All photography, graphic design, verbiage, digital printing & staple binding personally completed with love by yours truly in Austin, Texas.

24 pages
5″ x 7″
signed limited first edition of 31 prints

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[click pics for full image]

True to character, I jotted down a few points of interest during the panel discussions that I’ve been assessing, but no significant lessons or questions to add to my mental card catalog, much less post about on here.

Yesterday morning I read a negative [but completely justified] review on Keep Austin Stylish of work recently shown at a fashion event that provided the foil I was looking for:

Does taking a pair of jeans and cutting part of them out and replacing it with neon lace and then creating a “top” by simply taking a yard of tulle and tying it around your boobs really make you a designer? The sad thing is that in Austin it apparently does. I’m sorry to have to be the one to say this but, adorning an outfit does not make you a designer.

Photo credit: http://keepaustinstylish.blogspot.com/

This “bad review” was heartening to read because she had the balls to write it, and because it was the truth. You gotta respect that, and she did go back to compliment the hair and make-up, which was actually eye-catching and well-executed. I haven’t subscribed to this blog over a long period of time (a matter of months, vs. 3-4 years as I have with other fashion blogs) so I am not sure how many other shows have been negatively reviewed on the site, but in general, I rarely come across panned fashion shows or collections. * I will say after barely delving into review-territory on Tu Scene in late ’09/early ’10 that even throwing the teensiest amount of negativity into a commentary is what definitely gets the conversation going.

Another foil: there’s a whole genre of online venues for and by graphic designers to vent about pain-in-the-ass clients/bosses/salespeople and their dismal creative preferences: Sh*t The Creative Director/CEO/Account Guy/Client/Intern Says, Comic Sans Criminal [I'd love to see a site called Papyrus Perp! why won't that font just DIE?!]. And of course, outlets like Design Observer, Design You Trust, PRINT, Voice, etc. offering industry news and formal analysis. And a ton of other stuff I don’t even seek out because it’d probably push me over the edge. I worry enough about designing and executing projects 40 hours a week, thank you very much, and I’m lucky to have sympathetic co-workers there in the trenches with me and a kindhearted husband who actually listens when I need to blow off steam about all of the above.

Why compare to art writing to fashion and graphic design? For one, I read comparatively more about these subjects than I do art, and because they are both creative, subjective cultural topics, unlike, say, computer programming or neuroscience. Not that one can’t write passionately about computer programming and neuroscience, but a slogging through lot of the empirical information to get to the juicy conclusion would probably be rather dry for most people. And also because both forms cull hugely from visual art — contemporary, historic, folk. But there doesn’t seem to be a lot of conversation and second-guessing about pre-reqs in those communities. You’re either with The Establishment [anyone who has a print magazine presence] or you’re a rogue blogger. If anything, blogging has actually helped the fashion machine reach out and grab consumers by the lapels through the web with all kinds of creepy tracking MO’s. The last couple of years have seen the rise of the Superblogger – once fairly regular people who now wield influence* over media and major brands. [On a side note, wouldn't it be cool to see something like IFB for art bloggers? A support network, not so much an information aggregator]. The only pre-reqs I can gather in a general sense for these two sectors are that the writer must have a passion and knowledge about the subject matter. Graphic design bloggers take it one step further, but not a big one: the expectation is that one works in the field, which would require a piece of paper issued by an educational institution. So while it’s true not just anyone can write well about fashion or graphic design, there certainly seem to be less hang-ups in those communities.

When I write on my own site here, I worry about being invalidated because I didn’t go to a prestigious state school with a strong visual art program and don’t aspire to move to NYC or get my MFA [but Marfa, Alpine or heck, even Silver City would be OK]. Maybe because I don’t possess that background I’m more likely to second-guess myself, and it’s just my perception of a snobbish vibe that actually has little to no existence in Austin, because all the kids who went to state schools with fancy art programs seem to be equally doubtful.

So my question is, why are art writers so self-conscious? As Women & Their Work Executive Director Chris Cowden pointed out [via], Texas doesn’t have as many writers as it should considering the amount of work out there. I don’t ask this in a self-congratulatory, “hey, let’s give ourselves some credit” or self-aggrandizing, “hey, let’s not be so hard on ourselves” Oprah-esque self-esteem check. I’m just curious as to why this conversation is happening with visual art and not these other cultural communities I mentioned.

• Is it because there are formal conventions [or perhaps "trends" is a better word] to graphic and fashion design one can delineate and analyze?
• Is it because unlike fashion and graphic design, art is not completely consumer-driven, thus making its value harder to quantify?
• Are we afraid of hurting relationships with readers and other artists in our locale?**
• Is it a self-image problem? Do we have to be the first at everything, bucking trends unless we’re the ones who establish them?

On a side note, personally, when it comes to trends I just try to give myself a break. I dislike a lot of trendy work, but usually only for that reason — because it’s popular, and when something is popular, the quality and technique and be better manipulated to have a market and influence. But ubiquitousness is not a real reason to be so harsh about it, because I’ve come to realize it’s kind of inhumane. 95% of trendy art won’t even matter in a couple of years anyways, and the 5% of artists that do evolve deserve success because they progressed, and I think if one progresses in any endeavor, it’s a show of real dedication. Another quality to respect. So why get so upset about it? Just take a look at Facehunter and you’ll see fashion conventions are flimsy, transparent and easy to puncture as a layer of cellophane. Graphic design styles, on the other hand, shift slowly from decade to decade, with relatively little hand-wringing over the past, present and future.

Probably the most common trait I can chalk this self-consciousness up to is that most artists who can write decently are people who are caught up in thought about how they’re communicating on several levels, which affects what they produce in their visual art, all through to the way they speak and write. I’m not that surprised when I read something by an artist friend that shows they have a real gift for language as well. These are the people who should be encouraged to write, start a blog. To give whatever they think they might be capable of a try. Honestly, the only other group of cultural contributors I hear stressing more about writing than artists are actual writers!

If you’ve made it this far, you might’ve judged I’m probably not cut out to be in the aforesaid artist-writer group. I guess this is more of a stream-of-consciousness journal entry than a critical essay. In fact, as I was writing this, I kept imagining how I’d discuss this through a Margi Kimball-style brainmapping illustration!

Going back to my sparse written notes, I see a couple of other thoughts I’d like to elaborate upon, but not to nearly this extent. Lucky you!

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* See Mr. Boyd’s wonderfully comprehensive summary of the Summit for further illustration about cheerleading and much more on his Houston-based art blog, The Great God Pan Is Dead.

** Earlier this week, the dazzling WendyB brought up an important caveat about this perception: Famous ≠ Rich. Still, I would love it if designers sent me free shit and all I needed to do in return was snap a few self-modeling photos and post them on my broke-ass but famous blog!

After a creatively dismal 4th Quarter 2010, 2011 is already off on a highly productive note. I’m really interested in listening to music again, constantly, which as a general pattern with me indicates that sparks are a-flyin’! Scroll down for some recent hair/make-up/photog woodshedding. [inspired by ZE Records' Mutant Disco vol. 1]

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.

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.”

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

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.

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.