“Inside the Mind and Creativity
of Eric
Homan (Through the Years)”
-My Creativity Dogma-
by Eric Homan
~Written
from 1993 thru 2008~
Copyright
2008, Eric Homan
“Who I Am As An Artist” aka: Everything You Wanted To Know
About Eric Homan
(But Was Afraid To Ask)”
by Eric Homan
Contents Within:
Insights/ Philosophies/
Manifestoes/ Theories/ Concepts/ Rantings/
Beliefs/ Dreams/ Notes/ Cacophonies/ Thoughts/ Clues/ Confessions/ Thoughts/ Dogmas/ Dissertations/ Thesis/ Critiques/ Essays/
Propaganda/ Opinions/ Ideas/ Views/ Notions/
Proposals/ Hypothesis/ Arguments/ Judgments/
Feelings/ Attitudes/ Values/ Beliefs/ Convictions/ Principles/ Aesthetics/
Menu of Catharsis/ Contents
“Who I Am As An Artist” aka: Everything
You Wanted To Know About Eric Homan (But Was Afraid To Ask)”
Forward
Personal Intro
Examples of My Computer Artwork
My Personal Expression
Art as “Entertainment” Therapy
“Artist’s Statement”: A
Universal Personal Art Experience
“Empathy Art”
Some Family and Personal Background
I Am a Powerless
Super-Hero, But an Empowered Artist
“The Record Breaker”
My Hidden
Keep on Going
The Trials and Traumas of Surviving
My Identity As a Computer Artist
Now What Do I Do?
Fear the Premature Death of My Creativity
The Moment I Truly Realized I Was an Artist
One of the Events That Got Me Out of My Shell
The Creativity Trap
The Loss of Creativity in the Real
World Work Setting
"You Can't
Go Back Home Again"
A Job in the Arts
Teaching Philosophy
Teaching
at an
How I’ve Grown as a Professional and as an Adult
The Collaboration between Teacher and
Student
Teaching with Confidence
Being Professional vs. Being
Eccentric
Having an “Imaginary Friend” for
Creative Satisfaction
Reasons for My “Fantasy World”
My Sensitivity Complex
The van Gogh Legacy
Reflecting on the Eric of
the Future Tense
Artistic Confession
The Artist Utopia
Art as
God
Love and Art
A
Sheltered Existence Adds To An Extraordinary Imagination
Exposing and Exorcising Personal Demons
A Journal as Psychotherapy
Journal Exorcism
Journal as a Life-Map
Journal as Financial Savoir
Journal as Time-Travel
Journal Existential Importance
Movie Journal Conversations
Movies as a Creative Oasis
Good Fortune and the Guilt
Working Hard
Artistic “Real World” Conflict
Introspective
or Anti-Social... or Both?
The
Real Thing
Looking
Out For Your Creativity
The
Art Suffocation by the Real World
Beware
of Reality
An
Artist’s
The Fight
for Life of the Obsolete Artist
Do I Have To Conform?
Artists
vs. Society’s Apathy Migraine
Rejections
‘R’ Me
Dealing with Rejections
Art Isn’t About Money
“Art for the Self”/ “Art for the
Soul”
The Right-Brained, But Right-Handed
Dilemma
Why I Am Attracted To Surrealism
Artists vs. the Media
Suicide Me/ Erase Me
The Necessity To Play
The Uncool
My Moment of Existential Clarity
“What the Hell Have I Done With My Life?!”
“Do I Have Anything To Say?”
No New Ideas?!?
Where Do My Ideas or Any Ideas Come
From?
An Illustrated Journal
This Spark of Inspiration
EVERYTHING IS CREATIVE
Expanding the Brain’s Imagination
Powers
My Fantasy World Is So Strong
Feeling the Most Alive with
a Chaotic Hurt
My Superhero Superpowers
Looking Past the “Self-Indulgent”
Surface and Finding One’s Own Expression
Artistic Progression
Creating
Art as a War and Crusade
Having a Social Life vs.
Introspection of Art-Making
Fear the Creative
Fear of Having Children
Art Is Necessary
Art vs. Adulthood: A Sobering Moment
of Clarity
Fear of Being “Domesticated”
The Quest to Be Creative and Be in a Relationship at
the Same Time
An Unhappy Creative Life vs. a Happy
Finding Peace: How to Be Happy as an
Artist
My Long
Road
How A Conservative Family with an
Artist In It Grow Apart
Have an Art Day Today
“Creating Art on a Natural Emotional
High”
Healing Art Dreams
Digital
Artist Discovery?
Problems with Selling Your Artwork
"There's
Too Many Movies In The World For My Own" Crisis Question
The Commercial Formula (“It’s All So Clear To Me Now”)
Don’t Compare Yourself to Those
Around You
Where Is My Audience?
An Artist without an Audience
Controlling Your Light
Living On as an Artist
The Power Trip
Being Driven Isn’t Enough
Artists Hold Nothing Back
It’s Just Not That Simple
The Curse (or Gift) of Being
Ambitious and Depressed
Positive Personal Life Changes/ Art
Life Evolves
A Happy Ending to My Personal Life
Funeral
Rights
“Who I Am As An Artist”
aka: Everything You Wanted To
Know About Eric Homan
(But Was Afraid To Ask)
Forward
4-13-08: I felt compelled to write some sort of
forward to what you’re about to read because, for me, it’s like someone else
entirely wrote it. You see, the following writings were journal entries of
sorts for over a decade of my life that chronicles the ups and many downs of my
life as an artist. With every depressing episode I had, I have to acknowledge
that in a sense… it’s all been worth it. “I’ve made it.” I’ve gotten the
majority of what I wanted out of life. And like life, it still has its upsets
and disappointments. When you’re young, you aspire to such unrealistic dreams
and goals for one self, like becoming a major moviemaker like Steven Spielberg
and such. Of course, once you get older and wiser, you realize that Mr.
Spielberg had more than just talent on his side, but an enormous amount of
luck. And his life hasn’t always been a walk in the park just because he’s
gained a certain degree of mega-success.
How this all relates to my own life is that I also
wanted to make it big as a movie director when I was growing up to show all
those who teased me and doubted me when I was a kid. I was obsessive about it.
I worked like the devil possessed and maybe worked a bit too intensely to get
ahead. I made my life so much about being good at art that I eventually
neglected being good at being a personable human being.
So that is why I am here and now writing about where
my life is at now. Because what you’re about to read can be so honest, strange,
revealing, disturbing, cathartic, and emotional, you may not believe I will
ever be a happy and well-rounded person again. What one needs to realize is
that when I wrote the things I have, I was a different person in very different
times. I’m happy to disclose that I did find a way to a balance of my artistic
side with a personal life. I am engaged to be married to an absolutely
wonderful woman named Lisa. We own a lovely home in
Now
that doesn’t mean I don’t still get down or upset some days. I still face down
my depression sometimes, but I feel that I am gaining a greater sense of
control and confidence. I didn’t become a household name
And
as you read, know this: I still have my sense of humor intact. Remember that as
you proceed forward… with caution. My
life awaits.
Personal Intro:
“Hello,
my name is Eric Homan. And please, call me ‘Eric’.”
Believe me, this is a great privilege to
be able to present a statement of who I am as an artist, why I do computer art,
and what my art pieces are about. When I see a gallery show of a particular
artist’s work, I find myself always looking for and reading the artist’s
statement with great interest for its additional background, complexity, and
insight on their art that isn’t directly expressed in the work itself. This is
especially helpful when experiencing art that is self-expressive and
surrealistic. With the additional explanation from the artist, I often find
myself empathizing and appreciating the work more on a personal basis, as if I
was let in on its secrets and emotions. I hope you find my following comments,
philosophies, and explanations just as revealing and enlightening. “Let me show
you the contents of my artistry...”:
Statement Intro
Throughout most of my
childhood and up into adulthood, people who knew me told me that I didn't talk
much. Well that's true - unless it's about a topic that I actually do have something to say about. I won't
talk about sports if they're not interesting to me. But if it's about certain
specific topics involving art, movies, music, or emotions - I have plenty to
express. I only speak when I feel it's necessary and worthwhile. I don't want
to waste my time or energy on boring chit-chat small talk conversations. When a
topic arises that I feel deeply about, I express it passionately like a man
possessed.
So the following essays
are topics that I felt a need to express. If I didn't feel that they were
important enough to write about, I wouldn't have bothered. They exist before I
consciously choose for them to exist and
be read. They are not the average, ordinary banter. They have meaning to me
and hopefully to many other people as well. I wish to share my sensitivity
through my art and writing.”
I realized that there is a key
ingredient missing from the majority of artwork that I look at. As an anonymous
viewer, I am lacking a personal relationship with the artists. I don’t
personally know them. Just imagine how much you feel for a friend or
family member’s artwork than you would normally for some stranger’s artwork.
The personal connection is what makes you see into the soul of the art. So that
is why I choose to write so extensively and exhaustively my “Artist’s
Statements” in order to make that personal connection with those who experience
my artwork. I want them to know about me in order to feel about
the artwork. If you understand my background and where the artwork came from,
then the work takes on an entirely new and enhanced sensitive meaning. I ever
so desperately want my work to matter. So I put in the time and energy to make
it so. I hope it shows that I cared enough to share my inner life with
you.
My Formal Biography
Eric Homan is an assistant professor who teaches Motion Graphics, Computer
Animation, and Video classes at the
Examples of My Computer Artwork
Describing
the content my artwork, I would explain my pieces as Surrealism mixed with
Expressionism with touches of Dadaism for humor. A friend of mine eloquently
labeled me “The ‘Vincent van Dali’ of Computer Art”, which I liked. My pieces
vary from 3D animated haiku visual poems (“Life Forms”) to an interactive
experience piece (“Vincent van Gogh Working at McDonald’s”) to abstract 3D
animated paintings visualizing elemental intercourse (“Rainbow Twister Sex”).
My Personal Expression
This
written artistic statement pretty much sums up the majority of what there is to
know about me and why I create art. I wrote down the following because I have
an overwhelming amount to express about a tremendous number of artistic and
technological topics. I specifically wrote down what I feel because I can’t verbalize it coherently and fully. It’s
simply too much information and emotion. I needed the time to be inspired to
record it into words and present it as a paper or art piece. I needed to
coordinate and organize my ideas before I can fully express myself. When I do
speak in public, I usually stutter or mutter my words because I’m trying to
express dozens of ideas and feelings at once! What it all comes down to is that
I make art out of passionate self-expression - nothing more. Not for money, not
for women, not for fame. I desire to communicate who I am so people will feel
what I’ve felt. The following writings are a testament to who I am as an
individual artist.
The
following honest explanations are my way of spelling
out why I’ve acted the way I have and chosen the route of “artist”. Writing it
all down, I can reach more than one person so I don’t have to explain myself
all over again and use up more time and energy. Besides I can express myself
better through writing than I can through on the spot speaking it. It’s also my
therapy for myself. It’s for others to understand me better so they won’t feel
confused about me. Writing all of this is like confession. I was forced to
examine myself and strip down my guard to let my soul breathe.
Asserting
My Hidden Inner Voice
4-24-05: I have come to realize that I don’t always
have much to say out loud in public. I’m an introspective thinker that ponders
and dreams on one’s existence and the life surrounding myself. So I finally
asset myself fully and roundly when it comes to writing. I need that moment of
reflection and quiet to analyze and take notes of what’s around me in order to
have something meaningful and enlightening to share with others. This is how I
best communicate. I write from my own life experience. I write from the movies
I watch or about the music I listen to. I write from the (night and day) dreams
I have. I write from my hurricane imagination. These are my passions. So it’s a
grand irony when people find me boring on some occasions when they are out and
about with me. I am usually quiet and reserved, unless stirred with charismatic
conversation or inspiration. Strangers and casual observers find me almost
shallow and withdrawn. But this is not the case. They see a silent surface
without witnessing the deeper, hidden content within. I do not thrive in a
crowded social environment. I am a dreamer, and I work best in times of peace
and quiet. I feel the most free when I am in nature, and that probably speaks
volumes. So here are the thoughts boiling inside my brain. My mind is always
active, though I do get tired when overstimulated or overwhelmed by my
surroundings. Give me space and give me time to pour my heart and emotions and
opinions on.
My Artistic Turning Point
“We
have all been changed by our tragedies.” –from the comic book Justice #12.
It
was an unexpected date to be a turning point: October 12, 1996 – Columbus Day.
It happened to be the worst date of my young adult life that involved the
ultimate tragic surrealism: this was the day that my mother was killed in a car
accident. It became the defining moment in the development of my life and for
my artwork. From that moment on, my art steered into being more
self-expressive, personal, and introspective instead of commercial, shallow,
and superficial. This devastating trauma at my young adult age of twenty simply
altered my artwork to have a more personal, deeper meaning. My mom had always
personified all that was good and kind in my life. Realizing that some driver
who was driving too fast had senselessly killed her, I had to reexamine my
chaotic feelings in order to survive my overwhelming grief. Art was my main
lifeguard, my saving grace, my spiritual salvation.
In
order to fully understand the insanity of this event, you have to know what
type of a woman my mother was. My mom was extremely polite, innocent,
kind, sweet, generous, supportive, cheerful, always smiling, and deeply
religious in her Catholicism. To have such a positive existence destroyed so
senselessly, and on a day when she was on the way home from doing volunteer
work when some @sshole was passing two other cars over a hill in no-pass lane
was the key to unleashing the madness to this life. It was too devastating and
numbing at the same time. I couldn’t decide to cry or chock up. I had to find
something to hold onto to save myself. Creating art was my release.
I recall during the end of my mother’s viewing before
the funeral ceremony that my two sisters, my mother’s two sisters, my father,
and myself were allowed to have several minutes alone beside our mother before
they permanently closed the casket. At my mother’s casket, I made a private
prayer/ oath that I’d make her proud and I wouldn’t let her down. I’d make
something good of myself... that I’d never give up... that I’d do my very best. It was overwhelmingly intense proclamation of my
dedication to becoming a great artist instead of a good artist.
It was the start of an obsessive quest for pride and glory. There was an almost
delusional intensity to my promise. At my most vulnerable and emotional, I
endearingly declared to make something of my life instead of an average
anybody. And so began my odyssey of
working harder and focusing myself completely on fulfilling this renewed obsession
with becoming great – something I’ve felt deep down inside of myself
since I was a boy. I had to make something of myself. I had to work hard… and
dream harder than the rest.
Her
death woke up my emotions to express them in artistic means. It was also during
this experience that I sensed my artistic styles. Surrealism and Expressionism
was discovering that your mother is dead and the world goes on just as if
nothing tragic had happened to anybody else. Life’s state of insanity had to
hit home in order to provoke me to feel deeper and find harmony to my life
through doing art. Though great movies and art had always stimulated immense
emotion out of me (i.e., Schindler’s List and van Gogh’s “The Crows”),
they usually didn’t last with me. Her
death did. With my emotional barriers
open and raw, I couldn’t help but release my feelings. Her death defined where
my artwork would go: into a strongly emotional, introspective direction instead
of a commercial path. With too many questions conflicting me, I had to find
answers - so I created them in my art. Indeed, art dulled the pain of my
mother’s death. As a result, I filled myself with peace by creating art.
Instead of seeing a psychiatrist, I decided to talk through my art.
“It’s
only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do everything.” -a
line of dialogue from the film Fight Club.
This
change in artistic tide could best be exemplified through a storyboard piece I
did weeks after my mother’s death. The raw and brutal visuals and emotions in
“The Falls” shows how much anguish I had that needed to be released -
immediately.
Coincidentally,
I later read up and found out that some of my personal favorite musicians had
also lost their mothers in car-related accidents when they were a young,
impressionable age: John Lennon, Bono, Sinead O’ Connor….
“Eulogy For My Mother”
(Or the
sermon I would have given at her funeral service): “As you have seen already,
us children of my recently departed mother have taken part in the service of
this funeral mass. Lara gave the First
(I’m
not sure if I did a good job. I only managed to express about 10% of what I
originally wanted to say.)
Going through the sudden death of a loved one is
perhaps one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through. The death of my
mother made me emotionally dead from delirium off and on for several months. I would
cry hysterically some days to myself in my bedroom during the weeks after the
tragedy. The melancholy insanity would hit me at anytime. I remember having to
hold back from breaking down while in class, in a school hallway, on the way
back to my apartment, or at church. It was a terrifying time to be alive
because I wasn’t sure when the pain would fade away. It’s amazing how I managed
to keep myself together through the cathartic artwork I made while I was a
student at an art school. I survived. I never completely fell apart. I
always had the work to get me motivated to have something to put my
mind, emotions, and talent to. It saved my life from emotional implosion.
Living with the Knowledge that I
Should Have Been Dead
I
later realized that I was supposed to have gone down to King’s
Sometimes, I start to deeply wonder how I ever managed
to get into movies, comic books, and van Gogh because I never had anyone in my
youth who inspired me to relish these things. Somehow, my curiosity led me to
the library or a bookstore where I discovered them. I sought out these places
because I was bored by my surroundings in a small town (sports, parties with
beer, high school). Logically, I should have gone to a “normal” college
majoring in education because that was what my parents and sisters did. Were
all those years of teasing and rejections so upsetting that I didn't want to
take part in their world anymore? I had to find a route through dreams in order
to escape from normalcy and to become a better person.
I
have been asked one singular question in regards to my artwork and writing that
I’ve created throughout the years: “So what is this for?” In no simpler terms, I had something to
express and I expressed it. I had the time and I used it. I existed so I
expressed it. It was that simple. I rose up to the challenge of making a mark
on society by producing original thoughts, self-expressions, personal visions,
and creative insights. I didn’t want to go through life without having
something to say. (I appear all too shy in ordinary appearance, but I was
flooding up inside with something close to art to get out of me.) I had an
artistic oasis inside my brain that I needed to bath in. Dreams were the gold
and diamonds of life. Out of an unkind desperation, I had to express myself. I
had no choice. Most dreams are born out of
desperation. Or else why dream? Maybe crazy dreams are what keep us sane. So I
suppose I made all this artwork that took me literally thousands upon thousands
of hours to do for myself… with the hope that others would relate to it as
well. Hell, everyone has dreams. I
just wanted to be someone with something to contribute.
If
anyone ever asks me why I do art, I will respond with this: “I feel the most
alive when I am being creatively active. That is when I feel the greatest joy
and ecstasy.” Some critics might call this “getting high off of dreams
instead of off drugs”. Yes, they are correct.
Art as “Entertainment” Therapy
Because
art is an aesthetic medium and can emotionally move and please a wide range of
people, art is “entertainment” therapy. Art could convey a message or emotional
reaction while others experience and “enjoy” it. In the end, the art became
therapy for the artist and the audience as well, in relation to how much they
empathize. I became
an art psychiatrist. I usually create art to define who I was as a human being at a
certain time in my life. It’s always quite an experience to look back and see who
I was in years gone by. How rewarding to explore myself and possibly help
others through the creative process.
“Artist’s Statement”: A Universal Personal
Art Experience
My
art is a personal experience because life is a universal personal experience. For example, everyone can remember where they
were when they heard the news when John Kennedy was shot, or when the
Challenger exploded, or when the
“Empathy Art”
I
describe my work as being art made for the viewer’s empathy, understanding, and
catharsis: a self-exploration that occurs in the art and is transmuted into the
viewer. The ingredient that makes this art empathetic is that the work has to
be sincere, in quality and emotion, for others to feel, relate, and react to.
My pieces were created out of conflicted emotions (pain and happiness, ecstasy
and numbness, imagination and mediocrity, self-discovery and repression) in
order to find emotional resolution in my life and work. I will not deny the
sense of anguish in most of my pieces - but I feel that it is hurt that needs to be addressed, released, and resolved through
an artistic process in order to arrive with a greater aesthetic whole. Art
helps us re-calibrate our perspective on life as well as enrich our lives with
meaning. Sometimes it takes a cathartic piece of self-expression to sharpen our
senses and retune our imagination. What I’ve expressed was of honest beauty (or
repulsive honesty, depending on one’s point of view). The results were, for me,
a body of artwork through which I am giving back the emotions, fantasy, and
reality that I have lived through to the world. The content tended to be
surreal and expressionist - but that was
what I experienced out of living. It was honesty, not fantasy that I was
recording.
The
Collective Experience
I want my art to touch the vulnerability in all of us
so we can all feel that vulnerability together. It’s a collective experience.
We’re all sensitive, vulnerable human beings no matter who you are. We have
feelings. So let’s touch them through art.
I feel my art really does reach a
lot of people and a wide, mature audience. Who hasn’t been through death… the
break-up of a relationship… despair? Who can’t relate
to loneliness? Loneliness is universal. Therefore, who wouldn’t be able to
relate to my art? The personal is the universal. I project my
feelings into my art for a mass audience to receive them.
Some Family and Personal Background
To understand my artwork better, you need to know part of
the history of my past and where I came from. I grew up in a heavily religious
family in
There was a point during the fifth grade when I became a
sensitive human being. I was getting teased and harassed like crazy for being
different. I liked two girls in my class and being mocked in front of them
devastated me on a daily basis. At home, I would be cruel and tease my older
sister Tanya for being “fat” and overweight when we got into a fight. I was
just venting my frustrations upon someone else. Well, the teasing I was getting
at school started to show too deeply from my increasingly withdrawn and erratic
behavior. I was desperate for the cruelty against me to stop so those girls
might like me. My mother went to see my teacher to see what could be done about
stopping the psychological terror on me. When my mom came home to report about
their meeting, she disclosed that I had teased one of my classmates in the
classroom who was also one of my few friends. At that moment of truth and
revelation, I sunk into an abyss of guilt that I was part of the problem. I was
degrading other people just as those bullies were doing to me. I wasn’t any
better than them. It was at that moment that I realized my actions and decided
I had to change for the better. That was the spark that started my sensitivity.
I Am a Powerless
Super-Hero, But an Empowered Artist
Ever since I was a young boy getting picked on at school,
I’ve been obsessed about becoming a superhero. The cruel reality was that I
didn’t have any super powers in order to help defend myself and impress the
girls. So I had to make one for myself. So I took on the guise of “Artist” with
creativity as my super power. But since my artwork ended up being about
personal expression and conflicted emotions, I turned into an anti-hero instead
of a hero.
My Adolescent Turning
Point
From my journal (3-2-94):
March 2nd,
1990: the monumental date that marks the biggest turning point in my life while
I was growing up… ever. It was the day I was caught forging my
mother’s signature and found myself personally humiliated before my class. I
was used to other people embarrassing and teasing me. This time, it was from
me. And so, I had a minor, little breakdown. I cried while desperately trying
to hold back the tears. I realized that my hard fought life wouldn’t be worth a
cent if I didn’t start to change. Fortunately, I did make a
change in my life… starting on that day. Making that decision was a crucial moment where I had to choose to
be “good” or “bad”. That is why I have always considered it one of the most
prominent moments in my life.
At that time in my life, I was
hanging out with the outcast crowd of loser kids in seventh grade who were
about a year away from going bad.
I enjoyed the freedom they offered, especially during lunch when we’d leave the
school and walk to the local grocery store with the other “rebel” kids and eat
junk food. Then instead of playing basketball with all the other kids, we’d
hide out by a corner school heater until fifth period class started. The
empathic friend I hung out with, Cory Eichen, who was sort of like my alternate
reality version of myself if I didn’t shape up, would later truly go
“bad” by sexually assaulting a girl three years later and soon dropping out of
school from too many school suspensions. He didn’t find any point to going to a
school where your peers degraded and destroyed you. He was a casualty of the
teasing us “geeks” received. I understood.
From my Journals: 1-5-94
Cory Eichen: a past, good friend of mine from 7th grade who
has completely (pardon my English) fucked up his life. Of course, our
classmates and bullies had something to do with it. You see, we were
very much alike back in the 7th grade. Both of us had countless
problems and were equally harassed. We found comfort in each other’s company
after lunch by hanging out in a secluded corner of the hallway. Yet somehow, I
strayed off on to the best path possible for myself while Cory kept to himself
and remained getting teased on the way to Juttes grocery store, which only led
to fights. I believe that teasing made him lose control of his life. You can
either get better or worse when you get to the end of the line. You have to
make a decision. We lived parallel lives until that point of decision and no
return. I choose the hard, longer path by shaping up, working harder on my
studies, and “ignoring” the teasing and people who wanted to “fight me”. Cory
choose the regular, same old path. God, some days I wish I could have helped
him. But now it’s too late. He probably will serve time in prison (maybe for
life) now that’s he’s gone out and nearly raped a girl/ his “girlfriend”. Maybe
one day he’ll do himself in and do something worse and find himself receiving
the death penalty (let alone suicide). Time will tell its secrets. It’s only a
matter of time.
1-13-94 By the way, Cory
Eichen was so wrong and so right. He took on the evils of life and got caught.
He “absorbed” the evil that was around him, all the teasing that people did to
him, and became it.
And through the years, I strayed away
from the public crowd of irrelevance and went on my own path for personal
success.
Now, here I am, a successful student,
worker, friend, and “visionary”. Who ever said patience is a key to a fine
future must have been right. I am a successful person. Now that I can’t believe
especially when I’ve grown up to be a young man. Unbelievable.
One of my earliest goals for an ideal career choice for me was to be a Disney Imagineer who designed theme park attractions. The Disney parks and the other roller coaster parks enchanted me. It was like escaping reality by entering a fantasy place on earth. That was the childlike awe attraction. As a self-proficient dreamer, I felt I could contribute to creating my own physical dreams. When I was in the fourth grade, I would construct highly detailed miniature cardboard amusement parks, complete with pizza concession stands. I drew out wildly exciting designs for a new Disney water park. One segment took place on a pirate ship where you could walk the plank and dive into the crystal clear water that was filled with exotic fish and gorgeous (fake) coral. Mermaids would swim by and blow kisses at you.
One
of my earliest ambitions as a young boy for a possible career when I grew up
was to be a great explorer. As I grew up through elementary school, I sadly
realized that 99.99% of earth has already been discovered. I had been born too
late to discover
I recall back to the eighth grade for me and how I
was seeing the light red-haired school guidance consoler, Earl Klosterman, who
was a school acquaintance of my father’s. I went to see him twice a week to
talk to him about my “problems”. I mainly talked about how I had low self-esteem
from getting teased and how nervous I was about having girls like me. He
encouraged me to do something that would make my peers respect me and get the
attention of the opposite sex: do well in sports. Since this was a small town
in Midwest
I grew up in a hometown where
winning in sports was how you became popular or “the man of the hour”. People
would work so hard on being good in sports to feel good. I rarely had athletic
abilities and would usually lose horribly to the point where it made me look
absurd. Eventually, I started having fun with the ridiculousness, not care
anymore about even trying to win, and have fun with how surrealistically bad I
was. I recall going bowling for Phy. Ed. And bowling a score of 31 with over a
dozen gutter balls. Meanwhile, my classmates and peers were bowling and
bragging about their high scores. It was a way of getting attention… especially
of girls and how they were always attracted to the sports stars. I figured I
could brag about how pointless sporting events were by playing wildly poorly. I
learned hard about the stupidity of competitiveness. I lived through twelve
years of this insanity. I’d rather be doing something meaningful with
expressing myself through my art and intellect – not with physical activities
or a touchdown. The pain and anguish I continuously was subjected to fueled my
obsessive desire to distinguish myself through creating great art. Creativity
was my special ability that I knew how to win with. The canvas was my
playfield. Yet there wasn’t any audience for people to see my skills. It was a
sports town and the arts were barely supported, let alone encouraged. Life in a
small
I
struggled socially throughout my twelve years in school. I was an obedient
teenager and devout Christian. Yet something inside me felt a desperate need to
rebel and escape my strict religious upbringing. Moreover, I was working as a
janitor during my high school years. All I could do was dream obsessively about
leaving my hometown where sports were endorsed and the arts were shunned. When
I got to art school at the Columbus College of Art and Design in
Being Different
in a
From the small town hometown where I
came from, there were so many things that would make you into an outcast. If
you didn’t go to a bible study, you were looked upon differently and seen as an
outcast. If you didn’t like sports or go to sporting events, you were seen as
suspicious. If you didn’t attend church regularly, you were seen as strange. In
a town where everyone knows who the other person is, it is impossible to remain
anonymous and without looking down upon if you are different. This is where
cities were so strangely refreshing with their isolation and diversity. People
just didn’t care if you didn’t go to church. There’s so many others who don’t
that it didn’t matter. If your majority is suddenly a minority in a city, they
don’t look down on others so much. But in a small town where the community is
definitely the majority, you can feel extremely isolated and alienated by being
yourself – different.
Much of my art emerged from no-hope environments that
I grew up in. Growing up in a small town forces you to dream big. I became a
quintessential small town dreamer. Graduating from an art school forces you to
experiment and do anything. Not getting through to girls or your family forces
you to work even harder on your artwork to get them to notice you. I had
nothing to lose by creating the artwork I did with the feelings I possessed. I wanted
my work to have an interactive catharsis to it that the viewer could
experience. It would be one glorious universal breakdown of emotion through
chromatic visual urgency.
There is something about small towns that are
innocent at heart. They are so removed from the speed and complication of big
cities. Growing up in one clearly shaped up I ended up as. I remember my mother
warning me about how corrupting moving to the city might be for me. I’d be
exposed to things that I normally wouldn’t be in a small town where drugs don’t
exist. No abortions. No crime. People don’t lock their doors. There is
something about the impersonal feeling of city life that can make you feel like
you’re rotting from the inside with loneliness and isolation. In a small town,
you’ve got a community of people looking out for you. In a city, you’ve got
yourself and a small band of people who you might call friends. In a small town
there is only one religion – a Christian religion. In the city, you’re
bombarded with a buffet of religious options and possibilities – even none at
all if you like. In a small town, you’ve got quiet and boredom. In the city,
you’ve got noise and activity. They’ve both got their faults and imperfections.
Some can’t stand either of them. In a small town, it’s a perfect area to raise
children. In a city, you can make more money. In a small town, you can keep
your home and car unlocked without worrying if anyone will break in. In the
city, you’re always double-checking if the doors are locked and secure. In a
small town, you trust your neighbors. In a city, you don’t know who your
neighbors are. In a small town, you’ve got only one ethnicity. In the city,
you’ve got dozens. In a small town, no one is gay, bisexual, or even
“bi-curious”. People even wait until marriage to have sex. It’s like a whole
world stuck in a good-natured, 1950s past. They’re so outside of what’s
happening that they never quite catch up. They’re still stuck behind. The one
thing that small towns do have in replacement of drugs is alcohol. Because it’s
legal and cheap, most everyone drinks heartily. Alcoholism is a commonplace
development in a small town world with nothing to do. It breaks the idyllic
world of small town life. But in the city, things are just that much more
complicated by having too many people around that aren’t quite the same, that
don’t speak the same languages, make the same general income, or have the same
religious practices. In a small town, at least you can relate to those around
you by default since they’re your same ethnic, religious, and economic
background. Most everyone is middle-class in a small town with a few
lower-income and higher-income families. But otherwise, everyone is humbly on
the same level. In a city, you’re surrounded and overwhelmed by the diversity.
At times, it is extremely refreshing, yet also suffocating. There are sometimes
too many differences. To go from a world where everyone is heterosexual to
suddenly encounter homosexuals can be an extremely surreal experience. To go from
Caucasian to African-American, Latino, Asian, let alone Texan! It’s like the
world went upside down if you come from a small town that you’ve rarely ever
left and explored the outside world. You’ve always felt secluded and isolated,
surrounded by corn fields and farmlands for hundreds of miles. I’m not saying
that small towns are perfect, but they are guarded from aspects of urban life
that can corrode one’s self through the years. Imagine a world without crime,
drugs, racism, or deceit. Small towns uphold more central family values than
anywhere else. Being removed from speed and slowing life down can make you see
the world in a more peaceful, calmer point of view. And yet many people who
live in small towns dream of being in the city for more things to do… to have
more fun. The scent of pig manure can get to one after a while. Things in the
big city are much more confusing. And out of the confusion brings stress,
anguish, depression, and exhaustion. It can cloud your better judgments and
spoil your innocence.
On break from graduate school, I found myself in blissful Yellow
Springs, Ohio, my idealized small town full of alternative art teens and
college students, a new age book store and art house movie theater, a comic
book store and coffee house, even a traditional "Dairyland" ice cream
joint and small town park. Lorna and I went to a main street tavern where we
ordered some beers and spaghetti. I was in my
After the jubilation of being in Yellow Springs with so many artists in
a small town, I was wrecked with isolation by being with my dad and sisters for
the next two days. When I'm around them, I end up seeming "eccentric"
and, worse, "nutty". I'll make a surreal, warped joke and none of
them makes a sound. If I made the same joke to Justin or Eddie, he'd laugh
hysterically. I feel miscast at my own family table. The conflict of
personality only tired me to the point of depression.
For me while growing up, the movies were such a
magical experience for transporting me to places I’d never seen, experienced,
or been to. I grew up in a small town in Midwest
Breaking Out From High School
Yet
the odd thing about high school was that my classmates and I were all in the
same boat. We still hadn’t moved off into other courses of life. We were all
kinda stuck in the same classes with practically the same abilities. We were
all stuck in the same small town.
Yet
once we all graduated together, the ties were broken! We were set free to
whatever destiny we aspired to achieve. It’s was the moment where the popular
kids stopped being popular anymore. It was the beginning of when the geeks rose
out from the shadows of their bullies and into their brighter futures and
stellar careers. The popular kids can simply keep telling stories about their
glory years in school, of a time long past.
My
Artistic Development
Unlike
some of my peers and former classmates, I worked obsessively to get ahead in my
art and in work. My family wasn’t as rich or as socially connected as some
people’s families. For my art portfolio, I had to go to a community college in
I
have to keep working to “make it”, though I don’t know exactly what for. Am I
at some psychological loss from years of unpopularity, romantic rejection,
general boredom, or creative bliss?
My Hidden
The more I think about, the more I realize how screwed I
was when I got to art school in August 1995. I didn't have much artistic
technical experience, unlike most of my classmates. I knew I'd have to work
extremely hard just to make it through that first foundation year. Yet I did
have one major, major asset that the others may not have had: I was
possessed with the desire and passion to succeed to prove myself to those who
teased me and publicly humiliated me while growing up at school. The rage and
the obsession was just that intense. I was going to make something of myself
and I knew that hunger was what would make me succeed eventually. I mean, you
really have to question how someone could graduate with top honors in Media
Studies without video, animation, or computer experience. I simply worked my
ass off. Every morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Every weekend even. The
fact that I didn't have much of a social life obviously helped as well. But I
made it through art school because I was desperately trying to prove myself. I
had to succeed in something in order to find a reason to continue living. I couldn't
be a failure. And I was willing to burn my life force out in order to make the
grade and the art. It was an extremely intense period in my life. My life was
all about making art. Constantly.
Keep on Going
9-21-06: You
know, learning how to survive and thrive in this world is harder than just
learning a technical trade. I’ve been re-reading my early ’96 journals when the
winter and cold came and I was left feeling lost and confused with my being in
an in-between world of high school and college. Everything was very new,
different, and uncertain. And with that comes exciting highs… and devastating
lows. I was still hanging out with my old friends from Coldwater. I was still
“living” under the rules and teachings of my parents and family. I was still going
to church and not enjoying myself. I was still in the midst of finding myself.
I was feeling “love” and longing for a shy young introverted workaholic woman,
Phyllis Hornung, who had never had a boyfriend before and sort of curiously
liked me. Reading my words from that fragile time in my life made me empathize
with how my own CCAD students are going through. Your hopes and dreams are all
in the air and you don’t know if they’ll fly forever. And when they do fall and
crash, it devastates you. That is absolutely
the problem with being a dreamer. I know all about the depression one can go
through. But I had to keep going on, live through the noise and pain, and carry
on. I wasn’t a “great” artist back then. I was struggling and putting in long
hours while others were able to whip out their projects in no time and get
“A’s”. It was a sickening environment to be in. I had to have maximum patience
in order to “make it through”.
The Trials and Traumas of Surviving
In May of 1996, I found myself in
such a trying period after the completion of that first year of art school. My
whole life revolved around making art, completing assignments, 12-18 hours each
day for the past nine months. Suddenly, it just all came to an end and I didn’t
exactly know what to do with myself. I didn’t have enough of a social life to
catch me when I had to fall back into having a “normal life”. I did have a
girlfriend, my first, and she went back to
And
an even trauma and challenge laid in wait for me with the next semester. Since
I didn’t have many art classes, I had pretty much started at a beginner’s level
during my first year, the foundation year, at CCAD. My next year was for me to
enter my major in Time-Based Media Studies. The thing was I had never used
video, done any animation, or had extensively used a computer before. All I had
a passion for movies and animation. But I didn’t know how to create them! So during the summer in
between semesters I was found myself questioning how I’d do. I knew I’d just
have to work hard to make the grade and do “well”. But it was still a major
question mark. Maybe I’d made a mistake taking on something I wasn’t already
skilled at? Maybe I should have gone into writing as a major since I did so well
at creative writing? Did I make a mistake going to CCAD with getting A’s, B’s,
and C’s, but always feeling so far behind everyone else? So my life ahead of me
wasn’t foretold at all. I wasn’t for certain if I’d make it.
My Identity As a Computer Artist
When
someone asks me who I am, I respond
that I am an independent computer artist. Furthermore, I use the computer to
explore time-based arts, digital three-dimensional environments, and
interactive multi-media as a means of personal expression. Inside each artistic
piece I create, I leave behind a part of myself: my emotions, memories,
imagination, ideas, and dreams. The fortunate thing about personal art is that
its qualities never grow dated or obsolete. They only become richer and more
revealing through age and maturity. As long as there is honesty and real
feeling in the work that others can sense, I feel the work will always last as
long as there are human beings out there who have the empathy and imagination
to feel.
I’m
an artist and a poet, someone who creates meaning
and emotion to this existence through their creativity. That is
one of my roles in society. A role that is under-valued,
under-estimated, and misinterpreted. Artists are the ones who see life, feel
life, create life. In the truest sense of the word, we are all artists –
yet some take their sensitivity a step beyond everyone else. The true artists
are the one’s who feel beyond themselves. They create because they cannot help
but create. They must find meaning to our existence through their own body and
mind.
An Artist’s Audacity
To
have the audacity to create art and express anything is quite astonishing. It
takes guts, bravery, even insanity to dare to be different. To present
emotional truth to the work is an even greater mutiny against society that
cares mainly for commercial art that repeats itself and regurgitates its ideas
to sell/ pimp itself.
One of the hardest things to deal with during my
second semester during my senior year at CCAD is the loss of my creative
partner and peer, Justin Jason, who was like my creative compatriot in the
fight for challenging what can be done with time-based art forms such as
computer animation, interactive art, and digital video. He graduated a whole
semester before me and I was left behind to fend for myself and what my art was
about. After several years at art school, we had both found our voice of what
we had to say through our artwork. It was a joyous time. Yet once he left school,
I felt that one of the main creative voices and supporters I had was silenced.
I was left on my own. What made him special was that we both understood each other's wildly
experimental/ abstract/ surrealistic work. Our work was unique, different,
exciting, and original. Without that fellow artist nearby who could
constructively and intellectually critique my work, I felt rather lost and
alone. Instead, I was left in my classes of peers who were much more
traditional, conservative, and commercial towards creating art. With Justin, we
were both exploring new territory that made us both feel mutually alive. Now the spark was gone and I had
to rely on my own self-confidence in my own work to get me through. The
majority of my fellow classmates offered little to nothing that truly
adventured off into new realms of thought, emotion, or consciousness. Though
Justin and I had only collaborated on one major project together, it was like I
had lost my main partner. It was like John Lennon and Paul McCartney had split
up and now we were left to our own devices of what to make of ourselves. I
managed to keep in touch with Justin, but there's still a void in school that
won't be easily filled. Where there was once an understanding perspective in
the class now lies ten other bodies who just don't get what type of art I'm
doing. There apathy and indifference really hurts me when I feel I'm making
something new, interesting, and exciting. So, I have to carry on.
On the Verge of Graduation and Into
the Scary “Real World”
3-25-98: “Anxiety was in
the Air”: There was this wild feeling of spring anxiety in the air throughout
the computer labs today. It was a mix of uncertainty for my future, so I’ve
been working extraordinarily hard on my artwork. I need to distract myself from
thinking too much about the real world that is about to bite me once I
graduate. I also feel like this may just be the last few months I’ll ever have
to do creative artwork until I am forced into the professional world of having
to make a living doing work – real work – that isn’t fun at all to do. There is
also a feeling of sexual tension in the air. I see a girl that I like… and then
I see her boyfriend and it’s totally wipes me out. Again, it forces me to work
harder on my artwork in order to prove my worth. I do not want to be anonymous.
I want to be noticed and liked. It is all I can do to be. The girls are wearing
short skirts and I cannot help but be filled with overriding hormones that
scream to be released. I just wish one of them would notice me. But at the same
time, I don’t know where I’ll be living in a few months after I graduate. So
what’s the point of getting into any type of relationship? Everything feels so
transitory, uncertain, and alive. It
scares and exhilarates me. I have never felt so present tense and so full of panic as I do right now. I am a bit of
a control freak, so it’s no wonder that I’m losing my mind lately. The spring
weather makes me so flustered with emotions, but I don’t have any foundation to
release them besides my artwork. It’s no wonder that I’m terrified of losing
being about to express myself through art. I know I must “grow up” and become
part of the real world now that I’m almost a graduate. Yet I also feel like a
newborn child, awakening from a childhood dream and being born a newborn adult.
Graduation and spring will do that to you. I’m crying and laughing at the same
time. I’m at the end of my dream… and I feel it’s time to wake up. In fact, I’m
certain of it.
During
my final year of undergraduate studies, I felt a need to continue pursuing my
interests in art through interactive, computer animation, and digital video
forms. When I imagined myself using these mediums to commercial ends I realized
that I would be hampering my freedoms of creativity and self-expression - the
two freedoms that allowed me to achieve a sense of meaning in my life. I
considered creating art in my life to be work, play, vocation, and dreaming.
For the last six months of my senior year, I worked intensely on pieces about
relationships, sensitivity, anguish, escapism, and humor.
Throughout
my life I’ve immersed myself in music, movies, and books because they deal with
levels of feelings and perceptions that are beyond the concerns of everyday
life. Through several cathartic experiences, my emotions have evolved with a
penetrating sensitivity for life, and this has allowed me to apply what I had
learned about the world to my art work and my life. I believe that exposing the
negative is healing and very positive. It is also extremely important to have a
sense of humor about life and art. Hopefully, my work will affect others with a
sense of empathy and sensitivity. I‘ve sought as diverse of a selection of art
as possible with an urgency to define my character and my art. From Frank
Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A
Life in Four Chapters, I consider cathartic expressions in all forms to be
influential and inspiring.
Through
working with Premiere, Photoshop, Director, Maya, and other software programs
in 1996-98, I found techniques where I could finally manipulate my work into
dreamscapes and personalized “memory parks”. The creative jungle-gym of ideas
inside my existence found a place to thrive and grow. I felt that there is a
great potential in these mediums and wished the opportunity to continue
learning and exploring at a graduate school. I envisioned myself addressing the
viewer with direct, first-hand questions that arise during an interactive
piece. One could read the text on the image as well as be audibly provoked with
decisions where their choice will affect the direction of the experience. I was
also excited by the new digital environments one can create that imaginatively
mirror reality. Digital individuals could shake hands with filmed characters in
the same environment. We could expand our creative vision and combine these new
mediums with a sense of personality and emotion that is often left out of
digital work for the sake of fancy special effects purposes. I believed that
graduate school would be the ideal environment for me to pursue my goals… and
it was.
Now What Do I Do?
When
I was a senior during my first semester, I was in a panic of what I was going
to do with myself when I graduated (just six or seven months away). My teachers
were advising me to look into jobs at advertising agencies and kids interactive
CD-ROM companies. My first traumatic conquest was simply trying to find the
courage and strength to ask my teachers on what to do with my degree from CCAD.
I was in a state of fear and confusion since I was a creative artist trying to
use art as a means of creative release for an audience as well as myself.
Working for a corporation didn’t sound very appealing as a fit for my
personality. I had such a terror inside that I wouldn’t be able to fit into
anywhere. Here I was, a creative genius in my own eyes, and I was about to be
left out on my own – alone in the world. What a wake-up call to my self!!! I
realized it was going to be either sink or swim. I’d be in incredible trouble
if I didn’t get out of the depressive funk I’ve been in. The possibility of
change was exhilarating to me. It was desperation fueling my emotions. I didn’t
know what I was doing. I wasn’t sure if I really was enthusiastic about being a
creative artist and finding myself stuck in working at doing boring jobs that
didn’t leave me feeling fulfilled at
the end of the day. According to my personal beliefs, simply making money in an
“art-related” work place wasn’t enough to make me happy.
Fear the Premature Death of My Creativity
4-9-98: “I cannot stop being creative. It is a sheer
impossibility for me. So that is why I am so scared and fearful of graduating.
My greatest strength and asset will suddenly go to waste because “the real world”
doesn’t use true creativity in the workplace. They want to make money,
so they just want to do what has already been successfully established.
Original ideas have very little to do with the business of making money. And
that is what I fear so gravely. Creative people are idealistic dreamers. Once
reality crashes into them, they are left to fend for themselves through the
wreckage and carnage that awaits them in the uncertainty of graduation. I make
this all sound so overly dramatic, yet it does hurt to feel your dreams die and
never mature. You have to be full of dreams in order to understand what this
could feel like. It is like losing a beautiful child that no one wants.”
“Up in the Air”
5-5-98: There’s an
electricity in the air of not knowing where my future will lead or go. I feel
my dreams slipping away from me, or maybe just opening up. I’m in a
relationship with a girl I am uncertain about, yet feel sexually attracted to.
I’m about to graduate from art school, but don’t know about my grad school
chances. Everything is up in the air. I’m juggling my future blindfolded with
only a small slip in the blindfold to see what I’m doing. I’m scared and
excited. I know things are about to happen for me, or maybe not. I’m on edge. I
know I can’t commit emotionally to dating when I know I may be leaving to a
whole other region of the
The Moment I Truly Realized I Was an Artist
Let me just politely state that simply going to art
school doesn’t necessarily make you an artist. You can learn how to draw or
paint, but that doesn’t quite make you real.
But I feel what does make one a true artist is if you make art for art’s sake. You’re not doing it for
a grade for a class or for money. You are just creating to create, expressing
to express. I believe the turning point moment for me personally was
immediately after my graduation from the Columbus College of Art and Design
when I had to question if I wanted to make art anymore. “Why spend so much of
my free time doing something that wouldn’t be making me money?” I questioned.
Of course, spending time working on my artwork also helps me out with my
techniques and craft in the process to remain great at what I love to do. I
watched as many of my classmates who were just as good and talented as I was
simply cease making artwork. They
didn’t have classes for them to force them to do art anymore. And so they just
stopped. Art had always been more of a hobby than a passion. Yet for me, it was
a passion, a great love and life force that kept me feeling creative and my
mental state stable. I needed the self-expression in my life to be exercised
through my artwork. It was like breathing in and out. I needed to keep doing
art for my own sake. And that was when I realized I was going to be a life-long
artist rather than a short-time art student. The difference had been made, and
I stepped past the line continuing on making personal art.
One of the Events That Got Me Out
of My Shell
I
believe I got over my fear of public speaking and my trepidation of becoming a
teacher from being out selling my artwork for two days at a community festival
just a month after I had graduated from art school. It was that much of a
wake-up call to myself that this was something I had to do. Quite
simply, this type of life of being a “gypsy artist” didn’t suit me. You put
your life’s work out on a table for people to look at and admire… and pass
right on by, over and over again. This is no way to make a living. I couldn’t
even stand simply wasting my time and energy out their sitting next to my art
prints for ten hours on two consecutive days. You never know what the weather
is going to be like. It could be insufferably hot, which makes people not want
to come out to the festival. It could be rainy, which does the same. And even
if it is perfect weather, that doesn’t mean the economy is in great shape every
year. It all came very clear to me during that weekend festival. My idealistic
hopes and dreams were crushed. My colleague artist friend had boasted up my
expectations too high. People weren’t going to be easily impressed by
surrealistic/ expressionistic digital artwork in a fancy white frame and fork
over $50. I barely made a profit by selling just a couple of works. That didn’t
justify my sitting out in the summer heat and humidity. Yes, my artwork was
good. But it made me realize I could never make a living doing this type of
thing. So I realized I had to change. And this was just another event that
converted me to get me out of my introverted shell and become an extrovert.
This was the real world. This was like shock therapy.
6-27-98 “Com Fest ‘98”
“But you and I, we've been through that, and this is
not our fate. So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late." -“All Along the Watchtower” by Bob Dylan.
From
ten in the morning to nine-thirty this evening, I put all of my energy and time
into setting up at Com Fest ‘98 and sitting in front of my digital prints,
framed and matted for $50, and had only one sale... reduced down to $45. I
enjoyed the first few hours of looking around at such a bizarre diversity of
hippies, homosexuals, dogs, and “other”. I read through my journals from a year
ago and realized how naively sentimental I was about love and loss. Jason
Brooks and I rationed off our jug of lukewarm water in 90+ degree heat.
Thankfully, we were in the shade, so it felt more like 86 degrees. I sweated so
much I only pissed once for the eleven hours I was there. Yet, things turned
disappointing and disillusioning as the hours waned on. Our rather high
expectations about how well we would do with such a large crowd died along with
the sunlight. Curious observers were impressed by our work and took many
of our business cards. I uncomfortably encountered a couple of scarily
interested gay men who took several of my business cards with my home phone
number on them after “flirting” with me. I spent so many weeks working on putting together this
portfolio with self-promotional materials such as personalized business cards,
flyers, and posters – only to watch my business cards with my personal
information on them snatched away by gay men in their forties who were walking
by with their dogs, checking out my artwork, and me. “Aaaarrrrrggggghh!!!”
All that work only to be turned on its head.
It was so sadly
ridiculous. I felt drained and desperately wanted
to leave - yet, I had to stay since I drove over the tables and art that had my
friend Jason’s work on it, too. I believe the main thing that got me through the
day was the thought of being with my girlfriend at the end of the day. Still, I
became severely depressed and uncertain.… I lost my idealism and found the life
hard. I felt the heavy responsibility of raising money for myself in my chosen
profession of art and discovering that I despised it. By doing things I didn’t
want to do, I felt the urgency of my life and my future. I arrived into my mind
for the first time since those grad schools rejected me back in late March that
I had to change. As I drove past CCAD on my way home tonight, I missed the
comfort of having a steady schedule of art classes, of being a student. I
yearned to be a freshman again. After all...sigh... I’ve found the “real world”
to be a disappointing, miserable place.
I told myself: “You have to endure even as your dreams wane. Even when
your mind pollutes you with suspicion, doubt, and desperation. Even when your
skin is burnt and your head is aching.”
The
Creativity Trap
The
trap that I fell into while developing my artistic, self-expressive skills as a
student at CCAD was that I enjoyed myself too greatly when I was making
creative art. It felt too wonderful to be able to create something so
fantastic, original, expressive, emotive, and fun. I wanted to do it all of the
time. It simply became so addictive when I became good at it. Making art was
something I was excelling at, something I’d never been able to truly do that others couldn’t do in my entire life.
That was what made it feel so special and unique to me. Creativity is a skill
that few others can harness and control. Learning to articulate it into
something concrete in the form of art (in my case, video and animation) was a
special power that I found within myself as a student during my final two years
in art school. Yet the pitfall of this was the scary realization that the real
world doesn’t have much of a use for “creative art”. And that deeply upset me
to the core of who I was: a creative human being. I had so much to say and the
skills to do something with my voice and emotions. Yet once you graduate from
art school, now what? I was frightened and freaked out. This was why I felt
such a desperate need to go to art school. I wanted to express myself while I
was still feeling the passion to get it all out of my system. I was outpouring
with creative ideas and explosive emotions. I needed to express myself as an artist. That was exactly what I had
evolved into being. I direly wanted to know that I had a two-year lease in the
future that I’d generally know what I was going to do with my creative self. It
also dawned on me that being an art teacher would be the main way to sustain a
career that would allow me to remain creative. Out of being highly creative and
finding a purpose in my life, I found myself ironically “useless” to “the real
world”. They wanted video technicians, not artists like who I was. But I also
found a bridge between art school and “the real world”, which was graduate
school. It was the time that I needed to keep working on my craft, my
creativity, and self-expression. Yet I was also discovering what kind of skills
I needed to make a career of being a teacher as a teaching assistant.
Taking the Plunge into
Probably the wisest thing that has
happened to me artistically and personally was moving down to a different area
in a graduate computer arts/ animation program where I got to mature into my
own as an artist/ animator/ professor. I stepped out of the shadow of
undergraduate doubts and competition at CCAD and into a place where I could
start fresh and prove myself on my own. I got to make it. Through my isolation
in a different part of the country, I got to be free.
“My
(Written
in between my first and second years in graduate school in June of 1999.)
My
experience as a student at the Center for Electronic Communication has been of
growth - technically, artistically, and emotionally. After finishing my
undergraduate studies, I wanted to further express and explore my feelings and
ideas through computer animation and interactive multimedia pieces at a
computer arts graduate school. The Center for Electronic Communication became
my destination by offering a program that allowed each person their artistic
freedom in what they wanted to express through computer animation technology.
The lab provided the most up to date equipment for visual and audio work that
was available to anyone enrolled. Through my first year, I learned Alias/
Wavefront’s Maya in the studio every week day from 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. It
was a difficult and frustrating challenge; yet, with the helpful assistance of
my instructors and classmates, I managed to go from having little technical
knowledge to being able to use and work confidently in Maya, Unix, Composer,
and other software involving digital video and audio.
To
grow artistically while learning and using so much technology was the
challenging part. Each semester, I had to complete a computer animated piece
with audio that was at least thirty seconds long. I managed to stay on course artistically
and on schedule due to the fact that my instructors insisted that I have a well
thought out, well-constructed storyboard. That way I was able to orderly
construct my piece in the computer and create some finished animation every
Monday in order to be critiqued during out Workshop class. I learned more about
my art from my classmates reactions (they would reveal to me if parts of my
piece were not coming across) and criticism (technical suggestions) than I ever
would have alone. At times, it was hard to take. But I needed their extra
perspectives in order to step back, reexamine my work, and guide it to a
greater whole. Also, the Center had the equipment in order to create the
finished piece I envisioned making (with a sound recording room, audio editing
stations, compositing programs, and editing software) - and put the piece out
professionally onto high quality tape. I spent a great deal of time,
frustration, and stress to get to my end goal. Yet, that end piece was so very
rewarding.
Emotionally,
I’ve grown in learning how to deal with other people’s criticisms towards my
work and understanding why some things don’t communicate. I used to not care if
one of my animated pieces weren’t coming across because it was my vision. I ended up realizing that if
I wanted to have other people to enjoy what I was doing, I needed them to
understand it as well. That led me to focus myself as an artist - to think
about how others would interpret what I was trying to express (especially after
spending so much time on it). Also while enrolled in the graduate program, I
had to give two Seminar speeches to my classmates and instructors that opened
me up to being able to communicate better and more fluently. Giving those
speeches were half fulfilling, half embarrassing - yet they offered me the
confidence and an insight in how to do a better job if I ever decided to become
a teacher after I have finished the program. Without these experiences, I
wouldn’t have grown.
-Eric
Homan -- originally from
The Loss of Creativity in the Real
World Work Setting
The #1 thing that graduating art school students
complain about once they enter the work field is the sudden and shocking loss
of being able to be creative in their work. For four years, they were able to
do whatever they wished to pursue in their young and fertile imaginations. Yet
suddenly after graduation, they are thrust into jobs that reduce them into
drone bees in a hive. To the creative mind, this is devastating, stifling, and
numbing. And yet, I cannot deny the allure of being a teacher, one of the very
few jobs I knew of that I continue being creative in. Working at an art school
allows me to remain artistically fertile rather than be in a creatively-stifled
environment that might smother my great grand ideas forever.
1-11-00: I felt the major changes in my life today. My
adjustment to spending 80% of the school day working on preparing for
the undergraduate animation class and helping out grad students has been
intriguing for me. It’s a job and I have to do it. I can’t spend my time
on just my own artwork and concentrating on content, concepts, and creativity.
I have to write up demos on how to use the audio equipment, editing video
pieces, move computer monitors, and read computer animation tutorials. At least
all this “adjunct professor” work makes me want to work on my own stuff all the
more. Yet I have to remind myself: my job is now first, my art is second. One
supports the other. I have noticed that my confidence in communicating with
other people has grown and matured a great deal in the past two weeks. The
panic of finding out that I would be teaching an animation course - alone
- forced me to act, and change, if I wanted to survive in supporting myself in
this chosen professional career. Tragically, my introspective personality in
which I turn to in order to create much of my art has become victim to my
change of personality. I can feel it. I’m now acting like an “eccentric”
people-person instead of an “eccentric” anti-social person. I can’t be quiet,
shy, selfish, introverted, or depressed anymore around people. I have to show
guidance, inspiration, confidence, and knowledge to those around me in class
and in the M.F.A. program… even if I don’t feel it wholly.
I
knew this day would arrive, but at least I don’t feel as sad and lost as I was
for the past six years concerning my career direction. I spent most of my life
wondering what the hell to do with my life. Inventor? Explorer? Architect?
Astronaut? Artist? Writer? Graphic designer? Painter? Photographer? Custodian?
Movie critic? Computer Lab monitor? Children’s interactive CD-ROM artist
designer? Photoshop freelance artist? Computer animator? Computer arts adjunct
professor? Professor? I started off as a dreamer, and this is where it led me.
"You Can't Go Back Home
Again"
5-5-00: Upon finishing the craziest
semester of graduate school where I was working 120 hours a week on a deadline
to finish my senior thesis project, I was emotionally, mentally, and physically
drained. After graduation, I flew back to my hometown of Coldwater for a two
week stay with my family. It took me only three hours on the first day back to
be bored with my hometown. There's nothing on TV but numbing mediocrity for the
masses. The people I've known when I was young have moved away or changed. A
stroll through Brodbeck's grocery store and the Coldwater public library
exhilarated me with nostalgic thrill - like a walk through a physical memory. Coldwater
is a town of simple people whose main desires are raising their children and
caring for their lawns and gardens. No wonder I feel so much happier in
I think it’s time for you to know a few more things
about me, like my motivations for how and why I’ve chosen to live my life the
way I have after graduation from art school:
There are times in my life where I feel a crisis is
upon me for living my life as a dreamer and lover of movies, music, comics, and
art. Most people around me don’t live that way at all. In a way, I feel they’re
living a fuller life than I am and I feel the intense insecurity and need to
change – immediately. But what I think is really at stake throughout my life
are my dreams and my artistic personality. I’ve been in love with
dreams and have been riding the highs of my imagination ever since I was four.
It’s what gives me the most comfort in this existence called “life”. And
all that follows revolves around this dire pursuit of dreams. Bear with me if I
stray.
I’ve
found my dreamer self in turmoil before, such as when I got rejected from the
first two grad schools I put my heart into getting accepted to. It was after
those rejections that my world came crashing down around me and I found myself
wandering around like a lost soul in need of a life. I was just months away
from graduating from art school and had spent so many hours passionately
working on my artwork in order to prove myself a worthy artist. It was like
having a rug swept out from under me and suddenly there was no solid ground for
me to stand on. It was also during this time that I diminished how much art I
was producing and starting thinking like someone who was entering the real
world. Dreams simply weren’t going to support me and pay my bills. I had to
make myself useful in a commercial society. Creativity and talent alone wasn’t
going to find me success unless I knew someone inside the movie industry. I
started going out with a girl who liked me, and I liked being liked. So I
started loosening my highly Catholic morals and kissed the sexual deep end with
her, which I don’t think I would have done unless I was in a state of personal
emergency where I needed to take risks and chances. After a while, I
didn’t have much hope for this relationship to last. Yet I soon lucky found
someone else who fit my personality better. Once again, my artwork and dreams
weren’t as important as the here and now. There were, indeed, secondary. I
needed to get back into the real world with real people and have a real
relationship. Yet, fate took a shock back at me. I got accepted by a different
graduate school that was perfect for artists who wanted to “pursue their
personal vision” with computer art. It was a perfect match and I went away to
Yet
during my two years of graduate school, I freaked and panicked about my chances
and abilities of actually becoming a teacher. I was, after all, a shy, quiet,
introspective guy with big dreams. And the wrong work environment with the
wrong kind of students (apathetic high school students, for example) could
leave me crushed and disillusioned – and once again, leaving my dreams
disserted. As a response to my building anxiety, I made a highly personal,
honest, confessional, yet savagely sarcastic interactive art piece called
“Vincent van Gogh Working at McDonald’s”. It was basically a future-tense
autobiographical “fantasy” of myself in the role of van Gogh, working at a
dead-end job where the unimaginative, unchallenging, repetitive work environment
slowly killed off my/ his artistic yearnings and passion to express himself. It
ended up being a satiric commentary piece about the current state of artists in
our society that don’t support the creative arts and its role in fulfilling a
sense of emotional peace and purpose within ourselves. It made the viewer
imagine a world without van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, “The Crows”, or “Starry Night”
because society had crushed his spirit to work. He instead lived his life
working hard in a fast food joint for medium wage while living in obscurity,
sometimes making good paintings no one cared about. In a way, I simply planted
van Gogh’s life story in our modern times as a commentary of our own
times. It spoke about how I felt as a struggling artist in need of financial
and emotional support as well as how we don’t care or encourage the
lower-income artists.
After two years, I made it to my goal of graduation with several
well-made computer animation/ computer art projects under my belt. I had even
started teaching on my own as a teaching assistant and then on my own to my
very own class on a graduate and undergraduate level. It was a crucial learning
experience. Yet my relationship with my girlfriend suffered from my being away
and being focused too greatly on my studies. We got lost along the way and we
split up – another causality of pursing one’s career and dreams instead of
focusing one’s attention, time, and presence to someone dear. I couldn’t
maintain both dreams at the same time. Just as something awful was happening,
something incredible happened as well. Miraculously, a job position opened up
for me so that once I graduated I got hired on to the computer arts graduate
school university staff. I was now a real teacher on a university level. I
wouldn’t be teaching children; I would be teaching adults. Some of which were
older than I was! All the hard work and dedication I had done had proved
fruitful for something. I’d be able to continue making art while being in an
environment that produced art. It was an ideal match.
Yet
all in all, as I was succeeding professionally, I was struggling personally. I
was having a terrible difficulty filling in the empty space of my private life.
I felt like I simply wasn’t connecting with anyone on a personal level that
reveled movies, music, books, and art as much as I did. So I filled in that
emptiness the only way I knew how: by making art and making dreams. It was like
making love and producing beautifully unique and original children. And here
lies the paradox of being an artist: you can’t be a great creative artist
if you’re mostly an extrovert. You have to dedicate yourself, your time,
and your energy in order to make yourself good. “Luckily” for me, I grew
up an introvert and enjoyed being alone because that was where the magic of
dreaming emerged. That was where I found the most pleasure. But where there is
pleasure there is also pain. It kept me indoors too often and I became a
part-time recluse passionately working and writing away while listening to
great music and watching great movies. For a dreamer, it was
How
things change…. After two years of teaching at
Once again, luck played a role in my life. I was alerted of a full-time job opening at my undergraduate Alta Mater, the Columbus College of Art and Design, and I submitted my portfolio and demo reel. I had to wait and wait and wait for months for confirmation back if I had gotten the job. Fate was kind to this twenty-five year old dreamer – and I got in. What this meant was that I could continue making art while providing a decent income that could support my creative endeavors. Teaching computer arts at a college/ university level was an ideal way for me to continue being a professional and a dreamer at the same time. This is one of the hardest challenges for today’s artists to do in our society. I had found a way to balance being in the real world and exploring one’s private fantasy world at the same time. This was crucially important to my personal and creative survival. This was more important than gaining recognition for the artwork that I’ve poured my soul and imagination into so passionately. Teaching computer animation and digital video classes helps me learn and stay up-to-date with the software while keeping me in a creative environment that supports being artistic. That is something you simply can’t entirely get if you work in the commercial or freelance world where you’re forced to do jobs that tend to be rather soulless and technical. I’m too full of passion to be in that world for too long of a period of time. I am content in being a teacher. Besides, it’s what my parents were, as well as both my older sisters.
A Job in the Arts
The more I think about it, the more I realize I did
the near impossible: I actually managed to get a job in the arts. The greatest
irony of this was that the very place was I went to get my undergraduate
education is where I ended up getting a full-time teaching job. Then again, I
did the same thing with getting my first teaching job at exactly where I went
to graduate school.
Teaching Philosophy
As
an instructor at the Columbus College of Art and Design in the division of
Time-Based Media Studies, I've taught Computer Animation I, Video I, Video II,
and Advanced Time-Based Projects. My goals in these classes were to provide
students the appropriate content for creative and technical growth in each due
subject. With the complexity of teaching with high-end computer animation and
non-linear video editing software, I've taken great care in finding the right
balance of how much information to provide on a week-to-week basis to students
who are also taking several other challenging and time-consuming courses each
semester. Each week in class we break up the time through tutorials that we go
through together so that everyone can be kept up and no one is completely left
behind. With the expansiveness of the software and topics that I teach, I've
been sensitive to not providing too much technical information that might cause
confusion or discouragement within the students' bound of understanding. I
usually have to take myself out of my instructor's position and try to think
like a student in my class to determine what is the right amount of work to
challenge them without losing their interest or their minds. Through years of
teaching classes, I've worked out a schedule for myself of what should be
covered every week that has worked well in past semesters and, I'm pleased to
recognize, worked terrifically last semester as well. Since many of the
students learn at different rates when it comes to left-brain technical
information (like a complex computer animation package like Maya), I encourage
those who are ahead of our weekly class lessons to feel free to work ahead on
topics that will continue to challenge them. Creative-minded artists often
struggle a bit at first with learning a new canvas like 3-D computer animation.
For those who are learning at a slower pace than others, I take time aside with
them to review what we've covered to catch them up with the rest of the
students. I was one of those students myself who was slow in those classes, so
I feel that I have plenty of empathy for their struggles. There is not as much
instant gratification with working with computer animation since it's mostly a
technical challenge for the first few months of using it, which causes some
students to feel upset. I work on displaying patience with the students and to
not get discouraged with technical problems that come along the way of creating
creative work on the computers. So far, I feel that I have been successful in
motivating students to create the best possible work they can within the course
of the class. I try to employ a sense of fun as well as a seriousness to the
content of the course. Sometimes, I've had to stop myself from perhaps joking
around too much and get back to the seriousness of teaching. It's a hard
balance to maintain that has taken a few years to work out. I can't be too
serious or students will get bored with the technical aspects of what I teach.
Yet with every semester, I feel that I am getting closer to finding that
correct attitude and mindset through my classes. In addition, I strive to keep
providing a dedicated enthusiasm for the subject matter through the creation of
my own individual personal artwork in the fields I teach so students can see
that the subject matter can be applied in creative methods rather than strictly
commercial means.
I make it known to my students or any media studies
student that they can reach me in my office during my office hours throughout
the week, or whenever they can reach me while I am at the school and not in
class. Also, students keep in contact with me throughout the week and weekend
through email, for which I constantly check at least once per day. So if they
ever have a problem or question that needs answering, they can get a prompt
answer. I have also written letters of recommendation for exceptional students
who have come to me for such a letter of merit for a scholarship, graduate
school, or a job position.
Teaching
at an
8-28-03: The odd thing about being a
teacher is that I have to take on a different persona. I can't be the
introspective Eric Homan that I normally play in my life. I have to be
extremely talkative, engaging, informative, warm, strict, friendly,
educational, entertaining, and so much more. Today was my first day of teaching
this Fall 2003 semester. I've been teaching here for a full year now. I had
minimal nervousness this morning since I knew it was the same old song and
dance. I knew what to say, what not to say, how many jokes to pull off, and how
much information to give. I spoke for probably for a combined total of four
straight hours. (I normally talk for an average a half hour each day.) I get
weird sometimes, but at least I know when I am and to stop myself from going too far. At least I have that freedom
teaching here at an art school.
From the very first day of class, I can tell what
final grades each student will get. I could make out the grades that day in
class, compare them with their grades on the last day of class, and I bet
they’ll be remarkably close. Their personalities, postures, voices, and
especially their eyes reveal what type of work they’ll produce. You’ve got the
eager ones, the tardy ones, and those in between.
How I’ve Grown as a Professional and as an Adult
6-4-04: By viewing through those old videos that I
made in the summer of 1999, I have been able to reflect on how much I’ve achieved
and matured, especially professionally since I was a graduate student.
Back then I had no valuable teaching
experience, a child-like girlfriend who was older than me, an efficiency
apartment, and just barely enough confidence with computer animation and
computer art to back up my BIG dreams. Looking back, I’ve gained so much. I’ve
built up a portfolio of work that I feel is strong, original, expressive,
challenging, and emotional. I’ve been a teacher for over four years now and I’m
comfortable in front of crowds. Moreover, I’m finally knowledgeable with
technology. I’m single, but at least I spent that time by myself making myself
wiser so that I know what I wanted from a woman. Thank God I didn’t settle for
the first girl who would have me. My social skills were also still drastically
in question. I’m calmer now around people than I ever used to be. Back then,
the future was so uncertain. I feel a bit more at ease in my own skin.
The Collaboration between Teacher
and Student
One of the big secrets of my deciding to become a
teacher is this: I learn so much from
simply watching the students work. Each of them has their own ways of problem
solving and coming up with unique ideas. I get to be exposed to their new
methods and learn from them. It’s an amazing relationship because they
originally learn from me. It’s like they’re giving back what I’ve given them.
It’s a terrific, default collaboration. In return, I get inspired from their
creativity, both in their concepts and in their technical skills.
Teaching with Confidence
9-2-04: There
are times when I am teaching a class, specifically my Video I classes, where I
know that I am in complete command of my knowledge and craft. I now know
exactly what to say to my students and how to inspire them as well as educate
them. I am confident in ways that I never was while growing up. That is how
much I’ve changed as an adult human being. Movies and movie knowledge are my
arsenal of educating these young minds. I’ll show the awesome he helicopter
attack sequence in “Apocalypse Now” to blow their young student minds and
imaginations away!
Being Professional vs. Being
Eccentric
10-19-04: There
are some days while teaching a class of thirteen ADD students where things
aren’t that much fun. Teaching takes a lot out of me. Thank God I’ve got
several years of experience behind me. But it’s also hell to have the computers
not do what I think they’re going to do. I’m helpless and humbled by it all…
and it wares me down greatly. I have to rush to figure the problems out with an
easily impatient class.
Then there are times when I’ll make a completely
eccentric comment aloud in front of some students in the hallway that will
weird even them out. “Wow. That was totally random,” one exclaimed today while
looking nervously and confused to his friends. I suddenly realize that I’m not
acting like a professional anymore and I’ve turned into my “weirdo” persona
that mainly alienates people. And I know it’s bad when artists feel alienated.
It hurts me enough to “sober up” and mature to cut out my neurotic crazy side
and wise up to acting like a “real teacher type”. My “weirding people out”
provokes an emotional reaction in me to mature.
The humiliating experience of being rejected forces me to strip the façade and
be raw to people around me. No more of this clowning around.
Yet
I feel that this eccentricity in me is part of the kid in me that has been long
repressed and is dying to get out again to play… and breath! It’s the most
special and unique part of my personality that I have to keep under lock and
key or else people will find me to be “odd” and “unusual” for acting quirky,
different, and alive. In order to be professional and “normal”, I have
to act like everyone else – like a mature adult. But it just kills that
wonderful part of me, of you, and everyone else you know who has to be normal.
It’s like living a slow death when you lose your individuality, creativity, and
originality that you once had as a young child. You trade it in for
consumerism, sex, food, and television – all seductive forms of The Great
American Escapism.
A Life Question
9-1-99: A Life Question hit me tonight while driving home from a classmate’s house: “How did I get here?” How many years had I panicked with the thought of what I would do with myself as a career? Where could I go when your hometown is in rural Midwest Ohio Columbus Love What
You Do
Looking back at my past, what truly got me through my undergraduate and graduate studies was that I really loved what I was doing. I adored creating imaginative, creative art. It gave my life meaning. So why not sacrifice my energy, my time, my mind, my very life to its creation? It was as self-gratifying as it was exhausting – and it was worth it.
Having an “Imaginary Friend” for Creative Satisfaction
When
we were young, we sometimes create an imaginary friend (an innocent incarnation
of our imagination) when we were sad or lonely. I never had a real “imaginary
friend”, except for my tendency to daydream a great deal and make up stories,
characters, and fantasies in my head. So my “imaginary friends” evolved into
being my artwork. I talked and communicated through actual physical media like
digital images, sound, and writing. As an adult, art has saved my life from
days of loneliness, isolation, and sorrow. It was a form of finding creative
satisfaction through a love of the imagination. Creating artwork became a
medicine for the soul.
Reasons for My “Fantasy World”
Sometimes
I will find a role model that I identify with so deeply my persona evolves
closer to who they are by emotional relation. Andy Kaufman is an excellent
example of a performer who is so charming in his sincere childishness and
varied personas that I act like him after watching him. He made me feel and act
“young”, giddy and irreverent. His “act” is all about play-acting, like one would when they were young. Instead of being
yourself (which is impossible to do when you’re under ten yours old considering
you haven’t been alive long enough to know exactly who you are), you pretend to
be someone else in your own fantasy world. I love being part of Andy’s “world”.
It’s a world without problems, worries, or concerns. In a sense when I create
art, I transform my persona to be like his and escape into my own fantasy world
of my own creation. It makes me feel alive and new. If I had to choose, I’d
rather live in the fantasy world than in reality. If their mind was open
enough, who wouldn’t?! We all get sick and bored of reality eventually. That is
the purpose of movies, comedians, music, books, or any other form of escapism
out there. I’ve been in such hurt and pain and confusion for so many years now
it doesn’t make sense to stay the way I am. I’ve tried changing and altering my
lifestyle to fit in with society. But it is society itself that should change.
So in my fantasy world - be it in my art or in my imagination - I make it
reality.
The
role of the artist is a harrowing one because it’s a balancing act of living in
a dream world and living in the real world. To express such wild fantasies
means to remove oneself from the ordinary concepts and workings of modern
society. Living within one’s fantasies involves seeing the world in a
fictional, otherworldly aspect. As beneficial as it is for ones art, being that
way only makes living and dealing with the real world all the more problematic,
unnerving, and ultimately disturbing. Being a dreamer in a logical world is a
nightmare for one’s emotions. Everything is not real or as fantastic as in
one’s dreams. Having to cope with both mindsets of being normal and being
eccentric is a tightrope act for one’s mind. It’s easy to get confused and
fall. It’s a great, troubling conflict for artists to live by and a painful one
at that. To live in one’s imagination can never compare to living in reality.
I would have to say that there is a war inside my
personality for control over myself. My extroverted side and my introverted
side are at war for the rights to my emotions and actions. I tend to settle
with my introverted side because I have less of a chance in wasting my time and
a greater opportunity of allowing my dreams to grow. Extroverted activities
have often grown old after the first hour. If you’re by yourself, you can
choose what you wish to do with your time. The possibility to waste one’s time
is much higher when you’re with another person. You don’t always have something
to do together. Yet sometimes I will become bored with one way and completely
and immediately switch over to the other side. Suddenly, I will become
extremely talkative and hyperactive. I want
to be around people. But perhaps in an hour or two, I’ll want my solitude
again. My personality has that sort of tug-of-war for control of the man.
An Outsider’s Insights
There’s
a lot that has been said about foreign directors having a better, more keen eye
on
One of my abilities as an artist is to be able to
feel what other people feel, as well as to think what other people are
thinking. I suppose I gained much of my insight from watching and observing
thousands of movies in my lifetime. You really can learn a lot from the movies. It is the gift and curse of
empathy. So “beware of artists”: they know more about you than you know
about yourself. We really are that sensitive and observant.
My
Sensitivity Complex
I do feel like I am in crisis with my art and my
life. Mainly, I don’t know why I should keep creating art when it comes in
between my having a “normal” social life. I feel that I’m breaking down every
so often because I know how much I need to have a love life and friends. I can’t
just have my artwork that I’ve been making love to for years. And I have to
question if it’s possible to have both co-exist. Society doesn’t support my
artwork. I can’t sell in galleries since it’s digital and time-based. It’s not
commercial enough to appeal to a wide audience. I feel that my extremely
personal artwork is doomed for obscurity even though I know it’s good,
that sensitive people can empathize with it, and that I put the ultimate depths
of my heart and imagination into it. I feel betrayed that I took my life, gave
my soul, and got “nothing” back. It’s a sad love relationship. What else can I
do with this creative force that’s within me? The world respects and yearns for
John Lennon or Kurt Cobain because they expressed things so raw and new that
they reinvented rock and roll. I followed those types of confessional role
models for my entire mature life. So where’s my place?
Controlling Your “Light”
“The light that burns twice as bright
burns half as long. And you have burned so very brightly”... “Revel in your
time!” –Dialogue from Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut from the creator
to his replicant android creations that only have four-year life spans.
“It's better to burn out than to fade away. My my,
hey hey.” –“My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)” by Neil
Young and Crazy Horse.
That line from the Neil Young
song was also quoted cryptically in Kurt Cobain’s suicide note as well. He was
aged 27 when he died and became a member of a tragic rock club of dead rock
singers who died too young at the age of 27 (Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin). At
the age of 27, I have contemplated how I’ve lived my life and if I’ve lived too
deeply in my artwork. Have I lane waste of myself emotionally only to produce
an extraordinary amount of great artwork and writing in my wake? And yet I am
keenly aware that if I stay on this course I may end up in that same club of
dead rock stars or dead tragic artists (Vincent van Gogh). I have to find
balance to my life and my art. I can no longer life as “brightly” within my
artwork while paying the price with loneliness and isolation. I have to find a
well-rounded lifestyle even if it means getting married. I can spend a certain
amount of hours towards my work and dedicate a certain number of hours towards
family and a personal life as well. It’s that simple. I’ve read other artist/
movie director biographies (Spielberg) of how they made the transition and I
know it’s possible. You can be creative and have a marriage/ family in the same
life. It’s not impossible.
The van Gogh Legacy
Van Gogh once wrote: I must learn to
paint what I feel - not what I see; but what I feel about what I see."
I’ve taken that reflection to heart and based it into my own life.
With
all due honesty, it tears me up inside that I’ve put that sincere heart out on
the line in my computer animation, computer art, and interactive pieces and
they still don’t make any difference to anyone besides a handful of close
friends… and myself. I truly wonder if my introspection has mattered to anyone.
Will people just go and joke, “This guy sure is weird, emotional, and
depressed!” and go back to their lives? I want to make something so personal
it’ll be universal to everyone who has deep emotions, imagination, intellect,
and a sense of humor. (At least I’ll get the an alienated teenage outcast
crowd.) I know that this has become a cliché in my life and with any struggling
artist, but I truly feel a deep empathy for Vincent van Gogh for allowing
myself to be consumed in my artwork and not receive much or any recognition for
it during my lifetime.
I feel that I was seduced by the romanticism of creating great art out of extraordinary desperation. I’m burning out all my pain as fuel for my art. It’s the van Gogh legacy in me. It’s a selfish, addictive routine that leads me back to where I was before: lost and found in my own hell/ fantasy world.
Yet after deep thought and years
of reflection, I don’t think I’d mind being a “genius” and not being recognized
for it during my lifetime. At least I would be living out my role model Vincent
van Gogh’s life.
As far as my artwork is concerned, I feel like I’m in
some sort of “Vincent van Gogh trap” where I know I’m producing pure, real,
honest, powerful, original work – yet the majority of society doesn’t care.
They want to be merely entertained. They don’t want so much to have to
think or feel. And if I do, I have to seduce them into it, mainly by
entertaining them first. It’s quite the crisis of identity when I realize that
my hard work that I’ve slaved over and poured out my soul on doesn’t matter to everyone.
It’s traumatic. What do I do to solve this while retaining my own identity?!
That is the mind-blowing contradiction. I have to change not because I’m right,
but because my existence doesn’t fit in with the rest of the world. So what I’m
doing is good artwork, but it has no reason to be if so few people care about
it. I have to make a conscious effort to make something ordinary. Do you
know how insanely hard that is after you’ve managed to “break through to the
other side”?
When the
Hard Reality Hits
I felt the
emotional ground beneath me give way. I couldn’t survive just as an artist
making art for myself and hoping that other people will like it, too. My dreams
succeeded in their pursuit of being great to the world, but utterly failed in a
commercial sense. I hit my crisis, artistically, professionally, and
personally. I didn’t have anything to support myself with. If I have no job
means no money. No personal life means no emotional support.
(Ironically, no personal life also means I have complete freedom and plenty of
time to work. But that’s until the money runs out and I have to work at Burger
King.) My Vincent van Gogh ethics were failing me at last if I don’t have . I
am a creative person on his last legs. I just want someone to talk to. I can’t
stand this isolation. I can’t win while I’m losing. I’m suffering - I admit it.
With no family, friends, or a woman around to fulfill my personal life, I’ve
been living in a failing dreamland. I’ve created my own fantasy life. Lately,
I’ve been waking up to the real world. Living on dreams is a naïve delusion if
you can’t support yourself financially with another job. I can stay in my
apartment alone much longer with my music, movies, books, and computers to live
within – but for how long?
Self-Expression Anyway
Even
though I have had no immediate and grant commercial success with my artistic
video work and computer art animations, let alone recognized critical success,
I feel that I am sitting on a hotbed of creativity,
ideas, and realizations. And that’s what keeps me working even under the
reality that I may be creating art for an audience of one – I, alone. Yet one
day, maybe there will be others (a couple or a million) who will enjoy what I’ve
worked so hard on. These ideas and energy may not come back again in my life. I
have to release them before they fade into the recesses of my memory never to
return again. So there is an urgency to expressing what I have within me with
the time I’ve got left.
Have I lived my life well? Did I
make the most of what time I had? Was the urgency and passion of living to my
fullest lead me to desperation? Did I sense my mortality and blandness that I
had to urgently do something about it?! Was living a normal “happy” life such
an impossibility for me? Did I make the most of myself? Was I able to make
myself greater than I knew I could be? Did I see past average mortals’
pleasures and want more out of my being than just marriage, sex, and kids? Did
I care too much for seeing through my imagination and expressing what I found?
This legendary life I wanted to be.
I
realized the urgency I had of life and acted upon it. Yet, I knew I could not
cease the emergency I was feeling. I was too far gone emotionally. I couldn’t
do pieces “that would get me a job”. I had to risk my sanity in order to find
creative bliss. Obsessively preoccupied with making art that matters to me, I
stopped my ability to be sociable – at least for a little while until I acted
like a normal human being again.
Reflecting on the Eric of
the Future Tense
4-1-01: While in bed tonight, I thought about
how I would be when I reach my old age. I’d be reflecting back at my life
perplexed, satisfied, and regretful. The
Eric of the Future Tense felt that I should have taken more logical
chances. He wished I were happier. Sensing the existentialism, I realized that
I was still young and had a chance to make my life extraordinary. I just needed
to remember the urgency and need to take advantage of the moment without
getting accustomed by the realization. I wanted to call up girls I knew I
didn’t have a chance with for a date. It didn’t matter if I didn’t make it with
them. I had to try. I had a chance to
be happy and realize that I’ve got
just one life to be happy in. I had to live
it and keep that thought fresh with me for every day I’m alive. I had to get active.
“Imagination” and Beauty Overload
With
dealing with every day modern life, I simply want to tune out from so many
“fantastic things”. Everywhere we look in media are “beautiful”, flashy images.
Our media society has cheapened and commercialized our livelihoods. Once upon a
time, the Statue of Liberty was an awe-inspiring sight! It’s a tourist
attraction now (with a sign on
I
sense the danger of replacing religion with movies. Our dreams and imagination
- our escapism - has become our God... a visible
God - and certainly not a silent God thanks to 5.1 surround sound.
Computer-generated special effects are our miracles. The movie theater is our
church. And I am a guilty convert.
Artistic Confession
When
I create art, I confess it. My emotions possess me with the intensity needed to
drive my creativity and ambition. Art can provoke a portal to emotions - a
catalyst for empathy. For nearly every day in my life, I’ve channeled my
problems, fears, courage, feelings, and creativity into an expression, a
release, a "miracle", and a belief. With challenging myself in discovering
the "art" in me, I've grown into an ultra-sensitive, subtly
"insane" mammal with the ability to express myself creatively. I
can't cease from being honest about my emotions, especially when I’m exposing
them nakedly as art or writing. As a lonely soul, I need a way to survive. God
only knows where it will lead me.
What keeps me together mentally and
emotionally is my artwork and creative activities. Without imagination, my life
would be a desperate failure. Yet with my creativity, I feel like a god, a
creator of what 99.9% of the population cannot dream up. The art and writing I
obsessively release is what makes my self-esteem high. It keeps me believing in
myself.
When you reveal one’s art to others, you stand naked
to the world with your private self exposed. You’re divulging your sense of
humor, your imagination, your perversions, your insanity, your sensitivity,
your emotions, your vulnerabilities, your genius, even your weakness. It’s the
ultimate test before others. You have everything to lose, or maybe nothing to
lose. In the end, it’s all a state of mind… your mind… on the line, with a
fancy border around it displaying in a museum somewhere.
Stay Changing
Contrary to some people’s beliefs, I’ve got myself
figured out pretty well. I know who I am. Yet, I’m always changing, so I’ll
never truly have myself “figured out”. That’s what keeps myself
interested in living and being alive with this eccentric and eclectic
personality I’ve got. I’ll always surprised by the choices I’ll make.
7-4-01: I confronted a new personal, artistic challenge and crisis - and I
addressed it actively with a fellow artist. While spontaneously stopping over
to visit Alejandro, we got into discussing art, then my artwork, and finally a
disagreement that my artwork “all looks the same”. “It’s all bright colors and
vibrant brush strokes in 3D space. It’s all Vincent van Gogh influences!” I
suddenly realized I had something to prove as a unique individual artist again.
I knew I wasn’t consciously emulating van Gogh’s style, but I was going for the
emotional intensity I saw in his work. I’ve been holed up in hiding in my
apartment working on my art ever since I graduated. I need to emerge and reveal
myself. I need to get recognized and/ or rejected. I’ve got to stop using
images of my family and myself in my work because of “convenience”. I have to
focus on what I’m expressing instead of documenting emotionally surrealistic
ideas.
I also have to
consider my audience for the first time. Why the hell am I making any of this at all if it’s not going to be shown? Why
am I even writing these words?!! I can’t keep talking to myself
forever. I have to gain attention, a social circle, a lover, and a life. I should be alarmed that my work isn’t being accepted. What
am I going to do about it!? I’ve been passively accepting that my work doesn’t
affect everyone. I’ve been loathing in that fact for most of my adult life. I
have to merge my art with something that will make it accessible!!!!!!!!!!!! I also cannot keep staying the way I am. I
withdraw myself into movies instead of confronting my social shortcomings. I’m
frustrated and I have to do something about it. This is my declaration of independence
from my own passive personality!
God, I
love attacking myself to force my personality to change! I hate being the same.
It’s emotionally and creatively suffocating.
I found
the source of my artistic frustration. I’ve been exerting myself in so many different
areas and styles that I don’t have enough time to finish any of them. I’ve been
expressing all these ideas, but very few of them feel like anything more than
just documented ideas. They’re not commercially ready! I’ve been taking on
literally 200 projects at once and they’re never finished because I’ve been
rushing them through.
The thing
that scares me the most is that I’m afraid of not being interesting or great.
I’ve spent all this time in my life suffering and I want to have something
“artistic” created for it. In the end, I’ve just been self-indulgent. It took
an outsider to notice that in me. I want everything I say, create, or write to
be meaningful, but it won’t be. That’s a humbling thing to realize.
Ah...
the adventure of being lost. Now my nerves are on edge and end.
Sticking to a life of routines is what makes like
seemingly “fly by”. That’s why when we’re young, life seems to go much slower.
We’re living spontaneously. We don’t know what’s around the corner. We’re not
in robotic jobs that have us go to work at a set time and leave work at a set
time. That’s why I’ve chosen the life of an artist. There is no real routine –
there’s constant change. I’m improvising every day. Married life, to me,
isn’t what I’m looking for. Sex on a regular basis dulls the mind. When you’re
a kid and dreaming about having sex was so much better than actually regularly
having sex. Not that I don’t love sex, but predictable or kinky sex isn’t all
that great after several years. Yet it’s like living life happily on
cruise-control with relative comfort and safety towards death. But that’s not truly
living. To live in relaxation is to sleepwalk through life. Make life an
adventure – not a resort.
The Artist Utopia
3-3-02:
I am firmly against social segregation in our society. We as a country allow
people to choose to worship the God of their belief, yet religion can tend to
cause a subtle, yet enormous separation in our society. I am opposed when
people of different races, creeds, and faiths separate themselves by
associating with only each other’s
kind. I abhor the isolation that is brought by minority clubs.
African-Americans who only associate with African-Americans, Jews who only
stick with Jews, Catholics who only mix with Catholics, Italians who only dine
with Italians, Greeks who only marry Greeks. I believe the only minority that
is truly homogeneous is artists. They have the capacity and sensitivity to
dream and empathize. They are made of everyone who is different and need a
place to be part of. There is nothing elite about being different. Being an
artist is to be set back to stage one again - without restrictions of race,
creed, or faith. Yes, artists are yet another segregated minority - but the point
is to dilute all minorities into a whole - to make them one. I’m not saying artists are better or superior. They’re just as
flawed and weak as everyone else. I believe in order to make this work we have
to take the best attributes and qualities from other minorities and unify them
into a united entity. If idealism is a weakness, so be it. I’d rather dream of
a better world than dread they one we’re in. I’d rather feel than isolate. John
Lennon’s “Imagine” would be one of our National Anthems. “Imagine there’s no countries. It
isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for. And no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace.”
Sometimes
the inspiration is so profound that I feel enlightened by such an imagination.
I feel like I’m a priest, a holy artist bringing the work of God through means
of light, color, form, sound, and time. I feel blessed to share God’s message
through the human experience. I wonder if I am a minister of creativity, a
prophet of imagination, a soldier of sensitivity. I’m always on the march.
Art
is my God. It is what I worship and believe in. I hear all the time from my
peers who tell me art is dead and that there are no new ideas anymore. I
consider these people to be art atheists.
I came from a heavily religious family. My father was
in the seminary; my mother was once a nun. I don’t consider myself a very
religious man. But people pray in different ways. I do my praying and
expressing through my artwork. Creating art unburdens the heavy emotions in my
soul. I quote a line from the van Gogh
movie Lust for Life: “But I must say what I feel.
I’m not an atheist... I do believe in God - a God of Love. And I believe that
there are many ways to serve him... one man does it through a pulpit, another
through a book or a painting.”
3-21-04: And
I’m using the available time I’ve got left before I get married in a few years
to make as much artwork as I can. God, I know I won’t have the time, energy,
ideas, imagination, and enthusiasm forever. I’m just here shooting off my
arsenal of creativity. I’m a demigod of inspiration. I am a being of art.
During my fifth grade year, I pondered deeply about
what I’d become when I grew up. Such a profound topic for a twelve year old
troubled me for a long time. Coming from a heavily religious family, I briefly
considered becoming a priest. It seemed like the ideal career in order to help
other people and serve God. I endearingly wanted to spread goodness. It was my
greatest wish. As the years developed and I matured, I grew apart from the
whole religious routine of attending religion classes and going to church. I’d
had my fill of the Old and New Testament and needed some escapism. I knew I
liked to daydream, so I became an artist/ writer instead. It was the
appropriate route for a creative person to take. What emerged from my artwork
was a need and desire to help people… to show them a light. I believe my
artwork has empathic values within them that people can feel from and discover
new things about themselves. In a way, I’m a minister of using visuals and
audio to communicate emotions and imaginations. I’m a creator as a servant of
God. I don’t need to actually be a priest or rabbi in order to spread the Good
Word, as well as not be afraid of showing the Darkness. My work represents both
Heaven and Hell.
In a way, when you’re an artist, you’re a mother.
You’re giving birth to something out of yourself. It builds for several months,
even years, and finally it comes out and it becomes a work of art.
Love and Art
I
consider creating art to be like the act of loving. And when you’re creating
art that you know is great, the experience is extremely gratifying. The viewer/
lover has to feel something from it. You better make it count and put
everything you’ve got into the expression and make it an adventure to remember.
If the viewer isn’t getting anything from it, you’re not communicating well
enough. If things become routine and repetitious, the experience becomes
boring. When you make art, give it pleasure and give it pain. Make sure it’s
sincere and full of passion. I feel so strong when I’m feeling creative and
releasing all these ideas and images while music is fueling me along. It’s like
living an artistic high.
When I am unraveled emotionally, I am filled with the
emotions that spark my imagination to create art. It feels better than any
orgasm. The feeling can last for a minute or hours. Creative inspiration
and release is better than sexual intercourse. It is the ultimate in living.
One
of my secrets to my success with having a potent imagination is that I've led a
mostly introverted life. I don't care to go out much and I'd spent a good deal
of my life in my room. I wasn't spoiled or wealthy to have gone on trips to
I
must disclose and express that to be in a state of creative inspiration is
better than sex for one main reason – it doesn’t happen all that often.
Creativity and inspiration doesn’t happen to everybody either. Few know how to
tap into the stream of consciousness that allows one to feel and see what
others cannot. With sex, you can have an orgasm any time you want! Have it with
a woman, a man, or with yourself. It’s a physical sensual act that any living
organism can perform. It’s a great, great feeling and rush… but once it’s over
it’s gone. And having too much sex simply makes the experience and feeling
repetitive. Yet with inspiration, you have a rapture in the mind and
imagination. Things come together in a way that most of the world doesn’t
see. Artists are the ones with the visionary sight and might. It’s a completely
natural high. HAVE YOU PONDERED INTO THE INFINITE LATELY? I
have…and I like what I see.
The Creative Thought Process
Allow me to explain where creative thought processes
come from. You simply take your own memory experiences, apply them to inspiring
media that you intake (movies, comic books, music), and out comes a hybrid
“original” thought – something that was never thought of before. One
image + second image = new image. The results are often quite surreal and
dreamlike. “Mermaids giving head to male college vacationers under the waves
off
Exposing and Exorcising Personal Demons
One
could say that the act of creating art is practically an act of violence. Some
of the artwork that I’ve expressed is my own aesthetic expression of violence
deep in me. We all repress emotions. My art are my personal demons exposed. I
had to release them the same way someone might sing, murder, destroy, rape,
scream, or love - all acts of passion. The aggression I had built up had
provoked me to do something about it. Art was the most sane expression/
exercise to do. I have to do some sort of art every day in order to keep a
balance to my sanity.
“You
have to be crazy to be creative,” proclaimed an acquaintance of mine. “To
disrupt the normality of life with something original and different involves
something mad inside the mind.” I agree and work on... “mad”.
Much
of my artwork is full of and built on desperate energy. Yet I wish for my
artwork to express everything life has to offer us: the poignancy, the
childlike wonder, the darkness, the love, the reverie, the anger, the humor, and
the honesty. I want to show the spectrum of life through the environment of
art. I want my artwork to be so personal that the viewer should
feel like they know me.
While I was working on some of my artwork at school
yesterday, someone asked me if I was having a good summer vacation now that
school had let out for the spring semester. “Yeah!” I replied with mixed
confusion since I wasn’t sure if he meant a “real” summer vacation. What I’ve
mostly been doing with my time has been working on my art since I didn’t have any
teaching duties or chores to do for a while. To me, creating art is a vacation
into the imagination. It’s a journey I enjoy taking. And I’ve taken that voyage
quite a few times. The greatest vacations I’ve ever had has been when I’ve
taken myself to places no one else has seen or experienced. That’s adventure!
That’s excitement! That’s exploration! And to take that artwork and show it to
other people allows them to take the same trip through my own fantasia. Even
though we’re not all physically together, it’s still a vacation we all take
together through the art. You could call it, “The Great Escape”.
The
Importance of Keeping a Journal
It’s come to my attention that keeping a journal or a
diary is a way to express and release one’s mind. Most artists keep notebooks to record their ideas, thoughts, and
drawings. My notebook is the computer. It is where I record my soul and
creativity. This ongoing journal is my legacy. I believe it’s art if you create
something out of no other reason than the need to create. It’s essential
to keep one’s sanity with all the madness going on in life. It allows oneself
to examine one’s day, one’s emotions, insecurities, victories, and sorrows.
It’s a personal therapy session one can give oneself to clean out their heavy
burden of being human with sensitivity. It’s practically necessary for everyone
to keep one just to become more understanding with life and society. I keep a
journal to have someone to talk to so I don’t go insane. Judging from
how much I’ve personally written in my own journals, I’ve been in great need of
communicating. It’s also the ultimate creative exercise by making sure what you
write (or say) is worthwhile and worth saying. It gives me an extraordinary
opportunity to organize my thoughts – and, by default, record them. It’s a
documentation of the fantastic experience of existence - a blur of attitudes,
ideas, and events... twisted in the seeds of hours.
The purpose for
writing this journal is for me to discover who I was back then and see my
creativity mapped out the day I was inspired to write down a specific idea,
memory, or emotion. On a later date, I can resurrect those concepts for
possible execution when I need inspiration.
I’ve been writing a journal since
1993. It’s taken time to make myself comfortable enough to be able to open up,
confess, reveal, and express the deepest parts of me and what I’ve experiences
as Life. I’m “on”/ alive – and I’m aware of it by recording my times. I
release the most intimate of thoughts in my journal. They are my most sacred
elements of who I am. It contains the repressed stuff I’d never reveal to
another soul except to myself so I could see who I am. In my journal lies my
fantasies, my dreams, my nightmares, my fetishes, my sexual desires, my loves,
my hates, my imagination, my records, my hopes, my despair.
A
Journal Releasing Creativity
When you’re an artist, you always have to stay
creatively active. For me, keeping a journal is the best way of keeping the
creative spirit burning. You need to have some sort of output; so words are the
fastest, most convenient source. Also if and when
I need an idea to make an art piece out of, all I need to do is look back at my
journals. Even the words and notes I wrote in 1996 as an undergraduate student
are surprisingly direct, imaginative, and emotional. I just have to organize
and focus excerpts into something fully realized.
I believe that
the reasons I write so often in my journal is that I’m chronically frightened
of not having any ideas to come back to when the time comes for me to do a new
art piece. When I was in my undergraduate Photography I class, I didn’t have a
clue of what to take pictures of. My work suffered for that reason and I
received a “C” grade. Being a perfectionist, I was haunted by the experience.
Ever since, I can’t stop from recording every good idea I’ve come up with. I
can’t stand losing an idea, no matter how stupid or small it is. I record all
my dreams, every movie I watched and how I felt about it and during it, every
prominent experience or feeling I had during the day.
Looking back at all the journals
I’ve written, I sensed great pride at what I’ve done with my life in regards to
creativity and self-expression. I expressed myself. I kept myself from
going mad thanks to keeping a journal. I made it through hell.
Yet a journal can be the most
positive thing one could ever create in one’s life. Keeping a journal is a
celebration of one’s life... of one’s
very existence. It's a document of what one learned, felt, lived, dreamed. Writing down and confessionally expressing one’s feelings is an
exorcism of the sum of one’s manic day – especially if you’re an emotionally
overloaded artist type. Releasing emotions by oneself is more helpful than
seeing a psychiatrist for $150 an hour. Since I’ve been writing in a journal in
1993 with over 1,200 pages, I’ve probably saved myself around $20,000 in
session fees. What an amazing self-help psychoanalysis. Yet the first step to
writing a good journal is to not hold anything back… even if it’s immensely
embarrassing. You have to let those feelings be exposed naked to yourself
through words. The safety catch is that one doesn’t have to reveal those
feelings to anyone else but oneself (and certainly not to your significant
others if one knows what is good for oneself and sustaining one’s
relationships).
When I’m interacting with someone in person, I feel
that I’m not communicating myself effectively enough because I’m mostly feeling. I’m too much on the spot, in
the moment surrounded by too many distractions. Yet when I sit down in a safe,
secluded area, I have the ability to enhance upon how I can communicate by
emulating what I’m feeling with more
concentrated thought and intelligence. I can harbor my emotions,
imagination, and intelligence into something of great merit and
self-expression. It does enrage me that I can’t emit that same level of
creative power in spoken conversation as I can when I write or make art. I
simply need to be honed in on that creative state of mind. No one sees the artist
when I’m in public. They see some anybody.
It’s in my artistic work that I’m recognizable as a true individual talent.
A Journal as Psychotherapy
You could say
that I write this journal as psychotherapy to myself. When I did have to see a
psychiatrist, I always regretted that my family was paying all this money for
me to express my feelings. So I figured I might as well express my feelings to
myself, learn from myself, and keep the money to buy CD’s with. I thought it
was absurd to pay someone $120 an hour to listen to my troubles?! Also, after
nine months, psychiatric sessions weren’t going anywhere. So I decided to keep
an introspective journal analysis of my soul, imagination, dreams, fantasies,
times, emotions, and ideas. It was my way of saving money and spending it on
something worthwhile. Oddly through the years, my journal evolved into written
art. In a sense, I was commissioning myself to write down my most personal,
anguished emotions.
I
am writing this on-going idea journal out of a desperation that I may not be
inspired or creative in the future. I need something to fall back on when I’ve
burnt out of imagination.
I
recently read that Kurt Cobain’s diaries were purchased for 4 million dollars.
What a pay-off for having manic depression!!
These have been my personalized psychotherapy years.
I hope they do the trick.
Like everyone, I have a dark side, but as an artist I
am able to express it and reveal it. My journals happen to be my primary outlet
for me to immediately exorcise that darkness. All the depression, the bent-up
sexual urges, the rage, the exhaustion, the sicknesses, the bitterness. But the
journals also expressed the joys, the blisses, the exhalations, the epiphanies,
the miracles, the wonders, and the dreams of my existence. It contains my very being.
The journal is the recording of the inner remnants of
one’s mind. When you look back at it and read through your life, you can’t help
but exclaim, “How exciting! How horrific! How incredible! I lived through all that.”
Journal as a Life-Map
Most of what I end up writing about is my confessing
the emotional turbulences inside of me when I’m under duress or depression. It
flows out of me as an outlet for the flaws that I carry in the ways of
loneliness and confusion. I find writing to be a friendly medium of expressing
my ideas and daily events. A journal is a perfect record of what occurs to me
and where to put my creativity.
Here’s
a mathematical psychological idea for you concerning journal writing in
relation to psychiatry. If I continued seeing a shrink since 1993 at a rate of
$120 per day of writing. Then measure in the inflation rate to $200 by 2004. I
would have had spent around $8,000 on average per year on psychiatry bills. Then
that would be $104,573.45 from 1993 to 2004 that I’ve saved in writing
down my feelings and thoughts in a journal. Now that’s saving money!!
What a deal I’ve made for myself by learning to express myself through
self-expression through journal writing!!!!
Journal as Time-Travel
Reading
my journals is like time-travel through words.
Journal Existential Importance
There are thousands upon thousands of sensitive,
emotional, and creative people out in the world who also keep journals just
like me. What makes mine any bit as special as theirs? Ultimately, it cancels
out our uniqueness. Doesn’t it? It forces the world not to care all that much
when there are others with the same feelings recorded in the same phrases and
ways.
When I write down comments during a movie, I’m
recording what feelings that arise during the movie experience. I’ll also stop
the movie to write down lines from the movie that strike a personal cord with
me. It’s sort of a communication between myself and the movie itself. It speaks
to me and I reply back through journal notes.
Movies as
a Creative Oasis
I get ideas while watching movies all the time. That
is why I compulsively watch moves and take notes while watching movies.
Visual images, characters, voices, dialogue, sounds, or anything can stimulate
my creative side and spurt an artistic concept in my head. I find it wasteful
to not write these valuable ideas down, even if I don’t use them. Archiving
them for future use saves me work in the future. It’s like picking fruit and
packaging it in a freezer for future meals.
Good Fortune and the Guilt
What
my artistic life has come down to is that I had enough money to get me through.
After graduating from the Columbus College of Art and Design, I managed to
leave
While
talking on the phone to Justin Jason, I asked what had happened to our ‘hippie’
art school classmate friend Mike Folliet. Justin informed me that Mike has been
working at a framing company. He had a show, but it wasn’t of much new work. Is
that what has happened to my old classmates after they graduated? Was the last
of their artistic ambition left behind once they graduated? It’s sick that my
friends’ dreams aren’t supported or given some sort of funding. It’s a sad fact
that a lot of artists don’t make art anymore after art school.
And
unfortunately and sometimes inevitably, there is an emotional gulf that is
created from the unbalance of careers among artistic friends and family. Envy
can subtly and gradually break up a relationship from a lack of advantages. If
one friend is making $100,000 per year and the other is barely making $15,000,
it obviously hurts their relationship. It’s a sad part of life that happens to
everyone at some point in their life. People change, and accepting that is
often the hardest part of co-existing with others.
The
following is an excerpt from a letter from Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo
on receiving his financial support: “I’m sure you have saved my life and I will
always remember that. Money can be repaid, but not kindness such as yours.”
With that quote,
I wish to gratefully acknowledge my parents’ assistance and support of my
artistic career that led into becoming a teacher. They may not have understood
or fully appreciated my artwork, but at least they didn’t stop me from making
it.
Unlike some of my
friends and former classmates, I work obsessively to get ahead in my art and in
work. My family wasn’t as rich or as socially connected as some people’s
families. For my art portfolio, I had to go to a community college in
I
have to keep working to “make it”, though I don’t know exactly what for. Am I
at some psychological loss from years of unpopularity, romantic rejection,
general boredom, or creative bliss? Many of my earlier art pieces were done
with an almost suicidal honesty. I didn't care anymore. I just wanted to be
noticed by society, a grad school, or a girl.
Art School Discipline
My
undergraduate Art school years were basically boot camp for aspiring artists.
Half of my peers dropped out by their first semester of their freshman year.
You have to work on your assignments during every waking moment - including
evenings, nights, mornings, and weekends. I usually went to bed around 1:30
a.m. to 3:30 a.m. and woke up around 6:45 a.m. Sometimes, you pull an
all-nighter and don’t go to sleep at all. The cafeteria food sucked. The
workload doesn’t let up for four months until a month holiday break, and then
back again for another four. You constantly have to watch to see if any of your
peers are showing signs of suicidal tendencies... sometimes it’s even your best
friend, your roommate, or yourself.
One of the first things an inspiring artist has to
accomplish after getting their technique and training down is to find their
individual voice. They can’t go around painting images of dogs and cat, sunsets
and pretty pictures all their life. It’s all been done before. You have to do
something original and innovative with your talent and imagination. Some
artists stop there and don’t proceed to find a way to do something
extraordinary. They’re perfectly comfortable recycling what’s been done before
and repackaging it with a slightly different look. All the photographs have
been taken. All the paintings have been painted. All the comic books have been
drawn. What area hasn’t been explored enough is using art in a time-based form.
Commercial filmmakers can only go in circles after a hundred years of making
and remaking the same old scripts, plots, and storylines. Yet experimental
personal movies have barely been tapped into. Thanks to the new technological
tools artists have at their disposal (such as computer animation and other
software programs), they can produce whatever is in their fantastic
imaginations. These tools are the future of art. They offer us artists the
ability to break new ground in the artistic horizon. Still based art is a
dead-end art. Movies can be so much more than just entertainment. They can be
the infinite media canvas.
If you’re disturbed, different, or brilliant, art
school is an alternative to going to a mental institution. It’s a place where
you can release your emotions constructively and gain focus to your life. It’s
well-known that many of those who go to art school have tried, attempt, or at
least contemplated suicide at some point in their life. Art school is a place
of salvation. It’s a hospital for the emotions and the mind. It’s a place to
purge one’s self and create something beautiful. That’s why I work at
one. It’s a scene of art therapy.
Artistic “Real World” Conflict
My
GOD!!” I screamed one day, “are there no jobs for people who are just
purely creative and hard working?!! I’ve got big dream with nowhere to go!”
In a strange, sad way, going to art school was like
living in a fantasy world of ideas, imagination, and aesthetics. In the outside
world, they don’t care so much about the integrity of art. “ “The real world”
cares about commercial value. Graduating from art school can be the ultimate
rude wake-up call for those artists who are living in their own little, big
fantasy worlds. Such a shock can be horrific. They ask you the most provocative
questions: “What makes you different from everyone else? What separates you
from what is normal?” You work so hard to find your own voice and style - only
to find yourself alienated and no one relates to your work. You’re ahead of
your time. You remain a genius to yourself and an outcast to the rest of the
world.
Journal
entry from late ‘97, eight months before I was going to graduate from art
school and enter the “real world”: “The world had suddenly changed without
me. Feeling lost and urgent, I asked Kon Petrochuk, my video teacher, about
where I'd be able to get a job. Commercial "video work" sounded like
I'd be abandoning the creativity and self-expression I had inside that I needed
to release. This wasn't a joke or something I could dismiss. I wanted to talk
to someone to release the personal intensity inside. I wanted someone to hold.
My sensitivity was astonishingly frightening. I had been working myself
obsessively on my art only to realize that it didn't matter once I got out of
school. My idealism and innocence faced death. I restlessly sought to find
meaning, and someone to relate to - only to realize the loneliness I had
created for myself for choosing to live with movies and music instead of
friends and family.
I regained my
confidence and focus on how my art was meant to be: an original self-expression
of how I saw the world. Why should I even try to fit in when people don't
accept me for who I really am? I could not deny my desires or bizarre
imagination when it is part of what I'm trying to express about myself.”
The Blood of Creative Artists
I
recently got back in touch with some old CCAD classmates of mine. Since I’ve
been down here in
These
guys were my creative peers for three years when I was an undergraduate at
CCAD. Having moved away from
As a curious, ever-evolving artist, I constantly want
to change. I don’t want my artwork to be avoided and neglected by society. I
want to be shown! I worked too hard on it for it to fail. It is my
responsibility to make it somewhat commercial so that a wider audience will
enjoy it. I do want to go work for PIXAR out in
Art as a Voice
On
most occasions, my art can speak louder and far more brilliantly than I can in
mere words out loud. Simply speaking spontaneously in casual conversation is
not enough to make an impact in society. Art allows me the chance to think
through what I want to say, wait until the moment of inspiration, and release
it through artwork or writing. These very words are a realization made real
from a moment of self-awareness of how my art I produce is an extension of
myself. Art and writing are greater façades of myself than what I naturally
have with an average looking, shy, quiet human male body. Art makes me
extraordinary rather than ordinary. Art has allowed me to open up in ways I
wasn’t able to do in normal conversation. When I have the time to organize my
thoughts and dreams into a clearer vision of what I want to express, then I
feel that I have matured into a true voice.
Introspective or Anti-Social... or Both?
“I
have a confession to make: ...I’m having an affair with my art.”
People
have been assuming that I’m obviously anti-social since I’ve managed to produce
so much work in the past few years. In a sense, they’re right. But I have to
defend myself again and again that I feel that I am justified in my actions. I
know that there are women out there who are very interesting and artistic and
fascinating... just not exclusively in south
Worse yet, you
can’t “stop” being creative. If you take a year off, the artistic mind set
could fade or vanish. There is no retirement, only distraction, when you’re in
the creativity business. If I had to describe my life in social activity terms,
I would say I’m dating and making love my artwork, to creative ideas and
impassioned emotions. Only when you’re by yourself can one become a true individual. And it does have its
benefits (originality)... and problems (the loneliness). Yet I don’t get lonely
if I can have something to occupy my time. I chose art to save myself and offer
me some meaning to this life. Yet I cannot work forever... and that old familiar
emptiness aches back into me.
A loner is someone who stays away from society so s/he
won't be corrupted… one who realizes that something is wrong and refuses to be
part of its "norms". I am proud to be a loner... and it torments me
every day.
When you’ve got so many dreams in your head that you
feel like they’re flooding your every waking thought, you know you’ve become an
artist because you’ve got to express them to release. You just can’t hold back
the dam gates of creativity. When you get so many ideas per day, you haven’t
got a choice but to let them out in some form of artistic expression. When you
don’t want to waste them by not doing something with them, you know you’re an
artist. When you spend every day thinking up something original and you find
yourself jotting down notes constantly, you know you have to be an artist.
You’re different. You’re plagued/ cursed/ blessed/ damned/ gifted with too many
dreams to hold inside forever. You have to be an artist.
I do have the inner pride of
being a real artist – the real thing. I’m not the son or daughter of an upper
class aristocrat whose spoiled upbringing got me in the position where I can
party every day and throw some paint on a canvas as a hobby. I do my artwork
out of an emotional and spiritual necessity. I have not compromised my artwork
by doing what other people think I should be doing. I control my own fate and
my artwork’s vision. The ideas are my own without the help of “ghost-writers” or
“script-doctors”. I have the rights to my own content by self-creating
everything. I have not let wealth or fame interfere with my creative habits. I
have not let drugs influence or corrupt my life. I have dedicated myself to my
artwork through the pursuit of a greater imagination for the world to
experience through me. I am the bringer of fantasy – the universal dreamer.
You know, one of the most essential
things to sustaining creativity is to be isolated from negative criticism and
attitudes. You have to have a initiative to keep creating art. If someone
rejects your work or tells you you’re wasting your time, you may find yourself
ultimately giving up on your art. It’s an insane thing to be creative in our
society that doesn’t endorse the arts as much as they should. If you are around
such negativity, you need a think skin and be able to believe in yourself
enough to keep on working. You have to know a lot about yourself and why you’re
doing art in order to survive such artistic crises. Having extraordinary
self-determination is a must. (Being self-delusional could be considered doing
the same thing.) You have to trust in your art and yourself. Outside opinions can be a good thing, but they need to be critical
in a good way rather than being in a naïve, thoughtlessly destructive way. You
have to look out for foolish people who may discourage you. Yet if you’re
isolated from the outside world and live without distractions, the art inside
could effortlessly flow out without hesitation. If you’re working in isolation
“in your own world” or among friends or family who encourage your work, then
you can work without losing your creativity.
The Art Suffocation by the Real World
If
I had a full-time, heavy-loaded job, I wouldn’t have time to “hide” in my
artwork or introspective emotions. These mere and mighty personal words would
be insignificant. All the art projects I’ve slaved out of my soul would never
be experienced. All of my pain and happiness would never be shared. I’d have to
deal with being normal. I couldn’t be an individual as much anymore. I’d have
to be with relatives who I “can’t quite relate to”. I’d have to go back to
church and be a religion. I’d have to act and dress normal without
eccentricity, individuality, weirdness, or freedom. I wouldn’t feel lonely
because I’d be like everyone else, but I wouldn’t feel much freedom or
individualism either. I faced that reality with a shiver... and walked on
feeling possessed with alive
emotions. They were awakened to the possibilities.
Something happened after my studies
at undergraduate and graduate school… the urgency eased away. Slowly, the
passion to dream diminishes. Upon entering “the real world”, I had to “act”
like I’d conformed and be normal. I took a job teaching time-based media arts,
which allowed me to supplement my computer artwork. Still, having a profession
took over forty hours out of my week when I was used to working 80 hours a week
on my art while in grad school. My attention to the artwork side of my life was
literally cut in two. Then came my social life. I’d been mostly a loner for
most of my life. Gradually, I started hanging out with more people and actually
enjoying myself. I wasn’t so full of raw depression or competitive drive
that forced me to dream and focus so deeply on my artwork. I had to spend time
with friends and the lady in my life. Hanging out with friends and simply wasting
time gradually softened my creative and emotional zeal. I was so
comfortable that I had stopped “living” for my art and making true artistic
progress. I hadn’t stopped making art, but I did have to slow down. Yet I began
to get so emotionally comfortable that I had initiated myself to start “living”
for myself for a social life like 99.9% of society. Yet I was neglecting what
great art I could have made. That’s when I realized the danger with having a
good ol’ time (copulating, watching TV, drinking, smoking, or whatever)
without having made a mark in society with my art – especially with a mind
brewing with dreams and a personality ripe with emotions. (Nevertheless, there should always be some time to spend for a
social life.) I mainly blame this slow loss of
artistic focus on graduation day from school.
The ultimate question arises of “Why continue making
art?” So many potentially great artists cease to exist from creating any new
art after that point on. There’s no point. “Get a job” is what they’re told by
the REAL WORLD (parents, significant other, roommate).
But if you do end up remaining creative and expressing
yourself through creative means while out of art school, keep up fighting for
art’s sake. I suppose part of the problem rests in the fact that when you’re
twenty-one you’re hungrier and more passionate about changing the world through
your artwork and emotions. You just have to tell yourself that you’re as young
as you feel. As an artist, you have to remain energetic at heart and blissfully
naïve – if not delusional for the sake of protecting your passions. “You can
change the world, or at least your world!” you have to tell yourself.
The body grows older and wearier, but the creative spirit shall remain. It just
has to be reminded sometimes.
Life
simply doesn’t have a place for real artists. There is no market for
extraordinary innovation, expression, and emotion - just sugarcoated sensations
and showy, emotionless special effects like in today’s terrible
7-19-03:
My skill and forte in my life is to be a
creative, innovative thinker. Yet I am considered just another human being used
for mechanical and technical purposes around the house and society. My special
artistic gifts are forsaken and laid to waste. I am used for physical or
technical labor, nothing more. What a waste of the use of the human
brain. And I’m not alone for millions of great artists from around the world
are forced to give up on their artistic talents because they don’t provide
enough money for them. They’re offered no opportunities to expand their great
creative powers. It’s a disturbing routine of self-expression being laid to
ruin and left premature. The world wants us artists to be normal so we can fit
in. If we can’t, they medicate us with anti-depressants and bad television to
numb our minds. We have to rebel. We have to escape from becoming obsolete
artists with ordinary dreams.
Dressing
Differently/ Thinking Differently
While shopping at the Lima Mall, I
realized that I would never wear clothing that has more personality than I
do... especially when other people are wearing the same clothes and look the
same. They all have the same "personality".
For me, shopping is worse than a visit to the
dentist, where at least there are no lines or unfulfilling choices there. I am
not the master of my domain when shopping for clothes and stuff. If you don’t
dress normal, people will hate you, insult you, and ultimately alienate you.
And in my personality, thinking different is so vital to me. So shopping becomes a complex conflict within – to be
oneself while conforming to culture. “Looking good” with clothes is ridiculous
to me since other people are seeing a façade of me. And most people don’t want
to see the real me with all of its wild colors and challenging imagination.
They’ll never get it. So I wear what people would feel comfortable seeing me
wear – meaning conformity. I bought a
black suit for my funeral… and for other people’s weddings and graduations.
Do I Have To Conform?
12-18-04: Life
scares me sometimes, or that is, unnerves me with how conformist and
conservative it can be. I am a bit frightened when I go to a family holiday
party and I can’t engage myself in conversation because I don’t think or talk
about sports, work, or news. I talk about ideas, emotions, art, movies,
music, and universes. These are the things that stimulate my mind. No one
wants to be a creativity explorer but me. And it kills me inside. I strive for
life to have a point to feeling this way. Do I have to conform to ordinariness
in order to fit in and be happy? But does that also mean I have to like football
and bad TV shows that dumb down the brain? It scares me… terrifies me into a
near panic attack.
Living
Life High on Chaos
This life is so crazy that I don’t see any reason to hold a normal life – a sane
life… a stable mind. Existence is beyond me, let alone for all humans. They may
think they know what they’re doing, but it’s all an illusionary disguise to
hide that we haven’t got a clue to why we’re even existing. We don’t know –
therefore, due to admitting this sincerely – we are left unto our chaos. God
(?) - God help us now. I’m not simple-minded enough to believe in God.
I’m too sensitive. I wish I were more naïve and neutered. (But who am I to say
that there isn’t a “God”? I don’t know for certain.)
Here I am in an
impossible life. I know that I possess this great amount of artistic creative
expression - yet so few care. Society
wants superficial beauty instead of honest emotion and artistic passion. There
is little to no support of artists in this world. Do we have so much of it now
that no one cares anymore? I feel a lack of artistic and emotional empathy from
my family, which only enhances my alienation and drive. No one close to me
believes in my artwork or my personality. They do tolerate it by politely
nodding their heads when I show my work to them. Suburban domestic families who
have such normal lives surround me. Here I am, this “loner” who pursues art instead of getting married and
raising children. I stand alone with my migraines, physically, emotionally, and
artistically.
After submitting
my work to over fifteen different festivals and contests, none of my
interactive pieces or my computer animations by themselves have won any sort of
award or recognition. I’m just left feeling so frustrated. I can’t tell if the
jurors don’t know what to think of my work, if my work doesn’t apply to the
category of their festival, or if my work isn’t good at all. Am I wasting my
time - or even my life?
Dealing with Rejections
3-28-03: Predictably
for the fifth year in a row, one of my computer animation pieces didn’t
get selected for SIGGRAPH. That rejection left me feeling lost and confused
about my artwork since it’s never getting accepted there – and I’ve got several
former classmates who have gotten in. Is my work not breathtaking enough? With
my dreams rejected, I felt like I was left in limbo with a panic attack
swarming into my being. Suddenly, I was filled with a restlessness and
desperation just like I felt every week while at CCAD. An incoming cold and the
lack of sleep I got last night also contributed to my sudden loss of
self-esteem. Even the sunlight teased me with its pleasantness in the midst of
a personal great depression. The sun made
me shiver. I felt aimless… pointless, agonizing with a depressive energy. I
am one of the turned down. Thankfully, I don’t take SIGGRAPH all that seriously
since it’s not dedicated to showcasing experimental or personal art work.
This further rejection only counters how the notion
that I have to work harder for acceptance. And yes, that means being self-involved. I’m afraid that means
sacrificing from having a social life. And when I finally receive that
long-desired recognition, I’ll be too emotionally lost and empty to care for
it. Still, I know I’m a good writer and a good artist – yet I’ve been working
for eight years now on my artwork and I’ve barely gotten much critical support
of it.
I almost
prefer the fact that my dad and family aren’t that interested in my artwork…
let alone understand it. I am aware of its emotional implications that it takes
on my vulnerable psychosis and actually drives
me to work harder. He gives me a reason to be ambitious.
Battling the Agonies of Apathy and
Rejection
I’ve
had my near-life altering days. Or let’s say, my days of questioning and doubting. One of my students heavily
inquired during class where this computer animation work would get him a job.
He demanded where the commercial payoff occurs for all his hard work. “I don’t
want to be a starving artist!” he professed. He mentioned these things after
hearing that my classmate Ty had gotten into the Electronic Theater at SIGGRAPH
for one of his latest animation pieces while one of my latest works didn’t. Though I told him that I could
make “artsy” pieces since I can support myself through teaching, I started to
question why I make the art I do. “Therapy art” hasn’t gotten me anywhere
commercially. “It’s not going to play to the folks in
The Continuing Frustrations
It
tears me up inside that I’m putting my heart out on the line in my art pieces
and they still don’t make any difference to anyone else. I truly wonder if my
introspection has mattered to anyone. Will people just go and joke, “This guy
sure is manic depressive!” because I actually used real emotions instead of
manufactured emotions into my work. Or:
“He sure does take a lot of drugs!” because I actually used my God-given
imagination instead of ripping off what other people have done before. And then
they go back to their lives without feeling changed because they weren’t
willing to open themselves up. I want to make something so personal and real
that it’ll be universal to everyone who has deep emotions, imagination, and a
sense of humor. (At least I’ll get the an alienated teenage audience.) It’s all
been coming together in the editing of images and sound in the past through
hard work, doubt, and redoubt. I’m putting everything I’ve got into making my
art work.
What Is
“Accessible”?
I don’t know how to describe what I do as accessible. What
is “accessible”? Something that’s been done before countless times that have
proven commercially and financially well received. But art isn’t meant to be
made into money. That completely changes its nature. And I believe that is
where people lose their focus and understanding to time-based video and
computer art. Most everyone expects it to be commercially viable since
Are There No Jobs For Creativity?
7-2-03:
One day, I overheard
some women talking about a brother of theirs who was majoring in poetry in grad
school. They prayed that he’d be able to get a teaching job or something
because “there wouldn’t be any other use for his skills in society”. That was
extremely disturbing to overhear. That clenched it: the real world has no use
for art and creativity if it doesn’t employ the making of money. And to do so
is to sell out – compromise one’s ideas and vision by “dumbing it down”. What a
horrific realization for a real artist to come to terms with. It’s like
learning that everything you feel and express so deeply inside is not just obsolete,
it’s insignificant to your human race.
(What fervor made me write these words? They’re not even for
anyone? I’m not getting paid for this time and energy of putting down my
thoughts. Am I talking to myself for self-introspection’s sake, art’s sake, or
just talking to myself because I’m alone and need some company? Was the stress
of feeling too much, and I had to let the passion out…?)
Art Isn’t About Money
The thing is… making art isn’t about making money.
It’s never been that way for me. I did it because I purely enjoyed it or it was cathartically healing me in some sort
of way. Creating art isn’t about commerce because in its heart there is a
higher level of self-expression that elevates it from being something cheap and
formulaic. There’s a creative zeal to it that far beyond mere dollars. The
paradox of the situation is in the fact that artists still need to survive and
make a living. So no support or funding means no art. Artists have to find an
alternative way of supporting themselves. And that means either being able to
sell your art regularly (very rare), selling out your artwork (become a graphic
designer), giving up on art and doing something else (military), or doing art
on the side of doing another job (teaching). But what arts comes down to is
about the enjoyment and pleasure in doing it. And that is something you can’t
put a price tag on.
I
believe in my artwork so much that I have to keep working on it. There is no
turning back or quitting. Even though I receive no recognition,
response, or pay to what I create and write, I still think it’s truly
interesting, original, and meaningful. It keeps me excited about living, so I
keep working on it. If I thought my work was mediocre, I’d probably stop making
art. But after reviewing some of my projects and writings from the past few
years, I have to admit, with deep critical thought, that I am a good artist and writer. I have no doubt that I am a creative
individual artist.
Now if only my
future was more certain from blind ambition and creative talent. I have
confidence in myself and my artwork. It is society that doesn’t!! It is society
that frowns and doesn’t care for originality or self-expression - just bland
entertainment Hollywood escapism. As an artist who is trying desperately to be
true to himself and his art, it’s goddamn sickening and depressing!!
Suicide-inducing depressing!! Things have got to change! And it constantly makes me
question: “Does making good art even matter?” No one seems to care for
“talent”. Creativity goes almost ignored in our society. No one really cares.
And I am left alone. It instills a sense of terminal loneliness in oneself. I
either fall to the pain, resist, or remain oblivious to the pain. If I leave
myself to be disenchanted with my life and art, I don’t think I’d have anything
to live for, in consequence.
An Artist’s Defiant Revolution of
Society’s Status Quo
We live in a world
where creative artists on also on the endangered species list. A desensitized
society already infatuated and over-saturated with media gossip has no use for
their dreams anymore. So hear this, all ye who dare not bare my call, I’m
screaming out of my mind and imagination to save your souls from apathy and
superficial
My artwork could be called “small”
art, as in it doesn’t exactly appeal to a mass audience. My work is more
personal, quirky, eccentric, creative, and unique than most commercial work.
But that is exactly what makes it different and good. Those who
do understand and “get” what I am expressing are rewarded with a deeper
connection to the art that is more personally, emotionally, and artistically
pleasurable. It’s depth lies in its personal identification to what the work is
about. Most commercial work expresses the same old storyline and characters
without the idiosyncrasies and originality that makes up most human beings.
That is the core of what I try to express as a creative artist working today.
“Art for the Self”/ “Art for the
Soul”
What
a revolutionary idea – make art for your own self without thinking about an
outside audience or how much money you’d want to sell your artwork for. Make
art to get your emotions out. If other people relate to it, all the better.
Personal art is meant to be empathized with through the honesty of the work. It
is doing something that commercial art cannot create: the human soul. Art is
something that must be in our lives in order to figure our way through this
mess called “life”. Without it, we’re all alone and falling apart. Commercial
art is all about escapism. Personal art is about making us face our fears,
dreams, hopes, disappointments, desires, and struggles… hopefully without
sugar-coating it. It is what connects us together as a collective society all
going through similar, but different struggles.
"This song
is from one of those albums I made after I left the Rolling Stones, and most
people thought it was only about my
parents. It's actually about 99% of the parents out there alive or half
dead." -John Lennon introducing "Mother".
My
Audience
My audience is
anyone who appreciates a wild sense of the imagination and self-expressive
emotions. I do believe my work is suggested for the sensitive. If you have an
open mind and are willing to accept outrageous new ideas with sincere emotions
at its core, you will enjoy what my artwork and writing are about.
From a “Rolling Stone” article:
Irish singer Sinead
O'Connor plans to retire after the release of the live DVD Goodnight, Thank You. You've Been a Lovely Audience in July.
"I seek no longer to be a 'famous' person, and instead I wish to live a
'normal' life," O'Connor explained in a post on her Web site. "I am
glad that ye are helped by my songs. So help me too, by giving me a private
life."
"My advice to anyone
who ever admires a so-called 'celebrity,' if you see them in the street, don't
even look at them," O'Connor continued. "If you love them, then the
lovingest thing you can do is leave them alone and don't stare at them! Or bang
on restaurant windows when they're in there. Or make them get their picture
taken, or write their names on bits of paper. That's pieces of them. And one
day they wake up with nothing left of themselves to give."
"Thanks to all of ye for a great time and
a great education," O'Connor concluded. "Love, peace, and don't
forget to pray."
Upon learning that one of my
favorite musicians was ceasing from making more of her art, I started an
intense discussion with my friend Justin about fame. Indeed, who would want to
be invaded everywhere you go by fans, fanatics, and freaks.
We expressed how “glad” we were about being artists and not being
famous. It’s really quite a relief to remain an anonymous artist and be able to
remain creative under our own rules. Imagine not being to go out without people
staring at you – recognizing you – wherever you go. It’d be insane. I’d
treasure my privacy. I treasure my privacy even as an unknown artist! “Fame” –
such a mystical goal for millions of us in our idealistic naïve views of
“success” – really is a curse in the end. Yet, we (even myself) continue
to dream of what would be like to be “adored” and “admired” by millions.
(“That’d show all my high school classmates!”)
The Right-Brained, But Right-Handed Dilemma?
It
has been discovered that people are generally more artistic if they are
left-handed than right-handed people. Left-handed people tend to use the right
side of their brain that specializes in being artistic and creative. That
“fact” was always discouraging to my dreams of becoming an "artist"
because I was right-handed. So I used my frustration as a reason to work harder
on my artwork. In the end, I was an artist and still right-handed. (This
conflict of proven knowledge was just one of the reasons why I embraced Surrealism
in my work and life.)
Right/ Left Brain Confusion Functioning
After
I read a chapter on Right/ Left Brain functions, which led me to fathom my own
confused state. Since I’ve been right-handed for as long as I can remember, I
have had a slight confusion/ creative blend of mind. In this chapter, it stated
that right-brained, creative people have usually been left-handed. So maybe I
had learned to work with the wrong hand when I was young! That could have
screwed up my brain functions, such as my handwriting. Maybe….
Why I Am Attracted To Surrealism
The existence of God has always been a tricky thing
for me as I grew up as a Catholic. Once I got out of my small town environment
that was mostly German Catholics, I was exposed to other ways of thinking. In
Catholicism, you are taught that there is only one God and only one God you
should worship. Well, other religions worship other deities of Buddha, Muhammad,
Zeus, or the Sun. And yet we are also taught to be respectful of other people’s
beliefs. How can I say that they are wrong then for praying to their “God”?
What if the God I believe in and was taught to believe in isn’t real either?
Hence, this was just one occurrence where surrealism came into play in a major
way. I just didn’t know how to feel or how to act. Do Catholics just not ask
themselves these big, complex, paradoxical questions that might shake up their
entire belief system? Do they censor themselves from asking “What am I doing
here?” so they can remain sane and happy like little children or cattle? I lost
my faith in religion, but not in a higher being. But the breakaway from
religion cost me my unity with my family and cousins since they didn’t think
the same way I did. The complexities can estrange thee, as they did to me.
Surrealism took hold of my soul and my thoughts. I wrestle with it daily ever
since. (And this was just one instance of millions.)
Artists
vs. the Media
I’m
so sick of media manipulating our society to be like its cute plastic models. I
wouldn’t have minded if people weren’t already imitating these superficial
images of how people should look (without imperfections or emotion). I’m sick
of how media makes everything sexy.
People, especially impressionable teenagers, look at this and (subtly) get
brainwashed, while denying it to their parents and the news crews. Instead of
having normal imperfections to their lives, the beautiful people substitute it
with drug addiction. I have to declare WAR on this hypocrisy. MTV and
I
have to fight back because my emotions won’t have it any other way. They
threaten my sanity. “Coping” with this insanity is insanity. In order to
break through, I have to communicate over the emotional static and beyond the
superficial media beauty. I’m sick of being neglected and scorned upon. My time
has come to rise up and speak up and out upon the masses. Give me an audience
of one or one trillion!! I just want to give the world some truth instead of
some fifteen-minute POP culture eye-candy.
I
have to take a stand against how glamorized drugs and sex are in the media. I
have to address it to make out world a better, less confused place. I have to
sort through the chaos and Surrealism and find harmony and structure within.
I’ve
set unrealistic goals for myself - yet all great artists have to do that! You
have to have that kind of ambition. Madonna famously said that she wanted to
rule the world. So do I... just in a different sort of way.
It’s
a pain to be an artist. Your personality requirements have to be that you are
an opinionated individual with something to say, a loner, emotional, dedicated,
independent, and focused to one’s art. How does one find room for a lover and
family?
To Make Every Hair Stand On End
I want to make art that is going
to make every hair on your entire body stand up on end. I used to get that
excitement from watching great movies when I was younger. I haven’t felt that
way in a long, long time. God, I miss that cinematic sense of awe. So I have to
create my own art to excite myself. It’s out of a desperate need to feel in awe
again like I used to feel. I want my imagination to be opened.
8-19-03: I’ve
got the feeling that several of the “artists” I’ve met have given up on their
dreams by now. Here are my fucking artist peers and all they do is talk about
what great sex they’re having or how wonderful their relationships are. Yes, I
yearn for some of that, too, but isn’t there something more they want?
Is lust and love what brings ultimate contentment? Am I the only one screaming
out from the darkness believing that having dreams are what’s more?!?
It’s seems to be in vogue for adults to give up on their dreams for something
more concrete like making money, babies, and orgasms. People try so hard to be
like each other in order to be liked. I hate that. It’s kills all originality
and good art that could have come from such great artists. Witnessing this is
the saddest thing in the world. Some call it maturity, which I agree it is. But
I also call it casual, cool insanity. They just conforming to the easiest route
that everyone else has taken in order to have a happy, comfortable life. In
other words, having a pointless existence in a pointless world, and it doesn’t
bother them a bit. Perhaps, I do want my life to mean something. And why
would I even consider going on with an active creative mind when 99.9% of the
earth’s population has quit on their dreams? Call in a deeply rooted
subconscious eccentricity that demands that I be different from the rest in
order to make my place in the universe.
That is why I continue to hang onto my ego, my dreams, and my art.
I don’t want to lose them that easily. That is why I spent so much time looking
for the right mate. The wrong choice would have meant doom for all the
creativity that could have followed. That would have been tragic, futile.
And not giving up on your dreams is a “crisis”
decision. It means not conforming to what other people want you to be. It’s a
daily desperate, yet valiant struggle to keep going on. It takes great courage
and defiance to make it. Yet in the end, it makes one a stronger person.
Meanwhile, the rest of society won’t “wake up” for years later during their
midlife crises that they didn’t do anything with their life. As an artist,
we’ve dealt with our crises on a regular basis to the degree that we know what
we’re doing. We’re that in tune with ourselves.
8-22-03:
A Fearful Fantasy of Mine: Suddenly, a priest
appeared in my house with my family members standing behind him. It was an
“intervention” to make me “normal” again. It seemed to absurd to be true, and I
thought it was comedy at first. It eased into a nightmare within three seconds.
They were serious. Free-thinking dreamers like me are outlawed and
censored in this sad, sad society. What they don’t know is that I’m happier without
their lifestyle and beliefs. I am my own self. Not one of them. I’m different.
They actually got together to make me “change”. That’s insanity!
Suicide Me/ Erase Me
8-25-03: I am
overcome with a sudden realization that to become reborn I must get rid of
everything about me. My possessions are a trap. I cower in my escapist
security. They hold me inside and counter my very day. What if I lost
everything in my home: my artwork, my CDs, my movies, my computers? I’d be left
with nothing – except a new identity with a clean slate. It would truly be an
eraser moment of self. I’d be free again. Then again, the safer, saner route
would simply be a new state of mind.
Amnesia would be another way of solving the question of becoming new again.
Just erase my memories and the emotions that burdened down on that personality.
It was going to be suicide or erasing my personality
in order for me to survive as part of humanity. I couldn’t take the loneliness
being me was doing to me. I was that desperate. I wanted to be erased, which, I
suppose, is another way of saying I needed to change.
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a
dream.” –Edgar Allen Poe.
8-25-03:
Artists have always danced on the border of
madness. We’re in that gray area taunting, scratching, playing, and fooling
around with our emotions to bring out the brilliance of our creativity. It’s a
dangerous recess. One fall can lead us into the abyss. I’ve been there and I’m
been humbled by how vulnerable we are. It’s like we’re as fragile as a twig
about to be stepped on at any moment. Only we’re too naïve to know when or
where that’s going to happen. So we live cautiously. We’re wearing our armor on
our sleeve. We’re in danger of becoming a sensitive species of the endangered. We’re
too sensitive to exist naturally.
8-23-03: Why
did the spark go in people once they’re reached “maturity”? Some days I look
around at the world and see adults act like they’re on cruise-control. Most of
them have lost any sense of true imagination to their lives. In replacement,
they’ve gotten kids, vacations, and sexual intercourse – yet no dreams. I see
more life and wonderment in children around the ages of 3 through 8. Oddly,
around the time kids become teenagers, their fantasies drift off into thinking
about making money, having sex, and getting a job – three things that tend to
kill off one’s imagination. Has life’s many responsibilities gotten adults down
from dreaming high? Most adults live on auto-pilot with the compliments of
beer, TV, and sports. It’s all too much of a waste of life for me. I’m not
taking that route. What’s the point to living without a sense of awe,
adventure, and imagination? Some people think artificial stimulations like
drugs, one-night stands, and video games are life’s highs. It looks like
supporting one’s own artistic habits is more important than one would have
thought. Some accuse dreams for not “paying the bills”. That’s sometimes true,
but it does heal the soul. And yes, both of them need tending to.
“Have you ever thought about it? The moment those
kids stop playing those games, they start to grow old. Playing ‘Kick the Can’
keeps them young”… “Maybe the fountain of youth isn’t a fountain at all. Maybe
it’s a way of thinking”… “What’s the matter with you?! Where’s your life!?”… “He’d say
that being awake is dangerous and silly. He’d say we’re crazy. Well maybe you
have to be a little crazy in order to make the magic work!!”… “Playing
children’s games is the secret to youth!”… “You’re afraid! You’re afraid of a
new idea. You’re afraid to look silly!”… “There’s magic in the world. I
know there is.” –Dialogue from the old “Twilight Zone” episode, “Kick the Can”.
I hate when people insist that people need to
“grow up”. It all depends in what way. Growing up doesn’t mean losing
one’s sense of wonder or imagination for the world. Growing up doesn’t mean
having to stop playing and experimenting. Growing up doesn’t mean to cease
feeling and being innocent and naïve, like the way a child sees the world.
Don’t you yearn to feel how it feels to be young again and see everything new
and exciting? Growing up doesn’t mean to stop dreaming and drink beer! Smoking
shouldn’t be a substitute for laughing! Making love shouldn’t just be a
substitute for not having recess anymore! It is the death of creativity if one
believes in such advice. We need to play again in order to dream again for life
to feel magical. This is one of the great inner conflicts and battles that all
real artists and caring human beings have to deal with throughout their
lives and careers. You have to be a realist while remaining a dreamer. Its
society-imposed schizophrenia that tries so hard to break the dreamers by
forcing them to conform, or else go insane.
During a family reunion one year, I came across an
uplifting epiphany. For my money, playing with a colorful parachute (like I
used to in Phy. Ed in the third grade) and blowing bubbles with a group of
giggling young, under eight years old cousins on a park’s grassy field was the
best experience on earth!! It’s simple, innocent, bliss-out fun. There’s no
competition as in most sports activity – just collective teamwork. Hanging out
with the adults can often be so boring. And to them they think I’m too distant,
shy, eccentric, or whatever. I can’t help it if they like to talk about their
hairstyles and who’s dating who. Belonging to that small talk
state-of-mind is Dullsville! It’s madness because it’s all meaningless
dribble. Where is the fun then?! The kids, from ages three to eight, really
seemed to be having a great time. So I hung out and played with them. And I
found myself retuned in with their alive jovial mindsets and free giddy
spirits. They took a liking to me – the adult who acts like a kid, as one of
them. I guess I was surprised to be accepted so quickly. I’m used to being
rejected and estranged in society all too often. But here children hadn’t
learned those negative emotions yet. I realized then that I haven’t played
with children in years. And playing was an integral part of my childhood
– of anyone’s childhood. We “grew out” of recess because there simply wasn’t
anymore recess in high school and college. Adulthood turned into other
superficial pleasures like alcohol, drugs, smoking, and sex. They distracted us
from freeing our inner child – our innocent joy and bliss of life. For me,
finding a chance to play was a cathartic, nostalgic, heavenly, and exhilarating
experience. (Though I will admit that for an older “kid” like myself, it did
get exhausting after being around a dozen hyperactive kids!) Everyone should go
find some children they know or are related to and play with them in their
playgrounds just to get out of their stoic adult shells just for one sunny
afternoon. Quit being “mature”, professional, mannered, and adulterated. We
need to get real again. Get born again through playing again. If it
takes going to recess, give yourself recess. Go for a refreshing bike ride.
Swim several laps for the pure rush of it. Use your imagination to create an
adventure!! Dream. Breathe. Live. Play… today.
Nurturing
Your Imagination
6-25-03: It’s a
sad fact that during puberty most teenagers trade in their sense of imagination
in life for girls and sex. Suddenly, they have other things in mind and in
hand. It’s often the outcasts and “losers” who don’t have girlfriends that keep
their fantasy worlds thriving. They’re the ones who haven’t “grown up” because
they’ve been rejected by the pretty girls. They still want love, excitement,
adventure, and sex – so they elsewhere. Go to a comic book store, a library, a
movie theater or a video store. And because they’re not loving a person,
they’re loving their imaginations by dreaming. They receive something special
from such sources of fantasy that women can’t offer. It’s a constant supply of
intelligence, awe, beauty, grandeur, exhilaration, excitement, adventure,
romance, suspense, danger, and, most crucially, imagination. That key element
of imagination triumphs over all other experiences. It’s what is not real. It
is experiencing and glimpsing the infinity.
To be cool is probably one of the worst things you
could be as a human being. You’re simply following the rules of other people
and trying to imitate what other people like and look like. There’s no risk
being taken. So where’s the fun? I wouldn’t call myself cool and I wouldn’t
call myself a geek. I’d just prefer to be uncool or noncool. It’s more pleasing
to be an original than it is to be hip. As Huey Lewis and the News once
eloquently stated in a great 80’s song, “it’s hip to be square”.
I
have nothing else to do but make art. I want the attention because I don’t have
a strong social life. So I put myself on display through my images and sounds.
It’s the best way for me to communicate my deepest self and inner creativity. I
pray through my art! I pray in surrealistic praise poems of glory, doom,
desperation, and ecstasy. They have my emotions in the forms of dreams. My God,
it makes me feel so good and so bad to make art. It requires such dedication
that my personality turns into a recluse and I work and slave on what I feel so
passionately about. It’s an art trap, a suicide celebration in colors and
fantasies. I get lost in it as I drift away into memories that didn’t exist
because I make them all up because I was bored to tears. God save me. Not
quite… great art saves me. God is in the artwork for it comforts
people as well as myself. It is the scriptures of Saint Salvador Dali,
What if every single person wrote an autobiography of
their life and published it on the market? Who would be all that interested
when the world is flooded with tales of each person’s life?!? People
would cease to care about one another after a while. 99.999% of the
autobiographies would be meaningless because they were nothing special compared
to the others. It’s like they’re living the same dull, unextraordinary lives.
And what would this apathy do to most people if they realized their life was
nothing “spectacular” or “brilliant”? Even if they committed suicide it would
be considered cliché… just another stereotypical ending to a tortured,
dull life.
My Moment of Existential Clarity
5-31-04: As I was swimming my laps in an emotional
rage at the condominium clubhouse swimming pool at a gorgeous evening on
Memorial Day all by my lonesome self, I realized that all life was a temporary
thing. My job. My life. My father’s life. My friends’ relationships with
their girlfriends and wives. The personal relationships of my students and how
they dissolve once they graduate and go off into the world. The universe we
exist in. This very moment. They’re all just in the passing. Some just
fade sooner than others. I felt myself being completely in the moment. I was
aware of being alive with the total awareness and existence of death. It
made me pause in the pool and rest by the side and stare into the luminous
clouds in the blue heavens above. I thought about Lou Reed’s song “Temporary
Thing”. Everything around me would come to an end… and I accepted it. It made
me realize how little time I had left to do with the life I had in me. I also
felt a calmness in me that I realized that I’ve lived my life wisely by
pursuing my dreams instead of doing nothing. It also made me realize the
opposite, which is that this was “no big deal”. We’re here for just a while.
Enjoy it while you can! There’s no time for depression. There’s no need for
negativity when you already know your end. So why worry? What an extraordinary
epiphany and feeling. It was existential euphoria.
“Get out, it's just a temporary thing ...”
-“Temporary Thing” by Lou Reed.
“What did you accomplish at the end of the day?” This
is an extremely important question and dare that I ask to myself. Will a
shallow one-night stand relationship give my life “meaning”? Will going to
church save my soul? Will working at Taco Bell make my life worthwhile? I think
too much, I know. But I did find truth and meaning in my life through making
self-expressive art. I wouldn’t exclusively label my work “personal” either. If
it’s self-expressive, the personal can also be the universal.
“What
the Hell Have I Done With My Life?!”
Asking myself the BIG question of “What the Hell
Have I Done With My Life?!” has evaded me for most of my conscious
existence. It forbids me from wasting my time with small talk and bland social
activities. I have found the deep need to create art that has a great
importance and depth to it that will allow it to last for ages. I also found
myself more attracted to the big conversations and grand expressions in
books, movies, music, and art. Can you blame me for this? Really and truly? I
felt the reality of being alive and wanted to make the most of it. Can
see my internal conflict and turmoil that I’ve had to deal with for my entire
life?
“Do I Have Anything To Say?”
There
is one, great question that all sincere artists ask themselves during their
lifetime. Normally, they first ask themselves this question during their
junior or senior year of undergraduate studies when they’re focusing on their
craft and major interest of their field. That dire question: “Do I have
anything to express?” Most cynical artists will respond that everything has
been said and expressed before. “There is no new art to be made!” they exclaim
frustrated and passionately. I’ve asked myself if I have anything worthy to
express or if anyone would even want to listen or experience my artwork. For
one thing, as an artist, I can never say that there is nothing
new to be said. Yes, there is an overwhelming amount of art in the world that
repeats what has been said before. It numbs our minds and weakens our
imaginations. But all one has to do is realize that imagination is infinite,
which means art will always have something to say. One just has to have the
confidence to make it happen.
So ask yourself:
“Do you have anything important to say? Do you have anything to live for? Do
you have the patience to find out?” Hopefully, you will be able to find out
that art has the answers.
It’s pretty sad and pathetically
cynical when your own art teachers tell their students that nothing new has
been made in decades and all the good ideas have been done. That’s totally
completely true with commercial movie-making. Yet that’s ridiculous when it is
applied to experimental or independent movie-making. The goal of commercial
work is to make money and maybe win awards. Experimental work discards all of
this and just goes wherever it wants to go. And this creates new areas for
where art can go. New ideas and avenues are created. They are just not as
immediately assessable to a wide audience. And for this experimental work is
left mostly unnoticed while the cynics keep talking about how there are no new
ideas.
Where Do My Ideas or Any Ideas Come
From?
6-19-05:
Well, I am a visual artist. I find my
inspiration from looking at visual images and sounds (TV, movies, comics, CDs)
and use my “beefed-up” imagination to extend the visuals with my own
perceptions.
For example, I’ll be reading a comic book, Legends of the Dark Knight #18, and read
a panel where two people jump out of a plane at 10,000 feet as their plane
explodes from a heat-guided missile behind them. Then I recall watching a video
of my girlfriend skydiving when she was still a high school student while
attached to a professional skydiver so that they will land safely. Then my own
imagination comes into play… and play it
does! (And I apologize if this following imagination is too perverse for
some!) The new idea arrives of going skydiving with my girlfriend from 10,000
feet while having “sky-sex” with her as we free-fall to earth. What a massive
sensation! And what if we had that professional skydiver attached to us to make
sure we landed safely as we had intercourse? It would be a “skydive three-way”
of sorts. So in the end, the idea arrived by adding a visual image and a memory
while being multiplied by my own personally unique perversity, creative
imagination, and drive for originality. This is the formula for new ideas –
arriving from them from other ideas and images.
An Illustrated Journal
I find “American Splendor” to be such a revolutionary
idea and concept. It’s basically a journal illustrated as a comic book.
It’s Harvey Pekar’s life, musings, depression, dreams, perversions, struggles,
drama, comedy, despair, and other varied moods mapped out as art. It’s a
journal in picture form. He took his existential boredom, his spare time, and
made it into an art form. That is great. That gives me something to do – a
purpose. I’ve got the words and the content. I just need to translate it.
“American Splendor” gave me the confidence to try anything.
I record every idea that flashes in my brain here.
It’s a stream of creative consciousness. Every day’s journal is a near perfect
record that could be made into a work of visual art. It’s all there and ready
to be plucked – realized - visualized.
You’ve got to have faith in your ideas and concepts.
They will take you places. Envision them. Believe in them. Create them.
Complete them.
This Spark of Inspiration
READ, Eric!... and Remember: Simply read from your journal, Eric, as narration for
time-based artwork with video or still photos as the visual element. Create
instrumental soundtracks in Garage Band. The narration tracks are strong enough.
Trust in yourself enough that they’re good
enough. Believe me, Eric. You may not believe yourself tomorrow, but your
Eric Homan of March 19th, 2004 at 11:33 p.m. on a Friday night
believes in this spark of inspiration. He was hungry enough to want to go for
it.
EVERYTHING IS CREATIVE
You will never be left uninspired if
you just follow these simple proclamations and revelations: “EVERY DAY’S
ACTIONS ARE CREATIVE. EVERY ACTION CONTAINS ARTISTRY. EVERY BIT OF DIALOGUE OR
CONVERSATION CONTAINS BRILLIANCE. EVEN GOING TO THE BATHROOM IS A MASTERPIECE.
BELIEVE IN THIS AND YOU WON’T EVER FEEL BURNT OUT AGAIN. EVERYTHING HAS
POTENTIAL. IT IS JUST ILLUSION THAT IT IS NOT.”
Yet, there is one
area that I have chosen to explore that has barely been glimpsed: the
subconscious mind. Dreams are the infinite. There is no limit to what
can be explored with dreams since they are so mysterious, alluring, and
unresolved. They are the new art. They are what shape my life and my artwork.
Emotions are the glue that keeps dreams together and the oil that keeps them
coming. Surrealism and Expressionism are the modes one can investigate these
areas - be it video, computer animation, photography, painting, sculpture, or
new technology.
Contemplating God and The Imagination
9-20-03: Thinking
about the near and non-existence of God and the limits of the universe
nearly overloaded my brain with too many possibilities. I dreamed too far to
the point of nearly freaking myself out before I was ten years old. Asking the
highest questions was something I sometimes tried as a kid growing up in a
small town with manic depression, an overactive imagination, and severe
boredom. Sometimes, I’d start formulating answers that would fry my brain that
I’d have to quickly forget what I’d been thinking in order to regain my sanity.
As curious human beings, we all have this ability to ponder such thoughts. It’s
just that we come to a point where we get afraid of finding the answers. We
forget we always have the bravery and the imagination to dare out and beyond
the impossible. We all have the answers; it’s just a matter of being able to
accept and understand them.
Expanding the Brain’s Imagination
Powers
It seems that we as human beings haven’t even come
close to tapping into the power of our imaginations. We live, we breathe, and
we dream. Yet the best we can do with our fantasies is to express them in art
forms like movies, paintings, writings, songs, and games. It seems like we
should be able to do so much more with this presence inside us called
imagination. It’s been said that we as a human race have only learned how to
use only 4% of our brain power. We could be telepathic if we “knew” how to
control it. Is it about tapping into our beliefs and moving into something
cosmic potential? Are we gods and we don’t even know it? Can we use our
imagination to have mind over matter? To be able to live without eating for
forty years? To be able to cry purple tears? To upset the sun by saying its
true name? To forget how to spell because it doesn’t have any shame? Why aren’t
we flying… or moving at the speed of crimson light? Why haven’t we broken free?
Why not create physical creatures from our minds? Can I train the subconscious
aspects of my imagination?
My Fantasy World Is So Strong
6-26-03:
My fantasy world is so strong that reality can barely compare or stand up to
it. I haven’t eaten in hours and my low blood sugar has loosened up my mind.
I’m at ease... the world is a dream. I’m just visiting in the reality. Why take
a normal wife when I can have my wildest erotic fantasy dream woman? I can base
her on someone I have a crush on in real life, but wouldn’t go out with me. I
can still have her in my private state of imagination! It’s like having the
ultimate love life! I’m in a dream. Reality is just for play! Hey hey!
The most powerful people on the planet are not the
politicians. It just appears that way. Underneath the pulse of our
society are a group of individuals who have in their minds the ability to alter
how we live, think, and feel. These people are the artists – the dream makers.
Why? Because they lie within society waiting and dreaming of what comes next.
Why? Because they are, quite literally, the hungriest. They are the most
obsessive, passionate, and visionary people in the world. They dream because
they can. They are the superheroes nobody ever sees or knows about. They are
the ones who will rule the world when the time comes. They’re old and they’re
young. They’re the idealists who can’t stop from dreaming things up. They are
the illuminists of our times. We have the powers of the universe. The
ideas are made out of ultraviolet light. We Are the Dreamers. We are the
fortune-tellers. We are the miracle makers. We express our fantasies,
destinies, futures, pasts, and forevers. We are the awe-gazers.
Yes, this is a naïve concept, but it may also be naïve to underestimate the power of the human subconscious and imagination.
My Superhero Superpowers
5-28-06: With
all of my jealousies and anger buried deep within my soul, the only way I've
learned to release it back has been through creating art and writing. It's my
outlet ammunition. I get such an orgasmic rush from being able to be creative
and expressive in a way that others don't know how to do. It's my superhero
superpowers – creativity and self-expression. Being an artist in society is a
bit like having a secret identity as well, which gives me another sense of rush
and pleasure. I gain my creativity and energy through listening to great music.
It's like Popeye eating his spinach to get super strong! Put on a great song
and I'm intoxicated by it enough to channel it into expressive forms and
thoughts.
Feeling the Most Alive with
a Chaotic Hurt
5-28-06: There’s
a great deal of urgency, emergency, and great struggle inside after you’ve had
your heart, dreams, and hopes dashed aside, usually by a woman. Everything in
your emotions unravel before you and your pores open up asunder. It’s hard to
know what is truth anymore when one’s love is lost or left bleeding. You try to
save yourself, but you can’t find an answer. Your magical universe is imploding
and you can feel every moment of every second because something inside of you
is dying… crying out. I suppose I feel the most alive with this kind of chaotic
hurt within me. A lot of creative energy bursts through this way. You see the
world with fresh eyes after the emotional tears have wiped away all illusions.
You’re reborn with the death of love. You have to reinvent yourself with a new
way of looking at life because the old way is over. You have to move on. The
urgency is real.
Looking Past the “Self-Indulgent” Surface and Finding One’s Own
Expression
My
artwork is about personal expression, which tends to make much of the subject
matter about me and my reactions to living. Because my artwork is about me does
not mean that it is about ego or
self-indulgence. I despise when people are unable to separate self-expression
from ego. They can’t see past the surface. The viewer’s empathy and emotional
connection is what makes someone’s personal art their own self-portrait. That is what art is for, at least, personally
speaking. The interactivity further connects the artist with the audience/
interactee by allowing them to alter, manipulate, change, and advance the art.
I
have a great deal of empathy for Vincent van Gogh for creating self-portraits.
Even our initial reasons for making art out of our images was alike. He knew it
was difficult to find models, so he used himself to try out different styles.
Yet there was also some emotional self-exploration in them. He was fascinated
by how his work represented the different stages and emotions in his life.
Artistic Progression
I
am glad that I had to work and learn how to be creative by getting in touch
with my emotional state and channeling it in artistic mediums. I had taken
years of art classes just like everyone else and had developed just like
everyone else. I grew increasingly discouraged that my work didn’t seem any
different than my peers. Out of a blind need for catharsis, I started
expressing my emotions through various art projects I had to do in the
following months. That began my journey into creating art that meant something
to me... and, hopefully, to others who also empathized with its content and
feelings.
War is a desperate artistic act of the utmost
expression. To give your life and sacrifice everything you are for a cause, an
idea, an expression, a love, and a feeling. Like Neil Young ever so
sardonically wrote in his song “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” that “It’s
better to burn out than fade away”, the artist creating art goes out in a burst
of glorious brilliance and self-destruction/ self-implosion. Then you look back
and wonder if the creativity was worth it. You screamed and cried and wailed
and prayed on your battlefield of the canvas. It’s ultimately a desperate,
impossible situation – but still we artists persevere and prevail.
Most of my art
portrays the emotional battlefields of myself, a good man at war with himself.
My art is about the comfort of self-examination. To rediscover a child’s sense
of play in art.
Having a Social Life vs.
Introspection of Art-Making
6-3-02: Having a social life has become
something of a conflicting blessing. I love having friends to hang out with;
yet I also feel I’m being taken away from the introspection of my artwork and
writing. Movies and music used to primarily take up my free time since I didn’t
have anyone to socialize with. The creativity and originality of those mediums
would inspire me to create art. The images and ideas spring creative concepts
to my brain. Recording that thoughts are what keeps me creatively active and
alert. If I didn’t, I’d lose my perspective and focus. It was like a cycle of
creative creation. Yet once that cycle is compromised, I’m left agitated and
nervous. I don’t have my release. I suppose that’s why I prefer to have few
friends. I don’t want any hanger-ons who distract me from doing art. I want to
be around people who inspire me – not drain me with banal conversation. In
general, I like to be alone sometimes with only art, movies, and music as my
companions.
Drawbacks to Being Creative
If
you are a creative individual, you may find your social life to be not so
simple. People will assume that you are self-centered, eccentric, full of
yourself, an outcast, a show-off, pretentious, and vain (sometimes rightfully
so). People will believe that you will consider them inferior. But the truth of
the matter is that I have to view people in two different categories: one as
creative artists, the other as good people. One must understand the difference
between the two - and respect both.
I
sometimes prefer Picasso to my family. Often I’d rather spend my time
expressing myself. You may have the mindset of being “a legend only in one’s
own mind”. And if you are good, your closest friends and peers will envy you,
discourage you, worship you, and hate you. It’s a rough, rough path.
You
will also find yourself in the situation of wanting to be creative all the time in order to stay creative.
The workload and dedication can heavily burden one’s social life, family life,
and love life. Being creative may be extraordinary, yet one is not protected
from unhappiness that can stem from one’s own gifts.
Fear the Creative
11-20-03: People have been saying that
overly creative types should be “heavily medicated”. It’s like the world’s afraid of an advanced imagination! They
can’t differentiate between drug-induced hallucinations and the real imagination.
They think that anti-depressants will ease the flow of the insanity within
life. Well, sorry, but it’s there and we have to deal with it sometime.
5-1-04: I’m
starting to come to the realization that life isn’t worth living anymore. Not
with this level of pain and loneliness. It’s like I’m living a very complicated
slow-mo form of suicide. I’m sacrificing myself into my artwork and writing. My
freedom and my creativity are my only reliable friends. I have other real
friends, but they can only give so much of themselves to be with my company.
Doing artwork is like my life support and my death machine. It’s my
legacy and my epitaph. I don’t have anything else to give in this world… this
wild, chaotic meaningless existence. I look around and see so many people I
don’t quite relate to – and it wounds me deeply. It wounds me more I can’t find
a love that will stick around. But I do have to thank that I am not in a
relationship with a woman who would only drag my dreams and I down. Now that
would be a sin to my artistic pursuits. I’d
rather be lonely and with my freedom intact instead of being in a dead-end
relationship that isn’t going to truly fulfill me. I’ve got
acquaintances with women who have children and now they’re too deep in the
thick of all them to have any time for what’s important to him. I know it’s not
right to be so selfish and self-centered, but this is a competitive
world! How can one get ahead when you’ve got a wife and kids sinking you down?
You have to work hard. You have to work harder. You even have to work harder
than that.
8-6-03: I have found
that as lonely as I am at times and as humiliating as it is to be single at
social events, I still prefer my solitude and bachelorhood. I don’t care for
the increased emotional and physical mess. I’ve witnessed how married life with
children can be. I adore children – yet in the field of my creative interests
in my life I believe children have no lasting part. I wouldn’t be able to
commit to the responsibility of taking care of babies, children, and worse, teenagers. Ultimately, I’d make a better
uncle than a father. I am an artist and a teacher. My art and my students are
my children. They’re already an overwhelming load. My dedication to my artwork
and self-expression has indeed taken over my life in such wonderful and
devastating ways. I need solitude to work. I can’t have screaming babies or a
nagging wife telling me what to do. I’ve grown too independent, I’m afraid.
It’s no wonder I’ve remained single for so long – I value my freedom too
highly. I do, I do, I do. I’ve learned to have friends to offer me human
company. Yet I’m still hesitant about the heavy commitment a relationship has
upon one’s self. I’m already giving everything I’ve got to creative pursuits
(for no one, so far, but me). I can’t have the family load breaking down what
I’ve spent so long building up – and
that’s my entire creative being. It’d be too much of a waste now to give
up. I’m past the point of no return. As Neil Young put it so eloquently, I’m
“too far gone”, mentally and emotionally.
Family… or Dreams?
8-6-03:
I’ve watched great artists wither away once they’ve given up on art by getting
married and/or having children. Suddenly, their focus readjusts to pleasing
them instead of contributing anything to the art world. I see some of them as
taking the easy way out. They’ve stopped living once they’ve turned off the
creativity. Originality is what gives us life. I fear that once they
forget how it feels to create something new they lose hope in life and
eventually go into emotional autopilot. They’re no longer human. They’re
robots: going to work, making love to the wife, raising the babies. Yes, there
are joys that go along with that sort of safe life. But… they’re nothing truly
special. Is that all life has to offer – a basic rerun of your father’s
life? I’ve worked too hard and felt too much to give up now. That’s why I’m
still looking for a lover that I can live with, and someone who can live with
my life. It brings up a great question: what is greater in life? Family… or
Dreams? Is it worth losing the awe and wonderment for screaming babies?! If
you’ve got the creativity, original thought processes, and ambition, why would
you give it all up? You can’t give up! You’ve got to find your role models and
stay the course. Find people who have gone through the same struggles and
yourself and keep going on even if no one believes deeply in you! Don’t let the
dream fade away! Stay! Stay! Stay! Stay!!
Fear of Having Children
8-22-05: Mainly
the only time I ever get any artwork or creative work done is when I’m bored
and have lots of free time to myself where I need to keep my mind occupied.
This is why I fear having children so much. They’d dry up all that extra time –
those precious moments of quiet and daydreaming where I feel drawn to making
art or writing. If I had too busy of a life, I’d have little time to release
those internal visions, emotions, and fantasies. They’d just remain there in my
head.
Defending Your
Individualism
4-7-03 (Written when I was single): As an individualist, I have to protest against some of
these accusations I’ve been hearing that I don’t have a “complete” life because
one doesn’t have a girlfriend or children. When you’re an artist, your art
becomes your love life because the sense of creation is like procreation. There
is an orgasmic thrill to reaching into the depths of creativity and emotion
that can’t be discovered with a normal domestic life of family. Though
personally I do yearn sometimes to be “full” with the company of a kind
companion, I recognize the sacrifice that the artist makes in order to progress
their art. The average person doesn’t know how good it feels to do something
meaningful with one’s life! How grand it is to create art! They won’t know how
wonderful it feels to be able to express a creative mind through an artistic
medium. They won’t know the pleasure of having something artistically
meaningful to do with one’s existence. My life is of singular dedication to an
artistic vision. They will say it’s unnatural. I will say it’s extraordinary.
I will say one thing: on evenings, nights, and
weekends I actually have extra time for myself to stay at home and work on
redesigning my web page, work on photo retouching, and edit some writing. If I
had an overbearing social life, all this artwork wouldn’t exist. I wouldn’t
have the creative time to work. It’s that simple. I needed time without
distractions.
I want to make love to my dreams. I suppose that
makes me slightly asexual. Some women have gotten to have too much baggage for
me to handle. As Neil Young once sang, “better on down that road without that
load”. Goddamn the truth to that proclamation!
Ironically, now that I look back at it, I have been
extremely fortunate to have been single through parts of my twenties for it
allowed me the time and concentration to focus on being a creative person. I
was able to work on and finished dozens of art projects while having time to
keep an extensive journal, watch great movies, listen to inspired music, and
work on side projects involving various diverse techniques such as digital
photography, computer animation, digital compositing, sound design, digital
imaging, and digital video. Most people, even most aspiring artists, lose touch
with their creative idealistic spark during those crucial years. People get
married, have children, and often get weighed down by those outside pressures.
It’s true that the stress of providing for one’s family could prove fruitful to
jump-starting one’s creative momentum, but oftentimes it leaves one high and
dry. Sometimes finding love and happiness too soon in one’s life can halt one’s
own yearning for creative fulfillment.
When
you’re single, lonely, celibate, and alone, you’ve really got something to
prove – and the time to do so. Your work and your art becomes your wife
and your life. People find themselves in their twenties. They find out what
they can achieve, what they can dream, and what dreams they can make real.
The wife and kids can come later in life. But when you’re single in your
twenties, you have the energy to aspire and achieve. Don’t waste it on too many
women, drugs, sex, and drink. Channel it into something fruitful. Dreams need
life. Use your own and give.
Your
enthusiasm will guide you, yet you may feel alienated in a world where
“everyone” has moved on with their lives. You’re the only dreamer around. Well,
let me just say now that that’s all part of the journey. The isolation is part
of being a dreamer and artist. Some people dream, but others dream and actually
create something meaningful. That’s the difference between you and the rest.
You worked harder than the rest when you had the chance to in your twenties.
And it’s a great feeling to have produced something worthwhile when you
had the chance.
Art Is Necessary
My life has taken on deeper meaning through my
artwork. I’ve spent a lot of time by myself creating art through my feelings,
experiences, memories, and emotions. So how can I fit in a social life beside
it? I nurtured my spirit and followed my dreams throughout my life. I didn’t
allow boring relationships to enter my world. Some called this sad on my part
to live a lonelier life. I considered it necessary in order to liberate my self
and my soul.
Art vs. Adulthood: A Sobering Moment
of Clarity
7-9-03: I can feel everything in existence, this
waking instant, slow down to a halt. Life as I know it isn’t moving anymore for
me. I’m stuck with myself. I don’t have any distractions. I’ve fully moved in
all of my positions into my new condo after nine hard days of moving and
working. With no more work, I’m simply here. I felt my first waves of
uncertainty and panic that I’ve moved into a new place where everything is
moved around and different. I had to readjust to my surroundings now that I’ve
been uprooted and upgraded. I should be happy as hell. Instead I felt as hallow
as heaven. All of my securities that I had living in my apartment before were
now gone or displaced. Then again, I need to get some more sleep. My entire
body is aching. While at the condo’s pool, I had to overhear the hottie mothers
chatting about places to go out to eat and looking after their kids. Is that
what becomes of people in the suburbs? Get yourself well fed at nice places to
eat, have sex, make babies, and live an uneventful life? To me, that seemed
like torture. I suddenly feared about dating the wrong women and finding myself
in a similar predicament. Life would be no fun anymore. Even if it does leave
one wanting and lonely, art is everything.
Fear of Being “Domesticated”
7-9-03:
A terrifying thought realization entered
my mind: what if I got so busy with a marriage and family in the suburbs that I
simply lost contact with my creativity since I didn’t have any time anymore to
keep exploring its reaches? I’d be just like everyone else, yet infinitely unhappy that I could have
been a visionary when I ended up as a normal in the end. I believe having my
dad “furnish” my condo with garage sale items has made my place into his
home. What started as immense gratitude for his immeasurable contributions has
evolved into a masquerade to make me look “domesticated”. I’ve got to retain my
individuality at all costs. I need to get my creative mojo back!
The
Quest to Be Creative and Be in a Relationship at the Same Time
12-5-04: This
question has left me conflicted throughout my twenties as I grew into being a
creative artist. I knew quite clearly that in order to be the most creative as
possible, I’d need to be in an environment of complete freedom, away from
outside distractions and responsibilities. What it amounted it, really, was
solitude. Yet I quickly realized that with all this “free” time and clear air
to think, I would also get very lonesome. But here comes the paradox: if I were
to get involved in a relationship and commit myself to it, I’d lose my freedom
to the responsibilities of being normal… being a good boyfriend… being a
husband. I’d have to free up my free time to the one I loved.
And
so I did “surrender” myself to being involved in a relationship. That was part
of the sacrifice and compromise to being in love. Yet I knew that being in love
with the right woman was worth all those challenges because I knew she was
saving my soul from growing lost from loneliness and despair. As I remained in
a relationship, I saw my output diminished and my creative thoughts become
fewer and fewer. I was becoming “domesticated”. Nevertheless, I still retained
my creative spark. I found a balance in order to spend a certain amount of time
working on my artwork and writing, and another amount of time to my significant
other. Though I did change in order to make my relationship last, I still
maintained who I was innately inside. And I knew I had to change because art
alone would not save me. It was never the companion who was going to make me
feel extra complete at the end of the day. I realized I had to be less selfish
if I was going to survive. And if that meant giving up some creative energy
(and therefore some brilliant and wonderful art pieces as well), so be it. It
is a far better alternative than loneliness.
An Unhappy Creative Life vs. a Happy
2-27-05: My
life is changing for the better and the worse. When one thing goes ever so
right, the other goes in the other direction. In order to have a stable
romantic and social life, I have to be somewhat normal. And because of this, I
have to partake in normal, bland activities. And from these distractions, I am
creatively hampered and distracted. I’m becoming increasingly domesticated and
dumbed down. I am becoming normalized. My quirky individuality is
shrinking more and more as I get older and more mature. I am less enthused
about doing creative personal work when I know it will probably not get
a wide audience for it. It’s increasingly difficult to dedicate myself to my
own artwork when it starts to interfere with showing affection to my
girlfriend. In the end conflict, I’m sharing my attention and emotions. And
both are very important to me. Yet making personal art doesn’t have an end
reward. So I feel increasingly amiss within my creative work. Yet that gaping
hole that once was my personal love life is finally filled. My life as a
paradox. I’m more creative when I’m single; I’m less creative when I’m in love.
It’s rather true that being unhappy and having lots of time help inspire art.
Yet it’s a matter what gets my creative juices flowing, which makes me feel the
most alive. Without my creativity, I feel like I am nothing… an ordinary
man with little significance. I know this may seem like I am granting myself
“elitist” undertones, but I am a highly creative human being. I can’t
necessarily change that without sacrificing my soul and personality in the
process. Some might conclude that it is my personality that drowns me from
being more sociable. It’s an endless cycle of dreams vs. reality.
Finding Peace: How to Be Happy as an
Artist
2-28-05: I woke
up with a fairly clear head and mind of what life is all about: finding
happiness. And I’ve been struggling with that a lot for years because of my
ambitions and demons keep me down. I want the world to love me and respect me
and know me, but I’ll never truly get it no matter how hard I try. I’m killing
myself with my dreams. What I need is what I’ve already got: a woman to love me
back, a family, friends, a home, and a job. It’s all very simple. I’ve been
trying to do too much with my life. And I’ve been left lost, lonely, and
confused from it. I don’t need to be that way anymore. Living is about finding
peace through your existence – not misery and suffering, even if great art
comes out of those emotions. I can make my own life a happy art experience if I
want to. It’s that simple of a realization with a clear head.
My Personal Sacrifice to My Family and Myself
“Not
being able to create art, they will not be able to understand art.” -Charles
Bukowski, poet.
12-10-01: I need to explain some confusion in my personal life, specifically
regarding my conflicted relationship with my family:
One day, I
returned a phone message from my sister Lara, who ended up condescendingly
pointing out that I haven’t been showing that I care about my immediate family.
To me, I understood why I haven’t been as loving
to her, Tanya, or my dad. She judged me without knowing why. It was an extremely
uncomfortable, complicated, and touchy situation that didn’t have any easy answers.
Understand
that artists are, in their very nature, self-centered individuals. We desire to
make art about ourselves and want to possess as much time and energy towards
our art as humanly possible. Eventually, it becomes something rather obsessive
where you have to work every day to continue functioning, emotionally and
artistically. Sorry, but it is a highly competitive world out there. I’ve
realized that and sacrificed my personal ties with my family to get to that
level. I wish my deepest apologies towards my loved ones for dealing with my
emotional and physical distance.
It
angers me, though, that I don’t receive the recognition and respect for the
hours of labor I’ve put into my job and artwork. When I was working 80 to 100
hours per week and spilling my imagination and soul into my animation pieces,
did I get any emotional comfort or empathy? None. Except for my peers and
classmates who were doing the same type of effort. I’ve had long conversations
with some of them involving their disappointed feelings towards their families’
timid reactions to their exhausting and wonderful work.
With
a career and art life like mine, I can’t juggle too many balls at once. I can’t
have family and friends in too many places without some of them feeling
rejected or hurt. I imagine this is a problem everyone faces. I simply can’t
keep in constant contact with everyone I’ve known (including sisters, cousins,
aunts and uncles, former best friends, old roommates, college classmates,
childhood buddies, and ex-girlfriends). Some of them had to be “dropped”. I
know I’m dealing with a very, very sensitive area because no one wants to be
forgotten about… especially me. I tend to best keep in contact with people who
are physically close to me - meaning that they are in the general same area
where I live. Understandably, I prefer real physical contact to an impersonal
phone conversation. A long-distance relationship is limiting unless you have
something really interesting to talk about every time you’re on the phone with
that person. If you don’t, it’s strained and dull. For an artist or sensitive
person, it’s like death. So I go
about my day with those around me who share similar interests and pursuits.
I
grew up in a sports-loving small town where I never felt all that accepted
within. It doesn’t take much to understand that I wouldn’t be homesick. If you
weren’t having a beer or playing football, you might as well not even exist. My
only solaces in a small town were the library, the video store, comic book
stores, and the TV. I was forced into playing the role of a “loner” because I
was different. It’s not a fun character to play either. I hated it. It wasn’t
until I arrived at art school that I met people I could relate to on an
artistic, emotional, and social level. Yet once I graduated from art school, I
lost many of those people who I considered my soul mates by moving into the
“real world”. In graduate school, I didn’t encounter as many artistic-minded
people as I did when I was an undergrad. Realizing this, I had to convert my
personality over to acting like them, which was more technical, professional
minded. I couldn’t be solely a creative person. So I put in my hours learning
the 3D animation software, video editing software and tools, sound editing
software, and compositing software. Frustratingly, I was a slow learner and the
road to understanding all of these things are longer for me than it was for
some of my other classmates. As an artist, technical information is simply
harder for me to understand than visual information. Eventually after much
trial, I improved and found myself in the opportunity to teach the software
that I’d labored to learn. I’ve learned how to be a professional at work and
when to curve my eccentricity to a minimum for the sake of keeping a job.
There is a lack
of creative and intellectual people to be with. And that’s not to personally knock my own family in any way.
It’s just that they don’t keep my mind fueled like I’m used to it being with
artists and work colleagues. Call me selfish or self-centered, but I need to stay creative. I can take a
break for a few days, but longer than that I start to wig out and feel pretty
useless. If you don’t understand this, talk to other artists - and I don’t mean
retirees who took up painting and ceramics!!
Pursuing
one’s dreams has never been an easy journey. It almost always involves some
sacrifice of those you love in order to meet those goals. It’s a route filled
with heartbreak, isolation, conflicts, compromises, disappointments, and
rejections. Yet it’s also filled with triumphs, discoveries, enlightenment,
inspiration, creativity, and emotions. I’m too far down the road to stop. Yes,
it does mean being selfish and putting oneself and one’s art first. I’ve
lived and experienced too much to be a “normal” person again, watching football
on Sundays and drinking a beer while the kids play in the back yard. I don’t
want to be that person because I wasn’t born as that person. I feel different.
No lobotomy is going to cure me of that. I feel that I have something important
to say and others believe in my work as well. Once again, I understand the
strain I’ve put upon my loved ones (my family) by dedicating myself to my job
and artwork and not as much to them. I hate to state it, but Fantasy,
Surrealism, and Expressionism is more exciting than talking about the weather
to a group of relatives. I need my time and energy to spend on my job and art
so I can support myself financially, emotionally, and artistically. Please
understand these things! In turn, I understand that I need to spend more time
with my loved ones. It’s not exactly personal. It’s just the business of living
our lives the way we see fit. Conservative
family-minded people will laugh, scoff, and complain about this. More liberal
artist people, to some degree, will understand or empathize. I don’t expect you
to because ambitions and dreams get in the way of family, which is, in a way, a
sin. Well, I believe my dreams are good and worthwhile. The sacrifice is what
I’m belatedly clarifying on. Because I’m still young and I haven’t gotten much
attention or recognition for my artwork, it’s hard for others to see why I keep
writing and making art. Another dream of mine is that some day all of you will.
My
mom used to be my biggest supporter of my artwork, even though she didn’t
entirely understand what I was doing or where I was going with it. I didn’t
realize how much that meant to me until she was gone. Since her death, I’ve
been having to self-motivate myself to do the work I’ve done and the hurdles
I’ve had to overcome along the way. I know she’d be thrilled with what I’ve
accomplished and how far I’ve gone.
How A Conservative Family with an Artist In It Grow
Apart
7-23-06: Here’s a good analysis of my family’s
dynamic together that I wrote up a while after we had gathered together for
Lara’s birthday. When asked, I haven’t been able to articulate why I don’t feel
quite the same with my family members though we get along… until, that is, now
I’ve spent a few hours with them and it all comes back to me why we’ve grown
apart…
Today
was the gathering together of my family to celebrate Lara’s birthday. What
struck me first was the fact that for the first time in our lives all of us had
significant others. Lara brought her boyfriend Eric, while Tanya with Steve and
their son Ryan. Dad and I were by ourselves. But I now had KH, and my dad
mentioned he was now dating someone as well. It was weird to witness my sisters
cuddled with their lovers in the family room at my dad’s place. I took note of
the Surrealism of seeing my once “little” sisters all grown up, married or
about to. And it’s still weird to think of my father with someone besides my
mother. It seems odd to see my family members with one of the opposite sex
because Lara and my dad haven’t dated much. Usually every holiday they come by
themselves. I mention that my sisters are all grown up since I don’t feel as
much kinship to them as I once did when we were much younger. Today I noticed
how religious and conservative Lara is; she even likes listening to Christian
worship music rather than “good” music. Ever since I was in high school and
when she left home for college, I evolved into a more liberal-minded, creative
human being. She on the other hand became more conservative and finding peace
in the Catholic faith. I found so much more joy and self-expression in art,
music, and movies in a way religion had closed me off to. We basically found
very disparate ways in order to find happiness to our lives. I just went one
way and she went another. The arts are just on a very different “elevated”
mindset where you need a more open mind to appreciate new ideas and
extraordinary visions. Once you’re there, you feel so much more wonder and awe
to your life. This afternoon when I showed some old edited experimental video
footage I had shot back in 1999, she laughed in embarrassment of how “weird” it
was with its motion trails, vibrant colors, and personal expressiveness. My
family didn’t know what to think of it since they didn’t have the same dreams,
deep emotions, and drive. Lara’s conservative, sheltered mind had never seen
such images before, especially from the artist adult brother she barely knows.
And because she had her boyfriend with her, she acted even more estranged by it
since they exist in their own little private world now that I’m also obviously
not part of. We’ve lost the sibling intimacy we once shared as kids playing
games in the same house. She may also be subconsciously upset that she isn’t
part of my creative life since she can’t contribute to it. It’s just too
foreign to her. They’ve all got their own personal lives to confide and share
in. That leaves less attention to one’s siblings since we’re not around each
other anymore. And there lies the gully of separation that occurs when you
leave home to find yourself. I think Lara sees and remembers me more when I was
six than the real me of today. At the Chinese buffet we ate at for her birthday,
Lara commented aloud how shocked she was to see me eat such a diversity of food
since she recalls me being so finicky eater as a child. I could just imagine
how a 1950’s Beat poet’s family (like William S. Burroughs) might have reacted
if they were so conservative, almost from another domestic world that would
find his work so utterly bizarre they’d just laugh at it from how “weird” it is
to them. They’re just not from that “hip” world that is open to creativity and
artistic ideas. They’re from a world of raising children, going to church, and
going to Cincinnati Reds baseball games. It’s a billion miles away from
surrealist movie director David Lynch and 70’s Glam Rock musician David Bowie.
People change based on what people or ideas they meet throughout their life. In
my family’s case, it’s the significant others that they meet and how their
personality scalps to meet that other person. I’d never seen Lara show much
interest in going to baseball games. Now she goes all the time with her
boyfriend. It’s all a bit confusing. I suppose it works both ways with how my
family views me and my extremely diverse personal role models. I’m so far gone
from the conservative shy youngster who once served mass nearly every week that
my sisters don’t know me anymore and it confuses them to the point where they
can’t relate. All they’ve known their entire life is to go to church on Sunday.
And they’ve never truly questioned that. Once I stopped, they found me
different and “lost”. In truth, I was very much found. I just can’t help it
if they didn’t feel the same way. I’m happier being agnostic rather a
practicing Catholic. I found healthier views in other religions like Buddhism.
I longed for inspiration for my imagination rather than religious aggravation
and mental enslavement. I saw religion as a prison and I wanted escape. Those
little moments where our views parted because I stood up for what independent
choices I made in my life to make myself a happier person left me isolated from
my family in that area. But in my circle of friends who are artists with
similar principles, it’s completely natural
not to go to church since it’s so out-of-date with the modern times and
ideologies. And once you’re strayed from the conservative ways of your family,
you just can’t fully come back home again (as the old saying goes). We grew up
and made our own choices. And yet still, we still respect and are nice to one
another because we’re family. Yet It is rather tiring to be around my family
for a long period of time since I have to try to fit into their world. And
that’s very exhausting trying to be like someone I’m not. It makes me feel like
I’m not free. If the scales were
tipped, they’d be the ones feeling insecure and unnerved. I just try to relax
when I’m around family and try to go along with everything. They are, after
all, very good people. We just don’t personally share the same viewpoints. It
does bother me that I’m not extremely talkative with their small talk and daily
gossip since it’s all so alien and unexciting to me. I don’t belong to any
religious groups so it’s difficult for me to get excited about their
conversation. If they brought up the life and passion of Vincent van Gogh or
how beautiful and moving Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is, I’d be able to
talk at length for hours! But Lara usually talks about our cousins that I
rarely see or know anymore. She’ll sometimes try to reach out to me by bringing
up a movie she’d recently seen to “involve” me. But she’ll lack any depth to
discussing it since it’s usually a standard
So hopefully,
I’ve explained what a chore it is for me to be at these family functions by
myself. I do enjoy how having outsiders at our family gathering can greatly
change the dynamic in the room. Everyone’s on their best behavior, which eases from
tensions that might arise if it was just us blood relatives together. All in
all, my family got along rather warmly together today. I even got out a Frisbee
and threw it with my brother-in-law Steve and Lara at one point for half an
hour. It’s about finding those little simpler things that are universal that
most anyone can share together as a family. It can be as easy as throwing a
Frisbee together that connects us together to have fun together.
Sacrificing
For Our Art
For
the Roman Polanski movie The Pianist, Adrian Broody sold all his
possessions and lost touch with many of his friends before he went off to play
this role. He starved himself and lost 30 pounds. He gave up the music he
normally listened to and learned to play the piano. Robert DeNero did similar
extreme preparations before he took on a movie role. I do similar artistic
emotional swings as an artist. These are ordinary eccentricities. We
sacrifice for our art.
“Suicidal” Aspirations for Art
To
explore emotional and artistic boundaries is to attempt suicide. I’ve been
letting my emotions kill me. I’m an artist - I express that. I’m a failure - I
let myself see that. Just because it is personal doesn’t make it good or
important to anyone else - unless you are significant and popular. There are
people just like me writing the same words... wondering, “How do I make it that
much better?” My art is about me
risking my life to accomplish a meaning to it. I risk my sanity, my family, my
significant other, and my financial situation.... I’m doing everything I can to
make it work.
Though I’ve thought about it and I do feel “down” sometimes, I’ve never actually
attempted suicide in my life. I’ve
never slit open my wrists and watched the blood drain out because life sucks. I
never hung from a rope in my bedroom because of love. I’ve never locked myself
in a garage with the car running because of problems at school. I’m surrounded
by artist friends and colleagues who have. I’ve only
tried to “kill myself” through doing art. It’s all in emotional sacrifice. I’ve
had the emotions of one that is suicidal – that is so desperate to let go of
life that one must purge oneself of the feelings he feels. That is where art
comes in. I exorcise the demons in order to rid myself of them. In a way, it’s
like committing suicide to those feelings. It’s clearing oneself of the pain.
But it could also be like the opposite of suicide, which is confronting one’s
emotions and problems through channeling a sense of reason and understanding.
Perhaps, that’s part of the journey of being an artist – traveling through the
darkness to reach the light on the other side. Let the night wash away and
greet the new morning. Some art can be greatly beneficial in its honesty and
compassion. Art is meant to heal, even if it’s ugly. It’s raw, ravaged,
righteous, and real. There’s peace in art – a finality, a solution, a
resolution, a conclusion, a contradiction, or even a confession. Through
experiencing hell, one can find heaven on the other side. Art is one such
pathway. It’s also a safer, wiser route to go rather than suicide.
If I’ve got anything on my side, it’s that I’ve
survived a lot of shit in my life and it’s made me stronger and tougher than
most people. I’ve survived migraines. I’ve survived bullies. I’ve survived my
father. I’ve survived high school. I’ve survived depression. I’ve survived
broken hearts. I’ve survived panic attacks. I’ve survived the sudden violent
death of my mother. I’ve survived watching bad movies. I’ve survived diarrhea.
I’ve survived food poisoning. I’ve survived bee stings. I’ve survived. I’m
ready for emergencies. I’m ready for wars. I’m ready for the apocalypse. I’m
ready for it now.
12-9-01: I want
to be what people don’t want me to be. I don’t feel a reason to buy wedding
gifts for cousins I hardly know just because they sent me a wedding invitation
to a ceremony somewhere in
Holding the Creative Spark
11-3-03: There
were some days where I woke up with a blank state of mind that alarmed my
emotions. I didn’t even feel the impetus to write down my dreams, subconscious
or conscious. It was radically disturbing for someone who is used to thriving
off of the high of creating. I’d always get a bigger rush from being creative-minded.
Sometimes I hadn’t made any artwork in several days because I’d been “social”.
“Is this how life goes after this? No more original content and vision that
allows life to move slower instead of seemingly going by in a flash?
Where is the fire to fuel my artistic flame?” I asked pleadingly with myself.
The fright made me reminisce back to years ago when I was a possessed devil of an artistic man as an undergraduate and graduate student. I was burning everything I had to give for the love of art. I created every day. I slaved for the muse. I wanted attention so badly. And I was scared and aware that I’d some day lose my creative spark. So I decided to keep working like crazy and do as much creative work as I could until I got married and had a family, whereby I wouldn’t have the time, energy, or enthusiasm for art as I did when I was young and carefree. I took my youth and ran with it. I was single at the time, which meant I was making love to my artwork rather than making love to women. Judging from the work I produced, I had a lot of creative juice in me.
Have
an Art Day Today
10-26-03:
Today was a gloomy Sun-day. The irony
may have inspired me. And in that I felt myself gravitating towards making art.
I was bummed out over my deflated love life, so I plunged myself into my work
and had an official Personal Art Day. I looked through some of my old Mac
archive CDs where I stored all the old digital 2D artwork. I got a creative
high from realizing how much great work I’ve produced, but haven’t shown yet to
the world. I was on the artistic verge of attack and invasion. It
was a creative conquest over the banalities of earth existence. I used to
obsessively work on all those Mac art pieces and Director files when I was down
in
“Once
you’ve got something in your system, you can’t get rid of it!” This is what was
stated by Willow, a powerful witch character in the TV show “Buffy, the Vampire
Slayer”, who has gone cold turkey of not performing any additional spells
because it was taking over her life and harming her loved ones around her. It
centered on having an addiction to the power and dangerous exhilaration of
magic. “If you could be plain old
“Creating Art on a Natural Emotional High”
In
response to those people who believe my artwork is produced because of drugs, I
feel that the sheer wealth of work speaks for itself. There’s no way possible
that I could have created so much art if I was on any drug what-so-ever. It
shows that I didn’t have many distractions that forced me from not getting the
work done. Yes, my work is surreal - but that doesn’t mean it’s drug-inspired.
“Druggy”, yes. I don’t believe in using drugs or alcohol to inspire myself.
Life itself is enough inspiration and insanity for me to work off from. Through
the years, I grew into having a “natural high” from the accumulation of my life
and art experiences. My body’s metabolism can’t handle drugs, let alone a few
drinks. So I feel blessed that I can keep making art without having to resort
to other chemical dependencies to stay “creative”.
Once
again, I manage to create a great amount of work by being fueled by music
playing in the background or on headphones. I also work much harder when I’m
hungry, which psychologically provokes me along.
No Drugs Necessary
No
matter how surreal and bizarre my work seems none of it was ever inspired by
the intake of any drug substance. I don’t endorse or praise the use of drugs to
take oneself to a deeper state of consciousness. If the artist can’t take their
own imagination to that level on their own terms, they’re weak for not being
daring enough on their own emotional and mental terms. My work is a natural
representation of my mentality from living.
8-9-04: I have
always feared the use of drugs on our society to control how we think and feel
for ourselves. George Lucas had a groundbreaking feature-film debut with 1971’s
“THX-1138” about a Totalitarian society in the future where everyone is
required to take anti-depressant medication and other personality/
stress-control drugs. If you don’t, these silver-masked police officers beat
you and ship you off to an all-white prison with the other outcasts, gays,
misfits, faulty people, and undesirables. Drugs are used to keep law and order
so society can be peaceful and calm (which is all “wonderful” and “nice”), but
what is lost is one’s freedom to think and choose what is right and wrong!
These are fundamental issues each human being must be able to use in resources
in their existence. That is part of their reason for being. That is their independence.
I have also been critical of how people perceived
artists and outcasts and how they’ve tried desperately and cruelly to change
them in any way possible without thinking properly with an open mind. Case in
point, the great
“Don’t you know? They’re gonna kill… kill your sons.” –“Kill Your Sons” by
Lou Reed.
“All your two-bit psychiatrists are giving you
electro shock. They say, they let you live at home, with mom and dad instead of
mental hospital… Mom informed me on the phone she didn't know what to do about
dad. Took an axe and broke the table - aren't you glad you're married? And
sister, she got married on the island and her husband takes the train. He's big
and he's fat and he doesn't even have a brain. They're gonna kill your sons.
Don't you know, they're gonna kill, kill your sons. Don't you know, they're
gonna kill, kill your sons…Until they run run run run run run run run away.”
-“Kill Your Sons” by Lou Reed.
“They
never face the reality of drugs. They’re not looking at the cause of the
drug problem. Why is every body taking drugs? To escape from what? Is
life so terrible? Do we live in such a terrible situation that we can’t do
anything about it without reinforcement from alcohol or tobacco or sleeping
pills? I’m not preaching about ‘em. I’m just saying a drug is a drug, you know.
Why we take them is important, not who’s selling it to whom on the corner.”
–John Lennon.
Escapism is a drug. Life is too dull without
imagination. That is why we have to look for a temporary way out. Life
can be good sometimes. But sometimes it can be so very, very bad. And there are
many various methods to escape from reality. Take into account why people take
drugs? Or what makes a nymphomaniac addicted to orgasms? Or a movie buff want
to watch three movies a day (on average), 365 days a year? Or a lonely
housewife who reads romance novels obsessively? We all like the high it
gives us. We want to feel what it was like when we were children and the world
was fresh and new. There lies a key difficulty to being an adult – life gets
repetitious and boring. We have to keep ourselves entertained, enlightened, and
exciting. For example, remember when you first say a zebra for the first time
at a zoo? You were in wild-eyed awe. Yet once you’ve been to the zoo multiple
times, the animals are not all that mind-blowing. We miss and long for the
feeling of the highs we once felt. As we grow older, we look for artificial
methods of mental, emotional, and physical stimulation. We’re bored and numb,
so some people take drugs (pot, cocaine, ecstasy). Some play board games and
puzzles. Some screw and have children to distract themselves. Some make art to
keep in exercise the brain’s creative capacities. So look to God and pray in a
holy place every day. We’re all relatively in the same boat together – each one
of us “guilty” of escaping from the trials of existence. Some are healthier
ways of escaping than others; others are more self-destructive than helpful.
Yet each way is connected in wanting to find a way to feel something
great again. We all want to feel good. It’s up to each one of us to find
which route will lead to true happiness. (Hint: it don’t come easy.)
Music is much better than drugs. You don’t come down. Music
is fulfilling… the next day you feel better. Drugs, the next day you feel
terrible – unless you have more drugs.” –Neil Young.
The various escapisms I’ve found in my life are the
polar opposite of the depression I’ve felt. There’s powerful escapism in
watching a great movie, listening to a powerful diversity of music, being
loved, feeling sexual gratification, or creating art. Escapism is when you’ve
withdrawn totally or elevated yourself from feeling whatever tired emotions you
were having. It brings you closer to God, closer to the core of the universe.
It’s a learning experience with yourself and your soul. It’s a moment of bliss
amongst the stars.
Healing Art Dreams
11-2-03: “Ever have a dream that solves all your
problems that were troubling you the day before? I had that type of dream this
morning,” my dad expressed to me. Now he knows what I do for a living as a
creative artist. I make dreams that heal people with cathartic emotions and
with a new way of seeing life. That is the importance and value of art. That is
why it is so crucial to our society in order to use to use art as a mirror and
as a revelation.
The Dreamer’s War
It will be imagination, not
weapons of mass destruction, which will fight, decide, and win the future wars
in our reality. The dreamers will take control. Their dreams will make them the
kings, conquerors, and warriors. The fantasies made real in our world will take
over the world as undefeatable creations of the mind. Their imaginations,
complicated by their extreme emotions brought out from witnessing the horrific
events of war, will have become so outraged, engaged, and powerful that they
will have gained the ability to, literally, make their dreams come true. They
will be able to protect innocent lives and defeat enemy forces with their lives
being lost. Their dream creations are like unbeatable superheroes. Giant
humanoid aliens, twice the size as the
Remaining
Young In Spirit
I enjoy exploring the imagination. It is what gives
me pleasure and happiness in life. I can do it through creating art, watching
lots of good movies, reading comic books, and listening to music. Some might
call this being in a state of suspended adolescence. I call it saying young
in spirit instead of old in heart.
Who I’ve Become
There are times where I see life – my existence –
from a state of confusion and ongoing irrationality. We as human beings keep
breathing, dreaming, and growing old on this rock called Earth. And I often,
every day in fact, find myself in a crisis of what I should be doing with my
time with this life. I have found a job – as a college instructor – and as a
creative artist. I am an idea taker. I have this gift of coming up with
creative concepts and I compulsively record them in a daily journal. I wonder
what I should do with all these ideas and how they all form together. I mean,
what’s the point to all this creativity if I don’t have a true use for it? I
suppose there is some artistic gain in getting the ideas recorded down, but
where is the commercial gain to my efforts and energy? Once again, I digress
into desperation and bewilderment. But I do see things very clearly. I am
writing my daily autobiography in the form of words, movies, and animations. I
am a self-expressive artist. I am a creative human being. I am a communicator
of emotions and ideas. There is no need to panic over this fact. It’s all
right. It’s all right. I know what I’m doing. I’m existing. And I have
found peace in that.
Digital
Artist Discovery?
11-16-03:
So where is my breakout film or piece of art? I have to question myself because
I seem to have unrealistic dreams while I choose to do anything I want when it
comes to computer art. Moreover, the digital medium I prefer to work in isn’t
one that will allow me to sell it for much of a profit. It’s almost like the
medium constricts one from truly advancing the art form from being anything but
to be used for commercial purposes. Perhaps that is where a dreamer like me
comes in… some creative loner outsider off in his own world (in
Problems with Selling Your Artwork
One of my biggest pet peeves with making video art or
documentaries is very few people will wish to see it unless there is some sort
of critical acclaim, hype, or controversy surrounding it. People don’t care
about any random video work if they don’t have someone telling them why they
should care about it. There are simply tens, if not hundreds of thousands of
movies out there competing for your precious time to view them. Only a select
few will make the cut. What pains me about this so much is that I personally
put so many hours of energy, passion, determination, and imagination into many
of the works that I’ve done – and yet they are never or rarely ever watched.
For example, you have to have a “name” in order to sell your work. If one of my
pieces was “by Steven Spielberg” or “by George Lucas”, I’d immediately get an
audience for my work. Yet if it reads “by Eric Homan”, no one cares… even if it
is any good, if not exceptional or possibly even emotionally cathartic. And yet
I wish I was actually getting some recognition for my labor and tears rather
than complaining about it. I truly do. But I know how hard it is to make your
self noticed nowadays. Even those who try so hard to be notorious or
controversial are now looking tired and dull because there are so many who
have. In a way, this is a great challenging device to make us artists dream up
new ways to make ourselves more impressive and ambitious. Yet I feel that we
have also swamped ourselves with so many movies being out there that we are no
longer able to fill a niche in the market. Anyone can make a movie nowadays.
That hurts professionals greatly who want to be respected for the hard work and
discipline for their craft. Yet if anyone with a video camera can make
“movies”, it makes the artists look less prestigious. Of course, there are
movies, and there are “good movies”, which both amateurs and professionals
make. Still, the problem still cries out: how do I make people care anymore? It
makes me think about going to extremes. (Does someone have to kill thousands of
people to make society actually look
at your art? The media does celebrate serial killers and broadcasts their lives
in detail for the mass audience.)
"There's
Too Many Movies In The World For My Own" Crisis Question
8-16-06: I had a crisis on conscience this morning from
seriously contemplating what's the point of making any new movies when there
are literally tens of millions of movies, Hollywood-made or home-made,
saturating the world? I was reading the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly
for their Fall Movie Preview and here were over 80 movies all trying to
attention in that short season! If you don't have a "name" star(s)
attached to the project, the public in general won't be interested in seeing
your work because there are more highly marketed films out there. There are
thousands of arty-little short movies out there; why add another one to the
litter with my own self-made reveries? It made me severely question what's the
point to everything artistic and creative I've been doing and working so hard
on every spare moment I've got? Or should I have taken the "easy",
normal route by just raising children? I wanted to be something extraordinary
and I have. The major flaw to it all was that no one cares because there's so
many "extraordinary" movies out in the world. What is going to make
my world stand out even more than it already is by being different, original,
personal, and creative? Do I have to do something taboo, controversial, crazy,
terrorist-zeitgeist cinema?!? What is going to make people care when there is
so much apathy out there in the world regarding art when there's just too much
of it? And by creating more of it we're lessening its impact. Yes, art is very
important to our society's balance and the way it sees itself. But it is
terrifying that only a handful of artists out of thousands are able to get
their work shown and exposed, while other just as deserving artists are left
abandoned and obscure. Such a gruesome realization is enough to make one cease
making art altogether out of fear of starvation and/or insane expression, or
force them to take their work to the next level. It's that intensity that will
force one to confront their work and mature. But still that may not be
enough....
Pessimistic
Predictions of a Tortured Obscure Artist
12-7-03: Is all
of my video/ computer animation artwork doomed to being “terminally arty”?
I am coming to the severe and urgent realization
that what I have to express to the world isn’t going to be heard by
99.999789447217% of the world. I’m just going to be an obscure computer artist
living in
Why Keep Paying to Watch Recycled Movies?
12-26-03: Are
the American people so stupid to keep dishing out their hard-earned money for
repetitious stories in movies? Since
The Commercial Formula (“It’s All So Clear To Me Now”)
12-8-03: I
attended a guest speaker at CCAD who graduated from our school back in ’94 and
now he’s directing a movie for Disney. Actually, that doesn’t sound as
fantastic as it really is. It’s a straight to video movie he’s directing.
Still, what it comes down to is that he made it. Unfortunately, he was
also the stereotypical epitome of enthusiasm for making money in the field of
media. And he’s got all the right ideas for it. He pitches wildly soulless,
excitingly created, derivative animation projects. It’s just like what I’d
heard a week ago with the “X-2” movies: “making something new out of something
old”. So what they’re doing is stealing what people have done before and
recycling it as there own with a new spin and perspective on it. “It’s “Raiders
of the Lost Ark” meets “Dances with Wolves” meets “Goodfellas”. “Big Movie Star
+ genre picture + special effects + hit song + diverse cast = BLOCKBUSTER!”
Everyone will be attracted to seeing the movie now! Show them something new
with something old. In a way, that’s “genius” since people will be able to
relate to it because they recognize something in it that they’ve liked seeing.
It eventually comes down to equations of what a mass audience is going to want
to see. It’s not about what’s emotional or original. It’s about what’s
commercial. “Is this going to make the producers money?” That’s what it all
comes down to when you’re producing commercial art. In order to make money, you
have to sell yourself. You have to make everything you do “fun”, “fun”, “fun”.
Toss in all your favorite movies in a blender and reserve it back to society.
Sadly, we’ve got so many people doing this that the majority of the
entertainment out there is incredibly bland because they haven’t tried doing
anything truly different. They’re making money in a children’s market
where the kids won’t be able to realize they’re watching recycled parts from
other shows from the past. Instead of being part of an Artist’s generation,
it’s like we’re living in the plagiarist’s generation. That’s absolutely
nothing to be proud of, but they don’t seem to care because they’ve just
bought another new 48’’ flat screen TV. Money kills off what’s pure and great
about art. True artwork isn’t commercial in the least bit. It’s meant to be a
private experience. They say that
Yet he did offer some hope. We
are creative art students who can make great animations and movies on a low
budget. We can make studios more money by spending less. We can make a great
“Punisher” movie in
Don’t Compare Yourself to Those
Around You
Adulthood means turning insecure about one’s place,
position, and stature in life to the point where you become delusional and
miserable. You compare yourself to those closest to you and turn to jealousy as
a natural weapon of defense. It doesn’t suit you to help you any. It’s merely a
phony invisible shield from one’s own misgivings and happiness. You look to see
who is fat, who is bald, who is different, and who is crazy just to find a way
to make yourself feel better about who you are. You compare yourself to your
neighbors, family members, and friends in hope of seeing how you are doing.
Ambition swings the sword and cuts off relationships around you by dismantling
the balance between you and your peers. Lust for more money, fame, recognition,
and prestige haunt you until depression becomes your soul mate. It’s not worth
having it as a so-called friend. It never is. You’ve got to stop being insecure
and start feeling happy with how you are. Do the best you can without comparing
yourself to those around you. It will only lead to emotional self-destruction.
And that leads to feeling down for every morning, afternoon, evening,
and night of your life. You don’t want to have grown up to become lost in your
dreams of success. You have to control yourself better and learn to be happy
with who you are and what you’ve managed to do – which is survive.
Where Is My Audience?
4-27-04: Am I writing papers and essays that no one
truly wants to read? Have I put all of my passions and energy into something
that won’t have an audience? Have I forsaken my life to terminal obscurity?
Doesn’t society want to read about someone who has even bigger, more absurd
problems than their own? Don’t they voyeuristically want to discover the extreme
emotions deep inside someone who is even more sensitive and fragile than they
are?
An Artist without an Audience
3-29-05: There’s a subtle failure going on in my
life. I want to make the most of my life, but I get tired on my days from the
daily defeat that my art work doesn’t appeal to a large enough audience and it
gets rejected. So why spend months of my life working on art that won’t change
the world, let alone make me money or gain me some recognition? I’m an artist
without an audience. I’m alone in my vast imagination, unable to make a
difference. And right when inspiration hits me anew, I am finding less and less
willpower to go through with the idea and project because I get distracted with
school work, freelance work, and having a social life with a girlfriend/
friends/ family. Or I just get tired and fatigued and just want to rest… relax.
I don’t have the energy or urgency I once had to keep me going. I feel the most
alive when I’m eccentric, neurotic, and creative. If I can’t be this way, I
feel cut off with my humanity. We’re not meant to be so “professional”,
“conservative”, and “adult”. It drains me dry to fit in all the time. I thrive
on being different because I am
different. I must be alive to live.
It scares me and eventually numbs to be like everyone else in order to maintain
a steady income. It’s tragically devastating.
And the irony of it all is that I am “happier” now
that I’ve been in years with a steady girlfriend that could lead to a suitable
marriage.
Controlling Your Light
“The light that burns
twice as bright burns half as long. And you have burned so very brightly”...
“Revel in your time!” –Dialogue from Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut
from the creator to his replicant android creations that only have four-year
life spans.
“It's better to burn out than to fade away. My my,
hey hey.” –“My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)” by Neil
Young and Crazy Horse.
7-7-04: That line from the Neil Young song was also quoted cryptically in
Kurt Cobain’s suicide note as well. He was aged 27 when he died and became a
member of a tragic rock club of dead rock singers who died too young at the age
of 27 (Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin). At the age of 27, I have contemplated how
I’ve lived my life and if I’ve lived too deeply in my artwork. Have I lane
waste of myself emotionally only to produce an extraordinary amount of great
artwork and writing in my wake? And yet I am keenly aware that if I stay on
this course I may end up in that same club of dead rock stars or dead tragic
artists (Vincent van Gogh). I have to find balance to my life and my art. I can
no longer live as “brightly” within my artwork while paying the price with
terrible loneliness and isolation. I have to find a well-rounded lifestyle even
if it means getting married. I can spend a certain amount of hours towards my
work and dedicate a certain number of hours towards family and a personal life
as well. It’s that simple. I’ve read other artist/ movie director biographies
(Spielberg) of how they made the transition and I know it’s possible. You can
be creative and have a marriage/ family in the same life. It’s not impossible.
There is an extraordinary conflict going on in one’s
adult life. There is the pursuit of being great, and the pursuit of being happy
and normal. Greatness usually excludes the later because you have to excel from
being average and ordinary. You can live a life where you are like everybody
else and be happy being that way. You fit in to the conventions around you. Yet
if you want to be something more and be truly great, you have to give up or
leave behind the things that hold you back. You have to reject conformity at
the cost of finding one’s own personal freedom. And this is at the cost of
one’s own personal happiness.
Living On as an Artist
4-3-05: I’m hitting a stage in my late 20’s where I
foresee that I probably won’t be spectacular and recognized for my creative
vision. I may just fade away. But at least I have loads of artwork to leave
behind for someone to rediscover after I’m dead and gone. I know that if you’re
a true artist, you will not be known during your time.
The Power Trip
5-19-05: I drove over to Borders to read Premiere and Entertainment Weekly because I was getting restless at dad's place.
As I looked around the store, I felt myself envious of other artists and
writers who have been published, like Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman. Premiere had an issue of the 50 most
powerful people in
Being Driven Isn’t Enough
6-9-05: I slowly came to my realization that I wasn’t going to be famous enough to even get my artwork displayed. I may be driven, but that’s not enough. I was bedeviled by the desperate situation that I may have spent y