By popular demand (sort of)

Here's some raw, wrinkly bamboo. I just couldn't resist using some blue. I still have to work out mixing proportions for the ink; I'm using too much binder.

New year's resolution update (again)

I hardly ever try to do the new year's resolution thing, so I give the tradition no credit for me trying to improve my painting situation. But it's still a good excuse if anyone asks.

"Um.... why are you spending so much time splashing paints around?"

"Have to. New Year's Resolution."

I wonder how many things you can apply that to?

"Why are you wearing a green 'fro?"

"New Year's Resolution."

"Well, I guess that's OK, then."

Was that as good for you as it was me? ^^

At any rate. Above is my new table all finished. As mentioned before, it's really a glorified coffee table, but it was still a nice project.

I've never made anything remotely like furniture before, so it was interesting. To the right is a picture of the table from the front while I was staining it.

Hopefully this will not be the end of my efforts to try to spend increasing amounts of time on ink painting because I have a long ways to go.

Treeness

I really love this tree. It's such a humble thing. After painting it, I feel for the first time that I am getting somewhere with my painting. This tree came from inside me, and that's saying something.

New year's resolution update

So, have you totally given up on your Resolution yet? I set myself a pretty steep goal (considering I'm a novice and just who isn't busy?) of spending 8 hours a day dedicated to painting.

So far I have increased my average by as much as an hour, and hopefully I will be able to do even more soon. I have just started staining and finishing my work table. It's really just a glorified custom coffee table, but hopefully it will be a big help keeping me comfortable and focused while working.

I am starting to run low on all kinds of paper, but hopefully I'll get in a new supply in April or May.

Then I can start doing more fun stuff like the tipsy tree above.

How to Fail as an Artist, 5

So how do you start pulling down the big bucks? How do you get everyone's attention? The answer is simple: Bigness.

If you want people to know how big you are, all you need to do is demonstrate for them. It really doesn't matter what you are into as long as you can do it bigger than anyone else. It doesn't even have to be better as long as it is inhumanly large. Even manure can become high art as long as you can make a big enough mountain of it in a really inappropriate place.

Therefore, if you paint, your paintings must all be at least 12 feet tall. This ensures that a rich person or museum has to buy it, for one. Also, exaggeration stimulates the brain. The larger you make something, the more stimulating it will be, and people will be forced to acknowledge your artistic greatness by the more primitive portions or their brains.

This also goes for sculptures without saying, but don't forget to apply it to the more popular forms of sculpture making the rounds: installation art and found object sculpture.

Many artists have already successfully applied the Bigness principle, so you'll have to work hard to catch up.

This is why inappropriateness is so important. Exaggerating size is a great first step, but since it a well-known yet never openly-talked-of secret, you also need to combine it with something inappropriate. That way you can overwhelm peoples senses and sensibilities at the same time.

Personally, I am fostering secret plans to release 30 tons of oranges set with sparklers into them Little Miami river on a highly inappropriate occasion. Wish me luck, but don't spill the beans.

(above photo: Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen, Spoonbridge and Cherry, 1985-1988)

Gnarly

I love twisted, gnarly tree trunks and branches. I'm still a bit messy with them, but that doesn't diminish my enjoyment.

Next week: either an Resolution update or How to Fail post. Whichever comes first.

Is it art?

There is never ending debate about what makes something art. One answer seem to have become axiomatic over the last few decades. Only the artist him/herself can decide that any given object it art.

To understand why anyone would believe this, it helps to know that in the early part of last century, Marcel Duchamp set up this precedent by submitting to an art show a glazed porcelain toilet which he had grafittoed with the pen name R. Mutt. In his defense, the toilet/urinal thing did have some great lines.

In the decades that followed, particularly the Sixties, people who wanted to answer the question 'What is art?' but were too lazy to put any real thought into it decided to put the whole thing in the lap of the artists and sometimes curators. At least then you know who to blame.

However, this sort of sloppy logic is demonstrably untrue. Many objects that were never intended by their makers to be art now reside in art museums (the spearhead on the right is in the MET). Many objects created with great artistic fervor now reside in landfills.

From bronze daggers to ball gowns, bodily fluids to burnt offerings, what makes something art has little to do with assertions and a whole lot to do with social constructions. Just like money, art exists because we agree it exists. Only the most personal art forms can be considered art with only the artist's assertion because the artist acts as both creator and admirer of art.