Conceptually Driven

Why I paint spirals

2011-08-16T18:47:27Z

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Once upon a time, in a land far, far away; I took Geometry. Like most of the other ninth graders in my class, I found it to be a refreshing diversion from arithmetic and equations (otherwise known as “Math”), and in getting to know and draw shapes, I was introduced to the spiral, properly. We had these nifty graphing calculators, black and brown screens and spirals would animate right out of the axes once the correct equation was entered - though by this time, bringing equations back to the shapes was a brilliant way to rekindle my fading interest in math. And then, there was the geometric theorem (I can’t find a reference) that stated that “all spirals are similar,” as depending on the dimensions on the axes on which they are mapped, they can be made to look exactly like one another, even if arising from very different equations. So if the shape is a spiral, no matter how it looks, it’s just like every other spiral. cool.

It wasn’t long after this that I began to draw spirals. I could manage to draw a straight line, but drawing a spiral became effortless. The trick I found was that a constant pressure to the writing implement had to be applied in addition to drawing a circle. Start small, in the middle, and eventually your spiral would be perfect, and the pencil off the page. Then try going the other way. Then make them tight. Then make them loose. While constructions with compass and ruler had all been enlightening ways to define space, the spiral captured my curiosity in its lack of definition of anything other than itself. Also, the features of each rendering were each unique and presented limitless opportunity to practice drawing lines without boredom. My in-class doodles became arrangements of spirals.

Spirals followed pixels to my canvases. These were initiated as doodles, and it took some practice to move into “painting mode” after this, since the doodles were delineations of spirals, and paintings are full-color renderings. Needing to pour the additional brain power into completing these images was (and still is) an experience of growth, which has helped me think about what the spirals bring to the picture and how to put them to best use. Since this point, spirals have decorated greater shapes, been the main source point for my abstract compositions, and even provided baseline organization for pieces that were built off of a spiral with no remaining evidence of it.

Just a little while ago, I rewrote my Artist Statement. I was seeking common ground in all the work that I do, including Twitterscap.es, oil paintings, and latex house paint paintings. While it seemed to take forever to compose, the idea I set out to explain arrived without a lot of frustration, and it also made sense with the other hobbies and interests that I have - like mysteries, divination, and other explorations of things pragmatic people tend to write off as implausible or nonsense. It’s a fascination with Infinity, and reaching out beyond myself to discover what else is out there. Spirals are an obvious reference to the idea of infinity: they come out of somewhere, they go somewhere else, and in our awareness we witness just a small portion of the path expressed by the shape. Spirals are mathematically infinite, though are found in finite expressions throughout nature, like snail shells and whirlpools. It’s like nature borrows the idea of infinity, or shapes with no plans to stop growing get stuck there, or it’s just a way to expression without having to rewrite the rule of ultimate expression.

Whichever way, that’s what I paint.

Back from being home, in France

2011-07-01T18:05:34Z

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Vacations are always good for renewal of perspective, but Paris (and France in general,) for me, is a walk in a whole new paradigm. There’s more to this perception than a simple physical transfer to another continent; there is separate, more natural nutrition. There is human-designed space, architectural and landscaping, to suit design principles and the running away of the imagination. There is a long, well-documented history and elements from various times co-existing like a poorly organized museum. There are differences in weather, water, shelter, rhythm, and other very basic influential elements.

We stayed with my Aunt Susan who lives in the French Alps in a little town called La Roche sur Foron (meaning, the rock on the Foron river.) The town has existed since the medieval era and left to illustrate this are a sizeable tower (on a rock, possibly “La Roche”) and a surrounding walled-in village complete with narrow roads and an old market area where grain basins in stone still exist. Here, Travis got his first taste of real French pastry, and our experience of France as a couple began at the Marché Thursday Morning. Having not spoken French in 10 years, I still managed to buy some Beaufort cheese before I felt the lead begin to melt off of my memories of the French language.

In the region where Susan lives (the Haute Savoie,) there is a sense of age and indigenous life that permeates the landscape. Only, this isn’t indigenous life as we think of it in America - it’s actually white indigenous life. Barring modern conveniences such as cars and electricity, it’s still going pretty much the way it always has: bakeries make the bread, villages go to church on Sunday, and old ladies still make cheese from their own cows and sell it out of their farms. Restaurants often do the same. Here, the sense for me is that the daily grind, the struggle to do enough, the strife among drivers and other rivals, and other petty daily stresses completely give way to a timeless rhythm of life that is in and of itself, a force of real good. There is more good just in the air in this region than there might be in the hearts of adult people in entire neighborhoods in big cities worldwide.

While it was vacation, and technically I was supposed to relax and enjoy the time there in this way, my lasting sense of its gravity was that I became temporarily smarter because I was there. I am at a loss for how to explain the perceptive shift other than to say that my creativity, thoughts, luck, and communication become receptive, inventive, and more perceptive during the length of my stay. The next best thing to staying in this region forever is to return to normal life feeling completely refreshed, reassured, and having stowed away a bit of all of that greatness in memory as a souvenir to which I no longer have access. With any luck, though, I’ll be back next summer in August to watch the house that my Aunt lives in, while she goes on vacation.

Anyway, just a quick note to let you know that I am back from vacation and hitting the ground running.

Collectors Opportunity: One-time Signed and Numbered Twitterscapes

2011-02-15T22:32:09Z

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It’s going to be an exciting year for me as an artist. This spring, I’ll be attending SXSWi in Austin, then flying off to Paris in June - undoubtedly to see lots of artwork and sniff out a few galleries, hopefully. This March will also mark 1 year since Twitterscapes were first introduced to the public at Chroma Gallery, and as part of Creative Albuquerque’s Women in Creativity series, I’ve decided to share Twitterscapes again, this time at Petroglyph, with an exhibit of images that were produced as the first Twitterscapes, before the code in the script was set. There are up to 40 of these I could show as the progression the images took, though I dare say, I’m limited to showing only a few of these by cost.

The Story behind Twitterscapes

In case you don’t already know, Twitterscapes are images created from data provided by Twitter. The program, written by me exclusively to create Twitterscapes, pulls the users tweets out of Twitter’s Application Programming Interface (API) as well as information about the users who authored said tweets, matches the colors each user has chosen for profile colors to western consonants, vowels, numbers, spaces, etc., and then thus displays each character as a colored pixel, across the page, from left to right, just as the letters of each tweet would run across the page if intended to be read. The result is a pixellated display of colors and rhythms that very from scape to scape, and never are two the same. Conceptually, it’s a snapshot of time in today’s quick fix, digital, momentary terms. The twenty twitter users included in a scape don’t know each other, and don’t know that Twitterscapes has pulled their tweet. All the information represented in each Twitterscape has been obfusicated out of its own context, yet preserved in the still-visible rhythm of speech and personality of the Twitter user in the personalized colors. The same can be said for older snapshots of time, particularly old photographs, where the context is lost, yet the composition, the mood, and the intent still remains.

Why a special Twitterscape edition now?

The more I look around, the more I see the need and the demand to provide my collectors and potential collectors an opportunity to support Twitterscapes and my art at large, so that they may continue to grow in scope, in audience, and in popularity. It’s for this reason that I have decided to release a one-time 13x19 signed and numbered edition of the two Twitterscapes that for this show only have become the first ever to be printed in large format. The two images selected represent the physical jump of twitterscape generation from one server to another. That is to say, August 31 was the last scape produced on the old format, and Sepetember 9 was the first Twitterscape produced on the current updated platform. The gap of time between them represents time when no Twitterscapes were made, and effort was being made to migrate the Twitterscapes from one place to the next. The time surrounding both of these Twitterscapes is time when Twitterscapes could be made freely, including today.

I will be offering these two significant Twitterscapes at a 33% discount from now until the end of February, in my Big Cartel store. They will be printed, signed, and numbered - the number of the edition will closely reflect the number ordered. This is the first and only signed and numbered Twitterscape edition, as their digital nature makes numbered editions obsolete. However, I will be printing these in 13x19 format, the first of their kind, and only printing one edition of each. These numbered Twitterscapes will always be the first signed and numbered edition, and will always be recognized as such, for their 200+ year lifespan.

The best part is, I’m able to reduce the price of the 13x19 edition 33% for this unique opportunity. Instead of the normal price of $74.10, this edition will be offered until the end of the month for only $49.99 each. This is an extraordinary opportunity to get what will be a rare Twitterscape example for a very low cost, possibly the lowest cost I will ever offer them for. Not only that, but there will be one edition of these printed, and their numbers will be limited to the number ordered. This edition of Twitterscapes is likely to increase in value faster than any other Twitterscape edition I’ll ever make.

Shop Now!. You only have until the end of February to get these before they will no longer be available.

I’ll be selling them online as part of my great-big Online Store Experiment, a case-study type initiative I am taking to find the best sales format for my artwork online. These Twitterscapes will be available on Big Cartel only.

SPREAD proposal for Site Santa Fe

2011-01-02T23:37:48Z

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Project Summary 200 Words

Twitterscapes are images composed of pixels that derive their color and position directly from “tweets” on the popular social network Twitter. They are created by an online program that obtains the data and breaks it down, character for character, into colors chosen by that user to be a part of his/her profile. In their current iteration, Twitterscapes are derived from the public timeline and are titled by day and time created, as they are effectively social media snapshots of that very moment. My SPREAD proposal is to use Twitterscapes to create a live dialogue between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, via Twitter. The physical piece will exist in two installation areas, one in each city, and will comprise of a screen or projection, support equipment, and instructions: to send a tweet on Twitter including a particular word with a hash mark in front of it (called a hash tag), whereby the program will recognize these tweets and show them in Twitterscape format, in the other city, live, in real time. The result will be a cascade of colors and pixels created by human beings, exchanged back and forth; visible at the installation sites and online.

How will you use the grant to make your idea happen? 50 Words

The creative technology behind Twitterscapes already exists. The grant will be used to solely to secure two installation sites and needed equipment: two computers, two screens or projectors, and two internet connections.

Project timeline?50 Words

Work to secure space for two late summer months (August and September, September and October, or longer) will begin immediately. After space is secured, projection equipment or screens will be selected for optimal exhibition in the spaces. Installation will occur one week before opening.

Why is this project important?100 Words

The goal is to engage the public in a voluntary dialogue between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and to draw awareness to the means by which we now rely on communicating: smart phones, iPads, and other devices that will be used by participants on-the-spot and off-site to participate. It might also engage creative thinkers to look beyond their understanding of social media and think of additional beneficial uses for its endless supply of data. It will certainly reach the pedestrian communities around the installation sites and bring social media, with all of its interaction, off of the devices where it now resides.

Exhibit: Infomatic Aesthetic at Flying Star Cafe

2010-12-28T20:59:12Z

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I’m pleased to have just returned from installing five paintings in the Downtown Albuquerque Flying Star Cafe. Not only is the location frequented by thousands of people in a month but its decor is retro-modern, complete with bright colors and high ceilings. I’ve never hung my artwork anywhere like it, but I have to say it looks fan-tabulous. The show will be up for three months, so the exposure it will bring to my aesthetic will be invaluable.

The work at Flying Star includes Diptych, Sometimes We Know Differently (we don’t forget), Untitled, and two new paintings without images on this website: Scare and Blue Day. Blue Day is a diptych of the same dimensions of Sometimes We Know Differently and Scare is a progression of the thick application technique also used in Chase. All of this work is done on Latex on Canvas and involves Pixels. I’m noticing growth in the popularity of my “infomatic aesthetic” artwork - the work in this show was picked out directly from their listings on this website, and the new ones were brought along despite having no images and were included for fitting in well with the others.

The “infomatic aesthetic” term is one leant to me by the editor of my recently updated biographical statement. While her talents are many, the biggest gift of her contribution was to impartially summarize the aesthetic path my work follows, while linking its conceptual foundations, in a neat, tidy label; one that I can use responsibly, modestly, and accurately. It may assist my efforts to enable my work to be found, as the emergence of this particular aesthetic into mainstream art appears to be imminent; judging from a single Google search. There are blogs and websites dedicated to its showcasing, but even more so, there is a laundry list of colleges offering information aesthetic to art students who will invariably carry some of its influence into their work no matter which way it goes, or at least recognize it for the rest of their lives. To date, it is the most accurate “label” anyone has ever offered to my artwork, and I plan to keep it until another one rolls around.

I’m not “into” labels, generally. I find them to be limiting, underestimating, judging, yada yada. Without at least one good one, however, explaining the artwork I do goes from a couple of succinct words to a paragraph dotted with “uhm”s and “ah”s leading to a conceptual mess and the impression that what I do is not meant to be understood, enjoyed, or collected. The label, therefore, is a good tool for an artist to provide as a memorable framework for a new audience, to suggest an area of their personal experiences with which to relate to the artwork. The benefit of a label this good is that the work comes from the same place in me, and therefore the viewer can more accurately identify with or read the intent and energy of the artwork. This ultimately leads to more collection, more attention, more interest, and either more sales and/or more effect on the world, depending on if one is more important than the other.

These paintings will be hanging in Flying Star through the end of March. Their “infomatic aesthetic” will be harmonious with all of the efforts of people who go there to work on their laptops, and the people who stop there on a break from working on their computers. Conceptually, Flying Star is a well-matching companion to my work - so it’s highly appropriate that my longest show to-date should deck their halls. Even the colors and decor are spot-on. I’ll look forward to any new opportunities that surface from this exposure.

The difference of a good art photographer

2010-12-10T00:21:32Z

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My art photographer is a transformational figure in the development of my art portfolio. The images that are produced from that studio are perfectly color accurate, archival of all surface detail, and actually look just like the paintings themselves. As an added bonus, I feel like a million bucks.

In other news, if you ask me how the last week has been, I'll tell you "expensive."

Without further ado, some photos:

Color Accuracy

Don't Socialize My Medicare by .carolinecblaker.

A photographer that specializes in artwork will rarely use a flash. Instead, there will be human-sized lights for the purpose of casting a consistent daylight wash over the work with as little interference as possible. Other benefits to this are capturing the work in its original dimensions, and the photographer’s eye for accuracy - features that can be missed by the artist.

Texture and Surface

Let me be sky! by .carolinecblaker.

The details that will be captured by a 22mpx camera far exceed that of any 8mpx camera, no matter how expensive the lens. Looking at the image on the right does give the same impression as checking out the live painting, for a good reason! Even if it’s the smaller more condensed version, the large version had all canvas and surface detail for the zooming eye to see. As such, when it zoomed out and whittled out detail to make the smaller image, it created a clearer, much more representative image of the painting than any capture could have without the initial pronunciation of such detail. Buying the time of a person with a decent camera is an investment that outweighs the risk of poor documentation or worse, appearing to be an amateur.

Interest vs. Disinterest

untitled with spirals by .carolinecblaker

Granted, this last example was unfinished in the “before” picture, but have a look at the blues, in the bottom center - they were not replaced. In the “after” image, there’s a terrific chance of a person knowledgeable in painting being able to pick out your pigments, brush strokes, and even the layering process. The work gains value just by presenting itself for evaluation at this level.

As you can tell, I’m pleased with the results. One thing I forgot to mention - if your art photographer is also a printer, he/she will keep the interests of exacting your color and detail for future editions to be printed and enjoyed. Better yet, if a collector wants a print, you know exactly where to go.

And hey, who hasn’t found the reproductions market to be soaring?

State of the studio - October 2010

2010-11-02T17:45:35Z

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Since my last studio update, everything has changed. I have gotten married, opened my own commercial shop, and moved the studio in with the web, effectively declaring myself a professional artist, without a single sale. Good thing I have other skills to back that up. I’ve been working for a terrific San Francisco based web shop to hold down the fort while securing wall space and painting time in the other parts of my rented retail space. Last weekend I declared my first ever “Art Bender” - meaning I hit the paints every day and even a third time on Wednesday. There were a couple of elements that made this Bender different from other painting efforts.
I purchased 9 new canvases of 3 different sizes, brush cleaners and soaps, and new brushes, and had these supplies in-hand. The new canvas sizes assisted composition impulses. The brush cleaner held down the fumes until uncapped, and provided the right texture for bristle rinsing. The soap revived 12 11-year-old brushes (some still bearing the price sticker from the Washington University bookstore) The new brushes, purchased on a hunch of what I thought I needed, ended up being the perfect bet, and alongside a terrific resin, took painting from a technical puzzle to a sublime pleasure.

By declaring the Art Bender, I had effectively given myself permission to paint whatever, as awful as it might be, as long as I just painted. This proved to be successful for a couple of reasons: not only did I follow a structure to my worktime, as I felt would maximize productivity (rather than just getting caught up with what I should do, what I should finish, etc) but it also gave me the freedom to try other techniques with the latex, and to try new techniques with the oil too, as I had new brushes to try. With the oils, I prepped a canvas, began spiraling, then suddenly, I had the backdrop for a face.
In my post-college years in St. Louis I used to participate in a figure drawing group, lead by my then - boyfriend. As we drew torso after torso with a variety of media, we would increasingly tease each other about the single thing that would always appear in the drawing: a face. Since these times, upon seeing the face appear in my work, it reminds me of this time (which can be enough to remind me of what I don’t like about being an artist) but also makes me feel that my work is too derivative to be decent. It reminds me of how far I have to go artistically to create work that is truly worth the time put into it. And unless I’m painting a portrait, it discourages me from the track I was on, and I either deliberately sabotage that face, or give up on the piece entirely.
This time, however, I was running an Art Bender special on “paint whatever.” I took myself up on the offer, and turned this face into the portrait. This focus on the accidental portrait gave me everything I needed to take a really fresh spiral composition to the portrait level, as it was the right time to decide on and develop space and line density - to take it out of the sketch and take it to form. I sometimes have trouble here - as I don’t always care to make a decision about this, and without such a decision, the composition suffers lack of any navigable logic, which leads to a less successful painting (or, in commercial terms, a painting that nobody likes, that never makes a difference. The proverbial waste of time.)
Having had this decision made this time, however, resulted in a true breakthrough. The personality of the woman ensued. She is old and off-the-rocker. She is politically motivated. She is a tea-partier. She doesn’t think for herself all of the time. She is sick. The larger picture of politics, that I had never known or realized how to take aim at, was suddenly in front of me. Finally, the influence of Peter Saul, painting master and political satirist, among my favorite painters ever, was in my work. This was ready to go somewhere. FINALLY.
Wednesday I began a painting using the opposite process - start with the portrait, and abstract into a spiral composition - creating a recognizable persona with all of the sarcasm and intensity of the spirals. Sarah Palin. I had been waiting until now, the perfect climate and artistic direction, to paint her, but I am ready. I have already collected images of her and printed a contact sheet of them for visual reference, not being sure which one would be useful at the time. I’m interested in her artistically, for the sheer fact that I’m afraid of what her rise to fame and power means for the future of humans: she is beautiful, undoubtedly, but also very fashist in her views - and this combination of personal characteristics apparently justify the rise of fashist mentality for people who want that and need a leader who can weather the celebrity-worship climate with all the right stuff. My painting of her will ideally convey this, while providing visual engagement that strikes the viewer on the first-glance, yet hosts a continued study of the work somewhat comfortably.
I’m really pleased with the state of the studio at this point. On Wednesday, while I might have otherwise been at a 9-5, I was painting instead. I’ll have more and more chances to paint during ‘business hours’ in the future - produce more and more, grow more and more. The studio is in full swing and working.GVT54C7EK6NA

Real work for peace -13 Grandmothers at a time

2010-09-24T17:52:14Z

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The International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers is working for peace; spiritually, energetically, and in other ways we might not expect:

In October 2005, the Grandmothers Council sent a letter to the Vatican for the repeal of papal edicts dating back to 1493, which granted dominion to European nations over lands occupied by tribal peoples for thousands of years. Read more

Were you even aware that such an edict existed? I wasn’t. I want to be sick, yet I’m also thrilled and grateful to this group for unearthing such acts of history and not tolerating their current standing.

As a person who truly believes that all people are equal and have equal gifts to share in coexistence, I see dire need for this work all around me. I try to make my contributions through my art and web development, as well as every day in the presence of others, yet these efforts are young and minimal. Though they won’t stop, it can still be frustrating to see their lack of impact. I believe that this work needs to be done regardless, so its easy not to give up and to know that some day it will make a difference.

The Grandmothers are a panel of experts of peace, essentially, who come from all settled continents, and travel the world to pray at sites of peace and war. Despite their differences of heritage, they are of one mind when it comes to being concerned about the state of the world:

We are deeply concerned with the unprecedented destruction of our Mother Earth and the destruction of indigenous ways of life. We believe the teachings of our ancestors will light our way through an uncertain future. from grandmotherscouncil.org

Month by month, these women travel as a group to each others’ places of origin throughout the world to pray for peace and unite their backgrounds in such solidarity. In October 2010 they will be traveling to Hiroshima, Japan, to pray for peace at the site where the atom bomb fell in WWII, in honor of one of their own, Grandmother Clara Shinobu Iura, who is of Japanese origin. These gatherings revolve around the protection of Indigenous lifestyles and cultures, including their medicines, religions, and not to mix them, but to share in order to “bring sustainability to our communities, to our peoples and to our planet.“

It might be a tall order, but I’m going to try to embody any of this in all future art that I make. No matter what the topic, it carries with it a prayer for the coming together of all people in the name of peace. There is no longer any reason to feel doubtful of the notion that peace can be among all of us, especially if a group such as this is making it their life’s work. I’m also going to get involved too.

As long as you would like to join me, you are more than welcome.

Self as Informant

2010-05-26T03:05:13Z

{caption} I am underinformed. Underexposed. Underperforming. Under a rock. No, seriously! There is so little to make art about that I just don’t. its not I don’t want to - but what about? How? If I can do anything, why do anything? But this is unacceptable. I’m a capable professional in other aspects and I can’t even coach my own painting? Ok. ok. Maybe if I start reading..

My first move is to pick up the exhibition catalog from Eye Infection, featuring artists Robert Crumb, Jim Nutt, Peter Saul, H.C. Westerman, and Mike Kelley; five men without permission or collaboration successfully deconstructing perception same as the “rules” of conceptual and fine art. Or at least now that’s what they are known for, without the whole rogue aspect: they are all monumentally celebrated now for breaking a tradition that was redefined as such along the same lineage. Its a surprise to myself that I haven’t looked at this book in years despite schlepping it around and admiring its spine whenever I enter my studio. Its also a surprise, but not entirely, that I had never read the text, only gazed at the pictures, until Wednesday night. Then I did read it. It was time for studio, and I had the never before feeling of wanting to read a book. There was a funny break in the moment I picked it up - the feeling was somewhere along the lines of instant bolstering. (There is probably a better word.)

I was surprised to read that each of these artists was linked to Jackson Pollock in some way, even though most of them have never met him. It was just this lineage that justified their work that was either gratuitous, coincidental, or just because he is the best known Abstract Expressionist and they are subsequent to him. The eye-opener here is that art holds up better if the artist is linked to a pioneer in some way, even if the artist never really connects with the pioneer - the slightest visual clues that could file the art under the category of some major pre-existing movement give the art context and the critics something to write about.

I would have never linked any of these artists to anyone - which is apparently a measure of my informedness or else neglect of industry obviousities. This is also, however, why I liked them so much. Their messages are authentic, pictorial, and crafted from passion and skill- and while most of the same can be said about Pollock, few of us have addressed our remaining doubts on the whole skill thing. The text by Robert Storr begins with linking all participants to the Cannon (not just Pollock, but Calder, Magritte) and addresses how these artists are in their time playing the same necessary reflective and definitive roles. Then, one by one, each artist is introduced by history and motive. Essentially their common thread is activism through art. Their choices of topic, permutation, and their thread of challenge are all independent of others, contemporary and historical, but their applied activism in their apparent disgust of their topics is commonly grotesque, monumental, and funny. Its also as expressive as written language in a visual colloquial grammar.

So.. as into this as I am, my next step is to find my activism. But I still feel belittled by the task. Bits and pieces of memory accuse me of not being up to it, and not mattering. I toss those aside, though inside I have heard them out. These are the parts of me that need overwriting, erasing, repositioning. And this is how I’m going to do it.. so anyway..

The next piece of fortune for this investigation comes in a visit to the Whitney Biennial, which is always mind-blowing, but this year I had a mission: to find my commonality by my contemporaries, all there. Where is my voice, in all of these carefully crafted varieties of apples, oranges, grapes, and starfruit? Seems like the biennial is good for choosing by topic, and the aesthetic or inspiration is less important as object than the communication of the total package - each piece is essentially a universal mastermind of a message. In the end, there were some pieces that were almost inconceivably awesome, but others I just plain understood or felt a kinship with: Aurel Schmidt, Ari Marcopoulos, and especially Jim Lutes. Their works told me what art needed; it was the same as the Eye Infection: Passion in a cause.

Apart from the narrative, I learned something: the internet isn't the only place where all you have to do is look for the answers you need to your questions: art also has this. When without constant influx of inspiration its important to make the self serve the art. Dedication in this department can find the lost, focus the scattered, tame the wild. Its just what needs to be done if you are that artist, and you don't know what's next.

I am afraid to say what it is so shortly, but I have identified my first cause. In the whole Biennial, I saw nobody address this, yet it keeps me down frequently and is a perception that is tied to my own insecurities with such congruency that inspires confidence in myself to develop the allegory, messages, multiple pieces year after year to sustain its growth. On the other hand, it is a dangerous topic. Its one line description will force judgement of my intent with fury that I’m not quite ready to take without some development and defense of the effort. It will also require research - and staying in tune with Politics.

State of the Studio - 05/05/10

2010-05-05T15:43:17Z

{caption} I'm pleased to say that I have left the 9-5 workforce in favor of making my dreams come true in the ways of creative work and living the American dream. In this brave new world, I'm finding that I'm standing on the edge of something powerful I've only dreamed of getting this close to before. Its not only great, but numbing. Now that I'm here, what do I do? What efforts do I need to make? Where should I focus my attention? How do I go further than this?

In looking into myself for answers, I come up remarkably blank.

This has been the trouble, however, for awhile. Its nothing new. Same ol' too much to do and not enough time. Same ol' money first, creativity last. Same ol' peripheral tasks that numb my brain and consume my energy. On top of that, a terrific partner who deserves and gets a lot of my quality time.

Its not that I don't have time to do work - its more that I'm the type of person that is likely to act on motivation to avoid pain than to derive pleasure or, in the case of my work, to act on something just because I believe in it, not because it was sold to me by somebody else. I'm the type that will take care of everything I can, then worry about the stuff I can't. A career I need to develop is begging to find leads. Another person is interested in my presence in one place where I can develop a little faster. The wedding countdown is on, and a disturbing number of items have yet to be taken care of. And I have a lot of art that just sits here. It feels a little stale. Inwardly, I'm being torn bit by bit by all of the stresses of this new venture, including failures of my own intuition. Those hurt the most: something you obviously should have seen coming hits your face out of left field. I guess that happens more when you have your eye on the prize. But in thinking of working on my art - there is simply nothing left inside to work from. I tweeted: "Sometimes I wonder if the art is lost". Last night was one of those times.

In my current situation, I opened my studio door last night for the first time in weeks. I sat in the middle of the floor for awhile. The space was unkempt, but the energetic buzz in there was unmistakable. I had been cultivating and hiding this creative energy for years, and it wasn't lost, it was just behind this door that I literally forgot to open. Still, I looked inside myself to find my next project. You could hear a pin drop in there, it was so empty. So what the heck was I doing? How did I get this far only to lose my true gut motivation to make art? What the heck?

My mind began to wander to all that was going wrong, and then landed on a particular memory where I felt mistreated, belittled, and really friggin helpless to do anything about it. My feeling was that I was solidly in a perspective of truth there too - there wasn't going to be anything I could do about it. And then it hit - so what exactly is the "right" thing to do with this sentiment?

In contemplative moments of distrust and remorse, forgiveness is not automatic: there needs to be a shift in perspective that leads the charge to healing. And I needed to offer forgiveness to the situation, but that's not what motivated what came next. In a tiny window of respect for all things, including this crap, I offered my well wishes to this person to overcome their own obstacles as I hoped to overcome mine.

Boom.

The remorse vanished and I suddenly felt twice my own size. I wished this again. Same thing! I wished it and I wished it and I wished it and a flood of bliss washed over me. Then I moved to others - I wished that they overcome their obstacles as I knew them, whether they were wronging me or not. When I opened my eyes, I recognized my studio as I used to know it - a room of my own for infinite possibility. But it was filthy! Ugh. Time to clean.

I didn't exactly clean after that, more like organized major supplies between my office and my studio, as much of what I had been storing in these two rooms was actually meant for the other. I re-familiarized myself with the supplies in each and prepped each room to be worked in again. I moved a lot of extraneous storage items out. And I figured out why I wasn't doing so well with the art work.

It became obvious when I had opened my eyes before and it was so true! Then I remembered I had said this in an interview in this video. I had learned to make art from clues from inside, from a desire to create, and had used the process to move past pain and suffering. In my March exhibit, I had realized that the process of moving past everything was complete. I had learned everything that could teach me, and now that the Pixels had moved off the canvas and back to the computer, and now that they had served their purpose in guiding me through processing healing, it is time to focus outward. Move along. GTFO. Its time to look and listen and create about stuff in the outside world. I've graduated. Its over. Get a job.

Twitterscapes are successful art because they are outwardly focused. They take context from Art and from the(*ahem best announcer voice) "Social Media Revolution" and unite the two. This is pretty good - I know I can grow it, however. So with painting, what now exactly? Well, There are some unfinished pieces in my studio and I have found a bunch of very specific junk that I'd love to apply to my work (got any ideas for a whole bunch of dental floss?) One thing I'm going to try to do is paint in the Cancer ward at the UNM hospital.

The bad news is that I have no idea what I'm doing. The good news is that I have a new place to look for answers. New work up soon, but for now, expect quiet contemplation from me as I attempt to discover a way that only I can make an impact.

One Million Bones on the Washington Mall

2010-03-18T00:35:36Z

{caption} Genocide: a historical event of epic proportions. Mass ethnic cleansing - killing millions of people in the name of .. something. Its far away and its long gone, right? If this were going on now we would hear about it all over the news right?

Actually, this time, the contemporary genocides, while being as lethal as the Holocaust are as secret as the Freemason rituals to the United States and other first world countries: most people do not know, and others are not talking. The facts are that genocide is happening right now. Right NOW. Its happening with our government's knowledge AND with no intervention- we are simply allowing for it to happen without objection, despite the 'never again' promise post WWII. If you feel in any way that this is completely unacceptable, somewhat remotely unacceptable, or otherwise not acceptable, there IS something you can do. Artist Naomi Natale wants you (yes, You! and your hands) to make a bone to represent one victim for display in this massive art installation on the National Mall.

Natale's goal is truly impressive - one thousand bones, every day, for three years. After having met this goal, there will be one million bones - which is only a fraction of the amount to represent the victims of contemporary genocide. Still, a visualization of one million bones- a mass grave of a total of 4,855 humans (with 206 bones/person) completely hand-built by individuals mindful of the genocides and on display on the Washington mall, just askng for our government, who we know to know better, to intervene.The installation will arrive in 2013 and every person has the chance to participate. The website, onemillionbones.org has complete instructions for artists, hobbyists, educators (there is a full educational component,) and activists (you can sponsor a bone, made of recyclable materials and impregnated with seeds - which will be distributed for growth after the installation is finished!) I already have contributed two bones, thanks to the excellent launch party I attended with Julia Mandeville of Creative Albuquerque and the Alibi .

Please, if you have a chance, check out onemillionbones.org and mentally slate your contribution - bone, financial or otherwise. We need to stop genocide, and if politicians won't listen, we'll just hsve to show them, together.

On Twitterscapes

2010-02-20T21:59:08Z

{caption} My career has a whole has been comprised of two distinct pieces: the web/technology driven side, and the art studio side; the art side having existed all along, became a career as soon as I was aware of myself needing one. It wasn’t, however, one that would support me for years. It was for this reason that I began to learn web development, in order to market myself, at the very least, and hopefully expedite the process of my getting ‘discovered’ by a collector or gallery that would lead to happily ever after. As it tends to happen, at least for artists, the skills I acquired in my search for building myself a website became job-marketable and have lead to my current career as a web developer. In conceptualizing my studio paintings, I have attempted through painting compositions of pixels to bring the electronically based portion of my creativity full-circle back to the studio, and at some point set a goal for myself to arrive at an art form that suited both my conceptual studio art creativity with my knowledge of web technologies. I’m pleased to announce that I’ve landed on the beginnings of an art form that does just that. So without further ado:

I call them Twitterscapes. They are pictographical representations of Twitter’s timeline that use the individual alpha-numeric-symbolic characters of each tweet to create a composition of color using the users’ profile colors as selected. The way it works is that each tweet on the feed is matched character for character with parameters that turn it into a color. Then the color is displayed as a small rectangle (or as I like to say, a macro-pixel) on the screen. At the end of the 20 tweets that the public timeline provides, there is a 700x 800 image composed of user-assigned colors in the pattern of the users’ tweets: thoughts, musings, communications, or shout-outs.

Already, there are a handful of data visualization techniques for Twitter. Its been selected as a test platform for the development of data visualization tools for reasons including its uniform data set: always 140 characters, always free of garbage (spam, injections, malware, etc.) The 140 characters of twitter provide a manageable data set for which to build venn diagrams, linear graphs of popular terms (Stream graph), and others. Twitterscapes, while being developed in the same sandbox as other data visualization applications, removes all analysis of data from the data itself and provides a conceptual image by which to muse on the rhythms of the communication by strangers to strangers, the colors selected by strangers to best express their tweets, and how all of this appears in a random but uniform grouping - a sample of 20 of tens of thousands of tweets per second.

Twitterscapes’ innate properties are that they are fleeting. They exist, in potential for 60 seconds and then that potential is gone forever. Being pulled into the browser, they exist until the page is refreshed, or else captured as an image and preserved as such in the realm of digital imaging. A print of a Twitterscape is the preservation of a fleeting moment in time, removed from its digital context as visual proof of its own existence for its short time. Conceptually, prints of Twitterscapes are photographs of interpreted data . The print is not the data, nor is the live Twitterscape the data. In an age of images, these pictographs tell the story of select twitter users in the tune of old photographs. How many details stay in memory? How many details matter to recall the feeling told by the image? What did these tweets actually say? Surely they have lost most meaning even in their native format simply by being removed from their original contexts and exposed to the world as public data.

I’m anxious to see what Twitterscapes evolve into, as more than the Public Timeline are incorporated. Individual Twitterscape feeds are a near-future possibility, as well as mega-transforming trending topics twitterscapes. They already extend my current body of painted work: my pixellations (paintings of pixels) as I have already essentially chosen those latex colors as mine - and now I’m painting with other users’ colors using what they offer to the public as data. There are other data sets out there too - but Twitter might be enough, until the concept has fully matured and undergone the tests of criticism and time.

The Faces of the Ancients

2009-09-11T03:32:25Z

{caption} They are still around and among us - Ancients - their stories are still told by incomplete and inconclusive clues that have been left and scattered like camouflaged marbles among the rocks and stones that still exist as fascinating skeletal evidence of the quinessence of human existence. Like fans or addicts, living people of unrelated culture, history, and lifestyle travel for days to set foot in and breathe the air of Mesa Verde and other early history sites around the world seemingly in order to continue and be a part of the guessing game that has set these locations apart from the other sites on the planet we continue to change and develop from the fire of our own culture, building structures, parking lots, and drainage systems from far-retrieved mixtures of earth’s many virtues. In the end, many check off such visits on a long list of goals of consummation and quietly congratulate the ego for its many battles in pursuing and conquering such a goal. Sometimes photos are taken and shared to entice others towards the sights we have seen or perhaps to stoke raw jealousy. Sometimes we even use these photos for our own photographic reminders, as we know all too well that memories fade - and the value of having such mental imagery to access and relive over and over is too valuable to allow to fodder in the junk of everyday existence - after all, all the proof and warning of such degradation exists within the ruins themselves.

As we are distracted by TV, by children, by making our living, some things are lost. We are attracted to pre-history cave and cliff dwellings for their mystery of why and how, and for the sheer awe of superimposing our existence with the existence, one-time or ongoing, of these settlements, and challenging our core beliefs to fit this evidence within the structure we’ve built internally to make sense of the world and its evolution. And then we go and size these places up. We see it, then we are in it. There is something else that happens too. Some absorbtion. Some give and take. It happens to everyone whether or not its being noticed, and more so when topics of discussion are accurate and can relate the world as we know it to the world we are trying to figure out. When objects, events, organization, and community are understood, the world in question - the one that exists beyond our borders of space and time - gets closer to our reach. Further observation of natural sound phenomena - the trees, native birds, echoes, falling rock provide further auditory clues to our seeker within and as the sensory olfactory of this place inhabited by just a moment of this life is absorbed, suddenly it becomes possible to imagine the inverse that is clearly also true: that the dwellers who once existed here are much like us- they ate, they had jobs, they had to pee, and they fell in love. Near the end of the tour, there’s less of a sense of a museum, and far more of a living space in time, where once people were, and now they are not. We can witness their spaces, participate in their footprints, and wish them well for wherever and however they may be in existence today.

Outside the structure of a tour, sometimes a guide will be willing to entertain questions that less suitable by our cultural standpoints for the greater tour. How tall were these people? Do they know by found human remains? Do they find a lot? Where have they been found? Oh, right over there...

Spirits that have not moved on stay where they feel they belong. Anyone who believes in ghosts or has witnessed this knows. It might be confusion, unfinished duty, or commitment. Places that have been inhabited by people and loved and protected throughout those peoples’ lives house the energy that was invested, traded, and released by their inhabitants. All of the love, disgust, dread, fear, laughter, dispair, and excitement of the settlers’ lives was contained within these settlements from birth to death, and even then afterwards assuming guardianship of the survivors and their territory..

Native American cultures, aside from some spanish-influenced catholic values, are ancestrally focused. While there are divine centric gods to pray to and worship, the ancestor, having died and ascended and being ever-present, is considered to be closer to the gods and therefore divine. They are sometimes thought to function as go-betweens between the people and their gods, as messengers, or as divine lobbyists, folks who watch over their living relatives and make cases for them to the gods. Ancestors are included at dinner in contemporary Native American cultures and honored for their carrying of messages, resources, and well-being to this world. The back-and-forth of energy and love is just one aspect of the Native way of giving back what has been given.

Arguably, the exchanges between the living and their ancestors can be interpreted as sustaining for both sides - the ancestral body of energy is fed by the gifts of the living and the living are in turn serviced by the ancestral guard they maintain. Having gone on for thousands of years, the ancestral energy is well defined and at some root point is common for all people. The feeding of this body of spirits can be conceptualized as energy healing or any other kind of feeding, nursing, or fortification. Its vein is strong and its root is deep. And it is real to all who have ingested its gifts and wonder.

The ancestral energy of these ancient settlers in places like Mesa Verde can be difficult to imagine, conceptualize, or absorb in our distracted lives as modern people of different ethnic origin and life focus. Visiting somewhere like Mesa Verde is full of this kind of energy, as all who have ever inhabited these spaces (roughly between 1000 and 1300 AD) have moved on and become ancestors for today’s native tribes. The people moved on from these cliff dwellings, but left a permanent mark within their space. The homes, gathering spaces, and religious spaces all still carry evidence of personalized intelligence, spirituality, and creativity. They will not, for the forseeable future, belong to anyone but these ancestral energies.

Looking at the surrounding rock formations, I perceive the faces of the ancestors in megalythic effigies all over the raw land. These faces are made of natural rock formations, and through the mind’s eye. I can clearly remember my time as a young girl, seeking shapes within the cut rocks on Mt. Riga or on our lengthy trips through Pennsylvania and upstate New York. I would look for, but never see, the personalities, the facial structures, the human personalities that appear to me today. They appear as heads, as interactions (one or two personalities interacting), groups, and crowds. And they are everywhere. I am pleased to provide the photographic evidence of the personalities that I see coming through the earth.

While noticing the faces among these natural rock formations, it might be tempting to pass such off as coincidental or meaningless. After all, the laws of nature basically say that the wear and tear on these rocks has been random, and even while finding shapes within them, its not worth the attention for the simple fact that it could hypothetically look different and mean nothing either way. Still, we are lucky to notice what we notice. Being of a culture that is so far from the earth’s gifts (they go through machines, processing, transporation, retail, and TIME, to get to us and are sometimes changed beyond recognition) the raw pictures that are communicated by earth are easy to doubt, but also rare and without pattern. Yet, we go to Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, and other places, to look at rocks, and the earth, and the importance of the formations of those to the early people for whom the aforementioned earth to people process did not exist. Then we get a little closer to them. Well what about them? What about their ancestry, that is still alive today?

In this moment, we have a crossroads. We can level off at our current understanding, falsely wondering at what might be ahead in that, credit ourselves for thinking beyond our thinking, and be satisfied. The other option is to think for a sec that these shapes that we find coincidental might be less coincidental. Well what then? You are crazy! .. your mind says. You have nothing to support this idea nor do you have anything to gain but everything to lose from this latest tipping point. Strangely, you might not have them aboard at the time, but there are a few notions within nature that support the personalization of these personalities that you are struggling to understand.

One general notion is that seeing a face, with a human history behind the species of more than 5000 years, that it was bound to be somebody’s face, some time. Right? What about that? It doesn’t need to be assumed that the person in living existed in the geographical area of the effigy or that their spirit still exists. Its processing the face, the emotion, and its perceptive message in the gesture that is valuable to even the most skilled spiritualists, and not whether “facts” can be drawn from its witnessing... So I guess, don’t worry about that. Already, the experience of witnessing the effigy is the strongest event it has to offer, and in that it is spectacular.

Additionally, if you subscribe to the notion that Native American ancestry, and even non-Native American ancestry, still exists to strengthen the living population and fortify its successes, then how could it be impossible that the energy of these divine beings (who were once human) show up as personalities in the places on earth in which they dwell? If its not impossible, then its magical possibility is left to be entertained. Thousands of years of being reinforced by the living allows a spirit more strength than the forgottien - just look at Jesus Christ. Furthermore, the order in which their energy might organize itself is beyond our understanding: we would understand quite a bit about these entities that science at its current place considers nonexistent, in order to deduce and deduct any possibilities of what these spirits can do.

My personal experience of these personalties/effigies is that they are extremely human, communicative, and in all probability have a history of life. They are existing ancients, and I am blessed to gaze upon their faces.

Those BAAstuds

2009-03-27T01:28:22Z

{caption} To know about which I speak, you must, you must, you MUST check this out:

"We took to the hills of Wales armed to the teeth with sheep, LEDs and a camera, to create a huge amazing LED display. Of sorts. "

Whether or not they meant this as a simple commercial stunt (I think I noticed samsung in there somewhere), these BAAstuds may have really stumbled upon a truly unique outlet of expression. They use the formations of these sheep to mimic other known entities- the "Pong" formation, and the fountains/fireworks. They even take it out of context to create a Mona Lisa image from their lights. (Srsly, how do they do that?)

In my opinion, the most poetic thing about this is that their medium, their method of delivery, was the age-old technique of sheepherding. Trained sheep herders used dogs through their vocal commands to direct these groups of animals to these unique ends. Its Art that is not only modern for media (LED lights, digital video) but in parallel also drawing on one of the oldest survival techniques and professions of their ancestry.

To me, this is art. What about you?

(Thanks to Steve Lenti for your introduction to this material.)

Hoot Hoot!

2009-02-21T04:55:39Z

{caption} So when do you know you have a problem?

When the brick wall you hit on your latest strive to make your life better rises to meet you faster than you are running, and it has come from no one other than you, and the things you have not dealt with in your life.

Today this was my fear of balloons. Dumb, I know.

On my latest investigation of ways to come up with some extra cash I visited one of the only restaurants I could see myself potentially waiting tables at, for one reason or another. I was dead set to impress the manager, the staff who waited on me, and find the better side of some of its more negative aspects. What could go wrong? Oh yeah, that. My deathly fear of round floaty latex balls where kids dig their fingers, fans chop at full speed, and drunk guys stretch pull and rub in my hair. Just being around them used to cause panic attacks, now its only the aforementioned events, which unfortunately for this latest plan would be part of a course of five minutes. I barely made it through dinner.

While I’ve been aware of this phobia my whole life, it has never stood in the way of anything I have been determined to do. Granted, my determination was born in full force in 2006 - at which point nothing I did truly required putting up with so much exposure to balloons. Before that, it was ok that I was afraid. While it wasn’t pleasant, I would just heed to the fear and go somewhere else. Leave. Problem solved.

This time, the difference was frustration. I wanted to be there. I was determined to be there. Yet this old cranky fear was once again yanking me around like a half inflated balloon in the hands of a child, it was determining my every mood and shape. How could I live like this anymore? Be held back by inflatable latex? Survive a deadly illness yet feel the fear of death by the instantaneous pop of a colorful party prop? The irony was nauseating. And while I was tempted to ask the manager if budget cuts would, at any point in the forseeable future, take balloons off the menu for good, I left instead with the first independent, confident sheer determination I have ever felt regarding this lifelong condition. If I’m afraid of something so silly, it must be a phobia. It is not normal and someone out there can treat it.

Then I landed on it. Globophobia. Thanks to the search engine. Just searching “Fear of Balloons” brings up Globophobia over and over again. Not only does it have a name, but the search revealed that I am not alone, which I mildly suspected. It had even been covered by People Magazine, lumped in with the fears of Bananas and Railroad Tracks (tracks I can understand.. but.. bananas? ) The guy in that article has needed to use a helium machine to blow up balloons for work and described it as torture. How brave. For me that would be a job lost. Or just insubordination - refusal. Think verbal abuse, physical abuse, making me blow up balloons on a helium machine? I’d take the verbal over them any day.. Take this woman for instance:

Bless her!! Everything she says is how I and thousands more feel.

More than anything, my internet search revealed that I didn’t have to live with this if I decided to proactively seek help. Now more than ever, not only do I realize I have a problem, but that I don’t need to live with it any more, and that whether I continue to live with it is under my control, and I only need to decide to begin and see through the process of healing in order to escape its grip. Help is available and wants me to come to it if I want to be helped.

And more than anything, I wonder what life will be like when I am not afraid.