amano

As in “arte a mano”. Among other other things I did today, I coined this term to describe my approach to art of all kinds. Whether audible, edible, or visible  all of my work adhere’s to this idea: use whatever is at hand.

Time, media, inspiration. The quantity & quality of each that I posess at any given moment will never be the same. That is what makes ALL art unique, however, few people really embrace the idea when they’ve little time, cheap materials, or mundane daily life as a muse.

 Even the coinage of the term is an insight into its meaning. Is that how you even say ”at hand” in spanish? Do I care? No, the word carries meaning for me. I don’t have the time or inclination to find the “right” way to say it spanish or any other language [tho I considered Latin for a moment]. I used the knowledge I had at hand to make up a fitting word.

Brazen? Surely! Mildy irreverant? That too! Humourous? My good man, I reply with a hearty “HELL YES”. Ha ha-haaa. Now I’ve lost my train of thinking. Ah yes, using whatever you’ve got to make something cool and artsy.

When making music, I feel equally comfortable in front of a piano, laptop, drumkit, turntable, or a computer screen. The same is true with visual art…a mouse, brush, and ballpointpen are all welcome additions to my stockpile of weapons. Obviously, I’m more adept with some than others, but that doesn’t stop me from making use of any of them to express an idea.

If you stash away all manner of random knowledge, as I am want to do on many a wiki-binge, those seemingly useless tidbits usually tend to be werth their weight, so to speak. As you increase your knowledge-base by reading, listening to music, or studying the strokes of asian masters, you’ll have a larger field from which to harvest new ideas. In other words, there’ll be more “at hand” when you need it most. Those tidbits and incomplete thots are invaluable to an artist and infuse a piece with an intangible aire of togetherness that is absent otherwise. The end product seems like the product of years of planning and deliberation, when in fact it was wholly (or primarily) improvised…a work of a moment or two.

Another truth is that if you are often constrained by time, and you use what little you’ve got in absorbing various obscurities, the resulting compositions will be uniquely stylish and carry a freshness in texture that will set it apart from your peers. Aspire to do something impossible and daring, but most of all intresting to you, and the you’ll at least have something decent with plenty of depth and personality.

Look these vocab words up:

Bilibin

Gouache

Hiroshige

Hokusai