I am not entirely sure who this person is but they sent me an email about their experimental work on the Tumblr blog under the name Ruminsessions. Apparently this is personal and experimental work but there is some tasty eye candy ready to be gobbled up.
Nearly 13 years ago my younger and only brother Luke was in a terrible car accident that he barely survived. It’s hard to believe it was that long ago. I was only 23 at the time and about to graduate from college. I returned home one night after going out with my then girlfriend (she is my wife now) to find a message on the answering machine from my mother that my brother had been in an accident and I needed to rush to the hospital immediately.
After a night of partying my brother hopped into a car with some friends, none of which should have been driving. The car lost control not long after they left a house in the country outside of our hometown of Kearney, Nebraska.
My brother was thrown from the vehicle and suffered severe injuries and head trauma. He was clinically dead when the ambulance arrived. He was later revived but in order to survive the brain swelling he was put into an induced coma for the next two weeks or so.
That is only where the story begins. My brother died multiple times as was recorded by the medical staff and each time had different near death experiences. It’s truly a miracle that he survived. His memory of events both in and out of his body are unique in my opinion amongst the mass of people who have had similar experiences. I say this only because he remembers so many of them in extremely visual detail.
It took me many years to come to grips with my brother’s experiences and it put me on a coarse to search for meaning in my own life. His accident came at a time when I was supposed to enter the world confidently and begin my adult life after my education. Instead I began that life in question. All of my beliefs had been stripped from me. The next several years I struggled to care about the frustrating system in which we are supposed to live. A brush with something totally spiritual is enough to make you wonder why we have made life so difficult for ourselves in this world.
The only answer I have found is love. I love my brother. I love my wife, my parents, my friends, family and now my beautiful son. Love is the spiritual twine that binds us to this world and whatever is waiting for us on the other side.
My brother was asked last year to share his remarkable story with The Biography Channel. I suspect he will likely be asked again in the future to share his story at greater length through another media channel. His episode of I Survived…Beyond and Back will premier Sunday January 29th at 8pm Mountain Time (10pm EST).
I am apprehensive about watching it because I know he is going to share things I am sure I have probably never heard him speak of. I am very proud of him for deciding to tell his story and share it with such a large audience. He is my only brother and I love him so much. It’s been hard for him to pick up and carry on with life but he is now doing extremely well. It is amazing that he survived such a traumatic accident with barely a mark on him. He’s currently attending University with a major in theater and an interest in someday becoming a director.
I will be watching the show with my wife this Sunday. I invite you to join in. Lastly, I want to thank all of you who have read this blog and supported me over the years. This special place I have created has opened many doors for me and introduced me to some amazing people. I have always left the myself open on this blog as to who I am, the experiences I have had and what inspires me. It’s a line directly into who I am as a person. My brother’s experiences have had more impact on me than almost anything else that has happened in my life. There is nothing more personal that either I or my family could share. I hope his story will now further inspire you as we all look toward a more meaningful and spiritual future. Thank you for all the love you have given me through Changethethought. Hopefully this story will actually inspire the name I adopted for both my work and this blog a decade ago.
So I was working on this psychedelic triptych, just for the hell of it, and finally finished it last night. I threw it in my personal section because I wasn’t really sure where else to file it. I hope you dig it. I think for my next round of posters I may print these up. If anything, just because I want to hang them in my own home to freak people out a little bit. Most people aren’t accosted by introspective art every day and I like to put some in my home especially in private places like bedrooms or bathrooms to force people into that zone where they have to confront themselves a little bit and think. We may take that for granted because so many of us spend so much time plugged into the current of digital art and culture but most people have yet to enter that space. So, it is easy to take them off guard and I love to see how they react to work like this.
I want to do a few things this next go round with my posters that are a little less direct and more open to interpretation. I hope you dig it. If not, that is fine too. Its art you know. You can’t please everyone. These were digitally-collaged using found imagery.
They are loosely based on the concept of identity, memory and the infinite nature of the space-time continuum.
2009 is going to be a good year. I can feel it. Expect a lot of new work and a better website (if I can find the money to upgrade it). I am going to bust my ass this year like there is no tomorrow. And there may not be a tomorrow with 2012 around the corner. You never know.
I have been working hard lately on several new poster ideas. I have put some of the results up in the work section of the site. I have a new Obama poster that I want to get ready for the inauguration. The poster measures in at 18×24 inches and is 4 screens. I actually want it screen printed this time and I am looking for a good screen printer (preferably one here in Denver, Colorado). If you know of one please drop me a line. I am also working on another series of smaller A3 posters as well. Two of those you can see in the Print Section of the site. One of which is a revised version of an older poster I did a few months back. I am working on 2-3 more of those as well and then I will be doing another run of A3 posters. Probably sometime within the next month. The other posters are just a personal experiment I have been working on lately collaging found imagery together to create psychedelic landscapes. You can see two of those in the Personal Section. More of those to come as I get to them. I probably won’t print those but who knows.
Also, I am still seeking artistic representation (an art rep) to help me find new projects. I am also still planning on rebuilding the site sometime in early 09 and I will be looking for relevant sponsors and advertising. If you would like to take a look at the traffic numbers and are considering advertising please send an email to hire(at)changethethought.com.
Basically between Changethethought and my 9-5 job as Art Director at Cactus, I am busting it pretty hard right now. I love what I do though and that is why I do it. I will also be working on a new television commercial right after Christmas and we just released our new series of commercials for the Own Your C campaign also. Lifelongfriendshipsociety did an amazing job on the spots and I will be getting them up on the site, along with a full right up on the new direction we chose for the OYC campaign this year in the very near future. You can actually see the spots at Motionographer right now.
Thank you for all of the emails and support. Full steam ahead.
Well, this one goes out to all the readers in the United States. I am currently in San Antonio, Texas visiting some old college friends of my wife and I. They recently had a baby who is absolutely adorable and has boundless energy. I don’t think I have ever been around a baby so little who has such a lust for life. She barely sleeps and is constantly smiling and ready to go. She is already making all kinds of sounds and even standing by pulling herself up on the sofa. All of that is happening while she is only 7 months old. I think she is going to be some kind of a child genius. It doesn’t surprise me though since my friend is working on his P.H.D. at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
It’s always good to get away and see old friends. I rarely get personal on this blog and sometimes I think I should more often because that is what people like. I have been really stressed out lately trying to figure out how to earn more income for my wife and I since she is really ready to have a child. I want to be able to provide for her and my baby when the time comes and it has just been hard to earn enough in this field to do so. The United States has become a lot tougher place in the last 10 years for younger couples and the future doesn’t always look so bright either. It’s a hard time right now I think for everyone. I would love it if I did well enough that my wife could stay home for a year and take care of our baby but I just don’t and that weighs heavy on me. It’s hard not to get down and be a little angry sometimes and when that happens I sometimes bite the hand that feeds me and then make it even worse for myself.
So, I am trying a lot of new things in the future to try to get the ball rolling more for myself. Hopefully some of those things will pan out. It’s been a crazy year so far with this blog and in my own personal work. I never thought it would attract the attention that it has but I am just getting started. I really want to start doing interviews this year with other people in the creative industry and starting to add some new content to the site that will make it a lot more resourceful and meaningful for people.
Happy 4th everyone and if you have the chance to, take some time for yourself or to spend with your family. I’ll try to keep posting a few things here and there while I am on the road and I will be back in the saddle again fulltime come Monday.
Well, since this is still my blog to some extent, I feel like this is a proper place to air my intentions. I had an epiphany last night and I woke up this morning in a different state of mind. I realized I have been trend whoring much too much lately and I need to slow down a little. I need to find my center if you will. I spend so much time, for obvious reasons when referencing the blog, looking at the up-to-the-moment trendy work that is out there and I allow it to over influence my thinking.
What it has left me with is no real definable identity. For a while I thought this could be a mark of pride, but I am not so sure about that anymore. What I feel I am missing and craving is just pure old fashioned good design. Good typography, good use of space versus negative space, clean lines, simplicity and form following function. The designers I really admire tend to really know who they are and commit, in some sense, to their identity. Scott Hansen is one who comes to top of mind quickly. His work at Iso50 is just all around well designed. Some of it is trendy, but it is all well designed. The ‘good design’ aspect of his work is what will make his work a reference point for years to come while the trend whores will most likely fall off the map. It is as though he holds up a measuring stick to all his work and asks, “alright, this is done, but is it well designed?”
I haven’t been doing this, what I have been asking myself too much is, “alright I am finished, is this cool?” Cool comes and goes and changes as a matter of perspective. Good design has staying power. So, it’s time to clear out my attic a little bit and start self-editing. I am going to commit to this statement of purpose starting today and start holding up that measuring stick to my work. Don’t worry, I will still be attracted to bright colors, and I think you will still see a lot of my identity in the work, but I am going to put more controls on what I produce. I think ‘better design’ will resonate with more people than just producing heaps and heaps of ‘cool stuff’. Hopefully I will begin to find myself in the process as well and there will be more clarity in my work. Don’t worry about the site either, that is staying for a while as well. I do actually think the site, although it is trendy, is still far better designed than 90% of the awful looking sites and blogs that are out there at the moment.
I will most likely start with a series of posters, similar to Scott Hansen that you will see on the site sometime over the next few months and move out from there. Please don’t mistake me, I will not be ripping off anything Scott designs, I am just going to follow a bit of his ethos, focus on doing only a few things, but do those things very very well. I know this will take time. If you have an opinion about my epiphany, leave me a comment or contact me via the contact section.
