Where have I been?!!? Such old news here on this site! Well, I’ve been getting ready for Artomatic – the semi-somewhat-annual DC universalist, almost immersive art festival. Artomatic opens April 13 and runs through May 20 at 2121 Crystal Drive in Arlington, VA just off of the Crystal City Metro Redline stop. The event is taking over two floors of an office building undergoing rennovations and will feature over 400 artists.

 What’s my involvement?

I have a space on the 6th floor, Section A, Room 44 (Room 6a44). I will be featuring three different groups of art on my wall: Individual framed traditional work (my portraits), a collection of photo prints of every drawing Ive done in the past 15 years arranged in chronological order (like a visual diary or self portrait!), and I will also have a section of digital photo frames, prints, and a canvas print of my data visualization and Second Life work.

HOWEVER! The coolest thing is that I will also, through Dorkbot DC’s courtesy, be projecting my Second Life 3D world SintixErr Gallery for DC Artists into the digital arts room! Not only that, but since they have WiFI, I’ve been working with Claudia Vess (in charge of the digital room) to broadcast various live (music, poetry reading, etc.) events into the Second Life gallery as an extension of Artomatic into the virtual world! That’s pretty cool

This is all very last minute. After having heard of Artomatic in the background for ages (I wasn’t around for the last one), it really didn’t make my radar for a long time. Everyone else, though, was really excited and the enthusiasm spread eventually! I ultimately registered and got a space, thanks to Angela Kleis who volunteered to grab me an area on my assigned day while I was out of town seeing the Cure. (Yes, Paivi and I went to see them play – I was the first one past the gate at Ultra and was front and center the whole time – saw Porl play for the first time! – at the Ultra dance music festival in Miami..I might write a post about that later). 

So far, Ive been at the building every night this week, and a few last week, volunteering or setting up my space. It’s a deep red with off-white molding (you know, opulant victorian). It’s a very powerful color and is the only one that’s NOT in any of my framed work. Im in the process of framing the wall itself with black curtains, covering the ugly blue carpet with gold material, getting pillows, etc, etc, etc. It should be gorgeous – or at least tacky (Im often a bit over the top). My only gripe is that Ive absolutely destroyed my last good pair of pants (long story) – Im a really messy painter.

All of the set-up, though, has also given me the opportunity to spend some time with and get to know better a number of people I like and don’t normally get to see often (or just met) – Angela, Mr ArtDC himself (Jesse), Sean, Michael, Rebecca (although she still hasnt met me for coffee yet, pshaw!). 

 Angela also interviewed me a few weeks back about my Second Life work and you can find the link HERE.

During all this, we’ve also introduced two new artists to the SintixErr Gallery in Second Life and worked out the arrangement with Small World galleries (affiliated with a real life NYC gallery). I sent over the works of a number of the artists at the SintixErr and the Small World people are doing an outstanding job with them – 5 of the artists I sent over have sold work there  – and they’re not even open yet! Amazing, Im thrilled!

 Luckily for me, Artomatic had provided a good break from Second Life, but Ill be back in-world extensively later this week prepping the area for the next month’s artomatic stuff!

(Unrelated Top Edit since this doesn’t need its own post: I’ve added my technical resume to this site in the Pages section if anyone is curious. I’m trying to consolidate the “plethora” of online personalities I’ve built up over the years.)

The past two or three weeks, I’ve been spending a lot of energy in and around the art world (and writing), but have been too busy to actually produce anything myself. This weekend I was determined to change that. For whatever reason, though, I just couldn’t bring myself to do another portrait. Honestly, I think it’s because I haven’t come across any faces that have really inspired me lately. So, instead (and because it had been a long time since I had drawn buildings or anything else that requires real perspective in a piece) I chose to use a slice of DC itself. I wanted to try and make an expressive portrait of a scene completely devoid of people.

What I ended up drawing was a cell phone capture of 3 or 4 unused buildings on Eye Street in Washington, DC just north east of China Town. I had taken it last Sunday while I was out in the area with Art Outlet folk. The street corner isn’t particularly special – it looks a lot like many other DC streets – but I thought the mix of building color (especially the boarded up windows) in contrast to all of the flat gray surroundings would be interesting. The rules I set for myself were: no rulers, no measurement markers, and a one hour max completion time. What came out was this:

(More to come later, this post has been interrupted by an artoutlet.org meeting.)

Now back. As I was saying… The above picture is obviously not going for intricate detail. All of the squares repeating really gets tedious. Instead, I tried to use some of the same techniques I use for face portraits (namely to get down the main details that strike me as the most interesting and core to the feeling of the face) and apply them to a city scene. In this case, I thought these were the specific things that held it together:

• The green window area of the second building
• The burnt/exposed brick area on the side of the second building
• The blue/white split of the third building
• The fire escape on the 2nd/3rd story of the second building
• The window repetition of the furthest (office) building
• The blue dumpster in front of the third building
• The fence next to the second building
• Tree branches and the sign coming in from the right side
• The yellow boarded windows (others were grey)

Once all of these things were represented somehow on paper (just enough so they were recognizeable), the other details didn’t really matter so much and could be fudged. How many windows there are on the last building or what exactly they look like really doesn’t change the character and feeling of the scene at all. The detail of the black car past the dumpster didn’t matter either, the subjects of the piece were the buildings and not the things around them. As long as some bare minimum context was provided, the main points identified above were sufficient for the purposes of expression.

I think the portrait techniques worked and, if not technically brilliant, I think the piece that came out has a definite personality.

(As a side note, I pencil sketched this first and added the conte crayon on top. The pencil itself would never have caught enough of the feeling to allow for an expressionist attempt like this without a lot more attention to detail.)

In the next several months, it looks like we (speaking with an artoutlet.org hat on) are going to be having at least two more shows that we’ll be looking for artists to participate in. One will be a self-portrait focused event and the other will revolve around more “active” art: anything that moves, shines, has electrons flowing through it, involves live performance, thinks, connects to the internet, or is in any way interactive.

The self-portrait show I expect to be juried and I’m not sure about the other event – details are at their early stages. I do believe, though, that we’re going to have a different taste and style from other shows. So, if you’re in the area of greater Washington, DC (or want to show your artistry here) and happen across this post, feel free to contact me  or info@artoutlet.org (until the artoutlet page has something official up) – even if you haven’t considered showing before. I’m very much interested in finding interesting, moving, fascinating art – regardless of what the art world in general is doing or has done. If it works, it works.

(Bear in mind this is still tenative and I’ll put out a more formal call here when things are firmed up – but I’d still like to hear from you in the mean time. These are community events, first and foremost, so your questions and comments are absolutely considered and welcomed.)

ARTISTIC VISION

People are interesting. For every life, there is a fascinating story to be heard.

Some stories are larger than life, grandsiose, beautiful, heart wrenching, or just outright fascinating epic works. These lives are the ones that get the most attention – they’re easy to show, easy to present, are somewhat obviously interesting, and are glorious in their own right.

 The other lives, though, are smaller, might not have any striking affect on the world around them, or just don’t plainly fit into what we think of as a well defined story. That does not make them, though, any less interesting or varied or less worth hearing about…they simply need to be given the right space.

 And in the end, no matter what our story is, whether we’re beaten or torn, pristing or dirty, large or small, well sketched or just scrawled, we (all of them) ultimately share the same fate and are part of the largest, simplest story of all: To be lit, to burn our time, and then to finally fade out.

The goal of my Vignettes in Flux installation on January 27th in Arlington is to show you these stories together: To bring into paralell, through 24 portrait sketches and small works, done over 15 years,  a variety of disconnected  lives and stories and the single fate that we all share. You will be able to look in through dusty windows and see short glimpses of the lives of these lonely pieces of art. By selecting the appropriate tracks on 2 provided CD players, you will be able to hear the artist tell the story behind the faces you see. How they came to be, Who they are, and why they exist. Some stories will be about the art, some the subjects, and sometimes you will hear both – there often isn’t any different in the artist’s mind.

Although they will begin the evening lit, these vignettes will all eventually fade into the darkness as the night progresses, their stories over.

INSTALLATION TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION

I’m going to be using one of the garage doors at the Danville Body Shop to present these 24 pieces of art as vignettes. While most would not stand on their own, I think they are more together than they would be apart.
There will be one picture per garage door window. These pictures will be hung inside the building facing out to the parking lot so you have to look in to see them. Each one will be individually lit (using glow sticks) so you will be able to see 24 glowing windows from the outside. Each glowstick will be opened randomly throughout the day before the show so that, as the event progresses, the lights in each window will slowly start to fade one by one…dimming until they’re effectively out altogether. At the end, they should all be dark or close to it.
The pictures themselves will all be hung a small distance from the window (1 foot back?) with black wire so they appear to be floating in the air behind the windows in the light. I believe they will all be matted. The area behind the pictures will be backdropped with something black and not very reflective to give some illusion of empty space behind the art.

Id also like to provide 2 cheap ($10/$15) portable cd players mounted in front of the display. Both will have the same CD in them. A viewer will be able to select a track # based on the windows of the portrait they want to hear about…and will be presented with quick stories about the art like the ones you all heard the other night.

I like the idea of giving these sort of pieces a viewing…there normally isn’t a place for them, but I think together in this context it will come across very well….

The following link has two images of a full-scale cardboard/plexiglass mockup I did of 2 windows:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sintixerr/sets/72157594482149189/

I’m at the tail end of a long (9 episodes, can yah hear me!) marathon of watching Nip Tuck on DVD. I had only seen one episode before, so it was all completely new. Outstanding series, but I bring it up only to introduce the two sketches I did tonight -one in pen, the other in pencil. (There’s a third in charcoal but Im still playing in the sandbox with her.) Both were of old pictures I found in an art magazine, so the subject matter isn’t original, but the look and feel of the finished works are uniquely mine (I particularly like the girl on the bottom left of the pencil drawing…she’s mine and me).

What I find interesting is how much more I love my sketches than my fully planned, large, art pieces that need quotes around the word “art” when I describe them. In some circles, it’s all about the artist’s vision and what he has to say. But, at least in my case, I find that what I want to “say” is just what I see. Not line for line, shade for shade, angle for angle, but how things are to me. How is that different you might ask? The former (my vision) is a whole lot more intellectual. Art done for that reason tends to use the medium for expressing the brain. Maybe it’s all about how your hear feels at the outset, but it still has to be filtered through that analytical engine upstairs – the part of your brain that is the Ticktockman to Harlan Ellison’s Harlequin of your heart.

But with sketches…I get a chance to put on paper (as maybe you do as well) what my heart and soul see. When you work that quickly and just -don’t care-, your brain takes a nap…or plays interstellar golf with God or …something. Why should such a big, important organ participate in idle doodles?

My brain never had that much interesting to say…and I think that’s true of most people. Really, it’s just a pattern recognition and prediction engine…a big calculator. It might be good at slicing and dicing my rawhumanity into forms more palatable for every day (Walmart) use, but that’s not very interesting is it? Not -unique- and not -me-.

At any rate, Nip Tuck let me zone out with its exquisite prefab’d entertainment, my brain went away, and I got to sketch today. I love it.

So……the opening at MOCA was last night. I ultimately ended up hanging 4 pieces – even the one with a frame I was unhappy with (A lot of people liked it anyway, which goes to show there’s no accounting for taste).

It was an enjoyable evening and a lot of my good friends showed up – including a couple that I hadn’t seen in some time. The quality of work around mine was much better than I was expecting (and Im grateful for that!). I didn’t really meet too many of the artists, but I did talk to a couple of them. Unfortunately I really didn’t know who was who and since Im usually pretty shy in those situations, I didn’t go introduce myself. Some of my feedback to Dave will be that he should have artists wear nametags at openings (as they did at the City Hall heART of DC opening) so that the public walking through recognizes the artists and so the arists can recognize each other.

The coolest decision I made was to make a whole bunch of prints (at home with the photo printer and at Ritz via their 1-hour digital-photo kiosk) of almost all of my decent artwork. I brought those with me, showed a few people, and left a few at the show. Im definitely going to do that again! They all came out so well!

The prints also worked out because Cindy (a friend and ex-coworker) ended up seeing this picture:

…and asked (demanded?) to purchase it. I wasn’t going to sell it to her since she was a friend! (and I also didnt want to sell stuff at Dave’s gallery’s show that wasn’t up on the walls…thought it would be rude). But, I did offer it as a gift and Im going to take her to the DIY framers place in a couple of weeks to get it framed. Thatll be fun She agreed to let me put it in shows now and again if I need to. That works out well!

As I’m trying to get a (some) piece(s) ready for the MOCAdc Heads or Tails show, I’m realizing that I have 15 years of half-done and slightly immature art laying around that could potentially be turned into pieces that I’d consider trying to send to shows.

So, with that in mind (and thanks to my wife), I’ve started to try and clean up and update some of that older body of work. It’s a scary process, though, because I could really mess some shit up that way…most of those pieces I left that way for a reason.

The first piece was my Lady Lazarus (Collette) piece. It didn’t need that much work, but since I’d like to take it to the show and frame it I thought I’d try and fix up a couple of things.

What I found out was that: Even though a piece might have hard, ugly lines and not be what you think they should look like, those misfeatures of it give it a character and are part of why you love the piece in the first place.

In this example, I changed her eye a bit unintentionally and I was having a tough time putting it right (same with the smile). In human faces, just the slightest nudge of a feature in any direction is enough to put the whole thing off.

Luckily, I think I’ll be able to fix that.

Here are the two images compared:

BEFORE AFTER