X is the Artist's request for exception from The Liar's Paradox

The artist’s understanding of inertia and a body at rest or in motion within the natural world; extends into a command of storytelling within the representational world.

The story connection completes the dimensional shift between the art and its impression on the viewer. This shift helps the viewer understand the future at large, and the more impactful without being obvious in function, the more the artist’s handling of materials is Art.

For any production or processed object, its impact is owned by the composition.

Representation favors rectangular compositions in two ways: 1.) the focus within the representation is framed by rectangular architecture; and 2.) the art object will be displayed in a rectangular space.

Painting and film are especially owned by rectangles, and the favored proportions are 1x1, 2x4, 2x3, 3x4, 5x7 and 9:16.

Gravity and inertia and timing are ruled by irrational numbers, not rectangles. Shapes made by irrational numbers are parabola, Golden Spiral, circle, ellipse. This means that the shapes of storytelling [shapes of the natural world and physical geometry] come off weird in a rectangular, constructed world – instead of the inverse, which is that the rectangular world is weird, as a construction inside of the natural world.

The artist exploits that conflation of “what is weird” through The Liar’s Paradox.

The artists do not mind being called liars – when they’re lying; but not when they’re telling the truth.

Because of The Liar’s Paradox, the artists coax the viewers into stories told by pretending that something is not what it is, resulting in understanding the art object as materials handled by the artist to tell a story. We call this at its highest levels – at full expense of function - “Romantic.”

 But what if the artist is telling the truth? What does it look like? More than the sum of the parts?

X will mark the spot.

Truth can be told by navigating the path between the shapes of the natural world and the shapes of the constructed world, seeded by the square. While by itself the square asks for a centered composition; connecting the corners of 2x4 creates the first Golden shape: Golden Triangle.

Connecting both sets of corners creates the X, finds the center, creates a radius to use to find the Golden Section of those lines, finding the dimensions of Golden Rectangles, and, progressively, The Golden Spiral. Composing with these shapes enables the artist to tell truth within lies inside of only being an object pretending to be what it isn’t, inside of a larger lie inside of the consequently shrouded truth.

When you see X in the middle of a composition – the shape, an implied line, literal X, an exchange of positions, or any discordance – the artist is invoking exception to The Liar’s Paradox to tell a truth to the viewer – some story from the natural world, that if it could only be said out loud, would change everything.

Technology, news, history: how do we know, how do we find it? Art.

I have fallen into a rabbit hole connecting various forms of art employing an expanse of storytelling tropes and narratologies. Once you see them, they are hard to ignore. It appears as if their contemporary purposes are "poor man's patents," gossip, and posterity. If I had to guess why narratologies fill the airwaves and culture more than ever, I would propose that since 1945, radio broadcast of a song or story at a certain frequency strength has had a tiny creative gateway with a checklist for symbols or mentions of astronomy, dealing, and irrational numbers. Pi. Space. Funding. Etc. I'd even propose meeting the checklist is what got It's A Wonderful Life finally produced after so many re-writes.

In the US, the CIA has been a big pusher of the matters that make American Art uniquely "American." The first generation of modern artists were working not just "minimally," but inspired by irrational numbers. While many of the artists might have held personal beliefs that aligned with Communism, the work they made was so visually opposite to Social Realism, they inadvertently supported free thought only made possible by Capitalist "market conditions," which was really the CIA all along. 

Lateral movement between the agency and film for TV has a nexus at CBS, where the network was used as an arm of the agency by backing creative content that used tropes, narratologies and symbolism per some checklist for content. These follow forms in homage to irrational numbers and include allusions to chains of intelligence and economic issues since the Baroque period. Understanding how the symbolism moves and works with the plot and direction is underscored by understanding how shapes (flat-compositional shapes, story forms, sets and lighting shapes, and shaped history) move through dimensions. Film, as a fourth dimension, can show us the first, second, and third dimension; then the fourth over time/years.

Two tools have helped me find out very quickly if a production has a secret message: an animation of Jupiter's three, interior moons; and a toy called the Spirograph Animator. The first tool is great for analyzing clips, layering it against the audio to confirm Iambic Pentameter. It was with this that I found out Start Trek TNG dialogue is perfect poetry and Iambic Pentameter - they were making it easier to do with dialogue in Klingon! The second one is thrilling and better as both a visual and audio tracker because it has more texture, but it requires dark lighting and cannot be filmed without depreciation and loss of the visual and audio illusions.

Why should this be a fascination? Why should I want to know what, how and why content is being delivered to me? Who controls the present now controls the future; and who controls the future controls the past; so who controls the present now? I told you: technology, news, history. How do we know, how do we find it? I told you: Art.

Medical Illustration of Cataract Surgery Discovered in Sistine Chapel Figure

Of the prophets depicted in the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo, the arrangement of Ezekiel’s legs and the drapery wrapped around his body appear to describe a medical illustration of a medieval cataract surgery called “couching.” San Diego Artist Bethany Britz identified the revelation on Friday, July 26, 2024. “I was concentrating on the prophets from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel for other reasons, when it became obvious to me that the drapery wrapped tightly around Ezekiel’s left shoulder could be interpreted as illustrating a lens getting removed from an eye.” Since 1990, other discoveries of anatomical or medical illustrations have been found within the Sistine Chapel figures, showing precedent within Michalangelo’s work.

What makes the illustration so especially appropriate to Ezekiel were his visions as a prophet. Seeing beyond this world already provokes the concepts of “vision,” but he moreover envisioned a whole machine like an armillary sphere, of four or six wheels working together to move smoothly, without turning; and the machine was covered in eyes.

“Cataract” comes from a Greek word for “waterfall,” which was coined for the condition because it was believed to be caused by excess “humor” or extra water in the eye, and it was believed that releasing the water would restore sight. Michelanelo’s fresco figure for Ezekiel has two knees, one draped by cloth that flows like a waterfall to the floor, and the other that is undraped. “I think the knees represent two eyes, the right one being the one with the cataract condition. The flowing drapery represents this ‘waterfall’ idea, with the hand on that side posed supine; the hand near the undraped knee holds a scroll, as if capable of reading,” said Britz. “Then the left shoulder, wrapped tightly with the drapery: this is the detail of the cataract procedure. The twisted fabric is the optic nerve, the shape of the cloth wrapped around his body makes an ‘eye’ shape, with a flap of fabric flowing over the eye. A tight little cap on his head in the same color as the ‘eye’ could represent the lens of the eye getting poked out or pushed back into the eye to cure the cataract condition.

“Also,” Britz continued, “as drawing, painting and art supplies became more sophisticated, so did representation – including medical illustration. An oblique view of the eye is a break from the entirely unhelpful, practically symbolic medical illustrations of eyes from the Medieval period; the oblique perspective is far more informative and implies that Michelangelo actually witnessed or studied a dissection of an eye. As a medical illustration, there is enough there to understand the lens as being a structure inside of the eye and that it can be removed. The draped fabric recalling a waterfall is poetic support for the concept; and of course, Ezekiel as the eye guy might cinch the interpretation for a lot of people.”

Bethany Britz is an artist living and working in California since 1998, with her images and ideas available at www.bethanybritz.com.  

The Spirograph Dance Party

Spirograph Dance Party Where Nobody Gets Up

Everyone who knows the Spirograph drawing toy, with its gears and pens and resulting rosetted drawings; also knows it’s limitations. After the drawing is made, so what?

In 2020, Spirograph updated its application of concept and expanded into several, more completely satisfying approaches to the same idea. In particular, the Spirograph animator toy delivers the most progressive impact: the rotating table and strobing lights work with the angles of the layered drawings to achieve fantastic optical illusions. Once involved into the drawings’ capture, the animation only becomes more personal – and at this point, a song can be layered into the experience to for an audio illusion – and then into a seeming interaction between the table’s “group mind” and the drawing itself. What is at work, exactly? The Fibonacci.

Battery powers only the lights. The drawing gears themselves show the obvious, tell-tale, spiral shape of the Fibonacci sequence; and the table spinning activates the strobe lights kinetically: every 137.5 turns, the strobing shifts into a different pattern. Then, as the table rotation decays, the animation of the drawing shows an evolution of its facets performing as a reaching, dancing, multidimensional body-shape. Because living people make the drawings, a margin of error is inserted as a part of the effect – if even a part of one layer can be set “a little messed up,” the satisfaction levels up.

When a team creates the layered drawing – each person with a different gear and color – watching the results can be thrilling, proving relativity on an intimate scale. When a poem or music with lyrics is introduced into the experience, audio illusion within the song can be visually exposed by the dancing drawing. The song choice of the team can be specific or random, genre and the meaning are irrelevant because the illusion is owned by the spirit of cosmic objectivity at human scale. Under the right circumstances, the five-minute experience might totally transform the trajectory of the day by driving home twin points: 1.) we all own the moment; and 2.) perceived imperfection is actually a path to discovery.

The Spirograph Dance Party Where Nobody Gets Up is an all-ages activity with an arrangement of tables and four chairs at each, and a station for the Spirograph Avatar is set in an area visible to everyone in the room. The station has a tall table and the “theater,’ within which is set an animator, whose performance in the box is captured and shared as a larger, projected version. Importantly, the lighting in the room must be dimmed as low as possible, small lamps at each table can shine focused light when necessary.

The event has three phases: first, the mechanics of the exercise are mastered and each table submits a drawing to share with the group on the projector, escalating the learning curve. Second, the tables try out drawing several different kinds of animations added to the gear-drawings. Third, each table chooses music for their work, then shares it in a round-robin MC’d by the Avatar Host. The Avatar supplies a variety of rhythms, poetry and music that specifically amplify and discover more energy within the drawings. This progression shows how to find depth, enforces learning vicariously with a soft touch, and proves that layering contributions makes some kind of “body” unique to each group. 

The less invested, drop-in experience can also be made “pop-up style,” with only one animator and the assistance of the Avatar. For this, the rolling podium is set up as an attractor and the Avatar guides the participant(s) through creating the drawing, then moves into a dimmed area for more precision to the experience. The projector is unnecessary; the rolling podium makes moving areas easy.

Layout of Event

A dimly lit room is set up with four chairs at each of four tables; a podium and tall table are set up at the front of the room for the Avatar. A curtain suspended from the ceiling might be necessary to eclipse light from the entrances. A disco ball is a nice touch. On each table is set a small lamp and a Spirograph Animator, which includes drawing gears, pens and Post-it notes to use in the Animator. A pre-printed scoresheet keeps track of which drawings achieved what, and a small tray keeps completed drawings after they have been tested.

The first phase of the event has the Avatar move among the teams in direct contact to show how the devices are put together and used for the activity. Then the “tables” and “crowns” of the devices are taken off to be used to create the drawings, and the groups are asked to draw as a team, with everyone taking a turn at layering a gear-drawn design in a different color. The animators are put back together and the designs are tested: the first level of illusion is introduced. The Avatar proposes that a “perfect” spirograph design is not the point and is only the cradle for the team’s unique spirit, then explains how to use the scoresheet to keep track of what is discovered. Then, each table chooses a drawing to share and the Avatar works the theater/projector to show a larger projection of the selections to the room. Ideas are shared and the Avatar is an expert in accolades towards everyone’s work.

The second phase introduces dots and shapes, showing how they punch and dance out of the designs. As the teams proceed with the exercise, the Avatar dj’s songs that work well with the illusion, occasionally singing along with the songs. This is the second phase, following the format of the first for each person to layer a contribution. The teams volunteer to share findings and successes and the Avatar projects them. For this, the designs dance to the Avatar’s music choices.

Beginning the third phase, the Avatar talks about the moons of Jupiter, decaying time, and tributing, iambic pentameter layered into discordant 4/4 musical meter, pointing out a list of suggested songs or film-clip dialogue on the scoresheets that demonstrate the audio illusion. The teams choose songs to try with drawings and then submit their drawings with music requests, which the Avatar plays in tandem to the projection. At this point, the dance party has fully unfolded: the Avatar asks the teams to consider and express what matters in the moment and what does not matter at all.

Trifold pamphlets for each participant commemorate the night, wherein drawings from the exercise are stored for posterity. Taking these home keeps the memory organized, contextualizes the drawing, and enables the participant to talk intelligently about what happened.

Copyrights and The Family Pact

Try and Catch the Detroit Judith is a video composition created in 2023. The content is an original, personal story that layers appropriated film clips, images and sounds; and references real history as a thesis supposition is built and presented. The thesis demands recognition of a pervasive subculture of storytelling that intersects with astrophysical narratology. Because the layers work together like gears to dig into deep, shrouded meaning within the copyrighted materials, eg the clip from Try and Catch Me, starring Peter Falk and screen legend Ruth Gordon, I do not consider the inclusion of these materials to be infringement or depreciation to the originals; but a keyhole through which a viewer can also learn the symbolic vocabulary so that they may also understand the world around them, as told by the sub-story. I propose that if someone objects to the layering of the copyrighted materials, it is because they believe they (the objector or the materials) do not want to expose the code, for whatever reason.

One very good reason to want the code to stay shrouded is the Family Pact instituted by Anna Maria Luisa de Medici in 1737. Through this, the last member of the Medici family formally decreed that their immense artistic and historical legacy had to remain forever in Florence. Make no mistake: The Detroit Judith is perhaps the most beautiful portrait of Mary Magdelena Medici ever painted - but to admit that might be to also admit that it belongs in Florence. But: does it? Does the narratology that structures the painting, that presents the proof that caused suppression of astronomy and physical geometry (except for war tools) belong back in the hands of those who wanted to hide it? To this, we might say “symbolism is a kind of testimony, but the duplicity belies real accusations or proof.”

Pivotal: whether time goes forwards or backwards, it all depends on whose ox is being slaughtered.

Clear Contact Paper Can Change You

One, precious, indispensable tool has been tight in my grip through all of those places and days and paintings: clear contact paper - and I know I always will have some, as long as I can afford it.

Why is this? What luxury do I see in this planning device?

Clear Contact Paper as a planning tool can make time go back and forth. It expedites - microwaves - the planning process in such a direct - and yet affordably cautious way, that it can coach what otherwise appears intuitive towards sophistication and a depth carrying a larger message.

My message as an artist to other artists is about this tool, the way it is a time machine. Better than a best friend, it is me, myself from the future and my objectivity about the present situation, whatever it is.

The overarching message of my work is attached to how, when we work through some moments of focus, the more objectively we can examine future situations, the better we can prepare. Not only “Be Careful,” but to quote Rage Against the Machine’s Testify:

“Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now controls the past
Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now?”

And I am saying I see a way of doing this with clear contact paper as a compositional planning tool for painters.

The Shape I Am In

I believe that while Art in the United States presents itself through means of heritage and/as gestalt, the west coast prioritizes super-superficial gestalt over inherited “artifactual fictions,” to the point of illiteracy of visual story telling. I see this as exploitable.

I want to talk about shapes, allusions, illusions, how to use and recognize the active shaping of heritage in popular programming. Understanding how to participate in the conversation about the past teaches how to leverage the future.

The Shape I Am In is a thesis presentation of how shapes convert ideas from one dimension into another.

Paintings in a signature style flocked all walls and set the viewer into seven separate dimensions, essentially portals into the inside of my mind.

Lighting, arrangements and textures in the atmosphere broadcast a safe space.

Activities were present to help thaw the viewer into an interaction with the thesis, asking for them to sit and stay. Talk. Tell.

Narratology prevents illiteracy and apathy

The best way to bank a culture’s accomplishments and records is in “narratology,” highly symbolic stories told between mother/parent and child. While this storytelling chain is nearly impossible to dissolve, it is possible for the depth of meaning to detach. The ultimate beauty of the method is that, if the story can stay mostly intact, the armature for a future reassembly remains.

 In 2023, narratology has never had so much exercise through popular programming, publishing and fashion. Recognizing the layers of meaning makes conspicuous new ideas – new science, or new appreciations that might as well be “poor man’s patents”- tumble forwards into a playful invitation to educate oneself on contemporary science at one’s own pace.

Training to recognize and understand hidden heritage passes the torch of our accomplishments into the future, adds depth and meaning to enjoying popular programming; and is, in short, power against ignorance and apathy.

summoning talent requires mastery of processing

There is no function instrinsic to Art that uniformly spans across cultures. Conversely, everywhere, there is elasticity allowed to all creations towards the emulence of beauty, the spectrum’s far end being at the full expense of function.

To create anything is to externalize conversations about our place in infinity. When an idea needs to be examined, art plays the role that brings the idea from the mind into this world, making it into a thing, maleable and improveable. If, through the intrinsic beauty of the thing, expectations are surpassed into an expanded understanding of our lives, then the thing is elevated to being Art, excused from other function. As soon as an attempt is made  to imitate the mode of the new form, the mode itself falls below the bar of being artful, as the functionality of imitation belies the ability to surpass expectation.

The Artist should be able to make anyone believe that anything is not what it is by opening up this extra dimension that “hinges” between a moment in our minds and a platform used to represent the idea. Representation provides the dimension to convert a personal inspiration into a shared belief.

Western Art has creative devices that permeate through discipline and form, to support our ongoing culture with remembrance of past discoveries. The devices are artifacts, they are allusion to fortify illusion, and they are gifts from our ancestors. Sacred shapes and proportions, anatomical understanding, material technology, The Ellipse, perspective, density, and symbols – they all have importance in American Art, but I propose that west of the Mississippi, nobody cares.

In the US, cultural immersion and the reciprocated understanding of encrypted allusion dilutes as the country might be studied from East to West, because of three main factors: the diaspora of western development based on the freedom to define one’s destiny; the development of photography and film as an outreach artform and advocate for found majesty; and the development of design principals first identified by Psychologist Max Wertheimer. This trifecta of simultaneous forces is so much easier, more intuitive and so much more aligned with the American Western spirit that it has practically replaced approaching Art with serious, contemplative intentions; with the evermore popular: “I don’t know anything about Art, but I know what I like.”

Design asks for the viewer’s eyes and mind to fill in gaps, to bring false memories to the image in order to make sense of its dynamics. In contrast, eons of our artistic heritage has examined representation itself and its position to another dimension where the ideals of ideas live in hologram. A lack experience with the dimensional “hinge” causes easy, unchallenged relativity to categorically slip by as a mystic truth; and elevates the individual’s authority on Art, having been able to so easily fill in the blanks brought by design. If it’s so easy, “I can do that!” 

What’s the harm? If the real role of Art is to impress upon the viewer “love in a look,” whom does it hurt?

The harm is done to the understanding of process as the artist’s converter of emotions and ideas into shapes and forms. Processing is a time machine bought with inheritance and whetted with skill into a unique and shiny, unstoppable tool. It finds greater depth, builds a secondary platform to find elasticity in the materials and therein facilitates talent. Pivotally: when summoning talent requires mastery of processing, disguising the inclusion of processing disguises the accomplishments of talent.  

Contests of Power

In a black and white episode of Perry Mason that I saw as a rerun in 2000, some fashion illustrations were featured as an important clue in a case. The designs were a kind of illustration in two colors plus a black definition line, where there was a “background color” that included everything that was not the garment, the garment was contrasted in white, and then the entire design was given form and detailed with black line. The effect of only contrasting the dress against everything else stunned me with how effortlessly it gave importance to the garment and withdrew importance from the figure, and that it communicated from this mode with no rendering and minimal suspension of disbelief. It moved into a style that was sleek, low effort/high concept and could occasionally show a controlled, reserved facility of talent.

Artistic Question

“Can simplifying a description cause a more intense narrative? Can limiting colors in an image somehow adjust perceptions of the subject’s behavior? What can a figurative subject do, under these circumstances, while still being less noticeable than their dress?” I saw these as rich questions and the three-color system to be the best tool to contrast the ideas of conformity of behavior and conformity of form against one another.

Plastikote Paint

There is a direct correlation between the availability of the Plastikote paint, my studio production and the evolution of my concepts.

When I started painting on wood, it was to embrace a surface that could withstand abuse and yet not be so precious that I might need help to install or transport it. The preparations to seal the surfaces would alternate between a transparent whitewash undercoat and pastel finish; and a glossy, more direct saturation of color sealed up with a coat of high gloss. On top of the prepared surface, I used a favorite paint by Plastikote, now no longer available, I’m sure because of some horrible percentage of lead or ingestible plastic within the pigments. My materials trifecta required few visits to art supply stores – I could get everything at Home Depot and Longs – and what I needed from Longs I could get 24 hours. For a single artist with a day job who is also a woman with limited storage; the nature of an all night paint supply transformed my schedule. The simple possibility of buying the perfect paint 24 hours a day bore an edict that materials purchases were to be done on “non-studio time” and that (irrationally, I now realize) if the paint supply was open all night long, there was never a reason good enough to reschedule or interrupt studio time. It was more likely for me to buy paint while out on a date than during studio time.

During this wonderful time in my life, from 1999 to 2007, while it may have been an almost ten year avoidance of art supply stores, it also was when I really dug my heels into a certain way of thinking about making artwork. I became very regimented about my schedule: wake up early and paint for two hours, then prepare for day job; day job; go to 24 hour Longs/go out; come home and prepare to paint the next morning. Because of the structure of my schedule, I imposed more structure into my compositions and color schemes. For example, early paintings on wood without Plastikote attempted to discuss contrast of behavior to expectations of form in three color compositions, with some variances in finish (that never could photograph anyway). The introduction of Plastikote into my work expanded my palette to include four then five colors at a time – this in turn enabled me to express implications of motivation through much more complete compositions.