I am excited to announce that I am officially a Creative Capital PDP Alumnus. I would like to thank SOEX for an intense and very amazing opportunity.

Erik Parra

Welcome to the newly redesigned Erik Parra Dot Com. This new website is a work in progress and I will continue to work with it in addition to updating new content. I have been building the site myself, with the help of Fivepoints Arthouse. I have designed the site to be easily updated so please check back often for news and new images of recent work. You can also connect via RSS on the connect page.

Please enjoy!
Erik Parra

For weeks now I have been attempting to make writing as natural a part of my creative process, as painting or drawing. This has entailed some house cleaning, a bit of rearranging as well as some strategizing and a whole lot of soul searching. Recently my first piece of art writing , a column that looks at Olafur Eliasson's masterful use of water as a medium, was published in issue 3 of Plastic Antinomy. Standing at the launch party with the magazine in my hand was a very invigorating moment. So much so that I started crafting a list of everyone who ever inspired or encouraged me to write in order to send them a magazine in thanks. Please look for your magazine it is in the mail.

Overwhelmed, I just found out that the great Robert Rauschenberg has passed. Rauschenberg's early works are very important to me, a feeling galvanized when I had the opportunity to catch this exhibition of his works while living in New York, a few years back. I remember spending hours at a time lost in those combines, history and that intangible that mesmerized me so. RIP Robert Rauschenberg, Thank You.

An explanation for the lapse of time can only be summed up in academic terms, that is to say I was consumed by academia. What is worse I was land locked in the center of the country with out adequate material to write about.

I was teaching color theory in the fine art department of a very large state school. At this particular research school, the fine art department is housed in the college of education and the various arts are equally without community and college organization. This is endemic of larger cultural problems with in the state, our country, etc. but this does lead to internal issues with regard to the organization of the department that are not your garden variety Hickeyean state of affairs. For instance color theory was considered an elective, that is not required by art majors, which never made sense to me, but I digress.

So there I was in the heart of middle America with out a thing to see worth writing about. Since this is no longer the case, I will resume writing about art, music and film my way, as I experience them here in San Francisco.

Broken Glass
back in action
soon!

The Lenny Bruce Performance Film is the second to the last routine Bruce ever did because he would die one year later. In it he uses excerpts from his three obscenity trials to illuminate the flaws of trying him for obscenity law violations and the judicial system in general, all while delivering his routine. Going back and forth between trascripts from the cases, his bits and what are obviously newer adlibbed pieces we get to witness a very intelligent, creative person performing in a very relaxed way. Bruce is in the moment, comfortable enough to take risks that ultimately underscore his programme and pay off in spades for the audience.

I have been watching this non-stop since I bought it a week ago, it is just that good. This is one of the first sort of comprehensive filmic ethnographies of punk that I have seen that get's it right. That is to say it is sensitive to punk as first, an idea or frame of mind and second, as an extension of American roots music blues, and rocakbilly. This film also addresses in a clear, logical way the America, London punk squabble by clearly delineating the bands that influenced each other vis a vis interviews with people that 'were in the pit' at these shows or who were integral in their respective scenes. There is an amazing short documentary about the LA punk scene which is a great suppliment to this book, this DVD also includes other shorts that address punk's affect on fashion, the influence of zines, timelines, an interview with the ever intense, self-proclaimed "Professor Hank". There is a tremendous amount of material handled in a clear, smart way but what else would you expect from a document created by Don Letts.

This is the exhibition announcement for the installation. Networks are a collection of smaller entities working together to form a larger entity. Communication, transportation and the nervous system, for instance, all share ten characteristics inherent to "systems" they each contain senders, receivers, channels, transport, traffic/payload, security, signaling, scheduling, terminals and ancillaries. There are two main kinds of networks, point-to-point and point-to-multipoint. In point-to-point networks traffic moves from one node to another such as with roads and telephones. In point-to-multipoint networks traffic moves from a central hub that controls the flow of traffic to different nodes, ie. nodes are not directly connected and resources and information are mediated. I was looking at several different systems local to Greensboro yet relevant to many neighborhoods across the country. I was also fotunate enough to be able to integrate aspects of my own studio research(outside of the residency) and inquiry somewhat seemlessly. The title of the piece refers to the numerous systems at play in the installation, the multiple layers of meaning as well as the installation's role as hub or mediator in the point-to-multipoint system of communication I have installed.