Just prior to the pandemic, I discovered the entire run of "The Love Boat" and have been watching episodes in order ever since. Weird, I know- but it's brought about such fun and engaging conversations with fellow pop-culture lovers that I realized my sense of shame has evaporated! Great opportunity to see the changes on cultural mores as well! Plus all of the older stars you remember from childhood- what a treat.
I’ve got only snippets of making time at the moment (parent of three little kids, it’s the season for interruptions and little sleep), so what I’ve been doing over the last two years is just find an artist who interests me, and put whatever grabs me about them in my journal - and then make stuff in there that riffs on their stuff.
And I just plug away at that artist til someone they mention pulls me to a new artist. It’s definitely a “who” and a “zigzag” approach, mixed with a “go ahead and make bad art” ethos. I didn’t mean to make it a deep dive, more of an anything to keep making strategy, but it has ended up being a wide exploration of women artists, especially abstract artists.
A favorite part has been finding kid books on artists and doing art with my kids inspired by whoever I’m learning about. Two favorites of theirs have been JoAnne Mitchell and Yayoi Kusama. Oh and Louise Bourgeois. There is a lovely kids book about her called Cloth Lullaby.
Thank you for this amazing burst of inspiration and links to click through. This is one of those archetypical Austin Kleon posts to me with tons to explore and zig and zag through :-)
First on Jack Kirby, I visited a massive Kirby exposition in 2019 while on holiday in France. You can checkout a lot of the sketches and photos in my blogpost: https://diggingthedigital.com/jack-kirby-tentoonstelling-de-fotos/ (In Dutch, so be prepared to translate the text :-))
I've been blogging since 2000 and over the years I found a growing interest in the history of the web, personal computing and videogames as an adjacent. From reading up on 365 RFC's by Darius Kazemi (https://write.as/365-rfcs/) to the unofficial biography of Stewart Brand in the book "From Counterculture to Cyberculture". That's how I learned about people like Lee Felsenstein and his role in personal computing. I love to watch stuff like the Mother of All Demos,
I keep old (Dutch) magazines from the early 90s about exploring the web, sort of like our Dutch version of Wired. Books like The Ultimate History of Videogames and playing old games on MAME can really brighten my weekend.
The fun part about studying history is there's always new information added every day! :-)
I’m only now getting to reading the the “pandemic project.” A week ago it occurred to me that I would like to really clean the studio and jettison stuff that I simply did not want to do anymore. Does going through 30+ years of notes and idea sketches, plus all the papers my mother had saved since I was 10 years old count as a deep dive into myself? I think so, albeit a bit indulgent, however I seemed to be meeting aspects of myself forgotten or never even noticed. Thanks for your wonderful ideas !
All these comments = so great. I'm going to start w the artist Robert Gober. who mesmerized me on a trip to MOMA as a child. must find his cabinet filled with toilet paper rolls, so far no luck other than in my memory. Then would like to go deep into Christopher Wool. if anyone has tips, please share
I thought I was a bit weird. Spent a couple years obsessed with lichens - picking up bits on branches, drawing, reading about, even looking into a mathematical proof that lichens are fractal. Fractals! Another enticing obsession. Stretches the imagination, range of interests, and challenges the way I look at the world. Added note, I have limited vision, so much of this is in my mind, though my new smart phone camera gives me access to sights my eyes alone can’t.
That sounds awesome. I’ve been trying to get ahold of a book called PATTERNS IN NATURE on which Jane Alison based her book on writing, MEANDER, SPIRAL, Explode
My kids are obsessed with Home Alone and it was this year that I discovered that there's a whole franchise (6 total movies!) and so we dove in head first. Some are terrible, but I allowed myself to love them because of how much my 5- and 8- year old love them. We've been watching each one repeatedly, and I consider their interaction with the movie the thing I love to observe most. I ask myself what are the elements that draw in the kids? Which draw in me? How did they make 6 iterations (at least one is legendary and at least two are pretty terrible) that still get my kids and I to keep coming back? The mix of contemporary parenting dilemmas, references to cool kid-technology, and slapstick violence against bad guys delights every time. Of course, the underestimated kid who saves the day is the big win.
As always, on Tuesdays, I love the extra "shot"of inspiration, the thought provoking text and comments! Although not an exact example of listenthrough, but more a rough beginning of going down the rabbit hole, was the Miles Davis, Birth of Cool documentary I saw this week. That man went through so many different creative phases, reinventing himself all the time! I thought I knew quite a lot of his music but after the documentary I realized it was only the tip of the iceberg. I will definitely dive into his music further. I also love his quote in the beginning of that documentary: "If anybody wants to keep creating, they have to be about change". David Bowie was the same, also a good one to do a listen through on.
A more personal project I'm now diving into and which seems more the beginning of a "learn and do in public" is the idea to create one interactive artwork with as much people as possible, everyone contributing their own idividual part. I would be interested to know what happens if the artwork would not be linked to the name of one artist in particular. I'm looking into terms like identity, individual, mass, anonymous and what artists have said about it. Diving into projects like Ai Wei Wei's "sunflower seeds" (collaboration of Ai Wei Wei with craftman, but the artwork was only bearing his name), JR's faces projects (collective art, but again linked to one artist), Michael Toombs, known for his interactive community murals in Kansas. But also diving into the world of NFT's, do they relate in any way to my idea of collective -yet individual- art? It's a nice rabbit hole to be in and the next step will be to share the next steps on how to pull off such a project. Maybe even within this community;) A quote of Miro (book / interview: I work like a gardener) I like in this respect: "Because a profoundly individual gesture is anonymous"
You can’t go wrong with Miles Davis. Holy moly what a catalog. My recent favorite these days is ROUND ABOUT MIDNIGHT but the (rightful) classic, of course, is KIND OF BLUE. It would also be remarkable to listen through players in his various bands. (See: Coltrane, Bill Evans, etc)
Another great dive into Miles' catalog: in order to quickly fulfill contractual obligations, they recorded FOUR albums in two days' time.
Relaxin'/Steamin'/Workin'/Cookin' With The Miles Davis Quintet.
Miles, Coltrane, Philly Joe Jones, Red Garland, Paul Chambers.
A great track from Relaxin' is You're My Everything. Red Garland starts playing this beautiful flowery intro, but Miles cuts him off, saying "give me some block chords." Then mere seconds later Red plays a totally different (but equally amazing!) intro.
I’m a fan of Patti Smith’s writing. My project is to read through some of the books/authors that she writes about in her memoirs. I started with Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. It’s a slow, fascinating read, and I love flipping back and forth between the actual 2666 and Smith’s writings about 2666.
A site new-to-me: "The Shfl,” which has guides to various musical things. Here’s one Sasha Frere-Jones wrote about Warp Records: https://theshfl.com/guide/warp-records
Comments here are so so cool. Lovely rabbit holes to fall into. I often listen to jazz when I’m doing art. Not a very sophisticated jazz person but Ted Gioia has a great newsletter that often points me in interesting directions.
Teju Cole has amazing playlists that are perfect for art doing—mostly instrumental. “Year” is my fav.
If you'd like to learn more about jazz, Ted has an AMAZING book called simply "How to Listen to Jazz" that I really, really enjoyed and gave me a great education in the music.
My deep dive is -- AUSTIN KLEON -- daily, zig jag, links.
Just prior to the pandemic, I discovered the entire run of "The Love Boat" and have been watching episodes in order ever since. Weird, I know- but it's brought about such fun and engaging conversations with fellow pop-culture lovers that I realized my sense of shame has evaporated! Great opportunity to see the changes on cultural mores as well! Plus all of the older stars you remember from childhood- what a treat.
Transcribing a piece of music ALWAYS surfaces details you somehow never heard, no matter how many times you've listened.
(Doubly so if you're also responsible for transcribing instruments besides your own.)
I’ve got only snippets of making time at the moment (parent of three little kids, it’s the season for interruptions and little sleep), so what I’ve been doing over the last two years is just find an artist who interests me, and put whatever grabs me about them in my journal - and then make stuff in there that riffs on their stuff.
And I just plug away at that artist til someone they mention pulls me to a new artist. It’s definitely a “who” and a “zigzag” approach, mixed with a “go ahead and make bad art” ethos. I didn’t mean to make it a deep dive, more of an anything to keep making strategy, but it has ended up being a wide exploration of women artists, especially abstract artists.
A favorite part has been finding kid books on artists and doing art with my kids inspired by whoever I’m learning about. Two favorites of theirs have been JoAnne Mitchell and Yayoi Kusama. Oh and Louise Bourgeois. There is a lovely kids book about her called Cloth Lullaby.
Thank you for this amazing burst of inspiration and links to click through. This is one of those archetypical Austin Kleon posts to me with tons to explore and zig and zag through :-)
First on Jack Kirby, I visited a massive Kirby exposition in 2019 while on holiday in France. You can checkout a lot of the sketches and photos in my blogpost: https://diggingthedigital.com/jack-kirby-tentoonstelling-de-fotos/ (In Dutch, so be prepared to translate the text :-))
I've been blogging since 2000 and over the years I found a growing interest in the history of the web, personal computing and videogames as an adjacent. From reading up on 365 RFC's by Darius Kazemi (https://write.as/365-rfcs/) to the unofficial biography of Stewart Brand in the book "From Counterculture to Cyberculture". That's how I learned about people like Lee Felsenstein and his role in personal computing. I love to watch stuff like the Mother of All Demos,
I keep old (Dutch) magazines from the early 90s about exploring the web, sort of like our Dutch version of Wired. Books like The Ultimate History of Videogames and playing old games on MAME can really brighten my weekend.
The fun part about studying history is there's always new information added every day! :-)
I’m only now getting to reading the the “pandemic project.” A week ago it occurred to me that I would like to really clean the studio and jettison stuff that I simply did not want to do anymore. Does going through 30+ years of notes and idea sketches, plus all the papers my mother had saved since I was 10 years old count as a deep dive into myself? I think so, albeit a bit indulgent, however I seemed to be meeting aspects of myself forgotten or never even noticed. Thanks for your wonderful ideas !
I think it definitely counts!
All these comments = so great. I'm going to start w the artist Robert Gober. who mesmerized me on a trip to MOMA as a child. must find his cabinet filled with toilet paper rolls, so far no luck other than in my memory. Then would like to go deep into Christopher Wool. if anyone has tips, please share
I thought I was a bit weird. Spent a couple years obsessed with lichens - picking up bits on branches, drawing, reading about, even looking into a mathematical proof that lichens are fractal. Fractals! Another enticing obsession. Stretches the imagination, range of interests, and challenges the way I look at the world. Added note, I have limited vision, so much of this is in my mind, though my new smart phone camera gives me access to sights my eyes alone can’t.
That sounds awesome. I’ve been trying to get ahold of a book called PATTERNS IN NATURE on which Jane Alison based her book on writing, MEANDER, SPIRAL, Explode
I’m going to have to look for those too.
My kids are obsessed with Home Alone and it was this year that I discovered that there's a whole franchise (6 total movies!) and so we dove in head first. Some are terrible, but I allowed myself to love them because of how much my 5- and 8- year old love them. We've been watching each one repeatedly, and I consider their interaction with the movie the thing I love to observe most. I ask myself what are the elements that draw in the kids? Which draw in me? How did they make 6 iterations (at least one is legendary and at least two are pretty terrible) that still get my kids and I to keep coming back? The mix of contemporary parenting dilemmas, references to cool kid-technology, and slapstick violence against bad guys delights every time. Of course, the underestimated kid who saves the day is the big win.
My kids love HOME ALONE too but we quickly wizard of oz’d them “pay no attention to those sequels!” Haha. This seems much healthier.
As always, on Tuesdays, I love the extra "shot"of inspiration, the thought provoking text and comments! Although not an exact example of listenthrough, but more a rough beginning of going down the rabbit hole, was the Miles Davis, Birth of Cool documentary I saw this week. That man went through so many different creative phases, reinventing himself all the time! I thought I knew quite a lot of his music but after the documentary I realized it was only the tip of the iceberg. I will definitely dive into his music further. I also love his quote in the beginning of that documentary: "If anybody wants to keep creating, they have to be about change". David Bowie was the same, also a good one to do a listen through on.
A more personal project I'm now diving into and which seems more the beginning of a "learn and do in public" is the idea to create one interactive artwork with as much people as possible, everyone contributing their own idividual part. I would be interested to know what happens if the artwork would not be linked to the name of one artist in particular. I'm looking into terms like identity, individual, mass, anonymous and what artists have said about it. Diving into projects like Ai Wei Wei's "sunflower seeds" (collaboration of Ai Wei Wei with craftman, but the artwork was only bearing his name), JR's faces projects (collective art, but again linked to one artist), Michael Toombs, known for his interactive community murals in Kansas. But also diving into the world of NFT's, do they relate in any way to my idea of collective -yet individual- art? It's a nice rabbit hole to be in and the next step will be to share the next steps on how to pull off such a project. Maybe even within this community;) A quote of Miro (book / interview: I work like a gardener) I like in this respect: "Because a profoundly individual gesture is anonymous"
You can’t go wrong with Miles Davis. Holy moly what a catalog. My recent favorite these days is ROUND ABOUT MIDNIGHT but the (rightful) classic, of course, is KIND OF BLUE. It would also be remarkable to listen through players in his various bands. (See: Coltrane, Bill Evans, etc)
Another great dive into Miles' catalog: in order to quickly fulfill contractual obligations, they recorded FOUR albums in two days' time.
Relaxin'/Steamin'/Workin'/Cookin' With The Miles Davis Quintet.
Miles, Coltrane, Philly Joe Jones, Red Garland, Paul Chambers.
A great track from Relaxin' is You're My Everything. Red Garland starts playing this beautiful flowery intro, but Miles cuts him off, saying "give me some block chords." Then mere seconds later Red plays a totally different (but equally amazing!) intro.
I’m a fan of Patti Smith’s writing. My project is to read through some of the books/authors that she writes about in her memoirs. I started with Roberto Bolaño’s 2666. It’s a slow, fascinating read, and I love flipping back and forth between the actual 2666 and Smith’s writings about 2666.
Swimming upstream! Very nice.
A site new-to-me: "The Shfl,” which has guides to various musical things. Here’s one Sasha Frere-Jones wrote about Warp Records: https://theshfl.com/guide/warp-records
This is a fun example: Tiersa watching movies with her cinephile son! https://twitter.com/tiersaj/status/1487542915568214019?s=21
I can't wait to tell my wife I bought a book entirely about Road House.
Comments here are so so cool. Lovely rabbit holes to fall into. I often listen to jazz when I’m doing art. Not a very sophisticated jazz person but Ted Gioia has a great newsletter that often points me in interesting directions.
Teju Cole has amazing playlists that are perfect for art doing—mostly instrumental. “Year” is my fav.
If you'd like to learn more about jazz, Ted has an AMAZING book called simply "How to Listen to Jazz" that I really, really enjoyed and gave me a great education in the music.
Just requested from my library, thank you!
I agree! I love the community we're gathering here. And I second Ted Gioia and Teju Cole!
52 Loaves: One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust
Book by William Alexander
I bet my wife would love this