Haven’t done one of these things in a while!
You probably read it five years ago, but I only got around to reading Daniel Pink‘s A Whole New Mind this weekend. Funny enough, I had read his cool manga-style career guide, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, and liked that a lot. (His new book is Drive.)
He’s a good follow/fellow on Twitter: @danielpink
I forgot to blog this: back in June, The Austin American-Statesman quoted me in an article on mind-mapping and ran one of my maps.
Read the article: “Mind-mapping gets the ideas flowing“
The folks at PBS asked me to be a guest blogger for their “Remotely Connected” blog. I blogged about the upcoming NOVA episode, “What Are Dreams?”
Read my post at the Remotely Connected blog, or below:
“I like to sleep so I can tune in and see what’s happening in that big show. People say we sleep a third of our lives away, why I’d rather dream than sit around bleakly with bores in “real” life. My dreams…are fantastically real movies of what’s actually going on anyway. Other dream-record keepers include all the poets I know.”
- Jack Kerouac
Like all artists since the beginning of time, I’ve looked to dreams for inspiration.
I started writing down my dreams as a teenager, after I got my hands on Jack Kerouac’s Book of Dreams–dreams he collected by scribbling in his notebook the minute he woke from sleep.
Later on in college, I studied just enough psychology to learn that the creative process mirrors the dreaming process. As the film director David Mamet says in his book On Directing Film, “The dream and the film are the juxtaposition of images in order to answer a question.” Not only can the dream provide us with material, but the process of dreaming itself can provide us with inspiration towards a process of working.
Any artist will tell you that when the work is going really well, it’s as if you’re taking dictation. The characters speak because they want to speak. The act of art-making is an attempt to fall into a kind of dream state. We do this by abandoning the linear and the logical for the non-linear and the free-associative. This is when creativity happens.
After watching this NOVA episode, I pulled out my pen and crayons and attempted to digest what I had seen through drawing–juxtaposing images in space. It was not unlike dreaming, watching the images come out of my hand…
Yet another movie I drew at SXSW 2009 is streaming online for free: RIP! A REMIX MANIFESTO, a documentary about Girl Talk, fair use, and remix culture. Head over to Pitchfork.TV this week to watch it.
If you read this before the end of tonight, you can watch 45365—the best movie I saw at SXSW 2009—for free online at Hulu.
A couple of brothers from Sidney, Ohio (really nice guys, too) made a documentary about their small hometown. I grew up not far from Sidney, and I can tell you it’s the most honest and moving portrait of home that I’ve seen.
These are a couple sketches I made during the movie and the Q&A a few months back.
Become a patron of my work by buying one of my fine art prints.
Steal Like An Artist is coming out in March 2012, now available for pre-order at your local bookstore or online:
Newspaper Blackout is available at your local bookstore or online:
