Category Archives for Art

The Mokers

modoc. n. One of the several small dummies set up to be knocked over by baseballs at a carnival tent; hence, a stupid person.
mohosca. n. Muscle; energy used in work.
mojo. n. Any narcotic.
mokers, the. n. Despondency; dejection; the blues.
mokus. n., adj. 1. Drunk. 2. Liquor.
molasses. n. A good-looking used automobile displayed to attract customers to a used-car lot.
moldy fig. 1. A prude; a pedant; one whose views or tastes are old-fashioned. 2. Specif., a person who prefers traditional jazz to the progressive forms.

The Pocket Dictionary of American Slang. Eds. Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner. Pocket, 1967.

Blog Recommendation!

I don’t do this a lot, so you know this has weight. One of my favorite people in the world, poet and writer Steven Rineer, has a new blog. He has had difficulties publishing his poetry, but he’s one of two largely unpublished poets I have admired for years. And not because we are friends, but because I find his work extraordinary and it pushes me to get better at my own writing. So now he has a blog. You can find it under http://stevenrineer.com. Don’t mind the large banner. I have had the pleasure of visiting California 6 or 7 years ago and Steven hosted me. He is a brilliant reader, and a brilliant writer. TRUST ME ON THIS. On some level, I owe my life to that man. Go follow the dang blog. His first post is up, it’s called “On Being Sick, Astral Weeks, and Sometimes Getting Through.” Click on the link! Do you like it? Tell me! Tell him. He’s a light in this world, a weird, gentle, awesome light.

My Version of World Domination

This from a new illustrated post at The Width of a Line, an awesome blog about a young, incredibly talented artist from Berlin, who keeps posting amazing sketches and pages and pages of her drawings online.

When people are moving too fast, if you’re brave you can also ask them if they would mind sitting for you for a bit, which helps to avoid the pesky drawing-people-without-a-model problem. I saw her at the fleamarket with a friend, but she was moving to much and too far away to sketch. I took heart and approached her, told her I would like to draw her if she had time, and gave her one of my cards. And she actually called about an hour later, ready to be drawn! (…) So this isn’t only about drawing strangers anymore. Suddenly I’m actually talking to people about drawing, exposing myself as I usually don’t: if they agree to be drawn by me, that also means they get so see and judge the drawing. This is frightening and exciting at the same time.

What this has to do with world domination? Well, as a side effect, this teaches me a lot about illustration in general, aspects of picture-making that I didn’t have to take into account before. Over these two month there is already a development in style and skill visible, I think. Ultimately I hope this will prove fruitful in helping me make a living from drawing, which is pretty much my version of world domination.

Dumb and Dumber

See someone making a good objection (discussing the innateness of artistic genius is somewhat dumb) and then jumping to equally dumb, no, wait, even dumber conclusions. Witness this and cry:

Why did Picasso depict women in such ugly, distorted ways in his paintings? Because Picasso is Picasso? Or because he treated women like tissues…soiling and discarding them in his wake. As Jean-Paul Crespelle writes in his book Picasso and his Women:”…Just as he kept old matchboxes or pencil stubs, so he kept his old mistresses ready in hand. Just in case…” Which is the more interesting response?

What a twat.