Permission To Suck

Heightening or Cheating the Creative Encounter

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Artistic creativity is an act of intimacy or not; it’s genuine art or it's artifact. Learn to manipulate tools and their crafty mechanisms so they become secondary or not.

The Vernacular Photograph an Accidental Masterpiece

Thursday, May 6, 2010

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Like colloquial speech is to literature, vernacular photography is any type that isn’t intended as art. "There are no accidental masterpieces in painting, but there are accidental masterpieces in photography." - Chuck Close

Handiwork: One Man’s Story about Rediscovering His Art

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

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Nate Sheaffer relates the re-awakening of his creative love for a craft he left behind years ago: "Ten years ago, my life changed forever. Early in 1999, I lost my glassblowing business to offshore competition, followed eight months later by the suicide of my closest brother."

Paul Rand: “That son-of-a-bitch. He was so good …”

Thursday, April 29, 2010

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"Everyone has to learn too much in too short a time. The only way of learning is to do it. There is no shortcut. You need to do a lot of things over and over to get better and better ... Time is short, art is long" - Saul Bass

Ube’s Ice Cream Shop

Monday, April 12, 2010

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All Creatives will relate to artist Ube Urban. I got an immediate warm feeling when I watched him paint a bicycle in Jake Wiens' video; I know what it's like to be immersed in the flow of creating. The idea has been captured so the remainder is letting the gun do it's thing.

The Modern Kitsch Experience

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

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Defining art has never been all that controversial; it’s the "good" part that carries the debate. New tools have made discernment tougher still. It’s not all that hard to make the work appear good through imitation or mechanized craft and then assert its worthiness.

Technology + Art :: Love, Hate & Ansel Adams

Monday, March 1, 2010

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Film delayed gratification long enough so those behind a camera needed to see the image in their minds eye and exhaust possibilities to make it happen at the moment of exposure. Technology has changed that – call it postvisualization.

You Gotta Admire Them Skills

Monday, November 9, 2009

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Skill is math already proven. Not only are skills easy for culture to appreciate, our education from pre-K is about skill development and learning the rules. We have standards, objectives and tests. Skill is linear, owning them isn’t unique except to say one has more than another or that their skills are good. This post includes a segment of a Charlie Rose interview with painter Chuck Close.

Don’t Bore Me with Genius

Monday, October 19, 2009

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The woman’s exceptional; mostly paints oil on canvas. She’s an invention of art school, but failed to graduate because of a hasty yearlong sojourn to Italy. A return to the states was followed by recurrent menial jobs as she continued to paint without gainful discovery. Dull. No combination of adjectives and adverbs would change the [...]

Talking with Photographer – Bruce DeBoer

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

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In 1970, a 12 year old boy enthusiastically picked up the family Kodak Instamatic and started pointing it at anything. Or was it everything – hard to tell – but after only one twelve exposure cassette, he was running to the corner Drug for processing. Every photographer knows the ecstasy of repeated shutter clicks whether [...]