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

THE ALBUM WILL COME AS A 48.4MB ZIP FILE CONTAINING 10 X 160KBPS DRM FREE MP3s.

All you have to do is perform a Google News search for “Radiohead”, and you’ll see that much is already being written about their decision to make their new album “In Rainbows” available for download at a cost of, well, whatever you’re willing to pay as a consumer. Yes, this is revolutionary, but let’s take a closer look, and then let’s draw some parallels before deciding what, if anything other artists can learn from Radiohead’s bold move.

Free art has been available for a long time. I have degraded images of some of my art available for your viewing. How am I to stop you from “stealing” it by downloading it to your local machine, or even making prints of it yourself? I can’t stop that. (If you DO decide that is the route you’re going to take, please consider making a donation of whatever amount you’re comfortable with). I’ve also given away my artwork for free before. Sometimes, I don’t know who the recipient of the free art is. Other times, I have the pleasure of meeting the cheapskate art lover. Either way, I look at it as a way to spread the joy of art, as well as getting my name out there. If I made enough money to hire an accountant, I’d have him write off the free art at whatever value I assign to it and claim it on my taxes as a marketing expense.
Street musicians and performers have been using the “give what you’re comfortable giving” business model for years. Sometimes, they even make enough to get by. Even restaurants sometimes give away free food to entice you into coming into the restaurant and experiencing the art of their chefs, for example.

In the case of the restaurants, they are hoping that you’ll come into their establishment and buy more food. Similarly, Radiohead is offering their music for free, if you want it. But, as they say in the email which they send to folks who have signed up to download the album tomorrow, the songs will only be ripped at 160KBPS. I like my digital music at 192 or better, and I’ll bet that audiophile fans of Radiohead are willing to pony up some cash for an actual CD of the music, as there are rumors floating around that Radiohead will sign with a label to distribute the album in 2008. Think you can avoid the lines getting the digital version? Nope, there’s even a digital queue:

But can visual artists, for example, afford to give away their best work for free? Maybe degraded digital copies of it, sure, but originals? No, I don’t think they can. And I’ll go one step further and ask all artists who are just getting started not to underprice their artwork. Doing so de-values artwork by other artists of the same caliber and makes the art-buying public thank that paying full value for art is not necessary. I was in a gallery over the weekend at which the featured artist was selling small 5″x7″ framed original watercolors for less than $100. An original is worth more than that, my friend.

For more about how to price artwork, have a look at this article.

Donate and Support the Artist

If you found this article useful, please consider making a small donation. I accept donations in any amount, none are too small or too large. All donations and gifts will be used to further my artwork. Donations are easy to give online, via Paypal or if you would like to work out any other method of supporting your local arts, please contact me directly via email.

Animoto is a new service that allows users to create music videos from their photo slideshows. There are full length vids available at a cost, and there are free 30 second vids available as well. I decided to give it a whirl and let you know how my experience was. The service seems like it could be useful for folks wishing to quickly display a sampling of their artwork or photos in an entertaining fashion at a low cost utilizing an easy-to-use user interface.

The sign-up process was relatively painless. They included humor in the process as well, which is always good, incorporating positive words into the annoying anti-bot detection requirement, as well as making the button read “I’M A HUMAN”.

For the actual uploading of images, Animoto supports uploading from your local machine, or accessing some of the popular photo sharing sites online including Flickr, Facebook, Smugmug, Photobucket and Picassa. I chose to grab some images from my Flickr site. After giving Animoto permission to access my Flickr account, I chose an album. This process from within Animoto was less than perfect because, for a 30 second clip, one is limited to around 15 photos. Animoto does not display photo counts for the albums in Flickr, at least. I had to login to Flickr to check album sizes. A minor annoyance.

The next step is to choose music. You have an opportunity to upload music from your machine (with a warning that it had better be legit), or choose from selections offered on Animoto. I tried to upload from my machine, but the Animoto service did not seem to have this feature completely bug-free yet, so I had to go with their selections, which included three genres: Indy, electronic or hip-hop. It seemed all of the selections in each category were lame, so I went with what looked to be the least lame. There was no way for me to tell, as the “play” button intended to preview the music before selection did not work.

Okay, so I have the photos loaded, the music selected. Lastly, I need to tell it to create the video. I do this and wait a short amount of time before I receive an email letting me know that the vid is ready for online viewing.

It seems to be a fun little tool, but not very useful in the end because of the lack of control the end user has as to which images are displayed in which way. I think the display order is based upon the way the photos are ordered in the album, but I think it’s more of a throwaway “Oh, neat” thing than anything. We’ll see how it goes, as with all 2.0 startups.

View the video below.

Update: The embedding feature seems to spit out bad code, so you’ll have to follow the link to view the vid they made for me. View the vid for reals.

The Reverend was riding his double-decker bike beside us as we pedaled along the bike trail near the Clark Fork River. It was a beautiful low-heat, low-smoke late summer day in Missoula, and this crazy guy in white was hollering encouragement to us through a megaphone as we got the parade rolling. People rode on all sorts o bikes, from box-store BMXs to hand built metamorphosis rigged up with independently swinging rear tires. It was indeed a freakshow.

It was a freakshow that celebrated alternative transportation, and it’s a freakshow that comes to western towns every year, sponsored by New Belgium Brewing Company. It’s a free festival of live music and performance art, magic tricks and acrobatics, flameshooting pogo sticks and beer. Oh, yes, there is beer. But, this year, at four dollars for a “Token of Our Affection”, the cool little wooden beer tokens, my budget didn’t allow for much imbibing.

This year, I had some errands to run with a friend during the middle of the festival, so after the parade, we cut out early and headed off to get our lives out of the way so that we could get back to the festival. We missed most of the theatrics and music, so we spent our time watching the crazy bikes. In the middle of the park, a metal gate formed a circle in which rested an array of crazy bikes, ranging from the simple unicycle to the exercise bike that had no pedals, but was powered the rider’s ass moved up and down on the seat. It was hilarious watching people try to ride these bikes, and then the fun started with the Drag Show Race.

After one of the Tour de Fat’s workers explained from one of the main stages that the Tour is completely powered by alternative fuels, a faux NASCAR loving guy came out to make fun of the sustainability of the festival. After we had just listened to The Reverend explain that the entire stage and sound system is powered by the sun, that the plastic cups in our hands were made from a corn product that is compost-able, that all of the vehicles on the Tour are Bio-diesel, NASCAR Boy said that riding a bike is like having a fast car and making a right turn, referring to race tracks where one drives fast and turns left.

With that as a lead-in, the Drag Race began. Two teams chosen from the audience and comprised of a man and a woman each, the contestants rode fixed gear bikes with small tires around a small race-course. The women went first, and seemed to have a pretty good handle on it. During the required pit stop, they were then dressed up in NASCAR regalia before they were allowed to continue their last lap. They handed off the bikes to the men, who had a more difficult time figuring out how the things worked, but they got the hang of it in time for the required pit stop, where their female teammates had a blast dressing them in drag and sending them on their way.

We soon left in search of food and more beer, last call having been called, and our stomachs ready for a meal.

The Tour de Fat, while celebrating alternative transportation, also encourages alternative thinking and community. Creativity and art. Fun and relationship building.

And, I’ve decided that it is the New Halloween in Montana. Without cold weather to impede costumes that require one to go coatless, the Tour de Fat bike parade is the place to show off one’s costume prowess.

Check out all of the 2007 Missoula Tour de Fat photos