Art With a “Message”

I can be called many things but an elitist is not one of those things. I grew up a dork, and remain a dork to this day. That is who I am. And having not done art since I was a teenager, I am a self taught artist, so any ego I have about my ‘art’ is pretty minimal. I like what I can do, and I am working to be better at it, and people can feel what they want from there. I hope people dig what I do, with writing, art, or photography, but it is what it is and people dig what they do.

And let’s face it, we all do what we do for us first, and the world second, which is as it should be, to be true to your own voice and vision. And we all do some things people like and some things people won’t like. AS an artist, and AS a person active in a community though,one thing I don’t just dislike but truly hate are self important artists who play at being deep and involved when really they are just focused on themselves and how talented they are.

I hate art with a message.

There, I said it.

I hate art with a message.

I think the notion that some art has a message, and other art does not is an utter farce and is as shallow and selfish as an ‘Artist’ can get. While I will never claim that my stories, pictures, or paintings are terribly deep, there are messages there. Sometimes they are subtle, sometimes the messages are overt but they are there. For me, all the things I do all stem from a desire to tell stories so that is always at the heart of what I am doing. Hell, sometimes I may not even see any message because I am too close to see it, but it is there. It is always there. I have known a LOT of artists, and all of them, me too, have an ego about their work, even if it is minimal. You have to have it because without that ego you cannot do it. Without a belief that what you are doing is valuable then why the hell would you bother with it all? What sucks is when an ego gets so out of control as to believe that what they are saying is IMPORTANT, which then lends itself to inferring that other art may not be so important or deep.

Which is hilarious because, like I said, all art has a message.

Listen to the BEACH BOYS and their songs are about love, and partying, and surfing, and all manner of fun and does that mean there is no message? Uh, no. The message is that life is good, and we need to enjoy it. I get the same message, or a similar one, from MONET, who seemed to love to show how beautiful the world was. So was that not a message? I write dark stories and there are messages, sometimes as simple as that life is not what we believe it to be, or that we can find power in our meekest selves and push onward, or even that we must make sacrifices in order to protect and help those we love. Messages, all of them. So to say that some art has a message and other art does not is ridiculous.

Art with a message indeed.

Oh, wait, what of ‘pop’ art or ‘trash’ art, or mass marketed art. To tell those artists, whomever they are, that their work means nothing is pretty damned bold. Even a painting of a silly monster has meaning. Maybe we need to look a little harder sometimes. Maybe that is the REAL message, not that certain art has meaning and other art does not.

Ridiculous.

As an artist, questionable artist though I may be, I get frustrated when any other artist feels that they are better trained, better schooled, and have deeper art than anyone else. The more walls you build around yourself and your art the less people see of you AND the art. The less people try to see. Sure, they may go to your opening, or gallery show, and they may like your stuff but do they FEEL it? Do they want to? You can get meaning and feeling from a stick figure just as you can do art of of people of color and claim high ideals and that you are for the People and the Unserved and still say NOTHING.

For me, the more you put on your art, the more baggage you give it, the heavier the piece is, and art is most powerful when it is light, and natural, and makes you feel. You can tell people all you want that you are doing Good work and are helping the people, and are for the people and all that nonsense but dammit, you can help the world just by doing what you do, and taking a moment to legitimately help people, face to face. Telling them you are helping them isn’t quite as effective.

Me, I will just do what I do and let you figure out what it means. And trust me, it means something.

…c…

Changing Faces

So I was out with friends a couple weeks ago doodling and while doodling I came up with a few ideas I wanted to paint. One of these ideas was a goofy looking guy with a misshapen face and googly eyes. I haven’t painted in a while so I got the stuff out and started painting a couple days ago. Things were rolling along pretty well for a while but I hit a spot where I just didn’t like it. I was stuck on what color to paint the guy’s eyes and chose black instead of white, wanting to go against what I normally would.

Big mistake.

As soon as the black was on I hated the painting. It suddenly looked dumb and aggravated the hell out of me. I have only painted over a couple other paintings in my short life as a painter but I have done it, and this was one of those times. I just couldn’t see a way to salvage what I had done.

VOILA!

I painted over the picture with all black and worked on another idea I had had floating in my head for a while of a ghost appearing from darkness. It evolved from there, as can be seen in the final work, but the heart of it is there. I kinda dig this. I was in the middle of it and wasn’t really happy with it but it came to life in the details and layers.

So this is what I have been working on. Other than the BIG PROJECT that is still waiting to be completed. But soon…

The Ones That Get Away

Twice I can recall times where writing just broke my heart. The first time was I was still a teenager and had been working on a story called Road Kill for what must have been weeks. It was the longest piece I had written I was really proud of it. I had a notebook I had the story and some other random stuff in and, for some reason, I placed the notebook on top of my mom’s car and forgot it. Naturally she went somewhere that day and POOF no more story. I was crushed. I was so proud of that story and it was just, gone and lost. The loss of it still bothers me because it was my fault. The good thing is that the story was strong enough that nearly twenty years later it is still in my mind and waiting to be re-written. Just a matter of time.

The second time I had my heart broken by writing was a bit worse. A bit scarier for a writer. A few years ago I had been having trouble with the computer I had at the time and it was just acting up and being finicky, as computers are wont to be. A friend of mine, a woman I had dated a few years earlier, told me she could fix the computer without a problem. She’d back up everything and re-install Windows and do it all up. Not a problem. Awesome. So she came over with a friend and started working on the computer. It was a long job so her friend and I hung out and talked and watched as the computer was worked on. Time passed and I was sitting in my living room with the friend of a friend and we were talking and all of a sudden my friend starts freaking out and crying and I am like, uh-oh. We rush into the bedroom, where my computer was, and my friend is bawling her eyes out. She screwed up something. She had forgotten to burn discs of all my documents, including personal letters, and all stories, and I had lost all photos and all music. Oh crap.

I had lost a LOT. In terms of music and photos, and personal letters, I lost a LOT. As for the stories, I was lucky in that I had a lot of stuff saved to discs and stuff but really, I lost a lot. Dozens of stories were lost for the ages. Gone and, now, forgotten.

I was crushed, I was heartbroken, but it was the first time I had really shown the stuff of adulthood because I let it go. My friend didn’t mean to do it, felt awful about it, and that was all there was too it. I lost the stories. Hell, I lose a lot of stories from sheer forgetfulness. Maybe the stories were great, maybe not, but there were more in the well, all I had to do was drop the bucket and haul them up.

Going through what I have with stories, I always wonder what other stories have been lost, to me and to anyone else. What poems. What art is lost to the ages for whatever reason. The ghosts of the ones that got away are thick with the arts. Haunting us with what may have been and never shall be now.

And you have to honor the passing and the dead, the lost and the never found. You have to honor them because for a moment they were all you thought of and could imagine. For a moment they were your future. But futures change and we must change with them. We have no choice. Some dead will never be buried, but that doesn’t mean we forget them. With luck, with work, we honor their memory and move forward, taking what we learned from and through them and hoping we can do their likeness well.

I have lost a lot of stories, but in their losses, perhaps the lessons learned were more important than the stories themselves.

Ten Years Gone…

Today is one of those days in life where it is important for me, means something to me, but which no one will really care about. For me, today marks the tenth anniversary of my first book signing, which was at the Borders Books and Music in Flint, Michigan. The anniversary though is more for this year, which marks the tenth year since my short story collection Back From Nothing came out.

What is funny is I remember more about the signing than I do the book coming out. The book was a project that was long in gestation and seemed to take forever to come out. I began the process, at best guess, in 1996, and after a long search for a publisher, I found one that finally said YES. The hell of that YES was that the publisher was a subsidizer, which meant I would pay the expenses of producing the book and they would print it, set it, and would distribute and promote it. Back then it was the best I could do and so I went with it. With a lot of help and support from my family I managed to get the money together for the book and, finally, after a ton of edits, and corrections, and waiting, the book was released in 1999. What’s funny is how much did and didn’t change.

I was suddenly an author, I had a book out, but I wasn’t making any real money from the book. And, within a couple of years, the publisher had gone bankrupt and I was left paying shipping on some 1,400 + books so that they wouldn’t be disposed of in some dumpster. Over the years I have learned a lot about writing, and about self promotion, and it’s never been my strong suit. I can do it, but not terribly well. I prefer to tell the stories than to have to pump myself up to convince people to buy my work. The book has never sold well, but I have moved copies. It is something that shows my youth and inexperience yet still packs an emotional impact. It is still one of my greatest achievements. A lot of people talk about writing, or putting a book together, and I did. However it came out. I did it.

The signing was funny because they set me up right in front of the door with my book, which seemed awesome but which really meant people were asking me where stuff was. Then I had the religious couple that came and started speaking with me, and flipped through my book and found the ONE DAMNED PIECE that would be inherently offensive in that it was from the point of view of Lucifer. Oops. That night I had a celebration dinner with some friends at a local restaurant and it was great.

I have done so much since those days, have grown so much as a writer, and I cannot wait until I have another book to illustrate this growth. Over the years I have put together several small collections (self published called ash-cans or chapbooks, if you will) for conventions I have done and just as examples of my growth. I have been published four times, in two publications, have worked conventions and fairs, have done podcast reading, and have met some of the most inspiring people I could ever imagine. Ten years goes by fast though, and I am still so far from where I want to be as a writer.

Ten years ago I officially began a journey that has taken me to places I had never dreamed, but it was the first step, and while I have taken a few since, I am still working to find a way to balance my writing with my life, my writing with my art, and am working to find ways to get my stories to the world. If you have been with me along the way, I thank you, if you are just joining me, I welcome you, and hope you’ll stick around to see where the journey leads.

Now let’s get going.

Garden of Eden 3

These are the last of my Garden photos that I did last weekend down the alley where I live. These are less whimsical and are more visceral. The theme is similar to what has been seen in photos I have done before but I am more confident with the camera, have a better camera, and have a much different backdrop for the darkness that underlies these photos.

Garden of Eden 2

More pics from the alley near my apartment.

In the Garden

Where I live in downtown Flint is a pretty fun little area. I live on the main drag through Flint, called Saginaw Street, and have an alley behind the building which butts us up against the Capitol Theater, an old school theater that is full of character but which has seen better days. Down our alley there is a little alcove that was lovingly dubbed the Bum Jungle because of its over-run vegetation and because it was frequented by a lot of homeless and indigent people. The Bum Jungle was on the verge of being reclaimed during a project to rehab a building that neighbored it but that all fell through so the area is being reclaimed by nature once more.

A lot of photographers take high school seniors, especially girls, into this area to do their pictures which seems to me a bit silly and disingenuous (hey guys, look at my URBAN pictures, woooo!) but so be it. I ducked in there today with some props to to take advantage of the space. I felt a bit cheesy as it is SO overdone these days to do pics in there but I think I brought my A-game. I will post these pics over the next few blogs.

I give to you…

Look Up!

Odd End

These are a couple things I have been working on of late. Most time I have is spent working on a project that one of these is associated with but otherwise I worked on these two things.

The painting was begun and intended to be black and white but it felt undone so I added detail. It feels heavy handed now but it is what it is. Perhaps my mind will change in time. I wanted to do a painting in black and white for the simple elegance of it, and as a challenge. I don’t hate how it turned out but for the moment it feels so alien to how I saw it that it’s not something I am comfortable with. Yet.

The other image, the girl and the flame, is for something I am working on. I like the image, I like the idea, but I changed it because, again, the simplicity of it was lost in the detail. I have re-imagined the image and am happier with that version, though I do like this one. It got a bit complicated/muddled in coloring it in Photoshop but that is not always an ideal program.