ap170305 Close call: Wake up call  

Yesterday I walked from our home in lower Queen Ann. I was with four blocks of my destination—the Trader Joe’s store at the top of the hill. It was there that Lynda and I planned to meet. We coordinated my walk time and her bus time. It was about 1:05.

Walking on 1^st Avenue North I came to Blaine Street, and I was looking down the sloping street at the Number 4 bus, waiting there. I was startled by the sound of a vehicle skidding to stop. There, about ten feet from me, was a black SUV that had almost hit me! I froze—like they say, like a deer in the headlights. I looked at the driver—she was aghast. I felt meek and I hurried out of the way.

One second was all the separated me from serious injury or even death. She may have been going about 10 miles per hour—a little slow because at that intersection there is a jog where Blaine meets 1^st Avenue. It takes about 27 feet to stop a car going this speed—about one and a third times the length of a Sports Utility Vehicle like hers.

As I resumed my walk, I began playing back what a difference that one second would have made. At ten mph, a car covers about 15 feet per second. One second would have been enough to smash into my right side, probably breaking my hip and femur. I’d probably be thrown a dozen feet besides, hitting who knows what on my body: My head? Shoulder? What the overall impact would do to my back—operated on five months ago—shoulders, neck and head is hard to tell. If not killed, I could have been hospitalized for months.

Visualizing different scenarios in my imagination as I walked on, I wondered how, would Lynda be informed of my situation. Would medics go through my things, my wallet and cell phone and know to call her (assuming someone called 9-1-1)? Lynda would be on the bus by then, heading up the hill to meet me. Would she hear her cell phone?

What about the SUV driver? Yes, this close call was partly my fault because I was looking the other way, distracted. Was the driver distracted, too? Was she looking at her cell phone, or paying attention to a kid in the back, perhaps? Honestly, I was too shook up to think about walking around to her car window and talking about this, cussing her out, maybe, or anything. I don’t even know if we made eye contact.

I’m pretty sure it was a woman; and as I reached Queen Ann Avenue I hoped I would see her parking her SUV. My thoughts collected now, I’d be pretty sure I’d have a talk with her. I didn’t see her, though. From Blaine Street she could have gone the other way down Queen Anne Avenue.

I would never know for sure what happened yesterday when I was in that crosswalk, but I know it was a wakeup call. Old men like me shouldn’t go walking unattended if they don’t watch out. My mind wandered; I wasn’t watching out for cars—like a little kid. It’s cool to think young if you’re a creative artist, but not cool if you are in traffic.

What if I’d been hit? What would happen to the art in our gallery, and the software experiments I’m working on? I believe I am doing things to ensure that the art and the gallery is useful and helpful to Lynda, and to our two daughters and their families. I will die—run over by an SUV or struck down by a fatal heart attack or stroke; and that’s the bottom line of why I spend my time the way I do.

That is why I’m pay Nellie to learn and develop database management for all that I’ve made; and bookkeeping, using our family assets as content to her databases and financial accounting. That’s why I refer always to the dumpster story[1] to underscore the alternative to valuation and dissemination of the gallery’s contents for the benefit of my family and community.

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[1] The dumpster refers to the inevitability of discarding my entire life’s work into a 10-yard dumpster at the time of my death in order to clear our gallery and storage room so as to leave no obligation to family and friends.

vi170303  Wiki or not:  Here I come  

Anne Turner, one of the children of the late Stephen Hazel, suggested how to preserve and extend artists’ legacies. She maintains a website for him and is one of a number of children of region’s notable printmakers, the Children of the Printmaking Revolution. The author offers up his different approach.

Wiki nor not wiki

Should I start a wiki? The original question came up when Anne Turner and I began discussing ways to preserve and extend artists’ legacies. She is the one of the children of the late Stephen Hazel, and she has designed and maintains a website for him. I commented that she is one of a number of children of regional artists and printmakers of note, suggesting the term Children of the Printmaking Revolution.

We had a meeting at our family’s Mini Art Gallery. She commented, as she looked around the gallery and seeing artworks on the walls and Halfwood Presses for sale: “I didn’t realize there was so much here.” I thought, You have no idea how much there is . . . and Stephen is part of it.

There is a great deal to say about artists’ assets and the transfer of their legacy. Usually people think only of selling the art as a way of transferring it. They assume there is a market. Sometimes the art auction is a choice. With no alternatives planned or imagined, what are the descendants to do? The bottom line is that it is no easier to sell the art after the artist dies than it was during his or her lifetime; otherwise, there would be no discussion.

The work did not sell—period. When the work of art became a commodity, it entered a pool of sharks. Commodities sell when there is a plan to sell—usually before the object is made. Artists traditionally do not plan to sell a work of art before they start.

Commercially successful artists do, however, plan ahead. They choose colors that are currently in fashion and that will probably stay in fashion for the duration of the artwork offering. They consider medium, size, subject matter—everything they can imagine and study in the marketplace of design, decoration, entertainment, and interior furnishing.

Some artists, like Stephen Hazel, eschew this approach to making art. We—and I include myself with his kind of artist—have the idea that art comes not as a commodity but as an experience moving us to make something. If our finished art moves another person or people to something like an esthetic experience or cultural idea, they appreciate it; they may buy it.

Since the combination of the object’s appearance to the eye, the content to the viewer’s mind in some cases, and the exposure to the kind of people who can and will share this experience are rare, it’s rarely that the artworks sell. Even if the price is low, it may not sell. Commodities are like that.

My view is that there is a way to surmount this situation, and surmount it I must. I’m willing to see all my works destroyed—“sacrificed,” as Carl Chew would say—to simply clear out our valuable piece of real estate so that it can be rented to create an income for our family.

To create a bridge and connect to that point in time when and if the art and all the gallery furnishings, as well as miscellaneous tools, etc. (and the Halfwood Presses) are sacrificed, I work to change the art from commodity status to utility status.

If I succeed, it may be partly from my vision of the Northwest Print Center Incubators, because, among the 19 incubators, I planned a one feature called by a working title Printmaking Hall of Fame. Its focus is on artists of the Pacific Northwest Region who made important contributions to the art, craft and design of printmaking, including innovative tools and techniques. Think Dan Smith and Glen Alps, or Elton Bennett and Sheila Coppola.

I am the oldest printmaker (born 1941, the year before John P. Morgan) who has lived in Seattle since 1966; I may also be the oldest teacher of printmaking—unless my nineteen years at the UW do not qualify me as others whose formal teaching career was longer—such as Thomas Johnston. Therefore I am qualified to design a printmaking center which spans fifty years and blends old and new technologies in a way to benefit Seattle’s Cultural Arts.

sp170122  Practice makes perfect: Practice also makes it permanent  

The expression “practice makes perfect” comes to mind as he begins this day’s work on his Memoir Project. Perfect studios is the idea he formed in the early 1970s based on a teaching hospital where teaching, research, practice and service are concomitant.

As I sit down today to work on my memoir project, my 1977 Journal open in front of me, I’m ready to start dictating using this capital Dragon software. I put on my headset and open the program and realize this is only practice. The expression “practice makes perfect” flashes into my mind. Perfect studios is a matter of practice. Perfect studios, the idea I got in the early 1970s from the teaching hospital, is about practice.

Practice and production are the “P” in the TRPS principal underline the perfect studios. “T” is for teaching; “R” is for research; “P” is for practice and production – which go hand-in-hand with each other; and “S” stands for service. 

The culmination of artistic practice—whether it’s in the visual arts, music or architecture—is service. We are all servants to humanity and Earth’s human life sustainability.

If an artist is to be a valuable part of the community, his or her value comes only by virtue of their commitment to TRPS. Practice, then, includes buying and sustaining productivity software. I am about to copy out a statement from August 11, 1977, for my memoir project using this Dragon software.

This serves me as an example of how to be an artist of value to the community, because this practice gives me the ability to answer or respond to the needs of my community, starting with my family.

By the end of the day I have practiced several kinds of software applications in connection with my computer and its peripherals—including the Internet. Because I am working on my memoir project, this has a strange effect on me because the traditional memoir is a book. Therefore, why include the Internet?

My mother wrote her memoirs by hand in three blank books given to her by my sister, Gail. Beginning in 1995, Gail and my older sister Wilma and our younger sister Jennifer labored to put her longhand text into type, and then into machine-readable text. Eventually I published it as an on-demand paperback.

My memoir project, however, is not destined to be a book. What it will be, if not a book, remains to be discovered. I think if I practice every day with the apps and equipment I have, and utilize the remains of my lifework in this practice, I will be fulfilling the basic TRPS formula. Then, in a process known in industry as concurrent engineering, the form of my memoir project may become clear.

 

in161213  Writing art history as it happens 

I met an art history student from the University of Washington today, and I told her I had been thinking about someone to write about the history of printmaking in the Pacific Northwest. Art history books have been written by scholars in the past, but I think it’s time to reinvent the way art history books are written.

Wouldn’t today's art students be interested in a startup to do this?

I’ve been studying online magazines, for example, which have been around for a generation. I subscribe to one from Spain on printmaking. Art magazines have a kinship with art history because so many scholars rely on magazine articles and essays to provide substance and validation of the information available to them.

However, I feel art history books lack the immediacy of real art experiences. One might have an art experience by going to an art museum. Reading material at the museum, such as labels of the works on display, audio guides, books, and live guided tours make the art experience even more interesting. It’s great to know the back stories which docents can tell about the works in the art museum.

But for every hour spent in an art museum experience, many thousands of hours are spent by people using their mobile devices, desk top computers, podcasts, and TV—far outside the world of art and art experiences. Forward-looking art history students should consider blending the tradition of scholarly art history with newer ways of publishing.

One of the owners of a Halfwood Press publishes an electronic magazine he calls “Baseball art and history,” which is about baseball card collecting. I loved previewing his online publication. Like most electronic magazines, it mimics a real magazine showing two pages on screen with right pointing and left pointing arrows for turning pages.

The double-page spread in the link below, for example, features an article with artwork, a photograph, and a video insert. There is a hotspot indicating a link to another page in the magazine or other websites.

Link to the Helmar Brewing Co. online magazine.

Art history books could be made the same way as e'zines but instead of thick tomes, they could be created in installments. I’m reminded of 18th and 19th century practices such as used by Dickens in which he would write a chapter to be published in a monthly magazine. Eventually these chapters were sewn together to make his complete novels. 

When I met the art history student this morning, these ideas all came together, and I told her that - just this morning - I was wishing I could find an art history student who would be willing to explore the topic of printmaking history in the Pacific Northwest—possibly get on track for an MA or PhD someday.

Currently this student is a docent in a local art glass center. I know other art history students who work at some of Seattle’s art museums such as the Seattle Art Museum, the Frye Art Museum, the Henry gallery, and others.

The normal course followed by an art history student is to seek a job in academe. In my opinion academe is unable to provide sustainable, effective positions for art historians. I recall a time when one of the art historians at the University of Washington left academe to work for one of Bill Gates’ early art projects.

This prof was able to pursue his scholarly bent and probably gained more security than he had with his professorship. Not only that, he would participate in new technologies that would make his work seem more meaningful.

I suggest that young people who are interested in art history endeavor to reinvent the way art history goes down. My own experience taught me how even in the vaunted Halls of Ivy, history can be distorted and at risk of being lost. I am referring to the period between the Second World War and the mid-1980’s when I was at the UW.

So much has already been virtually lost temporarily. I would help young historians cobble together an online magazine designed so as to restore some interesting facts about the past 50 years in the Pacific Northwest art history.

in161213 Writing art history as it happens

I met an art history student from the University of Washington today, and I told her I had been thinking about someone to write about the history of printmaking in the Pacific Northwest. Art history books have been written by scholars in the past, but I wonder if it’s about time to reinvent the way art history books are written. Wouldn’t art students be interested? Or the public?

I’ve been studying online magazines, for example, which have been around for a generation. I subscribe to one from Spain on printmaking. Art magazines have a kinship with art history because so many scholars rely on magazine articles and essays to provide substance and validation of the information available to them.

However, I feel art history books lack the immediacy of real art experiences. One might have an art experience by going to an art museum. Reading material at the museum, such as labels of the works on display, audio guides, books, and live guided tours make the art experience even more interesting. It’s great to know the back stories which docents can tell about the works in the art museum.

But for every hour spent in an art museum experience, many thousands of hours are spent by people using their mobile devices, desk top computers, podcasts, and TV—far outside the world of art and art experiences. Forward-looking art history students should consider blending the tradition of scholarly art history with newer ways of publishing.

One of the owners of a Halfwood Press publishes an electronic magazine he calls “Baseball art and history,” which is about baseball card collecting. I loved previewing his online publication. Like most electronic magazines, it mimics a real magazine showing two pages on screen with right pointing and left pointing arrows for turning pages. The double-page spread, for example, features an article with artwork, a photograph, and a video insert. There is a hotspot indicating links to another page including pages and other websites.

publishes an electronic magazine he calls “Baseball art and history,” which is about baseball card collecting. I loved previewing his online publication. Like most electronic magazines, it mimics a real magazine showing two pages on screen with right pointing and left pointing arrows for turning pages. The double-page spread, for example, features an article with artwork, a photograph, and a video insert. There is a hotspot indicating links to another page including pages and other websites.

publishes an electronic magazine he calls “Baseball art and history,” which is about baseball card collecting. I loved previewing his online publication. Like most electronic magazines, it mimics a real magazine showing two pages on screen with right pointing and left pointing arrows for turning pages. The double-page spread, for example, features an article with artwork, a photograph, and a video insert. There is a hotspot indicating links to another page including pages and other websites.

publishes an electronic magazine he calls “Baseball art and history,” which is about baseball card collecting. I loved previewing his online publication. Like most electronic magazines, it mimics a real magazine showing two pages on screen with right pointing and left pointing arrows for turning pages. The double-page spread, for example, features an article with artwork, a photograph, and a video insert. There is a hotspot indicating links to another page including pages and other websites.

publishes an electronic magazine he calls “Baseball art and history,” which is about baseball card collecting. I loved previewing his online publication. Like most electronic magazines, it mimics a real magazine showing two pages on screen with right pointing and left pointing arrows for turning pages. The double-page spread, for example, features an article with artwork, a photograph, and a video insert. There is a hotspot indicating links to another page including pages and other websites.

publishes an electronic magazine he calls “Baseball art and history,” which is about baseball card collecting. I loved previewing his online publication. Like most electronic magazines, it mimics a real magazine showing two pages on screen with right pointing and left pointing arrows for turning pages. The double-page spread, for example, features an article with artwork, a photograph, and a video insert. There is a hotspot indicating links to another page including pages and other websites.

publishes an electronic magazine he calls “Baseball art and history,” which is about baseball card collecting. I loved previewing his online publication. Like most electronic magazines, it mimics a real magazine showing two pages on screen with right pointing and left pointing arrows for turning pages. The double-page spread, for example, features an article with artwork, a photograph, and a video insert. There is a hotspot indicating links to another page including pages and other websites.

publishes an electronic magazine he calls “Baseball art and history,” which is about baseball card collecting. I loved previewing his online publication. Like most electronic magazines, it mimics a real magazine showing two pages on screen with right pointing and left pointing arrows for turning pages. The double-page spread, for example, features an article with artwork, a photograph, and a video insert. There is a hotspot indicating links to another page including pages and other websites.

publishes an electronic magazine he calls “Baseball art and history,” which is about baseball card collecting. I loved previewing his online publication. Like most electronic magazines, it mimics a real magazine showing two pages on screen with right pointing and left pointing arrows for turning pages. The double-page spread, for example, features an article with artwork, a photograph, and a video insert. There is a hotspot indicating links to another page including pages and other websites.

Art history books could be made the same way but instead of thick tomes, they could be created in installments. I’m reminded of 18^th and 19^th century practices such as used by Dickens in which he would write a chapter to be published in a monthly magazine. Eventually these chapters were sewn together to make his complete novels.

Above, screen shot from the Helmar Brewing Co. online magazine.

Above, screen shot from the Helmar Brewing Co. online magazine.

Above, screen shot from the Helmar Brewing Co. online magazine.

ap161119 Take back America 

A challenge for artists, crafts people and designers  

In recent days the catch phrase “Take back America” caught the attention of many people and helped to win the presidential election. This author is skeptical as to whether it’s a good thing because, as a world traveler, he’s seen how Americans are viewed.

Art of the spin

“Take back America” was a pop slogan in the two-year election, but begged the question, “Has America been taken?” There is a disconnect between the haves and the have-nots in America, and the well-kept secret by the “haves” is how to take away from those who “have not.”

The cheat in a win/lose game, for example, seeks to win by not playing by the rules, and gaming in such a clever way that he doesn’t get caught. He keeps his cards close to his chest, or he has a few cards up his sleeve. The losers don’t get it.

The stakes in the presidential election were high and have been since the year 2000. Most Americans, about 99 percent probably, only took notice of how much the USA is hated on September 11, 2001 when terrorists took down the Twin Towers with our own passenger planes.

It took that to wake up Americans that someone out there really, really hates the US—even though there were plenty of signs and outright declarations. For a while, Americans came together, had meetings, put up flags and preached nationalism. It didn’t last. Within a decade there was an undeclared civil war in the USA—and our enemies helped.

Katrina came along then and showed that our belief in and preparedness for climate change was weak, along with other suspicious decision-making in the Presidency and his cabinet.

Along came a half-African American out of nowhere and won the election—which, at the same time, awakened the nascent racism in the United States.

This president restored some of the decency of the office which had been immoral and corrupt. Around the world people took notice, but the wrongs of the previous presidencies—such as the invasion of Iraq—were not forgiven.

All during these decades, education was under constant attack with renewed energy, weakened with growth of anti-intellectualism and anti-science propaganda. Cynicism grew as mind-gamers preyed on religious zeal, fear of foreigners, and economic troubles.

The proportion of losers grew relative to the small number of clever winners, the Americans who were cheating on Americans and thriving on the deepening ignorance and growing demands for more “bread and circus.”

The election became a circus, something like the Super Bowl of politics. Big money backed and rigged the outcome. “Take back America” was the most popular phrase of recent times. The winners use it to fool the losers; the loser use it to justify their blind, ignorant and misguided actions which, in the end, will leave Americans at the mercy of outside control.

The professor takes back America by its roots

I’m a professor like no other as a mixture of engineer, artist, and designer. But my main interest is education—as education is the only thing America can use to restore its place in the world as a respected nation. Education, innovation and creativity are the roots of our original nation. I will help get back to these roots.

The founders who wrote the Constitution debated its wording and came to general agreement. On some points they differed – such as slavery – but on one point they agreed: Their experiment wouldn’t sustain unless the citizens were well educated.

As a new country confronting a frontier and a mixed population and many issues, art and design were unheard of. But innovation and creative thinking of our founding fathers was at the core of our nation’s birth. Therefore, I look at the challenges facing us through the lens of the educator and innovator in arts and design. Without a doubt, art and design are behind both the good and the bad in America.

“Take back America,” is the kind of catch–phrase that comes from creative thinkers. It’s called “spin” in speech writing. Designers know that short, vivid phrases are easy to master and remember. Long speeches, thoughtful essays, and slogans over five words in length, are hard to remember and they don’t sell.

“Take back America” can mean almost anything. If you are among the top 1% of the wealthy, it can mean take away government restrictions on lending institutions selling subprime mortgages that caused the housing crisis. “Take back America” can also mean strong government controls on immigrants. The slogan can be turned this way or that, depending on hidden agendas.

I’m a professor like no other partly because I’ve had 50 years the think and act like an artist, designer, and educator. I think about America's place in the world view, I think about its place as viewed by people in other countries because I’ve been around the world.

Thanks to hundreds of people I've met over half a century–students, colleagues, and perfect strangers on the Internet—I’ve developed a worldview that helps me look at things from outside the USA and from outside of boxes.

“Outside the box” is a catchphrase that means, in my case, thinking about a tangible product to benefit artists designers and entrepreneurs born after 1980 (Millennials) can have to develop their security and do good not only for America but also for America’s place as a nation of respect and sustainable businesses.

Picture this

Picture me stepping up to a whiteboard in front of a group – mostly half my age – and selling the idea of their owning the company I architected instead of working for an established company. Right away you can see the uniqueness of my endeavor. Right away you can see that this is innovative, and creative, and you can see why conventional thinkers (inside the boxes) are skeptical.

That’s okay. In this imaginary room where I’m making my presentation, skepticism abides. Cynicism runs deep in the USA. By the time people are 30 years old in this country, they have seen so many reasons to be skeptical and to not trust an old professor particularly an art professor. That’s why you have to take a global view of my plan, and look at my sales abroad.

I’m willing to stake my intellectual and tangible property on the development of the people in my imaginary room full of listeners. But how can I sell this? Can I use a diagram to show both the local requirements and the road to international exports?

The benefit of my offering is that I have tangible data – that is I can back up every notion I have that justifies my belief that a worker-owned enterprise can provide its members with living wages and a meaningful occupation.

sp161116  How I can help  

Art professor advises Industrial Design students

An email from an industrial design student inspires a study of the employment outlook for people like him—which does not look good. The author considers a plan for using the product line of etching presses for the nucleus of a new enterprising initiative.

My design for their future

I would like to license my product and services lines to ensure that students with an industrial design inclination be acculturated—enabled to meet changing requirements of wealth creation and redistribution, to add value to the US economy, and to be relevant to society’s educational and recreational needs.

My product and related concepts could be the basis for the students to form a not-for-profit membership organization—working titled Northwest Print Center Incubators—with a range of services reflecting collaborative innovation by designers, educators and industry professionals.

Industrial design defined and economic outlook

Industrial designers combine art, business, and engineering to make products that people use every day or in specialties such as healthcare-related and medical instrumentation, educational technology, games, entertainment and the military. They consider the function, aesthetics, production costs, and the usability of products to develop new product concepts. They imagine how consumers might use a product when they create and test designs.

The outlook for industrial design students today, however, is uncertain—if not downright grim. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Handbook a year ago, employment of industrial designers is projected to grow slower than the average for all occupations: 2 percent from 2014 to 2024. Salaries will average around $32/hr., or less than $70,000 a year. Consumer demand for new products and styles might sustain the demand for industrial designers but only if they are new. American ID students must be increasingly competitive, too, as more projects are done over the internet.

Education of industrial designers

Typically, industrial design students are only vaguely aware of activities that precede and lead up to design of products. Things like stakeholder vision, business and brand strategy and management at the operational level of technology-led and marketing-led drivers. These 'fuzzy front end' activities are where the real commercial innovation and creativity is—not in some vague, aesthetic consideration or ease of manufacturing.

My work with industrial designers in an art school

At the UW, in the 1970s and 1980s, I proved to be a visionary and my teaching helped students build their careers on my vision. I’m not a genius; I merely permitted and encouraged them to think into the future beyond established curriculum. What worked for them worked for me, but not in the art world. I was invited to jump over to the design division, and one quarter I sponsored a group project by ID students designing a rock-star style bus for a mobile cross-country summer school. It was around 1982.

I retired young in 1985. The “education industry” called to me, and I built on the knowledge of art and technology that I gained in school. Art education is valued and supported as intellectual and technological activity, not just as mere supplier of artists to art patrons.

Later on I combined my printmaking skills, teaching, design and technology to create the Halfwood Press line and related services. The press is an artifact of an old, dying world, but by re-purposing it for the experience economy I found a sizable and extendable market for this and related products and services.

For example, an estimated 15 million people in the US alone experienced hands-on exposure to printmaking in the past half-century. They enjoyed it, and today they have money and time to return—and they buy my presses. To illustrate this, imagine 1% of them descending on Seattle to satisfy their curiosity and creative needs. The crowd will completely fill Safeco Field—54,000 people.

The Northwest Print Center Incubators is my design to bring young creative designers and entrepreneurs together so that they can build up and take ownership of the various enterprises associated with printmaking—not only presses, but entertainment, senior services, early childhood education and games with purpose.