It’s been over three years since I’ve posted here. It’s time to start writing again. I’ve been thinking about doing some writing about art. One reason for this strange urge is that I want to explore what I think about art, and I think about it a lot.
On one hand, I could be considered somewhat of an expert on the subject. I’ve been creating art since I could hold a pencil. When I was very young, my parents gave me pencils and paper to keep me from drawing on the walls and in the margins of books. With my two siblings grown up and out of the house by the time I was five, I was virtually an only child. An only child with ADD, which of course no one had heard of at that time, so an only child who was just weird. I don’t think my parents really knew what to do with me. When they figured out I would spend hours silently drawing, my dad started bringing home typing paper and pencils from his office. Reams of typing paper and boxes of pencils. I would lay on the floor in front of the TV with a pad and pencil and silently draw rather than bounce off the walls and get into trouble. I know the television of the fifties from the audio, I wasn’t watching I was drawing.
I majored in art in college and when I graduated I tried to make it as an artist and a printmaker, but I really didn’t try very hard. In my twenties I had the perfect job for an aspiring artist, I tended bar at the Black Forest Inn, near the Art Institute and frequented by the local art crowd. I could get by on working 3 shifts a week so I had lots of time to develop my skills. But like so many things in my life, I was distracted by another obsession. I was addicted to pickup basketball, and I spent that time working on those skills. All I have to show for that is really bad knees. But that’s a different story.
I moved on to “commercial art.” In quotes because it’s an old term that folks in field absolutely hate. I plan to address the artificial divide between “fine art” and the applied arts. Something I’ve never quite understood.
I worked as an illustrator, an animation inbetweener (yes that’s a job title), a production artist, a newspaper layout artist, a graphic designer and unfortunately a manager of a group of artists. I say unfortunately, because I was the poster child for the Peter Principle, I sucked at management.
On the other hand I don’t know shit about art. I was at best a mediocre art history student. I’ve never read much about art theory or aesthetics. I do love museums and galleries and combing the internet for art of all kinds. But I can’t make any claim to being a critic or knowing anything about current trends in fine art.
So, this is the beginning of a series of posts about art. I’m not doing this to educate anyone but myself. Hopefully you won’t think it’s complete bullshit.
