Cattle Drive

In June of this year, I went with 3 friends (Steve Shurtleff, David Knutsen, Shawn Ryan) to Idaho and went on a cattledrive at the 4-D ranch. It was one of the best things I have ever done in my life. Here's a little video to commemorate it.

art that has no power

i'm in philly right now visiting some friends for a week. jack the dog is chewing on a bone at my feet. holly and jenny are talking about soup.

holly and i went to the philadelphia art museum yesterday. went walked around til our legs hurt and had to sit down with weak coffee in the museum cafeteria. There are some really great pieces of art at this museum. really famous works that i saw all through my undergraduate degree on slides in classes that i usually had a ten minute nap in every day. if you come here, you should definately check it out.

a couple things struck me from that experience.

one

being a maker of art, it's weird to see a bunch of people pay money and in their leisure time, walk around and look at what people have created. i think what gets me about it is that art seems to be made in boring, lonely places where nobody is watching... namely your studio. it's not a glamorous process. it's just... well it is what it is. for me, it's just what i do. and that process is mixed up with all the doubt, triumphs, hopes of making a living and being profound... yadda yadda yadda.... it's just what i do. it's not an event. i don't think i'm making myself very clear. i guess one of the other things that i felt as well as that being an artist isn't necessarily your parents first wish at financial success for you. i remember talking to a co-worker of my mom's (a doctor) as i was doing my undergrad, and i told him that i was thinking about being an art major. he looked at me and said i should go into business. (nice.) but that's one opinion that i seem to come across a lot. being an artist isn't an easy road and there is not a lot of financial pay off... and along with all that there isn't a general audience urging you on. in fact it feels like a more general cheer is to get a real job and be responsible. so to see people pay and gawk at pieces of work that artists have created as a sort of entertainment... it was just a really wierd experience. i guess it made me wonder if all my hard work would have the same response later on in life.

which leads me to

two

out of all the art that i saw... there wasn't much that really blew my mind. now this could be to blame for my sore legs and possibly short attention span, but nothing really got me while i stood in the presence of it. not like music does at least. you go to a concert... it's a very emotional experience. i want the visual to be like that. i have had some experiences like that with viewing a visual piece. (and i will say that this was my own opinion on one day of my life... so it's not an a across the board statement of belief). and i have liked those pieces i've seen. in fact, the day before we came across the lineage gallery and saw a show by sam flores. very cool stuff. but i guess nothing that day really moved me. it made me think about something my friend jeremy said to me about painting and what to paint. he said that we should paint what we want to see hanging in a gallery. "when you walk into a gallery, what do you want to see?"

i guess this is my burden... task even as an artist. maybe not for others, but just for me.
i do think this will take me a greater part of my life though. this causes me to sigh, yes... but it makes me want to try as hard as i can to accomplish this.

what does art with power look like?

i'm dumb

here is a little meaningless video....