I am Karan from Olympia, WA.
Almost every other name used here is a pseodonym pseudonim pseudonymn alias.
The rest of it is true - mostly - and all of it is my own.
Don't even think about taking any of it, unless of course, you want to pay me.
Random Wisdom: We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time. - Vince Lombardi
The counter says that 2846371 have been flummelized, but I personally think it's all a big lie.
This week on Work of Art the assignment was to create something that shocks the viewer. The guest judge was Andres Serrano who is famous for his shock work. Serrano is famous for his use of piss and poo in his work and my feeling is that Serrano and most other shock focused artists are more into the medium than the message. I frankly find shock art insipid and sophomoric so I had little hope of seeing anything that pleased me
True to my expectation, almost all of the artists used sexual themes in creating their messages. I think the greater challenge would have been to find a non-sexual message and then shock the hell out of us with it. But sex it was for the majority. The cliffhanger shock in the episode was that two of the artists were to be eliminated. I’m OK with that, there seems to be more than two that should go, but I’ll slow track myself and settle for two at a time.
So...sex focused shockers were produced by Ryan, Erik, Jaclyn, Jaimie, John, Mark and Miles:
Ryan did a piece he called “My Tranny Porno Fantasy” which was, I dunno, graphic and pinkish. It was so, well pink and so deliberatly pink. I just can’t say much more than that. The extension cord was a nice touch...which was orange in the middle of all that pink.
Erik did a big feet-little feet political sort of piece to condemn priest pedophilia. It was all nice and poster-like...the judges even said it looked like an album cover...which it did. Big feet and little feet...not really so shocking...more condemning.
Jaclyn again ran straight to the bathroom and stripped down then snapped a few shots of her large (and I suspect, enhanced) boobies, printed them up and attached yellow star pasties to the “private” bits. After they were framed, the pictures looked very much like those pictures you see all over MySpace...grainy and self-produced. As she stood there all panicky about how boring they were, Erik suggested she let viewers add graffiti to them as part of the artistic effort so she did. That little suggestion pushed her into the top four and she took full credit for the idea. Erik said she was misrepresenting her ownership of the idea. She claimed she had thought of it before he said something....yeah whatever. It’s recorded honey so shut up.
Jaimie again with I’m a Christian...you know it just doesn’t matter and I wonder if anybody really cares about that? She did a graphic novel like attempt at The Last Supper showing Jesus as a gigolo or something surrounded by all these Victoria Secret sorts of models with weapons and debauchery all around. Again...who cares? That Last Supper theme has been exploited to death and I was bored.bored.bored.
Speaking of cartoons, John drew a man who was self-fellating...it showed an enormous penis and was pretty bad art. The most shocking part of the experience seemed to come from John who acted like he was disgusted with the whole concept. He did make it very clear that this was not a self-image and not a part of his own private moments. I basically think the act looks physically uncomfortable and I wonder how many men were inspired to give it whirl.
He also spelled fellatio incorrectly. It’s beginning to sound like I’m the spelling fairy around here doesn’t it? I’m so not qualified for the job.
Crazy Miles who produced one of the more entertaining pieces but only if you listen to the back story that produced it. Let’s just say that Crazy Miles told us all that his erotic Disney piece represented his first arousal and his last....complete with the goal of arousal dripping down the drawing. Yeah...ewwww. I’m guessing that Disney, Inc. is going to get all on top of that bit of public awareness. Look for it to disappear from forever. Maybe I should just save me a copy of it...maybe not.
Abdi, Nicole, Peregrine and Nao opted to shock us in different subject areas. Peregrine decided to poke run at fashion...and apparently the fashion that the host China Chow wears...you remember her, the one with the wonky eye I mentioned before. BTW, her eye is still wonky.) It was funny to see China reach that realization. Peregrine’s piece was OK. It belonged in the safe zone. She’d better get going or she won’t be in the middle for much longer.
Abdi created African American man heads dipicting grenades or bombs of some sort. They were striking in appearance and interestingly enough, he displayed them flat on the ground so that the viewer needed to get down there to experience them. I’m not so sure the piece was shocking as much as it was a statement of social culture.
Nicole did a weird series of thumb vials that contained human bits and spits and goop. It was just weird and she seemed to be trying to copy Andres Serrano’s love of ickiness for icky’s sake. It wasn’t even interesting to look at. She blew it this week...but lucky for her, not enough to make the bottom four.
Nao is a nut job. Not a loveable nut job like Crazy Miles...she ‘s just not likeable. She did a performance art piece that involved throwing together all kinds of crap, dressing herself in a plastic drop cloth, doing bad clown makeup and propping up in the front of the gallery. It made no sense, had no background story and was just plain ugly. It was classic shock art...all imagery and no content. Ugly and boring and senseless. I hate her work.
And...now the piece that I found to be the best shocker of the lot....and the most profound....Mark’s “In an Instant”. It was a triptych piece that was clear in its message about child sexual abuse. It was almost difficult to view and fully and completely conveyed it’s message and was shocking in its impact. Mark nailed the assignment and was by far the best of the evening.
Of course, I was wrong. Mark didn’t even make the top four. He was relegated to the safe group and his work was given very little attention. Abdi won the evening. I’m OK with that. He did a good job. The two who went home were Nao - HOORAY! and John. I am sad that John left. He seems genuine and nice and he is talented...but this week...his giant penis sucker sucked.
I’m so going to get some odd traffic on this post.
Edirp and Ecidujerp
Two comments before I go with this entry....first, I like Work of Art and apparently from what I read online and hear from my friends, I’m one of just a handful of people who even know the show exists and of that tiny number, I am the only one on earth that likes it. Yay for me! Second, of the four episodes that have aired, I’ve watched all four on our DVR. I never seem to be able to catch the thing when it first airs. Of course that makes it one of many shows that I watch via the DVR. I like to kid myself that I don’t watch much TV. That’s absolutely true if you only count the TV I watch when it first hits our TV set but the real truth is that I watch a lot of TV via DVR. Lots of TV. Work of Art is one of them. And because I watch it delayed, sometimes I see episodes back to back more than a week after one of them has initially aired. This is a long explanation of why it’s taking me so long to report back on episode 3.
OK. So, episode 3 had our happy little coven of artists ordered to produce new book covers for old classics. Apparently those who produce the show only know of 5 classics because the artists were paired up to “cover” the books. They were given 7 hours to come up with something and to produce a fairly commercial piece that would represent the book and draw readers to the book by the cover.
With 7 hours facing him, Crazy Miles decided to spend his time wisely by reading his assigned book, Frankenstein. He hunkered down and spent 4 hours plowing through the thing. Now, I do understand that to find inspiration in a subject some level of understanding is necessary but he was facing a very impending deadline with this project and it seems, well, crazy, to spend more than half the time reading the book from cover to cover. Anyway...he read it and in the end spent almost no time in producing his piece, a plank of circuit-scribed wood with wires and scorching adorning it. I actually liked it and found it kind of compelling. Crazy Miles was paired with Rocket Man Abdi. Abdi struggled with this assignment and his piece was not so much good. No. Not good. He has lots of talent and I am willing to wait him out.
Alice in Wonderland was assigned to Erik and Nicole. Erik created a playing card representing Alice a couple of the other elements from the book. It was scary strange...not Disney Alice in Wonderland, not even Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland. More like Freddy Kruger’s Alice. Yeah...scary strange. Nicole’s painting had an installation in it that held a little box with an eat me cracker in it. I thought it was clever but the work was boring and I wouldn’t be surprised if the cracker was stale too.
Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde and Nao and Ryan were all working toward proper representation. As before Nao apparently didn’t care what people thought of her work...because after all, we’re wrong and we just don’t understand real art. She is right. I didn’t like her photograph and I didn’t understand it. Where we don’t agree is that she is a talented artist. Punk Rocker Ryan did an interesting pieced that seemed to represent the complexity of the struggle faced by the title character. I liked it.
The Time Machine was presented by Peregrine and John. Peregrine did a crafty piece that looked very much like an inscribed oval frame with the little inscriptions representing elements from the book. It was OK. Not fabulous just OK. I like Peregrine because she seems to be a free spirit and she dresses quirky...but if her art doesn’t pick up pretty soon, she’ll be packing up her paints and beating feet outta there. John did a very colorful piece that looks very much like he made it with post-it notes. It sort of looked like a big old crystal and near the bottom of it, he took a sharpie and drew in a tiny little ladder. One of the judges just LOVED his tiny little sharpie ladder. I thought it was an odd addition. But I’m not a judge...at least I don’t get paid to be one.
Old Lady Judith and Jaclyn had very interesting takes on Pride and Prejudice. I think maybe Old Lady Judith may have read the book. Heck, she may have typed the thing up for Jane Austen herself. Jaclyn did not know the book. Not even. Let’s revisit the setting for the book. It’s about a very prim and proper young lady and her family as they work within the very structured sensibilities of eighteenth century England....not so much the half naked self portrait that Jaclyn produced and she misspelled Austen. Judith produced a half and half painting with the title of the book scrawled backwards across the top. It was not so nice to look at but she did spell Austen correctly. (Thanks Margaret for the correction)
The final pairing was Mark and Jaimie Lynn who drew Dracula as their inspiration. Jaimie Lynn found conflict between her Christian ideals and the blood sucking undeadness presented by Bram Stoker. Her painting was a meandering landscape that lacked focus and was pretty much a mess. Mark aced the assignment. His cover was attractive, very commercial and clever. It was by far my favorite.
I was wrong though...the winner of the night was John’s tiny ladder and The Time Machine. It was bright and will surely attract the attention the publisher seeks. I just didn’t like quite as much. The big go home loser was Judith and her dyslexic cover.
Go here to see the images: www.bravotv.com/work-of-art/photos/episode-3-rate-the-work
This story is making the rounds today....Charlie Kratzer is a lawyer with a sharpie and he writes on his walls. I’m going to invite him to my house and share my sharpies with him. Take a look (and then again and again) at his work: Sharpie Art.
The pole...actually, for the sake of brutal honesty, where whence it was a tree, it is now a log and if my vision holds, it will one day be a pole....no matter what, the thing remains intact and we’ve reached a compromise. I acknowleged that much of his concern is legitimate...and the fact that I have zero experience carving wood is a significant concern about the finishability of this project. He recognized that I like to try new things and that this is a unique opportunity.
Leonard asked if I could find a standing tree that might meet my needs so I walked around our property seeking a cedar that will work for me. Unfortunately the only cedars we have are fairly inaccessible. He asked if I had a time line which would either yield a completed pole or a chainsaw finish to the thing. I relunctantly agreed to one year...knowing full well that because I will have to work outside, my actual work days will diminish as we edge toward fall. Finally, he is concerned about the expense of the tools I’ll need so I promised to work with what we have on hand and also seek anything I need in addition with an eye toward economy.
Houston, we have a compromise!
Leonard will drag it to a winter resting place not far from where it now resides and it will await implements of carving. I’ll find some sort of system of chocks which will elevate it an inch or two off the ground to delay the decay and we’ll cover the thing with a giant tarp we’ve been stowing for ages.
Hopefully this will hold and our lives will return to our normal decision making system of push and shove.
Have you every wondered how an argument with a man holding a chainsaw might end? Me too and I’m worried about it.
This morning before Leonard began the less than pleasant task of cleaning up his big cedar mess he told me in very stern tones that he didn’t want that pole of mine to survive his clean up. I told him I did and the ensuing argument was not pretty.
Every point he made was valid...the pole is very long, it is very heavy and unless it is somehow elevated off the ground, it will begin to become one with the earth. It is likely that my pole carving effort won’t take place until the weather turns and then it is unlikely I’ll be able to spend any lengthy amount of time out there chipping away at it.
Truth is in every one of those words - but still.....iwannacarvemyfirsttotempole!!!!!!!!
He told me he was going to saw it up. OK. Instant escalation and now we’re at a stand-off. Me with my big pouty snarl and him with his just sharpened gas powered chainsaw.
iwannacarvemyfirsttotempole!!!!!!!!
to be continued....
Last weekend Leonard “pruned” our giant cedar tree. By pruned, I mean
he cut down the two daughter trees that were growing next to it and then
chain sawed the leg-width branches on the bottom ten feet of the trunk and
he made a mighty mess. In the process, I laid claim to the trunk of the
largest of the daughter trees so that I can carve a little totem pole. My first!
Leonard’s less than supportive of this artistic plan, complaining that the trunk
weighs something like half a ton and worry about it taking a long long time
and the expense of the carving supplies.
Whiney baby. Nothing should interfere with art. Nothing I tell you.
