Monday, December 21, 2015

Spiel on art

All my life I have been making art, mostly drawing. Nowadays, pushing 50, I consider myself an artist, true, but not necessarily a drawer. My drawing skills are limited. I can't draw you or your house. I mean I could give it a fair shot, even surprise myself, but that's not what I want to do, even remotely.

As someone who makes comics I've met and befriended artists that can draw you, your house, you as a centaur, your house on telescoping robot legs spanning the whole of a major city, tropical jungle, whatever. From any angle to boot. My own dear brother John Mavreas can do these very things. I cannot. Sometimes I wish I could but then again I also wish I could design playgrounds, do backflips, think of something to make for dinner, drive a car.

These artists impress me. They want to draw like their heroes draw. They cite golden age, silver age, adventure, fantasy artists. They cite renowned draftsmen and obsessive pop culture visionaries. I will never be counted among them. I realize more and more that the art I love to make is all project oriented. Sometimes it'll be drawing cute critters for a colouring book project (see a couple posts below), sometimes, collaging abstract bits of paper using a copier or old fashioned glue and scissors (see immediate post below). I also have conflated my collecting with my artistic practise, honouring certain found scraps as I honour my own creations. This has confused things a bit since I also run a curiosity shop.

My heroes are unnamed. I love lots of disparate work, lots of thinkers, writers, artists, lots of plain everyday working folk who do other things, like design parks or make dinners. Sure I love Frazetta and Kirby but not enough to become them if I could. I also love Schwitters, Debuffet and Klee. Maybe I could be 10 percent of those guys.

My art consists of some drawing, some collage, some writing. I do all these things freehand and I also do all these things on the computer. All these things also fit neatly into the pages of smaller or larger books. So, yeah, I like making books. But I don't only make books. I also make paintings.

I also make installations but I'm certainly not versed in the history or theory of installation art. I've read some art history, mostly dada, surrealism, pop and comics. I studied literature but my lit theory is abysmal. I make concrete and visual poetry but talk about that as if I was a parking lot rocker with mostly yelps and awed grunts as tools of communication.

Almost, because I also lead collaborative creative workshops that touch on all of the above. I've also yelped and grunted to rock music for years with my pals in a shitty practise room.

I needed to write a bit this afternoon, so here it is.

Sunday, December 20, 2015

A visually poetic month

Recently I've had the good fortune of having three visual poetry mentions in three different places on the internet.

First off Nico Vassilakis invited me to participate in Singular Vispo :: First Encounters.
The challenge was to select one piece of instrumental visual poetry that got my personal ball rolling. Here is my effort:
Singular-Vispo


Secondly, Amanda Earl asked me to participate in Brick Books celebration of Canadian concrete and visual poetry. I chose one piece from a series entitled New Value Black to showcase.
Celebration


Thirdly Ian Whistle kindly featured the entire series mentioned above on his blog h&



from NEW VALUE BLACK