I know, I know…
Yeah, yeah. “Where’s Amy?”
School started three weeks ago, and it hit right as I’m working on three (count ’em!) projects that involve materials that I’m learning how to work with. I’m building a small city based on the architecture in Bosch’s work and my drawings, in porcelain. I’m making a flash-animated, interactive, online game. And I’m making a painting (ok, I know how to do this, but it’s been a while) which involves sanding down chunks of the image to the point where I’m ripping up the wood panel underneath the image.
All of this is awesome! But it involves an awful lot of trial and error, learning, making tests, etc., which means that I don’t really want to call something “finished” until I’m absolutely sure. Which means I really don’t want to blog about it all, just yet. I was telling one of my students that what’s great about getting older as an artist is that you really know your medium; you can look at a half-finished drawing (for instance), and picture what it’s going to look like during its next phase, the phase after that, and the phase after that. It’s almost like you have ESP and can see into the future – things will be half-rendered, but you can picture them in your mind as being totally done, and you know if you’re going down a good path or not.
Working with new materials means you don’t have ESP. You have to take things one step at a time and remain totally mired in that one step until its finished. I’m ok with that. It just doesn’t make for very interesting blogging, until things come together a little more.
Hyperallergic article
There’s a great article about Jersey City artists on the blog Hyperallergic. Written by Brendan Carroll, it’s finally an article about being an artist out here that cuts through the crap:
Some US cities have up-and-coming art scenes. Jersey City is not one of them. There is no infrastructure to nurture, sustain and attract artists on a professional level.
He’s absolutely right. Jersey City is a great place to live, but it gives you no particular advantage if you’re an artist. I’m totally ok with that; in fact, it suits me really well. But it’s really refreshing to read an article about JC that doesn’t hype the supposed art scene out here. You want art? Go to NYC. It’s not hard to get to, and it features the best art in this country. You want cheap, big, nice housing in a diverse, working class, and liberal area with lots of public transportation? Live in JC. It’s great – you can visit NYC every day if you want, and then come home to a very liveable place.
Anyway. It’s a good article and Brendan highlights my work. So, hooray!
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