Eyes wide open -- sketching interiors

So much beauty at Key Biscayne a couple of weeks ago! I carried my notebook everywhere, and didn't even feel intrusive. I used black Sharpie and added watercolor pencil later.

Coffee table, with orchids

This is the same coffee table, and the alcove beyond.

I wish I had left the flowers white!

Eyes Wide Open -- Sketching faces

Faces fascinate. I still don't get an exact likeness. I'm new at this. I just use my Sharpie, watching TV and sometimes the crowd around me. These were mostly talking heads  from TV.

In the upper left I'm practicing a nose.

He has crayon added. 

How conceptual artists do it

Lives of the Artists: Portraits of Ten Artists Whose Work and Lifestyles Embody the Future of Contemporary Art by Calvin Tomkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I know art is a state of mind, but I still have a hard time understanding conceptual art, which is supposed to be all about this mind of the artist. Tomkins helps. He shows how conceptual artists take an idea and run with it, haphazardly, skillfully, lucratively -- confidently calling their escapades art. They are artists. They make art.
Painting -- been done, done, done...sculpture from stone -- so yesterday! But hey, I've got an idea! Float a dead shark in formaldehyde ... stick a circle of dead butterflies onto the wall ... consider ways to channel the elusive element of light .... take a series of selfies, wearing a different get-up in each ... and best of all, SELL it for big money. That manipulation of the market becomes art too.
I liked this well-written introduction to new art that is old enough to have made it.


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The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion by Meghan Daum

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

There's so much we don't discuss, and that's what Meghan Daum wants to talk about: she wasn't patient as she watched her mother die; she actually likes LA; she doesn't want children of her own; she used to affect lesbian style, although she is not gay; she doesn't like to cook.
I respect Daum's impulse to be honest about things that she could just as well hide. But for me the embarrassments, at least in these essays, are boring. Maybe that's why we don't discuss them.

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