Show Us Your Art! (and other art talk)

A conversation with @Ulu made me realize we're chock full of artisans working with our hands so you're probably constantly creative in other ways. I'd love to see what other people have created. Show us what you make when you're not building bikes! As they say, "no wrong answers"!

This was a commission piece I created in 99 for a jazz related company named DownBeat that appreciated the abstract nature of graffiti-style lettering. It was to be mounted on a mirror with the painted back helping to define the object and make it somewhat more legible. The color of the piece is dependent upon it's reflected environment. It was designed for a changing landscape allowing the introduction of flowers, for instance, to reinvigoration a space with new colors every day. From concept to near completion..
This was my third metal piece. I had this one cut by water-jet at an artist friendly shop in Brooklyn named Milgo-Bufkin out of deco-aluminum sheet. This is the D after painting the back, resting on a mirror. I masked the brighter green outline on the front and sprayed it, editing with a razor.

I connected the lightweight material with industrial adhesive after roughening up the meeting points. But I hadn't accounted for the combined weight being more than the sheet could handle and you can clearly see dimpling at the top right of the A, if you can find the A


Unfortunately I never got a picture of it's final mounting so the defining color behind is wasted in these shots. I wasn't thrilled with the overall alignment and had a really tough time mounting it but It was fun conceiving of it and working with my hands!

[extracted with help by CaptainAwsome from this conversation]
Ha! Sure, place the onus on the starving artist and forget the tasteless landlord and privately funded "arts" organizations who's boards are stuck in the pop era. These are typically promotional pieces benefitting the backers of shows and private collections. As a self proclaimed artist trapped in the cultural wasteland that once was a mecca for creatives this situation enrages me. It's the corporatization of cheap products at inflated prices and it works in conjunction with the concerted effort to stifle what governments might consider dangerous art.. like 70s rock and 80s rap for example. Both informative and political means of conveying stories, squashed by the market with help from (Reagan-Clinton) government deregulation of media. In New York for instance, our laws on vandalism have historically wavered between misdemeanors - felonies and back again depending on the political climate as such a visible, high traffic city has the potential to spread messages globally by simply writing on walls, (the origin of the word vandalism). When this happens the law sees no difference between scribbling and stories tall murals resulting in task forces sent out to collect the identification of artists who haven't been absorbed by establishment employ. Those who might deliver beautiful, yet subversive messages in a public forum. This eyeball represents that suppression by filling all available presentation space with fluff. A win-win for wealth. Though I blame those with the power to place and profit from this piece rather than the unimaginative artist. They have to live with the criticism that follows work that hasn't matured yet. Its allll money and this [artist] is a pawn. Ya think Ozzy was given a show to help his career or to make one of the original detractors of war look like a blithering ..... while battling addiction knowing he's still angry and active with a couple of kids on the come up?


p.s. sorry for the off-topic rant. I don't mean for it to sound angry but I am passionate about this. Peace, love and arts!

Glad to know ya fellow creative! Thats an interesting run you've had. Evidently we all travel familiar veins here. For me it boils down to forming visions with my hands. My graffiti based infancy evolved into murals, giving way to set design supporting programmatic animation studies funding my current bike fantasies.. but I keep my eye on the street because it's the most accessible. Not unlike our bikes. I'm guessing we're all creatives.

Thats exciting to have a public piece you contributed to still standing. I'm gonna bike over and look at the amphitheater @Ulu, partly because I didn't know it existed. Thanks

I also had to learn a program to create the outline for laser cutting this piece. From the look it may have been one in the same. At that time it was architectural software with a manual the size of a phone book. I'd cut one by hand priorly but it was too rough.

Ulu said:

It's in Bakersfield CA bro. That's a loooong ride.

Click to expand...

I was wondering how I missed it. We've got a Kings County Community College too. Figured you were traveling for work. Silly uninventive colonial naming conventions.

You've worked on some beautiful projects.

I've done some work for architects as well. The ones I know are currently starving so... Good parenting on your pop's part.

Worth noting that 60% of New Yorkers don't have enough savings to survive 4 months if they were to lose their jobs, so the architects aren't the only ones.

All true. And Goya was retelling a story, while not historic, the myths and their meanings held wisdom for future generations. When pieces are important in that way they tend to stand the test of time.. thus art is implied. My favorite example is Banksy's street stencils. This is his work from the period when Disney was absorbed by GE who was producing military weaponry. Simple but beautifully effective and continues to inform as most people these days inquiring about my shirt, which represents an actual street stencil, were either unaware or forgot.