those three years with you
public hangings
It’s been interesting, attempting to condense my photography interests into 20 or so photos for a public “show.” On my blog alone, I have more than a thousand images, and more than 40k images which are sitting, some raw, some post processed, on my external drives. Sometimes I pull up one of these images; maybe even specifically one I don’t like just to see if I can “rescue” it, and it turns out to get a lot of likes on tumblr or flickr. I am surprised by this and question my process, which may not be a terrible activity to undertake now and then. But is the universe really so random that my own curation is moot on my own work?
I also titled this post a public hanging. I have a difficult time going analog with my work. Print presents a finality that is difficult to accept. I don’t think I ever feel done processing a photo. I could feather an area, sharpen, dodge, burn, or see what it looks like in black and white or toned. Once hung on the wall, I wonder how I will feel about these 20 images I have selected. To off-quote and dramatize Perec, will I forget about these walls? Is this why we put pictures on walls, to forget that we build these barriers? If it is so easy to forget about the wall, will we forget about the pictures to? Did my photos just become a barrier or a tired excuse to forget about the walls if even for only a moment? Will I feel as free among them as when I captured the images? Is all of this junk-thought about hanging art really what i we want need from art?
I have everything printed and ready to go, and now I have more than enough time to wonder if I selected the right ones.
I included a print of one sketch. This act of including a sketch is an old nemesis of mine. I have felt compelled, since I can remember, to include some aspect of my drawings in with my work in other mediums as if to say, look I can draw too! It is a crutch; a way of validating or communicating that I have artistic requirements I put on myself. This is an unfair requirement to place on the viewer though. Perhaps I will leave it out.
Still my primary goal is and has always been to increase my own visual vocabulary of the world, and share these ways of seeing with others. Perhaps this is what everyone does, but in their own respective interests and careers - but this is how I have chosen to go about it, and society is calling it art at the moment. I wish only for the show to connect with at least one person who will say, “I know that place, I have felt that feeling, and now I know how to convey that feeling, and know that someone else feels this way too.”
I think it will. Maybe. Perhaps. Hopefully.
Hacking the Creative Brain
I had the great luck to catch Denise Jacobs at SxSW in a personably small session, where I sat right up front. She has so much passion and energy - it was addictive and infectious.
Check out her site, and if you happen to be in Las Vegas April 8-11, and you’re a professional “creative” (everyone is, truly), check out her talk in April: “Hacking the Creative Brain” !
If you’re wondering why you solve code problems in the shower, or suddenly figure out how to solve a user interface problem while seemingly thinking of nothing at all, she explains it all. She enables you to recognize and create these conditions for creative problem solving.
when it snows in March
chasing the chimera
what sets the thunder wild
You come to me,
but I keep on.
Now you’ve flown to far.
I turn to say it’s getting late,
but I keep on.
and still you fly to far.
trembling the birch
Avoision.com featured my work!
My wonderfully talented friend has written a blog entry about my recent illustrations. You can read a bit about my process for those, but really, do explore his inspiring work instead. It’s not just art work, it’s a way of being and thinking about how you’re connecting with the world.
He also looks better with long hair than I do, but he started before me, so it’s a goal.
Also, another friend from Quebec has kindly scanned in tons of antique illustrations for me and sent me a huge gigabytes worth library of source material. He has an excellent tumblr and you won’t be disappointed with a follow. You can find his work at greynotgrey.com and it’s truly inspiring. His personal blog there is also a trove of art, thought and awesomeness.
These guys are amazing and have both gone out of their way to help a guy (me) whose social ability tends to require patience and followup. Thanks guys.
Art Errare
The word error comes from the latin Ers and before that the Sanskrit word for flow. Its first meaning is then simply, to wander around. It is only newer interpretations that attached it to negative meanings such as defect, deception, mistakes, and falsehood.
When writing code, developers often have a feeling of releasing the code, and sometimes into environments where we cannot predict what that code will encounter. I have found in coding that most errors crop up due to some condition in the input to the code that the code I wrote simply couldn’t tolerate. Perhaps I wrote some code that expected an input number value of 0 to 100 and some extreme case wanders into a range of higher values such as a value of 101. It’s important to realize this isn’t an error. The code is simply not written for the possibilities. In coding, we change the code to grow with the new expectations.
Sometimes it happens in reverse. Your code is more tolerant than you knew it would be, and perhaps someone does something with your code you never thought of. This is a fun day for any coder.
Art does the same thing, but its input is the human experience. You create, you release it into the wild where it has a dialog with your viewers, and you learn something new. You then create something new with this wider understanding of the possibilities. Open dialog and criticism is crucial to the growth of any artist. The community is where an artist goes to debug ideas and improve the breadth and accuracy of their syntax.
No artwork fails. It simply wanders.
involuntary dilation of the iris
believing in what we’ve found
The Cliff
American Design
