RUSSIAN PROFESSOR PREDICTS AMERICA WILL FAIL DISINTEGRATE IN 2010!

 

REALLY, IT IS TRUE HE DID.

 

• The Wall Street Journal reports in an article “IF Things Weren’t Bad Enough”, by Andrew Osborn.

Professor Igor Panarin’s forecasts are all the rage in Moscow, America Disintegrates in 2010.

  

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html 

 

• The Professor said that until recently nobody took him seriously, about his predictions. Now they are listening.

Professor Panarin says the economic and moral collapse the United States will trigger a Civil War that will end the union between states. The new independent states will realign themselves with foreign countries like Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, Russia and the European Union. Of course, the Russians will get Alaska. Well they the Russians can see it when they look out the window. I wonder if they can see Sarah waving at them.

 

• The professor provides us with a map of the new AMERIKA.

The map is color-coded; I like that because I am an Artist. I like color. I like visual props it helps me understand information that is hard to imagine. Now I see the professor’s point his theory.

 

 

 

 

 

• To tell you the truth I am having a hard time with Igor’s theory.

First, he realigns California and Arizona with China, well they would go with Mexico don’t ya think, at least Southern California.

 

Then he only gives Hawaii to Japan. I think that Japan would for sure get more states especially where they have manufacturing plants like WV, LA, ALA, GA, KY, TENN, SC, and NC.

 

I would remove New Mexico from Mexico because the Aliens have already claimed them along with Nevada, so China looses one too.

 

Then there is the question of the Canadian section. I really think they will negotiate with Mexico over Arizona because there are more Canadians there than Mexicans. Florida too will surely go to Canada.

 

Now I wonder about Minnesota as most of you do anyway. But Wisconsin; no way will we give up the Packers to the Canadian league.

 

And those states he gives to the European Union, Nah I just don’t see New Hampshire or Vermont going that way let alone New York and New Jersey, they are well you know, it is a defiant NO!

 

As for the Western, Rocky Mountain States, NOPE I just don’t see it.  In fact, I just don’t see it at all with any of the states. Sure, we all have our opinions and we all have our differences, that is the strength of America.

 

Here in Montana we argue and debate all the time, but I can guarantee if trouble comes we will all stand up together and face trouble head on. Look at our Military they are not Californians or Republicans or Mexican Americans, they are Americans period and so are we all.

 

• Now to tell the truth things are bad in America with the economy right now.

But we all know we will come through this, better and stronger and just maybe smarter. Our Parents and Grand Parents did. And remember this Professor the world tested America in the 1940’s because some people thought we Americans were to weak to over come the Great Depression. But history is the definitive answer to that test.  

 

• And let’s talk about art.This is an Art Blog.

Modern Art owes its birth to the hard times of the past, the wars the depression. The artists and other creative thinkers were inspired and created a new world of intellectual ideas and art from their experience of the hard times.

 

Yes, the economy is hard it is scary and uncertain. However, the real deal the real important things are and will remain the same throughout this test, so be grateful, and be fearless. Change has come to America embrace it, welcome it and ask yourself what kind of America you want in 2009 and 2010.  We need to stand up together and fix what needs fixing and move forward as One Nation. And if those who would see us fail want to test us when we are struggling, well so be it. I for one don’t think it will work out to well for them.

 

As for Russia taking control of Alaska Professor I don’t think Sarah is waving at you, look harder I think she just has one finger up.  

I made my own map, I think it is better than Igor’s

My Map

I predict that the Professor will re-evaluate his data and check his pants in 2011

 

Filed under: Art, Culture Economey, Environment, Journalism, Media, News, On Art, Politics, Trash, Uncategorized , 2009 predictions, American Failure, Andrew Osborn, Economic Collapse, Igor Panarin, Money, Predictions, Russain Professor Predicts America Will Fail, Wall Street Journal

Dave’s Psychic Art Predictions for 2009, what are your Psychic Predictions for 2009

• 2008 was a year of years for sure, who could’ve predicted Two Thousand and Eight.

I dun’ no but here are some of my predictions for the New Year 2009.

 

 

 

• Wall Street Investors and Bankers who bought multi-million dollar artworks of various livestock genre to hang on the walls of their mansions will begin to create recipes for new and unusual entrees.

Beef Formaldehyde-tine, and of course, the new hamburger rave, the Mad Cow. Yes, it is a lot of beef but let’s not forget about the sea food menu. Pan Sautéed shark in a cream formaldehyde sauce with “capers”. This is a quick variation on a stuffed flounder recipe. And I predict Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern will show up at several of these feasts wearing a new Damien Hirst Tee Shirt and exclaim, now boy that’s really good as he samples the various delicacies.

• My prediction for the art market and art sales for the New Year is the same as last year.

Art will still be sold to the highest bidder and perhaps to the bidder that is“High”… But from what I can see is we all want the relationships between the artist and the market to change, well I predict that it will. Those questionable galleries that we all complain about, well they are going away in 2009. Artists will re-invent the Art Market Place by taking their art to the streets. Most will be holding signs, that they painted that read, “Will Make Art for Food”. But just maybe you have an unrealized ace in the hole? Christie’s reports that Collectable Wine sales reached the third highest ever $50,665,602.00. Global sales were $1,898,068.00. The top seller was a vintage 1961 Hermitage La Chappelle for $60,000.00 The good news for me is I found a vintage bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry 1968 or 69, who can remember it was the sixty’s,  while cleaning out the old VW Bus getting it ready for the scrape yard. So I predict if you look under that sofa or under the cushions you might just be rich. As for art sales I dunno, Art Business.com Reports that trying to track art sales is like trying to count the stars in the sky.

 

• The Associated Press reports that nobody knows where the first 350 billion of the bailout money went.

They contacted 21 banks that received a billion dollars or more to find out. Nobody is talking. They asked, how much did you spend, what did you spend it on, how much are you saving and what are your plans for the rest? Only JP Morgan/Chase commented and they said, “We’ve lent some of it, we’ve not lent some of it, we have not disclosed that to the public, we’re declining to.” REALLY that was their answer. So I predict the next $350 billion will be spent trying to figure out where the first $350 billion went. I also predict that throughout corporate lunchroom’s you will hear, Hey Morgan can you pass the  1961 Hermitage La Chappelle, this Beef Formaldehyde-tine is a little dry. Here you are Chase, by the way do you miss “The Golden Calf,” by Damien Hirst that was in the boardroom. How bout those hooves and horns of 18-carat gold. You did save those didn’t you?

 

• I predict that the global Environment will improve; better cleaner air and water.

With the downturn in manufacturing, I see un-looked for benefits that will help the environment. Except for the floating continent of Plastic trash http://davideubank.wordpress.com/man-made-continent-of-trash-a-fantastic-story  in the Pacific Gyer, Its size will increase by an untold magnitude as trillions of new small bits of plastic turn up this year. I predict scientists will trace the increase to all of those credit cards we will all be cutting up and disposing of in 2009. And don’t burn them either or Global Air quality will plummet.

 

• I predict the old Obama slogan of Hope will be replaced by Obama’s new slogan What the F_ _ _ were they thinking.

He will also be heard yelling, they did WHAT!…

 

 

• One more prediction for 2009 is that if the New Year is anything like the old one it will be exciting and unpredictable.

But artists are the creative pulse of the human existence and creativity is our business. Many new innovative and creative ideas begin in the arts. Artists recognize the new first and then the rest of society well follows. So I predict we will be the creative leaders of the future as we have always been. . Don’t blow it!.. Stay positive and create.

 

• And please share your predictions for 2009, come on have some fun.
• Happy New Year!…

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Culture Economey, Environment, How to, How to survive as a Working Artists, Investing, Journalism, Media, News, On Art, Politics, Uncategorized , 2009 predictions, Bailout, Barack Obama, Collectable Wines, Economic Predictions 2009, Environment predictions 2009, Floating Trash

Is Art Dead; Do Cannibals like Sugar?

•  Ok I was reading Kurt Vonnegut, so blame him he is dead you know.

Besides it is cold outside, 2degrees now up from 20 below.

 

• Vonnegut said that the only thing we can agree on today is “Sugar is Sweet”.

That there are no new ideas only recycled ones. And we won’t all agree on that for sure. So today, are there any new ideas new images or should we just quite and enjoy the reproductions of the past. I mean is there a curator or anyone else out there that could recognize a new idea? With all of the periods of art we know so well and now Raw Meat hanging on the most prestigious gallery walls around the world is there anything not done. Is no idea new, only a variation of it’s the theme.

 

• Should we give sugar to the cannibals and pay to show our art, pay to have someone look at our art.

What is the idea fairness for you the Artist?

 

• I like Van Gogh because nobody during his time recognized his genius except Theo and perhaps the Postman.

And boy doesn’t Kirk Douglas really make you believe he was Van Gogh.

 

The point is this, will the greatest art produced today go un-noticed un-scene by our generation. Missed by the prejudice of knowledge about what is art today what is important.

 

• Do you really think, believe that sugar is sweet?

Oh and by the way Van Gogh holds the record for the most sold reproductions of any artist and he never sold a thing while alive making art.

 

• Does he know how successful he is, is his spirit out there watching? I hope so I really hope so.

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Culture Economey, How to survive as a Working Artists, Journalism, On Art, Painting, Photography, Uncategorized , Business of Art, Is Art Dead, Kurt Vonnegut, New ideas in Art

Chaco Canyon Revisited, “We Can Never Speak Their Names; No More”.

awareness-of-memory-self-portrait-of-an-artist-forgotten

 

Today’s headlines detail the failure of our way of life, a human system on the brink of Collapse.

This is not a new story in the history of civilization. It is a story of transition from the past to the present and an uncertain future. Several years ago, I read Jarred Diamond’s book Collapse. He writes about the people of Chaco Canyon and the failure of their system, their way of life. They exhausted the natural resources that had been the source of their success as a culture. In the end the climate, the environment changed and civilization failed. Throughout the Western United States lay the ruins of the past.

• The people vanished

as their environment no longer sustained them, from the Wupatki culture http://www.nps.gov/wupa to the Chaco Culture http://www.nps.gov/chcu they were gone.

 

• Today the reasons why these civilizations failed is part speculation and part science, the mystery of what, when and where they went remains un-spoken in stories of a vanished civilization.

 

After reading Diamond’s account of the failure of the Chaco Culture, I wanted to go to New Mexico and see for myself this place of mystery of un-spoken stories. I embarked on my expedition of discovery, I went as an Artist not as a Scientist. My discoveries are intuitive, based on my feeling about this place.  My intuition, my gut feeling about what happened and what remains were my source, my sense of this place.

 

• Diamond writes about an enterprising culture that had a purpose to develop beyond their limits and technology to sustain them.

They were a culture that destroyed their sustainable environment for the sake of development of expansion. It is un-clear in the forgotten stories why this development was so important to the Chacoan’s.  Some archeologists believe the pueblos were only used during ceremonial seasons and that only a small population of people inhabited the area year round. As the story goes, thousands of visitors would come to Chaco during the ceremonial seasons to celebrate their stories, their beliefs. Perhaps this account is true or maybe there is a story untold.

 

• Diamond writes about how the people deforested the landscape.

They cut down all of the trees of what once was a forest far beyond what the eye can see into the distance from the canyon so they could build their city. What remains is a desolate landscape void of any large trees. Ponderosa Pine covered the landscape before. Diamond estimates that the Chaco people cut down tens of thousands of trees as far away as a sixty-mile radius from the Chaco site. This was a time when horses did not roam the landscape and all of the timber moved was by the manual labor of the people. They carried or pulled the fallen trees to the city and they built great structures. In the process, they changed the flow of water of their life substance and slowly the environment turned against them. Corn, which was the food of the gods no longer, grew in this place. Slowly they vanished as a culture. There is evidence that the last Chacoan’s began recycling. They salvaged material from older buildings and reused them to continue building new ones. But this was an effort too late because the environment became the master of this land– a land unable to sustain a human presence. To be sure, descendants of the Chaco Culture still exist throughout the region. Fragmented disenfranchised from one another they either sought survival on their own or assimilated into other groups. They became us a thousand years into the future beyond Chaco.

 

• As I drove toward Chaco Canyon in December 2006 Diamond’s description of the landscape became un-mistakable, a desolate place, a vast void in the forest.

Traveling many miles from anywhere, you come to the canyon. At first, you look hard to see any remains, any ruins, as they appear camouflaged, assimilated into the cliffs of the canyon walls. Then the ruins rise up out of the ground and the land takes on a new presence, a human presence.

 

As I walked through the ruins, I imagined the stories told and the laughter in the Kivas, circular rooms where people gathered to enjoy the company of others. Room after room the presence of the people remains. The great canyon wall that shelters the city is a place for stories bearing evidence of art and culture. Rock Art, perhaps the billboards or the signs of the culture tell the story– water, rain, of corn, and of new comers. I think many of these drawings are maps, signs for the next generation that tells where the water flowed and where you plant corn. Stains in the rock face of the canyon show the eons of sediment from the flow of water now gone.

 

• Images of plenty, of corn and raindrops on water and an awareness of time speak to me from the images of ancient artists.

Artists who were aware that they had the ability to speak beyond their own time, to communicate into a future they would not know themselves. 

 

• The question I asked myself was, “Did their simple depictions of life in Chaco etched into the rock hold the key to the complexity of their culture?” Like images in a child’s picture book absent of sophisticated language, the artists tell their stories.

Stories told with the awareness of time for us.  Stories told with the intention to teach generation after generation. As time flowed where water stopped, the lessons have changed. Are we now today looking at our future through the eyes of the artists and builders of Chaco Canyon?

 

This is the very premise that Jarred Diamond writes about in his book. It is the awareness that systems fail, that things fall apart. It is the idea that if a culture can recognize these changes– the limits of their environment soon enough, that they can change their behavior to ensure their sustainability.

 

• It was not war here in the Americas or some far-reaching natural disaster like an asteroid impact that brought failure to the Chacoan’s.

It was a system design of their own making that brought upon them the end of their culture. A failure just as we are surely bringing upon ourselves.

 

• This series of Photographs will perhaps tell the story of my intuitive feeling about the stories and names we can speak No More.

 

Visit The Gallery and see the Exhibit

http://eubank.home.bresnan.net/We%20Can%20Speak%20Their%20Names%20No%20More/index.html

 

we-speak-forgotten-stories-no-more

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Art Prints, Environment, Journalism, On Art, Photography, Uncategorized , chaco canyon, Climate Change, Collapse, Enviornment and Art, Green Building, Travel Photography

In Search of the New, Pushing Traditional Boundaries of Art

Transgressions of Form, david eubank 2007

 

• Digital Imagery has become the new medium of creation for many artists including myself.

The possibilities are endless and exciting. From photography, digital collage, film and video, images have becoming more sophisticated and are part of the visual language of our time.

Artists of all genres are experimenting, looking for ways to transform digital technology into the New. New images, new techniques and new audiences are changing how we see the world. The new digital world is still young. Technology has opened international borders, communication and ideas like no other technology before it.

• Social networks for artists have brought us together on a global scale.

New images ideas and conversations with friends crossover all of the boundaries of space and time.  

Artists networks like “Arts for Arts Sake”, http://artsforartssake.ning.com and “Art Review”, http://www.artreview.com/index.php are the new cafes where artists can socialize and share ideas. Both networks are free and offer opportunities for all artists to share in the experience. Here as an artist, you can show your latest work to your peers instantly. You can join discussions on a plethora of topics about art. You can build your own artists page or online gallery. In addition, these servers automatically help you with placement, marketing on the web at Google and other search engines.

For me the new technology has expanded my friendships my audience and my creative opportunities. Like here at http://wordpress.com where you are reading this Blog. You can sign up for free, write your own blog here, and begin sharing your creative ideas and your work with the world.

•  http://www.youtube.com enables artists and filmmakers along with an amazing assortment of everybody else in the world an opportunity to show your work and communicate.

This presidential election season here in the Untied States experienced the impact and importance of “You Tube” as voters directly communicated with candidates in a variety of formats. The citizen shared the national and international stage and the importance of the impact was immediate and provocative and was a major influence in the election.

In the early days of digital art, webpage and game designers dominated the field.

• But a few pioneering fine artists emerged like Deena des Rioux “Robotic Portraiture”   http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2001/02/08/28068.html

Deena began experimenting with digital college in the late 1980’s using Photoshop she has created a new way of seeing and working with her digital prints that pushed the traditional boundaries of art in a new direction. She replaces the brush with the mouse and expands her ideas as she explores a new medium.

• Tim Holmes a sculptor has expanded his work to film on the internet at Blue Universe.com.  http://www.blueuniverse.com/thsculptures/films/film2.html

Holmes creates moving sculpture using film. His audience has expanded to the internet and artists social networks.

In Body Psalms words take on new dimensions of expression that appear in no other medium. Words become moving sculpture as they unfold stretch, recombine and morph into other words and images… Tim Holmes

Today the tools of technology can allow artist like Deena des Rioux and Tim Holmes to explore new methods of creating art, that were before limited or unavailable.

• Rinpa Eshidan a Tokyo based artist group has taken preformance art and painting in a new direction in the modern media environment of You Tube and the World Wide Web. http://www.rinpaeshidan.jp

The group has just release a new DVD of their work.

• ARTOCRACY https://artocracy.org

founded by Megan Murphy is a digital marketplace for original art. The online gallery offers artists working in digital formats as well as others the opportunity to sell their work through an on line medium. Artocracy sells art similar to the way music is now being sold by downloading from the internet. The gallery offers inexpensive original art that the buyer can download and print at home. The artist authorizes the reproduction of the prints and the buyer gets an original artwork. The buyer also gets to participate in the making of the art.

• My introduction to the digital world was a need to produce catalogs for exhibitions.

Soon I was using Photoshop and a publishing program. Photoshop quickly became my dark room. Even back in the 4.0 days of Adobe the power to create images was incredible. As a photographer, my only issue then was camera technology had not caught up with the software. To get a good image still required a film-based system. But today that is all history.

• As a painter, I was looking for something new, that is when I began to experiment with design software.

I wanted a way to draw that was fast and changeable. I wanted to make or invent images. What I discovered from trial and error was a mysterious set of images that intrigues me to my artistic core. I still I am not sure what I see in these images, but as an artist I intuitively know that something is there, that these images call too me. I began using the images for painting taking them to yet another level another transition. Then I looked at the images as prints, photographs and found that they offered another medium. Soon I was making digital prints. I really did not know how I felt about the process. It is mechanical, it requires a machine and for me the computer became like a camera and the dark room only far more diverse.  

• My work, Transgressions of Form is a group of digitally manipulated images of the human form that explore the transitional states of the process of their invention.

I wanted to find a new way to generate images, a method that interrupted my preconceived ideas about the figure. At the same time, I wanted to create images that moved me, stimulated my feelings, and my desires about the human form. I began to experiment with a Panorama Maker program that was bundled with printer software and Photoshop. My Idea was to stitch images together not to make a panorama but to make or invent new images from familiar, expected forms. I tried many different kinds of images and found that the nude human figure worked, while other images did not. Starting with various images of the figure, I manipulated them in Photoshop. The simplicity of the human form allowed for the creation of complex images that did not contain too much visual information so as not to overwhelm the limits of the program and the image. As the program reads all digital information in the image and this can result in too much visual detail. The human figure because of its smooth surface and varied positions is less complex digitally and at the same time contains complex variations created by movement that are natural to the figure itself. This is what intrigues me about Tim Holmes movies of Moving Sculpture.

Taking combinations of manipulated images, I load them into the program and transform them into new images. I would describe the process as random, by chance like using a slot machine. Images of chance that often do not result in successful expectations. Other times the result is an abstraction that stimulates the visual senses of memory about the human form that perhaps recalls hidden, repressed or forgotten memories of human desires of the flesh. Images, about the secrecy and beauty of our own personal experience and our expectations of intimacy with the human figure.

 I also want to note the influence that Deena Des Rioux had on my initial investigations into digital imagery. She brought her work to Montana and her “Robotic Portraiture” exhibit opened a new vision for me of what was possible. Having curated the exhibit I was fortunate enough to spend a great deal of time looking at her images in the museum where I worked. The possibilities were there right in front of me. And so I took my meager skills at the time and began to learn and work.

 For me this is still new after several years. My interest in Photography is rekindled, as are my interests in painting. Now digital printmaking will be a medium of choice even if I have arrived at this point by chance.

 I am excited about the future of this New World of Art.

Transgression #20 david eubank 2008

 

See more of my digital images at:

http://artsforartssake.ning.com/profile/davideubank

 https://www.artocracy.org/?1&page=/store/m-29-david-eubank.aspx

 

 

 

 

Filed under: Art, Art News, Art Prints, How to, How to survive as a Working Artists, Media, Movies, News, On Art, Painting, Photography, Uncategorized , david eubank art, Digital Art, digital print making, figure art, How to make digital art, New Art, You Tube

The Cultural Homogenizing of America or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love Wal-Mart

• A Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death on Black Friday.

And scores of shoppers stepped over his body and trampled other Wal-Mart employees attempting to help the poor man. Did the idea of Falling Prices become, chumming for Killer Sharks, creating a shopping frenzy.

You might be asking yourself, what in the world could Wal-Mart have on sale that would cause such a tragic display of human behavior; a Human Shopping Frenzy. I can’t Imagine! And Who’s or What’s to Blame!

I am going to blame the Corporate Cultural Homogenization of America and soon the World.

• Sameness to the degree of insanity.

Not one Wal-Mart on this planet has a unique product on it’s shelves for sale. Every item in the store is massed produced and can be purchased at any other Wal-Mart in the world, for the same price. Maybe if you don’t get out much you don’t know this? But having traveled around the country and shopping at different Wal-Mart’s I can testify that they are all virtually the same. Same store layout and the same products. Oh you might argue that a Super Wal-Mart or Sam’ Club has more items, but they too are the same.

As a Visual Artist, I Noticed the Endless Development of Box Cities with Endless Parking Lots across America.

Every Exit Ramp is Home. MacDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Wal-Mart, Target, Loews, Home Depot, you can fill in the blank. Each offers the same food the same products. A Big Mac is a Big Mac; where ever you are…! And now suddenly we Americans are worried we can’t get more of the same stuff that has been mass produced in numbers unimaginable. Why? So we can all wear the same Team Tee Shirt. Oh Right; there are different teams.

Or… Maybe the frenzy resulted from a call to arms to stop the now doomed system failure at our doorstep, to save our new homogenized culture to get more stuff before supplies become limited to only millions or hundreds of thousands of the same thing.

So how did this cultural change happen; how did consumerism become a belief system that perhaps is the New American Religion, Consumerinsanity.

• I will tell you another scary story…

I moved to a small community in Northwest Montana about 13 years ago where I became the Director of the local Art Museum located in downtown Kalispell Montana. This was at a time of franchise infancy in the community. Wal-Mart and Costco arrived just about then after the first McDonalds. Before that, the infrastructure of the Flathead Valley was local Mom and Pop un-franchised businesses. The Flathead Valley of Northwest Montana was mostly untouched by the mass distribution of corporate enterprises that dominated the larger communities of America.

Its sense of place was unique, it was that small Home Town, that Rural Paradise that offered a haven from the large urban communities of modern America, a place where a kid can grab a towel and walk to the end of the street to the community swimming pool with no worries.

Thirteen years after McDonalds and the explosion of Franchise Businesses I can hardly recognized the original community I moved too in 1996.

The valley has taken on the same visual characteristics as the rest of America it has become part of the… Homoge-O-Nation!

As you drive through the valley on U.S 93 the landscape reveals the same architecture, a true assimilated American Community. Wal-Mart, Boarders, Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target, Walgreen’s and a plethora of corporate franchise restaurants to supplement a major anchor complex. You seen one you seen em all.

This is how goods and services are delivered today, the Architecture is functional and predictable, a box with ornamentation stuck on it giving each box an identifiable appearance, or as I like to think of it, a CODE.

One-step farther inside the box and we identify the product line. It really doesn’t matter what McDonalds you walk into anywhere on the planet, you know you can get a Big Mac and you identify the product with the architectural Code.

The architecture is the reinforcement of the Code an image of the corporation, the franchise; it is part of the brand.

This is where the Sameness of products of the Landscape, Cityscape and culture started.

As the code or Brand was reinforced into our culture, our ideas about ourselves changed. We began to seek our comforts in unifying products.

These products help us define our status or place in the social economic pecking order.

These product identifications, brands, codes enhance our personal liability to others and our sexually and sex appeal and appearance.

Many of us now live in houses and neighborhoods that all look alike. Even the color of the houses and building are regulated, all the same color scheme, no variation on the theme is tolerated. No more directions, Turn Right at the Desert Brown house on the corner, or you will be trapped in a maze of cul-de-sacs.

As a reformed Minimalist and Photographer this might have worked out well for me, all I need to do is take one picture of any one of these boxes and my work would be done and I could just reprint the image any time inspiration over came me.

The Development that we have come to believe we need, that we want, has created a sameness that has overtaken the cultural landscape across an America of endless McDonald’s, Strip Malls and Big Box Stores that has grown into new cities and towns, not built to live and walk in, but to drive to. Development and Sameness has changed us as a culture.

• Perhaps this is how it happened?

Developers brought us development and products and we were all told we needed them and we believed the developers, the corporate retailers, and their advertising and believed we needed these products.

This idea is in stark contrast to having true needs and then developing products and services to fill our true desires and needs.

I am sure we all really want a MacDonald’s hamburger that is smaller than the pickle slices on the bun. But “Your Love n It”.

• Four questions I would ask you:

Does the New American Culture fulfill your True needs?

Can we develop what we want, what we need in a more thoughtful way?

Is originality culturally Dead.

Is Art Dead…!

• I have an idea for you.

It just might be original in today’s culture. Go out and find a local art gallery and buy an original piece of art for yourself this holiday season. Spend as much as you can afford and buy something with the thought that you want to live with it for the rest of your life. The art could be a painting, a sculpture, a photograph, any thing that represents an individual original creation. It could even be a fine craft item that you could use or wear. But it must represent individual creative originality. Then live with your new art purchase and enjoy it throughout the many seasons to come. Don’t worry your appreciation for your artwork will change continuously as you change because of it.

I noticed something in my community that was a direct result of mass distribution and coding, it is the OPEN sign. Our local Costco Wholesale Warehouse carries these signs as does Sam’s Club, we don’t have a Sam’s Club but it is coming soon. What these signs do is tie or link the most diversified group of businesses together, as a brightly colored thread weaved through out a tapestry of individuality.

The signs use an established and functional Code, OPEN for business. They shine brightly throughout your community and mine; in small unique business that can offer you the consumer a new market and new products, like the local art gallery in your neighborhood or town. In fact, I started to collect pictures of these signs in diverse business in my community and across the country.

A sign of originality connected by sameness, Open for business. In the space of a couple hours one day I took dozens of different Photographs of signs in an incredibly diverse selection of businesses that only have the sign in common. Once you start looking for OPEN SIGNS you will see that these simple, functional signs dot the Urban Landscape like Dandelions in a well manicured yard.

• And maybe your find a good Hamburger too!

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, How to, Investing, News, On Art, Photography, Uncategorized , Buying Art, Consumerism, How to buy Art, Open Signs, Urban Development, Wal-Mart