Kotaro Hoshiyama

in

Adore Hoshiyama’s style of collision and his transformation of boundaries and expectation into a creative fuel. (Insta)

The 42-year old painter counts manga artists like Tezuka Osamu, Katsuhiro Ootomo and Kazuo Umezu as early influences. But he also looked to Picasso, Kurt Schwitters and the collage-based work of the neodadaists and pop artists. Hoshiyama enjoyed diversity and using multiple styles of expression. But he struggled with conventional pressures to choose just one, which many associate with originality. Eventually he had a breakthrough, realizing that the structures in place restricting him could be turned upside down to unleash his creative freedom.

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Rain rain rain rain rain and Kirby has torn asunder a pad of sticky notes which says something about something but since my head is, at present, engulfed in a cacophony of barometric throbbing I'm unable to ascertain what that sticky something is. Sticky nom-noms. Sticky snackie noms. IDK but hey, the latest Squarespace update did indeed fix the lack of linking in the iPadOS app - YAY – but, as is the Squarespace way, broke the ability to edit photo blocks - BOO; someday they'll get it right, in theory.

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If nothing else good happens, the gift of being able to once again add links to posts via the Squarespace iPadOS app makes the week redeemable. Fingers crossed that the functionality remains for at least a few days before they break it again.

Rowing machine is assembled (thanks to help from Kirby, of course). Current thinking is to do two days of running followed by one day of rowing and repeat – this being dependent, however, on the impact (or lack thereof) that the rowing has on my blood sugar: if it results in me having to do more running in order to offset the lack of impact of the rowing, it's not worth it. Yoga will remain a constant – it's the only way I've been able to put in six miles a day, week in, week out, on my body – but, with increasing years, I can feel the impact of those daily six on my joints and, given that I want to continue this routine until the day I die, it’s time to find a way to give myself something of a break. Hopefully this'll do it.

A structure / design for re/emergence0005 is, well, emergent. Trying a switch to afternoon work today: when I jam the two blocks together in the morning, Kirby is a nightmare for the second (and for much of the rest of the day). Better to give him space to run around and have my attention and then, after lunch, go on our walk and return to work with a hopefully exhausted and nap-time-ready Kirby. In theory.

The day awaits.

PANIC IN THE STREETS (1950)

Richard Widmark plays a military doctor fighting the plague and the resentments, protestations, and deep-rooted distrust of the citizenry. Sound familar? A potent and thrilling examination of our remarkable capacity for self-destruction featuring Jack Palance in his screen debut.

(Directed by Elia Kazan from a screenplay by Richard Murphy and Daniel Fuchs (story by Edna and Edward Anhalt). Starring Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes, and Jack Palance. Released 15 September 1950.)

Uno Moralez

I can’t recall how I happened upon Moralez’s work, but I’m so glad that I did. An excellent summation via this interview with Moralez in The Comics Journal:

Moralez is a Russian enigma whose LiveJournal is written in Cyrllic, whose work is both drawn and published in digital pixels, whose output comes in the form of bizarre and ferociously NSFW image/gif galleries as often as comics or illustrations, and whose name is not even Uno Moralez. Before I conducted this interview with him you could easily have convinced me he was an elaborate hoax

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Perpetual struggle, continued: the cessation of attempts to make The Work (at hand) be what I want it to be and instead act as its guide, its shepherd, to help it towards the realization of what it wants to be.

Meanwhile, in injuries: only took slicing the top joint of my right index finger on the door (thanks, Kirby + screen door) to recognize how much I use it: can't loop finger through coffee mug handle; can’t pull hair back; can’t floss; can't practice drumming while writing easily - fucking flamacues; can't type as quickly; can't (easily) latch my wife's necklace... How fortunate, then, that my middle finger has gotten so much of exercise over the last several decades.

Random nostalgia trip: as I grew up around darkrooms and photographic development, I've been missing the miasmatic delight of those chemicals. Telling, I think, that most of my childhood memories involve noxious fumes.

The day awaits.