Advice for Emerging Artists

From Art Review – ‘How Soon Is Now?’ Exhibition at the Bronx Museum of the Arts – Review – NYTimes.com by Roberta Smith

“How Soon Is Now?” suggests that there is no point in spending time on “professional development” or learning how to advance one’s work in the marketplace if artistic development is not well under way. That requires lots of long, hard looking at all kinds of art, in all mediums, from all periods and cultures. Aspiring artists need to expose themselves to the sheer intensity and variety of art, to learn what they love, what they hate and if they are actually artists at all. New York’s galleries and especially its great museums offer ample opportunity for this kind of self-education, which leads to self-knowledge. Anything is possible when artists set to work knowing they have something they urgently need to say, in a way it hasn’t quite been said before

John Cage’s “Rules for Students and Teachers”

1. Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.
2. General duties of a student–pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.
3. General duties of a teacher–pull everything out of your students.
4. Consider everything an experiment.
5. Be self-disciplined–this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
6. Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.
7. The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.
8. Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.
9. Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.
10. Break rules. Even your own rules. Leave plenty of room for X quantities.

(Via Robert Genn)

Chuck Close: Self Portrait/Scribble/Etching Portfolio, 2000


I went to see This show at Colby College yesterday. Really nice show, nominally based around the etching of the title, whch you can see the whole process here.
Description of the show from the Colby site (since I don’t know how long it’ll stay there)

Chuck Close has been making self-portraits since the late 1960s. These efforts are invariably based on photographs that he makes of himself and famously translates into paintings, drawings, prints, and other media—typically a methodical, labor-intensive process. His investment in such processes forms the subject of his Self-Portrait/Scribble/Etching Portfolio, 2000, a set of twenty-five prints that illustrates the steps required to produce a single, twelve-color etching. It is also the focus of this exhibition, which uses that portfolio as a lens through which to examine the intersections and parallels that structure Close’s artistic ideas. Accompanied by a full-color catalogue featuring a new interview with the artist. Organized in conjunction with the Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University and The Mead Art Museum, Amherst College

It closes at Colby in a couple of weeks,, and I’m not sure if it’s headed anywhere else (it looks like Colby was the last stop on the tour).
This tapestry was also in the show, and is from Colby’s permanent collection:

This is also the 2nd thing on my 101 in 1001 I get to cross off. Yippee!

101 Pushups

is one of my goals in my 1o1 in 1001. Here’s how I’m going to accomplish it:
OneHundredPushups
My initial test was 25 consecutive pushups, which means I fall into category 4 for my age group. The program is supposed to take 6 weeks, and I’ll be starting this Friday.
Take the test, and try this too.

101 in 1001

Today starts Jenny’s and my 101 in 1001 days challenge, which ends May 30, 2011.
basically we have 1001 days to do things on a list of 101 things.
Check out my list by clicking the link in the sidebar over there on the right, under pages. I’ll keep you updated on the progress.

Moved the blog!!!!!!!!1

Yahoo! It’s done, please update your links to show that I’ve moved this thing to my front page.
I’ve set up redirection to make sure that everything isn’t broken, but you probably want to set your links properly.
Thanks.
More later.
K

New theme

Changing my site around, getting a new look. The blog is just the beginning. I’ll be moving it to the front page, so this is what you’ll see when you get to my site, and embedding my gallery, and more.
Keep on coming, and excuse the sawdust.