A Walk With Me

This is the second time I've hung out with a co-worker outside of the work environment, and the first time I've gone hiking in a long time. We talked, we opened up, we shared skeletons we each had in our closets.

But one thing kept coming up over the course of the conversation: changing the aura one emits so that it is received better by another.

Any sociologist can tell you that there are some racial stereotypes in the world that are true. Asians must have rice with their meals, Europeans can hold their liquor very well, Africans are hung like horses. Being Asian, the concept of auras affecting others is already inherently hard wired into my genetic code. It's easier for me to understand than it is for me to articulate in comparison to someone who doesn't know anything about that kind of Eastern philosophy or world view.

Now, this is nothing new. I've been told this in one fashion or another. However, there is something about hiking in the woods in winter with someone you like and respect that makes words like these stick better. He even acknowledged that it isn't an easy or instant process, but once that change happens, you'll know it. Something nobody told me. Everyone that told me that assumed it was like a light switch. He was the first person to tell me otherwise.

It's no secret that I'm not a fan of New Year's Resolution. I believe that if you resolve to change something about yourself, you shouldn't wait for the new year to roll around to do it. You should just do it. It only feels like some kind of divine design that I had this conversation several days before the new year does roll around.

Box Office Planning Part Duex

A slow first hour gave way to two things: A chaotic five hours after that and the ability to at least tackle presentation issues with my thesis project. Admittedly, I haven't had the energy to spend on the project, as I am so exhausted from work, all I want to do is sleep. My next two days off are tomorrow and Saturday, but who knows what random events those will bring.

So, as you can see, I took another synopsis sheet home with me because it had notes involving how to display my work. As usual, if you cannot see what is in the image--and I know you can't--click on it to bring up a larger image. At this moment, I thought I would just upload the image and explain why I'm uploading it, but I have no intention to explain my chicken scratches. Those who have been keeping up with my blog and this project should be able to make sense of the madness. If they cannot, I'm confident that they are smart enough to figure it out on their own.

Morning Thoughts

My next day off is Christmas Day, which marks the half-way point of the four week break between semesters.

While I have a plan of attack for the new semester, I haven't done anything for it. What little time I have before work I spend checking mail and message boards, if not blogging while I'm eating breakfast. After work, I'm so exhausted by the never-ending stream of shoppers from the mall that I go straight to bed after taking Skippy out for his evening walk.

The only day I see in the future to work on any of my projects, personal or for the new semester, is Christmas Day. It's as good a time as any to start, but trying to get a whole stack of paper finished? I will have to channel the legendary animator Ub Iwerks if I want to get that many drawings done in a day. Without distraction if I can help it.

I don't know what the deal is, but these last few days have been a little off kilter.

Blech...

All day today I've been depressed, uncooperative, surly, and just down right mean to nearly everyone. My motivation took a dive, as I can't even look at either of my current projects without wanting to do something else. The indecisiveness of my nature reached the point of annoyance, and what little pride I had left was spent when I realized I was one of those late Christmas shoppers who opted to buy a gift card because there was nothing else I could buy for the person.

And this is the only outlet I have for said frustration. Sad how I can't channel it into something more productive.

Time

Yesterday, I was introduced to a customer of my dad's that, by all accounts, is a fan of my college. Didn't find out if she was a former student or something, but she obviously enjoys talking about art on a level the average business worker doesn't have knowledge of.

The usual questions were exchanged like what is my major and my area of concentration at this point and how soon I'll be expecting to graduate. There were even some challenging questions like what kind of concept am I going for and where does it fit in the contemporary art scene, to which I answered to the best of my social ability.

The most interesting question? She wanted to know if my views on contemporary art and who I believe is the average person going to the gallery will hinder any kind of progress in my work after I graduate. I thought about it for a moment.

When a few seconds cleared, I went with my first answer.

The contemporary views of art will always change. Their view and my idea of who is actually going to these galleries and looking at these works will not stop me from creating anything I want.

What will stop me is time. Time, in a social nature, is something that one either has too much of when there is nothing to do or too little of when there is too much to do. Finding time or making time to get projects done has always been a problem for me, more so than presentation and craft. That's the one thing that will stop me from doing work more than anything.

Case and point? Last night I was only able to get three drawings done for my box. I didn't do any last week because I was so exhausted running back and forth between work and domestic responsibilities (READS: taking care of Skippy) that finding even five minutes to draw is impossible. I'm typing this blog while I'm slopping down Ramen to sooth a sore throat I caught from my dad. That's how little time I have.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like XXX-Mas

My day, technically, hasn't even started yet, and already I've been bombarded by the media's old-but-proven-to-work tactic of selling sex via a product that probably won't get you laid no matter how nice it is.

Now, personally, I have nothing against that kind of advertisement on a whole. If that is what it takes to get you to buy BOD Man Body Spray or even a shirt from A&F, then I see it as fair play when you have other companies out there advertising discounts that don't exist.

What has me bothered right now is the fact these ads are boring on softcore porn for me, what with my sexual frustration and all. It can best be described with the phrase "arrested experience in flirtation resulting in unwarranted trauma." In other words, I only have myself to blame for that.

And the stupid thing about that? I know why they are using that tactic to advertise. It is to get our attention. As a media influenced culture that is very sexually repressed to the point where talking about what you do in bed is considered inappropriate in public, it takes shirtless athletes ripped like Adonis and rail-thin beauties sitting in a very suggestive position to get our attention for a product that we otherwise don't care about. Unless you are in your so-called prime and want to get laid, because that's all that the demographic those ads are aimed for think about when they are frustrated over real life.

That said, let me close this entry with some perspective: I can't remember the last time I got laid let alone what it felt like.

Stuck Between a Box and a Digital Place

Today is the first of four days in a row I have off from work. I figure use it wisely and produce something now that I have a plan and a goal. But I kept hitting these weird blocks that would distract my efforts in one sense or another.

When I was working on my drawings, I found myself losing interest very fast and wanting to continue with my fireworks show. When I was on the computer, I found myself bored with the digital world I immerse myself in and feeling the need to actually sit down and complete that box of drawings.

The cycle would just keep repeating to the point where I had to just get up and go to sleep to see if I couldn't reset this.

I couldn't.

So here I am, blogging again because I don't know what to do with these feelings. And a new one is creeping up as the day is drawing to its close: the feeling that I just wasted another day without getting much of anything done.

Box Office Planning

If you can't see the image below clearly (and I know you can't), simply click on it to see a larger view. It should be of great interest to you. Why? It's the results of being in an environment completely unrelated to my studies and the resulting clarity of thought.


Now that, assuming you looked at the image, you're probably wondering how to make heads or tails out of my chicken scratching. Well, let's start at the beginning.

I knew I was suppose to come into work for my first day back, but I didn't know what position I was to be in. I had a sneaking feeling I was going to be in Box Office. Either way, I would more than likely be behind a counter of some kind since two out of three of the jobs there require it. That's the service industry for you, I guess. My assumptions where proven true when I walked in and saw I was to be in Box Office because the normal weekday guy had the day off. And I was looking forward to asking him on his opinion on some of the movies we are playing, too. Particularly the movie about Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping titled What Would Jesus Buy? since I just learned about him in Public Art class.

Because it was Monday and high school exam week, nothing much happened until after 15:00. And I mean NOTHING. By the time I went on my break, we only had 150 people come through the doors over the span of four hours. That's not really a lot of traffic in theatre terms. Although we did make up most of the money we could have lost selling gift cards. I mean, hell, one lady came in and bought $900 worth of them. But for the most part, I did a lot of sitting around and thinking.

After Jason accepted my dare to deconstruct Pong (which I was very impressed with, but that's easy with me), I, being one of respect when it comes to a bet or a dare which acts like a verbal--or in this case, written--contract, revisited my big box-o-drawin's to restratigize my plan of attack.

Things started slow. Very slow. I listed the things that were expected that I failed to execute in one manner or another. Things like how I need to complete at least one stack of printer paper by the new year, figuring out an installation lay out, finding five established artists to cite as examples over the course of art history to provide a foundation for my work, and most importantly what my conceptual thesis is.

When I listed "cultural obsession," my brain remembered the term Jack used to describe me during a critique. He called me a "media junkie." I wrote that down in the margin and didn't revisit it until after a wave of lunch-time movie guests. When I did, another word popped into my head. Otaku. That's when things started to click into place. I was making a piece talking about my personal obsession with cartoons and comics. Not necessarily anime and manga, which is what the otaku culture is centralized about, but the whole gambit!

I went into a flurry of idea jotting having finally made sense of the confusion. Takashi Murakami was the first artist I listed because of his Little Boy exhibition he curated for NYC some time back, which I have the hardcover book linked here still shrink wrapped since I read most of it in one sitting while in the library for Contemporary Art History. Great book, too, if you can find it. Chinatsu Ban followed him pretty quick, as her Hello Kitty elephants deal with her obsession of maternal insecurities. South Korean artist Hyungkoo Lee followed her, not because of his animatus series (though that is what drew me to him), but because of his objectuals that were design to express his insecurity of being... well, short and small featured compared to the Westerners he's been exposed to who are all tall with big eyes and big hands. And obsession that brought him to contruct a suit that he walks around in so he has bigger eyes, bigger lips, and a slightly taller stance from what I was able to see in his video he had at the Biennale. Reverend Billy made the list of artists who deal with obsessive culture when I found out about his movie. Why? His intent is not only anti-consumerism but it is focused more tightly on obsessive consumerism. In other words, shopping because you want to shop because you feel the nead to shop.

From there, I began trying to come up with referances I could look up as foundation for contemporary obsession. The first one that came to my mind were the Gamer Widow Group, a support group for mostly women who have lost their husband or boyfriend to online games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft. I found out there are a few widowers in the group as well, victems of girlfriends who would rather play Guild Wars over going on a date or having dinner at a fancy resturant. From there, that lead me to the convention scene. Star Trek, Star Wars, Comic Con, and the like. The obsessive fanboys that dress up in costumes of high craft and detail as well as the nerds that have booth space just to show off their collection reminded me of another aspect of obsessive culture I knew about but never researched: the collection stores in Japan. These are stores that can go up to four floors of nothing but glass cases of figurines and collectibles, all of which rented out by collectors or sellers. They function more like galleries for the obsessed than they do store fronts.

The sociologist in me that was clawing his way out made me write down some topics of interest for my own trivial pursuits. Some of the things I plan on looking out for or at least trying to figure out on my own are the comparisons between the obsessive fan bases of anime and western media. I think they act the same way, just with a different media. I would also keep tabs on the difference between "East Otakus" and "West Otakus," the later being rather a new thing in the US since the anime boom. Which means it will be harder to look into, since Murakami said that East Otakus are easier to profile than terrorists post 9-11. He even classifies himself as a otaku in the book, complete with showing a photograph of his appartment. (If you've ever been in an international store and noticed that big wall of VHS tapes, that's what his appartment looks like.)

It seems only ironic in retrospect that I was obsessed about making this plan as flawless as I could, to link my project back into a bigger culuture of media obsession even if it is through one genre of entertainment. At least at the moment. I have a lot of electronic obsessions, and ideally, I would like my show to exhibit a good chunk of my said obsessions. How to go about that is another matter.

Even though I have a plan, I still have a big problem. Historically, research on a topic takes me just as long and just as much energy as producing a large artwork, which is essentially what I'm doing. The plan was originally a To-Do list, with the first priority to complete the damn stack of paper before 2008. The research was to happen after that, with the visual work production finished and all. But if you look at that scan, the research takes up 98% of the notes with only two lines talking about the piece's production itself.

So what do I do now? Go with the plan as originally concieved or figure out how to do both at once?

Art or Entertainment: I've Been Here Before

I don't remember ever being this angry for this long. I've held grudges in the past, sure, but they were all superficial and mean nothing. What little grudges there were, that is. But I don't ever think I was ever this angry about something for this long to the point where I start exhibiting some tell-tale signs of depression, namely having trouble getting up in the morning and a sharp loss in interests.

For the last three days, I've been tooling around with my fireworks show. As of right now, I'm already down with about half of the show. My mind is dreading the most complicated part to come once I get past a certain act.

When I take my breaks, I find myself not wanting to even look at the box of drawings I have started. To do so sends me reeling in feelings that range between utter worthlessness to that usual lack of confidence despite knowing better. I've stop reading the book that links animation to the major art movements after learning about Toon Town being the realization of Marx's utopian idea in an illustrated forum. And in their place, all I do is sleep and think about the fireworks show I'm making in the video game engine I'm exploiting.

This leads me to something Jack said in our meeting several days ago. He said that his hope is that when I leave college as an artist, that's all I do. I think about art projects while I have breakfast, while I'm work, while I'm taking my dog out for a walk, every possible moment.

Lately, I haven't been thinking about art so much as I've been thinking about entertainment. I've made the argument that you can make art entertaining. I've also made the argument that you can't make entertainment art. Hypocritical, I know. These past few days, I'm pretty sure there is a line that has been drawn. Yet you have games like Okami that bring art into entertainment and vise versa. You have Matthew Barney who treats his art films like any Hollywood studio would. Cartoons are referencing religious and cultural iconography in nearly everything they do, including their depictions of a generic Heaven and Hell. Do I even have to mention Mel Chin and his Melrose's Place project? And yet, I still feel like a line has been drawn separating the two.

Most recently, Jason's "Consider your audience ; it's okay to limit who the piece is for" has been ringing in the back of my head whenever I'm working on the fireworks show. Who am I making this for? Well, this project is definitely not for me. If anything, it's for people who can appreciate the time I put into it. So, in other words, the YouTube crowd, of which Jason is a member of on occasion. Is what I'm making art or entertainment? Definitely entertainment, but I see no reason why it can't be art. (Actually, I can, but I'm biting my tongue on that one since I've been in that position once already.) This means that if I display this in a gallery setting, nobody that is a part of that gallery audience will get it. If anything, they'll deconstruct it in an attempt to understand why it is even in a gallery setting. But when you deconstruct entertainment that has no meaning behind it, you end up taking something that is suppose to be mindless entertainment and perverting it into something more than what it is suppose to be. And I mean that in a bad way for most forms of entertainment that end up being deconstructed (video games, movies that have no moral lesson from the get-go, TV shows, popular music).

On the first day of Public Art Class, we had to explain why we took the course. Most of us frankly admitted that we had to in order to fill up a studio requirement to get our degree. I said something different. I knew then that my art didn't feel appropriate for the gallery setting and took the class to find other avenues. I never really got exposed to anything manageable until my bumper sticker project and the zine assignment, both of which I did surprisingly very well on.

Maybe my audience can't be reached in the gallery. Maybe because they don't go to the gallery. So does that mean that I'm producing entertainment instead of art? And if I am, why did it take me this long to realize this when I've been in the position before and was told to get out while I could because the program wouldn't benefit me? A fool's answer to foolish questions: I don't know.

Well, back to making stuff blow up in the digital world where they can't hurt anyone and I don't need an explosives licence.

A Direction or An Assignment?

Yesterday was the last day of classes for this semester. I start back at the theatre Monday morning. Nothing interesting happened in the grand scheme of things, except for Jack pulling me to the side on my way to class and asking about my self-evaluation for Seminar. Remember, I said that I would fail myself given what he said about how he grades the class.

In so many words and talking in so many circles, I pretty much told him the class didn't help me as much as I was told it would. I even told him about the outside help I got in preparing for the final panel, relaying questions that were answered here on my blog but never once came up in the panel. I had all the ammo ready; I was confident in myself, my piece, and the conceptual backing. Now? I'm not too sure anymore.

Jack tried to re-inflate my ego by saying that I'm smart enough to figure out a better way of execution. I told him that my intelligence isn't the issue. I know I'm smart, too smart for my own good sometimes. What I'm having doubts about now is my level of craft. I mean, the idea may be great in my head and may hit all the points I want, but apparently I'm the only one that sees it that way even when I put my audience into consideration.

I even told him about what I experienced at the Frist when they had the Masterworks show in town. About how a man approached me and asked what the big deal was and about how he didn't see why the paintings were so important. I didn't want that from my work, and since then I've produced everything with a duel intent. At the very base, I want Joe Blow to walk away liking something on an aesthetic level. I want him to leave saying "I liked how cute that character looked" or "that was very entertaining to watch." The second intent is the conceptual artistic intent. The thing I apparently suck at communicating on a visual level.

I told Jack about where I felt I fit into the whole communications bracket using two other students as my points of extreme. I told him that I felt I didn't fit into the spectrum at all. Apparently, I'm an anomaly.

I don't know where to go anymore. I've lost my sense of direction simply because of the reaction of the panel. I lost my confidence in my craft because of the realization that what confidence I had in my skills are vastly compromised by my own intelligence. Whatever idea I have will fail on the visual level.

I left Jack's office saying he would like to see 400 drawings, 100 each week, after break. Same style, same idea as what I presented for my final. We can then figure out my Senior show then, or so is his hope. I'm sitting here wondering what's the point? I'm just going to get the same reaction from the student body as I did from the panel.

Failed

Last night was Seminar's last night, and a new process of the class is to self-evaluate ourselves. The more we talked about the class orally, the angrier I got. When the sheets finally were handed out, I was one of the first to finish. I can only wonder what Jack thought of my comments, all of which were written like an angry child in big and violent marks.

It didn't help that he told us how he grades and that he is expecting to give out a set number of A's and a set number of C's. In his defence, he's the teacher. He has the right to fail people.

I failed myself in the self-evaluation. I left Seminar 2 feeling like I didn't gain anything and insulted that my interests were not being considered as my process evolved. It was all about product.

Before the class, I talked to another teacher who I've had before and was teaching another department's seminar class. I was blunt with her. The final panel ripped me a new one, and I didn't feel like I was pointed in a direction so much as I was being told what I was doing was wrong. I even told her that I did take into consideration everything the panel said: how they didn't know how to approach my work and how they felt that I wouldn't take their input. I didn't mention how I feel like they are pushing me in the direction of silk-screening a sentence on the wall. She expressed her disappointment in the lack of encouraging things I received and left me with a tag line I wish the public school system would realize. "Making art is hard."

And you want to know the stupidest thing that's come out of this experience? I'm actually considering doing that silk-screening a sentence on the wall of the gallery as my senior show, even though I know exactly how it will be received both by the art community and by the people that don't know jack about art.

End of the Semester Critique

For Everyone and No One
It's Unintentional but Intentional
It's Private but Public

These are the catch phrases that apparently I used last night that undermined and confused my final panel.

In short, the panel didn't know what to say, if they were adding anything to the pot, how to approach my piece, and, most important of all, if I was even listening to them.

Most of the questions asked to me during the process of my box of drawings didn't come up at all. A few did like the big sheet of paper idea. In my defence, I answered with a similar answer to what I wrote when they were asked before. I thought I had a solid case. Didn't turn out that way. In retrospect, it was probably my condescending tone of voice.

I spent the rest of the night observing with both bitter jealousy and a depressed frustration as the critiques of others were going so well, with new responses to the world and even laughs being shared. The entire night, I kept thinking "what did I do wrong with my drawings? With my project? What didn't I do that everyone else did so damn well?"

Apparently, I was wearing my heart on my sleeve that night, as I was pulled aside by a concerned classmate who tried his damnest to make me feel better. In so many words, he pretty much said the exact same thing as the panel did. I need to open up more and stop being a closed door.

A question came up that never really came up before despite what one of my teachers said about it always coming up: Am I doing this as a hobby or as a career move?

If I'm doing this as a hobby, then I should just quit. I'm wasting both time and money. Let me rephrase that, I've wasted both time and money if this is nothing but a hobby for me. If I'm serious about wanting to make art for a living, then at this point, I'm no better at it than when I was starting out at Watkins. One panelist said that she didn't even see my drawing as executing the fundamentals of a Drawing 1 class.

No question about what artist I've been looking at, even though I was ready with those answer. No question about if I've been reading any theory. No real questions at all other than the implied--or perhaps underscored--question of "What are you trying to do?"

With the piece shown for the first time to a group of people who have no idea as to the process and the logical thinking behind it... minus one person, you would think I would have had the ideal situation to see if my piece could stand up to the regular gallery trollers who go into every gallery in the city looking for something new and engaging. In some respects, I did. The response was less than ideal, which was expected. What I didn't expect was how harsh it actually was for me.

I had a lot of knee-jerk reactions to what was going on in my head, creating pieces most of which involved a ceremonial and artistic version of sepuku. I was even wondering how a gallery full of people would react to witnessing the act of suicide under the guise of a performance. That's right, I was seriously thinking about taking a shot gun to my head in a gallery of people looking at me similar to the monk to set himself on fire in front of his brothers and the entire village below their temple. Thankfully, I threw that idea out after realizing how stupid it would be to kill myself and call it art.

From there, my mind landed on this thought. The positive support I got from this idea was all online. It was all text based. Nobody saw the pieces until last night. Nobody that was keeping tabs on the project, that is. And yet, people were excited by it. It makes me wonder what was the actual piece: the drawings or the words describing the drawings?

From there, I began to wonder how both I and others would react to a gallery space where all you had to go on was a single line of text printed on a wall or on a pedestal saying something like "imagine this wall covered with cartoon drawings that make no sense and are in no way connected to each other" or "imagine a statue of a man being assaulted by bullets that are shaped to read as the word WORD." My immediate reaction to this is what in art history would I be using as a launching point and who in contemporary art history is doing something similar today? The only ones I'm familiar with using text in their work is Jenny Holzer, and the only thing I can come up with that I've been exposed to as far as a launching point are those pieces of a chair next to a photograph of a chair next to the printed definition of a chair. And that's not including the This is Not A Pipe painting.

When I run the question that Jason and others have asked about this project, I don't know how I feel about it. On one hand, I'm forcing the viewer to be the artist. Something very conceptual, but at the same time insulting to anyone who doesn't have formal art education in the same sense that they know more than just Picasso from a face-value point of view. The piece would read as snarky too, mostly towards the art community itself. Because I'm forcing the viewer to be the artist and imagine a wall of drawings or a statue on an empty pedestal, I don't have to actually physically produce anything other than the text. And even the, producing a line of text isn't that hard. How many lines have I produced just now in this entry alone? I mean, hell, I technically made two pieces with this concept already. But I'd still be insulting someone, be it my viewer or the art community, by putting just those line of text on a wall and calling it art.

It only feels ironic to me that I don't even know what to produce when I have an idea for an actual visual product in the fine art sense. It's almost as if I'm giving into the notion of "If you think you can do it better, then do it for me."

Did I mention that the show's post card would be constructed in a similar fashion with the words "imagine an example of a graduating art college student's work on this post card?" That makes three pieces.

Projects x2

The paper was turned in, and to be honest about it, I don't feel any better than I did before. I did the best I can do, which is all that anyone can ask for, I suppose.

That said, I picked up my old fireworks show ideas again. Why? Not for art, but just as something to do to keep me sane. It's kind of like those hobbyists that do things that could relate to their profession but kind of don't. I'm surprised as to how fast it is being put together, so who knows? Maybe I've finally got something entertaining going on with this show I'm producing.

During my breaks, I've been working on my box of images. I'm starting to notice a level of refinement in my drawings that is clear evidence of what practice can do for a person's drawing skill, even though I'm shoving these drawings back into the box at random. With a good eye, it's not hard to figure out the chronological order of the drawings. The only difficulty in that task is my ability to switch styles on the fly, which I'm quite proud of and would be more so if I actually was going into the field of cartoons and animation like I originally wanted to before I found out about the ugly assembly-line-like process.

They say that doing too many things at once lowers your IQ and shortens your attention span. Frankly, I just like producing things. It's a shame I can't make a living off of this kind of lifestyle. At least right now.

Thesis Block'd

When children draw on a piece of paper, they are directly involved in the creation and interaction of a world known only to them. This world invites them inward to the point where the child will hunch down until their nose is an inch away from the paper as they draw another line.^[1] As children grow into adults, these simple and natural creative pleasures become nostalgic, as an arbitrary value is placed upon them proportionate to the priorities we end up creating for ourselves.

That's about as far as I got in my paper before I got hit with a massive case of writer's block. And, yes, I get those. Everyone does at one point or another.

Actually, a more accurate term would be a writer's distraction. It seems my wonder'd over to some angelic fantasy of spending the weekend in a cabin rented out by a pair of hot jock twins who end up sharing more than just identical DNA bases if you get my meaning. Hot stuff even though I know it was probably spawned from an Abrecrombie ad.

I personally don't like having writer's block when I have to pop out a major paper. Then again, I normally don't. My science paper on Batman Beyond's sci-fi freak shows known as Splicers was the easiest paper to construct, even though the subject matter was the most difficult to understand (Turning Science Fiction into Science Fact and how to go about that process today). But this? It's an expanded artist statement. The only difference is that I have to talk at length about my piece and cite artists, theories, and anything else credible to "defend" my work as art.

And all I got was some abstract paragraph using the information I read from that link. And it doesn't even make that great of an introduction to the paper.

With this paper due Wednesday, and me needed to do other things for my two other studio classes, I'm starting to feel that, once again, this so-called break wasn't long enough.

Turkey Day Blues

I've been called sensitive before, both in real life and by people online that read testimonies of me crying at some of the most idiotic things like a theme park's Christmas display. It shouldn't come as any surprise that I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve when I post blog entries.

Apparently, I got something wrong with the last question asked by Jason. I've read over the post and still cannot see what he is talking about. The blog, my drawing process, one and the same? Running parallel to each other? And the same process only using different words?

I tried to be as broad as possible when I thought about that question. After all, the wider your umbrella, the more ground you can cover. I guess I wasn't broad enough.

To revisit the question with a paint roller, both activities give me an opportunity to feel better. I am also able to shut off the world in both processes helping me just create or formulate my thoughts. Both are somewhat private acts that can be put in the public sphere in one manner or another, either direct or indirectly.

God, why do I feel like that answer was forced? Up until now, I've been going with my gut and what I feel is the right answer with questions where there are no right answers. I'm told that one of my answers is essentially wrong because my honest opinion on the matter won't make me look good in front of a panel of judges who know more about contemporary art than I do because they have a resume and experience sheet longer than my own. I took this as being told that what I said would make me look like an idiot.

There are some days I rather be honest about my ignorance. It may not be bliss, but it sure as hell feels better than being told your honest opinion is wrong and will make you look bad. Unless, of course, the entire bulk of society disagrees with you to the point of political out cry a la Gay Right Marches. Then I don't mind being told I'm wrong by people who know better than I do and can defend their case in a manner that doesn't involve spewing out words of hate and intolerance.

You Bet Your Art!

So my Public Art project has generated a response faster than what I was expecting, which is a nice surprise in the series of nice surprises I've been getting. The project does have its flaws, mostly on the production end, but other than that, it's a project I'm willing to continue until it is actually done. This means that I'll need to get a computer ASAP if I want to update my site post graduation.

Okay, cheap plug over with. Time for the actual entry at hand.

Jason has, one again, taken the role of a sadistic Game Show Host and has asked me what I was hoping to be the last question so he can help me figure out what I should write and how to do my paper right. You know, seeing how I hit the mass reset button on everything and have yet to send my teacher a revised artist statement of intent and all that good stuff.

And now, for one million dollars and the admiration of the local art community, the question is: How is this project and your blog similar?

The question isn't so much "how" as much as it is "Are they." And the way I see it, they really aren't all that similar.

My blog and all my entries in here I see as a vain attempt to communicate to an otherwise silent person. It's more similar to that one nut in the neighborhood that sits out on their porch and talks to themselves because they have nobody else to talk to. (Or at least, that was the case before recently.) Here, I don't have to edit my thoughts because of something like a social taboo or trying to make sure I come off as who people think I am. I can be as perverted or sexually frustrated as I want to be. I can be as honest as I feel I can get away with given how I feel. Most important of all, I don't have to worry about someone interrupting me half way through a thought and derailing my train of logic. That's happened so many times before to the point of nausea. In fact, that is what normally kills my thought process. If I tried to answer the questions I've been asked in person. chances are really high nobody would let me finish my train of thought. They would interrupt me as soon as I took a breath, a sip from a drink, or a pause to think about what I just said.

This project and the drawing process is an escape, as I've stated many times before. I'm not looking to process my ideas in a setting where I don't have to worry about a cow standing in the middle of the tracks. (God, for someone that doesn't drive or have many mass transit options, I sure do use a lot of automobile and train analogies.) If anything, I'm the cow ON the tracks saying "screw you, you'll wait until I'm done or find another way around me" to both any train of thought I may have as well as to most external social stimuli. I just want to draw because it helps me feel better.

The argument can be placed that both the blog and the drawing process make me feel better. The blog because I can say what I want to say without fear; the drawing process because I end up feeling better about whatever it was that made me upset enough to want to leave reality for even five minutes. And that's a valid argument, but the only thing I see similar between the two with this argument is the end product as far as how I personally feel about things. Not so much the wall of text or the paper with a pen doodle on it.

I guess the Zen of my answer to the question is this:

The blog lets me actually think things through, be them simple minded idiotic thoughts--like what I want for Christmas or what I think about some cute guy I see--or really deep critical thoughts--like the questions I've been asked on the project or other things that may be on my mind mostly during bouts of depression. It is an exercise of my mind and how to communicate in the written sense since I fail at communicating in the social sense.

The drawing process lets me turn off my brain for a moment. I don't have to think as hard about anything other than where do I want to put this next line and does the image look cool or not. I'm not worried about character design, nor am I worried about the overall image once it is finished. I'm just enjoying the moment of creating something unique to my own aesthetic appeal.

The only thing the two have in common with each other is the fact they make me feel better in the end because both help me release a tension that drove me to one of them. Other than that, they are just like apples and oranges. True, they are both fruit, but they are different types of fruit with different tastes and textures.

Personal "I Suck"

With the thesis paper for my class due next week (and feeling the fresh sting of failure knowing that I rushed through a mold-making process instead of taking my time like I should have simply because I had to get it done for the next class), I've been looking for help with what to write about. The thing is, I don't know what to write for the paper let alone how to write it. In fact, I haven't even touched on the idea since I started my big box of drawings.

Since Jason has been helping me out by asking me all these critical questions and then asking to have the answers blogged, I went to him first. Naturally, he asked me to blog a few questions more as the final step of weeding out what I've written thus far. And the questions he asked couldn't be more personal.

The first question is this: What aspects of the project are important to me? Aspects as in "more than one."

I never really thought about what is important to me in any project I do, personally or for a class. The only thing that I considered important during the process is that I enjoy myself. I can't make art or do a process correctly if I feel pressured or I'm not having fun doing it. That's kind of how I messed up the rubber mold I was trying to make last night for Sculpture 2. I can only hope that it is okay for what we are using it for, or else I'll have to pour again.

In any event, that's the only aspect that is important to me: that I have fun doing it. The fun factor ties in with the idea of escapism rather nicely, because of the things we as a culture do for fun. We go to theme parks, watch movies, play games, hang out at bars with beautiful people, play with our pets, give gifts to our kids, etc. And when we do those things, most of the time we only think about the moment and not what happens before or after it. That moment is the feeling of fun and a release from whatever is keeping us tied down to reality. Why do you think when someone proposes, the generic response is that the act is a dream come true? Philosophically speaking, dreams are a subconsious escape, so by saying something made a "dream come true" is implying that the intangible escape has entered reality if only for a brief moment.

The second question is: What parts of this idea is closely connected to you? In other words, what part of you is in your idea concept?

Now, the way I'm reading this question is that it is asking not so much what part of the idea is a part of me so much as what is my personal connection to the piece. How is this piece an extension of myself? Or am I just putting another part of my personality on display similar to my blog?

My knee-jerk reaction is that I'm displaying my obsessive nature with the cartoon world and cartoon genre. Knowing that the piece is about escapism in one sense, one could easily come to the conclusion that the part of me that is in the piece is a very sad or frustrated individual who wants to say things he can't, have things that aren't real, and do things that are impossible as far as he sees it. It's no secret to anyone who's read my blog that I have a self-defeating nature, especially when I over think. The drawings is an attempt to alter reality so that it is more satisfying, thereby escaping it. Now you run into a lot of dangers when you do that, most of which are being so absorbed in the "new" reality that you forget how the one you live in works. The Gamer Widows can testify to that.

But the question I have to ask myself now is that is my obsessiveness with cartoons and the want to have a better reality than the one I have now really the driving force behind this piece or is it still that initial frustration with school, my art, and myself in general like when I started out? Things change, and sometimes they change fast. Both with the support I've gotten from this project online as well as the questions I'm being asked, the entire feel of the project is starting to become blurred. I know what I'm doing; I know why I'm doing it outside of the obvious; I know what I'm continuing to do it even though I had several chances to just stop and let it die. But what is it that I'm doing in the art sense? Communicating an idea of escapism? Displaying another part of my personality in an artistic fashion a la the black canvas of emo art? Or am I just bullshitting myself now into thinking I'm doing art when in reality I'm just filing away sketches to be used later like Dr. Seuss did?

When I sit down and think about this question, I honestly don't know. And if A = B and B = C in a conversation of associated ideas with a logical train of critical thought with little to no tangents in the overall flow of the conversation (God, I've watched too many episodes of Numb3rs to the point where I'm sounding like Charlie now.), then by that logic I cannot answer the second question of what part I'm connected to in the idea of the project. Which begs the question of if I'm connected to the idea at all now.

This is one of those half-truths nobody likes hearing. Or half-lies depending on your outlook on life.

If escapism is the idea of the project, then no, I'm not personally connected to it in the same way Jason is connected to gender roles and a contemporary look on the imagery of the modern male homosexual coming from the background he is. However, that doesn't rule out escapism being a part of why I draw, produce RollerCoaster Tycoon firework shows, play Sam & Max: Freelance Police, browse for porn, or am a member of Gaia Online. Okay, maybe the last one isn't escapism, but it can be, so it makes the list.

The point is that I didn't pick the idea from the start because it was interesting. The idea was already a part of the process and somehow made its way to the forefront. How and why that is the case is beyond me. It was never my intent from the beginning so much as my original intent was to just overwhelm my viewer to the point where quantity would cancel out any questioning of concept if not spark a conversation of a potential concept behind the piece.

Can you make an art work without an artistic concept driving it? Yeah, I think you can. I mean, Jeff Koons made things the way he did because all he wanted to do was make people smile instead of think about why he made a stainless-steel replica of an Easter Bunny balloon you could get at Wal-Mart. It was Greenburg that came along and pretty much made the contemporary argument that Koons was making some kind of commentary of the consumerism culture at the time by pointing out a copyright protected character's shadow was used to make a mirror used to reflect the viewer's image inside a frame shaped like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. And I kind of like that approach if the artist didn't have a deep intent behind it. Have someone else try to explain it, and if it sounds good, don't argue with it. I can't say the same if I started out with the intent of escapism being the driving idea and wanting to display that as best I can. But then again, that idea is just to hard when you have nothing but a blank canvas in front of you and you are trying to decide what to paint.

More Critical Questions

Got an e-mail from Jason. A very schizophrenic e-mail, but in his defence, he was just trying to illustrate a very real and possible scenario when my seminar final panel happens in just three weeks. Still, I have this really strange image of one of his photoshoped images in my head as the three people he described taken as if it was an over-the-shoulder shot of my presentation. With me as a guest model. Anyway, here's the scenario he presented.

Pretend there are three of me sitting at a table as your senior
thesis panel. One of me is wearing a suit and tie from Brooks
Brothers, another is wearing a thrift-store sweater vest and yellow
shirt, and the other me is wearing a pink pant-suit from Liz Taylor.

The suit/tie me asks: "Mr. Abarquez, you've recently stated that by
removing craft and presentation from your list of concerns you are
able to focus more on your process, rather than an aesthetic goal.
In what ways might you present this project so that the process
stands foremost to the viewer rather than simply looking through a
collection of drawings?"

The sweater-vest me follows up with this question, "I agree with this
question. Your willingness to share this personal method of escape
is fascinating to me. The drawings are interesting on their own, but
it is the idea of what you are doing as a whole that really intrigues
me. When this piece is displayed in a gallery for your senior show,
will you hang each piece separately in their own tiny little gold
frames? or will you have them all bound into a book like a photo
album so that viewers may flip through at their own pace? or perhaps
scan these drawings in and project them in some sort of slideshow
montage?"

The Pink Suit me interrupts at this point, "A video?"

Sweater Vest, "He's already said that he thinks this would be boring
after 30 seconds."

Pink Suit, "Boring for whom? For him or for me? I could spend hours
watching someone draw, especially if the video is done in an
interesting way."

Sweater Vest, "But his project isn't about a video."

Pink Suit, "It's not about the drawings either. It's about the act
of drawing and how he uses that to escape. So essentially he could
show us a video piece of him drawing and never even reveal what he's
drawn."

Sweater Vest, "Like the cartoon he described?"

Pink Suit, "Exactly like the cartoon."

Brooks Brothers, "And what about originality? If he's already seen
that in a cartoon it's not original."

Pink Suit, "Who cares about originality? It's safe to say that
nearly everyone who comes to see his senior show isn't going to have
seen the Recess Cartoon. And he's not copying anything anyway. He's
demonstrating that the act of drawing is what is important to him.
The finished pieces don't show that because the act is already over
by then."

Sweater Vest, "I like the finished pieces. They are important
because the act is important."

Brooks Brothers, "I agree. He draws so there are drawings. Seems
pretty simple to me."

Pink Suit, "When he addresses the panel it's going to make a
difference whether he's presenting finished drawings or video
documentation of him drawing."

Sweater Vest, "Or both?"

Pink Suit, "Absolutely both."

Brooks Brothers, "And if the video is boring?"

Pink Suit, "Who cares about boring? Have you ever been to an art
gallery? Most art is boring to most people."

Brooks Brothers, "Boring doesn't sound like escape to me."

Pink Suit, "Your tie is boring."

Brooks Brothers, "Shut up."

Pink Suit, "You shut up!"

Sweater Vest, "Both of you shut up. Regardless of what he wants to
do, this one fact is true: he is going to have to consider what sort
of experience he is providing to the viewer."

Pink Suit, "That is not what his art is about."

Sweater Vest, "For the sake of getting through his senior seminar
class and graduating, he is going to have to demonstrate that he is
taking into consideration what sort of experience he is providing for
the viewers."

Brooks Brothers, "So he needs to bullshit something...?"

Sweater Vest, "No. His concept is totally awesome. No need for
bullshit. But the presentation is as much a part of this piece as
the drawings or the act of drawing is. No right or wrong way to do
it, as long as the panel can tell that he's taken it into
consideration."

All three of me nod wisely.

Because this is a very real possible scenario, I'm going to treat it as such and pick up where the panel of Jasons left off.

To address the concern of presentation that has become apparent, my initial intent was to overwhelm my viewer, possibly alluding to the fact that there is a lot of things I want to escape from. The quantity of the drawing will out-weigh the quality and infer a sense of time. After all, it does take time to do these drawings, be it a little scribble on a paper that goes nowhere or a fully rendered character design. To simply display the box and/or a pile of the drawings was never my intent as far as a finished piece goes. The box is just there to help me transport them around and keep the piece together as cheaply as possible. Actually, it kind of refers back to when I was a kid and how I would stuff a drawing as neatly as possible into my binder only to have it ultimately creased by something careless like being pressed up against the side of the bus or something.

In any event, the box isn't going to be part of the presentation. It confines the mass of the drawings into something manageable, both physically and visually. My initial idea is to just wallpaper a gallery wall with them. Ceiling to floor if I can get away with it. Oh, and using just a plan office stapler, too, if not push pins. Again, referring back to how I would use anything I could find that was cheaply and readily available for the purpose I needed at the time when I was a child.

Now I know what you are thinking: Where did all this childhood stuff come from and why is it suddenly important to the piece?

Well, to put it bluntly, I've always wanted to be an artist since I was a child. And as a child growing up with parents in the office place, I had a lot of access to office supplies like ball-point pens and printer paper, which is the material I produced all those drawings with. More often than not, my mother would hand me a pile of paper and a few pens and I would draw while she worked behind the desk. This practice happened less and less as I grew out of having to be watched and started going to school, but I always had access to printer paper and pens. It was just something that was always around when I was a child.

One of the Jasons may ask if I've looked into any psychological papers or readings about escapism and childhood traumas (which I'm sure there are plenty floating around since that whole EverQuest thing). My answer would be a regretful "no." As much as I am aware of the generalizations of such escapism, particularly with video game culture, I have not looked into the studies myself.

And if I was permitted to brag, I would say that my own experience makes any scientific study on the matter irrelevant. After all, who knows better: the scientist doing the study or the kid who became self-aware of the escapism tendency?

A question definitely asked by the Jasons would be why staple or push-pin the drawings from floor to ceiling in an attempt to overwhelm the viewer? Why not produce a series of these sketches on one giant piece of paper, or better yet, the wall itself?

As much as that would push the visual product, it wouldn't push the idea. Furthermore, it feels like one of those suggestions given to me by someone that doesn't get what I'm doing. Someone who wants me to turn left instead of letting me turn right. And if the idea is as great as I hope the Jasons think it is, then the visual product should be able to express that awesomeness. And I don't mean awesome in the 90's way, but awesome in the sense that it gives the viewer a sense of awe. A giant drawing on the wall may have that effect, but I feel that this idea warrents the individual pieces of paper being as big as that single giant sheet if not more so.

Backtracking several minutes ago, one of the Jasons mentioned something about a video where all that is seen is my hand drawing and not the final product. Yes, I feel that having a video of me drawing is a boring piece. We don't live in the art era of Yoko Ono where I can get away with filming such a mundane act and call it art. There needs to be more to it in the video art world as far as the contemporary art scene goes. That something more doesn't have to be anything huge, but it does have to be enough to be interesting. And seeing someone drawing without seeing the final product would aggravate me as a viewer if I were to come across the piece in a gallery of my own accord without knowing what the artist is trying to do.

Meanwhile, while I would be saying this, I'm already formulating an idea of projecting the image of me drawing on the drawings produced while questioning if that image is overkill for the viewer or not. Someone let me turn right, but they suggested I use a hybrid (no pun intended) instead of a SUV to go where I want to go. And as interesting as it may turn out, especially if the viewer's moment caused some of the drawings to lift a bit creating a cast shadow, I think the video would take away from the images themselves. But in the end, what do I really want the viewer to see: the act or the resulting product?

Let's end the scenario there and concentrate on the question I just asked myself, because that's the matter at hand.

Now, I've stated before that the act itself is a private act. It is also an act that I feel is impossible to illustrate properly in any media. But I have to show my viewers something, so the challenge is to show them the impossible. Make something invisible visible.

The video is a great way to make the invisible visible, but the idea of aggravating my viewer with a video of me drawing seems very pretentious and snobbish to me. It's as if the video is saying "I'm so great at drawing that I don't even need to show you what I'm drawing." Definitely not something I want, especially after I just drew a comic slamming pretentious views of art.

So with the video idea something I can revisit if I feel like the idea and final product could benefit from it, I have to ask myself why the drawings themselves? The way I see it, showing them the drawing is similar to someone showing their collection of action figures that date back to several years before they were born only without the nerd factor. There are stores in Japan that have floors of nothing but action figures, some of them not even for sale, and the photographs I've seen of the floor space alone make the collection feel bigger than it really is. That's the effect that quantity has over the viewer. Conversely, it also shows an obsessive nature, which is often associated with escapism. If popular media has given the general public any indication as to what an obsessive mind looks like in the physical form, it is the quantity of things. That's why the psycho killer is more than likely going to have photos of the people they want to kill from every angle possible.

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I've hit the nail on the head after talking in circles. The drawings is the end product of an obsessive reaction towards the negativity of reality resulting in the want to escape to a world based in the cartoon genre that is of my own design. Tipper Gore would have something to say about this, wouldn't she?

Questions about the Project

When you ask me questions that are as complicated as the ones I'm about to answer, you can almost always be assured I'll bullshit half of my answer. If not, I always seem to offer a really good guess that makes sense in one way or another. Very rarely does a question come along that sounds complicated but is easy for me to answer. It's even more rare in the art world unless you've done your research or you are confident in your work to talk about it like you wrote the book on the subject.

It's been pointed out that the title of the piece implies an escape from reality, not so much an escape from a low self-esteem or a personal realization (though that could be brought up as well). But which is the expression of this escape: the drawings themselves or the act of drawing them?

This is one of those rare, easy questions you get in the art world. One so easy that the title answers it. These drawings are produced to escape reality, which means it isn't the final product that is the escapism part of the piece. It's the private performance of producing them.

I'm reminded of an episode of an old Saturday Morning cartoon called Recess. In the episode, the tomboy and usually aggressive girl of the cast of characters (there was a jock, a cool kid, a nerd, a fat kid, and a kid who came from a military family but was a wimp himself among the cast, in case you care) interrupts a group of kids drawing on the blacktop of the playground because they don't know how to draw a tree. Over the course of the fifteen minute short, you see a montage of how she aggressively scribbles and draws seemingly random marks all over the blacktop. Towards the end of the short, you find out she's been doing this for the entire school week, and they don't know what to do with her to get her to stop. Then, one of the kids that likes to climb the big toy notices something and tells everyone to climb up to the top of all the playground structures. Students and teachers alike climb as high as they can get, and what they see is a work of art fueled by aggression, frustration, and general angst. It's so beautiful one teacher suggests laminating the blacktop to preserve it. Well, to end the short, the school's sprinkler system turns on suddenly and washes the chalk drawing away just as soon as the girl finishes it. The students and teachers are disappointed and believe she is disappointed as well that her work was washed away. She replies that the only reason she did it was because it made her feel better, she didn't even see what the final piece was.

No doubt the episode was made to illustrate the importance of art programs in the school, but the episode does relate to my project. The act of drawing is the escape. Like the girl who didn't stop until she was done, the act of drawing is what makes me feel better. The act is the escape, and will always be that escape. This is a different kind of escape when you compare it to my other so-called addictions like video games or online forums. One is an altered reality I can get lost in and the other is an attempt to compensate for a lack of social interaction on a regular basis with peers of similar interests. But the act of drawing is when I can simply shut my mind off and not think about anything but what I'm drawing. I don't have to think about concept or final product or anything. The act of drawing just makes me feel better about myself and what is going on.

The second question isn't so easy. It's one of those concept questions that I hate answering because it causes me to over think. And when I over think, I end up undermining myself.

The question is this: By presenting these drawings to the viewer, what am I doing? Am I trying to bring the viewer into my escapism? Am I trying to make my escape a reality?

My knee-jerk reaction to this question is that it is impossible to bring the viewer into my world of escape. As much as we would like to think that you can capture intangible feelings on canvas, these drawings have nothing to do with the passion or frustration I feel from day to day. There may be hints of it alluding to a subconscious desire for all things cute, cynical, or even something about masculine insecurities. But the actual act that is preformed, the actual escape part of this project, is something I cannot display. Nobody can truly get inside my head while I'm drawing. There is no way to accurately depict it either in a video piece of me drawing with audio commentary or something to make it a video art piece. So how can I show my viewers something that is so ethereal that is refuses to take a physical form longer than how long it takes me to draw? Simply put, I can't.

So am I trying to bring my world of escape into reality? Again, my knee-jerk reaction is a "no." My initial reaction is similar to the first. The display of these drawings can't bring my world of escape into reality. The act does. If anything, these drawings are like souvenirs you buy from places you've been. You know, evidence of an experience. Displaying these drawings isn't going to bring my world of escape into reality so much as a key chain from Italy isn't going to bring Venice to my aunt whom I gave the key chain to. The same can be said about vacation photos and home movies from Disneyland.

These knee-jerk responses only lead to another question: Why display them at all? Why not have a performance of me sitting at a table drawing since that is the conceptual origin of the piece?

I would cite the Animation Tour they give at Disney World, but I was told that since the Walt Disney Company dissolved their animation department, that tour has been reduced to nothing more but a room with a video and then a walk down an empty studio. Gone are the days when you could watch the inner workings of an animation studio as they are working. But if that wasn't the case, I would ask if anyone reading this has been on that tour and watched one of the animators at work. It's boring after about 30 seconds. That's why I would never do a performance piece, and that's also why I consider the act of drawing to escape a private act.

This leads to yet another question: Why, then, am I making this private act a public piece? Not public in the sense that it will be out on the street for all to see, but public in the fact that someone besides myself will see the product. If the act of escaping is something that I claim to be impossible to show, why show it at all?

See, this is where I start to undermine myself. The only answer I can give myself is because I have to. The lowering of what little pride I have left because of an obligation to a class.

If this was any other personal piece outside of school, I wouldn't display these so much as I would turn the ones I liked into shirts and posters to sell on CafePress for little gain. If this was any other piece that I would like to work on, it would be posted here on my blog and then forgotten about once it fell off the front page. If this was like any other personal work, there is a high likelihood it would never get shown at all in the same way a personal work of art would be (i.e. in an art show or gallery).

But I've been pushed into a corner, and a cornered mouse has been known to bite the cat. These drawings, if I can meet my quota in time, is this mouse's strike back to the cat that has cornered me.

Why "I Suck" (is) Great

My sister's first boyfriend had this thing I found out about some years ago when they were still dating. Apparently, my sister would often say negative things about her body while shopping for clothes, most of which involving how she hated being a size zero and being forced to pay $10 more than people who are a size 1. He didn't really like that, so he made a game with her: for every negative thing she said, she had to come up with four positive things right then and there on the spot that counter it.

I was challenged to do the same thing. I don't know what I said about the project I'm working on that was negative about it, short of an outside conversation where I pointed out I've never had a good critique as far as communicating a concept, but I clearly said something negative. I have to now come up with five positive things about the project. No false positives; no beating around the bush and turning a negative into a positive. Oh, and I have to make it public on my blog.

So off the top of my head, much like my sister would have to do, here are five positive things about Drawings Produced In A Vain Attempt To Escape The Fact That I Suck.

First off, I'm happy with the fact that this piece has completely thrown out craft and presentation from the required elements of formal art. I was always told I need to work on those two parts in nearly all my school work, but in doing so, I felt like I was over-tooling a drawing or complicating something that looked fine as simple as it was. Not caring or worrying about craft or how to present this formally makes the process very liberating. I don't have to worry about cleaning up my images or making sure my hands are clean from ink when I move them. In fact, the last batch I finished was in a black pen that kept getting on to my hand whenever I moved it over an area! Now that's showing the artist's hand in a very literal context. If this was any other piece, I would have tried to clean it up and not have that happen. But the drawing looks fine even with the messy aesthetics, and I'm happy with that.

I also like the fact that the images I'm producing have no common thread in their content, aesthetics, or subject matter. There may be patterns, sure, but what I've produced so far have very little to do with the drawings I've produced before or after any given drawing. In fact, to drive this point home, I've been randomly shoving my drawings into the box in no order whatsoever. It's another very liberating feeling knowing that I don't have to be consciously editing myself as I'm producing a drawing just to make sure it fits whatever body of work I'm going for. If I want to draw a realistic, muscular elf one page and then turn around and draw a Disney dog on the next, I can do that without having to worry about people wondering what the fuck those to have to do with each other to begin with. Right now, half of what I produced has text and a comic dialogue while the other half doesn't even take up a quarter of the page. I'm not worried about what kind of sign or signifier I'm creating in the process nor do I care to find out if there is one in the images or not. Each individual image has something unique to itself and doesn't have to relate to the others in the box. If someone tries to find that common thread, they will only find two things: they are done in a cartoon genre of drawing and they are all housed in a printer paper box. Other than that? They all look like just handed pens and paper to random people and said "Draw something."

The process of the piece is pretty much second nature for me. I grab a sheet of paper, draw on it, when I like (or don't like) what I draw, I put the paper back into the box. My sketchbooks are covered with this same kind of process, though not so much in the last year due to classes. Hell, my mom has a file of my drawings that were done in the same way somewhere in that big file cabinet of hers! It's not as difficult as trying to do a formal drawing, with the cleaning and perfect rendering of shade, and it isn't as time consuming as a sculptural process, with the refinement of the surface texture and figuring out weight distribution. All I need to do is pick up a piece of paper and draw on it until my heart's content.

The project itself is relatively cheap. A stack of printer paper, even if you buy it in bulk, rarely breaks $50. I'm also using ball-point pens, which are sold by the masses at Wal -Mart for as little as $1 for three!! I've never priced any of my pieces before, but if I wanted to sell this project as a whole and not just the images (which is an idea I've been throwing around every time I produce something I think would make a great shirt), I can easily make a profit margin of 10x what it costs in material. And after spending $300+ on art related stuff, I need a project like this: cheap to produce with a high profit turn-around.

So let's see. This project is great because I don't have to worry about craft, I'm not forcing myself to edit while I'm producing the images or "make them fit" an idea, the process is second nature to how I already work with my personal projects outside of school, and it's cheap enough to where I could make a decent profit margin off of it in one way or another. That's four!

This last one is definitely a positive. There's no doubt about that. Just keep in mind that this kind of thing doesn't happen to me very often, and when it does, I tend to react in a way that isn't normal.

I like the fact that this project started out as a release and a proposal to what I thought was an empty void not a lot of people were interested in reading, and from that generated a response I have never seen let alone be the focal point of. My last few entries have the most number of comments on this blog to date. If I were to include the stuff that has filtered over into reality as a result of my blogging, it's definitely something that is both encouraging and strange. The good kind of strange, you know? The kind of strange that results in fetish culture where people outside of yourself or your group end up looking at you with wary eyes, and yet you don't give a damn what you think because that attraction to the strange just makes their opinion invalid. It's not as harsh as that, but that's the best way I can put the feeling that I've been having as a result from all the feedback. I've never really had this kind of support. It's always been the "That's a great idea, but..." scenario. This is the first time that I can remember where people--total strangers, sometimes--are saying "That's a great idea! Do it!" without adding any kind of cautionary add-ons.

And to be honest, I would rather have what is happening now with this project rather than the whole "present the idea at the beginning to a group of your peers and have them critique you during the process" scenario that I've been having since I started college. While I see the benefits of that process, I usually end up feeling like the end product isn't something I can own up to, something that I can say is all me. It mostly has to do with the process of critiquing half-way through the process and having suggestions being thrown at you by people who may or may not know what you are trying to do even if it is a very simple idea. Don't misunderstand me; there have been some very good suggestions that I have taken from people who I respect. But if I get even a hint that they don't know where I'm going or what I'm doing based on what they suggest I should do with a half-finished product, then I feel they are better off doing the piece for me because it won't end up being something that I created. I'm not being negative so much as I am being critical about this process.

That said, I like the fact that the project cannot be critiqued mid-way. It's just impossible. Only a few people have seen just a few pieces from the set, but they looked at them as individual drawings and not as elements in one piece. And the people that are generating feedback that are following this project here on my blog probably won't see it at all until I figure out how I want to display these images. And I like that. Nobody can interrupt the process and tell me where to go and what to do with them. Nobody can suggest that I do this or that hinting that they have no idea what the piece is about. I can finally create something that I can look back on and know that everything in that box, every image I drew, is 100% me.

I get that feeling every time I watch my old Blazing Rhythms fireworks show on YouTube . I've only had that feeling a few times while I've been in college, and it was always in the classes where the teacher was open to what I wanted to do and never tried to suggest something that would change the work into a direction I didn't want it to go.

Telling me to go bigger is one thing. Telling me to turn left when I want to turn right is another. Telling me to turn right in a bigger car is something I'll probably take into consideration; if I like the idea and where I'm going, I'll do it.

"A Series of Drawings Produced In A Vain Attempt To Escape The Fact that I Suck" Project Update

Not much to say, but I guess since my last angst-ridden entry generated enough feedback, both online and in the real world somehow, I might as well say something about it.

I got the paper, dug in a trash pile for a box that could hold it all, got another box to work as a divider to separate the used and the unused paper (should something happen and I end up spotting several blank sheets), and popped out a handful of drawings using a blue ball-point pen I normally use for note-taking.

Haven't revised my artist statement or my paper for the class. Don't care to because I know there's no way I can justify this project in an "expanded artist statement," which apparently nobody told me that is what our thesis paper is really. Stupid me thought it was an actual, academic thesis paper. In reality, it's just a longer artist statement with research citation. Why couldn't Jack say that in the first place?! And if he did, why couldn't he make the point of that more clear over the course of the class?!

Ranting aside, that's all that I've done. Debating on how to document this project. Frankly, I'm just drawn to the idea of displaying these pieces online with links on the ones I like to a CafePress store where you could buy them as shirts or mouse pads so I can make some money on the side. Can I justify that? Not really. The bullshitter is saying that is just another avenue of escape for some people: shopping. You know who you are.

So, yeah, there it is. I'm still spread way too thin given my classes and up-coming deadlines, and I seriously doubt I'm in a good place with this new project. In fact, my lack of being able to artistically justify what the hell I'm doing without bullshitting means that it will fail.

But I don't care any more. I'm tired of this pretentious art intelligentsia crap.

For Nobody's Approval

It's one thing to have no artistic direction, be it you never had one to begin with or you lost it in the process. It's another thing to be told you have no direction. I prefer to be lost and enjoying the process rather than being told I'm lost and I need to go this way. At least with art.

Last night, my seminar class had one of those class critiques that apparently I forgot we were going to do. I've been forgetting little details for each of my classes due to the massive amount of work I have to do for the other classes I have. Those little things seem to be big things to me in one sense or another.

Anyway, the critique I got was bad. I don't remember the little details. All I remember was being told that I need to focus on a direction and then just produce a huge quantity of images. Apparently the process I'm going through is taking longer than is desired of the class, and having no direction now means the long process isn't worth the final output. They would rather see quantity over quality.

My knee-jerk reaction was to throw those images I worked so hard on into the shredder. Right now, even with this carry-over of emotions, I don't even want to finish my pieces any more. I'm so frustrated with the reaction I got and the lack of knowing where I'm going artistically that I'm considering just submitting the following project in a month's time to the final panel, which means ultimately changing my thesis to something I can't research in the academic sense: A box of printer paper with a drawing on each sheet, totally well into the thousands, in a vain attempt to escape the fact that I suck as an artist.

I'm actually considering that line to be the title for the piece, minus the "as an artists" part and a few other choice words.

I know there is no way to justify why I'm doing this other than the fact that it is a knee-jerk reaction. I was having fun before, but now I just feel invalidated. That's the worse feeling you can have as an artist. Hell, that's the worse feeling you can have as a human!

In my mind's eye, my paper would just be a self-confession of depression and pessimistic thoughts that somehow links back to that box of paper with random and unrelated images. It would touch on things like the mask I put on just to get through the day and how that mask is starting to lose its string that keeps it up, why I always turn to video games when I feel like this, and generally what it is like to live not knowing if you officially have depression or not (though, I believe, that if you just exhibit the signs as part of your regular behavior, you probably have it.) Somehow, I would tied the whole thing together in an attempt to show that this isn't so much art therapy as it is very much escapism, an escape from reality and all its problems.

It sounds like a great plan on paper, but executing it? And actually getting a positive reaction for once in a class I actually care about? Do I even have to say "Frankly, I doubt that will happen?"

Once I get my box of paper, I'll go through with the idea. As for the paper? It's not so much a thesis paper so much as it is a supplementary piece. I'll be writing it on the side and only researching when needed. None of that "get your facts first and then critically analyze them" academic bullshit I've been doing. Obviously that doesn't work for me.

I feel like I just proposed this project for nobody's approval. But at this point? This late in the game? I could care less. In fact, I'm starting to.

Live and Let Die

It's been a while since I posted a dream of mine that I could remember. Mostly because of the fact that I never get to that point in the sleep cycle anymore. But last night, I was lucky enough to dream. The dream, however, wasn't one that I would classify as a nightmare, but definitely made me feel uncomfortable.

Here's the dream:

I am stuck in what appears to be a school building, only there are no lockers or desks, and in the place of classrooms are rooms where a dozen of us sleep at night in what could be best described as a refugee setting. Naturally, I'm being teased, made fun of, and/or otherwise left to sulk in the corner while the rest of the population of beautiful people talk about things to settle their insecurities.

An announcement is made answering the question on everyone's mind: What the hell is going on? It turns out that the building is actually a quarantine block for some highly contagious illness. A select number of us are able to leave, as the cure is very low in quantity. Names are not drawn, but rather predetermined based on our social interaction. I am picked because nobody cared to talk to me. Everyone else that wasn't picked will ultimately end up dead in the next 24 hours.

As I'm being escorted out to be cured, the faces of everyone in the block change to that of pity and sadness. I don't know if it is because they were made aware of their future state or if they are jealous of the fact I will get to live longer than them. The last person I see is this beautiful strawberry-blond boy, who kisses me on the cheek and whispers "I love you." I whisper back, "Don't tell me that now."

I was being escorted to an elevator-like ship. We move up several floors only to stop and have the doors open. We are told to stay inside. One person doesn't listen and ends up vaporizing as soon as he tries to leave the room. Scared out of our minds, we listen to the instructions. We then see a line of people being lead to what we could only assume is their death.

It becomes increasingly apparent that in order for us to live, everyone we ever knew has to die.

This dream does pose an interesting question, doesn't it?

If the people whom you mistreated or otherwise ignored ended up being the special ones, how would you honestly feel about them and about yourself?

On top of that, if you knew that the only way you could live is if everyone you ever knew had to die for you, how could you go on living? And I'm not talking about just your family and close friends, but everyone. Your enemies, your petty crushes, celebrities you swooned over at one point or another. How could anyone live in complete social and physical isolation like that?

It only feels appropriate that this entry is being typed while I'm the only one in the house, the isolation broken by two sleeping dogs who probably don't even think about these kind of things.

Lost in the Art World

It's post-Mid-term season, and with three high-level studio classes going on at once, I can't help but feel I have lost my artistic direction. The bitter taste of knowing my Seminar thesis paper could be better still lingers as I try to figure out my personal politics for a Public Art Class assignment I seriously could care less about due to my indifference in current political issues like global warming. Then you have the fact that my current exploration in cartoon aesthetics seems to be turning away from taboos and more towards images that I just want to produce to satisfy my own personal entertainment and quirks.

It's funny how once you know where you want to go, you end up losing your way if you don't stick to the beaten path. All these other assignments that I couldn't filter into Seminar seem to have caused a creative block.

And the funny part is I don't really care. It's not that big of a problem to me.

There's something about having a lap dog actually falling asleep on your lap that makes even the biggest problem seem like a minor annoyance. I kind of wish Skippy was like this all the time, but this is the first in what could be a very rare thing with him.

Art in Academia

I know I've made this complaint before, but I can't find it on my blog. Then again, this entire journal is riddled with reoccurring themes, complaints, issues, and dirty laundry that refuses to stay clean.

I'm at the point in my art where I should be thinking critically about what I'm producing. I should be looking up things and forming a paper that will defend my creations as art more so than a mere hobby with good skills. It's a nice opportunity for me to "nerd out" and put all that useless trivia that has been piling up to good use.

But I have too many other things that need to get done at the same time. And I'm too tired to think properly.

Right now should also be my Fall Break, which amounts to only one day by my schedule. The way the break is set up is that it starts on Thursday and goes through the weekend. Because I have no classes on Friday, this ultimately means I only have one day off. And even then, I technically don't have a break.

It seems ironic if not bitter sweet that I'm typing this while on a break from working in wax a piece that will be casted in bronze. As exciting as that is, the entire assignment to me now lost its luster. (No pun intended, for those of you that caught that.) Bouncing ideas off people, the teacher, and thinking over the design of the objects has turned the piece into something I feel no emotional connection with. Why? It's all for the sake of academics.

Call me ignorant, but art in the world of academia seems like it should be kept strictly to movements, understanding theories, notable artists, and the like. When actually producing it, academia should be an observer and nothing more. Then, when the piece is completed or even when it reaches a point where all it needs is some TLC and polish, academia can come in and say "Okay, this is what the piece is about and here is what it is referencing." That's how I'm going about with the class I mentioned at the beginning of this entry.

Instead, I'm in a very strange place where left is down and up is out and inside is the fourth dimension times the quantity of the astronomical unit between here and the Horse Head Nebula. Combine this with the continuing exhaustion, unrealistic deadlines that have to be met or face failure, and an ever growing need to just strangle the world for disagreeing with me, one has to wonder why I haven't killed myself yet.

If I'm allowed to inflate my own ego, the only noble part of this whole mess is the fact that my mind is willing to go on despite the body clearly indicating that I need to relax, cut down on the caffeine, and catch up on my sleep. Maybe over Christmas... in between my shifts at the theatre, that is.

Puppy Problems

If there ever was a sign that I'm not responsible enough to have a pet, it's the fact that my priorities are so out of whacked to the point where I can't even tell when my dog wants to go to the bathroom.

Several times today, I either ignored or didn't noticed Skippy's tell tale sign that he needs to go to the bathroom (runs and looks at the door). And each time, I've had to clean up his piddle.

And each time, what was I doing? Escaping reality by playing an online video game that was more important at the time than making sure my dog went potty outside the house.

I'm more disappointed in myself than I am at the dog not making it a more clear sign that he needs to go. He is, technically, still a puppy, but he also inherited the Jack Russell bark from his dad according to the medical papers. He could have barked to get my attention, but I guess he rather use that to warn off strangers than to tell his owner, who is suppose to be the responsible one, that he needs to potty.

Skippy may be housebroken, but I'm definitely not dog broken.

Vacations? What's that?

It's no secret that vacations, be them the kind that are needed or the kind that are obligatory for religious or governmental reasons, are too short for most people. You never hear anyone say that their vacation lasted too long and they wanted to get back to work. Well, almost.

It's also no secret that I've been under a lot of stress lately. Most of which personally induced to the point where I'm still not feeling any better than I was before I caught those "back to school" flu bugs. If anyone needed a vacation (or needed to get laid, period), it's been me for the last month and a half.

With the stress mounting to the point where dropping out of the semester (not out of college as a whole) was the most beneficial choice I could make, it became clear that not even taking care of dog would help my problems go away. So, for my sister's birthday weekend, I went along, despite having a work load that, while manageable, I knew I wouldn't do while I was out of the state.

I've said it once and I'll say it again: What's the point of going on vacation if you're going to bring work with you?

The weekend was nice, I'll admit that much. We stayed in a cabin with a view because no hotel within my sister's campus would allow dogs. We didn't do anything but enjoy the view, the company of the dogs, and watching a few movies that were available to buy at the bargain bin. It was the stuff that all three-day weekends should be.

But the moment we got back home to Tennessee? It was like God set the reset button.

Skippy was over-stimulated and ate out of both his and Lucky's bowl. He then proceeded to throw up on the couch. I tried to clean it, but even touching it with a pair of rubber gloves made me want to vomit myself. Needless to say, didn't get any sympathy from anyone. Instead I got a response I never liked hearing.

I've probably said this once before on here, but my laziness is preventing me from doing a site search on Google to find out. I don't like being told to just shut the fuck up and get over it. In so many polite words, that was what I was told to do with Skippy's half-eaten regurgitation. That's great if you can do it. More power to you, but do you really expect someone who isn't like you to be able to do the same things as yourself in these kind of matters where you can get over things like nothing happened? No! And to do so is asking too much of the person. Some people have to have a process in order to get over anything. We don't instantly learn things like how to deal with a break up or how to get over your low gag-reflex tolerance. For some of us, it takes a lot of time, but even then we may not be able to get over what everyone says we should.

And yet, I have a history of people telling me this. Just shut up and get over yourself and do it. I don't like hearing this, but I also don't like the fact that I can't do it like some kind of light switch.

The moral of the story? Vacations don't help.

Skippy

After about four days of having Lucky around, it became increasingly clear that I was growing too attached to the little guy. My parents decided to step in and get another dog. Not just any dog, however. They got Lucky's brother, Skippy.

Now, I know you're probably getting all these nice warm fuzzy feelings about how kind both my parents are for not only thinking of me (finally) and being kind enough to seek out and adopt Lucky's brother. But before that feel-good feeling takes over you entirely, there's something you should know first.

Skip has been experiencing several major health problems.

When he was adopted, the Humane Society recommended that he be taken home immediately. He was suffering from what is known as Kennel Kough. Basically, it's similar to the Kindergarten Flu. You put a lot of dogs in one place, one of them comes in sick, and then the whole building is sneezing and coughing like crazy. Some dogs are better resistant to it, some are not.

Because of how highly contagious he was, we had to separate Skip and Lucky from each other until they got better. Over that time, we noticed more problems coming up. Skippy seems to have a bum leg sometimes, to which we are not sure what it may or may not be. Because he is sick, the vet cannot determine if it is a side effect from the virus he has or if he may have canine arthritis. He's only a year old, but that's still young enough to get it in dogs.

To complicate things even more, we've been doing a lot of back and forth between the quarantine area of my room where Skippy is and the "clean" zone where Lucky is. Lucky evidently caught something from this, but it's minor compared to how bad it was when we first brought Skippy home.

Recently, we were able to get Skippy healthy enough to reintroduce him to his brother. Apparently, three weeks apart is enough time for kin to become strangers. All this morning, there has been growling and nipping at tuffs of fur as Lucky is trying to reclaim his territory of the living room as well as our affection and general attention towards him. Skip will growl back, but it is in defence. Lucky wants to be the alpha. We're going to have to fix that, because we thought the two of them would get along better. They are brothers.

For now, we are keeping an eye on them and only interfering when needed. Lucky is learning how to share the hard way by being shooed off from areas of the living room Skippy wants to sit or lay down on, and I'm keeping an eye on Skippy's walking ability to make sure it has nothing to do with canine arthritis.

As much as I love these little guys, this is just complicating my life more so than I need right now. But, for what it is worth, whenever I'm with either of these mixed mutts, I'm able to forget about my problems. That is until they start exhibiting their own problems that sends me into a worried state similar to that of a mother who lost her child in the playground.

Little Lucky

See the little dog to the right? He's the newest member of the family. His name is Lucky, and while his medical records show him to be a mix of both small dogs and medium dogs, he's predominately a Papillon with the yelpy bark of Jack Russell. He's house-broken, neutered, and has had most of his shots. (We found out from the vet yesterday that he still needs a few more.) His personality is documented as friendly but shy, however our observation since we adopted him on Saturday have been very different. He's very much a homebody dog, likes to sleep most of the day away if there is someone in the house to keep him company, hates being alone even if the radio is left on, enjoys just following you anywhere you go, is a light and very picky eater, and right now probably depressed because he's been away from his older brother for a while now. He'll get over the depression given how much affection we are giving him between myself and Dad.

And that is where our problem is.

It only took three days, and I've become so attached to the little mutt to the point of my parental side kicking in. In fact, he's been my little distraction from school more so than anything I have mentioned before this post. It's gotten to the point where I can't help but spoil the little guy every chance I get even if it is just petting him on the head.

This may be seen as a good thing to most people. And I would agree that it is. I could use a pet like this that is easy to care for and wants nothing more but company in the same room it's in. A little responsibility could be a good thing for me and could gently push me into the right direction I need to go in so I can learn to drive, find a better job, and move out. In the last few days, Lucky has already made me feel better about myself in a way I can't really describe in words. Those of you that own a dog would probably be able to relate to this feeling and be better at describing it than myself.

But he's not my dog. I'm just taking care of him until my sister can come home to take care of him herself. This is her dog to replace Shadow, whom we are all still missing to some degree.

I don't know how the people at the Humane Society do it. They probably have pets of their own. Most of the workers if not all of them mentioned something about their own pets when we were looking at dogs to adopt. But I'm not them. I can't seem to get it into my head that this is my sister's dog given past history and not my own dog or the family dog.

It's been suggested because of my behavior as of late that maybe I should get a dog of my own. While a good idea, I don't know how well I would be able to handle that. I like Lucky's personality and the way he just sleeps in the middle of the hardwood floor where we photographed him. I like the fact that he doesn't really bark unless he doesn't get enough attention. I love the fact that he's house-broken! But what are the odds that I'll find another dog like him that is right for me? On top of that, I don't think I'm responsible enough to take care of a dog of my own, or any animal for that matter! The birds we own right now aren't really getting any mental stimulation from me and are probably going mad with boredom. I can only wonder what's going through Lucky's mind right now while I'm typing this. (He's just looking at me from across the room. I think he may need to go potty.) And yet, something this easy, something that doesn't ask very much from me in terms of supplying essential needs, may be very good for me and my mentality.

One of my co-workers over the summer said that there are many psychological cases where doctors have prescribed getting a pet for emotional support. These people can get away with bringing their dogs on places we normally can't for very understandable reasons. The last thing I want to happen on my next plane flight to wherever is for the person next to me to have a panic attack because they are unsure how their pet is doing down in the cargo bay. I should probably ask him or do some research on my own time (HA! Like I have any of that now...) about this and all the things that involve it. This could be very well something that I've needed for a long time.

Or it could be something else entirely. I don't like thinking that Lucky triggered some kind of parental drive in me, given how many crazy cat-ladies there are in the world that call them "her babies." But that's also a possibility of what's going on.

In the meantime, until I'm ready for a dog of my own, I'll be testing my own level of responsibility with Lucky while I take care of him. I'm currently trying to crate train him so that he doesn't run up to my parents' bedroom door asking to be let out in the middle of the night. Hopefully, Lucky will teach me something in process.