Tag: Drawing

There’s a electrical power relay I sometimes drive by. It’s in an old section of town and it’s amazing how the towers and wires seem to sprout out of nowhere. It’s beautiful in its linear qualities. I remember Robert Crumb commenting in Terry Zwigoff’s documentary that he had to very deliberately take photos of this kind of thing for reference. You’re not supposed to notice it. It wasn’t designed to be pleasing. It just “is”.

you will not be rescued: this very strange thing about tumblr is the way it objectifies art and…

emiljafrances:

this very strange thing about tumblr is the way it objectifies art and other objects, completely removing them from their context. one stupid doodle in my notebook has gotten a thousand reblogs in less than 24 hours, and people make comments as if there’s no original person attached to it, as if…

Now that I’ve had a few drawings get out into the Tumblrverse and garner large numbers of notes I suppose I could share an observation. You see, the very nature of tumblr is something akin to a game of “telephone”. One can get 300 notes on an image and it’s unlikely that any of those people will end up following you. 

Tumblr is a free art gallery where the patrons don’t look at the information cards beside the art. I think that to put work up in this gallery, one starts functioning more as an artisan than an artist.  The process has more to do with what a product designer or craftsperson goes through than a studio portraitist or autobiographer. After the first re-blog, your work stands only on its merits. The artist mindset or story does not matter to the consumer in this case – only if it functions properly within a context.  A million people own an article from Ikea, only ten of them really care that it was designed by a particular person.

And this is all fine!  I happened to see emiljafrances’ Existential Crisis work and immediately recognized its mass-appeal. An image of an agitated young woman with tattoos and septum piercing accompanied by the words “Existential Crisis 2011” was MADE for this kind of blog platform.  It transcends any personal meaning the artist associates with it and is immediately and completely absorbed into the culture that identifies with the image and sentiment.

The implications are simple. Either make posts that are personally satisfying to you the artist and disregard what becomes of them, or pretend you are designing something for the mass market. Both can be satisfying outlets.

you will not be rescued: this very strange thing about tumblr is the way it objectifies art and…

(TW – this is not a cheerful post)

“I can’t find my ring!" she said.     (”It’s not down the sink. Don’t worry.“)     

I always find it. It’s never lost. I’m good at finding things. She is reading Leaves of Grass. "I like Whitman…”, she says. It’s an old copy with the names of three previous owners inside the cover.  She wrote her own name there in steady script back in 2002.  But it’s as if she’s reading through a veil. The words only pass before her eyes before being forgotten immediately. The act of reading is comforting but it must be like staring at a white wall trying to discern a sign painted over long ago. 

“I am exact and merciless, but I love you— there is no escape for you.

Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you just feel it,

I do not argue, I bend my head close and half envelop it,

I sit quietly by, I remain faithful.

I am more than nurse, more than parent or neighbor,

I absolve you from all except yourself spiritual bodily, that is

  eternal, you yourself will surely escape…”

"I like Whitman…”, she says.

It’s been a long time since I last worked in a baseball glove.  We’ve decided to play catch which is something she’s never done before.  I bought her a nice Rawlings mitt. There’s that amazing smell. It’s timeless. Hockey equipment just reeks. Glove leather smells of summer afternoons.