Where do you live?
It’s an interesting neighborhood filled with creative types
and we are comfortable here. We’re way off the beaten track, outside the
comfort zone, and navigating our neighborhood can be disorienting but full of
fun surprises.
Which is exactly why living on the corner of What If Street
and Why Not Avenue is so interesting. We like surprises, and are willing
to park our car in unknown places just to see what happens. We’re quite used to
things going “wrong”. We’ve learned from the folks living on Why Not Avenue
that maybe it’s our expectations that are “wrong”, and that things are really
OK. Either way something gets trashed,
“things” or “expectations”.
Welcome to another installment of Blog Carnival** a monthly
project of the notorious international art cabal EtsyMetal. This month’s
subject is “Where do YOU live?”, or, from our perspective, “where do you
LIVE?”.
For some artists location is important, and granted some
places are much nicer than others. But when it comes down to it, art happens
where ever you are because, well, you’re an artist and you don’t store that at
some location. So, to answer the question, we live on the corner of What If Street
and Why Not Avenue. We have lived here for a very, very long time.
It’s an interesting neighborhood filled with creative types
and we are comfortable here. We’re way off the beaten track, outside the
comfort zone, and navigating our neighborhood can be disorienting but full of
fun surprises. 
Which is exactly why living on the corner of What If Street
and Why Not Avenue is so interesting. We like surprises, and are willing
to park our car in unknown places just to see what happens. We’re quite used to
things going “wrong”. We’ve learned from the folks living on Why Not Avenue
that maybe it’s our expectations that are “wrong”, and that things are really
OK. Either way something gets trashed,
“things” or “expectations”.
We have to sort our trash in this neighborhood and we have a
special bin for Expectations and Preconceived notions. These get thrown out
about once a week, but we also recycle these things. It’s a bad habit.
The result of all this is not so much a paradigm shift as a
paradigm merry-go-round. Our perceptions, expectations and preconceived notions
are always shifting, being tested and resetting. Meanwhile “things” are flying
off the merry-go-round at an alarming rate.
“What kind of things?” you ask.
Things like this:
Disco Chicken . Mixed media. This piece is the result of a
game artists play called Exquisite Corpse. To play,one artists starts a work
and then passes it on to another artist to add something. The piece is passed
among each player the last in line being the one who “finishes” the piece. Disco
Chicken was the result of three artists. We were the last in line, having
received the silver square and the branching pendants.
Sylph on the move. We have been exploring the concept of alien
life forms and how they might manifest themselves. This images is also an
exploration of how we depict these pieces.
Sylph Arabia. This is one of many recent pieces where we are
using our artistic voice in a conscious effort to counterbalance the mindless
demonizing of all thing Arabic and Middle Eastern in western culture. We are
doing this by incorporating Middle Eastern design elements into our work to
demonstrate the sophisticated and sensitive nature of these ancient cultures.
Slinking. This is a purely experimental piece that is the
result of working with our friend and fellow artist Jillian Moore http://www.jillianmoore.net/.
We are now beginning to develop our own voice (this isn’t it) using the
techniques that we learned from Jillian
Lastly, for all you who don’t like metaphore and are
thinking “just cut the artsy-fartsy crap and show us where you live”…Here ya
go, Rancho 2Roses in LaLa Land.
••Blog Carnival is the mind-meld of Etsymetal an International group of artists who write each month on a common topic. In doing so we demonstrate how we each interpret the same subject from our own realities.
