12/11/2021 #44
12/11/2021 #44
Weather, Maria Ressa, Spencers Stationary, Art (small), Bedtime Drawings, Aileen Cassinetto, Half-Caste Woman, Zdzislaw Beksinski, Center for Humane Tech, Ameca, & Damodar Das Castillo.
UPDATE
We’ve had a dip in temperature (and remember, I’m in central California, where temps in the 30s seem very cold to us weather wimps). Still, I’m wearing layers indoors, and waiting for the time (soon) when the days get longer. Plus, maybe I’ve got a little “seasonal affective disorder” or maybe “seasonal pandemic disorder.” Or maybe it’s “the blues”? Call it what you will.
Maria Ressa’s powerful Nobel Prize acceptance speech. It’s not by accident that she mentions CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Pres. Rodrigo Duterte in the same breath. Exponential technology’s role in the rise of fascism around the world was her special focus (and also of Nobel prize winner, Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta). And some of her statements seem straight out of the Center for Humane Technology’s playbook, where she was interviewed by Tristan Harris in “Your Undivided Attention” (podcast), 2019 and 2020. On the other hand, I also think the CHT has been very much influenced by Ressa. Their projects and messages are converging.
See also Frank Langfitt’s article, “Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism.”
I went to Spencers Stationary in Carmel, today, and bought some Precise V-5 extra-fine tip pens. An older guy I’m guessing is the owner is always sitting way in the back, behind a dividing wall, where all the pens are. He peers over the top of his glasses at me before asking “Can I help you?” And I try to always ask for a specific thing, and not hem and haw about it, because I know from experience that he’s got the names and qualities of every dang pen and pencil filed and categorized in his head, and he will correct me if I’ve got the facts wrong. I thought you could get Precise brand’s extra-fine rolling-ball tips in both the V5s or V7s. “No, the extra-fine tips are only V-5, not V-7. What color do you want?” I left the store with blue, red, and black.
Anyway, I love stationary stores. I’m glad to hear that Palace Arts in Santa Cruz will not close its doors forever next month, after all! They’ve been managed by the Trowbridge family for decades. Turns out it will be under new management. I hope they do well with it.
ART
A few words about working small and being pretty much under the radar. I’d love to be able to say that I started to create small size work because it was my choice, and that I had all kinds of wonderful intellectual reasons for doing so. But I don’t have the space or money to maintain a larger studio. And because I’ve grown accustomed to working small, I’m not sure I even have the energy to create big works at this point. Besides, I work in a cottage where I have to be very careful about the floors and built-in shelves next to the table where I work. I can’t just go splashing paint around; can’t get paint spots or solvent on the floors.
There’s no garage and barely any space to store paper or canvas that’s larger than, say, 20 x 30 in. Right now, my largest pieces are stored flat right on top of my work table, because I don’t have a box big enough to hold them.
I make a lot of art on the dining table, which is also where I keep my laptop, which I use for my freelance editing, and that’s also where I and my partner eat. So, things get moved around a lot. When doing watercolors, I need to be vigilant not to confuse the watercolor jar with my glass of drinking water. I once had a very big easel, but we got tired of tripping over it, so I donated it to a nonprofit.
But I’ve learned there some great things about working small. The main pros are lower cost of materials, faster conception and production (small size works are also much more amenable to impulse), ease of construction and production (physically—especially for 70-year-old me), less hassle framing and shipping art; it’s more mobile—and that may be saying something in a world where climate change and the resulting flux and upheaval will result in more unsettledness, more migration.
I’m saying all this partly to the me that was a child of the 1960s; as a teen who absorbed the idea that to get your art in a big museum signified “success,” and the bigger and more monumental your art was, the more likely it was to be successful. It was that colonial, imperial idea of how art should be presented: as something signifying the power of a respected [art] institution or state.
I look online to see how small art works tend to be represented in online art mags. In the warped logic of the global art market, it seems that small works can only be valuable if they are taken to an extreme: “Impossibly small!” “The Tiniest Art in the World!” Or they must be tiny and exotic, preferably encrusted with jewels or gold leaf.
So, as always, my art prospects seem to be on the periphery and under the radar. But I’m feeling alright with that at the moment.
On the other hand, there’s writing. It has always been a mobile art. All you need is a notebook and a pen that works, and some time to write. I keep noticing that writing and visual art are creeping closer and closer together in my art practice, viz.* asemics and haptics (I was reminded of the archaic “viz.” in reading Daniel Defoe, so thought I would resurrect it for a moment—why not?)
More “bedtime drawings” to resist scrolling through social media. But the drawing habit is now starting to seep into other areas of “free” time, like when I’m taking breaks between editing or other work. Check out my website where I’ll be posting most of my “bedtime” drawings these days—though they will also show up here on occasion.
My drawings can look very different, stylewise, depending on what music I’m listening to, what mood I’m in, and how empty or crowded with thoughts my mind is at the time. Sometimes it looks like different people have drawn these. It’s just me, and I guess I’m multifarious, or multivalent, or whatever you want to call it. In any case, it’s not a very marketable trait.
*viz.
“1530s, abbreviation of videlicet "that is to say, to wit, namely" (mid-15c.), from Latin videlicet, contraction of videre licet "it is permissible to see," from videre "to see" (see vision) + licet "it is allowed," third person singular present indicative of licere "be allowed" (see licence). The -z- is not a letter, but originally a twirl, representing the usual Medieval Latin shorthand symbol for the ending -et. "In reading aloud usually rendered by 'namely.' " [OED]
LINKS
Aileen I. Cassinetto, editor and founder of Paloma Press, is one hard-working poet laureate. Check out her Poets Laureate Fellows Interview, and Neil Leadbeater’s review of her book, The Pink House of Purple Yam Preserves and Other Poems, in The Halo-Halo Review (Editor, Eileen Tabios).
In the office where I work, there is a photograph of actor Anna May Wong, signed and autographed to Salinas Chinatown’s unofficial mayor (1930s), Shorty Lee. So, of course, I was interested to see that there is a Substack newsletter, Half-Caste Woman, that focuses on the life and times of Anna May Wong — and what a life!
Polish photographer Zdzislaw Beksinski, “Nightmare Artist.” His art inspired director Guillermo del Toro. Critics called Beksinski’s works “anti-photography,” but he had different ideas:
I really don’t think most people understand just how advanced AI and robotics are these days—so advanced that it’s already having significant effects on our lives, democracy, and the life of this planet. Here are two links to two short videos and one 40-min. one that will give you sense of what’s happening.
You may have seen The Social Dilemma from the Center for Humane Tech. A couple months ago, the organization started doubling down on its educational message, and are now suggesting some paths to get us out of this tech sink hole. Here is Tristan Harris in “This is Why Technology Will Beat Humanity":
The 3.5 minute version, more or less:
Experience the “uncanny valley” of an advanced humanoid robot: Meet Ameca
Birds Aren’t Real! A message from the Bird Brigade. Is this art?
SOUNDINGS
Young pinoy musician Damodar Das Castillo learns to play cello (warning: there is much posing with tongue sticking out, and a brief stint in a metal band). His parents must’ve had the patience of mountains over those 10 years. But then he ends up in the Mozarteum University at Salzburg.
And here is Damodar’s final recital at the Mozarteum University (2021):
OK, I’m off to bed.
Take some time to rest, breathe.