It’s been a while Since I’ve posted anything up here. Sorry about that. I’m really not making good on my promise to post something new here every single week.
The only excuse I can offer is busyness.
I’ve been busy. Very busy.
Lots of prep work, lots of new paintings, and lots of shows.
I hung my ninth show of the year the other day. That’s a new personal record for me. Nine shows and over 100 new paintings in one year, and I’ve still got 1 full month to go.
Vote Now! Seeking Feedback on my Paintings
I’ve got a little project in the works. I won’t reveal what that project is quite yet, but it might turn out to be the most awesome thing in the history of the entire universe (but that outcome is rather unlikely).
A few days ago, I set up a new little area on my blog. I’ve got enough of the bugs worked out that I now feel comfortable advertising this new section. The link, which can be found in the upper right hand corner of this page, leads to a blog entry where my urban landscapes can be viewed, and more importantly, voted for.
Each of my paintings can be given a “thumbs up”, or a “thumbs down” rating, and as far as I know, the whole thing is completely anonymous. You don’t have to worry about offending me, or forcing my artistic direction one way or another, this is just about getting some feedback on my work.
At first, I published the link to a fairly small following, the people on my facebook fan page. The next day, the link was posted to a low traffic web forum. Yesterday, I tweeted about the page, and today, I’ve put the link on my blog, my main facebook page, and a few other places.
I will be keeping careful track of the results, and adding to this entry in the near future.
If you can spare a few moments, please, head on over to the new gallery section and vote!
Thank you.
I had just put in yet another 14 hour day with Brad. We were closing in on the 90 hour mark for that week, and I was worn out. After the short walk home, I stumbled through the front door, and headed straight for bed. It was nearly 4 am. My shoes were still on my feet, and I was asleep before my head even hit the pillow.
Around 9 am, my phone rang.
“um…hello?”
“Kyle, put together an art show for November.”
“um…sure.”
*click*
I rolled over and went back to sleep.
I crawled out of bed around noon and made my way over to the secret lab / collaborative studio (otherwise known as “Brad’s house”).
“Hmm…I had the strangest dream last night. I dreamt that I got a call from my old high school teacher, ordering me to put together an art show for Bob’s gallery. Weird.”
I checked my phone’s call history. It wasn’t a dream. I did agree to curate an art show.
Brad looked at me, “Have you ever curated a show before?”
No
“Do you know how to curate a show?”
No
“So, why did you agree to it?”
Because it’s a show!
Never turn down a show. That’s the rule. Show. Show your work. Always be ready. Be ready for three shows at once, just in case; and if you are already booked, work harder and make it work.
Continue reading Just Like Old Times
In my last post, I mentioned that I picked up a new lens.
I tried to tone-down my giddy excitement in that last post. I will be letting it all out in this post.
My 18-70mm 3.5-4.5G DX was sharp enough, it was fast enough, it was almost even enough; but damn! 50mm 1.8D prime, you make me so happy!
This is the most inexpensive lens Nikon makes. It is not a cheap lens. It is an inexpensive lens. It doesn’t cost very much, but it takes fantastic pictures.
It opens wide, all the way up to f/1.8, which is about 2 and a half stops better than any of my other lenses. The shallow depth of field this allows has given me a whole new world to explore.
Continue reading New Lens!
If you like overly broad assumptions, than these next few paragraphs are for you:
There are two types of photographers: those who like to take pictures, and those who obsess over gear.
Some head out early in the morning, venture to remote locations during stormy weather, and wait there, hoping to capture something breathtaking. The others stay at home, count pixels, take pictures of charts, zoom up close and look for flaws in the gear.
(I’m leaving out the third kind: people who downloaded some nifty app for the iphone that automatically filters their images into something cool.)
The photographers who go out and take great images can look down on the gear-porn junkies; they buy all this expensive gear, and never use it to make images worth looking at. The technically minded gear-porn junkies look down at the photographers for buying gear that is 2% less sharp around the edges at certain f-stops while zoomed in all the way, when a better alternative is only two pay-cheques more expensive. And everyone looks down on the iphone photographers, because no one seems to notice that good images are all that matters.
I’m not really a photographer, so I guess I’m safe from being stuck in one of these groups I’ve just invented, but I can certainly understand the appeal of being obsessed with gear. Its objective. It’s easy. Taking a good image is hard. Powerful images have a certain quality that can’t be quantified. In the discussion over what makes an image worth looking at, aesthetics are lost in translation.
Continue reading Photographing My Own Art (New Lens!)
I think the word I should have used in the title instead of “review” was “commentary”, because that probably offers a better description of what I’m doing here. I’m recording my own, highly subjective and biased reactions to what I saw over the weekend.
This was the first time that I was able to attend the show twice. I think that made a big difference. If you are wondering how I pulled that off, how an artist can afford to go to a show like this twice, let me explain the story:
A friend of mine won a free pair of tickets.
Being a poor starving artist, nothing perks my interest like the word “free”.
I must get my own free pair of tickets…but how?
Luckily, I came across the guys at Dapper & Debonair, who were holding an Art Toronto ticket give-away contest. “Tell us why you should win tickets, and the person with the best reason will win free tickets”.
I gave them my reason, and somehow, I was lucky enough to be selected as the winner! So I had a pair of tickets.
Then, my friend’s plans fell through at the last minute, so she invited me to go along with her on Friday. That meant that I still had my tickets, so I could go again on Saturday!
This was an awesome turn of events, since a big project that I am secretly working on in the background (that I’m not allowed to tell you about yet) isn’t going nearly as well as I would like, so having something go right was a nice and much-needed boost to my morale.
Continue reading Art Toronto 2010 Review: Part 2
I’m not sure when it happened, but the Toronto International Art Fair (TIAF) has been renamed “Art Toronto”. So instead of writing “I’m at TIAF”, people will now be typing “I’m at AT”
“At AT?”
Yes.
“You’re at AT?”
Yes.
The confusion will really set in when Star Wars nerds start having these conversations.
“At AT? AT-AT?, You’re a gigantic robot walking the surface of Hoth in search of rebel troops?”
Anyway, this is the event’s 11th year, and this is the 8th one that I have attended.
Before I write about my experience with this show, I want to write about my past experiences with it. (and I’m writing this part the night before seeing the show)
The first time I went I was completely blown away by the amount of art. I had never attended an art fair anywhere near that scale, and the experience was quite overwhelming, and mentally exhausting.
This was a high school school trip, so I was under strict time constraints, and had to make a certain number of notes and sketches. (Which I still have with me today) Since this experience occurred before going to University, I was still unaware of the great divide between art that gets written about by academics, and art that someone would actually want to purchase. I just saw it as art to look at, think about, and enjoy.
As time went on, and I saw more and more shows, I became more aware of the difference between blatantly commercial fine art, and the more non-commercial intellectual, academic-wet-dream art. I began checking out shows at artist run centres and non-profit art centres in the days before and after TIAF, so I could make easy comparisons between market-driven work, and the other stuff that artists are making outside of the commercial world. That doesn’t mean TIAF is blatantly commercial; this Art fair does not completely exclude some of the more conceptual work. Interesting installations line the edges of the fair.
Continue reading Art Toronto 2010 Review
Nuit Blanche turned out to be far more work than I had planned for, but that extra work is now paying off. Over these past few days, Brad and I have been reworking ‘Take a Picture’, creating a new series of invisible images for people to look at. As far as the technical aspects go, we definitely over-engineered our design. That decision is making “Take a Picture: Phase II” go a lot faster than Round 1. In the past two days, we’ve managed to accomplish what took us one month last time around.
Continue reading October Studio Update
I just got back from a series of lightning talks hosted by Site3 CoLaboratory.
What is a lightning talk?
Think of it as a TED talk in fast-forward.
Toronto has a lot of very cool people doing a lot of very cool things. The problem is that most of these people don’t know each other; they don’t know about each other’s work. Wouldn’t it be great if all these interesting people got together one night, gave a 5 minute presentation introducing the work they are passionate about, then they all stuck around for an after party where they could all talk to each other, and actually share ideas and contact information? Well, that is exactly what a lightning talk is. Get cool people together, make them talk to each other.
Continue reading Lightning Talks at Site3
I was recently given a pair of broken headphones. The damage was nothing serious, the right ear had just snapped off. They still worked perfectly fine, so long as I didn’t need my right arm for anything; I needed that to hold the dangling phone up to my ear. The TV station that the headphones originally belonged to has no need for gear that only half-works, so they gave them away.
The design of these headphones makes for a very difficult repair. I’ve had the same problem with this particular brand before. They make great sounding headphones, and great looking headphones, but the ears break off far too easily. I’ve had many broken pares sent my way, and I’ve always tried to fix them the same way; by collecting the broken parts and trying to reassemble the phones from these parts. To reassemble the headphones, I’ve tried epoxy, elastic bands, resin bond, contact cement, melting the plastic parts back together with a soldering iron, and duct tape.
Duct tape works very well – for a day, then they fall apart and I’m back where I started, only now everything is coated in a good layer of duct tape goo.
Elastic bands work for a few weeks, then fall apart.
Epoxy lasts about a month before the flexibility in the plastic causes it to pop off.
Resin bond and contact cement do nothing-there is simply not enough surface area to stick properly.
Melting the plastic back together just gives off fumes that are probably very bad for me, then snaps apart as soon as put them on my head.
In short, all of these methods have failed miserably, and none of these were creative solutions.
Continue reading Finding Creative Solutions