Category: art

sketchbook

Filled up my second sketchbook (ever), which seems as good a time as any to reflect on my relationship to art.

Image may contain: 1 person

1. Art is fundamentally performative for me. My dancing is my writing is my photography is my sketching, and all of these are done in the context of an audience, of being seen. There is a reason all of my sketching happens on the subway. Something about the mere possibility of being observed adds fuel to my creative fires.

2. In all of my creations, I’m looking for novel patterns, shapes, lines, and textures. My sketches are all guided by a gradually overlaid series of rules. Visual interest emerges when these rules conflict or the patterns can permutate in unexpected ways. This also describes my dancing, where my movement is built on a simple foundation of matching my body to the beat, but delight is found in breaking the patterns in ways that still conform to the aural structure.

3. I can call myself an artist in the presence of full-time artists and not feel like a phoney because I don’t live from my creations.

art_work

They say that writing about art is like dancing about architecture.

Just kidding, I’ve never heard anyone say that. But I wanted to record a little formal history of how I started making artwork, explain some of the different kinds of pieces I make, talk a bit about process and such. There will be a smattering of personal details and hopefully very little philosophy about the meaning of art or its practice. There are few questions less interesting than “what is art?” and I do not intend to indulge the inquiry here.

Without further ado, a brief history of my journey with art.

Continue reading art_work

control

Recently, John Campbell, the author of my most favorite webcomic, pictures for sad children, wrote a series of articles (for lack of a better word) that have generated some interesting controversy that’s relevant to my previous post about trolls.  Although they’re an interesting read, the titles alone rather succinctly describe the content.  The only background you need here is that John Campbell’s comics and street art are nothing if not compulsively melancholic, but never, ever serious.

His entire confession and apology was fake.  A lot of his readers and fellow artists were pretty offended, and not unfairly – but one line in particular got me thinking.

I regret the borderline people, those who could identify the problems in their life, face them, and allow themselves to be changed, but instead found it necessary to conceive of themselves as “struggling with depression” rather than being genuinely held back emotionally by some nasty and real situation. Any work participating in the “culture of depression” has probably contributed to these sad and unnecessary cases.

Continue reading control

replay

In January, my friends and I embarked on a project that has become, for me, a serious creative outlet. We decided to start building a town on our Minecraft server. If you don’t know what Minecraft is, that’s okay – all you need to know is that it’s essentially multiplayer Legos. This post is an attempt at sharing some of the amazing creations and the process behind the town’s development.

We didn’t have any idea what would go on it and we didn’t set any rules for what could or couldn’t be made. We just started making stuff. The location we chose was nothing more than hills and trees. Sitting in the middle of nowhere, the first creation was a statue of a bug with a sword plunged through it, and some signs (note – these are all recent shots, unfortunately I don’t have any from the beginning days):


By Ben

Here’s what the signs said:

The Bug King as he was found in 1388, after having been slain by the Bug Slayer. The Bug King’s death marked the end of the Insectowars, and ushered in a century of peace and a new golden age.

Continue reading replay

crow

Something about Norse mythology fascinates me. Every artistic depiction I’ve seen captures the essence of pure, unadulterated might. The very concept of a god like Odin seems inestimably epic, on a scale that culture today dares not wish that it could capture. We have no parallel – for what equal could there be?

Take this, for example:

The immortal Odin, overtaken by the son of Loki, Fenrir. I look at that drawing, and I long for it to be a reality that I could witness, and partake in. To face such a mortal enemy, for the whole of my destiny to be summed up in the intensity of one, ferocious moment.

Odin leaves behind the Valkyrie Brunhild as he goes to battle. Odin’s incredible strength wholly tamed by the delicacy and fairness of his Valkyrie.

One day, I hope to live in a house adorned with these sorts of images.

It Is NOT Okay to Crackle (O.o)

I present to you…

my poem.

Halo Two, how I love thee,
You are a joy only I can see

Who knew the only one DVD
Could unlock so much glee?

You have so many guns to explore
Pistols, rockets, and snipers galore!

With thine battle rifle
With which none can trifle!

To you, Halo Two,
I can only say “I do”!

*bow*

I slept through two entire classes today. As in, I walked in, sat down, put my head on the desk and did not pull it back up until the class was over. I was tired. I kept waking up in the middle of the night (I was kinda cold, but not conscious enough when I kept waking up to get more covers). In case you didn’t know, I was at Benjamin’s Saturday and Sunday while Mom and Dad were in Boston, visiting the Luddy’s. I didn’t go for a number of reasons.

I had the weirdest dream ever last night, too.

Picture, if you will, a classy hotel, four-star. Very full. It is in the near future, but for some reason, the KGB is alive and thriving, armed in black suits, ties, and sunglasses, with pistols, and enough of them to occupy said hotel. This is where the dream starts off. The KGB enter and occupy the building, and people are evacuating. I’m just a spectator here, not an actual person.

So, the KGB storm the building and people are going nuts. They’re shooting random people down, but for the most part, standing around, looking cool. They only occupy the first floor, though. They just stood in the lobby. Meanwhile, people are going nuts everywhere else in the hotel packing up and evacuating. Meanwhile, there’s a serial killer, mildly reminiscent of somebody from Kill Bill, with a sword. In every room I observe, he’s under the bed, and there’s always two people on the bed. First instance: I think it’s Zach (it could have been paul, but I think it was Zach), and he’s talking in my general direction, I don’t know, but he gets stabbed and I think he falls out the window. Keep in mind, this is a dream, things are fuzzy. Switch to the next room. Spiderman and his friend, wearing a green mask are getting ready to go to bead. Spiderman is wearing his costume, but has yellow shorts on and his right arm is in a cast. His friend is kind of like the hulk. He’s really buff, and has the urge not to wear a shirt to showcase his manly abdominals. And he has a green mask on. So mask-man is laying on the bed and gets stabbed (from under the bed, I don’t know how mr. serial killer did that with a sword), and starts screaming, so Spiderman pulls out a pistol and puts 7 (yes, 7) shots into the bed, somehow misses the serial killer completely, and gets stabbed. There were a couple more rooms of stuff like that happening, with one person getting killed and the other vainly attempting to stop the killer, but that’s about it. Feel enlightened by my horrible dream.

Dreams that I remember are normally very, very vivid, but I often don’t write them down, and thus forget. I have a few dreams I wish I could remember. Oh well.

New maps came out today – they absolutely rock. Definately puts Halo 2 on the map for a long time.