Curatorialist

Interesting news to comic book fans. For those of you who haven’t been keeping tabs on the Captain, Mr. America “died” a little over two years ago. The events of his death, and subsequent rebirth (“Rebirth” is also the name of the program that lead to his super human abilities, btw) are the subject of the upcoming series.

Captain America, as an entity, remains controversial. Born of an anti-Nazi sentiment, he represents America’s military at its most glamorous: protector of freedom, fighter of evil. As the definition of evil has become hazier, though, it will be interesting to see how the resurrection of Captain America reflects (or doesn’t) a renewed understanding of war and America. I, for one, like to follow history through the eyes of artists and comics are no exception. As our troops return from the Middle East, this will be a topic that affects all of us.

The first pages were released at the LA Times today, re-posted here for your perusal. The pages will be drawn by comic artist legend Brian Hitch and, aside from the political sub-text, it promises to be a whole lot of sweets for the eye.

The uprising will be July 1st. Official site here.

Belushi

On Yahoo! Answers someone asked for a list of famous artists who did drugs and the number one answer was, “The list of famous artists who didn’t do drugs would be a shorter one.” Creativity and drug use are inextricably tied, at least since the 60’s. Not just in fine art, but think about just your front of mind knowledge of musicians, writers, comedians and actors who were/are known mind-alterers. We’d like to believe that drug use is a product of idle hands, lack of direction, weak wills and irresponsibility driven by a wasteland mentality of the disenfranchised and lost. And while that may be true, you wouldn’t know it by the list of artists and creative minds who have done everything from recreational use to far far more.

Continue reading ‘The role of drugs in art.’

Our schools teach us to think in compartments: one class for biology, a different one for economics. We define ourselves in singular ways: our jobs, our religion, our dream. And the instructions say that to succeed, we must focus: read without interruption, study without a break, get through school without a year off. And at our jobs, our success is very often measured in how well we accomplish tasks of uninterruptedness: continuous hours of work, attendance in meetings, contribution to conversations, rapid response to dialogue. In that environment, distraction is the enemy. Distraction pulls us away from our goals, or the goals we are trained to reach for.

Yet, creativity offers a different take on distraction. I think of creativity as “odd bedfellows.” The joining together of two things that normally wouldn’t hold hands. Abbot and Costello, art director and copywriter, waterlillies and paint daubs. The perception is that artists see the world “differently,” but I don’t think that’s true. I think they just piece together different parts of it to make something new. But whatever your definition of creativity is, somewhere in it is the harnessing of distraction or, at the very least, a patient acceptance of it. That is the part that is so hard for everyone not involved in the process to understand. A creative assignment, be it fine art or commercial art, in total may be, say, 100 hours. But it is not a linear 100 hours or, more simply put, not all 100 of those hours can be spent just thinking about the assignment. Why? Because that’s just one bedfellow. And a creative notion needs the other. Finding it is what happens when you’re distracted.

Continue reading ‘Creative people must embrace… something… what was the question?’

My first desk job after college was at The Walt Disney Company. Email was just being implemented company-wide, but there were  a few who preferred to write their “memos” by hand. My boss was one of those holdouts and I was tasked with transcribing her scribbles, printing them out, getting them signed by her and routing them, either by walking or through interoffice mail. Walking was the quicker of the two options. There was also a social phenomenon wherein having someone else type, edit and route your messages was a symbol of power and so for people like my boss, she resisted this new thing called Email, where she had to take personal responsibility for her own written messages. However, within months the entire company was up and running on email and she was forced to adapt. Not that many years later, the notion of handwriting a note to somebody seemed downright archaic. This kind of rapid growth of technology has always seemed mysterious to me, although I have been as much a part of it’s growth anybody. The rate of growth has seemed so fast as to be nearly out of control and certainly reading the news and trying to keep up with it is positively dizzying.

Ray Kurzweil has helped me understand how this all works. He’s obviously smart, you can tell within 9 seconds of hearing him talk. He goes right into the facts and possibilities of the exponential growth of information technology. The notion is complex and simple: we humanoids think linearly, but the growth of technology doesn’t move at the same pace as us, it pretty much doubles every time there’s a new advancement. It’s a great thought if you consider that it means we are actually closer to solutions than we think we are, at any given time. The energy crisis, our economic crisis…  although the complexity of the solution is, well, complex, the steps to accomplishing it are fewer than we might imagine.

A few years back, The New York Sun ran an article about a (then) new art magazine, called Paper Monument. I have read and reread this article probably once a month since then. For one thing, it is exquisitely written and of course about my favorite topic of art, creativity and the importance of art and creativity. There is a lot of self-reflection involved in the launch of a new art magazine, that dares to print on paper, in the first place. But it begs questions about the role of art and how, in this crazy world, to reflect upon it. But it is a lesson for everyone, everywhere. I have used it, in speeches, as an example of how to think about new technologies, as well. Most importantly, this line “But nowadays, just standing still, and seeing, and thinking, is a revolutionary gesture.” I truly believe that is true. And it is a powerful notion. Following is the excerpt I try to remind myself of as often as possible, but the whole article is very interesting:

Continue reading ‘“Seeing and thinking is a revolutionary gesture.” An excerpt from a great article, resurfaced.’

Two things today made me a little more optimistic about the future. Not completely related, but in some weird way, perfectly juxtaposed against each other. The first was an idea I heard over lunch. I was having lunch with Mark Paolucci, President of Roddan Paolucci Roddan, and he told me about a client who came up with an idea to sell yoga mats with the stretches printed on them. That’s one of those ideas that pisses me off, because it’s simple and ingenious and perfect and I wish I’d thought of it. But in a more productive way, it reminds me that in an ever-changing world, new possibilities are ever-present. It is like new soil is constantly being laid down. That’s encouraging and inspirational.

The second thing that cheered me up was an article about tinkering. It’s a nice little historical view of the art of the tinkerer and how it differs from engineering and any other kind of problem solving technique that we employ on a more grand scale. It proposes the hopeful notion that with the immense complexity of the problems we face today, what the futurists call “wicked problems,” that it is probably not the bigger institutions, mired in their top-down processes, that will save us, but the lone tinkerers, working from the ground up, playing off of each others’ discoveries and applying it to their own personal needs until what time someone’s personal solve turns out to be one that works for all of us.

Continue reading ‘Yoga mats and tinkerers to the rescue.’

Yes, a year ago. I can’t remember to eat dinner most nights, but this random moment somehow sticks in my brain like a thumbtack. I was reading an article about a crazy Frenchman, named Michel Fournier, who was planning on taking a balloon 25 miles up into space so that he could jump out and set some kind of record. It was an interesting article, but the user comments were twice as entertaining. For fun, I did a search to see if I could find one of them that I remembered. Yup, the digital library of everything ever uttered still works. I don’t know why, but it still makes me chuckle.

The article was called, “Frenchman Plummeting 25 Miles From the Sky Will Break Sound Barrier, World Records.” Published in Gizmodo

This guy’s user comment was:

Based on the information above, here are 10 headlines to accompany his potential death.

10. World record set for longest suicide.

9. Man locks self in capsule, floats into outer space.

8. Man in fire retardant suit catches fire.

7. Unidentified aircraft shot down by military. People continue to live.

6. Sky diver hit by jumbo jet.

5. Parachute proves useless for man rocketing to ground.

4. Death drop, 15 minutes without parachute.

3. Man dies of shitting, heart attack.

2. Man jumps from space, lands on flagpole.

1. Man survives jump, eaten by bear.

People are funny.

You’re wondering what happened to him, aren’t you? Well, as it turns out, he never got off the ground. It would seem that improper attaching of the balloon part of his contraption caused it to float away while he was filling it. Why do the French make fun of us, again?

“Really?”

Back a number of years ago, I tried to put an end to the term, “Whatever.” At least in my little corner of the world. John Lennon said that “Apathy isn’t it.” And I believe that. Any person content to dismiss a situation with a single word seemed like part of the problem to me. And the term had an air of condescension to it, as though some kind of beachhead was gained for the person who cared least. I railed against it, chose not to associate with people who used it and let it infuriate me to no end. Eventually, either the word lost its spunk or people eventually realized that not caring put them, actually, in a place of disengagement that has little worth in most of life’s real endeavors. I suppose I just outlasted the “Whateverers.”

Enter “Really?” Not since “whatever” have I had this kind of visceral reaction against a word. For the most part, memes like “Really?” gain popularity because they make communicating a complex idea simpler. The NY Times has put the term to good use in their Science section, with a column by Anahad O’Connor called “Really?” where she tackles science questions, mostly pertaining to health. In that case it’s not sarcastic, so it sets up the column well. But when it does veer into the sarcastic, the message often gets lost. Take the article that ran in the LA Times Business section this morning, entitled: “GOP rides on the ‘Daisy ad’ storm. Really?” By adding that single word, we get it – the author is incredulous.

Continue reading ‘“Really?” The lazy man’s opinion.’