abrupt skits, painful theatre, improv of the absurd
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
needle eye
Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us. ~ Voltaire
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Monday, May 06, 2013
Thursday, May 02, 2013
Wednesday, May 01, 2013
Pileus
I would make an etching about the mortician. The setting would be a grim interior surrounded by tombstones. Against the stone workers table would be a person in manacles. The mortician gesturing with one hand cupped to his ear and a quill in the other. The mortician is taking requests. The person in manacles is the poor bastard who fell prey to his baser callings of greed and pride. The person who decided to acquisition the resources that allowed these fatigued revelers to provide for themselves. The person who made livery from livings. 
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Hazards of the occupation
"I've never been certain of who I am." Harry Crews. The transient colonist.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
man around the moon
As an exhibiting artist, one is always crafting your "artist statement". Even if your not writing your statement, that is your statement. It would be an interesting read, "The History of the Artist Statement" Like, did Michelangelo have an artist statement? So after considering my subject matter I realize how full of popular culture and toy culture my vocabulary was. Then I plugged in the years I would have been forming the core of my language centers 1970 - 1977 and came up with a peculiar shift in western cultural thinking. I believe that this shift involved the act of witnessing a human space adventure,in particular the global broadcasting of the Apollo 11. As demonstrated in the above clip about marketing the first "action figures". Cognitive shifts leave marks or signatures in the fabric of recorded history. I have heard aural accounts of the impact the moon landing had on science fiction and toys. In particular, the speculation on the alien presence in science fiction to the spectacle of seeing a man floating and bouncing around in that dark not earth other place. Maybe it was a shift in the Other. Like the unknowable was temporarily perceived as a vacuum. Vacuums are dangerous.(cue absurd image) ...and then you think, wow this is some really self absorbed bullshit.
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About Me
- Russell Maycumber
- St. Augustine, Florida, United States
- Spawned in the sub tropic Eden of North East Florida, hearing my grandfather spin coquina crusted yarns about voracious horizons and sandy roads through cool green tunnels of magnolias, full of floating bruised blossoms the colors of debutante gowns and Bourbon sweet teas.These were the stories of the old man and his friends making their way in this scrubby ward of crackers and carnies, fishing with dynamite, carving agency from the landscape with a rusty dredge and brine pickled wit. The more I recall the more I realized how much I inherited this compulsion to scratch my own name in the church pew of tomorrowland. Colossus imagined or real inspires none the less. I look to a past for some answer to my own compulsions. I come back to the only real constant, the story. I have tried direct narrative but stalled in the parking lot of Motel Dilettante. Groping with half understood elements of the trade I found the respite of abrupt skits and painful theatre. I persisted and sketches started mulching around the legs of my flat pack kitchen table I use as a studio. I started to blog these moments I spent spilling ink this way.
