...but I can't make a whole blog about that. I don't know enough about art to critique Uncle Ken's paintings...
Hogwash! Or, to use a new word that Uncle revealed to me, BUSHWA! You know exactly what is going on with his work; you simply lack the vocabulary to articulate your opinion. That's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it. I've had the benefit, or curse, of formal training in the fine arts and the path was strange.
I started college with the lofty goal of engineering; the college had a program where you spent three years there and then transferred to Purdue for two years. At the end of those five (!) years of undergraduate study you had a B.A. from one place and a B.S. from Purdue, at which point you entered the workplace making big bucks.
Looked good on paper but that program was a ball-buster, 18 semester hours; I think the average academic load at that time was 16 semester hours. I don't have the transcript handy but I was lucky to eke out mostly Cs and I was ready to bail out. Since I was 17 by that time I was all set to join the Army, like a certain esteemed gentlemen of my acquaintance. My folks talked me out of it, telling me to hang in for the rest of the school year, which I did.
Things improved the second semester and I decided that the pre-engineering program was a definite no-go but I could continue as a sophomore with the ever reliable "undecided" major, possibly business, and knock out all those classes required for graduation. Not a lot of room for electives but I managed to take two classes to help me decide what should come next if I decided to stick with college: Drawing (the artsy-fartsy type) and Mechanical Drawing (T-squares, etc.).
The Mechanical Drawing class wasn't difficult and I learned some good stuff that I found useful in later jobs. But the Drawing class was a nightmare, taught by a ceramics guy (they call themselves "potters" BTW) who had a cane and walked with a limp. I was amused when Uncle Ken talked of the many years of watercolor "classes" he's taken. Sorry, but it seems like a joke to me. Our drawing classes met three times a week, I think 3 hours a class, from 1:30 to 4:30. Very rarely did the class end at 4:30; around 5pm he would ask "What time do they quit serving meals in the cafeteria?" Uh, oh...gonna be a long day. The class would be dead quiet, everyone fervently drawing this pile of junk on a table for a still life; contour drawing, gesture drawing, now without lifting the pencil from the paper, now without looking at the paper, and now using charcoal, chalk, conte crayon, maybe combining a bunch of those things. That rat bastard was relentless, keeping the pressure on. You'd be so focused on your drawing that you didn't notice him sneaking up behind you until that cane crashed down on your drawing board, the sudden noise giving everyone a jolt. Jeezus H. Christ! Then he hissed, so only you could hear him, "You're not looking." I was very proud of myself for getting a C in that class, there may have been 2 As; you simply could not skate through. But, by god, I loved that class and learned to draw like a motherfucker, and became almost friends with the rat bastard. And second semester we had a nude model, which was nice for this young pup in 1967.
Anyhow, in the middle of the second semester the guy asked me, "What's your major?" I replied that I wasn't sure, maybe business. "Why don't you become an Art Major?" Well, I didn't have any answer for that so WTF, why not, and that was that. There was a price to be paid, though. Since I was behind in the art curriculum I had a lot of catching up to do during my junior year, with shitloads of studio classes: Basic Design, Painting, and Graphics (serigraphy, woodcuts, etc.), all very time consuming with expensive materials. That 3rd year of college wiped me out, completely depleting whatever inspirational resources I had at that point of my life. No point in returning for that final senior year, the well was dry. At that point I did the only sensible thing, that same thing which I had planned to do a couple of years earlier: dropped out and joined the Army.
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Whew! That went on a lot longer than planned, that's for sure. So go ahead, Mr. Beagles, speak your mind, give your opinion and if anyone doesn't like it you can tell them that The Old Dog says they can piss up a rope.
Sometimes I think Mr. Beagles is being ignored on this forum but no worries; I'm keeping a running list of things I want to ask him about, without being too intrusive. Typical stuff for me to be curious about but may be boring or routine to him, like how's the ice fishing been this year? I've never done it myself but it sounds like something worth doing, even if one time is enough. And then there are many questions about paper, a material that gives me endless fascination. Lately I've been deconstructing paper shopping bags, soaking them in water and carefully unfolding them. Amazing how they are made, and how different in quality and thickness the bags from different stores are. Plenty of uses with those big sheets, Kraft paper, I think it's called. Old newspapers are fun, too, once they get wet and dry out; they lose that smooth flatness and gain a subtle texture, quite pleasing in my opinion. I'm still thinking of what I'll be doing with them but there's always papier mache. This is where baking bread comes in handy; plenty of flour available for gluing stuff together. I believe wheat paste is the gold standard for archival purposes in libraries and museums, but I'm not sure.
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Uncle Ken has asked about my new digs and I will have more to report in the future, but for the time being I'd like to present what I am calling my official Beaglesonian portrait. The title is "The Goofball in Quiet Repose." To give you a sense of scale it is 22' 6" from the camera to the chair I'm sitting on.
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