The Experience

“This drive was a revealing experience. The road and much of the landscape was artificial, and yet it couldn’t be called a work of art. On the other hand, it did something for me that art had never done. At first I didn’t know what it was but its effect was to liberate me from many of the views I had about art. It seemed that there had been a reality there that had not had any expression in art. The experience of the road was something mapped out but not socially recognized, I thought to myself, it ought to be clear that’s the end of art. Most painting looks pretty pictorial after that. There is no way you can frame it. You just have to experience it.” - Tony Smith

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Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Life As Art+Framed by the Experience

...Art is abstract, life is concrete, using life(material)we create abstract(art)representations and these are our thoughts. Our thoughts are art, abstract electrical signals firing in layers of patterns that get referenced and through their referencing are assigned meaning.

In art we create meaning through the layering of material.

In life we create meaning through the layering of material. In the sense that, every successive moment in our experience is layered in our brain creating a layering of material experiences that can be viewed as a work of art in progress. Or looked at as smaller scale works of art in each full day. Or the extreme smaller scale(scale being determined by Time) art in which the piece is viewed with each influx and mapping of sensoral abstract electrical input patterns.

The quotation at the top of the blog is the driving corroborative thought from another artist 50 years before. About 2 month ago I had a discussion in my back yard with a friend who had never had any art history or theory, and he was looking out the Void in our backyard fence and expressed the same thought or experience that Tony Smith was describing 50 years ago in New Jersey. Our back yard faces south, away from the city of Atlanta, towards the federal penitentiary that glows way off in the distant tree line. In between the prison and our house is a segment of the Atlanta Beltline, and in between that and the prison, in the valley, we frequently hear many gun shots at various times of the day.

This particular night though we were sitting out back and Charles looks out through the Void and exclaims to me, "You should paint this, right here, that's art..." As I look beyond my shoulder I see the Imposing glow of the penitentiary lights, keeping eye over the distant cloudy tree line, as a large commercial airliner is coming down for a landing in the even more distant background. All of this is then remarkably framed through the next varying layers of houses and the dismantled backyard fence in the foreground nearest us.

I knew exactly what he meant, and it made my month to hear him say this. So I ask him what he means and he begins to describe that that view some how aligned and formed a composition between everything in the scene. Just as the artist may frame and organize a painting by certain proportions or geometric shapes that work subconsciously to make the piece beautiful and meaningful.

Things align in life that make it beautiful. Whether we have a conscious enough eye and imagination or not though is up to the framer. One who has entered into the world of Life as Art will see things more beautifully, and see how much control they really have to frame their own experience.

As Tony said "Most painting looks pretty pictorial after that. There is no way you can frame it. You just have to experience it.”

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Art is about a Process. A Process of Layering  materials that come together to form an abstraction of an Idea. Whether one is talking about abstract art or the most realistic painting or photograph one has ever seen it is still an Abstraction because it is being filtered. Depending on the materials and the process taken to assemble them one gets different Art--different Ideas. By following the right Process one can reproduce the same Idea.

Life can also be viewed in this sense as well then. Life in the Subjective Form is the Collection of Experiences that one chooses to Layer onto the neocortex through the senses. How these Experiences are Layered and connected within the wiring of the subjective individual determines the Subjective Life and how one relates to the Objective Life of Materiality. Objective Life still though consists of the Layering of atoms upon atoms to make up everything one sees. This is as far as modern schools of thought can really agree on. After this point the atom can be broken down to smaller "particles", smaller vibrations of energy, or Light---still in debate depending on what school of modern science you follow. So LIFE is a Layering of Light on Space through Time. Lets leave it there for now. Make your own connections. Flip over to the Justin's Paintings Page to see whats going on.......
 

A View From The Top

A View From The Top
Europes largest ash tray?