A friend from years ago contacted me after seeing one of my interviews and expressed interest in having the Napkin story featured in a new women’s magazine she was introducing. I suggested that my daughter, Chelsea, could perhaps write the article, which she did.
Absorbent Ideas – Exhibition | April 25 – June 6, 2009
KOKI – Fox 23 – On The Road – 2/16/09
Reporter Janna Clark and her videographer, John Gibson, came by our house at the beginning of February, 09 to do an interview with myself and my daughter, Chelsea. They spent almost 3 hours interviewing and videotaping the two of us, separately and together. They recorded us talking about the napkins as we leafed through them and as I drew one.
The were quite creative in their editing and I enjoyed the end result.
Good Day Tulsa – Studio Interview – 01/08/09
Kristin Dickerson of Good Day Tulsa (KTUL/channel 8), a local morning show, interviewed me about the napkin drawings and about the inclusion of the Obama napkin in Time magazine.
The interview was a lot of fun and the on-air and behind-the-scenes people were enthusiastic and very helpful. Ms. Dickerson was kind enough to mention my other artwork as well. In particular she directed the audience to my ‘Velveteen Woman’ photo-collage series on my website. She was also enthusiastic about contributing to that same series.
‘Drawing on Love’ and ‘Dad’s Napkin Messages’ articles in the Tulsa World Newpaper – 01/04/09
My local newspaper, the Tulsa World, published two articles about the napkins today. One was the local angle on the national Time Magazine article and the other about the original Napkin Story. They were nice enough to put a link on their front page for people to purchase the book. The reporter, Matt Gleason was a very cool guy and I enjoyed the interview quite a bit. I am very grateful people have caught on to the napkin stories and are passing it along to others!
First TV Interview – News on 6 – KOTV Tulsa
I contacted an anchor/reporter I knew, Lori Fullbright, at KOTV in Tulsa after I did the initial interview with the Tulsa World (but it had yet to be published). She liked the idea of the napkins and arranged quickly to come visit my studio and do an interview.
It aired 12/31/08 and was then picked up by their sister station in OKC and aired a few days later. I really appreciated Lori’s enthusiasm and interest in the story and how determined she was to get the interview done and broadcast quickly.
‘America the Beautiful’ in Time Magazine – 12/29/08
On November 5th, 2008, I drew a new napkin (the first since 2004). I drew it in response to Barack Obama’s election as our next president. I happen to be a supporter of his candidacy, but the emotion and happiness went beyond the politics of the moment. I searched my napkin drawings for an appropriate image and quote that expressed my sentiment and, finding none, drew a new one.
The morning after the election I scanned the drawing and posted it on my blog and on my flickr.com site. It got immediate attention (as did many posted that morning) and a great conversation ensued below it on flickr. Eventually Time Magazine saw it and decided to include it in their ‘Person of the Year’ issue (Obama being person of the year for 2008, obviously).
Imagination and Peace Building Presentation
In November, 2008 I received an email from an Irish nun, Sister Patricia Murray, working on her Masters degree at a seminary in Chicago. She found my blog when she googled ‘Imagination’.
She became a subscriber and had interest in a number of my napkin drawings. She wanted to purchase the rights to 5 of them for use in her thesis on ‘Imagination and Peace Building’ and in presentations in southern Sudan where she was doing her work. She said she would use the “drawings to show how simple illustrations can be an inspiration to capture ideas and to give courage.”
I loved the idea and sent her the drawings. She is will be sending me the presentation she uses them in once she is finished with her thesis and back at her work in Africa. I am excited to have them be part of something so important in the world.
It is a fundamental discovery I made many years ago, that to be a practicing artist of any worth at all you have to admit to the world your obsessions and secrets. You have to know in advance and allow that you will have family, friends, strangers, critics, etc. who will not like them. But you have to do it anyway, it is your obligation as an artist. It is your job. Your job is to create what you really want to create. That is what the world is waiting for from you. They don’t want someone else’s art, someone else’s vision. They want YOUR art and YOUR vision.
You may think that people who do ‘pretty pictures’ escape this scrutiny, but that is not true. For every artist obsessed with sunsets and puppy dogs or other sweet things, there are people who diss them, who put them out of the art category and into the schlock crap category. And that artist has to know that and allow it and keep doing what they want to do. It is the only way for an artist to get close to their passion and if an artist doesn’t get close to his or her passion, they will not create art for very long.
“Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul, and shows to people these secrets which are common to all.” – Leo Tolstoy
I love puffy cloud days, those skies that are filled with Simpson clouds (like those in the opening of the TV show, The Simpsons) The make me smile and make me sing ‘What a Wonderful World’.
“Time Is At Once The Most Valuable And The Most Perishable Of All Our Possessions.” John Randolph
Funny to have a young one saying this since they are the ones who usually are unaware that time is so fleeting. Actually, I think there is a gene in humans that basically causes us to ignore the reality of time and eventual death because after all, what are we really going to do about it anyway, right?
Most people, in spite of Randy Rausch and his Last Lecture, in spite of all the repetition of the cliche to live your life as if today is your last day, really don’t and don’t want to, live that way. They want to live as they live for the most part. Of course I am talking about my world of middle class America, not all people everywhere, though it might be true of them as well. I just can’t assume that.
“We do not choose the frame, only the painting inside.” – Anonymous
The frame is everything surrounding us from birth to death including the time in which we live. We can’t escape or control many elements of the frame. But we can control to a much greater degree two other things. One is what our painting (our self) looks like, and the other is the museum or gallery we are hanging in.
What does this mean? Is it similar to ‘God is Love’? If that is the case then it can be turned around, yes? Choice is Art. So, maybe what it’s getting at is that all the act of choosing is the act of art. Art is a codified, organized way of developing choices in a particular area. Rules for making choices?
Another question that comes from this is what happens when the artist is no longer making choices but instead is simply repeating him or herself, becoming a schlock artist, a serial artist with the same M.O. for each crime…I mean art piece. And therein lies the reason someone like Thomas Kinkade long ago stopped being an artist and is now simply a huckster. Watch out for those who don’t use their ability for choice. They are no longer artists.
“Without Art, The Crudeness of Reality Would Make The World Unbearable” – George Bernard Shaw
If you think about the most basic definition of art then everywhere around you the world has been designed to look, feel, smell, and taste good. Why is that? Why paint our walls? Why stain concrete? Why not just have dirt in the back yard?
You could say that art is the matrix (see movie for matrix idea) that allows us to think we live in a beautiful world. The difference is that art really does transform our world, it isn’t an illusion as it was in the Matrix. How have you transformed your world through art this week, or year, or day or?
