NUTS ABOUT DROSE

Drose is a band from Akron Ohio and they have problems. The music is irritated and distressed. The singer is scared and may be a ghost. I love the minimal complexities of the instrumentation (and how that oxymoronic description embodies said tension). The singer pretty much displays the same cadence in each track, but it's a style that's pretty unique so I allow it to do it's haunting on me.
Hear for yourself! click here!
Also, kudos to the band for making one of the creepiest album covers. Look at that thing!

THE END

The Mayan calendar ends on the fast approaching 21st of December, 2012. Does this mean the world as we know it is going to come to an end? No. It's certainly more likely that I'll be filing my taxes come February.
Suppose, just for the sake of this post, that the world is going to end on Friday the 21st and maybe we're even as ill-prepared as ever. How can one say his goodbyes to everything? If you're made aware of your own passing; you can muster up some noble form of reflection, but knowing that everything will be gone along with you is a different breed of eternity.
My long farewell would go something like this:
Does a peace need to be made now? Or will it be made regardless? Will my enemies finally face their doom? Or will I just think about them a lot less? I won't miss my loved ones. That seems to make the most sense of all. Don't miss your loved ones. Friends, Family, Pets; they have connected with, and not missed, you. Beautiful architecture that I have not hardly begun to understand will finally be relieved of its duty. All color will turn off the light and sleep in an abyss of non-color and the abyss itself will suddenly be nothing more than awake. Goodbye to every small item on the far side of this planet, and at the far edge of this universe, to where I never travelled. Were those items ever real? or were they only illusions? Now they are as real as gods and I too will soon be that real. Although, anything that might survive to bear my footprint would remember the impact as having lacked any god-like oomph. Goodbye silly words like 'oomph'. Goodbye.

STUDENT LOANS

Student loans haunt me every day and they are impossible to pay. Hey, that rhymes! But seriously, I make around ten dollars and some change an hour; Take some taxes out of that and my income is basically minimum wage. Sure, my job as a custom framer and printer is stimulating enough. My work environment also encourages me to do the art that I love, and for the first time in my life I have a decent full-time benefits package, but quite simply I do not make enough money to pay rent and bills and groceries AND pay $250 dollars a month for student loans. The math is just not there. So I resort to a bit of dreaming. I've always been good at drawing but, hell, I'm even better at dreaming! I dream of winning the lottery (even though I don't play the lottery, but that one time I do, my number will definitely hit and I'll be an instant millionaire!) I dream my art will get recognized (even though my art is in a stack on the floor in my room, because even with my employee discount, I can't afford to get all of my pieces framed to prepare for a show) and I dream other dreams that also make everything okay.... sigh...
When I started this blog I was in a pretty low point of my life, but I managed to breathe and think positively and think thoroughly, and that helped me grow a lot and keep a clear and healthy mind and body. I still breathe and will not let the pressure of student loans destroy me. The responsibility is another subject, and I'm working on keeping the ball in my court. Good luck to everyone who faces the same dilemma that I am facing. It can really make you feel vulnerable and worthless at times, but that is exactly how you should not let it win. Keep your chin up, breathe, find good ways to make money to feed that hungry dragon, and stay happy. If I can do it, so can you!

SERIOUSLY. THE F?

On my other blog Almostnaught.blogspot.com I have been posting pictures of my creations. Lately, my inky brush strokes have taken on the form of, what I call, bubble people. I made one particular picture of my bubble people black-and-white and posted it as my Facebook profile picture. My co-worker Jesse saw this and was reminded of a Jan Svankmajer animated short. I'm pretty sure Jesse hadn't even seen the color version of my image but the likeness, in both black-and-white and color, is certainly there in the first two parts of Svankmajer's film. I can only hope that I'm channeling this genius somehow...

DON'T WORRY...

...Be happy.
Today I visited the Institute of Contemporary Art to see a show by graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister. I recommend that anyone who has the chance go see it! The theme was happiness and boy did it ever deliver. Interesting perspectives, challenges, and motivational tag lines bombard the visitor from the moment you enter the exhibit; ultimately resulting in a fulfilling and thought-provoking experience.
If you don't make it there, you can at least watch a bit of Stefan here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/stefan_sagmeister_shares_happy_design.html

ALCHEMY

The other day I was framing, for a customer, a poster of a Matisse show that recently took place in some modern gallery. The poster was a bright orange 15"x 22" rectangle which housed two square Matisse paintings side-by-side in the top quarter of the poster. Underneath the paintings was the word MATISSE in big 4" high white capital letters and, below that, some other sparse info about the art venue. The poster was simple yet stunning graphic design and was certainly worthy of being framed. The poster was art designed to advertise art. I wondered if Matisse would have imagined his art ever being used in this way. Sure, in his lifetime, there were notes and advertisements that bore reproductions of his artworks, but to then have one of these artifacts revered as art itself is a strange thing. To me, this was a form of alchemy in the arts. We were no longer appreciating the art purely for what it was, and instead it had become the detail of another object. That object, the poster, considered the two Matisse paintings as only a small part of the whole. As an advertisement, the poster was implying that Matisse was the focus and would even plant that seed in the viewer's mind's eye; However, As a piece of graphic design and typography which was to be framed and hung in one's home, it was about that orange rectangle bearing images and words. This, of course, was not turning lead into gold, but the properties of an art had certainly been changed into another art...

HAPPY BELATED, C.O.P.!

My eldest child turned 2 (on the 2nd of July) and I've missed the opportunity to celebrate on time! You might say I've had my hands full with my newborn blog AlmostNaught. All excuses aside, it's time again to recognize another year's passing and thank everyone who supports me and follows my blogs! I do it all for you folks!