artiphacts

Food For Thought: On Artistic Productivity

It's 2 PM and I'm sitting in front of my compose screen in my fuzzy slippers.  I've been awake for hours and hours.  Reading, mostly.  Absorbing and thinking.  Drawing a little, too.

Some of my most productive hours are the ones I spend reading and writing in bed, just after waking.  All of my "A" papers in college were written this way, and most of the doodles in sketchbooks which worked out the details for paintings, drawings, and fiber constructions.  I wondered if it was odd, and I wondered if I was unusual for working this way, but it was too productive for me to waste time with deconstruction and analysis.  I had to just do it.  Because it worked.  Click HERE to continue reading...

 

Cross-training As Part Of An Artistic Foundation. . .

It's pretty widely understood that athletes can increase their performance by training in multiple disciplines.  Performance in football, baseball, tennis, and other sports which require quick, agile, responses are greatly improved by jogging, long-distance running, and exercises to designed to increase flexibility.  We don't think twice about the benefits that cross-training brings to sports, but it is equally valuable to the arts.  If you are interested in my thoughts on this topic, click HERE to continue reading...

Collage: The Good And The Bad Of Using Other People's Art. . .

To Begin With...

...I'm not referring to plagiarism, copyright violation, or anything else that implies anything used illegally or without permission.  This is simply about adding papers, images, stamps, ephemera, stickers, tapes, rub-ons, collage images, and anything else that could fall into the category of "sold for the purpose of making art". 

Here and there you pick up conversations about the pros and cons about the use of things in artwork that were not made expressly by the artist.  At one end, there's the group that would always forbid anything not made by the artist, except maybe the paper and the crayon.  At the other extreme, there's the (thankfully small) group of people who buy a stamp, ink it, stamp it, and say "Look what I made".   

In my opinion, the first group lacks imagination and needs to "get real"!  After all, would they invalidate one of Lidia's fabulous and famous spaghetti sauce recipes because the the tomatoes were tinned instead of hand-pressed fresh?  Possibly, but I would hope not.  And the latter--well, maybe if you're 5, but any older than that and you'd better just say "Look what I stamped"!

There is a thin line that runs through the middle of this however, and assuming that copyright issues are not a factor, there is also some legitimate concern over what you should call your own, and what ethically should be credited to others, even though you assembled it.  If you're interested in my thoughts on this, click HERE to continue reading...