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life
Creative Anxiety
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Creator Class. Found this term coined on PSFK - a blog I haven’t read since it Piers Fawkes started it back in my Adholes-lurking days about 4 years ago (myspace for advertising/design/PR/copywriting geeks) about an emerging demographic within, or perhaps separating itself from, the Creative Class. Inspirationally-monikered graphic designer Gabriel Amadeus writes:

“[Creator?] Hey, that’s me! Not that I am successful at it or anything, but I much prefer to be a jack of all trades instead of specializing in “vector illustration”, “interactive flash”, or “band posters”.

“In the past week I’ve designed flyers, banners, screenprinted shirts, welded a homemade bakfiets (dutch cargo bike), organized a scavenger hunt, planned a freakbike booth at the Oregon Manifest, and applied for a bunch of design jobs.

“None of which I got.”

What’s the difference? While the job roles may essentially be the same: being involved on some level - professionally or underground - in making new things, ideas, systems, the Creative Class still possesses a bourgeois, consumerist mentality. The Creative Class is still able to kick back and appreciate the finer things in life like slate bathrooms, organic buttercream vegan cupcakes and antique hoosier cabinets, as defined in David Brooks‘ hilarious and thought-provoking Bobos in Paradise; whereas the Creator Class equates or, more like, substitutes consuming with creating. I certainly feel that has been my paradigm, unconsciously for some time. This year, I’ve become much more self-aware about it. Now I feel I don’t even know how to relax anymore. When I was a kid, reading, drawing, painting, dressing up, making up my own typography, writing poetry, listening to music and playing piano were leisure activities. I spent the whole summer after 8th grade copying the artwork in Deeelite’s Dewdrops in the Garden, obsessing over The Beatles and playing Mozart sonatas for grins. Now, I plan outfits like science experiments and write equations to explain art projects to myself. Hell, I can’t even read a book without thinking how I might work the ideas into some new artwork, review it for this here blog, or recommend it to some other artsy type and if we’re drinking, talk about how we might collaborate around its central themes. Maybe some of it stems from guilt, knowing that my generation is the last-ditch effort to save the planet through recycling, vélocouture and hoeing around. For every 5 pieces I bring home from Savers, I grab a 6th to make something new for my Etsy shop. Parental Baby Boomer guilt aside, in short, my work and play have become so entangled and enmeshed that I frequently have trouble sleeping at night or enjoying a simple walk around my neighborhood.

It’s all about letting go, I guess. And yet, it’s kind of fun. At the lengthily-titled Tucson Emerging Leaders Creative Conversation: The State of the Arts I attended last week, a panelist posited, “We can figure this [problems within the local arts scene] out. Artists are crazy. We’re the only people in the world who invent problems for ourselves and then set about how to solve them.” This anxiety, this drive, makes me nuts but it’s also my main fount of inspiration. Anyone else feel this way about your work/play relationship?
life
What goes up…
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After the 3-week creative high of launching my Etsy store (with some surprisingly [to me] positive initial responses, I might add), I’ve experienced a low: waiting for the paint to dry on my men’s shirts, waiting for my busy husband has time to model them for product shots, catching up on sleep but then lamenting that an afternoon or evening I could’ve been working was spent drooling on a pillow.

Also feeling a bit frustrated in my new city. Many of my artist friends in Austin told me Tucson has a cool scene. I keep looking but I’m not seeing it yet. I know these things take time - it took me 8 years to get the knowledge I had of the art scene and to where I was as an art facilitator in Austin, and even then I had a long way to go - but it’s hard to be patient. And it could be lingering homesickness but I feel like things were finally starting to fall into place around the time I moved and I was starting to hook up with the right people. Although to be perfectly candid, it probably saved my marriage in the long run. I’m not one to figure out where the cool bars and coffee-shops are and hang out until I connect with someone/a group I can collaborate/commiserate with. I just really have to be in the mood for talking, and feeling insecure is definitely not a good vibe to be throwing out there when you’re meeting new people. And I definitely don’t live in a Taliban-style relationship, but my husband wouldn’t tolerate it for long. Seriously, if you’re attached, put the shoe on the other foot: would you be totally cool with your S.O. going out alone and chatting up members of their preferred sex after hours?

The goal with my store is to 1) have fun with my lifelong fashion obsession and 2) to raise money to invest in either musical equpiment or to self-produce a big, wacky art show here in Tucson. Music, I would have to completely re-learn; I’m leaning towards the art show idea at the moment since it’s something I already know how to do. I’ve noticed artistic growth in the last year or so of my role as a facilitator has played more to my strengths than being a creator. (I wonder if it has anything to do with what I wrote about awhile back: there was a certain amount of in-fighting at Pump Project when it was an all-dude affair, but since a few ladies moved into leading roles late in 2006, there’s been much more stability - and thus longevity with an endeavor would’ve otherwise likely folded by early the following year). But as a facilitator, I’m stumbling over the creative concept. Maybe that’s my problem. I’m trying to drive ideas rather than letting them come to me, so they all just seem so sucky. I think forcing things always ends in disaster. If you have to force it, your timing was probably off and it could’ve worked better at another time, or you just weren’t using your strong suit. There is a difference between working at something and forcing it.

Still, I’ve got a couple of plots up my sleeve that I am writing up to see if they work on paper, which I plan on submitting to a couple of spaces here. And even then, they don’t really have to be fully planned out paper. They’re more like a series of thumbnails, or storyboards. Some conversations I’ve had lately tell me that I’m going in a good direction. And, I shudder to admit, but I’m going to make an effort to better, selectively harness the Internet as a venue since for the time being, I’m pretty alone. An interview with a knit artist I read the other day on Etsy has given me resolve: “If you don’t take yourself seriously, then neither will I.”
life
US
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DiverseArts and Ricardo Acevedo present
US
A showcase of local rainbow families that celebrate diversity
New East Arts Gallery
1601 East 5th Street, Suite 106
Open from 12 PM to 6 PM, Monday through Friday, Saturday by appointment
Reception: July 12, 7 PM to 10 PM

DiverseArts is pleased to announce the opening of US, a photo-documentary chronicling the changing face of Austin and America in the context of the 2008 election year. During an election year characterized by the candidacy of the nation’s first mixed-race, presidential nominee, the photos, taken by Ricardo Acevedo, attempt to represent Austin’s “rainbow family” community: mixed-race individuals, families and couples. According to Acevedo, “American faces have become a feast of ethnic blending” representing “the beauty of our hybrid selves as earthlings, moving beyond the invisible borders of country and state.”

A California native, Ricardo “r/ace” Acevedo has been an Austin resident since 1998, gaining notoriety for his contributions to photography, music and film. His pioneering work in photographic painting lead Stacee Millangue of Austin’s “Idea Gallery” to describe his work as defining “the possibilities of modern photography.” Acevedo’s work is sensual and vivid, embracing the human form in both its delicacy and power. Recently, his work has been accepted for exhibition in the prestigious Center for Fine Art Photography’s 2008 “International Artful Nude Competition.” Samples of Acevedo’s work, photographic, fine art, music and video, can be found at www.intherastudios.com.

Outtakes…
photography, life, observations
Galveston
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Galveston is just about one of my favorite damn places in the world. It’s a place of bizarre beauty, shocking decay, bright colors and nearly all forms of decadence. I’ve been going there for the last 10 years every 4th of July weekend for an extended family reunion at a shorefront hotel. Long-overdue relaxation on beach is almost too good to get away from sometimes; swimming in the bathtub-warm Gulf water is also one of my favorite things in this world. Some years it’s impossible to tear myself away, and frankly too hot, to go for a walk and take photos of one of the most unique downtown areas in the U.S. Galveston was the (long e) premiere cosmopolitan city from about the post-Civil War era through the 1950’s, as the main shipping and exporting port and cultural center of the vast state, till the oil wealth of Houston overtook it, and other cities matured their own industries by the 60’s. Today, it’s an impoverished town with a tourist facade. But there’s an immense wealth of historic industrial, retail, cultural and residential architecture, all inspired by the golden industrial age of the early 1900’s and the flamboyance of seaside flora – all largely empty or in a sad state of repair. While I find something fascinating on about every square inch of every house or building, I also feel that worrying about capturing the moment on film, or should I say pixels, ruins it. Nature, history, economics and architecture: you can see why I enjoy this town so much.

I happened to have time for a downtown walk as I went in search of good coffee one morning (I found it at Mod Coffeehouse on Postoffice Street). This was the perfect time to go: very little street or pedestrian traffic, and tolerable weather before the sun had thoroughly steamed the humid air.

Old Hotel

The Past Is Present

Industrial Decay

Envelope Slot

Galveston Electric Company

Industrial Decay

Empty

Martini Theater

Sea

Bougainvillea Morning

door to…

O’Malley’s Irish Pub

Apartment foyer at night

R 1/2 Street

Smile… you’re in the ghetto!

Mailbox

Sculpture Garden

Seaside Motel
portrait, drawings, life
Before their time
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Before their time
Pencil on paper
May 28, 2008

In art class, my junior year of high school, we were asked to fill up a 100 page sketchbook over the course of the semester. This was the year when I starting thinking seriously (as seriously as a 16-year-old can) about art as a career. I remember sitting at my antique writing desk, staring at the objects on it - a stapler, a pencil, the hinges of the desk flap - as if they would they would start talking and tell me what to enter in my sketchbook for the day. As I gazed intently at them, they began to flatten out. I composed a drawing of these objects completely of shades only - no lines. I was astonished at the photographic rendering when I finished the drawing. I realized that what separates objects visually is not lines, but values. What makes dimension is not the shapes themselves but the proportions, the relationships from one change in value to another, that make up those shapes. Lines have their purpose as a shortcut but they aren’t what really define things. Now that I’m older, I understand how that “Eureka!” moment of seeing - of seeing physical objects and relating them to the mind, which is internal, and processing them back out again to the world as a drawing, something that is experienced externally by others - informs my outlook on life and people.

I made this portrait of my uncle in the 1980’s the other day to see if I could still draw, really draw. It took about 30 minutes. I’m a little out of practice but what was bizarre was that my proportions were dead on. I didn’t really have to measure anything. Nonetheless, when I double-checked my foundations of the drawing, I found everything was 99% accurate. I think this comes from doing so much graphic design over the past few years that I can now find the middle of the page or line up elements without having to measure them. Of course, I always verify my work by using the align/distribute tools in Adobe, but it’s kind of shocking when I realize I’m only one-hundredeth of an inch off.

You grow up but you don’t.
life
(a lot of quanitifying parentheses)
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shadyln: new student work in photography and digital media
Pump Project Art Complex
Opening Reception: Friday, April 11, 7-10pm
Gallery Hours: M 5-8pm; W-Sa 1-6pm
Through April 26

The Photocomm students from my alma mater, St. Ed’s, are having an opening at PPAC this Friday. It’s classic liberal arts-influenced work, composed like a well-argued paper: drawing from diverse sources, intelligent (in both head and heart), sincere and polished. I wouldn’t use any bad art words beginning with a “C” to describe it (conservative, cautious, conventional), in fact I think this perspective helps a wider audience of viewers feel a connection with the subject matter, because as liberal arts students, they are engaged with the world on many levels, not just through artistic process but also through demanding courses in the humanities that require a lot of reading and high standards for writing skills. I think this approach works for photography since, as enhanced as it may be by process or computer through the artist’s eyes, is still a record, an observation of a physical thing in the world. Now before you wonderful people go ape-shit and accuse me of saying that Photography is not Art, I’m not saying that makes it a “lower” medium than, say, painting. Printmaking has its own ambiguities in terms of the human hand and the extent of its involvement in the finished piece. Photography does capture essence, mood, and truth in a special way that no other medium can - things that qualify it as a form of visual art.

That aside, in coughing up a press release for this show, it brought back some reflection on things I’ve always known about my education but that the distance of a few years makes it ready to bring out into the open. While art and photocomm departments don’t necessarily discourage experimentation, I occasionally feel a bit behind as an artist from the lack of resources (practical faculty advice, technical knowledge, too many non-art majors in classes) I experienced as an art major there. As a graphic designer, I was pushed by my mentors during a 3-year long internship to open up as a person and grow my skills as a professional. I feel this helped me much further along in my career than the piece of paper I received upon graduation.

Now I’m just postulating here - if I’m wrong, then turn me upside down and paint me blue - but UT’s art and design programs seem to encourage undergrads to be more experimental, but much of the work I see coming out from seniors and graduates is the opposite of St. Ed’s. Words that come to mind are ironic, comical, introspective, indirect, cerebral. I’ve mentored a few UT design students, have run into this approach a lot: inventive designs but not a lot of practicality. I once asked a student to design a creative poster for a major event. As it turned out, he put all the important details (time, date, etc.) in 6pt font, and the rest was white space. This type of thing happened a lot with various students. They were very bright, but very silent (I’m a reserved person so me calling someone quiet is like saying they have the personality of a brick). Who knows? Maybe each was a fluke. The St. Ed’s students who worked under me were not very precocious as designers, but they had a better sense of how to communicate the message and work with others.

I’m not saying that one school is better than the other. I’m grateful that I attended a university that promoted “real world” knowledge and showed me the importance of good verbal and written communication. But I also feel that the experimental execution and tone of irony so prevalent in the hyped, emerging Austin artists has rubbed off on my work since I graduated. It’s hard not to be influenced, especially since I’m so involved organizing shows at PPAC. I think because I wasn’t immersed in an experimental practice during my formative early undergrad years, it’s still kind of a bizarre-o approach for me. I doubt myself very seriously when I do experiment, yet I feel it’s fundamental to growing as an artist.

Yes, I know, they’re all formative years. If you’ve graduated with an art degree, what’s your take on your post-secondary education? How has it benefited or stunted you?
life, observations
The Art of MMVII
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Here’s a list of things that caught my eyes this year, besides what I’ve previously written about. This year I seemed to miss all the well-reviewed and hyped shows and catch mainly the “off” shows. I still think the “off” shows were equally valuable experiences. The openings aren’t all crowded and noisy, you get a better sense of the space, and most importantly, you can actually look at the art. Same as the music list, I’ll be adding to this list as I remember things.

First things first. R.I.P Volitant Gallery, 1906 and while I’m at it, Clap! Clap!

The Screamer Company’s experimental art and design publications One and Two.

The freaky-fabulous installation environment of Art Palace’s Tabletop Sculpture.

So far, Art Alliance Austin gets an A for effort; we’ll see what the real results are this spring with Art City Austin and their other major events.

museo {i}menos‘ electric stencil workshops in the RGV and Front. Tamps. and global art activism via the web.

Congrats to AVAA on 30 years! It just goes to show that hipness and hype do not necessarily guarantee staying power, it’s all about hard work and dedication. Although a little more help in launching 3rd- and 4th-tier local artists and talented ameteurs to the next level would be great.

Florian Slotawa: One After the Other at Arthouse. I’m a sucker and advocate for peeling back the layers of history.

I thought AMOA’s EXTRA-ORDINARY: The Everyday Object in American Art (Selections from the Whitney Museum of American Art) was nicely done, although I’m not sure if a real critic would take points off for the pieces being part of another museum’s collection. And crap, I thought I’d written a post about this. Maybe I wrote it out in my notebook. Oh well, I’ll just dive right in here instead. There’s probably so many levels of curation involved that it’s hard to say if the art being shown is what has been the most filtered and diluted. I did happen to be around when a presentation was going on, and I thought the way the objects were presented to the public was illuminating. The exhibition asked the question, “Why the hell is this art?” which I’m sure is what a lot of average joes think when they see contemporary art. The lecturer’s answers were good in most cases–he elaborated on things like craftsmanship and underlying meaning. But what stood out more to me was that on a couple of pieces, he admitted (in elaborate terms and euphemisms), “Well, really, we don’t know why this is considered art. We don’t really know what the artist is saying. It’s just something that makes the world a more interesting place.” And being a graphic designer, I was partial to the display of local industrial designers in the back. I almost bought my dog one of those neat metal food bowls for Christmas (they’re available at Groovy Dog Bakery).
life
The Music of MMVII
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I’m hard-pressed recall new music in 2007 that I liked, so I’ll be adding to this list as I remember things. Usually I don’t pay much attention to artists if there’s not a chance for me to see them play in town. This year was different because I didn’t have very many opportunities to catch many local acts, and the shows I did see made me exhAUsted. I must be getting old! Instead, I discovered more international artists on various iTunes Radio stations, myspace, at SXSW and the French blog Pardon My Freedom. Hopefully some of these newer bands from outside the U. S. will come through Austin during SXSW.

AIR - Pocket Symphony
I like how each of their albums is different, even if not all of the songs are hits or particularly easy to listen to. Mer du Japon was my favorite song from this one.

Ex-Otago
I heard this band from Italy on Pig Radio over the summer. Giorni Vacanzieri, a catchy electro-pop ditty, has been in my head for months - and I love it!

Björk - Volta
Björk’s been my favorite singer EVER for the last 15 years. It’s funny how each one of her albums feels like it fits my life right at that time. It was a dream come true to see her live at the Austin City Limits Music Festival back in September. I know everyone’s crazy for Declare Independence right now (it was her incredible finale at ACL), but Wanderlust sunk to the depths of my pond.

Basic Soul Radio Show
I actually found this amazing podcast out of Manchester, U.K. in late 2006. Each week is a luscious 2-hour treat of head candy in acid jazz, trip hop, hip hop, house, experimental, drum & bass, soul and R&B flavors. And it’s real music – not the piped-in cheezy chill-out, lounge-y crap that you hear in bars for wannabes. Whatever is on DJ Simon Harrison’s list for Best of ‘07 would be on mine too.

Midnight Juggernauts - Dystopia
This album is only available in Australia, but I’ve heard a lot of phenomenal songs by these guys on Pig Radio. It’s a groovy ride on the electro-pop-rock-dance bandwagon, but there’s something more progressive and original in their sound than just pure trendiness.

The Black Ghosts
An late 00’s electro-pop-dance group only with sooooul, kind of like what Yaz was to New Wave in the early 80’s. I think they’ve only released singles, all of which I’m digging the early 90’s beats and sampling.