Remains of the Day

Packing and selling the last remains of the past dozen years, I'm reminded of a line from The Human Comedy by Balzac:

"Tell me what you possess and I will tell you what you think."

They say ownership is 9/10ths of the law, but are they referring to those that possess or those that are owned? Intersections and tragedies don't necessarily have to go hand-in-hand, but I'll be damned if it doesn't rip the essence from life every now and again.

Five weeks and I go home. - North

Steampunk.... probably not

The last couple years I have really enjoyed reading about the different processes various Steampunk artists use to create their post-modern Victorian throwbacks. Perhaps it has something to do with the complete opposite approach to ornamentation used by 99% of the art world when presenting art – myself included. Now I’m not saying that I want to crossover to the Steampunk genre, but I do believe the style has definitely evolved these past couple years from nostalgic kitsch to verifiable minor art movement.

Click here to see an example of the process.

I bring this up, because Steampunk seems to be the most easily transferable functional art movement that I have come across. Nothing seems to be off limits for a Steampunk transformation: laptops, watches, lamps, etc. But is the utilization of transformation of a functional object into an art object enough of a process to generate a MAJOR art movement that will stand the test of time?

Rather than take something mass-produced and change it, I believe I need the complete sense of power that accompanies starting from scratch. That does not dilute the importance of this style or level of process (watch some of the online videos and instructions and you’ll see that the level of detail and raw talent utilized by the artists is astounding) – but for myself and my work, I just think I need to keep looking for the functional art process that starts with empty hands instead of something I picked-up at Bestbuy. - North

With Complete Disregard for the Bear...

While packing my studio for the next move, I ran across this nine-year-old photo from my Gallery Director days the first time I lived in Missouri. - North

Collecting Thoughts

So I’ve noticed that the terms “functional painting” and “functional art” have a near endless supply of meanings. I’ve found examples of work that expand the definition of the terms to include:

• Methods of alternating home-décor to suit one’s image or financial status.

• Murals (this one threw me for a loop, I suppose the “function” includes teaching history, narratives, etc. – but that could include the majority of painting, so…)

• Work that involves the recycling of one material to create the base substance for another creation (such as a couch or wall hanging).

• Pretty much anything that falls within the realm of folk-art.

• And of course the standard-bearer for the American West – lamps and end tables made almost entirely from antlers.

So where does that leave the fine artist searching for a bit of the ole’-kinetic-lovin’ in the standard-bearer two-dimensional painting process? I believe the answer lies in the mixing of traditional media. Clay, glass, oils and glazes – let’s not forget paper either, oh where would we be in this world without paper. Wood and canvas also seem necessary in any process that would require more than a token nod to classicism whilst displaying the innovation that can redefine itself as contemporary art.

Don’t worry I’m working towards something, here. – North

Explorations

This is what I find interesting when I think of the possibilities of blending functional art and the act of painting. Obviously, not as examples of finished products, but definitely inspiration toward the concepts of composition and mechanics. - North

North by Northwest (yeah, I have a great name)

I have some ideas for the next phase of my work… I have an old friend that has spent twenty years creating sculptures/machines that create random art. I’m not looking for randomness, so much… anymore; but I do admire that idea of making one piece of art that can spawn another artwork or artistic moment, in perpetuity. My creative process, however, has nearly always required place as a muse.

I’m moving home to Montana and I’m not as disturbed as I probably should be with how that affects the Immersion Travel Art philosophy of my work. Painting still lives within the forefront of my mind; as does the concept of studying the unfamiliar cultural aspects of both resident and neighboring societies. However, I have held this growing need for quite some time to create functional work beyond the scope of my map paintings or even the continuous examples of contemporary kinetic/conceptual sculpture that I encounter in galleries and museums. The last time I felt this sort of need to reinvent myself I bought a house in Montana and within a short amount of time I was painting from the rabid perspective of every inch of those far northern prairies and mountains. I still own that house and studio space, so I’m going home within the next few months. I call it home, my wife calls it home and even my three children agree. These past three years, I have missed the Indian Summer that delivers fall to Montana. I don’t plan on letting that happen again.

For me - this continuous evolution of one’s perspective of the world is an ethereal aspect of the American West. - North

Form, Function, Multiple Lives

I’ve always been intrigued by kinetic sculpture…. until the moment I interact with it. Although, today, it seems that the new dominant factor in kinetic works is conceptual, I am still left wanting more. When I consider true functional fine art, I visualize a Stradivarius. The lives of the fictional violin from the great film “The Red Violin” also come to mind.

Function and form as one aesthetically pleasing work of art that reinvents itself with each owner or participant. A justification for the concept that the idea (itself) or artwork is greater than the individual creator. – North

Saw Blade Paintings and Function in Art

As a fine artist that prefers the company of wide-open spaces and the country-folk that accompany it, I often find that the biggest hurdle I have to cross is that of public opinion within the community I inhabit.

The most common question to answer is the purpose or rationalization for spending time or a “career” towards the end result of simply making art for art’s sake. Ironically, this has become much more of an issue since returning to the southern Midwest from the Rocky Mountain States. So the question goes – do I respond with functional work that is aesthetically pleasing or simply ignore the communitys' questions of relevance? Furthermore (and this is an interesting notion)… have I already unconsciously replied by turning my paintings into giant maps? - North

Never Trust Wine from a Box

HOLYHEAD, Wales — A man who dressed up as Darth Vader, wearing a black garbage bag for a cape, and assaulted the founders of Britain's first Jedi church was given a suspended sentence Tuesday.

Arwel Wynne Hughes, 27, attacked Jedi church founder Barney Jones — a.k.a. Master Jonba Hehol — with a metal crutch, hitting him on the head, prosecutors told Holyhead Magistrates' Court. He also whacked Jones' 18-year-old cousin, Michael Jones — or Master Mormi Hehol — bruising his thigh, in the March 25 incident.

Unfortunately for Hughes, the incident was recorded on a video camera that the cousins had set up to film themselves in a light saber battle.

"Darth Vader! Jedis!" Hughes shouted as he approached.

Hughes claimed he couldn't remember the incident, having drunk the best part of a 2 1/2-gallon box of wine beforehand.

"He knows his behavior was wrong and didn't want it to happen but he has no recollection of it," said Hughes' lawyer, Frances Jones.

District Judge Andrew Shaw sentenced Hughes to two months in jail but suspended the sentence for one year. He also ordered Hughes to pay $195 to each of his victims and $117 in court costs.

Barney Jones, his brother Daniel and cousin Michael set up the Church of Jediism, Anglesey order, last year. It claims about 30 members.

Jedi is the faith followed by some of the central characters in the "Star Wars" films. In the 2001 United Kingdom census, 390,000 — 0.7 percent of the population — listed Jedi as their religion.

Catching Dreams

I haven’t posted in while, spring always raises the hair on the back of my neck. I get that slight metallic taste in narrow recesses of my throat and I wonder how much longer I should stay in a place. It is always an odd moment in the year, as I watch another school term pass for my daughter and wonder aloud – how does one plan for spontaneity? Are a series of actions required to define a vision? Does adhering to a specific philosophy still enable random motion? Is a quest still important beyond the moment in which is lived? Do ideas have merit because they are lived or because they are successful?

During my first year of college, one of my good friends was a fellow skinny pre-architecture kid named Donnie, but we called him Slim. The housing administration of our college sifted through their grand wisdom and chose his random twelfth-floor-dorm assignment by some manner as obtuse as tossing a pepperoni onto a pizza. I have no other explanation for why they placed him with a talented yet juvenile baseball catcher, named Eddie Fitzpatrick, for a roommate.

Now Eddie was born the same year as I and raised in southern California. If I recall correctly, he arrived at our fair Mississippi River shore via a baseball scholarship. Something about his love for the game ingrained in young Eddie the desire to constantly swing items whilst walking across campus or even to the cafeteria for meals. He alternated the objects from day to day and was rarely seen without one or the other. These items included first and most obviously a bat and second, though, more surprising – a hammer. This wasn’t just any hammer, however, this was a fine wooden-handled job that had his full name neatly engraved near the base.

He liked the women and for the most part… the women seemed to enjoy his company as well. Slim and I assumed that the hammer must have been a gift from one of his lady friends and he kept it as a memento to remind everyone that his virility was worthy of rewards (and more obviously a good swing as well). The majority of the guys on our floor, however, were thoroughly unimpressed. I hate to nail-down one defining feature that may have turned his neighbors against him, but I dare say it was the endless supply of penis jokes with accompanying visual aides. At one time or another, every door on the twelfth floor was randomly knocked-on in the early morning hours and the occupants awakened by Eddie asking if they dropped their keys. The confused and still half-asleep unwitting participant would look to Eddie’s hands held close to his waist and holding something that most definitely did not resemble a set of keys. Then and only then as one was trying to remember how to cast the door shut would a glance at the floor to the sight of Eddie’s pants around his ankles trigger the internal recognition of a sick joke.

After a number of these repeated occurrences a group of residents took it upon themselves to penny Eddie into his room during the early morning hours. Now to penny one into a room the door must open inward (it also helps if the frame is metal and the door is solid) in order for a couple dozen pennies to be wedged between the frame and door rendering the inhabitant unable to open the door and thus trapped to consider their own brand of idiocy that led to such a revolt. Unfortunately the plan did not have the desired response due to the fact that Slim had an early class and Eddie was sleeping it off in the nearby girls’ dorms. To make it up to Slim, I stole the great hammer of Eddie and gave it to him as a reward. He in turn broke the head from the tool and placed it on Eddie’s pillow; then returned the handle to me to avoid incrimination.

The following semester both Eddie and Slim transferred to new schools. Slim spent the next year at a community college a hundred miles west and Eddie took a baseball scholarship at a hard-line fundamentalist Christian college in mid-eastern Tennessee. Every time I have moved over the past ten years, I have run across Eddie’s headless hammer handle. Recently, I thought of him again, while going through boxes and finally decided to dig-up a bit of information on our fair baseball star.

I learned that Eddie was number 33 in the 1997 college draft. He was picked-up by Pittsburgh in May and released by the Phillies roughly ten months later. From 1998 onward he has strung-together a career of minor-league ball teams, retiring twice to pursue assistant coaching gigs at small unheard-of Christian colleges (I can only assume his sense of humor has cleaned-up). It is this last part of the story that I find the most interesting. He never gave-up on baseball. I mean come on Eddie; you didn’t even make it beyond your first season in the majors. Why didn’t you just quit? Then I hear everyone in my own life asking similar questions. I swear to Christ if one more person asks me if I still paint – my next masterpiece will be engraved on the hood of their car.

I told a relative, the other day, that my family and I were considering a permanent move back to Montana. We’ve been thinking it is maybe time to stop and smell the glaciers for a dozen or so years. The response to my revelation was – “what would you do?” Well, pretty much what I’ve always done – make art. I could care less about much outside that realm. I guess Eddie and I have that in common. We live in the moment of our actions. I have a feeling that if we met today, I’d like him a lot more than I did back in college. I respect someone that doesn’t stop living his or her dream for the sake of insufficient financial success. These past couple years, when some one asks me what I do for a living – I simply respond, “I do what I do, the money eventually follows”. – North

Harbor Lights

Poulsbo Beach Under a Seattle Sky

Travel Concerns

I had some extra time and my recent dealings with airlines had been less than pleasant – so I booked Amtrak for the trip west to Seattle, two weeks ago. Always looking for an adventure I rode coach traveling west, but returned First Class via Sleeper Car for the eastern leg of the trip. There were certainly the usual array of colorful characters on the western-bound coach car; such as the gentleman that drank one Budweiser after another from the moment we left St. Louis at 6:35AM until we arrived in Milwaukee that evening. My disdain slowly turned to awe as I watched the man drain cans, seemingly, without interruption. Forget the alcohol content, how can one person consume that much liquid? (and the snack car was selling them for $4 each!) - North

Beachfront on the Kitsap Peninsula

car to train
train to train
train to car
car to ferry
ferry to car
and back again

Essex from the Dining Car

Passing Train: Glacier National Park

Passing Train: Sweetgrass Hills

Written Ten Days Ago

3:05 AM - outside Fargo, I am sick of the southern floods. More than a few traces of snow smatter the fields and cars as we enter town. Wandering tracks that look like Andy Goldsworthy was imitated – by God or maybe Moses have broken the frozen top-layer of snow. My body cries for sleep. My mind is resistant. I’ve waited too long, pretending to be North, to rest now.

A few hours backwards - in Milwaukee, the passenger manifest changed starkly from black to white. The matter-of-fact division was unnerving. As we enter the Dakotas, I’ve been a train traveler for twenty-one hours. The trip from St. Louis to Chicago was hellish. I’ll relive it in reverse next week. Is there an opposite to hell?

I’m listening to Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová through a single headphone. I leave one ear reserved for the sounds of my wife and daughter breathing as they sleep despite the rush of rain now sheeting the train. Thunder slaps the sky above the coach car; the lingering winter clap does not stir them to recovery in this lost northern spring. Moments require soundtracks; I was raised to be entertained. Bob Dylan carried me across Illinois and then again we conquered the face of Minnesota (his lost homeland), together. With the flat wet Minnesota terrain behind me I encounter only more unregistered tundra on the rails of North Dakota. My Montana is in the distance, though Washington is the final destination – I now rely on the melodies of an Irish and Czech duo to get me there. I can’t ignore the fact that I am an immigrant myself - in this adopted northern country; relying on the voices of fellow-foreigners in one-half of my head.

We’ve pulled away from the last remaining lights… a remembrance of civilization outside Fargo. The entire world has gone dark – except the single reading light above my head. While the other passengers sleep, I can only find dreams with open eyes. - North

Spring Over the Ridge

Flash floods continue to remind us that Spring is both lovely and hateful. - North

Dry Land

The levees are breaking, the poorest sections of town are flooding; they plan on opening the dam to finish off what nature started and hopefully save the best of the rest. We've heard it all before - but this time it is Poplar Bluff. Only twenty miles and a childhood away. - North