My new art fair

Because SOMEHOW I was not including in the what I guess is VERY FABULOUS Art Basel Miami art fair where 35,000 of the world's best artists congregate (it turns out I was ranked 35, 132 which is much better than last year (42,351)) I'm thinking about starting my own art fair in Seattle called Moisture Sure Gray Sure but Fabulous Yes Art Fair.

I might have to work on the title.

Anyhoo, I plan on holding it in the parking lot of the Safeway on Madison, hiring a tent or two and just see what fabulous things happen!

Probably a lot will (if I do it, but I won't.)

I'm also going to publish a magazine article (based on Art Review's Power 100) called Ed Nelson's Power 35,200 where I write about, well, the top 35,200 most powerful artists in the country, of which I know next to nothing except for artist number 35, 132 of whom I know quite a bit.

"Ed Nelson was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a humble beginning for someone who has risen to be a valuable member of the Power 35, 200!"

So anyway, another year, another year excluded from the fabulousness that exists elsewhere other than in the near vicinity of me and my so-called art.

Do I sound bitter? Well, no I'm really not.

Last year I felt like I was missing out on something, but this year I don't so much. I think I've come to grips with making art and what I want to with it and I don't see why there should be any reason that painting a painting that someone LOVES in Seattle is any worse than painting a painting that is coveted by New York collectors.

I mean what's so great about NY anyway?

In some ways, I think painting a painting that connects with a person (the man on the street) who didn't expect to be connected with by art is far better than painting a painting that connects with a gallery owner who doesn't know a man on the street from a hole in the ground.

It does seems sometimes that there's an artificial standard that's been created to establish the value of art and any new piece of art is evaluated against this artificial measure, instead of being evaluated in a different more genuine manner.

Now I could be eggs-actly wrong about this and more than likely I am. I do not discount the fact that probably a big new york art gallery curator is in fact very much in touch with what art means to any generation of our age, is sensitive to change and to trendy movements that aren't worth investing in, and in short, are all the things that I would hope them to be.

From what I've heard, however, this art fair in Miami involves a frenzy of art buying, it's more like a sale at a department store than anything else, with people lining up outside the doors and rushing in when the doors open to get the best deals.

I guess I would like to think that it's somehow not worthy of art to have this thing go on, but in reality, I think there are plenty of good reasons and good things to be gained by being a part of such a spectacle.

So I'm going to have to work on my rationalization a little bit to prepare for NEXT YEAR when again, more than likely, I will again be excluded.

Maybe I should try a more positive approach?

faces

Some people really like paintings and drawings done from life and some people really like paintings and drawings that are totally made up. It's fun for me to do both and so I do do both, even though I used to worry a little that I should just be doing the one or the other.

At the last open house people were asking me where I got the people from, which is something when I’m painting I don’t really think about too much so I looked at all of them on the wall and pointed to each and said “that one from a drawing, that one totally made up, that one from a drawing, that one totally made up” I think it was divided between half totally made up and half from drawings.

I said to a couple of people that I’ve drawn so many faces that even when I totally make them up they look like they weren't made up but I’m not sure that’s necessarily so.

I think more to the point is that when I do make up faces what I usually work on is making them have some life, to make them more than just a cariacature and when I work from sketches I do the same thing, so maybe they end up looking the same.

What I always think about is how much life Rembrandt’s paintings have in them, and I try to add that kind of thing to mine although of course mine are NOT REMBRANDTS…one of the best compliments I ever got was on this painting where a guy said something like the person looks real and not real at the same time.

That was exactly what I was trying to do, and to have somebody see it was absolutely amazing.

I don’t want to the faces to paint to look realistic in the normal sort of way, but I do want people to be able to relate to them somehow. I go to great lengths to make them not look realistic yet retain something and it’s a fine line that I don’t always manage to walk.

Whenever a face gets too specific, I don’t like it.

I don’t know, this is just one person’s opinion and you got to find your own way, that’s for sure. I think working figuratively is WAY HARD, partly because so many people have ideas about it (after all they all look at figures every day) and aren't afraid to voice them.

I have trouble in that I get influenced one way or the other depending on what painting is making a hit and what isn’t.

What’s happened to me a few times is I’ve had a great success with a painting and I’ll think, well I should do more like that and I try it and the new painting is nothing like the old one, and it suffers in comparison. Or at least it seems to.

What I think I’ve learned about that is during the course of an artist’s career there will be certain successes and they are hard to duplicate because you can’t duplicate the time you did the first one, your state of mind, the way you used the materials and all the things that CLICKED to make the first one so good.

I think the best thing to do is continue to work like you worked in the first place, working in a way that allowed you to do what you did and if you do that, you’ll end up doing something great again but probably it will look entirely different.

I think the time to do more of what you were doing is at the time you are doing them, and the thing is, I DO that and maybe not all of them are good, too. So when people like something I did back then, there really isn’t any going back to it, I just gotta smile and say “thanks.”

The thing is, there are so many people who like different things, it's not like everybody likes everything so that even if I go back and try to duplicate a success and fail, there's probably going to be SOMEBODY gumming up the works by really liking the failure. Not the people who liked the original success mind you, but different people!

It's really a freeforall out there I'm telling ya!

Toronto trip

Back from Toronto, here are a couple of things that I thought were remarkable.

1) you hear a lot of golden oldies in Canada, they pipe it in everywhere.

2) lots of diversity including white males in green army coats who have a beard and who stare at you. They all look like they used to play hockey at some point or another and they all look like their highest achievement was scoring a goal in high school, that in some way they are still reliving the experience somehow.

3) it's flat flat flat there, no sign of a hill anywhere which made Julie and I think it would be PERFECT for riding bikes. I don't know why we came to that conclusion, it just came to us spontaneous like.

4) The Grand Hotel in Toronto was something just short of fabulous! And I say that cuz it had great breakfasts and great beds. You can see why Shaq likes the place so much! That reminds me (celebrity sighting) I visited the bathroom in the lobby one day and by the smell of things, I think Shaq had just been in there.

The breakfast consists of:

a) scrambled eggs (yum)

b) sausages (yum, but only have one!)

c) bacon (you can have more of these cuz they are good for ya!)

d) French toast (skip this, it looks soggy)

e) diced potaters...could have been better but what the heck, huh?

f) go over to the pastry section and have yourself an apple something or other.

g) toast available but sucks. Lots of jam in little jars, good to steal and eat later.

h) coffee

i) juice, Julie didn't like it but drank it.

j) that's about it.

Now THAT is a good breakfast and you could probably go back for more if you wanted, but I didn't.

If that wasn't enough, the elevators in the place were the BEST I have ever been on. The second you would hit the button (and it didn't matter which floor you were on) the little bell would go "ding" and the yawning opening door of an elevator would be at your service.

5) Toronto looks like a bunch of different cities all rolled up into one. The following are the cities it looks like and the person who said it: Tacoma (EunJean), Rochester NY (Julie, Eugenie), Barcelona (EunJean), Boston (Ed), Cleveland Ohio (Ed) New York (Ed and Julie) and Vancouver.

6) We usually make it a rule not to laugh at anyone, but sitting outside of a store that sells vibrating chairs and watching an older asian woman calmly take off her shoes and insert herself into the vibrating chair and then proceed to writhe in ectasy for about twenty minutes (that we know of, we left before she was done) was too much for us.

When she went from Sleeping Lion to Dying Swan, Hopeful Crane, Julie just lost it, big time.

7) Whatever you do, DO NOT ask EunJean what she encountered when she went to the bathroom in Chinatown.

8) I still have the reoccurring nightmare of turning and seeing the waiter holding two bowls of STEAMING hot soon tofu at the Buk Chang Don Soon Tofu restaurant right over my shoulder as he waited for a big table to leave the premises in a very crowded restaurant.

As a Korean food aside, the taste for hot water added to leftover rice in a soon tofu bowl is apparently an acquired one, one I HAVE NOT ACQUIRED.

9) When going to the Beaches while Eugenie shops, it's best to allow for more time to get back to pick her up than we allowed for. However, in the Beaches section, (celebrity sighting) we saw the general area where John Candy used to live.

10) Although I do enjoy a good walk, I was glad I suggested that we use the high quality transportation provided us by the city of Toronto. They have street cars that start out at the beginning of the route with nobody in them and by the time you're done, you've got everybody in Toronto (literally) riding on them. I think there's like a hole in the back of the street car cuz people kept getting on and getting on and NOBODY WAS GETTING OFF! If you've recently lost somebody who has visited Toronto you might want to check out the holes.

11) There were the coolest graphics in the movie Stranger Than Fiction that we saw in Toronto. That movie, by the way, although members of our party begged to differ, I thought was EGGS-cellent!!!

12) Eugenie is caught up in SOMETHING very hard to explain in her studies at Rochester Institute of Technology although she valiantly did try to explain it and I got some of it (I think).

13) We all decided that a cold weather destination for a vacation was a VERY GOOD IDEA although a warm weather destination would be EVEN A BETTER IDEA!

14) the driving in Toronto wasn't too bad and you actually noticed that they were better drivers than Seattle, plus they were more friendly letting people in and stuff.

15) Julie did EGGS-actly what you ARE NOT SUPPOSED to do at the airport as a policeman politely pointed out, by trying to help a woman with her bags. That woman (from India!) is probably still at that airport trying to explain why she had to answer "yes" to the question, "Did anyone help you with your bags while at the airport?"

16) While I do like shopping, I only like it for about a minute and then I could easily move on to something else.

17) Toronto was the BEST.

18) It's good to be home.