The End of the Garden?

As the title says, I think that the idea of having a spring garden has fizzled. I was rearing some seedlings in the house for a month and now I've watched all of them die. My squashes died when I took them out of the jiffy greenhouse container they were in, some of my plants never even materialized, and then the other day I made a poor decision of thinking all of my tomato plants were old enough to go outside.

I put them out in a relatively sunny spot (Since tomatoes like sun, right?) on friday and at the end of the day I came back outside and they were all withered and bleached out. Every single one- even the purple tomatoes. So, I'm pretty sad about that because I was looking forward to growing them. But maybe it's a sign that school just doesn't allow time for proper care of plants.

Also, I had some garlic that had sprouted in the fridge and so I had planted that. Most of them I threw into the ground and they were doing fine, until my landladies husband came over and sprayed the backyard with weedkiller. He sprayed around some of them, but of course that stuff spreads like crazy and it's ridiculously toxic, so now all of the garlic has died or will die as well. It makes me upset, because I don't understand why my landlord can't have her grandkids come over and just pull the weeds out. That's what I've been doing a few times and I don't see any reason why people should just pump weedkiller into the ground when they can just do a little bit of work and pull them out naturally.

Watering won't help at this point!

So all I have left now are a few sunflowers and some lettuce, which is small and probably too bitter to eat. All of this is probably for the best not only because of school, but because I've injured my back somehow and it's not getting any better. So leaning over to take care of things would be too difficult and not the best idea.

Even though I'm still pretty sad and distressed over my portfolio review (as well as a handful of other things going wrong), there are some good things happening as well. I did my taxes and with the left over money I've bought some books and an SD card for my mp3 player so I can put most all of my music on it. I'm hoping that things will start to look a little brighter and not so "blah" in the next few weeks.

Conceptual Drivel and the Argument For What is Art

I know the title of this post is flame worthy, but you see that is exactly my point.

This morning I got ready and headed for my pre-portfolio review for my art program at school. I was fairly confident that whoever looked at my work would think it was pretty good. I had even heard that if they liked your stuff well enough then you could be accepted into the program on the spot.
Once I got there, I watched the three "directors" talk about what they wanted to see in the portfolio, and they even gave some examples of earlier portfolios submitted. One of the portfolios consisted of about 10 paintings. My program is considered more digital art than traditional, so I thought it was kind of strange that they would like the portfolio. Not only that, but the paintings were....to put it kindly, not very good. They consisted mostly of still lifes and one piece of a soldier with a caged bird. I thought it was rather cliche but they seemed to love it. I thought that if this is all that it took to get into the program then I should be all set. After all, I've already had my artwork published and some of the animation that I've worked on sold in stores.

One of the directors I had previously as a teacher and so we were told that we couldn't choose that same person to review our portfolio. So I chose to go with this one guy by the name of Greg to review my work. He seemed to be pretty popular with everyone and I figured that out of all 3, he was the highest in command and influence. As I waited for my turn to present my portfolio to him, I heard him make kind suggestions to the girl before me and he even told her that one of her pieces reminded him of Alexander Calder's work. The girl had no idea who Calder was, but told him that she would write it down. I thought to myself- how could you even make it this far without ever hearing of Alexander Calder? I shrugged it off and then it was my turn.

I showed him the first page and started explaining my work when he cut me off and told me that he would just look over it without me talking about it first. As he looked at each page he seemed rather uninterested and had this look of pity and confusion on his face. He reached the end and then told me: "I don't get any sense of who you are in any of these pieces. What is the point, the purpose? I don't see any ideas behind any of these." I was completely taken aback. He then asked me who I had taken my portfolio prep class with and I told him, and he looked in his direction and sort of sighed. I thought, "great! Now my teacher is going to get in trouble." My teacher had warned me that these other directors were big on concept-driven work, and so in a way I wasn't surprised at what he was asking me, but to write off all of my artwork was just ridiculous. The only kind thing he told me was that one of my life drawings was "technically okay." He could tell I was upset and then pushed his face closer to mine and said in this pitying voice: "do you understand what I'm asking you?" I said yes and but inside all I could think about was punching him in his smug face. He then got all happy and gave me my portfolio back and told me good luck on the final review.

That was the end and afterwards I really felt like crying, and even now I still do just to let off the steam. My frustration is borne out of the fact that these directors are focused more on conceptual driven art and they despise anything that is considered pop-surreal or low-brow. Plus, they have NO IDEA what kind of artists companies in animation, and game design want. They don't have a clue because they have never worked in those industries. Greg was telling the girl before me about an artist who took pictures of 60 peoples bellybuttons and how fascinating it was. These are the kinds of artists who are more excited about you pooping in a basket while cutting your hair off and gluing it back on to your naked body, than work that would be produced by a famous concept artist like Feng Zhu. My teacher told me that one artist they have been gushing over is Jason Salavon. We looked at some of his work in class and basically all he does is take a bunch of photographs, lower then to a certain amount of opacity and then layer them one on top of each other, resulting in a ghost-like image. Anybody with photoshop (you probably don't even need that) could do that simply enough. Besides, the idea isn't even original.

So which is "Art"? This:

As Salavons website explains:

Every Playboy Centerfold, The Decades (normalized)   2002

Digital C-prints.

From a broader series begun in 1997, the photographs in this suite are the result of mean averaging every Playboy centerfold foldout for the four decades beginning Jan. 1960 through Dec. 1999. This tracks, en masse, the evolution of this form of portraiture.

Or This:

Or maybe this:

Homes for Sale   1999/2001/2002

Digital C-print.

From a series begun in 1997, the prints in this suite are the result of mean averaging a specific number of realtor photos of single-family homes for sale. Each piece encompasses homes on the market in a given metro region in the median price range for that area.

VS. This:

Frankly I think that the people who are in charge of my program have extremely biased, close-minded, dated and skewed views of what they consider "good" art to be.  I firmly believe that much of what is considered low brow art now, will one day be extremely admired. These people seem to believe that if your art doesn't hang in galleries, and it's not controversial, then it's not art. Ultimately they show no signs of having any interest whatsoever in "working class art," art that is used by companies and the industry. Although contemporary "modern" art from the likes of Damien Hirst bring in a ton of money at auction, what about the artists that don't care about the fortune and fame? Are they not considered succesful, influential artists because they aren't making their work super conceptual?

I think that the kinds of artists they like may have some power in the fine art industry, but when it comes to influencing a new young generation, they fall flat. How many teenagers do you meet that love to draw and paint and want to be exactly like Jason Salavon? And how many teenagers would want to be a manga, comic book artist or animator? Truth be told, I don't like to encourage teenagers to draw manga without first observing the basics, but the simple fact is that while people may find manga to be stupid, silly, ugly and cookie cutter....it really has influenced a tremendous amount of young artists today in ways that high profile contemporary artists haven't. That's what I think is important, influence and not money sales.

Now I think that maybe if I put in my worst work, that they'll like it better than what I have in there now. If I make up some ridiculous story to put behind my work and give them what they want to hear then I'm sure I could lead them along and they would fall for it. I'm really tempted to make a piece now that includes several shots of Greg's head, in 20% opacity superimposed on top of one another, projecting on a cracked wall in red, while almost inconspicuous violin music plays in the background- all with a brazilian shaman sitting in a pile of soiled oily rags chanting loud spiritual incantations meant to ward off the devil. I know they would love it. It's not who I am, but it's what THEY WANT to see, right? And that's all that matters to them.
After my review I headed over to the art building to continue on a painting for one of my classes. I had been frustrated all throughout the week that I couldn't get the colors to look the way I wanted and I was hoping that today would bring some sort of breakthrough. But I still had no luck and eventually gave up. I know why my colors aren't turning out correctly and in class I become very frustrated while working on it. My teacher doesn't seem to understand what I'm struggling with but it's really quite obvious to myself. The problem is that I've never intensely studied color theory. Of course in high school I would make the classic required color wheel and do a few color mixing exercises. But it wasn't enough, and none of that information has ever sunk in. Pretty much all that I know is that red and blue make purple, yellow and blue make green, etc. But beyond the basics, I have NO idea what I'm doing. Because of this, I can see the color of my subject, but I have no idea how to recreate it, or create contrast and proper shadows. This deficiency coupled with never having painted in oils has reduced me to a state of extreme doubt in my abilities. I just can't seem to grasp oil painting....I've really only ever used acrylics, and they seem to suite me so well. I've wanted to paint with oil, but I just don't understand the process of working with it. It doesn't help that I still have the feeling that I have no idea what I'm doing when I clean my pallet, try to keep my hands clean and my brushes. The darned stuff gets everywhere and I'm paranoid of using all the turps and getting stuff on me.

Oy, that was a long paragraph, but today I've just been really humbled. Not to say I wasn't humble before. I think I'm actually pretty modest about my abilities. Probably too modest. But the painting problem has humbled me and the portfolio problem has confirmed that yes, I do need to find out what my work is all about, but also that the people in charge of the portfolios are a bunch of punks.

After heading to the library to try to find a crash course book on color and almost falling asleep there, I headed home. I caught the bus immediately, but on the next stop it broke down. I was about a mile and a half away from my house, so I decided to walk since it was a nice day. As I was walking I thought of Supertramps song, "long way home"and I sang it a little bit in my head as I walked. The walk wasn't too bad and I saw a lot of interesting things. As I got closer to my house one of my neighbors had the radio on and just as I was walking past, Supertramps song came on. It seemed like all of this had been planned.

When I got home, a letter from my little sister was waiting for me. I opened it up and it contained another envelope. I opened that and inside there was no letter....it was just tissues. Yes, facial tissues with an image of a lichtenstein-esque woman printed on them and she was crying. After this, I had a feeling that maybe this day really was all planned out, and for some kind of reason, although I'm not sure what. I haven't started crying over my wretched day yet, but those tissues really will come in handy if I do.