Courtesy of JT

"You could make a cartoon in crayons about a red square that falls in unrequited love with a blue circle, and there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house if you know how to tell a story.”

- Don Hertzfeld

Prodigy

All I want for Christmas...


This is a local photographer. Who's 15. She was on the front page of the PI today. Insane. JT says I'm too old to be a prodigy now.

I want to paint like this

Artists

"There are two kinds of people in the world: people who are artists and people who are supposed to support them. So, figure out which you are and do it with vigor." -Barbara Nicolosi

With or Without You

"The lyric is pure torment. One of the things that was happening at the time was the collision in my own mind between being faithful to your art or being faithful to your lover. What if the two are at odds? Your gift versus domestic responsibility?

I had always been the kind of person who would sleep on everyone else's floor, the eye of the traveling rat, a natural tinker. I would just wander off and be very happy. So now I have this person in my life whom I love more than my life but I'm wondering if the reason I'm not writing is because I'm now a domesticated beast. I'm wondering if I'm house-trained? If I meet somebody and I want to go off with them, to find out what their world is like, I can't because I'm a married man.

It's not even about sexual infidelity. I just remember thinking: 'Is this the life of an artist? Am I going to have kids and settle down and betray my gift or am I going to betray my marriage? It was a very difficult thing in my head. I had met a couple of people on the way who had taken advantage of my naivete, is the best way I can put, and I realized I knew so very little about this world and now, the future looked like I was going to know even less. You can learn about politics, culture, but your emotional life also has to be developed.

I think in some senses mine wasn't, and I was going through all this kind of uncertainty. I was at least two people: the person who is so responsible, protective and loyal and the vagrant and idler in me who just wants to run from responsibility. I thought these tensions were going to destroy me but actually, in truth, it is me. That tension, it turns out, is what makes me as an artist.

Right in the centre of a contradiction, that's the place to be. There I was. Loyal. But in my imagination filled with wanderlust, a heart to know God, a head to know the world, rock star who likes to run amok and sinner who knows he needs to repent...

If I had cut loose, what would have become of me?"

-Bono, U2 on U2

Trifecta

"A person who says he doesn't understand art doesn't know himself very well."
-Sophie's World


Art. Subconscious. Theism. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

Geoff McFetridge

Caught the SAM Scupture Park with Jen's parents when they were in town. New artist in the cafe. His work was exciting to me in general, but two pieces really stuck out to me, both around a girl and her dress. The one where she vanishes is particularly arresting.



Photos stolen from thedailymax.typepad.com (God bless Google)

Andy Crouch on the Art of Religion

"There is too much good in the world to be constrained by the bounds of religious utility"

"Better than useful... the economy of grace overflows with the unuseful."

"Does prayer work? No. Prayer does something better than work."

"We don't have to compel God to be useful to us, and he does not require us to be useful to him."

Andy Crouch Defining Art

Andy Crouch defines art as "Culture that cannot be reduced to utility"

He suggests that a wall serves a purpose, but whatever possesed us to create wallpaper?

Andy sees artists as operating in the realms of play and pain, and sees little of either in pop culture (escapism).