Sharing is Caring!

OK, I have several topics in my head to discuss in this post...
In an effort to make it not-too-long, I will move through them relatively quickly, I hope...
These topics kicking around up there are, roughly:

• Writing a blog... too much sharing?
• The mystery of the nude... and how to not alienate my readers.
• Painting... Mark Carder and the new paint box
• ENDGAME... work in isolation (trust my vision) or take in the views of my fellows?

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In the last few months I've had conversations with two friends which basically consisted of them telling me that reading my blog made them feel uncomfortable, to a certain degree. The idea was that the information I share herein felt just a bit too personal, and made them feel like voyeurs.

I guess the most interesting aspect of this topic to me is the degree to which their thoughts genuinely surprised me, and the degree to which I don't feel any conflict around this.
To me, the idea of sharing my thoughts around art, travel, culture, and once in a while a bit of politics or philosophy feels totally natural. I suppose you could imagine that all individuals fall somewhere along a continuum ranging from "very private" at one end, and let's say "very open" at the other end. I think it's clear that I am not at the "very private" extreme, but I think I'm closer to that end than the open end. If I ever start blogging about creepily personal medical problems or the inner workings of my relationships, well... someone please stop me. As it is, I guess I have some fantasy (like most writers probably do) that my musings will actually be interesting to someone out there, and maybe even spark a conversation or two.

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As readers of this blog know, I have an enduring fascination with the female nude.

I find that, as I am stepping into the world of painting, my interest in this topic is getting more focused, but I am also spending more time trying to understand it.

One thing I want to say, right off the bat, is that I am highly aware of, and very sensitive to, the fact that female nudity can be a divisive thing, and has the power to alienate certain segments of the population (and therefor also a certain segment of my readership.) Ideally, this is something I want to avoid, although I realize that my power in this regard is limited. 

I believe that the divisiveness of the topic is related to the sexualized power we allocate, as a culture, to the female nude, especially the "young, perfect" variety. For reasons which I think are complex and layered, this power and the resulting divisiveness are at their apex in cultures such as the one we find here in the United States, and are less of an issue in Europe. I think this must be related to the puritanical underpinnings of the culture; because sex is taboo, and not integrated into life in a wholistic way, it becomes fetishized.. and the nude female is the totem of this fetishization. 

After having lived in Europe for two years I can say with a certain small amount of authority that the nude (both female and male) is more integrated into the culture (statues and paintings everywhere) and simultaneously less fetishized, and... big surprise... seemingly less divisive.

I had an interesting conversation recently in which I found myself, again, pointing at this elusive gray zone between "sexy" and "sexualized." I think that Jassans was the first artist that I personally identified whose work confidently and effortlessly inhabited a "sexy but not sexualized" territory. The standing female nude by Alberto Galvez which I like so much finds the same delicate balance. Interestingly, they are both Spanish. Jassans was a religious man and seemingly saw the beauty of the nude (although he was biased towards the female figure he also did a handful of male nudes, including a pretty erotic Jesus) as an integral and essential part of the spectrum of God's creation. I find this fascinating, perhaps because it is so unAmerican, and... talk about wholistic. 

"Sexualized" tries to convince you of something. "Sexy" is just sexy; it's power is self-evident. The differences are usually incredibly, and fascinatingly, subtle. A slight shift in posture, a minute change of expression...

OK, before I alienate just about everybody....

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So far, I am much better at talking about painting and getting prepared to paint than I am at actually painting. 

In addition the the Lips that I showed in my last post, I did also paint a human figure which was a practice study for the protagonist in the big work I hope to start soon. The figure I painted served, more than anything else, to show me just how little I know. (In retrospect, I now understand that I  • did not prepare my surface correctly, • did not mix enough paint and was therefor "stingy" with the brush, and • did not mix enough values to correctly convey "volume" with shading and highlights, among other errors). As it happens, a chance conversation with another painter led me to a website on which I have now spent many hours teaching myself the basics. Mark Carder's drawmixpaint.com is a really incredible resource of information, with hundreds of hours of free videos and a choice handful of paid videos which promise to go more in depth (pretty soon I will be buying the "portrait painting" video... 8 hours of instruction for $100 sounds like a deal to me). To the degree that I now feel confident moving forward in actually putting some paint on canvas, it's largely thanks to the time I've spend watching his videos. Thanks for doing that, Mark. 

One thing I did realize along the way was that I need a place to paint. Our house is too small and clean and multi-use, and our shop is too dirty... and multi-use. So...

Many years ago I purchased a Frito-Lay delivery truck, which I've always called "the Bread Van." It is essentially the same beast as a UPS truck. I bought it for its great diesel engine, which I transplanted into my International Scout. About 10 days ago I decided to separate the cargo box off the rolling chassis and make it into my painting studio. (Finally, some pictures!)

Moving the Bread Van into place...

The box, removed from the rolling chassis...

The cab, cut off...

The front of the box, where the cab used to be, walled up...

The box, set into place on cedar blocks....

A painting studio! (It's darker in there than I thought it would be - I am waiting for my daylight balance lights to arrive in the mail)

(When I was transplanting the engine into my Scout, if I ever needed something like an exhaust elbow or a proper radiator, I could always find what I needed within the Bread Van...  So the saying that popped into my head was "The Bread Van doth provide." Now, years later, when I need a painting studio... the Bread Van doth provide. I may even, one day, convert the rolling chassis into a trailer. I am reminded of the Native American protocol of using every part of the animal carcass...)

The main problem with this studio is that it's going to be pretty impossible to heat, unless I do a major insulation job on it... which I don't want to spend the time doing right now. So I will use it for the summer and evaluate how to move forward when the time comes. Christina and I might just build a proper art studio one of these days...

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I'm sorry if you're all tired of hearing about ENDGAME, but...

I did finally get some feedback from Burning Man. They indicated to me that, while they liked the piece and it did reach the final round for funding consideration, it ended up not fitting in to the overall, curated experience that they shaped with all the other pieces. 

Almost simultaneously, I received an email from a dear friend who told me that he felt the piece was not up to my usual standards... that it didn't really seem like a "Christian Ristow piece," and that it felt like a bit of a "bummer." I love it that I have friends who can be that honest with me, and I appreciate the feedback... AND this assessment of the piece (along with a very similar evaluation by my dad) sent me into a one-day-long crisis of confidence. The thing is... I really, strongly believe in this piece. If my friends and family are right, then perhaps I've "lost my touch." Or, at least that's what I was thinking on that day.

I'm going to insert two quotes here... 

This first one is a quote by Joni Mitchell, sent by my friend Wylie Elson..

“I heard someone from the music business saying they are no longer looking for talent, they want people with a certain look and a willingness to cooperate. I thought, that’s interesting, because I believe a total unwillingness to co-operate is what is necessary to be an artist – not for perverse reasons, but to protect your vision. The considerations of a corporation [or what "other people" expect from you... my words], especially now, have nothing to do with art or music, that’s why I spend my time now painting”

And this second one is by the painter Andrew Wyeth, found on Mark Carder's blog...

"People only make you swerve. I won’t show anybody anything I’m working on. If they hate it, it’s a bad thing, and if they like it, it’s a bad thing. An artist has to be ingrown to be any good."

I believe in ENDGAME. I think that, at the end of the day, I'm going to need to ignore what everyone else says and build it, or paint it, or get it out of my system one way or another. Sure, I think it maybe needs another stage of development... another "layer." But I believe it's an incredibly strong and relevant image, and I think the world will be a better place when ENDGAME is birthed.

OK, that's it.
Goodbye, until next time (when I will probably write more about painting, and about Caravaggio and "Sapiens.")

CDMX

Mexico City.
D.F.
CDMX
All names for the capital of Mexico, biggest city in the western hemisphere.

Christina likes to take trips for some of her "big" birthdays, and that's all the excuse this family needs to get on a plane. We weren't originally thinking about CDMX (Ciudad de Mexico), but someone mentioned it as a possibility and when we realized we could get an experience that was urban, foreign, close, and cheap, it was obviously a good option.

We didn't do a lot of homework before this trip, and as a result we did miss out on a few things we had hoped to do. If you want to see Mexican Wrestling... book in advance!

There are a lot of pictures to post here, so I'm just going to fly through them... with captions as needed...

On our first day in CDMX, the smog parted enough for us to see the nearby volcano Popocatépetl. It turned out the be the only day we could see it. And, it spewed big puffs of ash! Apparently this is not too uncommon.

Our big goal, collectively, was to see as much art as we could. We got off to a disappointing start as almost every gallery and museum (!) we visited on Tuesday was closed, but we got the hang of things pretty quickly. 

One of the first spots we visited was the (very popular, book in advance!) Frida Kahlo house and museum. This was the house she was born in, worked in, lived in with Diego Rivera, and died in. 

This was her painting studio. The amazing windows and light have inspired Christina and me to build a similarly well-lit painting and multi-use art studio.

Frida Kahlo was a very sickly person, beset by various maladies throughout her short life. For medical reasons she needed to frequently wear corsets, which she treated as fashion items. This was probably the highlight of the museum for me, as I am only moderately enthusiastic about her actual paintings. 

Her death mask... on the bed where she died.

And, the courtyard garden. This was really beautiful.

There is a real cult of personality around Frida in CDMX. You can get her face realistically depicted or draws as a super-hero or cartoon character, on bags, t-shirts, purses and anything else. She is everywhere.

We visited a few different museums...

This was my favorite painting from the Modern Art Museum, depicting the four elements (earth, fire, water, wind). It was a big painting, probably 16 feet across.

We also visited the Palacio de Bellas Artes, home of many huge and beautiful murals by Diego Rivera and others. The above image is just part of a huge mural by Rivera. He was a communist, and one interesting thing I noticed about this image was the faceless "everyman" with the group of "red" workers at the top right.

Here is a detail from another mural, this one by... I'm embarrassed to say I don't know the painter... The details here are amazing... the female nude is covered in markings (tattoos?) of rope and arcane symbols, while the figure on the left hovers somewhere between life and death, bone and flesh, and is wrapped in actual ropes. 

We hit a few galleries too, although to be honest we did not see anything particularly mind-blowing. 

This gallery show featured many different objects hanging precariously from the roof structure, such as this trio of canoes, but the real highlight was the architecture of the space. The cast-concrete steps, the wood-timber roof, the vines overhanging the offices above, and the fluidity between "outside" and "inside" (even though we are completely within the gallery here, that is a sliver of unobstructed sky above) made for a really great space.

One of the most fun things we did, even though we were concerned that is was going to be too cheesy and touristy, was to take the "Turibus" around the downtown area. This is one of those double-decker, open-topped buses full of tourists with cameras... like us!

We did this on our last day in CDMX and, really, it was a great way to get a feel for the city and see the sites. Recommended.

Waiting for the bus...

And finally onboard...

By the way, anyone know what Language 7 is? We got a good laugh out of that...

In particular, the Turibus gave us great views of many of the monumental sculptures of the city, such as "El Angel de la Independencia (which was really similar to Berlin's Siegessäule)

And Diana la Cazadora (did you know there is a whole mythical 'meme' in art and sculpture around Diana the Huntress, and semi-nude women with hunting bows in general?)

(There are better pictures of this sculpture online, but I do like to use my own pix when possible..)

Haha, talk about "there are better pictures online!" This park has a copy of Michaelangelo's David, but the route of the bus meant I could only photograph his butt! When I showed Kodiak, he used the amazing zoom on his digital camera to get a super-close-up of David's behind!

There is quite a lot of integration, at least nominally speaking, of the indigenous "pre-discovery" cultures of Mexico into the modern city, at least in terms of place names, street names, and monuments. It is also true that certain native languages like Nahuatl and others are recognized as official languages of Mexico, alongside Spanish.

Here above we see a handful of sculptures referencing the "pre-discovery," or "pre-invasion" cultures.

One of the nice things about the Turibus is that you can jump off the bus at any stop, walk around and explore, and then jump back on. We walked for quite a while around the downtown area...

I swear, I have pictures of Christina and Cedar walking side-by-side from cities all over the world. I may in fact be their official photographer!

 As I stopped to take a picture of this nice piece...

... I heard a group of women saying in Spanish "What, he's not going to take a picture of us??" Well, my Spanish is pretty good by now, so I spun around and said.. "Well, I could.."

They were more than happy to pose for the gringo tourist!

Continuing walking around the downtown area, we saw this hand painted No Parking sign for the Russian Embassy (oh man, I love this sort of thing about Mexico!)...

... and we stumbled upon a giant "Fridays for the Future" protest against the inaction around climate change in the center of town. From this photo, the protest doesn't look big, but it was. The sign reads "There is no Planet B." 

If you're not already aware of Fridays for the Future, you should be, and you're not getting your news from the right sources. This is a world-wide protest movement by children against the inaction and ineptitude of the older generation when it comes to the total failure to protect the environment from the ravishes of climate change. I personally am very moved by this. Why does it take the actions of children to move the older generation to change? Well, apparently, it does. It was all started by a 15-year old Swedish girl. I'm not going to veer off at this point into a full-fledged discussion of climate change and how important that topic is for the future of our world, but... it is. Thank god for the kids. They give me hope. Click the link above and educate yourself, and be part of this movement. We are trying to start it happening in Taos. It was awesome to happen upon this, last Friday.

Well, as Friday wound down we knew it was the the last day of our trip.

On our last evening, we ate at a great little bar called "La Clandestina" and Kodiak and I shared a bowl of crickets. 

OK, well I actually ate most of them. I do like crickets and would like to see if I can catch enough of them around here, in spring time, to make a meal or two.

The last sunset, seen from our high-rise apartment. 

PS. I did find, in a comic book store, a graphic novel by Milo Manara about the life of Caravaggio.  (Milo Manara's comic books are not for kids!)

Even though it was in Spanish, and cost more than I would pay for the English version if I bought it here in the US, I couldn't resist. Sometimes the act of buying something small in a foreign or exotic location creates it's own special kind of memory, which you can revisit in a way by interacting with that object. I guess that's what is meant by "souvenir."

More on Caravaggio soon.

Oh.. and I did my first oil painting. 

This was a deceptively easy image to paint, and I copied it from another painting. Even so, I think it's only "OK." I'm currently working on a second painting of a full figure nude, which is really very difficult. In fact, I find it VERY difficult. I almost gave up yesterday, thinking "I guess painting just isn't for me." But Christina helped me carry on, and this second painting is finally looking like 'something.' More on that later, too.

The Dark Arts

Well it's been a while since I posted.

On the surface of things, I have moved on pretty easily from the disappointment of having ENDGAME be rejected by Burning Man. I have even seen it as a bit of a blessing, a bit of a door opening to new possibilities. But I think that, deep down in my vulnerable artist core, I am hurt by the rejection. Mostly because I believed in the piece; I felt it was well developed and was strong.
I've asked for feedback from Burning Man... some sense of why they turned it down... and they have indicated to me that this is forthcoming... but it hasn't come yet. However, as time passes and ENDGAME "recedes in the rear-view mirror," I feel more and more certain that the message was probably too dark. Or rather, not the actual message, which I believe is a positive exhortation to change, but the way that message is conveyed through... I guess "violence" is probably the best word. It was probably just too much for Burning Man to embrace. The title ENDGAME may also have reinforced this perception. (The original title was the more cumbersome, but also less negative and more ambiguous "Interreciprocity.") I've had an interesting conversation with my dad about this proposal, and his perception was that the proposal conveys "no hope." I actually disagree; much like With Open Arms, this piece presents a representation of one possible future, and asks the question "Is this really what we want?" The 'hope' comes in the immediately subsequent step...  the process that happens within the viewer who must internally answer this question and then contemplate how to avoid this future. 

The complication for me here is that I am always drawn personally to art (by which I also mean music, film, etc.) that has an "uncompromising" take on the human condition, by which I mean it is usually somewhat dark. To me, those are the works which push people deeper into their own understanding of the world and of themselves. Something I read not so long ago and which I've quoted on this blog before, which had a big impact on me is "make the art that you want to see in the world." Implied in this is the idea that one should not make art that they think, or guess, other people want to see in the world.

Among the many legitimate roles that art can play is the role of temporary reprieve from the miseries of everyday life. I'm sure that even I occasionally experience art that way, but ultimately that sort of light and diverting art never really holds my interest (with the exception, it seems, of the female nude). My favorite artists are always those that take an uncompromising view on things... Francis Bacon, Alexander McQueen, and my new favorite Caravaggio. These are people who were trying to find something meaningful and real in the world, and because they remained true to themselves in this quest, they found something original. I guess I'd rather remain true to my own vision and uncover something original and meaningful than try to guess what "people" want to see and try to make that. I think that is a surefire route to mediocrity. 

Ironically, two of the pieces I've made which I think are most successful (Becoming Human and With Open Arms) can both be read as fairly dark, but they are both ambiguous, so that's not the only way to read them. Perhaps Endgame was too unambiguously dark. Perhaps slyly incorporating that sort of vision into more multi-layered and open-ended sculptural images is the way forward...

Well anyway, one of these days I'll get over it. 

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Caravaggio is my new favorite artist, or "art-crush," as I've previously termed it. 
Ironically, just like Bacon and McQueen, he was a tortured gay man. OK, to be honest, Caravaggio's personal sexuality is a bit of a mystery - he lived and died a little over 400 years ago and much of his life is shrouded in mystery because... that's a long time ago. But he never painted a single female nude*, painted plenty of young male nudes, and it seems to be pretty widely acknowledged that he had sexual relations with his young male models. However it seems that he also had relations with female prostitutes. The only reason I bring this up is that I'm intrigued by this commonality he shares with Bacon and McQueen; it begs the question: "How does the personal sexuality of these artists tie in with, or contribute to, their dark personal vision?" Probably all of them felt some level of persecution or prejudice based on this. In light of the fact that I'm not gay, I may not be the most qualified person to speculate further... and I guess it's also possible that it's a coincidence and not particularly relevant. (Amusingly, a 2007 Italian film about Caravaggio's life posits his downfall as a result of his tragic love for a female prostitute. My first assumption is that Italians just can't stomach the idea that one of their most famous sons was gay, but I will watch it soon and have a better idea then.)

A large percentage of Caravaggio's artistic output was secular in a time when pretty much all painting was religious. On the urging of some of his powerful patrons and friends, he did at a certain point begin to paint religious subjects, but he seemed fond of choosing atypical moments from these religious stories, often involving murders and decapitations. If we throw in all the naked boys in his secular paintings, we could safely point to "sex and death" as a favored part of his oeuvre. Interestingly, he lived a short and violent life, dying at the age of 39 after having murdered 2 people (probably), having been imprisoned several times, and having become the most famous painter in Italy even during his lifetime. He is credited with having begun the Baroque phase of painting, he introduced the idea of painting "the critical moment" in an ongoing action, and is often referred to as the first modern painter. 

*Apparently he did actually paint a partial female nude... Probably my favorite painting of his is called Judith beheading Holofernes; I love this painting primarily for the complicated mix of emotions that Caravaggio managed to capture on Judith's face. It seems that x-ray examination of this painting shows that Judith was originally painted topless and that her blouse was added later. Too bad. 

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Speaking of "doors opening to new possibilities"... oil painting. I've finally come around to the honest self-assessment that the only reason I haven't truly started oil painting is fear, and I've resolved to just get over it and start. It seems like a long time now that I've been talking about starting to paint (and not actually doing it), but to be fair we did just come back from a week in Mexico city, and there is always too much to do around the homestead. I've resolved, though, to start this week and I think it's going to be tomorrow. Part of the issue, I think, is that the first image I want to paint is this really ambitions, life-scale thing (that I've taken weeks to meticulously mock up in Photoshop), and I think it would look great as an oil painting, but I don't know how to do it yet. So I've finally decided to paint a few smaller and less ambitious canvases first, to get the hang of it, and let the big ambitious one wait until I know what I'm doing. I had obligations yesterday and today, but nothing tomorrow. 

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As briefly mentioned above, last week Christina, Kodiak and I went to Mexico city to celebrate Christina's birthday, joined by our good friend Cedar. 

I was going to cram in a bunch of photos of our trip here, at the end of this post, along with stories of tacos and Frida Kahlo and volcanoes, but... upon looking through my photos, I realize that it really deserves its own post. So, keep an eye out for another post coming very soon about Mexico City, heavy on the photos.

ENDGAME

Well I said that I was superstitious about revealing my proposal until Burning Man decided on it... and yesterday was the day, so here it is:

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Project Summary: 
ENDGAME is a large-scale sculpture of a Swordfish and a Man, freeze-framed at the apex moment of a battle, or a dance. The Swordfish's spear has pierced the chest of the man, while the Man holds a spear which has similarly pierced the body of the Swordfish. Their eyes are locked.

Physical Description:
ENDGAME will be fabricated from steel and aluminum. The figures arise from a base of two abstract waves which are almost crashing together. The only point of connection between the waves and the figures is the tail of the fish. The space between the waves can be entered by the public. From certain angles these waves mimic a mouth or a vagina, the great female ocean birthing (or swallowing) the combating male figures. The man will be supported in space by the two piercing spears, which will be steel or stainless steel and part of the internal steel structure. The eye-lines of the figures will be locked on each other. The poses of the figures will suggest conflict, but also dance.

What is the philosophy of your piece?:
The image of this sculpture came to me in a flash of inspiration, and as such I have been somewhat reluctant to parse its meaning, preferring - on a certain level anyway - to let its power emanate from a place of un-analyzed subconsciousness. But OK, all that aside, several meanings do emerge without much effort, the most obvious of which is the dependence of man on the natural world, which he (we) short-sightedly despoil, to our own peril. We think we control nature, yet we are locked in a dance with it, our fortunes tied together in ways we don't always see. Both these figures are apex predators. Each fights for survival, imagining that the only way forward is to kill the other. But their individual gazes, locked on each other, suggest not only a dim awareness of their common ancestors, but also of the common cause they must share if a holistic future is to be forged. Also suggested is the flash of awakening.. satori.. being stabbed in the chest.. something only a swordfish could do!

Interactivity:
ENDGAME will be climbable (to a point... the figures will be off limits). When weather and temperature variables are agreeable, the gently sloping upward incline of the larger wave will provide a place for sitting or lounging. The interior cavern-like space created by the two waves will be accessible to the public. By squeezing between the waves, one will enter an intimate space which is protected from the outside world, and which will give unique views of the sculptural elements above. On an intellectually interactive level, the sculpture will also force participants to confront dualities of beauty and danger, male and female, life and death, harmony and discord, and the important question of whether there is any sensible endgame which could possibly result from violence and enmity.

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Christina also submitted a proposal this year. My first hope was that both of our proposals would be funded. Christina has not been funded by Burning Man in a few years, so my second hope for this year was that, if only one of us were to be funded, it would be her... because, as my friend Richard said, "Artists need that kind of validation." Well I got my second wish. My project will not be funded, but hers will.

I'm very happy for her. It does mean that we will be going back to Burning Man, and taking Kodiak back for his fourth time. It's a good thing for Christina, and it will be a good thing for the event, because her proposal is very strong.

I find I am taking this rejection pretty well, all things considered. I've said several times that I believe in this piece so much that, even if it wasn't funded, I would build it anyway. At this moment, still only a matter of hours after reading the email, I'm not sure what form that might take, what scale... or what material.

But it's still a rejection, and I guess that is not easy. Maybe the message was too dark. Maybe the granting committee felt they should only fund one proposal from our family... I really have no idea if they make considerations like those. Maybe they want to "change things up" a bit, not funding the same people over and over again (although I can certainly think of several artists who are funded repeatedly.) Burning Man used to make a point of distinguishing themselves from other granting bodies by promising to give feedback to rejected proposals explaining their decision, with the idea that this kind of feedback can be helpful to the artists... and I couldn't agree more that it's useful to hear that kind of feedback. But as far as I know they no longer make that promise; it's been many years and several rejections since I have heard their reasons. I would love to know.

(I should do a blog post of all my rejected proposals. Otherwise they are just lost in my hard drive... and if my computer should fail one day, then lost forever...)

I did make a pretty nice model of ENDGAME (which is the basis for the image above.) A video of the model can be seen HERE. It has occurred to me to re-work certain elements of this model and call it a sculpture, in and of itself.

Anyway, more time for painting and other sculptures. The gallery owner down in Santa Fe showing Big Mother has encouraged me to build more pieces like that one, which gives me a nice nudge in a certain direction. Maybe this is the push I need to start making things I could actually sell... what an idea!

Stories to Tell

--Begin obligatory meandering preamble, with tinges of self-doubt--

Sometimes I say smart things in my blog.
I like to say smart things.
Sometimes when I have something smart to say, I will decide to put it into a blog post.
This can lead to a converse situation in which, during times in which I might feel I don't have anything particularly smart to say, I question whether I should bother writing... even when it's been a while since my last post. Such is the situation in which I currently find myself.
However, I will then sometimes remind myself of the other reasons to blog, such as creating a document of my adventures, and sharing with my readers the peculiarities of the artist life. Even when I don't have that super-witty life insight to share, there are still stories to tell...

--End preamble--

Even though I sort of talked myself out of taking the time to learn oil painting, opting instead for my home-spun concoction of water-colors and colored pencils, oil painting continues to hold a certain allure for me. Oil paintings just look beautiful, and all the great masters have used oils. So, even though I haven't exactly jumped into oil painting, I continue to read about it and work my way through online tutorials. One of the observations I read somewhere online was that the impediments to getting started are various, but perhaps the biggest one, harder to overcome than arranging your studio or assembling your supplies, is the mental block.

I haven't really started my painting, and I can think of several semi-legitimate reasons why, but it seems that the mental block of jumping into something one has never done before might well be at play. I've been working on a photoshop mockup of the image, and although I've put in quite a lot of work, I approach my goal VERY slowly. Mental block, or obstructing perfectionism? Hard to say.

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I needed to go out to LA a second time a few weeks ago in order to pick up Big Mother from the gallery. On my first trip, back in December, I was excited to spend time in the big city and soak up the culture. But this time, for whatever reason, I just wanted to get there, grab the sculpture, and get back. It so happens that on the evening that I could have stayed in LA, the city was scheduled to be hit by a major storm, and so that was another reason for me to get the hell out of there. I did the whole trip in about 53 hours, 36 of which were spent actually driving. I did have about 3 hours in the city of LA, most of which I spent at the Taschen bookstore in Beverly Hills. I have a bit of a book problem, and I do really love Taschen. But of course I do... their books are all essentially picture books, ranging across subjects such as art, architecture, photography, celebrity culture, all things erotic, and history. I picked up 6 titles from their "Basic Art" series. These are introductions / overviews of notable people and topics from art history, at only $15.00 each. The ones I brought home were Tamara De Lempicka, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Caravaggio*, Hokusai, What Great Paintings Say - Beautiful Nudes, and What Great Paintings Say - Faces of Power. I also saw a beautiful large-format book about Sharks... and I have loved sharks since I was a kid... but I couldn't justify the $70.00 price tag. I found it later on eBay for $26.00, and it really is gorgeous.
*More to come on Caravaggio in a future blog post, I think.

Here we see the six art titles from Taschen, the big Sharks book, as well as a few other shark books from earlier times in my life. Oh... actually... those shark books give me an idea for something to say that might actually be smart...
Looking through the shark books from the 1980's I am struck by the degree to which the attitudes in those books are not particularly conservation-minded, but rather feature large sections about the commercial value of shark products and the virtues of shark-fin soup, set amongst other sections about shark attacks on humans (sharks kill about 6 people per year, a fact which is used to partially justify our killing of approximately 100 million (!) sharks yearly). The new Taschen book is, of course, much more oriented towards conserving sharks, as their numbers are plummeting fast thanks to us. But my point is, I do sometimes find myself frankly amazed at how primitive we are, as a species. It's hard for me to believe that there are still people out there finning sharks, or, for that matter, fighting against measures to slow down global warming or oppressing women and brown people. The reasons for these behaviors are, of course, short-term thinking and personal gain. Personal gain sometimes takes the form of survival; that poor guy cutting the fins off sharks and throwing them, finless, to die a slow death in the ocean might be doing the only thing he knows how to do to put a meal on the table for himself and his family. But the rich fucks fighting (with the help of first-rate fucktards like our alleged president) for their right to belch CO2 into the atmosphere from their factories are operating from the opposite end of the personal gain spectrum.

My observation of the differences in the attitudes expressed in the shark books of the 1980's versus those expressed in more recent books is two-sided. On the one hand, how wonderful it is that attitudes have shifted so radically in only 30 years! On the other hand... really? We are still having these conversations? The only reason there are people passionately advancing the cause of saving sharks is there there are still other people out there killing them. #metoo only exists because there are still men out there raping women, and people need to fight for the rights of indigenous people because there are still those who would rather rape the forests of their natural resources than respect the rights of the historic inhabitants of those forests... and of course this list goes on and on. Personal gain over long-term, communal vision. Do these people not have children? There is more money to be made in shark-diving tourism than in shark fishing, but the world needs responsible and mature leadership to take us in these directions, not only of course in shark policy but also in energy policy, environmental policy, race relations, etc etc. Sadly that kind of mature leadership is in short supply these days.

I've been thinking about the concept of ENDGAME lately. As in, what is the endgame of your ideology? Violence begets retribution. Unless, I guess, you've got the bigger gun. At least that's what conservatives seem to believe. Build a wall... keep them out... a better life for us. The castle-on-the-hill mentality. But that's not long-term thinking, and it's not moral. Where is the empathy? It's been shown, and should come as no surprise, that conservatives are significantly less empathetic than liberals, and also that they are more fearful. (Those are both really good articles, which explain a lot) More fear, build a wall, buy a gun. It's hard to see how there is any long-term thinking in these ideologies. How do you build a better world while trying to suppress what you fear in the hopes that it will make your own private little slice of the world better... for you? Do these people not have children?

Sometimes I think about the history of humanity as if it were the life of just one person. In the time of the cavemen, humanity was a baby. When he was a toddler he invented an imaginary friend (god), a delusion which he is thankfully beginning to outgrow. Embarrassingly, humanity does not seem to have grown up past the teenage years, at best. I have a hard time understanding, sometimes, why we are not yet the sage and wise elder who treats everyone with compassion and knows that the good of the one is inextricably tied to the good of all. But clearly the era of the wise elder seems to be still many many years away, and sadly it seems that this confused and short-sighted teenager is probably going to burn down his own house before understanding how to properly care for it. He has also not yet figured out that the only sensible endgame is in fact the golden rule.

Well, shit... I don't know if that was smart or not... I think it was more like a scatter-shot diatribe. Yeah, sure... I'm an idealist and a "bleeding heart," but it's the only long-term view that makes sense if you ask me. I guess you either agree with me, or think the Environmental Protection Agency should be run by oil executives.

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People who know me well, or who have at least taken the opportunity to carefully observe my right forearm, might remember that I have a little growth on my arm which has lately attained approximately the size of a pea. Well I decided it was time to get it removed. Instead of burning or freezing it off, the doctor actually cut it out with a scalpel... which is just the kind of thing I love to photograph! (I was the operating-room photographer for my surgeon father when I was around 10-11 years old)

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Last week Christina and I were visited by a TV crew. They were shooting a pilot for a show in which the hosts, a Santa Fe based artist couple, travel around the country meeting other artists, visiting their studios, having a little hands-on time in the shop, and interviewing them. For certain reasons I was initially pretty skeptical about participating; it's a pilot which means it's not a real show yet, I've done quite a few pilots and they never really seem to go anywhere, they wanted us for a whole day, and of course there was no money in it for us. On the plus side, though, the show is actually about art, and it's always good practice to be on camera and talk about yourself. So we said "yes." And in the end, it was unexpectedly fun.

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This coming week will be a big and important week in determining what the next half-year will look like for Christina and me. I have two gigs in the works for the Hand of Man which I will find out about this week, and one of those shows might also involve Christina's Caged Pulse Jets. And on Thursday we will be notified as to whether Burning Man will be funding one or both of our projects this year. If all of those things come through it will be a very busy 6 months or so for us. I can only imagine that this type of work life is quite different from the average American work life. We have long stretches of slower time in which to improve our land, work on smaller personal projects, and try to learn how to paint, punctuated by bigger opportunities that consume us for months at a time. It's exciting, sometimes challenging, and usually fresh.

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I will have two sculptures at an opening in Santa Fe this Friday evening, February 22, at Keep Contemporary. I hope to attend personally. Stop by if you are in the neighborhood. In order to bring the art down to Santa Fe, I have temporarily converted my flatbed truck into a "box truck" by loading up an empty shipping container!