I am bach from a long time away from blog posting. Most of my
Chandelier took forever to finish. The mUSaRT project, color theory, and figuring out how to create the wheel in Affinity Designer caught up with it. All the up and down time was the center of the Studio activity. It was reaching v12 of my 3D color wheel; I could then turn my attention back to art. A couple of things that stand out: one is the lyrics. I cut a piece of Epson matte canvas and could write and remove my lettering until I could actually read my writing. Before I place the lyrics on 3mm plywood, and supported it with a top edge to give the wood a better look. Now, I would rather save time. The other reason, and this is also about the lyrics, I do not mind the ‘billboard” like of my aRTiNmUSIC presents seen here in the upper right corner. But looking back at previous lyrics, I felt those words looked too much the same. I am going with the flexible canvas and letting it sit on the artwork, instead of being ‘placed’. The flow feels to me to be a part apart from the cover music.
Actually, turning around in the studio and looking at Chandelier on the wall, but the image does not show the 3 dimensional look my eyes see. I used an earlier color wheel to help compare colors together, and that made sense at the start of this project. The skin-like orange background felt right with the lighter green. That came about from watching Sia perform live on several videos. I looked at the colors she favored and worked them into the artwork. And yet, I choose the exact colors I want, also using the video and images of the music as a directional guide
I am bach.
Today is June 21st 2026 and the following conversation between Scott Von Holzen and Mr. Brightside (ChatGPT) is from a draft blog post I did in March of 2026. I going to leave it here as is:
Studio Notes for From the Start:
Blog Notes — On Musical Traditions, Blending, and Authenticity
March 6, 2026 Conversation with Mr. Brightside, and edited by Gemini.
The Shift in the Groove
While cleaning the studio to a playlist spanning five centuries, I realized the musical needle has jumped the record.
For 600 years, Western music was defined by melody moving through harmony—tension and release built on chord changes. Hip-hop broke that lineage, treating the voice as a rhythmic instrument rather than a pitched one. It isn’t a matter of quality; it’s a shift in dimension. For those of us tuned to harmony, rhythm-first music can feel like a structural gap.
This evolution highlights a common historical cycle:
- Radical experimentation
- Commercial smoothing
- Deeper synthesis
We are likely in the middle of that third stage. Much like the American cultural story, these traditions are meeting, colliding, and learning to blend. The future likely holds a new language that combines the expressive flow of rhythm with the harmonic storytelling of melody. All the elements are already in the studio—it’s just a matter of how we move the faders.
Blog site format possibilities:
I have been away working on 12 different versions of my mUSaRT wheel and then transitioned to building two artworks together to submit to the solo ARC Gallery exhibition. What happened is that I have spent almost all of late 2025 my writing engaging with Mr. Brightside and Gem from Gemini, on the development of the mUSaRT wheel. The goal was always to develop an overall new type of artist color wheel. Version 12 turned out to be the last version that was updated from 12 to a final 12.8 in the quest to find a solutions to some major flaws with this type of Utrecht Color wheel upgrade. These existed from the start, and still existed with version 12. Therefor, finally, I have had to switch to a different ide. This new Color guide is bound to consume months more effort to create. That start is going to have to wait. I need to return to writing my ideas and displaying my art progress that has been completely tossed aside. I finally got caught up last night after 9 pm with the deadline for the ARC submission being 10pm last night. This is most important exhibit submission of the year.
This is also my third time I have gone through this effort. I feel this is my best effort of showing and explaining this art, but if I make the first cut that is the best I can hope for. So it goes. No one said this would be easy.
Scott Von Holzen.