Creative Calamities

Just last week I was offered the opportunity to teach a pre-college (teen) class in Digital Animation (Adobe Flash) at Westchester Community College. I am pretty psyched about the whole deal but the big difference here from my past teaching experience as an English teacher in Japan is I won’t be an assistant. I will have the opportunity to experiment and be creative with the curriculum . . . Muuuhuuuuhahahaaaaaaaa . . . . .

I suspect I will have to be a bit less experimental than I am when I cook but I am looking forward to the experience.

As I mull over how I will approach my new role as chief experimenter, I will expect the same from my students. Meaning, I would love for them to take chances creatively.

As I look for inspiration and instruction I am drawn back to one of my favorite video lectures from TED Talks. Sir Ken Robinson’s talk, “Do schools kill creativity?”

As part of my preparation for the art fair last month I decided to finally take the plunge and get myself an iPod Touch. I’d prefer an iPhone but I’m  not ready for a a two year contract.

So I took the plunges and I will never again will I have to explain what it is that I do and hope it is understood. If I go to a job interview and there is a problem connecting to the internet, presto! My portfolio in my pocket will always save the day.

I felt I got my every penny’s worth spent on the device for those features alone.

These days,  I feel like a kid with a new toy as I carry the thing around with me everywhere I go. When I work on the computer I often use it, when I go to bed, I might read a little of an ebook or watch a podcast before lights out. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, unbeknownst to my wife, I can be found surfing the internet under cover of duvet late into the night. In the morning I use it to check my email and listen to the morning’s NPR news report or check the New York Times headlines all before getting out of bed. My iPod Touch has replaced at least $600 worth of other devices that I own and it fits in my pocket. I have probably spent $50 on apps but they too are worth every penny, most being free or a mere 99 cents.

On my iPod Touch I track hours worked and send invoices, I keep track of expenses, study Japanese, study music and write music, I study fonts, find recipes, store maps or find restaurants to restroom locations in NYC, get movies times and reviews. All in the palm of my hand. And I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface. I won’t bother to write about how amazing the games are because I would be writing into next week.

I find AppVee a great resource for app reviews because it would take far too long to try out most apps.

The best thing about the iPod Touch for me is I doubt that I will ever grow impatient when left sitting in a doctors office long past my scheduled time, well, unless my battery dies.

After finishing a postcard sketch of a scene on the Hudson River in Irvington, I connect to a free WiFi hotspot and watch an instructional video.

When I cook I find it difficult to stick with a recipe. I almost always throw something in a pot that wasn’t called for in a recipe or buy something strange to cook. Yesterday my experimental nature got the better of me when I purchased a whole fish at my local Japanese food market.

Porgy marinating in soy sauce, cooking sake and sesame oil.

On a whim I decided to challenge myself to cook a whole fish (something I’d never done before). At the check-out counter I felt a bit of pride in my effort as I thought I heard the the woman bagging my groceries say in Japanese to the woman at the register that it was rare to see an American purchasing a whole fish.

But when I made it home and began preparing the fish, I just felt pity for the little guy as I held his limp body in my hands and he stared back at me. Not exactly a fish stick.

The taste was wonderful but I think I will be cooking vegetarian for the remainder of the week.

As an illustrator and explanatory graphic artist, I am well versed in the art of telling a story. But when it comes to my fine art I often neglect this important part of being an artist.

Another lesson that I learned when I showed my work at the Red Dot Art Fair in March was that simply making art and standing in the shadows is not enough. I need to be a storyteller as well.

As I have learned recently in the world of freelance graphics, I have to wear many hats. I have to be a salesman, marketer, accountant, art director and an artist to make a living. I have recently learned that need to make that same shift in thinking when it comes to my fine art as well.

When asked about my work I often give short adequate answers rather than telling the story of a piece of art. I am becoming aware than I need to “sell” my art in order to sell art.

One of the pieces that I displayed at the fair which depicted part of the Gion Festival drew unexpected comments. Someone who sat within eye shot my paintings for several days told me that it took two days before he became aware that my painting was not purely abstract. That surprised me a bit because the imagery in the painting is so obvious to me. And one of the event’s security guards remarked that he liked the painting because he could see there was a party going on. He saw it much more clearly.

When someone expressed an interest in a piece of mine and wanted to know more about it, I initially thought I didn’t have a much to say about it, but found that I could have plenty to say with the possibility of a sale encouraging me to dig deep in my memory. Just showing my art and standing in the background is often not enough to make a sale. I see a real need to practice talking intelligently about my art and getting comfortable with this aspect of being a serious artist.

The Short Story: Me (Aaron) participating in the Gion Festival, Kyoto Japan, 2000. Painting of the Eve of the Gion Festival (started 1999 reworked 2009).

Many times I have seen people talk a young artist down from an already bargain price on a piece of art, only pay double that price for the framing. But I guess it is easy to talk an artist down on his/her price when they are eager to sell.

A couple of weeks ago I participated in the Red Dot Art Fair in New York City. I was invited by the University of Miami’s art department  who sponsored a booth and featured the work of alumni in the New York area.

I had a quandary about pricing so I asked for advice. One of my former professors advised me not to price too low because in NYC in that venue people might not take me seriously if I price too low. So I double my prices. That would also cover the school’s 40% commission if anything sold. Since I was pricing high, I needed to upgrade my presentation. I  re-stretched one canvas, $60 and two framings set me back $400. After delivery/pick-up and commuting into the city for four days for schmoozing, I easily plunked down $500 promoting my work.

The spaces at the four day art fair rented for $11,000 to $30,000. A West Coast gallery in a space near us had shipped a huge crate in with their art. They had to cover the owners travel and lodging expenses, and hire someone to work the space when he couldn’t be there. On the last day he sold one small piece.

Lori Woodward, a contributing writer for FineArtViews breaks things down in her article Art Pricing Strategies 2. She discusses things artists should remember in pricing their work — the cost of making a painting, education, travel associated with art, framing, etc.

I used to feel strange quoting a price that someone considered too much for art. I don’t anymore. Because I have learned that making art is an expensive habit.

Scene from the Red Dot Art Fair 2010

About a week ago I received an email from one of my former professors at the University of Miami inviting me, and several other alumni who now live in the New York area, to display work in their booth at the Red Dot Art Fair. They secured a booth not long before the fair opened so we all had less than a week to select and prepare work for the show.

I often have trouble deciding what is my best work, so I asked a number of people who’s opinion I respect. What I learn was a reinforcement of what I already know to be true. Art is subjective and many of the opinions simply added to my confusion over what to show. In the end, I decided on my favorite painting, Buddha (inspired by a night in Tokyo at Buttu Trick-Bar), my wife’s favorite, Gion (inspired by a night in Kyoto before the Gion Festival) and The Bassist (inspired by a bassist playing at Terra Blues on Bleeker Street and painted while listening to Charles Mingus).

The Bassist almost didn’t make in in the show because space was tight and I almost left it in my car when I delivered my other two piece. And this was after fighting with the piece for 10 minutes to squeeze it in my car and driving with my head cocked to one side on the hour drive into Manhattan. Much to my surprise someone took interest in that piece, I took their card and they took mine. No sale today but I am keeping my fingers crossed for the future.

I have been a bit out of touch with the art world and I learned a lot of things this week, or at least a lot of things to contemplate in my next few posts.

View from outside the warehouse exhibition space and inside at the University of Miami's booth.

I haven’t seen snow like this outside of a ski resort and the Chicago Blizzard of ‘79!

I trudged outside about 2am last night with a tripod and a camera in a plastic bag for these shots. The exposure was about 10 seconds and there was a wonderfully surprising effect that I hadn’t counted on, which was tree limbs blowing in the wind and blurring, while the heavier branches remained still, making for a somewhat surreal scene.

When I began toning the photo to fix the orange light cast by the street lights, I stopped here when the photo took on a pinkish hue, which reminds me of the Cherry Blossoms in Kyoto, Japan.

Taken about 2 am on a tripod in Irvington New York, where more than 18 inches of snow fell.

I’ve been trying to push myself away from the table of these small scale food paintings. I’ve been working this week to dig into some larger pieces for a spell, but they are a lot of fun to play and experiment with. Today I began messing with a creamy textured soft mixing white with a pallet knife. Initially I only intended to apply the thick paint as the creamy topping on the cupcakes but continued using the technique throughout the piece.

I enjoy the way it can appear to be abstract shapes but at the same time it is clearly cupcakes.

Wayne Thiebaud who has inspired me to go in this direction noted about realism, that an artist “can enliven a construction of paint by doing any number of manipulations and additions to what he sees,” which makes it possible for representational art to be “both abstract and real simultaneously.”

I like the concept and the day’s discovery.

Small oil painting of Cupcakes with butter cream icing.

These days when I am in my studio painting my wife walks in and rarely comments on what I am working on. Earlier this week she walks in and I am startled by her emphatic statement, “Now that is nice!” in reference to a small still life of three pears.

Not having much luck selling my paintings on my own I figured I would give the Etsy community a try. With a slow start well in hand, I am wondering if the rest of the public is reacting to my work the same why my wife does. So rather that continuing to try to sell my more expressive work I began to try to think of a subject matter and style that might have a more universal appeal, which started with the pears.

So I have been borrowing from one of my favorite painters Wayne Thiebaud. I should probably feel a little guilty “borrowing” so heavily from him but, he said himself . . .

“I’m very influenced by the tradition of painting and not at all self-conscious about identifying my sources. I actually steal things from people that I can use … just blatant plagiarism.”

That being said I am “stealing” from Thiebaud’s colorful foods paintings. His food paintings tend to encapsulate much of what I like to think of as good old fashioned Americana, which conjures up images of diners and drive-ins and ice cream stands. For me, these paintings evoke a distilled Norman Rockwell-esk feeling, a pure uncluttered memory or daydream that is very personal, because they tend to spark memories rather than tell a full story.

It is natural for me to paint these subjects because I love painting and I love food. I plan on doing paintings of candies and cakes but I also will detour a bit into some of my own experience by doing paintings of sushi. More precisely kaiten sushi, which is common place in Japan and yet appearing more and more in other countries. Kaiten sushi is not just about the food but also the experience of waiting for just the right plate of food to work it’s way around the conveyor belt to your grasp. Just as much as I enjoyed the  experience and taste of a corn dog at a county fair, I enjoy the almost roller coaster like journey of the kaiten sushi.

These are a part of a series of small scale paintings of food.

The prize has been claimed already –

I am having a little give away. Back in November I made a blog post where I touted how much I loved Lynda.com Online Training Library. Today I have a one month free subscription valued at $25. Be the first to follow this link back to that post and leave a comment stating that you would like to claim the free gift certificate and it is yours.

Click here to the original post and claim your prize . . .  if it hasn’t been claimed.

This is the Lynda.com gift card that you could win. The card expires March 31, 2010.