Help Save The Art Academy

I've written about The Art Academy before. It is a hidden gem of the Twin Cities; a unique place to learn traditional drawing and painting techniques that have been improved and streamlined by modern pedagogy. I love this school, and the owners have become dear friends.

The Art Academy has been hit very hard by the COVID pandemic; they are unable to hold classes without compromising the safety of students and staff. If you have the means, please consider supporting the school as they try to weather this crisis. 100% of the proceeds of this fundraiser are going to staff salaries and recurring business expenses.  Thank you!

This Really Kind of Explains It

... maaan," says college sophomore, taking a bong hit while sitting on the floor of his cluttered dorm.

Against Elitism In Art

A while back, I participated in an online discussion about the relative importance of high culture versus popular culture. In the discussion, there were some arguing that high art has a special place above mere "popular" art. I made the point that much of what we consider today to be "high art" was made by craftsmen working to please a patron for a payday, and that renders the distinction between the two less clear than it may seem.

As strange as it sounds, a production artist on a movie or in an advertising house works under virtually the same constraints as Michelangelo: he is paid to deliver a certain piece in a certain medium by a date specified by someone else. And once one understands that "high art" and "popular art" in western culture have almost always shared a commercial motivation, enforcing boundaries between the two categories become more difficult.

I paint at an art school that teaches traditional and Renaissance drawing and painting methods; Bistre & Verdaccio underpainting as well as direct painting. But the school also teaches manga, superhero comics, illustration, origami, and has even given classes on miniatures painting. The director of the school told me that a student once complained to him that someone was painting a cowboy in one of the Renaissance painting classes. "Why is he painting that in this class?" His reply: "he just likes cowboys."

Here is a person who has every reason to look down at pop art, a person who has spent his whole life immersed in classical Western tradition and has forgotten more about Renaissance painting than most anyone will ever know, waxing enthusiastic about cowboys and "mere" comic book artists. It changes one's perspective.

I am in favor of standards, just not standards that depend on the age of a piece or an arbitrarily determined list of classics. Sure, Michaelangelo is great: but not because he's old; it's because he spent a lifetime honing and mastering a craft, and his work shows that. So does the work of Bernie Wrightson.

Right now is truly a unique time to be alive -- the luxury of leisure time has allowed large numbers of people an opportunity to both consume and even produce art in incredible quantities -- far more than a single person could ever absorb in an entire lifetime. Let's celebrate the skill and passion, and not worry so much about creating a canon.

Leopard Seal FTW

Worth a watch!
 

Read the story here.

The Purpose of Travel

"There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign."
--Robert Louis Stevenson 

"One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things."
--Henry Miller.

 "If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home."
--James Michener

" The traveler is active; he goes strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes 'sight-seeing.'"
--Daniel J. Boorstin

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
--Mark Twain

What I Hate About Being An Adult Today: An Ongoing And Neverending Series

Random observations of grown-up life in the last week -- 

• there is water damage in the ceiling of my home office again 
• that means the second floor toilet is almost certainly leaking again
• I got pink eye from my kid 
• the house and car insurance payments are due and they've jacked the rates again
• I need to shop for fucking insurance again 
• speaking of insurance, my company changed health insurance providers
• have I mentioned that I really hate researching insurance providers and policies? 
• it will be time to do taxes soon 
• my retirement savings are in the toilet
• that kind of brings it full circle 

Nerd Power

For the 1d4-1 people who may be wondering why I haven't been posting to my blog in so long, well, it's because all of my spare time and energy has been poured into my Dungeons & Dragons campaign website:

The Adventures of the Sword Coast Drifters

Since last fall, I've been playing the fifth edition of the venerable role-playing game, and it has rekindled my passion for all things D&D.

I haven't really acted as a Dungeon Master in more than ten years. So my group started with the introductory adventure that comes with the D&D 5e Basic Set. It turned out to be a modern classic! We just transitioned into Storm King's Thunder, and it looks to be another terrific adventure.

Being the game's referee can be a big time commitment all by itself, but I've added a whole new dimension to the DM's chore: after each session, I write the story of what happened. I've tried to write these like episodes of a show or chapters in novella, rather than merely mechanical summaries of the game. It's a time-consuming challenge, but I've been enjoying it immensely! A worthy respite from the horrible things that are happening in the world. Check it out if you have time to kill.