Category: Observations
I have drawn from a very young age. As an artist, it's my default medium. There are artists who see the world artistically through photography or film or clay or corten steel- may way is through drawing.
This is why I am ostensibly a printmaker at my current institution: because intaglio is uniquely suited to my approach to drawing.
Drawing for me has done many things, but I think it has been most important in the way it allows me a control over the world that is often otherwise not in my possession. This is a confession of sorts. There is something both profoundly human and somewhat pathetic about using one's art to solve one's problems. And the desire for control is at times a less than commendable motive.
I'm thinking about this because I'm remembering how, in my life, drawing has, in the presence of crisis or trauma or chaos, functioned and not functioned to my selfish ends.
I'm recalling a drawing class that I took in undergrad that, occuring as it did in the midst of personal chaos, of newish fears and considerations of my own mortality and fragility - the typical post-adolescent recognition that the sense of invincibility one earlier felt was an illusion (something I had utterly grasped intellectually, but that does not do it) (the admixture of the traditional fears and a small medical crisis exaggerated these out of their due proportion, I say retrospectively). For some reason, our primary lesson, to, in a fashion both modernist and self-consciously Eastern, let go of our desire for control over the drawing-as-result-of-a-process, rather than liberating me, led me into greater internal conflict. The result was a discomfort with drawing that would be take quite a while to overcome.
I also remember my temporary incapacity to draw following September 11th. The Thursday following the attacks, I told my teacher that I would be far below 100%, and unlikely to have enough focus to produce good work. For some reason that remains obscure to me he asked why. (September 11th may have been a far-off and, because I was not connected to any of those killed, abstract trauma, its awesome horror, spectacular amplification, and my simple empathy made it a trauma indeed) Drawing had not served me in the immediate term to fit my mind to the ugly edges of the world. Yet in the coming weeks, that event and the war in Afghanistan would lead me into a rather ambitious and personally significant drawing that, if not succeeding in ordering my world, served its purpose.
At the moment I am weathering a familial circumstance which frightens me and gives me trauma as I define it. (That is, I consider trauma to be any circumstance that redefines the self or the world outside of the self in ways that the two cannot be easily or immediately reconciled) On a certain level I have not confronted my direst fears head on. I have at no point in time conceived of the world in which my loved one is passed away. There is something about the leaden sense of death that has pervaded this entire Christmas season that makes this ideation almost unnecessary.
The fact is that a consistent discipline of drawing has both provided me with the pleasure necessary to see the greater circumstance beyond the lens of doom, and it has also served as a channel for these emotions and others in this time of multiple discomforts, longings, and losses.
This finally takes me to the advice that I gave to a good friend who is dealing with a terrible loss. I suggested to be aware of the ways in which grief and loss can make the act of drawing an act that does not serve intended ends. And yet I sit here recognizing that drawing in the midst of loss or crisis can provide meaning and liberation. I am myself and cannot speak definitively on this subject, one's pain is one's own and one's methods to cope are perhaps as unknowable, but I know that for myself drawing can do what discussion sometimes cannot: anchor us in unsettled seas.
Friday, December 31, 2004
Friday, December 03, 2004
Poem
Category: Literary Excursions
This comes directly from a dream I had last night-
I could hear his basso voice
As we walked through the hall into the courtyard.
We sat against the greyed sky
And as I was about to speak
His voice rose again.
Every time I talk to you, I said,
There's someone singing,
'You're a mean one, Mister Grinch.'
I don't know exactly what it means, although I gather it comes from anxiety about being understood.
This is probably some hippy idea that has been expressed so many times I should be embarrassed, but it strikes me that poetry is a more reasonable way to present dreams than prose, because prose, at least in the English-speaking world, speaks through a logic that is far less compatible with dream logic than poetry.
This comes directly from a dream I had last night-
I could hear his basso voice
As we walked through the hall into the courtyard.
We sat against the greyed sky
And as I was about to speak
His voice rose again.
Every time I talk to you, I said,
There's someone singing,
'You're a mean one, Mister Grinch.'
I don't know exactly what it means, although I gather it comes from anxiety about being understood.
This is probably some hippy idea that has been expressed so many times I should be embarrassed, but it strikes me that poetry is a more reasonable way to present dreams than prose, because prose, at least in the English-speaking world, speaks through a logic that is far less compatible with dream logic than poetry.
William Zabka, etc.
Category: Observations, Art In Progress
There's always a danger in using pop culture references. For a great number of people of roughly my generation, use of pop culture references can reduce to gesture, and not always particalarly admirable gesture at that. It is not exactly universal although nor is it at all uncommon to find that people roughly my age, people brought up like their parents in front of the television, use references to Goonies or Neverending Story or Thundercats or the like to generate nostalgia and to suck some sort of cool from these images.
Which is a way of introducing something I found while researching CS Lewis Jr., something that rather sophisticatedly combines pop culture reference and postmodern fiction technique. Oh, and it's also pretty hilarious.
Rather simply, Patton Oswalt (the writer, one of my favorite standup comedians) treats 4 characters across 4 different films (all but one played by William Zabka) as one coherent entity.
Which brought me to a certain concept, for my own artmaking.The costume is an element deployed frequently in films that talk about growing up. Whatever its intentions, and it's fair, I think, to gather that Scout's ham costume in To Kill a Mockingbird is used with far different intentions from those found in Karate Kid, the use of costume creates absurdities around the idea of identity, and well played absurdities are often memorable.
In The Karate Kid, a halloween party is the occasion for Daniel-san to attempt retribution toward Johnny Lawrence, to connect with Elizabeth Shue, to get his ass beat, and to be saved by Mister Miyagi. This is a critical part of the film, but whenever I watch it, all that I can see are those Cobra Kai bastards in their skeleton costumes. There is something simultaneously obvious and true about having Daniel's antagonists portrayed as a gang of fake dead bodies.
As I don't think I have disclosed, I have a currently fictional band called Owl. I was trying to think through costumes beside the obvious (ya know, owl costumes), and I was thinking that dressing the band as those skeletons would be really compelling. Skeleton costumes may speak directly to that pretty famous clip in a pretty famous film, but they don't speak exclusively to that. I was a skeleton for holloween when I was a youngster- it's an image that isn't necessarily specific, but is intensified through the specific.
Also, skeletons embody to the adolescent and heavy metal tendency to dwell on childish caricatures of death, on the grotesque and the implausibly gory. It's hard to pinpoint why this is, but there is a culture on display in Megadeth posters and Friday the 13th movies and perhaps even in Rob Zombie that desires to dwell on a cartoonish vision of violence and death, not exactly out of a nihilism, but because of a childish recognition/denial of one's own mortality. The skeleton costumes speak to this, but in an aggressively juvenile way I find fantastic.
There's always a danger in using pop culture references. For a great number of people of roughly my generation, use of pop culture references can reduce to gesture, and not always particalarly admirable gesture at that. It is not exactly universal although nor is it at all uncommon to find that people roughly my age, people brought up like their parents in front of the television, use references to Goonies or Neverending Story or Thundercats or the like to generate nostalgia and to suck some sort of cool from these images.
Which is a way of introducing something I found while researching CS Lewis Jr., something that rather sophisticatedly combines pop culture reference and postmodern fiction technique. Oh, and it's also pretty hilarious.
Rather simply, Patton Oswalt (the writer, one of my favorite standup comedians) treats 4 characters across 4 different films (all but one played by William Zabka) as one coherent entity.
Which brought me to a certain concept, for my own artmaking.The costume is an element deployed frequently in films that talk about growing up. Whatever its intentions, and it's fair, I think, to gather that Scout's ham costume in To Kill a Mockingbird is used with far different intentions from those found in Karate Kid, the use of costume creates absurdities around the idea of identity, and well played absurdities are often memorable.
In The Karate Kid, a halloween party is the occasion for Daniel-san to attempt retribution toward Johnny Lawrence, to connect with Elizabeth Shue, to get his ass beat, and to be saved by Mister Miyagi. This is a critical part of the film, but whenever I watch it, all that I can see are those Cobra Kai bastards in their skeleton costumes. There is something simultaneously obvious and true about having Daniel's antagonists portrayed as a gang of fake dead bodies.
As I don't think I have disclosed, I have a currently fictional band called Owl. I was trying to think through costumes beside the obvious (ya know, owl costumes), and I was thinking that dressing the band as those skeletons would be really compelling. Skeleton costumes may speak directly to that pretty famous clip in a pretty famous film, but they don't speak exclusively to that. I was a skeleton for holloween when I was a youngster- it's an image that isn't necessarily specific, but is intensified through the specific.
Also, skeletons embody to the adolescent and heavy metal tendency to dwell on childish caricatures of death, on the grotesque and the implausibly gory. It's hard to pinpoint why this is, but there is a culture on display in Megadeth posters and Friday the 13th movies and perhaps even in Rob Zombie that desires to dwell on a cartoonish vision of violence and death, not exactly out of a nihilism, but because of a childish recognition/denial of one's own mortality. The skeleton costumes speak to this, but in an aggressively juvenile way I find fantastic.
Monday, November 29, 2004
The Wire
Category: Criticism
I'll try to be brief, because that is not my tendency. The HBO series The Wire demonstrates yet again that HBO consistently produces exceptional shows. It is now in its third season and remains compelling in a way that network TV police procedurals fail to even approach.
What is perhaps most unique about this series is its naturalism in character development. Characters like Frank Sobotka, McNulty, D'Angelo Barksdale, Kima, and Omar (and this comes in part from the mini-series-like continuity of each season) have a realness, a mundaneness, and a credibility that leads one to imagine their existences outside the narrative. Also, the format of the series means that narrative events carry their own time rather than conforming to an explicit resolve-in-60 minutes contrivance.
The fantastic thing about the police procedural aspect of this series is that we get a vivid sense of the density and irritating bureaucracy involved, but the series is written with an almost wonkish enthusiasm that leaves us fascinated rather than bored. The police procedural aspects of, say, CSI or L&O: CI are frequently rather fanciful. Criminal Intent in particular resembles a murder mystery show more than anything else.
I imagine the reasons are largely economic, but I wonder why it is that HBO series' tend to be so radically different and radically better than their network equivalents. There is a conviction and apparent artistic integrity to HBO's shows that is refreshing in a television landscape in which so much seems rote.
I'll try to be brief, because that is not my tendency. The HBO series The Wire demonstrates yet again that HBO consistently produces exceptional shows. It is now in its third season and remains compelling in a way that network TV police procedurals fail to even approach.
What is perhaps most unique about this series is its naturalism in character development. Characters like Frank Sobotka, McNulty, D'Angelo Barksdale, Kima, and Omar (and this comes in part from the mini-series-like continuity of each season) have a realness, a mundaneness, and a credibility that leads one to imagine their existences outside the narrative. Also, the format of the series means that narrative events carry their own time rather than conforming to an explicit resolve-in-60 minutes contrivance.
The fantastic thing about the police procedural aspect of this series is that we get a vivid sense of the density and irritating bureaucracy involved, but the series is written with an almost wonkish enthusiasm that leaves us fascinated rather than bored. The police procedural aspects of, say, CSI or L&O: CI are frequently rather fanciful. Criminal Intent in particular resembles a murder mystery show more than anything else.
I imagine the reasons are largely economic, but I wonder why it is that HBO series' tend to be so radically different and radically better than their network equivalents. There is a conviction and apparent artistic integrity to HBO's shows that is refreshing in a television landscape in which so much seems rote.
Sunday, November 28, 2004
"Mostly Dead
Category: Art In Progress
I will begin work on a film that involves copywrighted material, captures from video/dvd. The gist is this:
Gather together the most significant and compelling shots and moments from two films: Ghost, starring Tony Goldwyn and Vincent Schiavelli, and The Princess Bride, starring Chris Sarandon and Mel Smith.
{Which, check this out- Ghost was directed by Jerry Zucker of Top Secret and the Naked Gun movies fame. Also, interesting if not quite so compelling thing vis TPB... screenwriter William Goldman also had a hand in Last Action Hero}
The collection of clips will be assembled together, respecting neither the chronology of each film or any overt sense of narrative coherence. Nevertheless, I will attempt to tie the clips into some sort of unity using a scripted voiceover which I myself will perform.
I am aiming toward the attitudes that each source film displays toward the semi-dead. I also intend to wring emotional intensity out of each. As such, clips to be included will include Prince Humperdink's sadistic torture of Wesley and Carl Bruner's expression of abject terror when he discovers that the $4 million in blood money is gone.
Expected running time is between 8 and 18 minutes, to throw out a random range.
Despite the fact that this project, were it to be of a commercial nature, would violate certain copyrights, I will use this blog post as published demonstration that I hold all rights to this idea. However, I endorse any other artmaker's video mashup on this (meaning the borderlines of life and death) or a similar subject.
I will begin work on a film that involves copywrighted material, captures from video/dvd. The gist is this:
Gather together the most significant and compelling shots and moments from two films: Ghost, starring Tony Goldwyn and Vincent Schiavelli, and The Princess Bride, starring Chris Sarandon and Mel Smith.
{Which, check this out- Ghost was directed by Jerry Zucker of Top Secret and the Naked Gun movies fame. Also, interesting if not quite so compelling thing vis TPB... screenwriter William Goldman also had a hand in Last Action Hero}
The collection of clips will be assembled together, respecting neither the chronology of each film or any overt sense of narrative coherence. Nevertheless, I will attempt to tie the clips into some sort of unity using a scripted voiceover which I myself will perform.
I am aiming toward the attitudes that each source film displays toward the semi-dead. I also intend to wring emotional intensity out of each. As such, clips to be included will include Prince Humperdink's sadistic torture of Wesley and Carl Bruner's expression of abject terror when he discovers that the $4 million in blood money is gone.
Expected running time is between 8 and 18 minutes, to throw out a random range.
Despite the fact that this project, were it to be of a commercial nature, would violate certain copyrights, I will use this blog post as published demonstration that I hold all rights to this idea. However, I endorse any other artmaker's video mashup on this (meaning the borderlines of life and death) or a similar subject.
Monday, November 22, 2004
New Gallery
Category: Art In Progress
Resolved: To create an art gallery in my art studio.
The plan is to make the gallery itself a 4 ft. square in the NW corner of my studio. Anticipated hours as of now are 5-7 PM on Friday and something similar on Saturday. There will be a new show in the space every 2 weeks. I haven't figured out how openings are going to be dealt with vis-a-vis food and drinks.
The work shown will be principally mine, at least until I feel comfortable enough to accept proposals for the space.
In order to make this happen, I will have to perform some construction within and outside the gallery itself. I will have to set up lighting and electric in a way that benefits the space. I intend to have all manner of artworks displayable in the space, including video and perhaps interactives.
I understand that privacy will be an issue.
I will produce fliers for each show, but (print Gocco produced) postcards will be limited to a card for the gallery itself (which I will sell for $3?) and perhaps special openings.
I have not yet settled on a name for the gallery, but I think it ought to be Owl-themed. Ideas include: Owl Gallery, Galerie Hibou, Moyen-Duc, Asio Otus, Bubo Gallery, and Gallery Otus. The wall outside my space will have signage, including, perhaps, a painting of an owl.
Resolved: To create an art gallery in my art studio.
The plan is to make the gallery itself a 4 ft. square in the NW corner of my studio. Anticipated hours as of now are 5-7 PM on Friday and something similar on Saturday. There will be a new show in the space every 2 weeks. I haven't figured out how openings are going to be dealt with vis-a-vis food and drinks.
The work shown will be principally mine, at least until I feel comfortable enough to accept proposals for the space.
In order to make this happen, I will have to perform some construction within and outside the gallery itself. I will have to set up lighting and electric in a way that benefits the space. I intend to have all manner of artworks displayable in the space, including video and perhaps interactives.
I understand that privacy will be an issue.
I will produce fliers for each show, but (print Gocco produced) postcards will be limited to a card for the gallery itself (which I will sell for $3?) and perhaps special openings.
I have not yet settled on a name for the gallery, but I think it ought to be Owl-themed. Ideas include: Owl Gallery, Galerie Hibou, Moyen-Duc, Asio Otus, Bubo Gallery, and Gallery Otus. The wall outside my space will have signage, including, perhaps, a painting of an owl.
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Jeweler's goggles
Category: Observations
I am in search of jeweler's goggles. They don't seem to be carried in any big box stores, even though my friend Cat suggested I could probably find them at a Home Depot.
I need these because some of my etching work requires that I do microsurgery on the copper, something I can't do au naturel without harming my eyes permanently. And my eyes are very important to me.
One of the reasons I mention this is that the internet can be a wonderful resource for connecting consumers to retail operations, for connecting seekers to information. But this works best when the consumer wants to order an item right from the retailer. What if I want it now?
I know somebody in Tampa has jeweler's goggles for sale. The future of the internet as a method by which retailers are connected with customers has to include the bricks and mortar to a better degree.
At this moment in time, I have the feeling that the problem is not that small businesses in Tampa that actually do sell this equipment aren't connecting their internet and bricks-and-mortar, but that they don't have any internet presence.
It's a lot to expect a small, maybe one-of-a-kind store to invest in cataloguing their inventory, but it may be the difference between getting business from people like me and not getting business.
This goes right to one of my greater criticisms of Tampa in general. As much as anywhere I've ever spent time, Tampa is a gridded chaos. Places like Florida Avenue are just one long stretch of ugly buildings disconnected from eachother. In this context, the big utopian malls with their sterility and air-conditioning and crappy chain clothing stores that I used to whine about in high school seem more real. Even the more wealthy retail zones like the Bruce B Downs New Tampa strip, manicured nowheres, are incoherent and wasteful.
It seems like raw chance that so many roadside retailers would get business. Nothing is within walking distance of anything else, there is not walking culture in Tampa except in the downtown areas, which aren't so great as far as downtowns go. Retailers must rely on location, eyecatching signage, and then on word of mouth. It doesn't help that this part of the world is built around tourism and that particular culture of looking.
Update: A trip around South Tampa today convinced me that my comment that there is no walking culture in Tampa is off base. But not in a good way. Poverty tends to force those who would otherwise drive to walk- not everyone can afford a car. Bus travel is an alternative, but it doesn't go everywhere.
I am in search of jeweler's goggles. They don't seem to be carried in any big box stores, even though my friend Cat suggested I could probably find them at a Home Depot.
I need these because some of my etching work requires that I do microsurgery on the copper, something I can't do au naturel without harming my eyes permanently. And my eyes are very important to me.
One of the reasons I mention this is that the internet can be a wonderful resource for connecting consumers to retail operations, for connecting seekers to information. But this works best when the consumer wants to order an item right from the retailer. What if I want it now?
I know somebody in Tampa has jeweler's goggles for sale. The future of the internet as a method by which retailers are connected with customers has to include the bricks and mortar to a better degree.
At this moment in time, I have the feeling that the problem is not that small businesses in Tampa that actually do sell this equipment aren't connecting their internet and bricks-and-mortar, but that they don't have any internet presence.
It's a lot to expect a small, maybe one-of-a-kind store to invest in cataloguing their inventory, but it may be the difference between getting business from people like me and not getting business.
This goes right to one of my greater criticisms of Tampa in general. As much as anywhere I've ever spent time, Tampa is a gridded chaos. Places like Florida Avenue are just one long stretch of ugly buildings disconnected from eachother. In this context, the big utopian malls with their sterility and air-conditioning and crappy chain clothing stores that I used to whine about in high school seem more real. Even the more wealthy retail zones like the Bruce B Downs New Tampa strip, manicured nowheres, are incoherent and wasteful.
It seems like raw chance that so many roadside retailers would get business. Nothing is within walking distance of anything else, there is not walking culture in Tampa except in the downtown areas, which aren't so great as far as downtowns go. Retailers must rely on location, eyecatching signage, and then on word of mouth. It doesn't help that this part of the world is built around tourism and that particular culture of looking.
Update: A trip around South Tampa today convinced me that my comment that there is no walking culture in Tampa is off base. But not in a good way. Poverty tends to force those who would otherwise drive to walk- not everyone can afford a car. Bus travel is an alternative, but it doesn't go everywhere.
Saturday, November 20, 2004
About This Blog
Category: News & Info
All materials found on this website have been created by Alex Costantino, aka Poop Ruiz, unless otherwise credited.
This blog was born on a lovely early afternoon on November 20th, 2004 in Tampa Florida. It was born of a need to catalogue ideas related to art and artmaking, a need to create a sounding board of those ideas, and a way to spread those ideas further than might be possible in person.
In the future it will be the occasion for the publishing of state proofs of artwork, essays on art, art and cultural criticism, poems stories and lyrics, and stupid ideas. It remains to be seen if this website will at some point in time have an educational component, but that's certainly possible
All materials found on this website have been created by Alex Costantino, aka Poop Ruiz, unless otherwise credited.
This blog was born on a lovely early afternoon on November 20th, 2004 in Tampa Florida. It was born of a need to catalogue ideas related to art and artmaking, a need to create a sounding board of those ideas, and a way to spread those ideas further than might be possible in person.
In the future it will be the occasion for the publishing of state proofs of artwork, essays on art, art and cultural criticism, poems stories and lyrics, and stupid ideas. It remains to be seen if this website will at some point in time have an educational component, but that's certainly possible
New boats on an empty sea
Category: News & Info
Hello and welcome to my alternative space on the world wide blog.
This space will be free of political speech to the degree that is necessary and will focus more on the development of artworks, ideas concerning artmaking, Hollywood script ideas, plans to take over the world, etc.
Hello and welcome to my alternative space on the world wide blog.
This space will be free of political speech to the degree that is necessary and will focus more on the development of artworks, ideas concerning artmaking, Hollywood script ideas, plans to take over the world, etc.
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