Still out of contact!

It's just too darn busy!  I'm trying very hard to get back into the swing of things, but the stress from work is leaving me as a husk by the time I get home.  I'll try to get some new random word pics together soon.  Also in the works: learning how to ink my drawings in illustrator.  My old pal Ron will be helping me with that in the next few months.

Out of contact

No updates lately.  Autumn quarter at OSU has started up and I'm swamped with customers at the IT desk.  Hopefully I will be able to do some art this weekend, possibly not until next week.

Too many projects, not enough time

Projects in the works:

• Secret stop-motion animation project, maybe even two?
• Continuing 'ring series' until it seems coherent
• Random-word drawings (will be posted here in the next few days)
• Reworked large-scale abstract painting

Also, I'm trying to exercise a lot more, which takes 45 minutes or so each work-out day.  Plus Autumn Quarter is starting up.  All-in-all, I'm cramped for time!  I already informed the family that I will be attending Thanksgiving, but the long Christmas break is mine.  Hopefully I can finish I project by then.  Oh, and see Tron Legacy a few times.

Update and newest video

It's been a very long time. Here's what's happening:

I'm leaving Facebook. It's over. It's not me, it's them. It was a great way to share videos and pictures, but over time I realized that if I can't convince my friends and family to go to my website for my updates, then they aren't that interested. Also, my updates are always pushed to the "bottom of the pile" with application updates, personal updates, FarmVille requests, blah blah blah. If someone with 300+ friends (easily achieved by even moderately connected people on FB) gets a single update from each friend, where would my update sit? All in all, it's not the best place to keep people informed, plus I have no creative control over how my posts appear.

I'll be starting to tag my posts with newer tags to categorize the content. Videos, art, and concepts will be posting into separate categories, as well as into broader categories such as the ubiquitous #art tag. This will allow for much finer detail in checking my latest posts.

All previous work posted on Facebook will be posted here. My drawings will be posted here in a much higher quality, and will be easier to navigate. Hopefully this will be a better forum for comments than Facebook. I will make all relevant posts back-dated to keep this post on top and current until I begin making new updates.

This is an art blog. This is not my personal blog. Perhaps, in the future, I will create a blog that will feature my personal thoughts. I'm still on the fence about that one.

Okay, without further ado, here is my latest (silent, experimental) video:

Seething Energy Experiment #2 from Atari Whittington on Vimeo.

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.

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

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.

The Beginning

This blog is to document my explorations in art at Ohio State University. I'm attempting to get into the MFA program at OSU, hopefully, but really anywhere that will accept me that I can reasonably afford.

I am coming from the College of Humanities with a BA, but I have been producing art in the form of drawing, painting, cold glass, and other mediums. However, I am not sure that my portfolio is strong enough in my chosen medium: cold glass. Also, with the difficulty of finding a suitable studio for cold glass, I will have to work very hard to produce enough high quality pieces to meet the minimum requirements for the portfolio. This year I am entering OSU as an undergrad again, signing up for art courses, and "getting my foot in the door", so to speak. I hope to meet with professors and get their impressions of my work and decide what I need to focus on as an artist. I'll also be working extensively in my ramshackle glass studio, pressing out fine completed pieces.

I hope to use this blog to publish my work and open it up for discussion with a broader audience outside the classroom as well as document my path through what promises to be a very interesting time of development and growth in my career. I'll be making regular posts of photographs of works-in-progress, completed pieces, concepts, and plans. I might also be posting videos and audio clips that either document progress or are just me tapping my brain.

Who is BlueZero?

I am Blue Zero. It's hard to explain where that name came from or why I chose it, but I'll try my best.

I spent two years in the US Navy as an Aviation Electrician Mate working on the P3-C anti-submarine aircraft. Part of enlisting is taking a series of tests: the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery), the Advanced Sciences Test, and some other vocational tests that depend on your choice of job, such as the DLAB (Defense Language Aptitude Battery). I took those three and got a perfect score on the ASVAB, a high score on the Science Test, and an extremely high score on the DLAB.

When I entered bootcamp I did amazingly well, earning awards and medals, including two of the highest awards achievable in boot camp. Then I entered technical school and became the honor student in the class with consistent perfect scores on the tests. I was actually challenged by my teacher with the hardest problem to troubleshoot that he could come up with and I was the only student in the class who could discover the problem.

The reason I mention this is not to brag, but to show that I had an exemplary record. After I left tech school and entered my squadron, I was immediately treated like crap. This is actually not common in the Armed Forces, regardless of what people might think. Over the course of 10 months I was given all of the worst jobs, pigeonholed in the most labor-intensive workshop (which doesn't get any credit for the work accomplished), and hounded for any slip in performance. After taking a look at where my life was going, I realized that I had become almost completely diminished. I was nothing. I started writing and drawing under the name Zero as a way of documenting my anguish.

Slowly I started to realize that I really wanted to die. It wasn't just some ambiguous feeling of depression (which I have struggled with since I was 5), or just a cry for help. The feeling that grew within me was a true desire to end my life, which would have been a final end to my pain and an escape from the terrible prison that I had gotten into. There is almost no way to get out of the military without some adverse records or effects, so I felt it was the only way. Also, being I worked around dangerous equipment and processes, it would be easy to make it seem like an accident. One day I realized I had made all the plans... and then I made one last attempt to save myself.

I wrote a letter to my Master Chief, who is the last defense in the enlisted chain of command before the Commanding Officer, detailing my entire experience in the Navy from beginning up until that point. I told him, in a nutshell, that I'd become careless and detached and that eventually I'll make a mistake that either causes mine or someone else's death. That raised the red flag pretty quick, and within 2 days I was evacuated off the base and a month later I was back in my bed at home in Ohio.

I'm still alive, obviously, but I still have this feeling of emptiness. I still feel like the Zero. However, I've made a lot of progress in understanding myself and my life. I call myself Blue Zero because I love the color blue and I really needed to reclaim myself, even if it means accepting my zero-ness.

I am Blue Zero.