Taking it Elsewhere

Well, it has been fun while it lasted. I am hereby giving up writing about my 52 books project in this blog...

...and started writing about it in a different blog! Whew- Bet you didn't see that coming!

After a few weeks of posting my write-ups , it became clear to me that the artwork here is being drowned out and lost between the words of my writing. While they are not entirely unrelated, I don't want to overrun what is essentially an art blog with large amounts of text. This is not to say that writing should not happen here, but the format of this project itself almost demands that it be a seperate entity.

And thus it came to be that on this day I hereby RE-introduced "Project: 52 In 52" at the link below:

project52in52.blogspot.com

Please feel free to check it out. I'll also put a new link over on the side for easy access.

(Book #5) Ken Kesey - One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

This post has escaped and gone to a better place.

(Book #3) John Hodgman - More Information Than You Require

This post now has a new home on a blog dedicated to Project: 52 In 52.

There are more hobos and molemen there.

(Book #2) Jose Ortega y Gasset - What Is Philosophy

This post has moved. It now exists here. Or does it?

(Book #1) Stephen King - The Stand

I have taken my write-ups elsewhere. This post has gone to elsewhere too.

2010: The Odyssey Continues

Well, it's that time of year again... the first day of the year time! A time when we make outrageous resolutions that could dramatically affect our lives for the better (or worse). This year is no different! While I could resolve to live up to my blog's name, and get back into literally drawing every day, I was drawn more to the blog's motto : "A Haphazard Exploration of Life through Art, Architecture, Photography and Word". Now that last part, since the inception of this blog, has been almost entirely ignored or overseen, but this was never my intent. To stimulate that particular aspect of my productions, in addition to my usual endeavors, I have laid upon myself the task of reading and finishing 52 books in 52 weeks, or a book a week for the year.

This has been an idea that has been kicking around in my head for a little while now, and once New Years rolled around, I simply verbalized it, and it was so. I'm not saying that I am going to be reading a tome a week or even a great piece of literature a week. I expect this to be a cross section of a multitude of topics, genres and length. My bookshelves are filled with a multitude of books that have been sitting there unread for far too long (or are calling to me to be reread), and it is high time to start tackling them!

On top of what I expect to be an increasingly daunting task, I feel obligated to write a few words in response to each of them: essay, review, a one sentence cast-off... something. Its one thing to glance over a piece of writing, but another to understand, absorb, articulate and respond to it.

I hereby accept my own challenge.

Getting Sculptural

As promised, I started looking at the gesture form as a sculptural object. Here was my first attempt at the idea of two intertwining gestures, three-dimensionally. I used some thin aluminum tubing as the frames, and black masking tape to form the undulating plane betwixt them. There are two things that I learned while doing this piece:

1. By forming a gesture out of a malleable piece of tubing, without guide or preliminary spontaneity, it ceases to be gestural. Sure, its curvy and sort of suggests a swooping gesture, but it is not pure in its nature. I am not exactly sure how I can make something volumetric that reads as a gesture. This is something that I have also had to deal with architecturally. How does one keep the gesture pure and keep it grounded in reality, that is to say the physical existence as opposed to a theoretical one. Which brings me to...

2. It is very easy, even starting with two relatively uncomplicated "gestures" and intertwining them, for the shape to become a physical impossibility. My original intention was to divide up the segments into equal segments and then connect those points with its equivalent on the opposing segment, thus generating form. Again, this was not easily done, and I think that I eventually had to cheat and break that rule to get the form to work. This was acceptable as it gave me a physical way of dealing with a partially non-physical problem...

Prelude to 2009

Welcome to the first post of 2009! Words cannot describe how glad I am to be rid of 2008. If i could find some way to somehow graphically represent the satisfaction of finally making it through that year, I am sure it would find it's way here or possibly just seep out gradually in the shadings of a pencil or the strokes of a brush.

That being said, December wasn't a complete bust productivity wise, though there were major distractions (exam, holidays, etc.), so I took the entire month off on hiatus here. And while the beginning of this year is shaping up to be just as busy, if not more insane than the last few months, I am hoping it will be a painless and productive breed of craziness. This year should prove momentous in it's capacity for change in every facet of my life, but as we all learned last year... change does not occur by itself. At the very least it takes persistence and someone to push it along.

The last few days have been mostly a reorganization and revitalization of the life and spaces around me that have also been neglected as a result of said hiatus. Tomorrow I head back to work and begin chipping away at the mountain that is waiting for me there. But there is Work to be done on my own time as well, so it seems appropriate that it should begin tomorrow as well. I have been called out by my friend Daisy and challenged to do a drawing a day for the year. In a way, the challenge stares me in the face every time I come to my own blog... "Not A Day Without A Line Drawn", it means.

Perhaps it's time to live up to my own audaciousness.