Wednesday, 29 June- The Blanket Weave

I have come to the realization that loneliness is nothing but an illusion. When asked "Who are you?", a typical response is that the "I" we think of, is a kind of secluded operator that controls our bodies from our mind which is completely separate. Our descriptions fall immensely short of who we are though. They contain nothing about our internal organs, the way we breathe, they say nothing about how life is impossible without our place in time and space or interacting with other people/things. We wouldn't think of a flower without a stalk connecting it to soil and without water to soak into the soil to make the flower grow. So why do we think of ourselves entirely removed from our surrounds? Philosopher Alan Watts, suggests that we are each like individual threads in the blanket of reality. If we pull, tighten, damage one thread then other threads clump around them or break away.  Reality is woven together in pattern.

That is perhaps the most well-phrased reasoning behind my current work with patterns. Interaction with the author of this blog http://www.thinkpast.com/ , and my interest in, the similarly candid poetry of Allen Ginsberg, makes me re-examine my usage of pattern. Rather than using them to criticize dogma I would now like to turn these works into a dark reflection of modern reality. So in doing this I have adopted the circle concept of a Tibetan, Buddhist mandala (which represents that inter-connectedness of reality. http://www.religionfacts.com/buddhism/things/mandalas.htm)

So I begun by drawing lots of patterns on grid paper, like in the last post. Now I have increased the complexity of design.

 

Finally, I would like to find a manner of printing or copying them in a way that I can retain the complex design and make tiles of them that are about 20x20cm. Then I can collage them all together, to make a poster-sized print of them all interlinking. I will then merge the patterns with photos or images representing other aspects of reality.

Monday, 27 June

So in regards to images I have been playing with at this point.

And now I need to start finding images to combine. So I can create representations of this time, where people and places dance, writhing in these patterns of human entanglement. (Though do ignore the colours. This is pure design and I just fill these things to make editing.)

Fleeting patterns. Residual joy.

I just recalled my password to this sight, hence not updating for a while. In the mean time, I have found some incredible moments of joy. I feel as though the last three or four days are a continuation of a dream. Like a prolonged moment of consciousness. Nothing feels particularly important but everything is so beautiful with a kind of ethereal glow. I feel like everything, including myself, is just woven through a kind of universe pattern that we can't see but we all know is there. Like perpetually changing threads of something that comprises reality, all we can see is the pattern of change. I think this is what happens when you fall into moments of joy with someone that are fleeting moments but reside in memories that dance like a ballerina on repeat video. https://picasaweb.google.com/102633729999897508670/PatternProjectionsShopped?feat=directlink#5506953507057394834 (I've been thinking)

I was going to work at lifeline today before I see Anneliese (to work on the book about Brisbane) but I think I need to draw something of these woven patterns on grid paper. I need to re-interpret life into patterns because they've changed :)  I'll post my drawings and our plans and any work we do on the book this afternoon. (particularly now that I know my password)

Portrait of Friend Arthur as Kraken. Interlaced with pattern

Friday 17, June

Thoughts about a project (a book I'm working with with a photographer friend) are churning around in my head like a jumbled soup of recycled brain waves. Perhaps that just means I need to document them in my more stable diary-blog format. Initially I wanted to work on a children's book illustrated to show characteristics of my local area. I think it is now connected with a more morbid, sincere vein of thought.

At my friend's suggestion, I've been looking at the work of Joel-Peter Witkin....- A talented photographer who shows rather grim, almost carnival or freak-show pictures of confronting subjects. These images are somewhat grotesque but it resonates with the idea of a local environment morphing with individual perception. Eastern philosophies even suggest this, in the sense that you are the world you see around you because you and your environment can never be seen from anything but a very personal interpretation.

I would like to think that I didn't perceive the world around me in such a morbid way, and I don't, but quite often I find myself in unsettling nightmares of this type at night. I tend to re-interpret them into my visual art, just like the symbolist Odilon Redon did. I work in polar opposites to not lose sight of the entire spectrum of interpretation in it's whole. Which is why I do things like painting pure abstracts and photo manipulation or life-drawing in the same intervals of work. Also I need to balance morbidity in art (like these images) with opposites like joy and humor.

This book I will be working on will show all ends of this scale in relation to people's interpretations of the city we live in. Like how morbid events taint an otherwise normal place, positive happenings can cause places to connote something beautiful. I guess that's also the basis of how advertising functions.

With abstract photography, painting, drawing and imagery we will document the connotations in their diversity. I'm still thinking this through but hopefully there will be grants and exhibitions available for this project.

The apples are fresh if you're looking right....

If you copy yourself enough times you become very large.

After waking up this morning I read Keith Haring's journals for about an hour. At some point during this, I just got "it". I mean in the sense that even though I understood everything he wrote the whole way through, something just clicked and I just "got" it. At which point his artwork's became awesome to me, rather than just interesting art done by an eloquent man. Is that the whole game of art? Just making people feel like they've not just bought a gift token from your mind but they really "got it". So then I tried something I've never had an ability at.... simple, comical drawings :)