Road trip!

It is day one of my two day work-week, and I must say, I could get very used to this. Or at least I could get used to the idea until I remember that I have 5 days worth of work to do in two days.

Be that as it may, I'm still excited. Early Wednesday morning, J and I are departing for sunny Florida, and unless weather.com is lying to me, it actually will be sunny. The rain is supposed to end Tuesday night and it'll be sunny and mid to upper 70s just about the whole time we're there.

Though this is sort of a bitter sweet trip (more on that at a later date) I'm so happy to be going. I love Florida, the St. Augustine/Jacksonville area in particular and going there is a bit like going home, or at least going to the home of a good friend or close relative. I can't wait to stick my toes in the sandy beach along the Atlantic.

Hello, my name is Simon, and I like to do drawrings

Since posting a rather lengthy reply to Mandy's Blog, pontificating on art, I've been thinking about my own work. I want to do more of it and get some more exposure for it.

To that end, two things will be happening. The first is, I'll be posting some of my art on the internet. I want to post new things, though. Stuff done in the last year or so. I imagine I'll be hard pressed to do that faithfully, but I don't mind if I cheat a little. I'll post a few pictures here, if I want to talk about them, but most of them will be in my facebook account. I know that's not what it's for, but I don't care. I'll start uploading this weekend.

The other thing that will be happening is that I'm going to start working on a larger-scale colored pencil piece for a contest Prismacolor is hosting. I'm thinking something along the lines of a stylized self-portrait - a cartoony version of me killing zombies. If nothing else, it'll be fun to do. I have plans to do the thumbnail sketches tonight and I have to say, I'm pretty excited. I almost want to leave work early to get a jump on the other stuff I have to do so I can get to work on this sooner. Patience is a virtue, I guess.

Back to the grind.

There is Hope and Joy in the World!

Ye gods, U2 has returned to sing us fanatics into frenzied and blissful oblivion.
I can't begin to speak about how excited I am about this. I've often referred to my first U2 concert as my first, and to date only, religious experience. This was back in...oh, '05 I think. They were on the Vertigo tour (not to be confused with the How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb tour, which was the official tour behind that seriously under rated album of the same name. I digress.)
Anyway, I can't really describe that show in a way that would do justice to how I felt about it. It's a bit like being genuinely in love. For those who've seen, they know. For those who haven't, no adequate explaination is possible. I suppose you could watch the companion DVD. Needless to say, it sort of made me understand religious fanaticism, arena churches and devotees of Christian rock. Sort of. Well, no, not really.
Anyway, this September, my beloved Irish rockers are returning to Chicago in support of their newest studio effort, "No Line on the Horizon." I admit, with no small amount of shame, that I have not given this album the time it, or indeed any U2 album deserves. Having downloaded it from iTunes this past Friday, I have as yet to hear the entire thing, start to finish. I intend to remedy that as soon as possible.
Now if only the All-State Arena was still called the Rosemont Horizon (and they were playing there, instead of Soldier Field). It would fulfill my appreciation of poetic dorkiness to as-yet unsurpassed levels.

Slapping Shepard Fairey Across the Face

When I say that name, Shepard Fairey, you probably wouldn't know off the top of your head who I was talking about. But, if I were to show you this:

You instantly know who he is. Fairey, a commercial and street artist from New York city, created this and many other iconic images that have become ingrained in the public consciousness, while at the same time managing to avoid becoming a household name. Generally, that's depressing to an artist. If we're all going to be really honest with ourselves, artists are attention whores. We do what we do to communicate the inner blackness of our tortured souls, to present the world with our own asinine views on things we love or hate, blah blah blah. It's all a terrible lie. The truth of the matter is, we do what we do because we're all attention-starved little monsters. No matter what line of bullshit we feed you, know the that the true reason we make art is that we do it for the asspats.

Except for the graffiti artist. In an almost petulent and childish response to the fine art world that has patently rejected graffiti as a legitimate artform, graffiti artists have turned on the paint-spattered heels of their Chuck Taylors and said "fine, you don't want to give us your recognition, we don't need it." It's almost a point of pride for some graffiti artists to labor in obscurity. But with the rise of renouned artists like British wall-scrawler, Banksy, and California based Barry McGee, graffiti has been gaining ground and attention from more people than just the local police.

Enter Shepard Fairey. As a man working in the medium that coined the concept of "street cred," Fairey has been a catalyst for bringing street art off the underpasses and into the gallery. He first caught the public's attention in 1989 with his now-famous "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign, which later morphed into the ongoing "Obey"street art project. Most recently, Fairey has been working with Saks Fifth Avenue for their Spring/Summer ad campaign (something which makes me, personally, cringe, but hey, whatever. I can't say I would refuse that payday if it were offered to me). But it was the now much loved, much ripped-off image of president Barack Obama that has finally cemented Fairey in the public's consciousness, even if they aren't totally aware of it. Earning Fairey a spot in the Smithsonian (the original of the poster was purchased last week for their portraiture collection) and a retrospective at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, this image that has come to graphically represent hope and change appears to have finally brought graffiti to the attention of the fine art frou-frous. What can I say, they're a bit slow.

So why do I want to slap Shepard Fairey across the face? I don't. I like Fairey, always have. That brand of snarky, visual dissent that Fairey and others like him sell has always been a favorite of mine. I'm no where near quick and clever enough to do what guys like Fairey and Banksy do, but I do like them. What has me pissed off, and what's inspiring me to rage this morning, is the abuse of their ideas. We've seen every variation on Obama Hope imaginable, from versions featuring former presidential rival, John McCain, to the most recent version I've seen, being bastardized advertising for octogenarian comedians.

Apart from the fact that I can't think of a single link between Obama and the comic in question, even in the most wild and far-reaching stretches of the imagination, this annoys me on several other levels. First, it's unoriginal. Yes, we know. Obama Hope is everything a graphical image for mass production is supposed to be. It's strong, highly emotionally driven, speaks to the viewer, inspiring, yadda yadda yadda. But since when does one guy "getting it right" justify everyone else who has been charged with creating a visual being lazy and ripping off someone else's work? I know artists routinely borrow liberally from other artists. You might even be able to make a convincing argument on the idea that all art has been borrowed from somewhere. But this direct rip off, changing only the person in the image while everything else remains the same, that is cheap.

I think that's it. I think that word, cheap, perfectly encapsulates how I feel about bogarting a famous image. It's cheap. No original thought goes in to creating the knock-off. Further, the knock-off cheapens the value of the original. Fairey's big "thing" has always been about saturation. Repetition of something is what makes it iconic. Repetition and direct theft, however, cheapens the original, the message, and in this case, the movement it represents. On Fairey's behalf, I feel as though people ripping off this image are mugging him and slapping him across the face. I'm incredibly saddened to think that one day, 14 year olds who've never heard of Barack Obama will one day be wearing t-shirts with this image on them like so much Che Guevara. Hell, Che everywhere bothers me now.

Ultimately, it's that cheapening of things that are and should remain valuable that distresses me most. That and I hate that fuckin' knock-off poster!

Rekindle

Since October, I am ashamed to say that nothing of terrible importance has happened. I had a surgery. I lived. I'm paying for it. Life is going on. This is the way of the world. Events, when viewed through the lens of hindsight, aren't terribly important.

I've been trying, albeit not very hard, to get this professional art career going for some time. Due to my various self-created road blocks, that has not happened. It's about time that changed. To that end, I'm beginning a new series of portraits. Thanks to the kindness and generosity of my lovely sister-in-law and brother, this morning I opened the shiny two month old copy of Art in America that has been sitting on my desk for the last 3 weeks. I love flipping through art magazines. It reminds me of college. The downside is, the consequences for skipping work and going to the Art Institute when I don't feel like working would be much more dire than they were when I'd skip class to go there. Anyway, to my delight, as I was flipping through the exhibition reviews, I came across Robert Bauer. He's kind of a nobody, which is to say he's kind of like everybody who isn't making millions on a 12"x12" panel. He does what I want to do. Realism has always been a love of mine, mainly because I don't really have the patience to get it absolutely right. I try though, with some mild success. People like Bauer or Lucien Freud and the old masters like Rembrandt, Vermeer, and van Eyck render people so well that it makes me green with envy. They almost create new human beings based on their subjects. That’s what I want to do.

Inspiration is a funny thing. Like fossil fuel, it's rare, expensive, and in extremely short supply. The good news is, I think I've found some. Now all I need are subjects, time, tools, and... and... oh bugger. Well, nothing worth doing was ever done easily. When I get something worth showing, I'll show it.