Shiny Artifacts..Shiny Art n' Facts?

As EXPO 30, our b. j. Spoke Gallery Juried Competition, is quickly approaching and having lined up our juror, curator Maura Lynch from the MOMA, to judge our competition, it was time to actually place some ads. The hard copy ads were already placed, but the task of posting the online ads,some 4 to 5 hundred of them, remained to be completed. The venture is a relatively simple one, setting up blank emails, cutting and pasting the postings,including a note of introduction as to who we are, etc. The method of actually locating appropriate online venues in which to place this information is completed in a variety of ways, depending on the intention, mood and demographics of my purposes. Sometimes I run through a list of Art Schools/Colleges in a particular state, sometimes I scroll through specific types of artists, ie. sculptors, paper artists, print makers. I have also learned to identify specific groups of working artists who may have an interest in submitting work to our gallery, or perhaps individual artists whom I feel have demonstrated solid, professional quality work which would be suitable for our jurors perusal.$35 buys an artist the chance to submit images of their work on a CD, along with thumbnails all of which are accumulated on a master CD for the judges consideration on a given Monday in Spring. From these, the judge narrows down her choices to between 14and 28 winners. The final winners are awarded a group show in August,and the honor of having been selected from among hundreds of competitors by a curator from the MOMA or the MET or the Whtney, or the Guggenheim museums.. So, that was today's goal..place at least a hundred ads, hoping that they would reach students, designers, artists from all walks of life from all across the US....It really does not have to be a difficult task...unless one is distracted by the seemingly thousands of references to art, fine art, art words, creeping out from every pixel of my PC, sirens that bring me far, far from my objective, right to the site of rocky fascinations with..NEW IDEAS...it was here that I made a vow..I would complete my 100 postings for today, (I did all the art schools in NY, MO, WV and KY and for those last two I was beginning to slack off; not too many art schools in West Virginia and Kentucky..)I finally finished. My neck feels as if it is crumpling under the weight of my motivated head. BUT..FINALLY I am free to return to those sites which I had so hopefully pasted to my "Favorite Places", and so, I indulge myself...in the pure distraction of "shiny objects, art n' facts.."

Today's Artifact

Gargoyle/Wall of Saint Salvatores/St. Andrews, UK

Symbols

"Armida" Symbol of Man/ 18" x 24"

While flying through the web today, searching for artists who might have interest in submitting work to EXPO, I landed upon a book (a shiny artifact..) that we used back at Smith College in our psych courses, whereupon I trod down to the basement to reclaim it..

Carl Jung's book "Man and His Symbols" is a salient source of information regarding the nature of art, its relevance to the deeper aspects of our lives and its significance at the heart of many sentiments of the more primitive kind.. Art has been playing at the edges of man's communication since there were fires to sit around and discuss what "the meaning of art" was.. Jung reminds us that as a society, our hopes, needs, aspirations have remained relatively constant through out the ages, and that while the arts/symbols may have transcended from one age to another, their truth and value have clearly continued to dazzle the psyche of culture.
"The history of symbolism shows that everything can assume symbolic significance: natural objects (like stones, plants, animals , men , mountains and valleys, sun and moon, wind, water and fire,) or man-made things (like houses , boats or cars,) or even abstract forms (like numbers or the triangle, the square and the circle) In fact, the whole cosmos is a potential symbol."

Carl Jung

"Man and His Symbols"

Got Ideas?

Does anyone have any suggestions regarding what I ought do with these 3"by 3"squares?

They are cut free from old paintings that didn't quite succeed..I just can't part with paper,

so I continually search for new renditions of otherwise unwanted pieces..These have been painted with F and W inks on Arches..Any ideas? I'll even throw in collaborative rights for anyone whose ideas I end up using..promise.

Summer's Yield/ Winter's Harvest

Last summer at this time I was outside cutting down Japanese maple branches, perching along side vast white cotton paper, and arranging a decent composition. I tore through bottles of green, red and brown ink, throwing paint and then walking away and waiting for the sun to reveal the results. This summer the process has been less routine, as my recent art show had to be taken down, sales had to be made, and I had to be convinced to get back to the cupboards and hit the paints again. I have an idea morgue, a little file I keep with those concepts and possibilities that seem to plague artist's minds until they at least get them down in writing. The quest to embark on my next endeavor seems to bring me back to Scotland, a real beautiful and rugged piece of an Island that
consistently felt colder than the actual temperature revealed. Sometimes, late at night with my nose covered in feather quilts, I wondered if I had actually fallen prey to a conspiracy of Scottish thermometer trickery stretching from my beautiful manse in St. Andrews to as far away as our palatial apartments in Edinburgh. It was in these moments, these 35 degree mist that seemed to sit beside me at huge wooden tables spread with the feast of New York art supplies, that my mind did more painting than my hands. For once in a very long while, cups of hot tea remained untainted by quick mindless strikes from my paintbrush..this time I actually was drinking hot tea from top of the cup to the very end..not cleaning my red laden brush to prepare it for dipping into the next color. I had never seen tea remain tea colored for so long.. Perhaps I would have kept it and painted with its majestic sepia tones had I been back in the states..but I needed its heat to enter my body more than the paper needed to be adorned.