"At the end of Sailing to Byzantium, the poet says after death he wants to be a golden art object, a magical toy that can sit upon a golden bough and sing to a drowsy emperor of the past and present and future. I wanted to say that although I am not an emperor I feel that Yeats’s poem sings to me. Yeats is dead, and yet he continues to sing. I wanted to say that I wish I could sing to them."
Gary Arms
Albert Einstein: “Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better.”
In wing trees and the sky's
Un-being trees to skies
Art note - I realize that "art" is a kind of religion for me. It is a practice and meditation, it is an mercurial thing, that can respond to anything with authenticity, framed by chosen boundaries, infused with the magic inherent in the translation by the individual artist as subjective consciousness. There is chance, there is a consciousness, there a cultural and personal context, there is history and past present and future... The dialogue and sharing are also integral to what art is to me. This all maybe be romantic in regard to my belief in the potential of "art" to transform the world, share human experience both universally as well as personally and politically or whatever is appropriate for the individual artist. when I say "art" I mean any mode or medium of expression. That said we all have a sense of what really works for us. What is great work to us. There are of course many unsuccessful attempts to make "art". For me I'd say most "art" as art sucks, but the bits that work for me are exciting- thrilling at times - tingly - moving - inspiring - humbling...
Tough experimentation and rigorous analysis with a light touch and agitated spirit.
Memory
"Memory is a tricky thing: subjective, malleable to the needs of narrative or the fog of time. Some linguists believe that preliterate societies used myths to preserve their collective memories, and it seems possible, or at least poetic, that the style of memory is toward constructive story-making, not simple retention. We remember the stories we tell about our lives; we invent our lives in the remembering."
"inquiry and narration, into a conjunction, making things up as he discovers them and discovering them as he makes them up. He never works to a plan, and so his prose stays close to the thought processes of a writer working out what to say next and responding to what he has, perhaps mistakenly, just said."
Religion
"Let me explain. Religious life, at least as it is for me, does not involve anything like a well-defined, or even something on the way to becoming a well-defined, concept of God, a concept of the kind that a philosopher could live with. What is fundamental is no such thing, but rather the experience of God, for example in prayer or in life’s stunning moments. Prayer, when it works, yields an awe-infused sense of having made contact, or almost having done so. Having made contact, that is, concerning the things that matter most, whether the health and well-being of others, or of the community, or even my own; concerning justice and its frequent absence in our world; concerning my gratefulness to, or praise of, God. The experience of sharing commitments with a cosmic senior partner, sharing in the sense both of communicating and literally sharing, “dreaming in league with God,” as A.J. Heschel puts it, is both heady and heartening. Even when that partner remains undefined and un-theorized."
Dream 11/25/13
Went to show "One". One representative work by many artists.
Wash painting in oils limited pallet lime green dark brown - nature big trees with mastodon...
junk viewer build of Frankenstein junk kids crap that had a viewer that showed images of looker caught before viewing coming into view and toward viewer, digital housed masked, mixed with analogue...
stoner set up - down back hall into dark basement like with high school kids taking old people one at a time to matched and bowl stoner circle and security guard interruption - place to run further into back with greater dangers, dust and darkness (played as real)..., dinner with family two kids mom. Pictures of dead father beaten to death - mummy like is demolished faces... Enter through the Gift shop...
Big antique car, mechanic driving and fixing among crowd - miracle of mechanical motion...
Electrics strung throughout like telephone lines - big spaghetti mess... Flat on wall over head view distorted...
Beauty
“It was a quest for aesthetics, for beauty — instead of the truth,” he said. He described his behavior as an addiction that drove him to carry out acts of increasingly daring fraud, like a junkie seeking a bigger and better high." Staple fraud statement.
As the psychologist Karl Weick is fond of asking, “How can I know who I am until I see what I do? How can I know what I value until I see where I walk?”
My forever is over.
"I felt ecstatic and somehow completed, but also shattered."
Landscape
"landscape, in other words, of unfiltered experience, of things felt rather than thought through, of the world in its beauty absorbed before it is understood, of patterns and sounds that lodge themselves in some indelible place in the psyche"
Harsh
“We're responsible for our own behavior; through our actions and interactions, we can make a difference in our neighbors’, and our own, lives.” The ideal artist, they seem to think, is a creative, benevolent teacher who helps people learn to share, care and be nicer to one another.
Conceptual Overdose
Well crafted conceptual art amounts to clever interior decorations. Most of that stuff, one gets the joke is rewarded for being clever too and then it’s a crafted design or object from there. This shallowness includes much of Pop and culture referential works too… From the most successful commercial artists to fine art world Warhol onward. I’m done with this shit and searching for direction… Not conceptual, not decorative, not pop, not overtly culturally referential - memes… Political art is to and end and I love the power and effect art can have on political and cultural belief systems, but again al these forms I dismissed can become great art work as individual works...
I don't go for that fake shit - brands - commercial - any gimmicks.
Eyes close up - into our souls.
Snap shots - family stories of snap shots, real and constructed histories mixed up.
A persons life in pictures
Motion of water and wind and fire and bodies
Universal forms - spheres, faceted geometry, fractals in life.
Terra: ‘The Infatuations,’ by Javier Marías - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/books/review/the-infatuations-by-javier-marias.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&src=dayp
Work
How much of do we give ourselves to the work and how does the work bring us to open up?
Explore a relationship of familiarity with work to the value we place to the art, a personal - idiosyncratic, value based on what we perceive in the art related to history with the work.
Discover
I want to discover something in my little world rather than make commentary about obvious things that any reasonable human being would agree with me about.... I also want to avoid pop. I see much jumbled pop - logos, comic bookers, games refs, iconic celeb ritzy ideals and images. I do love all that culture and it has it's uses and really cool successes in fine arts, but again I'm resistant to commentary and celebration or sentimentality from outside my world and imagination....
Romantic
“The romance of narrative is perpetually at odds with reality,” Mr. Roth wrote. Despite this, many photographers “routinely submit the intrinsic factuality of the medium to the shaping and manipulation of storytelling. The ‘road trip,’ the ‘cycle of life,’ the ‘coming-of-age,’ ‘the war story’: all these are staples of photographic constructions.”
These organized narratives help us soothe our anxieties about the world’s senselessness and give order to its complexities. But in Mr. Roth’s view, they “are often tired myths — ones that numb us to more discomfiting ambiguities.”
NYT - white road
In the book’s afterword, Paul Roth defended Mr. Sigal’s choice to reject the allure of a digestible but false story.
Hyper-Connected
Everybody is continuously connected to everybody else on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Reddit, e-mailing, texting, faster and faster, with the flood of information jeopardizing meaning. Everybody’s talking at once in a hypnotic, hyper din: the cocktail party from hell. Total noise....
David Foster Wallace called Total Noise: “the tsunami of available fact, context, and perspective.”
Artists know that the world is always already in the process of unraveling.
Art is not an image here, but a complex process of becoming.
“that the world is open for play, that everything and everybody is mockable, in a wonderful way.” Jonathan Winters
Why We Love Beautiful Things
BY LANCE HOSEY
"If designers understood more about the mathematics of attraction, the mechanics of affection, all design could both look good and be good for you."
"...transforms everyday structures into systems of beauty".
Project Series 45: Kirsten Everberg:
"In a Grove” will consist of a suite of four new paintings based on Everberg’s exploration of the 1950 Japanese crime drama Rashomon by filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. For “In a Grove,” Everberg is creating an almost hallucinatory environment as the four new large paintings wrap the viewer in an immersive atmosphere that alludes to the slippery nature of truth. For over ten years, Everberg has explored issues of meaning, memory, and history through fluid abstractions that have multiple narrative and painterly layers. In strikingly beautiful paintings, she explores how images work and how images mark the elusive passage of time. Everberg has developed an innovative technique of pouring glossy enamel paint onto horizontal canvases creating lush surfaces that blur representation and abstraction. With vibrant color and shimmering light, the images shift and change as the viewer moves around the work."
Thoughts
Much of my work since the early 80s is time twisted or interactive. This includes digital works, painting, video, film, drawing, collaborations, performance, installation and audio. I have let go of the notion of 'medium'. Rather than the form or materials of a work, it is more about a zeitgeist and possibilities mixed, woven and expanded upon.
When I ask myself what is meaningful in my work, on one level I explore ideals and on another I reflect upon my experience. I'm critiquing and sharing my evolving worldview within forms for interpretation. I structure each work to be fair to my inspiration and to interpreters. My goal is not to solidify the work into something easily definable but rather structure an experience that continues to grow.
It's disappointing to me when people talk about technology in art rather than the work itself. The tools I use I hope are not a distraction from the experiences the works offer.
My art works are results of a process of looking for and discovering meaning and significance. Sometimes this is translating "stuff" that strikes, scares, delights or frustrates me. The stuff I'm calling my "art" are those things I can make, or point to, that can stand in for what-ifs. My works suggest possibilities and leave plenty of space for interpretation.
To be an artist is to translate and share significant understandings, fascinations, and insights. "ART" is for me a belief system of spiritual nature. I recognize 'art' as a trans-formative of consciousness.
OOOwwie... That's more gross than cool!
Beauty
I think you state much in the heading "..idea of beauty". The pursuit of beauty has a long tradition in art making and there is plenty of examples of this pursuit rending significant works, yet beauty is an idea not a predetermined absolute. There is the notion that our brains are wired by evolution and conditioning to recognize "beauty" and I do see truth in this, yet "beauty" is contextual and subjective. Human struggles can be beautiful, our vulgarities maybe as well. I do think that beauty on a superficial level has been demonized by contemporary art culture although to dismiss beauty is simple minded and ludicrous. Beauty on the superficial can also be strategic in the work to bring a viewer into a reception of the work with greater opportunities to experience depth within the work... Our understandings of beauty and its uses and how it operates on so many levels is worth the philosophical endeavor...
Donovan, "I'm a poetry appreciator more than a poet, an inspired appreciator is all..."
Gwyneth, "like a big shadow hanging over you" about the dog, Sophie, who wants to play all the time."
Beasts of the Southern Wild - nyt
"They also remind us of the metaphysical arrogance of childhood. Because the self and the world are perceived, by an awakening mind, as opposites — what is inside my head and what is outside; what is me and what is not — it seems to follow that they must be equal. I, too, am a cosmos."
Painting becomes a process of constant struggle to harness that which is fleeting; a reality always in motionin terms of light, local perception, and time. When I say that I come to know my reality through the instrument of painting I want it to be understood that it is a choice I have made in order to confront the ephemeral.
My paintings are a meditation on myself.
Hi Renee,
I actually found a couple of your paintings from Syracuse in a portfolio wallet. I'm sorry I was unruly and critical. They are fresh and nice with a real yearning for the landscape of Iowa. It's odd that the things that are valued it retrospect are often those things that one reacts to at first. I find that there are many things over the years that I cherish that upon first exposure, I was negative towards....
The works on paper you did back then inspired me to keep it simple and work on paper taped to foam core board. All my canvases are unfinished and crap. I have a number of stretched and ready canvases sitting in the garage that I can't seem to get to, because I know what a learning curve I'll confront and know that I can work on paper with much more satisfaction and less expense... Plus I love leaving paper unpainted but canvas left without paint applied just feels not so good....
Below is a painting that I finished this weekend. I think it is one of the strongest in a long time. These are very subtle works and really don't translate to .jpg well.
Sarah is doing the real nice video work as part of a walk she gets in once a week or so. She started doing this walk when a close friend of hers died and she was grieving. It's gone on beyond that with ebbs and flows. But mostly it is a space that is hers. I've never done her morning walk with her... The kids have a few times but rarely. Anyway she posted a piece today. It's called "together but it's not a romantic ideal or anything like that...
http://purple-waves.posterous.com/
It's Spring time a good time to paint!
Very best,
Geoff
IMG_9106.jpg
"Beckman's painting is a response to the spiritual crisis of modernity. With Beckman, painting renews its spiritual intention, becomes a spiritual sanctuary, achieves, once again, a spiritual aura, if in a very different, indeed worsening spiritual climate." Donald Kuspit
“the freedom, spontaneity, openness and complexity of an image, not exclusively of the studio or the mind, but explicitly and intimately tied to nature and human emotions.”
Food
The metaphor extends to the lives of the people who are touched by the spirit of our mission when they experience, hands-on, what it means to incubate friendships, community and family through the common denominator of food.
In the Future
“In the future, not getting any imagery or story line or content is going to be the equivalent of silence because people are so filled up now with streaming video,” said Ed Schlossberg, the artist, author and designer who runs ESI Design. “Paying attention to anything will be the missing commodity in future life. You think you’ll miss nothing, but you’ll probably miss everything.”
Schlossberg said that, for a long time, art provided the boundary for silence, “but now art, in some cases, is so distracting and intense and faceted, it’s hard to step into a moment. Especially when you’re always carrying a micro-camera and a screen all the time, both recording and playing back constantly rather than allowing moments of composition and stillness when your brain can go into a reverie.”
Art Room
Develop artist live work / studio spaces with a community building design strategy. Such as communal work spaces and small group formation design plans. This could be as simple as keeping spaces down to five spaces clustered or just three. But the challenge is to sort out a good plan. From these we finance T4T and let things evolve from there.
Designs would include out door spaces and perhaps be parochially implemented by inhabitant communities.
The whole area would be lifted and smart creative and green development could be a boom...
At a Juncture
I'm at a juncture. I've found pleasure in the meditation of the rose and the patterns in geography - planes, shadows, birth - life - death, now I realize that zen experience is not enough - the funny thing is that when I get involved in the realm of ideas, I don't much like the work I make. I do have fantastic and successful ideas when I apply thoughts to making something for promotion, advertising and invites. It's just that it's so much bigger when I discover it in unexpected ways and cites. Executing ideas just seems like work with little room for the Divine to shine. Pumping my ego seemed like so much fun when I was in my 20s... Those motivations and insecurities lead me astray in my 30s. Having a family in my 40s and unfulfilled after years of strong appreciated commercial work, I've come out to this place of still unstable ground, but in a place of discovery too.
"Take the raw stuff of life and transform it into art."
Do you think? Or is that just therapy art.
Artist statement - Thoughts in progress
Up until a few years ago, my art adventure was very much about exploring outwardly. My vision and curiosities took me places. I explored abstract story telling and made experimental documentaries, videos, interactive sculptures, performances, and cultural riffs.
More recently, I find my painting and time based work to be more inward looking. My subjects are found close to home mostly on my back porch. It is an inside/outside, in-between zone where the mundane and transcendent mingle. Compositions, patterns and light plays unfold into complex and organic meditations on everyday life and ephemerality.
On my porch, a struggling rose bush is my favorite subject. The rose changes quickly and offers interesting allegories, formal pleasures and rapid change.
In my video work, I've been shooting with a PXL2000 toy video camera. Working with it's low definition image is more like painting then HD video. The videos are close to my painting work in their contemplative nature, their condensation of time, and the intrigue found in my intimate experience.
"Large scale drawing, as dance performance, story telling, gesture play. To be performed for the camera on final day.
Large scale painting as gestural story telling."
"The real journey of being an artist is not in acquiring new skills or techniques but in having new eyes.". Proust
Beauty is not simply subjective...
Not a profession but rather a practice
Like all human beings, we feel that we know beauty when we perceive it...
Not images or sounds but rather in elegance and potential - power - often with a simple concept or principle...a
"False dichotomies that paralyze art making and art cultures:
Formalism vs conceptualism
Political vs aesthetic
Pop vs high"
"In his own work, Professor Pierce uses film, video, and sound to create experiences in transformative time. He creates multi-channel site-specific installations as well as single channel works that often blur the line between narrative, experimental, and documentary film genres. While widely recognized for the stunning cinematography in his impressionistic documentary film Red Shovel, which won the Kodak Cinematography Award, he considers his editing and sound design to be at the core of his art."
Lala notes: paradigm
I am lost these days. I wonder what's up with me when I simply mess up all over the place and especially right when there is so many good thongs unfolding? I like and do not like loneliness. I like contemplative time and freedom from misunderstandings of others in space of busy solitude. All my activity is with a desire to share but only when it is safe, which it is usually not. This is the pointer for me that community is of the utmost importance. This is trusting the generosity of a group and maybe trusting myself too.
Is market place really the most important aspect of "art". The market's concerns and preoccupations, even for those artists, like me, that have avoided commodifaction both consciously and unconsciously, sit in a place relative to our desire to make and share and where we may fit where we clearly don't feel is the place for us or our work...
The neat qualities of THINGS!
Again i realize that dialog is where we come closer to a truth. With in humility we can go beyond ourselves. Such a simple idea that I need to be reminded of over and over again. Clarity comes from disagreement as well as affirmation. The dialog doesn't only happen between people our surrounds and all of the world is part of the dialog too. What we can not see, comprehend, or feel is alway present for us to appreciate and available to know. Truth is fragility, failure and compromise is a path toward apprehension. The pursuit is the path of authenticity not acquisition, experience of the adventure is a way to touch allusive truths- the divine beyond the cocoon of ourselves. Presence and respect play large roles in openers to the dialog toward that which is beyond ourselves. We are redeemed be others, by love and appreciation, by forgiveness of ourselves, acceptance of incomprehension, and a willingness to venture into our adventure....
Lala notes: Sarah said, "You say it all in your note, it's all about trust! You don't trust".
"...transience of things saved from oblivion by memory and art."
Lala note: community - judgement and validity shall be left to groups and critiques. Agendas and politics left to the individual artist and left out of the purpose of the collective. Sub groups naturally form with shared concerns, coming together and sharing art and finding support is the emphasis of Lala. A shared desire to embrace and translate our experience as artists is what unifies us. Community is a paradigm of art which usually takes a back seat to agendas. Although "agendas" are a natural motive to bring communities together, when in fact, being part of the community is what is the strongest pull for many of us. Nearly all significant art influences throughout history have been more a result of sharing through community rather than the goals and agendas that that brought the community together in the first place. Whether it be booze, cafe culture, oppression, war, passion... Community is really what allowed for the articulations of mediums into significant artistic expression. Even the hermit -seeker finds their place of significance through the recognition and support of others who are part of a larger zietguist forming a community... So, Lala is about our artist community, building and promoting community, and identifying ways to allow us to come together and mMs our contributions as artists.
It occurs to me that all major shifts in "art" have resulted from a position or attitude toward experiences rather than a particular artist's great work or even a group of artists works. The significance of the influential works is just that "significance". The regard or attitude of the artist results is work that challenges and/or reflects an interpretation of experience that is significant to other artists and sometimes some consciousness of the era.
Art - Full Constant Light, for Artists in New York - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/arts/design/26ligh.html?pagewanted=2
List
Buy "GEORGES MéLIèS: FIRST WIZARD OF CINEMA"
1. Set up virtual SmudgeArts.org or SmudgeProject.org.
2. Pay "Art in Context" and update shows and work samples.
3. Write wikipedia entry.
4. Submit to other art database sites.
5. Post all videos on YouTube.
6. Finish portfolio site.
7. Work at least a little everyday.
8. Put affirmations on the fridge.
9. Schedule on calendar.
10. Forgive always.
11. Be positive, flexible, honest and open without self judgement.
12. Make make make without hangups.
Finger Phenomena
"Everybody has their own individually mapped texts - of what they are, further this is layered with ever changing internalization and translation of stimuli. Art is when the personal text coming through a person results in a object story or event elegantly translates to the universal aspects of humanity and maintain it's uniqueness of emerging for a individuals externalization. The art object does not need to come from an "artist" but rather is art by it's nature and recognized art-ness by one or more people."
aTool_LAWeeklyReview - In Geoff Seelinger's lovely video "A Tool is a Tool", a wrench suspended in front of a camera on a roving bicycle renders a cubist cityscape.
Intuition
An intuitive approach to exploring possibilities with a media and medium that is framed by experience, pleasure in process/results process, exploration of subjects of interest and qualities of satisfied feeling. So broad? I think that the equation of pleasure process/results maybe what is worth thinking about more.