Jump to content

Jazz Junkies released


Recommended Posts

Hi to all you Jazz junkies,

I’m an artist from the San Francisco and a big fan of Jazz. Today I'm announcing the release of Jazz Junkies. It's my new Kickstarter project and I am trying to spread the good word to all the serious Jazz junkies out there. I'm reaching out to this great community to help me reach my funding goal..Please have a look:

photo-little.jpg

Jazz Junkies (silk screened prints) by Kamiblue

Three 20"x 21" silk screened prints of legendary Jazz musicians: Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Chet Baker designed as a triptych.

Only $20 for 1 or $50 for the set including US shipping charges.

Edited by Kamiblue
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess I wish you luck but have to turn :tdown on choosing artists based on their "junkie" status and its even worse that you include this

Each of whom eventually was to succumb to the very same demons which perhaps allowed them to reach new pinnacles in their respective forms.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Kamiblue,

Your prints are really nice and seem like a work of love, but as you can see... focusing like you did - pun or not - on the unfortunate habit of the artists will make it hard for the true jazz aficionados to spontaneously support your project. Best of luck nevertheless.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow-Didn't expect that reaction--Dan--I didn't pick those artists because they were junkies...They're among my favorite Jazz musicians.

And yes, Dan the section you quoted from my description was awkwardly worded, but I don't think it contains objectionable content, does it?..well, JSngry I guess you're JuSt aNGRY---

Thanks Simon8 for seeing the love.

Please allow me to explain:

I truly love those artists and I spent months and months creating those prints and I chose that title(apart from the alliterative aspect),because I think junkies have gotten a bad rap…It goes without saying that there are some not so great junkies out there, but when I look at my favorite artists: musicians, poets, painters, writers, etc…they all seem to have that in common, but it’s clearly dangerous. It wasn’t meant to be an ethical judgment. In my kickstarter profile I listed myself as a junkie, so my intention was not to denigrate these truly transcendent artists in any form…The prints are my personal elegies and I hope they'll only bring joy.

Check out a large view here and I think you'll understand what I was trying to say.

Kamiblue

Edited by Kamiblue
Link to comment
Share on other sites

well, JSngry I guess you're JuSt aNGRY---

No man, I'm the happiest thing on wheels. For real. But it's not from getting fucked over by junkies, or from seeing firsthand drugs block and destroy at least as much as they free up.

And that's not a judgement, unless you call being depressed by the cumulative baggage of bad outcomes resulting from bad choices a judgement.

Then again, maybe it is a judgement. Maybe I should be emotionally neutral when it comes to things like self-destruction and collateral damage. Maybe I'm just not evolved enough to be there. Maybe I should even celebrate it!

But I'll not, I can't, and I won't. Sorry.

But good luck on your money thing!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Half a block from here is a block of stores and restaurants. Junkies stand in front of them daily and beg money from the passing university students, and there's usually one raggedy guy or another who uses an old homeless newspaper for a prop while he peddles something else. You can see how some of these guys deteriorate, sometimes quickly sometimes slowly, year by year until they disappear. At the alley is a mural depicting a bright and good-hearted young friend, a talented artist, who died of an OD. Whenever I entered the restaurant where he used to work, he'd play a Thelonious Monk CD on the background music.

The idea that C. Parker played so great because he was high is b.s. He may have needed to get off in order to play at all, but that's not the same thing, and apparently Bird knew it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah JSngry--you sound angry--This isn't a "money thing"--- like I said, I spent months and months making those prints and believe me even if I was to reach my funding goal, I wouldn't be making a profit.

I'm not saying that you should be a junkie--each of those prints(if you took the time to look at them)is clearly a lament for the untimely loss of a great artist.

Are you familiar with Huxley's "Doors of Perception"? How about Baudelaire's "Les Paradis Artificiels" or Rimbaud's "Extract from the Voyant letter"--Here's a quote from the latter:

The Poet makes himself a seer by a long, rational and immense disordering of all the senses. All forms of love, suffering, madness: he searches himself; he consumes all the poisons in himself, to keep only their quintessence. Unspeakable torture, where he needs all his faith, every superhuman strength, during which he becomes the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed – and the supreme Knower, among men! – Because he arrives at the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than others! He arrives at the unknown, and when, maddened, he ends up by losing the knowledge of his visions: he has still seen them! Let him die charging among those unutterable, unnameable things: other fearful workers will come: they’ll start from the horizons where the first have fallen!

That said, I don't think my prints are celebrating junkies--I was trying to show that being a junkie can expose you to the infinite, but that the consequences, as in the case of these 3 great artists, are often tragic. Each print illustrates the movement from light(the eggs represent Hesse's "Abraxas"(the opening up of one's consciousness) into the darkness of their addiction eventually culminating in their untimely deaths, symbolized by the flowers.

My apologies if you find that objectionable, but that's the way I see things.

Kamiblue

Edited by Kamiblue
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually, jlhoots my next prints(triptych) were set to be about 3 of my favorite Beats: Kerouac, Ginsberg and Cassady, which I planned to title "The Father(Kerouac), the Son(Ginsberg) and the Holy Goof(Cassady)." Unfortunately, there may not be a next set, because without the support of others I can't afford to do this.

Sorry, if I offended this community.

Kamiblue

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm sorry, but in this house, to stamp the banner of "Jazz Junkies" over theses great artists is a the very least insensitive to their legacy and importance, anyway you coat it.

Your statement: "I was trying to show that being a junkie can expose you to the infinite" baffles me. The infinite misery? The infinite waste? Being high on opiates give you insight to the Infinite? In my experience opiates turn people into a real despicable assholes at best, so I have to call you out there.

That monkey on Chet Baker's back is a nice touch, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Marcello--I respectfully disagree--I believe that what is perhaps the most definitive biography on Chet Baker, "Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker", alludes to his being a junkie in its very own title. And Billie Holiday is quite frank about her addictions in her autobiography, "Lady Sings the Blues". Is this title, "Bird Lives!: The High Life And Hard Times Of Charlie (yardbird) Parker ", objectionable too?

The infinite refers to god. "The triptych form arises from early Christian art" and my prints are clearly meant to have religious significance. Charlie Parker is compared to the Buddha and the text extracted from "Mexico City Blues" is quite obviously a prayer to Charlie Parker--A prayer for forgiveness. I also put a halo behind his head to make my intentions clear. So, we have Charlie as god--Buddha-- as the center panel, flanked by the other parts of what forms a holy trinity.

You may have noticed both Chet Baker's and Billie Holiday's head are at the same level, which is significantly lower than Charlie Parker's as traditionally triptychs had a larger center panel.

This is a traditional triptych:http://en.wikipedia...._-_WGA11878.jpg

I don't know if you are familiar with the Beats, but the originator of the term(the Beat Generation)--Actually, picked it up from a junkie-Herbert Huncke--Jack Kerouac said Beat was Be-at(Beatitude). Huncke the junkie was beatific to him. Pure. Open. An open door. The Beat writers in America celebrated Jazz musicians, Rimbaud, drugs, junkies, free love, etc--Need I remind you of William Burrough's "Junkie"?--The Beats begat a rather large movement in the 1960s--the Hippies, and Huxley's "Doors of Perception', (not to mention "The Doors", the band)..was one of their bibles. So yeah, pretty much for at least the last 60 or 70 years some of our most celebrated American writers and thinkers, and prior to them the Surrealists and prior to that the Dadaists, etc, etc, have come to embrace certain chemicals as doorways to the infinite. Of course, you could go further back into our prehistory and take a look at Shamanism--"Shamanism (pron.: /ˈʃɑːmən/ SHAH-mən or /ˈʃeɪmən/ SHAY-mən) is a practice that involves a practitioner reaching altered states of consciousness in order to encounter and interact with the spirit world."

Res ipsa loquitur---The fact is consciousness altering substances do indeed allow for glimpses of the infinite, like it or not.

The Beats believed that Jazz musicians had "it". The "it" referring to a beatific vision--which to me implies that through their music they were able to come face to face with god and to convey that voice to all those who were listening. The Jazz musician..the Junkie..is the ultimate Beat...

Edited by Kamiblue
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Reach out to me when you do your R&B Wife-Beaters set...do you have any idea how much of the infinite POWER you can eat when you smack your bitch upside her head and put her in that place where she needs to go but don't got the good sense to go there until you pop it into her? Woman gives you life, and beating her is just retuning the favor. back to her.

Kisckstart that one, bitch, I'm all in!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh, I get it now; you really have no real idea of what your talking about!

So, to lecture you back, Professor:

Yes, the title of "Bird Lives" is somewhat objectionable to many ( but not as much as "Jazz Junkies", and the book itself ( along with Albert Goldman) is filled with embellishment and outright lies.

I know what a triptych ( correct spelling) is, by the way. I have a Masters in Fine Arts too! Too be fair, that concept/use is a nice idea, no matter how misguided.

Do I know of the Beats? Better than you, I'm afraid. There was a time, many years ago, when I had a more than a passing friendship with Robert Creeley when we he taught in Buffalo. A deeper thinker than yourself, I might say. Huncke? Now there's a degenerate Times Square junkie for you. Too bad you couldn't hang with him for a week or so so he could show you how enlighten he was.

I really don't want to see your next Kickstarter campaign on the Beats.

I'm going to stop. This is really not worth the effort. You live in the Bay Area? I suggest that you take a field trip to the seeder parts of Oakland or the Tenderloin for a month or so and tell us of your insights if and when you come back. It may do your art some good.

Edited by marcello
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi to all you Jazz junkies,

I’m an artist from the San Francisco and a big fan of Jazz. Today I'm announcing the release of Jazz Junkies. It's my new Kickstarter project and I am trying to spread the good word to all the serious Jazz junkies out there. I'm reaching out to this great community to help me reach my funding goal..Please have a look:

photo-little.jpg

Jazz Junkies (silk screened prints) by Kamiblue

Three 20"x 21" silk screened prints of legendary Jazz musicians: Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Chet Baker designed as a triptych.

Only $20 for 1 or $50 for the set including US shipping charges.

"Bad Taste" doesn't come anywhere near describing this project.....I'm gobsmacked. Is it for real?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A (geographical) outsider's comment looking in:

What's so great and even desirable about reaching one's self-imposed artistic ceilings only after becoming high (and then ending up being invariably strung out before the vicious cycle starts again)? Celebrating shooting dope as an achievement in reaching artistic heights? Hey, is this still the dope-worshipping late 60s/early 70s in music? (Yeah, I know, dope had been shot by other artists, including musicians, well before that time but was there ever an era when shooting dope and getting high was ever that close to being "respectable" and "the thing to do" well BEYOND musicians' circles?)

But strictly personally speaking, what I find rather tiresome is that seemingly endless desire by whoever wants to put in an artistic touch to come up with drawing, painting, pastiching (whatever ...) the same faces, poses, postures of oh so well-known PICTURES over and over again. How often, how dreadfully often have we seen the pics (the REAL photographs) before that were at the heart of these three graphic reworkings? And how often are these graphically altered renditions of the actual photographs already being used in (relatively speaking) "pedestrian" advertising art (posters, record covers, etc.) without any pretenses of high art anyway?

Isn't it so that in the end the musicians in question are recognized primarily because people recognize those VERY photographs and automatically associate the musicians shown there?

Hey, instead of all this, how about selecting 5 o r6 or even 10 photographs of the musicans in question and then combining the faces, features, characteristic elements, expressions, typical body postures of those musicians into a NEW drawing, painting (whatever ...) of those VERY musicians from an angle or in a pose that has NEVER before been captured in a photograph yet shows the respective musicians in the same unmistakeable and immediately recognizable way ?

IMO THIS will show the world that one can REALLY draw, paint, etc. Because it will demonstrate that the artist can extract the three-dimensional features of a face or body from two-dimensional source material and TRANSFER them into an accurate yet different two-dimensional image that is NOT based on a preexisting picture available for use as as a source for copying or painting over.

Otherwise, beyond pure technicalities of how these prints are made, and given today's technical and software possibilities, IMHO this trend of rehashing of utterly well-known photographs will entail the risk of pushing such efforts (however noble they may have been at heart) into the nowhereland somewhere between "another Warhol imitation" and "clever Photoshop or other graphic software use" in the minds of very many who've seen exactly the same pics (either the original photographs or grahically altered renditions) a zillion times before.

Sorry if this comes across as somewhat harsh, but again - how about creating something NEW instead of altering all too well-known source documents? (Give or take that monkey on Chet's back ... ;)

Edited by Big Beat Steve
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kamiblue - I am sure that your intentions are honorable, but you should understand the reaction here. What do you think Bird, Billie, or Chet themselves would think about it? It is one thing to be open and frank about an addiction, and quite another thing to want your picture to be paraded around under the banner of "jazz junkies."

Edited by John L
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That heartburn commercial where the lady is eating spaghetti and it - the spaghetti - reaches out and starts smacking her in the face, so she takes the medicine and then she presumably goes back and scarfs it all down, eats it all up, hey that medicine let her show the spaghetti who's boss, that's that this artwork is, a heartburn commercial, only the lady is jazz musicians, the slapping spaghetti is life, and the medicine is heroin.

All I know is that if some feistyass spaghetti started slapping me in the face, I'd not need no heroin to smack it down and get it ate. Some extra Parmesan maybe, but for the spaghetti, not me.

Can you imagine, shooting Parmesan?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

JSngry-I don't know what you're talking about and I don't care, but don't call me a bitch old man.

Marcello-Should I make fun of your misspelling of you're as your when you wrote "no real idea of what your talking" or to as too where you write "Too be fair"? or here where you wrote "when he we taught in Buffalo"? or when you used the wrong tense and wrote "how enlighten he was"? Or "seeder" when you meant to write seedier? I see your profile lists your age as 58--I'm a great deal younger, but not nearly so childish.

You know the Beats better than I do? I find that assertion highly dubitable at best, even if you did know Robert Creeley--It's thunderously apparent to me that you have no IDEA about what they were talking about, either. I've lived in Jersey City, Culver City, Oakland, Harlem(when it was Harlem)...so a field trip to the seedier areas is as misguided as the rest of your "thoughts".

Sorry, for upsetting your delicate sensibilities Head Man, but alas it's for real.

Big Beat Steve---My German friend.

What's so great and even desirable about reaching one's self-imposed artistic ceilings only after becoming high (and then ending up being invariably strung out before the vicious cycle starts again)? Celebrating shooting dope as an achievement in reaching artistic heights? Hey, is this still the dope-worshipping late 60s/early 70s in music? (Yeah, I know, dope had been shot by other artists, including musicians, well before that time but was there ever an era when shooting dope and getting high was ever that close to being "respectable" and "the thing to do" well BEYOND musicians' circles?)
I didn't assert that and I'm not celebrating shooting dope--These prints all lament what is often the endgame of being a junkie.

I'm sorry you don't like my reworkings..I don't consider them Warholesque though..something more like a mixture of Graffiti and Folk Art. Anyone can draw as anyone can play a musical instrument--There is no lack of able people who are at the very least competent artisans. I'm sure that you're aware that many of the greatest painters/artists in history had their work at least partially done by their assistants. Why don't you write some software to extract a 3-D rendering from 5-10 photographs? I'm not interested in doing that. There's nothing new under the sun, even that statement is old. Yes, I used photographs, perhaps, famously recognizable ones...that was kind of the point...Now the composition of the 3 figures(junkies) as religious icons, although, not new, is all mine... These prints are my authentic voice and that's all anyone can be expected to express...If you don't like it, that's fine...It's the only voice I have.

John L--I think they'd dig being the new holy trinity..Jazz Junkies is just a title--It doesn't exist anywhere on the prints...

Edited by Kamiblue
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sure, Kamiblue, I see your point, and of course ome man's meat is another one's poison. It just is that I find it a pity certain images are all too omnipresent and have been used almost to death in innumerable superficial modifications.

BTW, talking about 3-D, as I am almost sure you guessed I was not talking about creating a 3-D rendering per se but rather about being able to "imagine" 3-D views. Because if you draw or paint portraits and can combine different views of one and the same person and work them into a new image of that person from yet another angle YET manage to capture this person's features so everyone knows who this is supposed to show, then this requires the ability to IMAGINE objects in 3-D in order to transpose them into something new in 2-D images. No mean feat and something where artistry comes in, and THIS is something where "I doff my hat in sincere appreciation". ;)

Now, as for photographs seem a million times before in various modifications ... well, the novelty wears off there IMO and I for one am underwhelmed. But again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder so to each his own ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

JSngry-I don't know what you're talking about

See, this lady (she looks like she could be a variant on Chan Parker) is trying to enjoy life, take it to a higher plane, but the spaghetti of life won't let her, it is too much the boss of her and slaps her every time she starts to partake. She feels overwhelmed and needs an escape so she can get to her own special place. So she takes the Tums heroin and chills that shit right down so she can go about ruling life the way only a hip chick with a belly full of Tums heroin can. The Tums heroin puts her life where she wants it to be and now she can stare down the spaghetti life and it just limps out. She is free, at least until the Tums heroin wears off. And it always does.

I mean, if you can't understand how Tums heroin works, are you sure you're ready for the real thing?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Big Beat Steve--Sorry, imagining 2-D objects in 3-D and translating them back into 2-D renderings leaves me about as cold as my prints do you. There are innumerable forgeries of any of the great masters..It's a purely mechanical skill... I don't claim to be a great artist, but I do claim that great artists(all artists, in fact) have voices and I think that when you look at my images you don't see the photographs, rather you see my voice. It may be very ugly, more folk than art, but it's authentically mine..I wasn't trying to lose my voice by borrowing a photograph..but I did want the image to be iconic. These are iconic photos..My intention was to take a culturally iconic image and give it back, or give it, its proper iconic significance(in the true religious sense of that word), which perhaps, as you pointed out, has been lost(or in the case of a religious icon, not expressly intended) due to its having been printed over and over again ad nauseam..by framing it as a strictly religious piece.

I get it that not everyone is going to like my prints--Did I think I'd unleash this rancor over a title? no....

Edited by Kamiblue
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I get it that not everyone is going to like my prints--Did I think I'd unleash this rancor over a title? no....

I think any serious jazz fan would know that "Junkie Jazz" isn't just any old title but might cause serious fans to question the intent as well as the knowledge of the artist. Linking artistry to the use of junk is questionable at best, above and beyond the cost its had on the artists in question and their followers. The Ken Burns jazz film was rightly criticized for its focus on Bird's heroin problem - were you unaware of this?

The fact that the title doesn't appear on the art itself makes it less troublesome but I don't see how a true jazz fan, particularly of those artists, could think herself innocent when she titles her work Jazz Junkies then expresses amazement that she's on the receiving end of some rancor.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...