IdeaJones

Tag: Art

  • Playing A New Game

    Playing A New Game

    Take a chance on yourself.

    Hi. I hope the new year is treating you well. So far it’s not bad from here. True, I have a cold, but those happen. No sense taking it personally. I get frustrated when I get sick. Long story, but I took a long time to get around to living my own life, so I tend to think I shouldn’t take down time. I have “too much to catch up on!”

    But I realized recently that I can’t start from anywhere but where I am, and can’t start as anyone but myself. I am who I am and I am where I am, and if sometimes it feels like I’m not where I “should” be, is that a useful idea? So I’m working on not living in the past, or trying to live in the future, or constantly measuring myself or my life against some invisible yardstick. This moment, cold and all, isn’t bad.

    A friend of ours just got her driver’s license. She’s over 30 and had never intended to do anything but use Uber and Lyft and public transit, but she got a chance at a new job and they need her to drive occasionally. So, nervous as she was, she faced it head on and learned to drive. She’s continuing to challenge herself, learn new things, and go in whatever direction looks best to her at the time. That’s brave, not to get stuck in a rut because anything else is unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

    I’m learning new things. For the first time, I got hired to create the art for a CD cover. It’s not something I had done before, but I met with the musician and his producer, they liked my ideas, so I decided to stretch myself and learn to do a new thing. We’re all happy with how the final artwork turned out, but I admit, it was a nervous business in the beginning. I wanted to do a good job for the client, and my own pride in my work.

    I researched the covers in his genre of music and gave it some thought — it seemed to  make sense to honor the conventions of his genre (blues rock), but not simply be “one more in a herd of just that.” So we (yes, I created the artwork, but he had choices to make and participated in the creation) took a common theme in his genre and changed it up. It still fits his genre, but it won’t be just like hundreds of other covers. Still, could I pull off my idea?

    Here’s one thing I figured out — most music is sold online now, which means a potential customer could first see it as a postage-stamp-sized picture on a phone or tablet. It used to be that album covers had to work in a fairly large size, that of an LP record. Then 45s came in, and the images had to work smaller. Then audio cassettes, now online sites showing pages of little “stamps.” The cover has to work at the size of, say, a tee shirt, and at that postage stamp size. I poured hours into creating an image that would be clear and interesting whether it was scaled up or scaled down. So I learned a new thing — to create artwork that works no matter what size it is.

    I’m trying new media artistically, and trying new things as a writer. Who knows how successful it will all be, but I’m trying. Like our friend, I’m learning all I can and then getting in there. It’s like a roller coaster. Sometimes scary, sometimes exhilirating. I hope your new year brings you just enough of the right kinds of challenges to keep you growing.

  • Pumpkin Dances and Good Vibrations

    Pumpkin Dances and Good Vibrations

    ideajones-happy-jackI created this short video as a holiday greeting for our Facebook page. It’s set to the music of Mick Martin & The Blues Rockers.

     

    Fortunately, we have good working relationships with a few artists who allow us to use their music for non-commercial projects.

     

    Too often, what could be a good moment, or a good project, goes down in flames for lack of basic courtesy. Case in point…

    My friend Janice and I volunteered to hand out information for a charity at a concert. We wanted to go to the concert (The Monkees, supporting their “Good Times” cd and the band’s 50th anniversary). The charity, The Davy Jones Equine Memorial Foundation, supports a herd of horses left behind by one of the founding members of the band (Davy Jones).

    We wanted to approach people who came for the concert and tell them about the charity. From the venue’s perspective, this can go very wrong. We could have arrived and just started approaching people in line — people who might not have want to be bothered. We might have slowed down the line of people entering for the concert, talking to people who were interested, and making things harder on the people charged with seating the audience and getting the show started.

    Janice and I went the day before, explained what we were going to do, and asked who we should speak with. Because we approached the people at the venue when they weren’t too busy to talk to us, and asked politely (1) if we could and (2) how they’d like us to do it, they were receptive.

    Eventually, we spoke with the head of Operations for the venue and he had the staff set up a table and chairs for us inside, and allowed us to enter early to set up. We were told a few times by various people at the venue that they appreciated how we went about it — that we asked beforehand, and were mindful of not wanting to interrupt the jobs other people needed to do. They checked on us a few times to see if we needed anything. When the wind picked up, they even taped the back of our poster to our table so we wouldn’t have to chase it.

    Janice and I had a great time. Lots of people who are fans of Davy Jones learned about his charity, and we enjoyed the concert. We also enjoyed working with the staff at Vino Robles.

    Which is how Mark and I approached people about using their music for videos. We did it far enough ahead so that nobody was rushed, explained what we wanted to do briefly and clearly, and asked permission. It sounds simple, but I’ve seen people just charge ahead without asking more times than I can count — and it usually doesn’t end well.

    Mom used to say “Respect other people’s work and don’t get in the way of it.” Good manners are good sense. They don’t guarantee you’ll get a “yes,” but they take a lot of obstacles out of the way and make that “yes” more likely.

    Btw, I can’t say enough about Vino Robles, which is a lovely venue, and Paso Robles, a lovely small town on the California coast. If you’re making vacation plans, it’s worth checking their event calendar, picking a concert, and making a trip. We stayed at the Best Western Black Oaks, which was clean, comfortable and has a friendly, efficient staff.

  • Happy Haloweek!

    This is "Harvest Moon," a digital painting based on my acrylic painting, "The Night Watch."
    This is “Harvest Moon,” a digital painting based on my acrylic painting, “The Night Watch.”

    Here it is, the fall holiday. If autumn had a mascot, it would be a kid draped in a sheet with holes cut out for the eyes, carrying a plastic pumpkin.

    The holiday came from All Hallow’s Eve. It was believed that on that night, the border between the living and the dead became thinner and things such as ghosts could get through.

    Before that, it was Samhain, a holiday that reminded people it was time to perserve and store food for the coming winter and lay in supplies.

    The Irish and Scots brought traditions such as costume parties, carving pumpkins, and having bonfires to the United States. From the U.S. Halloween traditions have spread to many other countries, and each has put its own spin on the holiday.

    A bit of trivia about trick-or-treating: in parts of Ohio and Iowa, Halloween is “Beggar’s Night.” I don’t know if knocking on a door and offering the person who answers a choice between giving you something or having a trick played on him is begging, exactly, but “Blackmail Night” sounds awful, so…

    My most successful Halloween costume, in terms of candy collected? Santa Claus! Mom made my costumes. One year, I wanted to be a tomato. Yes, I was a weird kid. Anyway, Mom was talented and she really tried, but she just couldn’t come up with a good tomato costume, so she converted it to Santa Claus. I was horrified. Santa Claus? On Halloween? But I went trick or treating, and people loved it. “You’re way to early!,” they’d laugh, or “Santa Claus! That’s great — I’m tired of scary costumes!”  They dropped extra candy into my sack (because Santa carries a sack, of course, not a plastic pumpkin). I made out that Halloween. Other kids were openly jealous (and yes, I shared).

    Halloween is a chance to try on other personalities, play games, eat treats and either be a kid, or remember being a kid. Wherever you are, we hope you have a wonderful (safe), happy Halloween!

     

     

  • Back To The 60s

    This poster, just finished, celebrates some great 60s memories.
    This poster, just finished, celebrates some great 60s memories.

    This is the 50th anniversary year of a lot of 60s stuff:

    The Monkees tv show (and band) launched September of 1966;

    Star Trek (the original) debuted the same year;

    The Chevrolet Camaro, The National Historic Preservation Act (preserving sites with historic significance in the U.S.), the last official Beatles concert, the Batman tv series, and Francie, the Barbie doll’s “hipper” cousin, all made their bows in 1966.

    I was in kindergarten and Mom said that my older sister would be taking me to see The Monkees in San Francisco, CA the following January. To say I was thrilled would be an understatement.  They were playing The Cow Palace and I hadn’t been there. They were playing San Francisco and I hadn’t been there (even though we lived in Santa Cruz, which isn’t that far away). And they were The Monkees. I played their records until they were so fuzzy it sounded like static.

    Then Mom told me the concert had been canceled. Someone was sick. That was that.

    Well, that wasn’t really that — Mom lied. I think she got a look at the chaos that was the audience at a Monkees concert and decided that she didn’t want her five-year-old daughter to be trampled to death. Or my sister, who was a hippie, adamantly refused to take me. I’ll never know. Either way, it would be years before I’d hear them live. I got to see “the Threekees,” which is any three members of the band, a couple of times in the 80s. Those times it was Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones. The shows were a lot of fun. I even got pranked by Davy, which is a very special memory for me.

    This year, Mark took me to see “the Threekees” again, in Monterey. Initially it was to have been “the Twokees,” in this case Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz, but Mike Nesmith came onstage for the last part of the concert. It was in an old “golden age” movie theater, The beautiful Golden State Theatre in Monterey, and we got to meet up with friends. Thanks to our friend Janice, we even ended up center stage, second row, and we had a lot of fun. And while I didn’t get to see them in San Francisco, I will be seeing them in Paso Robles, CA with Janice — which is why Mark and I made this poster.

    Davy Jones died suddenly, leaving his daughters and a herd of horses, some of them rescues, behind. Horses are expensive to maintain (I grew up with them and it’s both labor-intensive and expensive to keep a horse), and his daughters set up a charity to keep their father’s little herd together. As my time in fandom comes to a close, it seemed like the right note to do something to support the Davy Jones Equine Memorial Fund. So Janice and I will be out in front of the theater before the show, passing out information.

    This poster of Davy Jones is also a nod to one of my favorite artists of the 60s, Peter Max. I’ve been a fan of his work since I was a little kid.  It’s colorful, flowing, and when I was a kid in Santa Cruz, psychedelic art was everywhere. Of course, I was much too young for the “tune in, turn on, drop out” 60s, but the aesthetic was in magazines, on tv, in the music, clothes, movies…  Since Max’s work and The Monkees both came out of the 60s, it seemed right to mix a bit of Peter Max into the style. I’ve also got a thing for stained glass. Most often associated with churches, there’s something about stained glass that makes the subject more of a statement.

    Stained glass is bold in its use of color and light, but fragile. It also forces the eye and brain to do one of the things they do best — find patterns. The face here is rendered minimally, but it’s clear what and who it is.

    So I’ll be standing around this weekend in Paso Robles, hoping this encourages people to approach us and get information about Davy Jones’s charity (yep, official charity, 501(c)3, I checked), and making people smile. If you’re in the area I hope you stop by!

     

     

  • We thank you, they thank you…

    (Quick note — if you haven’t gone to Rebubble.com and signed up for their emails, you really should. For example, they have a sitewide 20% sale going today. Getting great stuff from talented artists is wonderful, but getting a deal on it? Awesome!).

    If you've made a purchase from us, you've helped a refugee start a new life in America!
    If you’ve made a purchase from us, you’ve helped a refugee start a new life in America!

    If you’ve bought anything from our Redbubble store, or from our Etsy store, in the past three months, you just did something very cool.

    Four times a year, we take 25% of everything we’ve sold and buy something for a charity. Right now, we’re supporting Opening Doors, a charity that helps refugees resettling in California. These people arrive in the U.S. with next to nothing. They’re often fleeing violence and the threat of death, so they don’t get to bring much. The charity finds them housing and helps them get started with language classes, help navigating getting the kids into school, how to get around using public transportation, etc.

    So what did you do? You helped buy bus passes so that people who don’t have the money even to ride the bus can get to the doctor, or get the kids enrolled in school, or buy groceries. Often refugees arrive from places that don’t have much in the way of public transportation, and they don’t know the city. Volunteers show them how to use public transit to get where they need to go, taking them to appointments. It makes a new and intimidating place just a bit more familiar.

    Opening Doors also collects items for “welcome kits,” including pots and pans, dishes, etc. When it’s time to turn part of our sales into donations, we contact the charity and ask what they need most. This time, Opening Doors asked for bus passes, so that’s what we donated.

    We. Not just Mark and me… if you bought anything from us in the last three months, you’re part of “we.” You bought bus passes and donated them to a charity. You are part of the day someone gets a bus pass, leaving $7 in his or her budget for food, or school supplies for the kids, or medicine.

    So thank you. We thank you, and they thank you. Enjoy being a patron of the arts (buying something from a small arts business like ours makes you a patron of the arts), and a humanitarian. As a friend of ours says, “You are awesome! Own it! Own it!”