(or "So You Know You Can Dance but Can You Get Enough External Validation?)

            Competition is in our genes. Even if you don't "Believe" in evolution you have to admit it goes on in nature.  If a creature has genes that give it an advantage in survival long enough to procreate and the offspring are also successful in doing so etc. you have a "winner."  Then we got a hold of it.

            It has been shown in studies and in races that test humans to the "limits."  There are "limits" and there are "Limits."  People can bicycle across the United States though they hallucinate and feel like they are being chased by daemons to do it.  We can climb cliff faces with no safety harness and we can survive in the arctic.   Give a person an incentive and they can eat all sorts of things.   But most stable creatures have things in them that prevent them from doing just anything that impulse dictates.  Then along comes a spider and sits down beside her and the Fight or Flight instinct kicks in and the Race is On even if the spider had no intentions of attacking let alone running after a human.  People hit the "wall" when running marathons or bicycling across the country but they produce in their mind the impetus to ignore the first warning of impending shortage and keep "soldiering" on.   Even when it comes to mundane things like practice we have to be forced to repeat an action ad nauseum until it becomes part of our muscle memory.  Then if not prodded we slack off. You do see lion cubs practice hunting and its cute but you don't see adults of many species wasting effort working out or practicing new moves or trying to improve on statistical history.  Just us humans.

            These instincts don't always serve us.  If we are protected and don't feel the need to use our reserves soon we believe we can't use them, that others are better because they can, or that with some Talent that is supernatural or inherited destines them for greatness.  Children growing up with arguably too much assistance from over protective adults will not learn their limits or the validity of the ones imposed from outside.  On the other hand outright neglect would not allow the child to learn what is acceptable to society or life threatening verses what they want or feel they can do.  I heard a child screaming about hurt and pain and suffering. I did not call the cops. She was just learning to swim and couldn't find it in herself to exert herself, to push herself to do what is difficult and try to keep her head up, Kick and hold on to something in a completely supervised backyard swimming pool lesson with parents standing right there with her.  In their favor they continued to talk to her in a calm fashion, give her advice and did not immediately give in and stop the lesson.  I remember similar instances in my youth if I stretch far enough back in memory.

            So then there is the next level.  There are adults and institutions that push children to do what is right, difficult, and/or boring to excel at an activity that almost seems supernatural later when they show up at the Olympics or on game shows, recitals, or some other competitive exercise. Good for them.  Then there is the next level after that.

            I believe the pyramids were made by people who had it in their mind they wanted to do something right and would work hard to get it.  I don't believe in their religion that Pharos were god and that they had to give their lives to him to make his immortality more pleasant.  Then there are parents that will drive children mercilessly to make them All that they can Be in an extreme way.

           That's the hothouse method.  Give a kid no quarter and educate them to college level before they are old enough to get out of grade school.  Enter little girls as beauty queens before they even reach puberty.  Make every living moment a scheduled event that must include some social activity with externally validated reason for taking place and quantifiable results.  Play on a couple teams every space in the calendar available and add as many credits as possible.   People who live vicariously through the kids have to be careful not to forget about sportsmanship in favor of winning or self esteem vs. competitive ferocity.

            Not everyone can or would want to break dance by spinning on their head springing directly to a standing position and jump over 15 people all to the beat of a popular bit of driving music.  But once you try you could be forced or feel the need to continue until you were the "Best in the Universe."  How much pressure is on Mr. and Mrs. Universe anyway?  Especially when we cannot even prove what other sentient life may exist in the universe despite Science Fiction (that is Sci-Fi for short not SyFy) movies like "The Fourth Kind." and Whitley Strieber's book Communion.

            I Know I can dance but I darned well better not show up on TV trying to compete with someone who can memorize 50 choreography routines and a sense of rhythm and timing that would put a Rolex to the test.  There are shows now where that kind of  thing happens.  A choir director that shows up to a school with no music program out of the blue and starts auditioning people to be in a competition a few months away.  No follow up job is invented to continue the choir tradition that I know of.   There are the usual TV shows that test you on trivia (that word has always had a sore spot for me.)  Then the singing and general talent shows dedicated to a particular country but essentially its the same old idea that has been around probably since cavemen had the first wall drawling talent competition.  But how much is too much?  So where do we draw the line?   If I say I'm not interested in learning an instrument but latest research shows you can't be good at it unless you learn some things early on, in other words unless you start at an early age, should I have been forced into more rigorous music reading classes anyway?  I found out I do like choir but not really so much trying to learn piano in college.   There are examples of children and adults that attain savant level learning of an instrument or drawing or painting.  This without a specific limit in mind but people have had to suffer sometimes to attain it either because of injury that causes the ability or in the case of Eidetic memory, a lack of discrimination of memory and there meanings.

            Competition in general is something I tend to avoid.  Some rational questions about reality TV type competition go like this:  Do you Really have to be the "Best" or is doing it your best the point?  How do you know it is your best if you have these physiological and psychological limiters in place?  Did David have judges with numbered cards watching as he danced for God [II Samuel 6] ?  Given this story exists why do some churches ban dancing?   Did he doubt or have a clue what his style was, or worry about if he could do it again in front of the audience tomorrow.  "Thanks again folks we're here with the ark all week."   

            The unreality which we are all fed is that we must be the best according to judges and there is nothing worse than being ordinary.  That was satirized in the movie "American Beauty." Mediocre people just wont be remembered and when they are gone they are gone, forgotten, buried in the mass unresolved humanity and of apathy.  That is a finite, small, very human perspective. 

            If you don't have religion then you believe in lasting effects but how much do we control those?  Do butterflies know or choose how they affect weather across the globe?   No.  Do even the best built human artifacts last forever?  No.  How long a streak of FAME is long enough?  In the face of eternity and infinity what finite goal is permanent and lasting enough?  I can use archival quality products to preserve my photography for a relatively long time but not forever.  Those moments affect me and other people and maybe they affect others and so on.  With an infinite timeline even a "long" but finite line segment is reduced to a geometric point when viewed from an infinite perspective.  Only one being I can believe in has an infinite perspective, knowledge and wisdom and I believe He thus has the ability to remember that all those points were/are human lifetimes.  That they did have length, all be it finite.  We did have feelings and ideas though selfish, limited and ignorant though they may seem from an infinite perspective. In him the best part of people and their ideas could last forever.  That is external validation.

Here is a riddle.  There is a time when all elements will conspire to prevent it.  It is the mystery of artists everywhere and the least predictable part of any artistic endeavor.   Before funding and model releases and studio bookings if you're into that or just before you spend mucho deñero on equipment you have to open you're heart and have faith that something will become this and transform before your eyes.  Have you guessed it?  Inspiration. 

I have been told that photography is my muse but its not. It is my medium.  The word Muse like so many others has multiple meanings.  I am not a polytheist but understand the concept.  A muse is a protector and catalyst of art, a source of ignition, the boot to the head that makes one inspired from the outside.  Strangely from our perspective the muses of old were concerned with literature and performing arts and even astronomy. None for creators of 2D and 3D arts.  Often in modern parlance a muse is the subject of the art directly or indirectly.  At the least a muse is someone who understands what you are up to and allows you to work through a dry spell by giving a simple goal that doesn't lead you away from where your heart is.   My muse has so far been worse than absent.  I fear she has been killed in an accident or worse working for someone else as a CPA.

So far jobs have sort of materialized and opportunities arise but a single solitary muse has failed to make an appearance.  Maybe I'm blind or badly misdirected.  There tends to be one thing that sets me out the door to take pictures and its not pretty. There just has to be little else distracting me or holding me back in opposition to an odd sense there is something out there I am missing that would be good to take a picture of even if its a little uncomfortable.  I set out with a general need to take pictures and go to a place I think I have a chance to do so.  It is never clear what will be inspiring especially if it is in a place I don't particularly think of as pleasant, unusual, or just outright ugly.  I got some of my more interesting pictures (at least to me) just by going with my friend Myron to document some industrial decay in my Palmerton Zinc series or Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary.   And then there are the volunteer mission trips to places of devastation where not just the photographic inspiration is a matter of faith but the conditions which we will be living.

In this documentary artist Chuck Close say he believes in the expression "'inspiration is for amateurs'  if you wait for a bolt of lightning to hit you in the head you won't get much work done."  http://synapticstimuli.com/creatures-of-wisdom/  and he also states it this way, "I don't work with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work." Read more: Chuck Close at His Gala Party: Eff You Every Much -- Vulture http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/09/chuck_close_at_his_gala_party.html#ixzz0i0wOx93J and as with most wisdom there are other precedents and angles to view an idea: "If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything."  - Win Borden

So the definition of muse for me is more about the verb

            To be absorbed in one's thoughts; engage in meditation. Cogitation.
            v.   tr.
            To consider or say thoughtfully

and also a noun

            n.  A state of meditation.

Though I had not taken any courses in or practiced Transcendental Meditation there must be something to this; when behind the camera I do tend to focus my mind on what is in front of me and think about what is going on in several areas around it to see how it is interlinked and overlapping on multiple planes of depth into the distance.  As Theo once said it is sort of a form of prayer.

Beauty is here and there and seemingly everywhere and nowhere at the same time and one person can't see it all.  If you have a perspective you can share that makes art more accessible and clear to someone who never loved or respected art that way maybe you are the muse. 

For Clarification: my friends act as muses in the general sense often but no one is THE muse.  Sorry if I don't name everyone on here specifically.  Thank you for being my friends and being with me through the process.   Just last night my friend took me out of the house and talked with me.  Thanks Michkal . Though a similar conversation ensued at the end of the evening to several I have had before it I still feel it is progress.  I am just stubborn in believing that my viewpoint can't be all that special and of groundbreaking interest.  I know my inspiration does not have the weight of social importance as do people who are making political protest or spiritual sermons that include racial and sexual controversy.  But it is mine.  I do feel our society is lacking a deeper sense of beauty.  I think people are living in isolation in a world of perhaps too many people.  We have learned to ignore our surroundings anesthetized by the bombardment of media sensationalism.   It is a tough goal to try to be a part of that process of seeing the world and adaptation to it in a more subtle and thoughtful way.  Thanks for reading this because in writing I am coping and processing it in hopes you have similar need to feel that connection and contribute to the world in what ever way that is yours and yours alone.

The main activity was going on in the Crayola gallery where there was live music and a bar of sorts where my two bucks for a raffle ticket got me a small plastic cup of cabernet.  The featured art was by dimensional mixed media artist lynne dian gulezian.  Yes, I know I left it un-capitalized.  That's the way she and many other people have their moniker on their websites, cards, booklets etc.  Something about the internet and the effect of trying to cram a half billion words over clunky keyboards has made us practical or lazy depending on who you ask.  I could go on a whole rant about texting and the lack of real information in text from information theory but I would digress.  Anyway, it was very interesting if a bit hard to describe.  Scenes and people from her African past plastered in paint, cloth, paper and plastic like some kind of shopping bag material but with much more color and shapes forced into them and flattened out some.  After a while of reading the plaques I gleaned what she was trying to depict.  That to me is the danger to and of Art for Art's sake - especially modern art.  We get so inured to the idea in modern society we can communicate history and ideas freely with unambiguous simple language.  It always falls short, fails and is corrupted with uses that stretch the meaning to some new vernacular.  Ask a lawyer why you need them to say "I want to leave this thing to my kid", or divorce this woman, or buy this expensive object or company.  But then we must use it to describe the abstract, ephemeral, the transcendental.  I take my hat off to the great poets.  Then we who have a visual bent to our makeup try to invent and reinvent a visual language or code to further elaborate or elucidate memory and inner viewpoints. Then somehow connect them to the outside world through an image or sculpture or other object collection that bridges that gap.  But unless someone is doing a bunch of studying of art history or you and your description there is a gulf.  And then that someone must really willing to wrack their brain to imagine the significance of the elements and composition of your work.   There is a danger most people will just look at it and say "I just don't get it."  "My kid could do that."  "Art is just somebody's trash..." or worse yet of all they will ignore it or be totally apathetic to it.  If you really want to communicate the 3"x6" plaque on the side still carries the brunt of the responsibility of information. 

I talked briefly to Raymond Sicignanao who does very precise but surreally colorful scenes of what he knows best- cityscapes. It came up that it is hard to find a definitive Vision for my work.  He said I just need to show things from my viewpoint how I feel it and that things will work themselves out in that way.  I've heard this before... still hard to believe in myself.  I have to confess to being slightly crass in thinking how I could never make the thousands of dollars for an image like he does but its a moment of weakness in my ego and my upbringing in a money conscious house (that is an understatement of enormous proportions but a topic for another day if ever.)

I strolled around the 1st floor peeking in at the glass blowing demonstration.  At first I thought they were just making dimensional hearts.  I overheard a spokesperson talking to the crowd about making a shamrock where they were making shamrock leaves for a bigger total piece.  It wasn't until that moment that I thought of the heart that would be a part of a shamrock in that new light.  Another lesson in seeing what you can - not just what comes to mind first due to preconceived stereotypes and conditioning. 

I got a little sampler cup of coffee (blah! I prefer black and dark.  It was vanilla flavored but it was free)  I started walking by the artists studios to see who was there and what was displayed.  All along the way I tried to stop and see the art.  Some was not easy to identify as any actual object and some was surreal, some was realistic or even photography.  No photographers seemed to be present and their studios were shut and dark. Their loss. :D At some point I checked out an installation of art made from found objects in an attempt to describe the artist's loss of virginity, domesticity among other ideas.   I was slightly interested but it was quite a stretch to see the connection of this stuff and what she was trying to communicate.  The woman curator of the installation was much more interesting so distraction may be the issue there.  Maybe I neglected reading up on and into the art due to good old fashioned male hormones but no use beating myself up.  I'm single and a man and I have to stop being ashamed of what is only a natural reaction.  We exchanged cards.  At the least I hope she kept the card and thus she sees a good part of me in my web site and my art of photography there.   Maybe I can learn from this too.  If you are reading this then I apologizes for not fully paying as much attention to your installation as I could have.  :)

I wandered into a studio where Andrew M. Kish III was talking with onlookers.  I got to hear his take on his ideas on artistic vision and what inspires him.  His water colors were for the most part seemingly photorealistic.  The use of photographic references was a major part of the process.  In fact he did add things and leave out others.   He worked with no true blacks and variations on white.   He added an abstract dripping as the bottom of a diptych with a seemingly photographic representation of the geometric architectural interior of Philadelphia City Hall as the primary image above.  The semi random second piece could blend well into the bottom of the first by design.  He was showing the relationship of order and chaos in the world.  Unlike so many people he denied the primacy of a specialized vision.   It is more just trying to capture a feeling at seeing something for the first time.  That unique viewpoint of the moment.  This was reminds me of Theo Anderson saying almost the same thing at that Banana Factory photography class.  You must see things differently than others.  Try to catch things you never saw before in even the most mundane object.   We discussed the nature of photography and painting as having different strengths and weaknesses such as the prevalence of relatively good cameras now and amped up images of anything you can think of everywhere you look.  It takes me back to why it is hard to talk with photographers and maybe why none were at the opening.  I find photography doesn't seem to attract the warm and fuzzy kind of artist but instills a form of paranoia and solitude.  People can easily steal an image off the net or see them for the cost of admission of the internet.  You can buy cheap Low def posters from Wal-Mart and put them in cheap frames. Or think they can take it by just setting up a tripod where Ansel Adams did and take just as good a picture.  There is a bit of a paradox in the fact that most people still acknowledge the skill necessary to paint a realistic image.  But I must admit my view that if it is too realistic it is almost redundant to go to great lengths to depict something exactly the way it is when you can take a picture.  Way back I said "remember the line 'do what you love and the money will follow.'"  Andrew brought this saying up and admitted that the money is following way, way back there somewhere but he indicated he was happy.  He has his wife, new son, and a studio at the Banana Factory all seemed to make him content.  That alone was something to see in his eyes.  The thought crossed my mind that for every artist in this haven of art there must be hundreds that have not found a studio gig like this.   The lesson there is just be happy with what you have I guess.  It may get better and could be worse.  At least I am able to work (eventually hopefully) and support myself as well as do my photography. 

I also briefly got to look into the gallery of Adriano Farinella who does some interesting landscapes with most of the emphasis on the clouds and soft light coming through them. There are some parallels in his work to some of my exploration of clouds.  He has been painting larger canvases than I am used to seeing.  I'm sorry to say I didn't get to talk to him very much as I was already tired and it was close to closing time. 

Canvas or camera - you use your unique composition to show something figuratively and sometimes literally in a new light.  So I have been trying to do that recording of conjunctions of elements of darkness & light, color or monochrome because maybe it will never be that way again.   What else is time but the separation of what was to what is and what will be in our linear perspective of much more complicated events.  My life history and soul are more than the sum of their parts and so are my photographs.  I can only hope and pray someone sees it that way while I go about my way because I feel compelled to keep doing it.  That is being an artist. 

I had been playing at being a photographer since about 1999 when on vacation at places like the Adirondacks, NY to do some rock climbing and a 2001 visit to Acacia National Park, MA.  A good friend and housemate let me borrow a 35mm camera and I took a walk through the Nazareth Borough Park and Jacobsburg State Park and was pretty well hooked.  I bought my first real (digital) camera in shortly after that.  I took pictures of the nearby trees in my yard, the neighbors yard and flowers, and the park nearby and the cats of course.  I got a dA Membership in 2006.  The very first picture I posted got all sorts of comments and favorite marks.  No other photo has lived up to it's success there since. Hello sophomore slump.  I took pictures of places like Hawaii.  More attention ensued and maybe the ego grew.

  In 2006 my position as a chemistry lab technician was eliminated at Air Products.   The world as I knew it dropped out from underneath me for the second time; the first being my divorce in 2000.  I seriously considered bagging my continued application to jobs based on my 6yr Bachelors Degree in Environmental Science: Chemistry from Kutztown University of PA.  I wanted to be an "Artist." {ta-dah! ♫}Meh.  You go to the unemployment agency when you become unemployed for the first time in 13 years and they give you the line about "do what you love and the money will follow."  Remember that line.  Some more expositional info and I will get back on track.  I have a house and car to make payments on.   A Messy and otherwise old and needy house.  I keep the roof up. I patch things up a bit but the funk has descended and it is messy here.  So, the decision is cast and I take care of the stuff and what keeps it and me out of the weather and/or mobile.  I got into another set of jobs in chemistry.  I will not name names but I have friends on fb who will read this and know what I mean as it relates to the shared experience.  Each job was {how to put it?} An Adventure.  There are lots of quotes about Adventures.   Here are two of many that make that an apt description.

 “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

 Helen Keller

and most of all
"The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself, "Oh, now I've got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home."
 Thornton Wilder

But here are quotes I had to learn about how it relates to art

  “Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”

 William Somerset Maugham

“A man practices the art of adventure when he breaks the chain of routine and renews his life through reading new books, traveling to new places, making new friends, taking up new hobbies and adopting new viewpoints”

 Wilfred Peterson

In 2006 or 7 I decided to take a photography course of sorts at the Banana factory.  I found out before taking it that it was not to be a mechanical "how-to-take-a-picture course"  but more how Theo goes about looking at and for subjects of photography for his work. My teacher for this class made a major project of exploring The Steel. http://theoanderson.com/.    He taught me a few things, or should I say tried to.  One was to think in terms of sets and how pieces fit together in a series.  A big one is that you have to be willing to take a walk on the dark side.  He did not elaborate. If I ask him too specific a question about things like how he does things in a business sense I get repelled by vague statements.  I try to take that as a philosophical teaching technique.  What I take from this is at the very least this: You must find out what you want to say and how to say it with your heart and head and hands (and camera in this case) and you cannot be concerning yourself too much about only what is bright, pretty or popular or what is going to make you money on a steady basis or you will be sucked into that abyss of commercial objectivism that our country seems to have taken to an extreme level and it will kill your work because you will loose your way. 

Even those working at The Steel didn't get what they thought was coming to them by staying in a safe settled routine 9-5er objectively good job.  That is just my guess. Maybe I just made that up.  I hate to attribute things to someone who doesn't say things.  Next installment on my specific experience at First Friday March 5th 2010.