Arts

117 posts

Confessions Of An Idiot

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Anyone who has spent any amount of time poking around the internet in the last decade will know that one of the internet’s gale force powers to be reckoned with is the power to make you famous for doing or saying something stupid. In dork-speak I think this malevolence would be referred to as chaotic-neutral. Doesn’t seem to matter what kind of stupid. Funny, dangerous, offensive, et al. If it was recorded, the world will see it and judge. The internet only facilitates.

I feel bad for many of these once and future memes. Haven’t we all said something dumb or had too much to drink and said “I can make that jump”? You’re a liar if you said “no”. That being said I thought I’d volunteer a couple of wickedly dumb things I’ve done in the past in hopes that you may too and we all may judge a little less harshly.

I was an art major in college. Specifically painting. As anyone who has gone to college knows you often enough end up with holes in your schedule that you can’t find anything degree-useful to fill with. After paying tuition the extra class fee seems kinda whatever so I would fill these holes with random classes. Anthropology, ancient Chinese history, whatever. I tried to do it with other art classes if I could which is how I ended up taking a marble carving class.

This class was awesome. I’m glad I took it. For one thing every other sculpture class I took firstly involved a long discussion of what equipment, fumes, radiation, glue, et cetera would kill you. This class started off with “Marble is calcium. You can eat it.”. Win! Maybe that’s what’s wrong with my teeth…

Most art carving is done with a pneumatic hammer these days. However to get the basic chunk of marble ready you need to cut it with a saw. We used handheld circular saws. The particular saws we had were equipped with safety switches whereas holding the button down it was on, slip your thumb off & it went off. I guess this prevents people from setting down saws that have watched too many Tom & Jerry cartoons that would then chase you and have a lunchbox would land on your head.

You know that rule about not wearing loose clothing around dangerous machinery? That’s a good one. Know the one about maybe not using a piece of dangerous machinery while by yourself out in a stoneyard? That one if it hasn’t been written should be.

I was cutting a block of marble by myself after hours with a loose sweatshirt on when said sweatshirt got caught up in the saw wrapped itself around my hand disallowing me from releasing the safety switch and thusly pulling the (running) saw closer and closer to my abdomen.

Fortunately I’m not much for panic. I walked over to where the two extension cords powering the saw went together, pulled them apart with my feet, put away my tools, walked downtown and proceeded to pummel my near death experience with Jack Daniels.

I’m a lot more trepidatious around power tools these days. Evisceration didn’t seem like it’d be much fun.

Oh and if you want to make fun of me for being a girl using power tools poorly I will pre-empt this urge of yours by informing you that I know how to weld. Not solder. Weld.

Found Footage Friday – The Movie that Scared a Generation (in one small Indiana town)

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Hello and welcome to the first Found Footage Friday, where I present all sorts of video footage you may find surprising and entertaining. I’m going to start with something very close to home.

I grew up in Bloomington, Indiana in the 1980s. Home of Indiana University and its esteemed folklore department and a small but thriving public access cable channel. I don’t know if it was a student’s folklore project or something the department decided to do, but if you say “Haunted Indiana” to any Bloomington child of the ’80s, they will tell you how it totally scared the hell out of them when they were kids. We now look back on it with great fondness and, thanks to the internet, it is something I can share with all of you.

It’s a collection of short horror stories based on Indiana folklore, shot on a budget of two buttons and a shoelace with a soundtrack stolen from Hitchcock’s Psycho and narrated by local TV personality Mike White. Here it is in all its glory. There is not much for me to tell you about it, just watch it (it’s less than an hour long) and discover the frightening horror that is Haunted Indiana-

Haunted Indiana Part 1 – Intro

Haunted Indiana Part 2 – Haunted Woods

Haunted Indiana Part 3 – The Cable Line Monster

Haunted Indiana Part 4 – The Campers

Haunted Indiana Part 5 – Burnt (a.k.a. the boring one before the really scary one)

Haunted Indiana part 6 – Monster in the Bedroom

That last one gave hundreds of children nightmares about never waking up the next morning. I hope you enjoyed the movie that was the stuff of nightmares for one midwestern town with a population (at the time) of less than 50,000 people. The world may never known the horror of Haunted Indiana, but now you do. Welcome to our nightmare.

The Detroiter: Who Are You People?

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Multimedia performance artist Laurie Anderson would like you to know the following three things:

  • 1. Sydney’s dog population loves rock music.
  • 2. There are no further plans to develop the amusement park she was planning with Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel in Barcelona. Peter Gabriel no longer wants to do it and the saddest thing Ms. Anderson can think of is a modern, high-tech amusement park one year after it’s opened and all the technology has become obsolete.
  • 3. If you want to do a fall tour in Europe, and you’ve never done a tour, let alone been to Europe, email 500 performance spaces in Europe and you’re bound to hear back from some of them. You will get your fall European tour.

Laurie Anderson gave a lecture, entitled Spirit and Opportunity (named after the Martian rovers), at the historic Detroit Film Theater as part of its lecture series on space last night and she wanted to talk about two things: Her stint as NASA’s artist-in-residence and how that influence her later project building Japanese sound gardens for Expo 2005.

She received a call one day back in 2003 and the man on the other phone said that he was from NASA and wanted to invite her to be the inaugural member of their artist-in-residence program. She told him he wasn’t from NASA and after a series of assertions that he was, indeed, from NASA she asked him what an artist-in-residence for America’s space agency even does. The answer?

“We don’t know”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? Who are you people?” Ms. Anderson replied.

“We’re NASA,” the man replied.

Eager to jump on board with a project that had no definition, something completely new, Anderson started visiting NASA sites and annoying technicians. Artists and scientists, she says, are very similar. They must create an idea and then they must execute said idea, working out the problems as they go along.

She was especially excited by a white board she came across that showed a series of problems the scientists were working on with terraforming Mars. In other words, making Mars look like Earth which caused Ms. Anderson to sarcastically remark that we as a species have done such a fine job perfecting our own planet. She, if you did not know, is against manned space travel. She thinks that it’s a waste of time given the advancement of robotics, a mere propaganda tool to advance nations over their enemies, much like Neil Armstrong landing on the moon was a great victory for America during the Cold War. She does admit, however, that she got very excited about manned space travel during “the Kennedy thing.”

The Terraforming Mars project, by the way? It’s scheduled to be completed in ten thousand years.

Not everyone at NASA was too pleased with her though. Astronauts had no time for the short, androgynous woman with the artist-in-residence namebadge and the people in charge of colorizing the photographs received from the Hubble Telescope (the Hubble does not actually take pictures, it merely sends a series of data that are then organized into pictures) were not so happy when she questioned their heavenly color scheme of pale pinks and pastel blues.

“People like it,” they said. And NASA is an organization that relies heavily on a positive public opinion.

Laurie Anderson would like you to know a fourth thing

  • 4. China is currently in international court claiming ownership of the moon. The Russians say they were there first, the Americans say they had the first people there and the Italians? Well, they saw it first.

Laurie Anderson was the first and last artist-in-residence as the people in charge of the budget decided that $20,000 to have an artist look around and be inspired by the program for a year was an outrageous, unnecessary expenditure. Ms. Anderson has campaigned for it’s reinstatement ever since so that other artists may get the opportunity accorded her.

Part of their problem with the program, she thinks, is with the work she decided to produce upon completion of the experience: a long-form poem entitled “The End of the Moon.” She thinks that, as a multimedia artist, they thought that she would do something with bouncing lights off of satellites and onto the moon in a sort of cosmic light show and they were disappointed with her creation. She said in a Q&A portion after the show, that no new work (other than the poem) had come from the experience, but in quoting a selection from her suggestion for Crasstalk’s book club*, she said “Who told you that to be a good person, you had to be a productive person?”

She wasn’t completely unproductive, however. A year later, when working on Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan, she was concerned with gardens, and what they meant. The Japanese don’t think of gardens the way we do and in the Japanese language, the word for garden translates to setting stones. Japanese gardens are stone arrangements and, working with a Japanese architect (the preparation for this exhausted her as the Japanese work ethic was a culture shock to the already hardworking artist), she studied how they work as spaces and how to incorporate sound and visual.

Working in a space about the size of Central Park, Anderson came up with a series of solutions that answer the problem “How do we see?” An aquascope that is basically a tube that lets you see underwater (there are no lenses, it is merely a tube) A box of air that created imagery of moving birds and a series of haiku sticks in different languages.

Ms. Anderson loves haiku because it captures a moment. She came up with one on the spot:

Cold Icy Morning
A Puppeteer Blinks
What am I talking about?

She also incorporated haiku into a fountain that, when water rippled the water, spread various translations of various haiku throughout the water, though it was unclear if this was a visual or a tonal piece.

There was a bridge that, when you held onto the rail while walking across it, caused a unique tune produced by gongs sounding softly against the river and the space as designed by the architect started out very dark, until it turned scary, then awful until, finally your life felt over.

A garden by Xanax.

The piece that captivated me, however, involved mud. She had noticed that the Aichi soil had a remarkable similarity to what we know of Martian soil and designed a piece wherein plasma screen televisions would be set into the ground, their cover appearing to be a thin sheet of water that displayed images captured by the Martian rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. She recalled being in the control room when Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars. All of the engineers who had worked on the project were there, each one of them only designing a small portion of the robot. Nobody knew exactly how they actually worked, and no one knew exactly where they were until the numbers started coming in. Remember, there are no cameras in space, only data and numbers. The numbers showed that the robots had entered the atmosphere. The numbers showed that the robots had released their parachute. The numbers showed that the robots had landed. The numbers showed that the robots had unzipped themselves from their case and started basking in the sun in order to fully power up. And then?

There are no cameras on space, but, thanks to NASA, there are cameras on Mars.

She gave a Q&A and then left after going ten minutes over. In case you were wondering, by the way, she wore a boxy black suit with a white shirt , and red flats with matching red socks.

Photo: Matthew Piper

My friend and I, quite invigorated from the experience but not yet ready to drive home decided to head over to the famed Scarab Club for their poetry series. We were able to catch the last two poems from the mesmerizing William Copeland, though were sad to have missed the previous poets as we thought the event was from 8-930, not 7-830. The Scarab finished their Silver Medal Exhibition earlier in the week and had debuted a new gallery of work, three of which caught our eyes (unfortunately, they only had the listings from the previous show so I currently do not know who created these works).

  • A doorway with striations of sticks coated in graphite
  • A series of photographs of images from years past (painting, photograph and mural) covered with their modern corollary. An image of Diego Rivera’s “Detroit Industry” mural was covered with a piece of photojournalism, the caption of which announced the opening of a new car plant in Turkey.
  • Paintings on wood and a sculpture that told the tale of a claustrophobic animal cracker with a broken leg.

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The Detroit Film Theater is located at the John R entrance of the Detroit Institute of Arts at John R and Farnsworth. They are open Friday through Saturday and are currently showing the Academy Award Nominated Short Films and Lust for Life starring Kirk Douglas. Vision and Sampson & Delilah start next weekend. Tickets are $7.50 and $6.50 for students and members of the DIA. The full lecture calendar, along with further information on the Detroit Institute of Art including current and upcoming exhibitions can be found on www.dia.org

The Scarab Club is located at 217 Farnsworth across the street from the Detroit Film Theater entrance.  Galleries are free and open to the public Wednesday-Sunday from 12p-5p. They also have weekly life drawing sessions on Thursdays and Saturdays that are free to members and $7.00 to non-members. There are also a number of special events including Third Thursdays and Brown Bag along with Costume Balls and Garden Parties that are member exclusive. In conjunction with WRCJ 90.9 FM, The Scarab Club hosts a monthly night** of chamber music that costs $20 at the door, $18 if ordered in advance and $10 with a student identification. More information about The Scarab Club can be found at www.scarabclub.org

*Laurie Anderson’s Book Club selection is How To Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson. It discusses productivity and its meaning in a world where we are experiencing technological burnout.

**The Scarab Club sponsors and runs the night of chamber music. However, the event only takes place at The Scarab Club every other month. The next night will be March 6 and will take place at The Scarab Club

Note: If you’re hungry after a visit to the DIA, The Scarab Club or anywhere in Detroit’s Cultural Center, I suggest a trip to the Cass Cafe for cheap, good food and drinks along with what is always an eclectic sampling of local art. The Cass Cafe is located at 4620 Cass Avenue at the corner of Forest Avenue.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to email 500 European performance spaces about the European tour of my exciting new piece “Gee, I’m Drunk”

Face Off Liveblog/Loveblog

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Welcome to the Face-Off liveblog open thread! If you’re not familiar with a liveblog/loveblog/open thread, just hang out, watch the show, and comment away! It really is that simple, but I’m sure you already know that.

If you’ve been watching Face Off, you know the deal. Special effects “artists” compete by completing challenges under given time limits, and being ripped apart by a panel of judges. It’s a pretty awesome show, but the absence of Tim Gunn renders it inferior to Project Runway, which incidentally kind of started sucking, but hopefully will be back in awesome action during its next season, but I digress. Like, a lot.

So far this season, they’ve done nude body painting, created aliens from some planet that I guess was made of water, drew/painted/licked on fake tattoos, and something in the first episode that I didn’t watch, so fill in the blanks for me if you like (upon checking the website, it looks like they gave people bug heads). They also slept during challenges, made big boo-boos, bitched, flirted, and made cakes.

As for the contestants, they’re a pretty motley crew, which is to be expected for special effects artists I suppose. I’d love for the producers to throw us someone who is actually unpredictable like a guy who works in a bank and wears a tie to match his socks every day. However, our crew is a pretty colorful bunch and I wouldn’t trade any of them. Except for Tom.

Tom, aka Captain Ego has his own FX shop and I guess actually has somewhat of a career in indie film. Sweet. He has some other interesting things going on I think, but I can’t remember specifics over the sound of his massive ego.
Gage, the token gay cutie with the ear gauges apparently has awesome parents who bought him a special effects magazine when he was a kid because he was terrified of Freddy Kreuger, in an attempt to make him less scared. He was also a protégé of Tom, which Tom was sure to let the audience know in the first episode.

Anthony owns a studio called “Demonic Pumpkins Studio”, which is a pretty kick-ass name. He also won the nude painting challenge in episode 2 and claimed it was “Better than winning any Academy Award”. Aim high, Anthony.
Megan; a 24 year old Pittsburgh suicide girl, has a not-at-all subtle crush on Conor and hasn’t seen a penis in 2 years (true story). She attended Tom Savini’s Special FX school of Makeup, also in Pittsburgh. She’s also way high strung and I predict there will be the throwing or intentional exploding of something messy in the future from her.

Conor is the 40 year old that either likes them young, or is a gigantic tease – maybe both. He apprenticed for the makeup artist for Dick Tracy, although I’m not sure they had scary monsters. Other than Madonna, naturally. He also works on the Vampire Diaries and is an instructor at the Joe Blasco Makeup School. These schools get way creative with their names, don’t they?
Marcel, the 24 year old anti-Top Chef Marcel, already has a shaved head and has yet to use foam in anything. He’s a vet assistant by trade which… wait, what? He seems like a decent guy and actually has skill though, so is he the dark horse of Face Off? Am I even using that term correctly? It’s my first time.

Sam hails from Decatur, GA, where she practices and teaches “permaculture”, creates make up effects – for who or why, I’m not sure, and illustrates the chalk board at her local Trader Joes. I wonder if she’s frenemies with the chalkboard illustrator at Starbucks. She also does corporate art and custom prosthetics and has a hippie mom. Good for her.

Jo is Mila from PR’s hapless doppelganger. She not only fucked up in the first episode, but she painted her model in the nude body painting challenge with latex paint, which the audience learned both has a tendency to peel off of human skin, as well as feeling rather itchy and horrible. The judges liked it anyway though, so she was safe. More recently, she showed blatant jealousy of Megan and Conor’s “relationship” and wore a sour face pretty much the entire series so far.

Finally, there’s Tate, whose mom was an artist and his dad a boxer, which means he’s probably financially supporting them by now. He’s done a few cool things, most notably prop fabrication for Jim Henson studios, which is pretty high on the awesome meter, but he’s not standing out yet to me – the person who has no experience in this stuff beyond going to see movies with makeup effects.

Our host, one McKenzie Westmore has an illustrious career, seemingly due to her family being the Barrymores of the special effects world. Her dad created a whole shit-ton (Yes, that’s a unit of measure, per me) of awesome aliens for Star Trek and her great-grandfather was some other movie guy who was apparently successful enough to get the ball moving on getting the entire family on the Hollywood walk of fame. Also, her dad dresses exactly like my dad, therefore is adorable and by rights should be a republican from western Pennsylvania. Ms. Westmore also has a bit of an acting career, most of which seems forgettable, but apparently she was on NBC’s soap opera, Passions, so there’s that.

Finally, our shrewd judges include Ms. Ve Neill, the brains behind the looks in Pirates of the Caribbean and Edward Scissorhands. That might be a bit of hyperbole, but I like to think of her that way. She also won three Academy Awards, which I hear is kind of a big deal. Also, Glenn Hetrick of Heroes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the FREAKING X-FILES people, and Patrick Tatopoulos, who had a hand in Underworld, Independence Day, and Resident Evil: Extinction.

For tonight’s challenge, Friday the 13th director, Sean Cunningham stops by to see how the contestants do with creating their very own horror movie villains. Something tells me no one is going to make cute little satanic woodland creatures this week. What do you think the over-under is on a murderous clown being created? How about a SEXY murderous clown?

Ok kids, this is our first time and we want to be able to come back, so dispose of your cigarette butts, roaches, and beer bottles properly, leave the place cleaner than we found it, and be sure to write a nice thank-you note to the owners of the joint before you leave. The show starts at 10 Eastern Time on Syfy, so be there or be… well, just be there really. Enjoy the show!

*So the show starts off with the contestants discussing Frank.  Apparently, he’s one of those hate him or love him types.  Being that he slept during two challenges and openly slacked off, I’m not seeing the appeal, but maybe people like that kind of thing?

*Bates motel!  I think I’m seeing the problem with this show.  These contestants need to start wearing khakis and polo shirts.  This whole multiple piercings/tattoos thing clearly doesn’t work.  Except for with the judges, so… never mind.

*Is “Go big or go home” the new, “I’m not here to make friends”?

*Jo does not like Megan.  She really really super extra does not like Megan.  Ask her about it, I’m sure she’ll tell you.  She’s making a disfigured nun, by the way.

*Now Jo’s having her patented insecure time and fishing for compliments.  I’m a horrible person because I would have told her it was terrible just to shake her up.  As a wise man said, sometimes when you go fishing, you catch a boot.

*Now the contestants are pitching their ideas to the PR girl.  They have to come up with a movie name, tagline, and of course, the villain.  Some are good, some are not.  For example, one movie is to be named “HIM”.  You know, in reference to the guy the movie is about.  Alrighty then.

*Conor’s tagline; “Death is just the beginning”.  That’s been used before, hasn’t it?  In other news, Megan’s super annoying.  I’m starting to see Jo’s side.

*So Tom doesn’t know how to make a teddy bear.  Really Tom?  What have you been doing with your life?

*Marcel made a boo-boo.  He almost didn’t get get his silicone out of the mold, which I gather isn’t a good thing because a.) you kind of need it for your villain, and b.) I hear it takes a long time to set .

*So Nicholas Cage is the official go-to guy for shitty action movies now, right?

*Gage made the same boo-boo Marcel did, only his mold isn’t opening.  Megan comes over to “help” and rips the mask.  Gage is understandably not happy.

*Anthony states he’s re-creating things that have already been done.  As I said before – Aim high, Anthony.

*Ah, Tate’s “Him” is a chick.

*Jo’s proud of her nun, but I’m not sure I should be that impressed.  It’s basically a burned woman with buck teeth.

*Anthony threw his away – it blows.  He said it himself.

*Conor’s is just fucked up.  There’s no other way of putting it.

*Sam’s “Baby Doll” is terrifying.  Absolutely terrifying.  They need to make a movie about it.

*Megan has a creepy photographer guy who looks like Marilyn Manson.  Yawn.

*Marcel’s was pretty ok.  So was Gage’s.  He made some deformed fisherman, which looks like, well, a deformed fisherman.

*Tom’s is some sort of murderous teddy bear humanoid holding a human head.  I can’t wait to see how this turns out for him.

*Conor, Sam, and Jo are safe.  Being that Sam’s doll is going to give me nightmares, I thinks she should have won this challenge.

*Gage gets really good praise.  I guess they didn’t hear about the prosthetic that almost wasn’t.

*Oh, Anthony – “I’m more into mental horrors than a brute standing in a doorway hacking people up”.  The looks he got were priceless.  I’d feel bad for him, but I don’t.

*Megan and her floppy hat are being criticized because her scary photographer guy’s mouth can’t move, so basically, he’s useless.

*Tate got good reviews, and when you look at the creation, he really worked his ass off.  Good job, Tate.

*Marcel just made a reference to the limited amount of time he had to complete the costume.  He did NOT just say that after Tate was up there.

*Ok, Tom’s teddy bear axe murderer is pretty damn scary.  Disturbing, even.  He pulled off a win for this one.  Good job, Captain Ego!  Speaking of Captain Ego, he pontificates that Megan should go home (because the judges asked him).  I have a feeling she’s going down.

*You guys, I can’t imagine how Liam Neeson was able to make a movie about losing his wife after actually losing his wife.  My cold, blackened soul feels sad for him.

*Elimination time!  Poor Marcel and his shitty paint job and concept is out.  I’m never right about these things!  This is why I don’t gamble.

Next week on Face Off – a gender challenge of some sort.  May be interesting, it might be not – the only way to find out is to watch!  Or DVR – that works too.  Goodnight!

Jonathan Solo nsfw

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In honor of the most obnoxious holiday ever created, I thought I would showcase an artist who’s work bends traditional gender roles. In the majority of art, no matter the medium, subjects are almost exclusively heteronormative. So when I see the work of an artist like Jonathan Solo my mind whirls. His goal is to make you uncomfortable, to make you think about his work, his subjects.  Adding in his own experiences with death, addiction, and personal struggles, his works are unique to his feelings at specific points in time. About his work in his own words…

“Strict polar gender identifications have been used to control and confine us, even persecute us, for millennia. We are at last breaking out into a fuller appreciation of the breadth and power of the multi-dimensionality of the gender spectrum.

My work explores the vast space between those rigid gender identities, through fine graphite renderings that are then cut and reapplied to birth a new identity. I am moved by the remarkable brave individuals I encounter who are exploring uncharted territories. They risk so much by just expressing their true selves, breaking free from the highly constrained paradigm of male vs. female. Lately I am fascinated by the existence of Intersex people and their unique histories and trajectories.

I blend elements of images from hyper-real sources like pornography and fashion with those of everyday people, juxtaposing female and male aspects. I then lens these with subtle distortions to generate an underlying visual tension in the overall image. After intricately rendering them in graphite on paper, I then excise each key element and reassemble them into the final layered composition. My goal is to evoke both a resonance and confrontation with viewers of my work.”

Art Appreciation – Albrecht Dürer

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The new art must be based upon science — in particular, upon mathematics, as the most exact, logical, and graphically constructive of the sciences.

– Albrecht Dürer - (1471 – 1528)

Self-portrait When you think of the Renaissance, you probably think of da Vinci,   Michelangelo, or another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. You should also think of Albrecht Dürer, and not just because he was pretty face. He was also a theoretical mathematician who applied his findings to his art, making leaps and bounds in representing the scale and proportion of his subjects.

Praying Hands

Ask any art student what the most difficult thing is to draw and 9 times out of 10 you will get “hands” as your answer. Dürer nailed them. And since figurative art apparently wasn’t challenging enough, he painted landscapes, religious iconography, plants, and architecture. He studied animal forms and reproduced them in previously unimagined detail. Not satisfied with simply painting, Dürer created woodcuts and copper engravings to make prints. He made a couple of astronomical maps, too. Oh, and he was a published author on geometry and human proportions in art.

So, yeah. Leonardo et al. were geniuses, but Dürer was geniuser.