Between the Eyes

I will have work on display all this week in the Oliver Gallery at USF. Closing reception is Friday at 7pm. You can find more information here.

I look forward to meeting people and answering questions. There will also be food, drink and generally awesome times to be had, so come check it out.

Banksy on Advertising

Here is a list of 10 great photographers that are harmful to the aspiring young artist. It's quite great actually. I've talked about a couple on this blog, actually. Not sure what that says.

Effigy of Agony

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the culmination of a many months work of work, successes and failures. These turned out so much better than I could have possibly hoped, and I am thoroughly pleased with the results.

After a huge setback with the printing of the metal plates, I was forlorn and depressed. The emulsion had failed, or some other part of the process had gone awry. I resigned myself to scan the failures and make the best of what I had to work with, creating digital composites. It took some time to get around to it, and meanwhile the plates continued to react chemically, as I had not bothered to fix them for the full length needed as I knew they were not viable. It's a good thing I didn't. The texture and discoloration are exactly what was needed.

Effigy of Agony

On a side note, sorry for the lack of posts recently, the last few weeks have been ridiculously busy. I will hopefully do better in the coming days. But really, you should all just be happy with all the new work I've been sharing. I mean really.

Attraction

I've decided to post some of the work I've been doing the past few months concerning my musings about entertainment, Florida, and other such topics. Now that I've totally teased you with my Effigy of Agony hints and snippets of course. The body of work has grown and changed around since then, as they tend to do, but I think I am just starting to get enough images for the whole of it to read as one piece or experience, and not just disjointed parts. Tell me what you think, I would love to hear the input.

Attraction

(Thumbnail opens full album, 34 images)

Novelty

Where on the spectrum lies novelty or "gimmick" art, things done just because they are strange and bizarre but might otherwise lack "artistic merit"?

Are these valid forms of art? Does that actually mean anything at all? Is anyone really capable of casting that value judgement - i.e. good or bad art?

Of Fish and Foo Dogs

I decided to share some sketches from one of the two moleskines I've been keeping, both new. Most are done with a brush pen, though the one is just a mechanical pencil. The other sketchbook is mostly full of mess, figure study, and other ridiculous. It is much lower quality paper and I therefore abuse it. But then, I think I really needed something to abuse, I treat my sketchbooks too kindly and perhaps I suffer for it. Many of these ended up in a collage I made. Which I don't have pictures of. Yet. It is currently not in my possession. I'll be working on that.

And also important photos. Yes, those. Shooting Saturday, still setting up. I don't know whether to be excited or terrified.




"Foo Dog" is the bastardized western term for Chinese stone guardian lions. I did this quick sketch from an easy to find photo because I had been thinking about them. We used to have a set in my house. Interestingly, "shi shi" (stone lion) is part of a long poem by Yuen Ren Chao which phonetically reads in whole:

« Shī Shì shí shī shǐ »

Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.

Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.

Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.

Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.

Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.

Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.

Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.

Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.

Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.

Shì shì shì shì.

In English:

« Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den »

In a stone den was a poet called Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten lions.

He often went to the market to look for lions.

At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.

At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.

He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.

He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.

The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.

After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.

When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.

Try to explain this matter.

The implication is as in English riddle poems (how is this so, how can this be, explain this matter) when really no answer is expected.

Of course, written out in Chinese characters it is more easily read, because while they sound the same the symbols are understandably different, similar to our homophones, for example 'deer' and 'dear'.