Getting back to things?

I've been freelancing again as a graphic designer. My bank account thanks me profusely, but my Landlady has been less than happy with having to wait until mid-month to get the rent. It's on its way, so we're fine, I just hate disappointing people and looking irresponsible.

With freelancing in my life again, my schedule is slowly returning to the M-F 9-5 corporate grind pace. I'm just happy to be productive. Such an odd feeling, really, but there it is. I'm not cut out for not having a job yet. I'm sure I could get there, but I don't have the chops for it quite yet.

With the return to work, even temporarily, I'm prolonging my unemployment benefits, so the weeks that I have no work or don't clear my unemployment benefit amount I can at least count on that to get me by. I'm also able to pick up the pieces of everything that I dropped these last few months, including the return to art.

Personal Patterns

I know myself well enough that I really think I can stop trying to live up to someone else's ideas of how my creative work should go. I know that actively -working- on it will yield the best results, but the creative urges come and go. Focus shifts. When things get to the point that they're ready to move forward, they do. As things get closer to completion, I can buckle down and study or be productive, but until I can see a point I want to get to, I'm generally not able to work on things that don't interest me.

It's not a good habit to have for the purpose of making money off of my art, but it's a lovely luxury for an artist who earns a living in the daily grind.

Well, I'm returning to Guru Dave next month to resume lessons. I've got Craft projects running now (that's Craft of the Wise projects, not 'Arts and'), a novel at a midpoint break, and my fine arts pursuits. My recent return to the freelancing world of graphic design has actually increased my Photoshop skills significantly. Not in the manner of picking up whole new avenues, but more in the way of "the penny dropped" and I 'got' how to use the Channel Mixer and Selective Color palettes for better control over photo retouching.

Took me a bit, but I'm glad I picked it up.
Still, I'm happy to be returning to working with Guru Dave. I've missed the studio and the intense possibilities that he represents. As well as the "tidying up the past art education I neglected" bits.

Well, we'll see. Really.
Back to work for now.

Dali's 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship

It's here! Oh frabjous day! Calloo! Callay! He chortled in his joy.

Yes, Dali's 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship were just handed to me by the kind US Postman delivering Amazon's box o'goodies for me, including ART & FEAR: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) Of Artmaking, by David Bayles & Ted Orland.



Also arriving today was THE VIEW FROM THE STUDIO DOOR: How Artists Find Their Way In An Uncertain World, by Ted Orland, one of the two authors of ART & FEAR. I have never read it, but I liked Orland's efforts on ART & FEAR, so I figured I'd give him a shot with his followup work.

ART & FEAR was a book I owned before, loaned out during the Great Sleep when my artistic side was encouraged to give up and let me be 'normal' with a 'real career'. Alas, like many great books, the loan never returned. But I'm not sad... it means that the word is getting out, and I've got a new copy of my own.

Back to Dali

My old Spanish Professor, Vilma Manzotti, PhD, at the State University of New York at Potsdam College, once chided her class of American students gently about the fact that we knew nothing about how to read a book. All books need to be read starting from the front cover, because there is vital information being missed. The Table of Contents sets out the outline of the work and helps put the reader in the right frame of mind. Dedications can be important, too, sometimes. And Forewords and Prologues all matter, because if they didn't they wouldn't be in the book.

So, with a nod to the wisdom of Vilma, I began at the front cover. Artwork by Dali himself. Pen & ink, thick and bold and fine and scratchy. An angelic figure behind a canvas where an artist is working, other "figures" or vaguely anthropomorphic ink swathes, stand about in various poses. Interesting to me is that the Angel figure, what I interpret as the Muse, is not looking at the painter or the painting, but is instead turning aside and reading a book.

Ahhh, Dali, your sin was that you knew your own greatness.

Inside the front cover we find a color plate of "Portrait of the Back of My Wife Contemplating Architectural Form". Fitting that Gala should make a very early appearance. Another page in we find another pen & ink drawing, "Port Lligat Madonna Help Me", then the Title page where I find that this is a translation.

Ah hah. You know how I said that art seemed now to be gathering to itself all of the component bits of my somewhat disjointed life? I was in Vilma Manzotti's classes for a reason, that being my undergraduate degree is in Spanish Literature. I'll read this through first in English, for the purposes of making an approach to Dali's writings, but I will have to secure a copy for myself in its original Spanish. Luckily, I am fluent in Spanish, and luckily still, I've had great philosophical discussions and dialogues with other academics and my professors about how translations must make a choice... either they have to be true to the literal words and translate as exactly as possible (a very scholarly approach), or else they have to translate the meaning of the text itself and sacrifice the exact language used (a very artistic approach). The best translators can use a little of both, but in every case, whenever you translate something you are completely dependent upon the lens of the translator to make the right choices, to be able to identify and see what is truly important to the text, to the author, and to the potential readers.

Best to always read it in the original language. Which is something the prophet Mohammed knew, and knew well, for he lay down the edict that the Q'ran must only be read or studied in the original language it was written in. Today, we call that Ancient Arabic, and student of the Q'ran must learn how to read it fluently. I'm willking to bet that Dali toyed with the idea, or would have agreed with it philosophically. I never met the man; more's the pity, but if I had to choose between meeting Pablo Picasso or Salvador Dali, I would choose Dali (although I know I might well have been disappointed by the interview, if he would have said more than 2 words to me at all).

Reading On

I do see that there are notes in the edition which tell us that the Dover edition has been slightly altered from the original... Gala's painting was not originally on the inside cover. My print production background tells me that it was cheaper to print the color pieces on the covers instead of putting a signature of color in the middle of the book, so this makes sense.

The other thing they mention is that in the original, Dali's name appeared without any accents, just as I've been writing it for fear of losing the accent in translation across ASCII and Unicode browsers. They put all of the accents in when they reprinted it from the original. Dalí. Interesting that in Dali's own time they didn't put the accents in... I'm not sure if this was an oversight or a preference of Dali's. More research would be needed, but I'm working on other things.

Dedication

Dedication follows, where Dali describes what he wanted at each of the decades of his life, and how things have grown. He also describes his mission "Now at forty-five" as being to paint a masterpiece so that he can save Modern Art from chaos and laziness. He swears he will succeed.

It's an interesting thing, really. Dali is known and talked about as a man of tremendous arrogance and ego. I'm not so certain it's completely undeserved, and that must be difficult to live with when you just want to wipe the smirk off of the man's moustachioed face.

Then follows a list of all of the 50 secrets with their titles, numbers, and page references. It begins with "1. The secret of the five different movements of the five types of brushes." and it ends with "50. The secret of the angel." Now, oddly enough, my mind is immediately drawn back to the front cover. I want to get to 50 because I suspect that he's alluding to the angel on the cover.

In skimming through the secrets, I see lots of references to weird and obscure things. Some of them jump out at me, though. Like this one. "19. The secret of learning to paint before knowing how to draw." Well, if the title alone is indicative (I highly doubt it's the whole shebang) then this one speaks directly to me. I don't yet consider that I know how to draw. Yet it's heartening to see that this might actually be a good thing, at least according to Dali.

Prologue and Quintessence

Stray comments about Dali having been at least passingly familiar with the occult from Guru Dave begin to draw attention to certain passages. Basically, Dali is setting down his parameters for what makes the artist great, and he says that it's the point of the book, which is revealed at the end in two lines. "...he will find it exactly in the last two lines of this book." Lines? Or lines? Word or sketch, I'm keeping my mind very open.

But it's a good point. I remarked to Dave that I pass by a fine art gallery in South Norwalk every day, and they regularly change out the paintings that they have in the front display to try and entice folks to come in. I've already seen that some of the works seem to have captured something of the spirit in them, while others seem to be merely color studies of various subjects in pretty frames. Some seem to be art, others seem to be paint on a canvas. Perhaps Dali will give me a better vocabulary to make my explanations from.

We shall see.

And now, on to the rest of the book.

Some art

I figure that after all of this talking, I should start showing. Thousand words and all. This is my first foray into working with colored pencils. Using Lyra Rembrandt and Caran D'Ache colored pencils because they both contain an oil-based binder (as opposed to wax) and working on a special flocked paper which has quite a nice tooth to it.

I really enjoy working with the method of building up the colors. The stonework was fun. It's just a scratch pad, more or less, but there it is.

This is an example of the Grid Technique, something which should be intimately familiar to any art student today. Utilizing the grid to break apart the target image into smaller bits that you then put together as the whole... well, this is in progress. I'll photo the "finished" piece and post it later. I started working in a 2B graphite stick, then after I was done with the figure I went back into the piece with an eraser, my 2B, and my 4B graphite. I erased the grid lines inside the figure, and I made some artistic choices and changes to the piece. I then tried to 'unify' the value scale, so that the darkness of the skin tones match the darkness of the brow, etc. Making all the values fall into place. Tougher than it looks, actually.

I'd love to do a grid piece with colored pencils on that flocked paper. Not just value but color and tone as well.

Creation Required

What is it about new beginnings which captures the imagination so fervently? There's something alluring about the blank page, the new endeavor, the blank slate. No past, no trials, nothing but pure unbridled potential. Of course, that fades quickly, but the strength of the finished piece begins with the first brushstroke, the first word, the first post, the first mark. From there, all potential narrows and becomes something else. It's the natural order of creations, and it's our job as artists and makers to commit to the path and deal with the process of unfolding that making entails.

I've blogged before, and even gotten a small audience going before switching to a different format and completely disappearing into obscurity. I'm glad that technology has advanced to the point that blogging is now free and the editors are intuitive. As a creator myself, I'm always looking for tools which are transparent in the hand. If I'm struggling to make the tool work, it's detracting from the work at hand.

About myself

My name is Adam. I'm 35 years old, and I make things. I'm a Renaissance Man in a Specialist World. I write fiction, prose, poetry, do ceramics, sculpt, draw, do graphic designs, play with Photoshop and Illustrator, and as of this past weekend, I do oil painting and watercolors as well. I don't take my label from any one medium, and I don't know that you could sum me up as anything other than an 'artist' in the broadest sense of the word. I am a visionary, a rebel, a study in paradox. Professional by day, Bohemian by night, as my friend Tish puts it.

I am, in short, a maker. I make things, and I make things happen. I've lived the cuckoo's life. Adopted at birth into an Italian family, I've never quite fit in (although they've accepted me just fine and I have a loving, supportive relationship with all of my immediate family members). I'm too weird for the normal folks, and too normal for the weird folks. It's not intentional - I was scorned by the punk kids in high school (this was the 80's and punk rockers were actually seen as being intimidating back then... now I see them on the old films and laugh), and shunned by the normal folks. I played clarinet and was a geek and a nerd and a band fag, but even in the band I was respected for my musical talents but avoided because I just wasn't ever a part of the crowd despite every single effort ever made.

I mention this only because after 35 years of it all, I'm ready to tell the world to fuck off and start living my life without guilt or shame. I'm weird and I'm fine with that. It's not from trying, it's just the factory default setting for my life.

Why Blog Now?

I start this whole blog because this past weekend I've begun a formal apprenticeship with the pluralist artist David Gulotta. He's teaching me painting (oils, watercolors, and pastels among other fine arts) in the old fashioned style of Master and Apprentice. I'm learning everything from the ground up: how to grind pigments, make paint, make brushes, stretch canvas, etc. It's something of a reaction to the VAST amount of know-how which has been sacrificed over the years since the "Art School" appeared on the scene. In one weekend I've already learned more about painting and sketching than I did in my art classes in college.

I've been affectionately been given the Apprentice Title of "Roundeye #7". It's a nod to when Dave himself was apprenticing in a Chinese Restaurant kitchen under a master chef. His name was Roundeye, so all of his apprentices get called that affectionately. As the 7th apprentice (a most auspicious number!) I'm Roundeye #7.

Creation Required

The name of this blog is Creation Required. It's a statement of fact for any artist. It's not that I have a choice about it, I simply cannot be emotionally content unless I create something, or put in work on a creation. I need to do it every day the same way that 18 year old guys need to ... well, you get the picture.

The urge to create is primal and pervasive. It is subtle when it manifests, typically appearing as the feeling that there's something I should be doing right now which is not happening. I find myself wandering from room to room in my apartment and driving my husband Storm nuts. I feel distracted, unsettled, unable to concentrate on television or computer games (with exception of Civilization and SimCity, that is... those games count as "creating" for my psyche). Sometimes I'll eat before realizing that the hunger I feel is emotional and tied with the need to express, to advance some project or work, or to just make something.

It happens more or less every day. When I indulge the creative need, I get to a point where there' a sort of inner quiet and afterglow like sex. Contentment, satisfaction, and peace. The creation has advanced, something has been brought forth from the inner spaces, and now, for a time, I may relax.

And so I call this exactly what it is. CREATION REQUIRED. Not optional. For me to be truly happy, I would need to be somewhat independently wealthy. Not for all of the toys and extra stuff I could buy, but just so that I could enter a studio and work on whatever happened to need creating that day. I can make schedules and tie myself to projects so that I can produce on demand, but I'm much happier when I can go where the spirit takes me. Maybe today it's drumming on my djembe, or dancing to music, or listening to a broadway show and making blocking charts and director's plans in my head for lighting and scenery and costumes. Or maybe it's sketching, or painting, or digital photography, or writing the next chapter in a book.

That's ideal. It also doesn't happen for me yet, but it's a dream of mine to get to that point where I can just be an artist and make stuff, and then hand the finished pieces over to someone else to worry about sales or turning them into profits. I'm a dreamer though, so I'm holding that eventuality in my mind firmly. I will dream large, and dare to dream about being the perfect vessel for a new way of seeing and thinking which gains sufficient recognition to free me from worrying about "working" for someone else ever again. As goals go, that's a great one. To be fiscally independent simply because the 9-5 grind interferes with the artist's life. To have property where no one may trespass without invitation, where the atmosphere of safety which all artists need can come about. That's my dream.

But since I'm still tied to the 9-5, working a career as a staffing agent for the Creative industry in Southern Connecticut, I'm forced to wrestle with the truth. That might be the dream, but this is the reality. It's totally a do-able dream, but like everything in my life -- Creation Required.