art as scrap

Today's post is: more musings on the "value of art", and how that relates to other basic human needs with which art competes for resources today. Earlier this week, an important piece of public art was stolen from a park in London:

Two Forms Divided - Barbara Hepworth (1969)
shown before & after theft
(photos: Southwark Council and Trevor Moore)

The theft of this historically-significant piece by renowned sculptor Dame Barbara Hepworth (her Wiki is HERE) is thought to be part of a "sickening epidemic" of public art thefts in England for the scrap value of the bronze metal (report on the theft is HERE) - which is, of course, a small fraction of the actual price at which the work would be valued for sale (something over US$780,000). If this is the case, then someone needed the scrap value in cash so badly s/he was willing to steal the sculpture and risk going to jail for it. It's been speculated that the piece was stolen by someone who "just doesn't care", or "got in with the wrong crowd" (see a thoughtful and interesting commentary by Zoe WIlliams of The Guardian HERE). Regardless of the facts that may ultimately come out in this case, it seems likely that (if the scrap metal motive is true) somebody saw some easy money, needed easy money, and grabbed the artwork at that value - despite what others might have thought the piece was worth at auction.

Please understand: I don't condone this or any other form of theft based on some argument of relative "need". For all I know the thief might be feeding a drug habit, or owe a bunch of money to people with nasty tendencies, or be engaged in who knows what other personal behavior that's been deemed socially unacceptable and/or criminal and thus punishable. My only reason for mentioning this aspect of "value" is to point out that SOMEBODY apparently valued this important piece of artwork based on its immediate scrap value - rather than its value in the Art Marketplace - because they needed the money. I make NO argument that "society is at fault", or that the thie(ves) should be pitied, or that the marketplace is somehow corrupt, or any of that.

I do argue, though, that the assignment of "value" can vary based on one's level of need. In the field of psychology, Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs" gave us a structure for this approach to understanding human behavior; he argued that people are motivated to fulfill basic needs before moving on to other needs. If this Hepworth sculpture was stolen to be sold for scrap metal, the thie(ves) valued it at its immediate cash value and NOT at its potential sale price as an artwork. This, to me, is assigning value to an object based on immediate need - which gives a different figure than its value as art. Two numbers, same object.

To play with this "value of art" idea a little farther, consider the legacy of recently-passed sculptor John Chamberlain (his Wiki is HERE), who initially found fame making art from the rusted parts of junked cars:

(untitled)
original image (and others) at The Art Theoretical,
an Avery McCarthy studio blog

Chamberlain said he started working in this scrap metal medium because it was (1) available and (2) inexpensive: "Michelangelo had a lot of marble in his back yard, so to speak; I had a lot of this stuff" (quote from LA Times obituary HERE). To me, this is the other half of the "value of art" argument; this guy chose to work in this medium because the material itself was so cheap, yet he was able to transform that low-value material into high-value artworks (one of his pieces sold last June for $4.7M). So, value is determined by WHAT, exactly? Beats me.

[NOTE: The previous post titled "Art - at what cost?" (read it below) described an amazing but very costly installation of "Land Art", a class of work which often makes use of the massive scale that's possible when the Earth itself is used as the medium. That posting, in which I reflected on other potential (charitable) uses of the $10M being spent to assemble the piece's components - mainly for the cost of transporting a 340-ton granite boulder 106 miles to the site - drew a really insightful and articulate comment from ObsArt (a cool blog on Earth Art) defending the work and its expense.]
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Today's creation is a Quicktime video I made from some still photos of our Christmas tree (we finished decorating it late last night):

(video © me)
Mozart: 8 Variations On A Dutch Song by Christian Ernst Graaf,
performed by Walter Klien
(from a great collection published by Musical Concepts,
available HERE.

I shot the stills this afternoon with some good sunlight coming in a window behind the tree; the mixed light was tricky but it gave a satisfying result. Had some Mozart on while decorating it, so that's what ended up in the clip.

Merry Christmas!
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Art - at what cost?

Today's post is about more rock art; serious rock art - like, say, sculpture using a 340-ton boulder:

Boulder to be used in "Levitated Mass",
an installation by Michael Heiser at LA Museum of Contemporary Art
(photo © THIS BLOG)

Artist Michael Heiser's installation piece called Levitated Mass will consist of this 21' high boulder suspended over a 456'-long trench through which viewers will walk underneath it:

prelim sketch © the artist
(posted at infrascapedesign HERE)

Minor logistical problem, though: the granite boulder Heiser picked for this work is 106 miles from the site. They've build a 290-foot-long transport structure of steel girders to take it thru 3 counties, under permits from 100 governmental bodies, with help from more than 100 utilities, over roads and bridges chosen because they should be able to support the 1.2 million pound load. Total cost is expected to exceed $10M. The moving project is described HERE; a cool video of the preparation process is HERE.

Heiser is considered part of a school of (mostly-American) artists who began doing "Land Art" in the late 1960's (WIKI is HERE). He's done several well-known works in this field, including "Double Negative", a 1500-foot-long sculpture for which he blasted and excavated two 30' wide X 50' deep trenches in a desert canyon 80 miles SE of Las Vegas:

Double Negative
(original photo for Las Vegas Sun, by Sam Morris)

Since about 1970, he's been working on a massive work called "City":

"City", work in progress by Michael Heiser
(photo by Tom Vinetz, NY Times);
(satellite images are available from Google Earth HERE)

in which he emulates ancient monuments and mounds in concrete, stone and steel structures up to 70'-80' high and 1/4 mile long (that's a cement truck at right in the photo above). Total cost is expected to exceed $25M; more detail HERE.

So, to recap: $10 million, $25 Million; these are BIG numbers - especially in today's troubled economic times. For some, this cost issue raises a pretty obvious question: Are you KIDDING ME?  Granted, it's all funded with private money, but: are you telling me we couldn't find a better way to spend this money? Valid point, I think. This amounts to artwork competing for resources with basic, survival-level human needs. As one LA Times commenter recently pointed out, this just might be the kind of disconnect that the "Occupy Movement" is talking about.

I'm pondering this point myself.

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Today's creation is: a forest. We started production (and mailing - first batch went out last night!) of this year's crop of Christmas cards, including a little handmade popup tree insert. I recently posted the image and some prototypes. Last night I made the first 60 of the little buggers:

(photo and design © me)

which was waaay more handwork than I envisioned, but they do really have the feel I wanted. Success, I think - despite the work required.
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Art as Reality

Today's post is on: the ultimate human interactivity with art. The matrix is here, people - in this complete artificial ecosystem with which people interact just by the act of viewing it:

Time Of Doubles
Interactive digital installation by Haru Ji & Graham Wakefield;
Image from: Media Arts & Technology Program, UCSB
(original image is HERE)

My suggestion: first, watch this YouTube video, which gives you a taste of the interactive experience. Here's my feeble attempt to put it into words: in the center of this room is a curved-panel video display that shows a kind of virtual "aquarium". When you walk into the room, your presence is shown in the aquarium as a sort of "energy being" that throws off swirling threads of light. These threads are consumed by microbeetles, which are in turn consumed by bigger (blue) snake-shaped lifeforms. The snake-forms constantly swim around and form fluid boundaries which shift as people interact within the aquarium [if you really want one, a more detailed verbal description can be found HERE; more amazing still images of the installation are available HERE]. The installation is currently up at the SIGGRAPH Asia 2011 show in Hong Kong, and it looks VERY cool.

If your brain isn't too fried now, watch the video again - this time paying attention to the people walking around and looking at the screen. Most of them seem to take a little while to realize they're IN the aquarium, a little longer to see that they're interacting with it, and a bit longer still to take in that they're an active part of this self-contained ecosystem. By the act of walking into the room, they've become full-fledged participants in a completely artificial world. As Neo so clearly articulated it, "Whoa ... !"

Neo learns Kung Fu in The Matrix
(© Warner Brothers; original image is HERE)

So what? Well, the piece actually fits into this thread I've recently been writing about the role of art with respect to what we call "life". It can document life; it can "imitate" life. It can affect life; it can be affected by life (as in yesterday's posting on the Japanese-American painters whose artistic lives were effectively erased by events). It can help one contemplate life, even in the abstract (the minimalist painter John McLaughlin once said: "I want to communicate only to the extent that the painting will serve to induce or intensify the viewer's natural desire for contemplation, without the benefit of a guiding principle"). 

In today's posting, I see that it can actually create an other-universe life outside of what we call life: the UCSB project which resulted in this "Time Of Doubles" work is titled "Artificial Nature". Yeah, it's software-generated; sure, our eyes see it via pixels on a screen rather than via light reflected off of physical objects; of course, the software is created by human programmers - and I would argue that NONE of those considerations make it anything less than a "real life". It's an environment with rules, structure and sentient creatures that interact with it - and with each other - just by BEING THERE. You know - just like the one we currently call home.

Now, hard-core Gamers might argue they've been living in such worlds for years, in Second Life, Entropia and countless other virtual worlds - and I'd almost agree with them. Dude, they've even got their own money in there! Still, those are mostly based on kind-of-familiar rules of interaction (okay, maybe not true for Portal, which has its own special laws of physics), and you DO need a specific human/screen interface, like a keyboard, controller or joystick. Wii, xBox Kinect and other systems with motion-sensing interfaces are coming ever-closer to what I'm talking about, I guess. Whatever. My point is the same: you interact with, and enter the environment of, this Time Of Doubles installation piece just by the act of viewing it.

Whoa ... !
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Today's creation is: the near-final version of a popup insert for this year's Christmas card. It's about 4" tall, and a composite of two colored ink pieces (tree + star) over a background I photographed last week at the local train station (village tree is there). Here are the image itself and the 3-D version that will go inside the card:

tree image [© me]

popup tree [© me]

I'm finally happy with it, and so is Kristin. Now to finalize the text to go inside the card (she does beautiful calligraphy) and start printing. At least 4 trips out for inks, I'm guessing. Oh, well - the design is done - almost.

Artist, erased

Today's post is about a couple of once-esteemed Japanese-American painters whose careers - and lives - were crushed by the outbreak of WWII. Kamekichi Tokita and Kenjiro Nomura each came to the US at young ages in the early 20th century, and found mainstream success in the Seattle area chronicling life in the "Japantown" district:

"Alley," a 1929 oil on canvas by Kamekichi Tokita.
Seattle Art Museum (Collection of Shokichi & Elise Y. Tokita).

"Street", (c. 1929), oil on canvas by Kenjiro Nomura
 [Seattle Asian Art Museum, Seattle WA, Oct 22-Feb 19] Collection of the Seattle Art Museum

For a time, they ran a sign-painting shop that supported their artwork and provided a studio, and their work was praised and often championed by famous artist Kenneth Callahan (see this review of Barbara Johns' book "Signs Of Home" - which I have NOT yet read - about Tokita's life, paintings and wartime diary). The shop closed in the Great Depression, and after Pearl Harbor was attacked both painters' families were eventually taken to the internment camps and the two stopped painting altogether (they both died soon after the war ended, at ages 51 and 60 - see Jen Graves' Seattle Times article "From Artist To Enemy" HERE). In 1946, when Callahan co-founded what became known as The Northwest School, he credited white artists with looking to "Asian influences", but made no mention of Tokita, Nomura or any other artists actually within the Japanese-American culture. They, their work, and their significance were essentially erased. As Tokita has said "(i)n a moment, we have lost all the value of our existence in this society."


Likely the only reason the importance of these two artists' beautiful work (shown HERE and HERE as part of an exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum thru February 19th) is even acknowledged today is that Tokita kept a journal from 1942 until 1945 while he and his family endured the Idaho internment camp:

(from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art;
these page images are quite beautiful themselves)

and his eldest son recently offered the journal itself for translation. The current Seattle show exhibits 20 of their paintings, with author Barbara Johns as guest Curator of the show.

In my view, the fact that these two gifted artists got totally screwed by the politics of THEIR time means a couple of important things. First, art can require some context to be truly appreciated. I think their work is beautiful, but it gains great meaning and power - and so does its influence on the work of others - when seen thru the lens of their "life and times". This, of course, goes against a prevailing view that "all '⌠Art'⌡ must stand on its own", unadorned and unexplained.

Second, and more chilling and immediate to me: those who create are ALWAYS at the mercy of the politics and moral climate of their times. The ongoing morals-charged debate over NEA's funding is a clear example; You may recall that "(l)ast winter, the Smithsonian Institute removed an artwork that had angered the Christian Right, and last [February], the House voted to cut a quarter of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) budget" (see Travis Korte's related Washington Post item HERE). Given today's toxic US political climate, this ain't gonna stop soon, friends. From my seat, the politics of OUR times are no more art-friendly than those surrounding WWII. Be watching - it's happening again. Or still: 


The wars are long,
the peace is frail.
The madmen come again.
There is no freedom in a land
where fear and hate prevail.
- "Wasn't That A Time", by Pete Seeger with The Weavers
   (performed by Peter, Paul & Mary HERE)
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Today's creation is: missing. The blogspot editor software has been screwed up for three days, during which I've been attempting to edit this post to add a new creation. I'm not waiting any longer. More next time when - HOPEFULLY - the bug is fixed.

art AS life

Today's post sort of connects back to yesterday's (below) about rock art in the American Southwest. Yesterday I opined that we currently treat the making of artworks as some special, noble act of self-expression, rather than as a part of daily human life. Today I found some powerfully simple sculpture:

Tube Lamp Study/Yellow
sculpture by Ricky Swallow (www.rickyswallow.com)
Currently exhibited at LA's Marc Foxx Gallery

that I think links art back to the daily human world, in a couple of ways.

In this current body of work, sculptor Ricky Swallow chooses subjects that are often daily-use things like chairs, lamps, hats, cups, tires or dead birds (hough these subjects can be personal to the artist - like a french curve, a drawing tool that he might have on a desk). The shape of the "Lamp" piece shown above is simplified almost to an abstract, but it's still kind of recognizable as something you USE in daily life even if you don't realize it's a lamp. The size of the work (this one is 7 1/2" tall) also makes it something to which you can relate; it's about the size of: a desk lamp.

He also links the work to daily life through his process: he makes an initial model of the object using cardboard tubes and tape (you can just see the spiral lines in the photo above), and these features of the model end up in the final artwork - cast in bronze, then colored and finished in an intricate process. Think about that: he chooses to leave evidence of this interim model-building step - and of the daily-use materials he uses in that step -- in the final bronze work.

Why would the artist choose to do these things (apparently) to connect these new objects back to daily life? In his own words, he works with these subjects because there's a "collective ownership and understanding that one brings to such recognizable forms." In my words: we can all recognize his cup as a cup, because we have cups at home. I take this to mean he intends this beautiful work to be something that's close to our daily lives. You can see his work in galleries (it's at the Marc Foxx Gallery in LA thru December 22nd), but you can also feature it as something related to life. I use tape and cardboard tubes - and lamps and cups - so these pieces feels familiar to me. I like that.
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Today's creation is: a flyer I did for a local community Winter Solstice gathering coming up in a couple of weeks:

(adapted from an original image © NASA)

© me; get the full-res flyer HERE

When I did the flyer, I reformatted and enhanced a NASA image from one of their/our incredible imaging satellites What you may not know is: since the satellite, cameras, launch costs and everything else in our space program is already paid for with our tax dollars, the images are in the public domain - and hence royalty-free for non-commercial uses. They really do have an incredible online library of hi-res images at nasa.gov .To be clear: the flyer is my creation; the image is not. Art? Or not art? You decide.
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Art and Life

Today's post is about rock art. Not the "Cover Of The Rolling Stone" kind (see obscure geezer musical reference HERE) where former high school class geeks scramble around on stage trying to be invisible; I mean the other kind where the art is ON the rocks. Like THIS: 

Medicine Wheel @ Palatki Ruin, near Sedona AZ
(photo © me: I tweaked it to emhance the image)

Somebody painted that symbol there many hundreds of years ago, under an overhanging cliff (so it's probably never gotten rained on), next to a deep crack in the rockface out in the Arizona desert. Why did they bother - to mix pigment from the rocks or the white clay at the nearest river, to bring charcoal there, to smoke something or meditate or do whatever they did to get in touch with what gave them the creative impulse? Must've been feeling really creative to manifest this image out of their heads and onto the rock, right?

Probably not. People who study this stuff think the white painting was done a few thousand years ago, maybe as a prayer for enough crops to feed the village that year. It's likely the artist(s) put it next to this crack because they thought the deepest fissures in the rock face go directly to the heart of the earth - the Creator - and that by putting it there this prayer or whatever it is would be heard. The black marks were added centuries later, possibly by someone in another clan or tribe, maybe to reactivate the power of the original mark; after all, they probably lived out in the desert also.

Probably. Likely. Maybe. Possibly. My point is, we just don't know why, or when, or by whom; we're all just guessing about that stuff from carbon dating, location, ruin site, climate, chemical analysis of pigments, etc. We DON'T KNOW - and we probably never will - why people made this art.

It does look, though, like it was more a part of daily life than art is today; now we tend to marvel at it as this Creative Endeavor or self-expressive Act or some big friggin' connection to The Infinite. Chances are very good that somebody made this image (and the hundreds and thousands of images within a few miles of it, looking like they depict animals and crops and spirits and the very Creation of the Universe):

Birth Panel at Palatki Ruin, © me
(see squatting Mother Earth at top right
of figures, birthing all the animals below:
you can make out elk, snake, deer, bear and birds).

because they needed something to help them and their families LIVE a while longer. It was needed in daily life; like putting gas in your car or cleaning a gutter or buying groceries. Centuries ago, experts think (yes, they're just guessing) the village shaman/artist wasn't some big-deal priest figure who lived in a big house or wore cool robes or held court when (s)he met with people; he/she was someone you saw when you needed something done, or had a sick kid or some other daily problem - kind of like getting a flat tire fixed. In fact, if the shaman thought (s)he was important, bad things could happen to him/her.

So, if the "Creative Act" wasn't so esteemed back then (read this Bradshaw Foundation review of a book that treats the topic; the book itself - which I have not yet read - by Ekkehart Malotki, is available HERE), then why is it a big deal now? Why don't we do it as part of our daily lives any more? We can hypothesize (read that as "guess") all we want about how it's deep in the human genome or comes from the core of our knowingness or whatever. In the end, same answer as above: we just - don't - know. But I do know that I AM trying to make it part of my daily, ongoing life. Because right now, at this point in my life, I just need to do that. Ponder it all you want; I don't know why.
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Today's creation is a set of photos I did of some recent paintings by a very good friend, Anatoliy Khmara. He doesn't yet have a formal web presence, so for now they can be viewed HERE. It was the first shoot I've done of a series this size (65 images so far, with probably more to come), and it was fun though tedious for me to process them all. We shot them in place (many are framed behind glass, and HUGE - like maybe 4' X 6') at the (really cool) Colby Gallery in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. The shoot itself was a blast - except for the part about lugging a packed-carful of lights and stands and clamps and crap in and out from/to the street. And don't ask me why I did it (it was commercial work, after all); maybe to express some deep Longing of my Soul, maybe to spend several hours laughing with a good friend (we laughed a LOT), maybe to learn new ways to use some Photoshop tools, maybe to hang out in an art gallery, ... . I'm just guessing; I don't really know.
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NOTE: LEAVING COMMENTS: it should work okay now. Thanks for letting me know (please keep doing so) when stuff on this blog doesn't work the way you expect it to work.

The Juice

Today's post is about where I recently got "The Juice".

A few years ago, I went back to school (yeah, think Rodney Dangerfield) and got a photo degree at Columbia College Chicago. I took nearly all daytime classes because, well, because I could - and also to get the incredible energy that my fellow students had for their artwork. Pretty much every class was basically me and 12 or 14 18-19-20-year-old colleagues. Most of them, once they were able to stop projecting their Dad/Teacher issues (though I was older than pretty much every teacher as well), eventually seemed pretty willing to just take me as another student.

Among the best parts of that for me was watching how incredibly juiced many of them were about their work, and how everything about it really mattered to them. Not everybody cared, of course; some were role-playing "arteests", some were bored trust-fund kids, and some were there mostly because they'd been told they were "artsy" (usually by parents who couldn't relate, wrote it off to "A.D.D." or some other behavioral acronym and medicated them - my informal survey showed that about 1/3 to 1/2 were on something. Smoke breaks were sometimes dominated by conversations comparing their meds. Yes, really).

Anyway, I ended up hanging out (okay, that was MY name for it - theirs was probably "babysitting Gramps") with people who DID care about their work. It MATTERED! It was IMPORTANT to them! A few had RockStar dreams about getting rich at it, but for the most part they did the work for the sake of the work, or getting it out of their heads and into the world, or whatever therapeutic undertones they gave to it. My point is that they cared about it - just because they did. Getting strokes in class critiques didn't seem to be why (those comments were mostly pretty critical, because that's the way to make your work better over time; the teachers managed that really well despite having a lot of fragile egos in the classroom). Getting rich didn't seem to be why. They just had to do it because -- they had to do it. Art for art's sake, or something - their work just HAD to come out. And for me, being around them reminded me - so does mine, dammit. So does mine.

I want that back, and I'm trying like hell to get there.

For a look at how that can work -- at least in my experience -- check out this year's "27-Hour Shootout" films by students at New York's School of Visual Arts:

(see the video HERE)

In this annual event, 1st- and 2nd-year MFA students are grouped into teams, given a genre and some elements to include, and then they get 27 hours to produce, direct and edit a 4-6 minute clip. The results are pretty cool, but watch their faces (esp the kid in the fake documentary) and remember when stuff just MATTERED. That's where I wanna get more often - and actually live there.
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Today's creation is: some updates to my wife's website, including making new buttons (which, as always, took me longer than I expected; I've managed to make it a simple 29-step process, using like 6 different apps and lots of grumbling and bitching):

All of this was to support an additional page about a new workshop she and a good friend are offering: "Parenting For Wholeness". You can see the updated site HERE.  (I know: "WOW - Buttons!" Graphic Design work ain't always glamorous, eh?)

Actually, today I realized something else that's really useful for me. I started this blog wondering how I'd find the time and energy to (gasp!) CREATE something every single day. Turns out I've been creating something pretty much every day for a long time. It's not all  "⎨ Fine Art ⎬" work, but it still uses the right-brain parts that feel so good; I know this because I do get so involved I lose track of time/food/hygiene needs. That's the feeling I crave. Not the "hygiene" part - the other parts.

The Purpose Of Art

Today's post is about Elmer Long's Bottle Tree Ranch, which sits on 2+ acres in California's Mojave Desert:

(photo by Gina Ferazzi for LA Times)

In the 1960’s, Elmer’s dad started taking him along to ghost towns and abandoned mining camps, finding bottles & artifacts (junk) in the sand. At age 67, he began welding huge metal sculptures that integrate & hold the stuff – which now includes more than 10,000 glass bottles. In this video trailer for “Elmer’s Factory” (an Onward Films documentary by Christopher Lee), Elmer gives the clearest statement I can think of on the purpose of art:

“I can pick a rock up off the ground, and I can make it into something. And it won’t be just a rock any more. It can make you think."

Just to be up front, there's no financial motive here, either. When people offer to pay him to make sculptures for them, Long says:

"I tell them, 'Build your own — there's my welding machine, you can use it.'
How could it possibly mean anything to you if you don't make it yourself?"
[emphasis added - See the complete LA Times story HERE]

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Today's creation is another attempt at a tree insert for this year's Christmas card (the popup thing I wrote about yesterday). I wasn't happy with the shape of the earlier tree, which was from a cellphone photo I took the other morning; I wanted something more organic-looking.

I did a sheet of trees on watercolor paper with colored India inks (greens, blues and a dark brown color underpainting). The inks are waterproof, so you can do layers on top of layers (once they dry) and the colors won't run together; you can get a nice overlay of colors and shapes that way. To get jagged edges I used masking fluid, which is a liquid rubber-glue that you paint onto the paper so the ink won't touch the paper; when done, you rub it off with an eraser and the paper is white where it was covered by the fluid. I also scratched the paper with the sharp end of a bamboo pen first, so the inks sort of pool in the scratches and make darker lines of color when they dry.

 This one turned out the best of the six (about 3" X 4") trees on the sheet:

so I scanned it in. I'll still have to tweak the shape in Photoshop before I draw ornaments, lights and a star onto it. I may post the final version in a few days.

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A word about copyright:
I just want to write about ideas, so I try to give attribution to everyone's work of all kinds. If I ever fail to give a credit, it's purely accidental and I apologize in advance.

Splash!

Today's post is something you may think you've seen before, but not like this:

Heinz Meier is an amateur photographer (took it up less than a year ago) doing this in his spare time (he's a factory worker). He plays in this sort-of-familiar "frozen droplet" style, using food coloring, colored strobes and adding some gum to the water to add texture. The images he gets are really striking; they look kind of like intricate drawings. Page thru a bunch of these: HERE.
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Today's creation(s) are three prototypes for a possible pop-up insert to this year's Christmas Card (our 10th year!). I'm leaning toward the taller one at left.

My wife Kristin and I collaborate on each card: I do the design and imagery, and she does beautiful calligraphy for the message inside. At this point, I'm happy with the front image and layout, but trying to finalize the message and tie it all together is dragging. We have "creative differences" every year - often pretty loud ones - but we always settle into a heart-felt card that we both love. Let the differences proceed!

I've been wanting to do something like a pop-up for a few years, but whenever I do something different (a vellum overlay, an insert, or something like this) it turns out to be WAAAY more work and production hassle than I anticipate. I don't know what the final will be, but it'll likely be a pain to actually make (glue, X-Acto knife, a folding bone, rulers, two kinds of paper stock, X 185 cards = recipe for disaster?)
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I think this blog deal is going to do what I'd hoped: forcing me to make something every day. I did clutch for a few minutes early this morning, but it passed. So far, so good ...

Putting Me Out There

I'm starting this because: (1) most recent days I've been posting stuff I come across that gives me a creative kickstart, (2) I need to publicly commit to creating SOMETHING every day, and (3) I'm scared to be this visible.

It doesn't really matter to me whether I'm afraid of failure or of success, and I'm SICK of reading all the "inspirational" stuff written about that. In fact, reading about how to do something instead of actually DOING something is one of my favorite avoidance tricks ("I'll do it as soon as I read one more book about it ..."). This is my official, painfully public call to action. Finally!

Every day, I will post two things: (1) some item - image, blog, site, reading - I've found that gives me creative juice (I know it when I feel it), and (2) something I've created in the past 24 hours. Not stuff I've done previously, unless it inspires something new (I find that repurposing images is an art in itself, and I've accumulated a pretty good stock over the years).

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Today's creation is this blog page. I reworked an image (tweaked colors & values) from a fabric/texture shoot & made it useable as the background. The editor is kind of clunky (esp the HTML editor), but I used a template and bent it to do what I wanted. I'll continue to tweak the "look/feel" as I figure it out.

Today's posting contains a quote from Sir Ben Kingsley on "Hugo", the new Martin Scorsese film in which he stars. About 3D and its impact on the industry, Sir Ben harks back to Joseph Campbell's work ("The Power Of Myth", e.g.) on the universal archetypes.

   "There are six or seven myths around which all our literature is based. I think there is an anxiety amongst certain filmmakers that the thread that connects what we do to these ancient, life-affirming myths is going to snap. And once that disconnect happens, the film is drifting. It's just a series of noises and effects."

Read more of the interview: HERE

Me, I'm glad to hear him honor the Archetypes. Say what you will about derivation; I believe they tap into something really deep and DNA-level primal, and can make work in any medium more powerful and viewer-involving.

[Note: I found Christopher Vogler's book "The Writer's Journey" to be a fascinating and terrific book on the use of Archetypes in movies, and in literature in general. Great read!] ******************
Please keep me honest and check this blog frequently. Say what you like and what you don't. Send the link to friends. Post it on f/b or somewhere else. Tweet it. Let's see what happens.

   thanks,
       Frank