The Business of Art Research

Here I am on Monday and supposed to be at class this afternoon. I prefer not to miss time but this morning I have a mice situation and on top of that I feel unwell. While I feel unwell and waiting for the worksmen, I like to make some use of my time. I happened upon this great article. I love articles like these because it takes the mystery out of things that have otherwise been hard for me to visualize.

http://www.artnews.com/2013/09/30/a-guide-to-doing-studio-visits/

A lot of artists have trouble with the business end of being an artist and understandably so for a lot of reasons. But every bit you learn makes the waters easier to navigate because you know what to expect. It is a new culture to be involved in which takes adjustments when becoming involved in any new community.

Great Job Ann Landi! Great article!

Happy Halloween!

I'm posting Halloween related work I have done in the past and recently. Can you tell I'm totally ape over sugar skulls?

Here is a needle felted sugar skull I made a few years back. Unknown amount of hours went into making it. It is around three inches tall and wide and close to an inch in thickness.

This is a stoneware ceramic mask with a picture of a mythical character called Queen Morrigan as inspiration. This mask was done my FVA year at NBCCD in the fall of 2006

Another stoneware mask that I call my " Screaming Mask". The mouth was made with holes so that I could weave red thread back and forth to cross. Both of these mask I love but don't really want up on my wall!

Here is a one way block patter up close of sugar skulls I did for Principles of Surface Design.And here is the pattern in completion measuring 18x18. Each repeat is 6x6 inches

 

And here is the two way block pattern up close and in completion at 6x6 inches per block and 18x18 inch in total size.

This is the four way pattern with from a distance not showing the whole block repeat. I didn't want to lose the detail too much. And here is a pic up close.

The next pattern we're doing for class will be a tossed layout which should prove interesting with the motifs in my earlier designs.

This is an ink painting I did from a photo of Nosferatu. I added the red rather than it just being a black and white. No matter how aged Nosferatu is the creepiness factor is still up there today!

I did this drawing while I had a cold a few years back when I still lived in Halifax N.S. The drawing was done in my sketchbook with the cross hatching technique. The drawing was done off a picture with the expression in the eyes and mouth changed some intuited shading. I also added the pony tail. Vampire Lestat eat your heart out!

This painting was done as a present for Christmas toowners of Fashionably Dead Boutique in Halifax NS who spent Christmas Eve with us that year in 2008. I wonder if they still have it. Notice how my block repeat patterns are in remembrance if this design I did for them. There is the rose held in the teeth, the bow tie, the mustache and the dapper hat. In this one it is a top hat while in the repeat patterns I gave him a Bowlers hat. In this ink and acrylic painting he also has a pointy beard. Very dapper indeed! The painting was done on some kind of paper first. It was either canson or a hot press watercolor paper, I can't remember. It was then affixed to the canvas after I added texture with gel and pallet knife around the edges of a canvas and then added layers of acrylic paint, scrubbing the colors away each time and then adding more.

Happy Halloween Everybody! I'll post Autumn themed works from past to present later!

Finding Time and Balance as a Multi Disciplined Artist

I try to create time for my other muses that have been with me for years. Yoga, dance, music, painting and poetry are among them. Some weeks are not as successful as others for making time for them. It's an ongoing process and I take what I learned working at Winners in my early 20s to save time. Their strategy was to do actions that are similar at once to save on time. This is why when I am at school I take lunches and leave some for supper so that I can stay and do my school work. This effectively frees up some time for me on the weekend. Usually I have something that needs to be done that only needs a computer like research, doing up a document or making a blog entry. It's not just important to practice but important to have forms of inspiration such as books or taking time to study vlogs on youtube about abstract painting.

Today I was skimming through a book called The Everything Writing Poetry Book and there was a couple of passages that were particularly interesting near the beginning on pages 12-14.

I enjoy the section talking about allowing time for ideas to develop as a way of building stronger images and concepts.
Then it goes on to talk about Freudian and Jungian Psychology and the process that a poet has to go through of balancing the super egos expectations with the ids needs.
The superego symbolizes customs, rules, and laws that are handed down to us by parents, teachers and societies at large. The id represents our survival needs including the need to be authentic and express our innermost selves.
I reflected that any artist of any kind or any person would do well to find a balance between these elements. They are both needed and necessary but one over the other creates imbalance.
It's important to listen and take advice from mentors, teachers, parents etc but it is also wise to take those words with a grain of salt because another persons point of view is simply that. It is "their" point of view and more often than not exists inside a box, a vacuum.
All visionaries in history questioned the status quo and butted heads with people who considered themselves to be masters in their field. Later on though the small artists who rocked the boat went down in history as making a major impact on how our culture grew to be what it is in the present.
Just imagine what kind of culture we would have if every single artist of every kind did nothing but lap at their teachers and parents feet for approval. Nothing new would result, nothing genuine with integrity. The culture as a result would not grow. There are artists that whether the teacher, parents or society likes it or not will stand behind their vision and keep expressing as well as marketing it as a gem of importance.
After awhile people stroke their chins and say "Oh I see...."
I love learning new techniques and I am also in awe of learning how people throughout history had done things. But every artist has a voice inside that speaks to them of how it is to be done. And sometimes it hasn't been done before. Sometimes it's similar enough to what has been done that it's readily accepted.
Everyone has their biased opinions and preferences. A person can insist that their opinions are not opinions but an educated fact.
In my opinion they are still working through their own particular filter of perception. Something in their lives said "This is what is most important in art history and these are the best techniques, and this is the best form of art." The person has developed an opinion. They may not call it such simply because they have academia in a specific sector to back them up. A person across the world no less educated or practiced most likely has a completely different "opinion" and approach.
And that is after all what art is about. It is about the artists vision, unique form of expression and developing their own perception rather than that of others. The definition of an artist is not someone who does things to make other people happy. They do not busy themselves running around doing what everyone has told them to do because their way is the best and right way.
Artists evolve culture by expressing the current form of evolution that they inhabit.

The Haunted Guitar Oct 24 2013

This is a poem that does it's best to express the effects of one song I first heard years ago done by a local musician, Scott Saad known as Void Ant.


The Haunted Guitar

A haunted guitar sings my soul back to me
She remembers where she came from
The haunted guitar was haunted by me
She knew how to express my deepest subtlety

My soul mourns the struggle and the loss
Twisted cavernous paths of dark I am lost within
Floating above the ravine, my feet do not touch

An unbearable soul pain this haunted guitar knows how to explain.
My soul was lost and resided within her and now she sings my soul back to me.

Anyone Wanna just Give me A Good Camera???

I don't like taking pictures with my cell phone. It's difficult for getting a picture to be non fuzzy and angled correctly.

Eventually somehow I really would like to have a better quality camera.

What I Do and Actually Did the Month of September and Early October

Here is a section of dyed BFL wool  for spinning class which was about to be drum carded. The other half was spun onto spools on Friday the fourth. The wool was arranged in a layered circle and then zig zagged back and forth and then a circle again in the dye pot. The acid dyes used was Chestnut, Magenta and Turquoise!

Here is my second scarf still on the loom with the Walls of Troy pattern. The warp and the weft was dyed by me. 

Here is the first scarf which as you can see has some of the dyed warp coming through the pattern. Looks neat!

Here is a watercolor life study done in class with Linda Kelley using warm and cool washes.

                         

And here is the home-work watercolor study of warm and cool. 

 

                                          

In class study of complementary colors

                           

And here is my home-work study of complementary color washes. I think this kitty turned out quite handsome!

This is the most recent watercolor done on Oct.4th in class. It's a study for developing more attention to detail and representing colors from reality. They also happen to be cooling and calming to the eye. The magenta contrasted with the green are complementary. The blue with the yellow are also complementary.

                 

This one was done earlier on in September as a home-work study for light and dark.

So far my favorite paper to work on is hot press but when I get into more abstract and textured pieces the cold press will probably be my favorite for working in that way.

I enjoy working with color combinations and contrasts as well as setting up interesting life studies. I do actually have a lot of practice setting up life studies from setting up ritual altars, christmas displays and other arrangements at home. I like my pieces to be displayed and shown off to best advantage in a way that attracts my eye as I walk through my home.

The Mission of Art by Alex Grey Review

I have been slowly reading this book over the past month since school started at NBCCD and discovered the wonderful refurbished library in the barracks!

I appreciate how he places an importance on the spiritual in art but his opinion is one sided rather than being an integrative vision spanning a broad spectrum. His belief is that the ultimate mission or purpose for art is to always seek to express the spiritual and through the act of expressing it through art the artist achieves "higher" states. It's all very new age philosophy and is obviously a movement against the counter movement that has been going on for years about not expressing the spiritual in art.

I believe that the mission of art is for the artist to find their fullest potential and all that holds them back is the clarity or lack thereof, of their vision.

There can be a huge discussion about exactly what constitutes spiritual art or why it is so called better than a painting representing reality. My argument is in defense of my own spiritual belief system which seeks to include rather than segregate and compartmentalize god/goddess into one area of creation. If God/Goddess creates physical reality then why is physical reality not seen as spiritual? My experience making art that represents something from nature whether realistic or abstracted reality is that I feel closer to the life force, to goddess/god. Everything is a reflection of Goddess/ God but also is that God/Goddess all at the same time.

People don't have to agree with me. My argument is simply, but why would you see spiritual art more in the human form than a landscape painting or a painting of an animal for example?

I also question the labelling of art styles because abstract very often simply is something from nature. Everything created simply is re-created in a new form. Sometimes it may not seem like something we've seen before but again it is really how we are looking at it. An abstract painting can be up close details of minerals found in nature or even of toxic waste whether the artist intended it or not. Maybe if we could understand and accept this perhaps our egos as artists would be humbled by understanding that we are recycling forms into something new. That we are working with a very old language and evolving it in such a way that speaks to the current culture of people that inhabit the earth.

Back to The Mission of Art, I felt myself not wanting to finish the book when he begins to speak more about how great taking LSD and other drugs are for bonding with God and creating an artistic vision and style that expresses God. To me, it just sounds like a lazy excuse to get high and attaching an overly bloated meaning to it as a form of self denial and defense.

I appreciated his description about his own process of creating art and how he has even taken years to finish a piece. I also appreciate that he mentions his wife and how she plays an important role and influence in his work.

Overall it's a good read but please do not start believing that the best art is your version of god/goddess or higher spiritual planes. I do love the things he says about how Art can be a form of worship and service and of being aware of the beauty of creation. I am however not about to start saying that an artists realist painting or sculpture is low because I know them to be lacking in spiritual awareness. I might as well as go so far as to say that nothing good comes out of an atheists mouth which isn't true! Most art has it's place in it's mission and function. I say most because some art I don't get and will never get. Such as the documenting of decomposing animals or laying in excrement and calling it "The Fools Room"

I do love that he included the little picture book about "How To Be An Artist" by his daughter Zena. 

You can develop all kinds of notions about what art is and it's mission but art always becomes stale even if it is new and shocking or weird if the intention and vision of the artist was simply to stand out. This means the art wasn't about the art. The art was about them and their ego rather than a pure form of expression.

Yet people can say art is art because people and the artist label it so.

Then again, our ancestors made what we call "art" but probably didn't call it so or attach so many superficial and egotistic meanings to it.

When we attach these meanings and high society labels to art, when art is simply a form of human language, art is then institutionalized and objectified in ways that are not only demeaning but draw it away from it's real purpose.

When people look at art, fashion, music, a person or a group of people and the only thought on their minds is " What can I get out of this thing?" not only are they not perceiving the reality of what they seek to use, they are failing to learn and grow as a human being. Cutting off their own humanity themselves they do not see the human reality in others or in works of art. The fact that human hands or that a human voice made the piece and breathed life into it means that this human has a story to tell that can reach deep into another human being if they would just listen.

Ego, vanity and conceit are the large blockages in the ears of many people who have allowed themselves to become more fragmented in an ever fragmenting world.

In this age of technology we need to remember what art is and what it can offer us as a human language. Artists of all kinds from fashion designers, musicians, poets, fibre artists, painters, novelists keep what is human alive in us whether we know it or not. Even if we seek to use it for our own egotistic and selfish ends the art of others keeps what is left that is human in us alive.

It's a great book to read. Some backs are so weak in their statements and use of language you kick yourself in the butt for continuing to read it because you hope it will get better at some point!

This one you might get something out of if your open minded and have the ability to think for yourself rather than develop a form of new age snobbery towards "non spiritual" artists.

And I say this as an artist who is also spiritual, who makes art that is more traditionally considered spiritual and at others times not.

What I Do and Actually Did Oct. 3 2013

The Gods and Goddesses Dance of Courtship

Twisted dreams rolling across the languid skeins of white and blue
Follow the sunset with your mind
Twisted dreams percolate through rusty skeins of black and blue
Follow the sunset with your heart

Souls dance in between
Courtship for the next life
Given a dance of union
With God/Goddess in the beloved
of sweet delights

A soft and com fitted dream
A place to be lost and to roll with the currents
Deep peace surrounds you
Deep softness floats you
All one, around and through you.

Oct.3 2013