Now several hours later, something hasj ust dawned on me whether I like other peoples art or not doesn't matter, what matters is what art is all about.

It's simple:

Art (in whatever form) gives the viewer the permission to stand an stare at it. Doesn't matter whether you like it or not. In this world how often do we get that opportunity to do that - just stare? We are so busy or so fed up or looking at the ground instead of all around us (where true beauty is every day) we are scolded by our parents at an early age - "Don't stare at the gentleman!" - yet at that age we are prepared to stare, we need to stare to soak everything up, to learn, to build our knowledge but soon we learn its' not polite and so we stop and the words of our elders stay with us for life "Don't stare"

Well, I'm here to tell you that it's ok, I actually want people to stare at my work, not give it a glance and turn away. Look, wait, soak it up SEE what is there, see what isn't there - give it time (not 5 minutes on the clock) but your precious time, time out, space, nothing - just look - you never know you might see! - just like when you were a child and pushed your nose up against the cake shop window to see the colours, textures and shapes to see how good it all was!

So here's to all us artists, we are all in our own way, our own style or genre, giving people the precious comodity of time - and that's not easy in this day and age!

(Down to the Roots)

(O! Brother)

Name: Tucker

Location: Sonora,CA

Medium(s): anything and everything-mixed media

What do you consider yourself (artist/designer/other)? Painter

Where can we see your work (place/publications/url)? A couple on MySpace  www.myspace.com/piratescavengers

When did you start gaining interest in artistic forms of expression? Straight from the womb

Who/What inspired your interest? The eternal void

Where do you first remember being exposed to art? Being taken to museums in the city when I was really young by my mother

What is your day job? I work at The Country Store in Sonora- it's a local health food store

Why do you create? The only constant we have in our lives is change, we need to be ever-changing, evolving. If I'm not creating, I am stagnant and feel lost.

Is there any recurring theme in your work? Nature is always a part of my pieces. Feathers, crows, mountains... Essentially the result of being born in Sonora.

What do you want from your work? No essential expectations, roll with the punches...

What do you want viewers to take from your work?  Just a glimpse into my head I guess- it's a visualization of how I was feeling at a certain point in my life...

How often do you work on personal projects? Not often enough...

How often do you work on commissions or commercial work? I'm just starting to design tattoos for people- thats on more of a trade system.

Does your art support you financially? Its hit or miss, most of the time I want things other than money.

Do you feel preoccupied with your art, do you think about it often during the day and night and do you anticipate your next session? I am my art

What do you do in your spare time besides your art? I'm trying to study to be an herbalist...

Which musicians are you currently interested in? The list is never-ending....the fleet foxes, devendra banhart, led zeppelin, the beatles, the avett brothers...

Are there any events you are looking forward to attending? November 8th A craft bazaar of sorts in Oakdale, I think I will be at a booth...

How long do you generally take on a piece? I will dwell on a piece for months sometimes and sometimes get one done in 10 minutes, theres no telling.

Have you jeopardized or risked the loss of a significant relationship, job, educational or career opportunity because of your art? I don't think i have.... this is an intense question Zac...

Do you work on multiple projects at once? Yes, I have at least 5 half-assed projects going right now.

Do you have trouble parting with your finished work? its mostly my mother who wants to keep everything I do.

One of the most simultaneously enjoyable and soul-destroying portions of the previously-referenced migration of all of my old blog's entries to "Curious Affairs" was the process of salvaging and, in some cases, recreating and redesigning, the entries' graphic elements. As a designer as well as a writer, I like to at least attempt a somewhat even ratio of text to graphic elements on any given pageview, and this was as much the case in my previous blog, if not more so, as it appears to be in "Curious Affairs".

However, the loss of all files that resided on my server following the cancellation of my previous website and hosting in mid-2006, the tragic Death-By-Skinny-Bitch of my retro iMac on my bedroom floor in early 2007, the former roommate who never turned over the thousands of files I had saved to her laptop, and sundry other technical mishaps over the past two years, left me only with archived files pre-dating mid-2006 with which to rebuild the graphic elements of my old blog entries. The reminder, yet again, that my electronic archives, which date back to my senior year at prep school, suddenly have a two-year gap in them during what was a remarkably prolific period for me and my work, was not a pleasant one.

The perspective that I gained, though, as I pieced together those graphic elements that could be pieced together, as I relived the memories, and the motivations behind, publishing them in the first place, was...refreshing. Because in some cases the process provided a rather arresting visual record of time, and events, and places, and...people...passing. And for some reason that alone made the loss of all of my other work in the interim seem rather...insignificant.

What an incredible difference two short years can sometimes make with the impressions they leave on our souls.

[Hotel Street | Chinatown | Honolulu Hawaii | Summer 2008]

His style wasn't different from any Dutch artist of his time, but his mind was.  It made the remarkable difference that brought attention to his talent. He idealised full grace and beauty but was incapable (at least to my knowledge) of portraying his images in sketches.  It puzzles me since his paintings were amazingly precise in every details and style.

A canvas has never been more difficult to deal with than paper. The movements of free arms, contours and motions allow humans to dance while creating. Sketching instead requires firm grips, fair lines, restriction and visual inspiration ahead.  It requires some precision...

The fear is related to unrecoverable mistakes on paper. Canvas can be fixed to a certain extent. Sketches, re-started from nothing...

Back to emptiness again. Rembrandt just knew it.

Blood splattered the wall but that was not a problem. Not for Evan. He stepped back to admire his work: A painting in blood, slashed dramatically by white chalk lines, many of them jagged as he'd only had small amounts of it to work with.

Suddenly, the world was skewed, like it was all covered in water, or it was melting.

The bare light bulb overhead went out again. He twitched and winced in pain as the shock startled him back from day-dreaming, and flicked at it.

With a hiss, the hot bulb lit up again. Reality was coming back to him; he often had this feeling of displacement when he was coming out of "The Zone", as he called it. He stared at his long, pale fingers, covered in the colors of his work.

Evan stretched his six-foot frame on the windowsill. He had buzz-cut his dirty-blond hair a while ago, for easier keeping. Blue eyes stared out into a street that for the moment was quiet. But he could only see part of it; the windows of the condemned building had been boarded up.

"Interesting," his girl Misty said, eyeing the painting while she played with her jet-black cornrows. The dim light made lovely shadows around the curves of her dark body and highlighted her juicy curves. "Where'd you get the red?"

He grinned. "Nosebleed," he said and sighed as she wrinkled her face in disgust. "Hey, you work with what you got, right?"

"I guess."

He put the painting aside and went to wash off the blood in the bucket of water from the river nearby. You work with what you got. Didn't Warhol start out like this, or something? Well, he was in the middle.

The light went out again. "Dammit!" he cursed to himself.

"Oh, leave it, Ev, and come to bed." Their bed for the moment was a crappy mattress with fleas and who knew what else, but he didn't care at that point. He saw Misty, bathed in very dim light from outside, taking off her hoop earrings.

A shadow moved.

"Evan?”

He jumped, heart hammering against his chest, and realized it was only Misty. "Jesus! Don't do that!"

She rolled over and frowned at him. "Sorry."

Evan tried to go back to sleep, but he kept smelling iron. Maybe doing it with blood was a bad idea, he thought to himself. Then again, he didn’t have this problem while he was making the painting. Then again, how could you smell with your nose screwed up like that? Then again. . . he finally fell asleep again.

He dreamed of her dancing in the street, like when he met her; she was a hot, mixed black and Hispanic girl doing Latino street dance. And then the scene changed, and her face was melting. It was all covered in blood, he was going away, becoming a piece of paper that suffocated in the wetness.

"Agh!"

He jumped up this time, staring wildly into the darkness. Something. . . .

To be continued.

©Loving Circle, All Rights Reserved. This article protected by U.S. Copyright. It may not be reproduced in whole or part without prior written authorization.

]]> http://homohominilupus.wordpress.com/?p=1418 Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:00:56 +0000 condottiero http://homohominilupus.pl.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/peter-clossicks-oil-paintings-and-me/ I found Peter Clossick's artwork more than a year ago while visiting a friend's house near the beach in Viña del Mar, Chile.  He had a printing of his work next to a huge window & a gorgeous view of the Pacific Ocean.

The painting was the following:

After seeing the painting in his wall I had to go back home.  I was walking out of the metro station and  found a mobile phone in the street.  I turn it on.  I wrote a short story telling the secrets I found in that cellphone inspired by Peter's paintings.

His oil paintings have a wonderful and melancholic image of humanity.  You cannot but stop and watch each of his body figures and speak with them.  It is like taking a time free from the world and just Think.

A year later and a few days ago, Peter visited my website and left a comment.  His comment included a link to his website: Peter Clossick's Artowork.

I hope you like his artwork as much as I did,

Adzak, who is best known for his plant and animal "dehydrations" and for the Anthropometric man series, built the studio with his own hands in the 1980s, along with the permanent sculpture garden. There are frequent temporary exhibitions of painting, drawing and sculpture by associated artists.

Birth 1927

Death 1987

http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Paris/Museums-Paris/Adzak.shtml

In his hand, he held on to a sheet of paper. This was a map that matched reality enough to get him lost every couple of turns but not too lost to abandon hope. An easel was drawn in the upper right quadrant, and it was to here that Nels headed.

Eventually a small subdued sign greeted him, "Painter's Gallery" and he knew he had arrived. The door to Painter's Gallery was a bright yellow with a red frame. On either side were gardens full of blooms. A myriad of colors shone upon Nels' eyes in a kaleidescope of rainbows. Birds sang from the trees that overhang the walk.

He opened the door and entered into a small parlor. The walls were a muted blue to match the muted grey carpet. Looming behind a dark brown desk, a tiny waif with a severe bun mutely collected his small admission fee. She counted his money and returned most of his change and pointed to the grey door on the far side of the parlor. Reaching under the desk, she pushed a button and the door swung slightly open. On the door was another sign, "Please Shut The Door Behind You". As Nels crossed to the other side, he did so and entered into a curtained off area.

"Hello," said a rotund man from one corner. "The works on display are not for sale. Painter only parts with commissioned works and this exhibition is only a demonstration of her talents. After viewing the exhibition, more information about commissioning a work of your own will be available. Please, do not touch the works." The rotund man pulled aside a curtain and ushered Nels through.

The gallery itself was a square room. The floor was tiled in a dark grey that matched the brooding walls. Nels was the only visitor. He looked around saw that there were ten works on display. On a plaque next to each one was the date of completion. Most were completed in the last day or two, but two were three days old and one was four days old. Each work stood on a solid unpainted, unvarnished wood block. Each wood block stood on a grate and each canvas was shackled, arms hanging from chains in the ceiling.

Each canvas was maze of cuts, burns, bruises, and welts. Some of the cuts where thin and already scabbed over. Some were jagged and rough, oozing blood that trickled down past goose bumps and bony protuberances, guided by other channels in the skin before welling up and following the curve of gravity down.

Some of the burns were blistered and some of the blisters were torn. The bruises were often amorphous blotches of black and purple and green and sometimes yellow. Other bruises were in specific shapes meant to guide the eye.

The intricate patterns shifted every time the canvas breathed. Some times the pain of the open wounds would cause a canvas to gasp, and the increased respiration would open some of the cuts to release more blood. Other time flakes of dried blood would fall lazily towards the ground.

On the far end of the spectacle of broken flesh, there was a black door. Nels stumbled through this and into another small parlor. Here Painter sat on a plain chair. Her physical appearance defied all expectation. Her eyes were full of judgment.

Nels asked her, "People actually pay you for that? How much money do you charge for your commission."

"For those that donate themselves as canvas, I charge nothing. For those who would donate others to be their canvas, I charge.. well, it is safe to say I've never been commissioned. Go back and ask them if they regret it."

Nels peddled back into the gallery. He returned several minutes later with an ashen look on his face. "When can you start?"

an artist, on the other hand, is a man who sells what he paints.
- Pablo Picasso, (1881-1973) -

Mark Rothko, one of the foremost members of the Abstract Expressionist movement was born Marcus Rothkowitz in 1903 in Russia. In 1913, Rothko, with his mother and sister, immigrated to Portland, Oregon, where they were reunited with his father and two brothers, who had emigrated from Russia previously. After studying at Yale for two years (1921-23), Rothko settled in New York in 1925. In this same year, he began to study painting at the Art Students League under Max Weber. This was Rothko’s only formal artistic training. In 1928, at the time of his first group exhibition at a New York gallery, he established a close friendship with Milton Avery, whose simplified forms and flat color areas informed Rothko’s art.

In 1929 Rothko took a position teaching children at the Center Academy, Brooklyn Jewish Center, a job he retained until 1952. He had his first one-person show in New York in 1933 at the Contemporary Arts Gallery. In 1934 Rothko participated in the organization of the Artists’ Union and later became involved in the American Artists' Congress and the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors. Also in 1934, he joined the newly established Gallery Secession in New York, but a year later he and several other artists left it to form a loosely associated group of progressive artists called The Ten (or The Ten Who Are Nine). From 1936 to 1937, Rothko was working in the Federal Works Progress Administration's easel project, established during the Depression as a means of supporting artists. The late 1940s marked the beginning of his color field paintings, works for which he is known. In these works he used the technique of soak-staining, applying thinned paint onto the canvas to create abstract fields of color, horizontal cloud-like rectangles, which pervade the picture space with their lyrical presence. His large canvases, typical of his mature style, establish a one-on-one correspondence with the viewer, giving human scale to the experience of the painting and intensifying the effects of color. As a result, the paintings produce in the responsive viewer a sense of the ethereal and a state of spiritual contemplation. Through color alone—applied to suspended rectangles within abstract compositions—Rothko's work evokes strong emotions ranging from exuberance and awe to despair and anxiety, suggested by the hovering and indeterminate nature of his forms.

During the summers of 1947 and 1949, he was a guest instructor at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco. He also taught at Brooklyn College, the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Tulane University. From 1958 to 1969, he worked on three major commissions: monumental canvases for the Four Seasons Restaurant and Seagram Building, both in New York; murals for the Holyoke Center, Harvard University; and canvases for the chapel at the Institute of Religion and Human Development, Houston, known worldwide as “The Rothko Chapel.” The dark and somber works he created for the chapel are thought by some to foreshadow the artist’s suicide in 1970.

http://www.phillipscollection.org/american_art/bios/rothko-bio.htm

Carole has an amazing ability to catch the light in her fantastic landscapes. Taking a look at her portfolio is like traveling to the Mediterranean. Not only can you see the magnificent landscapes and streetscapes you can almost hear the birds, waves and the people that occupy her images. You will find many of Carole’s paintings featured as runner up in many a challenge but in this one, “Interiors”: she has taken top prize with Casa Goldoni – Venice. With it’s surrealistic feel and repetitive shapes it is no wonder many members voted for it.

Marylyn from Redbubble on winning the interiors challenge

W/C 6^th October 2008

Corel Painter X es el programa de ilustración raster más avanzado, real y espectacular del mundo. Gracias a su tecnología Natural-Media, los pinceles, materiales artísticos y comportamiento de las herramientas, es prácticamente igual al de las herramientas del mundo real. Un software sin igual en el mercado conocido desde hace ya muchos años en sectores especializados como diseñadores e ilustradores, que ve mejorada en esta última versión su potencial creativo y su velocidad de trabajo.

Características generales

• Software de ilustración raster para dibujo o edición de imágenes

• Tecnología Natural-Media que reproduce con gran fidelidad el comportamiento y los resultados de las herramientas y materiales del mundo físico

• Mayor velocidad de trabajo y respuesta. Painter X ha aumentado su velocidad hasta un 35% respecto a la versión anterior, y la apertura y guardado de documentos se realiza el doble de rápido que antes

• Nuevo sistema de pintura RealBristle: el comportamiento de las cerdas de los pinceles ha sido mejorado, permitiendo una mayor interactividad entre la pintura, el lienzo y el propio pincel

• Nuevas herramientas de composición: gracias a las nuevas guías de proporción divina, los usuarios pueden mantener una referencia visual durante el trabajo sobre donde colocar los elementos de una escena

• Gestor de espacios de trabajo. Corel Painter X permite configurar los espacios de trabajo, pudiendo definir el orden de aparición de las distintas herramientas o materiales de trabajo, por ejemplo

• Sistema avanzado de pintura automática sobre las imágenes. Una solución que será del agrado de muchos fotógrafos, ya que permite convertir una imagen en una pintura con facilidad y con unos resultados sorprendentes

• Mayor compatibilidad de los archivos de Adobre Photoshop: se ha mejorado la compatibilidad de los grupos y combinaciones capas, así como los modos de fusión

• Optimizada la entrada de datos mediante tabletas gráficas Wacom

Ficha de Descarga:

Host: Rapidshare

Tamaño: 99.5 Mb

Comprimido: WinRar

Nota: Incluye el archivo .exe + el Path

Descargar Corel Painter X ver 10

Yayoi Kusama is an avant-garde sculptor, painter and novelist who defines her life as "a dot lost among a million other dots”... JUST LIKE OURS, don't you think??? Here are some images of the latest exhibitions at La Villette in Paris.

                                                                   [gallery]

Kosama´s Agenda for September, October and November.

20.sep.2008-30.nov.2008
Liverpool Biennial International 08: MADE UP - Pilkingtons Warehouse, Liverpool

10.sep.2008-13.oct.2008
Akasaka Art Flower 08 - Akasaka Sacas, Tokyo

23.aug.2008-19.oct.2008
Yayoi Kusama - Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Alberto Giacometti was born on 10th October 1901 in Borgonovo in Val Bregaglia to Giovanni, a neo-impressionist painter, and Annetta Stampa. He had a happy childhood. His father introduced him to working in the atelier, his godfather (the painter Cuno Amiet) taught him the latest styles and techniques, and the other members of his family assisted with his artistic development by sitting for him as models. In 1916, during high school, he displayed total mastery of impressionist language in a portrait of his mother modelled with plastilina. He left high school and moved to Geneva to attend the School of Fine Arts. Following a trip to Venice and Rome in 1920, during which he developed a passion for the work of Tintoretto and Giotto, he resolved to recover the innocent gaze of man's origins through primitive art and anthropology. In 1922 he moved to Paris to attend the courses of sculptor Antoine Bourdelle and partly experimented with the Cubist method. In 1925 his brother Diego joined him in Paris and became his permanent assistant. Alberto shared a sympathy for the surrealist movement with the Swiss artists he met in Paris and in 1927 began to display his first surrealist sculptures at the Salon des Tuileries. Success was not long in coming and Alberto began to frequent artists such as Arp, Mirò, Ernst and Picasso and writers including Prévert, Aragon, Eluard, Bataille and Queneau. He became firm friends with Breton and wrote and drew for his magazine Le surréalisme au Service de la Révolution. But Giacometti felt the need to return to the idea of "absolute resemblance" and after his father's death in 1933 shut himself off in period of a renewed apprenticeship. From 1935 to 1940 he concentrated on the study of the human head, starting from the gaze, considered the seat of thoughts. He also drew entire figures in an attempt to capture the identity of individual human beings with a single glance. In this period he met Picasso and Beckett and established a dialogue with Sartre which was to influence the work of both. He spent the Second World War years in Geneva. In 1946 he returned to Paris and met up again with his brother Diego, beginning a new artistic phase in which his statues became stretched out, their limbs elongated in a space that contained and complemented them. In 1962 he received the Grand Prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennial. In his later years he worked frenetically and displayed his work at a sequence of large exhibitions throughout Europe. Although seriously ill, he went to New York in 1965 for his exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. As his last work he prepared the text for the book Paris sans fin, a sequence of 150 lithographs containing memories of all the places where he had lived. He died on 11 January 1966 and is buried in Borgonovo, close to his parents.

http://www.italica.rai.it/eng/principal/topics/bio/giacometti1.htm

Elvgren commenced studies at the Minneapolis Art Institute, and later studied (and even taught) at the Chicago Academy of Art. His parents first encouraged him to study architecture, but shortly after starting his studies he decided to pursue art instead. Some of Gil's fellow students were Al Buell, Andrew Loomis, Coby Whitmore, Robert Skemp and Ben Stahl. Many of his academy friends would later also work for Coca Cola.

Elvgren graduated from the Academy during the depression at the age of twenty-two. Elvgren first job was one for one of the major US advertising agencies, Stevens and Gross. One of their most exciting clients was Coca-Cola. Elvgren contributed to several Coca-Cola ads. No artist working for Coke could sign his work, but Elvgren’s hand & style remain very recognizable.

Elvgren’s work also mirrors the sheer, nostalgic revery that the breathtaking illustrations of Haddon Sundblom's "Coca-Cola" Santa’s evoke. No wonder, as Elvgren quickly became a protégé of the legendary Sundblom. The old master taught his star pupil the lush brush stroke technique that makes Elvgren's girls such glowing wonders.

Elvgren conveys the ideal of real life, fun, beauty and sensuality in every of his paintings. Never sexual, always sensual, their style is the epitome of the age of elegance in which he lived.
He spent extreme amounts of time posing the models for the pre-painting photograph. Elvgren always looked for models with vitality and personality, and chose young girls who were new to the modeling business. He felt the ideal pin-up was a 15 year old face on a 20 year old body. In some cases, he combined the body of one girl and the face of another to achieve the desired result.

In 1937, Gil began painting calendar pin-ups for Louis Dow, one of America's leading publishing companies. These artworks are easily recognizable because they are signed with a printed version of Elvgren's name, as opposed to his later cursive signature. Dow paintings were often published first in one format, then painted over with different clothes and situations.

Around 1944, Gil was approached by Brown and Bigelow, a firm that still dominates the field in producing calendars and advertising specialties. They offered him $1000 per pin-up, which was substantially more than Dow was paying him. Elvgren signed on with B&B. Gil's Brown and Bigelow images all contain his cursive signature. Elvgren painted twenty calendar girls each year, ranging from the girl next door letting her dog out, to brave rodeo heroines & water skiing action girls.

Besides a successful career in advertising, Gil Elvgren also did a lot of magazine illustrations. His pretty girls also appeared on many billboards, the same image sometimes modified a bit to sell more than one type of product.

According to Elvgren author & art collector Louis Meisel: "Between the mid-1930s and early 70s, Elvgren produced over 500 paintings of beautiful girls and women. As the decades progressed, the paintings just kept getting better and better. Elvgren continually surpassed himself, always improving in composition, ideas, color and technique."

The beautiful Elvgren girls are never portrayed as a femme fatale. They are stylized ideals in which the realities and essentials of female form and expression are heightened and exalted artistically. Their charms are revealed in that fleeting instant when she's been caught unaware in what might be a surprising, sometimes even embarrassing situation. She is intruded upon as she takes a bath. Her skirts get caught in elevator doors, hung up on faucets, and entangled with dog leashes. The elements conspire in divesting her of her clothing. The Elvgren girls, pictured in a variety of fun and clever contexts, are life-affirmative art of the highest order.

Elvgren died in 1980, at the age of 66. Lately, there’s a resurgent interest in his work and prints of his pictures are still bestsellers. Today, Elvgren is recognized as one of the top image makers & glamour artists of the 20th century.

Met my friend Richard today for coffee at the Broadway Cinema, Nottingham. Great place but if you don't time it right you end up queueing with the OAP's who come to watch the matinee film (thought that went out with the arc). Nothing bad there as such, except they keep reminding me that I'll be one of the one day.

Had a though about the over 60's the other day - in the UK a lot go to afternoon ballroom dancing and tea. Now, if they are 60 now, that would make them 20 in the 60's, correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think the major craze of the 60's was the waltz?????? So how on earth have they ended up ballroom dancing, you'd like to think they would be banging heads to Beatles songs or even the Rolling Stones. Ok, so a person in their 60's probably shouldn't be head banging, but you know what I mean

Another thought, does this mean that when I'm 60 (don't want to discuss when that is but it aint that far off) will I be doing the same???? Not on your nelly.

I want to see what the headbangers of the 80's will be doing in their 60's! We should banish Strictly come dancing from our screens now just incase it is having an adverse effect on us in later life.

Anyway, enough rambling. The other thing I did today was change the header on my website I would be interested in anyones thoughts - it's supposed to show acrylic paint on a palette when I'm done painting for the day

Tenmyouya Hisashi

Katie Couric isn't known for her hard questions, and it seemed like she was throwing a softball to Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin when she asked at one point in the now-infamous CBS Evening News interview "...what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?"

 Couric's seemingly simple question, though, was tougher than it sounded: Palin could have given one of five possible answers.

Option 1: "I'm not going to answer that question, and here's why..."
As a friend pointed out to me, Palin couldn't have named any one publication in particular. The New York Times? Too liberal. The Wall Street Journal? Too conservative. Because transparency is the big buzzword in journalism circles these days, Palin could have dodged the question by explaining why she couldn't answer it.

Option 2: "I read my local papers."
A politician can never go wrong by going local, and listing the Frontiersman or the Juneau Empire could have answered the question—and might have even enhanced her folksy charm.

Option 3: "Like a growing number of Americans, I don't read newspapers."
Sure, it would have been a sucker punch, but it would have knocked the smug smile off the press's collective face. 

Option 4: "I read a bit of everything, from the New York Times to the Atlantic Monthly, from watching Bill O'Reilly to Stephen Colbert."
Palin would have demonstrated the worldliness that Couric was prodding for, and she would have been safe from attacks from both the far left and far right.

Option 5: "I've read most of them." 
This was Palin's actual answer. Apparently, she couldn't—or wouldn't—get any more specific.

The major problem with Palin's non-answer is that it reinforces the media's image of her. We've already decided that she's an idiot who is wholly unprepared and unable to be vice-president, and we're more than ready to jump on any of her numerous gaffes.

The press loves convenient story lines. That's why politicians have been reduced to caricatures throughout history, from Al Gore (a stiff) and Bill Clinton (a womanizer) to Richard Nixon (a crook) and William Howard Taft (a fatty). Once the media decides your story line, it's hard to create a new one. 

Palin hasn't been helped by the oddball strategy of her handlers, who insist on keeping her out of the press. As David Rosman wrote in the Sept. 12 issue of the Columbia Missourian, a politician doesn't want to make the press angry. Rosman's point was that an angry press will dig up skeletons, and his advice to Palin was to start making the easy rounds, from O'Reilly to Letterman and Leno, then on to the likes of Couric. It was solid advice, and it has benefits besides keeping the press out of Palin's closet. The more interviews she gives, the better she'll get at answering questions; and the more questions she answers, the more she'll be in control of her own public image.

Back to the original question: Does Sarah Palin read newspapers? I don't know, and, frankly, I don't care. But I would like a potential vice-president to be able to give a straightforward and effective answer to a simple question.

Julian Lesser wants to be interesting and compelling. Revealing but not too revealing. He wants for his work to be worth something. But not just in a ledger. This Astoria-based artist has a gift. He's modest but not shy when it comes to his art. His acclaimed collection, "Future Gardens and Other Destinations" recently opened in Upstate New York. Some of the same work will be descending on SoHo in

December. He's no stranger to experimentation. He likes a good challenge. He thinks of New York as home. But to Lesser, life is fragmented. To Lesser, we are all ripped apart inside by ideas and emotions. And when the Molecule recently asked the young painter to bring us in a little bit closer to his art, we found a bit more in the process.

UM: What was a typical "day in the life" at the Lesser homestead growing up?

JL: Good question. It changed from day to day. Things would be normal for some time and then they’d completely get out of hand. When it was normal it was nice. Our family was very safe, very loving. We enjoyed cooking together, traveling and learning together. My mom is an artist as well. When I was a boy I would spend time drawing and painting in her studio. She always encouraged my creativity. Like I said, the good times were good. And then there were the bad times. Difficult. Stressful. There were times when we were in financial crisis and had to move from where we lived. Times my parents weren’t happily married and my brother and I were forced to weather the storms from the sidelines.

UM: How has living in New York affected your art?

JL: Living in NYC has made me realize that I was meant to make art. I grew up in Westchester and went to school in the Hudson Valley, which has a very vibrant artistic community. I was able to focus on my art in the mountains of New Paltz. Then I moved to NYC after graduating from college. I engaged my art in the city while finding a way to survive. I often wished I could quit everything and just paint, but quickly realized the city wasn’t supportive of my kind.

In a sense I’ve always lived in NYC. We would often come to see family or do other things, so I felt like a New Yorker early on. The city inspires me. Not only my art, but my drive. Every day is inspiring and challenging. Every day is a day to create something new, to strive to be bigger, better, stronger. New York City makes you want to succeed. You can’t be passive in any way. It’s fast and rough, and makes you explore your motives and inspirations and goals, your soul.

UM: More and more creative types are relocating to Astoria. How is it living in Queens as an artist?

JL: There is so much energy, very much like the energy you find in the city. And it’s very close – a quick train ride – so I don’t feel like I’m missing parts of the art community. But being here gives me peace and quiet too. There’s also a sense of community you might not find in Manhattan. It allows me the space I need without worrying about whether or not I can afford to eat. It’s ideal here. I get the space I need to create my work and I’m slightly removed from the social distractions of the city, so I’m not always tempted by sex or partying. Well, I still do get distracted sometimes. I’m not a prude. Besides, some of those city activities are part of my inspiration.

UM: What comes to mind when I say the word "bodies"?

JL: Bodies of water. Bodies of land. Collections. Mass groupings of a particular thing. The human body, which in itself is a massive collection of cells and neurons. Bodies are collections, groupings, families. Bodies…it’s really a huge word that can relate to so many things. It relates to my work, I think. It’s an overview of a larger picture, an umbrella with thousands of layers below it. My work is a final image with thousands of layers, ideas and emotions below it, peeking through and lying underneath. A body of work, bodies of work…it’s a very artful term.

UM: Your work has taken several turns with respect to media. Ink, acrylic, mixed. Is there a clear progression? Introduce us to your personal artistic evolution.

JL: [sighs] I’m an experimenter. I love to try new things. I feel like I’m at a place where it’s working, like I don’t have to experiment with materials as much, but now I can focus more on content. My multimedia work comes from the need to create a history and substance. The textures. The layers. I have a process where I create layers and history first, then work with my content. Painting without exploring is of no interest to me. My paintings are journeys, small adventures. Still life is of no interest to me. I’m more interested in creating a history or finding a problem, then figuring out how to visually resolve them in a painting.

UM: You recently had a successful opening in upstate New York.

JL: The opening was great! The show had 51 pieces in it, my largest show ever. I created the body of work over the course of 3 to 4 months. Friends, family, art buyers and others came. I sold 12 pieces opening night. I hope the show continues to sell. It’s showing through November 2nd. I dedicated the show to my nephew, Nathaniel Lesser, who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) at 4 months back in early July. Whenever I got tired I remembered what, who I was working for. He was my motivation.

UM: You have a show coming up in SOHO.

JL: The show is at Bobby Berk Gallery. Bobby and I have been acquaintances for many years. We know a lot of the same people and share many friends. He has always had an interest in my art but didn’t have a space until early this year. It wasn’t until recently that he decided that my work would suit his space. He invited me to show a past collection of my work – it’s actually there now. He loved my new work and thought it would look great in the space. Of course I agreed.

We’ve grown our friendship and developed a business partnership, promoting his space and showing my work. The opening is December 11. The show is called “Escaping Manhattan: Future Gardens and Other Destinations Continued.” It will be some of the work from my most recent exhibition, “Future Gardens and Other Destinations,” as well as additional work I will complete over the next few months. I’m very excited about it.

UM: You were recently almost set on fire.

JL: Yes I was. Two cars in front of my apartment were parked next to a heaping pile of garbage on the curb. The blaze was bright and crackling and woke me up. I’m lucky one of those cars didn’t explode. I sleep naked so I would have really been fucked if fire had come through the window, or if I had to leave my apartment in a hurry. Since then I’ve been sleeping in shorts.

UM: In “Future Gardens” you fuse city structures with organic images.

JL: The collection is about traveling to cities, gardens and other landscapes. It’s about escaping New York and finding more. Of course I can’t leave right now…there’s too much going on. So, I decided to take a trip in my mind, to create my own adventures. While doing that I’ve found time to relax and reflect in my studio, or on the subway, or in Central Park. I made these paintings all over the city.

UM: Many of your human figures appear fractured. How did this style originate?

JL: As most of my work originates, without initial intention. This started with sketches and spills that were uncontrollable. But it felt right. Soon I realized it was a way to show self-reflection. To show all the sides of the people I was portraying. We are all fragmented, scattered, ripped apart inside by what we want versus what we need; what is right and what is wrong; how we feel versus what we think.  The fragmented figures represent the daily internal and external struggles each and every one of us goes through as humans.

UM: What's next?

JL: What's next? Ha! Make more art. Keep exploring this crazy, overwhelming inspiring world we live in. There is no next except this! This is what I must do: self-explore. Try to figure out the way we all fit together. Do I make a difference? Do any of us make a difference? What’s the point of being here if you aren’t going to contribute in the best, most eager way you know how? We all must do our part to contribute whatever it is we have to offer the world, to make a difference. To inspire each other. To make this existence worth a damn.

I think Henry Darger's pieces are so amazing.

I like this painter a lot.

Charles Miller

(NYTimes) Simon Hantaï, a highly regarded, famously reclusive French painter whose work explored ideas of absence and silence — and who took those ideas so seriously that he disappeared completely from view for 15 very productive years — died on Sept. 11 at his home in Paris. He was 85. (read article)

Though i am not necessarily a fan of his style Hantaï is an interesting and challenging artist. This in-depth article on him from Art in America is worth reading, as is this article on the correspondance that Jean-Luc Nancy and Hantaï maintained.