Making Things

Some weeks ago, one of the artists I am showing with at the National Veteran Art Museum told me I looked like someone who needed to drop all my responsibilities and make something. While I have issues letting go of commitments, I have started making things again. Taking a page from the methods of a friend, I started doing silhouette collages with duct tape sheets, and decorative papers. It is a start in terms of making things. As far as the methods go... well.... Imitation IS the sincerest form of flattery.

National Veteran Art Museum: Radical Vulnerability Installation and Interview

I knew this was coming because I was present when it happened. I felt very "Art:21" ish when I was working and answering the questions. But actually seeing the video and listening to myself....

Well... Look here

Radical Vulnerability at the National Veteran Art Museum

I have been working diligently for the past three weeks installing a larger scale site specific art at the National Veteran Art Museum for an upcoming exhibit "Radical Vulnerability". I can say that I am tentatively done installing. There are not enough letters in the word tired to explain how tired I feel. Nor are there enough synonyms for tired in a thesaurus.

In other news. Students are still challenging. I am not making enough art to satisfy my claim to the label "artist", but teaching still makes me happier more often than it causes me to shed enough hair that it looks like I am holding Cousin It from the Adams Family.

Pitfalls of Finding a Balance and Failing to make Substantial Art during Study Halls

I am trying to find a balance in teaching trying to pair a theme with some fairly technical projects, for what ends up being overall a fairly technical class. I'm tasked by the curriculum to teach my students good composition along with strengthening their skills shading with a pencil. I'm trying to pair the book which they will be reading in their American Literature Classes "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien, and "The Things They Carried" exhibit at the National Veterans Art Museum. I'm expanding it include the Gulf War, Afghanistan & Iraq in the past decade. I am at an awkward juncture where too many of my students are not finished with the previous project for me to pull a proverbial plug on studio work, but I also have close to half the class who is now finished and ready to begin a new project. I'm hoping tomorrow will be a better on this front.

In other news: I am failing at finding an artistic something I can do besides decorating my hall passes during my study hall periods. I am usually reviewing my notes for how class went that day, or lesson planning, or composing presentations, or teacher journal logs, or reading the myriad e-mails I receive. I do get a few moments in which I can sit and observe and let my gears turn, and creativity percolate, sometimes. My issue is that nothing worthwhile has brewed up that is not a lesson plan or image presentation. I have nothing I have created that makes me squee with delight, and proclaim "I made this!" like a kindergartener bringing home a piece worthy of the refrigerator door-and this bothers me.

GOP Debate or The reason my right hand reflexively flips off the screen as I am writing lesson plans

I saw the GOP debate last night and as much as a distraction it ended up being, it has made the word "republican' all the more dirty filthy and representative of all that is wrong with the world in terms of corruption, greed, and the absence of human empathy. I know not all republicans are like the pony show of trotted out in front of the Reagan Library, however, It begs the question about the sensible people I know are out there: This is who you want to represent you?!?!
I wouldn't vote for any of those people with your vote, let alone mine. I know there are conservative leaning individuals who are sensible empathetic people who understand the nuance and circumstance can drive individuals to hard times, and they are deserving of some manner of mercy, or at least more mercy than what the would be presidential candidates for the Republican Party. Also, am I incorrect in thinking the thing which garnered the loudest applause was the brazen hypocritical statement clad in righteous indignation about Capital Punishment by Rick Perry stating that in texas if you commit the ultimate crime against others, you shall receive the ultimate justice. Yet earlier in the night Perry claimed he would err on the side of life. I suppose because he is using Republican Logic, it is not what would be recognized in the real world as a logical fallacy.

Vegetarianism

I lament to say, I think I am turning into one of THOSE Vegetarians. You know the type. they are preachy, and snobbish. Well, maybe not preachy, but definitely snobbish about what I eat. I have found myself rather disenchanted by my parents offering me pizza and semi-innocently saying "you can just pick out the sausage", or making beef or chicken stew and loading it up with extra vegetables "so that you can eat, son". I appreciate their effort.
I do!
Honest!
But... picking out the meat in a dish kind of defeats the purpose. I have not yet figured out how to articulate why being offered meals like that irks me. It simply does. It's like doing one squat and saying you work out 5 days a week. But in grumbling about the misguided efforts by my family of celebrated omnivores at accommodating my decision to go vegetarian, I feel like I am being the kind of vegetarian which pisses ME off. The preachy, better-than-thou vegetarian, often vegan. Which I do not want to make a sweeping generalization about vegetarians or vegans. There are some very nice vegetarians and vegans out there! They post encouraging things for the struggling recently converted vegetarians like myself! I just don;t want to be this preachy self-absorbed douchebag about my dietary choices, though in an omnivorous and malnourished nation like ours.... you kind of have to in order to eat.

Adventures in Teaching or Biting off more than I can chew.

I successfully completed my first week of teaching and have been busily coordinating and concocting some plans for the school year. I have no clue how I will be able to balance out working at Oak Forest High School while sponsoring Art Club, Teaching the Community Arts Sustaining Academics Program, and Co-leading and continuing programing for the Vet Art Project. Where there is a will, there is a way. I still have a month in which to set down as much of the groundwork for the Vet Art Project and balance out my schedule of staff, department, and programing meetings as all of this will play a part in how I am able to do my jobs.
At OFHS, taking full advantage of the fact that I am only teaching one section of art, I have compared notes on all my students and touched base with as many of the Social Studies and English teachers to basically get the gears turning on cooperative lessons bridging art and historical context in academics. I already have one teacher who would like to co-plan a lesson on the Reconstruction in post Civil War America, and the Fox Sisters basically purporting to be supernatural mediums, and pairing it with a black & white drawing lesson.
In my concerted efforts to go out and do things and not be such a hermit, Thursday, I had gone to a speaking event at the National Veterans Art Museum. There I met two very cool veterans, Brock & Jake and reconnected with other cool veterans I had met before (Barry & Sabrina). Brock & Jake have been traveling cross country talking about their visits back to Afghanistan and have so many striking, shocking, and beautiful stories about their experiences. I had dinner with all of them afterwards were we chatted and met up with another veteran who had recently come back from Afghanistan the evening before. After this encounter and dropping Brock off at Midway to catch his flight, I stopped by Atomic Sketch afterwards to check out the art and acquired some artwork for my personal collection as well as talking with some of the artists at Atomic Sketch about the possibility of having them come speak to either my class, or for Art Club. Altogether it was a rather busy evening.
This got my gears turning, in which in the most grandiose delusions, I could have a panel of veterans speaking about their experiences and discussing how a decade's worth of war has shaped our culture as is, as well as what is going on as well as giving a first person perspective on what military veterans have had to go through. At its most humble, having a few guest speakers either for my own classroom, or for art club to do demonstrations and share a little bit of their experiences. With everything I will have to do over the course of the school year, it is exciting and new, and at the same time I ask myself: Am I biting off more than I can chew?

Impersonating Penguins

I had a most interesting experience today longboarding with some friends. There is a 9.5 mile trail/loop in a forest preserve not far from my house. My friends and I decided to go at it since it is a nice trail for biking, walking, skating, or whatever means of efficient ambulation you have. About 8 miles in there was a fork in the road which led to an offshoot, or you could keep going on the trail loop. My friends, being more avid and experienced longboarders than I had gone right and were turning around after a pair of cyclists directed them to the left as the route to continue the loop. This turn, I made with a gliding graceful effortlessness which made the subsequent events all the more contrasting. The turn was immediately followed by a downward incline which allowed me to pick up prodigious speed. I think I might have gotten a good 15-20 MPH on this downhill, which made the physics of what happened next all the more extraordinary and possibly, had someone had the fortuitous foresight, viral video fodder for the internet.

I must pause for a moment to discuss the downhill first and foremost. I live near Chicago, where everything is predictably flat. For the most part. There are softly rolling hills, if they could even be called that! Just understand that when I say hill, or downhill, this is referring to a segment of trail in which one must put forth minimal effort beyond leaning weight forward, if at all on a longboard, or a bike to increase speed to an equivalent of pedaling, or kick-pushing at maximum effort. That note/reference made clear, continuing....

I am barreling down this incline at an accelerated pace. A cyclist is at the base of a concrete and metal bridge over one of the many streams and brooks which dot the forest preserve. My lane is open, and I feel confident in my neophyte experience I can clear through. My eyes rapidly scan in that seemingly super-human speed in which your mind races and takes in all environmental information which permits, what at times seems to be automatic responses by more experienced individuals. As the distance between the bridge and I closes my eye catches the difference in tone of the concrete on the bridge. I can say I was maybe about 50+ feet away.
At 40 or so feet away I see a difference in the level between the concrete of the bridge and the trail. I calculate this to be between 1 and 1.5 inches. My body tenses in anticipation.
At 30ft, I have the infallible certainty that my 68mm wheels will not roll over that 1"-1.5" offset. I am wholly aware that my longboard has transformed from a leisurely ambulatory mechanism to a catapult/slingshot which is engaged with me as the human ammunition. There are two 8 inch steel supporting struts on either side. The one that concerns me most is the one on the left side of the bridge as that is the lane I am traveling in.
20ft. I lean slightly right, placing myself just left of the center dividing line of the trail.
10ft. My hands reflexively come up a bit to protect my face. I am eternally grateful I decided to invest in a helmet for longboarding, and doubly so that I am wearing it.
5ft. I square my shoulders and as my feet come free of my longboard. I do not scream or shout. I had no time. I am merely scanning the ground in front of me hoping I do not spear myself on one of the many twigs which last weeks storms littered on the concrete bridge. I fly for some indeterminate distance before having the wind knocked out of me. I slide gracefully like a penguin, Edward Norton's power animal in the movie adaptation of Palahniuk's "Fight Club" every nano-second, and planck time wistfully wishing it had been ice or snow as that would probably not have hurt as much. My hands bore most of the brunt of the graceful, and apparently gymnastically professional fall. My shirt had a few holes poked in it from my midsection dragging across the concrete. My pants to gained a "distressed" look fashionistas will pay 500 dollars for at some classy designer boutique. Even my Chuck Taylor lowtops got a scraping.

I got up to assess the damage, my hands looking bloody with drag marks on my palms. I noticed my left pinky finger opened up like a cherry cordial candy with a bite taken off revealing the cheery within, blood emerging like syrup, and Was that a pebble or a woodchip embedded in my finger? Was that a pebble or woodchip embedded deep in my finger where I need tweezers which I do not have to get it out?! My board rolls by me as I get up, and my first instinct is to get back on it and keep riding. The cyclist offered me his first aid kit, which I felt sure I did not need. It was all superficial wounds anyway. The cyclist and my friends remarked on how fortunate I was that I was wearing a helmet, that I did not impact the strut of the bridge, and how I fell like a pro and took the fall like a champ!

A little bit down the trail... like maybe 30ft, My vision blurred as whatever adrenaline high I was on which gave me the sense of well being rapidly faded. I took a seat on my board just off the side of the trail, fighting off waves of nausea and a strobe effect which my vision seemed to come and go like a looney tunes cartoon, and everything was dotted with grey blue and black motes. After a few minutes of swatting at mosquitoes which proved to be painful since my hand were scrapped, and made me look like I was in worse shape than I actually was because I was leaving blood stains where ever I squished a mosquito, my friends and I got back on our boards, finished the trail, and made our way back to my place where my friend used his medical expertise to dig the pebble which had become engulfed by my pinky. Apparently I clot very quickly and he had to reopen the wound to dig the debris out... quite possibly the least brave I have ever been while having someone tend to some injury or draw blood or what have you....

Because this beckons some manner of reaction

Pretty much every news source, internet, televised, and broadcast has been flooded with the news that Osama Bin Laden has been killed by U.S. Military action. My reaction was at first skeptic, and now cautious. Killing or capturing Bin Laden has been a tantamount priority in the mission in Afghanistan. He and the Al-Qaeda have been an adversary and figurehead for radical perversion of Islam. On May 1, 2011, The news channels and President Barrack Obama have confirmed that Osama Bin Laden has been killed through U. S. Military Operation. I wonder, and question what effect this will have on Operation: Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. I wonder if troops will be brought home, or how much longer will they be deployed overseas? I wonder if Al-Qaeda will attempt some manner of retribution for the death of one of their public leaders. I wonder if there will be a a strain on Pakistani/U. S. relations. I stand, cautious and watchful, hoping that things will improve of only slightly.

Busy-ish

The past month or so I have had a few obstacles and hurdles to contend with... as I am sure we all have at one point or another. I think I might have exhausted my student's interest in Graffiti... or at least in sculpture and graffiti because of some of the rules I imposed on their project. Rule #1: No curved lines, Rule #2: all angles must be in increments of 45 (45, 90, 135, 180 etc...). Thus far the project went on for nearly a month in a half with only about half the students actually getting anything done. Which was mildly frustrating to say the least. The work which has been completed however is rather impressive and amazing. Beyond that, there has been the challenge of documenting progress, which is difficult because students, I have found out, are notorious fr destroying work they do not see as successful. If they have thrown out drawings from the beginning of the year, I have nothing to compare then with now.

أنا إرهابي : فكرة تحديث

أنا إرهابي has been evolving a bit, if not in form and formal presentation, but in applicable concept. I have been presented with two conceptual quandaries. One is the prospect of owning the label of "Terrorist" is far too confrontational. In the face of everything that is happening with what essentially amounts to separate media echo chambers in which each side accuses the other of being terrorists to one degree or another. Generally, I agree with some progressive principals: Equal rights for all, woman's reproductive health is a between a woman and her doctor, and generally speaking, religion likewise is between you and your god or no god if you so choose. To the conservative fringe, and the conservative fringe of the fringe, such beliefs and inclinations are seen as a form of terrorism. There is a myth perpetrated that to go against what are seen as conservative principles is somehow Un-American and you are effectively a 'terrorist'. Or another of my favorite myths, that progressives, liberals, and even center-left people have a deep-seated disdain and hatred for America. I find the thought laughable, and at worst deplorably close-minded. Conceptually, owning the phrase "I'm a terrorist" or "أنا إرهابي" would be seen by this possible audience as a defiant declaration which would validate their worst suspicions. They would totally miss the point. The echo-chamber propaganda spin would be something along the lines of "They admit it! They really are terrorists! We are justified in waging war against the godless liberal left!". It amounts to a rallying cry which poses those who are different as enemy, and attempts to dehumanize stated enemy in order to justify violence as an appropriate response.
The second is the possibility of presenting the project as a passive voice, basically questioning the premise that because people hold beliefs essentially opposed to certain, for lack of better descriptor: biblical moral principles, those people are somehow terrorists. It is another angle for the concept of owning this idea that those who would oppose your views would be your enemy and at worst, terrorists who are looking to destroy one's way of life.
"I believe that the lesbian couple who has been together for thirty years deserve to get married as a symbol of their devotion to each other, and in that receive all the legal benefits that a civil marriage bequeaths unto them. In believing that, I'm a Terrorist?" Rhetorically, phrasing it in that way rings dramatically different. "I believe Planned Parenthood is an important resource for women in low-income circumstances, for that, I'm a terrorist?" Presented in this manner, أنا إرهابي questions the dehumanizing effect which violent rhetoric puts forth on those who politically do not agree with you. We have freedom of speech, but with such freedoms, do we really exercise the responsibility of how the words will impact those who listen?

أنا إرهابي

I have been absent from here for a while. In recent months I have been percolating an idea which is mildly radical, but I have been reticent to move forward on, mainly on account that it is a drastic idea. To the extreme conservative and fringe elements of conservatism, and religion, someone who is homosexual or just not heterosexual, represent something so abhorrently reprehensible that we can be likened to terrorists. I thought about taking this a step further and owning such a term. In order to bridge the link between Wahabi Muslims who have often been the perpetrators of many of the past decade's terrorist attacks, through a simple act of language "I am a terrorist" or "أنا إرهابي" has become the new subject matter. At this point in time I am still playing with the phrase as a calligraphic form, but also as a label. We'll see how this idea develops.

Pay it Forward 2011

A while ago, on facebook a friend of mine posted a status which read as follows:

"Pay It Forward 2011 ~ I promise to send something handmade to the first 5 people who leave a comment here. They must in turn post this as their status. The rules are that the items must be handmade by you and must be sent to your 5 people sometime in 2011. Happy gifting!"

Thus far I have only received 4 comments since posting this, and am tempted to post it again, if only to see if different people respond. I think the idea of something hand-made is romantic and idealistic, if only because we live in a world of ready-made, cookie cutter consumerism. Everything is pre-packaged and sanitized for your protection. It is like a facebook status, or an e-mail. It is quick, and instant, and requires very little effort on your part. A hand-made something, even if it is a home cooked meal, has what feels like a bygone sentiment which I fear is getting lost in the melange of life.

Picture of Bryan and me: delayed

It has been a long while since I have painted anything that attempted to be remotely photo realist in more than 3 colors. Being a bit of a nit picker who likes to pick nits, I usually hold a very fixed idea when I begin a project. The exception to this rule would be my collage panels, since that is a jigsaw with no concrete answer, and i don't know I am done until I glue down something, look at the collage as a whole, and am satisfied with the result. I digress. I will have a very specific vision of what I would like my finished product to look like, and there is little room for error or variance.
Back in 2009, I had a brief and serendipitous encounter with one Bryan Anderson, Army Staff Sergeant, Retired. He was blown up by an Improvised Explosive Device in Iraq, and his story was followed by many media outlets. He received a Purple heart for his injuries, and became a pseudo celebrity in the sense that he is one of the triple amputees who survived his injuries overseas. His story also helped me be at peace with the distinct possibility that if I were injured when I was in Iraq, and came home with a fraction of my physical self, that would be fine, as long as I came home. That is a rather dark and grim thought, firmly grounded in reality, and ultimately a pragmatic and crucial conclusion to come to when the alternative which you have to confront is death. In helping me accept this, Bryan Anderson was by example a hero. I had the opportunity to shake his hand, and his girlfriend was kind enough to snap a photograph of me with him. I have kept this photograph in my laptop and backed up on several different USB Drives, and external hard drives. After some time and wanting to increase my production output, I decided I wanted to make a painting of this photograph. I attempted to pencil in our figures on the canvas prior to painting, however I became increasingly frustrated at subtle variances in what I had drawn and what the digital image was. I would erase, and paint over the failed attempts several times before I resorted to a technique which I use with my students. My printer having bit the dust after many years of loyal service, I headed to a retail print shop and had a transparency of the photo created. I would use the overhead projector at school to project the image onto the canvas. This idea was foiled with the bulb in the classroom's projector being out. As such, I must wait until the bulb is replaced before I can proceed with this particular project.

Upcoming project idea

After a proverbial hiatus from semi-representational/naturalistic painting, I have bought a canvas to a scale I am comfortable with. There is a photograph I took a few years back which I would like to see as a painting. It has been a long while since I have done any sort of realistic painting, mainly because my skills as a representational painter are sub par. I might have to re-gesso the store-bought canvas as the surface is not to my liking... we'll see.

in my nightmares I.....

With the very little I recall of some of the dreams that I have had in the past years, an ongoing trend I have noticed is whenever I have a dream which I can undeniably consider a nightmare because if the true childlike fear and helplessness they leave me with are dreams in which I am back in the service during a training exercise which involves the use of, or possession of a weapon. usually what ends up happening is either I lose said weapon, have a first time user's non-lethal, not-necessarily-dangerous-in-a-training-environment-but-potentially-harmful-in-a-non-training-environment incident, like swinging a weapon in such a way that I basically put someone in the business end of a rifle unintentionally, or the weapon I have is not the serial number which I was assigned. Misplaced or lost weapons are serious security risks, and they will shut down bases to recover unaccounted for weapons. But with this dream comes the same sense of helplessness of you have a career making meeting or something to get to, and you lost your keys. You cannot remember where you left them, you have turned the house upside down looking for them, and they are NOWHERE to be found. In my nightmare usually, I am usually retracing my steps, and checking every nook and cranie of my environment for my weapon, or at least the weapon which has my assigned serial number. I usually end up either getting caught not having my assigned weapon, or I wake up from the sheer palpable fright which is physically making my heart race like I just finished a Tabata set.

A Really Late response to the Tucson Arizona Shootings and the surrounding politics

Last weekend a very unfortunate and gruesome event occurred in Tucson Arizona, when Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot point blank range through the head by an unwell gunman Jared Lee Loughner. Loughner had a high capacity clip for his pistol which allowed him to fire 31 total rounds before having to reload, which resulted in 6 deaths, and numerous injuries. I have the benefit of hindsight and the distance of time and space from this event in which I had plenty of time to digest the on-goings as they unfolded in the news media and the responses of the nation and myself to the shooting.

My first thought for good or for ill, and a shortcoming in my own judgments was "what right wing gun-happpy nutbag is responsible?". That judgment is a very broad generalization as I know most conservatives while strong in their convictions, and sometimes misinformed (something I am guilty of myself) are generally not bad people. As more information emerged about the shooter various news networks tried to paint him as an extremist of either the right or left based on what is altogether an arbitrary and wide-spanning selection of "favorite books" from Loughner's myspace page. All judgments about the shooter's politics opinions and conjecture piece-mealed and selected by presenting what was altogether only a limited selection of his readings.

As more information about the tragedy unfolded, we found out that Representative Giffords was part of Sarah Palin's Political Action Party's site to take back twenty districts from Democrats who voted to pass the Federal Health Care Reform. The districts marked off under a rifle scope's cross-hairs (I don't care what spin you try to retroactively put on the images, they are NOT surveyor's graphics, I know a rifle scope cross-hairs when I see it.) There are people who believe that symbolism and language riddled with gun euphemisms, and metaphors. This sparked a debate as to whether or not the political rhetoric was responsible for generating an environment in which politicians play on the public's fears and that in turn results in acts of violence seeming justified; a "do onto others BEFORE they do on to you" kind of mentality. I thought it was amusing to see the response from either side of the political spectrum, as it is telling when someone feels they are being called out on the offending behavior. It seemed a lot of the conservative news media and politicians responded with a "what are you accusing us of?" kind of response, where as some of the liberal media outlets acknowledged what might constitute their own infractions and adjusted their speech accordingly. My favorite example of the adjustment is Keith Olberman's satirical segment "Worst Person in the World" usually poking fun at people whose disregard for their fellow man may not be necessarily dangerous, but certainly deplorable if comedic in how it is presented. Olberman did not run this segment in the past week, acknowledging that not everyone may be able to appreciate the segment's satire.

What has been brought to light as well in terms of the shooting was the long history and frequency of mass shootings which have occurred in the United States. I do believe we have the second amendment for a reason, however I think that we should look at the Right to bear Arms with reason and a sense of wisdom. What sorts of things are perfectly admissible in terms of owning firearms, and why is it justifiable. This week Congress has introduced a Bill which would ban the public sale of high capacity magazine clips. High-capacity magazines are not used by any part of public service. Policemen do not have them, and many members of the military do not use them, so why should any civilian individual need them? There is public acknowledgment that automatic weapons are also effectively banned on a federal level, and depending on the state, actually banned. What I mean by 'effectively banned" is that access to certain kinds of materials involve a rigorous process and series of background checks as well as some large fees which need to be paid and are a hassle. If you are willing to go through the process, and your state does not have an outright ban on automatic weapons, you can get a machine gun.

These events of course are not without their heroes. For every sociopath who has no regard for their fellow man, there is a selfless courageous individual who you would swear has ice water running through their veins, and the well being of others becomes tantamount. In the Arizona shooting, this person is Daniel Hernandez, a 20 year old, Latino intern who happens to be gay. Three traits which are no more important that any other, but given Arizona's recent controversial political history, three traits which should not be left out of the dialogue about the shooting (Also three traits which as one reader of the Dan Savage Blog, will guarantee a teabagger's head to explode). Daniel ran TOWARD the gunfire once he heard bullets and attended Gabrielle Giffords' injuries, keeping her upright and applying pressure to the wound. Danile has been lauded as a hero by the nation, including President Obama. During the Memorial, Daniel Hernandez while appreciative of the sentiment "humbly rejected the mantle of 'hero'" to a standing ovation of everyone in attendance. My thoughts on his response were ironically "spoken like a true hero". He really is, in spite of his rejection of the title. I certainly sympathize with the rejection of the sentiment.

Overall, the events are unfortunate, however they are just another series in a chain of a bloody and violent history of shootings here in the state. The shooting in Tucson is horrible, but it is anything but inconceivable.