (Spizella arborea)
Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia)
White-crowned Sparrow (Zonottrichia leucophrys)
Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erthrophthalmus)
Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedorum)
Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus)
Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea)
Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis)
American Goldfinch (Carduelis tristis)
Carolina Wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus)
House Wren (Troglodytes aedon)
House Finch (Carpodacus mexicanus)
Purple Finch (Carpodacus purpureus)
Chimney Swift (Chaetura pelagica)
Brown Creeper (Certhia americana)
Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata)
Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescebs)
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius)
Hairy Woodpecker (Picoides villosus)
Red-headed Woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus)
Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus)
Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiccula)
European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris)
Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater)
Brown Thrasher (Toxostoma rufum)
Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis)
American Robin (Turdus migratorius)
Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperii)
Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris)
Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula)
Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe)
American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos)
American Kestrel (Falco sparverius)

Theatre of the Absurd
Collage by ArtotemsArt.

Carl Jung believed that dreams were the natural and direct reflection of the individual’s inner mental world. He saw them as a representation, a sort of snapshot of the dreamer’s unconscious state represented in symbolic forms. He stated that dreams had a specific means of expression using metaphors, images, and symbols that were the language of the unconscious mind.

More importantly Jung divided the dreams into two categories. The first being, dreams that contain personal content and secondly dreams that contain collective universal elements. These collective elements are the symbols and images that we as humans have developed throughout time and are meaningful representations of our state of being. Jung called these ancient collective images “archetypes”. The archetypes include the persona, the shadow, the anima, the animus, the great mother, the wise old man, the hero, and the self.
​

Dreams Revisited - Jung
​Images & Music by ArtotemArt

The Wunderkammer and a few of my works at Verde Gallery.