Today's A Softer World

Globalization

An excerpt from Kurt Vonnegut's Bluebeard:

How good were those pictures of mine which Dan Gregory looked at so briefly before he shoved Marilee down the stairs? Technically, if not spiritually, they were pretty darn good for a kid my age--a kid whose self-imposed lessons had consisted of copying, stroke by stroke, illustrations by Dan Gregory.

I was obviously born to draw better than most people, just as the widow Berman and Paul Slazinger were obviously born to tell stories better than most people can. Other people are obviously born to sing and dance or explain the stars in the sky or do magic tricks or be great leaders or athletes, and so on.

I think that could go back to the time when people had to live in small groups of relatives--maybe fifty or a hundred people at the most. And evolution or God or whatever arranged things genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of the caves, and somebody else who wasn't afraid of anything and so on.

That's what I think. And of course a scheme like that doesn't make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions.

The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her and "exhibitionist."

How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, "Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!"

Petite Safety Equipment

Oh baby.

Banksy at the London Cans Festival

For more photos/artists, check out Romanywg's Flickr.

Today's A Softer World

This post is dedicated to Adly.

Let's go to the desert.

I WANT TO GO TO BURNING MAN.
Probably not this year. Maybe next, or the one after.

But I'm going to go.

Okay, I don't really know much about Burning Man and prior to this evening I'd only heard of it in vague lampoonery. But Burning-Man-hippie jokes aside, the sweetest stuff looks (I've been poring over thumbnails & enlargements for the better part of 4 hours) totally steampunk/Mad Max/Doomsday-esque. Just switch mercenaries out with artists and performers and costumed hanger-outers. I've seen photos of better installations in that commerce-free desert than in any Chelsea gallery I've been to this year.

According to the event's official website, "Burning Man is an annual art event and temporary community based on radical self expression and self-reliance in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada." Every year, (since '86 when BM first took place in San Fran) some 120 miles north of Reno, Black Rock City exists for eight days prior to and including Labor Day. The temporary city's population has exceeded 40,000 participants in recent years.

HOW COULD YOU NOT WANT TO GO?!
Eight days of art-camping-dancing-friend-making madness...

Images by Richard Renaldi &
various photogs on burningman.com

of yore

So, I Googled myself recently & rediscovered a rather embarrassing digital relic: my long forgotten, once cherished Xanga. Funny thing is, grazing over odd quasi-chronicles, I have found the public posts just as inaccessible to the reader--yes, the imagined reader of the digital diary, our entreated stalkers--as my cryptic drawing projects are... and sketchbooks are... and paintings are... err... all my work is the viewer. I'm screwed.

Well if things don't work out after graduation I'll just join the Air Force and be a pilot or something.

+ + +
Somebody else who Googles himself:


CLEARING THE AIR

------------------
Monday, March 24, 2008

We Hear.....that John Mayer is so self-obsessed, he Googles himself every morning, and has been known to respond to online rumors just to clear the air.
------------------

This is, quite simply, untrue.

-John

Mister Barney

LOLLERSKATES

via eyeteeth;

>> see also the new Orwell covers for Penguin Books by Shepard Fairey

It's the first day of April, fools.

To think my heart skipped a beat...

Designin' & Publicizin'

SENIOR SHOW

*

ZOMG

i am in ur bases stealin all ur artzes.

Frozen Grand Central

Improv Everywhere

So serious.

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Art

Resinous Rodent

I promise my next blog will not be about Oddree's art.

I just wanted some peanutbutter
& now I'm stuck in this stupid block.
2007
Oddree Freitas
mouse, resin, steel, wood, mouse skins, thread, painted mouse trap

Space Pixels

art.teleportacia.org

Enter the crater and go to GRAVITY.

Squirrels & Arrows

The other day I edited these slides that I shot for Oddree's application to SAIC. As a cautionary note, some of these images probably aren't suitable for the squirrel-friendly or fearing.

We just wanted to pick our coats up at the cleaners.
Love, Wil & Adelaide.
2007
Oddree Freitas
squirrels, steel, wood, feathers, and thread

Also, I can't figure out what's wrong with the Javascript that's making the captions for these images appear and disappear. They basically note that the first half are of Wil and the second half are of Adelaide.

DAN ELDON!!!!!!!111

Today, I am going to meet my maker.

"Photographs, Art and Lessons, Taken From a Life Cut Short"
(New York Times)