fanatic fury of fine photography

So, I'm attacking this August art show like Bear Grylls on the side of an ice cliff with nothing to eat but frozen grub eyeballs. So far, I have 18 frames to fill, and I had planned for 20. I think I'll force myself to edit out two images. It's going amazingly well, but the limited space is going to be a buzz kill for my artstardom. I really have enough for a solo show. Actually, I'm pursuing a solo show with this set because it needs to be done. I've got a meeting with Kimber over at Modified Arts after the show goes up. I'm hoping she's into this work like she has been my other stuff. I think I slipped by showing off my newer work that's being shown in Seoul right now, and she may opt to show it instead.

To add to the success irony, that new series of gestural nudes has me up all night building overlay layers in Photoshop CS3 (the best, most addictive visual stimulation since the Purple-Jesus Acid of 1994). Those will be coming soon. I don't want to build too much momentum, overriding the huge set of documentary-ish photos I just spoke of.

Anyway, framing those 18 prints and rewriting my artist's statement is all that is left, besides actually hanging the work. It is going to be a great show, my first time being paired with Farrell Yancy.

If you know of any Phoenix based photographers looking for a gallery to show in - send them my way! We are reviewing portfolios soon to fill a vacancy at Gallery 8.

My fellow Phoenix artstars Kris Sanford and Brendan Regan just had very successful shows up at Eye Lounge and the Kitchenette, respectively. I'm becoming part of a pretty cool club in Phoenix. My roommate and beloved friend Jen Laffoon just had her first solo show in NYC. She shmoozed with some super artstars up there. It's ironic how small of a world the photography gang inhabits.

Anyway, enough of this bullshit. I swear that the promised flood of preview images will be up soon. I just keep getting sidetracked with the printmaking.

Miami, Arizona

the art of being an artist

Being an artist is only around 20% about making art, and 30% thinking about how or what to make. Another 30% is marketing yourself, and much of this effort is futile. I'm going to say that the next 15% is drumming up resources to keep making the art, and the last 5% is reaping the benefits, like having gallery exhibitions.

I just spent a few hours trying to round up some contacts over the internet. I don't know how anyone did it before the web. Of course, back then I think there was less competition too. These days everyone and their eleven year old niece consider themselves photographers. Since the advent of Live Journal and Deviant Art, bad fetish photographers and cliche goth-artists have now started considering themselves true artists. That's the thing about Post-modernism that irks me - 'bad' is now considered an aesthetic choice. For millennia, skill was a limiting factor to weed out incapable artists. Now incapable artists are able to squeeze right in with brilliant artists, since art is so subjective.

Since I am on a rant, I would like to say that people suck. I have found that most people are willing to do and say anything to keep from admitting that they were wrong. I learned long ago that if you just admit you made a mistake, people are very forgiving. When you lie and blame others, it's obvious and you look foolish. I wish everyone could accept this. Enough of that, though. I promise that a lot of good artwork is on it's way!

a question, an answer

Someone asked, 'should we legalize opium?'. Here's my answer. You may note a hint of sarcasm:

No, we should continue to waste billions fighting a 'drug war' that has produced no results. We should continue to send recreational users to prison, where they become hardened criminals and get introduced to harder drugs. We should continue to support violent foreign drug cartels who kill not only US citizens who get in the way, but resort to things like slave labor to produce the most profit. We should lie to our children about the nature of drugs so that when they eventually do experiment, they believe nothing we say. We should ensure a certain level of instability in the drugs, so that many casual users are poisoned or OD, instead of offering a true dose alternative. We should continue to force the price of drugs to be outrageous, so that addicts must resort to crime to continue their habit. We should keep needles away from users, so that they resort to sharing gear and get infected with HIV. We should definitely not create a legal alternative that we could tax in order to provide money for rehab and educational programs. We should bury our heads in the sand and pretend that what we've been doing for the last forty years is working.