And here's a compilation of all the degrading commercial clips from Folgers of the 50's. Insane. My mother had to listen to this during daytime TV. I have a whole new respect for her.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
I Enjoy a Good Cup of Coffee too, but.....
Harvey, you're an a*s, make your own effin' coffee.....
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Simplifying and Streamlining
Let's just quickly acknowledge that I missed posting the last two days for the Nablopomo and move on shall we?
Part of my reason for doing 30 posts in 30 days was to go out with a bang, not an explosive bang, more like a pot clanking bang. This blog will be altered and integrated into a new website with my own domain name soon. I've been fiddling with a website on Squarespace on and off for the past two months, I like the look of it but I wish I knew enough (any!) html to customize it more.
When I first thought of starting a blog 2 years ago, I had in mind that it would be used as a minor marketing tool to sell a bit of art here and there on Etsy. Although when you have a blog, you sort of need to write about SOMETHING, not just advertise yourself. Blogs that are nothing but self promotion are almost unreadable.
My first attempt at a blog lasted one post and was called, "Surrealist Art Mom". My youngest daughter was 5 at the time, Most of my time was still committed to being a mom, attempts to squeeze in art were sporadic so I had an idea to integrate my conventional life with some of my unconventional sensibilities. Surrealist Art Mom consisted of making a different kid craft each post. There were two different examples for each craft project shown, one nice cute craft made by my children and then my version using the same materials. The first post was sugar cookies decorated with food colouring makers. While my kids drew smiley faces and flowers on their cookies, I drew eyeballs in hands and wrote nonsensical, surrealist haiku's on mine.
The next post was to be cardboard tube art. My daughters would be making bunnies and puppies. I planned to do George W. Bush's Proposed Pipeline diorama in a shoebox. But the whole thing came to an end when I knew the key to making my craft successful would be borrowing the little plastic trees and forest animals from my kids play sets, having them strewn about looking dead from on oil spill. I just couldn't do it. I was too concerned about my girls innocent, developing brains being traumatized watching mommy do macabre things with their toys.
I know this blog needs to change, morph into something a little different because the frustrations I felt 2 years ago are gone now. At that time, I had spent the last 7 years feeling like an alien in my life. I loved spending time with my kids, but dealing with the politics of playgroups, preschool and small talk in suburbia felt so constricted. I'm not a joiner but joined and volunteered for half a dozen community groups during that time and was miserable. I wish I had discovered some of the mommy blogs like Fussy or Suburban Bliss back than, I would have felt normal, that I wasn't a freak, just separated from my tribe.
Having this blog and then my anonymous blog helped me get past some isolation. Yes, that anonymous blog is gone, reserved now for my private journals. Even with an alias, talking about my kids and husband and our daily life made me uneasy. It was called Me and My Stupid Diet, which wasn't an apt name as it dealt with my attempts to get myself and my family away from processed foods, all foods from industrial farms and living life as organic localvores. August and September were spent shopping at farms, canning, making preserves, herb sauces, baking my own bread and pretty much making everything we ate from scratch. Rewarding, except for the domestic slavery part. I'm still working on that kink, there HAS to be a way to make it simpler. For those interested, the Food Network created a reality show with 100 Mile Diet authors,
James MacKinnon and Alisa Smith, challenging 6 families to live on a local diet for 100 days. You can watch all the episodes here. The show takes place in my town. My suburban bitchin' shtick won't wash after you watch the episodes. It is beautiful here.
The new site will be my art portfolio and a blog and be my only web presence. One thing I know for sure I will never expect you to read a long winded, dull post as long as this one. Ever. And I didn't even post a single picture today. Sheesh.
Part of my reason for doing 30 posts in 30 days was to go out with a bang, not an explosive bang, more like a pot clanking bang. This blog will be altered and integrated into a new website with my own domain name soon. I've been fiddling with a website on Squarespace on and off for the past two months, I like the look of it but I wish I knew enough (any!) html to customize it more.
When I first thought of starting a blog 2 years ago, I had in mind that it would be used as a minor marketing tool to sell a bit of art here and there on Etsy. Although when you have a blog, you sort of need to write about SOMETHING, not just advertise yourself. Blogs that are nothing but self promotion are almost unreadable.
My first attempt at a blog lasted one post and was called, "Surrealist Art Mom". My youngest daughter was 5 at the time, Most of my time was still committed to being a mom, attempts to squeeze in art were sporadic so I had an idea to integrate my conventional life with some of my unconventional sensibilities. Surrealist Art Mom consisted of making a different kid craft each post. There were two different examples for each craft project shown, one nice cute craft made by my children and then my version using the same materials. The first post was sugar cookies decorated with food colouring makers. While my kids drew smiley faces and flowers on their cookies, I drew eyeballs in hands and wrote nonsensical, surrealist haiku's on mine.
The next post was to be cardboard tube art. My daughters would be making bunnies and puppies. I planned to do George W. Bush's Proposed Pipeline diorama in a shoebox. But the whole thing came to an end when I knew the key to making my craft successful would be borrowing the little plastic trees and forest animals from my kids play sets, having them strewn about looking dead from on oil spill. I just couldn't do it. I was too concerned about my girls innocent, developing brains being traumatized watching mommy do macabre things with their toys.
I know this blog needs to change, morph into something a little different because the frustrations I felt 2 years ago are gone now. At that time, I had spent the last 7 years feeling like an alien in my life. I loved spending time with my kids, but dealing with the politics of playgroups, preschool and small talk in suburbia felt so constricted. I'm not a joiner but joined and volunteered for half a dozen community groups during that time and was miserable. I wish I had discovered some of the mommy blogs like Fussy or Suburban Bliss back than, I would have felt normal, that I wasn't a freak, just separated from my tribe.
Having this blog and then my anonymous blog helped me get past some isolation. Yes, that anonymous blog is gone, reserved now for my private journals. Even with an alias, talking about my kids and husband and our daily life made me uneasy. It was called Me and My Stupid Diet, which wasn't an apt name as it dealt with my attempts to get myself and my family away from processed foods, all foods from industrial farms and living life as organic localvores. August and September were spent shopping at farms, canning, making preserves, herb sauces, baking my own bread and pretty much making everything we ate from scratch. Rewarding, except for the domestic slavery part. I'm still working on that kink, there HAS to be a way to make it simpler. For those interested, the Food Network created a reality show with 100 Mile Diet authors,
James MacKinnon and Alisa Smith, challenging 6 families to live on a local diet for 100 days. You can watch all the episodes here. The show takes place in my town. My suburban bitchin' shtick won't wash after you watch the episodes. It is beautiful here.
The new site will be my art portfolio and a blog and be my only web presence. One thing I know for sure I will never expect you to read a long winded, dull post as long as this one. Ever. And I didn't even post a single picture today. Sheesh.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
From Insider Art to Outsider Art
Yesterdays post had me thinking about value in art. Literally, the dollars and cents of it all. Contemporary art may establish much of it's value in intellectual.....oh god, I'm going to use the dreaded artspeak word....discourse, whereas outsider art, art made by the untrained and unknown often gets it's value from the stories of the artists lives.
One of those stories is Henry Darger, a reclusive janitor with a troubled childhood. He had no family, no friends and was most certainly mentally ill. For 50 years Darger wrote and drew obsessively in private. After Darger's death, his landlord discovered the extent of Darger's obsession, 30,000 densely handwritten pages. Among them was a 15,000 page meandering fantasy epic he entitled, "The Story of the Vivian Girls, In What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, as caused by the Child Slave Rebellion." 300 or so illustrations accompany the work. The images are appropriated from illustrations from printed advertising like the Coppertone baby. They are drawn on paper, painted with child watercolours. Darger was no great artist, but his obsessive world and disturbing life have made his larger paintings sell in the six figure range. He himself lived in poverty. The 2004 documentary based on his work and life, In the Realms of the Unreal is worth a watch, here's the trailer.
One of those stories is Henry Darger, a reclusive janitor with a troubled childhood. He had no family, no friends and was most certainly mentally ill. For 50 years Darger wrote and drew obsessively in private. After Darger's death, his landlord discovered the extent of Darger's obsession, 30,000 densely handwritten pages. Among them was a 15,000 page meandering fantasy epic he entitled, "The Story of the Vivian Girls, In What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, as caused by the Child Slave Rebellion." 300 or so illustrations accompany the work. The images are appropriated from illustrations from printed advertising like the Coppertone baby. They are drawn on paper, painted with child watercolours. Darger was no great artist, but his obsessive world and disturbing life have made his larger paintings sell in the six figure range. He himself lived in poverty. The 2004 documentary based on his work and life, In the Realms of the Unreal is worth a watch, here's the trailer.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Ignoring Art
Context is everything. It's no surprise displaying artwork from a famous contemporary artist on an urban street is overwhelmingly ignored. This was demonstrated when Belgian artist Luc Tuymans participated in an experiment where he painted a large artwork and hung it on a busy street in Antwerp. Predictable as it is, I find the video interesting because of the comments by curators and admirers of Tuymans work.
I have a tic of internal eye rolling every time I hear artists referred to as 'important'. It's confirmed now I'm a philistine because I've only vaguely heard of Tuymans although he's considered by many as the most important living painter alive. I like his paintings and I'm curious to read more to see why his work is considered valuable and influential. But c'mon, as much as I love painting, looking at painting, talking about the process of painting, the self-proclaimed importance of the art world makes me, well... barfy. Tuymans himself doesn't seem to suffer from this inflated view of contemporary art. The people surrounding him do.
I once had a professor (also somewhat important in the art world) who I did think was brilliant say, "If you can do art, you can do anything". It's been over 20 years since I first heard that comment and I still can't figure it out. I do have glimpses of what he meant. It takes a high degree of intellect to create great, meaningful art in any artistic pursuit. Still, I would like to know what he meant exactly. Clearly in that context, I can't do art, because if someone wants me to discuss the Euler-Tricomi equation as it's used in the investigation of transonic flow, I am so, like, totally clueless.
Now, be a dear, watch the video and have a little chuckle about how wrong all those curators were.
I have a tic of internal eye rolling every time I hear artists referred to as 'important'. It's confirmed now I'm a philistine because I've only vaguely heard of Tuymans although he's considered by many as the most important living painter alive. I like his paintings and I'm curious to read more to see why his work is considered valuable and influential. But c'mon, as much as I love painting, looking at painting, talking about the process of painting, the self-proclaimed importance of the art world makes me, well... barfy. Tuymans himself doesn't seem to suffer from this inflated view of contemporary art. The people surrounding him do.
I once had a professor (also somewhat important in the art world) who I did think was brilliant say, "If you can do art, you can do anything". It's been over 20 years since I first heard that comment and I still can't figure it out. I do have glimpses of what he meant. It takes a high degree of intellect to create great, meaningful art in any artistic pursuit. Still, I would like to know what he meant exactly. Clearly in that context, I can't do art, because if someone wants me to discuss the Euler-Tricomi equation as it's used in the investigation of transonic flow, I am so, like, totally clueless.
Now, be a dear, watch the video and have a little chuckle about how wrong all those curators were.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Grey Days
"Garden"acrylic, pen, pencil and thread
Yes, I missed a day. I suppose I could have pushed out a post before midnight last night, but I didn't have the energy. Notice the verb- push, like in birth. It's as though I've been giving birth to marginally liked children every friggin' day for 2 weeks. Ah, but is that not the path of any pursuit? enthusiasm in the beginning, then a plateau of boredom and waning energy which you have to work through?
Yesterday, I finished the piece above. Actually, now that I see it up here, some things are bothering me and I have a few things I'm going to add. The woman is my sister in law. I finally have gotten to a point where I'm comfortable using images of people around me in my artwork without having it necessarily reflect anything about that person. I'm sure my colour choices have been somewhat influenced by all the torrential rain and wind we're having. It's horrible. Everything has been cast with grey lately. There's a heavy, sick dampness in the air. Wait, am I REALLY talking about the weather? I thought only old people did that. Oh dear. I WILL try to do better tomorrow.
Yesterday, I finished the piece above. Actually, now that I see it up here, some things are bothering me and I have a few things I'm going to add. The woman is my sister in law. I finally have gotten to a point where I'm comfortable using images of people around me in my artwork without having it necessarily reflect anything about that person. I'm sure my colour choices have been somewhat influenced by all the torrential rain and wind we're having. It's horrible. Everything has been cast with grey lately. There's a heavy, sick dampness in the air. Wait, am I REALLY talking about the weather? I thought only old people did that. Oh dear. I WILL try to do better tomorrow.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Searching for Eagles
I had intended to finish a mixed media piece tonight to post on here, but I'm going to watch TV instead! So there! But before I go, I will leave you with photos of my search for bald eagles today. The eagles have landed to feast on the spawning salmon in the upper Fraser Valley where I live. I ran into about 6 other people who had the same aspirations for getting impressive photos. They all caused me to have a bad case of lens envy as I saw their tripods all set up with huge telephoto lenses on their camera. So I mumbled a sad hi as I passed them, knowing I'm not geared with the goods to belong to their unspoken special bird nerd club. Sigh.
We also took the wrong trail, so I was too far from the beach for good photos. The closest eagle was a juvenile eagle in a tree. Eagles don't grow their signature white head feathers until about 3 yrs of age. This one didn't join the others on the beach to eat all the dead salmon.
We also took the wrong trail, so I was too far from the beach for good photos. The closest eagle was a juvenile eagle in a tree. Eagles don't grow their signature white head feathers until about 3 yrs of age. This one didn't join the others on the beach to eat all the dead salmon.
Impressive turn out for eagle numbers, I counted 15 in this picture.
My kids were quickly bored, so to appease them we left and drove down the street to another beach and had our annual Poking at Dead Fish Day.
Nature- the ugly...
and the beautiful ....
Friday, November 13, 2009
Friday the 13th
I blame it on the date. I got nuthin'. Over halfway through this month, I thought I'd be fizzling out with this daily posting, but already I'm in a blogging funk.
Part of the problem is that while researching interesting finds to post here, I became over saturated by the cleverness screaming out for attention on the interwebs. I found detailed pictures rendered on dirty windshields, pac man can art and lovely jewelry made of sugar crystals,(which I really do like). There is also icky ad campaigns of villages made entirely of meat (vegans, close your eyes). Soon I wanted to get away from the computer completely, get back into my nice, clean studio and work with good old fashioned art materials. And I wanted to be entirely non-verbal. Also, reading about Marilyn Manson's highly profitable art show several years ago of watercolours and a few mixed media pieces selling in a range of $1000-$55000 made me (jealous?) grumpy.
Sometime today, I ended up watching a video clip of comedy where both characters, the dufus and pretentious snob, perfectly reflect where my head is at today. I love this program. It's ridiculously creative, stream of consciousness comedy where all the sketches weave together in every episode. From Mr. Show -
Part of the problem is that while researching interesting finds to post here, I became over saturated by the cleverness screaming out for attention on the interwebs. I found detailed pictures rendered on dirty windshields, pac man can art and lovely jewelry made of sugar crystals,(which I really do like). There is also icky ad campaigns of villages made entirely of meat (vegans, close your eyes). Soon I wanted to get away from the computer completely, get back into my nice, clean studio and work with good old fashioned art materials. And I wanted to be entirely non-verbal. Also, reading about Marilyn Manson's highly profitable art show several years ago of watercolours and a few mixed media pieces selling in a range of $1000-$55000 made me (jealous?) grumpy.
Sometime today, I ended up watching a video clip of comedy where both characters, the dufus and pretentious snob, perfectly reflect where my head is at today. I love this program. It's ridiculously creative, stream of consciousness comedy where all the sketches weave together in every episode. From Mr. Show -
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The Bob Ross Song and a Tribute to the Other Bob
A fun and catchy little tune, "Why I Don't Paint People"
(@ Andrea, oh no you don't! I'm keeping my crown)
(@ Andrea, oh no you don't! I'm keeping my crown)
My art teacher through most of high school was also named Bob. He had the same laid back, kind nature as Bob Ross. However, happy, painted trees wasn't his forté. He made environmental art pieces, including giant balloons that floated on rivers and metal rods that sang in the wind. At the time, I thought it was pretentious, now I think it's great.
I've been cleaning my studio and purging old art from my life for the past 2 days. I have a small truckload of canvasses that are going to the dump. Also going are a few boxes of sketches, reference pictures and inspiration photos that are no longer inspiring. Here's a peek into my cleaner studio.
There is some terrible old art I found today that I'll never throw out. My high school sketchbooks from Bob's class are atrocious, but I love them. My progression from fluffy fashion teen to angsty emo girl can be seen in these books. Yet, Bob's comments were always so enthusiastic and kind. He encouraged his students to explore all their creative whims.He lent me his expensive camera and paid for making slides of my photos for a silly installation project I wanted to do. And when the back of the art class burned down, most likely because of me and the old Christmas lights I used in my over the top, anti-war diorama, he expressed no anger, just sincere sympathy that my passionate project was ruined. He was so understated I don't think he received the appreciation he deserved from the self absorbed teens he taught. Certainly not from me.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
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