Machine Politick

I got a little carried away and forgot to take pictures while I was working on this. I was planning to post photos for every layer as it progressed, but between the stamping and the current layer, I had a blaze of inspiration. So here is where I am right now.

I have also been working on the final layer, which is the self-portrait portion of the piece.

When completed, this drawing will be a slightly raised element in the multi-media painting. The lyrics to the inspiring song are listed below.

Bad Attitude

Truckstop Honeymoon

When I pack a bag, I gotta pack two

One for me, one for My Bad Attitude

Wherever I go, she goes too – My Bad Attitude

My Bad Attitude, cause me nothin’ but trouble

When I order a drink, gotta make it a double

One for me, one for you know who – My Bad Attitude

Now we go to a restaurant, she act real rude

She stiff the waiter and she send back the food

Then everybody looks at me like I’m the dude with a Bad Attitude

Now we’re at a party, it’s no surprise

She in no mood to socialize

It’s always me who’s got to apologize – For My Bad Attitude

My Bad Attitude, cause me nothin’ but trouble

When I order a drink, gotta make it a double

One for me, one for you know who – My Bad Attitude

My friends come over and they full of advice

They say  “Once in a while ,Katie, won’t you just try to be nice?”

I tell my friends like I’m tellin’ you

It ain’t me they need to be talkin’ to

When I pack a bag, I gotta pack two

One for me, one for My Bad Attitude

Well, wherever I go, she goes too – My Bad Attitude

My Bad Attitude, cause me nothin’ but trouble

When I order a drink, gotta make it a double

One for me, one for you know who

Wherever I go, she goes too

It’s always me, just me and My Bad Attitude

The show I am creating this piece for is coming up in October.

I am currently working on a self-portrait  for a show at the Tannery Row Artist Colony in Buford, Georgia. The title of the show is The Music in Me and the format is square, as if we are designing album covers. Those of you who are familiar with my Liberty paintings will have some idea of where this painting is going. Because I work in so many layers, I have decided to start documenting each step in my paintings. While the details show through subsequent layers, it is often difficult to capture them in photographs, mostly because I am photographically challenged.

Here is the first step below showing the filigree that is often the first layer in one of my paintings. The gray menace in the background, scowling with disdain, is my husband’s cat Odin. He fancies himself a studio cat and loves to lounge on my work table, tossing my mixed media components to the floor with malicious glee. At seven, he is finally calming down, but he still enjoys making a mess.

This article will also be posted at Liberatchik.

My friends in the Buford Artists’ Group are organizing our next show. Here is a list of our participating artists:

1. Anita Stewart: Instructor/owner of Anita’s Artscool in Buford, GA; Mixed Media &             Acrylics

2. Beth Arnold: Retired Teacher,; specializes in Acrylic and Watercolor landscapes

3. Beth Stokes Clinton: Specializes in landscapes in Oil based on her travels including France and China.

4. Carol Luttenberg: Signature Watercolor artist, originally from PA;  now experimenting with colored inks and liquid watercolor on Yupo

5. Dolly Alexander: Originally from Texas, specializes in dry pastels.  She is known as “The Cloud Lady” for her unique rendition of clouds

6. Frances Byrd: Political activist and social conscience.  Works in Acrylics.  SCAD graduate and visionary artwork

7. Howard Wilemon: Retired Engineer. Very distinctive style.  Paints in Acrylics.

8. Judith Surowiec: Paints very colorful and surrealistic scenes in acrylics.  Studio at Tannery Row Artist Colony in Buford, GA

9. June Gotthardt: Paints landscape scenery of North Carolina mountain region.

10. Lois Colborn: Self taught Visual Artist.  Specializes with watercolor on Yupo which feature still life, abstract, or landscape as well as her own “Tiffany” look.

11. Lucy Brady: Paints in Watercolor and specializes in landscapes from National State Parks.  Also House portraits

12. Rosemary Benavides Williams: Originally from MA, Watercolor Instructor at the Sugar Hill Community Center

More details will be posted as they develop. The show is currently scheduled for October 13 – February 23, 2011. The venue is the George Pierce Park Community Center in Suwannee, Georgia. I am planning to submit work from the Patriot Pony Project.

Kurt Wenner: Artist, Architect, Performer

These paintings are by Michael LeKites, who was kind enough to post them on our Facebook page. They were inspired by last year’s Taxpayer March on DC. I eel a personal connection to the work because I also attended the event. From the perspective of an artist, they are very well executed. The color and composition are amazing. From the point of view of a propagandist – they rock and I hope to see more work of this kind in the public forum. Please keep an eye out for future postings of Mr. LeKites’ work, as I plan to keep track of his progress.

These images have also been posted on Liberatchik

How do those two topics relate, and how did I come across them? That’s not a bad question for a reasonable person to ask. When I picked up Origami on the Edge, I thought I would be teaching my son how to make some cool monsters.

Like everything else that involves raising a child, I should have known better than to make an assumption. If I haven’t learned anything else in the last six years, I’ve figured out that I don’t know squat about kids and just when I think I’ve seen everything, I’m proven wrong yet again.

We went to the library this week to get books and origami was a subject we were interested in. So we came home with this book by Xander Arena: American Mensa member, custom stone craftsman, full time student, and animal groomer of all things. I think you can probably guess what I thought of the biography, so we’ll leave that alone. Once I was actually reading the book to figure out how to make the monsters, which was the actual purpose of getting it, I realized there was a blog post in the making.

On the front cover is this little icon that says Green Edition. I bet you can guess where this is going. Before you assume I burn trees every day because I like to watch the shiny embers float about or club baby seals for their fur, let me say – I understand the need to conserve and protect our resources and the environment. However, those goals should not be accomplished at the expense of human life, under false pretences, at the point of a gun. The inside of the cover on the book describes why the book qualifies as planet friendly publishing in a smarmy, you suck manner that makes me want to add Dover Publications to the long list of companies I don’t want to give my money.

So, on to the point of this post. Why do I care about the blatant propaganda campaign in one origami book? Because it is obviously geared toward young people. You wouldn’t believe how many books like this are out there. I don’t believe it is coincidental any more than I believe that The Rainbow Fish is about sharing. It is a blatant campaign to teach children from a young age that humans destroy the earth and we all need to do without. Once that goal is accomplished, it’s a baby step to the concept that we’re all equal and should have equal things. Equality of outcome not equality of opportunity.

Why is this in a post on an art page? Because we need to be doing the same thing to promote honest, Conservative philosophy. Yes, you can find beautifully illustrated books on American history and Liberty in the children’s section. However, very few of them are the storybooks geared toward toddlers and young readers. If we don’t ingrain these ideas in our kids before we pack them of to public school, we have no one to blame but ourselves when they turn into blithering fools dependent on the State for their ‘needs’.

All of this brings us full circle, back to the origami book. The portion of the book that set all of this in motion is included below. You would think the description of how the artist designed the polar bear would be innocuous. Again, you would be wrong. The intro reads as follows:

“Originally, I viewed this model as simply a bear, but after reviewing photos of various sorts of bears, determined that it was definitely the arctic variety. Polar bears are presently in a bit of trouble, and I really do hope that they are able to adapt to our changing climate. Or conversely, that we slow the change…It would be a shame to lose them.”

I promise to come back from my family camping trip with something positive to say about art. I’m sure a weekend in a national park will lift my spirits. I know cooking meat over an open flame will!

Just in case you’d like to know what your kids are learning on TV, check out this article by our contributor Greg Contiero.

This article was written for Liberatchik

One of the books I am currently reading is the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. I am not a religious person by nature. Therefore, the book has afforded me some interesting insight into religion and spirituality. I do not, myself, posses faith or the belief in a higher being although (unlike many atheists) I do respect the right of others to do so. I find the concept of religion interesting; particularly the wealth of cultural and iconographic influence it has bestowed upon society.

For this reason, I believe I have approached the reading of this book with an open perspective. I have no agenda or preconceived notion of what it is about. I am reading it simply for the sake of gaining perspective. Ironically, the letters from Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood could just as easily be from a congressman to their aid. Perhaps it is because so many of them have spent their entire career dismantling America in much the same way that Screwtape dismantles souls.

I am not yet finished, but here are some lines I found particularly fitting to the current establishment in Washington.

“An important spiritual law is here involved. I have explained that you can weaken his prayers by diverting his attention from the Enemy Himself to his own states of mind about the Enemy. On the other hand fear becomes easier to master when the patient’s mind is diverted from the thing feared to the fear itself, considered as a present and undesirable state of his own mind; and when he regards the fear as his appointed cross he will inevitably think of it as a state of mind. One can therefore formulate the general rule; in all activities of mind which favor our cause, encourage the patient to be unself-conscious and to concentrate on the object, but in all activities favourable to the Enemy bend his mind back on itself. Let an insult or a woman’s body so fix his attention outward that he does not reflect ‘I am now entering into the state called Anger – or the state called Lust’. Contrariwise, let the reflection ‘My feelings are now growing more devout, or more charitable’ so fix inward that he no longer looks beyond himself to see our Enemy or his own neighbors.”

Translation: Put yourself and your ‘needs’ above all others. It is the mantra and the goal of the movement for ’social justice’. People are kept in a constant state of fear about their future, their status as victims, who will or won’t provide for their ‘needs’ while being kept in a position of helplessness and dependency by the very people who claim to be helping them. It is no coincidence that those same people have simultaneously torn down the concepts of morality, the family and individual responsibility.

“Thus by inflaming the horror of the Same Old Thing we have recently made the Arts, for example, less dangerous to us than perhaps, they have ever been, ‘low-brow’ and ‘high-brow’ artists alike being now daily drawn into fresh, excesses of lasciviousness, unreason, cruelty and pride. Finally, the desire for novelty is indispensable if we are to produce Fashions or Vogues.”
One need only go into the nearest gallery for an illustration of this point. The art community, which touts itself as being avant guard, independent minded, and opposed to the system has become a mere tool to the Progressive agenda. It is now our job, as Conservatives, to stand up to the status quo in the art community and take back our culture. How can we expect the next generation to understand what we are fighting for if they have no concept of Liberty or individualism? Traditionally, it has been the art community that has gone against the grain to raise awareness and promote unpopular ideas. I say we take advantage of that tradition and the means by which it has been achieved successfully in the past.

Want to help? Submit a blog post on the subject for our consideration. Send us images of your work. Find that in yourself that inspires you to stand up to the system and put it in creative form – produce a video, paint a picture, write a poem – anything to get the point across. If you need help getting started, contact me directly at frances@machinepolitick.com or feel free to use the Conservative Action Tools on my web page for ideas. The future is what we make of it.

This article was written for Liberatchik

A friend of mine showed me this artist’s work over the weekend. If you live in Atlanta, take the time to stop by DK Gallery in Marietta to see it in person.

This post was written for Liberatchik