The big situation out here right now is the Papergirl Northampton Project. It's open to anyone to enter artwork (on paper, smaller than 30"/30") and all of the entered pieces will be shown in several downtown Northampton venues before being rolled up into tubes and handed off by a team of cyclists to unsuspecting citizens of the town. The deadline is Aug. 20 to submit, and the ride is I believe Sept. 12. It's totally unfunded and nonprofit, and is based off of a project (the original Papergirl) done in Berlin, Germany. Now it's spreading globally, and I'm pretty stoked to be a part of the whole thing. Anyway, I'm not doing the project justice, so go to papergirlnorthampton.com for more info and to sign up. Sign Up!!!!
I've been painting a lot since moving here, likely due to the massive amounts of free time unemployment "affords" me. Unfortunately I still have no camera, so in the meantime these are just some of the things I've been looking at:
Amazing photos of Obama, aka "a cute guy named Barry" by a woman who knew him in college (unfortunately I'm a big dick and don't remember her name or what site I found them on. But I've been doing illustrations using them as reference, which I'll soon put up and then will be donated to Papergirl. Obama is like 21, and he is pimpin' -
I also recently got a documentary out of the library called "Proteus: A Nineteenth Century Vision" about the naturalist Ernst Haeckel, and though the movie was just okay, I'm completely addicted to Mr. Haeckel's images (mostly of his obsession, the "radiolarium") and they've quickly begun to invade my own work, with strange results.
And I've rediscovered an artist I first found out about years ago, when I was kinda sorta a little into the graffiti scene thing. Her name is Maya Hayuk, and I found her through Barnstormers, a cool project. Her work is sick but my recent crush on her is due to watching a few videos from her website - I absolutely want to be this woman. I can only wish to be as awesome and confident and tuned in as Ms. Hayuk. She's my new idol. Check her out.
I've been meaning to put the books I'm reading up on this blog, but have obviously failed at doing so all year. So here's what I'm currently reading, or re-reading: Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge. I had to read it in high school and thought I hated it, but it was one of those things that kept bugging me in my nightmares. Now I realize I loved it, but it disturbed me. O'Connor's short stories about racist, unhygienic, religiously fanatical Southerners in the, I'm thinking 40's?, tend to be a bit rambling and grotesque and unrelatable, until the climax of each story, in which some revelation throws everything into a new light. Definitely worth the read.
And for music, my iPod's been almost stuck onto Exuma for the last two months. It's too good. And largely unheard of. I particularly enjoy listening to "Dambala" with my toes tickling crawdads in the creek out back. Dreamy.
So yay I've finally updated my blog, and hopefully soonish I'll have a camera and can pretend to be like...a...real...artist, or something.
