Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Some entertainment. [link]Â Meanwhile, I’ve not been writing for a while as I am busy putting together an art show. I’ll see if I can’t spare some time, but I doubt it. I’ll be posting the process of putting the show together at the other site, as well as putting up the pieces featured in the show.All for now.[update] So, Rats Live On lives no more. He said, after this little exchange that he was going to quit blogging. But he actually pulled down his site completely. The entire exchange occurred as a result of a comment I wrote at blogcritics.org on one of his posts. He was posting about the ridiculousness of the new INXS band, and the ordeal of selecting a new lead singer on the reality TV show. He didn’t like how the selections were going. I commented that his article would have been a stronger one without the use of the word “fuck”. I was very diplomatic in the way I worded my comment so as not to appear attacking. He ripped into me on his now defunct site, personally attacking me, my writing and my art. All that’s left is the original post over at Blogcritics. Interestingly, even though he killed his blog and is no longer participating at BC, my comment was deleted, but his post remains. Just to be sure, I checked, and my posts themselves have not been deleted. AOL has recently launched yet another web-based email service. Occasionally, when I am on the air I use AIM Express while in the studio. Whoever is in control of the computer there has permissions locked down, and Messenger is not installed (and, sadly, neither is Firefox) and I sometimes have reason to IM with folks. Because of this, I received, today, in my regular email account, a notice from AOL that the new mail service had been launched. To save the rest of you the hassle of signing up for an account to take it for a test drive, I’ve done it for you. Login to this AIM Mail account I created with the following: screename=not5real PW=aimmailsucks You can see for yourself what I mean. My initial thoughts are, well, look at the password I provided, and you can tell my initial thoughts. And here’s why:
Google has raised the bar for web-based email ridiculously high, and I cannot fathom how a better free web-based service would look. So do yourself a favor, if you had any inkling of giving it a try, use the above login to take it for a drive first. BTW, if anyone needs an invite, let me know and I’ll get you one. It may not come directly from the linked address, but you’ll get one. A recurring theme in the lives of many of my friends is that of uncertainty. Uncertainty about what it is we want to be doing with our lives. We are a creative bunch. Most of us have jobs that, at the very least, pay the bills. None of us, none that I can think of, love our jobs. There may be one or two of us who have a job that we believe matters – that the work we do contributes to society and that we are doing important work. But, for the most part, we all merely tolerate our jobs. None of us are doing something for money that we love. And that breeds resentment. Resentment of our situations, and, on an inherent level, of ourselves. We resent that we are forced to work forty or more hours a week for someone else. We want to be creating art, or music, to be living and experiencing life instead of merely existing within it. And we do create, but not nearly as prolifically as we would like. We drink to escape the disconnect we feel within ourselves. And I want to go one further, and say that the disconnect is much deeper, and that it is a disconnect from our own wild nature. We are animals, we are wild beings. We are hardwired for wildness, even someone who has never left the city, even that person longs to be connected with nature in some fashion, because we are a part of nature. We were not meant to slave away for hours a day in a cubicle in front of a computer. We were meant to be outside, and because of that, our ancestors lived off the land, planted gardens from which they got their food, raised cattle from which they gained their sustenance. We are so disconnected from that, believing our food to come from Acme, or Safeway, or Albertsons, wrapped in Styrofoam and plastic. We put faux natural products into our bodies further removing us from our wild nature. I am not romanticizing the lifestyle of people who came before us. I understand that working off the land is hard, but I believe that those folks had a better connection with the land, with nature, with themselves, and with their true wild nature. I feel this everyday in my life, and am trying to pay attention to the occurrences of wildness in my daily experience. Even if it is something as simple as stopping on the way to work to smell the lilacs in bloom, something as simple as stopping for fifteen seconds to soak up the sunshine, warm on my face. Sometimes simply being aware of the wild nature we all have is a step closer to reconnecting with that wild nature. I am much less articulate about this subject than is Becca. Words in italics are scraps from my notebook as I wondered the Chicago Art Institute. The rest are things that struck me in no particular order. Been so long since I have been in a museum. Interesting to see how I was drawn to form, sculpture, Buddhist art. In a museum, each brushstroke a revelation of inspiration and technique. Take lessons. Work more with canvas + materials non-trad for me. OIL AND SAND in with paint. Red figure technique of pottery painting. Interesting that the interpretive signs, some of them, tell us how to feel about the paintings. “May indicate Man’s destruction of Nature…” in addition to giving us the history of the work. Compare to the interpretive sign for Turning Point of Thirst, by Victor Brauner 1934, wherin the sign scratches it’s head saying, I just don’t know what this one means when it’s obvious to the viewer (at least this viewer). Um, hello? AA anyone?  The above was painted as a response to Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” (below).  One of the current exhibits was of contemporary Dutch photography. I loved Wijnanda Deroo’s work. Photograph empty spaces Take tripod back to Prescott. 18th Century “I got my eye on you” came from a tradition of wearing a miniature photograph of one’s lover’s eye on one’s lapel. From the interpretive sign on Magritte’s “The Eye”, which was of his wife Gertrude’s eye.  I loved Joseph Cornell’s Soap Bubble boxes. Pollack’s Gray Rainbow Do a collage with 10 panels called A New Threshold of Liberty in the style of Margarete Top right is X, bottom R is backwall/sky (empty) w/ a machine gun shooting X. Great sketch for the famous “Rape of Sabine”.  Angel Planell’s Midday Sorrow Picasso Head Oil and chalk on canvas.  Albright’s Dorian Gray a painting he did for the film which was based on the book by Oscar Wilde . |
