Road Trip

Over the last week I travelled to Montréal, Burlington, Portland, Boston, and Buffalo. I've a limited traveling experience, so visiting new places always makes me reconsider what Metro Detroit is actually like.


It's difficult to separate yourself from the place you've grown up. High unemployment, corruption, social and racial stratification, I see and understand it, but visiting another major city really sharpens those definitions. About a week ago, the Detroit News ran an article detailing the abandonment of buildings in Detroit. You realize it's bad, but not until you understand there are forty story buildings without tenants. These beautiful, magnificent, buildings made by Albert Kahn, left to rot.


You're suddenly left to wonder… How is it that we got here? More importantly, how do we manage to get out?

The issues in an around the city comprised a large part of my work last semester. It seemed in every course, somehow Detroit worked its way in. I've tried using the summer as a buffer, to take space from the issue, but in doing so I've found that my want and interest continues to persist, but with a new-found conflict of abandonment. Fully cognizant of the issues which face the city, but eyes opened to what other metropolitan areas can be like, I'm left to wonder why anyone should be inclined to stay in Detroit.

There must be some motivation beyond compassion for people to stay.

Wayfinding

Truthfully, Alberto Giacometti's work is a bit repulsive when you first happen upon it. The sculptures are heavily distorted, unrefined, coarse and perturbing. It's only when you take the time to understand why his work looks this way that you come to an understanding with them.


While I greatly admire his work in this capacity, my favorite work of Giacometti is a rather small vignette of his œuvre introduced to me in a drawing class: His sketches.


When searching for photos of them, they were commonly called 'organizational lines,' but I think that is a great disservice to what is actually happening. Sketching like this is as much organizational as it is impression. It's where our mind meets paper, where we make our mistakes, but rather than covering them up, you embrace them and use them to your advantage.

I think as artists, it's difficult to see so many finished products and easy to forget how simply they can begin. The gist of Giacometti's sketch is derived not from accuracy, but from its failure. By building upon the lines he gets wrong, we see a more refined, unique image that gives us more than just a drawing, but a window into how he came about seeing it.

I first heard them called 'gestural lines,' and I find this diction more favorable.

Karōshi

This seems to happen at the end of every summer, I begin working late evenings, then weekends, then weeks on end. It's rewarding, but also very taxing, so apologies for the lack of updates these past few weeks.

Given work is on my mind, I think it makes sense to talk about a project I really enjoyed this summer. I was the compositor for the 360s on Harley-Davidson's 2010 motorcycle models Sporster, Dyna and Touring. The other models were split with the Pasadena office of the studio I work for—Realtime Technology.


Part of my reason for talking about this is I can actually show it. Much of what I do is tied up in Non-Disclosure Agreements for ages, but the website went live in late July.

Doing a 360 can be quite unsettling. You try to make sure the key angles are dialed in right; your side angles, front and rear three-quarters, angles you'd typically show in still images. Yet, it's the frames in between that pose the biggest challenge. How do you make a motorcycle look attractive from dead front or rear when you have just a sliver of it to view? You slowly find, all things are unattractive at one angle at least.


Further, all those color adjustments and curves that blot out compositionally distracting elements or change tones must be adjusted on a per frame basis. So, while the final product is a two second 360 rotation, you have to carefully edit 60 images, then ensure there is a seamless transition between them. Once you do it for one bike, you have to carry it across all the bikes you work on, or in my case 18.

I'm certain some will be quick to chastise me and comment that this work doesn't have 'meaning' and would question its artistic challenge. I'd argue for the contrary.

It's pleasant in art school to operate without constraints—although one will quickly find that self-imposing some constraints on a project is useful—to exercise creative expression without consequence. However, the practicality of this trait is debatable. At some point, we all serve masters, and being creative within a box, to find expression, is an interesting task.

That's not to discredit the former, there is a lot of utility in broader expression and a lucky few of us may yet make a career from that alone. It's just that creative freedom in art school often seems to lend itself to a legion of crafty projects about our mums, the homes we grew up in, or our individuality condensed into a 'hand-made book' using the artist's 'own handwriting.'

While still trying to be polite, I think the majority of these projects lack meaning. Not that there is not substance, but it often isn't conveyed to the viewer. Sometimes moments are too personal to relate, the medium is inappropriate, or you force the viewer to work through too much. Whereas with this, there is explicit directive, even if the ends is materialistic.

You can check out all the 360s at at Harley-Davidson's website.