... but then came to realise that art is not a cleverness contest. It is not one's capacity to be inventive. It is really an honesty contest ... the capacity to truly be that thing that you are.
Ben Ortner.
Ran Ortner paints the most extraordinary paintings.
I would love to live in a room with his work there on the wall, reminding me of the sea that I love, the sea I'm so far from now.
Here's a documentary (in progress).
Ran Ortner Trailer (documentary in process) from Todd Holland on Vimeo.
Taking power as an artist means going from beggar to partner. Artists who are strong partners thrive. They find resources, connections, and audiences. They don’t wait for opportunities; they create opportunities. Everyone we deal with is a partner (not a parent). Funders, presenters, museums, record labels, and critics are all partners. When we step up as responsive, responsible partners, we can go anywhere.
Simonet, extracted from his book, Making Your Life as an Artist - a guide to building a balanced, sustainable artistic life.
Every artist should read this.
Really. It's that important.
As Val wrote when I posted the link on Facebook, Good resource and point of view with concrete actions to take. They need to give this to students in school.
Val Oliver, an Originator/Creator/Writer/Director/Producer.
Making art will never be an entirely reasonable, rational pursuit. Excess, immersion, wildness, and obsessiveness can all fuel our work. But that doesn’t have to be the way we deal with all aspects of our lives.
Protect the wildness of your art practice. Keep the radical parts radical by cutting out the chaos.
Sustainable means your life can work over the long term. A lot of artists’ lives are built for 23-year-old single, frenetic, healthy, childless workaholics. That doesn’t last. Our lives change and our needs change.
Sustaining is radical.
(Starving is not.)
I'm almost sure I have things to say ...
I was accepted by the NYC gallery, as one of their photographers but I couldn't afford them. There was a lot of money involved and, in the end, it seemed more about money than art. I would have loved working with them but by the time Gert and I reached the end of the contract, it was clear. And so very over.
Today a client ... a friend, the lines often blur, sent me a pdf of the book she's been writing. It's full of my photographs from that time when I was working with her, having some of the most excellent adventures and wandering the world, photographing so many friendly and talented artists.
So I'm excited about that.
And I won a prize today. Last Friday, I almost couldn't breathe for stress because I was two weeks behind on my rather intensive marketing course. I sat here at the computer, Saturday, Sunday ... Monday, and mostly caught up. And somewhere along the way, I posted news of my one-day photography workshop for women. It sold out in 12 hours. So I won the prize that I had taken no notice of last week. I was 'that' far behind. I shared the winning with Chris, the one we all knew would win.
I transcribed two Genova interviews this afternoon, then wrote them up as short pieces for a most exciting new Ligurian website launching soon. Photos were sent. And now for the rest. These were the shortest interviews.
It's been slightly manic of late. Life is humming. I'm attending a Māori hāngi in the months ahead. Photos and stories shall surely be posted because I can see how that event might become one of those big old delicious stories, out there on Flanders Fields.
There's talk of Norway and a favourite friend at the end of summer. Lots of photography. And I'm organising a series of 5-day workshops in Genova. If you have ever wanted to work with me then this is the one because I have a truly superb group of Genoese people willing to work with me. However my webpage is still under construction. It's all there, just not the 'Buy' button nor dates. I'm currently looking at July, earlier if there's time for anyone to be interested, then September, October, November.
However, I will get that under control in the days ahead.
Amy Turn Sharp is one of the poets I love best and she has finally published her first collection. I wrote. I have ordered. News of that will follow. Kay McKenzie Cooke is another favourite poet. She has also published a new book. I want to get there too. And Ren Powell is writing and will publish again, I'm sure of it.
Life is good. It's slightly surreal. I'm busy. I'm babysitting Miss 9 for this week-long crocus vacation, and sure enough, there are some little yellow beauties out there in the garden. And in-between everything else, I'm reading my way through a most excellent book ... the Man Booker prize-winning book, The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton. I shall be sad when it comes to an end.
What art does is to coax us away from the mechanical and towards the miraculous. The so-called uselessness of art is a clue to its transforming power. Art is not part of the machine. Art asks us to think differently, see differently, hear differently, and ultimately to act differently, which is why art has moral force.
Ruskin was right, though for the wrong reasons, when he talked about art as a moral force. Art is not about good behaviour, when did you last see a miracle behave well? Art makes us better people because it asks for our full humanity, and humanity is, or should be, the polar opposite of the merely mechanical.
We are not part of the machine either, but we have forgotten that. Art is memory — which is quite different [from] history. Art asks that we remember who we are, and usually that asking has to come as provocation — which is why art breaks the rules and the taboos, and at the same time is a moral force.
Jeanette Winterson.
Anyway, the photograph below ... I took the longest way to school today and discovered this beautiful mural in the back of the city somewhere. I slipped inside the gate and took it.
The story of Botart de Amberes follows but here's a shot of the five art barrels at the 2013 event.
The practice of any art isn’t to make a living, it’s to make your soul grow.
Kurt Vonnegut.
Kurt's quotes seemed like an answer to my angst about money and art.
Meanwhile, this singer is making me smile. Most particularly, her song, 'You and I'.
I love the lines: let's get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France
Let's get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance.
I was out early this morning, 5 celsius, a clear-sky day but the air hurts the lungs we decided. Cold or pollution, or both, we couldn't decide.
I'm using Frances Mayes book, Under the Tuscan Sun, to pull me through the quieter moments. The tram was packed coming home but I was off in my mind and wandering with her in Sovana, where she wrote of being in ancient places, We can walk here, the latest little dots on the time line. Knowing that, it always amazes me that I am intensely interested in how the map is folded, where the gas gauge is pointed, whether we have withdrawn enough cash, how everything matters intensely even as it is disappearing.
I can never predict what I might find out in the streets of Genova, Italy.
Never. It seems that all is possible. Today the light was strong and it was hot. Really unbelievably hot but I am adjusting to it. Loving it even ... after the long Belgian winter that was.
I couldn't resist attempting to capture something of the artworks found in the narrow caruggi (alleyways) here in the ancient heart of Genova.
"The seed is here. It will only grow. I don't believe that anyone can stop it."
Judi Brennan has been a successful clay artist for many years. She has won several pottery awards including a merit in the prestigious Fletcher Challenge Exhibitia and has her work all around the world.
Located at the sublime L'Art'e Cafe and Gallery in Taupo, it turns out that every detail is fairly much sublime. Judi Brennan is the artist responsible and you can read more about her over here.
And so worth a few minutes out of your day.
Don't make people pay for music, says Amanda Palmer: Let them. In a passionate talk that begins in her days as a street performer, she examines the new relationship between artist and fan.
Ren posted a message on my facebook wall.
I needed to add it here ... a reminder for those days when I would rather voyage than stay.
We didn't push the limit; we just showed that they were further than anyone thought.
JR
And one year later ... 'Street artist JR made a wish in 2011: Join me in a worldwide photo project to show the world its true face. Now, a year after his TED Prize wish, he shows how giant posters of human faces, pasted in public, are connecting communities, making change, and turning the world inside out. You can join in at insideoutproject.net
Any time I raise anything on stage, I ask Di Mackey to join the project. Her photographic work is magnificent and I love her presence: her portraits are stunning, they expose intimacy, humor, and pensiveness; her photographs capture the space, the movement, human interaction deliciously, in a way that one feels invited to an event long after it disappeared from the public scene.
In all her unobtrusiveness when working with the camera, Di is great fun to hang out with, the artists, scholars, thinkers, curators of our big Berlin exhibition highly appreciated her, and when working together in Cairo, Istanbul, Berlin, or wherever else, I enjoy her kindness, humor, and delightful presence.
I miss her at the time when we are “in between projects.” One of the first things I will do when starting a huge new project is to ask Di whether she wants to do the photographic work. I hope she will.
Shulamit Bruckstein, curator, director of TASWIR projects / ha’atelier.
"But the moment I read Van Gogh's letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it. And Van Gogh's little drawing on the cheap note paper was a work of art because he loved the sky and the frail lamppost against it so seriously that he made the drawing with the most exquisite conscientiousness and care. ”
Brenda Ueland, from If Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit.
I found this extract this morning, just as I had set up my work station for the day, down here in the big country kitchen, and I thought it was surely something to share.
I have Terri Windling's blog in my google reader and most days, she has something like this to share with whoever cares to read her. She is a writer, artist, and book editor interested in myth, folklore, fairy tales, and the ways they are used in contemporary arts.
“Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure....Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative, and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.”
Maya Angelou
"Artists come together with the clear knowledge that when all is said and done, they will return to their studio and practice art alone. Period. That simple truth may be the deepest bond we share. The message across time from the painted bison and the carved ivory seal speaks not of the differences between the makers of that art and ourselves, but of the similarities. Today these similarities lay hidden beneath urban complexity -- audience, critics, economics, trivia -- in a self-conscious world. Only in those moments when we are truly working on our own work do we recover the fundamental connection we share with all makers of art. The rest may be necessary, but it's not art. Your job is to draw a line from your art to your life that is straight and clear."
- David Bayles & Ted Orland (Art and Fear)
found over on The Drawing Board.
I imagine that the person parking their bike might not have been as excited as I was about this quiet space here in the city of Genova.
I love the colour and textures of that pale golden building. I love that I always find this particular space by chance, while wandering on my way someplace else.
Light is everything here. There is the way the city looks in that deep rich late afternoon autumn light. I photographed a few city buildings last week, simply because the light had changed how I remembered the cityscape along via XX Settembre. I get excited over a blue-sky day and the promise of light in those difficult to reach parts of this tightly-built city. Then a stormy sky promises quite another effect, as the beautiful roofs quietly reveal their full beauty against a backdrop of clouds.
Loving Genova ...