I've become an avid Facebook user, that much is clear. And while there are a number of features about Facebook which I am not entirely thrilled about, nothing has been irritating me more than the wretched quizzes. Every day, a ton of people in my home news feed keep posting their quiz results. After taking a couple of these quizzes myself, I quickly realized how irrelevant and ridiculous they truly are. Since anyone can create a quiz with a little know-how, it's no wonder that they don't make any sense.

If it's not the "What Painting Are You" quiz, then it's the "Who Were You in a Past Life" quiz, or the "Where Should You Live" quiz, etc, etc. There is probably hundreds of random quizzes on Facebook when you click on any "more quizzes" link. Anything from finding out what flavor of ice cream you are, to what car you are. Not that anybody cares. I certainly don't care about the results of everyone's quiz taking, no offense. I am much more interested in communicating with people about more important matters.

And so, since I can't not see the results without removing all updates from a particular user from my home news feed, I have taken on a different approach to fighting back. That's right. I have created a quiz! The quiz of all quizzes. The "What Quiz Should You Take???" quiz! As an artistic experiment of sorts, I created results which are even more ridiculous than the quizzes themselves. This quiz itself is nothing more than a parody of Facebook quizzes, designed to illustrate the utter nonsensical nature of those things.

So, if you are like me and are tired of quizzes on Facebook, then join me in spreading this viral retaliation using the very thing we wish to be rid of. Be a part of the quiz against quizzes campaign!

The funny thing is, that after I wrote all the questions and results, it turned out that the quiz was more insightful than I had anticipated. Even if it is a parody, it is actually a pretty good quiz, too.

Based on the short talk I gave at the Anime & Manga Art Workshop at the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia. This is a cursory treatment of anime and manga, it's historical and cultural background, and the art movement that has resulted therefrom.


0. Introduction

Some might find it strange that a Polish artist, living in America, is making art based on Japanese culture. Because I grew up living in many different countries, and have this multicultural background, I look at the world in a multinational way. I see the flow of media across continents, and my work is based on my observations from that very multicultural perspective.

Culture is integral to any art that is created, and so too with anime and manga there is a lot of history and cultural context that has shaped it over the years.


1. Ukiyo-e

The Japanese art form of Ukiyo-e, which began around 1620, essentially laid the groundwork for a Japanese sensibility in art that would later find its way into manga, and then anime. This form of painting which started some 400 years ago had already established the use of flat colors and black contour lines.


2. Hiroshima & Nagasaki

In 1945, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forever altering the nation of Japan and its people. The motif of the atomic bomb and destruction on a massive scale would come back in anime and manga again and again, and continues to resurface to this day.


3. Westernization

Having lost the war, Japan starts out on a rapid process of rebuilding and industrialization. In order to survive in this new world, many Japanese ideas are replaced with American ones, and the country undergoes a significant Westernization. This process permanently changes Japan into an economic and technological superpower. In essence, this was and is a realization of the stuff science fiction is made of.


4. Disney & Tezuka

Post-war Japanese artist Osamu Tezuka, often referred to as the founding father of manga, saw what Disney was creating in the US. He was then inspired to create work of a similar character, but with a more distinct Japanese sensibility. Enter Astro Boy, as it came to be known in English, which cemented Tezuka's career. It's interesting to note how Astro Boy shares some visual similarities with Disney's work of that time.


5. Robots & Technology

Tezuka at this point established the popular themes of robots and technology with Astro Boy. These themes would evolve and persist to this day, culminating in their own genres and sub-genres of anime and manga.


6. The Anime Boom

The 1980s saw a boom in the anime industry in Japan, as well as a growing popularity stateside. With more money flowing, experimental film begin to be created. Among those, the cult classic Akira sets new standards. With Akira, we yet again see a resurfacing of the atomic bomb motif portrayed by recurring scenes of large scale destruction, intricately linked to the presence of technology.


7. Serious Themes

Works such as Akira presented a seriousness which became more common during the period of the '80s and '90s. Further elaborated in the film Grave of the Fireflies, dealing with the issues of war, bombing, and destruction more directly became more accepted and applauded.


8. Experimental Anime

Building on the trends of experimentation with the successful films of the 1980s, the '90s saw further exploration into uncharted waters in a serialized format. Neon Genesis Evangelion took those serious themes, and combined them with technological science fiction elements and motifs of robots and atomic bombs. It went one step further, by putting all these subjects under the umbrella of metaphysics.


9. Serial Experiments: Lain

The period of experimentation culminated with the creation of Serial Experiments: Lain. The series built on multifaceted approach of including technology, but then advanced into a league of its own by becoming heavily cerebral. Lain embedded over a hundred references to literature, philosophy, history, and more. Its content is in my perception some of the most artistically created in the anime industry. So much so, that it served as the impetus for my shift toward this subject matter in my art. In 2000, I created my first anime styled painting, inspired by Lain (pictured above, right).


10. Japanese Pop-art

During the '90s, artists Takashi Murakami (pictured above, left) and Yoshitomo Nara (above, right) spearheaded a new movement of art based on Japanese popular culture. Using the visual vocabulary of anime and manga, this movement gained a lot of momentum in the 2000s. The international success of these artists has served as inspiration for other young artists the world over who have become fascinated by anime and manga as it flows across national and geographic boundaries.


11. Powerful Means of Expression

It is interesting to me that I did not know about Murakami and his Superflat movement until several years after beginning to create work based on anime and manga. Personally, I found anime and manga imagery to be incredibly powerful as a means of artistic expression. Yet it would be difficult to deny the fact that knowing Murakami's work later on did not have any impact on my work. While I never tried to emulate his style consciously, I think it still exerted its influence on me in ways that I was not aware of.

Currently, my work is beginning to move away from the style I have been developing over the last few years. I am now on the verge of a significant change, looking at what moved me all those years ago when I first began creating this type of art and then opening up to let in a multitude of other cultural influences finally make their presence known.


12. Conclusion

The most important thing in all of this, is to realize that while anime and manga may seem like a shallow consumer product at times it is in actuality a product of hundreds of years of history. Major cultural changes all contributed to the creation of a visual work that we are seeing today. This is true of any art form, but it is important to understand how this work has been influenced by the world we live in today and all that has come before us.

After about a two plus hour flight delay I finally got into Roanoke, Virginia on Friday night. The purpose of my visit was to be a guest teacher of an anime and manga art workshop at the Taubman Museum of Art, which took place on Saturday. Following my late arrival, my host picked me up and showed me around a few Roanoke art exhibitions.

First we caught the tail end of the opening for an exhibition at Roanoke College, which features gallery space of a significant size and quality. We intended to see another show at The Water Heater but ended up missing much of that due to my flight's tardiness. Finally, after fueling up on some sushi after a tiring time in transit, we pretty much called it a night.

Saturday was the big day, and we got up nice and early for it. The Taubman Museum of Art is a gorgeous new building, completed just last year. Designed by architect Randall Stout, the building's forms are reminiscent of designs by Frank Gehry. Apparently Stout studied with Gehry at some point, as indicated by the museum's literature. So came as no surprise that I found the museum's interior spaces light and inviting, and find myself wishing this type of structure existed in Wilmington as well. The education spaces were very well designed from a utilitarian perspective, but seemed a bit small in comparison with the large open halls of the central atrium space. This became clear when the room filled with students attending the workshop, of which we had more than expected. I think we had close to 20 students, which got a little crowded but still manageable.


I opened the workshop with a short talk about the historical and cultural background behind anime and manga. Starting with a mention of the foundations in ukiyo-e, and then moving onto the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I intended to show how Japanese traditions, World War II, and the country's industrialization process were all major contributing factors in the creation of anime and manga. I then moved on to give examples of Astro Boy's connection to Disney, as well as popular motifs of robots and technology in the anime that followed.

Half-way through my talk I touched on the anime boom of the 1980s, and the experimental work that came out of that era and the time after it. My examples included Akira and Grave of the Fireflies, as bringing back serious and historical themes dealing with Japan's history. This served as a transition into Neon Genesis Evangelion and Serial Experiments: Lain as taking experimentation in anime one step further. At this point, at the mention of Lain, I shifted gears and talked about the fine art movement that essentially started with Murakami in the 1990s.

I showed images of work by Yoshitomo Nara and Takashi Murakami, and then moved onto examples of my own paintings at the end of the talk. It was probably only ten or fifteen minutes of speaking, which I think was the right length of time for this age group. Any more history and background information and I think they would have been bored to tears, but this seemed just right to hold their interest. We followed the talk up with some drawing exercises, a subject matter lottery, and continued to draw "cover" ideas for a comic book or manga. The workshop concluded with a short tour of the museum's exhibitions, which weren't all open unfortunately.

In addition to the above photos, I put up an album on Facebook of the workshop. I should be getting a few more photos of that at some point, which I will add when the time comes.
All in all it was a very productive workshop, and the kids seemed to enjoy it. So much so, perhaps, that some of them wished it had been longer. I on the other hand was more than ready for lunch at that point. We ended up eating at Norah's Cafe in the museum, which had excellent food and a very pleasing atmosphere. It felt cheerful and bright, even with the rainy weather outside.

The rest of the day we spent with more visiting of art shows and gallery spaces. Most notably, the current exhibitions at the Hollins University's Eleanor D. Wilson Museum struck me as the best that I had seen in Roanoke. In light of only some of the Taubman's galleries being open, the exhibition at Hollins proved to be better than what the museum had to offer. The work of Vietnamese artist Binh Danh was especially powerful, warranting further examination and contemplation.

That Saturday was naturally the highlight of my stay, as Friday and Sunday were marked by mostly being in transit and feeling funny. Altogether, the weekend was a great experience, but remained a fairly exhausting venture. I would have to say that what struck me the most about Roanoke is how, even though its size is not that much bigger than the Wilmington area's, the arts have taken on so much more of a vital role in that community. With the Taubman, a multitude of private galleries and alternative exhibition venues, and several school art facilities, Roanoke seems to be a very art oriented community. They even have an arts focused alternative high school (albeit not a cheap one). Most of the people I spoke with seemed to be very involved in the arts there.

All of this served to contrast sharply with the tiny art scene of the Wilmington area, which makes me yet again dissatisfied with my current place of residence. I am now again thinking of the move that we feel might be coming up at some point this year. But for now I think I must simply remain patient.

My ebay auctions that I recently posted are almost finished! They have now officially under 17 hours remaining, with my anime DVDs, Grandia game, and Copics apparently being the favorites. Here's that link again...

Looks like the auctions will close sometime around 5:00 pm tomorrow, so if there is anything that is still of interest to anyone, now's the time to keep an eye on it. Good luck, and happy bidding!

The results are in, for the deviantWEAR Design Battle Semi-finals. Not surprisingly, my submissions didn't win. Oh well. There were hundreds of submissions, so it's to be expected. Still, I felt my chances were good and my designs might just get in.

I submitted two t-shirt designs to the "Fashion" category, which just means that I didn't include the deviantART logo. After checking out the designs which did make it into the semi-finals [link], I must say I am somewhat underwhelmed. There were two I mostly liked, but nothing I would actually buy. Go figure.

So now I just have to look into the possibilities of getting my shirts printed on my own. We'll see how that goes.

For a mere $25, you too could have your very own magical easel! That's right. A few days ago on Wilmington's section of Craigslist, a "Magical Easel" was posted as being for sale.

Very nice, very portable (magical) wooden easel that is wood and wing nuts and clamps and very easy to put up and take down with a wide bottom "shelf" and a top brace/canvas holder that adjusts easily. (No, I have no idea what I am talking about!)

(Though I have no knowledge of painting supplies nor painting, I picked up this easel at a junk store recognizing that it had magical properties. As I have no understanding of the process, I do not know what those properties are.)

Fascinating. I would be curious to know just how this person realized that the easel has magical properties. Though it does seem odd that, while he was able to intuit the presence of magic, the specifics of its properties eluded him.

On account of having a new show coming up in a few months, I am now planning things out and needing to acquire some materials and supplies to that end. For a while now I've been meaning to sell a few items, and this seems like the best opportunity.

I have a few things up on eBay which might interest some of you. In particular, these anime DVDs are for sale as a package deal:

• Cyborg 009 (Vol. 2: Episodes 5-8).
  
• Bubblegum Crisis (Vol. 1, 2, and 3).
  
• You're Under Arrest (Vol. 1).
  
• Ceres: Celestial Legend (Vol. 1: Destiny).
  
• Panda-Z: The Robonimation (Vol. 5: Episodes 22-25).
  
• Planetes (Vol. 3 Double DVD set).
  
• Overman: King Gainer (Vol. 3, 4, and 5).
  
• Gantz (Vol. 1).
• Bonus: first episode sampler DVDs of Wild Arms and Noir

Other stuff going up on eBay includes Copic markers, a couple of games, and other miscellaneous items. To see my eBay auctions, just follow this link:


Newly available in our Etsy shop are prints of the Eye After Nobuhiro Watsuki Series of paintings. Just added those, and you can also purchase the entire set of three prints at a discount. The rest of our prints are all priced affordably at $10 each!


For those of you who are interested in video games, you might be able to help out in another capacity as well. I am looking to get a few non-functional game peripherals to make part of my artwork. Since these accessories break pretty often, it shouldn't be too hard to find them. Specifically, I am looking for a DDR softpad, and a wired guitar controller. Again, both can be broken. I am also looking for miscellaneous wires and cables, which do not have to work either, but I need to get a pretty good amount of those.

And finally, I would like to get an okay pair of headphones to make part of one piece which has an audio component. These do have to work though. Any of these items I would welcome as a donation, but I am also willing to pay or trade for them if necessary. If you would like to contribute, feel free to contact me using the link below.

Shortly after posting about anime availability on Hulu, I received an email from a representative of Joost.com, informing me that they too have a number of anime titles. "I saw your post today about Hulu and its anime library. I work for an online video site that also provides legal anime, like Hulu," writes Kerry of Joost. I hadn't actually visited Joost in a long time, and so I headed over to their anime section to see for myself their offerings and how the site functions.

As it turns out, Joost has in their library all of the anime that is also available on Hulu, plus a few more. Here's a list of their currently available titles...

• Angelic Layer [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Aquarion [watch] [info], subtitled and dubbed.
• AstroBoy [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Avatar [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Basilisk [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Bastof Syndrome [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Best Student Council [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Black Blood Brothers [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Bleach [watch] [info], subtitled and uncut.
• Blue Gender [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Buzzer Beater [watch] [info], subtitled.
• Cosmo-Warrior Zero [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Death Note [watch] [info], subtitled and uncut.
• Galaxy Railways [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Ghost Hunt [watch] [info], subtitled and dubbed.
• Gun Frontier [watch] [info], subtitled and dubbed.
• Ikki Tousen [watch] [info], subtitled and dubbed.
• Izumo [watch] [info], subtitled and dubbed.
• Jyu-Oh-Sei [watch] [info], subtitled and dubbed.
• Kaiji [watch] [info], subtitled.
• Kiddy Grade [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Moonphase [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Naruto [watch] [info], subtitled and uncut.
• Naruto Shippuden [watch] [info], subtitled and uncut.
• Origin [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Peach Girl [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Rumbling Hearts [watch] [info], subtitled and dubbed.
• Saiyuki [watch] [info], subtitled and dubbed.
• School Rumble [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Shigurui: Death Frenzy [watch] [info], subtitled and dubbed.
• Shikabane Hime [watch] [info], subtitled.
• Shuffle [watch] [info], subtitled and dubbed.
• Slayers, The [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Slayers NEXT, The [watch] [info], dubbed.
• Super Milk Chan [watch] [info], dubbed.
• xxxHolic [watch] [info], dubbed.

That's a pretty good lineup, and I guess streaming rights are available for mostly the same series, which is why we are seeing so many duplicates on both Joost and Hulu. The only series missing are Mushishi, Speed Racer, and Suzuka, which are available from Hulu.

However, Joost seems to have a department that is working a bit harder on getting new material than Hulu. Kerry also informed me that they "add new anime every week (and are adding a number of new series in the next couple of weeks)." In addition to the above mentioned anime, Joost also has streams of news videos from Anime News Network [link], as well as Wizzard Media's Track-shun.tv video reviews [link].

At this stage, it does in fact appear as though Joost is paying closer attention to demand for streaming services. So here's a "Thanks!" to you guys. And if you are reading this, I have a couple of suggestions. First, it would be helpful to know on each series' thumbnail if it's a subtitled or dubbed anime. This could be easily accomplished by adding another mini-icon. Second, it may be prudent to take to heart Marc Andreesen's proposition to link a free service such as this with purchasing options. Adding the ability to buy the anime on DVD or via digital download would not only be beneficial to the industry as a whole, but I also imagine it would bring more partners on board for Joost. The end result should be additional revenue for all parties involved.

So good luck to Joost, and good job. As for the rest of you, enjoy the free anime out there, and feel free to let me know if more series are added to the lineup.

Friday night, February 27, marked the opening of a new group exhibition within the black walls of the Artbox in Wilmington. The group show, which featured yours truly as well as several other great local artists, got some great press in the Encore, which I previously posted about [link].

While I didn't have any sales that night, nor did I expect to given the nature of the market right now, it was great to show my work in a new venue and to a new audience. We had an excellent turnout, especially for such a new venture, so I think the press and word of mouth did a great job of advertising the event. I've also posted some photos in a Facebook album [link] from the opening.

As far as I'm concerned, the Artbox is probably the best alternative exhibition space in town at this point. After the closing of Three Hounds Gallery in December, there isn't even a for-profit gallery space that is as large or versatile as the Artbox. It's presence in Wilmington is a boon to the local art community, especially during these troubled times. Even if most of us still can't sell work around here, at least there is now a good way to show it.