Art is an amazing concept, if one was to think about it and describe it to someone who didn't already have their own thoughts on the subject. It really couldn't be done. Each person has their own ideals as to what is art and as to what is scribble on paper.

But I digress enough with the thinking.Job applications surging, letterheads is getting closer and I'm still yet to polish off the residency application. But its getting there. SLOWLY.

  Art is an extention of ones being, an illusion if you will. Created from nothing with something to express. Its message only projected on it by an onlooking audience. I don't do art to tell a story, instead i do art to do art. You alone create its story.

  Whats your motivation, your reason for being, or doing what you do?

 

 "For me it is not striving to be the next best thing, or typically inherit notability. I exist and evolve as an artist purely to perceive and to create a perception of my imagination.

  How we perceive something to be very much creates who we are as individuals. Our differing perceptions make various things important or not, where we go and places we avoid, people we like and people we have a distaste for.Without fully realising it, our thoughts and perception have created an individual for others to perceive.

  As the artist I perceive my art differently, and I'm assured that I go about mine in a different method than other artists also. To me, my art is an escape from reality, a release from emotional conformity, and a motion of crazed passion in which each line placed on the paper will mean something at that moment, but nothing once its over.

  For me it's the adventure, sensation and evidence that I am alive while producing, and the finished product is a mere photo of that journey.

  I always found it amusing whilst studing Art that we had to critique what the artists process was in creating a piece. We didnt know these people, all we had to go by was the end works and that was merely an image. Sitting for hours deciphering colours and lines, how the timeline sat this piece in the cultural and political views of the time.

  In the end we could have been looking at a picture of a boat floating in an ocean, but we would have written pages of script saying that it was in fact about the rocky times living abroad with no family whilst being conscripted. It may have been, but in the end how would we know, perhaps this artist just liked boats.

  The audience with their knowledge and experiences will always create a perception of a work that is not in any way entirely devoid of artist intent but it will not be what the artist was thinking at the time.

 But really as an artist I have realised in most cases it is the process that holds all the key elements, its the perceived notion that in the end there will be something more. Something tangible rather than ideas and emotions.

  To me my art is just there, I could tell you what they may mean or where they came from or why i did what i did. But your own perception will guide you to conclusions, some i may not have come to, and that is merely all i can aspire to give my viewer.

I produce art purely cause I perceive it to be."

Avatar, \'Enter the World\'.

Even the tag line gives nothing away, but certainly leaves all the instant rpg and internet junkies drooling at the mouth. I was once one of those with the avatar (but thats another story) The epic experience to be someone else, somewhere else in more likely a whole new persona. One where your probably some heroic warrior saving damsels, which is not at all like your fat office sitting arse that can not stand up to their boss.

Either way, I was prepared to enjoy avatar from all the hype I assumed it would be a decent movie. And for me it was a considerable anticlimax. The most expensive film ever made. Nothing more than some overly spectacular 3d work, rather boring and preachy. I kinda felt like i\'d been ripped off but it was all okay cause it was pretty.

Well no it isnt.

Disguised under the powerful third dimension of the added 3d glasses is a movie that had the sc<x>ript of 12 years ago raped and slapped on the screen for the world to admire.
To which it is doing rather well, now rated as the biggest movie (in sales) in australian cinema. And well on its way to the number one selling movie of all time.
And this to me just avidly shows how blatantly stupid the average movie goer is, and how badly the cinema studios are becoming, with a lack of director and leadership to steer the silver screen, we\'ll all end up watching 3d show reels...NO THANKYOU.

Now I\'d like to point to you that Avatar, after reading some of the sc<x>ript and going on the hunt for the original plots to find out how badly it was raped and my insurmountably desired for information an curiosity exploded. (you can blame this movies popularity)
Just how good it could have been. (those who wish to read more, And i suggest those who have seen the actual movie to do so, cause it actually makes somewhat of a point to tell you some of the points that would have made it better, and to me did actually fill in some blank spots. Use the li<x>nk. But I\'ll actually make it short now;

chud.com/articles/articles/21969/1/PROJECT-880-THE-AVATAR-THAT-ALMOST-WAS/Page1.html

its a decent read) The fact of the matter the original sc<x>ript ti<x>tled \'Project 880\' was somewhat more deep and meaty of a story, it blatantly had somewhat of an epic battle and mind f*ck enclosed in what would be a really pretty picture. But like all studios and directors he decided possibly too hard to turn from writing to the screen. Hard to convey to the stupid mass public. And would be far too much of a MA+ rated movie. Not one for the holiday movie goers. They hacked the sh*t out of it.

These bullet points are the main, stark differences between Project 880 and Avatar:

- Earth and its environmental problems are explored
- We see Josh Sully\'s Avatar being born
- It\'s revealed the Avatar program exists to train Na\'vi to be an indigenous workforce for the Corporation, since it\'s so expensive to send human workers
- There are more humans, including a bioethics officer on the take, a video journalist, a head of the Avatar program and a second military idiot
- There is an Avatar controller who is burnt out because his Avatar died with him in it. He committed Avatar suicide because he had fallen in love with a Na\'vi girl who had been killed by the military
- The Avatars have a Na\'vi guide named N\'Deh, who is sleeping with Grace
- Grace survives the soul transfer
- Josh Sully gains the Na\'vi trust by being a member of the community. He also excels in a major hunt
- Josh Sully shows his leadership not by taming a dragon but by leading a raid on Hell\'s Gate to rescue prisoners
- Josh Sully isn\'t the only Na\'vi to ride a big dragon
- Pandora is a living entity and it sees the humans as a virus; it has been mobilizing the plants and animals to attack all along because it wanted to force the humans out
- There is no unobtainium beneath Hometree. The military just wants to wipe out the local Na\'vi to send a message to all the tribes that they must be obeyed.
- Some of the humans and the Avatar controllers rise up in the final big battle
- Josh Sully tells the Earth that Pandora will give any humans that return a disease that will wipe out humanity

See any differences???
I assure you some parts were probably extracted for good reasoning, but again i think you\'ll find a lot of parts were also extracted for sheer containing of what could have been a great story. Apparently when you are working with that much money its sorry to say but its the characters and plot that get cut before the XF.

Now back to what was and not what should have been. James Cameron has a lot to answer for. To me he\'s as much of a blow hard as Peter Jackson, and it makes sense that both these men were to go to work on this movie. Peter Jackson is obviously li<x>nked to WETA (mass NZ SPFX team across the board) who were the prime criminals for the blatant show stopping distractions from the lack of story that were the 3d graphics.
The angles were nice, and it was an overly good acted picture, with sometimes pre seen scenes from other movies, i mean exactly recreated with different actors present....to which James Cameron is known for in his other movies. Eg. Terminator.
Did anyone else see exact replica scenes from clash of the titans (original, there is a remake coming), gladiator, brave heart, blade runner???? They are there, trust me, go watch these movies then sit there and watch it again ;p
Those two over rated, over publicised, money given individuals,are reason number one, to which we owe this over rated crap film.

Next, I\'m going to make an evil individual out of myself and say that the human characters we\'re weak and didn\'t stand up at all against the overly glorified Pandorans. The were crude caricatures of the politically incorrect human, possibly the worst of capitalism and military today.
Possibly more related to the real world events in the Congo, Africa. Or more so the \'help\' in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wait could i be right...the director is Canadian born, big on moral politics and human rights.
Hmmm, could it be we had a bad movie to preach at us....no that never happens. Suppose thats another reason.

Now something i clicked onto straight away was the profound pushing of RELIGION>
How about some pagan propaganda anyone?
The fact that the human characters were of no religion, depicted as you will as horrible brutal unrelenting money hungry individuals.
BUT I was not wrong in noticing the rather large use of Christian sediments and expletives effectively to build their supposed \'strength\' in the movie against the Pandorans.
This to my amus****t has been confirmed to me by an article from the Cardinal George Pell. Since when did Religious figures start to review movies....0_o
Either way, as i did, he also noted that it was not only the humans who took this role of religion. It was the Pandorans who worshiped the mother goddess, almost Benign and non-interfering.
This literally preached off the screen to its audience. I\'ll use a quote i found whole heartedly fitting.
\"Worship of the powerful forces of nature is half right, a primitive stage on the movement towards acknowledging the one, the single transcendent god, above and beyond nature\".

COME TO THE CHURCH...XD

But It annoys me more so cause there was once a decent movie called \'Battlefield Earth\'(2000), that was pulled apart and destroyed by the media for its so called li<x>nk to Scientology. Unfairly it was never rated as a decent movie, more or less it was likened to propaganda similar to what Hitler put out during the WWII.
Now if i was to make you watch this movie today. Sure you would not be blown away by the then-amazing graphics (side note the spfx makeup was real nice) but you would be noting the rather large similarities at how both movies spoke to its audience. The characters are relatively built on ideals and their are two rather conflicting sides of to which both argue sides and love of a religion. The only difference is that when you stepped away from \'Battlefield Earth\' it left you questioning the movie, the actions of its characters and being mentally stimulated with thoughts.
Which I must say was largely lacking in \'Avatar\', it actually didnt leave you options for thought, it literally told you how to absorb and what should be believed. This I think Ruined it more so for me.

One of my final points would be the fact that the Pandorans actually look like one of my artist friends own characters, that have been around for a lot longer than the concept of this movie. I\'ll li<x>nk her deviantart account. To which if you browse through her gallery. The characters have similar elements, and although not 3d and epically profound sparkly images, you can definitely tell the similarities. So the whole movie i spent the time critiquing these creations under the notion i\'ve seen them before. And cause i know back stories and used to read her web comic, i see blatant pain. *HUGS PETA*

In the end, i cannot do anything about the epic fail of this movie, and I do realise I am being rather harsh on something that I did actually sort of like as it was a change from the horrid child 3d movies. But with its hype, the over lusting love for it, and the majority of people walking around with closed eyes, the pain its caused me after i\'ve seen it, it just makes me cringe.
It provokes me as an example of just what is wrong with the cinema world today, from the top production companies, to the directors to the people who actually pay to see these things.

There is a line I heard once from a director, who actually I could have used as an example but to my own credit I really withheld. But now I cant help it.

\"Its the pretty images over all else, and thats what is wrong with everything in this world\"
-Quentin Tarantino.

THIS HAS BEEN A PUBLIC HEALTH NOTICE,
brought to you by the only way that is, Sideways.

As an artist I’m used to peoples reactions to me, I’m not the same, I hardly want what you want and I doubt I do the things you do. Though occasionally…

But I am still humbled by standing in a room, looking at my work on the wall.
Even though there is a mass of people around they just swarm into nothing but background noise. I am left standing in the darkness people unknowingly that I am the artist of those pieces but somehow even though the lights are but upon the wall I feel like it’s me under the spotlight.

It’s a bizarre sensation, cause it is only I that knows where these pieces come from, it’s I with the secrets and it’s I they look through to look at the work. I guess in a sense even though I do use models and I do now show these works, they are still my perverse little secrets only they are just being filtered out through me to you.

Yes I went over to the Artist Shed, to at least see how they hung my works. Walked around the exhibit till I came to my wall, yes I have a wall. The way they hung the room, its always as If I’m kept separate, they don’t mingle my works. Surprised to see some red dots …especially on my piece “I scream out as your light sets me free”.

The one annoying thing, apparently my name is now Melinda Olice?? Go figure, I really don’t know how hard it is to have my name spelt right considering its on all the forms, its on my payment and its on my business card. Gawd, that just annoyed me to no end. My name Olive, that’s it, think of a dirty martini if you will but god d*** it get my name right.

The exhibit was rather smaller this year, I’m assuming it was thrown together rushed. And some pieces looked straight out of a life drawing class and chucked in a fr<x>ame, that made me feel sad. There is so much more you can extract from the human, from its form. From the person in front of you. It takes a while but its there.
There was a certain kind of presence to the whole exhibit last year, which was lost at this one…

Its been too long since I actually had that stupid grin cross my face but It came back when I had someone talk to me about my work, this person picked up on something not many do, or don’t feel like stating that they do. Maybe one day I’ll let you in on the secret but for now all I want to do is draw.
My goal is to be bigger and better than Derek Hess. His style is uncannily familiar to my own, and Leonardo de Vinci’s in the sense it’s anatomically correct sketches…basically, you don’t remove lines and it all builds the end image.

Even though Vinci came first (and many others), Derek Hess is seen as the birth of the style, simply cause he’s bigger and better and now…I want that tag. So yeah that’s it, and in the words of Whiskey Circus - “Life aint always fair, oh but honey I aint going no where”.
Why am I online if I want to draw? Because dear reader I am working on my website, which I must say gets me really annoyed. Html is a pain even with typo3. But besides the filler txt, and the slow uploading its coming up nicely. And the point of this off topic rant is I will no longer type absurdly long emails to you all. They will become posts on my Obiter dictor page instead. There will still be some rants and pokes for you to come out somewhere but the longer mental observations, they will become posts.

So lets recap, my art contains secrets, I am Melinda Olive a dirty martini, Derek Hess has limited time, and I wont be going anywhere in a while.

Speaking of horror, A NIGHT OF HORROR, international film fest in Sydney starting Wednesday, running for a week....(Dendy Newtown, Im very much considering it). Though here is to hoping it gets brought down to the Canberra Dendy also.


Other events, the awesome Whiskey Circus & Torch Le Monde playing at the The Excelsior. Friday 3rd, starting at 8pm. Two great sounding Rock n Roll Bands, drink specials ($5 slabs) and more fun to be had....what more do you people want....blood....hey you never know you may just get it....Stop complaining I know its in Sydney too, Canberra just doesn\'t have the draw card apparently. If your curious as to what they sound like, myspace is there home. But think Nickelback/Sebastian Bach/cold chisel/stp, and your on the right track.

Whats your motivation, your reason for being, or doing what you do?

For me it is not striving to be the next best thing, or typically inherit notability. I exist and evolve as an artist purely to perceive and to create a perception of my imagination.

How we perceive something to be very much creates who we are as individuals. Our differing perceptions make various things im<x>portant or not, where we go and places we avoid, people we like and people we have a distaste for.Without fully realising it, our thoughts and perception have created an individual for others to perceive.

As the artist I perceive my art differently, and I\'m assured that I go about mine in a different method than other artists also. To me, my art is an escape from reality, a release from emotional conformity, and a motion of crazed passion in which each line placed on the paper will mean something at that moment, but nothing once its over.
For me it\'s the adventure, sensation and evidence that I am alive while producing, and the finished product is a mere photo of that journey.

I always found it amusing whilst studing Art that we had to critique what the artists process was in creating a piece. We didnt know these people, all we had to go by was the end works and that was merely an image. Sitting for hours deciphering colours and lines, how the timeline sat this piece in the cultural and political views of the time. In the end we could have been looking at a picture of a boat floating in an ocean, but we would have written pages of sc<x>ript saying that it was in fact about the rocky times living abroad with no family whilst being consc<x>ripted.
It may have been, but in the end how would we know, perhaps this artist just liked boats.

The audience with their knowledge and experiences will always create a perception of a work that is not in any way entirely devoid of artist intent but it will not be what the artist was thinking at the time.
But really as an artist I have realised in most cases it is the process that holds all the key elements, its the percieved notion that in the end there will be something more. Something tangible rather than ideas and emotions.
To me my art is just there, I could tell you what they may mean or where they came from or why i did what i did. But your own perception will guide you to conclusions, some i may not have come to, and that is merely all i can aspire to give my viewer.

In the few weeks prior the naked children escapade in the art world, all started by the evils against Bill Henson, I had undergone people requesting my opinion on such things.
Before now i didnt really have one, well actually i tried not to put alot of thought into it purely cause of the hysteria normally called on when art gets uplifted into the media and the popular moral circles. But after some thought here is what I think.

I dont like Polixeni Papapetrou\'s art, I do not think that she was correct in placing that old art on the cover of a magazine 5 years later, I believe it was a stunt that backfired and made everyone in the art world look more stupid than before.
So lets break it down shall we, why don\'t I like it.

Art is a form of ex<x>pression. The artist, whom creates a who, what, how and why from their own world (idealogy, age, and class). In turn creates an artwork from these virtual ob<x>ject ideas, to the physical ob<x>ject that he/she presents.
Thus creating an aesthetic ob<x>ject which presents the appearance through visual qualitys and elements.
It\'s then given to the audience, those that are the body of critical mediators. Where they alone decide on the artists original who, what, how, why.
But this all starts with an intention (which can be known or not), an aim, a goal, a purpose or in the case of my thoughts, a perversion.
What a piece of art is physically, is nothing compared to what it expresses.

In all it forms art is surrounded by controversy, simply through peoples differing thoughts.
Audiences with differing moral attitudes and experiences determine if they take offence to someone elses pleasure.
The controversy seems to stay, only the ob<x>ject changes. It could be sexual, religious, race, gender or age to name a mere few.
Such as the SENSATIONS Exhibit in 1997, it was held in London, Berlin, New York but with the controversy surrounding it Australia refused to host it. Much to my sadness.
The sad fact is that the media likes to protray a sense of moral repulsion to art, with the BBC proclaimed that the art was no more that \'gory images of dismembered limbs and explicit p***ography\'. Then they miss the intention of the work intirely.
And much to the hilarity of it all the protestors actually handed out vomit bags to those that entered the building and threw manure in protest.
Artists included, Damien Hirst (known for suspending animals in formaldehyde), Tracey Emin (with her \'everyone i ever slept with\' tent), Marcus Harvey(\'Myra\', A image of the infamous child murderer Myra Hindley created using copies of childrens handprints), Marc Quinn(\'Self\', a sculpture made of 8pints of the artists blood)
The question now is would you find offence or would you be inquisitive to it?

\'Forever a child, for once you are no longer one, you are already dead\' - Oscar Wilde

Children are a protected speices of man, of that there is no doubt. Thus the use of children wither it be physical, emotional, work or art related it brings with it high moral prejudice. Laws protect them and insist that they are cared for, nurtured and protected from the predators that exist. Age is a big issue here, a child dependednt is a child under 18, though there are other factors that it drops to 16, and in a court of law it is said a child would know right from wrong by the age of 14. Individuals age differently and others not at all.
The use of them in art has forever tilted the views, though they are a popular subject matter since the renassance period. Children n*** in art is an old piece of imagery, often they are found posing with parents (also n***, which raises other issues also if your going to go there), animals or in a nature setting.

Having children in art is fine, till someone sexualises the image.
Sexualising children has been an arguement of the ages, many have argued Plato\'s view, that children are naturally sexualised and that its not a bad thing.
But he was speaking of the children experiencing and acting sexualised. Rather than adults placing it apon them. Frued was another whom believed in children discovering or becoming sexualised at an early age. Often they just didnt realise what it was fully yet but they were there still. Often described through his thoughts of Sublimination. Growing through experiences and learning what ones often covert.
Another idea came from a Book called \'Brave New World\', Adlous Huxley (1932) ( a must read if you havent) that children left to their own devices like other animals will experiment before they fully understand where all the parts go and how it all works.
As a side note, thought, Frued also believed in people attaching an ob<x>ject to sexualisation, a rather artistic idea if you think about it, that is abound in many artists work. Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, Chris O\'Doherty, and the forever vague Hieronymus Bosch. Everday ob<x>jects can be harmless and insignificant but take that ob<x>ject out of context, it creates new meaning, it can become powerful.
\"The change of function is whats frightening, and thats what art is\" - Hirst.
Which brings us back to children, are they

Bill henson is amoungst the artists I respond to. His works are cinematic and edgy, powerfully painful and sensual. They confront the senses, invoke a sense of being and moral lines. At 53 he still has a finger on the moral centers pulse. Which explains the contraversy that exploded at his new 08 exhibit,

From this came an uproar from the art community, Henson has had contraversy follow him round thus his lack of voice on the issue, he lets his art say all he has to. HIs fans and the bizar art community actually say more than they need to often than not.

Permission was issued by the parents, the images of the underaged children i saw were not visualiesed to be sexual, rather more the decay of the human being, a young life to be chosen a path.

Then as always then comes the next \'big thing\' to use the media frenzy for their benifit, earning nothing but more devides.
This woman with the child, 5 years on displays her piece of work, its not a new piece, its not worthy of saying its like a tribute, a thumbs up to hensons work, a belief that it is in anyway a parrael piece. I try to ignore those the best i can, which is probably why i didnt have a ready voiced oppinion.

Her pieces were sexualised. They were photos, young child not acting childlike, but dressed in old jewlery aging her, then there was the black and white twisted pose. More sexual, b&w then intensifies the contours of form and takes the mind almost to a pin up thought. Thus taking the context in my mind completely away from the Henson thought and into a new space. It deserves the flak it caught in many ways but not the context.

Here You\'ll find Sworlord\'s observations, that hold no reasoning to reality. These are not binding to imaginings and your own perceptions. And can be more than likened to Babble.
In any event your own can also be placed here.