Trust the Process

Artist Catherine Downing suggested I read,  Trust the Process: An Artist's Guide to Letting Go.

It is a great book for anyone who fights with a creative block in the arts.

 

Shaun McNiff explains in his book, "Trusting the process and accessing the energies of creative movement is a discipline. I liken it to the practice of sitting meditation. It is not simply a matter of surrendering to circumstances and external forces. The creative process requires the active participation of the artist over a period of time. People beginning to commit themselves to creativity have to realize that important results are not always immediate. Just as the meditator practices staying with the object of meditation no matter what thoughts, sensations, or other distractions arise, the artist learns how to stay connected to the image being constructed and the process of creation, assimilating whatever occurs into the creative act."

Amano Chocolate

I currently do freelance graphic design work for Art Pollard owner of Amano Chocolate.

They make artisan chocolate from select beans imported from around the world. They use vintage equipment and every batch is made with the best ingredients. I am totally addicted. Not only are they winning awards for the best tasting chocolate around the world we recently won top awards for the packages I designed for them this past year.

Translations in Visual Language

Elizabethan Report comprising of Tony Petersen, Aaron Hatch, Spencer Petersen and Thomas Carroll have burrowed their way into my heart over the past few years. It seems they reached their boiling point in Utah County and will be moving on to California.

I have designed their cd's and promotions and have currently been working on a new project involving them. I received funding from Utah Valley University to conduct a creative research project.

It is entitled Translations in Visual Language: Exploring the Connectivity of Sensory Elements and Emotions.

While traveling through southern Utah a year ago I was struck by the shapes and shadows of the mountains on the desert plain. Reminded of sound waves I began to wonder what this landscape would sound like if all the horizon lines and shapes were fed into some kind of music sequencing machine. Conversely I wondered what different types of music would look like as art.

As an artist I have long understood that people connect to their world in different ways; yet we all share the same emotions and often, similar emotional responses. Artists have been cross-pollinating emotionally for centuries: a story helps create a song; a song prompts a dance, etc.

With these experiences in mind I would like to delve into my own emotional responses, perceptual screens, and the connectivity of various sensory elements to each other. Exploring such questions as do certain shapes and colors synestheticly evoke in the creator/viewer a similar or equal emotional response as a piece of music based on those colors and shapes? Can specific instruments or music be translated into these visual language elements while maintaining their emotional power?

Specifically, I will explore my own connections between art and music by listening and examining 10 pieces of music by Elizabethan Report.

Check back about news and updates involving their music and my art.

Elizabethan Report, "Are you a Murder?"

From a moderate Utah culture known for clean cut faces and social graces, Elizabethan Report conversely has an unkept concern with their looks and concentrates on their sweaty sound which is splitting at the seams. 

Their new CD which poses the question "Are you a Murder?"  to a ravenous girlfriend in its second track cuts right to a raw thumping interlaced trio of drums, bass and guitar.

The chaos is controlled by well crafted wound up and loosened melodies that stain Tony Petersen's ornate illiterations of brooding lyrics. His velvety voice rises and swells with the infectious energy of the quartet.

Shaolin: Temple of Zen Coming to the Woodbury Art Museum

As the graphic designer at the Woodbury Art Museum I am currently working on promoting our upcoming exhibit Shaolin: Temple of Zen beginning Aug 14.

Over the past eight years, photographer Justin Guariglia has slowly but surely won the trust of the monks of the Shaolin Temple, a unique Chinese Buddhist sect dedicated to preserving a form of kung fu referred to as the “vehicle of Zen.” With the blessing of the main abbot, Shi Yong Xin, Guariglia has earned the full collaboration of the monks to create an astonishing, empathic record of the Shaolin art forms and the individuals who consider themselves the keepers of these traditions. It is the first time the monks have allowed such extensive documentation of these masters and their centuries-old art forms—from Buddhist mudras to classical kung fu—in their original setting, a 1,500-year-old Buddhist temple.

The opening reception for this exhibit will be from 6-8 p.m, Friday Sept. 4.

The Woodbury Art Museum is located in the University Mall on the second floor between Nordstom and the Gap. Admission is free. For more information please call (801) 863-6200.

Check out the Aperture Site for a look at some of the images and video that will soon be on display at the UVU Woodbury Art Museum.

Aperture, a not-for-profit organization devoted to photography and visual arts, has organized this traveling exhibition and produced the accompanying publications.

Renew Orleans

I was referred to the Las Vegas City Hall Bridge Gallery Post Card Exhibit to represent my home state of Louisiana. Artists from each of the fifty states were asked to make a postcard size image about the place they are from. I made a 5x7 piece called "Renew Orleans" that is currently on display there until July 2, 2009