ARCHIVES: April 2010

all wrapped up and no place to go
The dilemna trifecta

This isn’t an art blog. It’s a where-the-hell-does-the-time-go blog. April zipped by in a flurry of graphic design overload. Which ultimately is a good thing right now, because that is paying better than anything else I could conjure up. I somehow found space for the eight paintings I retrieved from a gallery that prefers very traditional stuff in the southeastern Pennsylvania vein. I guess my landscapes were too, mmmmm, interpretive for the clientele. Now I have to find space for the seven paintings that just arrived from the exhibition in Maryland. This wasn’t a commercial venture, but I was still hoping some of them would sell, partially so I wouldn’t have to find the space for them once they were back here. All wrapped up and no place to go.

I always called this the dilemna trifecta for artists; money, space and time. Space, or lack thereof, makes time for me to do other things... But it’s frustrating. The other day it came to me all at once — the bodies of work I want to do when I have the space. I will also need the money to free up the time and pay for the space. I have the inspiration. It comes to me in great floods and has for years, decades even. For this I am indeed fortunate, but it’s been a long drawn-out argument with the universe. If you want me to create all this, then give me the resources. Somewhere along the way I bought into constriction. Or maybe there is a constant balance, an equilibrium between poetic grace and suckitude, which supercedes anything I try to do to improve the situation with my own powers and abilities.

On the other hand, if pendulums swing, oooooh, it’s going to be good.

I still have a running list of more essential things to write about on here... But you can’t wait until you achieve perfection before starting something. You will never begin. That’s why I write rambling artist thoughts for you to read in the meantime. That’s why I allow myself to paint odd things in strange modes using large rubbery paddles on small masonite panels. I’ll never become any good at something new unless I go into it head first. In a small space on a limited budget. With an overabundant imagination. Heh.

posted April 30, 2010

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when food is rude
The things we paint

Omigosh, I am so very busy this month. Busy with actual real live paying work. Busier than I have been in a very long time. So far this month I have had only two days in which to paint. That’s a good thing right now, as frustrating as it can be. Next month, not only will the bills be easily paid, but money can get saved too. Yay!

I want to paint. I want to paint all kinds of things. The azalea series is now done. I am on the last of the period paintings. I am doing a few random trees and landscapes, still stretching my abstacted wings... but I am really beginning to miss the representational work. I needed a break for awhile, but the break is coming to an end. Meanwhile, no painting of any kind for me until the end of this month.

The deeper, more meaningful things I meant to write about — They are all in scratch form. Being scratchy. And I promised someone else I would be a guest writer for a community blog, but fortunately they are in no rush.

Like most serious artists, I make all or part of my living doing something else. Sometimes that something else is completely unrelated to being an artist. And sometimes it is related. We are Siamese if you please. Many artists I know are in arts administration, teach, paint murals, do commissions, paint houses, assist other artists or model. Some of us are in graphic design. I have been painting since 1975, and have been in the graphics field since 1980. The graphics field. The design meadow. It’s a good way for an artist to make a living and/or supplement other arts income.

I had this teacher, well, not really a teacher because the only thing I ever actually learned from her is how idiotic art school can sometimes be, but I had this teacher who was obsessed with the fact that I freelanced in graphics production while I was attending SFAI. She often made it very clear to the whole class that I was a sell-out because I cut rubylith and inked straight lines and pasted-up type for a living. There was no logic to any of it, but I was not the debater then that I can be now. Her favorite students waited tables. As I remember, she had a terrible sense of color. She hated narrative and allegory and symbolism. Me, I live for this stuff.

The painting to the right is called Chayote on Blue Ear Muff. I think this might have been the very last painting I did while still living in New Mexico. It turned out to be so very rude, but it wasn’t meant to be. Not at all. I just really like sculptural fruits and veggies and other things, such as rawhide bones. They are interesting to paint. Ah, but chayote squash, the undersides of chayote squash are genuinely rude. I also think they are very funny.

I recently hung this painting behind a door that is usually open. But when the door is closed, there the painting is, the only thing hanging in that particular corner of our small living room. When I am out of words for the idiots I sometimes encounter, I say ‘pick up a chayote squash and gaze upon its underside’. I should carry one around.

posted April 16, 2010

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creative fun from almost nothing
Be quiet out there!

This monthly feature on developing unlimited creativity is best referenced from the two original creative fun from almost nothing entries from the archives; September and October 2009. Read those two entries, and the entry below will be all yours. And now that we are opening the windows again... Use ambient sound to inspire your art.

Ahhhh, street noise - Lawnmowers, leafblowers, jackhammers, helicopters, busses, cars, idling trucks, honking taxicabs, wailing sirens, and trains click-click-clacking on tracks. And that’s just in the first twenty minutes of paying attention.

• Invent descriptive words for how any of these sounds sound and create a cityscape using these new words. For example; bdm-bdm-bdm-bdm and pheeeeeuuuw. Take these two new words and incorporate them into a city scene, with the letters as buildings, vehicles and so on.

• Create an abstracted street scene completely from your visual interpretation of the noise you hear on the street. Instead of a building being made of brick, its surface would be a sound-pattern reflective of what is heard on the street.

• Listen to construction or street repair noise. There’s all kinds of interesting sounds echoing out there. I’m listening to some right now. They’re tearing something or other up around the corner. There are hums and rhythms and screeches, all waiting to be translated into something visual. Do a sculpture or installation piece based on the sound of street construction.

• Illustrate something overheard in conversation among strangers on the street.

Excerpted and paraphrased from the book;
Creatively Unblocking Creative Blocks
Author: Alexandria Levin
ISBN: 0-9743267-1-2
Published by Painted Jay Publishing
www.paintedjay.com

posted April 3, 2010 (Happy Birthday Mom!)

All images and content ©2009-2010 Alexandria Levin