This (by Sister Corita Kent) was worth retyping and stealing from here:

Helpful hints: Always be around. Come or go to everything always. Go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully often. Save everything, it might come in handy later.

There should be new rules next week.

A quick post about Alexander Couwenberg painting style, … I love it. I wouldn’t mind having one of his painting at home or in my office.

How cool is this! Check out the link for more pictures.

Nice rendition of a classic. Makes you want to learn the alphabet doesn’t it?

I found out about this artist through a magazine called Circa. It’s very interesting work. I would love to see the luminograms. Here is a bit of the article written by Slavka Sverakova; “She chose this mode of work during her Master of Fine Art Degree studies at the University of Ulster and during the subsequent years developed its subtle qualities. She is and has been a perfectionist. Dedicated to a mix of ideas that range from heroic modernism back to Renaissance and earlier paintings, her images grow out of spontaneity of hand and arm movement, paradoxically disciplined by a compositional order carefully chosen a priori. Tapes are placed where the light should not make a mark. It is in distance from the surface and possibly the speed and direction of the movement that the work is allowed to be spontaneous.

I asked her how she works: in a dark room?

All the works in the GTG show are created entirely in the darkroom. I worked under normal B/W safelight conditions for this body of work but have previously worked in the darkroom without any light other than the light source I am using to make my mark with. However, either way I cannot see the mark I have made until I have passed the photographic paper through the developer – I print my own work. I have a small darkroom and manage to print large sheets of photographic paper, which I buy in rolls up to 114.5cm/45inch wide.

I like the darkroom environment, its quietude, it really is my studio…”

..CIRCA Article

visual / auditory

expending fourth wall

change the course of the action

communication role need to be interchangeable

In the theater of today, I feel there is something lacking, which I can’t pin point. There are many thinkers out there with different solutions but none, as of yet, have reached the stage. I would imagine that this is due to lack of money and no one is ballsy enough to start this wave of interactive opportunities for the stage. Like he mentions on his blog, interactive could mean that an audience member creates in advance a clip and then submits it to the company, who may or may not include it into their performances. This seems very labor intensive but hey, there are so many people sharing video on YouTube that one might think that it’s not hard to get done. Even with companies using YouTube, or any other social network for that matter, as a launching point for some products (aka viral marketing) it might help to get money for the company producing the work. Different but it could be interesting. I want 10% of the cut. This post will be continued at some other time…

..Butts In The Seats

Audiences are there to appreciate it. Actors are needed for the play to live. Directors are there to shape the landscape. Designers are there for the visual landscape. Critics?

I have never been really turned on by critics. I find critiquing one’s work isn’t natural. In the art world, critiquing is sometime ephemeral in comparison to a football review. I actually don’t really care about someones review to some extent. A person attempting to find their way in a piece or someone who tries to be intelligent about something that is usually more about an emotion. How can you critic emotions? Why should you?

Sometimes I wonder if critics actually understand the work involved in creating a piece for the stage either dance or theatre. It starts from a story that wants to be told. Conceptualizing the environment in which the piece will live arrives over many discussions at the local coffee shop. More people get involved. The team grows (hopefully). Performers rehearse. Designers try to sell the visual imagery to the directors/choreographers. They create the environment, the life of the actors or dancers. Again, the team grows and grows until the day it closes. The end.

The craft can produce interesting conversations and sometimes well, there isn’t much to talk about. It might lack in one department or all of them. If so, it might just be someone didn’t communicate their intention well enough. It’s not as easy as it seems. Communication is where it all starts or ends, depending on how you view it.

I wonder if critics know how much work is involved? I wonder if critics know anything about theatre lighting? That seems to be a point where most shy away or just don’t understand the art of lighting a stage, a person, and an environment.

I care about the audience, what they thought about the play/dance they have just seen. I would love to be able to have an audience who participates with their opinions somehow. An active audience that is engaged, wow! I think sometimes the critics just blur the lines in between the artist and the audience because no matter what we say, it’s only opinions.