Thw dandy is the not quite middle aged artist. It is a phase that we (i) have all gone through. "To live and die before the mirror" is the dandie's slogan according the Baudelaire via Bower via Camus pg 51. MAry shelly only lived to 52, Percy only to 30 and Byron to 32. They may have matured past the dandy mirrored navel gazing phase had they lived aslong as I expect to. I have noticed that the young ones do not understand us old ones. It is up to us old ones to be all the nore undersatdning of the young.
Revolt does not equal revolting in English. Does ones cultural history influence the understanding of concepts as well as vocabulary? Yes
I fear for the young people of today listening to the "president
' of the US presenting his "very" limited vocabulary, sad, and his self serving motivations . How will this influence oury oung people in another 10 to 20 years. I have been going back to what I can remember about being a high-schooler during the Reagan era. I remember the end of the big chill of fear about the "bomb". My parents lived through a more vsceral fear of the "bomb" and now our kids are blase about the whole situation. This disregard or unconcern with the folly of our leaders is at once healthy and an erosion of our future possibilities.
I work with teenagers every day that are disenfranchized and treat every story or post as equal. The fight at school the latest tweet from our "president" i tis all just a redictulous show
Saturday, February 25, 2017
Monday, January 30, 2017
WRITING ART
I have thought about writing. I like my own ideas. I don't know if others catch my train especially without feedback. How does a writer keep up the one sided story. I look for confirmation, evaluation, acceptance or questions. Writing art. I like Barbara Kingsolver, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Walt Whitman... I can't think of any more but there are more.
I read Camus' The Plague in the past. I didn't hate it. I don't really remember it.
The artwork that I am writing next to is two of the three films by Rodney McMillian showing in gallery 186 of the Art Institute until March 26, 2017.
Here is the blurb from the Art institute website:
"Rodney McMillian’s work grapples with the complexities of class, race, and place in America across a wide range of media. His video narratives explore events and figures who tend to be omitted from conventional historical accounts. Employing elements of performance, public speaking, and oral history, McMillian exposes the social and psychological consequences of economic inequality, the racism endemic to America’s political and institutional landscape, and the failed promise of freedom and prosperity for all of its citizens. Importantly, he has also spoken of—and in certain works explicitly demonstrated—a personal interest in the genre of science fiction: while his work engages the often stark realities of history and contemporary culture, it is motivated by the potential for alternative realities and future transformation. The three recent acquisitions on view represent the last decade of the artist’s work in video."
The Lyndon B. Johnson speech and the Sun Ra words were most influencial in my thinking.
McMillian as Johnson encourages the audience by saying that no man has ever been in this position of great technological possibilities it was true when Johnson said it it was true when McMillian said it and it is true now. We cannot run from our days we must face our own times. The Sun Ra speech is more scatological but strangely logical. I paraphrased, pounded and molded my subjective understanding of it into my own vision in the following statement about Helen's Exile.
Helen's Exile
"Nature is still there, nevertheless. Her calm skies and her reason opposes the folly of men."
She resists by being resilient and standoffish. It is like she almost doesn't care. It is almost as if her existence is not a result of us homo sapiens noticing. The sound, smells, tastes of beauty we can choose to perceive. Are we are able to look up from our smart phones or turn down the tweets of imbeciles? Those who have stolen the attention of the clamoring press and press the riotous crowds into the streets have done so in the pursuit of reason. If he is a mad man it is only a result of the mad times we live in. We must not turn away from our time. May you live in interesting times is a curse bestowed by a passing gypsy that we all spit on. We were so busy laughing and cheering our own reason and self-centered distractions that we though she was just one more dodo that would flicker unseen and unmissed. At the mad hatters tea party we must stop spilling the tea. He will just make more.
The foolish men crossed the limit in pursuit of reason. Reason can only win with death. Peace and freedom can only come with death. The prince of peace is the prince of death. We are here now and must loom up not for reason but for liberty, beauty, and art.
Helen was fired unceremoniously and she does not visit.
I loom.
I read Camus' The Plague in the past. I didn't hate it. I don't really remember it.
The artwork that I am writing next to is two of the three films by Rodney McMillian showing in gallery 186 of the Art Institute until March 26, 2017.
Here is the blurb from the Art institute website:
"Rodney McMillian’s work grapples with the complexities of class, race, and place in America across a wide range of media. His video narratives explore events and figures who tend to be omitted from conventional historical accounts. Employing elements of performance, public speaking, and oral history, McMillian exposes the social and psychological consequences of economic inequality, the racism endemic to America’s political and institutional landscape, and the failed promise of freedom and prosperity for all of its citizens. Importantly, he has also spoken of—and in certain works explicitly demonstrated—a personal interest in the genre of science fiction: while his work engages the often stark realities of history and contemporary culture, it is motivated by the potential for alternative realities and future transformation. The three recent acquisitions on view represent the last decade of the artist’s work in video."
In Untitled (The Great Society) I, McMillian not only stages a performance himself reciting President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 commencement speech at the University of Michigan, but also occupies it as a black man. In doing so, he raises questions about how history and politics are themselves consistently—and repeatedly—performed. In A Migration Tale, an unrecognizable (or unnamable) character clad in a silver Ultraman mask and floor-length black cassock travels on foot and via subway. McMillian references the “Great Migration,” during which thousands of African Americans left the rampant racism of the South for the promise of a better life in northern states, makes a condensed version of this northward journey, in the guise of an anonymous, ominous, and absurd character who goes unnoticed by those he encounters. Preacher Man grapples with questions of religion and the fight for racial equality in the United States. Dressed in a traditional black suit and tie and wearing a hat, McMillian sits formally on a chair in an empty field cast in shadow and recites words of the once Chicago-based experimental jazz composer and musician Sun Ra.
Rodney McMillian. Still from Untitled (the Great Society) I, 2006. Contemporary Discretionary Fund.
The Lyndon B. Johnson speech and the Sun Ra words were most influencial in my thinking.
McMillian as Johnson encourages the audience by saying that no man has ever been in this position of great technological possibilities it was true when Johnson said it it was true when McMillian said it and it is true now. We cannot run from our days we must face our own times. The Sun Ra speech is more scatological but strangely logical. I paraphrased, pounded and molded my subjective understanding of it into my own vision in the following statement about Helen's Exile.
Helen's Exile
"Nature is still there, nevertheless. Her calm skies and her reason opposes the folly of men."
She resists by being resilient and standoffish. It is like she almost doesn't care. It is almost as if her existence is not a result of us homo sapiens noticing. The sound, smells, tastes of beauty we can choose to perceive. Are we are able to look up from our smart phones or turn down the tweets of imbeciles? Those who have stolen the attention of the clamoring press and press the riotous crowds into the streets have done so in the pursuit of reason. If he is a mad man it is only a result of the mad times we live in. We must not turn away from our time. May you live in interesting times is a curse bestowed by a passing gypsy that we all spit on. We were so busy laughing and cheering our own reason and self-centered distractions that we though she was just one more dodo that would flicker unseen and unmissed. At the mad hatters tea party we must stop spilling the tea. He will just make more.
The foolish men crossed the limit in pursuit of reason. Reason can only win with death. Peace and freedom can only come with death. The prince of peace is the prince of death. We are here now and must loom up not for reason but for liberty, beauty, and art.
Helen was fired unceremoniously and she does not visit.
I loom.
Thursday, January 5, 2017
common stories
Laundry shoot
climbing trees
mom going crazy
kidcentric adventures
bizzard of 78
friendly foods and Hamaker's
Rivi
Katherine going away
Me going away
Flasher
Not knowing how to act
climbing trees
mom going crazy
kidcentric adventures
bizzard of 78
friendly foods and Hamaker's
Rivi
Katherine going away
Me going away
Flasher
Not knowing how to act
Winter darkness
Dahlgren again. Magic sci-fi. You can found anything on you tube now. When you are trolley freer you Neufeld who you truly are. If you don't know who you are them you are lost. Why fit in? Why feed the machine?
Art made:large vertical forms, sewn together and stapled to batons then attached to the ceiling.
Art made:large vertical forms, sewn together and stapled to batons then attached to the ceiling.
Experiment with space, light flow and airflow and it's effect upon we ntering and leaving a space.
Making charcoal, testing for high conductivity and see if there is an optimal wood and creation (burn) technique.
Paint on walls find sun and shadow patterns. Ala Lisa graffiti.
Make my panels, etched, printed.
Explore space and energy. Log time spent in different activities.
Learning creating environment. What do we truly need to know to be a self actualized individual and an asset to the beloved community.
Romantic: Blake Mary Shelly communes Gothic hallucinagens. What is crazy, when do you lose you mind or are you just losing buy in the the social construct?
Visit Tim Anderson. Find a way to inductively aquire a mode of working.
Yes, and!
Winter flight
Oh right, acrobats and flying on a ribbon. Experience begets insight. 100 years of solitude, wings of desire. Jung, beudelair, vonnegut, Lee childs.
Spinning drawings
Architecture
Flower
Tree of life dreamt og drawing it.
Sacred architecture.
The world is a stage, watching, give it your all, not a dress rehearsal.
When you make eye contact with someone they keep eye contact back.
Spinning drawings
Architecture
Flower
Tree of life dreamt og drawing it.
Sacred architecture.
The world is a stage, watching, give it your all, not a dress rehearsal.
When you make eye contact with someone they keep eye contact back.
Blissful Trauma
PAmela Sneed Invocation:
Chicago is living in trauma, post trauma, and ignorance be it blissful or willful. It is nice to have the choice to look away. It is nice to deal with what IS your job and not what is needed. This is not my nature. My genuine philosophy is that everything is connected. I connected with Pamela Sneed on youtube, and in books. I identify with her. I My idea of her. She reminds me of myself and my friends. I said I was going to speak today and across the board the reaction I got was Pamela she’s wonderful.
The work I chose as my jumping off point was the gift- the newest work in print at the library. Here I found no rhymes but plenty of reason. Reasons to connect with life and others, not to turn away from the shit that is happening, to make art, and to love yourself.
A ho, so it goes, It’s all good
I teach at a Chicago public School. I teach High School Art on the South Side. I have taught in different situations in and around Chicago since 1996. The chaos of the school system has caused me to switch schools every year for the past three years. I was at King College Prep for 4 years I was tenured but I was laid off with no notice because of “budgetary issues” . It is never just one thing though because everything is connected.
My last year at King I witnessed and lived through the school losing it’s SAFE.
New principal, school shooting and uprising
Hydiah Pendelton
Kenny williams
Maryiah Winding
Rap 101
Quartet for the end of Time Birds and Messien
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