http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/ A blog about conceptual art, and its drive in my life as an artist. en artist@carolinecblaker.com Copyright 2010 2010-05-26T03:05:13-07:00 http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/self_as_informant/ http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/self_as_informant/#When:03:05:13Z Drawing a blank. Once you graduate from self-relecting art, what’s next? Jim Lutes and the Whitney Biennial helped me find the answer. I am underinformed. Underexposed. Underperforming. Under a rock. No, seriously! There is so little to make art about that I just don’t. its not I don’t want to - but what about? How? If I can do anything, why do anything? But this is unacceptable. I’m a capable professional in other aspects and I can’t even coach my own painting? Ok. ok. Maybe if I start reading.. My first move is to pick up the exhibition catalog from Eye Infection, featuring artists Robert Crumb, Jim Nutt, Peter Saul, H.C. Westerman, and Mike Kelley; five men without permission or collaboration successfully deconstructing perception same as the “rules” of conceptual and fine art. Or at least now that’s what they are known for, without the whole rogue aspect: they are all monumentally celebrated now for breaking a tradition that was redefined as such along the same lineage. Its a surprise to myself that I haven’t looked at this book in years despite schlepping it around and admiring its spine whenever I enter my studio. Its also a surprise, but not entirely, that I had never read the text, only gazed at the pictures, until Wednesday night. Then I did read it. It was time for studio, and I had the never before feeling of wanting to read a book. There was a funny break in the moment I picked it up - the feeling was somewhere along the lines of instant bolstering. (There is probably a better word.) I was surprised to read that each of these artists was linked to Jackson Pollock in some way, even though most of them have never met him. It was just this lineage that justified their work that was either gratuitous, coincidental, or just because he is the best known Abstract Expressionist and they are subsequent to him. The eye-opener here is that art holds up better if the artist is linked to a pioneer in some way, even if the artist never really connects with the pioneer - the slightest visual clues that could file the art under the category of some major pre-existing movement give the art context and the critics something to write about. I would have never linked any of these artists to anyone - which is apparently a measure of my informedness or else neglect of industry obviousities. This is also, however, why I liked them so much. Their messages are authentic, pictorial, and crafted from passion and skill- and while most of the same can be said about Pollock, few of us have addressed our remaining doubts on the whole skill thing. The text by Robert Storr begins with linking all participants to the Cannon (not just Pollock, but Calder, Magritte) and addresses how these artists are in their time playing the same necessary reflective and definitive roles. Then, one by one, each artist is introduced by history and motive. Essentially their common thread is activism through art. Their choices of topic, permutation, and their thread of challenge are all independent of others, contemporary and historical, but their applied activism in their apparent disgust of their topics is commonly grotesque, monumental, and funny. Its also as expressive as written language in a visual colloquial grammar. So.. as into this as I am, my next step is to find my activism. But I still feel belittled by the task. Bits and pieces of memory accuse me of not being up to it, and not mattering. I toss those aside, though inside I have heard them out. These are the parts of me that need overwriting, erasing, repositioning. And this is how I’m going to do it.. so anyway.. The next piece of fortune for this investigation comes in a visit to the Whitney Biennial, which is always mind-blowing, but this year I had a mission: to find my commonality by my contemporaries, all there. Where is my voice, in all of these carefully crafted varieties of apples, oranges, grapes, and starfruit? Seems like the biennial is good for choosing by topic, and the aesthetic or inspiration is less important as object than the communication of the total package - each piece is essentially a universal mastermind of a message. In the end, there were some pieces that were almost inconceivably awesome, but others I just plain understood or felt a kinship with: Aurel Schmidt, Ari Marcopoulos, and especially Jim Lutes. Their works told me what art needed; it was the same as the Eye Infection: Passion in a cause. Apart from the narrative, I learned something: the internet isn't the only place where all you have to do is look for the answers you need to your questions: art also has this. When without constant influx of inspiration its important to make the self serve the art. Dedication in this department can find the lost, focus the scattered, tame the wild. Its just what needs to be done if you are that artist, and you don't know what's next. I am afraid to say what it is so shortly, but I have identified my first cause. In the whole Biennial, I saw nobody address this, yet it keeps me down frequently and is a perception that is tied to my own insecurities with such congruency that inspires confidence in myself to develop the allegory, messages, multiple pieces year after year to sustain its growth. On the other hand, it is a dangerous topic. Its one line description will force judgement of my intent with fury that I’m not quite ready to take without some development and defense of the effort. It will also require research - and staying in tune with Politics. Artists, Conceptual Art, Conceptual Art Theory, Studio 2010-05-26T03:05:13-07:00 http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/state_of_the_studio_-_05_05_10/ http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/state_of_the_studio_-_05_05_10/#When:15:43:17Z What should amount to more time in the studio has not yet - but last night I blasted through the lethargy that had been creeping in around my home workspace.I'm pleased to say that I have left the 9-5 workforce in favor of making my dreams come true in the ways of creative work and living the American dream. In this brave new world, I'm finding that I'm standing on the edge of something powerful I've only dreamed of getting this close to before. Its not only great, but numbing. Now that I'm here, what do I do? What efforts do I need to make? Where should I focus my attention? How do I go further than this? In looking into myself for answers, I come up remarkably blank. This has been the trouble, however, for awhile. Its nothing new. Same ol' too much to do and not enough time. Same ol' money first, creativity last. Same ol' peripheral tasks that numb my brain and consume my energy. On top of that, a terrific partner who deserves and gets a lot of my quality time. Its not that I don't have time to do work - its more that I'm the type of person that is likely to act on motivation to avoid pain than to derive pleasure or, in the case of my work, to act on something just because I believe in it, not because it was sold to me by somebody else. I'm the type that will take care of everything I can, then worry about the stuff I can't. A career I need to develop is begging to find leads. Another person is interested in my presence in one place where I can develop a little faster. The wedding countdown is on, and a disturbing number of items have yet to be taken care of. And I have a lot of art that just sits here. It feels a little stale. Inwardly, I'm being torn bit by bit by all of the stresses of this new venture, including failures of my own intuition. Those hurt the most: something you obviously should have seen coming hits your face out of left field. I guess that happens more when you have your eye on the prize. But in thinking of working on my art - there is simply nothing left inside to work from. I tweeted: "Sometimes I wonder if the art is lost". Last night was one of those times. In my current situation, I opened my studio door last night for the first time in weeks. I sat in the middle of the floor for awhile. The space was unkempt, but the energetic buzz in there was unmistakable. I had been cultivating and hiding this creative energy for years, and it wasn't lost, it was just behind this door that I literally forgot to open. Still, I looked inside myself to find my next project. You could hear a pin drop in there, it was so empty. So what the heck was I doing? How did I get this far only to lose my true gut motivation to make art? What the heck? My mind began to wander to all that was going wrong, and then landed on a particular memory where I felt mistreated, belittled, and really friggin helpless to do anything about it. My feeling was that I was solidly in a perspective of truth there too - there wasn't going to be anything I could do about it. And then it hit - so what exactly is the "right" thing to do with this sentiment? In contemplative moments of distrust and remorse, forgiveness is not automatic: there needs to be a shift in perspective that leads the charge to healing. And I needed to offer forgiveness to the situation, but that's not what motivated what came next. In a tiny window of respect for all things, including this crap, I offered my well wishes to this person to overcome their own obstacles as I hoped to overcome mine. Boom. The remorse vanished and I suddenly felt twice my own size. I wished this again. Same thing! I wished it and I wished it and I wished it and a flood of bliss washed over me. Then I moved to others - I wished that they overcome their obstacles as I knew them, whether they were wronging me or not. When I opened my eyes, I recognized my studio as I used to know it - a room of my own for infinite possibility. But it was filthy! Ugh. Time to clean. I didn't exactly clean after that, more like organized major supplies between my office and my studio, as much of what I had been storing in these two rooms was actually meant for the other. I re-familiarized myself with the supplies in each and prepped each room to be worked in again. I moved a lot of extraneous storage items out. And I figured out why I wasn't doing so well with the art work. It became obvious when I had opened my eyes before and it was so true! Then I remembered I had said this in an interview in this video. I had learned to make art from clues from inside, from a desire to create, and had used the process to move past pain and suffering. In my March exhibit, I had realized that the process of moving past everything was complete. I had learned everything that could teach me, and now that the Pixels had moved off the canvas and back to the computer, and now that they had served their purpose in guiding me through processing healing, it is time to focus outward. Move along. GTFO. Its time to look and listen and create about stuff in the outside world. I've graduated. Its over. Get a job. Twitterscapes are successful art because they are outwardly focused. They take context from Art and from the(*ahem best announcer voice) "Social Media Revolution" and unite the two. This is pretty good - I know I can grow it, however. So with painting, what now exactly? Well, There are some unfinished pieces in my studio and I have found a bunch of very specific junk that I'd love to apply to my work (got any ideas for a whole bunch of dental floss?) One thing I'm going to try to do is paint in the Cancer ward at the UNM hospital. The bad news is that I have no idea what I'm doing. The good news is that I have a new place to look for answers. New work up soon, but for now, expect quiet contemplation from me as I attempt to discover a way that only I can make an impact. Conceptual Art, Conceptual Art Theory, Studio 2010-05-05T15:43:17-07:00 http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/one_million_bones_on_the_washington_mall/ http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/one_million_bones_on_the_washington_mall/#When:00:35:36Z In 2013, one million bones will flood the national mall like a mass grave in protest of our government turning away from genocide in Rwanda, Burma, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on our watch. After the Holocaust, we promised 'never again' yet our lawmakers have continued to turn the other cheek to these contemporary atrocities. What can you do? Its very simple. Read on.Genocide: a historical event of epic proportions. Mass ethnic cleansing - killing millions of people in the name of .. something. Its far away and its long gone, right? If this were going on now we would hear about it all over the news right? Actually, this time, the contemporary genocides, while being as lethal as the Holocaust are as secret as the Freemason rituals to the United States and other first world countries: most people do not know, and others are not talking. The facts are that genocide is happening right now. Right NOW. Its happening with our government's knowledge AND with no intervention- we are simply allowing for it to happen without objection, despite the 'never again' promise post WWII. If you feel in any way that this is completely unacceptable, somewhat remotely unacceptable, or otherwise not acceptable, there IS something you can do. Artist Naomi Natale wants you (yes, You! and your hands) to make a bone to represent one victim for display in this massive art installation on the National Mall. Natale's goal is truly impressive - one thousand bones, every day, for three years. After having met this goal, there will be one million bones - which is only a fraction of the amount to represent the victims of contemporary genocide. Still, a visualization of one million bones- a mass grave of a total of 4,855 humans (with 206 bones/person) completely hand-built by individuals mindful of the genocides and on display on the Washington mall, just askng for our government, who we know to know better, to intervene.The installation will arrive in 2013 and every person has the chance to participate. The website, onemillionbones.org has complete instructions for artists, hobbyists, educators (there is a full educational component,) and activists (you can sponsor a bone, made of recyclable materials and impregnated with seeds - which will be distributed for growth after the installation is finished!) I already have contributed two bones, thanks to the excellent launch party I attended with Julia Mandeville of Creative Albuquerque and the Alibi . Please, if you have a chance, check out onemillionbones.org and mentally slate your contribution - bone, financial or otherwise. We need to stop genocide, and if politicians won't listen, we'll just hsve to show them, together. Artists, Conceptual Art, Conceptual Art Theory 2010-03-18T00:35:36-07:00 http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/on_twitterscapes/ http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/on_twitterscapes/#When:21:59:08Z Excited to announce a brand new conceptual art form founded in both my desk and painting studio: Twitterscapes.My career has a whole has been comprised of two distinct pieces: the web/technology driven side, and the art studio side; the art side having existed all along, became a career as soon as I was aware of myself needing one. It wasn’t, however, one that would support me for years. It was for this reason that I began to learn web development, in order to market myself, at the very least, and hopefully expedite the process of my getting ‘discovered’ by a collector or gallery that would lead to happily ever after. As it tends to happen, at least for artists, the skills I acquired in my search for building myself a website became job-marketable and have lead to my current career as a web developer. In conceptualizing my studio paintings, I have attempted through painting compositions of pixels to bring the electronically based portion of my creativity full-circle back to the studio, and at some point set a goal for myself to arrive at an art form that suited both my conceptual studio art creativity with my knowledge of web technologies. I’m pleased to announce that I’ve landed on the beginnings of an art form that does just that. So without further ado: I call them Twitterscapes. They are pictographical representations of Twitter’s timeline that use the individual alpha-numeric-symbolic characters of each tweet to create a composition of color using the users’ profile colors as selected. The way it works is that each tweet on the feed is matched character for character with parameters that turn it into a color. Then the color is displayed as a small rectangle (or as I like to say, a macro-pixel) on the screen. At the end of the 20 tweets that the public timeline provides, there is a 700x 800 image composed of user-assigned colors in the pattern of the users’ tweets: thoughts, musings, communications, or shout-outs. Already, there are a handful of data visualization techniques for Twitter. Its been selected as a test platform for the development of data visualization tools for reasons including its uniform data set: always 140 characters, always free of garbage (spam, injections, malware, etc.) The 140 characters of twitter provide a manageable data set for which to build venn diagrams, linear graphs of popular terms (Stream graph), and others. Twitterscapes, while being developed in the same sandbox as other data visualization applications, removes all analysis of data from the data itself and provides a conceptual image by which to muse on the rhythms of the communication by strangers to strangers, the colors selected by strangers to best express their tweets, and how all of this appears in a random but uniform grouping - a sample of 20 of tens of thousands of tweets per second. Twitterscapes’ innate properties are that they are fleeting. They exist, in potential for 60 seconds and then that potential is gone forever. Being pulled into the browser, they exist until the page is refreshed, or else captured as an image and preserved as such in the realm of digital imaging. A print of a Twitterscape is the preservation of a fleeting moment in time, removed from its digital context as visual proof of its own existence for its short time. Conceptually, prints of Twitterscapes are photographs of interpreted data . The print is not the data, nor is the live Twitterscape the data. In an age of images, these pictographs tell the story of select twitter users in the tune of old photographs. How many details stay in memory? How many details matter to recall the feeling told by the image? What did these tweets actually say? Surely they have lost most meaning even in their native format simply by being removed from their original contexts and exposed to the world as public data. I’m anxious to see what Twitterscapes evolve into, as more than the Public Timeline are incorporated. Individual Twitterscape feeds are a near-future possibility, as well as mega-transforming trending topics twitterscapes. They already extend my current body of painted work: my pixellations (paintings of pixels) as I have already essentially chosen those latex colors as mine - and now I’m painting with other users’ colors using what they offer to the public as data. There are other data sets out there too - but Twitter might be enough, until the concept has fully matured and undergone the tests of criticism and time. Conceptual Art, Conceptual Art Examples, Conceptual Art Theory 2010-02-20T21:59:08-07:00 http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/the_faces_of_the_ancients/ http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/the_faces_of_the_ancients/#When:03:32:25Z They are still around and among us - Ancients - their stories are still told by incomplete and inconclusive clues that have been left ..They are still around and among us - Ancients - their stories are still told by incomplete and inconclusive clues that have been left and scattered like camouflaged marbles among the rocks and stones that still exist as fascinating skeletal evidence of the quinessence of human existence. Like fans or addicts, living people of unrelated culture, history, and lifestyle travel for days to set foot in and breathe the air of Mesa Verde and other early history sites around the world seemingly in order to continue and be a part of the guessing game that has set these locations apart from the other sites on the planet we continue to change and develop from the fire of our own culture, building structures, parking lots, and drainage systems from far-retrieved mixtures of earth’s many virtues. In the end, many check off such visits on a long list of goals of consummation and quietly congratulate the ego for its many battles in pursuing and conquering such a goal. Sometimes photos are taken and shared to entice others towards the sights we have seen or perhaps to stoke raw jealousy. Sometimes we even use these photos for our own photographic reminders, as we know all too well that memories fade - and the value of having such mental imagery to access and relive over and over is too valuable to allow to fodder in the junk of everyday existence - after all, all the proof and warning of such degradation exists within the ruins themselves. As we are distracted by TV, by children, by making our living, some things are lost. We are attracted to pre-history cave and cliff dwellings for their mystery of why and how, and for the sheer awe of superimposing our existence with the existence, one-time or ongoing, of these settlements, and challenging our core beliefs to fit this evidence within the structure we’ve built internally to make sense of the world and its evolution. And then we go and size these places up. We see it, then we are in it. There is something else that happens too. Some absorbtion. Some give and take. It happens to everyone whether or not its being noticed, and more so when topics of discussion are accurate and can relate the world as we know it to the world we are trying to figure out. When objects, events, organization, and community are understood, the world in question - the one that exists beyond our borders of space and time - gets closer to our reach. Further observation of natural sound phenomena - the trees, native birds, echoes, falling rock provide further auditory clues to our seeker within and as the sensory olfactory of this place inhabited by just a moment of this life is absorbed, suddenly it becomes possible to imagine the inverse that is clearly also true: that the dwellers who once existed here are much like us- they ate, they had jobs, they had to pee, and they fell in love. Near the end of the tour, there’s less of a sense of a museum, and far more of a living space in time, where once people were, and now they are not. We can witness their spaces, participate in their footprints, and wish them well for wherever and however they may be in existence today. Outside the structure of a tour, sometimes a guide will be willing to entertain questions that less suitable by our cultural standpoints for the greater tour. How tall were these people? Do they know by found human remains? Do they find a lot? Where have they been found? Oh, right over there... Spirits that have not moved on stay where they feel they belong. Anyone who believes in ghosts or has witnessed this knows. It might be confusion, unfinished duty, or commitment. Places that have been inhabited by people and loved and protected throughout those peoples’ lives house the energy that was invested, traded, and released by their inhabitants. All of the love, disgust, dread, fear, laughter, dispair, and excitement of the settlers’ lives was contained within these settlements from birth to death, and even then afterwards assuming guardianship of the survivors and their territory.. Native American cultures, aside from some spanish-influenced catholic values, are ancestrally focused. While there are divine centric gods to pray to and worship, the ancestor, having died and ascended and being ever-present, is considered to be closer to the gods and therefore divine. They are sometimes thought to function as go-betweens between the people and their gods, as messengers, or as divine lobbyists, folks who watch over their living relatives and make cases for them to the gods. Ancestors are included at dinner in contemporary Native American cultures and honored for their carrying of messages, resources, and well-being to this world. The back-and-forth of energy and love is just one aspect of the Native way of giving back what has been given. Arguably, the exchanges between the living and their ancestors can be interpreted as sustaining for both sides - the ancestral body of energy is fed by the gifts of the living and the living are in turn serviced by the ancestral guard they maintain. Having gone on for thousands of years, the ancestral energy is well defined and at some root point is common for all people. The feeding of this body of spirits can be conceptualized as energy healing or any other kind of feeding, nursing, or fortification. Its vein is strong and its root is deep. And it is real to all who have ingested its gifts and wonder. The ancestral energy of these ancient settlers in places like Mesa Verde can be difficult to imagine, conceptualize, or absorb in our distracted lives as modern people of different ethnic origin and life focus. Visiting somewhere like Mesa Verde is full of this kind of energy, as all who have ever inhabited these spaces (roughly between 1000 and 1300 AD) have moved on and become ancestors for today’s native tribes. The people moved on from these cliff dwellings, but left a permanent mark within their space. The homes, gathering spaces, and religious spaces all still carry evidence of personalized intelligence, spirituality, and creativity. They will not, for the forseeable future, belong to anyone but these ancestral energies. Looking at the surrounding rock formations, I perceive the faces of the ancestors in megalythic effigies all over the raw land. These faces are made of natural rock formations, and through the mind’s eye. I can clearly remember my time as a young girl, seeking shapes within the cut rocks on Mt. Riga or on our lengthy trips through Pennsylvania and upstate New York. I would look for, but never see, the personalities, the facial structures, the human personalities that appear to me today. They appear as heads, as interactions (one or two personalities interacting), groups, and crowds. And they are everywhere. I am pleased to provide the photographic evidence of the personalities that I see coming through the earth. While noticing the faces among these natural rock formations, it might be tempting to pass such off as coincidental or meaningless. After all, the laws of nature basically say that the wear and tear on these rocks has been random, and even while finding shapes within them, its not worth the attention for the simple fact that it could hypothetically look different and mean nothing either way. Still, we are lucky to notice what we notice. Being of a culture that is so far from the earth’s gifts (they go through machines, processing, transporation, retail, and TIME, to get to us and are sometimes changed beyond recognition) the raw pictures that are communicated by earth are easy to doubt, but also rare and without pattern. Yet, we go to Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, and other places, to look at rocks, and the earth, and the importance of the formations of those to the early people for whom the aforementioned earth to people process did not exist. Then we get a little closer to them. Well what about them? What about their ancestry, that is still alive today? In this moment, we have a crossroads. We can level off at our current understanding, falsely wondering at what might be ahead in that, credit ourselves for thinking beyond our thinking, and be satisfied. The other option is to think for a sec that these shapes that we find coincidental might be less coincidental. Well what then? You are crazy! .. your mind says. You have nothing to support this idea nor do you have anything to gain but everything to lose from this latest tipping point. Strangely, you might not have them aboard at the time, but there are a few notions within nature that support the personalization of these personalities that you are struggling to understand. One general notion is that seeing a face, with a human history behind the species of more than 5000 years, that it was bound to be somebody’s face, some time. Right? What about that? It doesn’t need to be assumed that the person in living existed in the geographical area of the effigy or that their spirit still exists. Its processing the face, the emotion, and its perceptive message in the gesture that is valuable to even the most skilled spiritualists, and not whether “facts” can be drawn from its witnessing... So I guess, don’t worry about that. Already, the experience of witnessing the effigy is the strongest event it has to offer, and in that it is spectacular. Additionally, if you subscribe to the notion that Native American ancestry, and even non-Native American ancestry, still exists to strengthen the living population and fortify its successes, then how could it be impossible that the energy of these divine beings (who were once human) show up as personalities in the places on earth in which they dwell? If its not impossible, then its magical possibility is left to be entertained. Thousands of years of being reinforced by the living allows a spirit more strength than the forgottien - just look at Jesus Christ. Furthermore, the order in which their energy might organize itself is beyond our understanding: we would understand quite a bit about these entities that science at its current place considers nonexistent, in order to deduce and deduct any possibilities of what these spirits can do. My personal experience of these personalties/effigies is that they are extremely human, communicative, and in all probability have a history of life. They are existing ancients, and I am blessed to gaze upon their faces. Conceptual Art, Conceptual Art Theory 2009-09-11T03:32:25-07:00 http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/those_baastuds/ http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/those_baastuds/#When:01:28:22Z Extreme sheep art? well - yeah its been done. But would you call it Art?To know about which I speak, you must, you must, you MUST check this out: "We took to the hills of Wales armed to the teeth with sheep, LEDs and a camera, to create a huge amazing LED display. Of sorts. " Whether or not they meant this as a simple commercial stunt (I think I noticed samsung in there somewhere), these BAAstuds may have really stumbled upon a truly unique outlet of expression. They use the formations of these sheep to mimic other known entities- the "Pong" formation, and the fountains/fireworks. They even take it out of context to create a Mona Lisa image from their lights. (Srsly, how do they do that?) In my opinion, the most poetic thing about this is that their medium, their method of delivery, was the age-old technique of sheepherding. Trained sheep herders used dogs through their vocal commands to direct these groups of animals to these unique ends. Its Art that is not only modern for media (LED lights, digital video) but in parallel also drawing on one of the oldest survival techniques and professions of their ancestry. To me, this is art. What about you? (Thanks to Steve Lenti for your introduction to this material.) Conceptual Art, Conceptual Art Examples 2009-03-27T01:28:22-07:00 http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/hoot_hoot/ http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/hoot_hoot/#When:04:55:39Z My latest scheme to get ahead has only landed me the facing of my biggest, longest standing fear.So when do you know you have a problem? When the brick wall you hit on your latest strive to make your life better rises to meet you faster than you are running, and it has come from no one other than you, and the things you have not dealt with in your life. Today this was my fear of balloons. Dumb, I know. On my latest investigation of ways to come up with some extra cash I visited one of the only restaurants I could see myself potentially waiting tables at, for one reason or another. I was dead set to impress the manager, the staff who waited on me, and find the better side of some of its more negative aspects. What could go wrong? Oh yeah, that. My deathly fear of round floaty latex balls where kids dig their fingers, fans chop at full speed, and drunk guys stretch pull and rub in my hair. Just being around them used to cause panic attacks, now its only the aforementioned events, which unfortunately for this latest plan would be part of a course of five minutes. I barely made it through dinner. While I’ve been aware of this phobia my whole life, it has never stood in the way of anything I have been determined to do. Granted, my determination was born in full force in 2006 - at which point nothing I did truly required putting up with so much exposure to balloons. Before that, it was ok that I was afraid. While it wasn’t pleasant, I would just heed to the fear and go somewhere else. Leave. Problem solved. This time, the difference was frustration. I wanted to be there. I was determined to be there. Yet this old cranky fear was once again yanking me around like a half inflated balloon in the hands of a child, it was determining my every mood and shape. How could I live like this anymore? Be held back by inflatable latex? Survive a deadly illness yet feel the fear of death by the instantaneous pop of a colorful party prop? The irony was nauseating. And while I was tempted to ask the manager if budget cuts would, at any point in the forseeable future, take balloons off the menu for good, I left instead with the first independent, confident sheer determination I have ever felt regarding this lifelong condition. If I’m afraid of something so silly, it must be a phobia. It is not normal and someone out there can treat it. Then I landed on it. Globophobia. Thanks to the search engine. Just searching “Fear of Balloons” brings up Globophobia over and over again. Not only does it have a name, but the search revealed that I am not alone, which I mildly suspected. It had even been covered by People Magazine, lumped in with the fears of Bananas and Railroad Tracks (tracks I can understand.. but.. bananas? ) The guy in that article has needed to use a helium machine to blow up balloons for work and described it as torture. How brave. For me that would be a job lost. Or just insubordination - refusal. Think verbal abuse, physical abuse, making me blow up balloons on a helium machine? I’d take the verbal over them any day.. Take this woman for instance: var sid=134;var vid=12211; Bless her!! Everything she says is how I and thousands more feel. More than anything, my internet search revealed that I didn’t have to live with this if I decided to proactively seek help. Now more than ever, not only do I realize I have a problem, but that I don’t need to live with it any more, and that whether I continue to live with it is under my control, and I only need to decide to begin and see through the process of healing in order to escape its grip. Help is available and wants me to come to it if I want to be helped. And more than anything, I wonder what life will be like when I am not afraid. Artists 2009-02-21T04:55:39-07:00 http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/an_explosion_of_data/ http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/an_explosion_of_data/#When:02:24:08Z I'm going to make my first paces into the world of Generative Art soon, hopefully with a world other than my own to work with.Just a few hours after parting with my family after a lovely Christmas I get back to work, though not on developing my painting into a higher realm of contemporary art as one might expect. NO no no no.. this Christmas handed me a surprise that truly knocked me off my feet - good thing I was sitting down. I had submitted an article to digg and it just blew up. Nearly 1300 diggs in 4 days. 7 new fans. Woh. I have fans? The funny part is that they are not even fans of my painting or blogging. They are fans of what I digg. What I pull out of the internet. What I point at with a cheeseburger grin on my face and say "hey! look what I found!" For those of you who are yet unfamiliar, Digg is a pretty big deal. Its like the ebay of online article popularity. Everyone uses it to cast a vote for "hey that's cool!" or "Wow that really stinks." Anyone can sign up, and once they do, they can submit articles or leave comments for articles that have already been dugg. Any page on the internet can be dugg, but what happens after that can be very quiet or quite a ruckus. 1300 diggs is kind of a big deal. Now this isn't a tootie-wootie my own horn scenario. Its that I got lucky, and stumbled upon a huge article that nobody had Dugg yet. I found it on a really popular news site and was just the first to notice that it had not been posted to Digg. yet. Believe me, I went through several rounds of logging in and verifying it had been posted because I knew it would be hot. I have been in web development since 2003 and known about Digg since right about then, and this has never happened to me. I have never been notified of new fans over Christmas or found a through the charts article to post to the world's most popular popularity site to have my screenname sitting right next to it. A lot of people don't ever see this. I promptly logged into the website and updated my profile, sort of. I added my logo and web link.. but holy cow.. people (strangers..) are now following me, and with a little of my attention, this could get a lot bigger. I will be posting further on generative art once I find out more along the lines of what I want to do, but essentially, I am hypothesizing a way to use user data to create meaningful images that reveal the data's inherent integrity and talk about the influx of data within the world wide web and how it speaks to us through bombardment of advertising, subliminal messaging, and even journalism. Thinking about this is like looking across the Grand Canyon, standing atop a plateau; I have a long way to go to get to where I can see, and while on that journey, my view will be ever changing and quite different, and I won't have the end of my path to guide me in the right direction. Meanwhile, the best thing I can do is gather traffic, swing traffic, and influence web traffic and clicks. And I will be doing all of this without any attempt at sales or making money. I think. A glimpse of possibility can be riveting. I'm looking at 1300 digg's which was an effort that I began. Not that this isn't someone else's writing. it is. Not that someone else wouldn't have come up behind me and dugg it if I hadn't. They would have. But I see a start. I see the first of some things to come. I already know that I won't stop making these efforts as I have not yet in my adult life and there is much further to go. But in the mean time, I have added an RSS feed and Atom for Conceptually Driven, here: RSS ATOM And I have added them to Technorati, and myself as carolinecblaker. This is going to be fun. Let the games begin. Conceptual Art, Studio 2008-12-29T02:24:08-07:00 http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/volcanoes_and_the_christmas_spirit/ http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/volcanoes_and_the_christmas_spirit/#When:01:14:54Z Somewhere in this dusty, rocky outcrop of a city, Christmas is finding me, despite myself.While Christmas is firmly rooted in my upbringing, I left it at home years ago. This was a solution to the stress of the holiday, and in some extreme fashion, an opportunity to reinvent the holiday and other associated events, stresses, opinions, and griefs. It was one of several items like it that was too cloudy to enjoy, too gilded to love, too wonderful to forget. Christmas mostly used to happen at my home in Southport. There was one year where it happened in my loft in St. Louis, but that was two left feet short of a disaster. Some of those weren't perfect either, like the one where the holiday shopping communication had apparently fallen to an all-time low and the gifts were so mis-appropriated that it embarrassed everyone, particularly my lil sister who drew the short end of the stick. In my early years after leaving home, being poor and having a good, hard look at materialism, Christmas and all of its seasonal eccentricities and ridiculous expectations were decidedly OUT. I did not need it, and I would not borrow it from anyone - my family, corporations, and religion all included. Having no money to spend on anything but the essentials combined with the desire to free the mind of society's constructions, a path that characterized my mid twenties, go hand and hand. Add that to working in the Colorado hospitality industry, and you get "just another day in the neighborhood." I moved to Albuquerque, I think, after successfully deconstructing Christmas out of my existence. It was an event of expectations and anticipation - for everyone else. For me, it came and went, was enjoyed, but was not terribly important or exciting, except for the opportunity to break the norm and do something different. But this year, something changed. I moved into a house in April that was completely furnished almost to a point of needing only to bring the clothes on my back. I moved the Art studio after several months of observing the landscape of Albuquerque, and after deciding that the volcanoes were one of its most prominent, beautiful and signifcant features. Forget the Sandia! - I would say. These ancient formations on the West side were by far more significant for their age and permanence, not to mention their metamorphosis. Their role in the realm of ancient American cultures transcended time too, and today as preserved as the Petroglyph National Monument, they bear markings as old as the Lascaux Caves and are mostly untouched by modernity. The incredible parabolic shapes of their curves speak for themselves along the western skyline, appearing as smooth as spirals and are yet made of jagged pumice. Rather than dominating their position, they sit and forever sink peacefully in their setting, once violent fiery craters. They are an example of permanent transcendence in a world of immediate gratification, and value in geno centric mechanics and functioning. Yet they would rather sit silent through thousands of years than whisper their own name even once. I began to paint the volcanoes this year, inspired by their permanence and resounding silence, by their harboring of ancient artifacts, valued as proof of our ancestry, despite what we are. Somehow, in creating a space in my consciousness for things free of human, I have created a space for appreciation of ancient volcanoes and other silent things, where my time grows long, my life miniscule, and human constructions and whims, passing and faint. In front of all time, what is each human, anyway? Are we ants teeming upon the surface of the earth? Or are we valuable opportunities for greater entities to compete amongst each other? Can there truly be communication between sentient beings that have seen aeons pass and myself, or another psychic creature, to any positive avail? Can there be truth in such a transfer? And then there is Christmas, arguably the most significant celebration of such an event in America, as bastardized and clueless as it may appear at times. The ants march not only to work, but to the mall, with their electonic funds cards, sending signals everywhere, in the names of love, family, and even kindness to a stranger alongside strife, grief, anger, pissiness, and resentment of the ones we are not shopping for that take our parking spots, stop shortly at yellow lights, and appear generally clueless of anyone but themselves. Yet it is remarkable that this cross-section of behavior at this single time of year appears to be only a transmutation of the normal operations of things, its gift to us that it would be more transparent, flexible, and obvious, and even encourage our better nature by some greater law set in motion at its origin: "peace on earth, good will toward men." It took me till now to understand that this is an opportunity to all people who share this culture and this time of year amongst one another, to be mindful of all things we can perceive, and learn that the world is more complete with our mindfulness within it. Bonus: each additional mind to engage in such contributes to a greater, stronger, smarter overall population throughout the year- but that's just it. Do we just take Christmas for what its worth? Or can we use it as the true gift it is: to learn about how we are and how we should love, give, and understand one another every single day? This year I feel humbled as the Christmas spirit has come back to me. The stockings are hung by the chimney with care, the house smells of evergreens and Christmas cookies thanks to Yankee Candle, There are decorations: garlands, ornaments, and outside lights, and everyone despite the economy is grateful and giving. This weekend Travis and I made plans to watch "Toy Story" while just enjoying each others company and talking about Christmas gifts to team up on. This year, we will have Christmas together with my family as well as his, all together. It will be real. I can't help but reflect on a very peaceful year that I have had with him, and how incredibly things have turned out for us. Is it Christmas by Karma? maybe. But its really Christmas by company. Travis, his parents, and their family do this every year, and the house is stacked with "spirit". Four boxes of decorations came out of the shed. Theres no other time of year when 4 huge storage boxes are ever required. They're even red and green, to tell them apart from any of the other singular purpose shed bins. While I may not have inherited indigenous culture though my land rights or lived at the time when volcanoes were within the center of my sphere, I have inherited Christmas, and this is what I have that is ancient, verified, and transcendent. This is as close as I am going to get to my own personal volcano. And I shall breathe within its blessings and hold them for as long as I can throughout the coming year. Holiday Blessings to everyone, and stay present. Conceptual Art, Studio 2008-12-08T01:14:54-07:00 http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/reflections_on_a_painting/ http://www.carolinecblaker.com/scene/conceptually_driven/reflections_on_a_painting/#When:01:49:33Z One sign of up and coming success is watching the earliest and most earnest of work be appreciated with unprecedented focus. I feel both grateful and melancholy to think about one of my very first babies flying the coop to go back home to St. Louis and live with its very first and most devout fan, a lovely woman who has been tracking it for three years. Since the time of our first communication, I have moved to two different states, learned focus in the studio, and slugged around these huge paintings of my early career with me - changing their dressings periodically (really - the plaster "framing" around the edges) making sure they are always hung straight and look their best. An effort like this is not unlike raising heavy, bulky children with needs for maintenance as well as their creators personal growth and expansion of audience and capability, not to mention the drive to continue and finish and start over each effort without reinforcement from the world and without any good reason to keep going. The departure of Reflections on a Gunshot is a signal that what I have believed all along about my efforts is true - while taking time and effort for my karma to catch up with me, all the while plunging thousands of dollars into the effort with little or no return creates a massive cog with inertia that takes years of constant pushing to begin to turn, and after such, thankfully, may actually turn with you requiring a nudge or a push rather than a painful struggle. The effort of the work I produce is beginning to crest into its own dawn, all the while reminding me of this new phase's necessary upkeep: keeping my work out in the public, keeping my website updated and fresh with new features, expanding the topics covered by my work and my skills used. It will soon be possible to take the attention to my work much further, and the lessons I've learned from the last several years are part in parcel. Reflections on a Gunshot was begun at the dawn of the Iraq war in 2003 and is now at the end of its journey of audience, hopefully as the war itself comes to a fair close. Its not always enough to have confidence in your own work. The work itself, especially in art, can be made by another's vision and attachment to what they see. My time with Reflection was my first walk-through in this process, and while the empty space on the wall will be filled instantly, this is a piece of my personal history by its own departure, that I will always remember, and use as a model for other art work around me. I now feel like the first full turn of the cog is completed, and its great to see more gears down the line beginning to turn in synch. In addition, its now a process that I can enjoy knowing that its only a matter of time before the second turn is complete, and the third, and the fourth.. Conceptual Art, Conceptual Art Examples, Studio 2008-11-16T01:49:33-07:00