small works in wool: Hump Day Ho-Hum.

It being a mid-July Wednesday on which you are all undoubtedly engaged in a summer bask of one kind or another,

I thought it would be entirely appropriate if we hurdled the week's hump together with a Small Works Wednesday Re-run from last year at this time. If you caught it the first time, please forgive me for phoning it in today; if you didn't have a chance to check it out then, hopefully you'll enjoy it now . . .

"An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one."

A man named Charles Horton Cooley said that.

I have no idea what Charles Horton Cooley looked like, so New Neighbor No. 8 will have to stand in. I hope Charles won't mind.

My mother once said:

"You're famous to me!"

Although it was a sweet, mother-like thing to say, somehow it didn't necessarily make me feel more successful.

F Minus, Tony Carrillo

Occasionally I'm forced to do something as an artist that makes me really nervous. This week it was submit a sketch with a proposal. Drawing is my artistic Achilles' Heel, and nothing makes me more afraid that someday I'll be kicked out of the club.

Well, drawing AND talking about art. I think because I don't have an art degree, I haven't learned to converse with the proper amount of artsy B.S.

But take heart, would-be and wannabe artists everywhere, because today I have some

Friday (well . . . Wednesday) Fun for Everyone!

It's PIXMAVEN, a little gem that will generate all manner of artistic baloney for you to say when you need to sound educated in the art criticism arena.

All you do is submit a 5 digit number, and the site strings together some phrases from a bunch of numbered nonsense that can be applied in any art situation to virtually guarantee success.

By inserting my childhood zip code, for instance, I was able to come up with this:

"It's difficult to enter into this work because of how the reductive quality of the sexual signifier verges on codifying the remarkable handling of light."

How many times have I wished I'd said that?

And my old Seattle zip code yielded this:

"As an advocate of the Big Mac Aesthetic, I feel that the mechanical mark-making of the biomorphic forms brings within the realm of discourse the eloquence of these pieces."

When's my next gallery opening?
Or is it time for a new artist statement?

Or maybe I should have generated a smart-sounding explanation of my dumb-looking sketch before I sent it in . . .

All I know is,
success may finally be
within my grasp!