Recognition!

One of my pastel drawings was the favorite work on zatista.com by guest curator Anthony Cochran!

Endless Passage (Reversed)

Check out what he said about it and read his article HERE.

It’s nice to finally get a little recognition for something I’ve done.  The only problem is that over the winter, I realized that many of the images I posted on my portfolio sites were reversed due to the scans of the slides I used.  I re-packaged the original works to protect them a bit more, and realized that the slides were backwards.  I switched all of them out – except for the ones on Zatista.  Doh!  So, apologies to Mr. Cochran, but if you flip that image, I hope it isn’t any less your favorite!  Also a note to would-be buyers out there, take a look at the image in reverse and see if you still want it – hope you do!

-Endless Slug, endlessly slugging.

Endless Passage (Correct)

*** UPDATE ***

The very active folks over at Zatista gave a read to my blog today and noted the image flub.  They’ve kindly switched my image on their marketing materials to show the corrected image.  Who feels like an idiot? Slug do.  Anyway, thanks to Zatista for being so tenacious with their aid and interest in my work as well as all the other artists over at their site.

Busy Illustrating?

What has Endless Slug gone and done now?  I accepted a paid contract for illustrations.  Ok, ok, it’s not quite a paid contract since I contracted myself.  I recently started my own publication company since the world apparently will not hire me for anything (going on 10 months unemployed now, whee!).  Unfortunately, the form of publications requires me to have illustrations.  Since I have no money, I get to do all of my own illustrations!  I *hate* illustrating.  In this particular case, I certainly will do it – although I hope I can make some sort of revenue so that I can hire some professionals out there.

Anyway, the blog has been a bit lighter than I wanted lately, but only due to the high number of hits on my last post and the start-up of my new business.  I just wanted to update my more dedicated readers.  The Slug is still out there, slugging around…

Shallow Experiences and Imagined Communities

How do we define the difference between rich or deep experiences and those experiences which have little to no direct impact on our lives?  Secondly, how do we make another understand that there is, in fact,  a distinct difference?  And further, how do we explain that these richer, fuller experiences do not have to have anything to do with religion although people often immediately point at some sort of spiritual or religious explanation when having a meaningful relaitonship with an experience.

These are some thoughts which keep me sleepless sometimes.

It occurred to me one day that these new generations of people are very ignorant with no change in behavior in sight.  We are constructing a culture of pure ’stupid’ in the full definition of that word – I do not mean it as a slight but as an observation.  I consider myself rather stupid when it comes to using Adobe Illustrator, for instance.  But the difference between me and the rest of the society I seem to find myself in, is that I strive to improve on that stupidity, at least when I am aware of it.  And thus, my epiphany: When unaware, the public continues as if there are no problems in the world at all – which relatively, there are not.  We cannot argue.  The cell-phone and text-message phase of human evolution is a dangerous step towards extinction.  I don’t mean extinction of the species, but of something else: extensively shared meaning.

Sit in a Wal-Mart sometime and watch the teens walk around with their cells.  Try not to be creepy, please.  You’ll observe that the act of being with friends at the store, the act of being at the store at all, and the act of meeting people is far outweighed with the personal interest involved in the text messages which will erupt on their phones every few seconds.  This is because there is a much more intensively personal imagined community occurring in their minds (cf Benedict Andersen).  Why would anyone pay attention to the world they are currently walking around in when much more important things are happening between the space constructed mentally between texts – the text-web, as I sometimes call it.  So many experiences of life are being completely ignored – so many social skills are going unlearned, undeveloped, as people Twitter, ironically, about what they are currently doing, sometimes so quickly that the Twit is posted before the action even occurs.

One might argue that with new technologies and innovations, new behaviors and identities will form.  Sure, I cannot disagree.  I also text message, use Facebook, obviously blog, and have occasional public conversations on my cellphone.  But with the use of these handy tools, I understand a certain context for them.  I have had life experiences which did not include these things.  I have had many experiences which were deep to the core of my character and have developed me in much more rich and powerful ways than I expect any of these kids on celly’s will ever in their lives – and I am sad for them.

-To a point.  Instead, I look elsewhere, for others like me.  I thought I could find them in the art world, where they used to be, but the art world now is ridiculously involved with itself and its little shallow messages to itself.  Fine art today is like a sad kid who sends himself text messages in a language he does not understand, but up high so all can see.  Bravo.

Moral: Get off your damn phone and talk to a human you don’t yet know.  Then, get their number.  You are not anywhere near as important as the act of direct interaction between people is.

Glimpses of the New Year

I decided to post a couple of very low res pictures of some of the new work I’ve been doing over the past few months.  None of these works are finished, but they’re far enough along that the content should be identifiable.  I tend to work on new drawings and paintings over months to years at a time, so there is no expected time of completion.  Sometimes I don’t even feel like working on a project any further either, so what you see here might be all that will happen.  I hope to continue on these, however.

New Organic Geometrics (2009)

First, this is a return to my organic-geometrics.  I still can make a pretty nice pile o’ floating blocks.  It’s been about six years or so since I really did one of these and it’s nice to see I still have it. Now, if only people cared enough for these to buy them, I’d make a mint.  As one of my old art teachers once said (and I paraphrase), “the shapes, textures, compositions, colors, and techniques are all fantastic, but there is no energy.  If anything, these blocks are an attack on energy.”  He was very correct.  I hope to one day figure out the energy aspect of the work and make these floating shapes exciting and meaningful to the viewer.  At the moment, I think of them more lately as if Rothko made forms.  These are for contemplation, not for shock.  Are they about anything? No – as Francis Bacon once said, painting shouldn’t be “about” anything.  Not that I entirely agree with that, but I think I know what he meant… (there’s a painting joke there somewhere).

You may notice the faded color around the edges – this is only because the final layers of color have not yet been added.  The final step in this process is more color and a bit more water.  I’m waiting to do it though, I don’t quite know why.  Oh, incidentally, this is a soft pastel drawing on arches watercolor paper.  I add some white charcoal for a blending mechanism and spray with water.  Delightful.

Portraint (underpainting)

Second, is a new portrait.  This is intended as an underpainting of the final portrait, thus the blues and reds, but I’ve stopped painting on it at the moment.  I may re-start it.  This is oil paint on hardboard but I was experimenting with oil mediums and the surface is a bit uneven.  This does not show up in the photo, but if you were to touch the surface, you would feel it.  I let it dry a bit so I could work adequately back on top of it, but I waited too long and it pretty much dried completely.  So, this one is pretty much done as is.  If anything, I might hit it with some other material like soft pastel, but that rarely works.  This portrait was also painted from a photo of a model which I hate doing, but once you’ve painted real models, you can usually work from the photos later.  You must always remember, however, that you’re painting a painting, not painting a photo.  The photo should only help remind you of small details your mind may have missed.

"Come, Join the Dance" (2009)

Lastly is this monster of a painting.  I won’t even bother explaining this, but it should be obvious that it is very much incomplete at the moment.  I just wanted to give a small example of where I’m heading with work now.  I started working on this back in October, and have taken a small hiatus from it.  I used walnut and poppy oils on it and some of it is actually still wet after about 1.2 months of a break from it.  I ran out of steam working on it and hope to be renewed in the coming year to finish this thing.  It’s a large separation from what I usually do (see above), and it came out (so far) rather successfully, I think.  Comments from viewers are always appreciated, whether pro or con.

And that’s a few new things for a new year to come.

The Depths of Douchebaggery

Check this out folks:

The Bags Arcade Experience

Do you see what I see?  Look again; look three times!

I was in Ed Debevic’s a few weeks ago and stumbled upon this disgrace of humanity: A stand-up arcade machine simulating the game of bags.  I use the word “game” loosely.  In an age where classic arcades are dusting away into nothingness, I was shocked to find a new machine, then punched in the face with this new machine’s subject matter.

For those of you unfamiliar with “bags”, the game is a college-town phenomena whereby you throw bean bags into holes.  We’ve all played this game at family gatherings at one time or another, and it’s surely safer than lawn jarts, but the college fratties a few years ago side-armed this game for their own drunken devices.   In the college town I live in, you could not drive a block without seeing a great sea of bags boards and douchebags standing outside with beers, acting older than they were, girls nowhere in sight (except those fugly ones that can’t help but hang out with boys n’ beer), and trying very hard to be “the best” bags game on the block.  The game was sort of designed as a means to socialize – something to do when you are drinking with friends.  It sounds somewhat like a fine idea as some sort of activity instead of just standing around, but in practice (thank you anthropology), socialization rarely happens except with good friends.  Instead, you find that classic suburban subtle conspicuous consumption.  You can actually show off your friends to the neighbors and your social prowess, thus intrinsic sexuality, by simply grilling some burgers, drinking beers, and standing on either sides of the sidewalk throwing bags.

Of course, no phenomenon goes untouched in capitalist world right?  The next year, local folks’ yards were covered in locally constructed bags boards and bags as a means to make a few bucks from the incoming second-rungers who needed quick bags boards before anyone else.  I have no idea how economically beneficial this act was.  I can only assume it did not work out as planned as we rarely see any of these yard sales anymore.  But then again, these folks who tried to make and sell the boards were just hopping on a fad – a really poorly thought out and ultimately shallow fad.  Besides, they missed the point: you were supposed to make your own boards.  Making a bags board is an easy thing – any amateur idiot with a hammer and five-minutes to spend at lowes can build a set.

So we come now back to the arcade machine.

I scream this: What the shit?.  Seriously? No, no, SERIOUSLY?  What undergrad with a business degree and a friend in computer science came up with this disaster?  I can’t believe this thing actually makes any money at all except from really young kids who don’t know any better or by sheer novelty.  Is this one of those “it’s so bad, I just have to play it once…” sort of games?  Needless to say, I did not play it.  I actually couldn’t even stand in front of it for more than about 20 seconds.  I had to send a friend of mine back in with my cellphone to take a quick pic of it since I couldn’t even look at it again.  I should point out that the machine looks like a modified Golden Tee game, which it probably is.

But have we come to this?  Here is my analysis of what this machine means:

1. We have now decided to video-game every aspect of reality.  I just used “video-game” as a transitive verb and I don’t know if that is cool or not.

2. We have run out of so many ideas that now even the simplest games in the history of the world need to be created just to keep game designers in business, mostly from novelty games like this one.  It’s a downward spiral – we play games, want new ones, but are so distracted by our current games that we are not getting the life experience necessary to construct a reason to make new games, thus down we go making games based on this limited perspective to be even more limited, furthering the limitations set by the original anti-precedent…. and so on.

3.  Douchebags are flourishing.  This “nerds are cool” phase in contemporary US society must end soon.  I believe that when we legitimize nerd-dom, the folks who are usually maintaining the social power in social circles cannot maintain their hold without a slight ‘give’ of credibility in nerdiness.  Essentially, in order to be socially superior or even equal, I must confess to some sort of secret geek thing I do, thus again setting that anti-precedent to damage that status-quo.  The more it gets damaged, the more we’ll keep seeing douchebags appear.  Guys, girls, get on up!

4. People still take the easy way out.  This was the best idea for an arcade game you had? Seriously?  Why not tag? Jarts? Horseshoes? Yo Gabba Gabba scream-singing? Putting your clothes on in the morning? Standing? Channel-surfing?  Staring Contest? Even Facebook games have more of a challenge than Bags.

Well anyway, this post was a bit ranty.  But I had to share this with someone.

========= UPDATE!=========

Dateline 12/31/09

I have received numerous emails from folks – some I know, some I don’t – informing me of other sightings of these horrendous machines all across the United States!  Happiness overtakes me with a knowledge that my eyes and mind are not alone in worrying about the state of the contemporary world, be it in art or otherwise.  People have been sending me images of these “games” as well.  I thought I would share one…

Bags at Fattys

This photo is of a bags machine at a bar.  Thanks to Hepcat for sending me the pic.  I enjoy waking up to pain when I check my email.

-slug