Monday, December 10, 2007

Topic(s) to Come back to

  • The necessity for a rampant emergence of Biennials and its relevancy to the dissemination and exposure of Contemporary Art/Artists
  • Why Carlos Basualdos' choice of the word image in correpsondence to "Live Cinema/The Return of the Image" becomes so problematic in this day and age

Communication

Something i have become extremely passionate about is communication... as an artist i communicate ideas and feelings through color, scale, material, imagery etc. as a human being living in the US (hopefully not for long... there is an empty cave for one ... waiting for me in Iceland...)
I communicate everyday through action ( body language) as well as spoken word and text...
in every way we communicate, whether it is through action, through vision or the transference from voice to auditory, there always arises a disparity between what we mean and what is understood...
For clarity in further exploration of this idea, lets just say that the idea of communication is comprised of three stages,
1.) the communicator - the pure idea, thought, comment, etc. being expressed to another
2.) the intangible act/process of communication (which becomes an operation)- in which the pure idea is transfered and ultimately altered as it moves from one being to another
3.) the receiver- whose nature and environment and own convictions play into the translation of the idea into what they believe is being said

these disparities between what is said and understood, perhaps, may become moments of slippage, which (according to Bataille) is this uprooting that "disappoints expectation" ... and in a sense communication becomes this operation of slippage in which the form ( whether it is material, sound, or touch) and content (what the speaker/communicator/artist is trying to say) become displaced by the action of communication, whose end result is always contingent on the the "receiver of the information" ... this is where the slippage lies, provided that there is a miscommunication-unfavorable or auspicious...

which then brings me to another idea, which would be based around the "receiver" - still follow the afore mentioned contrived progression of communication. The "Receiver" must decipher to information that is being transferred to them... and because they will never truly understand what is being meant by the "communicator" there involved to a certain extent a level of faith or belief... ( if not then everyone would be walking around questioning everything and full of doubt - which is not a bad thing, and is something i condone, and suggest should actually be more common, but due to the nature of our materialist capitalist driven society, it is not- there fore i shall continue- and may elaborate on in the future).... returning back to belief... the receiver instills this sortof belief or faith in what they misconstrue from the "communicator"... which becomes their reality... to believe in something is to accept it as a truth with out any tangible proof... and to accept something as a truth then becomes real to that person... therefore it becomes your reality because you believe it is real...

Thursday, December 6, 2007

painting the inner reality

There are extremely interesting happenings occurring simultaneously in John Sloan’s Rainbow, 1913 as well as Hale Woodruff’s Caprice, 1954. Both Woodruff and Sloan, through the manipulation of various formal elements, have abstracted their compositions to differing degrees in order to represent and communicate their internal reality. While placing the paintings specifically on a timeline chronicling the progression of art, their stylistic elements allude to the impact of highly influential European Modernistic avant-gardes that were prevalent specifically during the time each work had been created. In terms of the artist’s application of paint, the motives behind the execution, and their individual stylistic representations, I have drawn parallels in both artists approach and exploration of visually communicating and embodying their ideas and emotions.

It is ironic that Sloan would choose to name this cityscape Rainbow, and include on the picture plane a miniscule image of the quintessential rainbow. Existing on the upper left hand corner of the picture plane is an arc of prismatic colors. This image of a rainbow appears to be minor in importance due to its scale in relation to the canvas as well as in Sloan's decision to use colors that are predominately cool and dark in value. In relation to what can be seen as the most important aspect of the painting, the muted rainbow appears in what can be taken as the heavens or sky and opposite to the city. Spanning the majority of the composition, the city is comprised of warm, effervescent colors that one would expect to be in the rainbow. Not only does the city contain a multitude of colors but its location in relation to the rainbow appears to be important. A rainbow exists opposite the sun and its existence is caused by the refraction and reflection of the sun's rays through drops of rain.[1] It seems as though Sloan may have been drawing comparisons to the city and to the sun. The warmth and brightness of the city caused the emergence of this prism after perhaps a rainstorm, which can be implied by the cool dark values surrounding it. Since the focus is on the city and the plethora of warm hues that have been employed and manipulated to create this amiable impression of the city, the title Rainbow may also have been an allusion to his choice of colors to convey his impression of the life and vivacity of the city. This imagery is loosely painted in thick oil paint applied with bold brush strokes. Sloan’s handling of the medium and composing with it has been done in a painterly manner. Paint has been similarly applied in Hale Woodruff’s Caprice. Caprice is an entirely abstract work comprised of color and brushwork. Each bold mark works together to create a “non objective symphony of brushstrokes” flowing across the canvas.[2] Woodruff generalizes physical detail, so that the canvas becomes an abstract pattern.[3] His use of lights and dark rhythmically move into and out of one another conveying this whimsical and capricious sort of nature. From a more central location on the picture plane, colors appear to move towards the boundary of the canvas. This creates a more dynamic composition facilitating movement into and out of the painting with an implication that the color could exude indefinitely into space, never fracturing from delimitation of a rectilinear canvas. Tension is present as the value of colors is darker in the top left, and a lighter value exists in the bottom right. These two values begin to divide the picture plane in half on a diagonal axis. Color becomes the dominant visual element in Caprice, it appears to be an intentional choice of color palette based on nothing but visceral decisions.

Color becomes an extremely important facet in talking about Sloan's work. The architectural space of this city landscape has been reduced to color: lights and darks. By eliminating some and emphasizing others, he produces a synthesis of effect, in which confusion has disappeared, but the suggestion of vivid actuality remains.[4] It is the humanity of the scene, as well as its pictorial suggestions that interests him. Not in the way of telling a definite story, but by inference and suggestion.[5] The dynamism created by the implementation of a warm array of colors harkens to the people and life that exists within the city of New York.

There is relevance and importance in both Woodruff’s and Sloan’s application of thick impasto-like oil paint onto their canvases. The way both artists have made and left a mark on the canvas translates into its own language. Each bold mark serves as a diaphanous record of the artist’s presence and process. Because of the expressive nature in the way both artists have handled the medium, the result of all these marks becomes a means to immortalize the internal emotion invested at the moment each transient stroke had been created. Woodruff’s Caprice is rendered as an abstract non-figurative organic composition. His use of free broad brushstrokes convey colorful impressions of rhythmic movements in nature, which has been presented in bright, clear and resonant color.[6] To stand in front of this image is to be confronted with organized chaos. The composition has a life which has been instilled in it by Woodruff. His title aptly embodies the manner in which the colors change direction and move at their own liking. It also may allude to the internal and emotional reality that Hale has transcribed into his painting. For Hale to have invested so much of his internal reality into his painting is not a reach. At the time he made Caprice there was an overall penchant for the reduction of painting to its material forms: non-figurative and two dimensional was accepted. This was a key formal concern for New York Abstract Expressionist painters.[7] Conceptually the mark-making of the Abstract Expressionists was said to have been drawn from the artist’s unconscious as well as from other universal themes and emotions derived from the collective unconscious.[8] Caprice was made when he was residing in New York. This work is representative of his response to what the Abstract Expressionists were doing and can be seen in his style which shifted to what he described as semi-abstract, symbolic painting.

Sloan’s Rainbow strays entirely from realism or photorealistic renderings and rather serves as his own personal account of the city. Sloan has immortalized himself and his view from the rooftop with his translation from intangible image (his perception of the city) to an object (manipulated paint on canvas). Besides documentation of the artist’s own presence, the painting also conveys his impression of the city. The painting then becomes a simulacra, where as the non-existing original is but the aggrandized imprint contrived in the mind and by the emotion of John Sloan. His paintings are then "made in response to life, distorted to emphasize ideas about life, as well as emotional qualities about life."[9]

Just as Rainbow becomes a recoding and reinterpretation inspired directly from Sloan’s external living environment in New York City, so does Woodruff’s Caprice. Drawing from his inner being, Hale is transforming his work from the physical natural environment. Both artists have separated their external reality from their internal reality, and have used the latter to inform a reworking of the former. Intense color, impulsive painterly gesture, malleable line, and amorphous shape formally are implemented to convey internal reality.[10] The aim of expressing internal reality in unconventional abstract terms was to bring out its vividness to the introspective eye. These were more appropriate than conventional representational terms, for internal reality seemed abstract compared to external reality, and more vivid once it was creatively apprehended.[11]

Upon first inspection of the work of Sloan, one may conclude he is simply painting the physical environment he resides in. Yet due to its altered appearance, the painting has been done by the dictates of his unconscious.[12] The distortion and abstraction perpetuated by the inner eye was the preferred eye in Modern art.[13]

The use of the unconscious and drawing from the artist’s internal reality has been prevalent throughout various movements in Modern art. Considering the years in which Caprice and Rainbow had been created, there were prominent European avant-gardes that drew from the unconscious or the internal impression of reality in which both Sloan and Woodruff would have been exposed to. Both artists had been looking at and drawing influences from Expressionism and Impressionism, but in addition Woodruff was directly influenced by the Abstract Expressionists. Their mutual geographical location in New York at the time of the 1913 Armory Show, which brought emerging European artists to the attention of artists in the United States, was a significant source of exposure to the advances in modernity as well as the impact artistically and internally that had been impressed upon both artists. It would have been at this show where both artists had seen their first glimpses of the Modern aesthetic. Woodruff, while at art school in Indianapolis, had expressed an intrigue in the new trends in the work of more recent European emigrant artists as well as in the examples presented art the 1913 Armory Show.[14] Yet the ideals represented in the works at the show were not embraced by the faculty at Herron, and in expressing his interest while simultaneously alluding to his pursuit, Woodruff concluded that there was no one at the school “who could prepare him for the new modernism which had taken hold.”[15] Similarly, for Sloan, the Armory Show is credited with having introduced him to VanGogh’s Dutchman’s Picture, which he commented as being inspirational and laden with “expressive power”.[16] Sloan, who had worked on the hanging committee for the Armory Show, could not have been unaware of European Modernism even before the show.[17] As early as 1908 John Sloan had been acquainted with American abstract painter Arthur Dove, whom had traveled to France in 1907 and was introduced and exposed to the extremely expressive European developments in painting style, in particular the Fauves.[18] The influence of the Armory Show and the emergence and ultimate integration of the concepts implemented by European Modernism can be seen as a catalyst for artists such as Sloan and Woodruff, to create works that have been derived and executed as a result of internal expression.




[1] Della Summers, Longman Advanced American Dictionary: (Harlow, England, 2001), 1186.

[2] Judith Wilson, “Go Back and Retrieve It”: Hale Woodruff, Afro-American Modernist (Atlanta, GA, 1988), 45.

[3] Ibid.. 45.

[4] Patricia Hills, “John Sloan's Images of Working Class Women”: Dozema & Milroy, Reading American Art, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 313.

[5] Patricia Hills, “John Sloan's Images of Working Class Women”: Dozema & Milroy, Reading American Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 314.

[6] Amalia K. Amaki, Hale Woodruff, Nancy Prophet, and the Academy, (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2007), 37.

[7] Judith Wilson, “Go Back and Retrieve It”: Hale Woodruff, Afro-American Modernist (Atlanta, GA, 1988), 43.

[8] Amalia K. Amaki, Hale Woodruff, Nancy Prophet, and the Academy, (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2007), 37.

[9] David Scott, John Sloan: (New York City, NY: Watson Guptill Publications 1975), 58.

[10] Donald Kuspit, The End of Art,(Cambridge, United Kingdom: The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 2004), 100.

[11] Donald Kuspit, The End of Art, (Cambridge, United Kingdom: The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge 2004), 101.

[12] Donald Kuspit, The End of Art, (Cambridge, United Kingdom: The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 2004), 100.

[13] Donald Kuspit, The End of Art, (Cambridge, United Kingdom: The Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge 2004), 101.

[14] Amalia K. Amaki, Hale Woodruff, Nancy Prophet, and the Academy, (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2007), 24.

[15] Ibid,. 24.

[16] David Scott, John Sloan, (New York City, NY: Watson Guptill Publications 1975), 58.

[17] Heather Campbell Coyle, John Sloan’s New York (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 59-60.

[18] Ann Lee Morgan, Arthur Dove, Life and Work, With a Catalogue Raisonne, (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses 1984), 40.

Friday, November 9, 2007

SculptureCenter







Bendati/Blindfolded
an open, collective performance
Sunday, November 18, 10am

This is to identify with the state of mind of Luigi, who, for over a year now, has had trouble with his eyesight. He must remain in complete darkness, or keep his eyes closed for long periods of time.

Those contributing are free to stay still or move, do something or not, work or rest. Participants are also invited to identify with Luigi's condition and simply experience the loss of sight for an hour.

After the performance impressions can be posted on http://forgottensculptors.blogspot.com a space where analogies, coincidences, and individual thoughts may appear; where images and voices seen or heard during the action can find an echo.

Emilio Fantin, Luigi Negro, Giancarlo Norese, Cesare Pietroiusti


Forgotten Sculptors
Bendati/Blindfolded is the last action in a series of events that make up Forgotten Sculptors. Forgotten Sculptors is a project by Fantin, Negro, Norese, and Pietroiusti, produced by SculptureCenter for PERFORMA07. The project began with a series of short email stories; and the second part consisted of a live performance by the four artists with the participation of Joan Jonas and Steve Piccolo, which took place at SculptureCenter on November 3, 2007. For more information about Forgotten Sculptors, please email forgottensculptors@sculpture-center.org

With the support of the Italian Cultural Institute, New York.

For additional information please contact SculptureCenter: (1) 718.361.1750 or
info@sculpture-center.org

Media contact: Katie Farrell, kfarrell@sculpture-center.org

About SculptureCenter
Founded by artists in 1928, SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit arts institution dedicated to experimental and innovative developments in contemporary sculpture. SculptureCenter commissions new work and presents exhibits by emerging and established, national and international artists.

SculptureCenter is five minutes from Midtown by subway. Please visit the website
for details.

PERFORMA07 (November 1-20, 2007) is the second biennial of new visual art performance presented by PERFORMA, a non-profit multidisciplinary arts organization dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century. http://www.performa-arts.org


(((http://07.performa-arts.org/artists.php)))

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

How to organize your brain in terms of computer files....

It is an incredible perception to equate a human brain to that of a computer hard drive. Just as the brain stores information, so does the the hard drive. Though the two differ in a plethora of ways, I can not help but continuously draw parallels. A click or an audio/visual clue will conjure up files/memories.

What if you created a folder called brain, and within that folder created more folders, and then within those folders created more folders etc. so that the further from the parent folder the more specific the folder...

what if you could reach a memory by typing in a command... something similar to:
~danigali/cisc103/lab04/index.txt


Though, what does it mean:

to reduce something sensorial/experiential to text?
for memories to be accessible to anyone?
accessible via inter web?
to be blocked into one pathway?
to be contained an exist in one location?
not to exist as other memories on the same loci?
to try to recall memories and share them as text?

More to follow...

Monday, August 13, 2007

The Art Parade!

http://www.deitch.com/files/projects/artparade07_pr.pdf

September 08, 2007
Along West Broadway

Deitch Projects, Creative Time and Paper Magazine are pleased to announce the third annual Art Parade. The parade will take place on Saturday September 8, at 4PM. The route will begin on Houston and follow West Broadway, ending on Grand Street. Following the success of the past two Art Parades, artists, performers and designers are again being invited to create floats, placards, portable sculptures, kites, performances and street spectacles.

THE ART PARADE is co-produced by Creative Time, New York's premiere presenter of art in the public realm and Paper Magazine, the definitive guide to downtown style and culture.

I plan on going to this ... if you are interested in accompanying ... contact me!

Monday, July 30, 2007

WaxFactory

In searching for additional information regarding Georges Bataille's 'The Impossible'
I stumbled upon the WaxFactory in NYC, which appears to be a home to multidisciplinary practices and artistic performances...

A couple years back a team of artist/performers staged a live performance of 'A story of rats'

information is obscure... additional prying is required

http://www.waxfactory.org/

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Innocence vs. Absurdity

Absurdity and absurdist actions, according to Camus, are identifiable by their lack of explication and solutions. Rather they are replete with description and experience. It is the 'what' not the 'why' which perpetuates and serves as a catalyst for absurd existence.

It hard for me to recollect actions i have engaged in that have had been inexplicable or with out a directive motive. It has been as though anything denoting absurdity has inherently become the alienated response.

Perhaps it is because of the experience pertaining to that of the absurd in which i have previously angaged in, or ,maybe because it is in that incomprehension of the absurd, that i have been deterred from a purely experiential situation, and have since sought out an existence based on the concreteness of a mathematical equation.

Within existing and engaging in a diminishing amount of absurdist actions it is in the popular notion of 'growing up' or 'maturing' that has placed such negative connotations upon the idea of absurdist living. Anything without an answer is taboo. Yet when we question an answer that has become the epitome of taboo. It is as if the pursuit of living has become synonomous with solidified solutions and rationale.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Check it out!

Look out for:

SEPTEMBER 2007
Artifact-Metafact
Artists exploring the transformations of visual symbols,
curated by Tamas Veszi and Carla Aspenberg
http://www.repetti.org/gallery_current.htm

* james Kalm - pseudonym for the art critic/ writer of the controversial Brooklyn rail

Posted by dani gali at 8:09 AM

*Eric Doeinger - www.ericdoeringer.com

* Jenn Dalton - http://www.artsurvey.net/survey.php

Sunday, May 6, 2007

The next documenta should be curated by an artist




The Next Documenta Should Be Curated By An Artist

After the opening of Documenta 11 several questions were posed to a group of international artists: What happens if artists take over and occupy territory usually reserved for curators? What happens if artists are asked to propose a concept for a large-scale group exhibition and take control over a prestigious exhibition such as Documenta? The responses to these questions, some in the form of full proposals or shorter comments, resulted in a publication, a web-based project and a conference titled The Next Documenta Should Be Curated By An Artist in 2003 and 2004.

Just before the opening of Docmenta 12 in Kassel this June, these questions and the responses are still at the center of the conversation about the role of large-scale international group exhibitions and the relationship between artists and curators.

Out of print for the last three years the The Next Documenta Should Be Curated By An Artist book is back and available again! Over 30 proposals will be back in print as a bootleg version of the original publication which will be launched on May 16th at the Swiss Institute in New York City.

Curated by Jens Hoffmann

Participants:
Marina Abramovic
Pawel Althamer
John Baldessari
Ricardo Basbaum
Laura Belem
Dara Birnbaum
Daniel Buren
AA Bronson
Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset
Morgan Fisher
Liam Gillick
Joseph Grigely
Natascha Sadr Haghighian
Carl Michael von Hausswolff
Isabel Heimerdinger
Federico Herrero
Alfredo Jaar
Tim Lee
Ken Lum
Dorit Margreiter
John Miller
Jonathan Monk
Boris Ondreicka
Serkan Ozkaya
Florian Pumhosl
Martha Rosler
Julia Scher
Markus Schinwald
Tino Sehgal
Lawrence Weiner

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Important Findings

"When I started to develop the script, there was one moment clearly in my mind. It was a winter’s night. I was standing in snow with my cameras. It was dark and I was taking pictures of a brightly-lit swimming pool from the outside. Suddenly I saw myself and the whole situation from a distance. That image became more interesting to me than what I was seeing through my camera at that moment. I thought how strongly imbedded a person’s own image is in his or her consciousness and how creating images and taking photographs at a specific moment shapes that image. Pictures remain to witness the existence of their taker as tangible objects, but they also represent captured moments in the flow of an individual’s memory. That one moment and the thoughts it evoked formed the basis for my film Black Water."
--- Salla Tykkä on her latest film 'Zoo'

"It is now time to reevaluate the once-horrifying statement of John Ruskin that architecture is the decoration of construction, but we should append the warning of Pugin: it is all right to decorate construction but never construct decoration."
- found in Edward Tufte's Envisioning Information


architecture is the mother of all arts.

"it's the way they draw these wretched tables!"
(accompanied with a drawn falt image of king and queen at flat tables with plates, cups, etc falling off the table)

Edit:

Things/Artists i need to check out, further explore:

1.) Salla Tykka (http://www.sallatykka.com/web/index.php)
2.) Matthew Buckingham
3.) Cabinet

Friday, April 20, 2007

a seemingly (un)important occurence...

Thursday morning was unlike any other morning...

the way the furniture is situated in my room is that whilst reclining in bed I and able to extend my arms and reach to obtain any one of the expanse amounts of items on my desk, including my laptop... at approximately 5:20am while shifting in position... i caused my pillows to moved, which consequently knocked over a tall glass of water... before i realized what had happened my poor computer was immersed with water... seizing my computer and immediately attempting to shake it dry... i watched as the blue lit 'on' button slowly flickered then faded off.. as did the screen immediately after...

thus followed the desperate attempts to thoroughly dry and revive... through broken sobs i continually blow dried and wrapped a towel around my computer... i also took this as an opportunity to thoroughly clean in between the keys... i'm sure my computer was not too fond of being as dirty as i had let it become ... and i was willing to do anything in an attempt to coerce this thing back to life... which really intrigues me in retrospect...

The almost death of my computer was almost like and felt like it was the death of another person or being... the time i spend on my computer is insane... It has been said that people interact with their cell phones more than they do with any one person... which is not only fascinatingly true... but incredible... because not only do we use our phones as communication to talk to people we continually check them for the time, set alarms, use them as planners, type and send text messages to other people... machines are extremely crucial and inevitably will be interacted with multiple times through out the course of our day...

Its nuts to think about how much time i spend with my computer... and to think how much this machine is like a best friend... just by going on my computer you could find out so much about me... through my music, typed documents, photographs, artwork, video, etc... and my computer has gone through and been to alot of places with me ...its fascinating how when i recounted the seemingly destruction of machinery as a 'death in the family' ... because of all the memories my computer has documented... to me it was a seemingly traumatic loss to experience... and im sure that this doesn't hold true to just myself...

this analogy of human to machine... got me thinking... about the whole idea of man/woman vs. machine; man/woman becoming machine; the actions of human mimicking that of a machine; the routine life of a human equated to that of the routine process a machine has been made to carry out...

I have put a lot of thought into this... and have on two occasions created art work expressing this idea... the first being a stop action short film "your bones got a little machine" and an approximately 5'4" plank of wood painted with acryllic paint to reveal the inside of a human vein juxtaposing red blood cells with nuts [and bolts] entitled "in the vein of humanity" ...

i feel like there is something extremely interesting in this and something that can be further explored with in this realm and duality of machine/human...

there is also something extremely interesting in how people and get on a computer or a video game system or any other interactive electronic for that matter... become so immersed in and easily learn and know how to manipulate it... what is also interesting in how both man an machine have a linear duration... that is for life existence ... perhaps on and off could be deemed similar to sleep and awake... or conscious and unconscious... also human error vs. mechanical error...

there is much that can be extracted from this comparison i feel... more to follow...

Edit:

Ken Berman in response to the question: "why machines?"
taken from: http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/05.29.03/berman-0322.html

"I see them almost as human. Nowadays everything is mechanized, you can't get away from them. Because of that, I see man and machine almost melded. I don't see it as a takeover of human nature, but I see a way for the machines to explain what I see as human nature. I also wanted the pieces to connect, so that they connect into other paintings. The idea is that they could be reassembled and rearranged, and that permeates this avenue of thought."

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

what I do...

I feel as though I have achieved a certain level of clarity and lucidity within the way I process, understand, conceptualize, and develop thoughts/ideas... Its as if everything is coming together, and that in recontextualizing things I am finally making my own decisions... and in not just making decisions based on caprice or opinion... these are informed... and a direct result of questioning... on 3 different occasions by 3 different people on the same day... coincidence or fate?... regardless... i was instantaneously impacted... "question things... questions will lead to more questions which will lead to answers that will and should yield more questions..." ...this may be meaningless... and a superfluous jumble of words... but for some reason... it stuck out like a sore thumb (i hate cliches)... and try as i might to disregard this imparted wisdom...there will always be that faint trace of a question mark ingrained in my mind... as a result...

Thus far I have been a mental maelstrom... and still i have not experienced the calm after the storm... yet i can still find solace in this tumult... though not staunchly set on a solid path... i feel that pliantly molding to the flux of life has been successful... i'm not sure when but that faint glimmer of beacon in the distance will guide me through the dense fog rolling off the murky waters...

I feel as though I have a hard time saying things... and even more so writing things... i have such high standards and expectations... its hard to free write without striving to be grammatically correct and employing at least one "big" word in every sentence...

Words are important to me... not so much letters because on their own their functionality in a sense becomes futile... its like giving a person a plank of wood and asking them to make a house out of it... its not possible because ... planks (along with a plethora of other various materials)...are necessary in its construction... likewise with words...

last Friday I drove into Wilmington with my good friend, peer, and contemporary Ben Lenoir... It was first Friday in Wilmington, DE... Specifically we went to check out Carrie Ann Baade's Vices and Virtues Exhibition at the DCCA; as well as Ron Longsdorf's exhibition opening at the LoFi Gallery... What stood out the most about that excursion was... not just the great experience, Carrie's Incredible paintings and attire... but some thing she had said ... to the effect of... "I feel that every painting was made for one specific person... every painting has one specific owner..." ... which i felt was an incredible way to look at the relationship between art and viewer... it was as if the painting took on a life of its own... what i found was also interesting occurred when you took the converse of that statement... and instilled a role reversal... every painting inherently has an owner that it was made specifically for, yet unaware at the time... but does every person have a painting...? a painting cant just go out and look for a person ... the person has to find their painting.... but then what if the person is as mindless as the pseudo culture of the society in which we consume...? then that person may either never have their own specific painting... so unlike the paintings that will inevitably all be accounted for... there will be orphaned people who do not have a specific painting...

Just as paintings have specific people... i feel that certain ideas, things, statements, experiences, etc. have specific words... in describing or recounting something to another person... i feel that the communicator needs to be aware that there is always that one word which will be the word that best described something... lets face it ... "i saw a good movie" ... what the hell does that mean?! there are so many better words that can be used to communicate more thoroughly to another person about what you experienced... depending on the person... good has a vast expanse of meanings in which it denotates... good: ... because it was thought provoking?...because it was reminiscent of an experience you had? ...because it made you experience a certain strong emotion? ...when trying to communicate... you must be aware that there is always a better way of thoroughly conveying to your audience what you are experiencing... and maybe... words might not be adequate... which is why I am a visual artist... i communincate in the constructed language of images ... and with in this realm it is my responsibility to find the best possible image to convey and share a certain experience/emotion with my audience/person i am interacting with ...