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Web Stuff

MCA talk

Marketing Best Practices for Independent Artists, speaker Jim Doran. Friday June 10, 10:00am-11:00am

I’m giving a talk at UMBC on Friday, June 10, 2022 at 10:00am entitled Marketing Best Practices for Independent Artists.

Categories
Opinion

A Dark and Gorey Night

Jim Doran talking at AVAM

Being a part of the great mystery show at AVAM has been one of the great honors and pleasures of my life. It is a thrill to see my art in the same room with Ingo Swann’s paintings, and around the corner from Edward Gorey’s The Gashleycrumb Tinies and Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon.

Gorey's Dracula Toy TheatreAfter I was well underway with my dioramas, I started hearing that my work is reminiscent of  Gorey. I wasn’t familiar with him until an acquaintance told me about his toy Dracula Theatre, which was inspired by the Broadway production that earned Gorey a Tony award for costume and set design. It made me swoony, and then I came into several of his books. Gorey had a fantastic sense of humor, elegantly placed around dark subject matter, and super human crosshatching abilities, which are two of my favorite qualities in another human being.

I read several books as I was preparing for this evening’s talk and my favorite is from CJ Verburg: Edward Gorey On Stage: a Multimedia Memoir: Playwright, Director, Designer, Performer. Verburg helped Gorey produce around twenty “Entertainments” in a community theater near where they both lived in Cape Cod. These “Entertainments” were plays that had twenty or so acts running from two to five minutes each. Gorey wrote and typed the scripts (something he began doing during WWII, when he was drafted to a desk job in Utah), designed the costumes, made puppets, arranged for the music, and designed the programs and posters. Verburg seemed to know Gorey better than the other authors I sampled.  I think the later part of his life, when he was so involved in these projects, is fascinating. Many of these were incomprehensible to the audience and abstract/absurd.

Gorey loved ballet, and dance informs many of his characters’ gestures. He would attend some 160+ performances on the New York City Ballet a year. He wore a fur coat, jeans and white converse sneakers. Verburg tells great stories of Gorey’s time at Harvard and the Poet’s Theater Project, of which he and his roommate, Frank O’Hara, were members.

Jim Doran talking about Edward Gorey

I talked about many other things, but one of the Great Mysteries I solved for myself is this: Gorey was influenced by French artist Charles Meryon. He collected some of his prints, which were heavily crosshatched, and quite nightmarish. Another interesting fact: Gorey was known to paint his toenails. Gorey claimed to be a Taoist, and maybe a surrealist. Gorey was also a voracious consumer of books, movies and television. According to his bio in the Gorey House website, he accumulated around 25,000 books by the time of his death at age 75. He liked soap operas, Third Rock from the Sun,  and anything he found entertaining.

So many of Gorey’s protagonist kids meet grisly endings.  When asked “Why do you hate children?” Gorey responded with “I don’t know any children.”

Ready to crosshatch

Pop-up drawings Gorey-esque drawings

People drawing in the gallery

 

The latter part of the evening involved a crosshatching exercise, inspired by the toy Dracula theatre. I made my own characters, and a zine with some basics on hatching techniques.

A quick guide to crosshatching

I have more of these. If you’d like one, please write to me.

 

Categories
Joie de Vivre

Make It and Take It

make-and-take-at-AVAM

I’ll be at AVAM this Friday with a TON of cigar boxes, ready to help bring new Dioramas into the world!

Details above!

UPDATE!

Results, below.

take-care-of-it

octo

art

blue-beauty

hostile-planet

horseman

final-frontier

lamby

more

cigar-box

bowling

Sushi

I’ll be doing another workshop (or several) in 2017! Stay tuned, and come make some art!

Categories
Dioramas

Diorama-rama Deux

duex

And I quote: “Wonder Commons presents Diorama-Rama Deux, a celebration of creative storytelling inside the box. Join us in our second year as we compete for awards and celebrate what can be seen through the miniature. Introductory Diorama demonstration by artist Jim Doran.”

rules

So, I set some of my work out and talked with folks about Diorama-ing.

talk

I quickly put together a zine about some of my work.

zines

This event is put on by Wonder Commons – Robert Marbury and his wife Alix Fenhagen.

Rob

The theme was “March Madness,” which has something to do with baseball or something. I made two dioramas that are NOT paper cut-outs.

I get a mild form of madness called SPRING FEVER. Perhaps you’ve heard of it – it doesn’t help that, after days of glorious weather, it snowed yesterday.

 

spring-fever-scale

And here’s part two, which has EVERYTHING to do with baseball:

mm-bottom-view

(More on both of these dioramas can be read in their own post).

I won “Best in Show!”

bis

Please notice that the trophy has two baseball bats AND two cups on top.

bis-2

This is a smart, fun (and amusing) event. I saw a lot of the same faces from last year’s event, and a few new ones. NEXT YEAR, we are going to have a “make your own diorama session” before the judging kicks off, and I have offered to help people realize their own diorama-rama-ness.

All of the entries were great – here are a few more:

FUN

This-is-not-a-peep

cesar

tulip

run

more

spring

Keep an eye out for next year’s Diorama-rama, and come!

Categories
Joie de Vivre

WordPress for Creative Geniuses

I gave a talk in at WordCamp NYC last August.  I explained things about sharing your creative work online, and whatnot.

The whatnot is the best part.

Categories
Web Stuff

FitBloggin 12: Better Blog Design on a Budget

Saturday, I went back to the Hyatt in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore and spoke on blog design [slides] at FitBloggin – how to find/hire someone if you need help or how to do it yourself.

I love seeing how FitBloggin has evolved, and seeing my new old friends from around the country. It was a great conference, as always.