Remembrance of Things Past

These are journal pages I constructed for one of the True Colors journals.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
 

Emma Lazarus, 1883

The Pulse of Mixed Media: my review on Amazon

It's Alive! (and kicking), March 13, 2012

This review is from: The Pulse of Mixed Media: Secrets and Passions of 100 Artists Revealed (Paperback)http://www.amazon.com/Pulse-Mixed-Media-Passions-Revealed/dp/144031070X/ref=cm_cr-mr-title

Seth Apter's blog-gone-book will be the subject of art talk viral and actual for months to come. Maybe it's inevitable that an artist with a Ph.D in psychology would always want/try to peel the proverbial onion when it comes to his art cohorts and peers, but Seth always takes it a step further and digs ever deeper with questions seeking answers cathartic and confessional. He pushes the limits in such a gently gracious manner - no it's NOT cleverly diabolical! And artists respond. Obstacles, emotions, choices. Secrets, fears, desires, anger. The depths are plumbed. The book serves up 133 artists (and their diverse and wonder-full art) on a gorgeously graphic platter of layout and design. Dozens of questions are answered in more and less detail in the first two sections of the book by 31 featured artists, and the additional (100+) artists are highlighted in the final third section, with responses to still more questions presented statistically by percentage. Danny Gregory, Angela Cartwright, Michelle Ward, Robert Maloney, and Julie Prichard are a few of the fantastic artists Seth has brought together in another deliciously crafted North Light Books publication.

Seth Apter responds!!!

Without further ado, with a huge woo-hoo, I present here to you: Seth's Answers! (I figure they deserve a post all their own!)

Me: Your (seriously) altered DeLorean has just brought you to the working studio of one of the most evocative and innovative artists of the century. Hmmm, I couldn't really see that date - what year is it anyway, and where in the world are you?  

Seth Apter: It would be a short trip for me…both in terms of location and time. I would head back to downtown NYC in the early 1950s and join the New York School artists for one of their Art Salons. The painting pioneers of the day that would fill that space included Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Still, Motherwell, Mitchell, Newman, Gottlieb, Reinhardt, Krasner, and so many more. Abstract Expressionism was being born and the USA was being put on the art map. Can you imagine the energy and creativity that was being generated?

Me: You have one day left, and you know it. How will you spend it, and with whom?
Seth Apter: No question I would spend the day with my family. There aren’t many of us but we would all be together. And no doubt we would be eating. And knowing me I would also be updating my blog.
(Me: (slapping head) Of course you would! And we would all be ecstatic to read your final thoughts...)

Me: What smell transports you; to where and when?

Seth Apter: Although I have lived in NYC for 29 years, I actually grew up in a house in Connecticut. The smell of cut grass always brings back my time growing up.

Me: In the incomparable 1989 baseball movie Field of Dreams, James Earl Jones, as Terence Mann, says,
"They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces...The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball...This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again." Do you agree? Also, Mets or Yankees?

Seth Apter: I think everybody has their own personal form of ‘baseball’ that floods them with memories, reminds them of better days, and offers hope that the future can be as singularly special as that/those experience/s in the past. I was, am, and always will be a Mets fan. I am much more like them and they are much more like me than the Yankees will ever be. I am all about the underdog, the hope and possibilities of a better year, the scrappiness, and loyalty. Success is sweetest when it is unexpected.

Thank you, Seth! You're the best.

Seth Apter + The Pulse of Mixed Media

Seth's art in Palais, Pasticcio 7

    an excerpt from Seth's Art Array interview in Pasticcio 10       

                  

This is NOT the vehicle that almost ended my life several years ago, merely a charming NYC bike taxi...

What can I say about a guy who has probably done more to support and encourage real community among artists everywhere in the past decade than most people do in a lifetime? Thank you, Seth Apter! Thank you, too, for always willingly giving it up for Pasticcio, even when her editors come begging at the eleventh hour...

And while I'm at it, I probably actually owe you my life...yeah, for that one crazy time you kept me, innocent Westerner that I am, from walking directly in front of a something - what was that anyway, a bus? - coming at me in the heart of New York City. But I digress.

You are not just a fantastic and generous long-distance friend, you are an exemplary artist to your core. I cannot tell you in words expressive enough how truly ecstatic I am for you having just published The Pulse of Mixed Media, a book everyone is going to want for their shelf; a compilation of the astute and reflective questions you put to a crowd of artists absolutely dying to divulge secrets and surprises, dark and intense, funny and light, and the art to expound on them. And thanks, once more, for letting me participate! It was a blast answering your questions, and awfully fun to construct my piece in response to your prompt. Can't hardly wait to party on at Momo Lolo Coffeehouse here on April 26th - did I tell you we'll have live jazz?

Anyway, this is just to say you could not have a bigger fan, nor truer friend, than I. There's just one more thing. Turning it all around, with a question or four for you...Hoping to plunge the depths here...Please get back to us soon; your public awaits, and wants to know:

1) Your (seriously) altered DeLorean has just brought you to the working studio of one of the most evocative and innovative artists of the century. Hmmm, I couldn't really see that date - what year is it anyway, and where in the world are you?

2) You have one day left, and you know it. How will you spend it, and with whom?

3) What smell transports you; to where and when?

4) In the incomparable 1989 baseball movie Field of Dreams, James Earl Jones, as Terence Mann, says,
"They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and  cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces...The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball...This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again." Do you agree? Also, Mets or Yankees?

To see Seth's answers to the questions, please go to the next post ---