adventure in the industrial heartland, braddock, pa
There is a House April 11-13
There is a House (documentation pix here)
Post-Katrina photography and video by
Patrick Bresnan
Bill Daniel
Courtney Egan (w/ Helen Hill)
Chris Sullivan
In Braddock, PA,
in an abandoned house
with stolen windows and no electricity,
an art show from New Orleans.
location: 2nd and Talbot, Braddock, 15104 (close to the river, just east of the Rankin Bridge)
open, Thurs-Sun, Noon 'til dark
for more info: orangevan(at)billdaniel(dot)net
this is part of the Points of Interest project.
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Freedom News: Americanism on the March
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a Sunset Scavenger photophow is up at Get This Gallery in Atlanta.
intereview in Creative Loafing
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Andrew and Breezy of Needles and Pens
took a bunch of work to 96 Gillespie
for a show called Hope Springs Eternal.
Here they are assemblying the book for the show:
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the show at Union Arts in Brooklyn was a major hoot. here's some flix: http://flickr.com/photos/uniondocs
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another Bozo Texino tour is in the works, about 9 dates in new england. details here soon.
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Mostly True, the book, will be back from the printer eatly May. Yee Haw!
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I've got a couple of old shots in the new Hamburger Eyes book.
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Dec 2007:
i'm stoked to have one of my New Orleans
photomurals in this fantastic show:
Luggage Store Gallery
20 year anniversary
IN THE FULLNESS OF TIME
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i'm now booking shows for 2008 for
Who is Bozo Texino and
the Sunset Scavenger sailvan installation.
give a holla if you got a place to show.
orangevan<at>billdaniel<dot>net
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Hi y'all. I really did move to Braddock. First thing to do is start booking some shows here. Dig this:
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PUNK PRINTS hey i've got a mini-portfolio of prints for sale at needles and pens on-line store.
misfits, black flag, big boys, dead kennedys, some skating...
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just did some shows on the way to braddock: in atlanta i finally discovered some groovy folks there and the happenin cultural underbelly of an otherwise dallas-like city. i hope to do a show down there soon. in athens oh, i pulled the greatest george jones moment of my career. drove 9 hours white-knuckled pulling a zig-zagging boat trailer at the orange van's top speed to try to make the screening... and missed the end of the screening by 5 minutes. the story is actually crazier than that, but you'll have to buy me a beer to get me to tell it. did a sunset scavenger sailvan (creative capital supported project, hell yeah) show in nashville-- a parking lot show at watkins college of art and design with these super-fine canadians who are following the monarch butterflies to mexico in their art gallery/boxvan that they project video onto the side of. a two-video-van show!
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i'm looking for shows east of the mississippi. if you want to host a bozo texino screening, a sailvan show, a hippie houseboat multi-screen film party, a lecture/demo, a punk photo show, or a workshop on converting skiboats into sailboats... drop me a line. (contact at the bottom of this page)
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the Sunset Scavenger mural print show has come and gone at Rakyo,
Juxtapoz has flix of the opening
Matt Petty's video blog is a funny video from the darkroom before the show.
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we all keep talking about moving out of our yuppie/hipster overrun neighborhoods, but move where?
how about braddock, pa? i'm gonna move there in oct and see what happens. come visit!
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i'm doing a gallery show in sewannee tennessee. here's the deally:
LIFE RAFT
September 7- October 10, 2007
University of the South,
Sewanee, Tennessee
James Edward Carlos Gallery, Nabit Art Building
Opening reception Friday September 7, 5-7 PM
Artist's talk Friday September 7, 4 PM
Itinerant documentarian Bill Daniel constructs an installation addressing troubled times--in myth and in the present, and produces a model for a metaphorical escape vehicle. The show features an inhabitable houseboat made from abandoned materials, a 2-channel video essay, and a large-format photo exhibit.
Inspired by the tale of Noah's Ark, hippie houseboat builders, and punk river rafters, Daniel optimistically imagines an improvised survival strategy to cope with the specter of economic and ecological catastrophe. The boat serves not just as shelter for the artist, but as a mobile projection apparatus--- a video program is projected on to its sails. The 2-channel, 50-minute video is a collage of contemporary and vintage documentary material that muses on contemporary issues of the peak oil crash, global warming, and the ethics of resource consumption. It explores examples of self-reliance and even contains a primer on celestial navigation, a handy skill when all the GPS satellites fail.
Also incorporated in the installation are a dozen or so 3'x4' photo mural prints from two contrasting landscapes--the hippie house boat culture in Sausalito, California and the wreckage of post-Katrina Louisiana. The juxtaposition of these scenes and the dynamic between the journalistic and fantasy aspects of the material plays with many of the same themes, formal and contextual, as the video piece.
LIFE RAFT is part of Daniel's on-going work, Sunset Scavenger, a Creative
Capital supported project.
In addition to his Creative capital fellowship Bill Daniel has received numerous awards including A Wattis Foundation Residency at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, a Texas Commission on the Arts film grant, and support from the R&B Feder Charitable Foundation for the Beaux Arts. His work has been exhibited throughout the US and internationally in both film houses and art museums. Recent venues include Dietch Projects in New York, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, The PDX Film Festival, The Dallas Museum of Art, The Rev Tour in Australia, The Center for Documentary Studies in Durham North Carolina, The Film Forum in Los Angeles, and the Rayko Photo Center in San Francisco. Bill began his work by documenting the Texas punk scene in the early eighties www.texaspunkpioneers.com. He has collorated with and exhibited with artists such as Margaret Killgallen, Craig Baldwin, Vannessa Renwick, and William S Burroughs.
Gallery Hours: 8 AM – 5 PM Monday- Friday
12-5 PM Saturday and Sunday
Contact information:
Greg Pond
931.598.1870
gpond@sewanee.edu
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other shows in the fall: i'll be tooling around the se in the fall. shows in atlanta and athens ga, so far. if you'd like to help produce a screening of bozo texino or some other project in your town pls drop me a line and let's chat it up.
orangevan (at) billdaniel (dotty) commie
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SOME SUMMER...
boxo texino screens at midnight in reno sat july 21st, part of erik burke's alley/gallery project: (con)temporary gallery
5th Annual Alley Take Over
sat july 21st 7pm in the alley at 1251 s. virginia st, reno, nv.
erik is a fab painter and adventurer and happens to have made a brilliant movie about buZ blurr called Road To Colossus. you must check erik burke out.
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Hi, happy third day of Summer.
the Sailvan made it back to port and got the gnar diff fixed. another 4000 mile, butt numbing, left arm sunburning, gasoline sucking tour is done. i'm holed up in san fran for the summer, where the air conditioning is free, free like the wind. got a few things going:
photo mural show at Rayko Photo Center, Wed Aug 1st, 7-9pm. photographs from sausalito and new orleans. this is part of my on-going Sunset Scavenger project with Creative Capital.
Working on a book project with Erick Lyle, his stories and my pix. no title yet…
check out the latest issue of Hamburger Eyes, the music issue, i got a few pix in it. let me just go on record here right now and say that Hamburger Eyes is giving Photography a healthy kick in the ass, a whuppin' it's needed for a long time.
Mostly True is book project to accompany the hobo film. published by microcosm, out sometime in the fall.
here's a mock up of the cover:
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(the van is full of shirts)
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4/27/07 faithful readers of this thing might remember the story last year about the differential on the toyota van that on tour started making horrendous howling noises in denver but made it all the way to albany ny before totally cratering. well, we have a similar narrative unfolding here in alabama today, in which the differential in the 65 chevy van is beginning to howl. can i make it all the way to 16 more shows in the next 20 days over about 25oo miles on this crunchy differential that is very near death? should i cancel some shows in order to stop and try to get it fixed here in mobile? maybe i'll have the ring and pinion gear drop shipped to me somewhere in florida and get the parts installed in atlanta ot pittsburg....
5/3/07 the differential is holding together. the grinding noise it was making has settled into a ringing grinding sound that changes pitch slightly every couple of days, but it seems like it will keep running long enough to get back to texas. an awesome tour thru florida included a camp out at hobo beach in pensacola with a bunch of the miss rockaway folks who dove up from new orleans.
hey, look! now you can buy the bozo texino dvd right here on this very website! and i also have a new e-mail address: orangevan (at) billdaniel.net
Scavenger of Death is a song by Dallas punk rocker Bobby Soxx.
sorry the site is so neglected. if i was on top of this game there would be photos and reports for some amazing shows in the last three months--- including a massive take-over of valencia street in front of ata with the sailvan and photo murals from new orleans tied to giant pipes sitting in the street, a weirdo-only show of the sailvan in slab city, bozo texino screenings from portland (maine) (where someone stole my hand-painted sandwichboard sign) to chico, including some neat spots like the ak press warehouse in oakland and station 40 on 16th and mission. and a photoshow at needles and pens: http://www.needles-pens.com/texaepunxpixflyer.html.
but all of that is in the past. next is a jag from sf to baltimore and back, lotsa shows in the south east,
including a swell photoshow/bozo texino screening with photographer mike brodie in pensacola.
2007 schedule:
March 29--Chico / Pageant Theater / 9pm / Bozo Texino
March 30--Sacramento / Fools Foundation / 7pm / Bozo Texino
April 3--Las Vegas / UNLV / Bozo Texino
April 4--Flagstaff / The Applesauce Teahouse / Bozo Texino
April 5--Tucson / In front of Congress Hotel / Sunset Scavenger (the sailvan)
April 6--Tucson / Outdoor show, old train station downtown / Bozo Texino
April 7---Marfa / The Dome / Bozo Texino
April 19 -- Shreveport, LA / Soundstage / 7:30 / Bozo Texino outdoor show
April 25-- Fairhope, AL / Dr. Music / Last Free Ride
April 26--Mobile / Satori Sound / Last Free Ride
April 28--Pensacola / Sluggo's / 8pm / Bozo Texino + photo show w/ Mike Brodie
April 29--Tallahassee / All Saints Cinema / 5pm / Bozo Texino
April 30--Gainesville / Warphaus / 8pm Texas Punk Pioneers photo show, 9pm Bozo Texino
May 1--Jacksonville / San Marco Theatre / 9:00 Sunset Scavenger, 9:30 Last Free Ride
May 2--Athens / Athens Cine / Bozo Texino
May 3--Atlanta / Dumpster Dive / Bozo Texino
May 4--Winston-Salem / The Werehouse / 7pm & 9pm (2 shows) / Bozo Texino
May 5--Lynchburg / Warehouse / Bozo Texino
May 6--Charlottesville / The Bridge / Last Free Ride + Sunset Scavenger
May 7--Baltimore / Cinema 1818 / 1818 Lafayette 8pm / Bozo Texino
May 8--Baltimore / Creative Alliance / Film Tramping touring workshop
May 9--Baltimore / Creative Alliance / Last Free Ride + Sunset Scavenger
May 13--Pittsburgh / Jefferson Presents at Garfield Artworks, 4931 Penn Ave. Sunset Scavenger 8:15, Last Free Ride 9pm
May 14--Athens OH / Union Arts 15 W. Union St. / 9pm / Bozo Texino
May 15--Bloomington IN / Boxcar Books / dusk / Sunset Scavenger + Last Free Ride
May 16--St. Louis MO / The Royale / 3132 S. Kingshighway / Bozo Texino
May 25 -- Austin TX / Moose Lodge / 2103 EM Franklin / 8pm / $6, $5 Moose members
June 2 -- Ft. Worth, TX / 1919 Hemphill / Bozo Texino (pending)
all shows $5 unless noted
Last Free Ride + Selective Service System Story + the sailvan
Nomad filmmaker Bill Daniel presents two 60's films:
one lost treasure of hippie piracy,
and a short video about an infamous and graphic 60's protest film.
Last Free Ride
by Saul Rouda and Roy Nolan
1974, 90 min, 16mm to digital video
The lost San Francisco hippie houseboat movie drifts into to town,
don't miss this one-night only screening, presented by touring
filmmaker Bill Daniel, who will be present for a Q&A.
"Here's a true gem of a cultural artifact---it's just unbelievable
that kids living in such wild-ass anarchy could pull off a feature
film. It's sincere, hokey, authentic-- unlike any sixties film you've
seen." -- Bill Daniel
Last Free Ride is an incredibly rare film that defies categorization
and provides a mind-blowing glimpse into a fantastic world where
industrious dropouts lived for free on homemade boats on San Francisco
Bay. As the Sixties wound down hippies and misfits began to move out of
Haight-Ashbury and onto an abandoned waterfront across the Golden Gate
Bridge. There they built a sprawling free-form floating community of
hand-made houseboats, beat-up sailboats and salvaged and converted
World War Two lifeboats. They lived rent and law-free on their floating
folk art houses, until the establishment--city officials backed by real
estate interests-- launched a war to evict them. Last Free Ride
captures this incredible story in a home-made film with all the naive
charm of a community theater presentation, with beautiful photography
and amazing reportage that could only be captured by the people who
were actually living the life.
The story line in Last Free Ride ostensibly, and rather clumsily,
follows the exploits of Joe Tate and his scrappy rock band, the Red
Legs, through their daily lives of boat-building, partying, and
ultimately battling the cops for their floating homes. But perhaps the
real value in this treasure of a film is the documented reality that it
incidentally depicts. This was one of those magic times and places
where a group of creative people was able to momentarily carve out a
place to live not just for free, but freely. It is a scene that in
today's security-obsessed, everything-is-for-sale society seems
impossible. But for a short while it was possible, and thankfully some
of those rebels put down the wine, guitars, joints and boat-building
tools, picked up cameras and recorders and make this unlikely
record of their incredible, inspired community.
While researching the history of the houseboat scene on San Francisco
Bay for a film on global warming, documentary maker Bill Daniel heard
rumors of "the hippie houseboat film", and eventually met
filmmaker Saul Rouda and star Joe Tate. Since then he has been
presenting Last Free Ride in conjunction with his Creative Capital
sponsored project, Sunset Scavenger, a work-in-progress essay on
climate change and the beginning of the post-oil era.
www.waldopoint.net
Also screening:
Selective Service System Story
a video by Bill Daniel about a film by Warren Haack and Dan Lovejoy
1999, 7 min, digital video
In 1970, a young film student at San
Francisco State College devised a scenario for a short documentary
film, Selective Service System that would simultaneously make a bold,
graphic statement against the Vietnam War and secure his own physical
deferment from the military draft. Three decades later, Bill Daniel
interviews director and subject Dan Lovejoy and cameraman Warren Haack
about the violence of those times and the violence manifested in their
uncompromisingly honest and brutal protest film.
the sailvan project: SUNSET SCAVENGER
Sunset
Scavenger is a mobile outdoor video installation in which Noah's Ark
meets Hubbert's Peak. This work-in-progress documentary-essay is a
collage of ideas floating around about the end of the age of oil,
climate change, social collapse and low-down punk-ass survival
strategies.
Sunset Scavenger is the name of a '65 Chevy
sailvan --a 2-masted gaff-rigged schooner that functions as tour
vehicle, projection screen and metaphorical emergency escape
craft. The video program is simultaneously projected onto the
sailvan's two sails and currently runs about 45 min. The non-linear
program stars hippie houseboaters, punk back-to-the-landers
anchor-outs, rubber tramps, off-the-gridders, and desert rats that are
today's true cultural vanguard, and features a bus-dwelling homeless
street preacher who relates Noah's story to our times.
i'm looking for venues to host the sailvan, so if you or someone you love has access to an arts budget gimme a call!
SUNSET SCAVENGER is a supported project of Creative Capital http://channel.creative-capital.org/project_865.html
KATRINA DUST a photo project from NOLA:
http://www.atasite.org/zine/issue5/katrina.html
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the texas punk photobook project: yep, still working on it. looking for galleries and exhibition venues for a monsterous touring photoshow.
now dude, check out my looney and lenghty interview on Mike Plante's fab CINEMAD:
http://www.iblamesociety.com/cinemad/interviews/billdaniel.html
and how about an interview at Fall of Autumn:
http://www.fallofautumn.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=203&Itemid=66
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(backyard screening at jawbreaker in eugene, ore.)
######### WHO IS BOZO TEXINO? #########
Freight rider and van tramp, Bill Daniel is back on tour screening his 16-years-in-the-making, documentary film, Who is Bozo Texino?, the secret history of hobo graffiti. This gritty black and white travelogue --shot entirely on film-- tells the mostly-factual account of the epic quest and unlikely discovery of railroading's most mysterious artist.
Contact: orangevan (at) billdaniel (dot) net
Who is Bozo Texino?
In 1987 Daniel and his trusty Bolex camera began hanging out in hobo jungles and riding freights across the West, looking for clues to the identity of a strange boxcar graffito. While gathering interviews and discovering clues to the identities of many of the most legendary boxcar artists, Daniel discovered a vast underground folkloric practice that has existed with little notice for over a century. Today these drawings live on as a new breed of hobos have taken to the rails and kept the tradition of moniker chalking alive. This artform provides unlikely common ground between mostly conservative railworkers and old school tramps and the kids whose approach includes spray cans and punk lifestyles.
Since completing the film in June, 2005 Bill Daniel and his film Who is Bozo Texino? have been on the road, wowing audiences of punks, geezers, folkies, foamers and graffiti toughs all over the nasty ol usa. The film has screened at festivals across Europe including Rotterdam, Vienna, and Slovenia.
On line reviews:
Who is Bozo Texino: a Search with Bill Daniel
Who Is Bozo Texino? is a great American movie, and its greatness is tied up very closely with its American-ness. With this brilliant experimental documentary, self-styled hobo film-maker Daniel places himself firmly in the bootprints of Jack London, Jack Kerouac, Walt Whitman, Woody Guthrie - a fine, long tradition of American artists who look for their inspiration to the marginal, the underclass, the vagabond and the outcast. Nominally a chronicle/survey/history of boxcar graffiti (a tradition as old as the railroad itself) and the men who create it, Who Is Bozo Texino? soon transcends its narrow subject-matter to become a gloriously rough-edged elegy for an America which is being swept away before our eyes.
Unlike the overwhelming majority of documentaries - even entertaining recent examples like Murderball, Dogtown and Z-Boys and Stoked - Daniel's film manages a near-perfect union of radical form and radical content, And it does so in consistently accessible style: at first you're intrigued by the stunning monochrome images captured by his self-effacing, sensitively-handled camera(s); by the startling kineticism of his fluent editing style; by the sheer range of voices, music and sound-effects we hear as he tracks down a series of grizzled hobos and wisdom-dispensing graffiti-'markers.'
Then you realize that, just as these men have always instinctively rejected authority and convention, Daniel has likewise embraced the unorthodox in his style of filmmaking - even down to his choice of title and running-time. Indeed, in less than an hour Daniel manages to say more about life, art, America and the simple joy of filmmaking than most directors manage in decades.
--- Neil Young, Neil Youngs Film Lounge
I am not going to hold back any enthusiasm
it is the best movie I have ever seen.
---Josh from Edmonton
Bill Daniel's homegrown epic is as kinetic and raggedly beautiful as the trains he hopped to make it. a film about freedom as literal passage across the land. Corporations brand things to say they own them, but there are ways in which humans have marked things to say they cant be owned.
---Jem Cohen
Seasoned DIYers like film and video artists Vanessa Renwick and Bill Daniel whose Lucky Bum Film Tour has crossed the old-fashioned road show with avant-garde film to become a national subculture phenomenon.
---Randy Gragg, The Oregonian
Daniel and Renwick makes some of the liveliest work on the microcinema circuit, wherein film, video art, and music collide with edgy, confrontational, unpredictable and often exuberant intensity.
--- Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
Also screening:
Britton, S. Dakota by Vanessa Renwick, 2004, 9 min. Depression-era children are hypnotized by the camera in this re-discovered imagery from 1938. Score by Johnne Eschleman. Portland-based filmmaker Vanessa Renwick is Director of Affairs of the Oregon Dept. of Kick Ass.
####### notes from the winterquarters #########
DEC 3, 2006 ######### so we finally made it back to snug harbor, shreveport, louisiana, after a 45-city clockwise circumnavigation of the usa. killer shows in all kinds of unlikely spots. now doing lotsa repair work on the vans. first thing going on this winter is a short expedition to the gulf coast to shoot some landscape photos with the old 8x10 camera. it's a beautiful wooden camera from the ealy '20's or teens. while down there gonna do some screenings of Bozo Texino: Dec 12, New Orleans, The Big Top, on Clio st. doors 7:00, films at 8:00. $6 Dec 16 and 17, Houston, Aurora Picture Show in jan the sailvan--- SUNSET SCAVENGER--- will be trecking across the arizona desert back to san francisco. will probably be doing some impromptu screenings, projecting on the sails on the van parked out in the vast rv campgrounds around quartsite. i'll post the details soon as they get figured out. SPRING: touring with "Who is Bozo Texino?" again. booking shows right now, so please drop me a line if you'd like to help set up a screening. FALL 2007: will be touring the whole dang country with the sailvan. also, looking for shows, so gimme a shout if you have ideas for venues for an outdoor video installation all about the so-called long emergency.
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photoblog from fall '06 loop
new chairs at the Madison WS venue
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me and the Sandman tearing up the american southwest on the ROAD DOG TOUR, jan. '06
Chris Sand