Posts tagged with "art"

A Chance To Create

Good news. Wait no. Great fuck­ing news.

I met with Frédéric, the own­er of the Salon, and after show­ing him a port­fo­lio of my pic­tures, he agreed to let me have an exhib­it in the next show in February.

As this was­n’t only his art gallery but his house as well, I offered to let him make the deci­sion after see­ing my com­plet­ed work. He told me there was no need, as he trust­ed me based on what he had seen in my port­fo­lio, which I felt was a very nice com­pli­ment.

As artists (and I use this in the loos­est sense of the word to describe myself), we’re very dif­fer­ent. I told him that I like to study pho­to­graph­ic tech­niques, espe­cial­ly in pho­tos that I like, and apply those tech­niques to what I want to express or show. When I look at a piece of visu­al art, I look at mean­ing and intent. When I cre­ate, I keep the same thing in mind. Frédéric, on the oth­er hand, is more of a gut-feel­ing type of artist. He does what he feels is right, and does­n’t wor­ry as much about the under­ly­ing mes­sage.

He asked if I was sin­gle, and I told him I was. “Good”, he said, “That’ll help you focus”. It made me think of a quote by Alexander Dumas:

Woman inspires us to great things, and pre­vents us from achiev­ing them.

I made a remark about how I’d have a forum to devel­op my ideas now, projects I nev­er pur­sued because I did­n’t have a way to get them to a wider audi­ence. He told me that I should­n’t wor­ry about an audi­ence, and gave me an exam­ple to demon­strate his point: if you cre­ate the most beau­ti­ful thing you’ve ever done and you keep it in your base­ment, it isn’t art because no one sees it1, but to get caught up in that dilem­ma, and to not cre­ate sim­ply because of that, is a tragedy.

So now I can pur­sue and devel­op one of my pho­to project ideas. I have to decide on a theme. I have see how much enlarge­ment I can do to my pho­tos with­out too much loss of qual­i­ty. I have to decide on the size of the final prints. I have to decide on the frame size and shape. I have to get the final prints framed.

I’ve always want­ed to cre­ate acces­si­ble art2.

Perhaps this will be my chance.

  1. An inter­pre­tive answer to the Zen kōan of the sound a tree makes falling down in the for­est, I’m sure [↩]
  2. As opposed to some­thing such as poet­ry, which is less acces­si­ble to the com­mon per­son. As a medi­um, film, pho­tog­ra­phy, and music (with lyrics) are more eas­i­ly digestible. [↩]

Emergence Exposition Opus 01

A few days before the show, I found out that Krista and Shane were play­ing a small venue in town. Usually I make it a point to see an artist just once in my life, but last time was dif­fer­ent; I was expect­ing Lederhosen Lucil, but was treat­ed to an entire­ly dif­fer­ent and unfa­mil­iar sound. This time, it was my chance to see Krista and Shane per­form after becom­ing famil­iar with the songs. Turns out the venue was in un petit salon des arts. This place boast­ed a mix­ture of dif­fer­ent art­forms; music, met­al sculp­tures, pho­tographs, paint­ings, and graph­ic poems.

I did­n’t real­ly feel like going out that night, but I forced myself to go, remind­ing myself that I could say the same thing any oth­er night and I’d nev­er get any­where.

Thumbnail: Entrance of the Emergence Exposition

When I arrived, the Salon was to capac­i­ty. I could­n’t even get in the entrance; there were peo­ple phys­i­cal­ly block­ing the door. My chance to get in came after a few had made room by leav­ing, then I saw a path up the stairs and took it.

Enter six degrees of sep­a­ra­tion.

Continue read­ing “Emergence Exposition Opus 01”…

Art For Art

I once made an origa­mi rose for a friend. Written inside was a poem I com­posed one night when I had an excess of for­lorn emo­tions. One of my best pieces. In order to read the poem, she would have to destroy the rose, ruin­ing the piece in itself, though sati­at­ing her curios­i­ty. If she nev­er opened it, she would nev­er be able to see exact­ly what I wrote.

For me, art must have three attrib­ut­es; it must be aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing in some way, it must car­ry a mes­sage, and I must be able to under­stand it or relate to it in some way. So many peo­ple seem so super­fi­cial to me when they put paint­ings in their house, or stat­uettes, about things they don’t under­stand. They own these pieces because “they like them”. They enjoy look­ing at them. Do they under­stand what the artist was think­ing when he or she used a cer­tain stroke of the brush? For all they know, the sculp­ture could be a mes­sage about any­thing they nor­mal­ly would­n’t agree with. They don’t under­stand what the artist was try­ing to do. They can’t appre­ci­ate the piece. It sad­dens me.

So I made anoth­er piece, as a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the rose I made for my friend, because I enjoyed it so much, it is a sym­bol for some­thing I cre­at­ed. It is a sim­i­lar rose, but with the words “art for art for art for…” writ­ten all over it. When I look at it, it reminds me of my friend, what I was think­ing when I gave away such a pre­cious piece, and what she’s doing right now.

And to this day I don’t know if she opened it.

Continued Shower Entries

I should end off every night with a hot show­er, and the addi­tion of an entry. I swear, it’s like ther­a­py.

I’m still wait­ing for my iPod, which should be com­ing in this week. The idea of being able to bring my entire music col­lec­tion with me wher­ev­er I go is just too tempt­ing. That way, when I need a Tool song, I can sim­ply bring it up, instead of bring­ing a Tool CD, just in case. I love you already iPod.

I hap­pened to stum­ble upon a song appar­ent­ly called Dan Automator, by Tomahawk. There’s some­thing about this song that is just speak­ing to me right now. I can’t even under­stand 90% of the lyrics, but Mike Patton just does such a great job with bit­ter­sweet emo­tion on the lyrics. The melody is just so…wrenchingly trag­ic, yet dul­cet. The only prob­lem is that I’m pret­ty sure it’s not a Tomahawk song. I saw them in con­cert once, and they did­n’t sound any­thing like this. Also, there’s a DJ called Dan the Automator whom Mike Patton worked with as a side project, and it’s just not like­ly that Tomahawk would name a song (incor­rect­ly) after him. That and the fact that the Tomahawk discogra­phies nev­er men­tion Dan Automator as a track list­ing. I wish I could get the real name for this song, so I could give it the respect of a prop­er track list­ing. I’m sur­prized that I was able to hold off on an entry yes­ter­day. Usually when I start up a page again (I don’t like the word jour­nal, because it’s not, and half the time I’m just rant­i­ng about some­thing), I’ll just flood the data­base with entries, and it will slow­ly become less fre­quent as time goes on. Of course, when I have a girl­friend, I feel I can’t write any­thing at all. It’s like my page is a girl­friend, who just lis­tens to me hate so well, and nev­er ques­tions what I’m think­ing, or why I’m think­ing it. I love you too, you porce­lain faced web­page.

I was flip­ping through some fash­ion mag­a­zines, and read about an art exhib­it being held about the evo­lu­tions of fash­ion and styles. They men­tioned a bal­loon­ing-dress by a Japanese design­er as a wit­ty piece, and a per­fo­rat­ed-wing out­fit as breath­tak­ing. The art of fash­ion has always puz­zled me; it’s some­thing that I’m com­plete­ly igno­rant of, that I don’t think I will ever under­stand unless some­one explains it to me.