I'm enjoying the PBS show Art:21 Art in the 21st Century. This is a soothing series that makes it even easier to be inspired by artists talking about their work.

The movie "Born into Brothels", though made in 2004 seems to have come to my television when I needed it. The power of the children's photography carries them much further than the schools that flatly deny their entrance. At least that is what I found myself telling the nun who said no one would take them. OK, I told the television screen. Then I thought to myself, oh yeah, I really must have forgotten this power.

Ned Broderick's Studio:

Photo by Jeff Mickey

"ARTISTS the shocktroopers of gentrification"

Look! Its Tim over at Rivet Head Printing. He has made us t-shirts!

This is a long-time saying of Jmk's he overheard and thought it would make a lovely shirt to advertise his printing company. The shirts are short sleeve t-shirts, (he is actually wearing mine I sliced into a crude tank-dress minutes before leaving for the party, as it was 89 degrees in the October hot sun)
and can be purchased by contacting Tim via the link in my blogroll.

(Artists often move into "run down" areas for the cheap rent, and become the tipping point for upscale types who make everything look like the suburbs and cause the rents to soar, pricing the artists out to move on to the next neighborhood [see: Wicker Park].)

Drawing

If you want to be able to draw accurately, just get a copy of the book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards, do all the straight forward exercises in the book, pay attention, and just like that, you are able to draw. The right and left side theory is not as important as the exercises themselves. I wasn't aware of the home page till I did a search to make the link, the book can be found for seven bucks on the net and is likely to be found in a used book store.

Jenny Holzer Twitters! How absolutely perfect.

Location: failed painting.

For a painter, at least this painter, looking at a painting that does not work, for whatever reason, is like staring at some creeping abyss of failure. As a teacher at the design school where Jmk once worked said, "there is only one student film, and you only get to see parts of it here and there". Failed painting is a place, one I don't like to visit in my own studio, let alone some gallery or cafe or dentist's walls.