Happy to announce I already have 3 paintings selected for the DAC show during Miami Art week this coming December. More details on the name of the show, location, etc later in the year. Maybe this year I will head over to Miami and attend.
My short story wins Honorable Mention in Writer’s of the Future Contest
I have suffered a lot of rejections. All writers do, I think.
Yesterday, I was told that I won an Honorable Mention in the 2nd Quarter Writers of the Future Contest for my short story, The Seeker.
Fairly happy about that. The contest has been going strong for decades and the winners are published in an annual volume. While I didn’t make the final cut, still happy to receive the Honorable Mention. And I’ll likely be submitting again in the near future.
What am I doing?
I ask this everyday.
The Welcome to Florida series should be complete this summer. It will be around 10-12 individual paintings, ranging from 16 X 11 to 36 X 48. I have around 5 of them completed now.
Applying to several new exhibitions this summer as well. Concentrating on Florida but also a few others internationally.
I have about a dozen short stories out for consideration. I constantly get rejected. I constantly keep putting them out there.
I’m swimming a lot in the ocean.
Considering going to Dublin for WorldCon but I haven’t decided yet. I’ve been to Dublin before and I enjoy the city, but there’s a lot of other places I want to see before revisiting it.
Mainly, I get up everyday and try to apply my creative force to something.
Miniature Corn and the Problem of All-Knowledge
The Crazy Testament is a loose collection of notes I keep in a loose collection of note-keeping areas. Herein, I expand on those ideas which probably should have been forgotten.
I grew up during a time when you couldn’t google the answer to everything (or most everything) and know it. To many who are slightly younger that might seem an impoverished age. In a way it was. But it provoked a certain type of dialogue that we are missing now and a category of thinking which is less practiced.
Miniature corn is something that I started thinking about around 6 am while trying to fall asleep last week. I imagined a miniature corn farm, with tiny animals laboring, and people husbanding the land and resources to grow the crop. Small droplets of sweat fell from the tiny people’s brows, the light bulb sized sun turned the budding cobs golden at the end of day.
Then I thought, are there really miniature corn plants?
This is the kind of question that before, I would have needed to let trouble me into the early hours of the morning and beyond, or until I could ask a friend who might know. No more. I turned over in bed, blinded myself by the blue light of my phone and quickly found out the answer on Wikipedia.
Do I really need to know about miniature corn farming and production? I do not. Here is the issue.
Before the advent of immediate access to information, we talked to each other about what we didn’t know. We tried to figure it out. We might have used reason, our own reason, to come to a conclusion about the likelihood of miniature corn farms.
And we don’t have to anymore.
I think there might be something lacking, a space in conversations that is now void, and possibly a cleft in our minds now that we can “know” all things so quickly. I think there might be a vector for the paucity of imagination in it.
So I have decided to be willfully ignorant of some things; the factoids that make less difference when the answer is found than during the time we ponder them.
Other People: Jordan Borstelmann and Crooked Path Forge
Other People is a section where I talk about the interesting things other people do.
I lived in Gainesville, Florida for about five years. I moved there when I was 22, I think. Two people moved with me and they remain my friends to this day. Jordan Borstelmann was one of those people and he owns and operates Crooked Path Forge.
We played in bands together, imbibed various substances together and generally ran around as the youth gone wild. Back then he had silly blue hair, now he has a giant beard and wears a kilt all day. I’m lucky to know him.
I used to make fun of him for reading Conan books. Now I read a lot of fantasy and write fantasy myself and I think Conan is great. So, jokes on me.
About a decade ago, Jordan decided to learn a skill straight out of the pages of a typical fantasy novel: Blacksmithing.
Over the years I’ve watched his work progress. Just last fall he was on the television series, Master of Arms, Season 1, Episode 2. It was strange to watch someone I’ve grown up with on television.
He runs weekly blacksmithing classes for beginners and also makes custom blades, swords, and many other metal items which I can’t enumerate properly. He had a vision and consistently worked at it and now is able to pursue it full time. He’s also a decent and honest person and a good friend.
You can find his work here on his website: www.crookedpathforge.org
If you want to see pictures of his work you can also check him out on Instagram @crookedpathforge
Upcoming Exhibition in Gainesville, Florida
I have two paintings in a new group exhibition taking place at Moisturizer Gallery in Gainesville, Florida. The show is called “Sick Joke” and it’s a show about, “humor and playfulness in art making”, curated by Dessarae Bassil.
Moisturizer Gallery is a fairly new space located at 2708 NE Waldo Road. Opening night is March 9th and it runs from 7pm-midnight. The exhibition will run through April 5th.
I briefly consider giving advice on scheduling, then come to my senses and decide against it
The Crazy Testament is a loose collection of notes I keep in a loose collection of note-keeping areas. Herein, I expand on those ideas which probably should have been forgotten.
I wrote down in my phone some ideas for blog posts, recently. By recently I mean a couple weeks ago. Here is one of them.
The Artist’s Guide to Scheduling in a Fractured World
I guess I wrote that down because it seemed like something I would see on the internet. I almost immediately realized two important things:
- I don’t like most things I read on the internet
- I’m in no way qualified to write whatever that article would be about
But I will talk a little about my failures with regards to scheduling.
I make a monthly list. On that list are the things I want to accomplish. The list is sometimes short, three to five lines. Sometimes it is longer, filled with twenty smaller tasks.
I often put small tasks on the list, so I can feel better about checking off the item. One recent line read: Move Lamp.
That’s all. I just needed to move a lamp. Store it elsewhere in the abode. Not even take it to Goodwill or a dumpster. Just needed to move it. And need is a strong word.
It took me over a month to do this. I actually failed to move the lamp in the month of November. It was early December when I did this, and it took approximately a minute and a half. Draw your own conclusions, and beware as you read on.
My list is almost never completed. I generally do the things on the list I actually want to, and then stand and look at the list, shake my head and go smoke or pace around and ignore the list. I spend a lot of time in my head, just thinking about doing things. Sometimes that’s productive, when I’m specifically concerned about the details of a story or painting.
Anyhoo, the list does mock me and that’s why it’s important. It’s a paper warning (yes, I use paper for the list, so that I can derive satisfaction in crossing the items off with an ink pen) a portent of potential doom, for I know if I can’t manage to do the items on that list, it becomes harder to pretend there isn’t something wrong with my mind.
I will give some advice on making lists to help you schedule your task now.
- The first thing on your list should be something motivational. Since I began making lists in my twenties, I usually use, “Crush my enemies.” As I’ve grown older and less fond of the ways of Conan, now I sometimes just start with a normal item. But not always.
- The second item and the remainders should be distinct tasks that have an endpoint. “Exercise” isn’t a good thing to put on you list. “Go to gym every Monday, Wednesday and Friday” is better. “Go to gym 15 times this month” is even better because you can mark little check marks next to it every time you go.
- Give yourself some easy tasks. That way you get to mark them complete. It makes it feel like you are doing something and that might boost you towards actually doing something more important. Example: Move Lamp. Warning: this doesn’t always work.
- Your list can grow. If I’m having a problem doing anything (frequently), sometimes I take a smaller task and just jot it down at the bottom of the list. That will be the thing I do upon waking the next day.
- You can look back at your lists at the end of the year and get an idea of what you were trying to accomplish, a kind of broad look at your own struggles. Then you may laugh or cry or both.
Anyway, all that advice is mainly bullshit because I’m terribly ineffective for vast swaths of time. Really what happens is I do little for a long time, and then I will suddenly, manically accomplish a lot in a wave of brutal guilt and fear. But that’s not really good advice to give.
Good luck!
Artsy Page
Happy to say, I’ve managed to find a place on Artsy, via representation through Design Art Concepts. Currently, I have two works for sale there and soon there will be more.
Artsy Page for Justin A.W. Blair
Stay tuned. Soon, I will have a new exhibition to tell you about.
The Water Between Us exhibition during Miami Art week
I’m proud to announce two of my paintings (Carriage Ride: Level 2: Ohio River and Carriage Ride: Bonus Level) will be on exhibition during Miami Art week running December 3-10th, and continuing through January 15th, 2019.
The show is entitled, The Water Between Us and takes place at:
d|a|c gallery
Rail Too Building
360 NE 75th street, Unit 123
Miami, Little River Arts District