Blog — John Hoppin RSS



Meat Drawing Corner

We hung some pencil drawings of pork chops and chickens in the corner of our house.  The three up top are chicken and the two below are pork chops.  I made them when I worked for a meat company, with the idea that I'd make them into icons for the website. Porterhouse pork chops. Chicken. I got the thread painting of butterflies and flowering plants from Java Car Service in Greenpoint.  It was late at night.  For $20 they sold it to me along with my ride back to Bushwick.  When they took it off of the wall there was a square behind it.  It was 2006.

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My Neighbor Eugenia

  My Neighbor Eugenia by John Hoppin When it gets cold, you can put more clothes on. When it gets hot you can keep taking clothes off until you don't have anything on and it will still be hot. I went into the hallway, my neighbor had her door open. It was 113 on the heat index. It was hot in the hallway. My AC was set to 78 degrees, it had blown the electricity and I needed keys to the basement. She had a grimy plastic fan. 90 years old, she lay on the couch in a transparent night gown with la enfirmera sitting next to her. Hace calor. Si, hace calor. It's hot. Yes, it's hot. Last year...

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Ted Purves, Rain Work, 1996.

In 2004, I lived in Oakland on Miles Avenue down the block from Ted Purves, Susanne Cockrell, and their son Oliver.  I lived at the corner of Miles and Hudson, one house in on the west side of Miles.  Ted is an artist and educator.  Mary lived in the house and I lived in the garage.  The main garage door didn't open, I came in and out through the side door.  I would pee in the yard instead of going into the house.  If it was raining I would pee into the yard from my doorway.   I lived in garages from November 2001 until June 2004.  They had oil stains and beds in them.  I got in bed fully...

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Ai Weiwei "Sunflower Seeds" at Mary Boone Gallery on 24th Street

          On Saturday I went to the opening of Ai Weiwei's "Sunflower Seeds" at Mary Boone Gallery on 24th Street in Chelsea.  The sunflower seeds are handpainted porcelain.  Their creation was a labor intensive production requiring thousands of workers over several years.  Some five million seeds were produced for the project. It premiered at the Tate Modern in London last year.  At Mary Boone, they have a portion of what was on view at the Tate, which was a much larger installation.  When it was first installed at the Tate, you were allowed to walk on the seeds.  However, it was determined that walking on them created toxic dust and after that you were not allowed.  At Mary...

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#OccupyWallStreet, Part II

I went with my parents to Occupy Wall Street.  The protests were only a few days old when we went, and just a few dozen people were there.  Dr. Cornel West was there.  Since I was first at Zuccotti Park there has been a lot of attention and interest in what has been going on there and the protest has grown significantly.  On October 22nd, Nami and I rode our bikes to Zuccotti Park to check out the scene. People bang on things. There are police barricades surrounding the park.  It is like attending a carnival on a doomed and tragic warship.  This is the lower western end of the Zuccotti Park. This is at the eastern end of the...

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