She Was Caught In The Wave....

It's been a while since I have had something to say here and an action to go with it, but I've been working hard. My music project has taught me many hard lessons and not giving up just because something isn't easy seems to be the biggest one so far. I know I'm not alone in feeling compelled to tell my story through art, and I'm probably not alone in having had periods of running away from that urge. In the past I've thought of some pretty absurd things to try and get away from, I don't know what...myself I guess. I thought of joining a silent convent which would never work because I'm an atheist and I have too much of a sense of humor. I wouldn't last 24 hours without busting out laughing. Another thing I thought of doing was hiking the Appalachian trail. Which if you know me your side probably already hurts at how funny that is! The first time I saw a spider it would be over. Anyway, this time around there is no running away from myself and I knew that meant expressing the things in me that are the hardest to express. That's what this project is, telling the hardest things to tell so that they stop getting in the way of the other things I have to say. So about that action: I have a new song, it's called Hiroshima Maiden and you can find it here: https://www.facebook.com/TheAquaheartsOfficial/videos/729461550538499/

No One Said This Was The End.

      As covered in my last entry, after pushing through some personnel issues, things are starting to take off a little bit more for me in the music department. I can't even express how happy it makes me to see this project moving forward again. When you work on something for a long time and you have to deal with delays: a lot of times your thoughts and feelings about it change. Well, this song is  an example of that for me. Would I try to get the point across in a very different way now? Yes. Are there universals still worth saying in this version though? Yes. Also, at this point in my process, I can't just take a developed idea that I have put a lot of time and money into and throw it out. That being said, I am proud of the breakthroughs I made while working on this song and the core of what I was trying to say with it remains the same. That is: No one said it had to be the end of a dream unless you decide that for yourself, that no matter what you have "slept" on in your life it's always worth waking up another day and picking up the fight again, and that I make art to fulfill a purpose not for any kind of popularity. The lines aren't meant to be specifically unfriendly, they are just meant to prioritize the mission. There are things that need to be destroyed like the idea that you have to be a certain shape, size, gender, age, sexuality, etc., in order to express yourself and be heard. There are things that need to be defended like the right to be who you really are. So, if you heard a previous demo of this song and it sounded like I was on the attack, please try and see it from the way I mean it as a constructive thing, and not a destructive thing. You can find the newest version of my song No One Said This Was The End at my new bandcamp page where you can listen to it or download it for free.  theaquahearts.bandcamp.com

If You're Not Winning The Battle Come Back With Bigger Guns

         So, pretty much my whole life I have dreamed of making my own music. I have spent a lot of time in the past singing other people's ideas in opera and musical theater, but I have always wanted to tell my own stories. I have come close and then walked away from this dream so many times I make myself sick. There's always something that gets in the way or it gets too hard or whatever. This time I. AM. NOT. WALKING. AWAY. That being said, I can't explain why some people can decide to have a band and BOOM it's viable in three months, where as some people like me have to struggle through everything blowing up a million times before something finally works. Anyway, my current project is 18 months in the making and That is 12 months too long. I could list all the reasons but that doesn't matter.
         When I first recorded my first demos for this project my voice was weak. I wasn't happy with it at all. I wanted to improve it before I put anymore demos out for my friends, and or interested parties to see. Also I wasn't getting the results I wanted on a sonic level or on a time frame level from the first studio I was working with so I hired a new one that I am much happier with. So accuse me of taking to long, accuse me of not exactly knowing what I am doing, but don't accuse me of giving up or taking this project too lightly because that's not even the case. Everyone has heard the saying: "Don't try. Do." and that's exactly what I'm doing. Now, of course I wouldn't say all of that and not back it up, so here is a link to my song The Naked Athena Returns with new much better vocals and mixing. I'll make another post when another one gets through the mixing phase in the next few days. All of the songs in the project are coming along and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. After that I have more of the story to tell. The goal is to perpetually be producing music for the rest of my life.  https://www.facebook.com/TheAquaheartsOfficial/

Spiky Sound Machine: Mark Ryden I am Not, But Me I Can Be.

        When people see me doing art in public I always hear things like "I could never do that" or "I wish I was creative." I always respond to these comments the same way: I tell people that art is not about trying to reach the skill level of someone else or trying to be what the world considers "creative". It's about making YOUR mark on the world and everyone has a mark to make. I've been preaching that gospel for many years, but have I been feeling it in my own heart? No. I admire several pop surrealists so much that it hurts! So for a long time I aimed my goals at becoming like them. That kind of desire to add to a movement and follow a tradition is fine. Many artists do that, but where it goes wrong is when you aren't really making your own mark. It should never be the case that you are slaving away at developing skills because that's what is "considered" the best at the time or because the "important" artists all do it like this.
         I realized that at this point in my life I wouldn't be adding anything to the conversation if I continued to try and make pop surrealist work. I always find myself fighting my instinct towards abstract, so, I decided to stop fighting that instinct and make abstract art instead of frustrating myself searching for my voice in someone else's movement. Pair that with the goals I have set for myself to work in series, and create more work in general and we arrive at my current projects. One of these is a budding series I call Spiky Sound Machine. They are abstract watercolor/mixed media works on paper that attempt to visually capture the energy I experience when I am at a rock show. I feel amazing making these and I can't wait to see how the larger works I have going develop. Here are the first four of them. They are pretty small (6x6 and 8x8), but I'm working on some bigger ones with more textures, and some blended drawing styles.

Of Mic Drops and Narcolepsy Through the Lens of Six Months to Live

      Digging this blog up again. The last time I brought it back was in 2012. That lasted until about 5 seconds later in 2012. 2012 to 2016. 4 years? 4 seconds? 4 breaths? 4 blinks? 1 high school career. 1 bachelors degree. Too much water under the bridge. Too much time gone by. Whatever, I can't go backwards. I can only go forward. So here I go.
      I've been known to refer to the arts as a great conversation. Everyone who creates is questioning, and answering. In turn they get answered and questioned. I believe this is one of the most beautiful and spiritual aspects of being creative. This is the bottom line as to why I come back to things like this blog over and over hopefully making a more authentic attempt at creating a part of that conversation each time.
       This particular "hey I'm blogging again" entry isn't like the last one where I was like "so basically my whole life got lazy eye on me and I can't exactly explain where I wandered off to, blah, blah...." The past four years have been one rough ride. Four years should bring you to new places artistically and personally, but I have been brought to a brand new universe. On a journey like that you learn a few things and I find some of those things relevant to mention here.
        First: the most valuable thing someone can give you in all of existence is belief. Every time you believe in something you give it a little piece of your will. You make that thing or that person more real. If you are lucky enough to have someone give you their belief, you are doing something terrible if you don't take it seriously, or if you deny it. Prior to my understanding of this concept I couldn't understand why anyone would ever believe in me, therefore disregarding the belief that was given to me even though I couldn't bring myself to see it.
         Second: If you have a story in you that is pressing to get out, it is selfish of you to consider yourself an owner of that story rather than a vessel of it. I have gotten super mystical about this stuff and I know that sounds weird to some people, but I believe in an energy that connects us all even if it is just something that can be explained through psychology. That energy prompting you to tell your universal truth isn't going to go away because you are scared to tell the real story.
        Third: You can't separate the artistic from the personal. When I started blogging the very first time it was on Myspace and I pretty much let myself go about anything. I used it as an outlet because I thought no one was watching. Well, that's kind of a fallacy to begin with because as a person who wasn't born yesterday I knew every time I took to the keyboard that I was typing into an immense public forum. I think there was a romanticism to the idea that a few random people in the expanse might stumble across what I had said and somehow I would be a tiny bit less alone in the world, BUT I wouldn't have to really know about it. Like connecting through a veil.  I learned that the veil was short lived. Over time more people than I ever imagined actually read what I had to say. When that got to be a little hard for me to take, I responded by creating this blog with the intention of keeping it mostly about the theory and technique behind my creative adventures and separating anything personal from that communication. That was bullshit! At that point I was cutting off that energy that I was supposed to be a vessel of and diluting any truth that could be present in my work. So, I'm removing that separation. As a result it may get messy, I may write about things I haven't figured out all the way yet.
        Finally: You can't make something happen by writing about it. You have to make something happen and then write about it. A theme that you will see in my coming posts about my current projects is breaking free from a theoretical or fantastical existence and finding an actual real existence. If you follow what I've been doing over the past year than you know that I have been pretty quiet about things because I never want to say things without actions to back it up ever again. That goes back to the first thing I mentioned about belief. I take your belief in me very seriously and I want to honor it with solid action. You deserve that.
        All of that being said the past four years have not been empty. There are plenty of actions to say things about here. One of the biggest things that has defined this time was my partner's battle with stage 4 cancer. We were told that she would absolutely not make it, and they strongly suggestion hospice over treatment. We chose treatment anyway, and against all odds she is currently cancer free. The way we lived and how we chose to face our fears during that time has really inspired how we do things now. It inspired me to not accept how my various broken pieces have defined me. It made me really want to push through my own emotional cancer and come out a survivor against all the odds. 

A Drawing Coming To Life: The Beauty of Watching A Drawing Grow

When you get an idea for a drawing you are excited and you want to see it pop up on the page just like that. In the midst of creating it's so easy to get all carried away in the manic energy that often comes with inspiration. It's also very easy to fall into a rut and go for weeks without making any progress in your drawing. Figuring out the balance between spurts of creative fury, which often produces a whirl wind of under developed ideas, and creative dry spells which produce nothing at all, has been my quest over the past several months. In many ways I am an artist still at the very beginning of my journey. At points further down my path I hope are series of paintings, gallery shows, and community with other artists. That path that I hope so desperately to progress on is paved with drawings, studies, and prototypes. With this in mind I have been trying to better my process of creating. I want my work to take more time because I am including more details and layers but I don't want it to take so much time that it never gets finished. So here is another drawing from the series I mentioned in a previous post. These ethereal little girls are going to eventually star in a series of paintings about the expectations placed on little girls by various entities in their lives. Calling upon the pageant culture and my own childhood experiences for inspiration. I am posting three pictures of this drawing in progress to show how taking time to build the drawing is just as much art as the finished drawing itself.

Obama In A Crane Machine: The Art Of Absurdity Is All Around You

Obama? In a crane machine? Yes! There was a Romney too, I just couldn't get a good picture of it. As an artist I was just born with different eyes. For some reason they are ultra sensitive to things that are ironic, absurd, or over the top. This is probably why upon walking into Walmart yesterday my attention immediately snapped to the crane machine in the corner sporting the giant plush heads of Barak Obama and Mitt Romney. To me moments of absurdity like this speak so much about our culture. The sight of the political candidates as toys in a Walmart arcade game brought a little bit of the "larger than life" of the personalities of Obama And Romney into my little, small town corner of the world. This splash of personality and satire is exactly why I feel that catching this image was capturing a moment of art. Art isn't a static picture on a wall. It can be a moment, a phrase, or something that is simply absurd. What is absurd in your world? What moments of art can you capture?

From The Craft Table

Sometimes you have to take a break from drawing all those details and make something fun and colorful. Inspired by by my love of street art and retro video games, I decided to make some Space Invader coasters. The fact that I had a giant bucket of Perler beads was a factor as well. I found the zen of placing each bead calming and meditative. I started with the intention of making a set of four but I ended up making five sets of four. Having all of these great little 8bit aliens in front of me made me muse about throwing a giant 8bit party. I should do that sometime. Anyway gaze upon my neon coasters, any ideas you have about making them for yourself and using them for pasting up purposes instead of home use are not my fault.

Tiny Work In Progress

Several days ago a friend of mine and I decided that we would swap artistic creations. I asked her for a color and a theme and she gave me red and mantis shrimp. She continued to tell me that she found mantis shrimp inspiring because they have the most complicated eyes of the entire animal kingdom and that they could see a much wider range of color than any other animal. I also found that inspiring. This is my progress so far on this fun project:

Sketchbook Update

Here are some things I have been working on in my sketchbook lately. I have an idea for a series of paintings that I have been developing drawings for.

I just have to put this out there because it's on my mind. I know that the shooting in Colorado has nothing to do with me, I didn't know anyone involved and, thanks be, I definitely didn't know the shooter, but every time I see something like this I always feel so strongly about the fact that if you need to express yourself, use art. We all have dark feelings, we all get angry. Lots of people out there feel the need to express shock or horror, that's why we WRITE and PAINT, We scream out punk vocals, or sing a heart wrenching balad. Whatever you have to do, but you make a creative record of your experiences. Hit people with ideas and images not fists and bullets. You will still be remembered and you might actually create something beautiful instead of something destructive that no one understands.

Exercise is good for ya!

I was in the library doing research for my art work and I found a book of drawing exercises and this drawing is what resulted from doing one of them. I had to pick two numbers which randomly assigned me the two words elephant and bathtub. My job was to make a drawing using the two objects and I came up with an elephant feeding his pet fish who lives in a bathtub.it was silly, but exactly the kind of thing I need to get myself rolling again.

Resurrection....

It has been a long time since I have posted a new blog. I could rattle off all kinds of reasons but, honestly, I have no idea why I am prone to letting important things slip through my fingers. Luckily there is grace and there are second chances in this world so I am affording those things to myself and starting again. Over the time that I have been absent I have been focusing on increasing my skills in drawing and painting. I have recovered from surgery and sickness. I have fallen into pockets of depression only to come out of them realizing that I have wasted months of my life. I have a long way to go, but I am still young and as long as I am alive I get to keep trying. That was a lot of personal information, but I started this blog not only to give my creativity a voice, but to exercise honesty about the things that make me a creative person.

I Make My Own Fashion!

I needed a shirt for something and it couldn't be just any shirt, so I decided to make one. Well, I actually made two. One for me and one for my girlfriend. We needed a little boost in our morale when it came to our music. This year was a monumental year for us in that area because, even if it was only a few times, we actually got out of our living room and in front of some people. It was awesome. I can't wait until we can do it again! It will be a little bit though, because I had to have some crazy oral surgery and I need to heal and re-train so that I can sing, but I know that with some hard work it won't be long until I am up on the stage again. Anyway, I made these shirts that say "Still Beating" on them to remind us that: that even though it has been hard and there have been all kinds of unforseen obstacles, we are still in the game. We still have something to say with our music that is important. My heart beats in technicolor!

Mini Comic Assembly Party!

100 copies of each one of my mini comics hot off the press and ready to become little books! I am so fascinated by this particular format. I love how it makes something with so much potential out of a single piece of copy paper. It just goes to show that you don't have to have anything more than a pencil, a sharpie, and a few cents to make a copy in order to publish your ideas. In the future I intend to test just how powerfull these little agents of artistic subversion can be!
It has been a while since I have made a new one, but I hope to remedy that situation in the very near future. I have the outlines for several of them already!
I have to say that these two tiny books, one poking fun at the Swine Flu epidemic, and the other a celebration of Halloween in 2009, have returned so many rewards! I leave them all kinds of places, coffee shops, libraries, book stores, waiting rooms, even underneath windshield wipers and everywhere I go people always enjoy them and often ask for more to give to their friends. My latest experience was at a restaurant where I put one with the check when I was paying the waitress. She immediately went and read it and within minutes she had shown all of her co-workers. They all came out and surrounded our table asking if they could have one too and when I would have more for them to have. People need so much more in their lives than just the daily monotony of work and home and work again, and I feel like I am on a mission to offer people one more little thing that punctuates their daily routine with some joy, or unexpected-ness. What better to do that with than tiny little absurd comic books.

Boo! Celebrating 31 days of Halloween with creativity!

Fall is my favorite season and I love Halloween, so Erin and I decided that we were going to celebrate 31 days of Halloween! I kicked it off by making a "scary" watercolor painting (pictured above). I hope to do a little something like this each day of Halloween, and share it with the world. That way I can use the experience of celebrating as an exercise in creative productivity. You have to document your life before there's nothing left to see. I feel like that is one important reason why art exists.

Happiness Is a Tiny Pair of Orange Unicorns!

One of the things that I do with myself when I seem to be unable to work on my own artwork is volunteer in various places in order to bring art experiences to kids that other wise wouldn't have the opportunity to exercise their creativity. The pair of earrings in the picture I posted were made by one of my mom's fifth grade students from last year. They begged me all year long to do Shrinky Dinks, and finally in the last week of school I was able to gather the materials for them to make shrinkable art to their hearts' content. They were so excited when I also brought jewery findings so that they could actually make something usefull out of them. At the end of the day my little toaster oven was about to give out from all of the shrinking going on! One girl came up to me and handed me the pair of earrings she made and told me that she wanted me to have them as a thank you for coming and spending time with them and doing art projects with them. She told me that she didn't think any grown-ups cared about her until I sat down and taught her about drawing. I found the earrings today after they had been burried in a drawer of craft supplies and they were an amazing reminder of what my life is all about. I may paint, sing, write, ect., for the rest of my life and those things may always be doomed to obscurity, but I am reaching people, even if it is one fifth grader who feels less alone at a time

It's The Thought That Counts

About a week ago I had to go to the hospital to get some tests. I know this is too much information, but it explains where the envelope above came from. They forgot to have me sign the form that says you understand their privacy policy so they sent me one in the mail with a postage paid envelope. As I was sealing it right before I was going to pop it in the mail box and send it on it's way, something hit me. I asked myself "Why do I let all of my snail mail go without taking advantage of the opportunity to effect someone with some art?' Someone HAS to handle that envelope. It has to be opened by a clerk and then passed on to the person that has to approve the form, etc., etc. Why not give those unseen people something unexpected? They open hundreds, or even thousands of envelopes over the course of their careers, so why not infiltrate their monotony with a little something different? So I decorated this one with stars and wrote "May you experience the wonder of 1000 wishing stars." on it. If it looks hastily done and sketchy that's because it is, but it wasn't supposed to be a masterpiece. Just an infectious little idea to make a single moment a little richer for someone I don;t even know.

I Won't Grow Up!... Or Maybe I Will.

Chronilogically I am an adult, but in all other respects I feel like a flaming adolescent. For a very long time I thought my refusal to grow up was the secret to life that I had and all those stuffy grown up zombies out there somehow missed.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWii---CKwYHowever, lately I have been evaluating things in my life and I realized something terrifying. If I am to be more than a failure I am going to have to become some kind of grown up. The very idea of it gives me shivers up my spine and makes me a little sick to my stomach. BUT, when I asked myself what I need to do in order to build on my art and my body of work in general, I came up with the fact that I am way to irresponsible with the things that I consider to be my purpose for being alive. I have tons of paintings that sit undone, or haven't even started but are ideas written in a dusty notebook. I have more notebooks full of outlines for short stories, errant chapters of novels, and stubs of would be poems. Then there are my songs, which are the most sacred to me, and therefore the part of my work that I am the most cowardly about. Letting things that are important fall off into space unfinished, and being a straight up coward are what people who refuse to grow up do. Learning to finish what I started and having the balls to face what is truly important are things that a grown up does. So, here I go, one project at a time, I am going to become a grown up. BUT, I am still never going to get old!!! FTW!!!

Unfinished Business

I have this painting that has been sitting around my house haunting me. I started it like two years ago and it just sits there and stares at me like an orphaned child. I have thought about throwing it away many times thinking that the moment for it has past and I should move on, but something always makes me keep it. So, I vow to myself that I will finish it within the week and I never do. Now I am showing it to the internet in an attempt to guilt myself into finishing it, because inevitably if someone sees it on one of my blogs they are going to wonder what it would look like finished. So here it is.

It came from a place in me that I had come to through the utter frusteration I was feeling about some of my other creative avenues. I really felt like my world was crashing down becuase certain things I was trying to accomplish just were not working. So I feel like I sort of have a vendetta against this painting. I have to win the war with it, as a symbol of staying the course to win the war with my other bigger projects.