THE DREAM

Henri Rousseau

AT THE CORNER OF ART AND COMMERCE STREETS

HERE ARE SEVEN HARD TRUTHS ABOUT ART:

1.ART is either a divine accident, or a miserable mistake.... we aren’t sure which.

2.ART is a complete waste of time until you become wildly successful.

3.Sanity and ART don’t mix, but sometimes they will glare at each other.

4.Once you are a successful ARTist, even your toenails become valuable.

5.You probably can’t trade your ART for a new Volvo.

6. They would rather invite a dead great ARTist for dinner than a live maybe great one.

7.Whatever ART is, it's not gravy.

FILE DRAWERS FULL OF PEOPLE

I want to write on a lot of other topics but I’m forced to do some business first.

I have been showing and selling my work since the late 70s, I have tried to be conscientious about maintaining a mailing list and keeping records of which collector bought which sculpture etc. There was an art boom in the 80s and I sold a lot of work. Often galleries do not want artists to know who bought their work as they feared the artists would cut deals directly with the collectors and leave them out......so at times getting information was tough.

At any rate I have mailing lists out the wazoo. A while back it dawned on me that changes of all sort occur in people’s lives. Lives change …my mailing list should change. I rarely changed it.

In fact keeping up with collectors became a full time job. I guess I slacked off in the mail and records department. Other than a few feeble rallies I have pretty well given up the fight.

If you bought a piece of mine years ago you are probably in “File- drawer A…B or C.” I get you out every once in a while and dust you off. Sadly I would rather get to work on something new than keep up with this stuff.

However along with this blog, which is somehow connected to Facebook and twitter, I now have a computerized mailing list. All of this is courtesy of Ashley. All I have to do is not screw it up.

So I am asking people who want to stay in touch to sign my mailing list …either on this site or on Facebook. I promise you will no longer end up in my studio in a cold file drawer but will be safe and warm in my computer.

Thanks

The management

SO HAPPENED BEFORE DREAM

Shall I question what the day brings or what the night leaves behind ? Last night was dream heavy and vision laden . Stirred into the soup of day it vividly fades and haunts my inner eye. Now I face another night....who knows? The mystery of it all still bides her time.

THE MUSEUM TALKS

I will begin by posting some OLD AND SLIGHTLY USED STUFF.  I have arranged these talks somewhat chronologically on the page from the most recent to the oldest. Although if you are an art historian and you're planning on writing the definitive ED HADDAWAY BIBLIOGRAPHY  I did shuffle the deck a bit.

ED HADDAWAY QUESTIONS HIMSELF

FROM MUSEUM of the SOUTHWEST TALK

I did the work of the audience for them by supplying both the answers AND the questions.

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Question.

What is art?

answer

Art is  the scratch that relieves the itch .........or it might be the itch causing us to  scratch ....either way anyone involved in art is reasonably miserable.

another answer:

For the  slightly nuts or the full blown crazy person art is therapy ..... for the rare sane person  it will drive you nuts

Then of course once again art makes good therapy

Question:

Where do you get your ideas?

Answer :

Before my mother died I used to call her up and she would give me  some good  ideas  and a lot of bad ones.... I've tried this with my wife but for some reason I find I'm always getting mad at her ideas....so I quit asking..... now I just go on line to www. art ideas .com

question from a kid :

asked in a nasty whiney voice

What is THAT supposed to be?

answer:

shut up kid

TOP OF THE HILL DOWN

TOP OF THE HILL DOWN

from

MUSEUM of the SOUTHWEST TALK

We lived at the top of a hill in an area of west Ft Worth called Ridglea Hills. My father was one of the first to buy a lot there and build a house. when I was little you could look out and see the golf course and empty fields  .You could even see Western Hills Motel which was in itself a very unique world.  This was soon after the war and in rapid order Ridglea Hills was filled and overfilled with houses and parents and kids .You couldn't spit without hitting another baby boomer.

At the time, however I was blissfully unaware of just how vast our army was. All I could concentrate on was the hill that we were on top of and the half a dozen or so kids on either side of us.

Soon all manner of stuff was being flung off that hill :

wagons , sleds, roller skates  ,bicycles, go carts, motorcycles, running and not, unicycles, random wheels nailed wildly to boards, and God know what else all went down that hill.

And with each voyage from the top of the hill down came an exhilarating abandonment to the fates and a inexorable trudge back up the hill.

As with all hills there were two sides to it .

One side arced more gently and gracefully, fast enough for mild thrills.... yet tame, its final safe uncoiling came in a slow even leisurely pace, which allowed for both contemplation of the ride and  a refocusing on what came next. Bill McDonald lived on that side, on my left as I hurtled down, his father was a doctor and a much coveted go cart was sitting in their carport awaiting my glance.

At the bottom of that side of the hill ,again on the left, a beautiful and mysterious girl could be seen moving swiftly from car into house.... car into house. The tantalizing  silent scene replayed itself daily as I passed by.

The other side of the hill however, what would have been the north side, must have been created by men still angry after the war . Maniacal 1950s asphalt  laying, road building ,engineers of death. That side of hill  crashed suddenly at its base with a cross street .....A poignant yet fruitless stop sign standing menacingly on the right.

It was only for the older wizened child, the child who sought the sickening sensations felt on roller coasters  and tilt a whirls, the dreamer of bigger more dangerous dreams.

Well here I sit editing this thing with little time left before I have to give this talk...There is so much more...Richard Ellwell, the bad kid that lived on the dangerous side of the hill The three girls ...I cant remember their last names....or their firsts....... also lived there. I had a very vivid dream years ago about those girls......... I think  it was when I hit puberty or something like that was going on and........I will save this dream for my analyst

But this thought is about wheels nailed to boards and me zooming down the hill past it all......I will have to finish it later

WARNING LABEL

FROM TALK at YAVAPAI COLLEGE

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Early on (a few weeks ago in fact) I thought perhaps I would write an all inclusive speech that would encompass the history of art, mankind, and the universe as we know it. This talk would be the basis for a trilogy that I have planned to write for some time and that will be a bestseller and this will allow me to continue to live in the style to which have become accustomed .

Later I changed my mind and thought I could possibly get a short but decent book out of these ideas.

Still later I have at times thought this talk would be the basis of a children’s book,  a low budget movie script, a reality TV show and a self help book for the artistically deluded. My ideas have continued their metamorphoses until as I sit writing this perhaps this talk will best be what you might call “a collection of random thoughts,”

I suppose the main point I want to get across to students at this point in my life is that as an artist I am to be pitied and not scorned. Yes, I have chosen this life, but I did it when I was young and innocent and inexperienced in the ways of the world, and in addition I want to plead insanity.

Like some of you I thought being an artist was a noble, maybe a sort of romantic endeavor. I assumed it would be full of hardships but those hardships would all be surmountable. So at the age of 54, with my life spent in the pursuit of art. I find I missed the warning label.

Let me spell it out:

Art can be hazardous to your health.

LAWYERS AND OTHER DAMN STUFF

LAWYERS  (From A TALK AT YAVAPAI COLLEGE)

......But I do want to talk about Lawyers however.

I think I am at last emerging from a “midlife crises” which has griped me this past year. I assume most of you are young, and you may not yet understand the relationship between Lawyers and a “mid life crises”, but let me assure you there is a definite relationship.

I will not go into all the cultural myths of those in the throws of mid-life.

Most of you assume it has something to do with red sports cars, Viagra and women and you may be right, but my ”mid life crises”  has been about art, money and lawyers.

For my fifty third year I hired a lawyer…an art lawyer in fact.

It all has something to do with the city of Albuquerque, a large commission, the Army Corps of Engineers, the city council, a Zoo director, a woman and her husband who went to Tibet, a man with some money.  4 years of my life, Prozac, water, trees, imagination,indigestion,  Zen and God.

I cussed a lot more than usual during this last year. I confessed to my friends that I haven’t been so mad since I had to deal with my ex wife.

It has affected my artwork drastically and I am now working on a series I call “Letters to my Lawyer”

In fact I am still mad and don’t want to talk about it…. but since I brought it up let me say this: If you are considering a life in the arts, hire a lawyer before you start.

Lawyers get lots of money.

You will want to learn to do their jobs for them so that you can save your money.

It’s not really all that hard.

First learn to type.

CUT AND PASTE (THE SOCRATIC METHOD)

I  (the 2011 Ed Haddaway) AM ENTERING  THE TALK AT THIS POINT AND NOT THE BEGINNING NOT ONLY TO MAKE AN OBSCURE LITERARY POINT, BUT TO TRY TO KEEP FROM BORING THE AUDIENCE

THIS IS FROM A TALK AT NORTHERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY

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I wrote the above paragraph  [DELETED FOR THIS POST] or rather the one I just read, or however I should say it, about a year ago …Another show….. another talk....another time. It was in Arizona, on a rainy  rainy day ....I think

I haven’t learned much since then so I will still use some of it and a bunch of the old stuff in this talk..

I have improved my typing skills (which are minimal) and I am better at this cut and paste stuff on the computer,

so I plan to essentially edit the hell out of this talk and make it sound better and more meaningful.

Laziness is the mother of invention

Here goes:

[Im cutting this paragraph as you may have already read it in another post]

Ok. Truthfully, it (a life in the arts ) is not that bad….It’s just that to elicit pity it’s necessary to recount all the hardships and then some and then to dwell on them. Endlessly

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The August 2005 Ed Haddaway will here delete the next sentence or two and say honestly I don’t have a clue what is truthful anymore ….Art IS bad for your health for all I know …...Its killing me and …I feel old …My feet hurt….My teeth hurt ……..etc….. etc….etc

I am however, a believer in the art as therapy school of thought. We are all sick and need help (so they say)

Art holds out the promise of a cure but it rarely delivers.

[More Perfectly Good Material Here on the Chopping Block]

Wow That sounds pretty good…… kind of deep and meaningful ….. I guess it stays in

But I’ll cut this……….

and this …….

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I do want to talk about Lawyers however.

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No I don’t want to talk about lawyers.  At least not now….. maybe later

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Shit! right here in real time  I just realized I am typing into the original document…I don’t have a copy on the computer of the old talk ….I need to stop and start over on this thing before I really screw it up. I need to cut and paste

I’m a bit nervous this thing wont work

(That’s one of those double meaning deals….)

I am unsure of the computer and unsure if the talk will work.