Download the track here on iTunes!

Special thanks to A.J. Goodrich for filming and editing, Isla and Jared of Purple Crush for choreography and recording, and to Isla and Jessica Ruvalcaba for being the fiercest backup dancers!

These photos document Duality #1: Masculine/Feminine, a knit piece that serves as a reflection of my views on gender identity. It is widely held that while the categories of male and female exist, they exist as biological and social constructs, not truths. As trans-identified people have made evident, no biological imperative dictates if a person is male or female.

Duality #1 can be seen as a visual model of how gender expression and identity function in relation to one another. Notions of an ideal male, wholly masculine, or of an ideal female, wholly feminine, are as unrealistic as the mannequins used for this piece. These ideals function as both poles and placeholders, useful and problematic. The knit patchwork unites these forms and places a more nuanced and holistic model of gender onto the rigid binary.

The warm and vibrant pink contrasts with a cool and subdued grey. Original patterns with overtly phallic and vulvic motifs call attention to the subtle geometric “gendering” of traditional knitting patterns.  The unique texture created by the wild and unpredictable arrangement of knit swatches exposes the complexity of gender construction.

Inspired by Aristophanes’ creation myth, Duality #1 hearkens back to a unified, pre-socialized form of gender in which “the sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two.”[1] Contemporary identity is comprised of a patchwork of gender expressions—the ways in which we perform masculinity and femininity. Dualities may appear as oppositional forces, but as I strive to show in this work, it is the relationship between the two poles that creates the whole.

Come see Duality #1: Masculine/Feminine while it’s on exhibition in Los Angeles at Knit Culture Studio.

Special thanks to Knit Culture Studio, Gavy Kessler, Elanor Lynn, Jessica Ruvalcaba, and Emilie Odeile for all their help and support.

OPENING RECEPTION

Thursday, February 7^th
7:00 – 9:00pm

Knit Culture Studio
8118 W 3^rd St.
Los Angeles, CA 90048
323-655-6587

Click here to RSVP on Facebook.

Also on view will be a series of archival single-edition signed 8×10 prints on canvas, inspired by my knit-sculpture. Pick one up at the opening before they’re all gone!

Download BenBot 5000′s first single available in this dimension on iTunes!

And listen to the full track here on Soundcloud!

Benbot 5000′s new single, Get Money Get Paid plays on a wall-mounted iPod next to a cascade of posters promoting the track.

As part of the BenBot 5000 Project, I did an installation at For Your Art for the third annual Queer Pile-Up. The opening was a huge success! Thanks to everyone who made it out.

There’s still time to check out the show! You don’t wanna miss all this amazing work from Los Angeles’ queer artists. And while you’re there, pick up a limited edition Get Money Get Paid poster! Just $40 for an archival 20″ x 30″ print.

Here’s all the details on the show:

Tuesday – Friday

12-5pm: Special gallery hours

Saturday, December 1 – World AIDS Day

12-7pm: Special gallery hours

7-10pm: Closing Reception and Women Together… Fantastic! (WTF!). A salon-style gathering with Eden’s Herbal Soda Co., Onya Hogan-Finlay, Kim Kelly, Lili Lakich, Dylan Mira, Tara Jane O’Neil, Otherwild and Martha Windahl

Darin Klein, one of QPU’s organizers enjoys some refreshments in front of the Benbot5000: Get Money Get Paid installation.

Ghosts of the Trucks of the West Side Highway

Ghosts of the Trucks of The West Side Highway is my latest installation, created for Install:WeHo, a one day pop-up exhibition located in a West Hollywood parking lot. I was thrilled to be invited to do an installation inside of a U-Haul for this event that showcased the talents of emerging LGBT artists in Los Angeles.

For my piece, which incorporates sound and photography, I really wanted take advantage of a truck’s uniquely charged site-specificity while exploring an underrepresented aspect of queer history: specifically, the gay truck-sex culture of 1970′s New York.

Inside Ghosts of the Trucks of the West Side Highway

I recorded a group of men having sex inside the exhibition truck prior to INSTALL:WeHo. During the exhibition, this audio was played back on concealed speakers, invoking auditory phantoms of the men who participated in the truck-sex culture that arose at the height of gay liberation. A photograph by Leonard Fink featuring men cruising the trucks along the West Side Highway was blown up, cut apart, and printed on gauzy fabric panels suspended inside the exhibition truck, as if a ghostly after-image of a moment in queer culture lost to AIDS and gentrification.

Listen to the audio here:

And to lean more about the piece and Install:Weho check out this interview I did for Frontiers, this write-up on the Out in the 562 blog, as well as LA-Weekly’s coverage of the event.

Detail from Ghosts of the Trucks of the West Side Highway

Please do join us for the opening reception Saturday, June 16th 7-11pm

The exhibition will be on view June 16th to July 8th.

“D.I.Y.V.I.P” is a mixed-media installation exploring boundaries to access and acquisition in the arts and popular culture. The piece includes a hand-knit velvet rope, a larger-than-life print of the pattern and instructions, and several kits that include all the yarn, hardware, and instructions you need to knit a velvet rope of your very own. The pattern and instructions will be available for download from lapoptart.com. Here’s a sneak peak:

After I installed Transcending the Material at Knit Culture Studio, Liz Kuball approached me to do an interview for her beautiful new blog, Until You Can’t See Land. Excerpt below:

L: How did you get into knitting?

B: I’ve been interested in all things fiber-related for as long as I can remember (the first thing I ever wanted to be when I grew up was a fashion designer), but I didn’t get into knitting until the fall of 2008. My good friend Jessica Ruvalcaba, who’s a master knitter herself, moved a block away from me, and one day I asked her to teach me how to knit. We spent many evenings hanging out and knitting at my apartment in Hollywood, and it wasn’t long before I realized how addictive knitting could be. I’ve had a love affair with the craft ever since.

To continue reading the full interview, check out Liz’s blog at untilyoucantseeland.com