Creative Cogitation

I have been send­ing pic­tures and writ­ing about my adven­tures in New York City on Face­book and Twit­ter.  If you want fre­quent updates you prob­a­bly should fol­low me there.  Mov­ing along…

Trans­porta­tion: I set up a car rental, but var­i­ous folks said, “You don’t need one.” so I didn’t pick it up-throwing myself to the ten­der mer­cies of local pub­lic tran­sit.  Gen­eral overview? Not bad except for the wait­ing part, but a book or phone with the mobile web can help with that. The hotel I am in offers a free shut­tle to Newark Air­port where I pick up the train to NY’s Penn Sta­tion (not to be con­fused with the Newark Penn sta­tion) for $25 round trip. A week unlim­ited pass on the sub­way costs $27.  I have yet to find out what a cab costs as other than that I have been hoof­ing it.  Sug­gest very com­fort­able shoes. 

Sub­way at Penn Station

Why am I in Newark NJ? Mediocre hotels in NYC after taxes start at $300, my dou­ble with pri­vate bath etc in NJ $50 a night. Even with the cost of trans­porta­tion it’s still less than a third of what I would be pay­ing on Man­hat­tan, and at least half of rooms else­where such as Queens or Hobo­ken. No bed bugs here. YMMV.

Food.  Prices range from very rea­son­able to vary expen­sive.  There is a cer­tain amount of con­ser­va­tion of enjoy­ment that goes on too.  Being able to sit down costs extra, hav­ing ambi­ence costs extra, a view costs extra, and if you have a view at a rea­son­able price the food is likely to be so so.  I find myself aim­ing for tasty sit down-as I am din­ing alone, ambi­ence is not nec­es­sar­ily required.

Cen­tral Park. Pretty, but in the end it is just a park whose real claim to fame is that it was not gob­bled up by sky­scrap­ers long ago.  There are city streets that go right through it, plus bicy­clists and jog­gers so you have to watch your step. 

Boy chases ducks at cen­tral park reservoir

A lot of parks pro­hibit dogs or pro­hibit dogs in cer­tain places so dog poo is not usu­ally an issue, but I would be care­ful about sit­ting down on the ground next to a wall as New York­ers do have pooches and all those canines need to whiz some­where.  The own­ers do carry bags to col­lect their animal’s drop­pings though.  I have not noted very many cats in this city. 

Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum of Art.  I thought it would be open longer than it was the day I vis­ited.  It took me a while to get ori­ented so I viewed some things I had no inter­est in (such as mas­sive amounts of dead Egypt­ian things) and missed out on some things I wanted to see (such as half of the con­tem­po­rary art col­lec­tion).  For $20 2 hours was not enough time.  Advise you get there ear­lier if you are doing MoMA dur­ing the week­days as the close at 5:15 PM sharp.  In addi­tion to con­tem­po­rary art, and the Egypt­ian funer­ary items, there is fur­ni­ture form var­i­ous peri­ods, musi­cal instru­ments, paint­ings from var­i­ous peri­ods includ­ing Cezanne, Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, even a Kuinji (which sur­prised me), Pol­lack, Japan­ese stuff, Chi­nese stuff, a bam­boo instal­la­tion on the roof, stat­ues, a tourist shop, a cou­ple of cafes, etc.  You prob­a­bly could roam around for 4 or 5 hours with­out get­ting bored, starv­ing or get­ting thirsty. 

River walk parks.  Lovely this time of year and there are lots of them — at least in lower Man­hat­tan — I don’t know about uptown.  There are also other parks sort of stuffed in odd cor­ners of the city. 

SoHo and Nolita.  Lots of shop­ping.  Ditto the main drags south from Penn Sta­tion (6th & 7th AVE).  Cer­tain areas of the city seem a lit­tle grungy to me.  YMMV.  Lots of var­ied and spec­tac­u­lar architecture. I also cruised around ground zero — you can’t see much except for cranes and the new build­ing grow­ing sky­ward.  Street ven­dors sell­ing food and fresh fruit every­where. There are also ven­dors sell­ing “Rolex” watches, I (heart) NY T-shirts, etc here and there, but espe­cially in Chi­na­town and SoHo/Canal Street.

Airan Kang sculp­ture, Light Read­ing, at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery NYC USA

So mostly what I have been doing other than hoof­ing it from point A to point B suck­ing in lower Man­hat­tan fla­vor is walk­ing about Chelsea (arts dis­trict).  The arts used to be in SoHo but now the cool kids are hang­ing out West of 10th AVE between say 20th and 27th ST. Open­ing nights tend to be Thurs­days, which I find to be an odd day for open­ings.  Most Gal­leries are open­ing from 10 AM to 6 PM Tues­day through Sat­ur­day, and show open­ings to close on Thursday.  

A lot of the art I have seen in Chelsea is what I would describe as “dead serious.” There are also a num­ber of instal­la­tions. I won­der if some of the art I see in Chelsea is of the “art you can live with” vari­ety for your aver­age col­lec­tor in NYC. It is inter­est­ing to be sure, but I per­son­ally could not “live with” dark and dis­af­fected very long… to each his or her own (although there was this one artist who did some­thing called “Flow­ers” which reminded me of Hello Kitty so…) There are also some mas­sive works includ­ing very min­i­mal­ist stuff.  I guess these sig­nif­i­cant pieces are for col­lec­tors who have space, which is some­thing I hear a lot of New York­ers are short on.   

Maybe art for the com­mon New Yorker is lim­ited to chara­ca­tures drawn by street artists and prints sold on the street.  I dunno.

US Bien­nale Group art being hung at Broad­way Gallery 473 W Broad­way 7th FL NYC

My show opens on Sat­ur­day (tomor­row as off the date of this blog).  I was told the open­ing is off the NYC Thurs­day open­ing sched­ule because of Yom Kip­pur. I don’t know how that will affect turn out.  The gallery owner enjoys my work, but he said it was priced too low, which was the sec­ond time in a week I had heard that — so I am rais­ing my prices. He also wanted to know if I did any­thing big­ger than 24 x 24 (I do — in fact I pre­fer large, I just don’t enjoy stor­ing it). We dis­cussed where I could go with the Binary Birds in the future.  It was an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion over 3 dif­fer­ent days.  I find myself with a lit­tle more insight into the art­work of this city.  But I don’t know if my tweet­ies will ever be that gritty. 

Before I leave I do intend to visit the Museum of Mod­ern Art.  As for the rest of the stan­dard touristy stuff, it’s not usu­ally my cup of tea but I may get around to some of it if I have time.  I am sup­posed to leave in less than a week so we will see. 

A blast of impres­sions. I find the activ­ity and energy of the city to be very fre­netic.  The Thurs­day open­ings are packed.  When you walk down the streets there are tons of peo­ple going this way and that.  Pedes­tri­ans seem to view lights as a sug­ges­tion.  It seems like half the cars fly­ing down the streets are taxis.  At night there are lights every­where — less than say Las Vegas, but still pretty bright.  I have not expe­ri­enced the packed sub­way phe­nom­e­non but I don’t think I want to.  Peo­ple are close and dis­tant at the same time.  My talk­a­tive nature seems to catch peo­ple off guard — they laugh ner­vously while main­tain eye con­tact and back­ing away.  The weather for my visit has  been in the 70s-80s & partly cloudy except for the first day, when I could have been car­ried off to Kansas by not one but two tor­na­dos; I got soaked to the bone before haunt­ing the Thurs­day night open­ings with New Yorker and artist, Assunta Sera. I come back from the city with a 100 pic­tures, exhausted, every night.  My feet are very tired. 

A park in the mid­dle of the street in NYC

Right now I think NYC is a nice place to visit, but I am a lit­tle home­sick for my mate, cats, kitchen, bed, car, my stu­dio and of course lower cost of liv­ing.  But I am not miss­ing the heat of of my home in Phoenix AZ.

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

In the midst of the Binary Birds series I was con­tacted out of the blue by an artist out of  Florida.  She com­mented on my paint­ing Mother Night, which made me think about it some.  Since I am in the midst of my 100 Paint­ings projects I do not turn down any ideas that feed the muse.  So I revis­ited Mother Night this week­end while I was fin­ish­ing hoot­suite.

Both paint­ings had me in the night mode.  I am noc­tur­nal.  I love the night, the stars, the moon, and the gen­eral qui­etude.  I am mar­ried to a morn­ing per­son, so from about 8 PM to when­ever I decide to rest, I get a big block of unin­ter­rupted time; such a thing is pre­cious to all artists-it allows you to get deep into your zone.

Mother Night’s Embrace, by Jake Beck­man. An abstract dragon unfurls its starry wings, embrac­ing the moon. The neg­a­tive space of the night sky forms the watch­ful eye of Mother Night.

I have been work­ing in a square for­mat for the last cou­ple of paint­ings.  The NYC art show is com­ing up and the max­i­mum dimen­sions of the works allowed are 25 x 25 inches, or other vari­ant, so long as they do not occupy more than 50 x 25 inches.  25 x 25 is an odd size, but 24-inch square can­vases are easy enough to come by. I don’t usu­ally work in  a square for­mat; I pre­fer rec­tan­gu­lar can­vases which lend them­selves bet­ter to apply­ing the golden sec­tion. So I embarked on a new ver­sion of Mother Night work­ing in this alien square for­mat.  After cre­at­ing sev­eral sketches using my Wacom tablet in Pho­to­shop, the image of the dragon cre­at­ing neg­a­tive space in the sky sug­ges­tive of an eye started to emerge.  Once I had that idea, every­thing sort of fell into place.

I think it is a such a cool idea I may have to explore it fur­ther. I love the images of the night, the moon and stars.  I also have an affin­ity for drag­ons and other fly­ing crit­ters as well.  And the idea of using neg­a­tive space in this way also intrigues me some.

Mother Night’s Embrace clearly has noth­ing to do with the Binary Birds, but belongs to another series Abstract Con­cepts, so I have gone off the reser­va­tion for this one paint­ing, and I hope you like it.

If you would like to pur­chase Mother Night’s Embrace, please see its page on my web­site; you can pur­chase it using Pay­pal.  Thanks for stop­ping by.

If you are in the New York City area between Sep­tem­ber 16 and Sep­tem­ber 30, 2010 — you can see Mother Night’s Embrace and a work from the Binary Birds series, hoot­suite, at the Broad­way Gallery, 473 Broad­way in SOHO.  The Gallery is open Mon-Fri 10 AM-6 PM. The artists’ recep­tion is from 3–6 PM Sat­ur­day Sep­tem­ber 25, 2010.  Look­ing for­ward to see­ing you there. 

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

For a while I have been think­ing Social Media Birds was not the best title, and then I am talk­ing it over with some­one at the Sun­nys­lope Art­walk and the phrase Binary Birds pops out.  At least its allit­er­a­tive, so I think that is going to stick.

Tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties dis­tracted me from paint­ing, as well as the end of tax sea­son & some out of town com­pany (which was fun, but not pro­duc­tive).  Then it was imme­di­ately back to doing Spring shows, but in Phoenix AZ USA it is start­ing to get pretty hot; yes­ter­day was around 96 F & it was prob­a­bly a lot warmer on the black top. I have one more show on May 20th, then noth­ing else sched­uled until Sep­tem­ber in New York City.   Here is a pic­ture of me schmooz­ing patrons at the Val Vista Lakes Com­mu­nity Mar­ket Sat­ur­day May 8, 2010.

Jake Beck­man with patrons at the Val Vista Lakes Com­mu­nity Mar­ket May 8, 2010. Photo by Kristina Konen.

Yes, I am work­ing it.  I used to say, “My art had bet­ter speak for itself, because I stink at it.” At this last show, one patron com­mented that I com­mu­ni­cated my abstract sub­ject mat­ter very well. Even I can learn. 

I call my lat­est paint­ing iPod Tweety.  It is such an obvi­ous deriva­tion I am sur­prised it did not occur to me imme­di­ately.   I think music shar­ing is one of the fore­run­ners of social media.  Remem­ber peo­ple cre­at­ing and hand­ing out CDs of their favorite tunes?  I know some peo­ple with hun­dreds of songs on their iPods, but these days an iPod is so much more than a music player, it’s and enter­tain­ment device,but my paint­ing ref­er­ences the music usage.

iPod Tweety by Jake Beck­man. One of Jake Beckman’s sig­na­ture Binary Birds dances to tunes on its iPod.

In addi­tion to the title, iPod Tweety, which is the ASCII binary string at the extreme right, the code also reads: iTunes, eMu­sic, Rhap­sody, Nap­ster, Ama­zon, MP3, Zune, down­load, Songs from right to left and top to bot­tom.  When I debuted this work at the April Sun­sets on the Plaza a young woman was plead­ing with her par­ents to buy it, but they did not relent so it is still available-for now.

For more details about iPod Tweety see  its art page at AKAJake.com.

What do you all think? Do you like it? Hate it? Think it’s deriv­a­tive dreck or haute pop?  Inquis­i­tive minds must know.  I have two more Binary Birds in the works.  Stay tuned.

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

This week­end, now nearly over is the big annual down­town Phoenix Art Show called Art Detour now in its 22 year.  The event kicks off with First Fri­days, which has become the tail wag­ging the dog so to speak.  Although Art Detour was the big event for many years, the monthly party called First Fri­day receives a lot more atten­dance on the whole these days. I had planned to go to First Fri­day but just couldn’t make myself join the mad­house that event has become. It really doesn’t seem to be about art, but more about the party, which is fine — but not nec­es­sar­ily some­thing I auto­mat­i­cally think is a great idea on any given day.  But I still felt like I had to make it down­town at least once to see the peo­ple who rou­tinely sup­port me at the local art shows I do.  So I force myself to be a social ani­mal and kicked myself out of my studio.

It was good to inter­sect with sev­eral peo­ple I had not seen in a while, but while the stu­dios were open I think many artists/owners were absent & recu­per­at­ing from the night before.  It was a quiet day to be about, but it was a clear-blue-sky brag­ging weather day in Phoenix AZ.   Gor­geous, absolutely gor­geous.  So, I didn’t just go to the stu­dios but did a gen­eral walk­a­bout in the down­town Phoenix area to inves­ti­gate how the Con­ven­tion Cen­ter remodel went, to see how the new ASU down­town cam­pus came together and the over­all progress of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion.  It appears gen­tri­fi­ca­tion was well under­way but the reces­sion has def­i­nitely halted things for now.  As for the art stu­dios, some that were open before are closed now, some have changed hands, some have moved, and maybe there are a few new kids on the block as well.  The Art Detour Head Quar­ters was listed at the Phoenix Cen­ter for the Arts so I was expect­ing a pretty decent dis­play there; in the old days it had a sam­ple of art from all the par­tic­i­pat­ing gal­leries. Unfor­tu­nately this year it was lit­er­ally a trol­ley stop with a few brochures — no art that I could see.  My over­all impres­sion of Art Detour on Sat­ur­day was under­whelmed. Any­way I took lots of pic­tures and edited them when I got home so you can check them out here if you like.

In the last few min­utes I have receive a cou­ple of tweets regard­ing this final day of Art Detour 22 1) Bring an Umbrella and 2) Greg Esser is pro­mot­ing his new ven­ture at West­wind Stu­dios, 16th Street and Cypress. I didn’t make it over to West­wind yes­ter­day; I wish Greg all the best.

So onto new art. While I was work­ing on 2nd Story Job, which will be posted next, I did not have a sec­ond paint­ing to par­al­lel process in mind.  I got a piece of water color paper out, gesso-ed it on both sides then thought­fully dripped, drooled and spat­tered paint on it while I waited for lay­ers of paint to dry on 2nd Story Job.

As 2nd Story Job neared com­ple­tion the abstract aux­il­iary work looked like this.

Born of Fire under­paint­ing (by Jake Beckman)

The color gamut of this pic­ture appears a lit­tle skewed toward the blue, and the range of the photo does not do the under-painting/background jus­tice, but I think you can get an idea of how it looked.

I have been on a major bird kick for years and I often default to some­thing related to that — in this case a bird-like dragon.  It took me a few min­utes to sketch the crit­ter out on to my can­vas.    I did a glaze of man­ganese blue to fill in the bird-like dragon’s body for no other rea­son than I had a big glob of it on my wet pal­let left over from pre­vi­ous Social Media Bird paint­ings and I intended to make the dragon dark.   I did not antic­i­pate I would love the effect of the under-painting show­ing through, but I did.   I very care­fully applied glazes of black to the ser­pent to define its struc­ture while retain­ing as much of the trans­parency as was possible.

Detail of Born of Fire by Jake Beck­man show­ing the under­paint­ing revealed through the glaze

Born of Fire, by Jake Beck­man, A dragon gazes sky­ward, obliv­i­ous to the fiery inferno that sur­rounds it.

So this results from me not hav­ing a plan when I start paint­ing. What do you think?

Update: Details about Born of Fire, size etc., can be found on its art page at AKAJake.com

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.