distruption -

 

We constantly distinguish - right and wrong, sacred and profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young and old, living and dead - and in every case trickster will cross the line and confuse the distinction. Trickster is the creative idiot, therefore, the wise fool, the gray-haired baby, the cross-dresser, the speaker of sacred profanities. Where someone's sense of honorable behavior has left him unable to act, trickster will appear to suggest an amoral action, something right/wrong that will get life going again. Trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox.

... he [a trickster] needs at least a relationship to other powers, to people and institutions and traditions that can manage the odd double attitude of both insisting that their boundaries be respected and recognizing that in the long run their liveliness depends on having those boundaries regularly disturbed.

When Pablo Picasso says that 'art is a lie that tells the truth,' we are closer to the old trickster spirit. Picasso was out to reshape and revive the world he had been born into. He took this world seriously; then he disrupted it; then he gave it at a new form."

- Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art, by Lewis Hyde

d i s t r u p t i o n . . .

Going back to my Art History class 101, why Pablo Picasso is so significant in understanding the modernization in contemporary art...
He took the life seriously, disrupted the preconceived notions of images and forms, and "gave it at a new form."

Now, that takes some serious thinking and work.

Do you think people would know...?

" So I was plucking all these red flowers today... and it took me a few hours! My shoulders are hurting! Well, when I was plucking the flowers, I wondered to myself... how is this art? And I thought maybe it is because all these colors would give warmth to people. When people come and see this, maybe they will feel warm inside. So you should think more about colors... and do you think people would know how many hours, how much work this takes? Do you think people would feel something when they see it?"

 - my mom (from our conversation 2 nights ago)

* * *

Shout out to my father for his birthday!!! We had a pretty serious party this past weekend for his birthday... a dinner table full with food and a few hours of intense karaoke. My parents love to sing together... ^_^

Lots of good talks today with great people in my life.

Feeling quite tired and I only finished the first day of this week...



G'night!

Advice from Joseph Grigely

Joseph Grigely's art is an art about conversations--the paths they take, the shapes and colors they have, and the stories they tell in the process of being retold. Grigely, who became deaf as a result of a childhood accident, uses as his raw material the written conversations that he has in his daily life; the scraps of paper on which hearing people have written notes, names, or phrases in order to 'converse' with him when he cannot read their lips. He uses these scraps of conversations to build wall pieces and table-top tableaus that all take as their subject matter the ineluctable differences between speech and writing, and reading and listening.

To read more about his work, go to http://gandy-gallery.com/exhib/joseph_grigely/exhib_joseph_grigely.html.

I read the book Letters to a Young Artist during my lunch time, and today I read the letter Joseph Grigely wrote. He talks about the poet John Keats and his way in "Negative Capability." Here is an excerpt:

"... Two hundred years ago, the poet John Keats faced the same struggle: He was overwhelmed with financial difficulties, and when he looked at the stuff that had been written before him - Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton - he resigned himself to the dispiriting question, 'What is there left to do?'
  He kept at it. In the space of a couple of years he wrote a half dozen odes that took poetry in a new direction, got a lot of bad press, saw his books remaindered, and died just after turning twenty-five. Plus, the girl he wanted said: no.

He called it Nagative Capability. Rather than trying to make sense of all the details that comprise the worrisome practice of being an artist, he wholeheartedly - and also wholeheadedly - got lost in the process of writing the best poems he could. In the letter to his brothers, Keats described Negative Capability as a way of being, wherein one 'is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.'

... So my advice, for whatever it's worth, is not to worry too much about those uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts. If making art is hard work - and it is - equally hard is the process of being an artist, of bringing the work to a public. This is where human relations are so important... So read as much as you can and get into the thick of life whenever you can - learn a foreign language, learn things about other people, go places and do things that have nothing to do with art - because it's the stuff that has nothing to do with art that has everything to do with art.

With best wishes,

Joseph Grigely

Happy Friday, everyone!

Mother as my toughest critic

photo 1

photo 2

Before I went to work this morning, my mother said, "Well, somebody is very colorful!" (photo 1) "Is it... too colorful?" "I don't know... you artists must have a different taste," she snorted. Since I have an office job, I thought perhaps toning down the colors would be a good idea. So, I changed (photo 2) and said, "better?" "Yes, much better." Hah... -_+

I get my small portion of bluntness from my mom. She will tell you what is on her mind. And sometimes, she is my toughest critic. After my Ox-Bow residency (shout out to all the Ox-Bow resident artists!!!), I showed her some of my small paintings (photo 3). My mother's comment was, "you must had been bored out of your mind!" -_-;;;

At first, I laughed with her, but I thought about it a little more... if this doesn't make sense to her, why is that?

photo 3

Today, my mom and I moved some of my studio stuff up in the garage (photo 4). We are going to start cutting flowers again in all its seriousness and we thought it would be better to do in a garage where we can actually breathe in fresh air. She and I started talking about my upcoming group show and a project, and her comments were valuable. I feel extremely fortunate to have my parents involved in my work... and them being the toughest critics of mine.

photo 4