We all have your guilty pleasures, and this blog is mine. She’s working as a flight attendant, but she is also an artist. I met through a friend and fellow art blogger.

Don’t miss her review of the new Lincoln “museum.”

Photo by Matt Connors from from April 11th march

Yale opposes the unionization of graduate students, who do a great deal of the teaching at most universities these days. Matt Connors, who recently had a show of his paintings at Jeff Bailey Gallery, is working on his MFA there, and wrote to me about it. There was a strike last week, and I believe Columbia grad students were involved in a solidarity action. Quoting his email:

The art school is one of the only graduate programs at Yale that receives almost no tuition remission, no health care and gets paid less than half of other graduate student teachers.

Knowing what it costs to get an MFA at Yale, and knowing the odds of an artist making enough money to pay off the debt required, this means the diversity of the student body becomes rather limited — those rich enough or crazy enough to risk it.

Here is a web page on the strike, plus an article from the Yale Daily News.

P.S. I have four(!) significant consulting projects going on right now, so I apologize for the rather light blogging.

Not only are they backtracking on gay rights, Microsoft pays right-wing anti-gay Ralph Reed $20,000/month for “lobbying services.”

Again, go to AMERICAblog for the story.

Check out Mica’s rainy day video post.

[image from her post]

Three Graces (detail from Botticelli’s La Primavera)

My first post was three years ago today.

[image from luminarium.org]

After meeting with a single right-wing preacher, and being threatend with an “evangelical boycott”, Microsoft has withdrawn its support of Washington state’s gay rights bill. At the moment, it’s perfectly legal to fire someone for being gay in most of the state. People in Washington believe this may kill the bill.

Go to AMERICAblog for actions to take.

From The Stranger

The Stranger has learned that last month the $37-billion Redmond-based software behemoth quietly withdrew its support for House bill 1515, the anti-gay-discrimination bill currently under consideration by the Washington State legislature, after being pressured by the Evangelical Christian pastor of a suburban megachurch. The pastor, Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, met with a senior Microsoft executive in February and threatened to organize a national boycott of the company’s products if it did not change its stance on the legislation, according to gay rights activists and a Microsoft employee who attended a subsequent April 4 meeting where Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft’s senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary, told a group of gay staffers about Hutcherson’s threat. Hutcherson also unsuccessfully demanded that the company fire two employees who had testified in favor of the bill.

…

The list of high-profile companies that endorsed the bill this year reads like a who’s who of the Pacific Northwest corporate world. It includes the Boeing Company, Nike, Coors Brewing, Qwest Communications, Washington Mutual, Hewlett-Packard, Corbis, Battelle Memorial Institute, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc., and others. And as late as February 1, Microsoft, which issued a letter in support of the bill last year, appeared poised to do so again.

I used PCs for most of my computing life, but once OS X came out, and once I was hit one too many times with a virus despite daily anti-virus updates, I switched. I’m thrilled to be using a computer that “just works,” and whose design is much more attractive, from the hardware to the software.

Go check out the Apple store. The Mac Mini is a good bargain for desktop users. While you’re at it, if you’re still using Internet Explorer for that exciting “is it going to let a web site install something nasty” browsing experience, switch to FireFox.

[Story via AMERICAblog and Jay Blotcher]

After I mentioned her statement in my last post, several people have asked me about it. Her web site is in the process of being updated, so I’ve put up a copy of the statement PDF here.

Also, James now has a post with images from the show.

Shell casings on the floor – Margeret Evangeline at Stefan Stux. Pick up a copy of the artist statement while you’re there. It’s one of the best I have read in a long time. This new body of work consists of stainless steel panels shot by the artist using various weaponry. I think it’s a strong show, but I didn’t get a good photo of the works, so you’re getting this one instead.

Details of a scuplture and a wall piece – Jim Drain at Greene Naftali. He is one of the founders of Forcefield, the first of the Providence, RI collectives to become famous. Most people first saw their work at the 2002 Whitney Biennial, but the cognoscenti discovered them via Dean Daderko and his Parlour Projects gallery.

Jesse Bercowetz describes this as the “Uri Geller eye” from the sculpture he and Matt Bua did for a group show at Alona Kagan. I couldn’t get a good photo of the live scorpion in the sculpture’s head. It think their piece plus Jane Benson’s are the strongest of the show. Their web site is here.

My favorite art benefit will occur on April 30th. Momenta Art is my favorite art non-profit in the city, and not just because their benefits are so good, and an incredible bargain. I appreciate their incredible curating taste, the fact that everyone running the place is an artist producing interesting (and political) work, and the fact that they publish a newsletter for each show with background information on the artists and their work.

You can buy one or more tickets via the enigmatic “Add to Cart” button on the home page.

Tom Moody has a post with some more images, plus a photo of the work he is donating.

We have gotten to know a number of artists whose work we first saw at one of the benefits, including Christy Rupp and Michael Cambre.

Speaking of Momenta Art, don’t miss the great group show they are presenting in the UBS lobby gallery in midtown.

Isn’t “log rolling” what Spy called their regular feature where they showed people trading positive reviews? Here is mine: Poet Alex Gildzen, who lives in Santa Fe and has a blog titled Arroyo Chamisa, mentions me as a blog he reads in an interview in Newtopia. Newtopia describes itself as “a journal of the new counterculture.” Snappy name.