Author Archive for hellocatfood

The State of McArt

I was finishing off some artwork when I came across a clipping from a newspaper I picked up on my travels in America. After a bit of researching I found out it was an article written by from the California Herald. Here’s an extract:

It’s painfully obvious it’s not about talent anymore, in the one place an individual could take refuge, in art and music. It’s about effortless attempts of self validation through promotion. This is now branching out though, into a national phenomena. Thanks to media and reality shows like American Idol, easy-to-use computer graphics, widely available electronics equipment replicating instruments that could fool even the most trained of ears and build- your-own webpage online communities like myspace, we’re nothing more than the time we spend typing or what our image invokes. Notoriety has never been more desirable or promising.

The rest of the article can be read here.

One thing that’s stood out to me a lot recently is that a lot of art that I see isn’t really driven by it being fun. It’s all about the CV and exposure and whatnot. OK, so I’m not totally innocent, but a lot of the work I do with other people is because it’s fun. The CV can wait.

Good artists make good art, not great CV’s

antonioroberts.com launched!

As you may or may not know I do a bit of community work and workshop work. I’d usually document this on this website but I felt it deviated from my personal artwork a bit and I consider the hellocatfood name to be my artist persona, so for that reason I set up www.antonioroberts.com. It focuses completely on my community and education work and hopefully gives that side of my work a more professional feel. Go have a look-see!

CV Dilema

I was at the pub today with Vickie Wood of CECI, discussing the next performance, when I thought I’d bring up the question about how to mention the previous performance on my CV. Do I say that I worked with CECI, as part of CECI, collaborated with, performed with or as part of or some other terminology? I only asked this because I don’t want to take credit for work that I’ve had minimal input in.

I’ll put it into a perspective bit more. When I first performed with Insectoid and CECI I didn’t have any input other than my performing of their piece. So, for that I’d just say I performed with them. However, as I’ve gotten to know the work more I’m at the point where I’m helping make decisions about future work. So, what do I say then? Have I collaborated with them, worked with them or performed with them?

What does everyone else in arty/blogging land think? I may be being a tad bit over cautious, but I really don’t want it to seem like I’m taking credit for anyone elses work.

In Common

There’s an open submission thingy going on and the theme is ‘In Common’. I want to look at what we have in common with nature.

So, I guess the first question is:

What do we have in common with nature?

Answers on a postcard please.

Open Source

I’m going to be moving into exclusively using open source software to create artwork in the near future*. More on why once I get my head around some of the software.

*that is unless it’s completely necessary that I use a piece of commercial software e.g. GMIP doesn’t support CMYK, yet Photoshop does.

CECI - Centre for Explorative and Creative Interactions

On Wednesday 18th June I was helping out fellow artist Vickie Wood at the graduate exhibition at Margaret Street. Several of you may have seen me look a little like this

n505026768_651243_8243-225x300 CECI - Centre for Explorative and Creative Interactions

I shan’t explain, but instead point you to the website to find out more

Tea

I got some inspiration at 2am yesterday. It lasted until 6am yesterday morning. And then it came back at 1pm yesterday.

This is what happened:

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Image hosted by Photobucket.com

And I just got inspired now, but I need sleep :(
Whoa, I just realised how many people are going to the Weezer gig on monday: Me, ,,, and Ian and Kim. I wonder who else I’ll bump into there.

This amuses me. Apparently geeks make better lovers. Geeks rejoice! They’ve even get a geek dating agency, ‘gk2gk.com’. I wonder if the l4d33z will be impressed if I wore my, ‘Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, All my base are belong to you’ t-shirt hehehe.

Anyway, night night all.

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Four hours of fucking solid hard work and this is what I have to show for it.
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It’s Staffordshire University’s Logo. It’s very simple, but I learned a lot about reflecting images and I feel I’ve improved my tracing abilities.

Btw, this is for a magazine cover I’m working on for my Student Union Magazine. I’ve already designed one tonight, but I feel the one I’m going to do could actually be used.

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So I’ve got quite a few ideas buzzing aroudn my head. And they’ve come to this.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com It was a good concept, just not executed very well. I’ve got a few ideas to improve it but shall instead move onto my next project.

I’m hopefully going to get a zine going or a website by september. We shall see. I’m doing research into it right now.

Anyways, I’m going to the Summer Ball in about two hours, so ta ta.