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critique, ideas, oracles, style, www
Artiquette
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Well, my prediction about the Tucson city budget meeting earlier this week was fulfilled: the impending fallout is now a bitter controversy. As Tu Scene is not a place for critique (yet), I shall blow hot pixels here, opinionated Art Diva that I am. Who knew everyone and their dog who opposed the hotel and renter’s tax would also be wearing red? Next time arts-supporters should don something more unique, like purple and yellow polka dots or balloon hats… or maybe just dress up a little so as not to look like the rest of the rabble.

Lately I’ve been thinking that artists need to re-consider the way they present themselves to the public in dress and unfortunately, in some cases, basic hygiene. As governmental entities and charitable organizations run lower and lower on funds, public outcry grows against their financial footing of non-essential projects that support lazy artists. Now is the time for us to combat that crank stereotype. I’ve seen artists who go all-out on the presentation/installation of their work to near-perfection yet viewer-ly accessible as possible, and arrive at their own opening in blown-out khaki shorts, birkenstocks with nasty cracked toenails hanging out (in the over 35-ish crowd) or stanky All-Stars, pit-stained t-shirt and oily hair (if they’re under about 35).

Same goes for interaction with non-artists. By the word interaction, I mean interpersonal relations beyond things like manners, etiquette, sense of humor. Throwing our visionary weirdness in in the face of squares who will never “get it” doesn’t help to win respect and will continue to put us on the fringes of public opinion in emphasizing the vital role the arts play in everyday life and education. Rather than being militant eccentrics in our dealings with average Joes, let’s shift that energy to doing really, really awesome work and producing mind-blowing public shows with the best of the money, time and energy we have. This will take a lot of honesty with ourselves: honesty about our own apperance and actions, honesty about how the other half really lives and thinks, honesty about our own expectations vs expectations of others. It takes a great deal of consideration, maybe not quite courtesy or “dumbing-down,” but consideration nonetheless.

It’s OK to be who we are, knowing that we can let ourselves go with other creative types, but I’ve found it’s effective to meet people halfway upon similarities, rather than getting them to come “up” to your level. For me, this is not an easy thing to do; it takes a lot of energy. Sometimes the most open-mindedness you can sneak into a stoic viewer is a nod of acknowledgment; other times, a little consideration in your interactions with a person opens doors and windows in them that they didn’t even know they had.

If you are going to ask for public or private financial charity, take extra care in how you present yourself. While the mystique of the bizarre worked for 20th century artists shaking the centuries-old system of academies, salons and commissioned funding by patrons, we’re now on the threshold of the post-fame era. Luck is running out, being in the right place at the right time is a four dimensional gamble in which the odds are against you a kajillion to 1. Now, anything, happening anyplace and anytime can be self-promoted online, yet needs to be well-presented to get the attention. I’ve noticed that art and fashion blogs (and bloggers, as they choose to reveal their appearance) whose photos/graphics/writing are well-realized, hitting the ideal nail on the head, get the attention, while others slightly less than masterful in those forms — however inspired — fall more or less to the wayside.

Presentation isn’t about marketing — I think that conversation is being phased out, slowly, as laypeople’s web and photography skills increase, and also simply because marketing lacks what is at the core of art: grabbing someone by the lapels out of the Everyday and teleporting them through a psychic pneumatic tube into the hyper-temporal, spiritual Whatever. And not always on an “elevated” or “higher” plane, just a different, and important one. Making them honorary shamans.

Maybe this “etiquette” I speak of is the backlash away from the self-centered focus concerning embrace or rejection, sobered into the austerity of simply being respected.
critique, culture, observations, oracles, style
Velvet Rebellion
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Prologue

1. Sametová Revoluce. The Velvet Revolution (Czech: sametová revoluce) (November 16- December 29, 1989) refers to a non-violent revolution in Czechoslovakia that saw the overthrow of the Communist government. On November 17, 1989, riot police suppressed a peaceful student demonstration in Prague. That event sparked a series of popular demonstrations from November 19 to late December. By November 20 the number of peaceful protesters assembled in Prague had swelled from 200,000 the previous day to an estimated half-million. A two-hour general strike, involving all citizens of Czechoslovakia, was held on November 27.

2. Tucson, Arizona. We drove past a couple wearing 6″ black platform boots, some sort of zippered pants-like skirt or skirt-like pants, black trenchcoats, flowing black tresses and inked-out eyes, lurching to the bus stop or corner store in the blazing summer sun. The sidewalk was otherwise desolate and treeless: a mundane concrete desert. It didn’t matter which one was male or female. I asked my husband, “What’s up with all the goth-y people here?”

I.
A Big-small City

Tucson is a mid-size city, not affluent. A little too big and not “cultured” enough to be called a college town. Like any other big-small American city, I would imagine artistically-inclined kids growing up here feel trapped in an unsophisticated society. Goth, a lifestyle that elevates music, art and fashion, offers a mode of connection with a larger artistic/cultural movement. And, one hopes, a sense of belonging. A sense of understanding and validation.

II.
Social Posturing

Trends are self-perpetuating. We are social creatures, even the goths who appear to wallow in misery and loneliness. Here, they are seen as the “cool,” artistic people, much like hipsters are in Austin. This starts in the adolescent years: say there’s a 6th or 7th grade kid who’s discovering he or she doesn’t fit in. Then, after summer, they come back to school all blacked-out and with a new, stronger sense of self. This happens every day in Austin, except the changelings are about 5-10 years older: young people arrive from across the country wearing American Apparel t-shirts and All-Stars; three months later they’ve latched on to giant sunglasses and neon.

In all trends/styles/communities, there is room for creativity and distinctions within the group, when you are part of it. But from an outsider’s perspective, everyone looks the same, the music sounds the same. I wonder if an outsider wrote this post on the Austin craigslist missed connections awhile back (paraphrased from memory):

m4w (Beauty Bar): You looked so hot in your skinny jeans, vintage shirt, pointy shoes and unusual haircut.

The description was lengthier and a bit more elaborate, but the tone was just as cutting. In Tucson, go to the craigslist musician category. Everyone wants to start a death metal/grindcore/punk band. To me, it all sounds the same. But then again, I can point out the subtleties between German trance and nu acid house, and why one is boring and the other is cool. For example, today I found a remix of Mondotek’s Alive (related to the TEPR remix of Yelle’s “A Cause des Garçons”) on an mp3 blog that primarily posted the type of *yawn* house played after 12am in Top 40 clubs.

The point is, here in Tucson, goth is a mainstream alternative lifestyle, like hipsterism is in Austin. For further analysis on this subject, I suggest Josh Aiello and Matthew Shultz’s brilliant A Field Guide To The Urban Hipster. It’s a bit dated (2003), certain groups have evolved, but it begs the question “How weird do you wanna be?” Are suburban soccer moms the Truly Weird? Are Nascar dads the Truly Weird? Are white male capitalist entreprenurs the Truly Weird? What about factory workers? How do they see themselves as a group? How do they see us? Today, the true artist (my definition: dedicated, driven, underground) no longer labors away in a decrepit urban warehouse or in the rustic elegance of a country barn, (s)he works out of his garage in a tract housing development or out of a corner of their living room in a nondescript apartment complex. Maybe the quality of their work isn’t that great, but that depends on what your definition of “good” and “quality” are.

III.
The Twilight Zone

I wish more research would be done on why, particularly in Mexican-American border regions, goth is the mainstream alternative, when in many other areas of the U.S., it died at the turn of the 21st century along with candy ravers. A few months ago, I watched a documentary about Latino hardcore Morrissey fans in the Los Angeles area called Is It Really So Strange? What could’ve been a great story shed little light on the reasons behind the obsession from this unexpected demographic because the narrator/producer was, like, the whitest, dryest most monotone guy. Ever. He just couldn’t connect with the people he was interviewing and not so much because he was not a part of their culture, but because he was just a walking social disaster. Naturally, his interview subjects were reticent about their fandom, which made for a total disappointment of a film.

I’ve asked my goth-leaning brother- and cousin-in-law about why they’re all into vampires and ornate silver crosses and black clothes. They grin and say, “I’m just in touch with the (or did they say my?)… Dark Side.” I’ve prodded further on one or two occasions: why? What’s so cool about the dark side? “Life is dark and pointless,” they intone. Nihlism. Emptiness. A daily drudgery between the next party or fuck, and even suffering and pain is a part of those experiences as you commiserate with your goth-y buddies.

But why Mexican-Americans? Is it a rebellion against the Old School ways of their families and elders? Is it a depressive facet of the ultra-complex experience of being bi-cultural (e.g. the Sad Clown)? Or, is it a rebellion against others of their own generation: the urban gangsters or the straight-edge traditional kids?

My husband and I say after we get south of San Antonio on IH-37 that we are entering The Twilight Zone. It’s a gradient that runs all the way to The Valley, growing stronger when we veer onto Hwy. 77 in Robstown, on through Raymondville and Harlingen, and finally coming to a delta in his family’s home of Brownsville, at the southernmost tip of Texas, the Mexican border; nothing beyond it but the mouth of the Rio Grande, endless flatlands, coastal marshes, and then the open Gulf. Everything “American” is tinged with Mexican culture and perspective. The clerks working in the chain stores in Sunrise Mall (warning: don’t go the the homepage, some really blaring Broadway-style music turns on) give you your total in Spanish before switching to English. The hot food focus in convenience stores is tacos and tamales, not hot dogs and fried chicken. And everything Mexican is infused with the crass commercialism of American society, creating a veneer of quaintness over the commercialism, or the crushing thumb of consumerism blunting what is unique and traditional.

IV.
Drug of Choice

César posed the goth question to his Tucson host when he came out to take a look around prior to our move. His tour guide said, “It’s because there’s a lot of meth around here.”

Let’s think about this. I’ve seen plenty of bleary-eyed redneck meth heads driving beat-up old pick-up trucks back in Texas, particularly in impoverished rural Colorado County where my mom commutes to teach middle school. The town’s water tower proclaims it’s “The White-Tailed Deer Capital of Texas” (read: hunting). My dad jokes that it should really say, “The White Trash Capital of Texas.”

So what does a style of dress have to do with a drug of choice? Not all hippies are potheads; not all potheads are hippies. Not all hipsters are cokeheads; not all cokeheads are hipsters. Not all crackwhores are urban; not urban females are crackwhores. Etc., etc.

Drugs are most certainly not a reason.

V.
Relative to… What?

This has inadvertently gone from a cultural sketch and self-analysis of my mild annoyance with goths. I personally thought they were more silly than anything else, like on Chris Kattan and Molly Shannon’s sketch “Goth Talk” on Saturday Night Live in the 1990’s.

A few weeks ago, I went to a dance party night at one of the cooler bars here in hopes of hearing something comforting, something familiar, something that reminded me of home: hipster blog music. But many people used it as an excuse to showcase their full-on fetishwear (and I use the term “on” loosely). I could barely stop staring as a girl in a light pink bikini top, matching hot pants, feather boa and Christmas pageant angel wings danced by herself till her friends got there: a dude sporting a kilt and mohawk and his girlfriend, fully stockinged and corseted. And they were, shall we say, not attractive in a conventional sense that would’ve made this display, um, nice to look at.

Now I find myself questioning my own style in clothes, taste in music, art and home décor, diction, inflection and body language as an outsider to the mainstream alternative lifestyle here. I wonder, what to non-hipsters think of hipsters in Austin? Do they look at our equally outlandish 80’s outfits with the same mild annoyance? The wrinkled nose? The curled lip?

One of the reasons I was not too keen on moving away from Austin was that I felt I’d found my place there. A place where many a nerdy, artsy, goofy-looking middle school pariahs could find community, a sense of belonging. A place to love and be loved. Maybe I would’ve grown tired of belonging eventually. “Once a rebel…” Or perhaps it was too late; I was sucked in. On the other hand, my husband had been rebelling against what he considers to be an oppressive atmosphere for a number of years, and I think his reasoning is the catalyst: our generation is not rebelling against the older generation like our parents did when they were young. That tie has already been broken. Our rebellion is against one another, our peers; but it is a Velvet Rebellion, an oxymoron. “Rebellion” implies hostility, anger, violence. Yet we do it through our clothes. It is soft, expressive, joyful – Velvet. Why? Are our differences with each other so negligible that they’re not worth fighting for? Have we grown so distant that we don’t know any other way to communicate? Do we not know how to fight? Are we afraid? Are we too selfish to abandon the system we are products of?

Epilogue

A newish writer-friend mused over drinks the other night, “I wonder when people are just going to rise up and say, ‘Fuck the system.’ ” I wondered to myself what he meant by “people.”
drawings, ideas, style, type
milagros
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The word “milagros” has been stuck in my head the last few days since I saw Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo last week. For some reason, the first time I saw “Miracles” – the neighborhood community center in the movie, I read it as “Milagros” – which sounded much cooler to me. My next project is to find the right t-shirts to paint it on in a couple of different styles. Oh, and the t-shirts will be shredded, of course.

Ink on paper

August 10, 2008
photography, portrait, style, women
Alter Ego
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I was invited to be in an art show called Alter Ego. For several months, I’ve had the idea to do some art/fashion portraits of the regular characters I inhabit in the theater of my head. I wanted to show the inner alter egos we all have, how we see ourselves in fantasies, daydreams, and also the male/female anatomy that makes up our psyche that may go unacknowledged. I don’t really express either persona on the outside at all, but maybe things do come out slightly and don’t get fully explained in my words or actions. This show gave me an opportunity to execute these ideas. There was one character I missed but I hadn’t quite thought her out yet, and I didn’t have the right outfit on hand anyways. Everything is completely self-styled, self-shot, and the shirts in both photos are my creations. These photos are amateurish, I know, but I think this gives them an intimate, honest and immediate feel.

Alter Ego I (if I were a guy)
May 2008
18″ x 24″ print

Most of the time I’m not a girly-girl. I call people “man” a lot. I feel more comfortable having male friends than female friends. And I wonder from time to time what it’d be like to be a guy. How would I look? How would I carry myself? Walk? Stand? How would I dress? Would I be considered good-looking or dorky or ugly? I was trying to think of all the guys I know and how they stand and position their arms, necks, shoulders… body language. It was actually physically uncomfortable to stand like a man. I had to mentally push my hips and butt out of the way, and the awkwardness showed in the shots where I was standing. Although I think my choice of pants had something to do with that – they needed to be looser and more concealing of curves. Here I look like a cross between my dad and my uncle (on my mom’s side). It’s weird. Closeup of the shirt is here.

Alter Ego II (the diva)
May 2008
18″ x 24″ print

This is the Diva. Dramatic, eccentric, elegant, bold, aloof one second, loud the next, ultra feminine. I like how the makeup came out. Operatic (female) but also drag queen (male). Detail of self-made shirt here.

Basic Self/Test Shot

Outtakes

I’ve been thinking about a shoot like this since last fall, and especially had the idea to wear a small hat or beehive hairdo thrust towards the forehead, but had neither the hat nor hair to do so. Also working against too little time & too much humidity in my non-climate-controlled studio.
observations, photography, style
Ft. Worth Foray
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As a working stiff, I don’t get no Spring Break, but I took a short one nonetheless. I didn’t take any furloughs during the busy seasons of last spring and fall wound up feeling ruined and depressed by Memorial Day/Christmas. A couple injections of sxsw chaos and a jaunt up to visit family in Cowtown were just what was needed.

Of course, I didn’t miss an opportunity to visit Ft. Worth’s museum district on a bright, cool spring afternoon. I always visit the Kimball, even if I don’t know what the exhibition is, it’s just a wonderful space. The current exhibit, Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art was extremely crowded (perhaps because DFW is the buckle of the Bible Belt) and mostly consisted of small objects like rings, glass and metal works, so it was difficult to get a close look at many pieces, and thus contemplate on them. The most interesting items to me were the carved stone sarcophagi and painted tombs with the names and exact ages of the deceased and touching, personal epitaphs written by husbands, wives, parents and friends.

Also intimate was the excellent The Art of the American Snapshot, 1888–1979 down the sidewalk at the Amon Carter Museum. Some of the earliest images were people photographing themselves myspace style, which shows this narcissism of the Millenials is nothing new. My favorite part of this exhibit were the autochrome photographs from the very early 20th century, a process which allowed the actual color of the object to be recorded onto the plate, rather than by post-process coloration. Hairstyles and outfits we associate completely in black-and-white sprung to life: what would’ve been a rather unremarkable picture of a young man sitting in a chair soared to fashion-plate level when the color version revealed him to be dandily dressed in a lime green shirt, lavender tie, green pants, green socks and white leather shoes.

Unfortunately, because it was late in the day, I missed Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s and Martin Puryear the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
advertising, critique, culture, oracles, style
Vogueing Out
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A couple of things caught my eye as I cracked open the March 2008 issue of VOGUE yesterday.

1) Is high fashion trying to angle itself with high art? Art has been what I would call “street hip” for a couple of years now, but for me, the deer heads, power lines and raindrops are all blurring together. D&G, Prada and Nordstrom ads (and that’s just in the first 20 pages) showed models posed in completely painted scenes or art studios, taking a more high art direction. The merit of the art itself isn’t the issue and a critical person could say it’s insipid to hijack art to sell clothes, but it seems to me that the message is that art is still elevated above the clothes. Art is absolute, fashion is mutable, both are visual cousins and the weaker, more changeable entity aligning itself with the stronger can only serve to build its brand. If you see fashion as fantasy, these ads could be a prediction of our fantasies to come. While 99% of people probably won’t wear anything from a runway in their lifetime, the culture of fashion can serve as a compass to where larger popular culture might go.

On a side note, it’s always interesting to me how fashion ads rely almost exclusively on photography, and what little effort is made towards incorporating graphic design is often badly handled. I usually don’t care for the photography in Marc Jacobs ads, it is one of the exceptions where the design is well-executed and not overbearing. And I don’t think there should be more graphic design in fashion branding necessarily, when you have outstanding photography, a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, it’s just interesting to not to see it used more often, especially with younger designers up against the grand old fashion houses.

2) Older celebrities trying to look 19, growing old very un-gracefully. Highly disturbing.
life, style, www
Absence makes the heart grow…
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I’ve been too busy to post on, much less check, the wardrobe_remix group on Flickr for the last 6+ weeks. I’ve been a much happier person since I quit worrying about how many views my photos got, getting comments, acquiring new things to show off, being heavily influenced other people’s clothes. My absence has also solved a quandry I’d been facing for a couple of months that had been causing me some mental “wear” & tear: what is my style? Experimenting and trying new (to me) looks since I joined the group in December of last year has been a bold, positive step forward, but I felt like I was losing myself in the process. I felt like I had to be constantly searching for the perfect accessory, evaulating every detail of what I was going to wear the next day, growing tired quickly of what I already owned, stressing about wearing the same outfit twice, and jealous of what other people had on.

And yet I couldn’t stay away, even though I knew that was the key to release. Since work and extra-curricular activities have forced me to withdraw from the group, I’ve re-discovered some things about my habits and style.
- I’m definitely a fashion chameleon, changing constantly from day to day.
- I tend to get stuck on an outfit or accessory of the week or month that I wear constantly.
- I like looking, but not buying. I put a lot of things back before I check out at the register. It’s not just the money-spending that bothers me, it’s also that I don’t want to get things “for fun” that don’t fit in. I can usually tell when I’ll get tired of something quickly or never wear it.
- I like simple, elegant, interestingly-cut clothes with bold accessories.
- Fit is all-important.
- I like black, and bright colors. I don’t like neutrals or pastels.
- This could be interpreted as subconscious/psychological: I like either prim, ladylike styles or androgynous, un-feminine looks.
- Dressing my age is important to me. So ladylike is the operative adjective in the previous item; I don’t like to look girly.
- Trends aren’t that important. I have always chosen clothes intuitively and find I am much happier when I don’t pay attention to trends.
But wardrobe_remix also impacted me positively and really helped me grow as a person.
- Best thing: I’m not afraid to experiment anymore. In the past, when I’d get dressed to go out, I’d have on an unusual-looking (to me) or potentially too-dressy outfit that would never make it outside my bedroom. I’d change into something reliable at the last minute only to regret my conservatism later.
- I’m better able to put outfits together, which I think is also confidence-related. Some mornings, I still agonize about what to wear, but for the most part I find it easier to choose things now.
- Customizing and making my own clothes has become a cool new past-time.
- Being exposed and contributing to a global, online, fairly young community has provided feasts for thought.
life, news, style
I’m back
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These people TOTALLY stole my idea. I’ve had the vision of starting a double dutch team on the brain for several months, but I don’t know how to do it, and I don’t know enough ladies who’d be interested. So…. buttons.

The Austin Style Watch chick is one of the double dutchers, and has a new site based on Hel-Looks.

Sometimes I’m not so sure I like this fashion scene in this town (Austin, TX), and the things that go along with it like hipster crafts and double dutch teams and wannabe breakdancing. I mean, I like clothes and all, but to me it’s all kind of a fake creativity. None of the heart-wrenching pondering or Zen-like blankness or genius humor it takes to make a really good painting or poem.

By the way, my portfolio website is down till I find a new web host. That means no pics will be visible on my blog for the moment.

So far this year, I’ve been on the path to some new artistic endeavors and connecting with various sets of fellow geeks and need an informal outlet for my thoughts, so here I am again.