The Blog Experience

My experience blogging has been okay. I never expected much out of it, and I never put too much effort into it. When given this assignment, I complained about it for a while because I hate blogs. I don't know why, I never really read them, I never really had any desire to have one. The most exciting thing about blogging was getting it done. My only "post" I got a significant amount of response to was about tattoos, and I think most of the class thought those tattoos I first posted were mine, but they weren't. I have read one blog more than twice and it was a friend of a friend of a friend who wrote it about ridiculous things... and she was payed to write it.

Although I'm not a big fan of blogging, as I have expressed, I would prefer to have made a website. I made a website once in 6th grade that was called school sucks and the private school I was attending found out it was me somehow and gave me detention for what seemed like a lifetime. My parents wouldn't let me use the computer for 2 months and I hated life without my AIM when I was 12. Fortunately, I found an alternative to internet, which I can't say here. It made me just as entertained while just lying in the grass. I guess you could say that all the above trouble allowed me to meet my "medicinal" friend. We have been friends on and off now for 8 years.

My Tattoos

Niether of the tattoos in my previous post were mine. I said that in a comment that is attached to the original post but whatever. These are mine. Hopefully, when I have some money, I'm going to get smoke rising from the lotus flower to the tibetan script. The tibetan script says "ohm mani padme hum" which is how tibetan monks pray. Translated literally, it says "hail to the jewel of the lotus," but its meaning is that everything is created in equality. The lotus flower is a tattoo that both me and my fiancee got, but hers is part of a bigger tattoo in a different way. The birds are from the cover of an incubus album, my all time most favoritest band ever. I didn't want to get "incubus" tattooed on my body in case I don't like them later in my life. I will soon get a bigger tattoo of a buddha's face carved out of a vaneer type stone wall that will connect to the ohm mani padme hum.

if you have pictures of your tattoos, try to post them as a comment or e-mail me if you want me to put them up as many of you commenters seem to have them or want them as well. kas334@nau.edu

Tattoos!

I love tattoos, personally I have 3 (technically 4) and love them all. They are addicting, extremely painful, ticklish, numb, and expensive. I have laughed uncontrollably through 1 of my tattoos, squeezed a friends hand through 1, and fallen asleep during 2 (which are techinically 1). I have no visible tattoos, on purpose, because it is hard to get a serious job with visible tattoos. Most inked people will say that if you can't cover it up with a long sleeve shirt and pants, dont get it. I believe that if you cant cover it up with a short sleeve shirt, don't do it unless you are positive. I also believe that you should not get a tattoo on a whim. THEY ARE PERMANENT AND EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE AND PAINFUL TO GET REMOVED. I suggest that if you ever want to get a tattoo, have it drawn out and make 20 copies of it. Put a picture of it everywhere... in your bathroom, on your computer, by your mirror, in your car, on your fridge, on your door, and everywhere else you can think of. Leave the pictures up for 3 months and if you cant stand to look at it anymore, DONT GET IT.

On a lighter note, here are a few tattoos that are pretty cool.

Anthony Goicolea: The Photoshop Master.

The first time I saw Goicolea's photography, film and paintings the the ASU Nelson Fine Art Museum, I was stunned. It was amazing. The films were short and strange. His paintings were naive, but beautiful. His photographs were interesting, cruel, strange, and eerie.

Goicolea is a self proclaimed narcissist who takes pictures of himself and compiles them in Adobe photoshop to create a photo with 5-40 images of him in a single scene. It is hard to explain so here is one of my favorites of his photos.

Tree DwellersBoys Room

Boys Room is a portrayal of a boys restroom before a school prom and shows two boys in a stall pinning flowers on each other, both of which are Anthony.

His most recent work has been somewhat environmental in his own way showing pollution, floods, and technology destroying cities and country sides. His other recent work takes place in a different time period and shows torture and pain (not my favorite of his work).Sky Lift

here is a link to his website http://www.anthonygoicolea.com/

Native American Art

Dennis Numkena is a lesser known native artist. He does huge drawings and paintings in oil, colored pencil, and acrylics mostly. Here is a picture of him. Most of his paintings have a variety of geometric lines and shapes and very little space. His art is better known in southern arizona and mexico than anywhere else and my girlfriend's mom sponsored his art for a while giving him a house in mexico as a muse. His latest drawing, which I have had a very hard time finding pictures of is my favorite of his. It has every color in it and is about 8 feet long and 4 feet wide.I haven't seen him since Thanksgiving Day but he is currently selling a $3,000 drawing at the Heard Museum. His pictures are colorful, well-balanced, and well-crafted.
Along with painting, he also is a well-known architect who has designed several apartment complexes and museums. He also designed costumes for the production of "the magic flute."

Jamie Burton: Stretching Canvas's Man of the Year

In this issue of Stretching Canvas (a magazine put out by International Tattoo Art) they have granted Jamie Burton, an up an coming artist not associated with the snowboarding company, Man of the Year. They said, "his career advanced on every front." From being in group shows, to showing in well-known galleries in L.A. and New York, to even leading group shows, he is getting noticed.
He mostly paints using oils, but does some occasional sketching. I even considered shelling out $150 for a print of this picture: In addition to winning Man of the Year, he won my appreciation for his art. He started as a tattoo artist but decided he wanted to paint full-time instead. His paintings are rich and as Burton says "...almost romantic." I stumbled upon this magazine at Hastings while searching for my usual medical magazines. I thought "Hey, its only $3 and they don't have the new issue of Archeology anyways." I'm happy I bought it. Here are a few more pictures of his work and a link to his website.
http://www.jamieburton.com/

Oh yeah... here is a picture.

Why blog, why about art?

Why Blog?
I am required to blog at least 150 words per post once a week for my english class. It was either blog or do web design, my teacher chose blog. I am pretty sure I swore off "blogging" in 6th grade when I got suspended from a certain private school for making a website using expage.com called schoolsucks. They didn't like me there anyways.
Why about art?
Well, I love art. I chose a really cheesy name for this because I was hoping not too many people would search for art blogs and find it. Back to art... I have grown up around it. I like to think of myself as being well-cultured. I think almost anything can be art. My mom loved musicals and plays and took me to every play that went through ASU's Gammage Auditorium for about 7 years. It was okay. I liked some, thought some were amazing, and absolutely hated others.
My parents took me to museums every weekend and asked me what I thought about it. I liked talking about the pictures the best. I guess thats how my photography interest started. Many of my friends and some of my family members and family members-to-be are artists or heavily involved in the art community in Phoenix, Boulder, Scottsdale, and Bisbee, among others.
I have several favorite artists, mostly photographers, that I will probably post about more than once. I like "post" better than "blog," I feel like an idiot saying "blog" for some reason. Anyways, I like artists that do something different or combine several styles. An easy example would be Damian Marley, he combines, tastefully, reggae and hip hop. I probably wont be talking much about music and I can only stand Damian for so long but hey... it got the point across. I also like artists that capture or create a moment that is different and interesting.
Hope my "posts" as I have decided to call them aren't too boring.

Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle

Matthew Barney is a film maker, photographer, sculptor, video maker, drawer, and performance artist. His most famous work is a series of films called the Cremaster Cycle. I wish I could explain what it is about, but I can't because I can't understand it. His films have no famous actors, no dialogue, and varying styles of music. Unfortunately, they are not available for sale that I have seen and they are only screened for several days in cities around the world. One of his films that you can buy part of is called The Order, which is his third film.
Many of the images in his film are crazy and unconventional. He is innovative and out of this world. In the part of his films that I have seen, it shows him collecting pieces to a puzzle, each of which is hidden on a different level on the Guggenheim Museum. I can't actually believe that the Museum let him use it as a part of his film. On one level, he throws large plastic statues into a hole over and over and over until eh thinks it is perfect. On another level, he runs around a band playing loud obnoxious punk rock music while many extras create a moshpit that he navigates through. You can check out the trailer on his website: http://www.cremaster.net/
its difficult to navigate the website and find the trailer, but i'm sure that it is somewhere.