New piece and a sketch

Here's my latest piece entitled "The Professor Explained to the Children, 'This is why you suck'" (8" x 10"; 11" x 14" framed). This piece will be part of the upcoming "Id/Ego/Superego" exhibit at The Tech Garden in Syracuse, NY. Steve Nyland is the Director and curator of this show. A sketch is shown below.

just some sketches

Not much to say this evening (I'm tired). Just thought I'd share some sketches from this evening...

voice and cliche?

Although I do like to experiment at times (like most artists), I believe I do have a "voice" in terms of visual composition (like most artists)... and, of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, methinks. It is an interesting topic for discussion and it reminds me a lot of when I was younger (my college years, for example) and listening to lots of music. When a band like Santana or Yes or Led Zepplin would come out with a new album that was "different" than previous albums, I was not too happy. I wanted to hear "their sound" (their cliche sound). I was so "bad" back in those days, that I would not go see Yes, for example, because when they played certain songs in their live shows, they were not "note-on" compared to the studio version of the song. I wanted NO variation. As I make my journey through collage, I am struck by the tension between experimenting with new forms, perhaps, and creating works that seem to be "re-hashing" previous successes. When I came across this vintage image of Vesuvius and the ruins, I was drawn to it and absolutely knew I would be creating a piece with it.

I also knew that it had the potential to be reminiscent of my previous "Day of The Invasion" pieces. I was drawn to create a piece in that style partly because I enjoy doing it and partly because I knew it would look cool and people would likely respond positively to it. So instead of worrying about doing "something new" in terms of different style, I just indulged myself and enjoyed the evening. As my fellow collage artist and friend Kyle Riecker said about this piece on FB, "this is signature Steven Specht". I agree. But is it my "voice" or is it simple "cliche" Specht? I'm not too concerned about it, really. Maybe it's like Santana writing a new song in the style of Oye Como Va...

Political postcard

I was running out of time this year to get a postcard piece done for the Annual Wish You Were Here exhibit of the National Collage Society. And like most artists, I hate to work "under pressure" (although I must say, it really motivated me to get downstairs to my work area). It's been prohibitively cold here in central New York State. After blowing the fuse twice, I figured out how to get two space-heaters working at once win my "studio". SOoo, I enjoyed a full night of play and work last night. After all sorts of sketches which were not satisfactory, I suddenly pieced together what would come to be this final product. It's more blatantly political than most of my work, but I like that. For anyone not familiar with this issue, it probably wouldn't surprise you that a company like Coca-Cola has production facilities in India and that there are issues of exploitation of scarce water resources (both in terms of use and pollution). Once again, the corporate abuse of the environment and local peoples is astonishing! One of my former students spent a summer in India doing a human rights internship trying to fight corporate power.

tedious progress

I am making some progress on the QR piece... but it is tedious work. I hope it pays off...

"Fresh Saturnalia Cocoa"

My good friend and fellow collagist Anthony Morgan owns the wonderful Black Gryphon restaurant in Elizabethtown, PA. Anthony is truly a friend of the arts as he features artists' works in the restaurant and charges no commission on sales. We have offered a number of "Dinner & Collage" events for patrons and the check presenters at the restaurant are all collaged by he (and me) and the staff. He is now having various collagists create place mats for his guests. Here is my second placemat (I posted my first on December 14, 2014)...

quickie TED talk

This is a "must see" for anyone who uses old books as a source of artistic material...
http://www.ted.com/talks/brian_dettmer_old_books_reborn_as_intricate_art?share=1afb086e37