New Video!

It took a lot of hard work and patience, but Carter and I finally pulled through with another A+ video! Look for cameo appearances by your favorite hollywood actors.

Peter Cetera

Peter Cetera discovers his true love: bats.

Almost complete!

This is the enclosure for the final project in my New Media class. I still have to add a few holes for the microphone and tighten the lines in a few places. I might still paint some glyphs in a few spots, but I don't want to detract from the simplicity it has right now.

This is the first time I've really messed with acrylics. I really like the texture and how easy it is to mix. The buttery quality makes it very smooth to apply. I've used acrylics to paint on boards, but never on a gesso'd surface. It's pretty nice.

Overall I like how this project has come about, but I'm at a loss for what to do with it once it's all done. I can't really put it anywhere in my house, so that makes me a little disappointed. I don't want it to just sit in the corner of the basement or in the garage, but I fear that's all that's going to happen to it. My friend Kevin might want to use it an installation he's working on, so we'll see about that.

Had we used a circuit board called the "basic stamp", I'd be able to continue showing the completed work, but as it is I have to have a dedicated computer running the software to present it. Oh well, it's definitely a learning experience.

So proud!

Carter is so proud of his guitar! Maggie seems very excited about it, too! Great Job!

I have funs.

I saw a picture of some of my friends on Facebook. One of them said it looked like they had been photoshopped into another photo, even though they were actually there. Sooo... I decided to make it look like they actually were photoshopped in.

Zap!

Artifacts

I've moved!

So I moved into a new place down the street. I live on Pacemont now, just down from Wholly Craft. It's a nice apartment with plenty of room for a little art desk or painting studio in the basement.

Within a few weeks school will be starting again and I'll be building a new desk with the help of my father. I'll be working mainly on videos this upcoming season, but with a little work here and there I might get a painting or two done or perhaps even a bound art book.

Old experiment

Here is a visual documentation of a "taste test" for a drink called "Crunk" that my buddy Carter bought for me. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

The stars are bright tonight

Another mash-up putting a classic 1980s progressive electronic song (Rockit by Herbie Hancock) against a crappy Star Wars ripoff called Star Crash. Before you ask: yes, that is David Hasselhoff near the end.

I thought I lost my soul...

I thought I lost my soul, turns out that this dude took it.

Take a look-see

I just discovered this fella by the name of Anatoly Fomenko. He's a a Russian mathematician who works on topology and is pretty well known in his field. In recent years he's started debating history and has even written a series of pseudoscience books about how our currently accepted version of modern history is all a sham...

Well, I discovered his video about the books on Youtube, then was directed to his page on wikipedia via the comments about his crackpot books, read the wiki entry and found out he's an artist, and then went to his art page. His drawings and paintings are very stark, minimalist, and bleak... but damn they are fascinating.

Loce Redux

Renew

I've begun work on reconstructing a hand-made book that was done for a class last quarter. The binding on it had become severely damaged due to a few small errors in constructing it previously, so I had to completely rebind it. The work is tedious and slow, but in the end it'll be a very solid work.

The summer is drawing to a close and I'm not anywhere close to my goal for submitting my graduate package. I'm a little angry at myself for not working more on my art, but I've been strapped for time and space to work. This quarter will have to be very intense in the artwork department, something I'm not totally confident can be accomplished. Still, I can always apply in 2009...

Manipulated Memory

I have mentioned before that my memory of China seems to be dormant. I don't really think about it that much anymore, but it certainly played a major part in my current life. Something happened there that really influenced my outlook on the way I live.

To celebrate (albeit tongue-in-cheek) the opening ceremonies for the 2008 Olympics in China, I submit these photos that really show how I felt about those places at those times.

Very Hot

White Hot Whiter Fury

You've probably seen this before

Here it is on my blog. I'm proud of this little trailer.

Jeebus!

I haven't updated in a while.

What's been crappenin'? I've started making a series of drawings in cooperation with my girlie. She gives me words, I illustrate. It's turning out good so far. The end product is a secret for now, but I'll let y'all know when it's ready.

In other news: I'm still rockin. I just got two of my favorite David Prior movies digitized, so I'll be splicin' with the best of 'em soon. I'm not sure how long my great mash-up project will take, but I estimate 10-12 days of work along because I don't know the software that well.

get crunk

This one, too

In case you missed it the first time

Burnout

Damn, I feel so drained by the past few weeks. I'm kinda burned out for the time being. I started a new painting, but it's still just in the initial stages and not really interesting to look at just yet.

Next week I have plenty of free time, so I'm hoping that my inspiration comes back for at least a little while during that time. We'll see.

For now I'm just listening to music and trying to read.

What's happening?

I've been listening to Jens Lekman again, which is very inspiring for me. His music is very good, well written, and well produced without sounding over-worked. There really is a sense of childishness in each song, but it's more of a childlike rebellious spirit than just being kiddy and shallow. His voice is very smooth, though I have to admit that his latest album really doesn't show off his range. In concert it was like listening to an angel, it was so clear and bright. I met him after the show and he was a very open guy and very kind.

He's Swedish, though, so I guess that explains why he's so nice. So far I have been very impressed with all the Swedes I have met. Nice folks.

I've listened to "A Postcard to Nina" several times. It really hits me hard because of some personal events in my past, but I can't help but love it. I have this strange sense of love/pain from that song. Ever love someone so much that even when it hurts just to say "Hi" you just have to keep doing it? Unrequited love. Sweet sweet hurtful love.

Too darn busy.

I've been running around crazy doing final art projects, plus some other interesting events. I'll be posting picture of the final results here in a few days, probably sometime after Friday.

Even though the school year is over, I'll still be pushing toward graduate school by producing work from home. I think my work will be better this summer without all the deadlines. I like to stress quality over quantity. It's been very difficult for me to push myself creatively with such short times to work on my art.

Depletion

I'm depleted. I pulled an all nighter and only got 4 hours of sleep. Soooo... 24 hours awake, 4 asleep, and now class for the rest of the day. I saw Indiana Jones, though. I guess it was worth it.

So as part of the all night work marathon I pasted the boards and cloth backing for most of my book. Altogether I have another few hours of work before it's done. I might finish it tomorrow, but it will certainly be done by the end of this weekend. I have to work very hard, though, to complete my digital art final project.

It's now or never. All or nothing.

I'm making serious progress on my painting book for my art class, but I'm hitting a major block for digital art. I've been trying to work as much as possible to get as many images as I can produced so I can weed them out before I print them... Arg! I feel lost.

They come from over there.

Soon.

Book 'em, Danno.

I've been assigned to create a book for class "in collaboration" with another artist, namely deChirico. He was the inspiration for Dali and Magritte, two of my all-time favorite artists. His influence is very clear, especially for Dali, whose landscapes are very empty and melancholy, which is the basic description for deChirico.

I've been interested in making art books for a few years, but I've been too lazy to figure out how to do it and get around to actually making it, but with the way my art seems to be moving away from glass and more towards design, I think it'd be a good avenue to investigate.

As usual, I'll post some of my results here.

More and more for less and less, more or less.

So... I broke down and bought an academically priced copy of Photoshop CS3 (EX). The extended part of it allows me to edit individual frames of MP4 files and such, each just like a photoshop painting file. I already have movie editing software (Final Cut Express), plus some extra painting software, encoding software, and sound editing and production stuff. All-in-all this means... what?

I'm gonna edit some damn movies!

The "Fuddle Duddle"/"Deadly Prey" mashup from before was done with some pretty primitive tools and took forever, but with the stuff I have now it should be much easier and faster with cleaner cuts and sound match-up.

Boy, am I excited.

Memories, greater and lesser

I've been editing all my photos from China, or at least a large part of them, to intensify whatever aspect of each photo contains the most potent memories. Each photo is treated quickly, because I have 120-300 that I need to edit, so I have to make sure that whatever element I choose to focus on seems relevant, but not so obvious that it damages the entire concept. Eventually I'll be collaging these together to make one larger work.

Most of my art is about perception. I perceive the world through my senses and I’m very limited in my methods of expressing those perceptions to other people. My work is also about memory. I have a very good long term memory, perhaps the best amongst my friends and family, and those memories are very internalized and heavily colored by perception. It’s my belief that memories and their meanings influence our personalities, which then influence our art. Perhaps, though art, we can attempt to access the collective memory of our culture to explain ourselves or our experience.

So, then, what is the collective memory and how do we perceive it? Can we access it? Those questions are something that I think philosophers and scientists are only barely working with. If we have a collective memory I think it’s something very connected to our daily lives, but our experiences and connections to it are ephemeral and subconscious. It flavors our experiences and we feed into it the icons and distilled meanings of our memories just the same as we pull meaning from our instantaneous experiences. For example: my perception of an orange is made of several things: the smell, the color, the feel, the taste, but also the memories I have or orange, which hover around it like a indistinct cloud. Some of those aspects are part of collective memory, such as the taste, smell, and color. We have an overall collective understanding of that, but somehow my memories feed into that collective understanding as well.

A short time ago I started becoming interested in the practice of taking photos and their meaning, as well as the reason or meaning of the act of taking the photo. I think that, with the widespread availability of cameras, our minds have become less sharp and many people rely less on their memory and more on photos. Some people have large collections of photos, so many that they can’t keep them in just one place. Some art snapshots, just quick impressions of a spontaneous moment, and some are more intentional: portraits, landscapes, and still shots. Of these, the most important to me are the snapshots. What moment is being captured, and why? How does a photo capture those moments?

What I find surprising is that, many times, the people who take the photos don’t remember why or where it was taken, though they may have some vague recollections. What purpose, then, do those photos serve? If a photo helps to capture a moment or a memory, but then that memory is lost, does it feed into the collective memory? Does the act of photographing a moment deny the collective memory of meaning?

What I want to do is try to bring meaning and focus back into photos in a way that reinforces my perception of an event, but also informs the viewer, perhaps with the help of perception from the collective memory. It’s my goal to eventually move beyond the photo, however, and begin to evoke those memories and feelings to leave an impression on the viewer without the need for further explanation.

If this works...

This weekend I decided to buy Photoshop CS3, but I wanted to buy the academic version, which costs a considerable amount less but can't be upgraded to CS4 later. I've seen advertisements for CampusEStore, which is the registered vendor of software for OSU on the internet, so I went to their site.

I looked around for a bit and got the version I wanted, put it in my cart, then went to checkout. When I got to the final screen it said that my software and shipping were free... At first I didn't believe it, so I went around their site a little more to see any discrepancies anywhere else, but I couldn't find any. Everything on their site was listed as 0.00. Giddy as hell and knowing about the laws of false advertising, I went back and got the best version of CS3 I could find (1200 dollar value) put that in my cart and completed my entire order, including school enrollment verification. I got a confirmation email and everything: my end cost is 0.00 and I have all the paperwork to prove it.

I think in a few hours I'll probably get some email apologizing and saying that they cannot honor that price, but I'll fight it as much as I can. If it works out, I got free software, if it doesn't, I'll still buy the regular version because I was planning on that anyway.

UPDATE (5/6/08): They canceled the order! No explaination or anything. Their site was also down all day yesterday after I made my order. Hehehe... I bet they had to send out several hundred cancellations. Sigh. 300 dollars. Is it worth the price to make good art?

Allergic!

Sooooo... I washed my laundry with my room mate's detergent because I haven't bought any of my own and I woke up this morning with hives all over. At first I didn't notice it, but after getting to class I started feeling really itchy, then I noticed little red dots all over my arms.

I had to take some benadryl and now I'm washing everything all over again. I mean everything: towels, sheets, sweatshirts, socks, underwear, washcloths, you name it. So my whole Friday will be dedicated to that. Fun.

In other news: My final project for my digital art class has to be externally displayed images created in photoshop... That fits so well with my previous artwork! I'm really excited to work on it, but I have to start soon. This weekend I am going to try to get someone to take me out to my old apartment to grab all my junk from the studio to begin working on it.

This is where we find ourselves.

These images were created for a project in my digital art class where I was tasked to create a digital landscape. I began by drawing a landmass with my digital pen, then clone stamped images from google maps and the internet to create a totally fictional island chain. I then made it more "official" looking by adding markings in an alien language along with graphs and that are obscure as to their purpose. Finally I edited some of my own photos from China to make them look like places on interest on the map. The originals are very high resolution, but I shrunk them for posting on this blog.

New word!

You'd be surprised at how often those little "security" images (you know the kind where you have to type the messed up letters to make a post) make funny words. Todays word: neurd. It's like a really brainy nerd. Neuro + nerd = neurd. Great fun!

Duddle Prey!

Videos for videos sake

Watch these videos one after the other... This is a small taste of what it was like in China while I was there. Granted, they were in a MUCH bigger city than Yichang, so things were different for them. Yichang is much dirtier.

Lost and found

Plans are in place for me to visit my old high school, though which doors I have not passed in 10 years. The teachers there will most likely not remember me, just another face in 500 in my class. I hope at least one of them does.

I look back on the last ten years and see some strange things: four year full scholarship to OSU which I gave up after 3 years to join the US Navy, 2 years in the active duty service where I learned to work on aircraft electrical systems, 3 years back at OSU for a degree in Chinese, a three week tour of Chinese factory towns, a year as a manager at Target, then 1 year in China teaching English... Now I'm back at school for another stab at higher education.

What a wild ten years it's been. Add to that countless heartbreaks, tattoo work, massive body modifications, an engagement, a break in that engagement, and all the normal college life experiences. Still, I can't help but feel like my life hasn't really amounted to much. I don't really feel like I have done anything that is really worth being proud of.

What have I done for ten years? WHAT? How bizarre.

I have a friend in one of my classes who thinks I'm the coolest guy in the world, that I've done so many amazing things, but from my standpoint I've done almost nothing. I just tell her that she's young and all those cool things and more will happen for her, too... but will they? Has my life been cool? I feel like it's been mostly hell.

The Quest

Quest for the Crown!

Hey Art!

I had a critique of my digital artwork yesterday in class and it went really well. The class thought it was really well done. I feel very proud! I would post it up here, but the pictures are 3000x3000 pixels...

Happy B-Day, Dad!

Even though he would never visit this blog, I wanted to say Happy Birthday to my old man. He spends his whole day on a computer at work, so he doesn't use it at home. What a turd. Well, he's 49 this year!

Yeeeeeah!

Montage of Monday and Wednesday

It begins! Here's a short photo montage of my Mondays and Wednesdays...

I dislike the bus.

I am finally somewhat free of the COTA bus! I had my bike repaired last week and just got it back from the shop this morning. I got to ride it again for the first time in over a year. I had forgotten just how crazy it can get trying to navigate around people on campus... Once people put their headphones in, I swear, it's like they lose 60 IQ points.

Well, at least I am self-sufficient again. I really missed being able to crank around town and not worry about whether or not I would be able to catch the #2 COTA to get things done. Now I really have to replace my bag, however, because if the strap snaps again (which it does once a week, now), I risk having my very nice digital camera getting smashed by a passing car.

New Header

I placed a new header up there. I felt the old one was too distracting. It's an edited and recolored version of the glass window I made a few years ago. I think it fits my style much better.

2D project

I just submitted this work for my 2D class. I wanted to push the limit of working with textural elements on a 2D space, so I built up the background with foam core matt. I pasted collected textures from all over the campus onto the matt and cut it out. Eventually I started playing with the layout of the textures, almost like painting, and placed them over previous textures where I felt they looked best.

Overall I think the piece worked well for me, but I didn't get very many comments on it in class. I was really trying to impart a sense of isolation or lonliness surrounding the central figure which, though you can't really tell from these photos, is a childhood picture of me.

What do you think?

Art shows

This weekend I went to my friend Jeff Fernegel's art show. He is a really creative artist who makes some very fun paintings. His painting style is almost like seeing a frame illustrated from the middle of a story. When viewed it feels like there should be some long explanation or back story, but it isn't there. When the elements of color and characters are factored in, there is a sense of childishness that really comes out powerfully. In effect, it feels like having the climax of a childhood dream painted.

Check out his blog, which has some of his paintings in it: http://www.newdarkages.net/withjeff/

It was a really good show. He had it in a great space, but it was a one-night-only deal, so a lot of people showed up. Also, being that it was so quickly up and over, his paintings were being sold left and right. I think he must have sold 90% of his paintings two hours. People would come in already knowing what painting they wanted and just pay him right there. I was really happy for him as well as reassured that it is possible to sell art in this city. Hopefully, when I make my emergence onto the gallery scene, I'll do half as well.

Will Ferrel as G.W. Bush

Catch a Stupid Thief

YEEEEHAW! I love Macs, the smart people who know how to use them, and the dumb people who steal them. HAHA!

Older glass works

Here's a few of my older works. These are the best ones I made, though I have a lot of stuff still stuck in the design phase, waiting to be made.
A little older... look at that mohawk! This next one is a remake of a commissioned piece that I wasn't pleased with.

Death and coffee

“Serving size is about the American fear of death. Instead of a great, short experience, people want to prolong a mediocre experience.”

James Freeman of Blue Bottle Coffee

It's the movement

Check this out, because you know you can't help yourself:

www.whollycraft.net

Locally created and lovingly crafted works of art from OUR generation. This is the future of art, made for us by our own, connected to us in ways we cannot explain, and disconnected from everything else in ways we all understand. This is art for you and for me that we can all enjoy.

Waxing... (drunk)

Small droplets of creativity drop from guitars played so beautifully, like butterflies tuned in chorus, like samples of the monotonous piping of the harmonic convergence of astronomical spheres, or the crunch of fresh blades of grass, all frozen in the sudden resurgence of winter's crushing grip. Frost glistens like blue nylons on a cute girl's leg, sidewalks framed by sprinkling dewdrops about to smash on the sidewalk as I carry my broken bicycle down the street, her wheels deflated and sad, a grimace of child who got the wrong birthday gift from dyslexic parents.

I saw you there; I saw your mouth move even though no one else heard. You were the quiet one, the one who wore bright pink against the backdrop of green and blue, standing out like a rhubarb amongst a field of kale. Keep shining, quietly, because some day someone will see you like I did and write you in a small black book under the heading "Fran".

You sing a song about longing and I long for a girl like you, your smile like a flash flood, overwhelming and fleeting, remembered in the aftermath as an event that shapes a season, but I think you didn't even see me. You, the quiet one, walked out with no expression, leaving me to wonder if you could feel the cold on a spring night like I do. I imagine you now, cuddle in a blanket alone, reading my favorite novel, and wondering if you'll ever fall in love. Yeah, you already have, in thoughts I share with you. However, you don't even remember my name. Maybe I'll see you again. And then I'll ask you: "What's your favorite color?"; and you'll say "Grey". It's always ambiguous like that, because I am Sisyphus.

As it should be.

I took a break this weekend and did almost nothing. I tried to get a few things done, but the bike shop was closed, the office that handles my school loans was closed all weekend, and I didn't feel like walking from Clintonville all the way to Utrecht to buy art supplies. Instead I stayed at home, listened to music, and spent time with friends. It was a true weekend.

No homework?

Technically I have a few things to work on, but nothing specifically assigned. Now I can relax and *gasp!* make some artwork that I want to make for myself. Also, I might finally get around to photographing my older pieces and posting a few of them on this blog.

In other news: my tattoo artist and I have started the planning phase for my next piece. It will cover my almost my entire upper torso and I think it'll be incredible. We won't be able to begin tattooing for another month, however.

Again.

The shoulder strap for my bag snapped again today after the small repair I did to it the other day. I think I will have to buy a new bag very soon. More money slips between my fingers...

Where can I go? Where have I been?

Ever since I was a young boy I have always enjoyed cartography. There something interesting about seeing the layout of land masses without actually having to be there. I would stare at relief maps in class for hours.

As I got older I started drawing my own maps, creating my own chains of islands, mountain ranges, rivers, etc. I even peppered them with cities with complicated names, histories, rivalries, and even empires. The maps themselves became alive, drawing me into their stories so much that I felt I was channeling these landscapes more than I was drawing them myself. Now I can easily spend days drawing series of maps from continent down to the cities themselves.

In my digital manipulation class I will be creating maps as part of a project and that's going to be a very interesting and personal work of art. I think I'll take it on myself to begin drawing those maps now, just because I know I'll want to put a lot of detail into it.

I guess that also relates to the assignment that I have been tasked with for the next two weeks, which is to create a digital landscape. I might draw up the maps digitally and then place images from Google Earth to populate them...

Another thing that I have played with since a child has been words and language. One day I opened an old set of history books I had received from a school and found a section detailing the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. As a child this was absolutely fascinating, to see for the first time the unraveling of such a mysterious language. I became obsessed with memorizing the symbols and writing my own letters in hieroglyphics.

Years later I stumbled on an mathematician's exploration in simple evolution of symbols and shapes based on strict rules. The charts of their permutations called me back to that moment of awe with the Rosetta Stone, which further inspired me to start creating my own alphabets following very simple rules. I still enjoy doing that today in my sketchbooks.

Perhaps I will marry the two concepts together, creating a fictional landscape with borders and cities and even with its own street signs and language.

He (almost) died.

After 14 years of faithful dedicated service in the field, my Israeli Paratrooper Satchel finally died. Kinda. The strap on one side completely snapped, which flung my bag to the side and down some stairs. I was able to repair the strap, but I don't know how much longer it's going to last.

I've carried my art books and projects in this bag for years. It's been around for so long that it's almost a part of me and my art, so I've decided to immortalize it by making art from it. I'm not sure what I will do with it, but somehow I'll incorporate it. I'm not sure if I'll get another one just like it. I think I might want a totally new bag that will hold more stuff and be a little more water resistant.

He was a good soldier and deserves a proper send off.

Weekend, Interrupted

All I did this weekend was art homework. What a drag.

However, I did make some visually appealing pieces that I enjoy. This one is titled "Do you wanna see my tattoos?" Almost every tattoo that I get is for me, and for my pleasure. I get a little nervous showing anyone my work, mainly because everyone seems to assume that there has to be a "meaning" behind it. There is, for the most part, but that doesn't mean I want to explain it. Sometimes personal art can be very personal. So here they are. My tattoos.

What does it mean, though, to put personal art out for people to see? My body art is personal and, usually, it's completely covered. When it isn't though, I feel like I'm letting someone look at my private journal. Perhaps my body is a kind of blog... Something to think about I guess.

Hatchy-batchy

Another day...

Today I had a hard time getting up. I feel like I haven't had a day to relax in over a month. School, work, moving, waaaay too much homework from the design class... Also my youngest brother left for the Air Force, which was pretty hard to deal with.

This weekend I was going to get all my glass studio stuff from my other apartment, but now I think I just want to chill and put my mind back together. However, this weekend happens to be my best friend's birthday. Ugh.

I sincerely believe that I will become undead after I finally pass away. Then I'll finally have some time. Eating? No need. Sleep? Not for a restless soul. I'll be the first fully-functional skeleton artist.

I posted one of the pictures I have been working on in class. Easy stuff to accomplish with Photoshop. More to come in the next few days.