Ronove

Sit down and close your eyes for a minute. I want you to imagine the one thing you'd want if you could make any wish come true, you are not allowed to limit yourself based on logic, conventions of morality, plausibility or any other thing excuse about how it isn't possible. Don't try to call something to mind, just let the life you want, the life you could never admit to wishing for with every part of your deepest self, the thing you don't even allow yourself to want wish and dream for, let that secret desire float to the surface. Be as aware as you can of what that reality is. When you're ready open your eyes. Now, what would you give to make that your living reality? Quit getting in your own way and make it happen, no matter the cost.

With this in mind, I've decided to get a tattoo today.  I'll post pictures of it later but its essentially an artistic reinterpretation of the image below, the sigil of Ronove.  Ronove is a goetic demon who according to occult sources, gains his power and notoriety in hell, by showing off how culturally influential he is.  Part of this is by taking select artists who devote themselves to summoning him, and ushering them to the very top epsilons of society, helping them find both fame and fortune within their medium. 

While I personally identify as a non-deistic animist and see Ronove as an archetype from the collective unconscious, the tattoo for me is a symbol.  It represents for me that I'm willing to cash it all in.  The idea being I'm permanently and indelibly marking myself, willing to condemn myself to any sort of infernal damnation in the theoretical afterlife, if it means that I will achieve the success I'm after.  I am willing to do ANYTHING to achieve my goals, and that's why I know that eventually I WILL achieve them.  

The moment you draw a line in the sand and say the minute I reach this line, I'm going to stop and quit and move in another direction, is the minute you set yourself up for failure.  I've chosen to be homeless before for the chance to better my career, when I was younger I really had that fire and commitment to make it, up until I started drawing lines in the sand.  No more lines, I will make it or I will keep trying till they drag me to hell.

For Christmas

So totally awesome! My parents were nice enough to pay for a year's subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud and Team Treehouse for an entire year.  Besides the fact that when I'm all done completing the program I should finally be able to get a job, I'll also finally be able to give making phone apps as art a try.  I'm super excited.

Well I'm attempting to continue my series from my bfa show.  Its been a rough start but I only started working on this piece today.  It'll take a bit to get the rust out but I think its coming back to me.

Strange Week

Well, I was fired from my job subbing at a catholic school for really asinine reasons (essentially people playing games), but it was likely all for the best.  I went to the Affordable Art Fair in Seattle and possibly found some gallery representation.  So right now I'm working on continuing my series from my bfa show and doing a piece for the Nightmare Before Christmas show.

I'm also going back to finishing my vision board.  I'd still really like to go to Yale for my MFA in Photography.

Old photo that I really love

Working on a Call for Art

So my friend Braden is curating a show at a store in Seattle called Other Worlds.  The show is supposed to inspired by Tim Burton with a focus on The Nightmare Before Christmas and other worlds at Christmas.  I'm going to do some scratchboard art for the show.  I'm picturing the ghost of a little boy alone in the woods holding a present, not far from his skeleton, where he got lost going to a christmas party.  Maybe something else, we'll see.

Really Cool Art Escape

So I've found something I want to buy myself if I've ever got the money.  I'm sure my money would be better spent saving for New York but this would be pretty amazing to do.  Its a one month artist residency (the kind you just sign up and pay for rather than winning based on talent and hard work) specifically in photography. You can check it out here.  Full facilities and all of your equipment and materials costs are included in the cost.  The only thing that scares me is I'm terrified of snakes and its in India.  I'm still going to go eventually but it will take me a while to save the money.

But an expert at what?

So I found this really interesting website online called "Expertory".  Its this online website where you can do consulting and teach classes online.  You post a class that you're willing to teach, the length and how much it costs and people can then book your class.  Its pretty interesting.  There's already like 10 crappy introduction to photography classes, so that won't work.  So I've been thinking about ideas for classes:

1. Converting my idea for a 12 week class on nude and erotic photography into video lectures where I give an assignment at the end, they have my email to ask questions, the student then does the assignment and emails it to me, then we review it together over a webcam session.

2. How to come out of the closet.  How to do it while minimizing the potential risks to your physical person and how to do it in a fun way.

3. Consulting people on how to throw a rave style party

4. How to cook with marijuana

5. How to find people to be friends with

6. Consulting people on how to have an adventure

7. How to plan a road trip.

What else you I try putting up?

I'll keep dreaming

Well I decided to post my resume on the New York City Craigslist.  I figure there's always a chance I might get a full on bite.  Unfortunately I can't afford to travel cross country for a little nibble at the line again.  It really sucks that I'm missing the Hassleblad photo conference in New York today.  I keep getting asked for a business card so I finally designed one that I actually like.  I've got the design saved online and I'll buy some as soon as I get my pay check.  Sitting here and sending my creative energy out into the universe, its a nice ritual for myself.  Even if nobody is reading this now, maybe they'll use excerpts from my blog in my eulogy, I hope there's some piece of deep wisdom they can extract from here.  I feel like I keep saying the same things over and over again but I don't actually get anywhere.  I'll figure it out eventually.

Halloween is Coming

Halloween is of course a great time of year to express your creative energies.  I went to the Halloween store but didn't see anything I particularly liked so I'm considering creating a latex prosthetic.  Its pretty easy and fun.  So you use alginate to create a mold of your face, then create a positive in plaster.  Over the plaster bust you're going to use clay (preferably oil based clay) to sculpt on top of it to create the look you want.  You are then going to create a mold using gypsum of the bust with the clay on it.  You are then going to scrape all the clay off your plaster bust and you'll pour latex between your gypsum mold and the plaster bust.  You then attach the latex prosthetic with spirit gum and cover your face and latex piece in makeup to achieve your desired effect.

Admittedly this is not my professional field so there may be better or easier ways to do this but its how I know to do it.

Extrinsic Motivation Killed My Creative Drive

I haven't made a serious piece of art in years.  Obviously part of that is that I live with my parents who fully discourage my art making and refuse to allow me to make work at home and have done whatever they can to get me to stop making art and "get a real job".

The thing is that, there's a series I've been dying to make for a super long time but I've haven't been able to find the motivation to make it.  Heck, I can't even get the motivation to go out and just shoot some photos.  I used to love just going out and taking photographs of anything I saw.  Now, if they aren't perfect examples of pre planned constructed reality with some deep neo post historical meaning, then I just don't do it because all I can think is "there's no way I could ever show that in a gallery".  My entire focus as an artist has become about making it in the New York Gallery scene, and that has completely killed my motivation to make art because I no longer want to make art that's just fun. I'm so focused on making art that's "serious" and "good", true examples of "high art".

The problem is if you aren't creating you lose that fire that gives you the steam to power through and finish some huge series like that.  Its nearly impossible to go from cold to performing at full performance.  I don't know why I never realized that before.  Tomorrow I'm going to go out and make something that I think is completely stupid just because its fun.

That's the key to art, keep making stuff that's stupid because its fun till you find something amazing in it.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.

So I cashed in all of my savings bonds and got a train ticket to New York City.  Then I got there and discovered that I didn't actually have a job and a place to stay so I had to turn around and go home. Currently I've got this big huge water jug sitting on my floor, with a few quarters in it and the words New York, in gold stick on letters across the side.

There's an online course in Travel Photography and Travel Writing that sounds amazing and supposedly National Geographic Travel Magazine looks at the students of this course for new talent.  It sounds a little too good to be true and I've got no way to confirm any of this.  The course is $575.  If taking it will actually get me the skills I need to get into a career in travel magazines, heck yeah lets do this, but if it doesn't that's $575 that would be better put to use in my New York jug.  I'm not really sure what to do.  What I'm thinking is I'm going to see if I can confirm their quotes they have on their website and see if they've had any complaints against them.

Traveling the world sound fucking amazing, especially if I can have an apartment in New York City to come home to.

A Charlie Brown Kind of Guy

If there were any character in fiction that I most relate with its Charlie Brown.  Of course in my Charlie Brown story Charlie is secretly in love with Linus who rejects him emotionally then uses him sexually when he can't find a chick to get him off.

Knowing there are people that have it worse in the world really doesn't help me, and having it worse is really dependent on the way you measure it.  If you're describing it in terms of the freedom to move through life independently, the ability to follow what you love, I find my life lacking.  My whole life I heard that if you find your true calling everything will just flow together for you, you'll be happy and nothing and no one will be able to keep you from accomplishing it.  I guess I'm starting to understand that what they meant is that regardless of how much shit gets in your way, you won't stop until you accomplish your goals.  Even if it never happens for you, you just keep trying.  The problem with that, is when you have a strong desireto accomplish great things, but are unable to find the resources to do it.

It really sucks but the world we live in is so much nicer to you if you're a good looking skinny person.  Hell if you're straight, white, male, good looking, trim, and come from money the entire world is open to you.  I am short, gay, fat, mixed race, balding, and have no financial help to pursue my art and no one will hire me.  Every time I think I'm going to get over this rut in my life and get to go back to my "real life" where I make art and live in a big city and have fabulous artistic friends who throw amazing parties and everything else that implies, Lucy pulls the football.

I land on my back every time and I never learn my lesson.  I keep letting Lucy get my hopes up, that I'll not just get to kick the ball and get to move the line of scrimmage off my own field goal so I'll have a fighting chance but that somehow I'm magically going to kick a 100 yard field goal.

My magic wish, if I had a Fairy Godfather, would be to a full time fine art gallery and museum artist with a three bedroom flat in either New York, London or Paris, and I would have a husband that was a stay at home dad and three sons.  I'm at the point now, where just having enough money to rent a room in someone's basement that isn't my parents, and be able to eat and make art would make me happy.

So people are always talking about building a staircase to the moon or the stars, that its slow and it takes work.  Yes, I do look for short cuts and yes they have been backfiring but I can never seem to find the tools and the resources I need to win if I play by the rules.  Where is this great American upward mobility?

Finding My Path

Well I've been working on a visualization technique where you visualize and repeat something to yourself and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.  The visualization I've been using is "I am living my true calling."  I really believe I've actually figured out what that is.  I've been working as a substitute teacher and I absolutely love it and I'm talking to the head of the MAT program at RISD and he's actually giving some consideration to possibly letting me into the program.  I really feel that becoming an art teacher is my true calling, for myself at least its the most wonderful job in the entire world.  When you look at my talents and interests it really makes sense!

In other news I've gotten really involved in the Mind's Eye Society, its a nonprofit LARPing club for the World of Darkness game system.  I'm the Venue Story Teller for my local domain for the Accord Venue, its extremely fun and this is the very beginning of the new venue.  I love finding fun creative things to do when you don't have the space for huge art pieces or the money to drive all over taking photos.  Its also a great way to get involved in my community, make friend and have fun that doesn't involve spending crap loads of money every week.  I'm even using my art skills to help the club, below is a photo I took for the club.

Crap Weather Blues

    I don't know about you guys but I'm completely SICK of winter, especially living somewhere that you don't really get to enjoy the benefits.  It would be one thing if I lived somewhere that I could go cross country skiing or inner-tubing or if I lived somewhere warm where the weather never really changed but instead I live where we just get grey and ick.  Mainly we get the occasional bout of freezing rain or freezing fog, if we do get snow its usually less than an inch, never enough to even go sledding.  The light quality sucks, I'm kind of sick of drawing right now and the light quality is horrible for photography.  I've been writing a bit, getting some good responses but more than anything I've been escaping to watch my little pony and down prozac.  I really need to move back either somewhere with better weather or to a big city where there's stuff to do when the weather sucks.
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Living for Today

As I've said before I can't live for someday, I've got to live for today because someday may never come.  So I know that I've said that "someday" I'd like to go to Yale for a masters in photography, well I've decided instead to live for today. 

I may have mentioned it before but there is a school in London known as the London College of Fashion and they have an MFA program in Fashion Photography and what's great is that their program seems to really have that balance of employability and fine art that I'm looking for.  I actually think this might even be a better fit for me than Yale would have been, don't get me wrong going to a school where people pay you millions of dollars a shot when you graduate would be fabulous but unless you've got wealthy politician parents that went to the school and a 4.0 GPA, getting in is like winning the powerball, maybe even harder since only 7 people get into Yale MFA Photo every year and probably dozens of people win the powerball every year. 
The reality is though that when I really thought about my visual ascetic and the kind of life style I want to live when I'm done with graduate school LCOF just made sense, it fit.

 The thing is I really do actually love fashion too, not like what's trendy at Walmart kind of fashion but like gorgeous art wear type fashion.  One of the girls I went to college with made dresses out of teabags and hair and different weird things and they were really some of the most beautiful things I've ever seen I totally loved them.  I hope I can get in.

That really is the thing isn't it, getting in...

You can have all the greatest ideas and intentions in the world but until you make it happen its less relevant than a fart in a stiff wind.  I'm not totally sure how to make it happen.  How do I get all the pieces to line up to give me the best possible shot, and will even my best shot be enough to get me in? How do I know who to ask to write me a letter for graduate school? How do I know what pieces to pick? Should I pick things that are more conceptual or technical? Should I send them a CD or print a book?

I miss college when if it really mattered one way or another the teacher would just tell you and otherwise it was up to your own discretion.