Hate to say that it took 10 years for us to finally check out the "new" location of the Asian Art Museum, and it's much more incredible than we all had thought.

Last night we attended the preview party for the Asian Art Museum's new show China's Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor's Legacy (Feb 22 - May 27) featuring 10 life-sized terracotta soldiers which were hand-crafted in approx. 300 BC to protect China's first Emperor, Qin Shihuang in the afterlife... In 1974 they excavated this massive site where thousands of statues were discovered where these originated.

We waited in a long line for some drinks (later discovered the shorter cafe line), we listened to the energetic Extra Action Marching Band, we checked out the incredible terracotta soldiers, but the best part was taking in just a small piece of the museum's massive collection of Asian artifacts. With only 20 minutes before the night was to conclude, we raced to the 5th floor and tripped out on the Southeast Asia collection.

PHOTOS

Extra Action Marching Band going for it amongst the crowd. Love these guys and gals.

At the time they were buried, they were hand painted in bright colors but the paint almost instantly faded when excavated.

Easy, son.

Over three months on the road (about six months for Conner) with nothing but a road in front of me, a motorbike under me, a backpack behind me, and a set of rules to live and die by. These are what made the "Harsh Barge" the grim and dirty adventure that it was. Rule #1: Never pay to sleep. That meant no hotels, hostels, motels, guesthouses, bungalows, etc. Rule #2: Only travel by motorbike (aside from necessary flights).

Those were the rules that defined the trip. The other rules—never wash white t-shirts or jeans, no shaving, no meat, no wasting beer, etc.—only made it more interesting. Sure, we got plenty of strange looks and into lots of odd situations, like when I woke up on the ground outside a hospital in Siliguri surrounded by a police officer and fifteen confused Indians; but it made the experience more real, more raw. Call us disgusting, call us over-privileged Americans, call us anything. (Just don't call us hippies.)

Illegal camping and getting drunk on beaches with prawn farmers in Vietnam, avoiding landmines and border patrol hassles in Cambodia, sexual assaults by a monk at a Buddhist temple in Thailand, sleeping in an abandoned building and waking up to AK-47's in our face in Nepal, and Conner getting hit by a car and run over by a truck in India is just a small taste of the fun that we endured on the Harsh Barge.

I'm not saying do exactly what we did—I wouldn't encourage anyone to do that. It's not for everyone, but it was for us. I'm just saying that you should go do what you want before it's too late. Before you have that career/marriage/child. Take some time off school. Quit your day job. Buy that plane ticket. Barge.

Paintings by Alexandros Vasmoulakis are up at Lebasse Projects in Culver City through this Saturday, the 23rd. We've featured some of his massive fragmented murals he's done in China and Europe in the past here. Enjoy his style.

Alexandros Vasmoulakis was born in 1980. He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts.

While creating an image for my Something to Weigh series, I decided to photograph myself sitting alone on the Times Square stairs to capture my solitude in a busy crowd.

After developing the film, I noticed that a man was standing behind me being photographed by an attractive blonde woman. Rather than pose for her camera, he was sneering at me behind my back. Five minutes later and at another location, another man turns his back to gawk at me while I am photographing myself sitting at a cafe table.

I have always been aware of people making faces, commenting and laughing at me about my size. I now reverse the gaze and record their reactions to me while I perform mundane tasks in public spaces. I seek out spaces that are visually interesting and geographically diverse. I try to place myself in compositions that contain feminine icons or advertisements.

Otherwise, I position myself and the camera in a pool of people... and wait. -Haley Morris-Cafiero

For more of Haley Morris-Cafiero's photography, please visit: http://haleymorriscafiero.com

Forget Brooklyn, Mexican street art is where it's at. Artist Curiot combines traditional Mexican elements with almost cartoon like characters, to make massive and beautiful murals. One of his recent pieces in Mexico City was over 30 meters long. We weren't exaggerating! ~continue reading

Mexcio City based Curiot opens the solo show Age of Omuktlans Friday, March 8th @FFDG in San Francisco.

preview inquires: info(at)ffdg.net

Jesse Balmer, Niv Bavarsky and Michael Olivo are three Bay Area artists who started drawing together with little more than entertainment in mind. They are showing their collaborative works under the moniker Golden Source Power Three at Needles & Pens in San Francisco through March 3rd. The 3 discuss their works through email internet technology.

JB: We started drawing together in February of 2012.

MO: I started with Niv about a month before, in late January. That was two months after I moved to Oakland.

NB: Michael emailed me one day to tell me he thinks I am "a magical man" and when he moved to Oakland we started drawing together - Jesse saw the early results online and the three of us started working as a trio about a year ago.

JB: It's pretty simple. Each of us starts a drawing and we pass the three drawings to the next guy.

MO: Yea, usually consists of multiple drawings being passed around in a circular motion. Rarely is anything sketched in beforehand.

NB: It's pretty intuitive and playful - we work together in the same room, each working on something, and we rotate. We have good conversations. We do very little planning in the initial stages, but as a drawing starts to take form, we help direct each other. I'd say we all trust each other to pick up what the others are putting down.

NB: I have long flowing curly hair, and a beard.

MO: ...

JB: She does.

JB: In the beginning the drawings were significantly less coherent. We've definitely learned how to emulate bits and pieces of each others' style to make the drawings feel more structurally sound. It's pretty easy to see that evolution when you look at the work.

MO: It's similar to love-making. Tough to tell who's where sometimes.

NB: We've all absorbed little techniques from each other - one of us will make a certain kind of mark, and another will decide that kind of mark will go well in another part of the image, so this group vocabulary has started to emerge.

Lola Dupre makes very beautifully intricate collages and is in a group show at CES Contemporary in Laguna Beach, California opening Saturday, Feb 16th.

Her piece below titled Processionary Squares | 100cm x 100cm / 39.5' x 39.5' will be in the show, and she emailed these process photos to give a little insight into her process... her, what we imagine to be, very patient time consuming process. Steady hand, Lola. Great work.

El ESPACIO G3 acoge la nueva esposición del artista OKUDA SAN MIGUEL llamada RAINBOW IN THE DARKNESS.

Es un proyecto que combina escultura, instalación, mapping, fotografía y pintura. Esta primera muestra esta compuesta por unas 10 obras exclusivas:esculturas con proyecciones mapping (con la colaboración de René Athiel), una instalación, fotografía y tres pinturasl en colaboración con SUSO33. Todo ello sonorizado por BIG CITY LOVER. --- Opening:l sabado 16 de febrero de 21:00 a 00:00 h. G3 :C/Guindos n 3 (Madrid)con : ---GHETTO NAILZ: Nail art en directo ---BIG CITY LOVER & LEGRAND KOKUNA / MAR.YO / DJ FREIKETS .music djS

OKUDA SAN MIGUEL

For those who don't know who Ryder Ripps is, here is a brief introduction- Ryder gained recognition for creating websites like Internet Archaeology (a site that salvages and presents old content such as images, flash files, and gifs from Geocities- a site that is now shut down). Ryder also created Dump.fm (alongside with Tim Baker and Scott Ostler)- a site in which users (for the most part artists) chat in real time using images and animated gifs that they either find on the net or create themselves. Aside from those sites, Ryder has created websites for artist/musician M.I.A and punk/art band Ssion.

Much of Ryder's artworks are digital files, or websites, and he makes a lot of his physical work about using the Internet. It's hard to define exactly what he does because each thing he does is so different from the last and they are all special or peculiar. For example- Ryder has a site called "Where's The Pixel" in which there is a single pixel on the screen and your goal is to try and find it, or his site "Luckyplop" which is a site that you drag an image to the background and the image remains repeated until the next person comes along and changes it the same way you did.

I discovered Ryder's work because I moved in with some kids who were using Dump. They would often show me some of the images from the site and I was really impressed by what I'd seen.

Fast forward about a year and a half later (I moved to New York from Wisconsin)- I think Ryder would be a great subject for a studio visit. He said he was up for it, and on the following Sunday I went to his Manhattan apartment to visit him. My roommate gave me some Bud Lite "Lime-a-Ritas" so I brought those with me. When I got there, Ryder had Orangina and vodka or something similar and offered me some. Check out the Soundclouds in this interview to hear Ryder discuss his work, and the other stuff that we talked about. Otherwise, I'm just going to describe his studio.

Ryder's home doubles as his studio, although he also has a separate music studio in Park Slope. He had his floor painted with the same paint they use to paint the floors of aircraft hangers- this weird, shiny gray color. When I got there he was decked out in internet related garb- a Tumblr mug, Windows 95 hat and an iced-out Facebook chain he picked up from Chinatown. His studio had a very strange medical/hospitalish/sterile/futuristic feel to it, I think because of the lighting and the shiny gray floor... and the 409 and hand sanitizer on his glass table. He has a cat named Sally. Ryder would go back and forth from going on Dump.fm to dancing and rapping along with Riff Raff. It was one part studio visit/ one part fashion show/ and one part dance party. We got hungry and went for Thai food and talked about making a rap group about the Midwest. Eventually we went back to Ryder's house, and I bought some Roca Wear shoes from him. We kicked it for a while, which you can hear here- and then we went to a 711 and bought a ton of junk food, including hot dog flavored chips.

Eventually it got to be pretty late, so I had to turn in for the night and head home. Thank you Ryder for the visit.

You can see more of Ryder's work at www.ryder-ripps.com. Don't forget to also check out Dump.fm and Internet Archaeology.

Thought I'd send over these photos that I took of this wall that is going up in West Oakland. I've been watching it grow on my bike rides home for the last couple of weeks. From what I know its the work of Skinner, Sean Griffin, and Ernest Doty. Cool dudes making the neighborhood look great! -Tim Gatto

We recorded an interview (MP3) with Ferris Plock on Saturday @FFDG touching on his love of San Francisco, ghosts, working with Kelly Tunstall, his son Brixton and the new one of the way... Plus, Ferris sings a song. Gotta listen to that.

If you do the IPhone thing, be sure to find our podcasts in ITunes and load us up through the great podcast app. Search "Fecal Face".

You can also listen to the interview through the player below.

San Francisco based Alec Huxley opens a show with Jason Hernandez and Nom Kinnear King on Saturday in Venice, CA at C.A.V.E. - A small taste of his recent dream state paintings that he'll be showing.

Benoit Jammes emailed over his cassette tape artwork. All are handmade and completely nostalgic.

FIRE SHELTER:01 is a personal project located at Sydhavnstippen in Copenhagen. The starting point for the design emerged from a fascination of the place. It´s a temporary project and a design experiment that wish to celebrate the place. The project has public access, and it establishes experiences of spatial and social character. In the creation of it nobody has been asked of advice, neither has it been possible for anyone to tell his or her opinion. It is simply thought of as a gift. More on this later.

You can reach the place at Sydhavnstippen after a 20 minutes bike ride from central Copenhagen. Sydhavnstippen was landfilled with building materials between 1945 and 1973. Before that it was a seabed. Since the landfill plants, bushes and trees have taken over the area, and today it´s a habitat for a variety of animals. Walking around in the area is just amazing. The “wild” appearance of the nature on top of the building materials, which are visible some places, makes you think of a “post-apocalyptic” nature. The often deserted area amplifies this.

Some wall action by Italian artist Crin who's been based out of Berlin since '09.

Some recent paintings by Portland based Adam Friedman whose show Space and Time, and Other Mysterious Aggregations opened last Friday at San Francisco's Eleanor Harwood Gallery. Our 2010 mini interview.

Thanks to Lavender Wolf who mailed us a copy of his new(ish) zine CUT IT OUT!

Lavender Wolf would like to place admirers of his work under house arrest! He's substituting handcuffs for a full color, limited edition zine that's sure to captivate and command your attention. CUT IT OUT! is the first published collection of Lavender Wolf's paper cuts, containing new, never before seen images, and celebrated favorites. Printed in color in an edition of a hundred and one, CUT IT OUT! is thirty-five pages, each issue being hand numbered and signed by the artist. CUT IT OUT! is available for eight euros. If postage and packaging is required, the zine is available for 12 euros in Europe and the United States. Please send all purchase inquiries to lavenderandthewolf(at)gmail.com and include the number of copies that you'd like to order, along with your mailing address if necessary.

NYC based photographer Ben Pier mailed his book Teenage Teeth ($24) to us awhile back featuring 68 pages of beautiful images which, according to Pier, are a documentation of American youth as seen through his lens.

Born in 1980 and raised in Missouri until the age of 19 when he went on to study documentary photography at Columbia College Chicago. After finishing school he left the heartland for New York City where he now lives and works.

FFDG is happy to offer the peice "Moss Ball" by Jay Howell in advance of his solo show "Enthusiastic Person" opening on Friday, Feb 1st. Available as of Jan 17th.

Howell's last show with FFDG sold out in preview.

"Moss Ball"
by Jay Howell
ink and gouache on paper, framed
29" x 24" (artwork: 24" x 19")
purchase

"Moss Ball" (detail)
by Jay Howell

"Moss Ball" (detail)
by Jay Howell