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100TH REC HOMIES
Here it goesss...
Recently watched a documentary about one of my favourite artists, Coulter Jacobs, and there's a shot in the film that briefly lingers on a quote he had painted onto a block of wood:
Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest*
My take on it:
The quote isn't anything revolutionary, but within the context of the doc, which focuses on Jacobs' artistic pursuits/struggles and influence within the LA tattoo artist + abstract art community, it perfectly sums up the importance of being forgiving & allowing yourself room to breathe when you're working on your craft.
As someone who has a tendency to overthink & give my all with even the smallest of tasks, finding that delineation between seriousness and levity can get very blurry at times, but perhaps that's exactly why that short sentence stood out to me and it may be of use to you too.
Whether you consider yourself an artist or not, it's just as good a reminder to not take everything in this life with too much severity. It's a heavy existence already, no need to make it harder on yourself by treating everything like it will utterly make or break your life and/or career.
*The quote originally comes from Hermann Hesse, a German-Swiss novelist, poet, painter & Nobel laureate whose works focused a lot on the pursuit of personal authenticity and self-understanding.
Apr 11, 2024
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reading this was so refreshing having just read Kafka’s The Trial which is 100 or so pages of what felt like the exact same scene over and over again
But really there’s so much in this quote that you can put into your artmaking! It helps me remember that the idea is king, and any way you can convey the idea is valid. why should the 75 Hours I spend on a painting imbue the idea with any more importance?
Jan 6, 2025
I have always adored art ever since I was in preschool. I loved creating characters or even doing my own renditions on characters and movies.
I even took time during lockdown to work on my interest, putting in hours of learning anatomy and structure.
However for a while I've been in a slump of sorts, I've lost creativity and the fuel to continue.
It's been hard, especially since drawing and creating is something I've been putting effort to what seems like eons at this point. I even decided to just quit altogether and pursue something else as a dream career.
There had become a point where my boyfriend gave me a pep talk and to prove his point he had read me a book he wad reading for philosophy called 'The Republic';
"All great things are precarious... Beautiful things really are difficult" and in his own words told me -
"It occurs often throughout the text, anything that is easy will never be beautiful, for if it is easy it won't have the scars and marks of something built through struggle, those scars and marks are the cracks through which beautiful shines most brightly", which I think helped me.
For the past month in my art class I've been researching a style called 'Jugendstil' and got a bit of inspiration again. I want to show off what I made because I'm genuinely happy with my product since a hot minute.
Anyways moral of the story, don't beat yourself up if you don't find something about you or what you make up to your standards, because beautiful things take time.
Feb 27, 2025
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There's a thing that I notice at art museums sometimes. Someone wearing a slightly annoyed expression will be speeding through the exhibit like they are going down a long to do list. Or I'll be playing a board game with a group and there will be some guy with a strained face looking like they'd rather be anywhere else. Maybe another time we're leaving a movie and they start to complain about how it 'wasn't realistic', you get the picture.
I swear to God it makes me want to pulpify their face.
I'm not saying that you need to like every piece of art or that you should feel bad for not liking a movie, but, goddamn, at least give it a fucking second. Closing yourself off to The New, being automatically opposed to earnestness when it appears, is one of the most damaging defense mechanisms I can think of. It is, in turn, also one of the best ways to maximize your misery.
The defense mechanism that is cynicism, turns its users into parasites of the Social; they are sold the idea (a lie) that damaging and denigrating <<something>> allows one to become independent of its power structure. On the contrary, just as a leech is the most dependent on its host, cynics are those that are most dependent on the power structures in our culture.
I really want to emphasize the difference between criticism and cynicism, because I am in no way saying that we should not criticize bad or damaging art, but to successfully criticize something means to first buy in, to really allow yourself to be taken by a piece, to examine it as it comes. Buying in as a term (even one so bathed in capitalist sebum) is the right one in this case because to buy in requires one to make a sacrifice. You cannot experience art without opening yourself to the possibility that it will do damage to you. To fully allow yourself to be moved by a piece of art is to allow yourself to be cut.
But inside that cut is what it means to be human.
I think the single best way to combat cynicism is an unceasing curiosity of the world and the people in it. The normal and common of this world is absolutely fantasmatic if you take a moment to examine it; we see the world through have fluid filled orbs made of meat for fucks sake. The fact that there is anything at all, the fact that you and I exist for even a second is an absolutely unbelievable mind fuck, and to be unimpressed by any and everything doesn’t make you special or better than anyone, it just leaves you on a road to the pit of despair and leaves me really bummed out for the rest of the night.
Sep 20, 2024
Top Recs from @verygoodvalentina
I adore finding a random video from like 2005 and reading through the comments the way a historian would examine an old manuscript from the 1700s. Are these people still active YouTube users? Or are they forgotten accounts? What did @jjlwis mean by "awww im gonna miss rob too!!!" ? Who even is Rob?? Anthropology in the digital age... so many questions... it's fascinating.
The important thing for me is not to add new comments. I feel like I'm disturbing an old archeological dig site and my sticky modern commentary will make the video crumble away into oblivion. More importantly, I don't want the algorithm to suggest the video to a bunch of people who will spam the comments section– major yuck 🤢
Jan 25, 2024
early 80s to early 2000s truck models are the perfect sizes imo. current trucks are transformer-sized behemoths that could easily crush normal vehicles into smithereens upon impact and i legit don’t know how those things are even street-legal. also, idk if it’s their design, reliability or the nostalgia factor per-se, but there’s a certain sazón those older trucks have that newer ones don’t.
2024 Ford F-150? 🤮🤢
1980 Ford F-150? 🫦🫦
Feb 9, 2025
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with social media being this pervasive entity that has weeded its way into our daily routines for the past 20ish years (plus a global pandemic that really solidified those habits), many young adults today have spent a large amount of their lives living online. it has become the new norm and i’m not gonna pretend i’m above any of this because it’s so easy to fall into it (i am literally writing this rec on my phone whilst it’s a perfectly sunny day that i should probably go out to enjoy).
with that being said, in the larger scheme of life, being in your 20s is still in a weird way the beginning stages of your life. it’s a period to try new things, make mistakes, learn from them and develop an identity that’s independent from the environment and people who raised you. though you can learn to do some of those things online, they don’t hold a candle to actually experiencing those things for yourself in real life.
all in all, the best way to not sleep thru your 20s is to prioritize in-person experiences that allow you to get a better understanding of yourself and your values. whether that be getting your first tattoo, moving to a new city or country, exploring your personal style or taking up hobbies you couldn’t or would‘ve never done as a kid, this is an important formative time to venture out and get a sense of who you truly are.
Sep 30, 2024