Category: Kyle’s Work

This section deals with my own art practice

From a Quick Laugh to Frustration

If you’ve been paying attention to this place, or any of the social media venues I frequent, you’ve probably heard quite a lot about the “DRM Box” project Brad and I have been working on.

But it’s been dragging on for months now, and I’m getting a little frustrated, so here’s a little behind the scenes scoop on the project.

The DRM Box was originally envisioned by me as a quick, week-long project to post online as a little internet joke. In my eyes, it just had to be good enough to hold up to video, then we would be done with it. Brad insisted that if we are going to do something, we should do it right, using nothing but the best materials and fabrication techniques for the job. It should be treated as a sculpture, where everything must be perfect, so after the video is made, we have a sculpture that is gallery-worthy. This is a situation where I do think Brad was right. This is art; we aren’t cranking out mass-produced wares for consumption, we are trying to make a unique object to express an idea that we are passionate about, and doing our best work is important.

Of course, going from, “just tape some crap together and hope it sticks together long enough for the shoot” to, “it must be perfect” necessitates a bit of a schedule correction. So, we went from a scheduled week-long build to an estimated month-long build. Then something big came up and my personal schedule changed, cutting out our free time together to about one third of what it once was.

These two factors lead to a project that started to really drag on and go nowhere for a long time.

But, this was ok, because we had a gallery show lined up for the project. The extra work was all worth it. They would be shown in a gallery after all!

Then the show never materialized. I don’t know what happened, but the show fell through.

So here we are, 10 months later, with a project that is well built, and it will be used for a quick little video, then put aside as we get to work on the next project.

But when you spend this much time with a project, when this much effort has been put into it, it becomes hard to treat it like a quick joke. It starts being something that you take seriously. And because we have been talking about it for so long, I fear the audience might also have begin taking this project seriously. I am worried that as far as the DRM Box Project is concerned, the humour is lost.

Klimas’ Sound Sculptures

I’ve been thinking about doing something similar to this since mid-2008:

Martin Klimas Paint Sculptures - Images and Story Presented by the Huffinton Post
Martin Klimas’ Paint Sculptures – Images and Story Presented by the Huffinton Post

This is why ideas should be acted upon, rather than just being discussed over and over again. Without execution, ideas are worthless.

Poor execution of a great idea is less valuable than good execution of a poor idea.

One those rare instances where we find good execution of a good idea, that’s where the magic happens.

Link to the original article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/21/martin-klimas-paints-with-sound_n_1290756.html?ref=arts&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008

When a Project Just Doesn’t Go As Planned.

Phase 1:
Kyle: “Hey, this will be unbelievably awesome”
Brad: “It wont work”
Kyle: “Sure it will!”
Result: FAIL

Phase 2:
Kyle: “Well, this wouldn’t be as awesome as the original plan, but it would still be pretty cool, and it lets us salvage some materials”
Brad: “I don’t think that would work”
Kyle: “Sure it will!”
Result: FAIL

Phase 3:
Brad: “Well, I guess we could just do it this way, it’s passable, and means we wouldn’t have wasted all this time…”
Kyle: “Yea! that will totally work!”
Result: FAIL

Phase 4:
Kyle: “Whatever, we’re artists…let’s just do this and BS our way out of it when people notice the shortcomings…hmmm…no, I refuse to go down that path, lets just burn it now, and never speak of this again so the world never finds out about our failure this winter”
Brad: “it’s on facebook, tee hee hee”
Kyle: expletives deleted

Putting Together a Body of Work

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!

Sketches and Rough Notes

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…

Illuminated Landscapes is Now Available in ebook Format.

Our Self-Published photobook, Illuminated Landscapes is now available in ebook format for your iPad or iPod or iWhatever.

Illuminated Landscapes can be found on the Blurb Book Store

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.)

The Little Things

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.

Talking at TIFF: What it Took to Prepare Our SoOnCon Talk

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.

That meant that we had to get to work.
Continue reading Talking at TIFF: What it Took to Prepare Our SoOnCon Talk

Getting Ready for a Show

Every time I have a show, I talk about how I really need to build myself a “show kit”, a box with all the equipment that is necessary to put up a show and cover for when something inevitably goes horribly wrong. That way, in the future, rather than stressing out and running around last minute, throwing a bunch of tools together and hoping for the best, I can simply grab the box and go.

At this point you might be thinking, “Oh, so Kyle has finally made this box and is going to tell me about it!”
Nope!
Sorry.
I’m going to show you a video of me griping about not getting around to putting it together. Hopefully by talking about the show kit here, I will find the motivation to build the damn thing in the near future.