fine art and design
ClayMation Experiments
There is a time early on when you try anything and it seems great because you tried it. I really got into sculpture but was gifted a couple of clumps of clay and figured why not……
When learning new things my first goto is using letters for me to experiment, after all letters are my first love. Like previously stated, I drew out my favorite comic book and cartoon characters but letters where the first subject that completely engulfed me. My first paintings … which were illegal… was letters and this was after years of drawing letters…. so back to the clumps of clay….. This was like 2004, 2005ish and thought I stumbled on to new territory…. Sculpting Graffiti pieces…. thats something else thats really fun… thinking you got a brand new idea but come to find out it s been done before… so while not “original” it shows that you are thinking along the lines of people who admire and consider Genius….. So around this time I was also in the early stages of figuring out to edit video … and was already figuring out animation…
I had a camera… probably a decent megapixels for the time but now would be laughable or used in order to mimic time when lower resolutions were standard.. because they were high at the time… talking the days of like 3 or 5 megapixels…. And got the idea for a claymation…. we was raised watching Gumby so had a concept of how it was done. I figured being the “sculpture” was already completed… I wanted to animate it forming… so “built” a stage of card board with white paper and set the sculpture on it… an early idea too was that maybe I’d key out the white and digitally create a background for it.. but never got around it that …
But I did do… was deconstruct the sculpture piece by piece and took a photo .. .moved a piece… took a photo… all the way down to it just being a clump of clay again… then took the images into final cut lined em up so that they would go from clump to the form and for funsies.. reversed it to make it a little longer… also made the beat that is playing in the background….
What a great time …….
"Cell" Animation from a different time....
Posting this because its from that magical time where everything you try to do is awesome because you are learning new things. The process was super simple... I chose from the hundreds of graffiti outlines I had stashed at the time... so the drawing is probably from 2000-2001ish ...I might have to comb through walls from that time as well because. I type this.I feel like I painted this somewhere… but anyways… the animation was completed a few years later.. in 2004... i had a copy of final cut pro.. i think version 5.... so i just traced the outline by hand and scanned each mark as if it was a "cell" and then lined em up... easy peasy ... it was just about trying to figure stuff out and still love it hahaha....
Conversations with my dog
My favorite part of the day is taking my dog .. Brandy Lou for long walks… its a time for reflection for me… We discuss things…. a lot of what gets written here comes from these walks…
I’ve always talked to myself… in 1994 my mother and I moved from Bloomfield St. in Hoboken to Willow Ave.. and my cousin was living on that block for a few years already … after I was there for a few weeks she quietly asked me to stop talking to myself as I got closer to the block because the rest of the kids where talking about me and making fun of her … hahahahahahahaha…. So with my pooch I have someone who am I talking too.. hahahahah
Sleep Osmosis
i’ve always needed noise to sleep… never had a tv in my room so the go to was always music.. but at some point in the timeline i noticed.. that while sleeping sometimes whatever was on would creep into dreams… so say i passed out on the couch for a bit and lethal weapon was on… there might be a dream with riggs and murtaugh might pop in a dream…. so i began to wonder about what gets into your subconscious while sleeping … does the brain still process information some how even though i wasn’t awake.. so thanks to this silly thing called the internet and having access to information my first idea was what if I listened to nothing but Italian lessons and italian speaking … would I pick up any of the language… hahahhaha so got my hands on some rosetta stone rips of lessons and shit like that and would just play them while i slept…. but without having some one to practice with I had (and still have) no fuckin clue if anything got in there hahahahaah surprise surprise… but…. that didn’t discourage me for giving it a crack with other shit still…. i made the wonderful discovery of Librivox.org with its free database of audio books so i began by downloading every since Philosophy book that I had wanted to read… and should have read while actually going for my degree.. but thats probably for another day.. … any ways… so what i would do is make 8-10 hour playlists of books and would just let that playlist go for a week or 2 then make a new playlist and so on and so on…. would do this as well with lectures and any audio that i wanted to be immersed in…. i would listen to them awake as well… but i wonder…. if anything got in…. because there is a familiarity with certain ideas depending how much of that topic was repeated …. like a deja vu type of thing…. i still do this from time to time.. .. especially with Manly P. Hall lectures.. there is just so many on so many topics and he possesses an engaging way of speaking….. i still dont know if it works… i dont think i want to know if does hahahahah ….
Trip to Beantown... circa 2005ish
Back in the early 2000’s … ArtCrimes.com was going strong…. updates every month with new art .. and new events…. one such event was being held by Boston College where they put out a call to come paint some canvases on the campus…. so myself and 2 of my boys sent in some work to see if we can get to rock.. and sure enough we got invited to come rock out….. i had access to a dv handicam so filmed the adventure.. made a little edit of it…. Obviously do not own the rights of the song.. but we were listening to “Only Built for Cuban Linx” on the ride and just so happened to be filming when “Wisdom Body” from Ghostface Killah came on.. and thought it would be a cool transition from the radio audio to the actual audio of the track…. the tail end of the video is track side in Framingham, Mass. and we found out about that after painting at the College the day before…. it was fun as fuck and a time i sorely miss……
A comment from a passerby...
I was working on a mural in the Bergen-Layafette neighborhood of Jersey City.. the other day… dont know when this will post but today is the 30th of November in the shittiest of year of 2020 hahahaha…. anyways I while painting a dude from the neighborhood stops by to tell me that he has been stopping by this wall everyday because every time he sees something new…. I was completely elated… for thats literally my hope for my work…. it makes the work ALIVE… and for me thats what art is supposed to be.. something that goes onto create other moments… other aesthetic experiences …. thats what i look for in art.. be it visual or audio… for example.. I’ve been listening to COMPANY FLOW FUNCRUSHER PLUS since 1998 and I am still finding new things contained with the music.. be it a lyric or a random sound… its continued to grow with me over the years…
That comment is what sets my intention when creating something… I want the observer to see something for themselves… despite whatever I am painting. I’m just working from the fuel I get from the collective consciousness … everyone has the same access to it they just have to realize its existence……
I think this comment is going to be what can set me off in writing more about my work… process and intentions for creating art because it is exactly what I want for my work.
Dilla Tribute - LightWorks : 2007
This was created in 2007 … I was applying for a gig to do animated music videos… they asked to create one using any song that I wanted to, Dilla had passed away the year before and I was sitting on a bunch of footage that I thought would work with it and wanted to do something than just a straight animation. The footage was from an annual Hoboken tradition that like of most “Old Hoboken” is gone now, where on 6th and Bloomfield st., The Altomare’s would have a crazy firework display to ring in the New Year….. and by crazy … I mean it… it would last anywhere from 45 minutes to almost an hour and half hahahahah it was amazing…… So what better to use in “Lightworks”…. so I edited all the video footage in Final Cut, and made the animations in what was then Adobe Flash… now Animate…. then composited it in After Effects.
So this serves as a tribute to one.. the great James Yancey…. aka Jay Dee aka J-DILLA as well as those most amazing times during those New Year’s Eve celebrations …