Art Art Art

This weekend was Open Studio at Alexander Hall. Alexander Hall was at one time an old supermarket that SCAD converted into classrooms for the undergraduates on the first floor and twenty-five or so 10x10 studio rooms for the graduate students on the second floor. On Saturday night all the doors were open and the art was on the walls and there were fancy refreshments going around and everyone got a good look at some really fantastic art. You weren't allowed to take photos but I snapped a few. I actually took allot of photos (shhh...) But I'm only going to post a very very very few select on here. The studios were lots of fun to see, almost as fun as the art itself. The terms are you can do whatever you like to your 10x10 cube as long as at the end you return it to white walls and account for all the outlets. Needless to say there some pretty interesting set ups and it was informative to see what tools they were using, and how they were managing the space. Allot of the studios mirrored the art that was displayed on their outside walls. The same color schemes from a painting could be found splattered on the wall or smeared on a palette.


I'm currently working on two pieces again. One for Painting, the other for Drawing III. I'm posting some photos of some of the recent pieces I have finished while they were still in progress. I photographed them finished in the studio yesterday but I have yet to put them up here.

Hope everyone to be well, and have fun preparing for Thanksgiving. I've been looking up different dishes to make for this Thanksgiving dinner and I think it's going to be pretty spectacular.

You may like to visit this website. He's a graduate student named Will Penny who does some really interesting, abstract, and aesthetically logical pieces. The marlin I photographed was done by him.

Bye!

"The Origin of Love"

For Drawing III our last projects agenda was to tell a story. It didn't take me too long to decide to tell the story of the origin of love, as told (or sung) by Hedwig from the fantastic musical, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. I have had quite the history with this play, it has been in and out of my life for years now and I just can't seem to leave it alone. Or maybe it can't leave me alone, I'm not yet sure. The lyrics can be found here.
     Summed up, the story of the origin of love goes like this. Long ago, when the earth was still flat there were three types of people. They looked like two people glued up back to back and some of them were two men (children of the sun), two women (children of the earth), and one woman and one man (children of the moon). These beings roamed the earth and gained knowledge and were very strong and extremely sentient. The gods became scared of how able these beings were becoming so Zeus decided to split them in half with his lightning bolts. One fateful afternoon he did so. We were torn apart, straight down the middle. Another god started a storm and swept us all away all over the ends of the earth, alone and stranded. The loneliness we associate with love is really the pain of the wound that split our hearts in half. The search for love is the search for the other half, and once we have found that other half, making love is the closest we can come to becoming one being again.
     My piece is in response to that. It is painted in Acrylic on canvas on two separate pieces so that you can switch their positions. They can be either together or apart. There is lots of thought put into what is behind each of the heads. On one side you have a closed eyed contemplative faced young man with the earth and a galaxy behind him. On the other you have an open eyed man with a brain, and the sun behind him. I believe that the sun and the brain are similar celestial objects whereas the earth and the galaxy are also similar celestial objects. The sun and brain emit energy, the earth and the galaxies are places where energy has pacified, it is not as turbulent and on the surface (or inside) of these tranquil environments more complex materials can be found, those such as the human brain.
     There is an interesting pattern that arises if you think about this in a evolutionary manner and look at the levels where material has reached some sort of stable form. Atoms, galaxies, suns, planets, humans. They all reach a maximum complexity at which point more complex entities emerge, almost like condensation, and begin their own journey towards maximum complexity. I talked about this last year when I wrote an essay on material evolution.
     This piece is also meant to show the tension that comes from love. Love is not possible without separation, just as these two beings can only see each others faces when they are separated. As one, they are ignorant of the pain. Are they better off this way?

The pictures below are of the work underneath the paint and also a sneak peek of my oil painting project that I'm working on in class, which is in half an hour. And my egg painting got on the wall! So that's good.

Alla Prima amongst others...

On Wednesday in my Exploration in Oils Class we painted in Alla Prima style. That means we did one painting in 2.5 hours. It was lots of fun. In 2.5 hours you can only get so detailed and you can't really hope to reach equal detail around the painting but the fun part is getting all the coarse parts down and then going in selectively and figuring out how parts of it looks to a much denser degree. I need to work more on this selective information vignetting in my pieces. I find I have more or less an equal level of detail on the entire canvas. I look forward to doing some more Alla Prima's on my own time and trying to work on this idea.
Bought a new bike recently. My old one got stolen. Got a good deal on this new one though and it is quite a blast to speed around town on gears that actually work. If anyones looking to buy a bike in Savannah I recommend Sekka bikes. They are nice people.

 




I also included a picture of the palette I used for the Alla Prima. The palette is like the other side of the painting; it's all the same materials ordered by color but they are not yet ordered by location. It takes both location and color to create the illusion of things. (or people)
I'm working on some pretty exciting and personal pieces for the next two projects in Drawing III and Painting (one project per class). I'll keep y'all updated on how they are going.

A Few Weeks In...

Yeasayer is coming here this weekend. If your looking for some good music look them up. Check out their song Ambling Alp. Here are some photos of the house, and my Drawing 3 project. More photos of the project soon. I'll probably edit this post soon but I wanted to get these up there.

Back in Savannah! Flew in on Monday morning and set all my stuff up. The city is amazing, per usual, and the weather, though hot, has been beautiful. The new house I'm living in is amazing! High ceilings, a nice kitchen, big windows, a deck, and wonderful friends makes for an amazing environment. It's been nice to hang out at the house but whats even nicer is being able to leave and come back to the house. It's a good feeling.

The picture above is of Gillian pointing to a doodle from last year. What you see behind her is our front door.

Long Ponderings

My thoughts have been hanging on me like the Spanish Moss rests on the trees. It multiplies the stillness implied by the mass of the tree by being so delicate and ethereal.

I added some new stuff to the blog, some pictures of artwork, and a better video gallery. I'll hopefully start writing more in here now that school will be starting soon. I'm looking forward for that quadrant of my year to start.
I changed my major to painting. I'm still going to the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia but instead of Computer Animation and Technical Direction, painting is now my path. And like all paths, it must be walked upon with vigour; not lightly treaded, scared of leaving a mark, and definitely not stamped upon, ignorant and awkward, but a graceful stride should be the gait of ones choice.

I climbed a tree today. This is the picture I got from up at the top.

Enjoy the newness!

Consequences of Believing our Senses > An intro-introduction

I have decided to start writing a philosophy I have been working on for the last year. I didn't know I was working on a philosophy a year ago and I am not sure if that's the right way to think about it, but now that I have made this my number one goal in life many things have cleared up.The nice thing about philosophy is that you don't need anybody or anything to do it, and you don't need to be anywhere at any particular time in order to think about it. On the bus, in my bed, painting a picture, riding my bike, are all examples of times that I have had the most interesting thinking experiments. It is my life goal to create my own philosophy and that is a goal that I know I will never reach. Having that as my number one goal, however, allows everything else to be more relaxed and filled with less tension. If my goal in life was to sail around the world in a giant piece of macaroni I might be tense that I couldn't do it. But now that I know I can't ever reach this bigger goal and that there are no other goals to be my "number-one-most-important-life-goal-ever-that-has-been" I can relax knowing that I can not fail in life.

This doesn't mean that I'm going to wake up late tomorrow and not go to class and not try to be the best animator/visual effects artist in the world. I have more than one goal in my life and I hope to accomplish all of them. But knowing that my biggest goal is one I will never reach is a good feeling that will probably help me achieve the smaller goals in a classier more composed manner. If there's anything I wan't to be, it's classy.

So this essay is going to be presented in parts, each one revealed as I write it. The order I am planning on goes as such:

-Entropy
-Evolution
-Work and Negentropy
-Consciousness
-Quality and perception

We will see if I stick to this... Also, I think I might call the whole thing "Consequences of Believing our Senses" Sounds pretty catchy to me, and the whole thing came as a result of believing my senses, and our senses are strictly relative to our conscious and our bodies meaning that the consequences for each might be slightly different for each, for each of us has had different senses but sensed them the same way. There is a lot to that title that I could explain but that's what the essay is for.

Check back for more!

Life Drawing

Some sketches of a skull we did for life drawing. 3 different views, one very dead person.

Artist Statement: Color Symbolism

    For our color theory final I chose to paint a scene showing what I believe to be the story of humankind. Humans, since their earliest incarnation, have always been unsatisfied with what they know and by this lack of satisfaction strive to know more than they did before. What is interesting to me is that as we explore further into the depths of the universe and further into the deepness of the atom we find not answers but only more questions. The more we know, the more we can question and the more we realize how much of a mystery it is that we are here.
    A constant companion on our search for pure truth has been logic. 2+2=4 all over the universe and the unbroken consistency of this fact has been a map allowing us to find patterns and rhythms in our environment. However, pure logic such as this has always seemed to be something external from us, a carrot leading the way towards something else. I think that this "something" is the realization that logic is not external but also internal and all through-out everything that ever is, has been, and will be. It is only when we truly realize this that we uncover the truth that has been looking us in the eyes. We are everything.
    In my painting there are four main elements. The red arm, the brown desert floor, the blue sky, and the black and white stellated octahedron. The meaning of each and their color is as follows: The brown desert represents the dull lifeless beginnings of this earth. Brown is the color of dirt and the earth. Humans came from this brown earth and are represented by the red hand. The hand is red to represent the passion that humans have. Red is a passionately sensual or violent color and the fact that it can be so bipolar but still stay passionate is a symbol of our ability to apply quality to everything we know. Things can be good or bad, but they really aren't. It's just how we think of them. Passion is also a messy thing, the hand is crafted as such to emphasize the untidy nature of our emotions.
    The red hand is reaching up towards the black and white stellated octahedron. A stellated octahedron is two tetrahedrons inverted and placed within each other. A simplified 2D design of this octahedron also resembles the Jewish Star and the Masonic Symbol. This geometric design represents pure logic; black and white. It is perfect and can be no other way for then it would not be what it is now. The red hand of passion is reaching towards this perfection and as it reaches upwards it also ascends into the darker deeper mysteries of our reality, represented by the ever darkening blue sky.
    As we reach towards logic, away from our primitive beginnings, we find deeper mystery in everything.




Maybe.

Self Portrait

I just got back from class, actually thats wrong. I just got back from SCAD Cafe and before that I had just gotten back from class. That's the way things really happened. In class we turned in our self portraits and I took a picture of mine so I could throw it up here. It was done in colored pencil on red Mi-Tientes paper (fancy name for construction paper that costs more). We were supposed to draw ourselves monochromatically and then add a halo behind our heads and also add something biographical to the piece.

The idea to do mine this way came to me one night when I couldn't get to bed. It strangely and suddenly popped in my head as if somebody had pressed next in a slide show. I find that this happens to me more and more. An idea will literally "pop" into my head and then I try and execute it as best I can. A good example of this was my final for drawing last year. I was sitting in class staring at the table as my professor was explaining the guidelines for the drawing and all of a sudden I knew exactly what I wanted to do, how to do it, where all the parts would fit in, and the colors that I would do it in. So then I did it and I was quite pleased. Same thing with this project.

I always wonder where these ideas come from. Do they ascend from the depths of my consciousness? Or maybe they descend from a global consciousness like dew drops condensing on a spider web. Either way I can tell my skills are improving as each finished project looks more and more like the one I first saw in my head. It's just a matter of showing everybody else.

Also, the background is based on a 16th century textile design.

Bezold Effect

This was a project for color theory. We made a repeating pattern and then showed that by changing only one color of the pattern, you can drastically change how it appears. Take a look! 

Artistic Statement

(This was a manuscript speech (to be read word for word) that I presented for my Public Speaking class.)

I follow my rules and I don't follow the rules of anyone else. This is my life, and I will run it as I see fit. It's the one time in all of time that I will be here and I don't need people telling me what to do. I'll do what I want to do. 

Who I am as an artist is the same as who I am. The rules and regulations by which I create any piece of art are the same rules and regulations that I apply to my life. If a rule doesn't apply to all aspects of both my art and my life then it's just a guideline. I do what I do because it is the only thing I can do under these rules and regulations. As such, whatever I do will be inherently "Clintonish." This is my style.

These rules and regulations have been influenced by over 19 years of sensory input. Everything I have done from day zero to the moment I say this next word influences the moment after it. However some things have greater weight than others. I'd be lying if I told you that finding a penny on August 14, 1997 was as important to me as reading "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance." But you never can tell.

The three biggest influences on my rules and regulations that I am consciously aware of are:

The film, "The Hours" directed by Stephen Daldry,

The book, "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers, and

The painting "Luncheon of the Boating Party" by Pierre-Auguste  Renoir

Each of these works of art both diversify and enhance my mesh of connections. I find that the messages they portray are real in every sense of the word, and in every sense of everything. 

The Hours is a film released in late 2002 starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Ed Harris. The screenplay is based off a book by Michael Cunningham. The movie explores the lives of three different women in three different time points all connected by the book, "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf. The film follows the three women for a single day in which we see each of them strained as far as they ever have been. It's an incredibly truthful and beautiful portrayal of man questioning himself, his reasons to live, to go on, and the answers that each of us individually must find. It's a lonely adventure living life. "The Hours" shows us the extremes of our isolation.

This realization is deeply saddening and the movie is not one to watch after the death of your favorite hamster. But I've been told that pain is weakness leaving the body. We shouldn't pleasure ourselves all the time, otherwise we'll lose the contrast. Contrast makes the darks darker, but it also makes the brights brighter.

"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers is a brutally honest look at "normal" life, the grey between the lights and darks. Under McCullers perceptive writing, all the traits of her characters, their thoughts, their actions and reasons and logic are brought into view with a sincerity so clean and sharp that you find yourself reading not about the characters, but about yourself. In one part of the book, a thirteen year old girl called "Mick" walks into a restaurant and orders a coke. She's done it before and will do it again, but each time is unique. Why does she go into the bar? Who did she want to see? Did she find what she was looking for? McCullers explores and explains all of this. To a further extent than even McCullers took, all of Micks actions, no matter how simple, are governed by a complex network that is Mick. For her to simply breathe requires coordination between trillions of independent cells. The simpler something seams, the more complex it truly is. I test this rule to everything I do everyday, and I have yet to find a situation where it goes wrong. 

The third stop on this tour of things that live in my brain is "Luncheon of the Boating Party" by Renoir. Ever since I can remember this painting always stood out to me when I saw it in books, or online, or remembered it out of the blue. It is a painting of people enjoying time on this earth. If there is any rule that I adhere to the most, it is this one. The casual laid back style of everyone at this painted party is a reminder that things will be ok. Yes, there are ups and downs. Yes, time to time things really go wrong. Yes, life is a bitch. But, at the end of the day, it's important that we enjoy our time on this planet. Remember, the clock is ticking. 

I follow my rules, and I don't follow the rules of anyone else. Neither do I expect anybody else to follow my rules. I do expect, at least I hope, that other people follow their own rules. When they do this, they are being true to themselves and they really can't go wrong.ß

Who I am as an artist, well it really doesn't matter. I'm not an artist. I'm not anything except for a human being trying to have a good time.

Recent Art Work and Photographs

February Art

"An unexamined Life is not worth Living"

( Rarely does one get the chance to speak their mind to an audience of more than 2 people. In speech and public speaking this year, I have had the chance three times to tell 19 other people at once what is on my mind. I view each speech not as an assignment but as an opportunity. This speech on Entropy is one of two that I am putting on my blog in the next few days. They have been edited a little to make them more readable instead of more speachable. Enjoy! )

"An unexamined Life is not worth Living"

-Socrates

Why are planets round? 

Why are bubbles round?

Why are there patterns in nature that repeat themselves throughout the cosmos?

     In searching for answers to these questions I have formulated my own philosophy. It's based off of observations of my own and observations of others that have come before me. My philosophy is my religion and Entropy is my god. In the next few minutes I'll try and quickly explain this abstract theory.

Entropy

     The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics: The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will increase towards a maximum value of equilibrium. Entropy is an abstract term that explains the universal phenomenon of irreversibility in a closed system.

     Imagine you have a cup of tea sitting on a desk. As you wait, the tea will cool down and eventually reach the temperature of the room. The tea and the air surrounding it will have reached equilibrium. This is important, equilibrium is standstill. No further action can occur. The tea and the room have reached their simplest terms under the given conditions. You may be able to heat the tea back up, but this requires work which pulls the energy from somewhere else. It’s a lose-lose situation.

     The fact that the tea is in the mug may also be explained entropically. The fluid tea has assumed its simplest structure under the given conditions, the conditions being the ceramic mug. If you were to break the mug the fluid would again find it's simplest structure and spill down onto the floor.

     Entropy will increase until the maximum value of equilibrium has been reached. Entropy explains why you are here, right now, reading this paper. Under the given conditions, could you be doing anything else?

Material Evolution

     The universe began with the big bang “the ultimate free lunch” Everything in the universe now came out of this bang and is still hurtling away from the origin. Immediately after the big bang “banged” materials started fusing together to create new particles that fused together again to create even more new particles. Very soon atoms formed and Hydrogen and Helium evolved  into even more complex elements: Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon. All this matter production was the result of the system assuming a simpler structure based on the conditions involved. This is material evolution through equilibrium and simplification.

     Eventually things started to level out, entropy reached ever heightening levels and energy was more broadly spread out. Things became not so disruptive. Planets formed, the earth was created. At first it was a bubbling ball of lava but things settled, the planet cooled, water and land divided and the environment became tranquil enough for conditions conducive for life.

     Darwin was right. We did evolve. Simplest structures won the fight. Space dust to planets to bacteria to Humans, each of us have been adapted to fit our constraints. But we Humans changed everything. Our ability to think abstractly allowed us to see patterns in nature. We were able to deconstruct our complex environment and reconstruct it into a system that would work for us. Everything that we touch, or use, or see, or buy, has been deconstructed and synthesized from natural materials . Realizing that our environment was a sum of smaller parts that we could mold to our will, technology took hold and we made our way through the stone age, the bronze age, the iron age, eventually into the present: the silicon age. Each age could not have existed without the previous. We started by smashing birds with blunt rocks and now we can split the atom. Again, an evolution of material. 

     Planet Earth and all of us living on top of this small blue orb are one of the fastest changing systems in the universe. We are moving evolutionally at an ever quickening pace. Each age that humanity has passed through has been shorter than the one before it. However the material systems we create can'’t even begin to reach the level of complexity that makes us who we are. We are each of us individually the most complex material in the universe. Matter that is self aware. There’s nothing like it except you and me.

The Ultimate Fade Out

     The Entropy of a system can only increase. Eventually all energy will be equally distributed around the universe and when entropy is at a total, no further action can occur. 

Life is action. When no further action can occur life will end.

     The cold remnants of dead stars and stray planets will spread out indefinitely until they are eaten by massive black holes that will later decay into enormous sub-atomic particles spinning around an axis larger than the current universe, spinning silently through the void. Even these super-atoms will decay and the universe, the void that was once filled with life, will be empty once again. 

Why go on?

     So what do I do know? How can I live life knowing that in the end all human accomplishments will mean nothing. I think of this and I feel ill as the weight of such a nothing crushes down on my feeble material mind. But “nothing” is an interesting idea. For something to mean nothing, for it to truly be without any meaning, that absence is itself something.

Work Cited

• Arnheim, Rudolf. Entropy and Art. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971. Print.

• Alfred Whitehead. Process and Reality. Hw Wilson Co, 1978. Print.

• "Entropy Intuition." YouTube. Web. 26 Jan 2010.

• "Entropy as Time's Arrow." HyperPhysics Concepts. Georgia State University, Web. 26 Jan 2010. <http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/therm/entrop.html>.

• Solloman, Robert. Introducing Philosophy. 7th ed. Oxford University Press, 2007. Print.

First Week Back

Savannah is still cold! Monday temperatures will start to rise but it is going to be a chilly next few days. Eeps! I successfully made it to all my classes this past week and I quite enjoy the way my schedule fell into place. All my professors are really interesting and I look forward to learning lots this semester. Tonight I took a few pictures of some of the artwork I hadn't photographed last semester. Enjoy!

Savannah, Savannah...

Well I flew back into the most beautiful city to find it in the grasp of the cold hard fist of chilly weather. Hmmmm... where did all the heat go? But it's nice to be back. Unpacked everything, arranged my room, bought some shenanigans to get me back to running capacity and am ready for anything from classes tomorrow to the possible end of the world. Maybe not so much on the later, but classes definitely.

Almost everyone is back here now and it's good to see that although Christmas and New Years did have an effect on everyone, they are still the people I remember and look forward to learning with. Everybody has so much to show and tell about their break. It's fascinating listening to the diverse and distinct stories they have.

Also, I just got the most awesome book ever about how New York City works. It's fascinating but I think I'll save it for another posting when I'm not as tired. Chow!