1 Day of Art

1 Day of Art London – (t)here Magazine

1 Day of Art, Photography, ,

The next 1 Day of Art event from (t)here Magazine is going to be in London on Oct. 28th-29th. If you’re an artist around London I highly recommend contacting them to see if you can participate (How to Participate). I was at 1 Day of Art Copenhagen last fall and it was an amazing experience (Thank you talenthouse!). The format is simple. You get together with the magazine crew on Friday night, draw a topic to work on, and then you have 24 hours to produce your work within the city limits. For my part I did three paintings in the bathroom of the Diamonds room at HotelFox, based partially on my experiences walking around Copenhagen late Friday night. Before the 24 hours kicked off we were all interviewed, and the camera crew and editors came around during the day to see how the work was progressing.

The whole thing has the nonlinear feeling of a hackathon or startup weekend, naturally without any coding, laptops and API’s replaced by canvas, paint, cameras, whatever you use to put your vision into the real world. Once the spark goes off you get the materials you need together and then create. The work from the other artists at Copenhagen is going to be revealed with the next issue of the magazine, but the cover is already on the web. Believe in the energy of the night and inspiration of the process and great things will come to those who decide to create. I’m looking forward to see what comes out of London.

VOLUME 13 – COPENHAGEN – COMING SOON…

Gonzo Art Presentation

1 Day of Art, Gonzo Art, Painting, , ,

Today is the day I give a presentation on my art at the Rote Fabrik. It’s all part of the professional artist class from the F&F school in Zurich. We’ve focused on writing the artist statement, and today I give a 45 minute presentation of Gonzo Art. There are a number of seemingly unplanned for events which have lead up to the point of me trying to tell the story of my paintings, but for sure I wouldn’t be at this point if I hadn’t won the 1 Day of Art Copenhagen creative invite on Talenthouse. Copenhagen was a stronger marker in my life, and the kind folks from (t)here magazine gave me a creative spring-board to propel myself somewhere I wouldn’t gone otherwise. I like to think I do various forms of art, but this presentation is totally focused on the Gonzo Art concept. It borrows from the Gonzo journalism themes set down by Hunter S. Thompson, I interpret it in art as meaning that the idea goes from the sub-conscious mind of the artist to the world as quickly as possible. No digital, no editing, pure inspiration thrown down on the canvas. Below is my presentation on SlideShare, I’ll add a version with audio but these are the bare-bones of the beast. The final version will include videos showing how my paint lands on the canvas and how the final form of the works evolve (basically like the videos I created for my Lazy Art period). So, I’ve done Lazy Art, this has morphed into Gonzo Art, and for sure it’ll evolve into something else – but here’s the story so far.

Experiments in Video Production

1 Day of Art, Artcast, , ,

I’ve had an interesting trip the past two years. I started focusing on photography, turned to painting, and now I’m into the idea of mixing everything in video/film production. I like learning new things, it drives me in life to look back after a year after and see those interesting turning points where I learned something new about my position in life and those around me. In the past I did some experiments with Art Casting, making stop-motion videos of paintings as they’re painted to show the evolution of the work. After I participated in 1 Day of Art Copenhagen I realized there could be something more.

I wanted to create a video that brings together the thoughts in my head and the music that I feel as I paint. So after getting back from Copenhagen I picking up a Sony VG10, started watching the Vincent Laforet film class from CreativeLive, and began learning how to make short films. The first few so far are Birth – Kraft and Gonzo Art. The goal is just to make something, that is going in the right direction. I’m basically a self-learning film student at the moment, and my first goal is to get down the film production workflow and make 1-2 minute films with a message.

Birth – Kraft

Birth – Kraft is a collaboration with Ethan Oelman, a photographer in Zurich. He planned a shoot with a dancer and rented out a pool in Altstetten in Zurich. I came by with my VG10 to shoot footage for a behind-the-scenes video and also to experiment. I shot footage of the dancer coming out of the water and then cut that together with still images that Ethan made during the shoot. I used Abaltat Muse to make the soundtrack. The flow of the film and the transition between themes was my main focus. Abaltat is an interesting program for quickly cutting music for videos, but I need to energize some music skills into the workflow.

Gonzo Art

Gonzo Art is a video of my favorite painting from 1 Day of Art Copenhagen, made for (t)here magazine. It includes a lot of writing inspired by Copenhagen and has many visual elements like fire and a giant head. How do you capture the texture of a painting on video? How do the visual forms need to be presented? I don’t know exactly, and that’s why this is an experiment. I used Garageband with samples from Computer Music magazine to cut the music. I then added voice-over using a helium filter on my vocals in Garageband. The soundtrack sort of sucks, but it’s a starting point for moving forward. Video production is forming the motivation to develop my music creation abilities, something I always wanted to get into.

What’s Next

I don’t know the future, I just know the awesome feeling I have cutting visual and music elements together. It feels right and powerful in an intimate way. It’s important to look back on how you got where you are. This short Gonzo Art video started with Talenthouse and a Creative Invite. I submitted my Lazy Art paintings and (t)here magazine picked my work, allowing me to participate in 1 Day of Art Copenhagen. This opened up a turing point in my creative life, I realized the ability to create is there, it just needs the right motivations and environment. You excel when you have awesome people around you, chilling on your own behind a computer is a recipie for mediocracy. The internet and social media are awesome for connecting people to one another and to new ideas, but you need a healthy creative environment in you life.

Gonzo Kanto Speakers on Talenthouse

1 Day of Art, Design, Lazy Art, Talenthouse, , , ,

I was looking through my Facebook and saw that Jennifer Chalbaud, a designer I had met through Talenthouse had submitted to the Kanto AV speaker Creative Invite, and that it was ending in 6 hours. I had a vision for a second, and wondered what it would be like to combine Lazy Art IV and Gonzo Art in a speaker design. It seemed fitting, to take the art created from 1 Day of Art Copenhagen, and see how it would work when applied to product design. I got back to my place around 5:30pm and had until 7pm to submit my design. After screwing around with SketchUp and a dxf file in Adobe Illustrator for 30 minutes I decided to go back to what I know and started making layers and masking in Photoshop. The result might scare some people, but I would buy one.

I started off with a white Kanto speaker box from Talenthouse…it’s a nice simplistic design, speakers on the front, clean lines, contoured sides and curves, something very clean and sexy. At this point, one could go with a minimalistic design to complement the form of the product, or go in the opposite direction and create something that dominates, both in color and form. I decided on impulse to go with the latter approach, and in my mind grafted two paintings onto the Kanto…

My favorite painting from 1 Day of Art went on the front, using the lower section of the patinting, which includes passages of writing, and this flows upwards with the Basquiat-Alien inspired head. I wanted somthing else for the top though, and decided to go with Lazy Art IV, which is sort of a universe view, with lots of color combinations running into one another. The paintings are sort of inspired from music, visions in the head, so it made sense to combine them with a speaker design. The final design is on Talenthouse at…Design for limited edition Kanto speakers

1 Day of Art Reflections: Pondering Talent

1 Day of Art, , ,

Editor’s Note: This piece is inspired by ideas brought to light in the author’s mind while reflecting on his participation at 1 Day of Art Copenhagen for (t)here magazine. They are a reflection of these experiences and mean little else. My eternal gratitude goes to Talenthouse, (t)here Magazine, my supporters and Hotel Fox for the opportunity to paint in Copenhagen.

Find your audience (or allow them to find you), that’s all you’re really doing as an artist as I see it. Don’t trust in what people say you’re talented in, trust in what you love to do. It doesn’t matter if you can draw the most perfect head in history, because buyers and appreciators of feet photos won’t give a shit. Finding your audience and porn are what the internet is good for. There are many artists, writers, engineers and scientists who “got found” after they died, because their audience didn’t find them while they were alive. Imagine if they had stopped because they thought that no one cared, then we would know nothing of Syliva Plath, Ludwig Boltzmann, Emily Dickinson, and other great thinkers of recent history. During their lives, they probably didn’t know an audience for their work existed (then or in the future) – or maybe they didn’t care if anyone enjoyed it. That’s what I see Talenthouse and their Creative Invite as being really good for, a way to find and connect with your audience, those people who appreciate what you’re producing. In my case the audience was (t)here magazine. Really it was just a few people, but the Creative Invite made that happen. Motivation feeds creation, and when you know that somebody, somewhere cares about what you’re producing, that simple feeling can energize your mind in unpredictable ways. Connect audience to artists – easy to understand – simple to execute. But does any of this matter if there’s no talent at play to create things? What is talent and how do you harness that wonderful energy?

What is Talent?

Of course, when somebody says something about talent and creating cool things the following thought comes up, “but those people had talent for something, they were bound to be appreciated.” So now you might wonder, “what is talent, do I have it for something?” I can only rely my own experiences on this subject. I’ll switch now to an analogy on head and foot illustrations. See, I have been drawing heads for years now, mainly in class notes, but sometimes also on random pieces of paper at bars or in journals.  There was and at present is no actual reason for these random head illustrations. I just do them because the smooth form of the random, anatomically incorrect head is something I like. However, until 1 Day of Art Copenhagen, I hadn’t found anyone, an audience let’s say, for pictures or illustrations of heads. This screaming head shown here (for example) I drew during a class on colloids sort of pissed off a chemical engineering professor at MSU, but only because he wasn’t the right audience for my work (and I wasn’t the right audience for his lecture). As an artist, there is no ambiguity about it, just do what you love and feel drawn to. That’s it, that’s what talent is. It is simply the motivation to do things other people aren’t motivated to do. For example, I’ve spent a lot of time playing musical instruments like the violin, saxophone, and trumpet, but I’m not a natural talent with these instruments because I’m not really motivated to play them. It’s fun to blow some air and produce some sounds and play with other people, but it’s not like I feel the energy of the world flowing through my body. In fact, I rather liked being the last chair in the band (four years in a row). I simply had no motivation to do more. I’m also not naturally talented as an engineer. Sure it’s fun to learn about materials science and mechanics and I do it well, but I could have studied anything for 10 years and become reasonably well at doing it (like playing the trumpet).

The Talent Myth

Humans like complicated scenarios, so we write a lot about talent and inspiration because we’d like to waste our time talking and discussing a complicated theory for how they relate to one another instead of creating something. Most people feel that they’re not really talented, and therefore, should simply just exist – without pushing themselves to create things that other people are not interested in. However, this is not the only option. Just do what you love and feel drawn to, that’s really all you need to do. Why? Because you’ll be naturally motivated to do it better than anyone else in the whole fucking world. That is actually a very real and distinct advantage you have over everyone else. This is an advantage you have over nearly everyone else in the entire world. Think about that, it’s not a small thing. If you try to trick yourself into being talented in something that you hate, and follow what other people love (as opposed to what you love), you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. For example, if you’re a head drawing lover, and you start to draw feet because you think people only like feet pictures, then you’re at a distinct disadvantage if you finally meet a head picture lover. They’ll be totally ignorant of your talent for drawing heads because all you’ll have to show them is a crappy collection of sub-par feet illustrations and maybe some photos.

Do What You Love

It was always irrelevant to everyone that I drew random heads. However, they made me happy, something about the perfect aerodynamic form that I like, but when I was staring at a blank canvas in the Diamonds room at Hotel Fox in Copenhagen, I realized that I needed to draw a large head. I didn’t ask why, I just did it. That was the starting point for a piece I now call GonzoArt – I. But think about it, if I had stopped drawing heads because I thought I’d never have an audience for them, then at that precise moment in time I would have been fucked – and might have possibly drawn a large boring foot, and the painting would now suck balls.

Talent can be considered inherent, but it’s not something you can quantify and say, this person has talent, they will be an awesome foot illustrator from their birth until their death. It’s just a desire to practice something with more motivation than the majority of the rest of the people in the world. Cameras, pens, video devices, paints, these are just tools you can use, but they should never be the defining factor in whatever it is you produce and then call art.

You are not talented or special. Now that you know you’re not talented you’re free to just go out and do whatever it is that makes you smile inside.

First Thoughts: Back From 1 Day of Art Copenhagen

1 Day of Art, , , ,

Editor’s Note: This is just the beginning, 1 Day of Art has unleashed a strange cocktail of awareness in our poor author, and he now walks around calling himself, “The Engineer Formerly Know As” and won’t respond to inquires about F=ma. The authorities have been alerted.

It’s just over a week ago that I jumped on a SwissAir flight to Copenhagen and headed  directly to Hotel Fox to participate in 1 Day of Art for (t)here magazine. The experience was simply amazing, an adventure in the truest sense of the word, and a time I’ll never forget. I had won this trip via a Creative Invite on Talenthouse.com, the social networking site for all manner of artists and creators. The plan was simple, to fly to Copenhagen to make some art for the magazine within the 24 hour time limit. I stayed in the Diamonds room at Hotel Fox, an establishment where every room in a piece of art, the perfect place to create in. I arrived at the hotel around 4pm, and met up with the (t)here magazine crew around 8pm with the other artists to chose our topics for the 24 hour creation madness. I drew a card from a deck of famous Danish figures, and on the back it said, “Artist’s Choice.” This meant I was free to do whatever I felt was right (or wrong), and I decided to choose nothing, placing my full faith in the process, sure that something coherent and good would create itself. All that was needed was to be the enabler of the energy flow.

I am not a religious man. I like to think of myself as spiritual, and  believe that art is pure energy. Those who know of physics and electricity or have an appreciation for the dangerous forces of Nature can appreciate this analogy; you do not create or destroy matter, and energy can not be dominated, only diverted in one way or another. That’s what painting is for me, my body directing the energy of creation. No God need enter into the equation, because no sane God would have anything to do with such foolishness, but that’s another topic. I got my assignment at 8pm on Friday night, and had till 8pm Saturday to deliver. I stayed out most of Friday night, soaking up Copenhagen and avoiding prostitutes on the street. I crawled out of bed around 10 am and had an amazing breakfast in the hotel lobby. Jason, one of the (t)here magazine crew asked me if I’d started working and I said I was heading out to find some canvases. The night before I’d been given some directions to a store to buy supplies at, and around 11 am I began the hunt. As I was out I pulled out one of my Bratz dolls  (the backup plan) and posed it next to a glass of beer waiting on the street, it seemed like the right thing to do.

I got back to the hotel around 12:30 with three of the most expensive canvases I’ve ever bought. Fine linen things stretched over solid wood frames, perfect for propping up in the hotel bathroom for a proper splatter fest. I had brought a rolling MountainSmith bag filled with creation implements with me to the hotel. Among the mayhem, a set of Manga markers – a Christmas gift from my ex-girlfriend. I’d never really used them before, but knew they’d be essential for the trip. I then removed my T-shirt, assembled paints, and began the process. For the next 4-5 hours I filled each white canvas with color and shapes. I wrote with paint pens, colored with Manga markers, and added layers of latex on top because it felt right and good to do. By 6pm they were done, and I’d documented the whole process with my A900 DSLR. I’m not a dramatic person, and dislike it when people use over-used taglines like, “once in a lifetime” and “life changing” or “turning point.” However, 1 Day of Art Copenhagen feels like a once in a lifetime life changing turning point for me. It was the first time I’d really just sort of let go and executed an art project. For sure, there were many points leading up to this day, but it’s the apex, which we remember and remark upon.

Time to Jet: Paints Packed for Copenhagen

1 Day of Art, , , ,

This weekend I’m heading to 1 Day of Art in Copenhagen and I’m sort of freaking out. To recap, I won the 1 Day of Art Creative Invite offered on Talenthouse, sponsored by (t)here magazine and Hotel Fox. The point of the adventure is to create a body of art in 24 hours for the magazine. There are only a few things I know for sure, floating around in my conscious brain, I have a flight to Copenhagen and a confirmation at Hotel Fox, all else is basically a mystery. When I asked what I should bring along, I was informed,

“bring what you need to create.  camera. paint spray paint glue  sticky notes paper sketch books”

Naturally I have most of these things on hand, but shopping for paints is ten time more fun than shopping for shoes, so I headed to the stores to pick up some paints and accessories for the trip, but now my heads are filled with adrenaline and sort of freaking out. You can’t think too much here, because you don’t know what’s coming. What will the Assignment be? We must prepare ourselves for anything, the future is a blank page and I’m walking into it with a curious anticipation I’ve never felt before. I have no game plan when it comes to art. I like the moment of creation to be unconnected from planning and science. I don’t plan out paintings, I don’t imagine how colors should connect with shapes, I just let myself fall into a trance state and let it all flow out. So it’s sort of hard to know what to take along. However, I’ve accepted the flight ticket and will now enjoy the ride.

My take-with list includes:

  • Various tubes of latex paint, rollers, sponge brushes
  • Paint and Manga markers
  • Sony A900, Sony F58 flashes, Orbis ring flash adapter
  • A head full of nervous anticipation

I don’t want to come off as a kindergarten-hack painter in Copenhagen, but I guess the best way to deal with these emotional insecurities is with a healthy cocktail of unearned confidence and a generous quantity of “just be yourself.” I was picked based on the Lazy Art I submitted, so logically I just have to do what I was doing before, and resist the urge to rewatch Basquiat and attempt to play myself off as some nouveau uber-awesome creative artist, because at the end of the day, I’m nothing more glamorous than a Doktor of Science. I should be prepared for anything. However, the airline has a baggage limit, and you’re always improvising with what you have anyways, no matter how much stuff you bring along to an event or setup in a laboratory. Whatever I create at 1 Day of Art it’ll probably have some elements of illustration, painting (color throwing) and writing. I can’t really separate these things, they all come up in the process and it seems like a natural thing to combine  them all. I’m uber excited to see what happens in Copenhagen, a city I’ve never been to and an environment I’ve never experienced before, it’s primed to be an awesome time and I’m still in awe that it’s happening.

Heading to 1 Day of Art in Copenhagen

1 Day of Art, Lazy Art, , ,

Strange and interesting opportunities come to those that seek them out. That’s the a sequence of words which come into mine when I pondered the email I had received from Talenthouse, stating in clear and unclutterd language that my Lazy Art submission had won me a trip to Copenhagen to participate in the 1 Day of Art event from (t)here Magazine.

Talenthouse is a social-networking website for creatives. I joined it a year or so ago, and eventually started adding to my online portfolio. It has a slick interface and is designed to be a very socially-oriented website. It’s like Flickr with the visual feeling of DeviantArt and something that no other website I know of offers, the opportunity to submit work to Creative Invites. It’s like this, a company organizes an invite, users submit their work, the sponsor picks the winners, and in my case, it means a flight to Copenhagen and a free license to go crazy creating art for an issue of (t)here magazine.

I submitted three pieces from my Lazy Art collection of 1mx1m paintings. These are graffiti inspired splatter feats of madness I do in my apartment from time to time. I started painting because it’s more fun than playing on Photoshop, and a billion times more interesting than screwing around on Facebook or watching MTV. Getting to do this in Copenhagen is sort of like a weird dream sequence. I don’t know what will happen there, but I’m heading into the future with an open mind and soul filled with desire to experience the unknown.

lazy art number oneThe premise of 1 Day of Art Copenhagen is straight forward. I fly to Copenhagen, there’s a bunch of other artists, photographers, etc. who will be there as well. We blindly pick an editorial assignment, and then have 24 hours to create a body of work on that mysterious subject. Here’s the official out line of events from (t)here magazine:

On October 1, 2010, artists of all disciplines will gather in COPENHAGEN for a one day creative event – 1 DAY OF ART. In this premier (t)here magazine concept – photographers, writers, visual artists, designers, and musicians will participate in an undisclosed editorial assignment. Our participants will gather in one location where they will randomly draw their assigned subject. Their subsequent content must be executed in one day, and executed within the city limits of Copenhagen. All files and relevant materials are due 24 hours later

The results will be published in (t)here Volume 13, due for release in SPRING 2011.

To be honest, this is balls to the wall scary for me because I don’t have any clue what’s coming, and I run the risk of making a fool of myself on the world stage. It’s also barrel-of-monkies fun, the type of trip I was born to go on. When fear and the thought of falling on my face creep up my spine, I look inward to setting my mind. I look at it like mountaineering. No sane person can head into the mountains without thinking they could die. Or, I think that’s the only responsible way to mountaineer. This sort of mindset keeps your senses alert and sharp, even when you’ve been out for 10 hours and your legs are shaking on the rock edge of a long ridge. You keep going because there’s no other option, and that’s my mindset for Copenhagen, head into the adventure without much of a plan, but all the disrespect for failure my sarcastic personality can muster.

There are a few things – philosophies if you will, that work for me in life. It starts with accepting that I may die on each mountaineering trip, welcoming that I’ll probably fail at whatever I start out doing, and believing that that inevitable failure means absolutely nothing. This method has served me well so far in life. It means I’ll try nearly anything, including walking into a cloud of tear gas, just to see what it will feel like (it’s like cooking too many onions in a kitchen with the window closed) and even if I do screw up along the way, I’m not blocked from going forward and living an interesting life. I know this comes off as sounding a little arrogant, but I’m a vented Doktor of Science, and assure you that I’m the first to admit when I’m spewing nonsense from my lips.

I would like to officially thank Talenthouse, (t)here Magazine, and Hotel Fox for making this adventure possible. I don’t know what will happen next, but my senses are alert, and I’m geared in the head to find out what will materialize from this interesting course of events.