The New Inspirational Movement

Tuesday April 17th 2007 in my living room

I’m writing out of frustration today. I’m getting ready to give an artist talk at California State University Northridge and it’s been difficult. I had done a previous talk at Stanford University and it sucked. It sucked because I tried to conceal my fears and contradictions.

The power point presentation looks nice. I’m covering a lot of material only my last 10 years as an artist…. I have cut back considerably, but I don’t want to loose my evolution. I want them to feel what its really like to be an artist, not that romantic bullshit that we read in popular culture magazines and websites.

The presentation has to be about an hour long. I press record and I begin speaking about my art to see if I’m within the hourly limit. It’s close, about 45 minutes. I rewind and press play to hear myself speak and all I hear is the tension in my voice, my own vulnerability and I am embarrassed. I try to think of Jimi Hendrix, Quinten Tarantino, Micheal Basquit and Tupak Shakur, how loud, quite, jittery, arrogant, they were/are…they had/have a strange quirkiness in them…I don’t know if it’s the drugs or nerves? a mental condition? or maybe just that’s the way they are….

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First of all i have to say that the question “Can an Anti-Pop and Pro-Pop Artist Collaborate?” is an interesting one. I can’t really think to any artforums, art in americas, juxtaposes, art history classes i have taken, or graduate school seminars in which this topic has ever come up in my own experience. So here, i can put my personal feelings aside and say this is really a revolutionary and pertinent question of our time, one I guess that isis and i will figure out an answer to.

Idea #1. The Really Pop Idea. The Idea I love most of all. The Idea i think you probably won’t like because it is too pop and you already said no to anna nicole… but i can’t stop thinking about her and i don’t want to.

she touches me i away other celebrities don’t… i guess i would think she is more like me than the average celebrity in that she is real…

much more real than stupid paris hilton or britney spears or angelina jolie… despite her boobs that i discovered were fake, she is more real to me… because she worked her way up from nothing, the way madonna did, from poverty. because she was a stripper who broke into modeling… to me to become so much more classic looking than your average hollywood bimbo. she raised a son when she was basically a kid herself on her own… totally respectful. she wasn’t totally skinny… i fucken hate aneroxic models and celebrities… gross. too skinny is bad. anna was 176 lbs when she died. shots of her dancing, just days before she died, practicing for an upcoming trimspa commercial, she looks absolutely beautiful and natural to me. all you skinny girls can kiss anna’s ass cuz she looked all that at 176 lbs… damn!

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Before i get into this idea of collaboration, i thought i’d hit up the link to my bebo profile and the photo albums i’m keeping over there. i am kind of beginning to visually categorize everything in my life or trying to. I have 10 albums so far. Each one has a 48 photo limit. It’s great for creating an online portfoilio of all my artwork because i work in so many mediums. it’s fun to divide them all up and make decisions to group certain things together in an effort to decriminalize them (ie. graffiti mixed in with gallery art… he he… is it legal is it not? and who really cares in the end?). Especially after you see my card that i sent to Gavin Newsom… that’s pretty revealing, if anybody even picked up on it. I had already given him my business card at that point anyway. Where do we draw the line on all these things? What is art and what is not?

Part of my art now is collecting news stuff about anna nicole smith… her legacy… her baby. I’m just so into her story… thus, my anna nicole smith rip bebo photo album… which i worked on for a couple hours this afternoon. i had to catch up on that before i wrote down the collaboration idea #1…. the anna nicole idea i had after i saw your recent drawings, isis. to be continued…

anyhow, here’s the bebo link

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There is an instinct for rhythmic relations which embraces wide
areas of forms (length, the need of a wide-embracing rhythm, is
almost the measure of the force of an inspiration, a sort of counter-
part to its pressure and tension). Everything happens quite involuntarily,
as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power
and divinity. The involuntariness of the figures and similes is the most
remarkable thing; one loses all perception of what constitutes the figure
and what constitutes the simile; everything seems to present itself as
the readiest, the correctest and the simplest means of expression.

My style is a dance, it plays with all sorts of symmetries, only to leap
over and scoff at them.

-Nietzsche to his sister Franziska

simile - a printed sign indicating that a musical figure or measure is to
be repeated as often as the mark occurs.

‘Music (Queen of my Soul)’ - Digital Art by Rene Angulo Trujillo

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Clay Figurine w Nicole’s Necklace: Idea for Collaboration 4-6-2007

Hey Nicole, I wanted to respond to your messages. I’m curious what your ideas are in terms of a collaboration. I thought I might share mine with you…

You: (Thru my observation) I thought a lot of your style: glittery, crafty, decorative?, pop. There’s a sculptural element to your work, working with objects and fashioning them into “creative things”. I have seen your jewelry that you have made for sale. Doing jewelry seemed like a logical step in your art making process….

I remember you talking about a “church” that you go to on Sundays? Do you like religion?

Me: I thought alot about my style: cartoon, classical (old school), anti pop.

I am not a practicing Christian, but I appreciate religion because of it’s ritual and how it gave artists opportunities to interpret it’s stories…Also, I’m going Ancient these days and ancient art was created for ritualistic/spiritual reasons…You, know, jewerly is a very ancient art and has history with religion too…

I feel a kinship between your jewerly and my figurines: they can be modern or they can be ancient. It’s endless!
Us: Perhaps our theme could be religion/spirituality? Would you be interested in creating our own religion(belief system) thru our art? Maybe each cartoon figurine and each piece of jewelry can mean something? Would they be symbolic? Storytelling? What do you think? And what about materials? Clay? Wood? Pewter?

Isis

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