During the insanity of the holiday season - please remember to slow down and use caution when driving around during the holidays (or really anytime). Think before acting and remember that bad things CAN happen to you. No store sale is worth riding in a MedFlight helicopter.
As someone who has had a LOT of experience with things going really bad - really fast - I can tell you that a healthy dose of caution goes a long way to preventing tragedy. Especially check to make sure that you have functioning smoke detectors, charged fire extinguishers and a carbon monoxide detector. Fire and smoke move like a deadly cloud of steam. And, unlike the movies, you will not be able to fight your way through smoke or fire - you’ll just die. So make sure you have advance warning, an emergency evacuation plan, and the ability to stop small fires before they turn into big ones.
Most importantly, do not let the commercials fool you into thinking that this holiday season is about how much stuff you can give someone you care about. If you’re a dead soulless, money seeking greedy bastard of a person - a diamond ring isn’t going to change that. All the money, video games, cars, and Ipods in the world won’t make up for never seeing your family. Life isn’t a shopping spree where the winner is the person who has grabbed the most shiny objects. So take some time to priorities what is truly important to you this season. And be careful as well as full of care.
Stay safe.
I’m always amazed at people who tell me they aren’t *allowed* to unionize. Because back in the day - when unions were effective and being formed the government was just SO ok with them. Police beat and shot strikers and burned down their union halls. People like Mother Jones braved the most that wealthy industrialists could throw at them and STILL kept going. Unions could benefit everyone who works. A union isn’t just for blue color workers - even wage earning cubicle workers deserve the protection a union can provide.
And I mean a REAL union. Think IWW not AFLCIO. A union that is working for a collective goal rather than the enrichment of the union bosses. Unfortunetly, such a thing seems to only occur after workers are starved into the streets for a decade or so - THEN people wake up and begin to organize in spite of the government telling you not to.
Of course a capitalist government is going to tell you not to unionize. The biggest threat (next to armed insurrection) to a consumer supported capitalist regime is a work stoppage on a national scale. Lots of organized people withholding their labor and consumer cash can bring fast results. But the government and business interests aren’t going to tell its ok.
BTW the image is yet another reasonably priced poster available here. (hey its still a capitalist system, the art isn’t free until the food is.)
Yeah, I added some to the original illustration… I’m not really happy with the way the CYMK was down-converted to low-res RGB. Always a touchy operation - the contrast really didn’t work out the way I’d like. The print version is all-good though.
So if any of you want to go here and contribute to my future legal defense fun- umm… escape fund… That’d be great.
I’m updating the zazzle store with new illustrations as soon as I can, so the supply should continue until the site gets pulled. Which, if experience is any judge, should happen pretty soon really.(My “fine art” is NOT listed on that site. Just the illustration work).
The above illustration is a rough sketch of where the next series of paintings will be going. I’m tentatively scheduling a show in about eight to nine months from now somewhere around Madi or possibly Chicago. As you can see, I’ll be merging political beliefs with artwork and should end up making the milk-drinking-suburban-mommy set very angry. Although they already do everything they can to stop me from publicly showing my work that features nudes. The NEXT bunch of paintings touch some very raw nerves in the US. But it’s stuff that needs to be thought about and addressed - if that pisses off the hand-wringers AND the fascists then I know I’m doing my job.
But who will buy them you ask? Well, don’t worry about that. The number one way to NOT make a living off of your art is to follow the crowd and do nice safe “art.” Take no risks and finish that series of colored pencil drawings of puppies in floppy hats and see how much you can get for them. If you’re lucky you’ll sell em at around $00.45 per square inch. See cutesy fluffy work is not competing against me. No. It’s competing against Hallmark (crown), and every other greeting card company and Asian hack art sweatshop that can churn out cavity provoking cuteness in visual form. And THEY are good at it. You are most probably not. Plus you have to add in all of the other Visual Muzak painters that clog the internet with similar styles. While my work is controversial sometimes, its done to a perfection level not usually seen in acrylics (in fact most people can’t tell them from oils) AND they have a deeper meaning to them. This tends to appeal to the people who pay living wages to artists. I prefer dealing with that type of collector.
It may smack of elitism, and it sort of is. But I really don’t want to spend my time catering to people who pay hundreds of dollars on throw-away garbage from Wal-Mart but will argue over a professionally done life sized original painting’s price. Good riddance to the lot of you.
I’ll keep you posted on the series progression.
We’ve dumped our relationship with the online Boundless Gallery site. A steady decline in quality of the site and artwork listed was bad enough. But the site has changed it’s model from commission based to artist fee based. Effectively that means it turned into a sunday-horsey-picture-painter vanity site.
It is easier to make loads of money off of wanna-be artists who don’t take the effort to market their own work. These sorts of sites eventually turn into overflowing pits of mediocre amateur art all priced at below overhead prices. They sell subscriptions to artists instead of selling art to collectors. I’m not interested in supporting that sort of thing so we ditched em like a bad prom date.
It’s a shame that most of the online venues for art sales - a good concept that still has promise - have been dragged under by the weight of the globe’s sunday painters and the parasite vanity gallery business models that feed off of them. Unless you are a collector of factory based chinese “art” or zero-contrast landscapes done in paint-by-number style - you’re out of luck online.
Anyway, another one bites the dust.
I have, after some thought, decided to stop putting up with an entire class of the “arts” community. This weekend I finally decided to no-longer tolerate a certain brand of earnestly annoying sunday painter. You know the kind, they’re the sort who frequent Wet Blanket and congratulate each other on selling a 30×18 watercolor of their cat for $20 on EBAY.
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So one of my chronic illnesses has the potential to make me blind (you get issued at least one chronic illness at the start of your artistic career. It’s important to get a good one as opposed to settling for a mere addiction). Having just returned from the eye doctor, I am happy to report that my vision is unharmed. Although, for the short term I can’t see a thing since my eyes are dilated to saucer size. Probably not the time to start painting then huh?
To the few people who have asked questions about our recent fire - and the lack of information about it…
Currently we have assembled a legal team in conjunction with myself and a couple of investigators have nearly completed the preliminary investigatory phase of our response. We have interviewed witnesses to the events on the neighboring rooftop deck, examined evidence and crosschecked the statements of the neighbors against said information. Oddly, their statements indicating the fire was set by ninjas in the dead of night without witnesses have not been corroborated. I’m not going to say much else except… If you start a major structure fire out of outright stupidity and negligence you probably shouldn’t get drunk and tell, anyone who will half-ass listen, all of the real details including how you totally got off without any real consequences. Because one of the people listening might be a private investigator who is diligently recording you. I’m just saying.
Currently we are negotiating with an insurance company representing one of the neighbors. While we are cautiously optimistic about the results of that constructive discussion, we are nevertheless, preparing our legal case against them. I am confident that will not be necessary. After we negotiate a “number” with said insurance company, our representatives will be contacting the other neighbors in an official capacity. I anticipate that “contact” will occur via Sheriff’s Deputy.
I am fairly sure this will come as a bit of a shock to them, as they are under the impression that we’ve forgotten them. Rest assured, if you burn my building down at 3am after setting a package of illegal fireworks off on a rooftop, I will be paying considerable attention to you. Patient, diligent, detailed attention.
At some point, we’ll be able to get more detailed about stuff, but as long as there is legal action in process we can’t post lots of updates on it.
Anything with “render” in it is touchy these days. Why, I remember the quaint old days when “rendition” did not mean - drug, strip, diaper, jumpsuit and fly a brown guy to a secret location for all-expense-paid simulated drowning fun.
The render I’m going to talk about is a design term. One you should be aware of, especially in the following usage:
Designer: “Yeah, so our team decided on a naive illustration combined with some hand-rendered lettering. That will be $5,000. Or actually, $10,000 American.”
You see, “Hand-Rendered Lettering” means “handwritten.” Of course, calligraphy is hand-rendered. But generally if someone uses “hand-rendered” they’re not talking about scrollwork and illuminated lettering. Especially along with “naive.” Otherwise known as: “God awful bad.” But intentially so.
So that above line would actually mean: “Our team decided on a “God awful bad illustration combined with some “handwritten” lettering. It should look like a junior highschool student council sub-committee did the job. That will be $50,000 American.”
Obviously, this can be a good thing in some cases. I’m willing to concede that some things done in a handwritten naive style end up being great. I have done the job of an Designer/Art Director and do NOT envy them in ANY way. (shudder). Still, it comes off as a little conceited and possibly disingenuous to say “hand-rendered” instead of “handwritten.” Big difference out of very few words. Unless you use the word “masticate” in a non-juvenile/nerdy context you probably shouldn’t mix your hands with any rendering.
I just wanted to clear that up since our language is adding new applications of “render” faster than we can keep up with it. That will be $80,000 American.
The dancer grows into the tree - the landscape seems to be growing/dying towards the creepy but crisp desolation of fall and Halloween. So a couple different possible meanings to this one.
Major website update completed… Hopefully not much is broken. 