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Friday, March 31st
The Artist’s Discipline
What many people outside the arts don't understand, is that to succeed in this profession takes just as much discipline as it does for the CEO, Athlete, Lawyer, Doctor. In most cases it takes more, since you already have the day job, and for your night job your calling happens to be to a discipline that we almost never feel equal to, in which we regularly disappoint ourselves, and from which the check is always late--often by a decade or two. Define “success” how you want, but to me it means succeeding aesthetically first, and financially later. For most people, “financial success” means making some form of profit from one’s work.
Paul Dorrell on 03.31.06 @ 09:57 AM EST [more..]
Monday, March 27th
Brainstorming
Let me invert the trend just once. Instead of me writing and expecting comments on my thoughts, let me ask you to write and help me out with a new situation I have on my hands. This is something altogether new and almost unwanted but which I cannot refuse without considering the options open to me. I need your help! All the ideas you might be willing to share, the experiences, the pitfalls I should be looking out for, any possibilities you might know of to help me determine whether I can make this baby fly.
[the main house: workshops and artist studio areas, a reception office and a small café perhaps]
Here’s the situation: my Patron has asked me whether I though it would be possible to transform her property into an Arts Centre - the property I wrote to you about where I have kept a studio. I have been reluctant to accept the challenge – the cost of maintaining it is in itself forbidding even if I am being allowed to set things up without paying a rent in the first 5 years of the project. The maintenance of the garden alone goes well beyond $600 a month, than there’s electricity [there is a well, so no water expenses] plus general maintenance – this just for the house! The project, even if I start out very low-key – no personnel, a well-organized sequence of workshops to make ends meet and maybe four exhibitions a year to attract people to the property, enjoy the art [sculpture, painting... music? poetry?... you name it] in its surroundings and help things gather momentum – still requires some investment. It's a daunting task.
Jose Freitas Cruz on 03.27.06 @ 11:27 AM EST [more..]
Friday, March 24th
The Artist, The Internet, The Essay and The Blog
I consider the blog an art communication in the form of an essay. I have used the blog to spread my words and art work images all over the globe. I have my own website on which to post my essays and so many other websites on which to post my blogs and comments. They appear on so many search engines and are read by so many more individuals than I could ever meet in a single location.
I have met new and younger people and learned so much about their thoughts and strivings and successes.
Each day I find myself in conversation with artists and collectors about my art works, stories and opinions.
I have been in contact with individuals and collectors of my works who linger in my past with the works they acquired from particular times of my life, but were unable to reach me until the Internet.
I heard from one collector who had been wanting to ask me a question for years. 'What did you mean by the expression on the mother's face in the large oil painting we bought at a gallery almost 40 years ago?'
Hyacinthe Baron on 03.24.06 @ 08:57 AM EST [more..]
Monday, March 20th
Theoryland
In Cantos 1 and 2, our hero--an ambitious professor--traded with dark forces to gain the gift of Lit Theory. Now, in Canto 3, he enjoys his triumph.
Ill: VICTORY
Yet another tea; the topic
of course, is me
Faculty flutters 'round
fearful of my frown. The Dean, all astutter,
wants to chat. I can stand a minute of that.
Meet and sigh, sigh and meet,
tasting the taste of their defeat.
It's true, my articles stun and depress the best--
did I not prove East is West?
All wonder buzzily what might come next,
what daring new dance upon the text?
I have rolled the campus
into a ball. I rise above them all,
logically foxy,
a very paragon of paradoxy.
Bruce Price on 03.20.06 @ 09:04 AM EST [more..]
Friday, March 17th
BIG SCREEN TVs
They can be short, fat, wide or flat, but above all, they're enticing,
exciting and entertaining.
Who doesn't have or want a BIG SCREEN TV?
I don't.
Don't get me wrong. It's not that I wouldn't gladly take a BIG SCREEN TV
(from here on to be called, "BSTV"), preferably Plasma and High Definition.
However, they take up SO MUCH ROOM. That's precisely the point. Who
doesn't want to see Pamela Anderson up close and as personal as you can get
if you can't see her in person?
I do!
Michael Corbin on 03.17.06 @ 08:16 AM EST [more..]
Wednesday, March 15th
Beyond The Money – Beyond The Painting
 I do need to sell just as badly as any one of you, but …
there are a couple of paintings I hold on to for a very long time. My wife will let me know that she would like to spend more time with one, or our two daughters, usually more blunt, simply forbid me to sell something they’ve seen lying around the studio and liked, and so I set them aside for a while longer – some, even, with the intention of forever. They’ll be shown alongside their siblings at an exhibition but they won’t have a price attached to them and from then on they will only be seen at home [or on absolutearts.com as Not for Sale]. The girls seem to have an uncanny sense for picking out the ones most likely to give us some guaranteed income – something I point out to them to no avail. In earlier years this was of some concern, but now it’s a family game I cherish. I believe I have mentioned in an earlier blog how they are in fact my most ferocious critics, and how their own intuition often comes into play when I am at a crossroads.
Jose Freitas Cruz on 03.15.06 @ 01:20 PM EST [more..]
Monday, March 13th
WHERE HAVE WE COME FROM?
 As you may have noticed I’m very intrigued by where the urge to make art comes from and how it has thread its way through our history. Based on certain facts, artifacts and theories many scholars assume that prehistoric artists made their images , ecorated their tools and bodies for several reasons. Two of the primary reasons seem to be for religious and spiritual reasons as well as for community celebrations.
Along with the first urge to create comes a number of ideas including prayer, communion with the spirit world or universe/nature, etc.. The painting on the wall of a mammoth being brought down by several hunters may have happened before the fact as a kind of blessing…a visualization of what the hunters would like to see happen…a kind of hunting magic! My mother always told me two things as I was growing up. She called me the absent minded professor because I was a very philosophical child. And later when my artistic talents began to emerge she often told me that one day I would be a world famous artist.
Walter King on 03.13.06 @ 08:59 AM EST [more..]
Friday, March 10th
My "Fifteen Minutes of Fame"
Sometimes fortune can still smile for one stuck in the wrong place - but the right time.
The year was 1985. I was the first local digital artist to show in a public exhibition space - the prestigious Honolulu Club. Imagine, the moment in a city when clubbers with drinks in their hands would be the first in that locale to witness framed-and-hung computer art. Way back at the start, in '85.
Pixels declared art! Over twenty years ago, before there was an Internet.
Now Honolulu ain't no New York, L.A., Chicago, Miami, or San Fran, so the party-goers at the artist's reception didn't know what to make or think of it. First looks didn't surface questions like "What is the artistic message?," similar to the search for the theme of a novel of fiction. No, instead the crowd's reaction to the images was "What is it?" or "What is it made of?" - curiosity that did not probe deep for aesthetic and philosophical substance.
Pygoya on 03.10.06 @ 08:24 AM EST [more..]
Wednesday, March 8th
What I love most of all about painting.
 Let us take some examples here and there.
I believe that the whole of American informal painting has had a great influence on Italian figurative art. I have loved painters like Rothko and Rauschenberg; At the Biennale exhibitions I skipped all the other paintings and only studied one or two to understand them well, and to understand the innovations they contained. It is difficult to select by artistic movement in a society such as this, where everything is mixed up.
 The art critic Crispolti, when he wrote an article about me, spoke of my “Informal derivation”, because I don't remove all my sketched lines, in contradiction with the details of the more finished paintings, making no sense if not inserted into a fabric that involves them, into a framework that either overpowers them, or makes them come to life.
Alberto Sughi on 03.08.06 @ 08:20 AM EST [more..]
Monday, March 6th
Life Decisions: Becoming a Fine Artist
I grew up in an artistic family. For many years my parents never had financial stability and I was always concerned about the life they were leading. The fact that they were living the life that they had chosen, and loving it was lost on me when I was a child. I guess that because of my unusual parents I was very wary about following in their footsteps and living the artistic life. I thought that it would be better to become an advertising executive and make a bundle of cash. I even went to New York with an AD Exec. when I was sixteen to see how it was. It was very glamorous, but I saw right away that the amount of stress involved was higher than I had expected. At eighteen I got into college at the University of San Francisco and I signed up as an Advertising Major. That put me in their art department, which was actually not at USF, but at the Academy of Art College, in downtown San Francisco. All of a sudden I was taking drawing and painting classes in a real art school. Meanwhile in my Advertising 101 class we were already at each other’s throats in the faux stress environment of our classroom which made our teacher laugh at us, a knowing laugh that spoke volumes, it said: “If you think that this is rough, try it out for real!”. After that class I dropped my advertising major and kept taking art classes at the Academy. I didn’t know that I would become a painter, I didn’t know much back then.
Matthew Bates on 03.06.06 @ 07:47 AM EST [more..]
Friday, March 3rd
DILEMMA
You know that you're deep in the art forest when conflicts and dilemmas
spring to life.
Like sneering weeds in the Victory Garden, dilemmas snake their way into our
day, promising confusion and loss.
Such is the case in my life of late. A dilemma graying over my art horizon.
It started when I got a few days off from work for the beginning of March.
"Great," I thought. "I'll use those days to go to ArteAmericas." "I've
been working hard. I need time off to enjoy!"
ArteAmericas is the Latin American Art Fair held each year in Miami,
Florida. It's relatively new and I've been really wanting to visit. This
trip would be a special treat given my great love for Latin American art
which always seems exciting and progressive. I really think that in some
ways, Latin American art is pushing all contemporary art forward.
Michael Corbin on 03.03.06 @ 07:28 AM EST [more..]
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