Category Archives: Art

The Job Is Not the Work

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.

Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.

The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it’s a job.

Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.

I call the process of doing your art ‘the work.’ It’s possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that’s how you become a linchpin.

The job is not the work.”
― Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

Mural Artist at work, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

The Finished Mural, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

Burn Genuinely And With A Free Flame

Posted on by Bill Chance

“There is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or a woman for their world. For the world of their center where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame.

The love of the diver for his world of wavering light. His world of pearls and tendrils and his breath at his breast. Born as a plunger into the deeps he is at one with every swarm of lime-green fish, with every colored sponge. As he holds himself to the ocean’s faery floor, one hand clasped to a bedded whale’s rib, he is complete and infinite. Pulse, power and universe sway in his body. He is in love.

The love of the painter standing alone and staring, staring at the great colored surface he is making. Standing with him in the room the rearing canvas stares back with tentative shapes halted in their growth, moving in a new rhythm from floor to ceiling. The twisted tubes, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared across the dry on his palette. The dust beneath the easel. The paint has edged along the brushes’ handles. The white light in a northern sky is silent. The window gapes as he inhales his world. His world: a rented room, and turpentine. He moves towards his half-born. He is in Love.

The rich soil crumbles through the yeoman’s fingers. As the pearl diver murmurs, ‘I am home’ as he moves dimly in strange water-lights, and as the painter mutters, ‘I am me’ on his lone raft of floorboards, so the slow landsman on his acre’d marl – says with dark Fuchsia on her twisting staircase, ‘I am home.”
― Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

Mural on construction fence, Farmer’s Market, Dallas, Texas
Derrick S. Hamm

Derrick S. Hamm

Out Of the Chaos

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

Mural on construction fence, Farmer’s Market, Dallas, Texas
Derrick S. Hamm

Derrick S. Hamm

From the artist’s Instagram.

This piece is based on the previous intaglio print ‘Harbingers’ and is inspired by the works of Botticelli, Caravaggio and Rubens

Sleep Without Dreams

Posted on by Bill Chance

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”
― Werner Herzog

St. Kampos by Ashley Pridmore
2018 Bronze
Poydras Street, New Orleans

In the City of New Orleans there is a fantastic arrangement of sculpture along Poydras Street. Walking down and back from my son’s apartment to the Running of the Bulls I took photos of a few of them that I’ll share with you.

Seahorse sculpture installed on Poydras Street

New giant golden seahorse sculpture arrives on Poydras Street

NEW ORLEANS CELEBRATES INTERNATIONAL SCULPTURE DAY 2018 WITH GIANT SEAHORSE INSTALLATION

Like a Graceful Dream

Posted on by Bill Chance

“On a certain day in the blue-moon month of September
Beneath a young plum tree, quietly
I held her there, my quiet, pale beloved
In my arms just like a graceful dream.
And over us in the beautiful summer sky
There was a cloud on which my gaze rested
It was very white and so immensely high
And when I looked up, it had disappeared.”
― Bertolt Brecht, Poems 1913-1956

William Cannings
Stacked V
2016 Texas
Materials: Steel, Paint and Polyester Flakes
Poydras Street, New Orleans

Artist Statement:
“Tall, bright and colorul, Stacked V aims to be whimsical and eye catching. The shapes are made with sheet steel – cut welded and inflated with air pressure to appear soft and ephemeral. The surfaces are developed using automotive paints to be glossy, smooth and seductive. The individual squares are free to spin on their aces – a changing composition of color and reflection.” – William Cannings

In the City of New Orleans there is a fantastic arrangement of sculpture along Poydras Street. Walking down and back from my son’s apartment to the Running of the Bulls I took photos of a few of them that I’ll share with you.

This is another sculptor from New Orleans that I recognized – I had seen his work (though I haven’t photographed or put it in my blog yet). He has a sculpture in the Hall Gallery in the Dallas Arts District named “Cubed.” Now I have to take the train down there, ride my bike, take some photos. I do have entries from right around there, after all.

Art and/or Advertisement

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists.. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.”

― Banksy

El Pajaro y la Nina by Ray Smith, 2016 Mexico/New York, Material Reclaimed Tires/Poured Concrete
Poydras Street, New Orleans

In the City of New Orleans there is a fantastic arrangement of sculpture along Poydras Street. Walking down and back from my son’s apartment to the Running of the Bulls I took photos of a few of them that I’ll share with you.

I don’t know what I like the best… the sculpture by Ray Smith… or the giant poster for Zatarains.

Beautiful And True

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Why do beautiful songs make you sad?’ ‘Because they aren’t true.’ ‘Never?’ ‘Nothing is beautiful and true.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The Lute Player, Enrique Alferez, New Orleans

On the right side of the entrance to the First Bank & Trust Tower on Poydras street, downtown New Orleans – is the huge statue of David, which I wrote about yesterday. On the other side, also done by Enrique Alferez is “The Lute Player” a softer sculpture, adding a little contrapoint.

Giants Are Not What We Think

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

David, Bronze, Enrique Alferez, New Orleans

Sculpture of David, in front of the First Bank & Trust Tower on Poydras street, downtown New Orleans – Enrique Alferez

Everything Worth Fighting For Unbalances Your Life

Posted on by Bill Chance

“There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.”
― Alain de Botton

VisionShift, Sonia King, Mosaic, Arts District, Dallas, Texas


VisionShift – Sonia King

Oblique Strategy: You don’t have to be ashamed of using your own ideas

Every year, going into the holidays, I am stressed at work and looking forward to getting away, doing some of my own stuff, and getting everything teed up for next year.

But the hits just keep on coming. Everybody is in a hurry, they want their problems solved, and they seem to think I’m the only one to solve them. I’m sure everybody feels this way.

On another note – I have become re-fascinated by this wonderful piece of music. I keep listening to it over and over. It’s a shame it was used as a cigarette commercial jingle for so many years, and that’s how so many remember it.

A-Hole in One

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an ever smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose”
― Winston S. Churchill

Oblique Strategy: Always give yourself credit for having more than personality

On our bicycle tour of The Cedars Open Studios we stopped at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary, The MAC. The gallery is undergoing extensive construction after its move from McKinney Avenue to The Cedars. But outside, there was a very interesting, fun, and cool installation, an interactive performance – A-Hole in One. The artist, Angel Cabrales, had set up a number of large carpeted outlines of various strategic countries across a vacant lot. The participant/observer would then take a wooden sculpture of a gun, equipped with a battery powered fan, and shoot golf balls out at the targets/countries.

From the artist:

A-Hole in One examines current political events and perceived societal norms through a consumable and familiar format: golf.

In a time when executive decisions regarding the fate of global politics appear to be determined on the golf course, Cabrales invites the viewer to hold this very power in their own hands. The MAC’s outdoor space will be staged as Cabrales’ ‘global’ golfing green, complete with golf greens and golf holes, where viewers can ‘play a round’ and inform the world of important decisions by way of random tweets. Golf equipment is provided, but participants are encouraged to bring their mobile phones and download the Twitter app.

A-Hole in One, The MAC

A-Hole in One, The MAC, if you look closely, you can see the blue golf ball travelling dowrange

A-Hole in One, The MAC