photo by ChadBrooks on Flickr

I’ve been shifting through old letters in preparation for The Leaving and the Left project, about which I’ll be writing more soon (it’s coming along).  As is often the case when embarking upon big “to keep” or “to toss” projects, I got sidetracked.  But it’s OK.  It seems as if it’s a productive diversion.  So, I’m sorting through old scraps of paper, lists and scribbled thoughts as I clear away some of the junk I’ve been collecting over the past year. I was inspired to collect some of the thoughts here in one place, so I present to you Thirty-Six Art Ideas to Execute in 2008.

1. Collage in the style of Russian propaganda artists re: low wages in Missoula
2. Print spam inbox for use in collage
3. Possibly incorporate the spam from #3 above into a mixed media piece (probably)
4. Draw with ink freehand in Moleskine and go over with pastels or watercolors
5. Steel wool and fire for performance art
6. Huge crane - images of beauty in a junkyard
7. Collage:opposites
8. Brainstorm list of 100 opposites for #7 above
9. For an opening exhibition - pillow fight at the show
10. Invite attendees to come in pajamas
11. Ah, yes, a pajama party show, now what art to make for it? Come back to this.
12. “merely a comma” –comma has text re: Iraq war in it. Dead American soldiers overlayed with upsidedown American Flag Mixed media piece
13. A whole series on The War? (without being too overbearing or preachy. How to do this?)
14. TITLE FOR PAINTING: Psalm 129
15. TITLE FOR PAINTING: Never Get out of the Boat (where did I get this?)
16. TITLE FOR PAINTING: Chasing Windmills
17. TITLE: Ebb and Flow
18. Shoot paint containers with a gun in order to create paintings (need to be out in the woods for this one. Also — get some guns.)
19. idea spawned by McMurphy: “pecking party”: the other guy “resist” (with rabbit/wolf/chicken/feathers and blood
20. TITLE: This train is on fire
21. TITLE: Footprints in Water
22. TITLE: The Bang and the Clatter
23. Find lat/Long for every place I’ve lived. Do Illustrator piece on it
24. Blog less
25. Remove ads from blog?
26. Kill blog filler
27. Open/Closed - film it, display feed of opening on site, post recording to YouTube
28. Face copies
29. Re: #28 - donated copy machine @ opening
30. re #28 - handbills with instructions for copying one’s face Shopped onto a facecopy, details on backside
31. Tracing with Sharpies over a lightbox, like Dex
32. More drawing/ doodling
33. Use doodles as jumping off points to major works (I know, everyone already does this. I don’t.)
34. Paint as realistically as possible from photographs (see comment from #33.)
35. Deconstruct photos for collages
36. Buy film for all old cameras — see what happens.

Originally, I was shooting for a list of 100. I’ll experiment more with lists of 100 later, but for now, this is a good start. And no, I won’t just add to this list.

If you want to donate anything to help me achieve any of these projects in 2008, please fell free by clicking the PayPal button below. Even a quarter would be great.

Thanks, and have a great weekend.

Yes, I realize blog references are excluded, so the list of 36 is incomplete. It was a brainstorm for cryin’ out loud.

Art love on the Internet for December 26th:

• KompoZer - downloads - KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing. KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive,

Art love on the Internet for December 21st:

• The Bureau of Communication - “Let that which is unsaid be said.”

Now is the time: Buy some Art

There are several ways to purchase Marc Moss’ art in time for the holidays. All orders of ORIGINAL ART are shipped FedEx at no cost to you. Prints, however, cannot be guaranteed for Christmas delivery.

Purchase Prints at Apollonova

Buy prints at the Apollonova Collective

Purchase Prints at ImageKind

If you see something that you like in one of the Galleries, or if you would like to commission a piece, please contact Marc directly via email: marc.moss.art@gmail.com

Flickr recently announced the introduction of Stats for their Pro users. Pretty sweet.

To view them, when logged into your Pro Flickr account, go YOU –> YOUR STATS. Here you will see displayed the top ten photo views for the previous day, and of all time. A table displaying the photo thumbnails also displays how many views each photo received, how many times each was favorited and commented upon, and, my favorite feature, a breakdown of where your traffic originated.

The “Other Sites” are further broken down as shown below.

Lastly, There is a breakdown of all photos you have uploaded. I’ll let the screenshot do the talking here.

I activated mine a while ago, but haven’t had the chance to look at my stats until tonight. The results were interesting, though not too surprising considering the title (and subject) of the photo. (and not that good of a photo) named Hot Upskirt Bike Action has had the most views. It’s tagged with:

upskirt
tourdefat
missoula
montana
bike
newbelgium

When viewing the photo as I wrote this post, I realized that one can also view one’s stats about an individual photo only without having to navigate to the Stats page. There is a “Stats” link on the main page for the photo being viewed, located under the ADDITIONAL INFORMATION heading on the right, below the tags. The photo in question was taken at the annual New Belgium Tour de Fat, held in Missoula and other parts of the NorthWest. I wrote about the Tour de Fat shortly after it happened, and it was a lot of fun.

Right. Not that great of a photo, eh? But let’s have a look at the stats for this particular image. It has the most views of any image I’ve posted to Flickr, including full blown nudes.

Wow.

So, the lesson here is: name your photos (or other artwork) well. Lesson #2: sex sells, and you don’t need any nudity at all.

Art love on the Internet for December 16th:

• FREEWAYBLOGGER.com - Free Speech: Use It or Lose It - Truth on the freeway.
• generator.x show on Flickr - Photo Sharing! - Generator.x 2.0 ‘Beyond the Screen’
• Gumball Poetry - Poetry by Mark Gibbons - Dementia
• How to embed a Flickr slideshow in your blog - Download Squad - There are many ways to display your Flickr photos onto a webpage or blog post, but few are as clean and elegant as Flickr’s own slideshow player. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could embed that player in your blog? Ah, but of course you can!
• How to Make Playdough (Play-doh) - The World’s Biggest Show & Tell - craft, food, diy - Make your own non-toxic toy with custom colors and fragrances.

Art love on the Internet for December 15th:

• Francesco Clemente - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - His work shows both surrealist and expressionist references. He was self taught and studied architecture in 1970 at the University of Rome. He did some paintings in collaboration with Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat in the 1980’s. Since 1982, he has
• Focal Length and Aperture Explained for the Photography Novice - The focal length of a lens determines its angle of view, and also how much the subject will be magnified for a given photographic position. Focal length also determines the perspective of an image. Longer focal lengths require shorter exposure times to mi
• Facebook - Illustrators beware :: Illustration - So that said, basically anything that is posted on Facebook can be used or sold by them to anyone. Yes, you do retain full ownership but you automatically grant the usage over to them. I just felt it was important to bring this to everyone�s attention.
• Download Free Vector Graphics at Vecteezy! - Vecteezy is an index of Free Vector Graphics available for download by some of the best artists around the world.
• BRIAN ULRICH : NOTIFBUTWHEN : PHOTOGRAPHS - In 2001 citizens were encouraged to take to the malls to boost the U.S. economy through shopping, thereby equating consumerism with patriotism. The Copia project, a direct response to that advice, is a long-term photographic examination of the peculiari