Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Good Ol' Dirty

O' Dirty Bastard
11" x 14"
oil on wood, 2014
No I haven't been listening to music much this past year but that's not to say I haven't been around music much. The neighborhood bordering our house to the north is largely hip-hop culture. Many have those hip-hop mobiles—revved up American made vehicles, the dodge is particularly popular, with amped up stereo systems—that ride the street in front of hour house with the stereo full blast. A friend continues to complain about it and asks me: "How can you stand that?". I can not only stand it, I'm loving it. The neighborhood to our south, at the other side of the creek, is largely populated by Mexicans, and the house directly behind our property organizes regular parties often with life music. Someone there plays the accordion. Needless to say: "I'm loving it". But none of this music comes with a play list and most hip-hop I hear consists of soundbites no longer than fifteen seconds. I'm hearing great fragments of which I do not know performer or title.

The hip-hop repertoire I play at home is limited to a few names or songs that I've grown to like over the years. I don't really know who's who in hip-hop. If I play selective hip-hop music at home it's either Shimmy Shimmy Ya or Brooklyn Zoo, both by Ol' Dirty Bastard, and both through YouTube. Both songs are part of my YouTube repertoire, which consists of about 25 music videos, all being played regularly. I there's a "YouTube-off" held, chances are I'll pick Brooklyn Zoo. The song stands at #6 at my combined top 100 of 2013 and 2014. The painting is clearly influenced by the stencil print I created a week ago. I painted like how you would make a print: I first painted the portrait in blue, and after it dried, I painted the portrait again but now in red. And besides a little tweaking...that was all.

Friday, February 14, 2014

The stencil

Cat Power
8" x 6"
stencil. 2014
The top 100 is compiled using a scoring system determined by regular lists of ten songs. The number one in each top 10 gets 10 points, number two gets 9 points, and so on. After a year that runs from mid-February to mid-February all points are added up. The top 100 year of 2013 has ended. Time has flown by. In my teaching obligations I've seen more than 250 students between August and now divided over 20 courses. Yes I've been busy, so busy that the top 100 of 2013 only yielded 50 top 10s, a little over half of a typical year. Only 65 songs scored 10 points or more, which is the cut off number for inclusion in the top 100. 30 of these 65 have received a complimentary painting. I have now decided to keep a running tab through December 31st in 2014 and compile the top 100 from this extended period: The Top 100 2013/2014. From then on the top 100 will run from January 1st through December 31st.

About half of the 20 classes have been painting courses and I have produced plenty of paintings in the form of demos during this time. All these demo paintings will now turn into top 100 portraits. The most intensive, and also most rewarding classes in the last half year have been lecture classes at Edison State College. The "Art Appreciation" course compiles everything about art into one semester. From hands on art experiments to the full scope of art history, the students truly received a crash course in art. The most fun assignment has been the stencil in which the students make an edition of ten prints. They trade these with other students and one comes to me. As a trade they receive one of mine. (I did the work too. I made an edition of 75, one for each of the 67 students and then some for myself.) The source image for my stencil of Cat Power came from Paste magazine. The song it illustrates in the top 100 is Metal Heart which featured on both on Moon Pix and Jukebox.