Friday, June 27, 2014

Exciting month so far with...

I've never shot Nina in focus, guess she makes me jittery!



Night of Nina Diaz Band debut.
Exciting month so far with the Magical Guitar

The object of having a magical guitar is, for me, aka Comic Book Shaman, is to collect spirit by drawing attention to the guitar, but only obliquely to me. I'm recording only a fraction of the persons brave enought to share with the guitar. The magical guitar and I attended all three of Nina Diaz bands's historic Belmont shows together. I found it an interesting fun experience. At the 3rd show, outdoors, there was enough light to take some kind of pictures with my poor little phone, but the low-rez images narrow their use a bit, but I thought that these short photo slideshows present the work well.
 


You're Back for More and I come back to Ratt tunes for the cool






Two from St. Mary's University the day G.I.A.C. played the Oyster Bake
am art part 03


The park near the house, magical guitar is on the picnic table that is equally hard to see









Thursday, June 19, 2014

Going Forward and Backward




Going Forward and Backward

I am a visual artst myself, but I admire musical instruments as works of art, and love guitars particularly; of course because as a child of the sixties that iconic instrument is at the core of my musical vocabulary more than any other.

I have a friend who loves guitars also, but has worked on them lovingly for decades, and carrys in his head an encyclopedian knowledge of very many aspects of their natures, particularly their proper parts and maintanance. Mike is as much like myself as you are like the reflection in your mirror; me being full blown on fire with the creativity of living my life, and he the opposite smoldering in maintaining a domestic and ordered existence.


We have talked of guitars for years in the abstract about early this year I became more inquizative, and so commonly we would review a dozen or more instruments, in detail in manic rapid fire questions and dissertations that drive others from the room until we subside.




I dreamed I asked
Courtney to smoke
with me about guitars
we went from pick ups
frets and screws on sixteen
separate instruments
plus the unknown flying V
that turned up just as I did.
Makers finish
repairing cracks issues
and tools best used. 
A cat here in town
met on the internet
who claims to build
guitars to outfit
cancer struck musicians
cynically I suggest we
scope him tightly before
diving in and suggesting
cycles rather than
heirlooms. Round and
round manic spiral up
rapidly to bounce
between us our brains
alive with input from
one another into
deep files out of the
loop until we can
actually use it. I
laughed recounting,
tossed me an Orange, 
not an instrument
but a dern amplifier
1/15/2014


Tonight I took the magical guitar to Nina Diaz historical second headline show at the Belmont, a tiny venue down on the west side of 6th street. She was great of course, and her band is really fantastic, they really played well to a smaller crowd that last week, her debut. I stood right at the stage with the magical guitar and proved invisible, but guitar soaked in the bands spirit, and the crowd seemed to enjoy magical guitar and pitched in too.

Here is magical guitar's body as Mike gave it to me to begin, along with just a few of the tools that accumulate as you work on electric guitars
 We talked quite a bit at first about repairing damage to many unloved guitars that come to Mike from time to time, as woodwork is an interest of mine, and decoration as well. When I decided to do this project I formed the idea of magical guitar right away.

I decided to keep the guitar body with me everywhere i want, and to collect spirit whenever I could. By showing the guitar body, letting people touch it, people stared at the magical guitar everywhere I went, and for months I took pictures of many people and many places. Hundreds of pictures...






The decoration evolved through different stages, once I decided on a narrative I painted it, captured my process in this series of videos