Background (in case you need it)
Pop-Up Galleries have been getting more and more press the last few years and I have run into them quite a bit in Chicago. They are sometimes longer than one night, but the concept is the same. Property owner has vacant storefront, artist has artwork and needs space to display it. It’s like an open house, but the space is staged as a business so potential renters can see it in use.

My Little Pop-Up
The Highland Redevelopment Commission approached me about curating a Pop-Up Gallery in their town and they connected me with a willing property owner. The Commission pitched the event to the Chamber of Commerce as a great networking event which was inspired, because it meant not your typical art audience. And a bigger audience.

I think many people are intimidated by an art exhibit, or think they won’t get the art, or maybe feel stupid, so they don’t go. Combining the two, networking and art, made it a successful event.

Lots of interesting questions were asked of me and the two other artists. It was refreshing to have people curious about how and why we create art. Curious enough to ask. Most people were surprised that it was such a fun, relaxed event, that art is something they could converse about even without any prior knowledge.

I thought the show looked great and it was well received. If it’s any indication, lots of people asked “When’s the next one?” It looks like in July another one might pop-up somewhere in Highland. Details to come.

I also know one artist that is trying to get a Pop-Up Gallery going in her city after participating in this event, and I would encourage others who live in communities without galleries to make your own. It was well worth the effort.

UPDATE: I have posted the Submission Guidelines online if any artists are interested in being in the next Pop-Up Show in Highland.

 

What I like most about the idea of a Creative Sabbath is the idea that it is something you do not just when you have time, or during screen-free week, but on a regular, weekly basis. Just as I notice that the time I put into exercise comes back to me twofold in terms of my energy level and stamina, I think that the “downtime” afforded by a regular break from technology, commerce, and electronic stimuli comes back twofold in terms of clarity and creative output. In my view, rest and reflection is not a luxury, or an indulgence, but a requirement of doing your best work. Though I’ll be the first to admit I sometimes have a hard time taking my own advice. If I’m not mindful I find that “relaxing” is what I do when I’m simply too exhausted to do anything else.

I am very interested to hear feedback from others on how they work downtime into their work and lives, and how they feel about the value of the concept of the Sabbath.

 

often have clients, friends and family ask me what I do… I tell them, “I’m a graphic designer” with all the things I do, it’s easier to say I’m a designer and be done with it. Each and every time I get the same response. “Oh, that’s sounds like fun.” or “I have a buddy that does that.” and finally “Isn’t that sweet.” Generally people do not have a clue what graphic designers do and what goes into design. From now… I’m a chair maker.

As  a chair maker, my goal is to create a functional and memorable chair that my audience can interact with. It’s engaging beauty and and well thought out form draws attention with measurable results. I use materials that were fashioned by other experts, like wood, plastic and metal but sometimes I create with assets and substrates all my own. I research, develop, shape and mold these materials into the final chair with the knowledge that my client may have revisions in which I have no control over. At times my chairs look wonderful but when sat in; don’t function the way I expected it to. I’m involved not only with the creation my chairs but the production as well. Tapping into a different knowledge base of measurements and processes, clients assume its a given knowledge, something that is learned over time. My process of starting with a problem and ending with the solution is nothing new to other chair makers, but even though other chair makers have access to the same materials and production methods, my final chairs are unique in their own way. I belong to an entire community of chair makers that blog about, meet about, live and breathe the chair making process. Some of us make amazing chairs and others make chairs that only last a moment. Finding the perfect combination of size, color, form, functionality and purpose is what I, as a chair maker, strive for.

What analogies do you use to describe your profession? How can we use these analogies to better educate our clients?

Drop cap by Linzie Hunter for the Daily Drop Cap

 

“Art, in our society, has been so perverted that not only has bad art come to be considered good, but even the very perception of what art really is has been lost. In order to be able to speak about the art of our society, it is, therefore, first of all necessary to distinguish art from counterfeit art.”

He opined that the sincerity of the artist is the most important condition that divides art from counterfeit.

Things haven’t really changed all that much, have they? We still question the intent of artists, the value of art, the criteria for deciding what art is or is not.

Don’t worry, I am not going to drone on about what lots of dead people said about art. This is really just a movie recommendation. I bring up all this ancient history, because that question—“What is art?”—is what I was left with after watching a fantastic documentary by Banksy—Exit Through the Gift Shop. It’s nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary, and if you are an artist of any kind and have not seen it I think you should.

If you have not heard of Banksy, in 2005 he made a name for himself by covertly hanging his own artwork in four museums in a single day—the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Brooklyn Museum. He is renowned for his street art but his identity is a secret, (for the most part).

The film begins as a documentation of street art all over the globe. An important record to make because of the temporary nature of street art. You get an inside view of that world, which was interesting enough to hold my attention—seeing and hearing from Shepard Fairey, Space Invader and even Banksy (with altered voice and face in shadow)….but wait…another story line appears. The film takes an unexpected turn into the high-end world of contemporary art. The story of the filmmaker becomes the focus of the film. The man behind the camera is actually the protagonist, not Banksy as I had assumed.

This film examines the role of fame and recognition in the art world. And Banksy has opinions of his own about the whole thing.

“Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don’t go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit.”—Banksy

“The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.” —Banksy

I’ve read a few online comments about the movie itself being one of Banksy’s pranks—that he is a puppet-master and his main goal is to make money. I really hope not, because I love the questions this film asks and to me they sound so sincere. I would hate to find out that this film is not a work of art but in fact counterfeit.

Watch the Exit Through the Gift Shop Trailer

Read more Banksy Quotes.

 

The reception this past Friday, part of the Fourth Friday Arts Walk in Crown Point, was well-attended, and filled with lively conversation. [M]others is an exhibition that grew out of the desire to connect with other artistic women who are juggling family, career, and artistic expression. Each of the three of us in this exhibition has found her own unique way to continue creating, and the work often deals with the inspirations and struggles inherent in this phase of our lives.

[Below: Untitled, charcoal and graphite on paper by Melissa Washburn; Study of Air, acrylic on paper by Patti Tobin Davis]

One of the things that really sparked my desire to create this exhibition was seeing the film Who Does She Think She Is? a documentary by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Pamela Tanner Boll. The film follows five women, both visual and performing artists, at various points in their creative careers and with various family structures. I saw this movie at the Siskel Film Center in Chicago, and the director was there for a Q&A after the screening. What really struck me was how many women were there in the audience, so hungry for dialogue and a forum to explore this topic. It was the proverbial lightbulb going off – “I am not alone.” I keep saying, only half-jokingly, that it’s not that mothers aren’t out there being creative, it’s that we don’t have a single minute left over to actually network with one another. Once you do make those connections, however, it’s amazing how fertile the conversation becomes.

I would never presume to speak for all mothers, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that mothers are certainly not one single thing. And unfortunately, we can be unimaginably cruel to one another. At the end of the day, we all love our children and want what’s best for them, but we are also all unique individuals with our own needs, wants, desires, and demons. I hope that this exhibition is enjoyable first and foremost as some really fantastic artwork and poetry, and second that the themes and ideas conveyed find connection with other mothers out there.

I also hope some of you, if you’ve made it to the end of this post, can join us at South Shore Arts, Crown Point, on Sunday, March 6 at 2pm for a screening of Who Does She Think She Is? More information about the film is available online at www.whodoesshethinksheis.net and more about South Shore Arts and the [m]others exhibition is at www.southshoreartsonline.org

 

So winter came and I wanted to go back and take pictures of the bridge but I never made it back that year. It seemed like every time I wanted to go out and take pictures something came up or I was just too lazy to go out in the cold when it was nice and warm in front of my TV.

The last few days here in Northwest Indiana we got dumped on with a lot of snow, so yesterday I decided to finally make the trip out there. I grabbed my gear and jumped in my car. I pulled up to the nearest parking lot and headed out on foot to finally capture the image that has been in my head for the last two years. After a mile hike through eight inches of snow I finally arrived at my destination.

It wasn’t the scene I had imagined.

The beautiful, old, picturesque bridge that I had dreamed about got a face lift. The abandoned railroad tracks was now a bike path and the bride was rebuilt. It was now metal instead of wood and it had a tall chain linked fence on both sides so people wouldn’t fall into the creek. I was disgusted.

I’m not sure what I was more disgusted about at the time. The fact that I just hiked through the snow for a mile with my big bulky tripod and my big bulky camera with my big bulky lens or that they remodeled the bridge? Either way I was disgusted. I really couldn’t believe my photo was gone. Stolen from me for what? A bike path? Ugh!

I guess the moral of this story is, if you have a vision, act on it! Don’t put off taking a picture of something because you’re lazy, it might not be there when you finally ‘get around to it”.

 

WordPress is being used as a content management solution by more and more web designers and developers everyday. I’ve been using it for quite sometime and I am always very happy with the standard installation and upgrades that the WordPress team continues to work hard on.

Over the years of using WordPress for a CMS and developing custom themes w/cms for clients, I’ve started to notice that there are a lot of plug-ins out there that are not really up to a high standard. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of GREAT plug-ins out there, but I feel like the number of bad or sloppy plug-ins are growing at an alarming rate. As well as plug-ins that get created with no support what-so-ever from the developer.

WordPress does have standards and a spec in place for their plug-in (read more here). They even have a great tool on their plug-in pages that will show you compatibility within different versions of WordPress.

The reason for this post is obviously that I personally feel that the WordPress development team needs to put a higher standard into place for plug-ins. Example? Apple has a very demanding criteria for their iPhone applications. Apple does this because it affects their brand and the iPhone name to the public. The higher criteria to get your app approved, the better results for everyone across the board.

I think that WordPress really needs to do the same. I have run into some horrible coding, bad compatibility, plug-ins that damage the basic installation of WordPress, all sorts of conflicting javascript, the list goes on.

As WordPress continues to be the leader in blogging software it will soon do the same with a content management system. I think that it’s crucial to their success that the start to consider a much stronger standard and criteria to the plug-ins that get submitted.

What are your thoughts? Are these the issues of Open Source Software and will never go away?

 

What does it mean to live, work, play and socialize in a creative atmosphere, town or region? In the past few weeks I’ve asked myself this question in regards to a couple different situations. And I feel at times, I’ve contributed to building a creative culture and have taken away from it. I can image a place like, Northwest Indiana, to be a place where creatives can meet, work and play together in complete harmony. This hippie like dream doesn’t have to live in the bottom of a bong; it can be a real – tangible thing if we as a community come together and make it the norm.

For example, what if we took the time to lift people up and praise them for things that they have done. I’ve done this from time to time and it has been done to me every now and then. But something as simple as a thank you note. I’ve sent words of visual delight to strangers and other designers in our area for no reason other than I came across their work and it was amazing. Atom Groom starts his day out by wishing everyone a good morning. Something so simple can be so powerful. I believe if we take his lead and start a movement of releasing positive energy it will open doors to a much more enjoyable community.

We shouldn’t feel threaten or put off by others in our community. I’ve opened up my bread and butter clients to a fellow designer when he needed some help. A designer that is ten times better than me, highly more creative than me, and just flat out fly. But when that person was in need, I didn’t turn my back to him and look the other way. I helped him out with the knowing fact that this person was extremely better than me and had the ability to walk away with my clients. But to me, helping another person is worth more than those clients would ever be. It’s acts like these that will bring our community together. I’m not saying, help every designer you know and give them all your clients, I’m simply stating that if can look past the competitive nature we have for the greater good; we will all eventually benefit.

Another example is letting people know who is in our community. When you hear the name Kevin Bruinsma, what do you think? “Uhhh, who the heck is that guy?” “Is that, the dude that works at that one church?” “I think he does something with tshirts?” When i hear the name Kevin Bruinsma, I say to myself, “He’s the man!” There are so many things that you may or may not know about Kevin. For one he is very passionate about helping other designers. Take INsight for example. Without Kevin, INsight would have never come to life. He was the one with the vision and foresight and agree to have INsight at Faith. He helped it flourish to what it is today. He is one of the driving forces that has helped to shape and mold the conference, a lot of that was missed in the press and I take responsibility for not including him as much as he should of been. Kevin is also an amazing designer. His website clearly shows his abilities and I’m glad that he has finally finished the site and its up and running. Kevin was also the motivating factor for me to pursue my 13lisa’s venture. His great work with developing drifter threads was an inspiration to me and something I’ve never thanked him for. Kevin is also an artist and photographer, a videographer, editor and set designer. All of which most of you didn’t even know. He is the lead man for the Community Arts Center and event organizer for that facility. Any creatives that want to have an event in that building just needs to give him a shout and he’s the one that can make it happen. So needless to say Kevin is a rock star among our community and I hope everyone will spread the word and know.

The funny thing is that there are many others out there just like Kevin and we don’t know who they are. It’s funny because Adam Groom and I will come across people every now and then and just be blown away that we have never heard of them and that they are out there. Its great to find talent and to welcome them into this community. There are many of you out there that I wish to know better. My door is always open and it’s sad to me that no one ever knocks on it. I feel like I have a somewhat visible presence with in our community and I still have yet to hear from a lot of you. I wish i could meet you all, my hopes are is that you all feel the same way.

Let’s take this as an open invitation to continue this conversation. We have this platform to communicate with each other and share are thoughts and perspectives but let’s take it to another level for the remainder of the year and really meet each other.

I know many of us feel safe in our little design circles and the cool kids hang out only at the round lunch tables but I think we’re are all cool kids – so let’s be cool together.

 

Why am I telling you all this?

I would like you to take a moment and consider your social responsibility as an artist and a communicator.

Web. Art. Photography. Graphic Design. It’s all visual communication. What are you saying? Is it worth your time? Is it providing for a greater good?

When I worked for prominent clients in Michigan, I never heard anyone say, “Wow, that campaign for Whirlpool really changed my life.” However, working for Faith Church, I have heard many stories of change, growth and transformation due to things I have had a hand in. The ability to use your creativity to make a positive difference in the world you live in, is priceless. I never really understood that until I fell into this weird creative working environment called Faith Church. One of the ways we are making a difference is through this new endeavor we’ve embarked on called the Community Arts Center in Cedar Lake, Indiana.

The CAC serves several purposes, two of which are clearly stated in the name of the space.  The purpose of the CAC includes operating as a community center where people from the Cedar Lake area will be invited to use the space for meetings, classes, and a variety of other activities.  These include after school programs, tutoring, community meetings, and a base for serving the needs of the community with food drives, clothing, etc.

The second purpose of the space will be distinctly arts-focused.  This will include classes for adults and children, ranging from guitar lessons to photography and sculpting classes.  We will have a constant display of art in and around the space from local artists.  We believe art is a powerful medium of expression, and we want to encourage the folks in Cedar Lake and surrounding areas to get involved, make connections, and use the space.

Faith Church Community Arts Center is located at 13300 Lincoln Plaza, Unit #1, in Cedar Lake, IN.  Hours of operation and scheduling are currently being determined.  Please call LeAnn at 219.864.0300 for more information.

 

Copyright Geoffrey Hudson 2010 – All Rights Reserved

My biggest goal (along with every other photographer in the world) is to get one of my images on the cover of a national magazine. I can’t think of one photographer that wouldn’t want one of their photos on the cover of Time or Sports Illustrated. But unfortunately for me, I don’t think I’ll ever achieve this goal. Its not because I’m not a great photographer (my mom says I am), its because I don’t know how to get there.

Its going to be a long painful road if I think I can go from a zero to a hero overnight so I’m going to change the options on my GPS from quickest route to side roads only.
Here are some roads I’ll be taking:

1) Tell my neighbor I’m a photographer and show them a photo when they don’t believe me. If your mother, neighbor, or the weird guy down the street that walks his dog at 3 am doesn’t know who you are and the work you do, how is a national magazine?

2) Get noticed. Get a local paper to publish one of my images.

3) Take the town by storm. The first thing people in my town should think of when they hear the word photography is me.

4) Win a photo contest. Exposure overload!

5) Do a photo shoot for Time. Check and Mate.

It could take the rest of my life to accomplish any of these and I might not ever achieve my ultimate goal, but I know trying to get there will be more rewarding if I take the side roads.

What roads are you taking?