This 2022 video below gave me a much better idea of the colors the Pet Shop boys like to use.
This is how I came about choosing this Pet Shop Boys song as my next project. It was on a walk that this Pet Shop Boys song caught my ear. I think for this project it was the lyrics especially, the repeating of “How I’m gon’na get through,” that are the “sampled” lyrics displayed on the artwork. In that moment those words were summarizing my directional concern for this art.
To confirm my pick, I check online for the sheet music at MusicNotes and purchase it. I could cobble together the sheet music with the help of the music’s free preview sheet music, but still there would be a lot of guessing and certainly respect for the accuracy of music is important to me. Even more important, is the value of my time. For a few bucks I own my cover music guide I can trust. After completing the project, I then purchase a cover music license. I am required a minimum of 25 music boxes. That is fine, even though there is only one music box, and I do not know if I will ever need a license, or any of the 40 plus licenses I have already purchased. It is not my music. I am doing what I feel is respectful and adequate for now.
The Pet Shop Boys videos have a lot of pink tones, and other mostly pastel colors in their performances. I choose a combination of colors from the videos that differed from previous recent works and went to work.
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I forgot to post, so now I have added an update.
This is the finished image I need only to go over its details to make sure I have completed what I needed to and then sign and date this work. I will post a video and the updated cover music on this next blog entry.
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I have made a small but important change in my thinking and direction: I need to document my depiction of sheet music beams.
The image below is a typical of sheet music. The “beam” which is the wide bar that connects, in this example, two notes from sheet music.
Now above, and below, are my its-about-time whatever beams, including a double.
Earlier this year, I started experimenting with different beam shapes out of creative boredom. In this work, I finally abandoned the idea that all beams should look similar. The only rule in my art is to capture the flow of the music visually. While this beam change seems simple, my respect for the music and the importance of sheet music has made it difficult, and slow going, to fully let go of tradition. Below, I summarize that change.
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Finally, I need to document a short story about a meeting I had concerning the future of the art group EmptyWallsArt, that I help form.
After a surprising number of months I had an eventual coffee meeting with Jeff to discuss the future of our art group, EmptyWallsArt. Before our membership meeting I wanted to put together some kind of joint understanding. We needed to come up with something about the future of the group after the sudden passing of our co-founder, Christy Skuban, in January 2024.
Christy was the heart of our group. She managed a gallery, displaying and selling all the members art. Even though my works didn’t sell and she eventually asked me removed them, I still believed in her. Christy was a relentless marketer, always seeking exposure for the group. Now, with her gone, Jeff had no other choice but to become the group’s reluctant leader. But his loyalty, like the rest of the group, was to Christy and not so much to EmptyWallsArt. That is the reluctant part. Tom Petty’s lyrics best summarize the group’s current thinking, “Their A&R man said, ‘I don’t hear a single,” without her.
During my coffee meeting with Jeff, I suggested that to keep EWA going, we might need to replace members and consider admitting 2D artists—a significant shift from our original focus on 3D art. This idea arose from the limited local 3D wall art talent, which became clear to Christy and me at our last group show when we struggled to meet the requirement of adding three local 3D artists. Jeff seemed both surprised and somewhat reassured by the suggestion.
My surprise came when Jeff expressed excitement about a cruise line that buys and rotates art on their ships. I responded, “People on a cruise aren’t there for the art.” All that did was reinforce our differing perspectives on art. Thus began the beginning of the end of a conversation that soon dwindled off to what’s left to say. And, as usual with Jeff and our meetings, he had somewhere else to be. He got up, turned his attention to someone at the next table, and I got up and left.
On September 10th, the group will meet to decide EWA’s future. Jeff and I agree, this could be the end, with several members possibly quitting. Full membership participation or not, with the remaining members, will determine the future of EWA. Even if EmptyWallsArt ends as a membership, I am going to maintain the domain name, just in case. Once again, I regret my difficult position, and my hopes for this group’s future being summed up in Tom Petty’s lyrics: “Into the great wide open, under those skies of blue, out in the great wide open, a rebel without a clue.”
Scott Von Holzen
(This is this artist’s 775 Post, which first posted in January 2010)
aRT iN mUSIC 