Os - Journal

I’m not entirely sure of what to think of Trenton’s studio. I’m not sure what to think of Art anymore either.

It all seemed pretty underwhelming and I wonder about what makes a good artist great. It seems that all of it happens internally.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I started listening to Brackhage around the same time that I was thinking about this.

Brackhage talks about listening to the buzzing in his head that he calls his muse, something we all have the capability of doing, and letting work flow out of him.

I think that’s what a good artist does. Being able to feel inspired from that weird spiritual place people find so hard to talk about and letting that flow uninhibited. It’s easy to fuck it up though. Over thinking things and forcing yourself in to the work.

Most of the time it seems like a good artists don’t know what they’re doing. I think it takes time for them to realize what it is that they’re doing. The doing happens naturally. The explaining seems to be the harder part.

It seems that the most successful artists are capable of articulating their works as well as they are at making it. Everyone is capable of making great work, but to be a good artist and what makes an artist and artist, is understanding and communicating that process.

That’s still a working definition.

Os - Journal

I've thought a lot about our field trip to the airport. I had never seen the inside of that industry like that before. It seemed to me like a small secret city we had been allowed into.

Everyone we met were real characters too. It was all very surreal. Maybe akin to Alice traveling to wonderland in a way. Why not? Gigantic “metal birds” and looming watch towers seem just as fantastic.

And although there was this sense of wonderment to our visit, I couldn’t help but feel afraid. At first I wasn’t really sure of what I was feeling, but when I looked out over the balcony of the control tower for the first time, over the vastness of this place, I knew.

I was afraid of what I saw – Empire. Being able to see it physically with my own eyes, I was able to understand the feeling that had chased me since we had arrived. I saw imperialism personified.

Maybe I’m being a bit dramatic, but I found something seriously disturbing about the airport, disturbing in the way that I find most corporations to be. I see them as soulless entities. Great evils that no one person can stop, that no one person created, that no one person directs, yet something we all contribute to and are responsible for. I think of Legion, the group of demons who possessed the man from Gadarenes, referred to in the Christian Bible. Like Legion, these soulless entities are comprised of many and are contributing to a great deal of suffering.

You read and hear about the effects of Imperialism but to see it physically and not just talked about as a concept is wild. Like staring at a great Dragon.

I saw imperialism that day for a couple of reasons. Mainly because of what the airport and airplanes o for us as a species. Imperialism could not function on the scale that it does today without this entity, this combination of space, time, people, and technology.

Before the airport and airplanes, ships and other sea faring vessels did the job, but not as well and so the spread of imperialism was limited to that technology.

Now things are much different and the airport is just one of the many tentacles of something I struggle to fully understand.

I think this is why I made my video piece. I felt compelled in its making. I’ve felt this way a few times since I started making work seriously. It’s definitely becoming more of a trend I feel.

I brought my camera with me out of habit and because I figured why not, never really intending to make anything out of the footage I captured but when I sat down to review my footage, and after feeling what I felt by being there as well, I began working.

My first attempt was a complete mess. I don’t think I really understood what it was that I was attempting to do at the time but after a few weeks of thinking and working I believe I got a good result. I feel like I’m communicating what I felt that day pretty well.

Os - Journal

Frank White’s Studio was an eye opener. It was interesting and informative to see the way a photographer works within the “real world”. At the same time however, I felt like his studio was kind of a relic, anachronistic almost, since modern artists in Houston don’t own studios as much anymore. For that reason it was a bit of a novelty, akin to going to the zoo and seeing the last great panda or some other dying breed.

I wish he would’ve talked a bit more about the technical aspects of his practice. He seemed pretty focused on the financial side of things. It’d be interesting seeing another artist more interested in conceptual work and less interested in making money.

His conceptual work was a little shallow I thought. He kept calling his work humorous. I understood his humor but I didn’t find it funny. His work was funny in the way that Garfield the comic is funny, which is to say not funny at all.