I would like to say nothing about art and take up as much of your time as possible

In general, people like to categorize everything so that there are words to associate with concepts and objects. This specificity is a time saving tool. It keeps us from having to mime everything in daily life.

Sometimes specificity can become a burden, especially when the information regarding a certain thing obscures what it actually is. Søren Kierkegaard is often quoted as saying “Once you label me you negate me.” I’m not sure of the original context of this statement, nor am I sure that it did indeed come from him, nor am I willing to do the research that would be required to find out. Suffice it to say that a confident person would not be likely to indicate that their personal value was so fleeting as to be snuffed out by a casual encounter with another’s taxonomy. Therefore, I am assuming that Kierkegaard was not very confident, thus not likely to state unbiased information, thus quite likely to have said something of the ilk of the preceding quote, thus unworthy of my time and attention. I could be wrong, but my current opinion is of greater importance to me than ruminations on the speculations of what may or may not be true regarding someone that isn’t even alive and didn’t seem to have it all together when he was.

The point that I am (finally) approaching is this: We are not changed by the opinions of others unless we allow that change or we are physically unable to resist a forced change. Let’s use as an example a person who is labeled as “worthless” by others. This person may be of low enough self-esteem that they begin to believe this label to be true. They may have felt negated, and they might actually physically negate themselves by some means of self disposal. As another example a person of formidable self-worth, yet unable to move or speak is stuffed in a box labeled “incinerator”. These two examples could be extrapolated and expounded upon to cover pretty much every aspect of how labeling can negate.

The negation could rarely happen immediately because depression is not usually instantaneous and the cleaning lady doesn’t usually get in until after hours.

One label that is thrown around to a point of desensitization is the label ART. Most dictionaries have several definitions of art, ranging from “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance” or “The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium” to “Artful devices, stratagems, and tricks” and “Skills and techniques”.

Personally I think the saturation of the meaninglessness of the term “art” has reached its apex. That’s right, a meaningless saturation apex! Being an artist doesn’t mean anything, it certainly doesn’t make you anything special. On some level everyone is an artist. No matter how banal ones expressions may be, a person cannot but help create something. They cannot help but influence the feelings of others. Even if that influence is just creating a sense of tension or chaos when they enter the room, they have created a unique and recognizable expression that moves people to discuss the work of that artist. They may wait until the artist has left the room, but any publicity is good publicity to an up and coming “edgy” irritation artist. The fact that individuals are recognized for their own particular creation (whether that creation is boredom, chaos, chewing loudly or anything really) shows that nobody can be totally unoriginal. So to say that your “art” is “original” is about as useful as saying nothing, except that it takes up everyone’s valuable time, so it is even less effective than saying nothing. Unless your art IS wasting peoples time, then good job! I’m sure nobody out there does it quite like you, and one day you will find your market.

People say that if you increase your vocabulary you will better be able to express yourself. That would be true if most people were smart and knew the same words as you. But sadly, even the most educated people just end up using more words in imprecise ways. The handful of people who know how to properly use pretty much every english word have to make constant compromises with their speech just to communicate. And a little news flash: the english “sticklers” are just people who are too oblivious to see that they are championing a losing cause. Yes, there are certain things that irritate each of us about the way others use language, but the “rules” will eventually change to accommodate the masses, just as they always have. So, if you’re “right” about some “proper usage” or punctuation scenario, just remember that in 10 or 20 years you will open a book and the rules will have changed to require what used to be “wrong” and the same people you “corrected” will still remember the story and laugh at you velocitously at anecdote parties.

I used to have a ponderous vocabulary, but I quickly learned that you use language primarily to communicate with others, not to write clever notes to yourself (although those notes are funny). Dumb it down and vague it up if you want to communicate.

Dumbing it down is difficult for many of us (I guess it’s a good thing that there aren’t THAT many). There is a certain voluntary cheapening or lessening of one’s self, an elective negation. One needs to decide how many scoops to take out of one’s own heart. What it then comes down to is, how many labels we are willing to accept.

I have always preserved the part I consider to be my “art” (whatever art may be), a visual documentation of “original” thoughts. Something from me, by me and for me, in a language that doesn’t change and doesn’t require labels or translation. On my end it doesn’t change, although I must say that the WORD “art” has changed for me over the years, and has - like so many words that have fallen before it - lost all meaning to me. I don’t mind if other people use it, if it still has meaning to them. I don’t mind if they use other words that don’t apply to what I do, to describe what I do. Even words like “abstract” or “contemporary” that have no descriptive value whatsoever don’t really bother me that much. I will still use such words with many qualifiers to convey a properly developed generalization to an academically inclined noggin.

So I will sometimes call my work “art” even though it may not be art by my definition or perhaps anyone elses. In the past, I have even tried to assign it an ism. I’ve tried Altruistic Depressionism, Objective Associationism, Artism, Artlike Documentationism and many others, but the fact is that none of those describe what I do. What I do describes what I do. I have never made a work of “art” for anyone else, I’ve just done what I wanted to do for whatever my reasons.

I always destroyed and trashed all of my school art projects immediately after the teacher graded them and handed them back to me. This usually resulted in a lower score, going from an A or A+ to a B, C or D instantly. I always wondered what made it so precious to the teacher when it had no meaning to me. Did it have meaning that was somehow negated by its new assignment to be trash? That didn’t make any sense, because it was always trash to me, from the moment the teacher gave us the assignment my process was all about how fast I could destroy the evidence of my compliance. I think the meaning the teacher saw was in the idea that he was helping young people see the value of art in their lives, so when he saw me throw away something created with thought and care, it hurt, and he made a quick show of the fact that he was upset. So, since my audience was visibly affected and could even put a score on it (B,C,D), it must have been art, but it was probably performance art (whatever that is).

Is this an art blog?

As you know if you've read a few of my posts, there is no theme at all to this blog. Unless that theme is that I write whatever I feel like writing. But sometimes a few posts in a row are similar. So, these little promotional pieces will probably be showing up for a while. So here is a link to my latest drawing on my gallery.

The image is called "Hand To Mouth" that is just for reference though. Really, it's self titled. But if I called everything "eponymous" I would be creating more difficulty for the people who might buy my work.

When I was young, I always thought that I would need to move to the "big city" to sell my work. I really wanted to show my work at galleries. By the time I was 18 and living in Minneapolis - which had a thriving art scene - I spent whatever time I could find hanging out anonymously in the downtown warehouse district. This is where the galleries all seemed to live back then. I was shocked to see that I didn't fit in with the whole art scene. Almost all of the artists were too heavily swayed by opinion. It seemed to me that they were trying to ride dead ideas until they rotted out from under them. I had insulated myself from culture (which was very easy where I grew up) and yet I had seen all of this before.

To me art was always expressing a thought I had, and thoughts I had were generally new and unique. It was easy to see that the majority of these artists had some real talent, but that talent was hidden beneath layers of "skill". I never wanted to see a display of skill. Skill CAN be great, if it doesn't obscure talent, but how many artists do you know of who can really do that? There aren't many, alive or dead.

Don't misunderstand me. There was some really cool work on display at many of these places as well, and some of it by the same people who did the trite stuff. I just expected to see something fresh, and my own drawings and paintings were the freshest things around. After spending 11 years in Phoenix, I long for the old Minneapolis art scene. Now, I'm in the high desert in the middle of nowhere, and I never once took an opportunity or even an offer to do a gallery show. I always said, "I don't have the right collection to show". When offered money for my work, I've always avoided the subject. So many people have said, "I really want that!" only to get the reply, "well you can't have it".

Well, an artist with real foresight would have acted on the inevitable moment that has now arrived. ART CLUTTER. I threw away all my work that I did as a young kid. But at some point when I was about 16-17 I started to hang on to some of it. Now, I still own almost everything I have drawn or painted since then. I don't have most of it on display, it just sits in boxes, taking up space. So, now after all these years, I'm willing to sell it.

I used to have several of my paintings up in my office at work. People always would ask excitedly, "who's the artist?" I would tell them that it was me, and they would hire us to do their web site. This worked exceedingly well with the women, but men would often hire my team based on the fact that I was 1) clearly great at my job, 2) creative. So I did sell my art in a sense. Or I used it as a sales device to sell my commercial art.



Above is just a picture of one of my old offices with a couple of my paintings in the background. I also insisted on real plants. People don't buy web sites from plastic plants.