Mighty Kmuzu

Jun 18, 2009

What is Art?

A long time ago I took a theater class at UNR (University of Nevada, Reno). For our midterm we had to do different scenes from famous comedy plays. I played Oscar Madison in Neil Simon's, The Odd Couple.

The scene we chose was the "It's not spaghetti". You can see the original production bellow. Basically, Oscar and Felix get in a fight and Oscar takes a plate of linguine and throws it against the wall.

I decided in our production, I would take the plate and instead of throwing it against the wall, I would throw it into the audience - It was a paper plate with colored fabric that looked like Linguine with sauce.

It went off without a hitch. I threw the plate into the audience and the reaction was perfect. Everyone started screaming and then there was laughter as the ones hit realized it was only fabric.

My professor gave me a big, fat "C". He said what I was doing wasn't art, it was a practical joke.

What is art?

National Public Radio recently did a program on the NEA's finding that over 78 million of us Americans create art. This includes traditional artwork like painting and singing to non-traditional artwork like building models or creating a blog page.

Is this Art?

The study also found that our viewing of traditional arts is going down. Not only are fewer of us attending art shows and plays but those who are attending are older.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Is their more "Art Value" in attending a Broadway play than there is attending a comic book convention dressed as Princess Leah? What is a professional artist these days? I think it is just as difficult to answer as who is a journalist.

I think accessibility has really changed the paradigm here. If you take painting for example, an artist in the 17th century was a painter, a chemist, a tailor and a carpenter. There was no buying paint from the Dick Blick.

I feel very lucky, I can go to Home Depot and pick up a pint of discarded paint for about fifty cents. A good tube of acrylic paint can cost about three dollars and if you buy the craft paint it is about seventy five cents. A whole package of brushes only run you about four bucks and stretched boxed canvas is around ten dollars.

When I started painting, I got into it for less than a hundred bucks.

But is this accessability a good thing? Does it make the artist community stronger and more diverse? I say both yes and no. I've seen a lot of poorly drawn horses, barns, lighthouses and dolphins lately. The crap has overloaded the channel. I mean just go to Ebay and type "art". It is Dodge City all over again and there are many bloody bodies in the street.

I recommend that professional artists be a little more professional. I talked to many professional artists who have no idea what abstract, impressionism or cubism are. They are not familiar with great artists like JMW Turner, Gerorgia O'Keeffe or even Andy Warhol. My feeling is that if you do not understand the foundation and movement of art through time it does not matter how talented you are - your work will still be craft oriented.

Also, an artist must have an intricate knowledge of the materials and chemicals they use to create art. One should know at last the basics of the different paint types, varnishes, canvas and brushes. Presevering a work is almost as important as creating a work.

Jun 15, 2009

Star Wars - The Myth

This is what happens to all great stories.

Jun 14, 2009

Rick Parks

Many years ago ... I'm talking ancient history here, I worked for Westwood Studios as a video game designer. It was a great job, although I was too young and stupid to realize it at the time.

At Westwood, I got to know a fantastic artist named Rick Parks. The hand painted artwork he was doing on the Amiga was absolutely stunning. You have to remember this was in VGA (256 colors 640x480). His traditional work was just as good.

He also pioneered some of the first 3D animations in computer games. I worked with him on Dune II. He created a flying ornithopter using the first generation of Lightwave for the Amiga and Deluxe Paint.

I've not been successful finding any of Rick's traditional artwork on the Internet and quite frankly it's hard to find much information about him. But Rick was a great guy ... funny and witty with a good heart. He was also one of the best artist I have ever met.

I miss ya Rick.

Joseph Hewitt - Ode to Rick Parks

Jun 2, 2009

Art of the Bot

I love robots - especially the very large, tall, destructive kind. Machines consumed with some overpowering rage fascinates me.

If computers could experience emotions it certainly would not be the same as us, humans. We fear the unknown - future events that cannot be predicted. To an artificial intelligence the most fearful thing would probably be contradictions.

A man with two watches may never know what time it is, but a robot with two watches goes on a rampage destroying all watch factories.

I just ran across an amazing artist of the bot, Eric Joyner. Joyner went to the Academy of Art in San Francisco and started creating fine art after commercial art became to tedious. He did a stint with Electronic Arts, working on such games as Archon and Bard's Tale. He worked a few years before I got into video games - back when there were only two colors (green and black).

In an interview with Fecal Face, he was asked to describe his art to a stranger,

"I would describe my work as narrative, painterly & realistic with a pop/sci-fi twist. But the truth is, I would never tell a stranger anything. Momma told me not to talk to strangers."

I would describe it as pastoral art of mechanical toys. Of course, it is all very comical, but in a strange way, these cute, Japanese toys convey a truer sense of real human emotion than to paintings of the organic kind.

Interview with Eric Joyner

I do not own nor do I have specific permission to use any copyrighted artwork. All artwork presented here is the original creation of Eric Joyner and he maintains all rights and privileges. Any use of copyrighted material in this post is under the guidelines of "Fair Use".

Tin Robots
Fecal Face

May 31, 2009

Path of Deconstruction

I don't drink. This is not a moral choice but rather a reality choice.

For a while, when my MS was real bad, everything started to smell like cheese. It's hard to put into words what happens when your existence becomes not just cheese, but the essence of cheese. It was as if some mad scientist created a chemical to remind you of cheese.

The same kind of thing when you realize that it was just a smelly sneaker and not provolone.

Anyway that was enough surreal - reality for my taste (excuse the pun) and since then I've tried to keep myself grounded in the rational. Hence - no drinking.

... but lately, I've started to deconstruct. Not my mental state (thank goodness) but my views on art and literature. I've had the impulse to take a picture of a dusty lampshade from all different angles and throw it together in a collage of sorts. Or to tape random noises in my backyard and then run it through Dragon Naturally Speaking software, just to see what story pops out.

Don't worry - I'm not going postmodern. At least, I don't think I am. Oh God, I hope not.

Maybe I'll grow my beard out just a bit more. That always seems to help. - allows me plenty of time to scratch and ponder. There is gray and some white in my beard these days. Sad to think I would need to dye it black to look young again for that all too important, non-existing intervie w.

Maybe get my teeth whitened; get those caps that make old people thud their words. My daughter would laugh at me. or maybe not. In any case, she would scold me for trying to be someone different than DaDa.

Perhaps I should just sit by my artichoke plant and watch the alien flowers bloom out of the cactus like bud.

You know it's the heart of the artichoke that has to explode in order for the plant to flower.