quote of the day----kant

Immanuel Kant - "To be is to do."

The Palm

I am trading The Palm Steakhouse a drawing on the wall for a dinner. Barter project is growing its own legs. Photograph soon.

female warrior---for sale on ebay

this is now for sale on ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290238799697

Monday begins the start of the "great birch wall" I am etching a sixty foot birch wall for a hotel and I am excited to make a piece I will be proud of. I always get antsy before I start big jobs. This weekend I will continue my barter-art experiment and lay low with my pencils and brushes.

camera

I decided to leave my camera in a cab today. I was thinking that a good ole NYC cab driver my just need a good digicam when he is not driving around..buy a new one this week.

quote of the day---EB white

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than a whole one.
E. B. White

dessert

Veniero's famous pastry shop offered me 1,000 dollars worth of pastries to etch and replace an old mirror for them. I have many a birthday cake covered for the next year or so. I used to live by them when I was too poor an artist to afford to eat. I am very happy about this trade.

lunch

Today I traded a Gardega original watercolor original for a lunch at a restaurant called Finnegan's Wake on the upper East side. Lunch was Great and an owner of another place called Murphy's Law was there and he offered me a dinner for art. I let him pick his watercolor because he was a class act.

question

How does barter and trade affect the value of art or the perceived value of art or the integrity of the artist. etc questions...Is art for ivory tower elite art galleries to be perused by the rich and bored or is art for the street and the masses?

cape cod

I was just offered a free stay in a cape cod house for an oil painting. Never been there...

The Palm

I am trading The Palm Steakhouse a drawing on the wall for a dinner. Barter project is growing its own legs. Photograph soon.

barter

Lately I have been thinking about the value of art. Art is worth what people pay for it. Is a Picasso worth 60 million? Perception is what matters. Really is manifested through perception and it is through agreement that we come to think that a Picasso, or any art is worth a lot of money. Today I treaded a watercolor for a $44 flashlight. I didn't need the flashlight but I was curious about what value a piece of paper with a picture I made has for people. I intend to shine a light on the idea of the value of art and the relationship to perception vs. reality.

amish

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish

The Amish

I have been thinking about how great it is that the Amish use barter as much and often more than cash and that they are not a people consumed with greed and material things like myself. My rusty old cogs started turning yesterday and I was wondering what it would be like to exist by trading art work instead of selling artwork for a living. I am planning a trip to Amish country soon because I have never been. I think the crazier the world gets the more appealing a simpler life gets.

the dimming of the day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK2N3S0lr4c

as good as music gets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPFZSuVydrk&feature=related

this song will cheer up any sad old soul (unless you have no soul...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5dEDIKOoQY

words of the day

Proud swagger out of the schoolyard
Waiting for the worlds applause
Rebel without a conscience
Martyr without a cause

Static on your frequency
Electrical storm in your veins
Raging at unreachable glory
Straining at invisible chains

And now youre trembling on a rocky ledge
Staring down into a heartless sea
Cant face life on a razors edge
Nothings what you thought it would be

All of us get lost in the darkness
Dreamers learn to steer by the stars
All of us do time in the gutter
Dreamers turn to look at the cars
Turn around and turn around and turn around
Turn around and walk the razors edge
Dont turn your back
And slam the door on me

Its not as if this barricade
Blocks the only road
Its not as if youre all alone
In wanting to explode

Someone set a bad example
Made surrender seem all right
The act of a noble warrior
Who lost the will to fight

And now youre trembling on a rocky ledge
Staring down into a heartless sea
Done with life on a razors edge
Nothings what you thought it would be

No hero in your tragedy
No daring in your escape
No salutes for your surrender
Nothing noble in your fate
Christ, what have you done?

artist of the day----p.g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etOLUz7OUF8

sun spots

I got an email from a friend in seattle..she said it has been so cold there that her tomato plants wont grow. I have done some research and it seems to me that sunspots have a large connection to global cooling or warming. I think nature is not so easily tweaked by mankind and that we are not quite as important or impactful (word?) as we think.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004470662_webweather11m.html

Over the past few years, a chorus of propaganda intended to demonize the Internet and further lead it down a path of strict control has spewed forth from numerous establishment organs:

• Time magazine reported last year that researchers funded by the federal government want to shut down the internet and start over, citing the fact that at the moment there are loopholes in the system whereby users cannot be tracked and traced all the time.
The projects echo moves we have previously reported on to clamp down on internet neutrality and even to designate a new form of the internet known as Internet 2.


• In a display of bi-partisanship, there have recently been calls for all out mandatory ISP snooping on all US citizens by both Democrats and Republicans alike.
  
  
• The White House's own recently de-classified strategy for "winning the war on terror" targets Internet conspiracy theories as a recruiting ground for terrorists and threatens to "diminish" their influence.
  
  
• The Pentagon recently announced its effort to infiltrate the Internet and propagandize for the war on terror.
  
  
• In a speech last October, Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff identified the web as a "terror training camp," through which "disaffected people living in the United States" are developing "radical ideologies and potentially violent skills." His solution is "intelligence fusion centers," staffed by Homeland Security personnel which will go into operation next year.
  
  
• The U.S. Government wants to force bloggers and online grassroots activists to register and regularly report their activities to Congress. Criminal charges including a possible jail term of up to one year could be the punishment for non-compliance.
  
  
• A landmark legal case on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America and other global trade organizations seeks to criminalize all Internet file sharing of any kind as copyright infringement, effectively shutting down the world wide web - and their argument is supported by the U.S. government.
  
  
• A landmark legal ruling in Sydney goes further than ever before in setting the trap door for the destruction of the Internet as we know it and the end of alternative news websites and blogs by creating the precedent that simply linking to other websites is breach of copyright and piracy.
  
  
• The European Union, led by former Stalinist and potential future British Prime Minister John Reid, has also vowed to shut down "terrorists" who use the Internet to spread propaganda.
  
  
• The EU data retention bill, passed last year after much controversy and with implementation tabled for late 2007, obliges telephone operators and internet service providers to store information on who called who and who emailed who for at least six months. Under this law, investigators in any EU country, and most bizarrely even in the US, can access EU citizens' data on phone calls, SMS messages, emails and instant messaging services.
  
  
• The EU also recently proposed legislation that would prevent users from uploading any form of video without a license.
  
  
• The US government is also funding research into social networking sites and how to gather and store personal data published on them, according to the New Scientist magazine. "At the same time, US lawmakers are attempting to force the social networking sites themselves to control the amount and kind of information that people, particularly children, can put on the sites."

plans to kill the interent

corporate interest's are gathering together to kill and change the internet as soon as 2010. I suggest this is a historical moment and it must be prevented, if we lose the internet as we know it we lose the battle for free information. Turn off your Tv's and research this issue before the net is a corporate controlled nightmare and you will have to pay to visit sites suchs as blogs etc.

ISP's have resolved to restrict the Internet to a TV-like subscription model where users will be forced to pay to visit selected corporate websites by 2012, while others will be blocked, according to a leaked report. Despite some people dismissing the story as a hoax, the wider plan to kill the traditional Internet and replace it with a regulated and controlled Internet 2 is manifestly provable.

"Bell Canada and TELUS (formerly owned by Verizon) employees officially confirm that by 2012 ISP's all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to a small standard amount of commercial sites and require extra fees for every other site you visit. These 'other' sites would then lose all their exposure and eventually shut down, resulting in what could be seen as the end of the Internet," warns a report that has spread like wildfire across the web over the last few days.

The article, which is accompanied by a You Tube clip, states that Time Magazine writer "Dylan Pattyn" has confirmed the information and is about to release a story - and that the move to effectively shut down the web could come as soon as 2010.

artist of the day---Heinrich Kley

(born April 15, 1863 in Karlsruhe, died 1945)^[1] in Munich was a German caricaturist, editorial cartoonist and painter.

"Jugend" 1932 Nr. 5, drawing by Heinrich Kley

Kley studied "practical arts" at the Karlsruhe Akademie and finished his studies in Munich. His early works were conventional portraits, landscapes, still lifes, city scenes and historical paintings. From about 1892 he won a reputation as an "industry artist", painting manufacturing scenes in oils and watercolors. They proved his deep understanding of the modern machine world. Kley attained greater notoriety with his sometimes darkly humorous pen drawings, published in Jugend and the notorious Simplicissimus.

The date of Kley's death is uncertain. Rumors initially suggested his demise in the early 1940's. It is also suggested that Kley died on August 2, 1945. Some sources mention the time of death on February 8, 1952.

Cartoonist Joe Grant was well aware of Kley's work and introduced his drawings to Walt Disney, who built an extensive private collection. A number of early Disney productions, notably Fantasia, reveal Kley's inspiration.

Due to Disney's interest and reprints by Dover Publications, Kley is still known in the USA, while he is nowadays little regarded in Germany.

today I have a meeting with production designer on my glass forest wall. The wall is 60 foot long or rather 3 sections of twenty feet etched to look like a birch forest. I am going to start the job as soon as today or tomorrow and I will document the entire process on here right up to final installation on July 15th. The wall separates a hotel from a restaurant. The main question is how many trees a panel and how dense is this forest. the forest through the trees etc and so on..after I finish this project I am going to hit the easel again and paint landscapes for the rest of summer.

the passion of van gogh

Today I was thinking about about Van Gogh...Is there anyone not moved by his work?! I think humans have empathy for those of us who are boiling with passion so much you can barley keep the lid on and half the people you meet think you are cracked. You are guaranteed to anger a lot of people and to alienate others but in the end it is worth it. Artist are no different than anyone else but rather they are just more mono-focused on things most people dont pay attention to. It is better to live five years alive and on fire and misunderstood than to live sixty years in a cocoon --- then again the lumps hurt worse when you grow older.



It's cold comfort
To the ones without it
To know how they struggled --
How they suffered about it

If their lives were
Exotic and strange
They would likely have
Gladly exchanged them
For something a little more plain
Maybe something a little more sane

We each pay a fabulous price
For our visions of paradise
But a spirit with a vision
Is a dream with a mission...

N.peart

hmm

I have been caught up in back and forth pricing and negotiating on a job. More tiring than actually doing the work. Back on the horse of art soon, Sometimes I think the horse of art is really a circus horse-- trained to run in small circles.

joke of the day

A man was walking past an elementary school and all the children were shouting, "13! 13! 13!" The fence was too high to see over, but the man saw a gap in the planks and looked through to see what was going on. A child poked the man in the eye with a stick and the children all started shouting and cheering, "14! 14! 14!"


counseling has one L....

kayak photo

I went kayaking in Northport Long Island today. I took some photos: here is a photo of an old boat engine on a floating dock. I like this as a possible painting subject but It would have to be a photo realist piece and be f0ur foot square otherwise there is no point in painting it--unless you made it smaller and then it would have less impact...I have a million ideas and never enough time. I think this photo gives a sense that it is almost 100 degrees outside. it has occurred to me that this things has a wheel on it which was probably used for moving it or it is in fact not a marine vessel at all. Any mechanics out there know what she is?

think

http://www.denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm

think once, think twice, think three times---then act