I just posted a call for artists on VFAF’s website: “Call for Artists Who Live With Mental Illness”.

… is technology advanced enough to be indistinguishable from magic:

Adobe’s future development path is towards understanding the semantics of the images you’re creating — treating a tree not as a grid of pixels, for example, but as an object in relation to others in the scene.

I didn’t realize CS5 was so far along.

(Via ValleyWag)

This hasn’t gone out on the normal channels yet, but I just put up the banner about it.

The Victoria Fine Art Festival is having a silent auction fundraiser. We’ll have some signed Shepard Fairey work there, as well as works from other artists he’s shown with before. I’ll check, but I think it’s all curated by Yuri, whose taste is excellent.

VFAF is a non-profit my family started to do a socially-conscious, recurring calendar of celebrations of art in Victoria.

Action Comics No. 1, the book that invented both Superman and the concept of superheroes, sold at auction in New York today for $1 million.

Yuri, the curator at the gallery, is a master printmaker. His latest series is called Red Tent 212282010, and is a relatively-involved Olympic protest.

[The Pivot Legal Society in Vancouver] will be using red tents to visually bring awareness to the issue to the world media in Vancouver from Feb 12 – 28, 2010. A very important time to be doing this. Visit their website and learn more about what great work they are doing. www.pivotlegal.org

So I decided to make this limited edition piece of art to raise awareness and money to support this cause, plus a little more. First, I hope to do is raise enough money to give a $500 donation to the Pivot Legal Society’s Red Tent campaign. Second, to buy $1,000 worth of art supplies and distribute it directly to artists in my community who are homeless or have experienced homelessness.

For just $25, you can help me achieve this and get a piece of my art as well!

Artwork information:
Title: Red Tent 212282010
Medium: Two color silk screen, grease crayon, ink
Paper size: 8.5″ x 11″
Edition size: 125, Signed and numbered
Price: $25 US or CAN
Shipping $5 Anywhere in US or Canada

They’re available via his website and at the gallery.

The cover image of next month’s Focus magazine (story starts page 14) is a piece from a homelessness-awareness show my family’s nonprofit is putting on in January.

All of the works in the show were executed by artists who have survived a period of homelessness within the last five years (or who are currently homeless). We’ll also be screening a locally-produced documentary on the subject and one shot in New York.

The show space is at 705 Johnson, January 15 (reception 5-8pm) through February 28. Films are Jan. 28 at 7pm, and Feb. 25 at 7pm, both free admission.

If you’d like to accumulate experience working in a gallery environment the volunteer sign-up sheet is at the View Art Gallery, but we’re closed until February so just get hold of me somehow (for example, by commenting below).

Please forgive me a gauche moment to discuss the crassly commercial.

Norval Morrisseau was a local(-ish) Aboriginal Canadian artist whose works are collected by the National Gallery. He died just over two years ago.

Recently some of his pieces have been appreciating at a good clip: Seven times ROI in under a year in a recent transaction to which I was privy.

There is currently quite a bit of turbulence in the Morrisseau market as he is very commonly forged. According to Wikipedia no Canadian art galleries are licensed to provide certificates of authenticity for works purporting provenance from Morrisseau, that right resting with The Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society.

A catalogue raisonné of Morrisseau’s work is still under construction and until such is established it will be difficult for his work to fetch demand-appropriate prices. This provides a valuable opportunity for collectors to establish a position in his work.

Things to look for when considering purchase of a prospective Morrisseau include the style of the piece (his most popular efforts, pictured above, are both easier to forge and easier to pass as forgeries) and the presence of identifying marks of workmanship, particularly visible fingerprints texturing the surface.

As I write I’m crossing the thirty-second hour of wakefulness. I decided not to sleep last night.

Everything went according to plan and I had a fatigue-induced freak-out just as the daytime downtown spilled into the rush-hour street. I hopped up on my aluminum desk, dangled my tipsy-toes over the radiator and started snapping Rear Window pix Hitchcock-stylee:

And an amazing thing happened: Time melted. I got into flow, sorta — flow-lite — flow-ish, right-brain whenever I wasn’t playing with camera settings, perception of time coming only in response to the fading ambient light level. My anxieties bled out through the shutter into the memcard and I actually had quite a bit of fun snapping away until the sun went down.

Our gallery is doing a juried, curated show in November of 5″x5″ pieces for under $50 each. Our curator judges the entires and presents them aesthetically. I was just invited to participate. I obviously have an “in”, but the condition is that my work has to be submitted anonymously so as not to sway the judge(s).

I’m probably going to do black-bordered wooden blocks with a mylar surface to hold ink I’ll plot digitally. Obviously my fotos so far have been totally amateur-hour, but I have until the start of November to submit either two or four pieces (the only lot-sizes allowed: 50sqin or 100sqin).

I’m thinking of reworking SUCCESS is a JOB IN NEW YORK to be both more bleak (no neon pastels) and physically produceable (maybe with Warhol-style print techniques!), and I’ve already been told it could be rejected for being “inappropriate”. As far as I’m concerned that means I’m on the right track — it ain’t art if people ain’t angry.

Right now I need to be photographing everything — like Tamil Tiger Terrorist Transit Tugs — and looking for great ideas to pirate, remix, and ink onto mylar.

I am not permitted to share my opinion on arts funding in BC, but I am enjoying this exchange in the Times Colonist:

Marcus Handman was executive director of the Victoria Symphony until 2008, when he jumped ship to the film industry. Handman says arts organizations should suck it up and increase efficiency. Mitchell Krieger has a background in opera and was managing an American playhouse until he replaced Handman at the Symphony. Krieger says the government shouldn’t cut funding.

I’d like to expand on Krieger’s historical references, though:

• Ancient Greek plays were mostly exhibited in religious festivals. Since Athens was a theocracy this could be considered government funding.
• In Mozart’s early career he was a court musician but he is famous for not having a patron: his prime source of income was public ticket sales, which proved insufficient for his lifestyle.
• Beethoven’s patron was Cardinal Rudolf.
• Shakespeare’s patrons were aristocrats, effectively the government in feudal times.
• Almost all Michelangelo’s commissions were of the Church but he also produced art for upper-middle class individuals. David was, ironically, commissioned by a textile business association.

Fresh off the sub-retard political move of cutting community theatre funding on Fringe’s opening night, when the audience was largest and most sympathetic, the government has turned its grossly-inept hatchets elsewhere.

Via Slog, which likes our art more than Seattle’s, a bunch of links. The gist? Now the government is cutting funding to artist co-ops. The money for Fringe has to come out of someone’s pocket.

If you’re looking for a (further) case study for how arts funding improves the economy here it is: My family is directly involved in those co-ops, namely in marketing their output nationally and internationally. The government funds artists, the artists paint, we recommend paintings to our clientele, the government gets taxes.

Ahh, the circle of life — or as economists call it “the velocity of a dollar”. Except in this case the government is trying to free ride on the artists, dealers, and their patrons. They want to take money out of the value chain without putting any in. All while in the middle of a recession. The mind reels.

Why am I not just advising artists to charge more, as I did Intrepid? Paintings and theatre tickets aren’t interchangeable economic goods: Some people will see a bad show; no one buys bad paintings.

Theatre productions have economies of scale working for them. Their product is show tickets and their model is to sell lots cheaply, enough to cover fixed overhead and per-seat, per-performance costs. Painters produce unique goods that sell for whatever people will pay for them. Their entire existence is overhead and their per-unit costs are degenerately fractional.

Artists, particularly new talent, need support from the government to work in BC. Vancouver is the most efficient place to do that for a couple of reasons (and another post). I’ve been to lots of these co-op spaces. They’re not Mile End, but they’re not grand-a-foot fauxlofts glassed into the sky either. There’s not a lot there to cut, certainly not 80%.

Anyway, I’m forced to stay on top of this. Lots to read and lots to discuss.