Thought Work

“People don’t change, they only lie to themselves until they start believing they have”

So my seminar work focuses on taking thoughts, comments and what have you and making images based from those ideas. This is one of these pieces. The image is very simplistic, but when combined with the idea it stirs up thought. I like the direction I'm taking with this, despite the overwhelming negativity involved. Much more on the way.

Things I've learned about John Updike's Writing

I'm somewhat familiar with John Updike's short stories and a novel of his called "Rabbit Run", so I think I'm finally at that point where I can make critical assessments on his style and things he likes to throw in his writing. This is strange and new because this is written word I'm talking about and I've never been that avid a reader despite the creative writing minor I've been striving for the past 3 years to obtain. Isn't that funny?

Updike's descriptions are incredible. This man would take the most mundane objects and scenes and describe them so vividly that you could envision it perfectly in your mind. He wrote a short story called "A&P" that takes place in a grocery store. He describes each aisle, and not just how it looks. What are on the shelves, what those things look like, what they do, why they are there, he writes these descriptions so wonderfully. He doesn't miss a single detail AND (and this is a big AND) he writes them down in a way that doesn't bore you. Not always areas and places, but also mindsets, what the protagonist maybe thinking, thoughts so common we might have thought them ourselves. Good in smaller increments, but dangerous in some of his longer novels. In "Rabbit Run" it would feel like entire sections of the book are nothing more than descriptions and that is something that is easy to get overwhelmed by. 3 pages about one old lady's flower garden is enough thank you.

Updike's Protagonists are assholes. Every single character that we have the pleasure of having the perspective of (from what I've read) is someone who is just a total jerk and more times than not, their own worst enemy. Back to "Rabbit Run", the man (Harry Angstrom) gets fed up with his family (pregnant wife and son) and decides to leave home to better his own life because he is unhappy. Yes, why don't we all throw our responsibilities to the wind and do whatever the hell we want? And that is only the beginning, he constantly tries to leave but then finds himself coming back over and over again throughout the course of the book, for one reason or another. Guess what he ends up doing again at the end of the book? We'll get to that later.

In the short story "Seperating" Updike has the main character Richard, a man going through a seperation with his wife who have to break it to their family. At first, he seems shaken by the entire ordeal and we begin to feel some sort of sympathy for him only to realize later one that the one who wanted the separation was in fact him. So this entire time we have the guy painted and gussied up to be the paragon of fatherhood only to find out that he is far from it, that he is in fact human as well.

Updike's Protagonists never accomplish anything. It's like no matter what these characters go through, no matter how challenging or rewarding the hardships are they just don't learn anything from their experiences or their mistakes. Harry Angstrom keeps on running over and over and at the end of the story guess what? He is still running away, selfishly trying to make his life better as he forsakes everything else. Over the course of the sequels to this story, there is some progress made by this character so not all hope is lost. Then we have the Richard from "Separating." He wants to break off the relationship with his wife, they don't even enjoy each others company anymore. And why does he want to do this? When confronted by his son at the end of the story who asks the simple question "why?" he doesn't have an answer. HE DOESN'T EVEN REMEMBER THE REASON ANYMORE. Why all the stress? Why all the tears? He doesn't even know why or what he is doing.

And finally we have the young man from "A&P", who has his eye on a lovely lady in a bikini who happens to walk into the store one day and goes as far to quit his job in hopes of impressing her after his manager kicks her out for the sake of public decency. His mind set akin to "Hey, if I support her poor decision to wear minimal clothing in public can I get in her pants?" Does this brash and bold move get the girl in the end? Worked as well as a screen door on a submarine and our hero is unemployed. Way to be champ.

The women Updike writes are cold. Almost all the girls I've seen this man write seem so unfeeling and judgmental as all the men he writes seem to be so passionate about everything. This is a common formula for his cast of characters, best illustrated in "Seperating". We have the father and the sons acting very emotionally about the entire separation while the girls are general complacent about the whole thing. No real remarks to make, no protests or anything, complete acceptance of the facts presented to them. They are nearly impossible to get behind as characters because of this, which helps readers relate to the often male protagonists he places in these types of events.

Now, I find Updike's writing to be a pleasure most times to read, but sometimes it can feel overwhelming, especially with novels. I enjoy his short stories, much more compact and compressed for my liking. Long story short, the man knows how to write and that is the important thing. But if you need to know anything about any of his works, the points above will pretty much tell you the basics.

Album Review(s): Spring Heeled Jack U.S.A. and Amy MacDonald

So I have only a couple of albums I wish to rate for your viewing pleasure this evening. Didn't get the chance to evaluate more than this, the others I'm still feeling more inconclusive about at this time.

Spring Heeled Jack U.S.A. - Songs From Suburbia

Rating: Rambunctious/ Happy - 3.5/4.0
We have here some fine work from the third wave ska revival of the 1990's that gave bands such as the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and No Doubt their big starts. This is the sophomore album of the group, which is their best work. The album starts off good and builds up quickly, but some of the song placements in the album I'd say could have been better. The beginning gets quick and loud fast, then gets more mellow by the end of it which seems like kind of a bummer for a ska album. Now granted, it wasn't too bad but the last few tracks were beginning to lose me till "Morning Sun" came on. In my opinion, the ending for this genres should be much more tremendous and loud.

It's very catchy, the songs have good lyrics and the singer doesn't repulse me like some ska bands like Less Than Jake. Tracks like Jolene and MCMLIX (1959) are absolutely wonderful, especially the 1959. The song is about how the baby boom generation wasn't quite as innocent as our parents so often lead us to believe. Other notable tracks include Beggin' and Time.

Amy MacDonald - This Is The Life

Rating: Earnest/Emotional - 4.0/4.5
The debut album of the Scottish singer/songwriter Amy MacDonald, entering charts at number 2. Not too bad for a first time, even though it's been a few years since the album was released she's had 6 singles in the UK (one being a re-release). MacDonald has quite a lovely voice, which adapts with the various speeds the the album's songs. I also have to give props to the band in the background, they really complement her very well. That's right, it's a folk album that isn't all slow songs about reflection and affection. It's good music to listen to when you just want to relax and that is always appreciated by yours truly.
The songs focus on things most people can find themselves relating too, whether it's melancholy or nostalgia with enough emotion in the lyrics for everyone. Tracks I'd recommend are This Is The Life, Poison Prince, Let's Start a Band and Barrowland Ballroom.

I don't post here nearly enough: New Projects fo Seminar

So I haven't posted about art in Months. Yeah, I've been really good at keeping this blog, no wonder no one reads this. Anyway, I'm here in the wee hours of the morning to hopefully fix that. Allow me to elaborate on what the hell I'm supposedly doing these days.

Taken from my seminar blog: http://jmcvey.net/sylva/

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“Legos”

I’m going to call this methods “Legos” for the time being, it’s catchy enough. The original sketches for this project involved various block shapes stacked up on top of each other, slowly becoming more distant from each other vertically. To give you a visual in lieu of the obvious lack of photography, it’s like falling tetris blocks. The idea was to take actual legos or perhaps pieces of wood and glue them to a large acrylic board to give it that “free floating” appeal. Unfortunately, this does not seem all that likely. It might be possible to make the image digitally, print it on vellum and have the semi-transparent appeal work for what it was worth, but that might seem a tad boring.

Then I started working with actual legos and then this train wreck started to look half decent. Markus Raetz did a sculpture that was the word “YES” from one perspective. When turned around, the shapes realigned and made the word “NO.” I am rather taken with the playful nature of many of his works, so I tried to do something like it without attempting to completely rip off his work. So far, I haven’t had a much luck as I would have hoped. There is only so much I can do with lego blocks. I shouldn’t try to make a transition piece since it would too close to the original piece I’m basing this on, I prefer not have seen as a rip off. At least, not right away. I have been contemplating moving up to Duplo or perhaps actual pieces of lumber.

“Speech”

And here we have yet another idea that I have been playing with for some time now since early last March, perhaps even earlier than that. Taking “speech” or perhaps a large amount of letters and words and having the letters act as small fragments of an image as they are shaded differently. The finished image is made up of various different sheets that all together make the image, much like an old animation cel. I’ve made pieces like this before, so I know there is a larger success rate for this approach. However, the trick for this one is making sure I’m doing something new rather than what I have been doing. I have been considering making it into a sort of assembly, bringing the flat image out to at a 2-D perspective. This would require thin mounting board, preferably something I can cut into without too much trouble. That particular approach to this method might be a tad pretentious of me, I’m still playing around with it. It’s very similar to Christopher Burnett’s “Sprawlcode”, which takes what I’ve done a step further by having each letter or character have it’s own individual color, which I believe is at least possible for me to attempt. Whether or not it’s even nessessary has yet to be decided. Here is the second “Speech” piece I made with Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. (Please pardon the watermark on the image below)

“Bars”

This is one of the earlier ideas I came up with. It starts with an image, a photograph would be a better example. That photo is cut into various strips which are then lined back up with each other to form a fragmented remainder of the original. The strips would cross over each other close enough to recreate the image minimally but far enough to have large spaces in between some strips. This one is going to be attempted small first, just to see whether it can be done and hopefully translated to a bigger format if there is some success to be had. This one feels like it will be a lot of fun to make, let’s hope I’m right.

“Explosive Diagram Gundam Model”

This is exactly what it sounds like. The idea involves taking a Gundam Model kit (perferable a RG or MG level, 1/100 scale would be ideal) and creating a physical explosive diagram from the various pieces used to create it. For those who might not have an idea of what I am talking about, this is an explosve diagram:

What I would need to do is find a material that would be thin like wire, only as translucent as fishing line to better establish that “free floating” appearance. What ideally this would turn out to become is half finished, normal assemblage while the other half had pieces floating out from different lengths much like the diagram. If it’s hard to get a visual of this in your head, I apologize since the idea is still a little raw. I have yet to find a model kit that would best suit my purposes for this approach, but that shouldn’t prove to be too difficult.

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So there we go, even manage to get the pictures there too. Ain't I wonder? I have been told my work has been nothing more than the development of "effects", making my projects nothing but soul-less shams. I'm not going to deny that there is no philosophy for any of these projects and I'm going to be frank, I don't really care. My project is the exploration of methods, it's the process of discover process. It feels like I'm building a body just waiting for someone to throw something inside and make it whole. But then we have the question "Why don't you give your terrible homunculus a soul good sir?" I would respond "Why should I? And if I did, what am I supposed to put in there?"

Despite this jibber-jabber , I've got to get cracking on making some actual art for this. I've behind on almost everything it seems and to make matters worse I've screwed up my sleeping pattern. Oh well, FOR PROGRESS!