art ethics.

Here’s something I haven’t talked about in a while if only due to distraction. After my yearlong hiatus from all things seriously photographic I’m getting the itch again. I remembering how much I love painting because it is so physical and ancient, and im experiencing a bit of trepidation about this new venture in the world o’ art that begins come October. I know I want to try but I’m not exactly sure how its all really panning out with me. The more I think on it, the more important it seems that I should continue to evaluate the way I feel about digital art and art in general as a means to an end. I just don’t want to find myself two years from now up in a dark room posterising a pill bottle in photoshop and using font to convey things like "betchya cant eat just one"

What I would really love to do is book covers, or magazines. I think this has come up because it has occurred to me that I’m getting in to the business of coercing people, which prompts me to think… is all beauty coercion?

Is all allure inherently trickery? Can we not avoid persuasion at the taste and smell of something exquisite? We think and feel and eat with our eyes primarily, and so, i have to try to navigate the ethics of this new thing that will possibly become my life.

You have to get past a lot of tape before you really start to become prolific and my website is a bunch of old shit by now. Well not shit, but old, at least in terms of what im capable of i think. So i suppose im a little concerned that i will, as i and so many others inevitably do, begin to hate craft out of frustration and burn out. It is here that I assume I will glance back at Colorado and say “if only i had chosen you.” But I guess the grass I always greener.

So if I’m to remain on the up and away from the trickery of modern advertising, I need to ask myself a few questions. What am I doing this for? How does this make the world a better place? Does this help only rich people and coerce only consumers? Or is it some kind of beacon for people who love things to be beautiful. Is it its own art form, or just a perversion of a few? I am now trying to count all of the times in my life that an ad has helped me in some way... cricket cricket.

Well I do have to say that have always appreciated a beautiful cover to a good book, or a fantastic layout in a magazine, or a good deepened cover photo, or a flawless piece of packing, namely bottles, specifically liquor and wine bottles....GASP...they’re so pretty. Okay, so there is some redemption to this I think, it’s just kind of under the radar.

right?

I mean there is something to living in and around and using art. Even just being in Morgan’s parent's respective houses the other day (I wish I had photographed more but I only got the one photo) was like this fantastic...thing? An art museum really...I mean, they ARE just things, but it makes you feel a certain way to live in and through and around art. Its like the reason that people play fantastic music in the backdrop, and the reason...if they’re fuckin’ lucky, have a Rauchembourg or two hanging on the back wall. It just and experience to live with art, its the same way its an experience to live with a person, or with an instrument. Its does something to your cognition and makes life generally more enjoyable if not just different. The more you live with a painting, the more it means to you, you start to attach memories and feelings to it and it evolves overtime as you look at it. Until one day, its just...part of your life. The space you live in is not the evidence of your life, but rather the skeleton that your life fleshes out. It sort of makes me feel like a hermit crab. A stylish hermit crab.

Its hard not having anything that is ever really certain sometimes, there are things that are certain for the era, and when the times are changin’ way too fast and you feel disoriented it can be exhilarating and it can be discombobulating. Its also exhausting constantly debating yourself, I suppose what I would like to give myself the permission of doing is to say that there is nothing wrong with taking a step back from self evaluation and self searching and change and constant upheaval and just stand there for a minute in your own happiness. It sometimes healthy to challenge and to let go of your stagnancy, and it sometimes healthy to stand still in your happiness. Be still and know that i’m content in this current phase, and i don’t wish to be disturbed for the moment. There is some sort of power in saying, “This is true right now.” Its true that I love you right now, and its true that the peach I ate this morning was sweet, and its true that all of the things I currently believe and feel are good and okay for now. And there is not shame in telling the guy next to you who is debating your every feeling and inclination to just shove it. You don’t always have to be something for everyone, and you don’t always have to question everything. Some things are better left untouched, while others thrive when moved. For now, I’m feeling good where I am, and im just gonna take a breath. I sometimes and lately have been afraid of the person im becoming. Perhaps it is here that change is a bit rapid and often for the moment. There’s nothing wrong with taking 5. Everyone needs a break.

Art and design are very ephemeral. It’s very hard to explain why and what art does, I don’t think anybody really knows why they do it, except that they just have to. It somehow salvages life for me in a way that I cant very accurately explain. And for this reason, I believe that art is a type of faith. Something that appears to you that you trust to do what it always has. And although it lets you down, quite often more than not, it keeps living and it keeps coming back. It is also very hard to say what art even is! I think, we identify with art in this way: because we alike art are not sure of what we are but endure in the absence of certainty. Though painful, we keep changing. A whole mess of success and failure that really has no rhyme or reason that can be attached to it, and yet it is this great romance that leads us on in a very Sisyphean way. The great sorrow and the great joy of life, is finding out why the fuck we do anything that we do at all. What is the what? What is the question? What's it to you, and what’s it to me? Maybe this is why we keep calling it up for coffee. It has no basis, no concrete definition, no practical implications as far as survivalists can prove, constantly evolving, does not have a specific or even sometimes reasonable way of being reached, and doesn't even always show up when it says it will. Furthermore, offers no guarantee of giving you anything in return necessarily. Art is a big fuckin’ flake.

I suppose the nirvana of this task is finding the "sweet spot" where you can create with the acceptance that what you toil over may be meaningless, with the iron clad hope that it is not. Maybe its worth it or not, but its definitely rewarding. Inherently accessible to all who posses a pulse, art is the peoples science, it is for everyone and by everyone alive, but sanctioned as the quiet obsession of an elite few.

a site that is so much fun its almost as much of a time suck as facebook:

http://www.sweet-station.com/blog/

the unframed awesome watercolor/crayon drawing in mo's room at her dad's house: