Video Finger Paint

Do you remember finger painting? I do. You start with a blob of this thick paint on a piece of glossy paper, I think I chose blue a lot, and you squished it around with your fingers until you became part of the painting. It was hard to stop. I think it was the feeling of the paint starting to dry on your hands that made you realize the experience had to come to an end. In the swirls I can remember seeing so many spaces and things that appeared and then disappeared in the next swish of my fingers across the paper. Great stuff!

I still do this from time to time, no so much with finger paint, but with video images. The theme of this video came out of itself. I just started with video of a late night drive home and piled on layers until it scared me. Darkness became the theme.Then I whipped up a sound track on my audio looping program and I had my video finger painting. Watch or don't watch if you are not good with darkness. (2 Min)

"to own my darkness

allows me to begin to make peace

with the shadows that move with me"

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Now finger painting was never that dark, was it?

It was in the process of creating the clip that I decide to stick my toes into the dark side. Starting out with a night drive then adding random images and then the hands and face (me) distorted and moving close to the camera, not as scary as the latest movies on the market, but dark enough to start me thinking about my own internal darkness. That's what happens when you create things, you never know where it will take you. Once I embraced my theme the music and spoken thoughts came quickly.

I've met many people who worry about dark imagery in the arts. I have often heard people remark about macabre paintings or sculpture that "who ever did this must have been a disturbed person". From my own personal experience (not that I am one to evaluate my own sanity) I have found that creating things often puts the emotions attached to the creative process into a place where it is more manageable. In other words when I write a song all the feelings related to the song move out beyond me with the performance of the song: this might be a public performance or even when I am alone. The song gives the emotion a place to live out beyond myself. Freeing me up to be able to feel more. So spilling out a bit of darkness eases the artist's ability to move through it and life. Now the mental health of the patron of the art is a subject for another blog.

Jeff in shadow

Here is a video of a professional finger painter. If you find something you love to do go with it! http://vimeo.com/2115211
The Video might play smoother on Youtube. Here is the link to my page. http://www.youtube.com/3randomword#p/a/u/0/rwiAAySnMG4

Just a Picture

Another Michael (name of the picture, not the writing)

He hears a voice

I drew him listening to it

The voice was telling him a story

He spoke it to me, as he heard it

As my pen gave him life

I'll write it down one day

If the story comes to and end

But the voice is still talking

cause he's still listening

and I keep drawing him.

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This is a line drawing superimposed over an enhanced photo.

Jeff who knows?

Piles of Words

Out through all of this
I find a place I’m not remembering
But I know I saw it first
In a place I was pretending in.
Up against the world I’m standing on
I could go through and just accept
That what I’ve dreamt
Is what I’d rather choose.
But the passing will have a cost
Tear the flesh
Accept the loss
I was born to make my way through
I am out there
Beyond the dead trees
Water up to my knees
The sky burning my hair
No, no, no
It’s not a nightmare
Until you leave
There.
Or do I mean here?

This is another pile of words that should have stayed in the notebook. You look at an image and write whatever comes. At the point I make peace with it, it goes from being an exercise to a finished product. I am finding no peace with this yet, in fact it has brought me more confusion.

Jeff makin' stuff up.

Here is a link to two artists I have been listening to. The first is called St Vincent but the front person is Annie Clark. From very soft to a harsh wall of sound, I love the changes and the thought. Take a listen. The first link is a polished Video -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9prpAv6kvo
The second is more relaxed acoustic - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNKHhJ0pq24&feature=related
Check out Andrew Bird (Violin) as well. They perform together sometimes - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsR0uyPxqxI&feature=PlayList&p=258B16774745F93D&index=21

What is that on the ceiling?

All right what are we looking at now?

One day I had this piece of wood left over and I started drawing lines on it. Then I took the saw and started cutting the shapes out. Once I had all the pieces cut out I drilled a few holes and doweled them together and hung it up.

Why? Sometimes I work with a material with a vision or a theme in mind, but in this case I just worked the material in hopes of being surprised. I will probably make more at some point cause I had fun doing it. Right now I keep drawing images that are moving outward, arms reaching to connect or find, seeking, probing, not sure where it’s going but I will keep playing with the idea. What I find is that each little creative endeavor like this takes me a little further along whatever path I’m on. Am I making sense? I guess all I’m saying is playing with a fragment of an idea can move you one step closer to a complete project. Too much of the time I forget to play and my thought process jumps right to trying to picture the final product. That leads to creative block most of the time. So play! It is the most productive thing you can do.

Jeff at play

Here is a link to a great article on creativity and play and overcoming creative blocks
http://anartistinbrooklyn.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/creative-blocks-and-play/

Crouch Down

This happens to me from time-to-time. I’ll start feeling small and insignificant when I look out across a valley to distant mountains or gaze up into the heavens at night. We somehow tend to look outward and disconnect ourselves from being a part of the vastness and the beauty of it all. Here is a grounding activity, or something I do to gain perspective. I take out my camera, set it on macro and wander around in the backyard. I like to find an area where it feels like not much is going on. This time of year with the end of winter and spring just beginning to pop everything seems a little bland. Just set your camera close to the earth and click away. You should find little worlds that remind you that the universe is under your feet as well as out beyond the stars and that you are a part of someone’s distant vista.
In my blog of January 27th, 2010 I linked to a Native American story called Jumping Mouse. In that story the hero, the mouse, is told to “crouch as low as he can and then leap as high as he can”. I often spend too much of my time leaping to see what is out there, up ahead, down the road, I forget to be and express what I feel right where I am. This is ancient wisdom; I hope some day to make it mine.
Let me take this further and share a few images from the past few weeks as the snow has melted. I’ll add a little writing exercise to the images. What I did here was to look at the images I took out in the yard and write my first line from observations or thoughts that the image gave me. I then put the image aside and tried to quickly continue the phrase with sense or nonsense, whichever came first.

-Looking down into an abandoned flower pot.

Dry and dead at the bottom of a clay pot
I will lay here until the gardener acts
Then I’ll slide free into the compost
To give the power I have left
To a story with out end
I am not just a part of it
I am a part of everything




Green are the bottles that hold spring
I want that to rhyme again with everything
The every and the thing or the thing and the every
Separate they work but together they’re heavy

Now back to the bottles holding spring
Green is the color of so many things
Every of course is black and or white
Based on reflection or absorption of light

The bottles, the bottles holding spring
Break them open let’s get it going
Everything hangs just out of reach
But as soon as it’s done we can head for the beach.

Needles and twigs stuck in ice
Makes me think of beetles and pigs playing dice
And if you were thinking the same
Be sure and leave me your name
For those who think like we do
Know reality not to be true.

I’ll stop there.

For those of you who like to leap real high visit NASAs image of the day.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/iotd.html

Jumping Jeff

Another Fragment of Everything

From time to time I will share with the world bits of my image play. This is where I put together random or thoughtout collections of stills and video and of course some kind of sound bed, could be music or ambient noise. These are studies to evoke feeling as well as exercises to develop my skills with the software.

If the film will not play follow the link at the bottom of the post to my Youtube page.

Lines of color

Edges by choice

Motion it leads me

Perceptions the voice

I wait on the skies work

to pull from the earth

I hold a dead flower

to know my own worth

Words I wrote down after I watched the finished video clip. No, I have no idea where this is going . That is not important, knowing that is. Trying to avoid knowledge and hanging with feeling. I'll live with it for a while and see if I find anything, maybe a song, we'll see.

Jeff in the process

If video is not smooth check it out on my Youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/3randomword?feature=mhw4#p/a/u/0/wx0LyZxHoJQ

The Shop Chaotica

I realize I keep mentioning my shop in some of my blogs. So I thought it would be good to share a visual of my shop. I have tried all my professional life to maintain a well-organized workspace, but at this point in my life I have given that up. The reality is I work within a constant state of chaos. I make constant attempts to have a place for every tool, but rarely are the tools in those assigned places. I keep trying, I’ll have big organizing days, but it never seems to stick.

As someone with a dyslexic brain I often wonder how this brain affects the shop. The dyslexic often has trouble holding sequences. I have difficulty following a method or set pattern. As soon as the tool has finished its job it is set down without thought of where it will be when I’ll need it again. In fact before I’ve put it down in my mind I am already using another tool. So dropping the first tool on the first available surface needs to happen. I do try to use all the hooks and drawers I’ve created for holding my tools but I am now at a place where I am not punishing myself for my chaotic style.

I guess if I never got anything done this might be a problem, but I do manage to be productive in the mists of all my clutter. In some ways I think it reflects the clutter inside my mind. I can be working on a woodworking project and then get a poem or story idea, or all of a sudden get an idea for a photograph I want to run out in the yard and shoot. I work very hard each day to stay on task and to try and just make notes of the ideas that come in the middle of the project at hand.

So to all of you out there thinking order will increase your productivity keep at it I am sure it will and as soon as I figure it out, I’ll let you know how I did it; got organized that is. For now I will dwell in the shop or place I call Chaotica (I thought I created the word).

Jeff back in the shop!

Okay I did the google search for the word "Chaotica" and of course it is a Industrial Metal Band, so I had to link them. There song "Unstable" is the song my shop would write if it wrote on its own. Now I am not a big metal head music lover but I do like loud angry music when cutting wood. So if you don't like loud angry music just use your imagination. Think table saw, wood planer and dust system all running at once. For those of you of the younger gen., I know there is much louder and even more aggressive sounds than these guys, but many of my thousands of readers found the Beatles harsh! To those folks listen at your own risk.

Chaotica, "unstable" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhMSHUqQc8A

Hold the Applause

For now I'll call this image:
Another Dream - Pencil drawing and Photo combined

I had a very musical weekend. I do tech (set-up the stage and control the audio) for a local music venue. Saturday night was Christine Lavin and Sunday was David Roth. These are two wonderful folk style acts and I recommend anyone to check them out when they come to your town.

Now let's get to holding the applause. During the concert with Christine Lavin I had an experience that reminded me of a dream I had several years back. Okay, yes I dream and have had very vivid dreams most of my life. Sometimes while asleep and sometimes while awake. So here we go! First the reality. The other night during Christine's performance she asked us to hold our applause at the end of her song "More Than One Million Americans". She asked us to not applaud at all and to just sit in silence and think about the song. So as a polite folk concert audience that is what we did.

Now the dream; in this dream I find myself sitting in an ancient Greek theater watching a classic Greek tragedy, something by Sophocles. As the play comes to and end I raise my hand to prepare to applaud. A voice from behind me says, " I wouldn't do that if I were you." I turn around to find a man dressed like a classic gangster with a pinstripe suit and the hat tipped down covering his face. He tips the hat up and begins to explain in that classic Hollywood gangster style voice (Bogart or Cagney) that we are at one of the earliest Greek performances and that at this point clapping to show appreciation of a good performance has not yet been established. He goes on to say that when the formal Greek theater began the audience did not focus on the actor’s performance. The story itself was the focus and the audience would sit in silence from a few minutes to as much as an hour before drifting back into their real lives. It was a form of collective meditation. The thought was that the play drew upon the spirit, the gangster explained. The spirit came out from the actors and from the audience and also from the past (the dead). It was all there at once and in the beginning the people would hold that spirit-filled moment as long as they could. I then asked him why this had stopped. He shrugged His shoulders and in a questioning voice said “fear”. At some point things changed and the presence of the spirit became frightening. The audience began making noises, shouting, wailing and then hand strikes or claps. He said at first you would clap in all directions moving your hands up and down in front of you and behind. As time went on denial took over and people said that they were not afraid of spirits but were just showing appreciation for the actors' work.
At this point I turned back to the play to join the silence. When I looked again the gangster was gone and my dream moved in another direction and lost focus. Remember that every thing I’ve said in this paragraph is a dream and I have not found any conscious research to prove any of this. Although in Tibet they do clap their hands to drive away “evil” spirits.

Back in reality at the Christine Lavin concert, her song that speaks of how many people have died from gun violence since 1968 came to an end, and there we sat in silence. Now there is always a split second when a song ends before the applause begins (not always in pop concerts) but when that time passed, the silence hit me like a shock wave. I had to work to hold the emotion at bay. It felt like the spirits of one million people landing on me. It came from Christine, from the audience and from within me and beyond, just like my gangster spirit guide had said. Christine let it hang for a good long time before quietly picking up her book and reading from it to move on. Thank you Christine for bringing the dream back to me. So now if anyone wants to, you can join my campaign to wipe out hand noise. Hang in the silence you frightened fellow Pagans, for we are one in the spirit!

Oh this is bad now I am sharing dreams. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen and I’m just talking about the stuff in my head. Here we go it’s all shaking loose.

Here's a link to a youtube clip from the Christine Lavin concert It's not the song I was talking about so we are back to applauding - Wayne Central Concerts 2/28/10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39KPnV3Vn-0&feature=youtube_gdata

Jeff wait for it!