I have been waiting for the perfect reason to finally begin my vandalization of artkamp.  I finally found such a reason.

 Until today, I have been thoroughly skeptical of things such as Product Red (most notably with relation to Gap Inc.) that target consumer’s sympathy for AIDS and other diseases, and claim to help by donating a percentage of the profits sold in the name of the suffering to actually help the suffering.

I must admit, I’m rather impressed when artists get on board and sell their work for a good cause…especially artists well known for selling work for FAR MORE than it could possibly be worth and for making art that is unacceptable in some circles (luckily, not this one).

 Damien Hirst, Banksy, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Andreas Gursky, and Yinka Shonibare have all donated artworks worth INSANE amounts of money that Sotheby’s is selling…and none of them are making a dime.  All profits go directly to the Product Red group’s efforts to give medicine to AIDS patients in Africa.

But don’t take my word for it…take Bono’s.

http://www.sothebys.com/images/home/flash/red2007/

 Oh, and PS.  Read the whole thing.  Bono has some fantastically beautiful things to say about art.

Well, after ignoring my totally voyeuristic habit of taking pictures of people from my 3rd floor apartment window, this picture has a pretty interesting story. As the snowfall was starting to end, I saw a guy sheepishly walk out of the adjacent apartment building. I say sheepish because he seemed somewhat embarrassed to be interested in the snow. At any rate he walked up to the trunk of a car and started to pack the loose snow into snowballs. I immediately began to wonder, “Is that his car? What if he is screwing with the snow on someone else’s car?” Then I caught myself and realized that it would have to be one incredibly bitchy person to be mad at someone taking snow off their car. “Hold it you asshole! What do ya think you’re doing with that snow huh!? Put the snow back!” Yeah, pretty rediculous.
Apparently it wasn’t his car or his hand were getting to cold because as soon as he had satisfied his curiosity with snowball making, he darted back into the building with a speed too fast for me to get a good picture. He left a small stack of snowballs, like a sad tiny featureless snowman. It seemed somewhat wrong for this snowman (or “snowbaby” which seems to be a more appropriate, but more tragic name) to live it’s short life on the back of a Honda. Somewhere, Frosty the Snowman is crying like the Native American in that 70’s littering PSA.

The large apartment complex Northcutt Realty is building behind my apartment is somewhat less of a glaring sight when the roof is blanketed in white. Two21 Armstrong as the complex will be called is somewhat like a modern day haunted mansion since the buildings have been closed in. Coinstruction noises eminate from within with no indications of where they are being made, or what’s making them. And the noises oddly enough happen at any time of day, and even on days like this where snow seemed to keep everyone home. It’s wierd because even at 10:00 at night you can hear noises, and considering there is basically no lighting on the work site, it is somewhat strange. Even in the snow, work was going on inside. Considering how ridiculously expensive the apartmets will be going for, I am sure they want nothing to get in the way of reaping the benefits of this development going on the market. The rent for a 1 bedroom place being almost 3 times what 1 pay across the street. Are there enough college students rich enough to pay it and not be forced into eating ramen and vienna sausages for every meal? I hope for their sakes there is. Yet with condo’s all over Auburn going on the market and selling virtually none, the answer to that question may be a resounding no.

(Note: Sorry, the pictures are HUGE. I tend to never reduce the size setting on my camera for the pictures I take, since I never know what I might see. Maybe when I’m not so lazy, I will reduce them for web viewing in photoshop; but until then, its probably best to not to click on the images unless you really like scrolling around a ginormous image.)

As a product of the deep south, snow is a bit of an anomaly for me. It always insights a sense of childlike wonder in me, it’s such a rare sight. Being from Montgomery, where snow is far less common than nearby cities like Birmingham, Atlanta, or Huntsville, it is very much a photo worthy event. So if you are from a snow deprived area like myself, and snow doesn’t at least cause a childlike curiosity, you have grown hard inside. I hope you all forgive this rather self-indulgent post about a wave of snow that was gone as quickly as it came (rain quickly followed and basically erased what had accumulated).

I was happy to see that I wasn’t the only one that hadn’t yet died inside and found the snow to be an exciting event. Two Asian visiting students came out of the adjacent building to take pictures. Eventually a few stalwart souls whose inner child must still be intact did come out, cameras in hand, to document the rare occurence. The snow seemed to expose those of us who aren’t yet jaded by the sight of the fluffy white stuff. Or at least, it exposed those of us who aren’t ashamed to find snow to be a thrilling change of pace. After all we do live in a place where snow of any substantive amount occurs about once a presidential term. We’re lucky to get a full week of heavy coat weather, let alone snow.

Luckily I was reassured that not everyone was indifferent about the snow. The guy on the bottom floor of a nearby apartment building (if you look hard you can see him) seemed quite pleased by the rare event. However, as soon as he saw me looking at him, his body language changed from that of wonder, to disregard. Why are we afraid of people seeing us excited by something? I think we lose a lot when we let the rare moments of life become mundane. Life is too short to live it within the prison of the serious and ordinary. things Maybe that’s why I chose to be an artist, it becomes my modus operandi to ensure that nothing life presents me, especially of such rarity, will be regarded as mundane.

Only Apple Could sell countless preorders on something whose only virtue is thinness. Apple is continuing what they started with the iPhone by giving the public a notebook with some style and interesting features while bizarrely lacking features found in the cheapest of its competitors. Now keep track of all the “advantages” this new model has in store for the mac faithful.

• ONLY 1 USB PORT: Tough luck for those wanting to use a mouse and a thumbdrive at the same time.
• NO ETHERNET PORT: Apple said the future is wireless, too bad some arent living in the future yet.
• ONLY MONO (NO STEREO) SOUND: Apparently Apple’s future doesn’t include the sound output found in the cheapest of Laptops. Pair that with the fact that the tiny single speaker dot found on the right of the keyboard reportedly sounds like cellphone in a tin can. Expect to keep earphones handy.
• NO FIREWIRE: Who need highspeed connections to peripherals anyway?

• ONLY 5 HOURS OF BATTERY LIFE: Apple’s definition of ultraportable apparently means constantly scoping for a power outlet. This battery life figure wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the next point…
• MACBOOK AIR DOES NOT HAVE A USER REPLACEABLE BATTERY: If you run out of power mid flight without a means to recharge, you are screwed. If you were on a roadtrip and ran out of power, you’re screwed. If your battery dies in general, you’re screwed…by Apple’s battery replacement plan. I can hear the Apple battery replacement division cheering over their job security from here. But let’s not forget the most obvious omission from the apple feature set.
• NO OPTICAL DRIVE WHATSOEVER: That’s right folks. To watch a dvd, or play a disc based computer game, burn a cd, or heck even install software, is completely out of the question. The only way to do any of that on the macbook air is to either buy the pricey optical drive dongle (need I remind you it will use that 1 usb port you have), or piggy-back someone else’s more feature-rich computer by installing software on it to make their cd/dvd drives accessible to you. Not only will that prove to be slow, but there is finally a computer equivalent to a smoker who only smokes by bumming cigarettes from friends.

To be fair, many of these features such as the ethernet port and the optical drive, can be purchased as dongles for the Macbook air. However, buying the numerous dongles undermines the point of this thing being so damned thin in the first place. Why buy the thinnest laptop when you need a backpack to carry the various accessories needed to make it match even the least of what the nearest competitor has to offer.Lets not forget the probles that the combination of these things will present. What if you wanted to use your cd drive on the go? Without being plugged in, the drive would severely limit the already short battery life. Or perhaps you bought one of the few PC games converted for Macs, and you wanted to use a mouse with it. You would either have to choose between playing the game with the drive without a mouse, or to have the mouse while piggy backing another computers drive over a wireless connection thats to slow to actually transfer the information to play the game in the first place. This computer is obviously made for someone who wants very little, wants to pay a lot for it, and refuses to acknowledge the overwhelming value provided by the competition. This is a prime example of style over functionality.

I am sure many of you who have read this blog with any frequency are familiar with my numerous theme posts (”Flicker Finds”, “Featured Artists” etc.). They do a great deal to keep the blog’s content fresh and posts frequent. Well, today I am tarting a new type of post, “Artsy Advertising”. Once or more a week I will post a print ad or video commercial that I feel is setting a sort of new standard for creativity in advertising.

So, to start off this new series of posts I will like to highlight one ad campaign that is really exemplary of the type of creativity I intend to feature here on Artkamp. If the European commercials for Sony’s line of pricey Bravia HD sets could be descibed in one word it would be “ambitious”. Employing entirely practical special effects (not a single frame of CG to be seen) while still managing to be a visual treat. These commercials definitely do their job in the sense that they make you feel good about Sony.

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It is definitely a risk to make commercials that are so grand in scale and labor intensive, only to show the product intended to be sold in the last two seconds. However, with a company whose slogan emphatically states that it is “Like. No. Other”, the ads should definitely reflect that sentiment. So in this case, these calculated risks pay off handsomely. With Sony itself being number 1 in brand awareness (ahead of the likes of Kraft, and Johnson & Johnson) and number two in customer loyalty in consumer electronics (behind the cult of Apple of course), these may be risks they can very well afford.

Another ad and making of video are after the jump.
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Simply put, Jen Stark is amazing. Her paper sculptures are the definition of meticulous. Tons of heavy card-stock paper, painstakingly cut with an X-acto knife and and elegantly bent or folded to reveal elaborate forms of “Kaleidoscopic” color. She said what got him started on paper was studying abroad in France and having to deal with buying all of his supplies there. The euro was high and supplies were pretty expensive saying, “I decided to get the cheapest but coolest looking thing in the art store – a stack of construction paper!”

Click HERE to go to her site.
Click HERE to go to her blog.
Click HERE to go to PingMag’s interview with Jen Stark.

“Taste” was my final project for Painting 3, a series of portraits starting with these initial 3 paintings. The name is derived from the face that the images are cropped just below the eyes making the lips the central focus. Taste is also the most unavoidably intimate of senses. One can smell and see from a distance, even touch with a sense of detachment, but taste requires mental and physical proximity. All the figures are white and male with the primary focus being on the chest nose and lips. It challenges the western assumption that the default viewer of a work is the white straight male (which why works concerning the african american experience are considered “black”, women’s issues “feminist”, and non hetero subjects “queer”). I feel that during the course of this past semester my painting has greatly improved, and I hope that Painting 4 holds even greater promise. These three paintings currently sit on the table in my painting cubicle as a reminder of what I have to surpass.