The Week After That Week

Inspiration: All images by Jeremy Enecio

Work: Starting on "Bats" drawing.



Reading Response: Interview with Thomas Joshua Cooper

"They (people at his gallery) move the work into the appropriate contemporary art context with dignity. I can't do that and I don't think that it is my job. My business is to make pictures with enough authority and clarity to absolutely validate the procfess that the gallery engages in with their clients."

He's right. The modern art world (the individualistic, interpretive one) works in a gallery system, but it preceded the gallery system. Though galleries hold sway over what is shown, and consequently what even has the possibility to be deemed good or bad by the public, that sway is only delivered by the power of modern art over the modern art viewer. Quality and integrity of concept, over pretense or format or avante garde-ness, is what drives things forward.

Galleries are nothing without art. But art is still art without galleries. Just sort of a fun revelation that quote lead to.

The Following Week

Inspiration: All images by Yuko Shimizu



Work: Finished "Oh, great. You again."



Reading: Expressing an Artistic Attitude

I've been thinking a lot lately about my cartoons and what they say.
After showing my grandmother the above "Oh, great. You again." image, all I got was "That's so cute!"

What.

It's said that comedians are the saddest people of all. I often describe myself as angry or sad, and I like to think that I use humor to explore those ideas, but I often wonder what exactly comes across.

Early in this class I referred to my work as "stupid" which Laura mentioned was noteworthy. Maybe it is.

I think attitude can be divided into:
My personal attitude (my temperment)
My work's attitide (its tone)
My attitude towards my work (my opinion)
What comes across?

Maurice Sendak, creator of Where the Wild Things Are, amongst other things, is quoted as saying "I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence." He was a really angry gay man with a lot of issues with childhood and society at large, and yet, he illustrated A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss.

I sometimes wonder if we aren't just sort of destined to do a certain kind of work, no matter how far a cry it is from our actual disposition. I like to think that I get pretty close with my drawings, but who knows.

Week that TYLER WENT TO NEW YORK

Inspiration

All images from Jason's book "Isle of 100,000 Graves"



Work: Sketch work for "Oh, great. You again."



Reading Response: Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin is a bit of an anomaly for me. I actually respect her work, ideologically. I'm really not a photography guy, and I'm not really interested in the cool "punk rock transient artist kid" scene. But her work doesn't pretend to be anything referential to the culture she's chosen to be a part of. It's just documentary. Literally anyone could do what she's doing. It's the art of life, captured over time. And I think that's respectable. Especially since she makes a point to not talk during the exhibitions.
I think this does bring up a good question of "What makes a photo-worthy moment?" Sure, her friends poop and do drugs and that's controversial imagery and when they get married and die it's sort of controversial too because alternative lifestyle people do normal things?!?!?! And yet, what about eating a sandwich? What about sitting and just thinking? Just because her friends let her take photos at what are culturally taboo moments, doesn't make those moments more representative of a life than culturally acceptable ones. Just a thought.

Week Nine

Inspiration: This is all three of my inspirations this week. There's like seven videos in here. This is literally all the inspiration I will ever need for the rest of my life.



Work: More Trolls!



Reading: Gregory Green, Intro/Interview Section

So I'm feeling fun this week and decide to just pick a random page in the book. I open to a delightful picture of a Moltov Cocktail. I say delightful becase 1) It's well drawn and 2) I realized that I already knew a lot about Moltov Cocktails and that made me feel good.

The artist in question here is Gregory Green, who's mission is to "undermine existing concentrations of power and distribute it among the people." Which, before we even get started, is not really anarchy. Anarchy is chaos, not equilibrium. But that's semantics.

Gregory actually seems pretty level headed, I loved his notions about taking off his "artist hat" and putting on his "business hat" and the idea that he doesn't always wear leather and spike his hair and play into all the other Hollywood fetish-ized aesthetics of an "anarchist."

Here's what I don't like:
1. He has five art dealers. Why does someone trying to subvert existing systems use them? Rage Against the Machine gets asked this a lot, because they're signed to a major label and... I mean really they're just a band. Why not be activists? Well because it gets their message out, is their statement. But does it? Does singing songs about anti-government or leftist sentimentality to a sweaty mob of inebriated 17-30 year-old's get the point across to the right audience? Does having five art dealers that help you get into syndicated galleries make you punk rock? No. Being poor because you're trying to do everything yourself is punk rock. And it sucks. But you chose to be punk rock so you have to deal with it.

2. He went to grad school. Not punk rock. Not anarchist. Grad school isn't even pretending you just want to "further your skills." It's explicitly to enter into the market for your chosen profession... or become a teacher.

3. We are living in the most DIY-friendly era imaginable. Greg complains about not being taught in school "how to make it in the art world." Not only does that happen now-days, but it's vaguely irrelevant. Before there were schools, there were people DOING things that MADE the rules up that later got taught to people too afraid to just stick their own necks out. If you want to get famous you don't need to be part of the system. Make a website, make funny videos, get self-published for like $5 a book and go to craft shows and market yourself. All by yourself. Like a person who doesn't want to support the system. If you get paid cash, you could even be a total prick and not report any income to the government and instead make a bunch of flyers for your awesome pseudo-political concept book or whatever hardcore DIY anarchists who drive a crazy van full of radios and guns do. There is literally no excuse to be in the system if your art is about not being in the system.

Then again, once your little indie operation gets off the ground, people will want to join you and you will BECOME the system, man. Isn't that just a bummer.

I really do like this guy though. Or maybe I just want to burn stuff down.

Week Eight

Inspiration


Trolls Go Home! cover by Mark Beech


Where the Sidewalk Ends cover, by Shel Silverstein


Also by Silverstein

Work:

A Book About Children for Young Trolls (Teaser)

You’re growing up quick, and now it’s time to help out.
But what’s being a grown-up troll all about?
Well it’s about catching children! But that’s not hard as it looks.
Just follow the A, B, C’s in this book!

A is for all the children, so good to eat.
B is for brunch, the perfect time for children’s feet.
C is for crying, which they do a whole lot.
D is for dessert, twelve children caramelized in a pot.
E is for how easy it is to catch children in nets.
F is for flatulence as the children digest.
G is for grabbing children when they’re playing hide-and-go-seek.
H is for holding them down so they don’t make a squeak.
I is for icing on all the little children’s heads.
J is for jumping in windows and pulling children from their beds.



Reading Response: Questions from Sourcing Inspiration p. 123

Are you more likely to be inspired by:

1. The presence or absence of contentment?
Ideas come easily when I'm happy and chatting with friends or reading new books, but the motivation to get to work comes strictly from angst land.

2. Personal situations or social conditions?
Personal situations all the way. I don't like contemporary topics. I'd rather invent my own history.

3. Interactions with humans or non-humans?
Humans... sort of. My best ideas come out when I'm essentially talking at other people. They use a keyword and something just clicks on a totally unrelated note. And if I present an idea and it makes them laugh, I know I'm on track.

4. Rest or fatique?
I have to keep an eye on this one. Sleep deprivation used to be my vice. Nothing like the ideas that pop out at 3am after a long shift at work and a good jog. But I'm trying to keep my wits about me more often now. I like having to work for the more abstract thoughts, it feels more earned that way.

5. Relaxation or pressure?
I work with both. I probably work faster with a deadline, but I tend to create ideas in a pretty steady fashion regardless of what's going on. It's really fortunate when I can apply them to classes I'm in at the time.

6. Sobriety or being high?
I'm extremely against inebriation. I think those ideas are ill-deserved, and usually trite. See #4 for more on that.

7. Joy or sorrow?
See #1.

8. Familiarity or mystery?
Probably familiarity. I just read a book of poetry that I found exceptionally inspirational, and I NEVER read poetry, but it was in a style that I like already. So I guess I didn't stray too far.

9. Production or consumption?
I don't consume new media a lot, but I mostly get ideas from exterior sources, again, triggering something completely unrelated from in myself. So 50/50?

10. The past or the present?
Probably the past only because most of my stories are set in some amalgum of the 50's, victorian era, and today. Those eras are already so idealized in their own media that they make fantastic space for commentary.

11. Facts or feelings?
Both? A mainstay of writing is that no matter how fantastic your world, there must be rules. There are certain physics and societal norms that even the most stupendous characters must adhere to. Creating those hard definite boundaries helps facilitate the emotional commentary by the characters found within.

12. Anger or pity?
Anger. I am very a very "let's trace this all back and see why this happened" person and in the end, most people are their own undoing. Empathy sometimes, but rarely pity.

13. Yourself or others?
I love to say I'm an isolationist, but what is a humorist with nobody to amuse but themselves? I'm constantly using my friends as test subjects for concepts and control panels for delivery. I may not be the most sympathetic person, and most of humanity makes me furious, but it's that rage against the human condition that in the end is the topic of every single thing I do. I would be nothing without the things I hate. And I hate everyone.