There are things I can imagine and I can draw. There are things I can imagine but I cannot draw. But, could I draw something that I cannot imagine?
~ István Orosz Graphic designer, animated film director, author.
A few days ago, I started on a new project—3D Metaverse Installation.
Part of my October show at Second Life Endowment for the Arts.
Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.”
– Henri Cartier-Bresson
(Drawing Quotes to Speak to the Artist in You)
Yesterday was my seventieth birthday, and I am beginning my third year of retirement, I have one bold request.
ArtChangesLives(Dot)Com is owned by me and started in grad school almost two decades ago. Subscribing to my blog will help the blog’s rank on Google and other search engines. I hope it will become a place for people to share their thoughts while creating artwork … Meaning any of the arts.
I don’t know if I intend to show or sell my work commercially, but I am heading that way.
Thank you to the artists who agreed to let me link their sites to this site. Most of these individuals are friends.
Art has a vital power to promote understanding of one’s self and the world and provides a path for an artist to self-realize and connect with the known unknown.
It is a big ask, but could you subscribe to this site? I’d appreciate it.
BTW, my 70th birthday was fabulous, hearing from friends and family and spending it with family.
In order to experience a poem, we must understand it; in order to understand it; we must hear it, see it, contemplate it—convert it into an echo, a shadow, nothingness. Comprehension is a spiritual exercise.
Octavio Paz,
Alternating Current, p. 49
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I don’t think I am creating anything as profound as Paz describes, but as I said many times in this blog—I am on a path, which is not totally visible to me. I get glimpses, but never too sure what I see.
I do want to say that just because I post works of art, I do not think they are grand, that the technique is refined, or the lines sure and sharp. I know they are not. However, as I do and study my ideas, my voice and path will clarify.
There is one thing I want readers and friends to know, and that is that I believe in a power greater than ourselves, and there is a piece, a bit, of that power, that Light within each of us. I don’t know if I am a theist, non-theist, pantheist, or panentheist. Whatever I am, I seek to reach, connect, and engage with that Light that exists within me… and you. I am saying this partly because I have avoided saying it in the public eye of art critics and peers.
OH MY GOD! I just came out again. 😆
“Every work of art is a culturescape of you, your memories, the moments you spent working, your hopes, energies, and neuroses, the times you live in, and your ambitions. Of the things that are engaging, mysterious, meaningful, resistant over time.”
― Jerry Saltz, How to Be an Artist
Finally, I got a gallery set up. I have to explore more because I am still determining if the plug-in NextGen Gallery is worth it.
I am reading Jerry Saltz’s book—Art is Life. I like it. He is very entertaining. I am unsure if I like him, but he speaks his mind. He seems to have compassion too. So I guess I do. But he would be a challenge, I think.
Loved his story of himself laying down the idea of being an artist. He speaks of creating art… akin to meditation and communing with the unknown. His question about … Is There Great Art on Instagram? I appreciated that he seemed to honor all the artists working… discovering… exploring… and most of all, creating art as an unknown but still creating.
Then this article/chapter—Iconoclasm Now: Charlie Hebdo and the Lethal Power of Art. That chapter was a show-stopper for me; as a Quaker and even as a young man, I believed that what I created on paper, sculpted, and images I made, I breathed life into the work. So whether it is seen or unseen, it has life cause it was/is a part of me. He didn’t go there exactly, but when he spoke about the image breakers that believed the images that “the thing itself and, as made not by God, they contain demonic spirits.” So I identified with that some people believe similarly about an image as I do—the demonic bit … not so much. But as a Quaker, there is the “Light of God” within the work.
The short of it, I am learning a lot, and Mr. Saltz’s book is good. It is approachable and entertaining.
The person who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
Creativity at Work
— Chinese Proverb
Yes, I am beginning again. Roughly a year and a half ago, my blog of 12 years was shut down by Blue Host because it was infected with malware. I mourned. It had over two thousand images taken or created by me. Hundreds of quotes I found meaningful and helped center my meditation.
After talking to former colleagues at Minneapolis College (MCTC), I found a new host and came to WordPress. com. They offered security to me and any readers coming to ArtChangesLives(Dot)Com at a reasonable price.
In the past posts that were saved and brought back, you will find lines of code that refer to images that once resided there. I decided to keep them there for references for myself. I hope you don’t see this confusing.
My pseudonym for Second Life activities is Tap Quentin. I named my Avatar after my first boyhood crush, Bobby Quinn. I just completed uploading many of my works to Second Life’s Marketplace. I invite you to view my works at my online store, Ephemeral Traces.