Gallery preview video, interesting.

Here is a video preview of a gallery show. I like it as much for the enunciation of the narrator as for the look at this person's art.

A video of a very talented sculptor--fascinating!

I found a video of a sculptor at work on a clay portrait of a very interesting man. The insights into the minute movements of the artist at work, how the portrait unfolds under his very adroit fingers, is just fascinating, and would be of great use to any beginning sculptor, and maybe even to a graphic artist. Here is the video:

next blog for quality art blogs

I am exploring the function of blogspot's "next blog" button. They recently made it a relevant to blog last viewed button. So if you have a topic you want to look through blogs in, you have to first somehow find a blog on that topic and then hit "next blog".

I wanted to see some art blogs, so I googled art blogspot. It got me to a chintsy art blog and next blog continued to give me chintsy blogs. So then I tried googling art blogspot museum, to get the quality up. This got me to the University of Wyoming's art museum, and from there next blog took me to this blog, http://microsketchbook.blogspot.com/ and I liked it quite a bit. Now I will try next blogging some more along that path.

English transformation art, a personal iconography

I joined the site thepoetryforum.co.uk the other day and started a thread about my English Transformation Art.
In posting to this thread, I came across the idea that what the client chooses as a text to become art is really an icon in his world of word use, and so this is a genre of personal iconography, as well as art.

More traditional art now on sidebar.

Today I have placed on the sidebar, just below the section on English transformation art, two recent works of mine which are more traditional in nature. The medium is colored pencil and the color choices were augmented by a calculator with a program I wrote to shuffle items randomly. Below these pictures and the commentary is a Paypal button to purchase a copy of the program.

To facilitate the random color choice, I constructed a rack out of heavy paper with eighteen coves, numbered three ways, 1) 1-18; 2) 1-9, two sets, and 3) 1-6, three sets. This permits me to keep separate sets of related colors on my "easel," either two sets or three sets, and have them all numbered from one to permit use of the calculator to shuffle them.

You can judge for yourself the effects that can be gotten with this program by looking at the pictures there in the sidebar.

An interesting video about art.

Here is a link to a very interesting video on the subject of art. Click here.

Is English Transformation Art really art?

Let me ask my readers, do you view English Transformation Art, such as the example here on my sidebar, to be art?

If you would, please comment to this post.

On the process of English Transformation Art

Conversation between myself and my English Transformation Art clients is itself part of the art process, in a sense. It is my task as artist to move the client, to assist, with as little assistance as possible, him in perceiving the difference between the really important things in his world from the less so, even if what is important to him is being silly. You may be silly about life, but you must also know what it is about silliness that makes you feel good, and know it at least well enough that you can see it in real terms, as a word or two.

It is my feeling that this is a process that will grow with each commission. Every client will bring a different world view to the table. It will be part of the process also to create better and better ways to record here in the blog the process, insofar as this meets with the approval of the client. This is a delicate matter. I enter the client's domain perhaps as no other artist does, making tangible his own view of his world, or some part of it, enabling him to create in his home or office a highlight exactly to his own specifications, something to share with those who visit him in home or office, and to keep hidden from those who he does not want in his home or office, if that is his design. I as artist must travel the road with him, engaging in conversation before creation of the work to decide what word or words it will say, hearing his musings and approach to the concept of this art, and his expressions of enthusiasm about it. What I say in the blog could be very much of this process, or very little, according to what the client either expressly states to me about it, or by my own judgment and taste about how I can enhance the experience for the client by setting it in the context of my own approach to the work, as the originator of the genre.

I have related here after successfully transporting the first sale to its author and buyer (the person is indeed an author!) a quote from his email acknowledging receipt of the work. This is a suitably understated approach to this groundbreaking step in the process. Better to let him express his response, in simple terms in this case, than have me begin with narrative about my impressions of his experience. I trust he will endorse this way of looking at it.

Some new color schemes have replaced old ones.

Following discussions at conceptart.org with some artists I have created seven new color schemes to replace seven of the old ones for my English Transformation Art, available here on my blog. Three, c201, c202, and c204, are unchanged.

I think the new ones are exciting and I hope you will take a look. Click here.

For those interested in purchasing a special, whether of the text, "GLENBARD WEST", or of the text, "YALE", There is now a greenish color scheme--c209--for Glenbard West, and a blueish color scheme--c210--for Yale.

New specials on English Transformation Art

I have now added specials for English Transformation Art, one of "GLENBARD WEST" and one of "YALE", at $40 for a 18"x24" unsigned print instead of $60, and proportional savings for larger sizes and signing. So now you Yalies have an alternative to the blue and white Yale Banner. You can have it in ten different color schemes, and it will be art, not letters.

Go HIlltoppers! (Glenbard West)

Go Bulldogs! (Yale)

Go English Transformation Art! (by James Batek)

engaging the client in a conversation prior to forming the art

The blog, being devoted to careful, inspired use of words, is the perfect setting in which to cultivate the interest of clients in the art I produce, English transformation art. By creating an environment in which a conversation naturally evolves, ideally with the client participating in comments and in that way engaging the artist in the client's own deepest language development, a speedier arrival at the central focus of interest can be brought about--the one or two words which most transform the client's everyday experience into that magic realm of wonder, the world of ideas.

a biography of James Batek

I was going to create two wikipedia articles, one on Batek Binary and one a biography of myself, but on entering the wikipedia world I found that they require a neutral point of view, prohibit original research, and require that all material have a reliable published source. I don't know if they would consider a blog a reliable published source, and although maybe they would I'm not going to push it. I readily admit I deal with controversial original ideas that aren't discussed anywhere else and to label them as coming from a reliable source is way beyond the good will that I have accrued in the publishing world. To assert that to wikipedia, where these issues are primary, would be a waste of time.

However, I will go ahead and publish these two articles, already written, here on this blog, by my usual method with scholarly work of first publishing to scribd.com and then embedding the scribd.com document here. I will place this introduction, from the beginning to here, at the head of both articles.

This is the second article, a biography of myself, James Batek.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19040742/James-Batek

The transformation of English transformation art into a solely manufactured product without a signature

The creation of a work of English transformation art, once the color schemes have been determined, is a matter of careful computer work. It is all work that follows a formula and therefore can be completely automated. Today there is general acceptance of the idea of digital art--work generated completely by a computer--and English transformation art is a cousin to that. This is the basis on which I, the artist, justify placing my signature on the work and selling it as art rather than an object solely of manufacture.

However, while the signature adds a certain value to the art it does not affect the aesthetic qualities of the art itself. Why not then operate as a manufacturer by omitting the signature and placing an imprint of a trademark on the work instead? Production of a work would in that case not require the imposition, at a key place in the manufacturing process, of the natural hand of the artist, making of the whole a manufacturing business rather than a craft business, and establishing the artist as the owner of that business with full power to hire a staff which would design systems of manufacture according to engineering standards based on the general aesthetic principle of English transformation art. The price a work produced in this manner could command would be less than the price a signed work could expect, but the labor required to produce the work, and thus its cost of production, would be less also. Profit margin would be roughly preserved and the owner of the business would be faced with business challenges rather than craft challenges.

As for the sense one would get from a manufactured item, the machine-like nature of this art is not the sort of thing that makes one look for the hand of a human author. It is the thinking up of the idea for the art, and the sharp simplicity of its expression, that impresses the viewer, not some consideration of craft, whether strongly to the technical side or strongly to the manual side. A signature speaks to craft among the general body of craftsmen while a trademark speaks to thought among the general body of thinkers. Certainly good aesthetic judgment plays a part in the formation of the business and would never be relegated to a minor role. But like other items that have been transformed by modern industrial capabilities into mass markets, to the benefit of the whole population, so would cheap English transformation art make a novel and attractive form of self-expression available to the masses at an affordable cost. Design savvy is as much a part of the industrial revolution as is engineering.

Price would depend on volume so it would be strictly conjectural what the price of manufactured English transformation art would be. Going to manufacture would only be possible if first the work proves to have a market as signed art. The first milestone was sale of one item and that has been passed. It is a new, and in a sense risky, art investment, a hurdle which every new artist faces, but made especially tricky by the somewhat intelligence-driven effectiveness of the product to make an impression on both the owner, who chooses the text and more than anyone else feels its impact, and others, who presumably have little or no investment in the text and react to the work as is in purely abstract terms. Jumping past this hurdle, especially the one of the owner, is the biggest challenge the business faces at this stage of its development.

These are the considerations that will guide the development of the business from top to bottom. Only sales and profit will prove them to have value, for the artist, for the client, and for the public at large.

The buyer of my art chooses the text that becomes the art.

The buyer chooses the text that becomes the art. That is the central message I wish to convey. You can see clearly what kind of image you can expect by looking at my gallery. There is a certain look about them that is immediately recognizable. Yet each one is unique as the word or words it represents.

Everyone has a different feeling about individual words. My art gives you the chance to immortalize the word or words that mean the most to you. Perhaps that is your spouse's or child's name, a favorite person or social group, a cause you believe in, a motto, a geographical location. There is no limit to the ideas that people might want to give a special place to as an artwork hanging in their home or office. And you have ten very different color schemes for the piece, each one of them showing off the theme in a special way.

Crystal proves herself a good judge of quality in art

Yesterday I invited Crystal, my girlfriend, to look at the recent colored pencil drawings I have done and pick out those she wants for herself. I was worried about this because I didn't know for sure what her tastes are and it will be one thing to pursue her hand if she has good taste and quite another to pursue her hand if she doesn't.

My greatest fear was that she would want none of them.

However, she picked out four, and I was tremendously encouraged by her selections. Of the nine small works (about 2 1/2"x 4") she picked the one I was confident was the best, two others among the best five, and another I don't recall. This was a quite good yield in terms of being similar taste to my own.

affair on the forums at wetcanvas.com

I recently posted to the forums at wetcanvas.com, where I am a member, asking for comments on my art and linked to here, to my blog, where, as you see, I am selling art with a slideshow at the top of the sidebar.

The post got a comment that alluded to content on my blog that wetcanvas.com members would find contrary to their art interests. I replied with a post offering a conversation and saying isn't that the strength of America. Then there was a reply from a third party who said that just by mentioning America that way I was showing I wanted to go in other directions than art.

I next sent a private message to the third party, as follows:

You seem to take this matter casually. I do not. The content of my blog is not for WC to censor and I get the feeling you two are trying to do that. I was not aware of any policy regarding llinks on WC. I linked to it because I show and sell art there. I do other things too. I don't disown any of it and I advance all of it as circumstance permits. The link was a way to advance the art and I took it. I expected controversy regarding the art and I linked fully prepared to engage in dispute over it. But not disowning the other things either I accepted the challenge issued by the poster. It would have been more prudent to send him a private message but then it would perhaps have been more prudent for him to send me one too if he wanted to dispute a matter unrelated to art. He could have left his comment on my blog but he left it here. I spoke about it on WC only because it was brought up here by someone else, sullying my name in a way which I will not sit idly by and allow to remain unchallenged where it is open to public view. I believe I did so with integrity, offering a conversation rather than engaging in epithets ("homophobic vitreol"). I am content with my response. You didn't like it. The whole matter should have been handled in private, but once it was out I had to defend myself, or would you disagree? Pehaps the intention of his comments is to disuade other WC members from going to my blog, knowing that he has no grounds to challenge the link. He is intitled to his politics and their advancement like anyone else. What I do about his advancement of his politics is my business, also like anyone else.

This is a private message. Who is responsible for bringing non-art issues to WC? My art is at the top of my blog. My reference to the blog at WC was about art. The other things on the blog are irrelevant to art. Why bring them up? Every day webpages are visited that contain widely diverse subject matter. Some are entirely monothematic. WC, appropriately so, is strictly monothematic. To ask outside sources to link in only if they too are monothematic in art seems to me to be going beyond due process. I made every attempt on my blog to make the art separable from the other things, placing it at the top and putting in a sticky referring only to it. I think I am just as devoted to art, and to keeping business and politics separate, as you are. I don't like this affair. It puts me in a bad llight. I love art. I spend a great deal of time with it. I believe in blogging, and that means openness. It puts a person at risk. It is wide enough a venue to allow anyone to say anything about anything, provided it it lawful. You might say it is more freedom than even the artist has. If by defending my blog I am bolstering bloggers' freedom then art can only gain additional freedom by my standing firm on my position, not on an issue, but on my freedom to link to my blog as a platform for art, as well as other things easily ignored if one is really just interested in the art. I risk comments such as I see here. I would like to appreciate everyone who disputes with me for their every strength. I invite you to do the same. Maybe we should take a cue from President Obama and all go out together for a beer. Make mine a virtual, barkeep!

I am now selling my art on my blog.

Yesterday I entered the world of blog art sales. You will now find at the top of the sidebar: (a) an example of my own genre, English transformation art, the color scheme being one of ten available schemes to be seen at flickr.com and the text being anything specified by the buyer (but read the introduction before you click on the paypal button) (b) A little introduction to this original genre, (c) a paypal button with fields for the client to fill out, and (d) a comment box, or "cbox".

This is a momentous beginning for me and like any artist I will be waiting anxiously for the first sale.

My readers can comment here to this post by clicking on "Comments" at the bottom of the post, or comment in the cbox in the sidebar.

starting out on an art marketing site

I have been moving on setting up a presence on a site that markets artwork.

I plan to upload images of my code art, as I have been calling it. I am changing my name for it to "english transformation art, an art/product of inventor james batek".

I will be able to conduct business on the site, explaining the idea, arranging deals, collecting payment, etc.