boom

I did this over the weekend and finished him up today. He had the word BOOM written on his chest but he decided he preferred the look of a flower so a flower it is. Acrylic on, er, uh, that thing it’s on.

Guerilla Art Show – the show that was

For the past three years some friends and I have been putting together indie art shows in downtown Flint that we called Guerilla Art shows – the name deriving from what my landlord called the first one he had us put together, he wanting a ‘guerilla art show’ in the building where I live, on the first floor. We have been loving the hell out of these shows and have had really good reception from them. The intention of the show was always to have a low stress art show in a funky space that helped get friends and underexposed artists the chance to get their work seen by people during Flint’s monthly art walks. We had a couple big shows but most were pretty modest and worked out very well. The history of the show is pretty crazy but free of taint, I offer you images from the last art show we did, this past Friday the 10th.Plus random pics of people that either bought, traded, or were given art by me this past weekend.

My Flint…

So recently a video was posted online at www.thisaintflint.ca that was produced to show how swell Ottawa, Canada is. Now, while I am always for showing how great the place where you live and work is, but this campaign uses Flint (circa 1989) as a counterpoint to how great Ottawa is, which I tend to take issue with. The video is biased and ill-conceived and uses fuzzy numbers and facts to support something that really doesn’t add up. Truly, this is a video you have to see you appreciate.

I live in Flint.

I love Flint.

I have been putting on indie art shows with friends here for three years and have lived here for nearly four. This is my home. And this is my response to their video.

With such a statement to accompany ‘your’ inflammatory video, I can’t say I disagree – this ain’t Flint. If this WERE a video representative of Flint you’d have seen the growth in business, the growth of the University of Michigan – Flint’s campus, and the overall sense that a very long shadow may finally be moving away from Flint. Ah, but then this video campaign was launched. How brave and bold a statement when a place the size of Ottawa takes aim at Flint (circa 1989) to prove that their city is doing well. Seeing that Ottawa has an NHL team, and is a capital city, I would certainly HOPE that it’s doing well. Whereas Flint is a small city, a modest city, and one that seems to draw undue scorn and criticism. What strikes me as absent from your video, is the truth. Say, that two Hollywood films have used Flint as not just settings, but as shooting locations. Now, if the city were as dead and decrepit as your video claims, I can’t see why Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, and Christina Ricci would risk their lives shooting films here. What is also interesting is that in the footage from your commercial you show two multi-million downtown building projects during their construction, and show them as if they are proof of past city failures. I would have at least hoped your video would have had a disclaimer that all information contained within was meant as a joke, or at least an exaggeration. We in Flint see it as neither. We see it as slander, pure and simple. How dare you pick on a city that has never been seen without the glasses of the past, where the only thing people think exists here comes from a movie that is twenty years old and, while engaging, was not exactly representative of the truth. I chose to live in downtown Flint nearly four years ago because I love this place. My father was born, educated, and worked here. My mother owned a salon here. I met some of my greatest friends and loves here. I have worked in city schools in an afterschool program with kids who many give up on and loved all of it. And I am an arts activist here helping to revitalize a city many seem to believe dead. I am here to assure you that it is far from dead. The economy has not helped it, to be sure, but the resiliency of the people is far greater than that but when such sad, narrow-minded, and wrong-headed things as your video are released and only makes it harder to retain our youth here, and to bring new people here to live. The VERY least Flint deserves is an apology, but what we truly deserve is respect and understanding. If Ottawa is doing as well as is claimed, so well that its national news can be ignored (what sort of logic is that, by the way?) then why prove it by diminishing a city that isn’t nearly the same size, scope, or importance as a capital city. No, your video ‘ain’t’ Flint, it’s easy enough to see for me, and those of us who know the city, because Flint is a city of hope, strength, beauty, history, art, love, and a future, and we don’t need a video, or rhetoric to prove it. We know it.

Chris Ringler writer/artist/resident of Flint

Post Script -

I received a reply to my email, and it was basically – we got your email, we understand the concern of you and others, here, read our press release. The press release amounts to more rhetoric about how they are not responsible for how people in Flint view Roger and Me, the film they get their facts regarding Flint from. The release is a bucket of crap that claims to care about Flint and that they didn’t intend to offend us, and hey, they even added a disclaimer page about how rad Flint is now. Yet the campaign remains. Something doesn’t add up.

I wrote back, much more agitated, and that is that. In other news, Flint is alive and well, and its demise, though mused over, has yet to be seen.

Something I am grateful for

It ain’t good, it’s great…

Sometimes I think we get too caught up in the whole greatness game. Sure, sure, we all wanna be good, great, or just pretty darn decent, and forget why it is we do what we do.
With writing, I have always had the sense to just do it, and not worry about where I will end up in the end. Hell, I want to be remembered for my writing, I want it to live long after I am gone but, hell, I dunno what that means. Who really knows what that means. You can say you wanna be the next, WHOEVER, but even those people will fade eventually. All you can hope for, all you can ask for, is to touch people with what you do.
That’s it.
I hope that my stories speak to the people that read them, for good or ill. I hope it incites passion. But beyond trying to tell stories that mean something to me, and beyond trying to write them as well as I can, I don’t have a voice in what happens next.
It’s a mistake to think you can plan greatness. That you can plot your future that way. Passion, if followed, can lead to truth, and that is where greatness lies.
Even if that truth is a lie.

c

Alexander and the Monsters

Alexander and the Monsters

The boy woke up with a start, heart racing and his forehead sweaty and knew he was not alone in the room. He looked out into the darkness and saw two small pinpoints of orange light that hovered not far from him and he let out a sob. A tear slid down his face, unseen but sensed and a hand, large and soft, reached out and wiped the tear away and the conversation started back from where it had been left a day earlier.

“But…why? Why do you have to go away? Why do you have to hide?” Asked the boy, trying but failing to keep his voice from quivering.

There came a pause then a long sigh that moved the covers on the bed, and then came the voice, deep and resonating other times but now low and gentle –

“Because they don’t want us here, Henry. They have never wanted us here.”

“Who never wanted you here?”

Another sigh, another pause –

“The adults.”

A sob broke out and filled the dark room. A small, frail hand reached out for the course, furry one but found only cold, empty air. Another sob. The boy sat up quickly and swung his arms around in great arcs -

“Alexander, Alex…ander? Are you, are you still here?”

There was no response and the pinpoints of light were gone. Henry dropped his hands to the bed and his shoulders slumped forward.

He whispered -

“Alexander?”

The air was still another moment then it heated and the orange eyes returned and with it the voice, though more far away.

“I am here, cub, but not for long. Not for long at all. I am not meant for this place. I no longer belong here. I am…no longer needed.”

The boy reached out blindly for the monster, his small body shuddering under the pressure of his heartbreak and the illness that had brought him to this cold, lonely place.

“But I need you Alexander, I need you.”

The boy broke into coughs that doubled him over and splattered his hands, arms, and bedding with fresh blood.

The boy swooned, weakened, and began to lean towards the edge of the bed, the side where the steel rails were down. Henry tried to catch the bedding with his hands but it slipped through them and his vision started to flicker. Just as he lost the last of his strength and was about to fall from the bed he felt strong, soft arms encircle him, steady him, and lay him back gently. The orange eyes are brighter now, wider, and ringed with wild fire that seems to warm the air and the breath that falls on the boy.

“And I need you, cub. I will never abandon you. No matter the danger, no matter what they say. I will remain with you. Somehow. But you have to fight, fight what is eating away inside you. I will help you, but you have to be the one to defeat it. You have to be strong. No matter what happens.”

Suddenly an alarm sounded from the wall behind the monster and the boy rose off the bed.

“Run, Alexander, run…”

“I won’t. We have run long enough.”

The door swung inward and the room was filled with the harsh, cold light of the hospital corridor. Henry clamped down onto Alexander’s arm as he realized what was happening. Three guards and a nurse rushed in to see how Henry was doing and, seeing the monster, the guards changed direction and went after it. Henry spun towards Alexander as the guards neared him but it was too late, the light had already hit the monster and he was fading quickly, his furry outline, marked with one ear always folded down, and his eyes were all that remained.

“ALEXANDER!”

The shadow raised a paw to the boy then was gone. Gone to wherever it was that monsters were banished to, whatever dark, lonely world where there were no humans; where there were no children.

One of the guards let out a scream at the sight of the disappearing form and dropped his weapon. In a moment it was gone completely and in another so was the darkness.

And laying in an adult’s bed, in an adult’s wing of a hospital, and with an adult’s disease lay Henry, a very little boy, who had no words for what he felt, but had a name for what had taken it away before and it was that name he whispered to the unrelenting light – Alexander.

They are Undead

Did this painting today. Have had a rough approximation in mind for a bit and here he is. Acrylics and paint pen, my methods of madness. What was funny is that along with this I was made up as a zombie for a picture shoot my girlfriend needed to do for school. Happy Undead day, wooo.

Stuff I do

This is gonna be a sort of lazy catch all of stuff I have done recently. It is weird to me how much I am painting of late. I think it’s due to a feeling that I lack time to really write, which isn’t untrue, sorta. But I have been painting a lot. And obviously posting a lot as this is post 101. Woo. Terribly exciting, I know. Well, maybe?

So, pics.

Of stuff.

I do.