KICKSTARTER - UNDERDOG PROJECT REWARD as an INVESTMENT

Kickstarter is like a fun little school project that you don't have to go by the teacher's agenda. Except it can be a time bandit, absorbing your mind's focus, whether it is successful or failing. How much comes from the community of Kickstarter may depend on how much you yourself have Kickstarted the campaign from your own resources - that's why Kickstarter may not be the best name for the funding platform. Adrenaline Booster may be a better term. It may not be the place where astute critics reach out, but more where, opinionated project surfers seek out waves that fit their liking and they will ride it, until the next wave comes by. How much the funders care about the success of the project may have something to do with how much they care about the person behind it, if they know that person. The project on its own, may be ahead of its time, and may be passed up for any number of reasons. The supporters will feel a royal Kick in the butt when they realize the project that everyone passed up has become quite the work, and the little REWARDS offered for cheap, are now PRIZED COLLECTIBLES demanding high prices. Yeah, that little $25 pledge on the LIMITED EDITION ART PRINT or that higher pledge on an ORIGINAL piece of art, may turn into a major INVESTMENT. But, you can't really say that in the project description. So, let's just say, that the rewards may be worth much MORE than you bargained for. Placing a pledge for that UNDERDOG PROJECT may be your best bet, but to get your "investment" reward, the project has to be fully funded. So, spread the word. And before you know it, you may see a win-win situation and another dream comes true.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1538065671/drawing-my-ship-in

DRAWING MY SHIP IN

Kickstarter Campaign: To encourage a 1st pledge, I offered the Project Image itself as a Freebie to the 6th pledge, 6 because I was playing off the 6% some site - probably one of the many wanting me to hire them to promote my site - predicted my campaign had the chance of success. But, after no takers, I offered it to the 1st bidder. It is an autographed original. Wearing a Blue Ribbon, the artist whips out drawings on the assembly-line - this was the real thing - NOT the hands-off faux-factory of the cold andy warhol's so-called factory where he had others doing much of his work, allowing him to perpetuate the mystery under a wig and on cloud nine enjoying the escapism of heroin, like his cohorts, david bowie, john lennon, and a slew of other Manhattenites.

Setback

Now that my laptop has been stolen and my camera, I will have to go through a lot more trouble to access my pictures to post on this blog. No, I didn't back up everything. I'll have to manually search for material that is boxed up in the "art" room. But some things like saved emails are gone for good. Years ago, around 1990, a similar thing happened, when a friend's trailer I had stored art in was vandalized. One day after work at the factory, I walked through the overgrown grass and towards the tree where the trailer was. Leading up tp the trailer were balled up pieces of paper. My heart dropped when upon closer examination, they proved to be my drawings. This discovery was a hint of things to come - a trailer where my works where scattered everywhere, varnish and paint splashed here and there, and the windows busted out on all sides of the trailer. Perhaps, the most disturbing finding was a few early drawings of human forms imprisioned by box-like framen - they were found stuffed in the bottom of the trailers non-working toilet. I tried my best to salvage them, but it appeared useless. I never found out who did it.

The Green fields of a Blue-collar dream

Those little seconds-long installations on a dream begun over twenty years ago is beginning to bear fruit. The rocky steps from the mill, where the call was heard to the opening exhibition of an international show, I knew if I kept with it, didn't give up, I would have a voice, that is directly related to its beginning, that like a seed, unfolds into a strong expression of itself. However simple it is to the human eye, it has a rich tapestry of archetypal patterns. "The world is your oyster," I say in each of these drawings.

Gillette Razors Landmark

Conceptual works offer food for the thinker. And to a passionate artist, it offers a bit of a counter weight to his/her usual mode of expression. For this proposal to Gillette, I took a piece of aluminum, resembling a chunk off the production line of a number of razors and cut a diamond shape out of it, pointing the upper half towards the sky, revealing a split-level design of the background architectual wall.

Blank Canvass Benefit Visual Arts Center of New Jersey

"Lunch with a Curator" II is my submission to the 2008 Blank Canvass Benefit at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey. The event is by invitation and helps support education & art programming at the center. Last year I did an oil painting for the same event. This year, I created a mixed media piece, complete with fork, brush, plate, clay sculpted into a "ship coming in," as the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey logo is expanded to have an artist with cap joined with a curator wearing a crown. I accented the regal moment as something very special and transcendental, fantasy-like. The piece asks - Can a meeting with a curator lead to something? Can an artist be catapulted out of his financial misery by a single win in a juried art show? It also says something about believing in the power of art. Visualize it and concretize it to actualize it. Believe in the power of art.

Drawing into Sculpture

From thought to image on paper to a fabrication 3-dimensionally out of hard materials. That is the basic steps of this dance of drawing into sculpture. But, time has already become an element of my drawing, before the 3-D elements were considered. So, the process did not flow in a traditional pattern of 2-D to 3-D, to the 4th dimension of time. So, how do I interpret the time element into the heavy mass-laden, sculpture? I have to model it like anything else 3-D.

The other thought is about juried art shows. Should winners be chosen at all? I mean, yes, we could all use a boost to our resume, but should the glory stop at being chosen to be in the show? Does a ribbon encourage a collector to part with his money? Does the selection of a few winners create discouragement in the many others whose work didn't win? I've won cash awards when I could barely afford shipping to the show, so it helped me greatly. Grants can have the same effect. It appears that winning anything may have similar feelings to those that didn't...even stories of someone finding something that others didn't. A career, a wallet, a voice.

The Female In My Art

She made her entrance by necessity. She was summoned in the name of Balance. I had focused too long on a hieroglyphic symbol which I later found to mean "MEN." Repeatedly, I drew it, transforming it over many months into its most dynamic form. Complimentary to this evolution of a hieroglyphic fragment, arose the posterior side of a feminine form, originally in thin line work. Later she evolved into a monochromatic wash in passionate,figurative embrace with her figurative, male opposite. This,emotionally and visually, brought about psychological equilibrium. After that, she continued her dynamic interplay with my drawing, sporting a continuous parade of colorful garments.
This watercolor pencil wash work was done at a fast-food restaurant in 2003. I framed a print of her and placed it in an eclectic store of unique things. A woman with her mother, after strolling through the whole store of thousands of items, stopped when she saw this print on a chair. "It spoke to me," she said. The original, like most of my original color works of this goddess, are complete with the authentic drops of coffee, which I used to blend the colors when drawing at fast-food restaurants. She measures 8.5" x 11" and I will let her go for $600.

Bathroom Drawing - an old outlet revisited

It may sound a bit strange - sketching in the bathroom, but reading in there is not uncommon. I've done it before years ago when I was working in the door plant. It had the aura of a studio, something I didn't have back then. Back then, I took a scrap of wood and placed it on my thighs to sketch. Now, I use styrofoam - there is no shortage of it in the shipping and receiving department where I presently work. I break a piece and presto, I have a surface. Pictured here is my sketches from yesterday on 1 1/8" thick styrofoam, and 20" long by a variable height of 9".

Perhaps the unwritten beauty of it is this - it is a testament of my irresistable urge to draw and my continuing dedication. So there you have it - Bathroom Drawings!

What if a grant is granted this week?

I applied for my first grant months ago and will find out if it passed initial screening within days. I could do so much with this grant. Twenty years of work stored in a small room could come to life in my proposal for a protptype for exhibitions that reveals the symmetry of my journey.

It would make such a wonderful and enlightening exhibition. It would also show viewers the rocky road to achieving a voice, the ups and downs. Bills continue to mount and I and my supportive wife continue trying to stay afloat. Yesterday, I sent out a package to a museum considering acquisition. Today, I send out an introductory letter and pics to Gallery in upstate NY. Someone will see that something in my work that will inspire others - that is the motivating force that makes all these mailings purposeful.

I've gotten the eyes of important members of the art world. Now I have to get their ears. I need a solo show and I need assistance in bringing it to the people, damnit!

LUNCH WITH A CURATOR

Last year, my donation to the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey's Annual Blank Canvass Benefit, was a painting depicting an alter ego of myself having lunch with the juror for the 2008 International Show. This was the "Best in Show" award - to sit down for lunch at the Whitney and have the ears and eyes of the juror, which in this case was the Whitney's curator of drawings. Did I resort to some ancient voodoo tactic to try my luck? No, I merely used art to express my hope for a certain outcome before it was decided to not happen - I wasn't even juried into the show. But in 2007, I won a Merit Award, one of the top 6 awards selected from about 1800 entries. So, my hopes are high and probably not too far-fetched. But, who's to say when hope is misplaced. I can think of many other things more misplaced.

This year I am submitting for the auction, a logo for the "Lunch with a Curator" Best in Show award in the upcoming 23rd International Show at Summit. It will consist of a plate, a fork, a 1" brush, an approaching ship made of clay, stick on letters, and a re-structuring of the VACNJ logo. I'll spray it chrome and call it "Lunch with Curator II."

HEY WHITNEY

In response to my rejection in the International Show 2008 (Summit,NJ), a show I really wanted to be in - the juror was from the Whitney and from the department of Drawings, I drew "Hey Whitney." The Best in Show award for the Int'l show was a meeting with the juror at the Whitney, and a Cash Award of $1,000. I entered that drawing in the Madison National Show in Madsion, GA, and it won a $1,000 Best in Show Merit Award, one of three awarded. The juror was Sylvie Fortin, Editor of ART PAPERS. Lesson: Take that artist's angst and channel it.

But the story doesn't end there. I sent a copy of this drawing to the Whitney to see if they wanted to purchase it. It's been months and still no response, which means there is no interest, because if there was they would certainly contact the artist. I sometimes find if a story is too good, too appropriate, or too relevant, it isn't wanted. Perhaps those that make the decisions prefer something they don't understand, which would make a big ego feel that it is important because it is after all, unexplainable by their cerebral cortex, and if it was easy to understand then it would be an insult to the inquiring mind if it wasn't easily grasped in the first place. Perhaps sometimes an artist should not try to explain the art, thereby making it mysterious, and exciting. But then doesn't art history try its dam nest to make our expressions understandable. Isn't that the point of lectures, books, and exhibitions, to a degree?

At any rate, there are a lot of reasons that determine an acquisition, and some may have nothing to do with the sheer freshness or spiritual value of the work. Look at dealers who may sometimes only look at the existing monetary "value" of a work as the informing factor in their acquiring of it. So, back to this fresh vision where an artist is gaining curatorial favor via juried art winnings, yet not one work has sold, and an artist has to struggle, searching car seats for coins, just to afford the most basic of materials, paper. Do collectors not have vision????