Thursday, August 26, 2010

Self-Portrait #4,092. Analog AND Digital

Rendered on wood or an electronic file? Yes. Click to enlarge, if you dare!

M Y   A R T — "Analog and digital" describes this self-portrait because it exists in the physical realm, on wood, and yet it actually exists only in pixels on your monitor. The background of this piece, everything but the superimposed 'big' head, exists on a plywood base, and consists of my now-usual mix of paint, paper, and polyurethanes. You can touch it, and hang it on your wall. In fact it is hanging in my friend Meghan's home right now. The small images include various photos of me as a young child, and of my father, my mother and my aunt Hoohoo, all instrumental in helping to foster and develop my artistic soul. Images of me in my twenties, include my shirtless punk period with a Mohawk 'do—Polaroids playing around with a plastic nun figurine, bold and brash with a mix of meek and mild. The painted plaids, in this piece, tie all of these incarnations together in a loose, ragged, haphazard manner, evocative of so many of our lives. The large face superimposed over the wooden piece, however, is a recent digital photo of me. It's overlayed in Photoshop, making this form of the self-portrait "real" only in pixel form. There is no printout, or painting or multimedia piece extant. I think I may print it out and use it in some other piece, as a section of a new piece, but I may just leave it as is. I like the concept of some of my art being purely digital, some of my art having physical representations on wood, and some pieces bridging the gap between the two mediums.

Duality—but Then Again, I AM a Gemini
It's ironic, and just a bit interesting psychologically probably, that my art is about finding those shared common emotional experiences we all have tucked away somewhere, and I've only been able to do that by becoming a recluse. From a life spent out in the public eye, in both my day- and my night-life, while obsessively keeping my emotional distance from anyone and everyone, I now find myself at the opposite end of the spectrum, and finding it really comfortable there. I've shut myself off physically, but opened my emotions to the world via my art.

22 comments:

  1. CASEY, I CAN SEE YOUR LIFE IN YOUR FACE. I LOVE THE WAY YOU DID THIS PIECE.IF I KNEW HOW TO COPY YOU I'D MAKE TWO OF MYSELF AND GIVE THEM TO MY CHILDREN. ALOT CAN BE SAID BY LOOKING INTO A PERSONS EYES AND LOOK AT THEIR SOUL. I'D LIKE TO THINK OF YOU AS BEING VERY KIND AND LOVING TO ANYONE YOU LET ENTER YOUR QUIET LIFESTYLE. I'M ALOT LIKE THAT ALSO. YOUR VERY SPECIAL TO YOUR NEW FOUND FRIENDS HERE ON YOUR BLOG.JUST LOOK AT ANNIE. SHE'S BEEN ON A ROLL. I MUST ADMIT I LIKE THE ART SHE'S PUTTING ON HER BLOG. IF I KNEW MORE ABOUT HOW THIS COMPUTER WORKED I WOULD TRY A FEW THINGS ALSO.I'LL JUST LEAVE IT UP TO YOU AND YOUR BUDS AND I'LL REAP THE ENJOYMENT.

    SITTING HERE FOR THE NEXT SURPRISE.AS THE KIDS WOULD SAY, YOUR WAY TO COOL.

    GRANNY

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  2. I'm sure it was #4,093, but we can have our staff's argue it out!
    Great photo. Now that you have visited both ends of the emotional spectrum, my hope for you is that you can find peace somewhere in the middle. You have too much to offer.

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  3. Casey you've completely inspired me to scan a bunch of old family photos. I've even found some with cars in them for later. I'm gonna turn my blog into a carbon copy of yours! Well okay I'm not actually gonna do that but I think you'll find these pictures interesting:

    http://thecahokian.blogspot.com/2010/08/family-ghosts.html

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  4. Casey, I almost fell over when I saw this self portrait -- I have in my head a very similar project. Since viewing your blog and your work I got this idea to do "As I Used To Be" with a collage of photos of myself at various ages topped off with a large very faded image of me now. I have been trying to figure out how to do this with my level of experience.

    I love the "looking through" the mind imagine to reveal what? - the soul perhaps.

    Is this something I could do by printing out the photos on paper and pasting on maybe a poster stock. I don't see myself working with wood and polyurethane. Any suggestions?

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  5. Annie: I think you might find a foam-core base would work well. It's available at any art supply or craft store, Are you familiar with the product? I might try to use a spray adhesive also. It's harder to use, you can't really move things around once it comes in contact with the surface, but if you carefully place the paper images from the top of the piece of paper on the base, and then sort of roll it down, you won't get any bubbles. Wet glue allows you to move the images around on the foam/cardboard, but it also tends to make the ink wet which can then smudge and also is much more liable to leave bubbles. Bubbles are the worst part of using paper on a backing of cardboard, foamcore or wood. You can press them out from the center until you get to the edges, but the more you press the top of the image, the more likely the ink will come off. Bubbles tend to come out once the piece is totally dry, but you can also 'prick' them with a needle if they're bad. I'll tell you, bubbles are the bane of my existence! It took me a LONG time to get the paper to adhere to the backing without a bubble, and I won't even finish a piece if i get bubbles. Sometimes, long after a piece is finished, if it's humid, bubbles will appear, but they always go once the temp drops or the humidity drops. There is nothing that can be done about those, but the bubbles that appear from just not adhering properly in the first place, DRIVE ME CRAZY, lol. I think I've mentioned that instead of using a brush I dip my entire hand in polyurethane and coat the back and front of the images that way, so I can actually feel the bubbles right away, but I don't recommend it. Apparently it's toxic and can leach into the skin, but hey, I give everything to my art! I'd cut an ear off if I thought it would help!

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  6. What is it with you artists and your ears???? lol

    Thanks for the suggestions, I have seen that foam-core board. I will get some and experiment. I guess I can use the spray adhesive inside, I will ready the label. The downside of this condo is there is no dirty workspace, but I do have a little balcony. Already my kitchen island is covered in art supplies, I keep reducing my cooking areas.

    Our humid season is drawing to an end so maybe my timing is right. More rummaging through old photo boxes... I hope the sound of that doesn't wake you at night.

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  7. PS: I made your self-portrait my desktop background ---- lol now I can't see any of my icons. But I don't even care.

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  8. Casey,

    This piece is amazing and haunting. If we'd known "then" when we were adorable little boys exactly how our lives would play out...well, it's quite a subject to think about. I look at pictures of me as a child and I can see me in them, and then I think of the road travelled and the road not taken...I know I'm rambling but this example of your work is very affecting.

    Speaking of adorable little boys, my first crush was on Roy Rodgers on television -- we got ours in 1951 (as I might have mentioned in an older post) when I was three. And I just received my copy of "Happy Trails" from Amazon and it's taken me back to my long-ago youth to look at all the pictures. I hope you get some royalties from my purchase!

    Paul, New York City

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  9. No royalties, but I'm so happy you have a copy of that book! Most of the additional spot art items are from my own collection of stuff, and I think it's one my best looking art books. Hope you enjoy it!

    I hope my art leads to all sorts of thoughts in people's heads. I know from my art show last year that it launched a thousand conversations with the people that came to it. I've been to a lot of art shows, and most people do a 'once around the perimeter' and then take a glass of wine and have a canape or two, and leave. I don't think anyone left once they walked into my show until it was over. There were more than 100 people at one point, all talking about the art and their own memories. It was awesome!

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  10. MOVE OVER PAUL, ROY IS MINE.

    GRANNY

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  11. Paul, when I attend various performances at my grandkid's schools, it's funny I always look at all the little kids and their behavior and try to imagine what they will be when they are all grown up. Will the silly ones turn serious? The shy ones become out-spoken leaders? The not so striking little girls blossom into beauties? And some of the little faces I imagine will not change one iota as they carry a very sage mask at this young age. It would be a wonderful study to be able to follow several children all the way through to adulthood.

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  12. Granny,

    Well, I also had a big crush on Pat Brady's Jeep Nelly Bell -- I was into cars even as an infant. And I think since Roy has ridden on without us we won't have too much of a conflict!

    Annie,

    I think there was a British TV series that followed a group of children and revisited them every seven years -- 7, 14, 21, 28, -- I'm not sure how long it went on but it was quite a while. You could see some kids had big changes and some didn't change it all. It was pretty fascinating. I also remember my high school reunion (20-year) when some of the mousy girls had really blossomed into attractive, confident women and some of the football stars and the "cool" guys had become the types that probably today believe Obama is a muslim and the earth is flat.

    Paul, New York City

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  13. Annie,

    Have you ever tried acrylic medium transfers? the image has to be a photocopy, not something from the printer. Different kinds of ink. I've done it a few times with varying degrees of success.

    http://www.utrechtart.com/community/index.cfm?commentID=163

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  14. I wonder if that would work with laser copies, which are pretty much the same as photochopies. I never use ink jet printers for my printouts, I have them done at a print shop and only use laser copies.

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  15. Marius, thanks for the link, I will check it out. It will be fun to see what I come up with.

    Paul, I'm going to see if I can find that series on Netflix it might be interesting.

    Has anybody out there read 'South of Broad" - whoosh, i'm a little over half way...wrenching!

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  16. I keep coming back to your idea about this image existing only in pixel form. It's really got hold of me.

    But now it exists in my mind. Is it still pixels...what form does memory take...what does it look like? A bit of electricity, a firing of a synapse, a chemical reaction. How and where is it stored?

    Does it exist when it's written down or spoken aloud? I don't know enough to have any answers.

    Sorry, just spinning things around. A dog chasing his tale.

    I forgot to tell you that I like it very much. Bow ties and musical notes and all.

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  17. Marius: I think about stuff like that all the time, i really do. I saw a show the other night on NatGeo I think, and it posited the question if our universe as we know it right now could possibly be a computer simulation by a civilization a million or several million years more advanced than we are. They mentioned that everything we do electronically has to be in pixels, and then explained that as far as we've studied, sub-atomic particles, the ones that are a billionth of an atom or whatever, are actually all the same shape, They're actually pixels. It was REALLY interesting. I've been thinking lately, i watch every science show I can, that our Big Bang could possibly just be an everyday 'ordinary' black hole, that we know exists. Perhaps all of the energy that is sucked into a black hole actually exits in a constant big bang, making universes every second. Or another thought is that we could all actually exist on another universe's grain of sand, and that there might be universes on each of OUR grains of sand.

    I think about shit like this all the time, it's just so fascinating, and the fact that we'll NEVER know, makes it all the more fascinating to me because I'll never know I'm wrong.

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  18. I've just been lurking and loving what I'm reading here. Thank all of you for your thoughts and ideas!

    Annie,I wanted to tell you I think those series of British shows are called "Up", as in 7Up, 14Up, etc. Might make it easier to find them. Good luck. I'd love to see them! I only saw 7Up.

    Katie

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  19. Katie - I found the series and have added them to my Netflix queue. Thanks so much for the info.

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  20. PAUL, I REMEMBER NELLY BELL. SO MANY YEARS AGO. WHERE DID THE YEARS GO. I CAN REMEMBER THOSE SAT. MAT. I COULDN'T WAIT TO GET TO THE MOVIES. MY GIRLFIENDS AND I WOULD SIT WAY DOWN FRONT I GUESS WE THOUGHT WE'D BE CLOSER TO ROY ROGARS. I WAS REALLY TO YOUNG TO HAVE CRUSHES BUT I SURE HAD ONE FOR HIM. THEN AT THE SAME MOVIE HOUSE WHEN WE BECAME TEENAGERS, WE WOULD MEET OUR BOYFRIENDS AND CATCH THE BACK ROW. LOL, ALOT OF HANDHOLDING AND SEEK A KISS. THOSE WERE THE GOOD OLD DAYS.

    LOL GRANNY

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