Billy Pappas

Oddly enough... I was watching the Sundance channel yesterday and happened to catch the premiere of "Waiting for Hockney" a movie about an aspiring artist named Billy Pappas who spent the better part of a decade creating a singular drawing using pencil and paper; a bust of Marilyn Monroe.

What is remarkable about the drawing is the level of detail. He used loupes to magnify the area in which he was working and was able to achieve an amazing level of refinement, a level not surpassed even by photographic imagery. I was amazed when they were taking close-ups of the image and it is remarkable that he spent eight and a half years working on it, millimeter by millimeter, day after day, he must have put painstaking effort into it; maddening effort. I can only imagine.

But after thinking about it for a while I began to wonder, where is the art in it? Is it the piece itself? Is it the artist? Is it the journey? Is it the spectacle? At first glance the piece itself it looks like an engraving, much like a U.S. treasury note; fine lines and patterns fitting together to form an almost perfect image. It is startling to know that it was crafted by a human hand. While there is an astonishing level of detail in the composition at some point that level of detail seems to me to become too analytical, too repetitive, too mechanical. I'm not sure that I want my artwork analyzed and broken down by the equivalent of a human Large Hadron Collider, searching for the "Art Particle". It seems to me that at some point artwork of this nature ceases being artwork and becomes science. I am convinced that with a machine that is refined enough to produce a fifty thousand dots per inch rendering can create something equally interesting and evoke an equivalent response from an observer.

When I think of artwork that is great I look for experiences that make me question, that make me ponder, experiences that evoke emotion and give way to the essential aspects of what it means to be a human being. Van Gogh's "Starry Night" is so fantastic because it allows the observer to bear witness to something beyond that which is normally observed by the five senses. While I admire Pappas for his technical ability, and certainly the iron-man-like effort that is something indeed noteworthy, this piece, and its placement as artwork seems to have been something of a miscategorization.

Have a look
http://www.billypappas.com/index.html

College this spring...

I am thinking about taking a class at Collin County College this spring. Lots of things have come together to influence me to try to get back in touch with the artistic side of myself. It has been a long time since I did anything creative and something where I can let my imagination run and play. It's either going to be Drawing I or Design I, I think probably the introductory drawing. I'll need to enroll next week so that I can register first week in December. Wish me luck.

9/24/2009
w00t! Registered.

Numbers Update

9/13/2009

Just a weight update. Went into the doctor to talk about stress and was weighed as part of the normal processing procedure. Down to 139 pounds, actually a little lower now I think. I had to go to Kohl's again and buy some more pants because the ones we bought just a month or so ago are now to big. I fit into 29'' jeans. That means I've lost 5'' off of my waist since May which is pretty remarkable. I am looking a little gaunt these days, but I think the net benefit to my health is worth it.

Still eating lots of great food... on deck today; black-eyed peas and cabbage with some apples for lunch...

      Weight: 139.6 lbs
         BMI: 20.6 Average                                   (Nov 13th, 2009)
 Cholesterol: Total: 123 LDL 77 HDL 29                       (Aug 12th, 2009)
Tryglercides: 88 mg/dL                                       (Aug 12th, 2009)
         CCS: 128 - LMA(17) LAD(78) LCX(18) RCA(15) PDA(0)   (May  4th, 2009)

Tim Burton and Henry Selick

I've been on this kick lately... maybe it's all part of the turning 40, mid-life crisis, introspection, figure it out phase of life that I'm nearing... or in the middle of if you ask my therapist.

In any event I've been evaluating admirably the works of Tim Burton and Henry Selick, particularly their stop motion films. These include many of which you might recognise:
"The Nightmare Before Christmas", "James and the Giant Peach", "The Corpse Bride" and most recently "Coraline". "Coraline" is FANTASTIC by the way and if you haven't seen it you don't know what you're missing. It's a little creepy in some spots and is definitely not for very small children, but those same creepy parts are somewhat reminiscent of the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm and while much less politically correct, make for a good tale. No spoilers here :)

I'm just amazed with the method used to create these movies. So much so that I looked around at Laika studios in Oregon to see what kind of jobs they had there, as well as MacKinnon and Saunders over in the UK where they make the puppets. It takes some amazingly talented artists to be able to craft such beautiful works of art, and then the complexity and perfection that must go into production of a stop animation in and of itself is mind boggling.

Tim Burton has an interesting past and there's a book "Burton on Burton" that I'm looking forward to getting from the public library. He's also published a book called "The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories" that I want to get and read. I'm on a Halloween creepy story kick too, reading Poe, Edith Wharton and some other things to get me in the mood.

All this to simply say that I feel like I've lost touch with my creative side. I used to do all kinds of things; draw, write music (lots of that) write, fly kites, etc. and I seem to have given much of that up over the years to focus on my career but I'm finding these days that my career just isn't as fulfilling as I want and I need something else to find my 'old self' or 'true self' or maybe just 'self'. Always one to look for inspiration, I think Tim Burton isn't all that bad a place to start. A little strange maybe, but in a way that embraces the differences of an individual. I like that.