Damn Photoshop, Blessed Freeware

Having problems opening photoshop and so I got antsy and found a paint program for macs that is free. Found one that has its issues but for a free program it is really cool. Check out and google "Beautiful Dorena" if you have time to blow or you just like ephemeral clip art like me.

"Beautiful Dorena is a free, experimental paint program for Macintosh. It contains a myriad of practical and impractical picture creation tools and features. If you have a video camera you can hook it up to your computer and fun painting with live video. It also has a fictional back-story about its creation and a built-in soundscape. Beautiful Dorena was made by the original creator of Kid Pix."

Drawing a Line Between the Past and Present

Bansky and Jules Verne at first seem like an odd pairing but I think what is happening in these two images hold a lot of similarities. Despite our computers, phones, and general mass technological daily state of living, we are still fascinated with the past. And yet that past was all about moving toward the future. Okay, Jules Verne was around not that long ago and while the cave paintings are far more removed from our time it still wasn't that long ago and I think we all relate when we see them, know why they were made and realize that today we are still compulsively making our mark on the wall.

This Giant can be seen here moving around in a very Jonathan Swift manner at a seemingly very awesome festival in France.

The Banksy I have no idea about. I just saw it on the internet and liked it. I love how many ideas could be brought up by it. That cave paintings are considered art and yet they are possibly the oldest example of graffiti that we have, that we destroy perfectly good art on our streets, it's just a great juxapostition of the past and present...
And it's cool to think that in a way Banksy is much like the cave painter- an anonymous artist rendering on walls what he sees and is concerned about out in the world.

Secret Life Of Bears, Foxes, Pigs....

I really like the great American painter of anthropomorphic bears -

William Beard (1824-1900).

I vaguely remember these painting from early childhood, well really just Bear Dance . I'm not sure if I ever really saw it or if instead Beard really tapped into the childhood desire to see teddy bears come to life when our backs are turned and just made them full on bears- taking it a step up. Auction House Records is hilarious too! Makes me want to be Alice and argue with a frog or rabbit.

Remember What Is Beautiful

 These are some random thoughts, as far as I can tell. I have no idea what was going on here. But I do really love how I used to always write this kind of poetry. Was I even conscience of the fact that I was doing that? Do I still do that and not realize it? Perhaps, because I write this here without being too self conscience of what it is exactly that I am doing. Just letting it flow. Just letting it all go.

Just A Little More Greece/ Roma

I would never be able to describe how beautiful the places in the top photos were, or how rad is was walking through alleys in Rome and coming upon a Nun taking in the scenery and old Brunellesci too. If I go any further trying to read this will be like trying to make works out of someone talking in tongues. 

The Queen Bee

The one with the red cellophane has a picture from a fashion magazine of Vanessa Beecroft under it that I really like. I don't know that much about her but I have seen images of her several times over that look just like this one- half naked and regal despite the fact that she is an older woman and not stick model thin. I love these images of her. She is proud. Good for her. Rock it! This is what sexy should be. I believe that she is a photographer and that her thing is to take images like these. Of real women with average bodies and question our beliefs of femininity and self image. But really its the self confident images of her that I really like.

The second image is just natural history museum stuff. I don't know. I like it. I feel like there is a connection there somehow between bees, femininity, and natural science. There is really, because I bought a book a few months back at the Culver City based Museum of Jurassic Technology that was all about bees and our historical mythology and superstition of bees that was largely involved with goddesses and bees being connected.

And thirdly red "Sexy" page. Yeah.

New York, New York

These pages that I made out of all the papers, receipts, pictures, and postcards that I brought home from New York are some of my favorite. I want more then anything to get back to this style I had making pages in my journals. It was frantic and messily textured yet edited and simple with great use of materials and composition. I built that style so fast and then lost it somewhere fast and didn't even realize it. I see it now looking back. I think I started to like what I was doing and then got impatient. I hope I can use paint and pictures and other relics of Chicago with the fresh eyes that I am taking there and make these kinda pages again. I think that the paint is the real key. I couldn't just flip to the next page. I had to really think the one page I was painting out because the color had to work and then I had to consider the time it would take to dry.

Old School Photoshop, Super Smart Kids, Killer Plants, Etc.

 

My mom got a copy machine when I was very little and I was really into what could be done with it. It was a sort of early form of Photoshop. I dug out the Encyclopedia Britannia and looked around for images that I liked and made this first image here. I remember being really picky in a way that I still am about picking out the images, hoping that they would convey who I was and my creativity in the right way. I had those kind of concerns way too young, or perhaps all kids are that self conscience? I really liked and still like the idea of exploration, especially with a little added morbidness. 

I just recently found this book at Borders- "The Mysterious Benedict Society." It really reminds me of how I really wanted to be special, different, and smarter then all the other kids I knew when I was little. This book is perfect for that kid and the adult that grew up from that. I convinced my mom to buy this book "Wicked Plants" partly out of interest in the unusual and sometimes dangerous capabilties of plants and partly because the cover is so radical. Then I read a section in "The Mysterious Benedict Society" where the children come upon a trap that involves a botanical solution to hiding a pit. I love that coincidence. I feel like all these things are part of an unexplainable desire to have knowledge and style in a American greco-roman classically influenced Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin way. I think that's what the last image, a page from a journal, is about. The pursuit of knowledge and happiness!

Wealth Is Weird

In high school there was this very particular class that was part of a three cycle kinda of required experience that also involved technology and health. This one part was life planning, career planning, or something like that. It horrifying. Our teacher taught about how life was about being able to afford and fast expensive car working a job that pays a lot of money. Well, what can you expect from an orange county school with three black kids and fifteen hispanic? It was well known that if you wanted a good grade in that class that you just had to be 1) female 2) show some boobs and it worked like clockwork. I didn't do well. My baby fat was fast burning off (must of been all that dancing in Echo Park!) and I hated the man. I purposely pissed the man off one day but now I can't remember how. I just remember being so pleased with myself because I was so timid. I do remember for sure that when I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up I told him either a writer or a bell hop. He told  me to write every day in a journal and while I though pissedly that I'd just be a bellhop then take his advise I did in fact take it to heart and I have been a pretty regular writer.

Anyhow, we watched this video in this class that was the most amazing surrealistic stream of consciousness based on the "American dream." Or maybe I just wasn't paying attention and was making it out to be something it wasn't. I loved it and am still searching for it based on this piece of paper and the few clues it provides. Since it is hard to see in the scan I'd like to write out some of the highlights-

"People live the longest in Hawaii"

"My father flew out to New York to get me White Goddess- the refrigerator. He ran from the airport to the metro to get me as fast as possible. I asked him what he wanted- meat and bread. So I took him to the deli. It fascinated the old man. He asked me to name off each sandwich..." 

-Romani Man

"Are we not allowed to know our food? That's just distressing. " - Meryl Streep on food and pesticides

"Agriculture is the highest death rate job. Farmers are now chemical workers."

Hollywood

When I was old enough I was taking off to Los Angeles every chance I had to go clubbing and exploring this city that lay so close. I'm pretty confident that these pages were made during that time. It is funny to see how negative my writing is, even despite my teenage angst. I hated Los Angeles as soon as I got there. Everyone was too cool, I remember that. And I wanted so desperately to be cool. I hadn't realize that what I really wanted for my future was to be comfortable and happy. This is something that I believe now comes gradually with age and figuring out what I like and saying fuck it to what everyone else thinks while also learning to care positively for others and taking positive care back. You know, having good people around you and not listening to the negative defensive words most people throw around. That's what a lot of areas of Los Angeles still mean to me. I place where people are too cool for school because they haven't found what they want because they got distracted by vanity. But a little vanity is good and taking it out just every once in a while is the happy balance.

Wish You Were Here

More from Athens...

These pages used to mean so much to me. I don't know what happened but I am not that concerned with traveling anymore. Nor do my past travels hold the same magic and personal mythology that they use to. Now I am so much more aware that no matter where you live there is something worthwhile to be found there. Especially when you live in such a densely populated and diverse area. This makes me glad that I made these pages. That while I may feel differently about travel and life in general, I can still reflect on these old emotions and beliefs. 

In addition, it is amazing to me to realize that my long obsession with Greco-Roman mythology and history has always manifested itself in different things I have done. I know I have always thought and read about that stuff but its funny to see it illustrated. Those emotions have not changed. While I may not be too concerned about traveling back Greece and Italy, I still very much travel back to the history of those lands.

High School Notes

In high school I created some of my favorite singular paper time capsules. They hold lyrics pointing to songs that I loved, images I liked, and other general teenage interests from the past. I'm really glad I held on to these kinda papers every time I see them.

A Few More A Day

A few Greece and Capri pictures. These, while not that exciting now, were really the moment where I realized I enjoyed making these collage journal pages and wanted to push them further to capture and capitalize on my emotions at these particular places.

They seem cheesy now but no, I know not to let that get to me and I know that they are very important not just for nostalgia but also growth in my documenting technique.

I'm getting tons of ideas 

that I want to execute! 

Good Times Aardvark

I'm putting this up for Ryan. Without asking him. I really like this. And, it makes me very psyched to see my influence on him with the "good times are killing me" line. I can only wonder where this came from inside of him. Love it!

Book I Pages 3 & 4/How I feel about Athens

"Some Greek Writings" by Gregory Corso

IN A WAY

the Greeks today

don't like Acropolis

because

it hovers over them

as though mockingly

as though imprisoning them

in a you-can't-do-better-than-me 

abyss

No matter whicheverway

they look

that mark of history

is impossible to miss

WHEN PRESIDENT EISENHOWER

came to Athens

he got a helicopter

and flew it over the Acropolis

and looked down on it 

like only Zeus could

I told that to a sharp Englishman

who replied:

He's fortunate he did not fly over it

like Icarus

PHAESTOS IS A VILLAGE WITH 25 FAMILIES

and one taverna

There my friend and I sat

drinking with the tallest Greek in the world

And though he must have been close to sixty

his face and body seemed those of a strong young prince

We could not speak each other's language

but drink after drink we talked about everything

I learned by my little German

and my companion's little Greek

and the others their little French and English

"He shot twenty German officers"

"But he wouldn't shoot a soldier"

"He says they were young and good"

"Now that the war is over and no more officers

he's unhappy"

"He's unhappy because the village has forgotten 

his heroics"

He sighed a sigh which seemed to say:

Those were the good old days

Having drunk so much I had to go to the toilet

and so did my friend and almost all the others

There was no toilet

Thus out into the pitch dark we staggered

behind the taverna we went

where

beneath the starriest sky I ever saw

we all did wondrously pee

Book I Page 2

I was so proud of this report card because I had great grades and comments except in one class. It was very easy to say to my parents "hey, I just do not like that teacher" and because of my grades they were just like "okay, that 'D' makes sense."

Book I Page 1

This is the first page to my first attempt at being something like Dan Eldon way long ago. It is nearly hard to look at because I can read into what I wrote the emotions and ignorance of the age I was when I made this journal.