Confusing “Different” with “Better”

January 22, 2012  –  Thoughts

Gallery Night was this weekend, and it was the first time in a long time that I went. It was artistically stimulating, as usual; I had the chance to absorb the details of hundreds of works of art by established and emerging area artists.

Since I’ve been making more time to do art recently, having the chance to expose myself to a bunch of other artists (somewhere other than the Internet) was helpful. But it wasn’t long before I caught myself dumping all the work I was seeing into two buckets: better and worse—than my own artwork, that is. (And it didn’t help that the people I was with kept saying things like, “Could you do that? How about that?”)

“That’s been done before—lame,” I said. Or, “This is the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. Why do I even bother doing art when there are people out there who can do stuff like this?” It was reasonable for me to consider the stuff that was “better” than mine to be almost divine work, but the stuff that was “worse” than mine just made me sick to my stomach because it was being shown on Gallery Night while my stuff hasn’t really seen the light of day. “Maybe this stuff really is better than mine,” I thought.

Eventually I came across some work that was done in watercolor with ink outlining, the same method that I’ve been working with for the past few years. The artist’s linework was far superior to mine, I thought, as were her treatment of the medium, her colors… That’s when I wanted to give up most. Her art was just so much better than mine, I thought.

But now I’ve had a few days to mull this all over, and I’ve been reminded of something I realized—or pretended to have realized—some time ago: These other artists’ work isn’t better or worse than mine; it’s just different. (And thinking about it now, it’s certainly good that my work is different than theirs, because if it were the same I’d be in an even worse place.) 

So that’s it: There is no “better” in art, just “different.” Now, I’m sure art critics wouldn’t allow that to suffice, but I do.

 

Sun & Moon Illustration

January 18, 2012  –  Artwork

Had this one sitting for a few days and decided to work on it a little more today… I’m liking it much better.

 

I don’t get into politics, but this is important

January 18, 2012  –  Thoughts

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

 

Training Begins!

January 17, 2012  –  Updates

This year I’m planning to run three marathons: Green Bay (May), San Francisco (July) and Bilbao (October). Both my brother and my mom are running in San Francisco also—it’ll be their first marathon! And then my family and I are thinking about doing the Goofy Challenge (a half and full marathon in the same weekend) at Disney World in January.

I took last week off from running, chocking it up to “recovery” from my last marathon. (In reality, though, I was fine since Tuesday.) It was nice having a few days off, but I’ve been itching to go for a run. 

Especially since I’ve been reading ChiRunning. It’s a really interesting book that talks about form and posture in running… and the testimonials/results of good form and posture are really astounding. Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter, where the author talks about his early experience with the practice:

That was when I began to experience a new level of smoothness and ease, often feeling as if I were skimming along on a conveyor belt. As I worked on technique, my sense of running more smoothly and efficiently gradually began to replace that old feeling of working hard to run. My breathing became less labored, my muscles were not getting sore, and many times I would feel better at the end of a run than I did when I started. I could go out for a thirty-mile run and come back without any major discomfort: an exhilarating realization. “Postrun recovery” began to take on a whole new meaning—hours instead of days, and sometimes no time at all.

Judging from the testimonials of people who’ve taken his classes and read his book, he’s not unique in that. It all seems pretty incredible, and I’m excited for what this can do for my running. I had my first training run today—a 30-minute tempo run—and it felt fantastic. 

Interested? Check out the book on Amazon.

 

Collectibles

December 30, 2011  –  Short Stories

You might say he was living in the past. But it wasn’t his past—it was everyone else’s.

The man spent his days searching from dumpster to dumpster for collectibles. He had a particular interest in the collectibles of one young woman, a girl in her early 20s working in marketing with good credit. Week after week the man harvested her cotton swabs and junk mail to such an extent that, eventually, her discarded possessions made up the comfortable majority of his own.

Continue reading Collectibles.