April 24, 2009 • 1:42 am 1
Shepard Fairey is not a Crook, by Steven Heller
Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Art Prints, Culture Economey, Journalism, Media, News, On Art, Painting, Shepard Fairey, Uncategorized , Fairey, Shepard
March 14, 2009 • 1:19 am 0
Back of the Yards Mitchell Siporin 1938
I am always looking for exciting Art Websites and the Luce Foundation Center for American Art is a good one.
The Website is not as good as going to the Luce Center, which occupies three floors in the west wing of the Smithsonian, but if you cannot get to Washington, it is a close second.
The center is an open storage program that exhibits or openly stores artworks from the Smithsonian’s American Collection. That in its self is a great idea and gives you and me access to parts of the National Collection that would otherwise be locked away in traditional storage.
The Website creates access to the collection beyond the walls of the museum and is a great resource on American Art.
Filed under: American Folk Art, Art, Art News, Art Prints, News, On Art, Painting, african art , American Art, Center, for, Foundation, Luce, Smithsonian, Websites
March 9, 2009 • 1:33 am 3
Don’t worry Mr.Stubbs is just Acting
You might think so if you read the plethora of articles written on the end of Big Art and Non-Profit Art Organizations.
Auction Houses are reporting poor sales and the values of previously valuable artworks are in decline or on the skids altogether. More over the fate of many Art Museums and Non-profit galleries are simply stated unknown with their endowments devastated by the financial turmoil that is everywhere. Other Arts Organizations from symphonies to seasonal festivals are canceling their entire seasons and Universities are closing their art galleries and museums and talking about de accessioning their art collections to raise capital. Collectors are in a panic as their wealth is failing and want to rush out and sell the treasures in their collections at drastically depreciated values.
You the average artist might get the idea that the end is indeed here for the Art Market. That might be the case for at least parts of the big art market, but I believe that Two Art Markets exist in two very different Art worlds. Just as I believe that two financial systems or economies exist in America.
Let me start with the value of Art. One market professes that the value in art is an investment and it operates much like the stock market. The perceived values of artworks are abstractions that are difficult for even the top experts to understand. What makes a Damien Hirst or a Jeff Koones worth millions? Is it the aesthetic importance or is it a rare commodity. Is value a false premise to begin with? The world’s great art treasures certainly, have real value but are they really worth the hundreds of millions of dollars paid for them or are their values just as abstract as the values of stock derivatives.
The values of these treasures are as unreliable an investment as mortgage securities or stock derivatives. In fact, I would compare the Money that everyone is so upset about losing including me is a close cousin to Conceptual Art. It the money exists inside our minds as an idea without real substance. This money is simply numbers on paper or in a computer programs and has no real value except in the idea that is actually exists. In fact, recently when AIG was called (as in poker) to pay out insurance claims against losses they insured against they did not really have any real money. Their wealth was a concept on paper.
The same deal is going down in the Big Art Market. Values of artworks, endowment funds and the real value of all of these abstractions are now becoming Representational or Realistic, and the picture is a scary one to say the least. I guess because like the experts I just don’t get the whole concept and don’t know why it works or doesn’t for sure, maybe.
So where does that leave you the Artist, Writer, Musician, Actor, The Arts Worker. It leaves you with the second Arts Market and the Second Economy. Maybe I should just call it as I see it the real Market Place.
The Real Market is where real things get done, where actual work is preformed, real things are produced, and where real money, goods and services are exchanged. This is the market where the real value in what you produce exists. You write a book and you sell that book to someone that wants to read it. You sell a painting to someone that wants to hang it on the wall in their study because the real value is, they enjoy looking at the painting, it brings real pleasure to them outside it’s monetary worth.
It is where you take the money you earned from the sale of your painting and you buy lunch at the corner café. You tip the waitress and she takes the money she made waiting on you and buys fresh produced grown by a local farmer to feed her kids dinner.
The kids spent the day at the local Art Museum on school fieldtrip learning about art and making art projects and they share their new knowledge with Mom at dinner.
After dinner, Mom is amazed that the kids are forgoing TV and doing their homework. Johnny suddenly gets the math problem that was a conceptual enigma, but after seeing an abstract Artwork that the Docent explained to his class, he sees the math.
Jill is working on her English homework writing the poem she had been putting off but because the museum had, a poet read to the class she is inspired to write her own poetry.
Jimmy is in his room practicing his music lesson because at lunch, the museum had a drum ensemble perform and he too is now inspired to make music.
Mom decides that it would be a good idea to sign the kids up for more art experience classes and becomes a member of the museum that she pays for with the tips she earns from many different customers at her local restaurant.
Years later, her kids grow up and never forget the childhood experiences that the arts provided for them. They go to galleries and buy art, join museums and buy season tickets for the theater and local symphony.
And we all eat, drink and prosper. That is the value of the real economy. By now, you get the idea and if you think about it, you can insert any real product or service into the equation. It is this very simple premise, the exchange of goods, services and ideas that makes the real economy real and is where we Artists can find success.
How do we make this second economy work?
Once you begin to think about creating a real value economy you will figure it out, let your creativity your artist out to play.
I do not believe we can go it alone as independent artists.
We need to work collectively to create an Arts Presence. Places where multiple artists of every kind work in visible ways. We need to create a presence in our community, like an arts district. Even if we all cannot have a studio or shop, we need to create the availability a connection to each other. Some artists have formed co-ops where they work as a group and share the costs and work load.
The co-op does not have to be just visual artists. It could be a combination of disciplines. You could have a visual art gallery and a music center or performance component like dance or theater where the combined talents could offer dynamic combined events.
Examples of Artists Co-op’s
Tennessee
http://www.clarksvilleartists.org/
On-Line Co-op
Colorado
West Virginia
http://www.icehouseartistsco-op.com/
Idaho
Other artists have created Phantom Gallery Networks.
Before the current Boom and as business’s moved out of older Downtown areas for new digg’s in newly developed retail areas empty retail space became a problem across America. Many cities and towns had wide-open, depressed retail corridors that presented a dismal picture of the community. Artists working together with property owners, city officials and businesses filled those empty spaces with art. The programs also created events like Art Walks to bring people into these depressed corridors stimulated the local economy.
Today as the economy worsens and businesses close up shop, a lot of space is going to be available.
It will take someone with energy like you to organize and build a successful presence. You can sit around and wait for someone else to do something or you can take the lead and make it happen. Art is your life your lifestyle and your business.
Examples of Phantom Gallery Programs
L.A.
http://www.phantomgalleriesla.com/DowntownLA.html
Butte Montana: This link is to the Montana State Travel Site.
http://visitmt.com/categories/moreinfo.asp?IDRRecordID=16816&siteid=1
I added this link because it is a great example of how a presence can create value. Butte is in between two large National Parks Yellowstone and Glacier. Tourist travel I-90 and the Butte Phantom Gallery program gives them something to stop in town for. Most tourist use the internet to pre-screen their trips and stops. Tourists buy Art and Lunch.
More Butte
http://www.montanastandard.com/articles/2006/07/07/newsbutte/hjjdjcjciijigc.txt
Tucson
http://wc.arizona.edu/papers/96/13/04_1.html
My wife and I lived in a loft in an old Hardware store in Downtown Tucson in the 1980’s Downtown was vacant and artists created a presence. One Saturday a month the local Arts Co-op sponsored an ad hoc art walk that brought thousands of people Downtown. It was fun and changed the perception of the Downtown area.
Now with the economy again bad, folks in your community are going to be looking for something to do that is fun and free. Local business will like the idea too because they want people to come out and spend money. In Tucson, the little shops and restaurants sold a lot of merchandise along with art.
Another way to go is to use existing businesses as exhibit space. Café’s, Banks, you name it, will hang art on their walls and you can create events like art walks that will bring people out and into those businesses. Everybody wins.
Art Spots
One thing that another Montana Artist and I did in Kalispell Montana years ago was start an Art Spot program. Marshal Noice a local painter/photographer and I the Director of a local museum made Art Spot flags. We got all of the hardware together to hang a flag at an art location. We charged each location the cost of the flag, hardware, and publication and hung Art Spot Flags creating an Art presence throughout town.
We created and printed a simple two-sided card with the Art Spot business names and address on one side and a corresponding numbered map on the other side of the card. If you visit Kalispell Montana the program is still working. Tourists can easily locate local art businesses and museums following the flags.
Note: Kalispell has a sign ordinance that restricts signage that is why we chose a flag. Most cities do not restrict Flags but do restrict signs and banners.
We had had a vision of doing something statewide with signage on the interstate to locate art hubs in towns across the state. It could still happen.
Art Spot Link
http://www.hockadaymuseum.org/Links.htm
The Internet
Today the internet is a very good place to start a collective or Social Network for Artists in your town, county, state or across the nation. I started a Montana Artists Network a couple weeks ago. The purpose was to create a site where anyone interested in the Arts Artists in Montana could communicate with each other to network and promote the arts.
I used Ning, which is a social networking platform to create the site. Ning is free for anyone to use and you can create your own network with ease using Ning. http://www.ning.com/
I want to stress that this type of social network is very different from a website. The format is far more interactive and flexible. Members control their pages and can do a variety of things to communicate and promote their art. Members can up-load Photos, Videos, create discussions, chat, list events, blog and many more. This type of format is dynamic and easy to use and it is free.
Examples of Ning Type Networks (I am a member at all three)
Montana Artists Network
http://montanaartistsnetwork.ning.com/
Brooklyn Art Project
http://brooklynartproject.ning.com/
Arts for Arts Sake
http://artsforartssake.ning.com/
We need to work together and create real value for our communities and our customers.
In Philadelphia, a Group of Artists are Bartering, Art for Goods and Services.
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20090308_A_barter_economy_for_art_in_Phila_.html
Many of these ideas are not new they just faded away with the boom times of the last decade. These Gorilla Marketing tactics grew out of need during the last down times, some hung on while others did not.
Today as we again face economic challenges in the arts, we need to explore ideas outside of what became the Box.
Looking for a new gallery may be the real challenge in today’s market. It might even become impossible as galleries scale back or close their doors along with museums and other non-profit art organizations.
You might just get a show if that gallery owner sees your work hanging in a vacant window a Phantom Gallery he or she walks past on the way to work.
As for the Big Art Market, most of us never got there to begin with. That market has been a far away illusion that made sensational headlines and captivated our dreams of fame and success. For the majority of us our market is still right here in front of us. All we have to do is create value to find success.
Success is measured in many ways, your success is personal, what do you really want from art, what is success to you.
The value of the arts is like a spider web, woven in many directions touching many places.
There are no limits of what we can do together only our imagination will limit us or free us. Put your creative thinking cap on and let your imagination fly.
http://davideubank.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/do-the-arts-need-a-national-bailout/
Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Culture Economey, How to survive as a Working Artists, Investing, News, On Art, Painting, Photography, Politics, Uncategorized , Art and the Economy, Art Co-op, Art Marketing, art sales, Investing in Art, Phantom Gallery
February 28, 2009 • 11:26 pm 1
The exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum showing now through January 3, 2010 is an example of what a government stimulus program can do not only for the arts but also for the country. The selected works tell the story of the Great Depression through the eyes of American artists of the time. President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration created the first government program to support the arts nationally. He and his administration understood how art could sustain the American spirit during a time of crisis and great hardship.
The program only lasted six months from December 1933 to June 1934. Artists were paid to depict “the American Scene”. Many public artworks were as we know them today site specific like percent for the art projects. Others were created throughout American in cities and in rural America. Artists not only had an opportunity to earn a living through the program during the depression they also were able to serve their country in a time of crisis.
You can see the exhibit on the web at http://americanart.si.edu/
One thing I noticed is that many of these artists went on after the program and had very successful and influential carriers like Franz Kline.
Once you are at the Smithsonian site, you can click on the link to see the Flash Program of the exhibit. I had trouble with the Flash version and you may have to adjust your computers program to view it if your security program blocks the application. I have included the link to the Non-Flash page that I found worked just fine.
Non Flash Link
http://americanart.si.edu/education/picturing_the_1930s/non-flash.html
Take a little time and look at what artists did during the last depression a time of crisis not unlike today’s financial crisis in America. It is clear to me as an Artist that the Art’s can sustain the human spirit in times of crisis and that Art can give us not only hope but purpose in our endeavors.
Enjoy the 1934: A new Deal for Artists Exhibit
http://americanart.si.edu/education/picturing_the_1930s/non-flash.html
Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Culture Economey, How to survive as a Working Artists, Journalism, Media, On Art, Painting, Photography, Politics, Uncategorized , American Art, Art of the Depression, Depression, Franklin Roosevelt, Franz Kline, Obama Stimulas Plan, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Stimulas
February 27, 2009 • 4:47 am 0
Montana is home to many artists working in every imaginable venue. Almost every community has some kind of arts program. Yet artists are spread across a vast landscape and often are isolated from one another. Montana is a very large place and traveling from one end of the state to another is a journey. We Montana Artists often do not have the opportunity to communicate with each other to share our work and ideas. This week I started a social network on Ning in hope of bringing Montana artists together in a central location on the web so we can communicate. Ning is a cloud network that supports the site. Montana Artists Network, http://montanaartistsnetwork.ning.com/
In addition to communicating with each other, the site offers the ability to promote our work and our ideas to the world.
Nothing is in stone, the site can develop in anyway the users want it too. Collectively we can have a lot of fun promoting our work and our ideas.
To join is totally FREE. You can create your own page and promote your art. You can create Blogs, Discussions and List Events. You can upload your photos, videos of your artwork to your page. The Network is open to anyone interested in promoting the Arts in Montana: Artists, Galleries, Art Organizations and Patrons of the Arts.
Why did I create the Montana Artists Network? After much thought and participation in other Artists Networks, I felt Montana Artists needed a site where they could easily communicate throughout the state with each other, share their ideas, artwork, and promote the arts in Montana globally.
In addition, cost and user friendly was a major factor in creating this site. The Ning network is free and is easy to use. You have complete control over the content of your page. You can use the page editor to control the appearance and options you like. You can add other technical resources to your page like Twitter and many others.
As the de-facto site manager. I will do my best to address any suggestion you have. Please let me know how the site is working and if there are things we can do together to make the site better.
I look forward to promoting the arts in Montana with you.
David Eubank
Check it out and Join the Montana Artists Network and please invite your friends to join too, the network is open to everyone interest in the Arts in Montana
Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Culture Economey, How to survive as a Working Artists, On Art, Painting, Photography , Art in Montana, Montana Art, Montana Artists, Montana Artists Network
February 11, 2009 • 11:06 pm 2
If you can’t get to England the on-line exhibit is done very well and I think is exciting. Just use the link and see for your self.
The collective works of the 21 artists offer us a view of different cultural ideas that are in some cases stunning ideas to what we in the west have come to believe about the Middle East. These bold artists tackle often sensitive and controversial ideas about their personal experiences and their relative cultures.
Ideas about Tolerance, Sexuality, Religion and Life today in the Middle East.
I spent some time going through each artists work and I have to say I enjoyed the new work and the show. However, what I really saw throughout the exhibit was hope. Hope that through the eyes of these bold artists we can find a sense of cultural understanding in our differences and our similarities.
Related Article by the L.A TIMES
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/europe/la-et-mideast-art11-2009feb11,0,5332594.story
Filed under: Art, Art News, Culture Economey, Journalism, News, On Art, Painting, Photography, Uncategorized , Art News, Culture, Middle Eastern Art, Modern Art, New Artists, New Painting, Saatchi Gallery, The Art of Politics
January 17, 2009 • 4:39 am 1
Wind from the Sea
The Passing of Andrew Wyeth 1917 – 2009
The gap between Andrew Wyeth and the modern art world is perhaps the same as the disconnection between modern society and the natural environment. Andrew Wyeth painted simple pictures of a simple life in his rural New England America. His painting however reflects on the complexities of even the most basic life lived. The established art community of Andrew Wyeth’s generation shunned his work but he followed his chosen path and ignored his critics and he painted his world as he saw it. In my opinion, this in itself makes Wyeth a great American Painter. He was a man that saw and looked for an understanding of his immediate world, the world he lived in, using his neighbors, their simple lives and the landscape where he lived to capture stories he told us about them on his canvas.
Andrew Wyeth recorded the connection of the natural world and the sustaining human connection of life dependant on the environment. People in Wyeth’s portraits of rural New England America dig in the earth; slaughter their own meat, meat that comes from animals not kept as pets but as resources. Sustainability directly connected to the natural environment. His imagery was of fields, hillsides, wildlife, farmhands, farm tools, fixtures and furniture. He spoke of the tranquility of a simple life juxtaposed to its turbulence, its cruelty, its tenderness and compassion. He used details that connected his subjects to the functional environment, hanging animal carcasses, rifles, hunters and meat hooks. In the detail of his images exists the evidence of natural decay, violence and loss of entropy the nature of any system to run down. Fallen trees broken logs cracked ceilings and peeling paint portray the decay all things must under go.
“Compared to master draftsmen, Wyeth cannot draw,” wrote Washington Post art critic Paul Richard in a 1987 review of an exhibition of the Helga paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. New York’s Village Voice newspaper called Mr. Wyeth’s art “formulaic stuff, not very effective even as institutional realism . . .”
It is hard to imagine that his critics were so cruel so disconnected from his view of the world, from his art. Perhaps his critics suffer from the same disconnection from the natural environment, as does our modern society. We find nourishment in the freezer section of the Super Market without a connection to where our TV dinner came from. Of how the meat, the vegetables became part of the modern meal. A disconnection from the idea, that people worked with their hands in the dirt or bloodied their hands in the slaughter of the turkey that is their dinner, in the microwave.
Many of his critics suggested that Wyeth was out of touch with the artistic trends of his time. Abstraction and non-representational trends in the modern art of his time that have today become artificial, introspective and disconnected from nature, developed into a artificial nature of there own design. I would suggest that many museum directors and art critics have lost their ability to recognize any art that is not of the modern vocabulary they choose to recognize. The masters of the art world share a prejudice that has disconnected them from the natural environment and nature itself. Artists are victims of this prejudice too. Many of today’s contemporary artists are trained to make art that
simply stated, looks like what art is expected to look like. Others seek shocking and controversial imagery hoping to shock the critics into looking. This is not to say that modern art is without merit and that the many artworks are not important and valid. It is a suggestion that the critics and directors are to busy looking at what they believe is important that they ignore the artist who has a different insight a different point of view. These Masters of the Art-World have lost their objectivity their connection to nature. They have become artificial unto themselves and they have lost their vision if they ever had one to begin with. Andrew Wyeth was able to maintain his vision in spite of his critics and he was successful in following the path he chose for himself ignoring the experts. This is not to suggest that we as artists should be representational painters but that we should ask ourselves the deeper questions about our art, to explore our beliefs and intentions. To ask ourselves the hard questions that can’t be answered by the critic but only by our investigations into our own subject matter.
“In the art world today, I’m so conservative I’m radical. Most painters don’t care for me. I’m strange to them,” he said in a 1965 interview with Richard Meryman for Life magazine. “A lot of people say I’ve brought realism back. They try to tie me up with Eakins and Winslow Homer. To my mind they are mistaken. I honestly consider myself an abstractionist. Eakins’ figures actually breathe in the frame. My people, my objects breathe in a different way; there’s another core — an excitement that’s definitely abstract.” Quote Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Wyeth wasn’t an artist without personal controversy. In the 1980’s when he unveiled his more than 200 works, 45 paintings and 200 sketches, the Helga series, he shocked the world and his wife who knew nothing about the artwork or the fifteen-year relationship Wyeth had with his model. Helga Testorf was Wyeth’s Chadds Ford neighbor who modeled for him over the fifteen-year period. Many of the paintings and sketches are of Helga nude. His images of her show her beauty and perhaps his love for her. I am not sure if this was a love affair but how can an artist who works so intensely with a subject not be in love. The work received the same welcoming for the critics. It was not of their standard. Perhaps Wyeth revealed too much of his affection for Helga in the work, perhaps his vision was obscured by his love. Still, I find the Helga series hauntingly beautiful, connected to the natural desire between a man and a woman. The work is Illicit, torrid, sinful and at the same time tender, loving and natural.
Braids
The prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York refused even to display the Helga paintings. “We had an opportunity to show the Helga series. We quite pointedly and as a conscious decision declined to do so,” said museum director Philippe de Montebello in 1987.
Andrew Wyeth is a great American Artist; his work will be the subject of debate for many years to come. If the Masters of the Art-World ever hear Andrew Wyeth’s voice then perhaps art itself has a chance to move forward. Our modern disconnection with the natural environment, the tendency to overlook the simple complexities in the relationship of ourselves with nature is at the root of why modern art has stood still and why modern
society heads toward failure. We artists need to look again at our world with fresh eyes and we can learn from the legacy Andrew Wyeth has bestowed upon us.
Read More About Andrew Wyeth
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/16/america/wyeth.4-409557.php
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/16/AR2009011601420.html?hpid=topnews
Washington Post Photo Gallery
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2009/01/16/GA2009011602313.html
Filed under: Art, Art News, Art Prints, How to survive as a Working Artists, On Art, Painting, Uncategorized , American Artists, American Painting, Andrew Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth Dies at 91, Helga Series
December 15, 2008 • 11:19 pm 0
Besides it is cold outside, 2degrees now up from 20 below.
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.
What is the idea fairness for you the Artist?
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.
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.
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
December 7, 2008 • 6:10 am 4
Transgressions of Form, david eubank 2007
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The group has just release a new DVD of their work.
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.
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.
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.
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
October 25, 2008 • 9:21 am 2
Two Dog Flats, Evening 08
Where do you find the time to create art
and support yourself too and don’t forget the family if you have a wife, husband and of course the kids, dogs, cats, horses and whatever.
Juggling all the balls is no easy task for the working artist.
An old friend of mine told me once, “If you have a Goldfish you may as well have a zoo”.
If you are lucky and established enough to make a living selling your work,
you are a member of the fortunate few. As the world revolves around us in turmoil with what seems like never ending financial and societal pressure, many of us have to work a day job, some of us may have to work several.
Then we have to be Artists on top of everything else.
If you are an Artist then you understand the have to be. We creative’s are trained from the beginning to be teachers to make a living. That was the purpose of the MFA programs. Others of us find work in galleries, non-profits, restaurants, whatever pays the rent.
And oh those creative odd jobs,
you know the ones that tax your soul, but you do it for the money anyway.
So how do you get time to do your work.
That was question I asked myself this year. I too have a day job and I can tell if you read on, you won’t feel too sorry for me, but maybe I can offer some soul soothing advice to you. About ten seasons ago I took a seasonal job for the National Park Service as a Historic Preservation Carpenter at Glacier National Park. I was trained as a carpenter before I went to college. After college I taught in various programs, worked in non-profits and museums and filled in the gaps with construction jobs. It seemed I always had a side job working as a carpenter.
Route 49 Two Medicine GNP 08
My current job offered interesting and challenging work, restoring and preserving buildings throughout the park. Glacier is a big park, the size of many states with tens of thousands of acres, if fact the acreage is well over a million.
If you have been to Glacier Park then you know it is a landscape of magnificent beauty as are most of our national parks.
My job takes me to every nook and cranny of the park. Constantly surrounded by and living in the landscape is a wonderful experience.
But I always seem to be on a mission.
I have to get somewhere and get some project done and that leaves little time to really enjoy the experience as an Artist. The job offers other enjoyments to be sure, but is demanding of time and attention. My employer expects me to pay attention to my work, but it is easy to enjoy the office when it is spread over such a majestic landscape. Being so large it takes hours to get to many job locations in the park, windshield time is what we call it, although it could be time in the saddle or on foot, on the trail.
That’s when you are out there in the thick of the landscape, but you are always moving always working so you pass it by with forgettable memories of where you have been and what you saw on the way.
I have to tell you I have countless forgotten memories of breath taking experiences that I just passed on by without stopping so much as to take a moment to enjoy, not even a picture did I take. In fact I usually found my self thinking about being somewhere else, in some city doing the whole art thing, until I decide to look.
Yes Look at where I was and Look at what was right in front of me.
Every job has “My Time”, when you are going too or from work and in my case when you are living at work as I do for a week at a time. Those brief little moments, when you can stop and look at where you are. That is your chance to let the Artist out to play, if only for a few minutes.
But what I am talking about is a few quality minutes, “Artists Minutes”.
That may be all you have some days when you juggle the world, but they are wonderful. I bought a little digital camera, a pocket camera to record my Artists Minutes to remember my moments. This year I recored the season changes and caught some fantastic moments during those brief minutes that punctuate my day job. I take those images with me back to my studio where I can again experience those Artist Minutes. I look at how the wind on the Eastside shapes the trees. How the sun lights the prairies, how the sky is sculpted across the mountain tops and how the stars illuminate the night sky. So when I get back into my studio I can remember and work.
Stormy Weather 08
Now you may not be as fortunate as I but you do have a world around you.
Look at your world and you will find art waiting to be made in it that reflects your environment, that reflects your experiences. The Artist, Photographer Sally Mann while being a mother created art of that experience, photographing her children at play. She created a profound body of work during those moments. Van Gogh, who may not be a great example, turned his everyday experiences into paintings by looking at what was right there in front of him. And so can you.
I know that with your head down and your nose to the grind stone you have little time, but if you start taking those Artists Minutes, those minutes that are yours you, will find wonderful things, you will find your art.
So set aside all the worries about the economy, the elections or what ever else is consuming your mind and time and take a minute, a minute for you the Artist.
Many Glaicer Aspens 08
Summer on St Mary
Oil on Canvas 48X60 inches, David Eubank 08
Filed under: Art, Environment, How to, On Art, Painting, Photography, Uncategorized , Glacier National Park, How to Survive as an Artist, Sally Mann, Van Gogh
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