Dead Letter Art

Re: details

News from Sunday, December 01, 2002 @ 11:18 AM

Sunday, December 01, 2002 08:11 PM

a saturday (and saturday nite) would be perfect. we will try to chill, laugh, and do art. as soon as you let me know when, i will try to set things up with chris, ron, and scot. perhaps we can chill for part of the day (or night) before hooking up with our fellow gorillas. you are more than welcome to crash at my place. soft pillows and warm blankets and hot tea, oh my.

i will try to make plans as soon as i am able, probably during this week sometime. i am looking at this next weekend or the following one right now (hopefully). staying at your three starr establishment would be glorious, and much better than most of my accomodations lately.

as far as DLa is concerned, we have just been going with the flow, and trying to head in the direction of more serious art. now that word serious here represents a mouthful, including ideas such as clarity of thought and purpose, depth of conception, and skill in execution. that is, art with these things (among others) in mind. What do you think?

i am as much for skill and depth as the next man – if that is not possible, i would hope that it looks neat at least. the serious nature of a work of art is as much in the viewer’s possession as in the critical execution of the work by the artist. we think enough alike, you and i, that i am quite certain of what you mean – and i hope your congradulatory remarks about scote are a mark of progress in this somewhat broad-sweeping art attack.

everyone seems to have different ideas for DLa, for the most part. TRon has not changed his art-thinking much, but has begun to increase its frequency, at least. Scote has done some new art that reflects his true potential at artistic expression, on par with other deconstructionists of his day (for example, a pastel werdz image with machine theme). Chrisp remains flexible, and inspired, to go with the flow. His influence involves low-key (yet high quality) approaches to art presentation. Where are you at?

ron may never turn from the dark path he treads into the light, the most we can do is give him a candle now and then and hope he burns it. i have a sense that scot is something of a goldmine for our artistic forays – in a sense both he and ron provide a great contrast to what we have been doing all along, and scote has the mental acuity, despite his numbing indulgences, to challenge and assist us in explorations. chris, i think, is more our third musketeer than anything – and i hope he becomes more active in discussions and creative inputs.

With the new ideas, DLa is trying to evolve to the next level. This discussion is only a summary of how we, as individual artists, have been developing and influencing each other. Not any kind of law that must be followed. Those days, believe me, are over. The way things are going, it’s all we can do to try and keep up with each other’s progression with retro-analyses and descriptive statistics — control is as impossible as it is undesirable. What do you think?

it sounds like your love of the game has diminished, my business friend. i will not miss any of that, i suppose – there has to exist some sort of control or structure to hold things together, but i do not think it takes much. if art has kept us all interested in each other for a decade already, i think the gathering will endure in spite of us. No peep from Ken while you were away.

i talked with ken today. nothing new. school gets out in a week and a half for him. he has some assignments from school he wants to put into the zine i think – graphic design (computer mostly), and he is working on a storyboard that he wants to use as a comic-formatted piece. he sounded pretty upbeat. also, he will be able to get a disc for chris with ps7/ms office/freehand for the mac. next quarter he plans on getting his mitts on some more software (quark, i think).

of all of us (including ron) i think ken and yasuko are most exclusive in their thinking, and as trends and motivation takes us closer to a more expansive pursuit of art, i believe the two of them will remain as two artists in the road we travel. i would like for them to continue the journey with us, but i have strong visions of them both doing art to the end of their days.

And, aside, I feel that time and experience has moved us well past where we all were a couple of months ago, with regard to interpersonal DLynamics. That is, each of us is invaluable and important in our own way, and we need to foster camaraderie within the group. For example, if Ken disappears for six months…no problem. If he ever wants to get involved again…no problem. At least that’s my take on such matters.. What’s yours?

agreed.

DLA 16? It hasn’t even caught up with us yet, and will probably feel alot like previous issues.. Much of the philosophical/etc. development has been recent — as in after DLA 16 was envisioned/planned/executed. It is almost done, however. hopefully in the mail around the 11th. Or something.

i am not worried about it, but the sooner the better! and when are we planning the next or following zine? and what will it contain? what format changes do you envision? what special projects are underway or in planning? more more more!!

It is interseting that you dug up that webinfo, as Chris and I were just discussing the use of his projector for some freshly painted turds. It is no surprise that the old masters pursued perfection by any means necessary, and may have employed optics during artistic creation. although it is more inspiring for me to think that such dimensional clarity may be achieved through sheer artistic will: desire, vision, concentration, execution. What do you think about such details?

i do not know enough about Ingres to dispute his possible use of a camera obscura, but the details of projection with a strong light and concave mirror onto a canvas sounds absurd and overly complicated to me. in my thinking, Hockney may just not believe that some artists have cultivated the skill to draw very well (not being able to achieve such precision himself.)

i am not completely against using the aid of mechanical devices or technique to do art, but i think that the use of such means must be necessary to complete the work in accordance with the idea behind it (that is, needed to convey the proper sense of the idea to the viewer or satisfy the artist his intended expression is achieved.) for example – it might behoove me to use the science of perspective drawing to complete the scenery, background, or juxtapose elements of the composition more accurately so that they do not draw attention away from a more important idea of a work. (as opposed to using my ‘artistic eye’ to represent the perspective as i see it, to imbue the work with my own sense of that reality.)
i have some interesting stories about artistic methods from my touring of museums too. i will share all these in time, and hopefully in person.

December

until i come up with a sense of what artistic notion i am going to pursue, i am finishing a couple of pieces in my sketchbook (ink drwg). i hope to set up some paints soon to play with them, and get a feel for drying time, textures, etc.. i will keep you filled in on any progress, or lack thereof.