↑Larryosan's blog

Congratulations to all those who have emotionally survived the holiday season. For those of you who approach and exit this time of the year on a positive note all the better. But for those of you who like the majority of humanity face the battle of expectations on so many fronts, my hat's off to you for hunkering down in the face of disappointment and delirium and barging through. You know what I mean, the what kind of gifts will I give to what will I get to how does that reflect the love given and received and oh my God what will I do on New Years Eve and now I have to face my life over the past year and come up with some kind of summation that isn't at least too painful and then make some more stupid resolutions to show that I am determined to do better this year kind of stuff.

Feh on all of that, resolutions are bogus, we make decisions and choices everyday of our lives. The resolutions we make are the ones we decide and execute from moment to moment in the stream of our lives. Every moment is a branch and we often go onto one limb or another. So I reject the whole idea of new years resolutions in favor of just living my life and plotting a course throughout the year. This to me is the way to go.

As I said before, no matter how I feel about my art or being an artist the real decisions being acted upon were made every time I picked up my camera or fired up photoshop and posted something. Somewhere in my mind is the confidence to say "hey world, I think this is interesting and worth your time looking" or with this taking some time to read my words. And by gum, there are at least 9 to 13 of you doing just that. Peeking a little into my mind and my life, and perhaps finding it interesting or entertaining or something. Hell, I find my life a little entertaining and when I don't I do something about it, if only to crack a joke or pick up a book.

So face that new year as you did the last one, make your choices in everyday life and you will find a path and if that one doesn't suit you then make a turn somewhere.

ta ta for now

Over the weekend on the Sundance channel on TV was a movie about Ed "Big Daddy" Roth the 1950's car customizer who changed the automobile into an object d'arte. He took the basic mode of transportation and went beyond the usual car customizers who fixed up cars to be hot rods with light bodies and heavy engines and took it to a whole new level. He sculpted cars and was self conscious of his role in art. He combined gear head sensibility with a sculptures eye to create cars that were years ahead of their time, in the sense it took years for others to catch up with his ideas. Todays concept cars owe a lot to him, and he infiltrated pop culture with his cars. Anyone who remembers the pop culture tv shows, the Munsters, even the bat mobile these owe something to this guy. The movie was fascinating, although I was born near the end of the fifties and owe as much of my upbringing to the 60's this guy was part of my childhood. I remember walking by a car showroom that had some of his work there. He invented the silkscreen tee shirt of today and counter culture in his own way.

It is funny as the 50's were portrayed as the era of Ozzie and Harriet or Leave it to Beaver but it was so much more and so much less. And the early 60's were that much different. But artistically speaking a lot of what we see today has their roots in these arid times. Something was bubbling beneath the surface. Art gets real interesting to me when the tectonic plates of history create enough energy for the eruption. If you watch these interviews of visual artists during this period they all speak of the sense of rising energy in the air. Something was happening, they were on a crest of a wave. I have no real reason to say this is true or not but as a general impression it appears to be real. It seems to me that art ebbs and flows until something kind of breaks out. Artists are not stopping or not making great stuff but it doesn't grab the popular consciousness until it erupts on the horizon.

I am not sure where we are right now, but I want to be part of that bubbling under suface activity until I break out.

Maybe I am right or maybe I am wrong, I am just trying to figure it out while going on my merry way.

ta ta for now

Light Light Look at the Light

So on my last piece I was writing about the issues of light and my frustrations with my camera. My friend Amiko responded with pointing out the question of using the RAW format from my camera. The camera I use the most doesn't have that output. But it also raises another issue, and that is my attitude towards technology and art. Now the truth of the matter is, all photography is based on varying degrees of sophisticated technology, it has simply changed the level of technique. That I use a digital camera and photoshop shows that I am not simply being a Luddite on the subject. But there is something to be said on how we relate to the technology of photography. Do I solve my problems by embracing differing techniques or using different types of technology or do I the "artist" adapt myself to the limitations of the hardware I am using or the software. Now the RAW format is called the digital negative and using software would be the equivalent of using an enlarger and darkroom techniques. That is one creative path, the other which I think I would like to aspire to, is adapting myself to the machine and see if I can warp the machine to produce something new that is based on some creative warping from me not from the creativity of the person who created the software or hardware. It is a slight philosophical divergence. I refer back to the days I used to take a video camera, hooked up to a video color corrector and then to the television. I would shoot a picture then change them with the video color corrector and then photograph the TV. All done with technology but there was a sort of organic quality to the process. I could do it easier with photoshop now but the physicality of the operation gave me certain limitations that I enjoyed.

I am not sure if what I am saying is very clear but I hope to pursue this line of reasoning further in future pieces here.

ta ta for now

Not much of a piece tonight, I am sick as a dog. First I was out for a common cold with chest cough, now I have stomach flu and this is ten times worse. I just got up to log in a write this. I don't have anything profound to say about life, art or any of that. I just feel like crap.

So Hello and Goodnight

ta ta for now

Being sick sucks, big time. Although it is a reminder of the fact we are at bottom biological in nature. For all that we talk of souls and our higher mental powers and the spiritual nature of man, we are still animals beset by the frailties of this all too mortal flesh. We are fed upon and made hosts to a myriad of creatures that some help and other hinder and yet others come to some kind of neutral agreement. The flu which used to kill us now only makes us sick as dogs. Killing us was not a great evolutionary path for that virus and this one is much more successful. Mites feed on our skin and bugs call our guts home and quite happy little campers they are, in fact we now can buy these buggers in commercial form to help strengthen the position of the good bugs.

Is there some connection to art in all this, well yes and no, it does not directly reflect in some profound insight yet at the same time, knowing who and what we are as people should express itself in our most profound endeavors.

ta ta for now

TV is Wonderful It Teaches Us Everything We Need to Know

Trying out short videos

Ours is currently a two cat household. We have two Burmese cats, Sam our senior citizen is 17 and our kid is Stella who is 4. We got Stella so when one of the older cats passed there would still be two cats. And that has worked, as I believe that Sam has done well partly due to having Stella to sleep with and groom. I think if his sister had passed and left him alone he would not have done so well. So I have a friend who is a cat rescuer and showed me a picture of another Burmese which is very rare to find on rescue sites. And now we are filling out an application. Of course there a lots of things to consider such as bringing in another female with Sam being old and a bit frail and whether Stella will fight for dominance and all that. Only the future knows how this will turn out, keep posted.

Does that have anything to do with life art or whatever, I guess so. It is my life and informs how I think and feel about the world. I have lots of pictures of my cats mostly to preserve our memories and a few I have turned into art pieces. My emotionality informs my work and in my self portraits you can see that conveying feeling and some sense of deeper thought, even if it isn't always there.hehehehe There is something to be said about our connections to the animals around us, the humanity or inhumanity of our relationship to our pets and food animals. I am not morally opposed to food animals but I also believe that our current industrial production techniques make us crueler than need be. We treat each other like crap so I guess it shows on how we treat animals as well. In fact there is a definite connection between sociopath behavior, serial killers and the maltreatment of animals at an early age. Cruelty to animals by young adults and future bad behavior does have a connection and has been documented time and again. I watch the animal channel and it tears my heart to see what people do to pets. Sickens me.

Sorry, didn't mean to get so morose. I will sit here surrounded by my little Burmese pride and ponder on tomorrow.

ta ta for now

I am embarking on a new art project. I can't say too much right now until the project matures a bit but it involves leaving the digital realm and returning to a more physical platform. Definitely low tech, which is something I have been discussing off and on for awhile. It is funny because I have been involved with computers and digital stuff for some time and it has been the basis for changing directions in my life. I reinvented my career based on high tech, I was a train operator and when I took a promotion I used my computer and technology skills to redirect the course of my career away from the trains in the subways to computers and training. At one point I taught people how to operate subway trains, and I trained the conductors how to safely operate the doors and make announcements and all that good stuff. But then I took a new direction into high tech and never really looked back. In fact I take pride in the fact that I forgot most of what I knew how to do and glad of it.

So now I am looking at going the other direction by heading low tech away from digital, still using the fruits of my digital labors but using them in a decidedly non technical way. And I like that, it refreshes my artistic sensibilities. I want to take a detour, I think if I don't veer away from my current directions I will get stale and continue to do the same thing over and over again. At some point in my photography I will have to move away from my self portraits and go over to some thing different. Who knows, other peoples portraits, animals, whatever, I am not sure. And I will need to go back to film and leave digital for awhile, always need to freshen myself.

More on all this later.

Oh and we put in the application for the cat with references and a call to our vet. Keep you posted.

ta ta for now

Insecure Blogging

NYC all in one night

Tonight the three ocean liners, the Queen Mary II, The Queen Victoria and the Queen Elizabeth II were all in NYC at the same time and they all left together. Two of the liners were docked up in Manhattan and the third was in Brooklyn, they surrounded the Statue of Liberty for a fireworks show. We were out on the promenade and it turned very cold and nasty at the end right when the three ships were sitting there and the fireworks went off. I have some pictures and a bit of video of the whole thing, but we left before the finale of the fireworks, and as it was one of us ended up with a touch of hypothermia. These ships are massive and we watched as the QMII turned in the middle of the river, quite amazing to watch. And as we took pictures of them, the passengers took pictures of us.

A million shots of the same thing over and over again. There were photographers and videographers running up and down the promenade getting into position. I was just one of many shooting tonight and that brings up the same issue I have had before, are we generating so much visual media, pictures, videos, recordings etc, that we are drowning the signal of our era under this massive amount of noise. Not that most of the pictures are good and some even great, but is that signal or noise? I am curious on how this generations exceptional artists in the visual medium, and I really mean the photographers, film or digital going to emerge from the mass. Is it from the usual career circuit of being out there for the papers or the magazines, fashion or whatever. Is that the road to greatness or will it be from the fringe, sneered and despaired over by the usual pundits and money makers. And isn't really the art brokers who's voices are really listened to these days. And is that different from any other time.

ta ta for now

The struggle continues

Walking through the world of design

The last piece I wrote when I tried to save it went poof. I lost all of it, not that it was anywhere near the pinnacle of brilliance but it was work and then was wasted. Oh well, life goes on, even if our work all disappeared life would go on. I guess the relative worth and weight of what we do here can only be measured in the gratification it gives us the creators and to you the audience.

My art project with postcards is coming along and I am very pleased by working at it. I got some interesting feedback on the subject and I like taking prints from my pieces and cutting them up to make small collages. I am combining this with small written works of poetry. Like these pieces I never know what it is that I will end up putting down on paper. All new stuff and I really like that as I went for years without writing anything new. I also looked up the concept of postal art and found that in fact there is a whole group of people who use the postal service as a component of doing a variety of art projects, They trade works, move pieces around the country adding to the work until it returns to the originator. All sorts of cool things. A website nervous.org is based on doing this. So the idea was never unique to me and my collaborator but the idea is just too cool. The element of discovery in every work makes it very gratifying to me. Kind of what it feels like when I work with photoshop on my pictures and hit just that right note. Photoshop makes it just too easy to change pictures, it is really hard to not go over or under modifying work, so it is really a happy moment when you pull in something just right. That is why I like the physical realm, there are constraints and physical limits that helps direct your work. And within those constraints so much can be accomplished, just look at the works out there. Amazing.

ta ta for now

I got tapped for jury duty. I thought I had stayed under the radar but they caught up to me so today I sat in the room for prospective jurists. Since my last time they have improved a few things, like better chairs and wi-fi in the area so lots of people had laptops and were cruising the net while waiting and I suppose some were working. Me I don't have any cool portable electronics, even my phone sucks. Living in a frugal household we get the "free" phones which have no features and I don't have a light laptop, the one I use like now is a desktop replacement and heavy as a brick. I tried to take it to school once and almost got a hernia. Someday I will have some cool portable electronics and be able to surf the web from wherever I am. Though if the truth be told, I don't even go that many places online, mostly here and flickr and to look at my email. I just don't surf that much for anything that interesting. Looking up people that do art for mailing was about the most interesting thing I have looked at in a long time. I do cruise wikipedia for interesting articles on anime, the shows that I watch on late night on the cartoon channel. I love futurama, this goofy kid ninja show called Naruto and some others I watch from time to time. Oh and Robot Chicken which is always a hoot, from the same people who did celebrity death match. Funny stuff, and new. So I spent the day reading and the courthouse is near our Chinatown so I had a great Vietnamese lunch which was very tasty. I am a huge fan of southeast Asian food. I was in Los Angeles during the period lots of people starting coming over from Thailand, and Cambodia so new cuisines were hitting the market in that city and I was trying them all. Yummm!

So nothing really on art, but then this is my life and that affects the art I produce if I can truly call what I produce art so be it.

ta ta for now

Well I finished jury duty, no cases, I suspect due to being on Friday and Monday is a holiday. So we sat around for the day and then lunch and then bye bye. Again, I had no electronics including leaving my camera behind as they don't allow them in the court building. And that was frustrating as it had rained last night and combined with the cool air the light in the morning was absolutely magnificent. I have walked by the buildings in lower Manhattan many times but this morning and later in the afternoon the light was clean, clear and crisp. Buildings just jumped out at you, the Woolworth front as amazing and the carvings, window sills and all those little details from the building style of the 20's were stark and just cried out to be photographed. And of course my camera was sitting at home. There were some interesting looking people on the street also waiting for me and my camera. I suspect they left muttering to themselves, "ah rats the putz left his camera at home". This is also why architecture and city design is so interesting to me, as this is the subject beside myself for my work. The newer buildings are just boring to me, a few have interesting designs but for the most part they suck. The rich are stingy with their goodies, the newer luxury buildings have wonderful and beautiful lobbies which are not available to the general public and the outer exterior is mechanical and looks like industrial design. And not good design at that. It's like have all those wonderful pieces of art in your collection and refusing to share them with the museums. People loved Brook Astor because she had sense to share her good fortune and not just as some ego boosting glorification of herself. Trump is just the opposite, this guy is all about self promotion, he is as hungry for good pr as the meanest of small time actors or social climbing wannabees. And he doesn't need it, his buildings stand out, he has money up the wazoo and he is still driven to be so venal. If he stuck with being famous for what he is good at he would still be a big name but something is wrong in that noggin.

But I digress, the light was wonderful, I didn't have my camera but at least I am done with jury duty for four years. Oh by the way, I sing to my cat.

ta ta for now

I have quit trying to type in an introduction, sometimes it shows up and other times it doesn't and I can't figure out why it goes either way.

Dinner with Howard and friends. I love hanging out with actors, and artists and this group included trainers, you know the people who help you get into shape or tone up or lose weight. All very self actualized people with large amounts of motivation and so into people and understanding themselves and others and pondering the great questions on how to bring in all that great stimulation and deliver great acting. Yeah, my kind of people. I would much rather hang out with people I may not agree with on all things than people who share my world view and are boring. Got to stay away from boring people, I need energy and it is funny as I am not really a social person but give me people who are movers in their own way. And this crowd tonight were that type of people, they move through life finding opportunities and making things happen for them and they have passion about what they do, whether it is doing yoga or training or acting. One member of the dinner party was an electronic engineer who helped design satellites for things like direct TV which he called his boring job but it paid for his passion which is acting and writing and doing creative at least to him stuff. Now I consider doing engineering pretty damn creative but that is not his passion it is something he does for money.

And to top it off we all played jenga which is you stack all these pieces of wood then take pieces away and stack them on top, in fact a strategy and physical challenge game. I am just happy I didn't tip the damn thing over, but fun was had by all. And isn't that the point of a good dinner party, so we succeeded in our endeavors.

Does any of this intersect art, in a way because these were people who created their art in the form of acting and this is a slice of their life and it gave me at least something to write about and so I see if this is a bit of the path I want to take in my writing. Perhaps this type of exposition is not what I want to do, well when I go back and read it, then I will find out and this blog work is an act of exploration and unfortunately for you my fellow traveler sometimes we hit those pockets of smelly gas and we move on as we dig deeper.

ta ta for now

Spontaneity in writing and photography