"A Happy Ending" features 37 artists online

I have just seen the first online visual art exhibition I like.
'Kudos' is what I'd like to say. 'High five!'

If there's going to be a countless amount of them, well then it's nice to have some favor.

D. Beasley, Curator of Marco Polo arts mag in Atlanta, has just published an exhibition for the literary arts journal. Here is the link.

Scrolling down the page, one finds a single image by each of the 37 artists. In the sore lack of plastic construction in contemporary art, it was a welcome surprise to see many images that had traces of fine visual tactility. That's aside from a bit of kinkiness in some of the subject matter. I liked the piece Untited, by Jieun Kim: a graphite and ink on Korean paper, which created lovely echos of the feelings I have for Persian miniature painting. The theme of the exhibit is connected to the genius film titan Francois Truffaut. Nice tag! (if titled-related only).


Untitled, by Jieun Kim

Childhood's Influence on Creativity: Harrison & the Studio Neptune blog project

Some artists make their own work refer to their childhood. Some artwork is all about the idea of childhood. Alas, there's academicians who sometimes outline how (great) artists automatically return to the core experience or actual place of childhood. Besides all that, there's plenty of artists who let their working life roll along with the influence imprinted from their times as a child, consciously or not.

Studio Neptune, an online resource for arts education, is maintaining a blog that features interviews reflecting child experience. Most, is not all of the entries are written by Neptune gallery and studio founder Elyse Harrison. Being an artist and educator, she has numerous artists and creative-types account for their time growing up and its influence on them.

Elyse is miles into this I believe, yet when I first heard her share about her subject I immediately resonated with it. The muse of her work seems to be in the realm of Gaston Bachelard - a French philosopher and author of certain books, The Poetics of Space and others like it, which you see romantically quoted today in the occasional artist's statement.

Regardless of how people qualify the experience of it for themselves, their early years remain their formative ones. They significantly form one's creative and interpretive response to being in the world. Awareness of this is good. When shared they are of considerable use as well to others in comparative terms.

The blog roll can be found here.

Change of Focus for eyemxmatter

Earlier this year I purchased a website. It is under construction to be my professional site. This blog, which has been a host for my painting and related events, will continue as a tie to my handle on the arts. However, I've been going to more art events than I ever have before. So the posts and commentary will be more outward in their scope.

We are always promoting whatever we talk about, yet I would argue that which is highlighted is not always intended to come from a competitive commodity and marketplace aspect (despite that being inescapable). I'd like to focus on other people's work, in addition to my own. I know that what I say about 'artist-xyz' would have a tendency to be more about my view than it is about 'artist-xyz'. So in talking about other people's work, I want to offer building blocks to a shape-giving view of contemporary art-making that could gel given time.

As philosopher Arthur Danto said in 'After the End of Art' (1997).........because - according to his thesis - the narrative of art history in the west was irrevocably completed with Pop in the 60's........ anything, ever since, can - and has accessibly been - art. Because of this ground zero, Danto believes that a platform for large-scale development in the fine arts no longer exists (as much as artists and/or their commercialization may strain for a second-hand notion of it). I tend to agree with Danto on this, and on it nevertheless being good news for everyone's freedom to create. Yet I like shapes. There's something about tangibility. Perhaps, within the humble process of maintaining a blog, I will find and contribute to any tangibility for the art community within this globalized community (and always, inevitably from the point of view of a painter). If nothing else, there will be a reflection of my thoughts staring back at people.