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mood: BULLCRAP!

It's Sunday morning and I've just finished springing forward for daylight
saving time.

Despite the hour lost, I had plenty of time to flip through the New York
Times and some glossy magazines. Sunday mornings are the times when I do my
clearest thinking ... I think.

As I was flipping through the glossies, for the first time in a long time, I
felt myself being detached from what I was seeing. I love glossy magazines
and get immersed and carried away by them instantly. However, not this
morning. I looked at a Times supplement pullout that has the actor Richard
Gere on the cover. I was struck by how much older he looks. His hair is
silver-gray and he has a lot of wrinkles on his face, however in his case,
they're character lines. Do you know the difference between wrinkles and
character lines? One simple word ... Grace. When you accept the REALITY of
a situation, it gives you the opportunity to be gracious and at peace. This
guy seems to be aging gracefully. Isn't that what we all want?

Michael Corbin on 03.29.07 @ 08:04 AM EST [more..]

Espace A.R.T.

Espace A.R.T. is a group of five young artists who have just graduated from the University of Bordeaux and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Bordeaux.
Putting together their creative abilities and their different ideas, they rent a small space in the centre of Vieux Bordeaux where every couple of weeks they display their artwork.

This month’s theme is consumerism, represented mainly by the idea of supermarkets. The five talented young men worked together, creating a unique sculpture expressing their view of consumerism and, in a more general sense, global capitalism.

Alice Cavender on 03.26.07 @ 09:15 AM EST [more..]

LEAVING TULSA (part one): Lies or Dreams?

I rode my purple stingray out of the driveway and up the street to the house on the corner where the two new kids just moved in. The garage door was down but I could hear someone playing drums behind the large gray door. I rode up, braked and fishtailed to a stop parallel to the big overhead door. I cocked my cigarette into the corner of my mouth so I would look cool. I took a drag, balanced my body holding the gooseneck handle bars with my left hand while leaning forward to bang my knuckles on the door. The drums stopped. A tall wirey guy in a tee-shirt, faded floral jams with dark short cropped hair and dark eyes raised the door about half way and looked out from just under. He seemed much older than me in my 14 year old mentality. “Hey man. What’s happnin?” he said in a deeper voice than mine. He slightly lifted his head on the "Hey man"-- a kind of a nod. I told the guy that I dug his drums and that I had a set and had a band. He asked “What kind ya got?”
Walter King on 03.22.07 @ 08:49 AM EST [more..]

Depression: The Artist's Malaise

(Please note, this section is lifted from Living the Artist’s Life.) Not until I was well into my thirties, did I realize that I had been suffering from some form of depression since childhood. Depression was so much a part of my nature that I never bothered to examine it, or its causes. Instead I simply assumed that it would be my life-companion, that I was something of a freak, and that I’d just have to make the best of it. I hadn’t known anything different, and therefore had no reason to believe that I would ever experience a life lived otherwise. On top of this I was a bit neurotic, being a writer, but that seemed to level out over the years, as have many of my insecurities. As a writer, I’ve had the advantage of working out my problems through the millions of words I’ve written. Not everyone is so fortunate.

Paul Dorrell on 03.19.07 @ 06:41 AM EST [more..]

Harmonious Collaboration

I would like to start keeping a record, now and again, of things that happened along the way and which I never had a chance to tell or record conveniently.

Two recent articles in the papers recalled to mind two meetings with the people in focus and took me back to past events and the decisions I took at the time. Some of you will maybe think that my reactions to these situations were brash and unnecessary – that I burnt perfectly good bridges –, but before you get carried away I’d like to say just one thing in my defence: I have no regrets. What little I have achieved for myself since then, I have done so without selling my soul – at least no significant portion. At least in that department I can sleep with a clear conscience, whatever that may be worth these days.


Jose Freitas Cruz on 03.15.07 @ 06:17 AM EST [more..]

Destroying Art Part Three – Finale

I enter the Esplanade Plaza, and see Barry Cavin with a nice big video camera, boxes of lights, recording equipment and cables. I look at the sculpture, and for a moment am unsure if I want to go through with this. All of the voices I heard on absolutearts are with me in this moment, the ones who said, go ahead, it’s courageous, and the ones who said, how pitiful, it’s a cry for help. The ones who said, do it in the closet and don’t tell anyone, and the ones who said, if you do this in public, it becomes an art form in itself. I look at Barry, enthusiastic as he is to participate, ready to roll, and think, well this is now, isn’t it? At least for us it is.

And for Barton and Dianna who are there, too. Juan and Kira from the Studio gallery. Joanne Sanborne from the Marco Island Foundation for the Arts, and her husband Bob. The property manager comes up to me, and says,
“I was told you’d be out of here by three. We can’t have big trucks driving in here during Happy Hour.” I think, and say, “There’s no big trucks. Just a car, and maybe later, a pickup truck.” With that he regains his composure, and helps me back in the Charger, so I don’t run anyone over. We position it so the grill looks like it’s about to take a bite out of the sculpture. Barry sets the camera up shooting along the row of obelisques with the car at the far end.
Andrew Wielawski on 03.12.07 @ 07:00 AM EST [more..]

Digital Art 2007/ A Conversation With Don Archer

Don Archer is himself a digital artist, and he is the co-founder and director of MOCA, the famous digital art site. This guy has been at the epicenter of the digital scene for the past decade. Who else, I thought, knows more about digital art than Don Archer? So I was quite pleased when he agreed to a little chat on Where Digital Is Today:

Bruce Deitrick Price: What's the most surprising aspect of today's digital art scene, the aspect you didn't see coming 5 years ago???

Don Archer: The discovery that digital artists are desperate for validity and are willing to pay for representation on high-quality, respected sites.

BDP: I had to laugh. I meant the biggest surprise inside the art, within the frame. In the digital sensibility or approach. Or within the digital community. Please comment on that.

Don: No great surprises but wonderment:
-- That 3D rendered arthas failed to achieve its promise
-- That algorithmic (mathematical art) is alive and flourishing
-- That manipulated photography retains its potency
-- That computer-mediated hand-drawn art remains a viable alternative to conventional painted or drawn art.”

Bruce Price on 03.08.07 @ 07:57 AM EST [more..]

A Painting Lesson

We were in open country, on a wintry day, white and light blue with the snow and the sun. Otello.had placed his easel on the highest point of the hill and was look­ing at the view below him attentively and with great concentration. I was hold­ing his box of paints and looking at the landscape, too, glancing up at his eyes to try to understand what he wanted to see. He was clearly performing some kind of translation - transforming, in his mind, the trees and the snow, the river and the hills into exciting colours, shapes and rhythms.

He took the box of paints from my hands and, while I was taking out his palette, he spoke.

Alberto Sughi on 03.05.07 @ 07:46 AM EST [more..]

The Fine Art of Negotiation

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. – John Fitzgerald Kennedy

According to the Wikipedia Encyclopedia, NEGOTIATION is the process where interested parties resolve disputes, agree upon courses of action, bargain for individual or collective advantage, and/or attempt to craft outcomes which serve their mutual interests.

In the art patch, my commodity consists of my knowledge, experience and industry contacts packaged in the form of consulting, seminars and book sales. That said, I’ve always been available and happy to answer a simple question to help an artist out. If, however, what is being asked is complex or involves more than a few minutes to type out an email reply, a consulting session ensues.


Barney Davey on 03.01.07 @ 02:11 PM EST [more..]