I reached a crisis point last fall....Extreme Craft officially eclipsed my identity as an artist. Even though I'm a total geek when it comes to the art that other people make, I've always gotten vaguely bummed out when I think about my own work's relationship to "Extreme Craft". I don't really consider my own work "Extreme", but I decided to throw down the gauntlet and make a challenge for myself. I've been a china painter for a long time. China painting is the technique that has always been used to make fussy little flowers on teacups. I started to think about ways to make china painting "extreme".
It came to me in a flash....or maybe a SPLAT. PAINTBALL was the answer! If I could find a way to load china paint into paintballs and fire them at plates, I could be the Jackson Pollock meets William S. Burroughs of the china painting world! After months of trial and error (not to mention cases of broken plates), I'm happy to show you some of the inaugural results. I've dubbed the composition above "Marksmanship #1". This project is doing exactly what art should do for the artist...it's letting me make dorky decisions about composition and color while letting me run rampant on the paintball field. For the first time in a long time, artmaking is completely blissful for me. If y'all are interested, I'll post more images as they become available. China painting has entered the ballistic era.
