Bleach & Conte

Untitled.

Geometric RIP

Artworks

I'm sort of going through a whole minimalist phase right now. Everyone on the internet has a website for everything. Twitter, facebook, myspace, blogspot, flikr, photobucket, 900 e-mail addresses, and who the heck knows what else these days. I'm trying to condense into just a few websites, mainly being this and my facebook. I even hate the portfolio site I have. So.. I'm going to be posting sketches here every now and again until I figure something else out.

Was it real, or just a dream?

For most of my memorable life I've been consumed by nature. The day and night sky consumed my attention at almost every moment I spent outside, and much of my time inside was spent thinking about this unreachable universe. I remember being filled with the greatest of awes for nature. For creation. Not in a religious sense, but a spiritual one. I found, in my childish distorted views of the world, a connection between myself and the vast universe that surrounded me. Now that I look back, I find that very egotistical of me. But even still I try to aspire to be the things I see in nature.

Jump to another part of my strange childhood. I was in grade school, on a trip with my mother and her now ex husband. We decided to embark on the two day drive to South Carolina through the scenic Appalachian Mountains. On roads that seemed to wind into nothingness we drove. Up and down for hours. The entire time, my mother was telling me how much she loved trees. I thought it was silly. To love trees. To find beauty in such a commonplace thing.

Jump again to Girl Scout Camp when we hiked into the woods to explore our surroundings. Again, trees were the topic of the day. Giant trees with hollowed out insides large enough to live in. And again, jump to Arbor Day in middle school when we planted trees.

I got older and life got infinitely more complicated. Puberty hit and depression from living under an oppressive, verbally abusive drunk fucktart, I again found solace outside. In the silence of nature. And I remembered a time when I was young, very very young, still in diapers... Walking under the shade of trees during the sweetest smelling spring of my memorable life with a woman whom changed me forever. My solace one day became a revolution. An internal storm of chaotic and almost instant change that, again, would change who I was forever.

I felt that the sun was my savior. The smell of the wind my greatest high. No one could judge me. I would live my life the way that I felt was right. And being the unbridled person that I am ( or perhaps it's irrationality and irresponsibility ) I made a very important decision in less than 15 seconds.

Eventually I realized that in a way, everyone and everything around me was connected. We all shared things in common - we are all human, we all have emotions and we all fuck up. These things are our roots. Or, politically, they are my country. Across this nation I can meet anyone anywhere and find something we have in common, be it instinctual or different parts of our personalities.

I realized that as society has evolved we deny that we are all alike in some way. We each want to be a leaf on that grand old tree, an individual. But without a twig, branch, trunk and finally a root there can be no leaves.

Either way, it's late. To be continued...

Old, old journal post from somewhere I shall not disclose. I'd like to point out that I'm cryptic and over analytical of everything. Despite that, there are some pretty good points in here, thank you very much.

The End of May

There is a lot to be said about endings. And I think that's where I'll start, today. The end.

This year my annually broken heart cringed at the loss of the civil rights battle over proposition 8.

One year ago on May 30th, at around midnight... One of the sweetest people I knew overdosed on heroin and died in his bed in the living room of his best friends house.

May of two years ago I was mourning the loss of an aunt ( around the 10th ) to uterine cancer. I found out that it runs in our family and that several other women in our family have experianced the battle with cancer.

May also houses my birthday, and the birthday of my best friend. I turned 21 on the 5th.

May has ended many, many things in my life, beyond what I've listed. I am glad that it's over. Glad that that month has come and gone and at least this time around no one died. American citizens shit on civil rights ( again ) but really it's like trying to teach an old dog a new trick. They'll get it eventually, even if they are a little slow. In the mean time a few million GLBT folk can just deal with the discrimination and broken hearts and I mean hey, their busted up families thanks to California can just pretend like they never had rights to begin with, right? America isn't about equality anyway. What country do these people think they're in!

... Yeah. No. Honestly. I don't get it. I mean, I get it. I get why they don't want gay marriage. Religion.. And I don't remember who it was that said this but I'd believe in religion if it made people nicer to one another but it doesn't. It breeds wickedness. And maybe I'd be alright if the Bible they follow so blindly wasn't more graphic and violent and incestuous than 4chan and every rated r horror film combined filled with all the preachings of a freaking cult leader. Oh wait. Not to mention the entire thing is trippy as hell. And I say this having been raised Christian, and also having renounced my religion.

I have the utmost faith in the GLBT community and the supporters of this community to overturn Prop 8. Maybe not in 2009. Maybe not in 2010. But they will. And when they do, not if, but when, it will be a gloriously happy day. I've always been picky about the battles I fight and support, and this time around the fight for civil rights is the good fight and it is the right one.

I know this has nothing to do with my art and my thoughts on or about art, not directly. But it has a lot to do with who I am and what my beliefs are. And if I neglected those things I would have no art to speak of. Throughout history art has often reflected the current polotical situations in society. And right now and for the last 40 years, and even beyond, equality between citizens of the United States, my country and my home, have been and probably will always be, an emotional and powerful point of inspiration in my life due to my somewhat unique upbringing. I grew up in a primarily black neighborhood, but went to a white private school. I grew up with a racist father and an overly accepting mother. I left the ghetto and moved to suburbia where my life could not have been worse unless I'd been raped. I was thrown out of my house and lived in a crack ghetto again as a minority, not racially, but mentally. While I've grown up living back and forth in different racial situations, and having experianced racisim to the point of hate crimes and police negligence, the battle for the right of marriage for the GLBT Community isnt something I grew up with, but something I grew into and something that became a part of my every day life the way that race and gender civil rights have. It is as much a part of my beliefs as roots of a tree are to the earth.

I can only look to the future for all of these things. Living in the past will get me nowhere, and I have shed these horrible memories one by one like leaves in fall. And as the wounds scar and fade in time the memories and lessons I've learned will never go away. I don't think any other community currently in the United States has moved forward so progressively as the GLBT community and I find a great peace of mind in knowing that they are there and that they will continue to move forward unlike many others.

Much can be said about endings. And I think that just as much can be said about beginning again. The GLBT community is resiliant and maybe this fight has been lost for now. But there are many other fronts to turn to, while this particular front has closed its doors temporarily. Progress is being made every day, in many other places and I know this great loss will do nothing in hindering progress elsewhere.

Only in my house...

My mother came home 2 and a half hours late from work, and started ranting about some nurse at her job... In which this sentence was said, " I don't give a fuck if she started nursing when she was 2 and worked there her entire life. " I love it when my mother gets riled.

And we made a complete chicken and broccoli alfredo dinner together and watched TOS : Star Trek on "late" night t.v. while we ate. Apparently, she loves Star Trek. Now I know where I get it from.. I'm oddly compelled to draw Captain Piccard, only because I want to draw and detail the shine on his bald head.

Happy Birthday James. I don't know what timezone you are in, but you're radical and I love you lots. Miss you, stay warm.

Now for something completely different.

I've noticed lately that my verbal communication skills are lacking. I slur things, and I barely remember vocabulary. Since I sit by myself at home all day, I rarely talk.. At all. I'll go upwards of 12 hours without saying a word. The saying, " use it or lose it " is applicable. To fix this, I am going to read outloud to my.. Well I'd say to myself, but that's just crazy. I shall read to my cat instead.

10 rounds in 15 seconds

I must admit that medieval torture devices are rather interesting. They say a lot about how far we've come, or rather - how actively we try and hide the horrendous, inhumane ( allegedly ) things we do. I am bewildered by the idea that torture is inhumane, when we've done it for so many thousands of years. Murder is inhumane, but we kill all the time... War is inhumane - but we do it for sport ( as I see no valid reason for our current war, perhaps only to flex some American Muscle ), discrimination is wrong, lying is wrong, etc., etc., but we do these things all the time.

Why do we continually deny it? Social stigma these days is quite a powerful tool, but that alone doesn't keep people from doing it behind closed doors. So what does that say? What does it mean? Other than these alleged inhumane things are quite humane and are a trait of human nature. I'm not saying go torture the next person that walks by your house but oh, it's something to think about now and again.

Thinking like a psychopath doesn't make you one.. But there was a recent statistic that stated 1 in 100 human beings exhibit psychopathic tendencies or thoughts, or actions.. Most of them become successful businessmen/womyn ( I had to ). Maybe it isn't so abnormal. I put my money down that if they tested good ol' ex-president-george-w.-bush was examined they'd find he was a psycho. Path.

And now for something completely different.

While I haven't taken pen to paper lately ( oh, I've been "busy" with my apathy and my insurance company ) I have been doing a lot of thinking about my "style" and why and what it means and all sorts of other b.s. and wondering about why I feel pulled so many different directions..

I enjoy religious art, not old school ( catholics expanded to a region where pot/shrooms wouldn't grow, before the dark ages old school ) where they removed all aspects of a body that made it so - where men and women looked the same though women weren't worthy enough ( save for that virgin mary ) to be portrayed as the long dark robe ( which we'd now arrest someone for wearing out on the grounds they could be a terrorist ) with that horrible hair.. Not that old school..

Maybe back from when the greek gods weren't "myths" though by todays standards their religion is still terribly valid.. Though I'm not so fond of their hair styles. Romans knew what was up. That classical, beautiful art. I'd love to go back in time and punch Constantine in the face. That man did not know what was up. He was so far down he was in China. Have you seen his wide eyed monument to himself? It's horrible. It makes me want to kick puppies. And I love puppies.

I love the romance of it, and at times the darkness behind a sculpture.. When you see it you're taken aback by the skill and the marvel of these tiny to massive human figures you can hug and feel the muscles in the body.. You can look into their "blank" eyes, but you can still see something, you can still feel a presence. I imagine the sculpture. You can touch what his hands touched so long ago, and when you do you are touching brilliance and greatness, and nothing like touching a celebrity or a president. I am no sculpture, but that idea is something to strive for.

And I'm torn, I suppose, between that romantic beauty with its capacity to be darker than it appears.. To the more modern "trends" I guess you could call them that, because finally there's a trend out there that has some half decent taste behind it. The bright flat colors and the vector shapes, and often the portrayal of some nature of some kind. The layering and fakness of it all; I call it fake because it's art that can't be touched, even printed it's still empty and false. But it's still appealing. There's a different kind of movement inherent in it.. But these days art we see is influenced by music ( fake music ). I suppose that's the movement I see. The fakness of it all reminds me of Barbie. It's a phase that will pass, and it might make some footnote in a history book 100 years from now. In reality it's actually a quite shitty style of art.

I highly doubt that Myron turned on music to inspire and motivate himself to work. It was his hungry gut and probably a little bit of misery that drove him to make his discus thrower. The motivation was internal.. Which as a society we've lost these days. We aren't hungry, and those who are don't have a pencil or paper to document it. And the Roman Discus thrower doesn't do Myron's original any justice.

So how do you combine the classical with the modern, the real with the fake, the beauty and the beasts. Cheesy, I know.. But it's my dilemma.