Welcome to the dark ages

I got a phone call yesterday. “How much you charge for a sketch?” I get about 2-3 of these a year. “Well that depends. How big, what medium, of what… You need to give me a bit more information.” “Just a sketch. What does medium mean?” “Local talent” is what crosses my mind. “Let’s put it this way…Charcoal is less then pencil, Pencil is less then Pen.”

“Well my wife wants to pose nude. A decent size…maybe charcoal, some color would be nice.”

I had been interrupted from cleaning my toilet for this. Might I add that cleaning my toilet would have been preferable? “Ok…Lets just say…11 x 17, pencil some color $450 unframed.”

Pause. “Ok…I’m just calling around for some prices. I’ll let you know.”

My first statement after I hung up was to Nathan…a lad whom I call my apprentice although I’m more a big brother to then a technical master, “Jesus Christ…If these people had bones in their noses they couldn’t be more backwards!”

He looked at me shocked as though I was accusing him of something. So I related the conversation that had just transpired. I explained to him one hires an artist. One has seen his work and has decided that he thinks so much of it that he would like a piece by him. One does not take phone bids over the phone for a piece of artwork…It’s just uncivilized.

I have lived here for 16 years. I am still shocked to how similiar this place is to New Guinea where I spent my 20-21 year, although in some ways those people had more of an idea what it meant to be individuals. And yeah I know that me being here is strange…even the people who see my work wonder what I’m doing here. When God is asked about this strange placement of me here, God in his infinite wisdom, and continuous mystery responds simply (as usual) with one word:

“Counterweight”.

And Yes I speak to God. And yes he speaks back…and No he doesn’t tell me things like to kill people or set fires. I am God’s Janitor/handyman. I clean up and make orderly what society has discarded or solve a design quirk that has presented itself that he, in his ultimate wisdom, has decided isn’t worthy of the light show and smoke and mirror-old Testament resolve that we come to expect from “GOD”.

What can I say…I don’t recall applying for the job.

Here’s a lesson for those “people” who would like a piece of artwork but hasn’t grasped the concept that Art isn’t mass produced, despite the slop that is being presented as Art.

Not all poetry is on Greeting cards…

Neither is all Art. Starving Artist sales aren't- they are mass produced design devices designed and exicuted to match the drapes and the furniture.

One does not “shop” for Art over the phone. It’s a visual medium. One must LOOK at art before one decides to include it in ones life.

I’ll bet you the concept of buying a puppy, a house, a suit of clothes, or for that matter anything that is going to be directly attached to you as a human being over the phone is beyond ridiculous. Mass produced Items like a car, a TV, a bed, life insurance, etc…yeah ok…get on the phone. But you must see the house if it’s going to suit your lifestyle. You need to meet the puppy to make sure you will connect and you hafto try on the suit of clothes to see if it fits. These are investments of individuality....something that people for some reason are trying really hard to lose. Did you know that NO 2 Zebra’s are alike- that their patterns are different. No two flowers are alike-each is a separate form of simplicity and beauty. It seems in this society One gets lost in the forest for the trees. One wants blend in and go mostly unnoticed. It seems that individuals in this society want to be associated as individuals by the consumer items that they employ, next time your in the supermarket notice how many brand names are emblazoned on peoples shirts that they wear for decoration. I recall a situation where people are renting areas of their bodies as advertising space. We are reducing ourselves as consumers and not individuals. Art is an individual statement. Art is the hall mark of being unique (that’s why Van Gogh painting’s cost millions of Dollars folks…cause all the images you see of that painting are copies of the original…)

I entitled this blog as Welcome to the dark ages.

In the dark ages people got lost as anything but units counted by the church, taxed by the wealthy and indentured or destroyed by the military. They lived ignorant, miserable, short lives maintaining the gene pool until the day that they would once again be thought of as something more then an exploitable resource. Artists were tradesman who were rarely known by their names. Just hired to decorate a church or some rich guys house.

Guess what….You’re putting your self in that spot cause being unique is just too much trouble…you hafto work at being different…Maybe that’s what he meant by “counterweight”.
anyway enough... my God beeper is going off-clean up in isle 7.