The Doors

Douglas McDunna is a long-time friend of my wife's, and now mine. Along with my wife, he's one of the few who have a hard time really talking about music because it means so much to them. To get him to write this about one of his favorite bands, his favorite gods of music, is pretty cool.

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When I first started listening to the Doors 22 years ago, I was amazed at their ability to transport you to a foreign land or a scene from celtic mythology or maybe a murder. No other band has the power to give me such feelings of inescapable sorrow, unhinged debauchery or the fundamentals of love. The Doors make me want to sit in a car with strangers and drink. They make me want to go to Portugal or sit outside a strange woman's house and wait to watch her. To break free of the bonds we place on ourselves or more importantly the ones other people put on us. To forget everything we've been taught up to now and to start anew for yourself. The Doors have given me ideas to question family, friends and lovers. They are a real american experience, based on a true american invention, the blues. Something so true that there's no question as to what it means to you. WAKE UP ! you can't remember where it was had this dream stopped ?
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Peace.

On The Wing

So I'm shooting for at least one blog post a week, instead of once a day. Clearly my priorities and time have shifted. Which is a challenge in the sense that I can't promote my business as I did. I'm having to figure out what will be more efficient and effective, and before doing it.

The way I promoted my art before was rather haphazard. I've got fun stories about specific commissions and projects, like the one about these 5 pieces going to a guy in New Jersey for his new place who emailed me not only knowing who he wanted, but sending me the images he wanted as well. Yet selling pieces was hardly predictable or consistent. I'm hoping it can be. It feels like new territory for art though. Artists typically don't look at their work as a business in the typical sense, I don't think. Maybe I'm wrong. So I don't quite know what I'm doing, basically. It's a little scary.

I mean I want to be able to support a wife, a daughter, and 4 dogs with Vinyl Art. But I don't want to go the traditional gallery representation route. Nor is my art traditional in the first place. I've felt that way a lot in my life, in no man's land a bit. Not as grandiose as charting new territory or anything. Just not normal. But then what's normal?

I can't just wing it anymore though. Fumbling is unacceptable now.

I need to fly. I'm learning how, on the wing.

Peace.

On The Wall

Jon was kind enough to send me a shot of the 4 pieces he commissioned as they hang on his wall. This is a cool layout! It's a nice alternative to the square. Even though it was really hard to sell these, I'm so glad they've found a good home.

I love getting to catch up on the story of my pieces, following them where they go. I've talked about this before, missing out when I consign pieces because I don't know who buys them, or when pieces get bought at charity auctions. But I have been lucky enough to have several owners send me pictures of their Vinyl Art.

If you own one or gave one to someone, I'd love to know what people think, and a picture would be awesome. If you can send one, just email it to me!

Peace.

Hard To Sell

I knew if I hung these up I'd have a hard time taking them back off the wall and shipping them off. I knew it.

Peace.

Keyboards: Rhythm AND Melody

The keyboard solo in "Riders On The Storm" is what hooked me on The Doors. I'd played piano from the time my parents put me in Yamaha school, sight-reading mostly. Since then, keyboards have been usually my favorite instrument in a band. Manzarek blew me away, especially when I learned from a documentary that he sometimes sang for Jim in concerts too.

Who's your favorite keyboardist?

Peace.

SOLD - Jim Morrison 08/18/09

I've Gone Dotty!

Early on I realized that trying to paint normally as one would with a brush wouldn't work well on vinyl. It ended up looking blotchy or too thick. In the back of my head, my high school art teacher's favorite project helped me figure it out. Dots.

I've described my work kind of like a reverse newspaper photo, with the density of the dots of paint creating the illusion. What was this project Mrs. Kahn loved so much that gave me the idea? Using only dots to create drawings with a very fine point rapidograph pen. I was in her elective class 3 years and each year we'd do these things and have a book printed of the whole classes' work. They were insane.


The idea stuck in my head from such a repetitive action so much so that after high school I actually was planning on trying one with colored ink. Yeesh. But, the theory is really useful. With enough care, volume can be created with smooth surfaces, and edges can be defined without solid lines. Indeed, the best lesson for me from the whole thing was that using lines to create shapes truly flattens objects, breaking the illusion of real substance.

This, along with my lessons from sculpture, are why I start in the middle of shapes and shade outward, bringing the volume out of the dark into the light.

It's also why I have to paint to music with a beat to it to drive my wrist's repeated dabbing.

Peace.

On The Move

You don't want to see what's below this photo and the rest of the room. Yet, anyway. I'm workin' on it. It's taken the last couple days to get this far, having had to unearth parts of the room not seen since 2005.

See, I tend to layer. That's my organization scheme. It can't be understood at all because it's simply chronologically stacked. I only know where things are because I put them there, not because they belong where they are. Drives my wife nuts.

Now, we're moving towards moving. I need to make my art room functional yet navigable. It has to look like someone might be able to get something accomplished in the space. So the shelves had to be consolidated, organized and nicely displayed. The desk on which my mini painting easel rests is almost bare too, which make me a bit nervous, but I think I'll be ok. The room echoes a bit too.

I also didn't have any of my paintings up on the wall until today. The albums visible on the shelves are all my painted pieces. I had the ones from this show still framed so I hung 12 of them. I've added Buy Now buttons on the previous blog posts featuring those paintings that are still available. PayPal lets me track inventory now so I can create individual buttons that will only let one purchase occur. It'll be easier and faster for people visiting this blog to buy ones they like.

Brian Clark bought 4 that had been in that dead rocker show and just received them today. He picked up Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Kurt Cobain. I don't name people who buy my work often, but Brian's just been so cool. His site helped me early on with getting going on this blog and his sarcastic comments on this blog caught my attention. Now on Twitter he's been very supportive and has shown his awesome taste in music. He loves "Fight Club", Mitch Hedburg and a bunch of other bits of human creativity that rock as well.

I directly asked him for his marketing advice recently and his answer will be in the form of a post about me! He wanted to wait until he got his paintings. So I'm looking forward to learning publicly what he would say to a guy like me. Wait, I'm a guy like me! Hehe, cool. I'll link to it, rest assured.

Or don't rest. Keep moving! I gotta go work more on my artroom while maintaining my inner

peace.

Getting Down

As I continue to add to this blog, it also continues to be a struggle to make the daily decision to be an artist. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to do what I like doing, i.e. creating, being productive. It is, though, the accoutrements (said Frenchily, this is currently my wife's favorite word) of the job of professional artist, the stuff that would be delegated to support staff in a normal commercial venture, that are trying. They aren't trying in the sense that I don't like doing them. I do really like the promoting and the networking and the organizing. It gives me a chance to learn more and more about connecting with people, with humanity, which is necessary for my ultimate goal.

It's the feeling of hitting my head against a wall over and over that kinda sucks.

I don't mean to whine and complain that I don't get tons of comments or anything. This isn't about feeling ignored. I don't mind that. If I did, I wouldn't have started this blog at all. It's the getting down on oneself. Being my own worst critic and all that.

It's tough to self-motivate when the business of being an artist is as flaky as it is. It's hard to push myself to do anything but paint when my vision of success isn't materializing more rapidly. Getting down to business takes a lot of energy.

I think it requires faking oneself out. I need to trick myself to do the support work in order to keep on keepin' on and get you to connect with my art and what it can do for you. I need to stay down with the cause if I have any chance of spreading it as far as I want it to go.

Are you down? I certainly wouldn't say no to more feedback. I appreciate any time you do devote to reading my ramblings, and am especially thankful for those who feel the fear of commenting and do it anyway.

Peace.

SOLD - Jim Morrison 10/27/08

Marketing Connections (Or How To Make The World A Better Place)

My friend Robert Benson just invited me to join a new site for vinyl lovers. Here's my profile. It looks kinda like a specialized Facebook. I hadn't looked at ning.com before, but it looks versatile and easy. The welcome email for this ning site said I was #59, so it's not big yet, but could grow if you guys join.

Growing the online network of people passionate about music, art, and creativity in general is perhaps my main lofty goal of this blog. Along those lines, I figured I'd give a list of blogs I've been keeping tabs on one way or another. These are people standing up for culture in their way:

Layla's Classic Rock
Imagine Echoes
Music Obsessive
Seth's Blog
davistudio
Think Simple Now
dig this / dig that
Zero influence
Magical Mystery Blog

This is an odd collection, but then I'm odd. I've commented on all of them, except Seth's which he has set up only to accept trackbacks and for some reason blogger won't do trackbacks right. So I email him. He emails back. He really does.

I got to thinking about marketers like Seth this morning. I like'em because they're job is to think of ways to make you make your life better. Or at least think it is. In any event, marketers push positive messages generally. Yes they do play to fears a lot, but that's what we respond to. If you haven't seen it, watch "The Day The Earth Stood Still" to understand that. Imagine if the Internet just stopped? Yikes. It's hard to remember what it was like before, say 1995 or so when the Internet took off commercially.

Anyway, marketers usually don't bash other products. They know they've got your attention for a limited time, so why waste it talking about the competition? I was thinking what it'd be like if political campaigns did that, promoting their candidate in and of themselves, not as opposed to the other one.

I don't like comparisons. My sculpture teacher liked to say that there'll always be somebody better than you and somebody worse, so worry about yourself. So much energy is spent by humans comparing themselves to others. Yes, society has to operate on norms to hold together, but participants in society don't have to judge themselves that way.

Be you, for cripes sake.

Be positive, too. Why spend so much time complaining about what you don't like? Like Zappa and so many others creative people say, if you don't like it turn it off, don't buy it.

Go one better and promote what you DO like, pay for music, contribute to society to make it what you want.

I know this post rambles, I know. My mind is a mess right now.

But it's me.

Peace.

SOLD - Jim Morrison 09/24/08

Buy Art Now!

Here's another one for Primitive Kool. It'll be for sale at their "dead rocker" show late September in San Diego, California. They currently have a whole bunch for sale on their website. Paul's been hurting recently, so if you're interested in buying one, check them out. He's offering 30% off until August 31st. Yep, 2 more days! He'll ship'em too.

Peace.

Jim Morrison 08/29/08

Not Destined To Make Old Bones

I was watching the VH1 rockDoc about The Who and heard it put that way about Keith Moon. Of course there are a lot of people who've listed musicians who've "lived fast and died hard" or however it's put. And of course there are more than those I've included in mine. But these are the creative souls whose art impacted my sense of my culture the most. They had a raw passion for living Life. I don't mean to glorify their behavior, just to note, to list, in no particular order, those brilliant fires that went out "early":

Keith Moon

Jim Morrison

Jimi Hendrix

Janis Joplin

Sid Vicious

Kurt Cobain

Shannon Hoon

John Bonham

Nick Drake

Bradley Nowell

Layne Staley

Gram Parsons

It's musicians like these and the fans thereof that make me want to do what I do.

Peace.

Making My Way Through The Dark

It's easy to discourage myself. I feel scattered, I feel unmotivated, I feel disappointed, I feel impatient. I feel my self-worth being attacked by my own inner voice. I don't know why. If I could shut that voice off I could realize all the good feedback I get and all the good things that are happening, but I get stuck in my own head. Vicious damn trap.

On this Indendence Day weekend, I'm going to try to leave it behind, to declare my independence from myself. At least until it learns how to behave.

When I listen to it, I get lost and I set out in multiple directions all at once out of fear. Fear is, after all, its main weapon. I've been taught, and taught myself, fear since I was little. Stupid fears that, while they helped shape who I am today and the life I've lived so far, have also helped my inner voice hold me back. It's rarely the end of the world, especially when it's something in my control. I'm not powerful enough to effect a devastating amount of destruction.

So, jump in the flippin' deep end of the pool. And stop worrying about little crap that makes the mind spiral inward to the point of nothingness or outward to oblivion.

Peace.

ON CONSIGNMENT - Jim Morrison 07/02/08

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

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.

(Pain)ting, Despite

Here're 4 for P/Art. Couple more to go.

Merry Holidays!

So here it is! Roger Steffens' own photo from the cover of "Soul Almighty", a collection on JAD Records. The gold of "Exodus" makes such a cool background. I hope it'll be good enough to go in the museum! I bought a piece of glass to use in the frame instead of the plex that comes with it, looks more professional that way. Doesn't scratch as easily as well.

Paul at Primitive Kool just sold the Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jim Morrison, but had to swap out one piece of plex. Shipping glass just scares me though. But, hey 2 more sold! I think he's doing a 20% off deal for the holidays. He has a few more of mine, listed at http://primitivekoolart.com/pages/DANIEL.html, and of course they are all available by commission! So read through my blog and then see more examples when you:

CHECK OUT MY WEBSITE AT: http://www.vinylart.info/

and have a safe and wonderful holiday! Peace.

GIFTED - Bob Marley 12/20/07

Top 9 Things To See In London?

Now live on YouTube! Click on the photo to see my new movie.

I've got some done with still much to do. Today, besides putting the video together, I did Damian Marley and Warren Zevon for commissions from Newport Nights. I've got a Jerry Garcia and Miles Davis to go, so far. I'm hoping for more interest after Primitive Kool puts those 16 up on their website. It looks like the Otis Redding sold too! We're going to London next week so I won't be posting here or able to paint, so I've got to get a lot done this week. I've got to get the ones done and framed for First Fridays, which'll be next week too. Feelin' the crunch!

Speaking of our trip to London, these are the things I'm most excited to see:

The Verve concert
Stonehenge
Westminster Abbey
Abbey Road
Tate Modern
St. Paul's Cathedral
London Bridge
Mary Poppins
Hyde Park

Please let me know what else we should hit! Otherwise:

CHECK OUT MY WEBSITE AT: WWW.VINYLART.INFO

and comment on my videos on YouTube too.

Miles, And Miles, And Miles!

Newport Nights rocked! It was a great gig, lots of people. I got to watch quite a few checking out my work. Ocean Beach is a cool place and getting to see the ocean was wonderful. A couple pieces sold, with more commissions as well. The Miles Davis they had sold online and another of him was requested by one of the employees of Primitive Kool. We'll definitely be heading back there for a future show!

Red Dog Gallery in downtown Phoenix is going to be displaying 8-10 of my pieces during the upcoming First Fridays! I've been hoping to find a place that participates in that monthly event as well, as the turnout of people interested in local culture is supposed to be huge. Woohoo!

I also found an inordinate number of records today at 2 local used stores. Bob Marley, Hendrix, the Dead, Pink Floyd, SRV... man, that was sweet! So now I'm stocked up and ready to paint. Besides the Miles Davis movie, I've also got the shots taken for a Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix so I'll be posting those this week. In the meantime, I've still got my gallery so:

CHECK OUT MY WEBSITE AT: WWW.VINYLART.INFO

and, please, leave comments here, on YouTube, or email me!

EDIT: I wanted to note that the image I use for the Miles Davis piece is the 1985 photo by Anton Corbijn. He's well known in the music world for his photography and music video work and I wanted to make sure to give him credit for the initial beautiful vision of the legend on muted trumpet.

Concerts, Concerts, Concerts!

Today starts a string of concerts my wife and I get to see. First is the Kings of Leon in Tempe, AZ. We saw them in New Orleans at the House of Blues and were excited they were going to come to the Phoenix area. Then the White Stripes in Albuquerque and in San Diego. Yes, we're seeing both concerts! They put on such great live performances we couldn't resist. "Anywhere within a 6 hour drive," my wife said. Then the Arctic Monkeys back in Tempe.

This won't be cutting down on my painting much, though. I've got commissions to work on and several I want to do because I know they'll make great pieces. I'll keep posting pics as I get them done too. Oh, that Dylan wasn't at Raw Style, it was at Wild About Music in Austin, TX. I had done 2 Dylans and didn't remember which was where. But now my brother-in-law has it!

I'm trying to decide who to show at Rockzone Records. So far I've got Jim Morrison, Ozzy Osbourne, Bob Marley and Lou Reed. I'm thinking for the DJ crowd to throw up Rick James "Street Songs" with Superfreak and Isaac Hayes "Shaft" dance mixes to make'em chuckle and think. Or Queen and Kiss. What do you think? I'll post the pics after I get them framed and hung, so who do you want to see? If you need examples:

CHECK OUT MY WEBSITE AT: WWW.VINYLART.INFO

and take a look at the gallery.

eBay And Feedback!

I've gotten my first comment! Woohoo! And from another artist too. How exciting. I hope more will follow.

I also have a couple pieces available on eBay for a couple more days. I thought I'd mention them here since they haven't really caught any attention there yet. I've got Buy It Now prices on them at the price that they are mostly selling for in galleries. I know 2 days notice is short, but I'm trying to make the most of my 7 bucks for posting them:

Santana - http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=170142992944
Jim Morrison of The Doors - http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=170142994102

So, take a look and see what you think! Indeed, these two are also shown in my gallery that you can see if you:

CHECK OUT MY WEBSITE AT: WWW.VINYLART.INFO

Come one, come all!