From Finland to San Diego to Sacramento to Haiti to WIsconsin

Technology can be an artist's best friend, not only in promoting one's work, but also in seeing the work of others in spots around the world.  Today's post takes us on a journey from the work of Russian artists in Finland to an interview with digital artist Joe Nalven to another digital artist here in Sacramento, Devalyn Marshall.

Saksala ArtRadius is an art center in Finland where two Russian artists, Ludmila Belova and Nadya Zubarevatake us on a tour of Finland's first and only labyrinth or maze.  They have shot some wonderful photos of the maze at night in winter.  Special thanks to Marja de Jong, Artist, Founder, Owner and Director of the Saksala Art Radius for posting about this on the Visual Artists and their Advocates group over at Linked In.

Strap on your jet pack for a ride over to the other side of the world, San Diego, California, home base for digital artist and found of the Yahoo Digital Arts Guild, Joe Nalven.  He was interviewed by Art Digital Magazine.  It's an interesting look at his journey as an artist.

Closer to home, my home that is right now, my friend Devalyn Marshall has just published a book of her digital art work called Digital Curiosities.   Her work is mostly fractal-based and the book is an interesting look at how another artist's brain works.

Another artist friend and photographer also has a new book of his work out now, Tomasz Kiebzak has published Zen and the Art of Modern Photography.  He's a wonderful photographer and also an abstract painter.

If you are an artist and have a little 5x7" (13cms x 18cms) piece that you'd like to donate to help the folks in Haiti, and can send them something by next week or no later than February 22, mail it to:
Monkdogz Urban Art Inc
Haiti Art Fund
P.O.Box 1440
Port Washington New York 11050

If you can donate, they would also like you to send a jpg of the work to :info@haitiartfund.com

Here is a fractal that I'm working with to create an album cover for Mike Crain's latest music.

Football and Art?

Bet you thought you'd never read a headline like that on my blog... hehehehe.  Well the only reason I post this is because I just found out about the art bet between the directors of art museums in Indianapolis and New Orleans!  I guess those are the cities where the Stupid Bowl, er Super Bowl is taking place.  Can you tell I'm not a sports fan?  I don't know why that came to be as my mom was a big sports nut and so is my baby brother.... hmmm ... let me think a little longer on that one.

Well you can thank Twitter for my recent education.  And you thought it was only a time wasting portal on the web; a place to go to avoid work.  Well it's all that and more.  To be specific I need to give a BIG shout-out to Tyler Green and his Modern Art Notes blog.  He makes some very salient points about the idiotic musings of the sports reporters that he's read/listened to/seen (that covers print, web, radio and TV).

As for moi... got some very good news today from Tangent Gallery!  Both of my submissions to their February Love to Hate show were accepted!  Sorry I won't be there for 2nd Sat.  I have to be down in Monterey to be in a small short film that weekend.  But here is one of the pieces called Sexual Mystery #3.

Get Your PR On

Right.  This sounds like a title for my other blog that deals with PR, but it's not.  This post is about how to get your work out there and how to approach galleries, especially those in New York.  Since that is one of my future goals, I was surprised to learn that one of the PR techniques I was using is a complete no-no!  I've been sending out my art show post cards to other galleries that I had hoped would notice me.

In the post at the Artsy Shark blog by guest blogger Rhonda Schaller, an artist, gallerist, and the Assistant Director of Career Development at New York’s School of Visual Arts, she says:
"Stop sending unsolicited jpegs and slides to hundreds of galleries that you do not know. Stop sending unsolicited emails with jpegs. Stop sending unsolicited packets in the mail. Stop going into galleries with a CD or your portfolio in hand and asking them to look at it, and being insulted when they say no. STOP. STOP. STOP."

OK, I didn't send packets or emails, but there were those postcards, which hopefully got recycled.  So click on the link and get the best advise that I've seen in ages about managing your career as an artist.  Special thanks to Carolyn Edlund,who is on one of my Linked-In groups for posting this!

Now, for your art of the day, may I present "Ghost Horse Colorado"

Recyling

Big Shout Out to 1st Angel - AKA Elizabeth Edwards, who blogs from Manchester, UK.  She's got a great newly designed site on which she interviews (via email) different artists.  I was lucky enough to be interviewed and published there I think about two years ago.

Go one over and have a look... it features some photos from our trip to Joshua Tree National park and my "Atlanta After the Tornado" mixed media piece.

And my random camera phone photo is called Moon Sliver at Sunset.

Critics vs Bloggers?

Or are they one in the same?  Interesting article at Sharon Butler's Two Coats of Paint blog after a round table discussion in New York with Big Apple Art Bloggers.  One of those in attendance was New York magazine critic Jerry Saltz, who apparently blogged about the subject himself saying that art critiques on blogs are fast becoming the new "thing". 

Butler reports that Saltz advised the up and coming critics to plainly state why or why not they like or dislike a piece of work.  He went on to say that sometimes in reading a critic, one can't tell what the person is thinking about the work!  Perhaps that's one of the reasons I never re-subscribed to Art Forum.  Their reviews seemed to be to be a collage of "art speak" (usually generated by higher degrees from art schools) and art history.  To me it appeared that none of these writers had ever been journalists writing for any kind of mainstream publications.  They were speaking to a rarified elite it seemed.  I used to be a theatre critic at the PBS station  here in town years ago.  I don't do that anymore as they were unwilling to give me a few more shekels for my time and expertise.

Of course, it could just be me.  I had a hard time finishing my lowly BA (theatre-communications) because I had done news writing for so long the MLA handbook and rules on writing university essays drove me nuts.  I even had the audacity to put in a few jokes (told by my evil twin Skippy).  I figured the only reason I got a good grade was because maybe the professor was reading late at night and had her defenses down and laughed at the  jokes.

It's ironic that mainstream writing for critiques appeals to me as I am one of the most non-mainstream writers of plays and performance pieces.  But in working in a theatrical environment you have other elements - like the set, lighting, perhaps video - that can give an audience information.  When you're just writing, it's just the marks that we recognize as letters forming words on the paper or the computer screen. 

Special thanks to Paddy Johnson over at Art Fag City for her tweet about Butler's article and blog... didn't know what the hell I was going to post today! 

Speaking of things theatrical, I've been cast in a small film that will be shot in Monterey next month and am off to do a reading of a feature length script called For the Love of Ivy by John Wagner.  It's a bi-racial love story set in the South of the 1950s, but bracketed in the present day with the central character as a old woman who then flashes back on her life.

And for your dining and dancing enjoyment right now, here's another in my series of digital floral woodcuts - The Pink Lotus

Time Marches On in Merry London Town

London's Victoria and Albert Museum or the V & A, as they say at the BBC, has long been the bastion of the decorative side of the arts in England.  It's the place for furniture, ceramics, glass, clothing of many eras.  But now, they have stepped out of the rarified world of old objects into the digital age!  I kid you not.  The V&A is now hosting a digital art show.  But after reading both the V&A info and the little piece by the BBC, I have to ask myself if it's really art, or just decorative software.

Although I am a digital artist, I don't have the programming skills to do the sort of work that the V&A is showing.  However I do use fractals, which are based on algorithms - math.  To the left is a design for a CD cover I'm working on for digital percussionist and looping artist extraordinaire, Mike Crain.  

Is Painting Dead?

Isn't that what just about every looking forward article about the future of the art world asks?  Guess I'm in a cynical mood this morning.  But it's always interesting to take a peek at what the other critical blogs have to say about the year that was or the decade that was....

Say you want a British perspective, well here you GO ...

How about a New York perspective, count on Paddy Johnson at Art Fag City here ...  I'm going on a hunt later today for other art bloggers in different geographic areas across our fair land, and then see if we can get an international perspective as well.  Got some thoughts on the matter?  Please post them as comments and I'll put them in the next post!

Here's an older work that incorporates poetry...

It's called Ghost Portals

Here's to 2010

Just after I had made a resolution to put more just artwork up here on the blog, I read Nanny Goats in Panties and see that it's not too late to join in her Resolutions Party Post.  So not wanting to be a party pooper, I'll have to make it public here!


OK....  this is called Electric Landscape from my Power Series of 2007.  It's also the new wallpaper I put up for my Twitter account.




So my other resolution is that I will learn more Romanian, so that perhaps I can be nice to the folks that don't have any English.

Of course I have really bad language skills so even if I can get one or more rudimentary phrases down like:  Boy, that show was a stinker!  I loved the way the actor used the stage space.  I also got a subliminal CD that tells me learning Romanian is easy and that I'll succeed!  I have until April, when I return to my wonderful friends in Bacau.  This is a photo of the Romanian flag that proudly waves over a bulletin board in my studio! 

And when I get over to the Nanny Goats in Panties blog, I find that her friend over at Mama's Losin It, is doing something similar!

Since I'm not a power blogger, I hope that I'm doing this correctly
5.) It’s time to list your New Year’s resolutions for 2010.

Happy Happy Merry Merry

The Art of Time

Do artists resent the fact that most of us work in the dark so to speak?  I know that I'm a compulsive art maker and while it's a hoot to sell the work and have work in a show, it's always seemed like the icing on the cake.   I like the work!  It's so much fun and if it gets noticed - wonderful - but it won't stop me from plugging away.  We all joke about how we'll be famous after we shuffle off this mortal coil. 

For one artist, that keep plugging mentality has finally bought her some fame and fortune!  We can thank New York artist (and member of the studioNOTES group) Tamara Wyndham for this inspiring link.

Public Art Across the Pond

Yes, that fiesty street artist known to all but his mom as Banksy, is at it again...  Special thanks to Mark Westall, Owner at FADwebsite from my Visual Artists and their Advocates group  on LinkedIn.  

Just click here to see some fabulous new works!

Christmas is Coming

waaaay too fast if you ask me!  I hate years when Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November.  It's like a week gets taken away from us before Christmas.  So much for my good plans to design a Christmas card for the folks who have purchased my art work in the past - guess it will  be a New Year's card!  I'm also going to give them a small print of some new work I'm doing based on the photos I took up at the Gladding McBean Pottery in Lincoln.

The Sweet Hubby did get lights up on the house and make a tree out of pvc pipe and wire and lights for the front lawn.  Now it would make just too much sense if I posted a photo of that here, so I'm not going to do that.  In the email box to day were too funny as hell photos that I don't know who took.  If you're one of the photographers for this, please let me know so I can credit you!

You really have to admire the chutzpah of  the Ditto neighbor.

There's a story that goes with this one:

"Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas  decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after 2 days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever.Great stories. But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.

Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn't realize it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn't take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard."