Manic Sunday - The Art Life
When you ride the subway enough and actually pay attention to your surroundings you begin to pick up on some peoples strange rituals. Here this man takes off his shoes when he gets on the Broad Street Line and it's not the first time I've seen him do it. Now I have to get a good photo of the woman I see bless herself every time she gets on the Snyder Street Station train.
While taking this photo of a customer leaving his tip with $2 bills I thought more about cash. As the youth prefer to make electronic payments it's a sense of comfort to see people still using physical currency and just studying it especially when it's something out of the ordinary like the $2 bill. Here this customer knew that the older waitress saved $2 bills for her grandchildren and has been doing it for more than a decade but admitted she only gets them from customers who are over the age of 55.
Well it took 24 hours but YouTube finally rendered the 4k video of my new Chestnut Hill book. I didn't add a soundtrack because I find them tacky and distracting when viewing a book on YouTube. Instead I left the sound of the pages turning.
View the video of the entire book here.
View the video of the entire book here.
The curse of artists on social media.
More artist friends of mine keep asking me about my blog numbers and escaping social media but next to none are taking my advice. To put it bluntly they are scared and addicted to social media to the point they won't leave even though they're all complaining about the stagnation of growth, the retreating engagement, the spam and advertisements. I keep telling them that unless they cut the cord and try something else like blogs or something entirely new it's only going to get worse. They're afraid to give up those big numbers of friends which mostly doesn't exist between dead, fraudulent accounts, and strict algorithms. You're supposed to be artists, you're supposed to be creative.... so create a new way to get your work seen.
As for myself I have this blog that's attached to my website which is still the main resource that my most serious collectors use. Also after I deleted my social media accounts I began a Flickr account like it was the year 2006 all over again. Flickr now has a "Pro" account that eliminates all advertisement and gives you an analytics page plus unlimited uploads for $72 a year. To me that $6 a month is nothing to get rid of all the noise that social media pumps into your head.
More artist friends of mine keep asking me about my blog numbers and escaping social media but next to none are taking my advice. To put it bluntly they are scared and addicted to social media to the point they won't leave even though they're all complaining about the stagnation of growth, the retreating engagement, the spam and advertisements. I keep telling them that unless they cut the cord and try something else like blogs or something entirely new it's only going to get worse. They're afraid to give up those big numbers of friends which mostly doesn't exist between dead, fraudulent accounts, and strict algorithms. You're supposed to be artists, you're supposed to be creative.... so create a new way to get your work seen.
As for myself I have this blog that's attached to my website which is still the main resource that my most serious collectors use. Also after I deleted my social media accounts I began a Flickr account like it was the year 2006 all over again. Flickr now has a "Pro" account that eliminates all advertisement and gives you an analytics page plus unlimited uploads for $72 a year. To me that $6 a month is nothing to get rid of all the noise that social media pumps into your head.
Another week went by with me staring at this blank canvas without a clue on what to paint. So to change things up I installed a red lightbulb in my desk lamp to see if it can get my mind thinking about my next painting. What it also did was give me a strong sense of nostalgia for the huge raw artist loft I moved into in 1994. With the exception of the kitchen every lightbulb in the 2800 square foot loft when I moved in were either red or blue. Later I added 20 feet of yellow neon light. I greatly miss that space.
I finished up this Sunday with a walk around my neighborhood having to remind myself that sometimes you have to get off the beaten path to find something worth photographing.
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