Comfortable Being Lost?

In Process

 I came to the realization the

other day that it seem like if you 

create or want to own abstract art 

you have to be comfortable with 

being lost. The image to the right

is being worked on at the writing 

of this blog post. It is in process, 

that is not its title. I keep adding 

elements and I am never sure 

where it will go next. I tend 

to spend long moments just staring 

at it and then all of a sudden adding something. 

It is as if I was lost in the woods with several directions I could

go in and then I just choose and go. With so many choices of

directions I could go in I think that is what keeps me making

art. Once I finish one piece with all its directional choices I start

over saying well let's take a different path.

So the next time you are looking at an abstract piece of art 

ask yourself am I comfortable with being lost or do I need the 

way to be clear. The art is not just about the artist, it is also 

about you.

jeffkimsey-carroll.com

Clarity

 If I Gain Clarity I will let You Know

The need to create

 is not always clear

Sometimes what one creates

is not always clear

I have a strong need or desire 

to create

to make things that are not clear 

and that look like no identifiable object or image

I am looking through the abstract

for something I might recognize

Yet I have no idea what I am looking for

It is one of those

I will know it when I find it 

moments

For now I just enjoy the process

and I hope others enjoy the product

I will let you know 

when I gain clarity

jeffkimsey-carroll.com

When It All Comes Together

 

Very well then, when it all comes together

A few thoughts on this piece

 

-It is possible that every piece of creativity is a search for God or something that represents the creative force of the universe.

-The piece above is like many of my works. It is me searching by creating.

-I often create a chaotic base on wood or canvas and then draw into it

-This puts me in a very relaxed state

-I think of the lines and symbols as an undefined language that only another creative (or the universe's creator) might understand 

-The word understanding is misleading

-Understanding implies knowledge transferred

-All I am attempting to do is transfer feeling

-The feeling you will receive will most likely depend on your state of mind at the time of viewing  

 -While all creativity maybe a search for the divine, it is also a mirror to the moment

jeffkimsey-carroll.com

 

In Relationship to the Vastness of the Universe

Undefined form and color

 

can cause the viewer distress

if the viewer requires clear structure 

to move through life.

My intent in creating this 

was not to define anything. 

The process

was to surprise or awaken me

leaving me with time spent 

in a state of play,

following the whims

of the movements of my hand and mind.

Is it art? 

In relationship to the vastness of the universe

the question and the image 

are just fun, to ask and see and to create.

Go out and play in your universe!

jeffkimsey-carroll.com

In The Works

My brain is a machine

with a program

that runs constantly

The program is designed 

to keep me alive

The program's definition of alive

is survival

It is all it has ever known

When I ask it to show me true life

it says

it's in the works,

keep moving forward and you will work it out

 Let's think some more

Just keep thinking

You will work it out

Don't stop thinking

cause then you are dead,

just run the program 

It is in the works

I no longer think

this is true life.

jeffkimsey-carroll.com

Thoughts on Portals

 Are you looking for a way to somewhere else?

Or are you already somewhere else looking for the way back?

The moral of most portal stories is, Stay put!

The lure of the light within the portal is an illusion.

The decision to go belongs to each traveler.

Just remember you are already somewhere else.

Are you getting this?

Wait, where did you go?

jeffkimsey-carroll.com

Moment #10

"Fiddle head Spirit"

Wall sculpture 4.5' tall

acrylic paint on plywood

new year new project



Well here we go 2012!I thought I would start the year off with a new  project. These are the first three pieces of my "Soul Star" line. The soul stars started coming into my head and I put them on paper but now I have to make them three dimensional. I plan to make many of them. they will tell a story when put together. Not sure what the story is  but they will tell me as they come to life and then I will turn it into a picture book. Each star will tell a part of the story. Now you need to understand I have no idea where this is going until I have created all the stars and even then we'll have to see what happens.

2012, The newest of new years. the point in time where it all begins.

Jeff telling stories

Note- these wall hangings measure about two feet by two feet.
Click on the pictures to see them larger.

See these and more at: 

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3219846778866.157896.1347320890&type=3&l=8d05cb1582



My sculpture Page:

http://www.jkcwood.com/Sculpture.html

something new

Over the past year I have done a few tile jobs for customers. These have just been standard tile work on floors or walls. I enjoy it but always wanted to do more absract work. So I have taken some of the leftover tiles and broken them up and added some other tile people have given me over the years and made a table top. This was really fun, but the next time I do this I need to make sure all the tile is the same thickness. There are a few places on here where if you sit a glass down it might be leaning a bit. I don't think it would fall over. Oh well always looking for new creative adventures. Let me know if you need a table top. Click on the photo for a little larger view.

Check out this wonderful website of an artist I met a while back when she needed some circles cut in plywood. She makes pictures in tile. They are amazing.
 Carol Shelkin Mosaics

Jeff grouting

Where Have I Been?

Yes It has been a long time since I posted and here is why. Ever since I returned from vacation (back in August) I have been working nonstop on The dinosaur exhibit at the Garden State Discovery Museum in Cherry Hill New Jersey, "The Dinosaurium". I had a great time working with the in house exhibits team to bring this place to life. Now that it's over I might be able to find time and energy to get back to blogging. Check out the photos That range from April to September.


Here I am back in April cutting out ribs for the Tyrannosaurus Rex.This is three sheet of 3/4 inch plywood glue together to give us child safe bones. That makes for hot saws.

 
These three little boxes allow the visitors to roar into the pipes and and have there voice transformed into a dinosaur sounding voice. It's just a guess  who knows what they really sounded like.

 Here I am placing the activities inside the Paleontologist dig site tent.











Here I am crawling through the belly of the beast. Well okay I'm just cleaning up the deck

Here is the climbing structure on opening night, The adults eating and drinking will not be apart of the normal activity.


 Here are two links to a news article about the opening.
http://www.nj.com/gloucester-county/towns/index.ssf/2011/09/dinosaurium_opening_at_garden.html 

http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/burlington_county_times_news/discovery-museum-to-open-dinosaurium/article_7d379e49-185b-5fc0-91c1-4692426d39df.html 

 Jeff "I'm not a real paleontologist but I play one on the internet"

The making of a tail

Still working on the Dinosaur at the Discovery Museum. Now the Dinosaur needed a tail, but the tail needed to bend around the slide. In the first picture I built a form and glued together 4 pieces of flexible 3/8" ply-wood. Clamped it and let it dry.

Once the bend was set I was able to cut out the vertebrae and spine element's. Then in order to give the tail some dimention I cut out and attached individual vertebrae pieces.

The tail will now be painted and hung in the next few days. I'll post pic's in the next few weeks. Follow the link below to see the latest pictures.  

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.226011260760911.70249.150455301649841&l=df47743a3e

Jeff at the tail end

sharing an idea

A few weeks ago I got an idea. So I wrote it down in my idea book. Here is what the idea looked like in the book. This idea involved me cutting out random shapes and attaching two of the shapes together to create these free standing figures. I then was going to give them all to a painter friend to paint. In the process of getting them to the painter friend other people saw the cutouts and asked about them. This led to me making them for a variety of

Priming the figures

creative people. This will result in the making of about eight free standing figures who will be cut out given to a variety of people  to paint any way they want and then all come back together to become a single piece representing diversity.

For me this is an exercise in sharing, starting an idea and letting it go where it will. I can't wait, but will, to see them all come back together as a family of self expression. Stay tuned for pictures! 

Jeff cutting

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"

----------------------------------------------------

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

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.

https://youtu.be/wx0LyZxHoJQ If the film will not play use this link to 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 channelhttps://youtu.be/wx0LyZxHoJQ

Feeling on an Image

Title: I am Made Up


I am made up
I was once upon a time
Not here
And now I am
But not really
Cause I am made up.

I am like make believe
I pretend to feel
The things I feel
But they really belong
To the one who made me up

I think
But I am not sure
Cause I am made up

Because I am made up
I spend my time making things up
Things to amuse me
And please me
And to keep me from thinking
That I am made up.

Works for me
I'm just made that way


I've started working my drawings into my image creations, stay tuned for more.

I really like taking a fragment of my idea and googling it. Here is a link to a website that proves we are made up of 93% stardust. Check it out!
http://www.physicscentral.org/poster-stardust.cfm

Pretending to be Jeff

Why Build a Ladder?

Photo Titled "construction"

I am building a ladder to reach my soul

It is not made of wood or steel

But something much stronger

It is made of all the emotions

I have the courage to claim as mine.

I have been building all my life. First with toys and then scraps of wood in the backyard with hammers, nails and lots of band-aids. I also build with words, sounds, pictures, pencils, paper, etc. I like combining materials sometimes with a vision and other times just to see what comes out of combining different materials or media. This I guess is the job of the artist.

I think this is what we all do.The cook puts different ingredients together with different temperatures and time to create a new recipe. Those who combine numbers, space and time to seek understanding or organization we call mathematicians. Teachers bring together resources, tools and a joy of learning to inspire their students. We are always building, changing and hopefully growing.

One day when contemplating purchase of a software to allow me to do even more combining of materials, and lacking the funds to make such a purchase, I came to the age old question of, why. Why am I doing all this combining? So I mused poetically into one of my journals the short phrase above. Yes I asked why and jumped right away to my soul. Do you have a visual of your soul? The place or non-place that supposedly houses your very being. I've heard said that Leonardo da Vinci and comrades did all their dissections and drawings of the human body to identify the location of the soul. Okay I'll add that to Wikipedia. I'm sure it's real.

I am trying to get an image of the soul here but I need this ladder to get up or down to get a handle on it. For me the road (or ladder) to this is in emotion. So I go forward combining what ever I can to evoke as many different feelings as I can to add to the rungs of my ladder.

Enough for the moment!

Jeff building one rung at a time.

On the origin of the soul - From the notebook of Leonardo da Vinci http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Richter-NotebooksOfLeonardo/section-14/item-837.html

over, under, around both ways

This is something I do from time to time. I will take an image or object and very quickly (quickly is my choice to keep me from over thinking) record every thought or word that comes into my head onto paper. I recommend you get one of these blank books and tape a photo or a magazine picture or even do your own doodling in it and then write down what jumps at you. never hold back on what comes, just put it down. Below is an example with one of my own photos and two minutes of output time. This is great exercise for both writing and just relaxing.Over, under, both ways around

look and go

know what we have done

wonder, awe

movement, power in cold steel

carried

I have been this way many times before

I have been all these ways.

across, through, below, above

stepping through sky

structure holds and gives

gives as needed

gives passage

I am crossing, over

to a distant point

any point too this

too, to

too moving, going

there

over, under, both ways around

Okay, first of all I do not time myself at this. I am only guessing it was about two minutes. This is one of those process activities. You are not trying to create a product, Just let the words flow out and be random. Our culture is so focused on product we forget to allow the process to have the time it needs and wants. If this was painting I was talking about these would be called studies.

What I am doing is a version of what is called Free Writing, but I've added the image thing to it. Here is a link to a page about Free Writing http://web.mst.edu/~gdoty/classes/concepts-practices/free-writing.html


Jeff is a word

First look at the edge

I crept to the edge

and looked over

and in that moment knew

the creator had dreamed me,

to fly.

I photographed this amazing creature last fall in northern New Jersey. The first thought that came to me when I looked at the photo is what I wrote above. It got me thinking about edges again. Yes I've thought about edges before. In fact we all do. It's not always conscious. The edge is that place or point in time where we have to make a choice.

I find in my woodworking I am dealing with edges on many levels. Sometimes I am knocking down edges to make a item more comfortable to touch. Other times I am multiplying edges to create more interesting detail. Often in my more abstract work I will draw a line (an edge) on the wood to cut with a saw. The grain of the wood will often try to walk the blade in a different direction than down my line. I have to then decide how much do I fight for control or do I let the blade come and go from the line. Sometimes I have let in flow and found I really like what came out. Other times I have fought for the edge I defined. The problem with fighting is that it creates more friction and that means a hotter blade and burns in the wood that then require time for sanding to heal the wounds. See any parallels to life here? The edge can be a place of conflict or joy. Although it is not always an either or situation.

As I see the world, there are those of us drawn to edges and those of us who would like to avoid them altogether. I may reach an edge before you do and leave you wondering why I am holding back. These edges are physical, emotional, intellectual as well as social and I feel the place where they all come together might be spiritual.

I think at this point I am going to make "edges" one of those returning focus point in my blog. From time to time I will try and share more of my thinking on this topic. For now I leave you with the link below to one of my favorite stories "Jumping Mouse" By Hyemeyohsts Storm. See if this story speaks to you of edges.

http://www.hyemeyohstsstorm.com/sevenarrows/emouse2.htm

Please let me know if the link does not work.

Jeff on edge

Fabricating Moments

Sometimes I fabricate moments digitally. Yes I take photos and combine them to create a new or completely unreal moment. This I call play. I started doing this as an exercise in spontaneity. The idea was to put images together quickly without really thinking about it and discover (or be surprised about) what I’d find in the combined images. My hope was this would impact my song writing, helping me to just write, not over thinking, and trust that I would find songs if I just wrote volume. It was kind of a cross training idea for art. I think it worked, but what I also got was images that evoked all kinds of ideas. The images themselves also provided ideas for writing songs and emotional exploration.

The key here I found was play. If you play with stuff you discover more and more ideas. Sometimes I layer video just to see what combined moving images come out of two or more clips. I love to take the scrapes of wood from my paid projects and create sculpture. This of course makes it difficult to throw anything away and that is a topic for another blog entry.

Play is a pathway to the creative spirit that connects us all.

Made up,
Jeff


Here is a link to more of my photo fabrications.
http://jlcarroll.webs.com/apps/photos/album?albumid=1999826