Fear of Greatness

undetermined title

emerging machines

Kite

>> huge dimensions

Personal Landscape

This is the outline to my first assignment for metals class. It's a personal landscape project. Our workspace is 8 1/2 x 11 x 5... 5 is the width. The idea is to create depth using layers. From front on, this will (hopefully) be a good piece. I'm worried, though working with 3dimensional space that the work will be odd from the other angles. Although, this aspect might work well with the piece as well. For my landscape I chose the stone arch bridge. I took the design from a sketch I did but then abstracted it using style that I usually draw and doodle with. Luckily this style works well with the material that we have to use for this project which is small steel wire and rods. My original sketch had the Minneapolis skyline on the back left side of the sculpture but I like the more simple design and focus on the bridge. With this being my first piece I'll have ever welded, I'm sure it will be far from what this sketch is. I'm an artist who improvises, so this idea is bound to change.

Dear Mr.Pittman

My life. It would quite be the same if you were to tell me yours. Or to hear it from your neighboor. However, I will tell as you wish. I know you will learn something new. Life is all life but we all hold a different perspective.

Milk was too expensive for Mom then, living in our house on Alta Vista Street. It was a rare occassion to actually get real milk (as in real, I mean milk from a grocery store). This one time, I remember well. I, too small to sit comfortably at the table, sat my butt on the kitchen chair and hung off the table with my arms folded and my chin barely able to rest on top. Mom had set out three bowls and spoons with a box of cereal on the table. I was reading the back of the cereal box. My brothers were around the house somewhere, doing shit. How was I suppose to know what they were doing at that age. Mom was on her way to the nearby grocery store getting milk. Real milk. We were all - as in all, I mean my brothers - sick of drinking that home made condesed milk shit. Mom had been making that to save money. You know what I'm talking about, that powdery stuff that comes in a box. Milk in seconds! Just add water! Yes. Gross. If you like chalk with your cereal, you're good. I was young enough to eat it with my cereal, afterall, it was mostly all I had known besides my mom's breast milk. My brothers on the otherhand, had had their last straw. For dinner, they insisted real milk with the cereal. Insisted.

My feet dangled off the chair, far from the stained yellow linoleum. My stomach was growling in discomfort and hunger. The back of the cereal box was getting boring. My brothers would pass through the kitchen on occasion, without any word. I don't know where Dad was. I just waited. Nothing to do. I waited for the milk. My cereal bowl was as empty as my stomach. Thoughts traveled through my young brain. Time passed. Just waited.

Mom got home finally. She had a gallon of milk. Real milk. Finally. She yelled to my brothers to come get dinner and they took their time to get there - they had their own lives. Dustin made his bowl first. Put way too much cereal in the bowl. Added the milk. Smelt the milk. Tasted the milk. Threw a goddamn FIT. It was the condensed milk again - in disguise. Mom had just only filled an old milk container with her own home made version of milk. The kitchen when up in turmoil, with my brother shouting at my mom, my mom shouting back, Keith fought a bit, although, ultimately didn't give a shit. I ate my own bowl of cereal. Was full. Went on through my life as a kid.

Biography

There's a lot of talk about his greatness. All about how much I should want to be like him. A list of characteristics I should strive for. How to live a life of success. Glory. Fame. It's obvious, read a biography for a step by step process of how to get a biography written about you. All Great men (and women) have biographies.

I can't remember the last time I could will myself to finish a biography.

I have two sitting by my bed right now, both of which haven't been read past the first half.

At this point, I find myself getting nauseous.

Sure, it's lovely to learn from people. Have role models, great. Whatever. But seriously, lets get real and look at who we're idolizing and why. Harry S. Truman wouldn't have had a biography written about him if he hadn't been in a position of authority. Einstein wouldn't have had a biography if his theories weren't popular. These people we read about through their biographies are quite simply ordinary people, like us, who found themselves in a position that culture decided to idolize. They aren't just Great. They're given Greatness. In part, you give them Greatness by reading their biography.

This is why I stuggle reading biographies.

The Greatness is sucked out of me. I'm belittled. I couldn't live up to a biography.

Reality: Characteristically I fit in with the ideal biographed person. So do you. So does anybody. Culture just hasn't decided to recognize the Greatness in all of us. We haven't recognized the Greatness inside ourselves. We are the ones limiting our Greatness.

So you want a biography about yourself? The plumber, the farmer, the store clerk, the educator, the student, the minimum wage waitress, the stay at home mom...

Start a revolution.
Honor simplicity.
Honor reality.


....

I have an idea to start a small series of biographies. I'll write about whoever. My friends, family, people on the street... They all deserve one. Just as much as Einstein or Harry Truman.

[untitled]

doodly doodly doos

piece of mind

By Alex Peter

How do you start one of these things? Ah, I don't give a shit. The funny thing about writing is once you actually start writing it's like all your genius ideas evaporate from your brain. They get smothered in all the laws of grammar and writing that you've been learning your whole goddamn life. It's no surprise people hate English classes for getting bad grades. The harder you try to conform to the class, the worse your grade gets. Ironic - I swear, if everyone would just start trying not to try, things would start getting better. Like this book.
How the hell do I know if any one will ever read this? It's probably shit. Good. I hope this goddamn shit gets published, canonized, and all the poor kids who are in English class can sit awkwardly discussing the secret hidden meanings behind my writing. Good luck kids. I was in your shoes once.
I feel like an old 40-year old saying that. Don't worry I'm not. I just graduated high school. I'd tell you what high school I graduated from but it's better I don't. If this book ever gets popular, I don't want any credit to go to that goddamn school. We'll just call it Roseville Area High, for the sake of calling it something.
Anyway, you don't have to be worrying that I'm some 40-year old trying to give some bull shit lecture or anything. I'm 18, true to God. True to you too. Whatever the hell that means.
The reason it's important you should know I'm not 40 is because I think it's important. Or "because I said so". I hate reading contemporary books targeted for teens that you know are a load of shit. It's because they're written by fucking 40-year olds. After I'm done reading shit like that I just imagine this 40-year old writing teenage sex scenes and enjoying it like some fucking pedophile creeper. Like I said, I'm 18. ...
Every book has sex just like every teenage kid does. Everybody knows it. At least everybody thinks it and every teacher expects it and every parent pretends sex is still a secret and non existent to their child. which, by the way, is a load of crap.
My mom always (I shouldn't say always) (-occasionally?) (never mind we'll just stick with "always" - who gives a fuck) likes to point out how all the teenagers have sex. All the time. Apparently we even have oral sex at the tables in school. Or so her coworker says. What can you do but laugh to something said like that. She assumes every teenager has sex but me. I'm the world's last virgin or something. Even if i was, who cares. I don't give one way or the other. I know I'm not the only virgin. Even if I wasn't one, I'd know I wasn't the only girl who'd been fucked. So what difference does if make?
I've never had a boyfriend either. That makes it a little hard to have sex. Maybe that's why my mom doesn't seem to worry about me so much. Just because I haven't had a boyfriend or had sex don't start thinking I'm some god damned goody-two-shoes-spoiled-rotten-bitch. I've had some close calls before...
...
...
I was always the nice girl, all quiet and shy. I remember Cameron Deuscher once said "Oh Alex, she's too nice". I hated that. And I hated him after that. I always secretly called him Cameron Douche Bag. Only ever to myself. I was too nice. He could have just called me "nice" and all would be fine. But everybody always has to stick that fucking "too" in front and all of a sudden it's a bad thing that I'm nice. I have a feeling I'll never grow out of this fucking "too". Like I'm some goddamn over achiever. That's why I don't have a boyfriend. My mom always said it was because I was weird. I've just discovered she's wrong. Boys don't like girls that are "too" much of something. Maybe they're just "too" insecure.
...
In a big group of girls it's like the feminine energy feeds off each other and swells and boils over to consume any sanity left in my brain. Boys might be insecure, but girls are the definition of that word.
Ok...not all girls. For example, this one friend of mine. She's chill and relaxed. She doesn't show when she's giddy and girly. That's what I like about her. a lot of people just think she's a bitch though. I don't think people understand the meaning of bitch. The people who throw that word around about her are probably just too insecure to handle her. It's not her fault. She says what she thinks and means it. She's really sarcastic, too. I think people take it the wrong way. I get a kick out of it.
We always joke about if neither of us get jobs for the summer, then we're starting a circus. Just her and me. We'd have different acts. Juggling acts, balance beam acts, cartwheel acts, and somersault acts. The best act would be the last act. We'd sit in the middle of the arena on two fold out chairs, the spotlights burning down on us. then we'd just talk. Like an improv show, except better. We wouldn't be acting though. Just talking. We have a lot of good sarcastic conversations so no doubt it would be entertaining. We'd blow the roof right off the goddamn building. You'll see.

...
(A few excerpts from an old notebook that I just found today. The notebook was titled PreCalculus and I found 8 pages of this jabber. I believe I intended to start drafting ideas for a book but then it turned into a diary. Extremely strange yet delightfully entertaining.)

Trisha Brown

Trisha Brown does not only have a huge influence on me but she has completely changed how art is described.

My dance professor from first semester, Lightsey Darst, summed it up quite well. She described dance as a "cloud". I believe this also transfers easily over to art and also merges the two forms together.

Imagine the individual particles of a cloud floating in space. They are all individual yet interacting with eachother in order to ultimately see the cloud-shape that percieved as a cloud. Now imagine this cloud shape to be art. Art is made up of particles that at any particular time can be a part or not be a part of our cloud shape. Keep with me in this world of analogy and imagine our cloud shapes as you would as an imaginative child. We see our clouds as bunnys, the crazy old lady next door, a sneaker, a fed-ex truck, whatever. Eventually our imagined creatures and shapes collide and contort, interacting with eachother, forming new, even more radical forms. If we tie this analogy to our concepts, we can dedicate the bunnies and trucks we imagine in the clouds as "art" and "dance" possibly even "craft" or "writing". So there are different types of clouds. Yet at the same time, these clouds interact, become one, separate, evolve.

This is why over the years art has been so hard to describe. Dance has found this struggle as well. Trisha Brown has done a beautiful, awe-inspiring job of portraying this concept. After Modern Dance took the stage, Trisha Brown evolutionized the movement to a form that was less rehersed that took a natural form. Her movements weren't glamorized or made prestigious by trained ballet dancers. She mimmicked everday movement like reaching for the flour in the cupboard or bending down to pick up a pencil. Simple tasks like walking, running, or even lifting an arm now became dance. This is a huge deal in art and dance history. It revolutionized what it is we consider art and what we consider dance. Can I be simply walking down the street and expressing dance?

Brown also took a huge step in converging art and dance. Many of her performances are set up as galleries (One of which I was lucky enough to see at the Walker). Like in one of the pictures shown, her performers are levied up to the wall of a gallery so they, themselves, are the art piece on the gallery wall. Some of Brown's other pieces are more direct and involve brown dancing as she creates a drawing or painting. In one, she holds charcol in her foot and as she dances, traces her patterns and steps. She beautifully weaves together two different art forms into one.

One of my favorite pieces is "Spiral Trees" which she demostrated at the Walker. This involved harnessing her performers into trees. They were attatched to a wire that was wound around the trunk of a tree so that when they were released, they would spiral down the tree. It created the illusion that the person was walking the circumfrence of the tree sidways. Each walker would be realeased at a different time interval. It isn't simultaneous or intricate. The beauty of it is it's simpilicity.

Tisha Brown's work is simple yet profound. I am amazed at how such a short statement can make such an impact on so many levels.

Vogue Dance

yeah. I did this. sort of.

Contact Improvisation

Relying on eachother's body position and weight. Inspiring and thought provoking. Learning how to relate.

Opression is relative.

I was discussing culture with my mom and she brought up the topic of female opression. Some countries are recently trying to bring back historic tradition of having laws such that require females to be entirely covered and escorted by their husbands at all times. There are also the laws requiring that females must provide sexual pleasure for their husbands.

My initial response: that's weird.

My thought out response: I can't relate to that.

Culture is a huge divider in relation. What I consider to be opression could just as equally mean liberation for some one of another culture. I'm not trying to say that these new laws of female opression are actually liberating. Although for some they may be but I cannot say for sure because I am not of the culture or in the same circumstances.

The break in relation doesn't stop at culture. There's age, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, health...