One more post: Been sort of stuck at my dad's for an extra couple of days and had some time to work over my Blogger settings. Amongst other insights I realized that Blogger's "Labels" feature = TAGS, a function I'd been wondering how to add. Almost went through and hash tagged by text the other night and am hoping the change results in some Moon Traffic.
One of the purposes of the blog is to build a new audience for what's turning out to be a radical change in direction for my methods as a visual artist. The overall content is the same -- science fiction themes crossed with a dystopic worldview and yearning for perfection in form -- but the execution has changed. More precise, especially in how the human form is employed by utilizing the spaceman figures + their equipment in ways that my rendering skills could never replicate. Right now the results are primarily photography based (using my smartfone: need a technical upgrade for better focal options) but I have manipulated some prints of the images with traditional art materials to convincing effect. One even sold.
The ultimate goal is to make my own space toy forms, not aimed at children (at first) but freakazoids like myself who have a nostalgic love of things like Space Bucket astronaut sets & rocket launching Space Tank toys. One of the objectives behind amassing a collection is to be able to study them for ideas, both as toy forms and packaged goods. Figure out how to simulate such product using my own unique visions as an artist, and potentially harvest an audience to consume them, including by just looking. Maybe offering ideas, insights, or other creative discourse: Art is about people looking at things and hopefully those things being interesting enough to foster a discussion.
The blog and related YouTube + Instagram feeds have already caught some interest and here is a better forum to verbally explore the culture of collecting. Studying that has been as important as learning what my tastes are, with an expected learning curve which may have put some off. And if so, Sorry Man. I mean it.
I'm calling this setup "The Altarpiece from the Cathedral at The J. Robert Oppenheimer Atomic Research Colony, Vega Nine" or just "The Altarpiece" for short. Atom bomb painting from our 2018 "It's The End of The World" show at the gallery I currently manage in Syracuse. Figures variously by Marx and Hing Fat, rockets by LP Toys. Silver dais is the lid from a candle jar and white dome shape a spray-painted gumball machine globe. Roosevelt Dime for scale, and calling it such is of course a Tom Waits reference. I hear it in my head every time.
A less arty angle. Toy forms were things I'd been evaluating earlier & kept out, and this is how my diorama setups usually come to be. Just random stuff I'd been looking at, arranged in some manner which strikes the eye as potentially meaningful, especially when combined with some sort of narrative contextual title or word interplay. Here the results limited by working on the small Hobby Lobby shelf I tacked up on the Ogle Wall in my Syracuse work space. Not much one can do with it.
I like the idea of Marx guys trying to set off LP rockets. Different eras & design objectives, with the Chinese designed spacemen adding a twist. It's an international effort, using quasi-military ideas crossed with pulp era science fiction forms, and twisted enough to engage the mind on several levels. Though in the end it's not a serious attempt at being creative with the forms, just snapping pix of stuff that had been of interest on a warm summer afternoon of relaxingly idle studio time. That's when we get cooking for real.
That faceless & armless Chinese made spaceman has become a favorite! All manner of surreal applications for his form, half in & half out of reality. I need to get busy with that rocket launching tank thing behind him too.
And I think my collecting has entered it's latter stage, where I know what I want, and have enough for now to get me started on the creative applications. Cooling down on acquisitions & spending more time studying the forms, learning their history.
Comparing the shapes of the upper thruster forms. Am fairly certain this one was produced by LP in the very late 1960s as part of their Apollo Moon Craze toy fad. Blue Hing Fat spaceman came from France, of all places. Would love to find some more!
The masterful Space Bucket Lunar Module, its design unchanged now for nearly fifty years. Probably costs a quarter to produce, same as in 1972. They are still making them somewhere.
Looks like he's leaning in to light a fuse. And the seated pilot figure looks like a statue. This might be an interesting angle to print out and manipulate. Or project onto a canvas to sketch from, another method I've been meaning to explore. Am currently searching for a new live/work situation in the Syracuse metro area and things like that will have to wait.
"Charlie ... Charlie I don't think you'se should be doin' that over here, Charlie ..."
The "Charlie" series referencing comical approximation of Brooklynites from old Loony Tunes, accident-prone Atom Age spacemen who speak in thick NYC/Jersey accents, with one of them (usually named Conrad after astronaut Charles Pete Conrad, NASA's sharpest wit) usually pointing out the potential hazard of the situation to the not-so bright Charlie, who got into the space core via working food service. One day he donned a flight suit left on a cafeteria chair & followed the astronauts onto their rocket. Ground control has been looking for him ever since.
Hand-painted Hing Fat spaceman to the right done during a Syracuse Public Arts Task Force meeting where we discussed the Creek Float project. All three of my float entries had Space Toy applications to them -- Will do a post on it.
"Nahh, nahh, relax, Flapjack. Now watch this ..."
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