Behold the PITA-WAFFLE!

What to do when your oven has a broken temp gauge and ya wanna make pitas from scratch?

Break out the Waffle Iron!

Just a basic pita dough with zero modifications. But the iron creates these little low lying crusts that are sorta like a cracker/crust of normal bread. Steamed a little in the microwave and they made a good sandwich. All the nooks hold stuff. mmm


I also later used 2 cast iron skillets to make a stove-top dutch oven which made regular Pocket Pitas but it's not quite as impressive. Live for the grid, be the grid. woot!

Bartering, an exchange of talents

So I have this chair that was left in my studio when I moved in. It's an old beautiful orange leather office chair, well it's beautiful to me anyway. It will be a perfect writing chair. Well, it has been sitting listlessly in the corner with a broken leg for over a year. I tried to fix it by gluing it when I first moved in yet my attempts didn't work and it quickly broke again. And there it sat. I knew it could be fixed but I was beyond my own capabilities with the tools I have in my studio. So it sat in the corner til I could deal with it.

So fast forward to Wednesday.

My friend Jack called me and needed a favor. He had a framed drawing of his from high school that had gotten wet on one corner and needed to be rematted and reframed. Jack is a woodworker and not handy with the art stuff. Different strokes for different folks. Anyway I suggested a trade. I'd remat and remount the drawing if he'd fix the chair leg. We each took the offered project to our respective shops and each were returned perfectly as if nothing had ever happened. Doesn't pay the rent but felt good to have a like-new chair and do something for a friend.
(I'll update this with pics later.)

Bartering rocks. If only the gas company and landlord needed something.

Lexicon of Paint

The Lexicon of paint.
Many assume that artists merely make pictures, but painting and most visual art is also a language. An artist builds up an entire lexicon of visual keys, a shorthand, to ideas of past efforts. Pollock's earlier work while not successful (insert your definition of success) gave him a basis for his later work.

His ideas found expression later but the building blocks for that breakthrough is
still there early on. An artist builds this language up over the course of their
career. Most good painters can see when another artist has been hesitant in
their strokes, inhibited in the execution of a work or ducking all possible
growth and personal challenge. We can tell immediately when a piece sings and
rages: Ideas and thought held manifest in the very paint. We build upon this
lexicon, a simple brushstroke conveys a myriad of ideas some dismissed and many
still forming but it speaks.



In Zen philosophy there is a saying that the old man is not the same as the man
of his youth, nor the child he was, yet they are still the same man. So too we
are new and old at the same time as painters. Pollock's earlier works may are
completely different than his drip paintings yet they are connected, related in
his own lexicon.

Were Cezanne's work merely images of Provence? Nostalgic and trite landscapes?
Odd still-lifes where the table is uneven? No, look at the paint the way it was
applied and the way he handled space and composition. See how form becomes
plastic and malleable in his work. Planes of color delineating form. These are not
the paintings of an unskilled country bumpkin at the fringes of the Paris scene,
they were the works of someone thinking and speaking visually. Dissect a Cezanne
and the Modern era becomes inevitable. The ideas were there in their infancy but
they were there for others to take further.

Art and painting has to be more than just formulaic A+B=Art. The end result
has to do more than look like art: it has to stand on its own and demand
respect. It does this through what is there in the paint. No amount of braying
will make it more than what it is.

What the Hell

Albert Einstein. Image credit: Library of Congress

So I've been proof reading for a few people lately and I know I can write as well if not a little better than what I've been reading *PC translation* it has inspired me to pick up the pen (courser) again. I have gone back and dug through my many files and resurrected a few stories to get them polished up to send off to magazines. They were good before but now I have fresh eyes and can be objective with the pieces.

The notebook I keep bedside has begun to fill up with musings I write in the dark lest the bright light drive the errant thoughts from the page. There is something about the way my mind works just as I'm about to fall asleep where I get flashes and ideas. If I keep my eyes closed and just write I can keep the thoughts flowing. If I turn on the light beside my bed it's jarring and often snaps me outta the moment. IOW, it pulls me outta that almost asleep state. I'm very good at writing in the dark, I almost never write over the same line. If I could only market that talent. *sigh*

I read once that Einstein would hold a metal ball in his hand when he went to sleep. The idea was that when he fell asleep, at some point, the ball would drop he'd wake up in a partial state of sleeping and write down his ideas. I guess my way is a similar approach but, as some have noted, I'm no Einstein but sometimes I have his hair.

Bad Hair Day (should be a National Holiday)

Anyway, scene snippets and full blown bits of dialogue are coming to me again. So either I'm channeling spirits, finally showing symptoms of multiple personality disorder or I'm processing a story on a subliminal level. Either way I'll post my progress and the various hurdles I overcome as I send off my babies to the cutthroat world of publishing.

Woot!

Redo, Re-edit, Reformat, Repeat

Digital Image Submission Standards

This has been bugging me for a while. I wonder if there could be a push to make a standard for formatting digital submissions. For the last 5 things I've submitted digitally this year I've had to create 5 completely different sets to meet the various required pixels, backgrounds etc. Very frustrating and time consuming. With slides there was always some slight difference in labeling but not as much as there is now with digital. At most it would be the order Name, title medium, year completed etc. but the slide was the same size. I only needed to make one set of slides and then customize the labels. With internet speeds and computer processing higher than ever people shouldn't have trouble reading files like they did 10 years ago.

Last year I wrote to the software developers, Arawak Software, who make a great art inventory/cataloging program called Flick!. Since it was a program that you enter the prices, size, medium, sale status/ownership, etc., I thought it would be a great if it could create a single reservoir of all your artwork and use it for parsing the different formats required by these differing submission standards. In other words it could keep all the art and details in one central file and then you could simply select, through drop down menus, items each art call required, generate image lists with all the details and the correct pixel ratios. Currently it doesn't do this last part just catalog the info but I have my fingers crossed.

Here's the letter I wrote them...

"mail@arawak.com.au
First off Thank you for making Flick!. Absolutely love it. Anyway, I don't know if this would be possible but both myself and a lot of artists I know keep running into differing submission guidelines for galleries, shows, and schools. One gallery wants slides or transparencies, another a CD, and yet another will want just printouts and another will want both a CD and printouts and a detailed list of each artwork with thumbnails etc.. It's very aggravating trying to have so many portfolios ready to go for every submission and having to create a new one from scratch for each one. It's a lot of work. It would be great if there was a way through Flick! to format printouts and/or compile a group of artworks with their details for various submissions. If these customized submission formats could be saved and certain details could be selected for inclusion or exclusion that would be helpful. For example: if I had a show I wanted to submit artwork to, I could select the pieces I wanted to enter, check off the info I wanted to include per the show's requirements (Title, Size, Media, Year completed, Resumé/CV), and hit compile presentation package. I'd get a folder with the images copied over to be burned to CD or an option to create a printout or PDF of the images with title size and media, yr completed etc. and the image. It'd be linked to my master image folder as HiRez (if the image was too low Rez maybe a warning dialog) and maybe a way to flag a piece that needed to be rephotographed. And lastly a way to keep track of how many different ways I have the artwork documented ie: Slides, Transparencies, CD, Hi Rez, Low Rez.

Also is there a way to add profiles for different gallery's commission/consignment arrangements? I have pieces at a couple different places and if I could store their profiles/policies then it could autofill their commission, consignment from selecting the different gallery as a location.

Lastly my only criticism of the current version of Flick! would be for print editions. I don't want to create a new document for each piece in the edition. If I could just say I have 45 in the edition and select that I have numbers 1-15 still in my studio, client A owns number 25, client B owns number 26 and the gallery in Chicago has numbers 27 through 45 etc. it would help simplify things for printmakers.

Just some thoughts but there is a need for this and since I like Flick so much I thought it could become even more useful to artists."

Their response
Hi Mark

Thanks for the ideas. It's great to get feedback and these are definitely going on the list.

Some issues, such as multiple items for editions are tricky but there are ways around it.

I'm glad the basics are in place and I look forward to building more features in with time while trying to maintain a simple interface.

Regards


S------- C------
Designer & Developer
Arawak Database Solutions
http://www.arawak.com.au/

Art is a business whether we want to admit it or not. If we are trying to make a living at it, it's a business, how we approach and manage that business is for each artist to decide what they are comfortable with. As a business there needs to be tools available at the business end to assist the artist. It's hard enough keeping the bills paid, affording supplies, equipment, studio rent and motivated to do the work as it is without having to re-do our portfolios for every submission. Imagine if we had to remake each piece to specific sizes or re-frame everything to different standards. There would be a riot (at least I hope there would be).

Basically I'm missing the simplicity of slides. Sure they were difficult to shoot sometimes and you'd have to wait for the slides to come back from developing and there was always the risk of having to re-shoot the work if there was some problem with lighting or some camera setting. But! once you got it down, once everything was on film, you were done, it was set. You just needed a set duplicated from time to time but that was it.

If one section of the art world set a standard, say curators or museums, then this wouldn't be necessary and the galleries, artist calls, residency programs etc. would be forced to follow suit. I just wish someone would start the ball rolling so I can stop redoing my portfolio every damn time I apply for something.

Cooking from Scratch

So for the last few months I have been rejecting the notion that I don't have the time to make my own food from scratch. I don't want to support corporate food and I rarely ever buy prepackaged stuff from the grocery store. It's good both health wise and ecologically, less chems and processed foods in my diet and no packaging I have to throw out to sit in a landfill for 10 to 1000years. Just seems like the right way to thy to live, besides it tastes a lot better. I've always been interested in cooking and often bake and expend some of my creative energy in the kitchen. Cooking has always been a good way to get my engine running before working in the studio. Another balancing act but a very rewarding one.


So I found a few recipes and skimmed the basic gist of each and then promptly ignored them. I kept the basic proportions and key ingredients (cooking is part science afterall) but just winged it. Anyway I started with something I was buying every week and thought couldn't be that complex => tortillas. I still need a little practice with these and I need to make a tortilla press but the results were edible and I know that with a little finesse I can improve and master. It's flour, water, shortening and salt basically, so how hard can it be?

Well I went from that to Pasta. And now I will never go back to the tasteless hard stuff from the store. Pinch of salt, an egg for every cup of flour, and some water. Easiest thing ever. Ravioli was a natural progression and now fillings and shaped, stuffed, pillows of magic are a new indulgence. In the time it takes to get a big pot of water to boil I can get the dough made, let it rest covered for a few minutes to hydrate and roll it out. Even the ravioli takes very little time. I'll post pics later.

From Pasta I then went to crackers and since I could only find 1 recipe in my searches, apparently crackers while popular on the grocery shelf are not that popular to make at home, so I adapted the recipe and began experimenting. Despite a few burned bits here and there I can say that it's been a success. I'll have to post the recipe later. Roll them thin and cook slow. Paprika does wonders in brightening up a batch of dough so it has a nice color, think Cheese. The coffee grinder makes quick work of small seeds and grains/nuts that you may want to add to beef up the vitamin and texture content of the crackers. For some I used dried peas, soy nuts and the dried Mexican pumpkin seeds. Still playing with these and will post a recipe when I have it nailed down.

Pictured above are the Belgian Waffles I made the other day. Good basic recipe from allrecipes.com which I then customized after this pic was taken. Added pumpkin and spices as I would for a pumpkin pie, decreased the amount of liquid and added oil, eggs and 4 tsp of baking powder. Easy peezy. Best waffles ever.

Writing, Art, and Balancing the 2

For many years I had a great flow to my life where I'd write and create art. The back and forth of the different disciplines was a good mix for me, activating different sides of my brain and allowing me to have a creative outlet in many forms. That flow stopped for me for a while due to finances and the basic stresses of supporting yourself as an artist in the city, but I am attempting to reignite that balance through this blog and in the new studio arrangement. Both writing and art take an enormous amount of time and dedication so finding time for both while keeping the bills paid is interesting at times.
In the last few weeks as I've organized my space. I've finally gathered all my stories and made a nice area separate from my art area dedicated solely to writing. I've also been proofreading for a couple people and as always when I do this I get really fired up and the story ideas start to flow. We'll see how things turn out.

Studio 935

My friend and studiomate David Abed and I have once again resumed offering classes from the studio.
http://www.graphicmarx.com/studio935.htm
It's been a long time since we last offered classes and feels good opening up the new space and getting people excited about art and sharing the work and techniques. Getting this enormous space organized and in shape has been a daunting task but worth it. Can't wait to see how this turns out.

Have a Heart

Update: March 6th, 2011
I am still proceeding forward with the Have a Heart project. I am offering the incentives to contributors that were highlighted through the Kickstarter site. Since the former fundraiser was unsuccessful I've scaled back the project into more manageable sections ie:
CNC Router Parts - $1000 needed
Windows Computer System - equip. donation or $700
Computer Software - $250 - $2000
Metal Supplies for Pieces - $800 - 1000
Production Costs - $2400 (2 months studio rent)


Help aid in the production of a new series of work to shed light on organ donation. In 1993 my Father died and his organs were donated. His heart, corneas and other organs went to help someone regain their sight and maybe help someone live a little longer. Since that time I've often wondered about the people that received his organs and how I viewed this medical miracle. In our modern world the act of organ donation saves lives and in a very real sense extends the donor’s life as a piece of them lives on. Yet this amazing feat begins by merely checking a box on a driver’s license for many; a simple stroke of the pen. Has the act of giving of ones' self become mundane or should it be illuminated in art?

I'd like to create a series of metal art pieces where I raise up a kidney or heart to relic status; something akin to a Russian Icon or a page from an illuminated manuscript. The plates will be cut much like a free-form puzzle or stained glass window where individual pieces lock into one plane. In printmaking the technique would be called a puzzle plate. The plates will be cut in free-form shapes then etched, inked, painted or anodized and finally reassembled into large art pieces. I envision 8 or more pieces approximately 3' to 4' wide to 4' to 6' high and approximately 8 months to complete the series. Supporters at all levels will be able to track my progress throughout the production of the works by accessing a private site/blog set up for the project.

This project has been rolling around in my mind for many years but it has taken that long to develop the skills and techniques necessary to execute the pieces as I've envisioned. Now I just need time and a little funding for materials to get it moving from my sketchbook and into reality.

http://www.graphicmarx.com/haveaheart.htm

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. I'll be post here occasionally but will be in the studio most of the time. This online wolrd can be such a distraction at times I hope I make it worth the time.