Carhartt WIP (Work In Progress)’s Post

Spike Lee: Creative Sources- One of those interesting articles I often stumble upon. After reading and marvelling at the accompanying images, my take is that the article emphasizes the importance of understanding the various influences and inspirations that shape a creator's work. I also think it highlights the fact that art is often a reflection of personal experiences, cultural context, and societal issues. #SpikeLee #CreativeSources #ArtisticInfluences #PersonalExperiences #CulturalContext #SocietalIssues

🤓 Notitas de la lectura de la semana: “[…] a Cézanne or a Seurat would have to struggle even harder to break through this crust today than he did a hundred years ago, because the mechanisms by which taste is handed down have improved. The size of this sector of the new art audience, the gratifying uniformity of its taste, and its insecure obsession with mutually recognizable signs of status, produce many consequences for artists. One of these is that the race is not necessarily to the swift, but more likely to the voluminous. The successful artist today must exhibit more widely than ever before. He or she is apt to get locked into a market structure which resembles, and parodies, that of the multinational corporation. […] […] Twenty or thirty years ago, dealers in New York used to struggle against dealers in Paris or London, each affirming the national superiority of their artists. These transatlantic squabbles are now extinct. What you have instead, on the multinational model, is associations of galleries selling the one product in New York, London, Düsseldorf, Paris, Milan. The tensions of national schools are dissolved. But this means that the successful artist must work on an industrial scale. […] “ This makes me think: finding the time to consistently work in an industrial scale, while coping with the increasing prices of everything is a challenge– I read a while ago that approximately about 4% of the people with a main creative job had a second job of some sort in the UK during 2019. After the pandemic hit, we can guess that a higher % of artists were forced to have side-jobs to get through. Wuh! How stressful but at the same time how empowering it is to be doing what you gotta be doing: art. A little, a lot, but making it. And to end, another curious statement: “[…] The kind of market pressure we have now tends to encase artists in a formula, but it also makes it hard on the person who paints ten pictures a year: the conditions of maximum exposure demand two a week. […]” Let me tell you, two good, consciously made, content filled pictures a week is A LOT. 📚Source : On Art and Money by Robert Hughes (December 6, 1984 issue)

A new blog discussing supporting local and emerging artist by adding their artwork to your waiting room or office. Imagine this, you go to your appointment with your lawyer/doctor/therapist/medical professional/etc. You want to be anywhere else but here. The walls are stark and cold, all you have to think about is what is to come. What is my prognosis, do I have to pay loads of money for this issue, is there something I need to worry about, how am I going to tell my family, etc. Or imagine this, you go to your appointment with your lawyer/doctor/therapist/medical professional/etc. You want to be anywhere else but here. The walls are decorated with the most unique art. You wonder what the artist was thinking when they painted this. Or is it an actual place or someone's imagination. It looks so beautiful. My grandparents had a place that looked just like that. Or had a pig that dug it's nose into the earth. The brush stroke on this piece is so interesting and the colours are so vivid. Which waiting room would you rather be in? How about your clients, which one? Do you think they will come to you in the same state of mind? Supporting local and emerging artists not only adds a personal touch to your space but also contributes to the vibrancy of your local art scene. Read more here, https://lnkd.in/ggy7QAPP

I've always wanted to go the Mecca of French comics, Angoulème festival, and the Guardian were nice enough to send me this year. It was even crazier than I expected: https://lnkd.in/eWQnnADd There was so much activity in the venues, so many talks to attend, so much to see – and then the culture minister Rachida Dati turned up – that it was kind of a reporter's nightmare. Not that I was under heavy fire or anything, but it was difficult at first to understand how to boil it down. Two things helped me: 1/ Forget the plan. Sometimes you have to throw yourself into the fray and just see what happens. 2/ "Soft eyes". As Bunk from The Wire says: if you have hard eyes, focusing on the thing you want or expect to see, you miss what's really important. (Maybe this is Forget the plan, part II.) The initial anecdote about Sylvia Pinault's indoctrination into comics came from a chance conversation slumped down on the floor of the exhibit hall, exhausted after six hours rushing around. I really love field reporting: the unpredictability and the sense that the world is far larger and more complex than the online version. It's useful to have a plan, to give you a structure to cling to, but it has to go out of the window at some point.

🎉 Exciting News! The latest edition of Man of Many's Digital Edition is now live - the 'CREATION' issue.🎉 Dive into exclusive interviews with Alexandra Daddario, the legendary Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, and the charming Patrick Dempsey. Hit the link to explore these captivating stories and more! #media #digitalmedia #digitalpublishing

This weekend, the Bag Factory Artist is hosting the opening of: "ditshwanthso, dipalo, digopotso" A debut solo exhibition by Refiloe Namise The exhibition opening is on 17 August from 12:00 - 15:00 with "Ways of Remembering: A lecture performance" taking place from 13:00 -15:00 This debut solo comprises of re-placed archive prints, video, performance, remembrances and readings. Namise’s work explores the making and preserving of a place: Alexandra, Johannesburg. Through various sites in Alex, her work re-members and re-articulates moments and their broader histories. These engagements develop ways of writing, recording, storing and sharing social knowledge, heritage and culture. Through this exhibition-in-progress, this year’s David Koloane Award recipient explores the idea of the Open Studio. The project’s title ditshwantsho, dipalo, digopotso, meaning ‘images, readings, reminders’ is uncapitalised to connote their existence within broader contexts. Just as the specific meanings of these words shift in response to their context, so too, the interpretations of Namise’s research are left open-ended, resolving themselves through their performance. In the Open Studio, the concepts of “research” and “artwork” become synonymous. Namise’s primary media being experimentation and intuition, many things come to realisation only in the realm of their public presentation.

HAVE YOU EVER DATED YOURSELF? If that sounds weird, let me explain that the concept comes from Julia Cameron’s book "The Artists Way". It suggests that we should make time - once a week - to indulge our artistic self. I’ve not read past that basic concept yet, but it struck an immediate chord. Even though I felt it was likely I’d not fulfil the brief every week, I liked the idea of striving to do so. Art is my thing. In normal times, I go to galleries with selected friends (I can’t bear going to an exhibition with people who use the experience as a backdrop for their unconnected conversation), and I’ll always happily go on my own. The Artist’s Date doesn’t have to be specifically about art, rather it’s about making time for the creative in you, whatever form that takes. I have a passion for people watching and am happy as a sand boy sitting somewhere with a cappuccino and a pastry…. just watching. I take a book to read in case there really isn’t anyone about, but my primary tools are a notebook and pen. I make notes about what I observe – how people look, how they’re dressed, the sound of their voices, what they talk about, their mannerisms, anything I find interesting or noteworthy. As a writer, I love to weave the small details I’ve observed from life into my story in order to make a character feel more real. At shows and markets, I often take myself off to a quiet corner to grab shots of interesting characters. A long lens and a big camera feels too much like stalking and, as I prefer to strike a balance between discrete and open with my picture taking, a compact camera will make me less intrusive but still able to capture what I’m after. I’m not going to lie, some weeks these solo dates are simply a pot of tea, a cozy blanket, and a book – all enjoyed indoors on a rainy day, entirely without guilt about those undone chores and unticked off items on the lengthy to-do list. Would you go on a solo date? If so, what you would do (and remember there doesn’t need to be anything artistic about it at all)?

In college Picasso's quote "a good artist copies, but a great artist steals" - A quote that you will find in this very article. I always remembered that quote, because I remember my young, naive self thinking how can any artist define themselves as "great" by coping someone else's work? Later, after some experience, time, and a great amount of maturing, I found what Picasso said and many others before him, to be true. In a world of 8 billion or more people, the foundation of learning is by watching and coping. Telling the same stories or lessons over and over again. Our nature is to remix and reimagine. Don't people always say imitation is the fondest form of flattery? Let them copy, let them steal. Let your designs that are original to you, inspire the next generation. #graphicdesign #inspiration #picasso #arthistory #creativity #reimagen #remix #redesign

At the height of his career, Henri Matisse faced a discouraging creative slump. Unlike many artists, he had already enjoyed international popularity during his lifetime, along with the favor of collectors, art critics, and the younger generation of artists who followed him. But when critics (and Matisse himself) wondered if the once-radical artist had lost his edge, Matisse was commissioned for a project so enormous and complex, it appeared insurmountable. Instead, it reinvigorated his creativity and set the stage for new levels of success. In this week’s edition of Creative for Creatives (my Substack newsletter), I outline Matisse’s “small steps” approach to creating big effects—that any creative professional can use. Curious to learn more? Check out the link in the comments below.