John Wells, director The Process Museum with Mark Rossi’s mountain lion sculpture
John Wells estimates he’s adopted about 10,000 “orphans.” He doesn't have an exact number so don't ask him. 10,000 is his best estimate. John owns, runs, curates and is the Process Museum in Tucson, Arizona. His museum is not so much an art orphanage as a well-loved art collection where some work got left behind.
Read MoreArt journaling has been around a very long time and is practiced across the globe to great effect. There have been some very famous art journalistsand many working in obscurity. The cost to get started can be very low while the payoffs are investment grade. They accrue and compound. And, your 80-year old self just might be able to rekindle some creative juices with those pages some day.
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Sexy cool junk art can happen anywhere. Just ask the Kenyan villagers who discovered a half ton of space trash in a farmer's field recently. Hey, found objects are the bedrock of sculpture. All those dead Dadaists were really onto something. Get some junk, make some art. Get satisfaction for life. Learn all about it all right here.
Read MoreAbstract art: fun versus misunderstood? And so thrilling to make, dammit.
Marla Olmstead and Julien Delagrange likely disagree. Delagrange, director of the Contemporary Art Issue (CAI) claims the key to successful abstract art is using uncommon materials in uncommon ways. At four years old Marla was selling her work for five figures and making it on her parents breakfast nook floor using tubes of Liquitex Basics acrylic paint.
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I’m never sure what’s fair and what’s not, especially when it comes to my art. I was grateful to have reasonable expectations and outcomes for a recent open studio tour. At 73, with 40 years of making art behind me I think it’s fair to expect 100 plus visitors and sell at least $500 in work. Didn’t happen. I saw about 20 people and sold zero dollars worth of work. And that’s fair.
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I’m a collage artist. Love anything from the postwar era. All my vintage texts have whole sections torn out, some are gutted. Going to hell for such ruination. And that’s okay.
The debate over whether or not to ruin books dates from Gutenberg (likely).
Author Susan Orlean authored The Library Book. Orleans confronted her adoration of the printed page by attempting to burn a book. “A book feels like a thing alive in this moment...they take on a kind of human vitality.”
Sheesh, I've been killing books for decades with no apparent karmic cost.
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"Hi, my name is Lorin and I'm an introvert"
I’ve been to more than a few (well-populated) openings in my career as an artist and I still don’t understand how to do it. Redditors (what do they know) have plenty of suggestions on proper etiquette for openings.
So, I wanted to see if I could do it different, get the real emotional experience, be out of place, out of my mind amid art, artists, collectors and critics. Then, reach out. Fit in, communicate.
And too, it helps if you just pretend they’re all naked.
Read how my experiment in art opening extroversion went and more of my advice for like-afflicted souls
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“Fosters Freeze, Escalon”, 1975; Robert Bechtle
According to published reports museum goers spend just 30 seconds in front of a painting (reading the wall label?) before moving on. Ouch. Sooo maybe just a quick glance at the actual work?
Bianca Bosker, the author of “Get the Picture,” found a better way. While researching her book about the NYC art scene she heard some simple advice: “just walk up to the piece and try to think of five things that it brings up...either in the work or how it makes you feel.” And oh, 86 the wall label.
I tried this out recently at the Tucson Museum of Art’s “Time Traveler’s” show.
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What if you don’t need art school? It’s expensive (an MFA can cost as much as $70k/yr). It may not come with a big payoff but your loans could total as much as $65k. Could coaches and mentors suffice? I never went to art school for a degree so maybe ignore this whole post. Or maybe coaches and mentors rock success like nobody’s business-I’ll use my remaining years to find out.
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Keith Haring’s devotion to making children smile is apparent throughout the Walker Art Center’s current show. Yet something was missing. Irony abounds in this interaction between myself and the WAC’s staff. Read on for the full story.
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Baby boomers embrace their fine artist when they recognize the parallel between family snapshots and the work of some very famous photographers. The masters and their curators find brilliance in the snapshot aesthetic.
Check in your attic, your closet, your shed or behind those five boxes of tax returns and check registers (remember them?). There’s a dusty box with the packing tape peeling off and it’s filled with possibilities. Dad’s snapshots want to be unchained, so baby boomers-embrace your fine artist self.
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Here's a 15-item list of my favorite and most inspirational objects. For an artist, inspiration comes from odd and sometimes disturbing crevices of safe keeping. Junk drawer collections are an ever-fecund resource. I built this cabinet, a bank of drawers arranged as a stack between two slabs of mahogany at a workshop at Penland School of Crafts in about 1980. It's stuffed with every oddity imaginable. There’s a pair of well-used green dice, my son’s baby teeth, a miniature button hook, a rusted pair of dissection scissors, bone fragments, birthday candles and more.
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Imagine you're baking a three layer cake of creative success. Should luck, talent and attraction affirmations be your first choice of ingredients for a yummy career as a artist these days? Some experts say so.
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BitBoy made a himself quite a deal when monetization versus creative self esteem was the question. He kicked his graphic design career to the curb in exchange for wealth, fame, a Lambo, a wrecked marriage and possible criminal charges. What a plan. Coulda, shoulda made a left turn instead maybe.
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The artist considers his own death and legacy.
In my case, I’ve made art for over 40 years but I could hardly call it a career either for financial gain or critical acclaim. Maybe I’ve been making tchotchkes every time I stepped up to the easel. My work has given me great pleasure but it’s unlikely my leaving will put any of my heirs through college.
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What is a sketchbook? Depends. It could be a vast stockpile of trial and error efforts all on the path to finished work completed elsewhere. A sketchbook could also be a finished work in its own right, a showpiece, every page its own complete and final piece of art.
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“Recognize the otherness of art., says Jerry Saltz in his book “How to Make Art.” He’s talking about the idea that inspiration and what we create comes from a cosmic force outside ourselves. Saltz adds, “...the work we create isn’t entirely a matter of conscious choice.”
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Here’s my take on dark humor-it’s funny, it’s fun to make and life’s short. The website Literary devices.net defines dark or black humor as: “...a literary device used in novels and plays to discuss taboo subjects while adding an element of comedy. The Russian scholar, Nikolay N. Gubanov defines black humor as, “...the line that we hesitatingly still crave to step across. A successful black joke often causes a mixture of feelings – shock, disgust, shame, and, of course, joy.” Visual artists know a thing or two as well about black humor. There’s a whole host of artists out there painting funny/creepy/dark in the metaphoric shadows. Check out Alex Gamsu Jenkins or the artist @ghoulorama and finally, perhaps the godfather of black visual humor David Shrigley
I hew close to the above definitions in my own work. I believe dark humor is an unlocked door to a land where you get to talk about things too awful to consider. Leavened with laughter, these topics join the party carrying champagne. Growing up, my parents revered correct and appropriate ways of doing and being. Dark and humorous art is my reverse legacy-thanks Mom and Dad. . Still, I do have some no-go topics (domestic violence and animal cruelty come to mind). Too damn hateful to be funny is my criteria for exclusion. That leaves the field sort of wide open as evidenced by my current oeuvre. I don’t present myself as any sort of expert on black humor. I’ll leave that to the Russians. And, of course, dark without the humor is sort of like eating a green salad without dressing- you can certainly do it but you’re definitely not going to enjoy it. Here’s a peek at my own dark path over the last 40 years of artmaking.
I’m curious what sort of dark or black humor others appreciate and enjoy? If you’ve read this far you’ve got your own ideas about dark humor. What limits and boundaries apply to you or are those moving targets? How funny do you have to be to create dark and funny art? This famous painting by Caravaggio is universally considered one of the darkest any artist of the era produced but few would call it funny. Perhaps Midjourney can give us a whole new movement where dark becomes dark humor with the right prompts. Here’s a joke that’s a good starting point for measuring your own darkness. Funny, not funny or hilarious--
“Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?
It was dead.”
Take my survey (here) to vote for your own flavor of dark and funny. In my next newsletter/blog I’ll discuss the (anonymous) survey results. I’ll also look at why some really smart folk think dark humor promotes human progress. Of why, as an artist, I should even care.
Welcome to my blog. You’re likely to find it well-written and a bit unconventional. Feel free to join the conversation
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