At the end of day one of Toronto’s first Mini Maker Faire, Brad and I record a quick video recap, expressing our thoughts about the event.
I also take a moment to shamelessly plug our photo book, Illuminated Landscapes.
It was a long day, I was very tired, and goofing-off with a camera running always cheers me up. (until I watch the footage several days later and continually shutter at just how bad most of my jokes really are…)
One of the things I like about blogging is how it gives people a back-stage pass to the mess that is going on just out of sight to make the show possible. It allows people see just how thin that veneer of professionalism surrounding an artist really is.
I have this theory that artists actually aren’t all that weird. They are just severely sleep deprived whenever they are showing their work, because something always pops up at the last minute and requires a long night of building something so the show can happen.
I had just that experience myself at Toronto’s first Mini Maker Faire. (Really! I’m not always that twitchy, grumpy, forgetful, and out of it!)
The venue provided some interesting and unforeseen challenges for installation. Set-up went on for much longer than expected. When the project was up, I realized that our invisible paintings were being washed out, and I had to do something. I took my project down and moved to a darker spot, which was slightly better, but not perfect.
Upon returning home, I constructed some sun shades for my paintings. My words can’t properly describe the situation and my state of mind. Luckily, I made a brief video documenting the experience (and my sleep vs. caffeine levels).
Back in October of 2011, Brad Blucher and I were invited to give a lightning talk at Site 3 at some point in the future. After numerous delays, the talk was scheduled to occur during Toronto’s first ever Maker Faire.
On my way to the stage, I handed my camera to a friend and asked him to film our talk so I could post it to YouTube. Here is that talk:
Continue reading Our Lightning Talk from Maker Faire Toronto
Two months ago, I wrote about writing this. I just realized that I haven’t actually posted what I’d written.
So, here is my new artist’s statement. It says pretty much the same thing my 2009 statement says, but I think this one says it better.
‘Urban Landscapes’ by Kyle Clements
Artist Statement for 2011My paintings seek to capture the energy and speed of our sensory rich contemporary life.
Although I have lived in Toronto for several years, my rural upbringing still leaves me feeling unaccustomed to this visually dense urban jungle. Filled with buzzing signs and flashing lights, everything in the city screams for attention simultaneously. It’s an overwhelming experience that saturates my senses and fills me with excitement.
Last week, Brad and I had a few sales of our photo book, Illuminated Landscapes. Through a complicated series of relatives and acquaintances, the purchaser was able to have the books delivered to me, so Brad and I could sign them.
It’s always flattering to be asked to sign something. (well, I assume it’s always flattering, I don’t really know for certain; this is one of the first things I’ve been asked to sign…)
In the last several months, through a series of flukes and random good luck, I’ve had the opportunity to observe several well-known people in action. One thing that struck me was how cool they were. They weren’t arrogant celebrity divas, they were regular people who, upon meeting me, went out of their way to make a tiny gesture to make me feel cool.
This gave me a brilliant marketing idea: don’t be a dick.
Tonight, I had the opportunity to chat with an old friend I haven’t seen in years.
During our brief time together, they offered me some very kind and much needed words of encouragement.
“You’re still doing it, you’re still making art full time. You’re making it happen. I’m so proud of you. I’m so envious of what you’re doing.”
Here is someone who from my perspective has their life in order. This person has a career they enjoy, a permanent home in a nice part of the city, a spouse, and a child.
And this person is envious of what I have: A tiny basement apartment with no windows, a rapidly depleting bank account (well, I’m still doing about 55.3 trillion dollars better than the American economy, so I guess I don’t have it that bad) a pile of new paintings that is accumulating more slowly than I would like, and a broken cellphone.
Wow. All these little things kinda made me lose sight of one big thing: unlike 90% of my former classmates, I’m still doing it. I’m still making art. That dream I had back when I was five is now a reality. I had forgotten about that.
A few nice words can really make someone’s day. Thank you.
OK, back to the studio…
Hello.
I’ve been a very bad blogger lately. Sorry about that.
I’ve been presented with a very big opportunity. A truly tremendous opportunity. An opportunity I really don’t want to screw up.
I’ve also been stuck in a bit of a creative rut.
I wish I had something interesting or inspiring to report, but the honest truth is that I’ve simply been working a lot, and producing nothing worth showing.
While the Abstract collection was almost entirely my photography, The sodium series is almost entirely Brad’s. (except for this one photo below, which is my only entry into this set)
Kyle Clements: Illuminated Landscape #74
We call it the sodium series because of the deep orange glow in the sky. Although we were shooting these in the wilderness, we were only an hour away from several cities, and the warm glow from those distant sodium streetlights bounced off the clouds and filled the sky with an unexpected orange light.
I’ve been working on the CV section of the website lately.
When I started building my site 3 years ago, I had no idea what I was doing, and the result became a maintenance nightmare. Lately, I’ve been going through, and cleaning things up, and reorganising the pages.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, organizing and picking a select few images out of hundreds of photographs can be a daunting task.
Our first method consisted of going through the folder in waves, sorting the pictures into separate folders: Bad, OK, Good, Better Best. This left us with a very disorganized and inconsistent collection in our “Best” folder, so we changed our approach. We picked a theme, and selected the images that were the best fit for that category.
We found it helpful to sort the photos into several groups of similar images.
None of these category titles appear in the book, since text was kept to a minimum.
Instead, I will sort these images right here, in a series of blog posts.
This folder was titled “Single Focus”, and the shots in this folder made liberal use of the shallow depth of field our f1.8 lenses made possible.
Continue reading Illuminated Landscapes: Single Focus