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Art is a Love/Hate affair for the British

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:19:08 UTC

The last time an art project garnered much nationwide media attention was probably in 2005 when Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "The Gates" was on view in New York's Central Park. One writer referred to the work as "a billowy gift to the city" and "the first great public art event of the 21st century".

It can be argued the this century's next great work of public art is taking place right now at Trafalgar Square in London. Artist Antony Gormley is inviting 2400 UK residents to take their place on the Fourth Plinth for an hour each. The plinth is to be occupied by someone 24 hours a day for 100 days - transforming the individual into a living monument and a representative of the city, Title "One and Other" the artwork is billed as a living portrait of modern London. What a participant chooses to do with their time on the plinth is entirely up to them. As I write this post, a middle age woman in a sun dress is saying hello to her "mum and dad". Want to know who's on the Plinth right now? Click here for a live video feed.

The plinth has generated a great deal of attention; with the public and media enthusiastically approving of the work and a handful of "art" critics griping about this and that.

Regardless of whether one likes it or not, the work succeeds at engaging the public to think about, and participate in, the arts. It may not be as entertaining to watch as a magician hanging upside down for 60 hours but, thankfully David Blaine is not scheduled for a hour on the plinth.

With a heightened sense of security and a slight mistrust of the arts (and general public at large), it would seem unlikely that this very public form of contemporary art could happen in the U.S. But why Britain? I was recently reading an article on the arts and culture in British life which tried to explain how the Brits felt about cultural life -"Take museums: in no other country is the idea of their ownership by the public, their status as a part of civic life, their role as the places we go to examine ourselves and the world, so strong. It is the deep-rooted idea that our national museums and our arts are the property of the people that has led to the widespread embracing of One and Other. Woe betide the government that attempts to introduce arts spending cuts."

In light of this public outpouring of participatory support, an organization called the British Art Resistance (B.A.R.) has declared this week "National Art Hate Week" to protest the business of culture. B.A.R. was founded by Billy Childish, also know as the founder of Stuckism - an International art movement supporting contemporary figurative painting. For the weeklong project Childish is asking participants to visit a local gallery and actively hate whatever is being shown there.

A recent article sums up the movement: "Where public opinion holds the likes of the Tate and National Gallery to be repositories of artistic value, National Art Hate Week largely considers them vacuous factories of business and bureaucracy."

Childish goes on to say "Only 20 years ago, people would have been outraged by this fourth plinth charade. Now, the public are robotically complicit with a manipulative elite who make culture homogenous and hateful."

The Art Hate website's statement of intent includes such jewels as "NATIONAL ART HATE WEEK has been instigated for the disruptive betterment of culture.", and "If a child offers you a painting during NATIONAL ART HATE WEEK you are to turn away in disgust." Visit the site to view the inspired propaganda posters and spread the word.

Artists would Benefit from a National Health Plan

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:34:58 UTC

According to an AP story, about 60 percent of Americans have job based insurance, about 7 percent purchase individual policies and the rest are uninsured. That 7 percent who purchase coverage directly from the insurer find the cost to be quite high, in part due to the fact that insurers spend a significant amount of money to insure only the healthiest people [article].

Most artists know the high-cost of individual health care coverage all too well. In general, artists are 3.5 times more likely to be self-employed and earn less than others with similar educational levels.

Recently the NEA reported that Artists are unemployed at twice the rate of other industries. With a slumping economy effecting the arts and ancillary professions, artists have been hearing that their work is a luxury item.

However, for many artists, health insurance is a luxury item.

Some artist take on a second job for the health benefits or may be lucky enough to be covered under their spouses job. However, those who are not face the prohibitively high costs of individual coverage. Costs that are even higher if they have a pre-existing condition - that is if they aren't denied altogether.

Earlier this week, the health insurance industry offered to end their policy of charging higher rates for individuals who are ill. A policy that is considered responsible for millions of Americans being uninsured.

So why is the health insurance industry suddenly willing to reverse the policy? Under increasing pressure from an Obama administration and Congress is the insurance industry really ready to make meaningful concessions?

The truth is, the industry knows that a national health care system would be a direct competitor. Offering to make insurance available to all Americans seems like an altruistic step forward - but is it enough to convince congress that the private sector is willing to reach out to the 45.7 million Americans that up to now they considered untouchables?

The WSJ quotes Cigna Corp. Chief Executive H. Edward Hanway as saying "I think that if we as an industry are willing to make substantial changes, then the need to have a public plan is extremely questionable".

I think a public plan is past due. This industry offer would seem to be an attempt to influence lawmakers and water down a government run plan that could potentially undercut private insurer profits. As momentum builds towards a national policy we may see more increasingly desperate 'hail mary' attempts at proving that the private sector can fix the ailing system - and successfully scuttle talks of reform like they did 15 years ago.

As it stands now, The current proposal would seem to be too little, too late. Ending the policy of charging those who are ill higher rates is a good start. But, until insurance is actually affordable, we're not quite there - and we can't expect the health-insurance industry to cave on every point. Even this current proposal has provisions and loopholes. For one, higher health status pricing for their insurance coverage would end only if congress mandated that all Americans to purchase insurance (at what rate?), and higher rates would still apply for a number of population segments - including older americans.

A doctor once gave me an early lesson in how the insurance industry works. Knowing I was an uninsured student at the time he handed me my medication and told me he would not keep a record of the diagnoses so it wouldn't effect me when trying to get insurance later. In my adult life as an artist and entrepreneur, I have been lucky enough to be able to afford individual coverage for myself and my family, but I recently experienced insurer rejection when trying to join my wife and child under one plan (my wife is also self-employed). Not going to happen thanks to my own medical history.

Aside from good health, our current insurance system also requires steady employment to participate - but an artists income tends to be rather sporadic. An eight week theater run, a music gig, commissioned work, seasonal art festivals, etc.

Too many of our creative colleagues are not insured or are finding it difficult to carry the minimal insurance they have. Artists at all stages of their careers struggle to make a living - a struggles made worse by a sagging art economy.

In the U.S. there is no individual grants for artists at the federal level and although a number of non-profit organizations are available to assist financially struggling artists, very few of them make preventative health care their mission. Affordable health care would benefit all Americans, artists included.

These apps will always have a home on my drive

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:24:54 UTC

It has been forever and a day since I have updated this site so I thought it was time to try and get back in the habit with something easy. I recently wiped my Mac for a fresh start and had the chance to decide which apps would have the honor of being reinstalled. Aside from the major players like the adobe suite and iLife, iWork, there are a handful of independent developer applications that I could not live without. Here are my top five favs.

1. Adium
It's a love/hate thing :) I've been IMing since ICQ and I still think instant messaging is the most annoying form of team communication. Particularly when used to think out loud. But I need to stay in contact with developers, clients and friends. Adium is the most unobtrusive instant messaging client and it supports the protocols I need: AIM/mac.com, google talk, Yahoo and jabber. Plus, thanks to a large community of third-party designers I can customize the look and feel of the interface. [Website]

2. App Zapper
If you have a need to install every application with a pretty icon then you probably have an app folder full of applications you never use. I'm sure I'll have some new apps to install after tonight's MacHeist Bundle Reveal. I have found no better way to clean house then to drag those unloved applications into the AppZapper window -- and having them Zapped into non-existence with a satisfying audio effect. Take that. Pow. [Website]

3. DropBox
Trying to deliver gigantic images to clients and vendors, sharing documents with the team, passing music files to friends and syncing files on my desktop and laptop used to require a frustrating mix of email file size limitations, FedExing CD's, FTPing Zipped files and toting USB keychains. Now I just drop any file into my dropbox where it is whisked away with impressive speed to be securely accessed on any machine (and any OS) by whoever I choose to share it with. [Website]

4. 1Password
Mosaicglobe sites, client stuff, multiple emails, social networks, bank accounts, blah blah blah. It is impossible to remember a unique password for each account and it's too tempting to give every account the same lame password. 1Password integrates into my browsers, offers generated passwords, and then remembers what they are. My 1Password application is a fortress holding over 250 account passwords. It frightens me to think would I do without this app to protect me from myself. [Website]

5. MyNotes
I jot a lot of notes and without a method to organize these notes my desktop would be strewn with random text files and i'd be sending too many emails to myself. I have tried every GTD app on the market (not a fan), and I have installed plenty of feature packed organization/productivity applications. But I keep coming back to one. MyNotes is simplicity. There is plenty it doesn't do but I don't need all that. It just allows me to write down my thoughts and organize them in a place where I can retrieve them later. Plus they're thoughtful enough to put a PSD version of their icon on the website in case you need it for a blog post. [Website]

Runner-Up: Handbrake Because I need to get those DVDs to AppleTV and my iPhone somehow. [Website]

Goobye Lux

Fri, 6 Feb 2009 17:07:44 UTC

All a Twitter about Twitter Apps

Thu, 5 Feb 2009 12:02:23 UTC

Spent the better part of yesterday reacquainting myself with Twitter and all the associated apps. My personal account pxldan and the MosaicGlobe account have been idle for a while. Twittering is awesome but like any social/marketing tool it can consume tons of time. However, some new tools have popped up during my absence to make it all a bit easier. Actually hundreds of em! The power users have flocked to TweetDeck. This application is built on AdobeAir and is great for managing multiple conversations and groups. To manage pxldan i've ditched Twitterific in favor of Twhirl's user interface features (also also built with AdobeAir). I still use Twitterific for the iphone but i'll try another app when i find the time... The next step was to find people with similar interests to follow (twellow.com and justtweetit.com). So now one of my desktops are now awash in conversational bustling. Let's see if I can maintain the discipline to maintain them both.

Clients are Mean

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 15:43:48 UTC

Sometimes the work that I feel is the best can be rejected by a client, and sometimes the work that is chosen seems to be the weakest in the bunch...Flogged magazine features those great rejects. The magazine itself is a downloadable PDF so you cant read it on the crapper unless you print it out first - but on the upside, it's free. So when your feeling rejected, remember it happens to every designer - and here's the proof. http://www.floggedmagazine.com/

Add a FriendFeed widget to MosaicGlobe

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:32:47 UTC

FriendFeed is a feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites, social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging updates, as well as any other type of RSS/ Atom feed.

Recently a friend asked if it was possible to add a FriendFeed widget to his MosaicGlobe website. I said no cuz I had tried to get creative with a blogcatalog widget a while back using a z-index layer in the footer field (hack). I was feeling good about it till another inspired friend informed me it looked a bit off in IE. She was being kind - it was a disaster on IE and made the page nearly unreadable. Remember kids - cross-browser testing!

Anyway, as it turns out FriendFeed has a Image widget that works everywhere. To paste it into a MosaicGlobe page, click the 'Embed in a web page' link on your FriendFeed site and select the Feed Widget. Select the option that you want displayed and select the Image format. Then copy and paste the HTML into your page (be sure you have the text editor in HTML view < >).

I embedded the widget to my About Me page. Note that I wanted 3 entries on mine but the widget creator only offered 1,5 and 10. So I choose 10 and changed it to 3 in the resulting code [num=3] - which seems to have worked. I also wrapped it in a float:left div to keep the page style looking decent.However, if it looks like crap on your browser - let me know.

Arts Advocacy in the Whitehouse

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:36:28 UTC

An interesting sidenote: Has any politician in recent memory inspired so much original artwork? Above: Propaganda Artist Shepard "Obey" Fairey's Obama Portrait.

In February, I posted a review comparing the art policies (federal support and arts education) of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I thought it would be nice to revisit the issue with Obama and McCain. However, the McCain art policy would seem to be quite simple - no art. It would actually be more accurate to say the John McCain has an Anti-Arts Policy.

I wrote of Obama's Art advocacy: "As the author of two books, Barack Obama is no stranger to creative expression. His public stance on the arts has been to stress the importance of Arts Educations in terms of the importance that creativity has in the math and science skills needed to fuel the nations future. So in addition to an increased in funding for the NEA, as president, Obama has vowed to Expand Public/Private Partnerships Between Schools and Arts Organizations which would increase resources for the U.S. Department of Education’s Arts Education Model Development and Dissemination Grants. He has also promised to create an Artist Corps; young artists trained to work in low-income schools and their communities -- again linking arts curriculum to improved test scores."

Solid huh. You can download Obama's official Arts Policy Platform here: "A Platform In Support Of The Arts"

On the opposite end of the creative spectrum is John McCain who makes it quite clear that he would prefer to eliminate all federal funding for the arts. In 1999, McCain voted with, among others, Sens. Robert Smith, Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Sam Brownback and John Ashcroft for the Smith-Ashcroft amendment. The amendment sought to cut all funding for the NEA from that year’s budget.

As for McCain's official policy on Art's education? Nada. The McCain/Palin website doesn't seem to address the subject. To be fair, McCain has been quoted as saying ”I have opposed federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts because I believe it is not proper to use tax dollars for what many Americans feel are the obscene and inappropriate projects this organization has supported. I support providing federal block grants to the states for arts education and artistic endeavors pursued by state and local authorities, while assuring that federal tax dollars are not spent on obscene or offensive material.”

So while McCain opposes the NEA he does indicate a basic level of arts education as long as it's not offensive or obscene. However defining offensive within art education is a slippery topic. See example #1 and more recently example #2. This runs along the same lines as school libraries - who decides what's appropriate? I am quite certain the the level of art that I want my child exposed to is much more 'expansive' that other parents may feel comfortable with.

The candidates records on the arts are not going to define the election but I believe that arts and arts education are an important part of our society's well-being and a crucial aspect of our future financial strength. The importance of the arts education (music, visual, performing, etc) and creative development in general cannot be underestimated. No matter the industry, politicians included, creativity is a competitive advantage. Is it another educational advantage that our country is willing to cede to other nations?

BTW - In August of 2008, The Americans for the Arts Action Fund PAC released their congressional arts report card. It was nice to note that Colorado's standing has improved from the last time I reviewed the report in 2006. 2 A's 2 B's and 3 F's (2006: 1 A, 1 B, 2 D's and 3 F's) thanks to a one Dem (John Salazar) coming round and one less Republican. What does remains the same is that each F sits next to a Republican.

Obit for Francis! RIP

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:10:24 UTC

Francis! Francis! (right) vs. The Ascaso Dream (left)

9 years ago my wife surprised me with a shiny, orange Francis! Francis! for my birthday. Coffee connoisseurs panned the model for it's substandard pump, aluminum boiler and non standard collar. But I loved-loved my Italian built Francis! Francis! I prefer jump starting my day quickly by using e.s.e pods rather than grinding whole beans. Again, coffee geeks have turned their collective noses up on espresso coffee pods but - whatever. Francis! Francis! is a beautifully designed and simple to use machine at a time when the only commercially available alternative was the black plastic Krups models from Bed, Bath and Beyond. Every morning I was greeted by the "Francis" (Designer Luca Trazzi's Daughter) sticking her tongue out at me as I enjoyed the surprisingly satisfying toggle switching experience. Last year the temperature gauge went out so I would just wait till I heard the boiler turn off before I pulled the shot. However, this week the pump died mid pull. - sniff.

So now I have a decision to make. Buy another Francis! Francis! X1 or shop around. The new X1's have upgraded the pump pressure and added a brass collar. However, I don't like the new 'icons' under the toggles and the price is $900 (We don't have the disposable income we had in out twenties - I blame bush). I'm eyeing the BMW designed, 15-bar Starbucks Sirena machine which for $399 is an affordable alternative - but lacks the inspirational design of the Francis. However, I am really leaning towards the Ascaso "Dream". This machine is built in Spain, has a 16 bar Pump, nice lines and sells for $749. Not a huge savings over the Francis but perhaps enough for me to justify the purchase?

Fiesta Day - Dia de Colores y Cultura

Thu, 4 Sep 2008 00:05:49 UTC

Photos from Fiesta Day in Pueblo Colorado

I spent this last weekend in Pueblo for Fiesta Day at the Colorado State Fair. Last year was the first year I had attended the fiesta and thankfully I was invited to participate in an art show for the event again. The show was organized by Ed and Charlene Simms and participating artists included Jerry Jaramillo, Carlos Fresquez, Evelyn Martinez and Pueblo's Doug Candelaria.

In addition to the parade and a multitude of acts around the fairgrounds we also checked out the Celebracion De Los Charro. The event featured Colorado's Charros de Las Delicias accompanied by Mariachi Vasquez. However, big draw of the event was the horsemanship and rope work of Tomás Garcilazo. The only regrettable part of the weekend was eating fried fair food for every meal - churros, fry bread and a deep fried snickers bar. This was the first time I had tried the snickers (last year i did the twinkie) - not impressed. My father tried the cheesecake - not bad.

I'll post some more photos when I have a chance.