“Gregory’s style captures the infinite depth of the moment, stretches it out past the point of no return from life’s linear rodeo, twists it around quantum characters, and almost makes the meaning of existence pop out of the canvas, not in shading or hue, but in the way a really ripe fruit bursts with flavor. And it’s pretty to look at too.”
-C.Burnside
The British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) Jonathan Charles recently reported on poetry penned by the citizens of Afghanistan. He says that in that country poetry is as important as popular film and music is in the West. So this is certainly a nation that is listening to its writers.
“Our Sheikh has put the rider of justice on the back of a stallion without reigns,” says one poet* of American and British troops, declaring their presence ineffectual and their plans aimless. [READ MORE HERE]
A contributor for Wired.com recently posted on their blog a query: is YouTube bad for music? The concern appears to be somewhat valid. You can go to YouTube.com and listen to music and watch music videos for hours on end for free. App developers are choosing to embed links to YouTube videos rather than pay a provider for the rights to stream. No money, no profit, no royalties. Are musicians getting an unfair shake? Is this free alternative pulling dollars out of their pockets?
Everybody take a deep breath. [READ MORE HERE]
From The Little Universe
I wiped the sweat from my palms onto my pants. Adams gripped the back of his swivel chair as he stood behind it, pressing his thumbs into the fabric. His stare remained locked on the blank monitors. I felt the tension getting worse, and I wanted to say something witty to break the silence, but nothing came to mind. Instead, a calm peace spread over us from the dark screens. I could hear my breathing and feel my heartbeat over the sounds of anything else. The silence made me think that something wasn’t working. I looked at the control panel and noticed that Jim’s green light was glowing as brightly as I had ever seen it, as if at any moment he would explode from thinking. I figured there must be a glitch, and I expected Adams to take off his glasses in frustration and start complaining to Rose about what went wrong.
Then suddenly, a tiny spot of light began to show on the main monitor. [READ MORE HERE]
No, don’t picture a perversion of the gargantuan family-friendly theme park. This is a place where you might not mind having your children present, it’s just that they might be kind of bored.
You, on the other hand, would have a great time. First off you’d be going to Australia. [READ MORE HERE]
Homer, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Lord Byron – they all at one time or another called to the Muse or ancient Muses of Greek mythology to sing and inspire them to make their writing worthy of the tales they sought to tell. Writers today speak of a person in their lives or perhaps a place in the world as their “muse”.
Sometimes we just have to admit that there is no such thing. [READ MORE HERE]
“I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we too, will be remembered not for our victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.” – President John F. Kennedy
In 1971 the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Artswas founded to fulfill the late president’s vision of the United States becoming a nation that stands as a world leader in arts advancement. [READ MORE HERE]
To get your music discovered you take steps down paths that many, many artists have trod before you. Musicians look ahead to recording, performing and the ever-pressing need to get more people to listen. The fan base grows, connections are made and you keep your fingers crossed for the day you get a break that makes music a profession you can live on. This is the common way.
What is less common is the path of the artist getting rediscovered. [READ MORE HERE]
Right-brain versus left-brain. Aesthetics versus analytics. Emotion versus reason. Opinion versus fact.
We’ve been holding to the premise that there is a sharply drawn line between art and science for decades, maybe even centuries. The feelers are in one group while the thinkers – the decision makers – are in another entirely. But wasn’t Leonardo da Vinci both artist and inventor? [READ MORE HERE]
In AN UNCOMMON CRUSADE Elisabeth, Simon, and Hugo join an ill-fated commoner’s crusade to Jerusalem in search of wealth, glory, and redemption. [READ MORE HERE]
Look what the cat dragged in. Thirty years ago.
South Central Los Angeles is not often associated with ska music, especially the L.A. of the 1980s that was dominated by West Coast Hip-hop a la Dr. Dre and World Class Wreckin' Cru among others. Out of this would come gangsta rap and the profileration of artists like Ice Cube, Snoop Dog and Warren G.
Meanwhile there was an underground music scene, with a band called Fishbone making a name for themselves by doing their own thing. [READ MORE HERE]
Young writers certainly have a lot to learn from their older counterparts. Seasoned writers draw from a wealth of experience working, living and traveling in myriad environments, meeting new people and taking an interest in subject matter that involves extensive research and sometimes financial resources to fully explore.
But sometimes the old have a few things to learn from the young. [READ MORE HERE]
Ladies and gents, our featured artist this week Ron Reams is having a one-man show at Frary Gallery in Sarasota, Florida beginning February 26. We thought if you were going to be in the area you’d like to know.
Frary Gallery
We wish Ron the best of luck with his exhibition, and hope that if you have not yet submitted your work to us that you will soon give us the chance to help you get discovered as well.
Visitors and fans of our featured artists, feel free to plaster your comments all over the Spotlight blog entries listed under the Spotlight Archives tab above. Let our artists know you’re a fan. We’re sure they’ll appreciate it.
If you were a sailor on an English merchant ship two hundred years ago and a black vessel flying a skull and crossbones sallied up beside you with cannons firing it would probably take a great deal of fortitude not to mess yourself. And if you were the owner of the shipping company and heard news from the crew’s survivors that your ship had been boarded and all cargo taken you would be devastated. That would clearly hurt your credibility with your clients. It could ruin you.
But try as they might, executives in the music industry are having a really hard time vilifying pirates of digital music. A Torrentfreak.com contributor recently posted an article in which he cast doubt on the propaganda espoused by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) which indicates that music piracy is destroying the business, at least on that side of the pond. Unlike the seafaring industry of the United Kingdom of old, it appears pirates just don’t pack as big of a punch as they used to. To summarize, digital music sales are continuing to rise, successful artists are still making money, but the music industry could perhaps be making a bit more. Hard to get righteously indignant to such lackluster stats.
Maybe “piracy” is a bit too strong a term for what’s going on. It implies malicious intent. But many artists are actually encouraging listeners to take their wares for free, or to set their own price – from Radiohead with the release of In Rainbows in 2007 to Matthew Trisler, one of our featured artists. Around here we insist that the creation of art is all about connecting with the audience. Some members of an artist’s audience can pay and others can’t, and we have a hard time seeing anything wrong with making some allowance for the latter group. Of course an artist ought to be allowed to insist that his or her work is worthy of purchase (the feud between Napster and Metallica a few years back is a case in point) and in this case the act of downloading the music for free is indeed piracy. Others just want to make the connection any way they can, believing sufficient remuneration will come later.
Musicians, whether you want your audience to pay for your work or download it for free is entirely up to you. But don’t fear the pirates. Most of them are actually pretty friendly, and just want you to know how much they like you.
Ronald D. Reams always had a restless, probing creativity – pushing on from one style to the next. His battle between abstraction and figuration has been essential to his art as he has moved from the profound realism of his black and white drawings of the 1970s, to the discovery of color in his Flotation in Form period of the 1980s, through his latest Landscapes period while living in Cornwall, England of the 1990s.
It was not until later in the 1990s that the artist started to put pieces of drawings and paintings together, building then into large 15-foot panels; creating the equivalent of an abstract collage. They reflected his search for a new, non-routine way of painting. This new media transported him into a new level of creative expression which led the way for the works that followed. Reams became less involved in the final result as his focus was centered more in the process of discovery. His brush strokes became more fluid and broader in movement and color. These 15-foot panels were divided into 60 squares that then were repainted. These pieces were filed into large notebooks and served the artist as a thumbnail memo for his later works in acrylic.
Today, Ron works in a highly intuitive way, experiencing the energy of painting with the paint on his canvases in an almost sculptural way, building layer upon layer, color upon color with movement toward self-discovery in an improvisational way rather than painting for an intended result. To Reams, a painting only stops momentarily – only to resume again on another surface. Listening, observing and allowing his evocative side to take the brush, Ron transcends to a new level of spirit within.
Links:
http://www.facebook.com/artist.reams1
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What do you think? Should graphic art be attainable for the masses or should it be reserved for the select intelligentsia where its sanctity will be preserved?
Before you answer that, check out this doggy art!
Our philosophy is that your philosophy is your philosophy. If you feel as though your work is meant to be distinguished, that it ought only to be displayed in a museum or selective event, we support you. Submit your links to event information, promotional material and the like.
If you have decided that you want exposure wherever you can get it, there’s nothing wrong with that! If your audience is any kind of audience, submit your links to artwork posted on Facebook, your personal blog or anyplace else where the average Internet surfer and theweak of wallet can stumble upon it.
It’s your art, your blossoming career. Direct yourself and we will direct your audience to you. That’s what Getting Discovered is all about.
Long, long ago, music begat the music video. Music videos begat MTV (Music Television), which over the course of two decades became a network devoted almost exclusively to reality TV. Lo and behold, Jersey Shore was born, a reality television series featuring loud and obnoxious discontents of the Garden State. None of this has been too terribly surprising.
Then one of the stars of Jersey Shore, Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, wrote a book called A Shore Thing. And with 8.5 million viewers Thursday night for the MTV series, Snooki is bound to sell a few copies.
Try as we might to sweep it under the rug, it is difficult not to give pause to this development in the publishing world. Writers across the globe are scraping out a name for themselves. They strive to get the attentions of agents who in turn schmooze the big publishing houses and if the stars align just so, a book is born. The works of many talented writers fall by the wayside because they are deemed unmarketable.
Meanwhile, if people watch you on television because you're vapid and amoral, your book is destined to be a bestseller regardless of literary talent.
Clearly this is not a new observation. Let's not rehash what has already been discussed ad nauseam about the flippant nature of fame, but instead simply step back and consider what we as artists are actually trying to accomplish. Getting published? Perhaps. But what if getting published means catering to the fans of Jersey Shore? If that is the ultimate goal, shouldn't we all gain some weight, put on skin-tight dresses and speak inanity into our webcams?
We can say something to Snooki's credit: unless she is some kind of smut-marketing genius playing an elaborate trick on us, at (the very, very) least she is seeing success by being herself. Success means nothing if we have to become someone else to get it. So don't lose heart. Your journey into the spotlight may be a great deal longer than our dear Snooki's, but connecting with the right audience - your audience - will make for a much more satisfying end to your story. Obviously.
If you live in or around the Hoosier state and you're into hip-hop, rap, basically anything with a good beat, you might want to take a look at a brand new promotion company called Famous N' Broke.
From the About page at FamousNBroke.com:
"Famous N’ Broke is your #1 source for Indiana music, art and fashion. Our staff prides itself on bringing you the most up to date / relevant news and information available. Throughout the next year you will see Famous N’ Broke become a major player in Indiana’s entertainment scene. We have assembled our staff of the best writers, interviewers, photographers, and videographers across the state ... With our help, we hope that Indiana will begin to receive the recognition it deserves in the music industry."
Here at Getting Discovered - which happens to be based in Indiana as well - we'll be paying special attention to this new enterprise. Musical artistsgetting your start, we hope to see you promoted by these guys and hopefully "famous and making a living" shortly thereafter. And of course we'd love to see you in our spotlight in the meantime.
Visitors, keep your eyes and ears open. 2011 promises to be a great year for discovering new music, visual art and literature. So keep checking back and discovering with us. We'll make it worth your while.
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What happens when a brilliant artist switches to a different type of art altogether? Well, often failure, and the collective sense that said artist should never have branched out from what he or she knows, from what pleases the audience, to do this silly and whimsical other thing.
But not in this case.
Maynard James Keenan, front man for Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, international rock superstar, is clearly passionate about making music. In the mid-1990s he discovered a new passion: wine. Soon thereafter he moved from Los Angeles to the Verde Valley in Arizona to plant a vineyard with the help of friend and winemaker Eric Glomski. From this Caduceus Cellars was born, which by 2007 produced wines that even a writer from Wine Spectator magazine gives praise to in the film Blood Into Wine.
Perhaps you've been doing something artistic for a long time, and doing it well. But perhaps a bug has gotten a hold of you to try something else like it did Keenan. You know what that means ... it's time to get discovered all over again.
You'll never know success or failure until you try. So give us a try. Submit. What you come up with might just wind up being absolutely delicious.
They're doing a crazy thing in Arizona. Artists are getting together and actually promoting themselves in a juried art show.
Says SonoranNews.com, "The 10th Annual Festival of Fine Art will showcase a variety of art forms and styles from contemporary to western. An expanded space will accommodate 150 local and nationally-acclaimed painters, sculptors, jewelers, photographers, as well as wood, glass and mixed media artists. The League promises to provide a wonderful experience for patrons and artists alike."
And what is the purpose? Simply advancing the arts. These are members of the Sonoran Art League and renowned artists from out of state, working to get the fruits of their labor out into the world. No angle, no propaganda, no money to be made (at the event, anyway). Just an understanding that art is an important part of our lives, that the arts in general are our collective soul, that when we cease to revere beauty we might as well cease to live.
If you're in Cave Creek, Arizona the weekend of February 18, check it out. Get inspired. Inspire us in return.
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We talk an awful lot about Truth and Beauty around here. The idea that everyone has a voice that ought to be expressed and that artists especially have a need to connect with an audience is a very prevalent one. Open your heart, open your mind, open your soul, and never be afraid of what comes out.
But try not to take yourself too seriously.
On occasion, bring the funny. A little humor in a serious piece - whether textual, aural or visual - goes a long way toward restoring the soul. We also occasionally need a little flat out hilarity (as Flight of the Conchords does masterfully, above).
So comedians among us, by all means step into the spotlight. A little laughter can be a beautiful thing.
From Shadowphoenix: Requiem
I practically herded the young woman ahead of me into the dark corridor; between terror and the drugs they'd given her, she was all but incapable of coherent thought or voluntary motion. I'd worry about getting her back on track with reality in a moment; first I needed to buy us a little time to make an escape, or at least a stand. I slammed the door shut behind us and closed my eyes as blessed silence rained down upon my ears. I spent ten seconds and magickal energy I really didn’t have to spare to place a security hex on the entryway, and then seized her arm and dodged behind a concrete support pillar. I had been through hell to get to this point: crouched in a filthy, cold maintenance hallway, next to a naked teenager whose sense of reality had been so desperately strained that it had reduced her almost to catatonia. And after all that, I calculated that I might have purchased us four minutes more to live. Not nearly enough, I thought as I stripped my heavy leather coat off and wrapped it around her to fend off the chill.
More at: jswayne.webs.com
Bio: Born in Texas, J.S. Wayne has either lived in or traveled approximately one half of the North American continent and in so doing, has amassed a resume that could fairly be summed up as “eclectic.” He recently completed his first “serious” writing effort, Requiem, the first installment of the Shadowphoenix trilogy, and is hard at work on the second installment, Requiescat. Currently he resides in the Texas Panhandle with his wife, a vicious attack cat who adopted him on arrival, and grudgingly tolerates his wife, and a terrier puppy who thinks socks are a threat to national security. His hobbies include strategy games, collecting outmoded weapons, and collecting true-life ghost stories. He also enjoys reading and writing, naturally, and this includes fan and hate mail.
His professional credits include:
Winner, Fantasy/Erotica short story contest at http://www.writing.com/, First Prize for Espiritu Sancti.
EzineArticles.com, "Are The Undead Dead As A Vehicle For Literary Expression?" He was accorded expert author status for this effort.
Recently a contributor to Askville by Amazon posed the question, "Who is the most overrated 'popular' novelist of the 20th century?" The top answers included Stephen King ("extremely formulaic and predictable"), Nicholas Sparks ("sheer ineptitude"), John Grisham ("unable to write a remotely elegant sentence"), JK Rowling ("her books all seem to be similar") and John Steinbeck ("very dull stories").
What is so striking about this list is that these writers are not just popular; the works they have created are unbelievably high-grossing, widely read, enduring stories that are referenced everywhere. How many times have you heard that a legal predicament was "like a Grisham novel"? Or that a dark house at night was so scary it would scare the bejeezes out of Stephen King? And didn't we all have to read and respect at least one Steinbeck novel in grade school?
There are worse things than being labeled "overrated". Like being unknown, in a state in which no one will over- or underrate you. For every detractor of these household names there are millions of fans. These writers probably do/did not sweat the critics.
Don't let fear of appearing overrated keep you from sharing your art. Don't worry over the possibility that one day you will have become so successful with The People that you won't appear to be a true artist anymore, that all the beauty and poignancy you once had will seem to have been washed out in the face of fame and glory. Don't fret over what the spotlight might do to you before you're in it!
Just write to us, your audience. If it means something to you, you never know what it may mean to us.
Sometimes the stigma of being overrated is no stigma at all. It's just jealousy, or bitterness, or simply an opinion with all the weight of a grain of sand. Remember that getting discovered is about connecting with your audience.
And that nothing else matters.
