Process and Memory

As I was housecleaning last weekend, I came across a bunch of travel photos taken on various trips throughout the years. In 1989, patty and I went to Paris for our Anniversary. I took a Pentax K1000 (old school) and took hundreds of really boring snapshots- Long story short- I decided to explore some of the ideas in my sketchbook-
The Nike is not exactly the way the photo suggests it- but more blended with what I remember of the moment you come around the corner onto the main staircase of the Louvre from the lobby (I probably am not remembering this accurately)
The point is really the mob with its back on history while the anchoring the base of the triangle is the lone figure of a sleepy, bored guard- apart and, somewhat, redundant. Above it all strides the judgement of destiny- a shabby victory of the gods- what good are wings when you have neither arms nor head?

We do what we want- we get what we want

Sketchbook update November 25, 2007
My wife says, "We do what we want." What she means by this is that people often say that they want to do this, that or some other thing, as in, "I want to learn to play the piano." If we really wanted to play the piano, we would be doing it- right now, today, no matter how badly or well. It wouldn't matter. If I could only give my students one gift, one lesson, one thing to take away from their time with me, it would be the gift of this moment of clarity. What ever you are doing, right now, is what you really want to do, even if that's drinking beer, watching the Beverly Hillbillies and smoking pot.

oh yes,
there are worse things
than being alone
but it often takes
decades to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late

and there's nothing worse than
too late.

Charles Bukowski

First Entry

I begin this blog as an extension of my website - a way to verbalize what I'm trying to do with the expressive content of my sketchbook.

First, a bit about the daily practice of a sketchbook: for me it is a form of diary- a way of parsing the world and its experience presented through my daily existence, my dream-life and the things I love, hate, hope for and fear. By the very nature of the exercise it is at once poetic and ineffable. It is inconsequential and gigantic. Hopefully, it operates outside the need for qualitative measurement.

My need to sometimes explain doesn't seem to fit very elegantly into the universe of the website, itself, so, hopefully, this blog may act as a "junk drawer" for all that stuff that doesn't fit elsewhere.

Let's face it- some of it is, lacking a context for it, not good. I admit to relying on a certain amount of artistic pretension to cover up for my lack of ability. Simultaneously I hold the belief that true authenticity must come from a certain fearlessness. As a maker of images all makers must, at some point, show their work to someone. Without this resolving act the work itself seems to remain inchoate-only partially formed. (Or is it just an ornate justification for shameless exhibitionism and self-promotion trying to pass for humility?)

"Even the president of the united states must sometimes have to stand naked."*

Over the next few months I will post a new entry each time I update my website sketchbook, typically two or three times each week.

*Bob Dylan- It's All Right Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)