3, 2, 1... How Can There *Be* Zero Of Something, If There *Aren't* Any?

3 C's - This is Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes painted on side C of "Cassadaga". It was happenstance that the 'C' on the label fit in the eye of 'C'onor on 'C'assadaga. Kinda cool.

2 sold - This piece is a commission for the organizer of the Florida Music Festival 2008 Rock Walk. She sent me back my unsold pieces as well. Two out the seven I sent sold: Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison. Pretty good for an art show at a music festival, I think.

1 to give - I've got one more piece to do for the Alabama Blues Project. I'll show that to you later on today, hopefully. It'll be of Elmore James (hard to find records by the early bluesmen, that's for sure).

Peace.

SOLD - Conor Oberst 06/24/08

Singin' The Blues

I've been doing a lot of that lately. But today, I'm getting back on track. I've got exciting things in the works, a new deal to promote, and I've already sold 3 at a show that hasn't even officially opened! Business is rolling!

B.B. King is the first of a new batch for Primitive Kool. They've almost sold out of the ones I had in their Newport Nights show back in October '07. (You can read more about Primitive Kool in these posts.)

So, I'm off. With a bit of a forced smile, "It's getting better all the ti---ime."

Peace.

Passion

Melanie is for a fellow passionate about his cause: getting her nominated and inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He is the audience I am most trying to reach with my art: the people who believe so strongly in the music they love that they champion causes to get that music the attention and recognition they feel it deserves.

I feel fortunate to have a means to express my own passions for art and music. Passion, though, has several meanings to humanity. It can be warm, deep affection, but also can be intense agony and suffering. According to Biblical writings, the Passion describes the process of Christ's crucifixion. It signifies strong emotion and desire. Overwhelming.

So it happens that two of my favorites albums are related specifically to the Passion of Christ: St. Luke Passion by Penderecki and Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ by Peter Gabriel.

The first is a contemporary oratorio composed in 1966 by a Polish composer who I was introduced to by my high school physics teacher. Playing for us "Utrenja", another composition about the entombment and resurrection of Christ which was used in the Soundtrack of Kubrick's "The Shining", over the huge speakers in his room that really projected the music's atonal wall of sound, Mr. Layton opened my mind to a whole new type of music. It's certainly not for everybody, but it demonstrates music's capacity for communicating raw emotion.

The second is the album created from Gabriel's soundtrack for Scorcese's controversial film based on the 1961 book by Kazantzakis. It too communicates powerful deep feelings, accomplished with Middle Eastern and African rhythms and harmonies. In a Q&A for the Florida Music Festival, I was asked who my favorite musician of all time is, and I responded with Peter Gabriel. His music has inspired me the most over the years, from his days with Genesis, to his innovative MTV videos, to his own passion for "world music". I was listening to his most recent album, "Up", while painting Melanie. The song "I Grieve" made me burst into tears, thinking about Jason.

I'm sorry to leave this post on a sad note, but I am this week powerfully, miserably sad. I miss Jas terribly. I had a dream with him in it, the first one I could clearly remember that he was in, and awoke hollering "Help!" because I was drowning. Sobbing, I couldn't go back to sleep for hours. Since that, I can very clearly hear his voice again in my head. Remembering that is good and bad, stirring up happy memories and heart-wrenching grief. I guess that's why "passion" applies to the range of intensely felt emotions of humanity.

Peace. Be well.

The Pearl And The Mirage

Ah, Vegas. I wasn't sure we'd be up to going so I didn't post about our weekend plans until now. We drove up Saturday to see The Verve play at The Pearl at The Palms and drove back Sunday. We made it, though there were several moments we seriously thought about turning around. The sensory bombardment of Sin City probably was a bit much, but the gig was awesome!

Our time on the Strip started out terribly. We checked in to The Mirage to find it lives up to its name. From far away it looks beautiful, but that fades quickly. My wife stepped into the bathroom in her socks to find the shiny marble floor soaked with water from a leaky toilet. Two hours later we ended up in an older room with an $8 pair of socks comped by the hotel. What a runaround, so badly handled. Don't stay there. I have never been one to complain privately, let alone publicly, so this is serious. Don't stay there.

Then we drove to The Palms off the strip. It's the hotel with the Playboy fantasy tower attached where Paris parties. From an excellent parking spot we walked right to the Pearl, which is just off the casino. It also lives up to its name, a jewel of a venue. We had assigned seats, unlike in London, so we didn't stress about waiting in the line to rush down to the floor. That gave us a chance to check out the concession stand. In London, it had closed by the time we got to it, so we didn't get to even look at the shirts and such. At The Pearl, though, we had plenty of time, no line, and I was able to get one of the $10 keychains. I needed a new keychain to replace the mini Sharpie that Marc Ford previously of The Black Crowes had used to sign a ticket stub, which I had lost at the Phoenix airport a couple months ago. This was perfect. The show was perfect. Great seats at the back of the front section so we could stand or sit and not worry about people behind us. We could relax which was nice because we've been so exhausted lately. The acoustics are incredible too. It was such a treat to see Nick do his dance on the guitar pedals. We could hear him so clearly this time; his sound level had been low in London. Someone apparently shouted out up front that he was the "Picasso of guitar". Pretty appropriate.

I've been distracted by a Windows Vista glitch on our HP laptop the past week as well, so art doings have been sidelined, but I figured it out this morning thankfully. So I can get back to business. I've got a commission of Melanie to do, the Florida Music Festival coming up, and I'm in contact with another artist from San Francisco whose daughter is doing an art project partially inspired by my work. She might put me in contact with some places to sell my work in SF as well as some musicians who might want paintings of themselves!

I'll get back to work and soon I'll let you in on a cool promotional idea I have brewing.

Peace.

FMF2008 Rock Walk: Music-Inspired Passion

So, these are the 7 I'm sending off to Florida. You can click on the photo to see it bigger. They laid out pretty nicely for this photo, I thought. Took it out on the pool deck.

I've gotten a couple commissions that I get to work on: Peter Frampton and Melanie Safka. Both are for people passionate about music that touched them growing up. The people I want to reach the most. Whomever your favorite is, I want to know. I want to create something for you to show off what that music means to you. Make people stop and think, "I know that face... isn't that...?" and then get to talk about why you love them so much. Connect.

Peace.

The Art Of Vinyl Art

Choosing the image and creating the composition is the hardest and most important part of what I do. The first painting above is the first image of Dylan that I've used, the second is the second. I used the second primarily because it is very similar to the Lennon image I use. I figured the pair would look good together. However, the difference between these Dylans demonstrates how important the step of choosing the image is to my process. The first is a much softer photo, more sculptural. It shows the volume, the curve of his face more. The second is much harsher, higher contrast. It relies on shape and edges more delicately to create shading and depth. Both are beautiful photos. I'm not placing judgement on either in comparing the two, just pointing out the impact on the final piece of the choice. The first ends up being a more subtle, but perhaps more realistic portrait, while the second is certainly more dramatic and bold, with the expression captured in details of shape rather than tone.

I thought I'd share this comparison because I just painted both, one for the Florida Music Festival and one for Wild About Music. They reveal different sides of the man: the contemplative songwriter and the forceful poet.

Thoughts?

Peace.

12 Inch 3 Is Catalogued, 4's Date TBD!

Rodrigo has been putting a lot of work into this. I'm glad he sold a bunch of his pieces. He's going to keep mine until the next show, date TBD. I've made a connection with a guy in London who uses stencils to create portraits of musicians on vinyl. Though he doesn't use albums by the subject, the compositions are cool and the color layering pretty nice. We hopefully will be able to team up for exhibitions in London at some point. It is still where we'd eventually like to move.

I did get one done today, Dylan for the Florida Music Festival. I like the new photo I'm using. I'll post a pic tomorrow.

Peace.

It Seems Backwards To Me

For my second iRecording, I threw it a curve with "Return To Abbey Road" again by The Beatles. It's a fan club issue with shorter pauses between tracks and a pieced together medley on side 2. My little new friend still picked up the actual song breaks, leaving the medley intact as one long file. Before CDs came out, I never dropped a needle in the middle of a medley. I pretty much always listened to whole sides of albums, especially bands that did concept albums, like Pink Floyd. I'm actually going to prefer the way the iRecord does it. I'd rather the whole medley stay in one piece, never understanding why they broke them up on CDs.

So I'm really happy with the white box of magic. I might even give it a name...

You can probably tell I'm a bit distracted from painting at the moment. I'll get back to it tomorrow... maybe.

I'd better because the Florida Music Festival wants 7 by the end of April and I need to replenish Wild About Music's supply as well as Primitive Kool's. I did sell one online sort of indirectly through P.Kool. A payment transaction showed up on PayPal for a Miles Davis. I contacted the buyer who said she'd seen the one listed as "SOLD" on P.Kool's site. Based on the buyer's address, I think she had gone to the gallery, seen my other pieces, found their site, got my name, found my site, and, because I have the PayPal buttons, just paid that way. Even if that's not exactly how it went down, I'd told Paul at P.Kool that I would always ask where people found out about me and give him kind of a referral fee. This is the first time it's happened, so I'm going to send him just about what he would normally make selling my pieces himself. I'll feel better anyways.

Peace.

A Month And A Day

Tada! No glare streaks! Just a little bit at the edge. For $100, it works pretty dang well. I can mess with the positioning of the lights too, maybe to minimize even that fuzzy spot. For this one I only used one light on the left side. There's a second light too, both are slick with built in tripods. The backdrop in the box is a nice blue too, so the color balance didn't require any adjusting. I do still need to kick up the brightness and contrast a touch, as it came out a little dark, but the above picture has no adjustments other than sizing and cropping. I can also get the album basically vertical because the backdrop fabric continues underneath and becomes the bottom of the box too, and the little tripod positions the camera so I don't have to fix the proportions either. I used to have to widen the top and increase the height to get it square. It's really neat though, kind of bounces the light all around inside to diffuse it. Anyway, I'm excited.

So, a month and a day after the end of my contest, I'm ready to ship it to the winner! Pretty cool day too: sold three at a local gallery, got a commission on a referral, got offered free records including apparently a Beatles, and got an email from a 9th grader saying I had inspired part of her art project and that she was going to write an essay about me! Me! I've also been accepted to contribute work to the Florida Music Festival Rock Walk. The best thing is my brain is allowing me to focus today. My wife's too, which makes me feel the most positive of anything. I hope it lasts.

Peace. Be well.

GIFTED - Jerry Garcia 04/02/08