The Fine Art Blog of Daz and Holly

Art therapist Elizabeth Beck was explaining to me how one of the tools that she uses to help her patients is a theory of creative and mental growth created by Lowenfeld & Brittain (1987).(she wrote) What this theory postulates is that all children go through specific cognitive developmental levels that can deduced by the stage they are in artistically. There are 6 developmental levels:

1. The scribble stage (age 2-4)
2. The preschematic stage (age 4-7)
3. The schematic stage (age 7-9)
4. The gang stage (age 9-12)
5. The pseudo-naturalistic stage (age 12-14)
6. The period of decision (14- )

Brian Clark asked the question "Where do you think blogging is going?".

Forgetting the spam and shop blogs and concentrating on the personal  blogs, I see a future with polished, web 2.0 savvy but generally  passionless blogs.

I currently see a trend happening where bloggers offer little personal opinion on what they post. The posts frequently show this new breed of blogger is hip to what information is current but these blogs often simply invite you to go read or watch someone elses stuff. One blogger invited me to visit the site of a musician without even saying that he enjoyed the music!

Bloggers are becoming timid as they try to cater to a possible audience rather than catering to a specific group. Will they lose a reader if they mention that they like a hiphop group? Will they look foolish if they wax poetic over a videogame they used to love? 

Will they be passed over for that promotion by writing what they really think about the latest company decision? Perhaps social networking is drying up the brutal honesty and associated humor that semi-anonymity once offered. 

I see personal blogging being used more and more as a real-time resume rather than as a diary or sketchbook. Sure, we don’t care if you blogged your new haircut but at least you wrote something honest. Now your former ‘haircut blog’ is carefully manipulated to show yourself off, gotta mention your awards, name drop and look like management material or project confidence to investors.

Now that your boss and co-workers can find your blog, your personal opinions will be as politically correct and bland as the polite conversation you make outside of the circle of friends who really do know you.

Prove me wrong…

Maddox wrote this..
Blogging: If minds had anuses, blogging would be what your mind would do when it had to take a dump.

That’s actually a good thing. Dreaming can be described as your subconcious taking a dump and dreaming is essential to good health. Taking a healthy writing dump might just be the thing to keep you creative. I find it funny that there are ‘creativity consultants’ and books on ‘how to be creative’ for professionals. Just blog something, anything, write your honest opinion on something and then try to tie it into something else, viola instant creativity exercise that anyone with a college education should be able to do.

~Butter Heart Love – digital art by Darren Daz Cox~

This art is by Chris Brogan, an artist who has found a more ‘useful’ identity bringing people together for business and pleasure by blogging on social networking.

I know Mrs. Chili will like this pic!

Chris meet Chili – Chili meet Chris!

My niece says "bawwoon".

~* *~

Two unrelated topics from email i received today.

First one, from my friend Jerry who has recently discovered Alex Jones, talking about how ‘president Obama will not stop war’.

War is possible when two sides feel that they are justified to impose their will upon the other. When humans decide that their particular version of right and wrong is stronger than the general concensus of humanity then war is possible. So why not work towards a world where war is less likely rather than sinking into a gloomy slump of negativity?

Ending war begins with you my friend. perhaps you’ll feel less hopeless if you can stop dividing humanity into groups based on differences and start thinking about humanity in terms of what values we share.

So what if Dick Cheney and his evil lizard man Illuminati hit squad and Osama Bin Laden are out to get you,  you can’t stop them from killing you out if they choose to but you can stop them from making you into a miserable cowering wretch who feels cornered and oppressed. As Abe Lincoln said, and I paraphrase, I’d rather be assasinated than live in fear of being assasinated everytime I turn around.

Be the change you want to see, as Gandhi said. If you want war to end then resist the temptation to ‘kill for peace’. Albert Eienstein said that you cannot simultaniously prepare for, and prevent war.

War is only possible when there are two sides. People are on the same side, even the evil ones. If you want evil to go then love things as hard as you can and appreciate what you have but don’t expect to hate away evil or kill it off and especially don’t expect someone else, like Obama to do it for you.

"I had to put an end to war, it didn’t make much sense to shoot at myself" – The Dead Milkmen

The other email was a polite business-like request for a recriprocal link exchange. I put a link for the corporate art site on my blog and they add me to their list so that we can both profit!

Ha hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Apparantly that person hasn’t read this blog at all. I have nothing for sale and no reason to cash in on my Google ranking and value social networking rather than trade offs.

As Chris Brogan and Jeff Pulver, two people who use social networking efectively, would say, if you want me to do something for you then say hello to me first.  So to the "online marketing consultant" who took the time to propose that fabulous opportunity for me to get more readers I’d suggest that you talk to me directly rather than to appeal to my perceived greed.

"You cannot petition the lord with prayer!!!" – Jim Morisson

Angel Bears – fine art illustration liquify filter art by Darren Daz Cox.

Wendi Kelly, noted writer and thinker  added some great points to my post on acrylic paints with glue added to make deep crackle textures.

Do I (and other fine art painters in general) think about the stability of the medium on the finished canvas, in effect, ensuring the historical legacy and possible re-sale value of the piece?

I think it is far easier to make a painting that will last for centuries than one that will ‘decay’, if you follow the tried, tested and taught rules!

I visited the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art) in NYC (New York City) a few weeks ago and as always I was stunned by the seemingly permanant beauty of the paintings. Sure Pierre Renoir was using essentially the same type of quality oil paints that we use today but even the egg tempera (egg whites with pigment) on wood panels from the early Renaissance looked fresh and new, not to mention the Roman encaustic pieces, heck that’s pigment in wax!

Is elmers glue mixed into thick acrylic paints going to decay sooner than a traditional painting? I doubt it, here’s an ‘abstract’ one  from about six years ago that has been on my walls consistantly and seems identical to when it finally dried, and bear in mind the paint was about a quarter inch thick on the canvas when wet!

~* Snorkeling in Truk Lagoon – acylic on canvas 8×10 inches by Darren Daz Cox*~

But I didn’t consider the future when I made this one, it is a "quantum painting", my intentions, my thoughts, my memories are all part of this piece, wether anyone else can see it or not. When Yoko Ono put an apple on a ladder in her show, did she consider April 2008? No, the art existed then, now we have the memory. In the case of this painting, the main part was it’s creation and the joy I felt while watching the metamorphasis as it slowly dried from random paint into a picture. What’s left is a memory of a memory and the paint on the canvas!

Truk lagoon is a cool place – go visit!

~* Truk Lagoon circa early 80′s- photo by Darren Daz Cox*~

 Sometimes ‘quantum art’ doesn’t leave any tangiable traces yet still exists, the final painting by paul Gauguin for example. When his young Tahitian wife finally died, the last memory of what it actually looked like was probably lost forever because she burned their home down, with his final painting on the walls, right after Gauguin died.

I imagine it – therefore it exists.

My favorite painting

My favorite painting is the one I can’t see
somewhere on the walls of a hut in Tahiti
the last mortal act of a soul so completely
absorbed in itself that it reached majesty.
Those tangible dawbs that remain should inspire
us all to strive for our truth
I know what my favorite painting looks like
even though there is now no proof.

~*Darren Daz Cox*~

Probably the most famous, or infamous painter who’s work has self-destructed from not following "the rules" was Albert Pinkham Ryder. You might know him from his The Race Track (Death on a Pale Horse) painting. A.P. Ryder was brilliant, one of my favorite artists and a total quantum painter! Like GG Allin, A.P. Ryder did his art for himself first and then for the rest of the world even if that was a very small world.

Sometimes the process of making the art is the art and what everyone else sees is simply the ‘left-overs’. Was Woodstock just the concert? Consider the act of painting as a form of meditation and a game while it is being created and not necessarily a methodical series of steps to make a completed product.

 So should the artist be concerned with longevity of the painting? Yes, if he intends the art to be for others, but no if it is quantum art (as quantum art exists outside partially outside of space and time!).

Work thou for pleasure; paint or sing or carve

The thing thou lovest, though the body starve.

Who works for glory misses oft the goal;

Who works for money coins his very soul;

Work for the work’s sake, then, and it may be

That these things shall be added unto thee.^[1]

^{Poem by American Illustrator and writer Kenyon Cox}

Good ol’ Jeff Pulver challenged his blog readers to write a ‘bucket list’, essentially a list of things you want to do before you die but Jeff modified it to be a list for 2008 things to do. I hope we don’t find sick irony in this when 2009 rolls around. You gotta admire jeff’s will to succeed in his business ideas but i came away from the post feeling that Jeff was trying a little too hard to sell himself rather than dig deep into his soul, but i do wish him luck and I’m pretty sure that redesigning his blog can be accomplished before he dies!

Chris Brogan’s bucket list is a little more traditional, a list and introspective look into why you want those things. Chris touches on some wishes but like Jeff he tends to overlay the post with a veneer of self promotion, which isn’t a bad thing it’s just more of the same, not so much like a politition (I wake up every morning thinking how i can help America) or Miss America (my goal is stop AIDS!) but like it’s a casual job interview.

I know, so why do I bother to read their blogs if I’m just picking them apart? I like them and find a lot of what they say to be informative and often thought provoking, but also I feel what they say could be ‘better’. I’m an art critic but being an artist myself I feel it is a duty to offer constructive cticism. I’m also an annoying smart ass who delights in pointing out faults probably because of my own insecurities but essentially I get a sense of accomplishment from writing my unique opinion on what I see.

I tend to write better when I’m responding to someone else’s point, I’m more like Spock than Kirk haha!

Anyway, the bucket list hmmm

I’d like to know my dad a little better.

I’d like to do a huge mural, not quite a Sistine Chapel job but a big room I can fill with my painted figures and my narrative with homages to all the artists that made my life so rich.

I want to see that episode of the Sha Na Na show where the Ramones guested. *editors note: I found the video on YouTube.com of the Ramones on the Sha Na Na show!!!!!!*

I guess that’s it.

**UPDATE: I actually did all those things. Now I wish and plan to be a self-suficient artist and live happily ever after.**

Ok, so if you don’t know who Chris Brogan is here’s the scoop. Chris Brogan is an artist who has a not so artsy day job because he needs to ‘put food on his family’. The ‘day job Chris Brogan’ shows businesses and individuals how to effectively use social networking to create useful relationships and is widely considered a good source for honest, educated opinions on the modern ways of communicating.

The logical result of following his own advice makes Chris Brogan one of the best known ‘news you can use’ bloggers out there and because he has taken the time to build a real relationship with hundreds if not thousands of us we live vicariously through his adventures. So that’s why I’m adding my two cents to the recent criticism levied towards him.

chrisbrogan - simply this: folks are mad I did a sponsored post for Kmart. Pitchforks at 11.

  I haven’t read the sponsored post in question. The very fact that they paid Chris Brogan to write a piece about their brand gives me hope that they won’t just collapse and let Wal-Mart have almost total dominance in the cheapest necessities category of business as competition is a healthy thing.

So why are (his) people angry that Chris Brogan got paid to blog about K-Mart? After all he is a blogger who works in the business and marketing field, giving useful advice for free and never too busy to reply to a serious email or tweet. He’s not some kind of anarchist grimly struggling against authority and many of the usual suspects in Chris Brogans blogosphere salivate over the chance to get paid to blog.  Chrisbrogan.com is not a hangout for hippy-esque finger pointing types who consider getting paid by a business to be ‘selling out to the man’, far from it!

I think it’s a situation similar to what Jim Morrisson talked about, and lead to his dissolution of the public. People, who feel powerless, will try to kill their leaders/gods/shamen etc. A lot of people are suffering as the recession drags on and perhaps some of them are lashing out in their fustration at people who have demostrated empathy such as Chris Brogan.

in a spiritual sence, if I have learned enough from David Wilcock to make a reasonable guess here, the universe is presenting Chris Brogan with a choice, to counter the negative forces with a positive approach (perhaps by simply not letting the criticism bother him and forgiving those who have nasty things to say) or to amplify the negativativty by feeling sorry for himself or vengeful or withdrawing to lick his wounds.

Anyway, I’m glad Chris Brogan got paid for doing what he’s good at. Below is what he is a genius at! (and if you paid him for that he wouldn’t have to pay the bills by writing copy for K-Mart!).

Row_Bot Fine Art by Chris Brogan

It’s pretty funny how people have criticized social media guru Chris Brogan for writing a blog peice on KMart, after all his gig is all about building relationships you can use so why not bridge the gap between faceless corporation and people? Anyway, synchronicity and quantum intent has allowed me to have this classic pop punk Kmart song on youtube and on my art blog.

I wanted a simple way to quickly make Youtube videos from my stack of art and stack of MP3′s but I want to use my PC instead of my old Mac. I tried Windows movie maker, and it crashed every time! So I searched and found Pinnacle VideoSpin, a free simple video maker.  You can upload directly to Youtube from the maker so it is pretty quick and clean. Here’s "K-Mart" by 3-Man, a pop punk band fronted by, and songs written by, Russell Biff Brown.

KMart by 3Man (Biff Brown) lyrics

Got three ninety nine in my pocket

going to kmart lookin’ for a bargin

kmart’s got lots of things

balls and hoops and Santo rings

well, I grabbed a cart and

started running down the aisles

in kmart no one goes in single file

I wasted two fatties at the deli stand

ran over two kids in toyland

(chorus)

kmart kmart ran my sister down with a shopping cart

kmart kmart looking for the blue light special

there was a sale i just couldn’t resist

but the light went out and i got pissed

It’s really gross the people pushing and shoving

to go through the place you gotta go num-chukking

it’s blood and guts and bombs and guns

(god, I just hope I didn’t hurt anyone)

(chorus)

(by the way, Alice from the Brady Bunch was the inspiration for the song haha!!)

3-Man rules! For a few months in 1991 they were the coolest band in the world, until Trevis got greedy and tried to sell the demo they recorded doh, Biff broke the band up right after they won the battle of the bands at the infamous Hanger 9 in Carbondale Illinois. Biff Brown of course formed Groove Swamp right after he broke up 3Man!

Here’s all the songs on the infamous demo!

 It’s weird how quickly 3-Man morphed as they started playing Descendents covers (which Biff didn’t particularly enjoy, he heard me play the Descendents enough for me to know that he wasn’t a fan) and then they did all of Biff’s songs (including several from our days in Mississippi), then Biff started to collaborate with Jazz singer Nora, amazingly one of the rare ‘un-plugged’ gigs survived, and here it is…

~* all music by Biff Brown – singer/songwriter now in PA*~

I painted a huge mutant angel on unprimed canvas, similar to the style of the painting above (Biff and his Wife Julie), as a backdrop for 3-man, does anyone have a photograph of it? Trevis? Lumpy?

Gemini Illustration by Darren Daz Cox – former artist for 3Man, who did the pop punk classic song – KMart.

Pruconas, there, now the word is in Google. Unbelievable, I was just thinking that ma.gnolia was pretty silly for creating a ‘short name’ that was longer than the actual name (see the screen grab below) but what it did was create something completely unique! Pruconas has no sites (at the time of this writing except one where pruconas is a possible spelling mistake) and no images associated with it in Google.  It sounds Spanish, it sounds like a name, it is now associated with this site 99daz.com – cool!

I will see how this word evolves, what images get associated with it, the chaos theory of a random word! **update, Febuary 18 2009 there are now 1,760,000 web pages on Google linked with pruconas and 155 images on a moderate safe search, most of them my art! **

Funny how synchronicity works, as I was just looking at some Spanish speaking people pictures on Hilary Masons Flickr site and before that her blog which is 3greeneggs.com/wp which is synchronous because look at the painting I have behind my dragon painting in my last blog post, it is a green egg!  (and outside of Dr. Suess, how often do you see or hear anything about green eggs?)

Ok, so synchronicity is a real phenomenon and neat but does it mean you should drop what you’re doing and think about it when you notice it? maybe!. By being aware of synchronicity you are keeping your mind open to a version of reality that is outside of conventional science. Some people such as science and spirituality speaker  David Wilcock, suggest that synchronicity exists to remind you that the thought you just had when you noticed the synchronicity was an ‘important’ one.

So, in keeping with my random approach to art (which IS chaos theory you know!) I will work on the green egg painting today, right now it looks like this…

~*The Green Egg – oil on canvas – Darren Daz Cox*~

I’m still waiting for a major synchronicity today but the serendipitous find of a candle in the shape of a man is inspiring me, as well as David’s synchronous blog post and Wendi Kelly‘s heartfelt tweet, my first one on my new Twitter account!

Beach combing on the beach at Keansburg New Jersey is awesome fun!

I think I proved to myself that even if you don’t feel particularly inspired you can rearrange some things you already have and try to take a decent photo and suddenly you have created art!

Awesome artist Babel Wallace only has 13 images associated with his name on Google so far (give him a chance and some encouragement and he’ll get plenty more I’m sure!). 3 of those 13 images listed in Google are actually mine, linked to his name because my blog uses proper SEO (search engine optimization) techniques.

I’m hoping that this painting by Babel Wallace called house of joy  will not only inspire us but also get indexed to his name. It would be nice for a fan of our friend to actually find his art by typing his name in a search engine!

I didn’t intend to ‘invade’ people’s image search with my own images, it’s just how the search engines work (for now anyway) and I’m happy to share what I know about this with you so you can try it too!

First of all, here’s what I’m talking about, I did a search for "babel wallace" because that’s his name, and the screen grab below shows the images that Google has listed (moderate safe search), note that 3 (so far) come directly from this blog.

The beautiful thing about this is that if our friend Babel Wallace was already famous he’d have lots of pics here, indexed with a greater relevance to his name, than the ones added by association from my humble blog -, those pictures would have lesser relevence.

Since Babel Wallace has only a few pics listed here (perhaps none of them so far are actually his work as he doesn’t have his own url yet,  Babel Wallace does have a fan page on Facebook curiously enough! (he is actually a famous musician and an awesome albiet newer painter!).

Oh, and why did my blog get 3 jpgs listed on the image search for somebody else’s name? Simply because Google randomly indexed some of my jpgs and I wrote the word Babel Wallace on a page that is a list of awesome artists on my blog. I listed a bunch of cool artists and WordPress and Google did the rest and now about 200 people a day find my blog by simply searching for their own name.

Just in case you think that people must be exploiting this, remember that Google knows the cheater blogs and the fake comments (if they get posted at all any more) and with Google’s image labeler process non-related pictures do not get associated as much. The fact that my blog is an amature art blog appears to give me SEO street cred!

I did have one artist get quite upset that my art appeared in a search for her name, and I will remove her name on her bequest, but most people seem to appreciate the fact that we, the little people who are independent entities simply showing our paintings and drawings (I have nothing for sale here and accept no bribes from companies or non-awesome types who want to exploit my SEO success) have control over the way the rest of the world sees us online.

***UPDATE FEB 01 2009 (5 days later)***

Now Google has added a bunch of pictures from this blog to the search for (use quotes!) "babel wallace", it still hasn’t added the one jpg that is actually tagged with Babel Wallace’s name though.

BTW, homersimplex.com IS this blog as well (I just have that url going to this blog too since I no longer have a separate site for my band), why in the hell Google chose to put that url on there is beyond my understanding at this moment, but my intent is to get our friend Babel Wallace more popular!!!

***UPDATE Febuary 27 2009 (one month later): Finally, the babel Wallace masterpiece at the top of this post is now indexed on Google. So now if you search for (use the quotes around the name!) "Babel Wallace" you can actually see his art in the image search!, There, mission accomplished! (btw there are 212 images now on a moderate safe search for "babel wallace" and most of them from this blog, see how this is a win-win situation!! )****

Inspire, be inspired and appreciate. Make lots of art and post it online!!!!

If you find yourself blocked while starting to write something originial, write a short piece on something you know. Pick your "Groundhog Day", the one day you could happily live over and over if you were stuck in a time loop.

Phil (Bill Murray) : I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster and drank pina coladas. At sunset we made love like sea otters. *That* was a pretty good day. Why couldn’t I get that day over and over and over…

I have always been fascinated with caterpillars, the first thing I ever remember drawing was a green caterpillar, my first poem was about a caterpillar too, it went  something like "catty hatty went to latty". The idea of metamorphasizing into another, more beautiful, creature has always stuck with me, perhaps it is my soul reminding me that we, as mortals, are merely larval too…

Spring 1990, my car had been towed away but I didn’t care, I couldn’t afford the insurrance, the wipers were broken and when the tire blew I knew it was the end. It had been given to me by my ex-fiances dad and I saw it as a poetic end to things, just leave it where it broke down and move on…

Lynn had been my first love, we’d been together for three years or so. To our friends we looked like the local version of Sid and Nancy and just as destined to fail gloriously. I knew that I had been to blame, at least partially, for the breakup and while I had virtually no experience in love prior to meeting her I didn’t think I’d end up feeling so dirty.

My worst fear was that I was an asshole like my dad, just not cut out for family style love and I too would end up running away to some third world country where life is cheap and rules are lax. I mean El Salvador was hardly a tourist destination in the 1980′s but that’s where he went…

 I didn’t dwell on it too much as I was having too much fun. In the microcosm that was MUW and the Possum Town area I was well known by sight and by voice. I might not have been the only guy who had a mohawk, possibly though, but I sure as hell was the only one who had had a fiance with one! I had the only car that was painted with peace and anarchy signs and had the first punk rock radio show on fm there.

The semester after the breakup I moved into the dorms on a campus that was 70-80% women, the school had been a womans college in the old days of segregation but now welcomed men, but because history and tradition meant so much to the board of trustees they still called the college Mississippi University for Women, which, I hate to admit, is one of the reasons I had made plans to leave after my sophmore year and finish my degree at Southern Illinois U in Carbondale.

I had a lot of friends, half a dozen of which I know are still just as cool, beautiful and creative as they were back then and they were the ones who I’d hug often. I had a few friends in town left from my air force days, my skate punk comrades and my stoner buddies. The art students liked me enough to make me their representative for the student government, not bad for a sophomore! and the teachers tolerated my eccentric use of their property, like the night we had that huge tye-dye party in the art building ha!

The art building is where I fell in love for the second time in my life.

My friends and I called her The Groovy Chick. She was a senior and I later found out that she was a non-local-born misfit too, she just didn’t make it as obvious as me.  One night we found ourselves taking a break together outside the art department and it happened, totally unexpectedly, love in all it’s glory. Perhaps the fact that we were both moving on in a matter of months allowed us the luxury of romance without having to think of the future. Her friends appeared to disapprove and my friends were concerned that I’d get hurt which only made it sweeter for the both of us.

One day I picked a bunch of wildflowers for her and she had them on her desk in the graphic design room.

Which brings me to my groundhog day.

I visited The Groovy Chick at her desk one sunny day and noticed that the flowers had just started crawling with baby caterpillars! I called up Biff Brown who was DJing and asked him to get people to name the caterpillars and dedicate songs to them. Biff played along and so did the listeners. I remember that Brian Pounders dedicated "The Great Gig In The Sky" to the caterpillar called "No" who had died, I wonder if Brian remembers that? Was it Ultra Violet who gave the name of "Gloomchild" to one? I’m pretty sure it was Biff himself who named one "Reginald Gurmy Epstein the third" haha!

Biff recorded his show and gave me the tape, and below are a couple of soundbites from that day in 1990.

I don’t remember the rest of the day but it was perfect, I know that much….

Actually, it might have been the day we went off into the woods to pick blackberrys which inspired my great lost poem "Blackberry Pirates"….

One of the people I’m connected with on Twitter, pronoiapierce, has a nice quality blog with original movies, great CSS and a goal of making a professional documentary ( I think!). I like the set up of this site, having a good quality movie interview start the conversation is a fine idea. I really enjoyed the brief talk with Sidney Levy on Authenticity vs. Sincerity but then read the authors comment "Is authenticity a commodity now over sincerity?". 

A commodity?? After watching the Life In Perpetual Beta promo-movie it became clear that the goal of the site was to simply get rich  and look good getting there, as when you are rich you don’t have to worry and while you’re getting rich it’s better to be considered creative, business-creative, not necessarily creative-creative.

It’s almost as if the author, Melissa Pierce, wants to have no opinion or rather keep her personal opinion out of it like a news anchor, just have the authority and the look. People assume that the news anchor isn’t an idiot, after all they must be special to be in that position, so if you get in that position you will be special. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this but when the author becomes a perfect example of the subject matter it’s an opportunity to look at ourselves.

Authenticity vs. Sincerity.

As an artist I completely understand the difference between authenticity and sincerity.
As a person raised on ‘punk rock’ I have made a firm stand to be authentic first, and sincere second.

Authenticity doesn’t have to be “good” but sincerity does.
When do you use the word sincerely? mostly on letters where you are trying to present yourself as professional, competent or knowledgeable etc, not as you really are, all those things and a lot worse!

Authenticity is often associated with weirdness, rebellion and may even be a threat to the status quo. These days Billy Idol is far more sincere than authentic, you pay his manager and he’ll play your venue (or his lawyer will settle with your lawyer etc) but there was a time when he was authentic.

Billy Idol was one of the first punk rockers, it was his (and his friends etc) vision, imagination and courage that propelled the Sex Pistols to fame and started a whole new offshoot of music and culture and rules were made to be broken, just listen to the five minute guitar solo at the end of Generation X’s song Youth Youth Youth, it’s not Jimi Hendrix competent, it’s too long and wanky to be “radio friendly” (you never heard it right?) but it’s authentic as hell!

Our modern society is often too sincere for it’s own good, heck, as competent, knowledgeable and professional Melissa’s fine blog is, all I know about the author is that she feels that something is lacking! What’s lacking is the freedom to fail in my opinion. Allow yourself to learn from setting up huge goals and dreams, not just business strategies to steadily accumulate contacts and wealth. Ditch the traditional coffee cup motif of dedicated business competence and do something unique!

I’m not suggesting you run down to a hip boutique and buy some sincere punk rock merchandise, so you look different, just don’t try so hard to be sincere, as you are already authentic but you are suppressing it!!!!

 Welcome to 99daz.com the best fine art blog in the world, in this dimension, ( it’s actually number two in another parallel one, where Rozi made her own fine art blog. Rozi is also the captain of a giant robot shaped space ship in yet another dimension but that’s another story). 

Ok, so I listen to a lot of ‘new science’ lectures that involve quantum physics and spirituality and the fact that you found this blog means I know SEO and social networking so I wanted to combine everything I know and save the world.

Well, the world doesn’t need saving, but I do want to raise the vibration of people’s consciousness to the point where they think more creatively (if possible). Here’s my latest art project idea to do just that.

First of all i will need to get a spam contract, like all the stupid spam you see has to be paid for to some company, so I get a contract with that company for the maximum amount of spam sendings.

Next, I make a cool piece of art and a decent poem to go along with it and pick a variety of titles for the email, something cool, like "eat vegetables and you won’t need viagra" or "cute bunny art contest winner" and then spam, spam, spam.

We know from quantum physics that your intent affects reality and we also know that we are also connected on the quantum level. Here’s an example using a current event. How many people suddenly became interested in Michael Jackson recently? people that never even thought of him, but suddenly were fascinated, you might be one.

One reason why you might have suddenly become interested in jacko is by the The 100 Monkeys effect, which suggests that our minds are connected and that you only need a certain amount of people to be thinking the same thing for the others to know it without even realizing they know it.

So you might be thinking of a certain thing not because you really care but because other people have it in their consciousness so it leaks over into everyones mind, including yours, and if it is a positive loving thing then the world will be a better place!

My intent is to inspire and raise consciousness so my art spam mailings, even if they go directly to your spam folder will still reach enough people to affect consciousness (obviously spam reaches enough people to be profitable or there wouldn’t be spam, right?).

Anyway, it’s just an idea I have, one of my many art projects!

Here’s a tabloid sized (11 inches by 17 inches) poster in my upcoming zine. There’s a bigger version on my Flickr account too. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gobzine/3712274203/

 Twin Faeries fine art poster for the free paper art zine caled Gobzine coming soon.

All art by Darren Daz Cox a Peoria Illinois artist.

I have green oil paint all over the place! But it looks soooo good!

I joined the Art Alliance Of Monmouth County and will submit a couple of paintings for the next show! I am hoping to rent some studio space too as I find that being in an artsy environment can inspire me! I also joined the Monmouth County Arts Council.

**update*** yow it was good to see these pics again! it’s amazing, to me, how quickly my art sensibilities elvovle and how much of the same basic stuff has stayed consistanct throught my art career. I hope you will consider creating your own fine art blog, and perhaps have a rotating random post poster dealeo so you can inspire yourself in the future!