Ceramic Tattoo Art

Introducing Blaz Porenta

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 07:14:00 +0000

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Illustrations

Drawings & Sketches

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What a great day! Thank you ALL for your donations!!! :)

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:55:00 +0000

I just can't say thank you enough for all of your donations! I feel so fortunate and grateful to be the one that gets to distribute these donations to people that really need them. I hope the pictures can give you some of the feelings I get from doing this work and inspire you to keep supporting this mobile outreach effort. I will also be inviting people to go with me to give supplies out as well. I want to be able to give that gift to people that want to make some new friends with some wonderful people. That is one of the many blessings I have received through this work the last couple of months is making a host of new friends. One of the "promises" in the AA program states something like you will gain and establish a whole host of friends that you will not want to miss out on. This promise is now coming true for me at 16 years sober. Every promise has come true in my life and I am also so very grateful for my sobriety. I have friends from literally all over the world! I have some artists friends of mine offering to send me some art pieces to raise money for California Homeless Resources. I have friends sending money and e-mails of support. I am truly wealthy indeed. I had a friend of mine send me a book recently that I LOVE! "Start Something that matters" is a wonderful book and I am getting some awesome ideas on where I can take this new passion of mine. God has put so many wonderful people in my life and I am really at awe of it actually this last couple of months. So - THANK YOU from me and THANK YOU from all of my new friends on the streets that directly benefit from your loving donations.

Matt :)

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Miss my Bostons (and Beasy)...

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:20:00 +0000

I MISS MY DOGS! These are my doggies that I had to leave from my previous relationship... (Tesse, Emily Bostons) and (Beasy have wiener and terrier mix found at Starbucks).

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Introducing - Wayne Martin Mellinger

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:59:00 +0000

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Our Neighbors on the Streets
A social Justice Perspective

About Wayne

I am a social justice educator, activist and writer, living in Santa Barbara, CA, where I work as a social worker for neighbors on the streets, particularly with those with mental health challenges. I advocate for all who are denied equal access to basic needs or are treated without dignity and respect.

I have a passion for helping chronically homeless and dually diagnosed individuals transition into permanent housing and self-sufficiency. I have worked as a Street Outreach Worker / Case Manager / Counselor for WIllBridge of Santa Barbara, the Safe Parking Program, Casa Esperanza Homeless Shelter, Transition House (Family Shelter) and New Beginnings Counseling Center. I am certified as a substance abuse counselor and bring substantial study of mental illness and treatment modalities to my work in the field. I now teach in the Alcohol and Drug Counseling Program at Santa Barbara City College.

I also teach a wide range of social sciences classes at Antioch University Santa Barbara, including mass media, social psychology, and social work classes, in which I proudly infuse the notion of “praxis for social justice” into every class.

I know that when we critically reflect upon our actions and then bring those insights to our future actions we can change the world.

I am a sociologist / social psychologist / social worker by training, and have spent much of the past twenty-five years teaching critical social science and qualitative researtch methodology at various colleges, including the Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and Berkeley campuses of the University of California, the Fielding Graduate University, and Ventura College.

I received my M.A and Ph.D. in Sociology / Social Psychology from UC-Santa Barbara. I have sought to re-conceptualize power and oppression in everyday social interactions and everyday cutural artifacts and have helped to create the subdiscipline of Critical Interactionism.

My academic publications are listed here:

http://www.getcited.org/mbrx/PT/99/MBR/11104788

I am an avid blogger. One blog is called "Doing Modernity: Using Critical Interactionism to Study Everyday Life". Find it here:

http://doingmodernity.blogspot.com/

Another is called “Our Neighbors on the Streets: A Social Justice Perspective”. Find it here:

http://ourneighborsonthestreets.blogspot.com/

I am an active volunteer and community organizer and have been part of the leadership for the Freedom Warming Centers, Survival Santa Barbara, the Restorative Policing Team, Common Ground Santa Barbara, the Santa Barbara Homeless Foot Washing, the “Homeless in Santa Barbara” blog, and several community forums on homelessness and mental illness in our community.

These initiatives lead Santa Barbara County Supervisor Doreen Farr and Santa Barbara City Councilmember Grant House to appoint me to the South Coast Homeless Advisory Committee of Santa Barbara.

I am also active as a board member for Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) and seek to mobilize local faith communities around issues of poverty and homelessness. I am an active member of the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara since 2005.

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Introducing Alberto Seveso

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 03:07:00 +0000

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Bio: Alberto Seveso was born in Milan / Italy in 1976, but has lived most of his life on the island of Sardinia, in the center of the Mediterranean Sea, in this corner of paradise has begun to take its first steps towards the art, computer graphics and photography.
Alberto has not attended school of Art or Design is a self-taught, began in the early '90s following the "Amiga" scene and start using graphics softwares like Deluxe Paint and mid 90s as a street artist, in the early years of the new millennium, he moved to Rome, where he began his career as a graphic designer / illustrator.

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Introducing Ken Fallin

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:10:00 +0000

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Since 1985 Ken Fallin has achieved an enviable reputation as an internationally known illustrator and caricaturist. His instantly recognizable doodlings of hundreds of notables from the worlds of entertainment, sports, finance, politics, and culture have graced the pages of the Wall St. Journal as well as many other fine publications. He has also produced stylish and witty art for major ad campaigns, eye-catching CD covers, bold and imaginative theatrical posters and, just to keep his hand in, the occasional prison mural.

Though Mr.Fallin does not deliberately wish to be secretive, his active participation in the FBI's Witness Protection Program does preclude the disclosure of too much personal information. Nonetheless, it is safe to say that his work appears with alarming regularity in the aforementioned Wall St. Journal as well as In Style Magazine, The Boston Globe, Barron's, The Chicago Tribune, and for a little razzle-dazzle, The Hollywood Reporter. Other presumably satisfied clients include HBO and Showtime cable television, BMG records, CBS News, Tommy Bahamas Clothing, American Express, Belvedere Vodka, and Walt Disney Productions.

In addition to his published commercial work, Mr. Fallin's specially commissioned portraits have proudly found their way into the private collections of such diverse celebrity clients as Patti LuPone, CarolChanning, Barbara Cook, Bernadette Peters, Madonna, Danny Gans, Doris Roberts, and Bette Midler.

Ken presently lives under an assumed name in NYC where he is the designated caretaker of three worthless hound dogs. They would all like to thank every individual/organization/company/network/publication, etc. who have been kind and discerning enough to have given him work.

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Sculptor turns connecting rods, engine parts into works of art - Introducing Metal artist Steve Culp

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:34:00 +0000

I was recently asked to photograph these works by Steve Culp. I was aware of his interest in aircraft. I knew he was a pilot and restored planes and had even, just recently, learned that he'd won numerous flying competitions, I had no idea about the extent of his metal-working skills. I'd been told that he worked on motorcycles planes, but not that he designed and built his own bi-planes—from scratch. I've since learned that he'd completely restored many fine classic and racing autos from the ground up.

These are pieces from a group he's produced recently with special historic car and motorcycle parts and miscellaneous other things he's found elsewhere and melded them into these fanciful creatures that seem like they might have evolved on some strange mechanical planet.

These aren't plumbing and appliances bolted together into robots. While some seem derived of Earth creatures, they depart with such whimsy, there's just no way to easily associate them with the one's we know on our planet.

Beyond an initial response, detail after detail draws one into features noticably similar to jewelry as he's introduced the use of contrasting polish against texture and fantastic iridescent hues in the surface of the metals. Even Steve's welds go beyond merely joining parts and serve to invent texture and are even used alone to add embellishment to associate different areas to each other.

Dogfella

There are some parts one might recognise, for example, tarty bird's clearly wearing some ginchy old lady's glasses, dog fella is really a copper fire extinguisher and machinists might be able to point out specific engine parts and such, but over all, they get lost in the identity and humor of the piece.

It isn't often that I have the opportunity to photograph a body of work crafted with a character and level of ingenuity equal to these. Add the good natured confidence of the artist, who's already proven himself, engineering serious projects dependent on functional design, yet able to apply the same level of creativity to objects like these, intended for pure enjoyment and I'm pleasantly reminded of the the excitement I experienced in my early successes as I learned to operate my first camera.

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Introducing Casey Weldon

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:50:00 +0000

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Casey Weldon was born in southern California, where he spent the majority of his life up to his graduation from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. After a brief time running his own studio in Las Vegas, Nevada, He relocated to Brooklyn, New York, where he now lives and works as an illustrator and fine artist.

By using to the iconography of today and yesterday's popular culture, his work aims to awaken a feelings of nostalgia within the viewer, though often along with a sense humor, melancholy, and longing for times lost.

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Introducing Aunia Kahn

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:57:00 +0000

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Aunia Kahn Born on December 5th, 1977 in Michigan, is a self taught figurative artist who began creating art as a therapeutic response to a difficult upbringing. Kahn's works combines many disciplines, wrapping them into a hybrid art form melding photography, painting and collage. She invariably designs, builds, and executes characters, non-existent places, dreams, illusions, fears and fables into creation, which meld elements of classical and contemporary art. Each work makes use of her own likeness in movie-like stills, dealing in varied taboo and often controversial subject matter to challenge the viewer, their understanding and preconceived notions; yet she connects through honest feeling and emotions. Aunia's work has constantly evolved, earlier works dealt more with her past, while her more recent creations delve into present emotional conflicts and inspirations.

She is also the owner of Reignlock Art & Publishing, the creator of the Silver Era Tarot deck, the forthcoming Inspirations for Survivors deck, and the Lowbrow Tarot Project, is the author of Obvious Remote Chaos, Minding the Sea: Inviting the Muses Over for Tea [Release Date: June 2012], and a graphic/web designer. She currently resides in Illinois with her four German Shepherds and black cat in her secret closet.

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Introducing David de Lara

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:54:00 +0000

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Bio

David de Lara is an Austin, Texas based artist and photographer. For more than a decade he has created original artwork of women that has been described as sensual, edgy, and provocative with an air of mystery. His work has been exhibited throughout Texas in Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi and nationally in Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Albuquerque, Detroit, and Tampa.

The women in David’s paintings and drawings are usually not based on anyone in particular. They’re like dolls used to represent the human condition. They often portray his thoughts, experiences, and philosophies. Although what he creates is presented from his point of view, what people interpret and connect with from his work is very telling about the common ground everyone has.

David’s artistic glamour photography is a natural extension of his art since women are the subject matter for both. Sometimes the images of the models he photographs are manipulated to blur the line between the reality and surrealism of life. There is an interaction of what is real and what isn’t that goes beyond the captured image to create something with a new meaning.

“Untamed”
graphite & coffee on 11″x14″ paper

Here is another coffee toned drawing. The thing about using coffee is that I can only use it after I’ve brewed a batch. That means I can only paint with whatever’s left in the morning. At least I know I won’t be drowsy when I start to work.

model: Theresa Manchester
hair: Jennifer Kraack

Some nights are best spent hanging out in a swanky hotel suite.

“Impetus Theory”
digital photo manipulation
model: Velcoity (well, most of her anyway)

I originally wanted to have Velocity’s disembodied head floating above her body. Every photo combination I tried just looked silly. When I started playing with this image and removed her head, I figured I’d start wiping out the rest of her from existence… When taken out of context, that sounds like some bizarre murder.

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Annie's Scuba Adventure... :)

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:11:00 +0000

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Introducing Apricot Mantle

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 08:03:00 +0000

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Apricot creates his drawings with Prismacolor pencils. His artwork is inspired by various Science Fiction and Horror movies, taking from them the cheesy and kitsch aspects. They are his envisionments of B movies that are fleshed out using vivid colors and strong cartoonistic realism.

Using a wide array of fabrication techniques he builds his own unique custom frames to continue the concept and theme of the piece beyond the paper. He feels that conventional frames often times limit the art to be restricted to the confines of a simple rectangle. His work stands out from the wall and often resembles a sort of, "art theme park". Each drawing tells a different story and the custom frames help to illustrate that idea further.

The actual building process he uses mimics the same techniques that are used in designing and building props and sets for movies. He was taught by movie special effects engineer Rick Hilgner of Creative Concepts Enterprises who has been making special effects for movies for over 20 years. Apricot uses practical movie effect tricks and secrets in creating some of the finishes for the frames.

About the Artist

Apricot Mantle broke into the lowbrow art scene in early 2009. First showing at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in the "Everything but the Kitsch N' Sync" show. He has since kept busy creating new drawings and custom themed frames for other shows in Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, Portland, New York and Atlanta. He has a bachelors in Illustration from Kendall College of Art and Design.

"Open Flame Zombie Girl" - Colored pencil on a Ceramic Skull by Gregg Stone. I made this for Crewest Gallery's Top of the Dome VI Group Show.

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Mark Ryden Tattoos

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:39:00 +0000

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Introducing Mark Ryden

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:12:00 +0000

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Juxtapoz Magazine
December, 2011
Mark Ryden
By Amanda Erlanson

For Mark Ryden, nostalgia is more than a panacea, a gentle salve that soothes the raw edges of modern existence — it is the very lifeblood of art. When he sits down to paint, he is surrounded by a jumble of wonderful old toys, books and peculiar artifacts that whisper to him in their myriad voices, sparking distant memories and forging strange connections.

Of course, the “highbrow” art world disdains nostalgia and its physical manifestation, “kitsch” as the pathetic refuge of the uncultured masses, upholding appreciation of the abstract and conceptual as the distinction of the refined mind. Yet the universal archetypes which connect us all are not nourished within the haughty academies of artistic formalism. They grow within each of us, fed by the dark underground river of our thoughts, feelings and dreams. When we come across a stuffed bunny, tin robot, or storybook that sets off a haunting resonance within us, something deep in our psyche recognizes a conduit between the waking world and the fertile landscape of the unconscious.

At Art Basel Miami this month, Mark will see the release of his first retrospective monograph, a collection of over twenty years of paintings that explore those uncharted spiritual pathways. The massive 366-page volume from Taschen is entitled Pinxit—playfully referencing both the preponderance of pink in his work and the Latin word meaning “he painted this,” which artists like Ingres and Rubens once appended after their signatures. Like many of Taschen’s titles, the book will initially be released as a 15" x 19.5" boxed collector’s edition of one thousand signed and numbered copies, to be followed by a trade edition at some later date. Though Mark has issued most of his books through his own Porterhouse Publishing arm, this project with Taschen offered him the chance to really stretch his wings. “There is a physical scale to this book that is truly impressive,” Mark said. “There are four-panel foldouts that will be a full five feet wide. I have always had a great passion for books, and it is very exciting to have a book of this enormity made of my own art.”

Soon afterward, the City of Angels will be graced with Mark’s first hometown show in five years. This coming spring, he will be unveiling a new body of work at Michael Kohn Gallery that will be informed by the same “olden days” kitsch that inspired last year’s The Gay 90’s: Old Tyme Art Show at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York. As Mark explains, “For every one painting I make, I will make perhaps fifty rough sketches. For every rough sketch I make, I have a hundred ideas that don’t get that far. I can only create a finished painting of a very small fraction of my ideas. There were just too many Gay ’90s paintings I didn’t get to finish for the last exhibition—I had to keep going.”
Kitsch is a perennial focus of contemporary art, but artists like John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage, and Paul McCarthy approach their subject from the supercilious viewpoint of camp, laughing at its “bad taste” while simultaneously reveling in it. Whereas an artist like Jeff Koons takes an ironic distance from kitsch, transforming a valueless object like a gaudy porcelain figure of Michael Jackson into something valuable—a work of art—by mockingly exaggerating its cheapness, Mark cherishes his ostensibly vulgar subjects, elevating them to the status of sacred talismans through the time-honored craftsmanship passed down to him from master painters like Ingres, David, and Bouguereau.
But even a lover of nostalgic artifacts has his limits. Recently, Mark has been found pushing himself embracing an arena of kitsch so egregious that it makes him feel strangely uncomfortable, and challenges his own aesthetic boundaries—the era quaintly known as The Gay ’90s. “I would look at modernist attitudes that detest the taboo subject matter of nostalgia, imagination, and beauty, and think about how incredibly closed-minded this attitude is. But I came to realize I have my own thresholds. I gravitated towards the Gay ’90s because it is the extreme of ‘distasteful kitsch.’ I wanted to play with it. Why not try to pull the lowest of the low into the highest of the high? It is interesting how those exclusionary modernist attitudes are as ‘olde tyme’ now, as the 1890s were when modernist thinking was born.”

Today, the 1890s have passed from living memory, and all that remains is a saccharine fantasy. Ironically, the period never actually existed as we now fancy it—a frothy confection concocted in hindsight almost two decades later. Our collective imagination of that time is shaped by the kitsch left behind by a thirty-year swell of nostalgia that arose in the early twentieth century. Gay ’90s mania came to a head with the rise of a new consumer culture in the Roaring ’20s, an era bracketed by two depressions and two world wars. Conservatives reacted to the turbulent times by churning out waves of wistfulness about the golden age of their youth. For them, the 1890s were the equivalent of the 1950s for us today—an era of prosperity and idyllic small-town life, the last moments of a simpler time before the advent of automobiles and recorded music. Looking backward, they recalled the “good old days” of straw hats and striped suits, marching bands and barbershop quartets, Gibson Girls and bicycles built for two. Yet, in the real 1890s, most Americans either worked on farms or in urban factories, and this small-town utopia existed only in summer enclaves where well-heeled folks from the city went to escape the soot and heat. This extraordinary nostalgia for the Gay ’90s was one of our longest episodes of cultural self-hypnosis, and lasted well into the 1940s.
By the 1960s, when Mark was a boy, the lingering artifacts generated by this fad had worn trite and old-fashioned. An ideal day would be spent drawing or painting alone at his desk, dreaming of metaphysical numbers and Egyptian mythology. While his creativity was being nourished by the psychedelic posters, album art and underground comics shared by his older siblings, sentimental pablum like “The Lawrence Welk Show” and schmaltzy mementoes that recalled “the good old days,” littered the landscape. Over the past few years, he has begun using his own ambivalence about that sort of kitsch to explore the conflicting waves of attraction and repulsion we feel when encountering imagery clichéd but familiar. As Mark’s soulmate and fellow painter Marion Peck explained, “The mythologized version we have of the past—a myth of life in ‘kinder, simpler times’—is extremely powerful. The passions it triggers drive the conservative political agenda that we as a nation are currently struggling with; its nostalgic tug has inspired much pure kitsch... with all unpleasantness or grit of any sort removed, clean and tidy like Disneyland. Perhaps on some level, we are recognizing the dangers of this whitewashing of history, and nausea is the result.”
In this series of paintings, as he has done time and again, Mark returns to his trusted cast of characters—his own pantheon of swap-meet spirit guides. The mythic figure of Abraham Lincoln is invested with an aura of divine power, despite being garbed in clownish Gay ’90s apparel. Jesus Christ, the impotent wizard, manifests as a shrunken figure playing a toy piano, then bears his eternal burdens astride a bicycle built for two. Languid girls who exude both a doll-like innocence and a knowing sensuality appear in nearly every painting, sometimes bearing fetuses tidily wrapped in their birth membranes, like hard candy in cellophane.

Within Mark’s conceptual landscape, these porcelain waifs represent the anima, the Jungian archetype that mediates the feminine aspects of the unconscious in the male’s emotional development. Indeed, Marion believes that each of the girls Mark paints is in one sense a self-portrait. In his paintings, the anima manifests as Sophia—the muse, the fount of creativity, and the goddess of wisdom. Asked about his close identification with the feminine, Mark said, “I believe that beyond the arena of art, the world would be a much better place if centered around a feminine perspective. The world has been really messed up by greedy white men who only work towards an agenda of personal wealth and power. It is this patriarchy of the past couple thousand years that causes so much strife. If the world was female-centered and if the dominant spirituality was based on the feminine and the earth, then human beings would know much more joy, peace, and harmony.”

Mark’s masterpiece Incarnation translates from the Latin as “in the flesh.” An ethereal beauty promenades through a formal garden, self-possessed as a Gibson Girl, tightly corseted in a bell-shaped gown of meat. The sumptuous hues and textures of meat have long fascinated Mark, for as he has asserted, flesh is what holds our spirits on the physical plane. Yet in the modern age, we have become so remote from the source of our food that we rarely think of the creatures that are killed for our consumption. Admittedly carnivorous as the next man, he is sensitive to the suffering inflicted by our meat-loving ways. In animist cultures, a hunter would pray to the spirit of the animal he had killed, acknowledging its sacrifice and asking for forgiveness. Perhaps Mark’s reverent oil paintings of the flesh are also a sort of incantation, a mantra written in muscle, fat and blood.

One of Mark’s most profound convictions is that we instinctively know that there is more to existence than the physical plane perceived by our five senses. He is fascinated by the idea that the world is an illusion like a diorama. This concept is subliminally present in all his paintings, in which mysterious scenarios play out in sharp relief against a misty panorama, as if set before a theatrical backdrop. Marion clarifies, “The way he builds a composition, the way he manipulates space in his paintings, placing the figures, pushing things forward or pulling them back, often gives them this sense of being on a stage, a little world apart from the ‘real’ world.

And this gives them a magical quality… They are their own world, their own place, much like the inner worlds of memory and imagination.”
Next year will mark a decade since Mark and Marion fell in love next to a moss-covered stone ball at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle. As a result of their union, they have mutually transformed each other, both emotionally and creatively. Fatefully, Marion introduced Mark to the theories of archetypal psychologist James Hillman, which deepened Mark’s understanding of his own psyche and had a profound effect on his work.” Marion reflects, “It is amazing that it has been almost a decade since Mark and I met. In many ways our relationship seems fresh and new, but our connection is very deep, and grows deeper all the time. We are just traveling through this amazing life together, and are quite awed by it.” And Mark adds, “I feel like my ‘authentic’ life didn’t begin until I met Marion. Before we met, my art making and philosophical thinking were isolated, and they progressed slowly. Meeting Marion energized everything. Now Marion and I are on the journey through life’s adventure together, and it is spectacular.”
In the essay for his 2005 museum show Wondertoonel, Mark wrote that “children can see a world ensouled, where bunnies weep and bees have secrets, where ‘inanimate’ objects are alive.” Those childhood feelings of mystical illumination and spiritual connection with the energies of the universe still hold incalculable power for us today, though so many of us choose lives remote from nature. A sense of harmony with the natural world is vital to most primitive religions, and still takes the forefront in modern Japan, where Shinto beliefs assert that every rock and tree may be inhabited by a god. “When you stand before a giant sequoia, it is easy to feel this power,” Mark reflects. “But it is not just the rocks and trees of the natural world that are inhabited by gods. Dolls, toys, and statues are also inhabited by their own gods. A stuffed bunny, a chandelier, or a ginseng root possesses an intangible presence that is difficult to explain. It is a thing’s ‘essence’ that is its little god.”

Throughout his life as a painter, Mark has listened to the voice of the wunderkammer in which he is esconced, working surrounded by a thousand small spirits, each whispering their own stories and dreams. “The paintings always come from an unknown place,” said Marion. “He doesn’t really plan them, they more just come to him… When he conceives a painting, he will be lying on the couch for many hours in a daze, surrounded by mountains of books, dolls, and scraps of paper from the massive collection of images that inspire him. Once he starts actually painting, though, he is in an amazingly wakeful, concentrated state of mind... He is totally paying attention to every tiny movement of his brush. Sometimes he says he feels like he is threading a needle all day long, poor thing. He is an amazing mixture of scientific precision and dreaminess, artist and businessman, young rebel and old man.”

Mark believes that if we look backward, past the societal machinations of religion, we can sense a more fundamental source of meaning—the natural forces our ancestors interpreted as forest spirits and primordial gods, and wove into a rich tapestry of myth. That same reverent intimacy with the natural world is intrinsic to childhood, but as we enter adulthood, our connection with those elemental forces tends to fade away. While some of us remain aware of these natural conduits to the mysteries of the unconscious realms within us, those pathways are often occluded by the perpetual distractions of modern life. Yet the more we risk as a society—the delicate balance of nature, the freedom of childhood, the wonder of a world not fully understood—the more important it is for creative people to help us imagine what could be, and might have been.
Mythographer Joseph Campbell believed that the absence of religious ecstasy in modern life is what causes many of us to go off the grid and look into cults and drugs for the transcendent experience. One of the functions of mythology is to show us how to evolve into higher paths of thought and action, and ultimately to discover who we are and what course in life fulfills us. Though we live in an era where the idea of myth seems archaic, these universal stories are still springing up all around us in different guises—from urban myths to dream paintings, from science fiction movies to comic books. Many of the more visionary artists of today, whose minds are open to the sound of the universe, are continually conjuring new myths built upon the ephemera of our times—new traditions that respond to our environment, rather than that of some desert-dwelling nomadic tribe that disbanded thousands of years ago. Perhaps the most important function of the artist is to make mythology a living medium, enriching our perception of the world with new metaphors that reconnect us with the mysteries. In his finest work, Mark transfigures the most clichéd artifacts of our culture into a modern mythology that rouses the wondering child within, rendering a greater empathy for all living things.
As Michelangelo chiseled the marble which would become immortal sculptures like David and the Pietà, he focused on what he conceived of as “l’immagine del cuore,” or “the image of the heart” inside the stone. He believed the masterpiece already existed inside the stone—had always existed inside the stone—and his purpose was to release it through his imagination. Perhaps the artist is sometimes unveiling a fragment of something primordial and perhaps inevitable, trying to see through the material and into something universal. Though he feels it’s dangerous to focus too hard on that objective, Mark is forever reaching for it. “Once you become deliberate and have a specific aim or goal, I feel you lose the connection to the transcendental,” he said. “If an artist is truly authentic and subconsciously connected when making his art, then the art will have a strong mythological or spiritual resonance. It is through the letting go of an artist’s goals that the art gains power. Letting go is the great challenge.”

In our frenetic modern world, people often find themselves restless and lost, deprived of a sense of meaning and purpose in life. Our souls yearn for mystery and beauty, whether we seek their expression through nature, love, music or art. Imagination can act as a bridge toward all the things for which our hearts ache—the ineffable, the spiritual, the eternal. Consequently, the artist’s most exalted function is to hold open doors into the unknown to help us divine the elusive nature of who we really are, allowing those parts of us that are seeking transcendence to evolve. In this respect, the artist takes on a shamanic role, mediating between the physical and spiritual realms, fueling our passions and healing our weary souls. Asked if Mark feels this sense of mission, Marion replied, “Though he definitely would not use the term ‘shaman’ about himself, I think Mark certainly has the sense that he wants to bring something into the world, something it is craving and yearning for—soul, beauty, hope, things like that. He has an amazing something, a magic which has this very pure and loving quality, a joy. Everyone who is around him can feel it. There is something there that touches everyone in a very mysterious and powerful way, and they fall in love.”

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The Meaning of "Namaste" and Symbol, etc...

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:16:00 +0000

I came across this name: "Namaste" when a friend of mine signed off with it this morning. I had to look it up real fast to not look stupid and I thought wow this is really a very cool saying. I have seen the symbol on tattoos and other deigns but really never knew the meaning of "Namaste". So I have included some of the things I have found on-line - Enjoy... :)

What does "Namaste" mean? My yoga teacher says it every week after our practice and I've always wanted to know.

—Rita Geno

Aadil Palkhivala's reply:

The gesture Namaste represents the belief that there is a Divine spark within each of us that is located in the heart chakra. The gesture is an acknowledgment of the soul in one by the soul in another. "Nama" means bow, "as" means I, and "te" means you. Therefore, Namaste literally means "bow me you" or "I bow to you."

To perform Namaste, we place the hands together at the heart charka, close the eyes, and bow the head. It can also be done by placing the hands together in front of the third eye, bowing the head, and then bringing the hands down to the heart. This is an especially deep form of respect. Although in the West the word "Namaste" is usually spoken in conjunction with the gesture, in India, it is understood that the gesture itself signifies Namaste, and therefore, it is unnecessary to say the word while bowing.

We bring the hands together at the heart chakra to increase the flow of Divine love. Bowing the head and closing the eyes helps the mind surrender to the Divine in the heart. One can do Namaste to oneself as a meditation technique to go deeper inside the heart chakra; when done with someone else, it is also a beautiful, albeit quick, meditation.

For a teacher and student, Namaste allows two individuals to come together energetically to a place of connection and timelessness, free from the bonds of ego-connection. If it is done with deep feeling in the heart and with the mind surrendered, a deep union of spirits can blossom.

Ideally, Namaste should be done both at the beginning and at the end of class. Usually, it is done at the end of class because the mind is less active and the energy in the room is more peaceful. The teacher initiates Namaste as a symbol of gratitude and respect toward her students and her own teachers and in return invites the students to connect with their lineage, thereby allowing the truth to flow—the truth that we are all one when we live from the heart.

Recognized as one of the world's top yoga teachers, Aadil Palkhivala began studying yoga at the age of seven with B.K.S. Iyengar and was introduced to Sri Aurobindo's yoga three years later. He received the Advanced Yoga Teacher's Certificate at the age of 22 and is the founder-director of internationally renowned Yoga Centers™ in Bellevue, Washington. Aadil is also a federally certified Naturopath, a certifiedAyurvedic Health Science Practitioner, a clinical hypnotherapist, a certified Shiatsu and Swedish bodywork therapist, a lawyer, and an internationally sponsored public speaker on the mind-body-energy connection.

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Man (Me) tries to connect homeless with resources

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:48:00 +0000

PHOTO BY ANTHONY PLASCENCIA, VENTURA COUNTY STAR // BUY THIS PHOTO

Matthew Kennedy shines a flashlight for Patrick Michael McInley Barker as he browses for a pair of pants on Friday in a shopping center parking lot. Kennedy, who was homeless for several months, now provides clothing, toiletries and other resources to homeless strangers.

Man tries to connect homeless with resources

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Matthew Kennedy said he was making $80,000 a year managing a high-rise in downtown Los Angeles before the recession left him homeless.

"When the large home developers stopped building abruptly in 2008, my career stopped," said Kennedy, 40, of Ventura. "I had to do a six-month homeless stint in Goleta from May to November of 2011 living in my van."

During that time, Kennedy discovered a wealth of free resources online.

"The government and other organizations have resources available for homeless people, but nobody knows what they are," he said.

With that, he launched California Homeless Resources online at www.homelessresourcesca.org.

"I made the website for the midlevel manager like myself who lost their job due to the economy and couldn't find a job and ended up camping in their van," Kennedy said, who drew on his skills as a Web designer to create the site. "I was so relieved that I could apply for these free services. I want to make people aware of what's available. This gives them a place to start."

The website has a directory of cities in California with programs available.

"It provides the resources to apply for everything — or as much as possible right away — to get the balls rolling all at one time," Kennedy said. "If you know what to do right away and get the ball rolling, you stand a much better chance of getting back on your feet again."

He got free eyeglasses from a business called SEE International. Before he became homeless, he also received a month's worth of rent — $1,075 — from Catholic Charities, "a conduit for some funds from the federal government that people just don't know about," he said.

"Obviously Matt has a passion for helping others who have been put in situations like he's been in," said Clyde Reynolds, executive director of the Turning Point Foundation, a Ventura-based nonprofit that offers shelter, supported housing and rehabilitation programs with a focus on mentally ill adults.

Reynolds recently met Kennedy when he was seeking advice about starting his nonprofit.

"Having been there and having to find the resources himself — and knowing how the system works — can be really helpful because a person who finds themselves homeless for the first time may not know where to turn or what resources are available," Reynolds said. "The fact that Matt is no longer homeless is also important because it sends the message that there is hope."

When he became homeless, "I tried to get as much help for myself as I could because I could not find a job," Kennedy said. "I believe we are going to see many more people like me, unfortunately."

Kennedy distributes clothes, flashlights and other needed items a few days a week to homeless people on the streets of Ventura and Oxnard.

He said he always needs donations, including blankets, sleeping bags, pet food, tarps and toiletries.

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Tattooed and Sexy the Female Tattoo

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:46:00 +0000

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Introducing the art of Jessica Ward

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:57:00 +0000

Visit this artists website

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Currency Portraits by Senseteam - Designboom

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:26:00 +0000

Using thin strips of dissected currency from around the world, Chinese creative firmSenseteam (website currently down) has composed a series of portraits for a book and poster series entitled Big Business 3 meant to “reflect the subtle relationships and influences across money, desire, society, nations, and human beings.” The project won a gold award at the Design for Asia Award 2011 and you can see much more over ondesignboom.

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NEIL YOUNG AND THE DAMAGE DONE | The Godfather of Grunge’s Early Years

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 08:37:00 +0000

Originally posted by

A historical record of artistry, anarchy, alchemy & authenticity.

The Selvedge Yard

December 1969, San Diego-- Neil Young plays his Gretsch White Falcon during a sound check at Balboa Stadium before a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young concert. -- Image by © Henry Diltz

Over his long and storied career, Neil Young has explored and influenced a wide range of musical styles– but it’s his early days that I love the most. There’s an ache and an angst in Young’s voice that resonates, and his guitar playing feels bare, matter of fact, and honest. Neil Young is often referred to as “The Godfather of Grunge” for the impact and influence he had on the grunge scene– Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain in particular. Cobain even went as far to quote Neil Young in his suicide note– using the line “It’s better to burn out, than to fade away” from Young’s song “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)”.

Not everyone is a Neil Young fan, I guess you either get it, or you don’t. I’m sure it has something do with our very different upbringings, but sadly– my wife is not a Neil Young fan. It pains me to say it. She’s definitely a more refined and accomplished artist than I, musically speaking– and his nasally tone (her words, not mine) is not exactly her speed. We also part ways when it comes to Lucinda Williams– who my wife not-so-lovingly refers to as “that warbly bar hag”. Ouch.

As a child of the 70s, and raised in a very, eh-hem, “progressive” family that always had the stereo playing– music (and the artist’s story behind it) became extremely personal and important to me. I would comb through the stacks of records and ingest the lyrics, images and liner notes.

I remember becoming strangely intrigued by the “Southern Man” record responses, feud, or whatever you want to call it– that went on between Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd. I remember feeling like I had to pick a side– plant my flag with either Neil, or the Skynyrd boys. Life had to be black and white then as a kid. I hadn’t yet fully learned of the ambiguous grey matter that (consciously and subconsciously) fills the cracks in our adult judgements, personas and so-called principles.

December 1969, San Diego-- David Crosby, Neil Young, and Stephen Stills. Crosby, Stills, and Nash were formed in the late sixties from members of The Hollies, The Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield. CSN collaborated with Neil Young occasionally, and racked up many hits in the 60s & 70s. Young went on to create more critically acclaimed music with Crazy Horse and his many solo albums. --- Image by © Henry Diltz

July, 12th 1970 --- David Crosby smokes a cigarette, of sorts, in a backstage bathroom as Neil Young looks on. --- Image by © Henry Diltz

San Francisco, July 15th, 1974 --- Neil Young holds his son Zeke at a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young concert. --- Image by © Neal Preston

Neil Young may be a control freak, a recluse, a guy who will fire a band on a whim, and an obsessive perfectionist (how long have we been waiting for his Archives box set?), but one thing about Young emerges: Neil Young loves his family. Nowhere is this more evident during Young’s account of his son Ben’s first few years. A nonoral quadriplegic, Ben Young was diagnosed with having cerebral palsy as an infant. After supporting Rust Never Sleeps, Young and his wife Pegi entered a program designed to teach Ben basic motor skills, which involved trying to teach Ben to crawl, for 14 hours a day. Neil and Pegi did this, every day, for an astounding eighteen months. His son’s disability (his first son Zeke, from his marriage to Snodgrass, also suffers from mild cerebral palsy) has inspired Young’s highly successful annual charity concert for the Bridge School in San Francisco, as well as his development of a disabled-friendly remote control for model trains (he eventually bought the Lionel model train company).

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Fine Surrealism Artwork by Leslie Ditto

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:50:00 +0000

Visit Leslie Ditto Website

Bio

As far back as I can remember I have always been drawn to self expression through visual arts. As a young girl, growing up in Memphis, Tennessee, I was not exposed to any classical surreal artist until I attended Overton High School for the performing and Visual Arts. Before that I was raised around an “old school” Harley Davidson shop that my father and his brother owned.I spent many summers helping my father there at the shop and watching him build Harley motorcycles from the ground up and then painted the gas tanks ( and anything else he could find on the motorcycle) with fantasy images that were inspired by such artist as Franzetta and Boris Valleo. I then became fascinated with the beautiful, powerful and sexy women that these artist created.

I was accepted into Otis Parsons in Los Angeles. After only two month of training my father had become terminally ill and I was forced to return home to Memphis. I was never able to return to school but could not deny the artist in me the opportunity for expression just because I had never been formally trained.
Over the years I researched techniques of the “Old Masters” such as Leonardo DA Vinci, Rubens, Raphael, and Rembrandt .I fell in love with the technique of glazing transparent oil color over a neutral colored under painting. With strong influences from fantasy artist, surreal artist, and the “Old Masters”, I create disturbingly beautiful oil paintings that interpret to the viewer my deep emotions that are conceived from my views of current social, political, and religious dynamics. My ideas come to me in an organic fashion. Starting with a seed of a simple idea and growing into many complex symbols and images. My main goal is to capture my audience and bring them to my emotional state in the hopes that my test for an echo will be a success.

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My Back Tattoo...

noreply@blogger.com (Matthew S. Kennedy) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:46:00 +0000

This is a drawing my Grandfather (Popo) drew when he was alive. I have it hanging in my van now.. He was a wonderful artist, he drew and painted. I loved the "space men" that he painted towards the end of his life. He passed about 2 years ago now. I hope to get a hold of those paintings when I finally light somewhere..

Anyway, this drawing below is going to be the back piece for my "Jungle Theme" tattooed body.. I will color it in.

This is my current Tattoo, not yet colored in.. Again when I get more $ and settle down I will be continuing and I will color it in as well. I want all kinds of Jungle characters hanging out on my body.. :)

A new Friend of mine had this picture up on Facebook today and it reminded me of this project I am working on (Thank you).. I need to continue for myself. :)

Circle round for Freedom. Circle round for Peace.

For All of us in prison, circle for release.
Circle for the Planet. Circle for each Soul. For the children of our children,
Keep the Circle Whole ♥

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