Romancing the LookyLoos- David Hickey

This article was very telling of how people perceive art and music and the artists themselves. I found this very comical almost because the realization that we make art and/or music for people just like is pretty apparent now taking a step back and thinking about myself and other artists I know. Musicians that I know want to start off with their "independent label" but want to become "known" and yet they wont settle for becoming a secular artist. They dont want to sell out but they want the fame that comes with it. Being a participant instead of a spectator is a huge difference in how they interact with the artist or musician, but often times the spectators are the ones who empower the upcoming artist the most because of their authority and separateness from the artist, and their lack of care in general for the truth of the artist. In the art world the necessity for social networking and interaction is key in this day and age. But, does this mean you need to sell yourself to the spectators or is there a place to still be true to your work or art and yourself and to surround yourself with participants who are just like you.

Cage

"Something has been done almost everywhere, " he said. "So it leads very much to the complexity of life. Leads us to the enjoyment of complexity (Cage). Cage in this piece of writing talks about chance operations, and putting pieces together to create a composition similar to a piece of music. And that these pieces of music cultivate a sense of wholeness and complex ideas into one moment to create artwork. Speaking about such things as methods, intention, discipline, and devotion, are aspects I think any artist needs to take into consideration when they are constructing their moments in art or music alike. Also, as many artist follow along with Cage- imitation in their artwork, and often learn from other artists through appropriation in order to achieve some mastery. But the most eloquent line in this writing was when Cage was quoted saying that art should spill out of being beautiful and move over to other aspects of our lives. I think we often overlook that art shouldnt just be whatever we subjectively call beautiful and it should reinforce our other parts of our lives that influence how we live and who we are as artists in the world.

DJ Spooky-Rhythm Science

In this piece of reading I found it very interesting how he spoke about how the notion of creativity and originality and blurred today. There is so much of a mash up of sounds, music, knowledge, art already in our existence what we make is a lot of the same pieces of our naming something or remaking of something already in existence. Copies and repetition are embraced and manipulated to create new names for something. As it says in the article, quoting Goethe, "Our country, our customs, laws, our ambitions, and our notions of fit and fair- all these we never made, we found them ready made; but we quote them". This reminds me of my how the found objects I collect create my work and my sense of understanding what they found pieces used to be which enforce my ideas and my artwork created from them.

Bachelard Reading

Reading Bachelard resonates with my work as an artist and how intimate spaces or presence seem to emanate from my work. The house being the corner of the world, and a place where imagination runs throughout the home you grew up in, reminds me of times as a child where I used my imagination to create places for my things or treasured belongings. My house felt safe, and my things were safe inside these places in the home. The space you call home and the construct of having a roof sustain shelter from everything seems to safe keep us from the outside world, of reality. Homes also hold memories that reality cannot recreate, or reinvent. Within homes or our families homes we create memories that hold within that space and never leave. They may change the look of the space but the memories and imagined places we once lived or spent quality time with family in never leave our memory. I love the poetic language of the cellar or garret, and the attic within the home. The spaces where we have our deepest, most intimate moments or places where our deepest secrets are kept are often those places within the home where we fear to go, or to explore for fear of emptying ourselves out or our secrets to an unsafe place. The houses we live in, grew up in, or our families helped cultivate our lives in have an impact on us and our deepest memories of our lives.

second crit for drawing

first crit for drawing

Things I needed to post!

John Cage:

I loved all the talk about method and process, sets of rules and processes that he made for himself, especially concerning layout. Something I was exploring around the time I read this reading. Establish a set of rules, and then set out to break them. Art impacting life is something I need to practice more, and not letting my life impact my art.

DJ Spooky:

The thought of remixing and sampling obviously is something I firmly believe in and this confirms my beliefs. This was easy to read for me. I really liked the part about automatic writing; this is something I also do often. I have a tendency to do some automatic paintings that don’t necessarily end up right side up, sometimes its good to get some shit out and fall on your ass at the same time…

Rings of Saturn:

I’m glad I didn’t read this when I was depressed… I read this reading on pain medication after being in the hospital, so I found the hospital part really funny. It was not easy for me to relate to Flaubert's problem, I’m not sensitive and I could never be confined anywhere, nonetheless my couch. I was pretty turned off and it couldn’t keep my attention, whoops.

Air Guitar:

Call me stupid… been done, but this reading was great. It was written in a way where I could really hold on to it. This might be because of my attachment I have with music and just being around industry and industry folk. I can actually deal with music people much better then I can deal with art people. With them its easy to convince someone that your cooler then them if you throw the intimidators on and your best “poker face” (no pun intended), considering it is the industry of cool”. With art people, its not that simple… it’s a test to see who can be more socially awkward and introverted... be cool… but don’t look it… be rich, but dress like a slob… makes a lot less sense to me and I really truly suck at it. The reading got me thinking of a world that could be flipped, where the fans are the museum goers and the artists are rock stars. You have your indie folk, your metal folk, some classic rock and some sweet hip hop. The attitude might be different, the cloths, the red carpet, the fans, the “lingo” but we are all making something that appeals to the senses. It got me thinking about my work, specifically the text work. As do most of us, I think we all listen to some form of music while we work. My list spans from Bach to Britney Spears to Bauhaus and Missy Elliott to Ministry. I see my work kind of like songs, especially those, they just have the audio missing, but if you close your eyes you know what kind of tone those lyrics go too.

Happy Holidays!

-Brett