Deconstruction

 Marketing spends incredible amounts of money and creative effort to produce TV commercials for their ends, not ours.

Every parent needs to show their teens how to deconstruct a TV commercial.
How are the actors, experts and spokespersons carefully selected?
What about their clothing, makeup and fitness?
How do the music, dancing and actor voices work to have an effect on the viewer?
Is the setting of the commercial realistic?
Does the commercial tell YOU what you should need or want?
What emotional effect does the commercial have on you?
Does the commercial promise what it can’t deliver?
Does the commercial subtly question your self-confidence, femininity or masculinity?
Is this product the best way to achieve any personal goals?
How does this product make you think about your wants vs. your needs?

Sacred

 Though my perspective may be limited, I don’t see that the spiritual or the sacred is of much interest to artists today. I don’t mean religion, though that could be an aspect of it. I mean a sense of awe before the beauty and complexity of the world, a search for the sublime, an appreciation of the connective web we all belong to, a belief that the sacred is pervasive.

In today’s world of power and brutality, art can make us see beauty or understand where we’ve gone astray. Unless we affirm the spiritual or sacred in the world, we lose the energy needed to make the world fully known to us and fully a part of us.
The choice to largely ignore this aspect of our human experience is a failure of contemporary art.

Art

 Art was a part of who I was as a kid, but so was mathematics. Mathematics was what I studied seriously through graduate school. Though I didn’t leave math behind, art emerged again and became the language that allowed me to express my own vision, my own way of making sense of what intrigued me. Art became a big part of who I was in the making and my teaching. Many artists and art lovers became friends. In the end, I think art made me more than I made art.

contemporary art

 Contemporary art is a hard nut to crack. It morphs into myriad forms and has so many things to say. It’s always new because its practitioners are always new. It can be confounding, funny, complicated, profound and provocative. But isn’t that its job?

Being overwhelming and demanding shouldn’t be off-putting. It should be a challenging adventure for the curious and those who are open-minded. Even the experts can be flummoxed by it. So take heart. All you need is to take it seriously, keep educating yourself and be open to what calls you.

Some questions

Some questions:
How is it that all of Trump’s trials only boost his numbers, but Hunter Biden’s legal battles bring down Joe’s numbers?
When Melania was on her dicey immigration path, was she vermin?
How come Trump followers seem to be radios with only one station?
If Trump thinks he is the victim of a witch hunt, why not give him an old-time test. Tie him up, dunk him in the pool at Mar-a-Lago and see if he floats?

If reelected, would Trump be a dictator or just a dick? 

Humanity

 Though the cause may be just, it’s hard to imagine that a people who have experienced the Holocaust would wage a war that was so brutal and deadly.

Innocent men, women and children killed in great numbers, their homes destroyed. Survivors starving and diseased without medical care. Displaced with nowhere to go and little food and water.
When we take away the humanity of others, we relinquish our own humanity.

Violence

Face it America
Violence entertains us
The bloody hero

Bullets in the head
A knife thrust hard in the gut
Any means for blood

Men fight, women too
Bloody faces and knuckles
Fight Club in the home

Soldiers see what’s real
Live it in their own bodies
PTSD kills

The Civil War drew
Spectators on the hillside
TV brings it home

No longer cowboy’s
Black and white morality
The streets decide it

Are we animals
Infected with hate and fear
Violent beings

Brutal, thuggish, mean
Violence is a language
Why do we use it

No, we’re better folks
Who haven’t figured out love

Or how to live it