Hey Everyone! We are taking part in a festival in Half Moon Bay on August 4th this summer. We will be with many other artists and musicians who are sharing and selling their work. Come check us out and join us for our debut event! It should be very exciting. I will keep you posted as more information comes in about it. But this flyer here shows the date, time, place, etc. Keep looking for news about what we have planned for our debut event! Please share and come and support us! Thanks for your support!

Jesse

Accessibility in Art

Ok, I have not posted for awhile, but I find myself really needing to write this out. I was trying to hold out until I got done with my work for the school year, but this issue is really making want to say something.

So, one of the recent themes I have developed is "accessibility in art". What does this mean? For me, it means several things. It means accessible in size, content, price, knowledge and contact with the artist, and any other way I can think of. Take this piece, for example. I believe this piece is only 5.5" x 8.5". The small size brings the viewer in close and lets them have a personl relationship with the painting. Have you ever passed by a large piece of art that could be in a city square, or something like that? I was passing something like that in every other piazza in Italy. I felt like I was just outside the space of these pieces sometimes. Please don't misinterpret my comment for dislike of the Italian Renaissance masters. (Monumental works of art are great and among my favorites of all time - I got to stand next to "The David" by Michelangelo and it was beyond words. I loved it!) I can't wait to stand in the shadow of St. Peter's Basilica either. These are amony my favorite works, but let me explain the difference. I could say the same of some of the large scale scultptures and paintings from today. There is a room at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, CA, where there are these floor to ceiling paintings and I have to go all the way across this giant room to even get a perspective on the pieces. I can't feel like I am part of the art. It overwhelms me. There is art that I like that is like this. However, I feel that overwhelms me and inspires sheer awe. I certainly don't feel like i can own it.

For my art, and I believe the art of my family, we want the people to be able to have a personal relationship with the art, that includes being able to take it home if they like it. Here's the thing that makes it hard for the average person to take home a piece of original art work. Let's just take a 2' x 3' painting that is done really nicely and with a lot of detail. This painting could range anywhere from $500 - $5,000. Now, if you walk into a gallery that is full of $5,000 paintings, then your market (the people walking in) may know exactly what they are walking into and are fine with handing over that kind of money. However, we need to look at the sheer economics of the situation. You average person does not have $5,000 to spend on a painting. They may have that to spend on a used car - something that they can take to work and get them around town to do their errands, etc. Last time I checked, my paintings did not have an engine to start up and get people around town. Art is not a practical buy, it is something that is extra. I believe art is necessary, do not misunderstand me, but when it comes to getting kids to school and putting food on the table, a car wins out over a painting - every  time for the average person. I can't compete against Ford and Chevy. It is just that simple. I want the largest group possible to be able to enjoy art. We talk about this as artists all the time, but then I see people pricing themselves right out of the market. If you go to an art festival, or a smaller gallery, and price a piece at $5,000, a lot of people are going to walk right by your piece after saying, "Wow! That is so great! Too bad I can't afford that."

Let me give you some background where I am coming from. I work with people who do not thin about buying $5,000 paintings. It is inaccessible. It is unrealistic. It is not going to happen for most people. Let's say that artist drops their price to $500. Ok, great, that person opened up their market some. However, let's look at the competition. IPADS, Laptop computers, weekend trips away somewhere, and cell phones, just to name a few things. Art will not win out with these things. A person is going to go for these things first. All you have to do is look around. What are people walking around more with? Original paintings or smart phones? It is not hard to figure this one out. It is the mindset of the average consumer. That person will walk into an art festival and art gallery (smaller one) and look at the price and they will check for a few things. "Is there anything cheaper that I can buy that I like or do they take credit cards/debit cards?" If you truly want art to get to more people, you have to factor in the economics.

I recently had a fundraiser for cancer. (Yay Gina! My wife completed a half-marathon to raise money for this cause.  All proceeds went to Team In Training) The piece above was a raffle prize donation. In this process of fund raising, I talked with some people and they said something that they liked was that they could go somewhere and walk away with two framed pieces of art. Granted, I work small, and so does most of my family. Size is another feature of accessibility that I will talk about in a bit. The point is that people want to own art, especially original art that has a connection to an artist! This fundraising opportunity opened my eyes to what people want. The people that supported this cause were not rich, or even all that well off in most cases. They did like art and they wanted to feel connected to the art. Of course, the larger a piece is, they more hours you put in and you have to charge more. They key is to really understand the economics and the market for your work and be able to be competitive. When you price it low enough, people will alway choose original art over commercial and mass produced art. Hand made things are important, but you have to be able to produce it in an economical time frame to make it good for you as an artist. If I do a 10' painting, I am not pricing that thing at $100. It would be too many hours spent making it and a loss on other work. You have to get compensated for your time. If you want to price even lower, you can create some of the finely produced items - like giclee prints or prints on good paper and sign them. What I do, and my family does, we put as much of our hands on our work as possible to make everything feel like it has our personal mark - whether it is an artist statement, greeting card, or a painting. People want that connection with the artist.

That brings me to my next point. Content. Content needs to be accessible. i have to say, my colleagues who do more recognizable images - like landscape and figures, or some variation therein, have an upper hand on truly conceptual and abstract art unless they can make it more understandabe to the masses. Take a piece that truly comceptual, maybe even a performance piece, or something in that nature, but there is an element that can be purchased to take home or to an office and displayed. I like this type of art and feel it is very good. However, people who are not educated in some of the more recent trends in art could have a difficult time understanding this. It is not as accessible as something like a style done after the impressionists or something along those lines., If you do push the boundaries of art, make sure your audience can connect with it. I know this brings up the argument of who are we trying to please or communicate with, but let's look at it from the point of view of a viewer. I walk into a gallery and there are some great pieces on the wall or in the case, etc. However, there is not artist statement or description, just a title and price. Then, in another part of the gallery, there is a piece that I like and there is an artist statement with background of the piece and what it is about, etc. For me, I take the one with the one with a statement because I know the story behind it. I could do research or find the artist to get the story, but the brief statement is all that is needed to bring the viewer closer to the work. It is important for artist to be able to articulate their story about each work, even if it is only a few lines. It does not take much time and it brings the artist and viewer closer together and it can also bring a group of people who want to follow the artist because there are great prices and great pieces with a story.

Take the piece above. It is a watercolor and graphite drawing combined. Where did it come from? Well, I explored to idea of the simultaneous coexistence of opposites from when I was in school and had my undergraduate show, and I still work with this even today. I also went to Italy and was influenced by Italian architecture and arches from the Renaissance. I grew up in a valley where there were large expanses of fields and mountains in the distance. I constantly want to explore the relationship of nature an human influence and use of natural things (like stone). That is not a very long statement, but now it gives the viewer some background, and it does not hurt the connection the view has with the piece, it only adds to it.

I could go on all day about this, but these are some of my thoughts about art being accessible. That is what I am about. I will blog again soon after school work is done. Have a great day!

The Olympian

One of the ideas that I explored during my master's degree was the imag of women where men usuaally appeared in Greek style art. This particular piece was colorized reference to black figure imagery from vase painting. This is an image of a female shot-putter. In ancient Greece, if you did not know, women were not even allowed to watch the games, let alone compete in them. So, this is a modern image making a reference to the ancient tradition. Another image combined here is the lion. Herakles, or Hercules by the Roman name, was traditionally associated with the founding of the Olympics, so this is another reference to that idea.

One of the other things I really liked about this linoleum cut process was how I was able to get such rich colors and have it reach such an intense level, especially when they are viewed in person. I usually worked small because it made getting intense colors much easier. Also, anyone who is familiar with the reduction process of printing, you have to print each color, layer by layer. One of the challenges I encountered as I worked through this process was which colors worked best as they layered over one another. One bad layering could ruine the entire piece, and that would be bad!

Overall, I am very excited to show this work all together on March 11. I will have my artist statement and a synopsis of my thesis out for people to read as they look at the work as a group. My master's work was truly fascinating for me and I loved doing the work on it. I hope people enjoy what I am sharing here.

Be sure to take the poll to the right of the post!

Thanks!

-Jesse

The Javelin Thrower

The Javelin Thrower, Collagraph Print

This is one of many in my Greek series. I did many that mimicked the Black Figure style of vase painting. I liked this style as a way of printing to remind the viewer of the powerful simplicity of black and white imagery that could be seen on the vases of ancient Greece. The ancient Olympians were often highly revered in Greek poetry, much the same as heroes in the military and ancient battle, such as Homer's Iliad. Epic poetry often immortalized athletes and heroes. Based on what I studied, back in ancient times, there was a much closer association between athletics and the military. One of the Olympic events was to race in full armor (made of bronze, I presume) for 100 yards. There was wrestling, throwing of spears, and boxing. Athletic training was closely associated with military training.

In Sparta, being a soldier was a way of life. We ofen hear of Athens during the history of 5th century BCE Greek times, but Spartans were also very influential as well. They did not have the buildings that we associate with the Acropolis, but they had the military that was leading the Greeks during the 5th BCE. The Olympics go back several centuries prior to that time. My thesis goes into greater detail about the relationship between heroes, myth, and art.

New Work!

Arches at Sunset, Watercolor, Graphite, Prisma Color Pencils, 5.5" x 8.5", 2012, Copyright belongs to Jesse Brown

This is a new painting I just did. I am trying to create a seris of architectural pieces that are a combination of layered image using watercolor and pencil. I worked in a similar style when I was an undergraduate and it was very successful. This is the first one I have done in awhile. When I traveled to Italy I got to see a lot of amazing architecture that really influenced me. You can see the Renaissance style arches that are pushing and pulling with the negative and positive space in contrast to the landscape. For me, it is a fun composition to work with and brings a lot of possibilities when trying to layer images. Sometimes it can be more challenging than other times.

As we look around, there is this push to balance human made structures and creations with the natural surroundings. "Going green" is a big thing now. As my professor in college talked about, it is a coexistence of opposites. Truly, we are always trying to balance our lives. If we look at it through that lense, then we have a lot to think about. In my work I feel that I usually come back to this idea in one way or another most of the time. Especially when I do this layered imagery with organic and hard-edged shapes and lines.

Thanks for coming by to see the work! Be sure to check out the new galleries that are going to be going up soon!

-Jesse

An Exhibition of my Master's Degree Work

Crimson Cloak, Linoleum Block Print, 7" x 5"

When I did my Master's thesis, I never got the chance to show my work and talk about what I did. Coming up, Gina and I will be holding a fundraiser event and I will be putting some of my copies of my prints on my thesis up for grabs. The title of my thesis is Heroes, Myth, Art, and History. The piece shown here was part of the series of art work that I produced to go along with the thesis. Ancient Greece was a fascinating period of history that triggers the imagination. Recently, the movie "300" was produced and brought the story of the Battle of Thermopylae to the forefront of the minds of Americans. A larger part of my thesis, which I wrote back bettween 2000-2002, focused on this battle, among other things. Greece is in the news right now about its financial circumstances, but I like to focus on the many contributions this country has made throughout its history.

"Crimson Cloak" makes reference to the color cloak that Spartans were known to wear. The Greek 'L' on the front of the picture comes from the symbol that was often put on the front of the shield that they carried. This is only one piece of many that was created. I look forward to sharing these pieces in the coming days. Enjoy! Thanks for stopping by!

-Jesse

Training in a positive environment

The more I train in martial arts, the more I realize that it is a process by which I learn new things. It is not a goal, or a benchmark, or some target to chase. Martial arts is a journey. Like so much of what we do in life, much of what we do is a process. The question is what will we do with the process that we put ourselves through. I realized that it is the same with work and day-to-day family life as well. We are a product of the processes that we put ourselves through. This year has been especially tough on me with work. The reality is that almost every work place is going to cut money and funding and ask more of what their workers do. How do we handle the stress? What will we do with the pressure? As I look back at this picture and remember this time, and then reflect upon my new routine of training every morning as much as possible, I realize the power of training and how it shapes not only your abilities, but also your frame of mind. I do not think anything is worth stressing ourselves out to the point our health is compromised.

When I trained with my sensei, Chuck Epperson, this past weekend, we had a conversation about training. I asked him how he made time with such a busy schedule to make time for his personal training. One of the things he pointed out is you just have to make it a priority. Kenpo is such a journey. The art of Kenpo itself can keep you busy everyday with just trying to think of new ways to train it and explore it. There are so many possibilities with the technical execution of the art. However, if you incorporate into that some of the philosophy of where martial arts comes from and what it is about, then you have this very intense and incredible experience that can take you into endless possibilities for training.

When I was on the beach last summer, training, the power of being out on the shore, at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, was amazing. It fed energy into the motions that I practiced. When I was out this morning, as the sun was rising and hearing the birds and feeling the presence of water near by, I was in a different place where I could focus and gain strength as I practiced. I think it is important to practice intelligently, as well as in a place the lifts you into a better disposition. Our environment and surroundings has a huge impact on us, and it is important to remember that when we train, make art, or work. I feel that we often expose ourselves to negativity too often and it affects us at work, in daily life, or in many other places such as school, in our community, or other places.

Take some time to pick your environment carefully and let yourself enjoy the positive choice that you made. If you train or make art, then let yourself be in a creative space where you can feel your strength gather. I know it makes a difference for me.

Talk to you soon.

Jesse