Baby Art

How I love that little dude. Maybe I'm just a proud father who happens to know a lot about painting materials. No matter, I find the following to be true: Children's artwork is remarkable. As an abstraction, nothing compares to scribblings. Was Jackson Pollock really conscious of his marks? Could he really separate himself from his creation or was he concerned with composition? Who cares, his works' worth millions and my son makes scribblings. But there is something to say for scribblings of a toddler, there was no concern for composition in the creation of my son's work. There was no years of art school telling my son what marks and colors were acceptable and which were not. There was no decades of television, magazines, newspapers, billboards, mail, T-shirts, books, or the opinions of others to influence my son's scribblings. The only influence my son had to make his work was that the panel, like the wall (ugh!), was white. As an artist, my work will never and can never be as pure.

You want more, meet me at the bar and I'll talk about the minimalists and their relationship to my son's scribblings. I'd tell you that my son is a master at abstraction and a master minimalist, and he's loosing his skill everyday he is alive just like the rest of us. But that's a better conversation over a beer.

South Florida Artists Form Voltron

As I stated in a past post, the largest force that kicked my ass off a 9-month World of Warcraft binge was being surrounded by other artists and musicians during my friend's (Noel Heberling's) wedding. Returning from Korea I decided that it was time to find some other inspirational types closer to home. Now I must state that I don't know a soul in Florida. There are a few parents I know from different parenting events, but I know nothing about the local artists or the local art scene.

I tried Meetup.com. For those who don't know, Meetup.com is a great way to find people with similar interests near you. Basically one person creates a sort of "webpage" on Meetup and invites local people to join. The meetup page is perfect for scheduling events in real life. To create a Meetup page costs about $20 a month.

There were a few South Florida meetups already formed, two were outdated and getting ready to expire (the owner didn't want to pay anymore). The third one had very few events and was more geared to professional artists to be that lived about 50 miles away from me. So none were ideal.

My response was to just create my own group and pay twenty bucks. So far, the response has been very good. I have several members and I seem to get a new one every day. Our first Meetup is this Friday at a cool bar I found here in Delray.

In NY, Szalla used to get gatherings of artists to go the Cedar Bar or Kettle of Fish and we would talk till 3am until we were all drunk and full of inspiration. I hope to find that here.

The link to my meetup is http://art.meetup.com/329/

The link to the coolass bar that I plan to bring my group and frequent often myself is http://www.kevroart.com/

And finally the link the MOBA, a funny website I found is http://www.museumofbadart.org/. I plan to try to make a piece worthy of this museum.

Red Vinyl

I am announcing a new series of Crateart titled "the Red Vinyl Series". Works created in the Red Vinyl Series are not for sale. Each piece is gifted to a specific person under the condition that it never be sold nor lended away. This way money has nothing to do with the work, it can't be sold, or bought, or obtained in any way unless I make it specifically for you and give it to you for free. Every piece will be made for a person that inspires me to create work.

The set will have no more than 20 pieces. I would like to do 20 total, but we will see how it works out in the end.

As a former NYC professional artist, I was bombarded with the notion that an artist is, first, a keen marketer of their work. Working int he field of art for many years proved this to be true. With the boundaries of what's good and bad art so fuzzy in our contemporary setting, talent becomes secondary to the ability to convince a client that you are a worthy investment.

In conflict with this thought is the dated notion of the sublime, that art has the ability to transcend itself form just a physical object and becomes a passageway between mankind and the divine. Less boldly stated, that art must be more than a pretty object or a wise investment, that it must be condensed with the passion of the artist and that it must transport the viewer to another place simply with its presence.

Practicality vs. Romanticism.

I have chosen a side with this series, and it is a sure loss. Red Vinyl will never make me famous or pay the rent. They will be created with one person in mind, and with that person's influence on my life as the motivation for its creation. In turn, My intention is to have the pieces bestowed with the greatest value and sentimentality by the person they are gifted to, the one, and only one, intended viewer.

I shall write more on Red Vinyl as I see it form. Below are a few pictures of Red Vinyl #2 (Jason Szalla), in progress.