workshops in scotland -- photos!

i figure that i should probably show what i've been working on... or really, what the kids in scotland worked on when i ran two workshops over there.


ok. so <- that is supposed to be an angel. this group of two girls made this. they were 9 or 10 years old. it goes back and forth and kind of wiggles.
this -> is supposed to be a skeleton and a gorilla that fight. they originally wanted it to pop out of the coffin in the front, but couldn't figure out how to do that, so they made them fight. when the rack (the thing that they're standing on) goes back and forth, they sway.



this <- is the group that made this clock that says "time flys". it rocks back and forth.


this -> is supposed to be a potato, or "tattie" as they say in scotland. he's wearing a little tam. they made him a kilt, but i don't think they got around to putting it on him.

this <- was made by a group of boys who were in to mountain biking and motocross. they made this motorcycle that rocks back and forth. this is all them, too. all i helped them with was showing them briefly how the mechanism could possibly move and showing them how to solder. for two hours work, i'm pretty impressed.

this -> is supposed to be a monkey swinging on a tree. it's pretty cute when it's moving. they wanted more time to put leaves on the tree and make the monkey swing a little better. but, again, for only two hours, i think they did an excellent job.

there are a few more, but i don't have photos of them right this second. i'll put them up either later tonight or maybe tomorrow. one is of a dolphin, and one is of a robin.

OPENSTUDIO thoughts

so today, i was commissioned by armando alegre on OPENSTUDIO to make "a drawing that explains why u like so much the blood in living things." i guess i do have some 'splainin' to do.

a couple of weeks ago in response to the appearance of two "museums" on OPENSTUDIO, i decided that maybe what was needed was more gallery curation. and so i started the plan to curate a show around a theme. for various reasons, i chose the theme bloody and set about commissioning and buying art with this theme. why bloody? good question. i guess for me blood has a lot of significance. and i honestly just find it somewhat amusing to make bloody cartoon characters.

we, as humans, place a lot of value on life -- the people most harshly punished are the ones who bring an end to human life (or who threaten the country, but that aside...). this reverance of human life also extends to other living creatures, some people even opting to never eat another (previously) living animal or using anything that might have harmed them. blood is inextricably tied to life. when i was reading "the second self" a while back, i was struck by how kids decide on whether or not something is "alive". more specifically, i was struck by the statement that spiders aren't alive "because we can kill them." which doesn't quite make sense when you get down to it, but in some way it does. on the whole, we don't think twice about killing insects or worms or things like that. maybe it's because they don't bleed. when making art on OPENSTUDIO, i often make things bloody. in particular, i'm drawn to the idea of cute gore. or cute monsters. the ability to show something that would in real life be really horrible but in a way that's estranged from all our connections to real life. it's cathartic in a sense. and by being able to laugh at something, you can begin to become unafraid of it in real life.

when we get an injury, we want to fix it. exposure of blood usually signifies a jeopardy to life; the one exception to this is menstruation. but, still, blood is not part of what we talk about, even though it plays a major role in our every day lives. we grow up watching nature shows where you see the lion hunting and then see the lion eating -- never the lion killing. nature minus the harshness. but, you know, nature isn't clean. it's bloody and messy and fearful. as someone who grew up in the country, i thought nothing of helping goats give birth, gutting my own fish, or of eating an animal i raised, etc. it was part of life. but then i moved to the city. in some sense, the nature of living was gone. i no longer had to fear being bitten by poisonous snakes, the deaths of my animals in the back yard/farm, predators. and i realized how sterile we humans try to make our lives. in some sense, i still feel that living in the city is just... strange.

but i don't think blood and fear and death and nature are things to be... well... feared. they just are. and it's more advantageous to feel capable of coping instead of being afraid of ever having to deal with them. we are mortal but our ideas (maybe according to plato) are eternal. but we shouldn't forget our mortality. we are rational animals, and sometimes it's nice to be reminded of the animal aspect. not everything in our world can be rationalized.

as for a more personal significance of blood, and at the risk of maybe revealing something about myself that i'm not proud of to the entire damn internet (or at least the portion that will see this), i went through several years of being (off and on) depressed and a self-injurer. and in some way, it's cathartic for me to externalize these things. to be able to laugh at myself. to realize that there are things in my life that may not be perfect, but that i always have the opportunity to change. to know that i went through this and survived makes the happiness that much sweeter.

so i guess i'll probably continue to make bloody cartoons for a while. it's a nice way to remind myself of my mortality, and to laugh at it and decide to live, anyway. sport death, maybe, to use the senior house motto.

yeah. sport death. only life can kill you.
it's better to face these things -- blood, death, disease, pain, fear
than to pretend they don't exist.