Art August 28, 2007 Yes Virginia, I am bad at self-promotion The Minnesota State Fair hired me to produce a podcast for them. Listen online or subscribe via iTunes. March 19, 2007 Who needs Nov. 4 when you have MySpace? Here's a running total of the presidential candidates' MySpace friend-counts. This is a dynamic list, so come back anytime to see the latest. Oh, and these are all of the candidate MySpace pages I'm aware of. If I'm missing one, let me know. I'll add it. March 16, 2007 Reach the hired ground Finally (!!!) updated my portfolio. A special prize to anyone who gives feedback. http://www.ochenk.com/design November 03, 2006 A double-cross for the rest of us If you voted today using a touch-screen voting machine, feel free to download this image and print it on your favorite sticky paper. It's probably a little more accurate than the normal one you got. October 29, 2006 Happy Halloween I followed this guy's tutorial to make this year's pumpkin. Took about two hours. Anyone know how to preserve something like this? (Although part of me wants to put this guy out of his misery as soon as possible. Any cool ideas for how to send him off?) August 24, 2006 Poetry on a Stick Leslie and I are doing a little art project for Minnesota Public Radio on the Minnesota State Fair. For every day of the Fair, we head out there, Leslie writes a poem, I record sounds that relate to the poem, I record her reading the poem, I edit all the sound together and get that audio to MPR. If they like it, they play it on the afternoon show. Whether they do or not, I post them here. Here's today's poem: Listen The Fair is a Living Thing Just past six a.m. Light starting to leak into the sky. They predict rain. We don’t care. Today is day one of our beloved State Fair. People already streaming onto the grounds. Three teenage boys cross in front of us, each wearing a feed cap, Each leading a newly shorn lamb. We hike past the old Machinery Hill To our favorite breakfast counter We talk about what we need to do first. Cattle Barn, space tower, or spin art? We talk about why we love the fair. The fair is a living thing. For these few days, we stop being isolated from each other. We stop being frantic little gerbils in our own daily wheels. Car. Cubicle, Car Computer. The fair is a living thing, Feet of flesh, hooves, claws, fins, feathers, Bristles and fur, Tap dancers and fiddlers, Hank Williams and Joey Ramone. The fair is a living thing That breaths and crows and squeals, Waiting all year long for us to return, Waiting to take us in, To feed our bellies and our souls, To welcome us home. December 29, 2005 Gingerbread is the hiz-ouse For years, I've had this fascination with contemporary folk arts. When we think of "folk art," we think of spinning yarn and sewing quilts and stuff like that. We don't really think of folk art as a contemporary thing. But of course, it is. Contemporary folk arts are things like jack-o-lantern carving and Easter egg decorating. Even Christmas lights on the house could be a folk art. Those that know me know that I go a little wild when exploring contemporary folk arts, so this time, I tried to stay small. I've never made a gingerbread house before, and I would definitely consider that a contemporary folk art, so why not give that a try? I came up with a very small design and kept to simple recipes. Here's the front: The back: And a detail of the front door: All of the decorations were done freestyle. I should have planned it out a little better, but I just wanted to get it done. Now, while this was my first gingerbread house ever, for full disclosure, my mother is a damn good cake decorator, so I already had some sense of how one decorates with icing. I'm not sure that I ever actually decorated a cake, but I learn a lot by watching, and I used to watch her work. All in all, it was a blast. I think it's very likely that I'll go nuts next year. December 11, 2005 I Wish I Had a River I Wish I Had a River Growing up in Los Angeles, I heard about the "great rivers of the world" with my only frame of reference being my understanding of the Pacific Ocean. No one talked about the "great Pacific" so I always imagined the great rivers, while obviously not challenging the size of the Pacific, certainly challenging the grandeur. I was luck enough to visit the Nile River when I was 15. It was big, of course, and lang as all get out, but it was a little underwhelming. Years later, I moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is the first major city through which the Mississippi River flows. As we're only a few hundred miles from the headwaters, the Mississippi is small, but its presence is so powerful. I would have loved to have some connection to the Mississippi River or the Nile growing up. I Wish I Had a River is my attempt to give that to others.