Archive for June, 2009
Once said, it can never be taken back…
Thursday, June 18th saw my first professional outing as an artist speaking publicly about their work.
Programmed by Cannery Works (a not-for-profit based in NY) and sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council the event was a success with a turn-out beyond the 70 seats we had hoped to fill. Though dark and stormy, art lovers turned out for a riveting discussion of photography as an art form and what we artists thought of the trend towards ever larger prints (hint: we all LOVE big prints).
The night was personally a pleasure for me: I’ve long felt comfortable in front of a crowd, and even more so when talking about something I know as well as my own work. My favorite moment of the evening came when someone asked “what makes us [the artists] think that our work was art?!?” I love questions like that – it gets the blood flowing and gets the audience interested!
The other artists, whom I am lucky enough to consider good friends, both discussed aspects of their ongoing projects (Timothy Briner and Matt Stacey).
I can’t wait to do it again… I hope to have some audio or video in the next few weeks.
VIDEO: My favorite “studio”…
I understand that work, like life, has a learning curve.
As I spend more of my time creating art I’m beginning to realize that having the time to do so does not necessarily mean that one will do so automatically.
Recently I spent several days alone in the woods working on sketches and concepts for my all consuming project, Carnivora. Below is a video that catches some of the elements I sought in order to help me help myself. It was a productive trip, though it left me yearning for more.
Consider this a tone poem: there’s nothing to really “get”… just a man in the woods.
Sights and Sounds
A glimpse, or a taste…
8:30pm, Manhattan, on a mercilessly cold and blustery midwinter night.
It took a moment to register, but soon I recognized the shape of a body huddled beneath the shivering blanket. The form seemed so at odds with the warm and vibrant scene just over it’s shoulder: a rainbow of flowers bloomed behind the glass and everything seemed right in that organized world. Though separated by only a few feet, I was devastated by the distance between the two.
shot with an iPhone 3G
A Career in the Arts? Really? – Part III
What drives someone to desire a career as an artist?
What makes them say, I’m going to make “art” for a living?
In hindsight, making the decision in college to switch majors, essentially turning my back on the sciences as a career and focusing on the arts wasn’t that hard a decision to make for me. I realized I wasn’t happy, and when I asked myself what would make me happy – being an artist immediately filled my field of vision.
I remember sitting in my chemistry professor’s office discussing some banal aspect of the day’s task. As I was wont to do: I cracked a joke, and though I’m by no means a professional comedian I’d garnered my share of prior laughs. The professor didn’t laugh. In fact, he looked at me as though I’d insulted him, and then looked back to his notebook. You see… he didn’t have time for jokes. He was a scientist and he was serious!
That had been the final straw for me: I knew that I didn’t want to spend my life cooped up in a lab with folks who only wanted to understand the scientific underpinnings of laughter. I wanted to laugh.
(NOTE: with that said, I have since met many hysterical, life-loving scientists, and realize that everyone’s mileage may vary)
Once the decision was made, I never looked back.
my college studio
Of course, if you’ve read the first two parts of this short series you know that it hasn’t been all art, all the time – far from it in fact. I’d liken the process to something more akin to the lining up of planets: once in awhile Mars and Venus align so that you can see them both from the Earth.
Stay tuned for Part IV, the final installation of this ongoing look at the origins of an interest in the arts. Click here to view Part I and here for Part II.