Back in May, I was paralyzed in fear about my next creative endeavor. I was so pleased with the first iteration of The Leaving and the Left – A Celebration of Love and Loss, that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to make anything else as good as that collection. I was avoiding the studio, avoiding thinking about it, avoiding doing any work on any of the backend stuff.

Then, I got a call from Misty, a journalism student who had seen my show back in February and liked it. She wanted to do a documentary on me and the philosophy of the project. She wanted to film me creating a piece start to finish.

O. my. God.

I told her I would do it.

And that forced me back into the studio.

And I did it.

I was working with different materials. Similar materials, but different than the ones I used in the first series of this project. There was a learning curve.

And I pulled it off. I got in there and created. I took new photographs of a new (gorgeous) model and played around with cutting those up and collaging those in a fashion. I figured out how to display the work that uses flimsy metal as its canvas, and cranked out nine new pieces in a little over three months.

It was highly rewarding, very exhausting and truly cleansing for me and for the people who contributed letters to the project. The resulting show, The Leaving and the Left – Teardrop on the Fire, opened August 7th.

And now I think that I’m finished with it. I don’t know. I said that if the donated love letters and post breakup emails didn’t come in, the project would die. And the letters and emails aren’t really coming in. I’ve tried a donation center at the show, I’ve tried Craigslist postings, I’ve Facebooked it and Twittered about it trying to solicit letters for the project. All failed.

So I think it’s over. I really enjoy working in this medium, and I want to continue in this vein, but I don’t know what direction to take it. There are still some behind the scenes things I’d like to accomplish with this project, and there are other (more glorious) reasons that I may abandon it.

People who want to see me continuing on with this project, though, need to submit some letters. Send yours, or tell your friends to submit theirs. Spread the word.

If you haven’t seen the new show, and you live in Missoula, you only have three more days to check it out. It’s at Noteworthy* Paper&Press (near The Wilma, on Higgins) until Thursday afternoon.

For a while I have been thinking about giving away my art. Not because the art I make is not valuable, because it is. I want to give it away because I cannot put a price on it. I was thinking about the “open source” model of software development. Many of the software applications I use every day are developed to be given away or used for free: Firefox, Gmail, Open Office.

Musicians, too, are exploring this new model of distribution. Issa (formerly Jane Sieberry) uses a ““self-determined pricing” system,Radiohead experimented with the pay-what-you-will economy, and NIN has been giving away his stuff for a while now (his new album is the best non-instrumental NIN since The Downward Spiral.)

Why not open source art, then? Giving away my art raises many questions. Does the art I sell become less valuable than the art I give away, merely because I put a price tag on it? Does the art I have previously sold become less valuable? There are more questions, but those are two that came up for me, and I would argue that the answer to both questions is no.

I’ve written before about how to price artwork, but I wanted to bypass all of it and get straight to the good stuff: bringing people joy and beauty. So I load up the car and head downtown to set up in the invisibleAlley. When I arrived, I had 4 framed photos, 7 framed collage, 5 mixed media pieces from the 404 NOT HERE & REBOOT_ series, and a rack of about 30 matted artworks of various kinds that were enclosed in Mylar bags.

As with previous times I’ve done art in the alley,I hadn’t done any formal advertising, no email blast, no SMS blast, nothing really. Just word of mouth and, this time, a little bit of Tweeting and Facebooking.

I started with the #freeartmissoula hashtag, but quickly forgot what hashtag I’d decided upon, and switched back and forth between that and #missoulafreeart. @nShontz even stopped by for a visit with his wife & son. (His son had a blast racing his toy car through the alley, smashing into the artwork. Very fun.) Oh, right, then Twitter goes down for scheduled maintenance.

The evening itself was so much fun. People’s responses were as varied as the people themselves. The biggest initial reaction was one of surprise and wanting to know WHY? The biggest answer is that I want people to enjoy my art. I also want to make room for the new art that I am creating, and instead of destroying or throwing away the old stuff, I thought I’d give it to folks who could appreciate it.

Some folks said that they felt guilty taking artwork from me, but took it anyway. Some wanted to donate cash. Some wanted to trade for other artwork, while others offered to buy me dinner, or breakfast, or a beer. One woman in particular couldn’t believe I was giving it away for free and walked right past the alley. Then, about 30 minutes later, she stopped back, chose a piece and ran off. She turned back long enough to say, “I’ve never stolen anything before!” She seemed pretty pleased, being able to “steal” something without having to face any unpleasant consequences.

After people’s surprise wore off, they were genuinely enjoying themselves. People loved the art and had a good time deciding what they would take home with them. I made some new friends and had a blast watching everyone smiling and laughing in the cool of an early summer evening in the best gallery in town.

The evening was about gifting, about appropriating public space, about making art accessible to everyone, exciting and affordable. I won’t give away all of my artwork, but I’m thinking about matting up some of the other stuff I have lying around and doing another free art show in July.

Over @ Newwest.net, Alexia Beckerling is giving us a glimpse into the studios and performance venues of a handful of local artists and bringing back multimedia glimpses into their creative worlds.

Today’s episode about Jason Bohman, an artist who paints on stage with the Miller Creek band really caught my eye.

For the first multimedia profile in this series on Missoula photographer Marcy James, click here.

My 1st Day on the Hill

Originally uploaded by love not fear
Today I am sore. yesterday, I could barely move, but today, my left arm, shoulder, left side of my neck, thighs, calves and ass all hurt. I’m moving slowly. Snowboarding is truly a young man’s sport.

Despite this fact, Sunday morning we loaded up the snowboards and some warm gear and headed out to Snowbowl for my first snowboarding lesson, four days after my 37th birthday. I was admittedly nervous, but trusted my good friend Lucas, the Original Gimp. Lucas, as many of you know, is an adaptive rider and snowboard instructor who has pretty much dedicated his life to the sport, so I knew I was in good hands.

My first challenge was figuring out how to strap in my feet. Foot, rather. To get on the lift, one must “skate” on the snow, a practice similar to that of skateboarding, so having both feet strapped in is no good in this case. I figured out how to do it, awkwardly, and then learned how to do J-turns by shifting my weight on the board and either lifting my toes or my heels, depending upon how I wanted to turn. I would come to learn that Luke was building a foundation of skills on which to build each piece of the day’s lessons.

The lift operator made my next challenge slightly easier by slowing down the lift. I caught the chair on the first try, but I misunderstood the instruction offered by Lucas, so I was riding solo for the 12 minutes up the lift, Lucas shouting encouragement from the chair behind me. Of course, I wrecked getting off the lift, but I was able to scoot out of the way of the next chair, and skated down a ways to strap in both feet for the next part of my lesson: setting an edge.

Just as with J-turns, one sets an edge based upon the distribution of weight on the feet, either forward up on the toes, or backwards, toes lifted. Learning this allowed me to “float” down the mountain a ways in a “falling leaf” zigzag pattern. The first few times I did this, it was in concert with Lucas, as I stood facing him on my board, and we “danced” down the mountain holding hands. He would squeeze one of my hands, and I would change direction simply by looking in the direction of the hand squeeze. Eventually, I was able to do this solo. I felt pretty comfortable doing this on my heel side, but my toe side definitely needs some work. Still, I was ready for the next step, which was combining toe side and heel side to actually carve a path down the hill.

Lucas explained the concept to me, and I gave it a whirl on my own. I ate shit. Of course. But I got up and tried it again, eventually figuring out how to carve a few turns on my own.

I wrecked. A lot. The most spectacular wreck included what felt to me like turning end over end 20 times, but Lucas reports that it was only 2 times. Still, I lost my goggles and hat, and was pretty beat up. I also became stuck in some powder at one point. I’d stand up and fall down, stand up and fall down, without really gaining any ground in regards to traveling any one direction. Rewind, repeat about 10 or 11 times, and I was pretty tired. Judging by Lucas’ laughter, though, I looked pretty funny, and I ended up lying there laughing, too. What else was I supposed to do, eh?

Even though I slept 11 hours last night, I’m still pretty tired and sore. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to give something like this a try, and, overall, it was a good experience. I’m looking forward to trying it again.

4 in 1 Minute

Originally uploaded by love not fear

The last drawing class I took was in 10th grade. Hard to believe, I know, but I’ve just never really drawn much. I like to doodle, but drawing realistically has never been my forte. Part of it was simply not practicing, but I’ve always been pretty uninterested in creating realistic art.

Recently, though, I attended a life drawing session at the Missoula Art Museum. Every Wednesday night artists gather in the basement of the MAM and draw a nude model. I decided to give it a shot.

I arrived with a graphite pencil, a charcoal pencil, a brown “liquid paintbrush” pen and a Sharpie. I wanted to draw using a variety of media, maybe even mixing all types on one page to see what happened.

The session began with a series of 30 second gestures. The model would hold a pose for 30 seconds, the moderator would say change, and the model would strike another pose for 30 seconds.? While there was free paper available for us to use, I wanted to use the vellum paper I had brought with me, but I didn’t want to waste it. I decided it would be fun and interesting to draw each pose with a different utensil all on the same page. The above is the first drawing from the 30 second gesture series.

We moved on to five minute poses, and I actually tried to draw the model as realistically as I knew how. I couldn’t remember anything from my drawing class, though, and we never even drew figures, always still lifes. I began to become frustrated.

Still. I was encouraged to see that my drawings seemed to be getting better. Not by much, but definitely better.

By the time the 10 minute poses began, I was deep in frustration. I stopped drawing before the 10 minutes were over and wrote, Huge frustration at not being better at this. Want to run out of the room now. Go outside.

10 Minutes

Originally uploaded by love not fear

I’ll probably draw again, but not before practicing on my own for a while. The experience was a good one. Trying something new and being humbled by the drastic difference in what I expected I would be able to achieve and what I actually achieved.

The only CD I ever checked out of a library that I never returned was “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts”, the David Byrne/Brian Eno collaboration. (After many overdue notices arriving in the mail, I went down to the library, told them I’d lost the item, and paid for it. they now have another copy in their stacks). I loved MLITBOG for a lot of reasons, the layered sounds, the samples, the beats, the moods that it created. At the time, I was already familiar with David Byrne’s solo work as well as his work with The Talking Heads, but I had only heard about Eno. Since then, I’ve come to love Eno and his work with a variety of other musicians, including his production work with Devo, Talking Heads, Jane Sieberry (now Issa, who, like Reznor, gives her music away for free) and especially James and the “Laid” and “Wah-Wah” albums. Eno, the “non-musician”, is most known for his prolific catalogue of ambient music, including the fantastic “Music for Airports”, as well as being an amazing record producer and contributor to such movies as David Lynch’s “Dune”.

Eno has always been fascinated by technology and how to twist and bend it for his own purposes. He’s experimented with generative music, music that composes itself, and has branched out into visual art as well, creating a computer game that generates a possible 77 million paintings, chosen by Eno himself. He is currently working on the soundtrack for the multi-player game Spore, “that allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a multi cellular organism, through development as a sapient and social land-walking creature, to levels of interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture.” [Wikipedia].

I’m here to make the case that Trent Reznor is the new Brian Eno.

Reznor got his start in Cleveland creating what would become Pretty Hate Machine by himself after-hours at the Right Track Studio where he worked as an assistant engineer and janitor. He became proficient at manipulating sounds and bending technology to his own purposes as well, just as Eno learned to do. He’s produced many record albums, including a handful for Marilyn Manson, as well as the phenomenal “Natural Born Killers” soundtrack and the “Lost Highway” soundtrack. His subtle contribution to Tori Amos’ “Past the Mission” on her “Under the Pink” album showed how quiet he could be when he needed to be. It was also the first time I can remember hearing him sing quietly while someone else took the spotlight.

Reznor’s original music from id Software’s video game “Quake” was long one of my favorite ambient pieces of music to load into iTunes when I needed to get some work done and didn’t want to be disturbed. He expanded his fascination with technology and its possibilities with the release of “Year Zero” and its companion alternate reality websites/reality game and subsequent user-submitted art in 2007.

Eno once predicted that music would one day become user-modifiable constructs, and imagined a day when future generations would look at past generations in wonder, asking in wonder, “you mean you listened to the same music over and over?”. Reznor took that idea and ran with it, releasing “The Hand that Feeds” from his dismal “With Teeth” 2005 release as a multi-track Garage Band download that fans could get for free and remix as they pleased. His newest release “Ghosts I-IV”, was released in a variety of formats, including a free torrent seeded by NIN itself. “Ghosts” was released as with a Creative Commons license (no copyright), and Reznor announced yesterday that the tracks can be used to participate in a NIN sponsored film festival on You Tube.

Talk about user generated content.

The album itself is supurb. I’d love to hear Eno’s thoughts on it. Those of you who haven’t hear it, go grab it at NIN’s official site and give it a listen for yourself. Grab the torrent if you’re familiar with the technology.

“Ghosts” ranges from smooth and quiet piano to the heavy muddy guitar and keyboard laden layers we’ve come to expect from Reznor. I’m looking forward to what people come up with, and might even make a contribution myself if I can find some time along with everything else I have going on.

NIN Ghosts Film Festival on YouTube

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Leaving and the Left Prototype 2

Originally uploaded by love not fear

The Original Gimp was over at my house the other night as I was completing another prototype. At his suggestion, I made one without wood, but instead used metal. His reasoning for the switch is that wood is too warm, but metal is cold, and the pieces seem to have a cold theme. I don’t think the theme is cold. Rational, yes. Clinical, maybe. While all loves are different, looking back with a clear and rational head into past relationships to learn what worked and what didn’t is a positive way to both honor what went before while building towards a successful and long-lasting relationship.

The process lends itself to asking questions like, I wonder what she’s up to now? Asking the questions is fine, but making the call, dropping the email or doing a Google stalk is not and would probably be perceived as disruptive.

I’m still trying to figure out how to apply all of these ideas to the actual finished artwork. I’ve figured out that I want to use metal as the background, and I think I also want to use wire to attach the glass to the metal, as showing in the new prototype. A problem that I tackled while making this prototype is how to attach the glass sandwiches to each other. I want the binding method to be transparent — no glue showing. I tried doing this by spreading the Superglue evenly across the glass, but it still dried somewhat opaquely. I know that Superglue makes a glue specifically for glass, so I need to go pick me up some of that.

Todos

Get glass bonding Superglue
Get metal scraps
Cut metal scraps
Read new email and letters

Oh, right. That reminds me. I found a new folder of letters and also figured out how to import all of my archived .mbox emails into a local mail client.

Prototype Leaving and the Left 1

Originally uploaded by love not fear

I finished the prototype last night. I’ve never approached making art in this way — making a prototype. Typically I go with first draft=final draft. But this series is important enough to play around a bit and figure out what works and what doesn’t. I’ll explore below what I’ve learned logistically during the process thus far.

I generally like the way it turned out, but there are some obvious imperfections. I’m anxious to make another prototype to see how what I’ve learned from this one can be applied.

Visually it looks good. I know I need to do a few things:

• Spread the superglue evenly on the glass so that the sticking points are not visible
• Go back into the electronic communique and even out the way text is distributed
• Mix the colors more evenly before applying them to the glass — I wanted to see if the paint organically blended
• More sandwiching of glass

I’ll learn more about the process as I do it, I’m sure.

A few questions I’m asking myself need to be worked out.
Should I quarantine each person’s sentiments per piece? For this one, I mixed letters from two different individuals with the idea that these types of emotions are universal. I’m thinking that maybe it doesn’t work within the piece, and that I should isolate feelings from individual writers. Still include both love and loss in one piece, just keep it focused on one person per piece. That will mean making more than one piece per person.

The inclusion of paint comes from a suggestion that another artist gave me as I explained the idea to him, and I like the idea. I’m interested in what others have to say about how to execute this series. Please share any ideas in the comments.

Please plan to attend the Holiday Bazaar this weekend at the Ceretana Studios, Featuring AFFORDABLE artwork by local Missoula artists.

WHEN: Friday December 7 5PM-8PM
Saturday December 8 11AM-5PM
Sunday December 9 11AM – 5PM

WHERE: Ceretana Studios on Missoula’s North Side
801 Sherwood Avenue, Missoula, MT 59801

I’ve got some original paintings, greeting cards, prints and some original collage available for sale. Have a look at some examples below. More at the gallery (don’t want to spoil ALL of the fun, aye?) Hope to see you there!

call Marc Moss with questions: 406.203.4683

Matted and framed print to be raffled off. Raffle tickets only $1!

Matted and framed print

Matted and Framed Print

Matted and Framed Print

ORIGINAL acrylic on black sketch board

Matted and Framed

ORIGINAL collage

Matted and Framed