Over the next several months, I’m going to be putting together a body of work for my next big art show.
Typically, whenever this happens, artists disconnect from the outside world and disappear into their cave for several months, only emerging once the work is complete, or the deadline has arrived (usually the latter).
For this body of work, I’m going to try something a little bit different. Rather than producing something in private, and only releasing the full finished series of work, along with a poorly written essay filled with confabulations, non-sequiturs and trendy art jargon to back it up, (commonly referred to as “an artist’s statement) I’m going to pop up every week or so, pull back the curtain, and invite you into my studio. (virtual invitations only. Invitation does not extend to the physical world.) I’ll discuss what I’ve been thinking about, explain how I see my work (note: what you get out of it may vary), I’ll talk about where I plan on taking it. But mainly, I’m going to talk about my working process.
Not the whole working process mind you, that would be rather boring. Who wants to read about every brushstroke and colour mixture? I’m going to try focus on the more interesting bits of the creative process .
And since this whole process is being posted more-or-less as it’s happening, you can have your voice heard. Feel free to chime in with a “hey, thats awesome, you’re awesome.” or a, “oh, no, don’t do that! That’s terrible!” (Hopefully I get more of the former. I like hearing nice things about me.) Not that this is some sort of attempt at interactive production process on my part, more of an open auto-documentary into my work, but I’m not closed to suggestions if you make them. Once I get the ball rolling, you might just be able to nudge it one way or another. Note: your ideas had better be pretty awesome for me to implement them.
Hopefully, this will be revealing for you, while preventing me from going stir crazy.
If you’re interested in keeping up with this whole thing, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, where I will be posting videos along with these blog posts. I’ll create a playlist specifically for this video series. “Kyle Paints 2012″ so if you don’t want to see ALL the random crap I post, just pay attention to that one playlist. So long!
I’ve been working on a fairly large blogging project since last August.
The talk Brad and I gave at SoOnCon, “Why People Hate Art” was assisted by a mind map I had created in a program called Semantik. Since the talk, my mind has been exploding with ideas relating to that talk. As I was working on it this morning, I realized that I have over 9000 words in rough, point form notes. I really, really need to sit down and develop each of these points into a post here, but the way ideas are interconnecting, I want to do this this most comprehensive way possible.
The good news: a whole lot of content is being worked on
The bad news: it’s gonna take a long time…
I edited the talk down from 28 minutes into a much more focused 18 minute presentation. The other half will be posted shortly (well…eventually) but here is the meat of the talk.
If you want the background to this talk, and don’t feel like digging through my earlier posts, here is a brief summary of this talk and how it happened:
Brad Blucher and I were invited to give a talk at the TIFF Bell Lightbox for SoOnCon 2011.
The topic for our presentation was “why people hate art”. Using examples of things we have experienced first hand, we launched into an attack on the pervasiveness of obscurantism masquerading as deep insight within the art world.
Art is often nothing more than a footnote to a (poorly written) essay using invalid logic to make unsound arguments, all the while using technical and scientific terms inappropriately and without justification in an attempt to apply a veneer of rigour and profundity over their steaming pile of banal observations and utter nonsense.
This talk is a criticism of that tendency in the art world.
Note: You can still get the 2-part PDF version of the book for free by sending us an email. (smile_takeapicture@ymail.com)
I know, I know…I probably shouldn’t be telling you about the free version while I’m pushing the paid version on you, I’m a terrible marketer, but yay! ebooks!
Now trees don’t have to die for you to have a copy of my book. Although if you like murdering trees, you can always pick up the paper version of our book. (I’d recommend the soft-cover version, it has a very shiny cover. I like shiny things.)
I’m currently in the process of editing the footage from the actual talk. The full presentation was 28:50, just shy of the 30 minute allotment we were given. My goal is to remove the dead space and redundancies without taking away from the actual content or tone of the presentation. I want to deliver the complete talk, while taking up as little of your time as possible.
Here is a little teaser to hopefully whet your appetite:
I recently came to the realization that I was using the internet as a tool of procrastination far more than I was using it as a tool of production.
I have gotten myself into the nasty habit of coming home, having every intention of working on something, but first, I will do a quick check of some fun sites. I tell myself, “it’s not a big deal, I’ll only be spending 5 or 6 minutes doing this, then I will get to work.” Then I start loading up various social media and link-sharing websites. I quickly skim over the headlines, looking for something that sounds interesting. When I find something interesting (which I always do) I open it in a new tab. Then I keep reading, going down the page, looking for the next link to open up in the background. Then the next link. Usually by the end of all this, I have something in the range of 20 to 30 tabs open on my browser.
Now, I can’t get to work with all this interesting stuff loaded up in front of me. What if I find something interesting, or a new idea to get my work done faster? I’d better read these articles first, then I will get to work. The wordcount on these isn’t that high, how long can it take?
I start with the photos, since they take seconds a piece. Getting through a good 5-10 tabs feels good. Then I move on to blog posts that are written in accessible everyday language. They are usually fairly quick to read through. I end with the longer, more academic articles, which often stay open in the background for several days before I get around to reading them.
Occasionally I do come across a great new idea that merits taking down notes, but normally what I read is close enough to my existing body of knowledge that I can trust myself to remember it after a single reading. All this info will come in handy…someday…right?
When I have finished reading everything, my eyes drift to the corner of my computer screen towards the clock, and I am stunned by just how much time has gone by since I booted up my computer.
“I’ve wasted how much time on this stupid thing? Oh, man I need to stop doing this! From now on, no more….hmmm…I wonder if anything new has been posted on reddit”
I knew this was something I had to change, so I installed a browser extension called ‘Stay Focused” (there is a similar tool available to FireFox users, but I’ve forgotten the name.) Stay Focused is a completely free extension for Chrome (and Chromium, which I use).
I had one of those weekends where everything lined up and I managed to get a lot of work done.
As an artist, making, showing and promoting art work often seem to dominate my attention.
Little things, like storage, supports, frames, lighting, and little studio improvements here-and-there often get overlooked.
Not this weekend.
A bunch of little things that had been on my “I’ll do it later” list are now sitting in my “done” pile. This is a good feeling. A really good feeling. Having a pile of cool new supports to try out gets me excited to start painting on them. Gonna be a good couple of weeks ahead.
Ever wondered exactly what it takes to put together a 30 minute presentation?
Brad and I knew that the opportunity to speak at SoOnCon was something that is unlikely to happen again any time soon. We also knew that we had nothing to talk about. We had given a lightning talk at Toronto Mini Maker Faire just months earlier, and we haven’t really done any new projects since then. But we still really wanted to do something.
I was on the phone with Brad, pacing around my apartment, trying to throw ideas back and forth, but nothing was coming to mind. Our conversation wandered off on some bizarre tangent. Then we started complaining about how horrible artists are, and how terrible a lot of art projects are. That’s when a little light bulb clicked on in my brain.
I suggested, “why people hate art”.
We frequently have long conversations about this very topic whenever we get together, so generating material wont be a problem. We’ve experienced enough art-BS first-hand to burn through 30 minutes without having to prepare a thing! This talk would be little different than any of our normal meeting, with one little difference: instead of ranting to each other in private about how horrible the art world is, we will be ranting in public! Brad thought I might be on to something. He prepared the application form and sent it off. We received our acceptance notice the next day.
I would like to begin by saying that for the most part, I try to steer clear of politics here. I recognize that I am not a political analyst or policy expert; I’m just a guy who sees the world through a particular lens and wants our planet to be a better place. For this post, I will try to avoid taking a firm stance on either side, and just report on my brief experience of Occupy Toronto from the perspective of an outside observer; an observer arriving with just bits and pieces of information.
It was early Monday afternoon, and I had just finished a meeting and location inspection for my next art exhibition. The venue I had been checking out just happened to be a 5-minute walk away from St. James park. I couldn’t be that close to the action and not go see it first hand.
I had read several online new articles and blog posts about the event, and I was still a little confused. There were questions raised over the point of Occupy Toronto. Politics in Canada aren’t as corrupt as the American system, and income equality isn’t as bad as it is down South. The general consensus on the blogosphere was that Occupy Toronto is primarily a display of solidarity for our friends at Occupy Wall Street in New York. This is the world’s way of telling the citizens of America “It’s ok, we got your back; we’re in this together”.
I don’t know Toronto’s South-East end very well, so I wasn’t absolutely sure what I was looking for, but the police and media presence made it easy to locate the park from the street I was walking down. Vans from each major news broadcasting network were sitting outside the park, and pairs of police officers were patrolling the parks perimeter. A few of the officers had an expression of boredom on their faces, but most were just having friendly conversations with each other.
