Living with an artist...

I love living with an artist.
Chris is one of the most intelligent beings I know. Yesterday's lesson:

I had found this image on one of the Tumblr blogs that I follow (Best Roof Talk Ever), and it pretty much blew my mind. I must admit, that I had to make Christopher walk me slowly through this concept... this is what I remember: the brightest part of a shadow can't be brighter than the darkest part of the un-shadowed area... there's a moral in this lesson that I haven't yet unearthed, I am sure.  Even though I use big grad school art words on a day-to-snobbish-day (today's word was "structural", ask Katie B.) I'm a dolt when it comes to painting. I can't even master finger painting. Maybe that is why it is a blessing, or fate, or something bigger than me 'doing something that scares me, everyday', that I ended up my better half. 

Maybe one day he'll critique my stick figures. I'll keep those to myself and whoever is one the receiving end of 'Draw Free'.

Oh please please please, let me let me let me...

"Why I want to be a part of the Screen Dance Certificate program."

There is something so interesting, so delicate and precise even, to the art of film making. To me, my interest gains even faster momentum once the layer of dance is added to the mix. Dance for the camera is a happy tangent to my main art form, modern dance which inspires a creativity in me, and inspiration that moves me to slide in, roll up my sleeves, and get my hands dirty. The genre fascinates me. The person behind the camera, behind the choreography, behind the very intricate inter-working of their own mind and self, possesses the rare ability to more precisely control an audience's gaze. Of course, one can never fully zombify an audience, making them think what you think, see what you see. But then, what kind of person and artist would want a cookie cutter reaction to their art? Not this person. Not this artist. My interest in controlling an audience's gaze lies in the hope and wish to better understand my own art form, and thus my own self. The utilization of film, as it helps me to finely tune the intentions of the art I create, has a way of sending me down undiscovered paths and wild adventures into my psyche. This plunge into deeper understanding has helped me become even more exact in my artistic intention, which in turns helps me craft art that more clearly directs the audience. The circle moves on and on, refining itself into perfect crystallized artistic intention and even more perfect audience understanding. JOKING (I had you going there, didn't I?). I really don't believe that anything ends up with complete or perfect creative understanding, but at least during the process of creating films and dances that manipulate the audience's gaze I gain some clarity. This clarity, this knowledge of the subtle artistic nuances and the meaning that laces itself throughout the art, is something I can't get enough of. Through knowing my art more deeply, I gain more knowledge of myself, an addiction I don't mind indulging.

... and so he fell ...

. . . and no one noticed and life went on, as it always does.

Musée des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W.H. Auden

(Thank you, Jackie Surpriseme.)