Bibliomania

So by now it should come as a shock to absolutely no one that lately my obsessions have been with cabarets and the acid decadence of Weimar-era Germany, the 1930's and 40's, and old starlets. I think my fixation with Anita Berber is beginning to bore or trouble most of my acquaintances, but I just want to know more about her. She seems like a made-up character sometimes, too wild to be real. Yesterday, I put in an order for that book.

I paid more for that book than I probably should have, but it's out of print now.

I also want to read this new biography of Hedy Lamarr that's just come out. Sounds like a crazy life story too.

Bad Days mean cool art?

I tend to make strange/creepy art when I'm frustrated. Doesn't it feel like, sometimes, there's just a big well of frustration going through you?

Skatepunk

Oh dear, I thought I'd already posted this. Oops.

It comes from a conversation that came up at one of the Steampunk panels at Another Anime Con in Nashua, NH. There was a comment that people tend to pick the same character types when creating steampunk personas: air pirates, mechanics, adventurers, etc. Where were the steampunk domestics, librarians, and stay-at-home dads?

Or in my case, where are the steampunk hipster skateboarders?

Fun fact, when the bicycle first became popular in Victorian England women couldn't ride them in skirts, but they wore wide, floppy bloomers. For Modesty.

The Deer Hunter

An illustration for class.

Leave Your Troubles Outside

The Emcee from Cabaret. That's all.

Oh shit, who let the artist start blogging

So, freshman year, one of my class readings was Claes Oldenburg's "I Am For An Art" a series of musings of being interested in art that "does something other than sit on its ass in a museum." As an eighteen-year-old in her first three months of an art school, to put it mildly, it didn't make an impression. Luckily hindsight is 20/20 and all those other clichés. I just read it again for another class, four years later, in the first three months of my senior year and I realized...

I am making that art.

Last year, I reconciled myself to something: I am never going to make museum art. And I okay with that. I make art that hangs from someone's cell phone, or sits on someone's bed. I make art that lives in context. If you put my Bitty Biters in a museum? Everyone would laugh and I would laugh the hardest. Because dude. What?

Admittedly, I am not a huge fan of Claes Oldenburg's art. Neither enamored nor enraged. I grew up in Cleveland and his Free Stamp has been a ubiquitous part of the landscape of my childhood impression of the city and maybe because I've been exposed to it for so long without knowing it was supposed to be Art by a Famous Artist, I cannot bring myself to admire it now.

But I do like his "I Am For An Art." It's hard to ignore it when this is part of the statement.

Ich bin für eine Kunst, die sich auf den alltäglichen Mist einläßt und doch siegreich bleibt.
Roughly (which is to say Google) translated: I am for an art that gets involved in everyday crap and remains victorious.

I work in everyday crap. It is my goal. Toys, charms, trinkets. I want and am happy to make that.

Let's hope I remain victorious.

I'll Be Your Server Tonight

So I said last night that I would post more art. Then I did a six hour shift, where I did nothing but talk on the phone. Then I came home and had frozen yogurt and talked with my roommate. Who is excellent.

Anyway, here's a piece I actually finished last week but I wanted some input from my classmates before posting.