Monday, December 12, 2005 10:09 am  <|>
<239> In The Name Of Art: As an artist, you can sometimes get away with an awful lot... I mean, in terms of your work at least. Think about it. Although it's debatable, it is much easier today to pass something off as 'art' than it was before. I'm not saying I'm for or against this, but it does make it harder for those who don't agree with the direction art seems to be going on (or is in) right now. As an artist, I can tell you this is a sticky subject... one I try not to get too far into too often. But regardless, the debate does effect pretty much every single one of us.

As the visual editor for HiNgE in the last year, and even before that with my role of picking artists for Sticky Art, I have had to consider not just the 'What is art?' question, but also the 'What is GOOD art?' question too. The latter is much harder than the former, but they are both tough questions to answer. For Sticky Art, the submissions flow in pretty well and I do end up with a certain amount of similar art that falls in line with the whole sticker and street art general style. This works for me and since it is my production completely in terms of running it, I don't have to really worry as much about my selections... as long as I know it's pleasing the community (and I hope it does for the most part). But with HiNgE, I take a more careful role. Pretty much up until now submissions have determined what we picked from to show. There is nothing wrong with this, but when a certain quarter yields little to no submissions for one reason or another, this leaves slim pickens for me. I feel like that isn't fair to the artists or to the readers, but this quarter I've decided to start actively looking for artists. It's not that this was out of the question before, it's just between how busy everyone is and such it wasn't happening so much in the past. It's a great way to showcase work and we try to focus on Philadelphia area artists but it's not a strict rule... so I think a lot can be done, I just need to make it happen. Again, it's hard to keep on top of it with so much else going on in my life, but it feels like something that could really be great if I can just put a little more into it. Anyway, that's what I'm hoping to do at least.

So back to Sticky Art for a second. I'm still trying to get things in motion. It seems like all these things are so easy to think about and, of course, harder to actually do... but I've been working on it and maybe once one or two things fall into order the rest will follow. That's what I'm hoping for at least. And things seem to feed each other too. If only I had more time to devote to these projects... but I have to keep my mind on my daily grind too... how annoying. Maybe today will yield good news for that. Here's hoping...

We got our tree yesterday. It's still in our garage... we will have to set it all up tonight. It'll be nice to have a little Christmas inside since we don't really decorate otherwise. I forced everyone to deal with me and allow me to get a real tree this year. I just have this thing about having a real one. Last year we didn't have one at our apartment. We used a fake one that Dan's parents let us use, which was nice of them and everything, it's just, like I said, there is just something about having a real one. Last year my parents had two trees. A large fake that my mom has always wanted which I never let her get apparently due to my desire for real trees and a second smaller one to put my ornaments on that they put up in our kitchen that was real. This year we thought the better solution was to have a real one at my own place and my parents can stick to their fake one. I will still miss not sitting under a real one on Christmas morning... a tradition that Dan and I have yet to make our own. He and I both go to our respective parents' houses on Christmas Eve and then he comes to my parents house by Christmas afternoon so that we get to spend Christmas together but still have the 'wake up on Christmas' feeling with our families.

Christmas memories start to fade by this age I guess - the ones you had from childhood I mean. For me, Christmas was always about the music... I used to play on my grandparents organ all kinds of Christmas songs because they had the songbooks. And they had one of those fake heater fireplaces that I would sit up close to (probably too close) with nothing but the Christmas lights on in my grandparent's living room. I spent half my childhood days at my grandparents' house because they lived literally 1 minute up the street. Our houses faced each other and I was always there to play too. My grandmother passed away my senior year of high school and my grandfather passed away almost two years ago now; before that he was sick for years from Parkinson's disease. So since before the end of high school, Christmas has never really been the same. It's just lost some of it's magic as I've gotten older and those 'best parts' have been forced to fade away. It's not sad exactly, it's just a part of life's progression... but that doesn't mean I can't miss those days, especially around this time of year.

So today feels like it should be a productive day. I'm going to try to make it so. I've been working pretty nonstop when I'm home on my grad project. It's almost ready. Of course I decided (since I haven't touched Flash in YEARS) to do my project website in flash. It's actually going much more smoothly than I thought it would. I'm not doing anything too fancy and I'm fairly surprised at how well I am using it considering I never really used it much even when I did use it. There are some things that I would do differently and/or make look a little nicer if it wasn't due this week and if I didn't already know that this site is simply a way to show my installation concepts. The project is the installation itself which I can't bring to full realization without a space to show it... but hopefully that'll happen at some point down the line too. It'll be listed in my portfolio when finished, but I'll post a link up here when it's done too.

But, since I'm at work still, progress on that will have to wait for now. I hope this week goes fast. I need another weekend and one just ended!! Until later!