Creative Cogitation

Hang Up by Jake Beck­man. A Yel­low Canary pur­chase atop the tele­phone icon of an “end call” cell phone but­ton. The ASCII Binary arch­ing over the top reads “Hang Up”

So it is day 23 of 100 paint­ings in 100 days.  I have com­pleted 9 paint­ings and I have 9 oth­ers in var­i­ous stages of com­ple­tion.  With a good days work I prob­a­bly can com­plete all of them, but my life is a con­tin­u­ous jug­gling act and I don’t know when I am going to get a moment to paint again in the next sev­eral days.

I came back from my trip to Oak Creek on Day 16.  I painted all day, then packed it in and drove back to Phoenix.  I decided I’d rather start off my short work­week refreshed in the rel­a­tive cool of the Phoenix AZ morn­ing rather than fried from dri­ving back down the hill in the heat.  It was an unevent­ful trip home.  The usual stuff, my day job and all, awaited me.

In the last week I fin­ished Vuvuzela’s, five, zero, Call Me, Hang Up & Do It!, pho­tographed them and got the images up on my web­site.  I still need to reg­is­ter them with my prove­nance ser­vice.  I also blogged about Vuvuzela’s sep­a­rately since it was directly related to the 2010 Soc­cer World Cup, which wrapped up last week too.

Do It! by Jake Beck­man, a yel­low canary angle flies before the “do it” but­ton of a cell phone. The ASCII Binary reads, “Do It!”

I have found time to start 6 new pieces in addi­tion to the three 11x14-inch paint­ings I started in Oak Creek.  The three inspired by my last visit to Oak Creek are ten­ta­tively named www (or web or net I am not sure yet), MySpace and My World.  The 6 new paint­ings are all 6x8 inch ones that will fin­ish out my key pad: six, seven, eight, nine, Hash and Splat! I need to fin­ish paint­ing the Tweet­ies in 7 of these and over­lay the binary.  My World and MySpace are some­what less devel­oped at this point.

As you can see, I am falling behind-I should have 23 com­pleted and only 9 done with 9 more in the works-well short of my goal. And I still have a tax class web­site to prepare, tax class to teach, an artshow in NYC, a mess of art to frame, etc.  I haven’t even pur­chased the frames, nor have I solid­i­fied my travel plans for NYC.  OMG I am so far behind!

Breathe.

This week­end I am going back to Oak Creek canyon.  A fel­low artist JChristi wanted to camp out and I sug­gested Oak Creek as it sim­pli­fies “camp­ing” a lit­tle bit.  But unlike my last trip, this is more or less JChristi’s show, which means I am going to have to work around her sched­ule.  We are sup­posed to leave Fri­day morn­ing.  Since it is a lit­tle after mid­night Thurs­day has just started and I have many things to do before I can leave for Sedona.  I am look­ing for­ward to going back though; it is really hot here in Phoenix (112 at the air­port today, 116 in some parts of the val­ley) and it will be cooler up there.  Also being unplugged does get my cre­ative juices flow­ing.   JChristi told me to “bring my paints” so I am going to, but I am unsure how much paint­ing I will actu­ally get done.

DH is demur­ing about going with again, so our cats will have one of their peo­ple around.

Back to the sub­ject at hand. Maybe 100 paint­ings in 100 days is not a real­is­tic goal given all the other things I have going on in my life — after all I have missed my mark by 61% at this point-not count­ing the par­tially fin­ished pieces.  Embrace the real­ity.  Maybe it will be 100 paint­ings by the end of the year (at this rate-even that is push­ing it).  I don’t know, but I am going to keep at this.

In the mean­time you can cer­tainly check out the paint­ings I have com­pleted on this project, and of course if you’d like to buy one that would be lovely as well.  Enjoy.    two, three, four, five, zero, Vuvuze­las, Call Me, Do It!, Hang Up

Also the cell phone key­pad is approach­ing com­ple­tion and I really think it needs a place to be displayed-in fact I have already laid out the pieces and had a look-see for myself. It’s def­i­nitely com­ing along.  So if you know of any place that might be inter­ested in dis­play­ing it and per­haps sell­ing it, please let me know.  I’ll post the entire work some­where when its done.

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.

Photo of Oak Creek taken by Jake Beck­man on or about July4, 2010. Isn’t it beautiful?

I think I last blogged Day 5–6 of 100 paint­ings in 100 days.  In the­ory we are now at Day 13. So in the­ory I have had 7 more days to work and I con­fess I have not.  Sun­day started with the best of inten­sions, but I didn’t fin­ish any­thing.  Mon­day was back to work day and I car­ried out affairs of my other busi­ness.  Some­time this week DH inter­rupted me with a com­puter repair that sucked up a day & ½.  Wednes­day I did some book­keep­ing and deliv­ered it Thurs­day.  This week I also dealt with get­ting my AC fixed-so paint­ing, which I did do, was squeezed in 30-minute chunks of time wait­ing for this or that to hap­pen.  Another advan­tage of work­ing small-you can actu­ally *do* some­thing with a 30-minute chunk of time. 

Tra­di­tion­ally my friend Mayna, who retired after 20 years in the Marine Corps, and DH would join me on this 4^th of July vaca­tion break; we usu­ally stay a week or more.  Some friends and fam­ily have a dumpy trailer in Oak Creek canyon, with a lovely lit­tle deck hid­den in the trees next to the creek-when I say dumpy I mean it an affec­tion­ate way. It is bet­ter than “lit­er­ally” camp­ing out as there is a gas grill, a gas stove, restroom facil­i­ties and even a shower.  It also is stocked with things like sleep­ing bags, air mat­tresses, lights and lawn chairs.  Basi­cally you need to bring your enter­tain­ment, food, drink, cloth­ing, and shower sup­plies. There’s a coun­try store within walk­ing distance-their prices are high, but you pay for the con­ve­nience of being able to get ice in the wilder­ness. Oth­er­wise Sedona is a short drive away; it has all the usual accou­trements of a town.  

I usu­ally take a bunch of pic­tures, we build a dam to make a swim­ming hole, hike about and I really enjoy being in a place where there is no cell phone ser­vice what so ever. 

So this year Mayna is stick­ing to home as she is out of work and try­ing to con­serve funds.  DH, I dunno-we did dis­cuss com­ing up here-I cleared it with the friends and fam­ily, pur­chased sup­plies, the plan was com­ing together. Then he did the heel-dragging thing all day Fri­day rather than flat out say­ing he didn’t want to come. I ulti­mately decided I needed to get out of town, even if it was by myself, but owing to DH’s pro­cras­ti­na­tion, I showed up here some­time after 9 PM, well after sunset.  

For­tu­nately for me some of those friends were already up here; they fired up the elec­tric­ity and water for the trailer so I didn’t have to find those things in the dark. I really appre­ci­ated them doing that; they are in a dif­fer­ent trailer so they didn’t have to do that, but they did because they knew I would be com­ing. I also remem­bered to bring some pre­cooked chow so when I finally did get sit­u­ated I would have some­thing easy to make and eat. 

Last night I slept under the stars.  When the moon rose some idiot bird started singing wak­ing me up, but I drifted back to sleep until sun­rise when a squir­rel demol­ish a pine cone began throw­ing its orts at me.  The umbrella is up now so that won’t hap­pen anymore.

This is where I slept and painted. A “Deck in the Trees.”

 I did notice when I turned my lap­top detected 4 wire­less net­works includ­ing an unse­cured one. One I rec­og­nize as belong­ing to a per­son who lives up here year round.  I bet if I asked nicely he’d let me use it.  But I don’t want to.  Mostly I do come up here to “unplug” but it is get­ting harder and harder to do.  You prob­a­bly can find an unse­cure net­work on the top Machu Pichu these days.  Any­way, I am ignor­ing those net­works as if they do not exist-hey the sig­nals are “low,” they might cut out on me in the mid­dle of some­thing.   Cur­rently this blog is in a word doc­u­ment to be cut and pasted later.

I brought the com­puter up so I could work on a Spe­cial Enroll­ment Exam Class I am sup­posed to teach in August.  I am respon­si­ble for updat­ing a web­site full of mate­r­ial on all three parts and I teach the sec­tions on depre­ci­a­tion and basis.  So I turned the box on, dragged out the part one mate­ri­als, and find I have absolutely no desire to do it. Instead, I spent a leisurely morn­ing unwinding-made break­fast, drank tea and read half a book, The Tomb of Her­cules, by Andy McDer­mott, which is exactly the delight­ful escapist trash it sounds like.  Finally I am think­ing of doing some­thing con­struc­tive.  I am here in all this reek­ing fresh air and stink­ing nature com­plete with the full com­ple­ment of bugs and other wild­fire so I guess I should get my cre­ative juices flow­ing.  Instead of work­ing on the tax class website, I decided to blog.  And now to paint-maybe. 

A bit later.  I wan­dered down to the creek, Blackberry and Lumix in hand. There is this one tree creek­side which reminds me of a tree ent ala JRR Tolkien. Don’t know how I can turn that into a binary bird.  But three other images did come to me-in the morn­ing as the squir­rel was throw­ing pine cone at me, I noted an abstract pat­tern in the branches of the trees over­head.  It was almost black and white (and blurry because I was not wear­ing my glasses).  The sec­ond image came to me as I watched a sucker swim­ming in a rel­a­tively still part of the creek.  The third image came later as the shad­ows started cross­ing from the West leav­ing a shaft of light weav­ing through the thicket of trees to illu­mi­nate a sin­gle stone.  When I fin­ish them at least one will be posted here.  I don’t know what the ulti­mate ver­sion of these images will be as they are barely drafted at the moment. 

Enjoy­ing the peace of the canyon, being unplugged, and hav­ing a moment to read for the joy of reading. I wish Mayna and DH were here to enjoy it with me.  The weather is gorgeous.

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.

On June 22 I decide to attempt 100 paint­ings in 100 days. I don’t know if I can even do this.  Its a daunt­ing task to con­tem­plate, but I am going to give it a try.  Why? I watched Julia & Julia and it gave me this ridicu­lous idea.  Sure I have heard about it before as a method to develop a dis­tinc­tive style. The the­ory is when you have to crank it out, your style will happen. 

There are peri­ods of time when my pro­duc­tiv­ity goes through the roof, but there are lulls, some­times long ones where I let my life get in the way of my pas­sion.  I also intend to blog about it.  Short blogs prob­a­bly, but blog­ging about it is going to be part of this exer­cise.  I have a hard time talk­ing about my art, it just doesn’t flow eas­ily.  I also want to write bet­ter blogs and there is no sub­sti­tute for, well, just doing it.  I am prob­a­bly going to be exper­i­ment­ing with the plug-ins and what not as I attempt to get more advice on pre­sent­ing the blog, so this will involve a lot of blog­ging too. Jeepers. 

Day 1.  I fin­ished up 2 paint­ings that had been lay­ing around.  One was very nearly done.  The sec­ond I thought was fin­ished, but when I went to pho­to­graph it I hated it and had to edit it sub­stan­tially.  So the edit­ing job became the the first paint­ing in 100 paint­ings in 100 days. I fin­ished two for day 1 and I started a sec­ond and a third paint­ing.  I had orig­i­nally painted one and decided to paint two with­out really know­ing where I was going with this idea. 

two by jake beck­man, two canaries perched with the num­ber 2, and ASCII binary of two & 2

As usual, the binary code has every­thing to do with the paint­ing, spelling out two and 2 in ASCII binary. 

Day 2.  three and four were barely started yes­ter­day, I had got beyond a sketch, but not by much, however they are fin­ished today. Of course I have to pho­to­graph them etc now.  Since these are all 6x8 inch paint­ings I have decided they are going to be arranged like a phone key­pad and be grouped that way; I have to do 5,6,7,8,9,0 #, *, and maybe answer, hangup and do it but­ton too.  So I have the idea for the next 8–11 paint­ings, which will give me time to con­tem­plate what comes after the cell phone num­ber pad. 

I don’t know what you all think about this idea, but Julia’s mother’s com­ment about, “Why,” espe­cially when I am so busy with other things does come to mind.  So if any of you all have ever under­taken a self-commited pro­gram for only rea­sons you can under­stand I’d like what­ever advice you might chip in or what ever gen­eral com­ments come to mind as I embrace this insanity. 

If you’d like to find out more about one and two or per­haps buy them please check out their pages at AKAJake.com, one and two. 

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.