Military Intelligence

Luck has nothing to do with Lucky the blog reviewer giving my blog a big thumbs down. I actually signed up and invited Lucky to review my blog. And it was a lot of fun! I recommend it to lots of bloggers and I hope I turn someone onto his super fun-spirited past time. Lucky began a blog while deployed in Iraq. It seems he has met tons of great people and his intentions and purpose for his blog naturally transformed and he ended up reviewing blogs as a hobby. I think he could probably charge money for the service!

He did not enjoy visiting my blog, he gave me one hump out of a five hump rating system, and I think I'm lucky I got the one hump, heh heh. But it was a really fun excercise and I say take it on. I knew right away I was asking for trouble. I grew up on army bases and waiting for him to review my blog triggered feelings of waiting for my dad to finish reviewing my homework. If you've ever read The Great Santini by Pat Conroy, you might get a feel for the dread of citicism being a flaky artist in a military family. There were a couple of us signed up to "Get Humped" and supporting each other waiting to find out how badly asskicked we would get in blogland.

I think my parents were at the end of an era when it was hip to be into one's culture and follow the art scene. No body does that any more. My parents get credit for this, they loved art and exposed my sister and I to all kinds of shows from Egyptian art to Colour Field paintings. They also exposed us to other cultures, religions, styles of living and gender equality. Considering my father, and his father, were conservative military men, I think this is remarkable and defines the kind of tolerance and enthusiasm that is lost in most childrens education today. Popular music and movies and tv are the major sources of art for kids. When I was growing up, it was the same but also included studying poetry, art and dance. That was a standard approach, everybody had to take art in school.

Lucky begins my review...

I am not an art critic. I know very little about, and therefore have very little appreciation for, classic art. I've been to some of the most amazing museums in the world, all over Europe and the Pacific, and I still don't know the difference between good and bad art. So, you can imagine my apprehension when I figured out that I was reviewing the website of an artist.

It's heartbreaking to me the desert that is art programs for kids. Art shouldn't be scary. Art shouldn't make a Major in the U.S. military apprehensive. This is a crime in our school systems...and continues a theme I have discussed here at this blog...that political intellectual mobsters have stolen art from the public. Art has been smuggled by universities and hidden in ugly architecture mimicking armouries.

Although I am going to continue my blog the way it is now, as a research journal for scripts and a photo diary for family and friends...I loved getting humped, even a shitty hump. I think Lucky is one cool dude, and I even hope he might get a little taste of Candy and come back for a visit now and then. He is my target audience. And it hurts me to fail at exciting someone into the world of universal mythology and stories, of art, and throwing out notes questioning "Is this the only way to get by on earth?" I had hoped that producing a chronicle of paintings as they were made and the items and content would showcase how anyone can make art, and that art is a narrative for each other. A form of storytelling. Quick, simple, emotional. And for the masses. My parents and teachers knew that it wasn't about whether art was "good art or bad art" it was about storytelling. A painting talks to us whether it is good or bad, or we like it or hate it. Is it sucessful in it's impact on us? Is it pretty? What does it mean? What does it make me think about? Is it saying something about the human condition? What is reality? Why are we here? What is love, truth, humour? Who are you? Oh well, back to the drawing board...

More from "Getting Humped"

Her artwork is interesting--the only problem I had with it is that it just suddenly pops up in her first month, with no background as to why she's posting those pictures or who made the paintings (it becomes obvious later). She now takes some great photos--not so at the beginning. She has a post that she is discussing a television show and lo and behold--she includes a picture of her TV. Once she figures out how to take pictures though, it quickly goes into photo overload--with dozens of photos posted over the course of a few weeks. Getting an account like Flickr to showcase her photos would make it a much more readable blog, while not losing the most valuable part of her site--the photos she takes.

CONVERSATION: While she gets a good amount of comments (5-10 per post) a large number of those comments are her own replies, reducing that number down to 2-5 per post.

OVERALL: For people interested in art this might be a good blog to see other's work. If you have time to read all the long posts, it also might be worth a read--just not for me.