First Blog 8/27/2018

Uncategorized 3 Minutes

So here we go. Started a blog to just free form thought explore…
Little bit about myself. I am Eric Spangler, ETS for short. I live in Lexington Kentucky and make art. Mostly photography but from time to time I get a wild hair up my ass and do something ceramic or a drawing or painting, or mixed media. My photography is not typical, in fact I would call it unique. I’m not out in the world trying to get photos of amazing landscapes, or beautiful portraits of people or animals. I use my camera like a paintbrush, I capture what I think of as pure art. I go out into the world each day, not looking to make art but finding it anyway. Everyday objects can become art… Ask me how… If you have seen my work you know what I am talking about. My images come from everyday travels. The grocery store, the gas station, my bedroom, the wine bottle that we drank last night. You name it I can take a slice of it, arrange it in some form of interesting composition and bingo… ART. I love what I like to call Pop Art, or my version of it at least. Iconic characters or just oddball characters or odd little images that are goofy but cool, like this one, titled “Abracadabra”

Abracadabra

I grew up loving Art and studied all the masters.  Art history was one of my favorite subjects and I like to think I learned something from my hero’s of art.   I once wrote this paper for an art history course in college.  I wasn’t really into writing a cold boring fact laced piece about art and artists, how fucking boring…  Not today Satan.  So instead I wrote this creative writing piece about a college aged boy who is walking down a road.  The road is county road 1872.  Before he realizes what is happening he has been transported though time to 1872 France where the first person he runs into is Claude Monet.  An interesting conversation ensues and they talk about Claude’s ideas regarding art and the creation of art.  The boy walks on to the next street which is road 1935 where he is transported to 1935 and runs into Pablo Picaso and has drinks with the artist and a similar conversation about Pablo’s artistic style of the time etc.  This goes on several more times with several other Masters.  All in all it was a great piece of writing that I dearly wish I still had a copy of.

I love abstract art. I love to see things in abstracts, the organic faces and objects that just happen to show up in abstract art.  I love abstract impressionism and expressionism both, although I find it hard to use the painterly nature of either movement in photography sometimes due to not having enough recognizable facets in the piece, and it is difficult to control the level of blur for any given object.

This past weekend I went to an EPIC concert at Riverbend music center in Cincinnati Ohio. It was New Orleans comes to Cinci.  New Breed Brass Band, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Galactic, and Trombone Shorty.  I made some really great art before, during and after the show, and danced and danced and danced and danced.  It was so hard to stay in the small area between the chair in front of me the person to the left and to the right of me.  I’m a big dancer.  When I say big dancer I mean I take up a lot of space, I can tear it up when the music hits my soul in that way where you really feel it down deep.  I grew up as young adolescent 11-15 years of age spending time at my grandparents house in the summers.  They lived in a poor working class neighborhood of Denver called Globeville or near there anyway.  I was the only white kid in the neighborhood.  Respect is always earned and in a place like that in order to make friends and gain their respect I had few options.  I could beat the shit out of a bigger kid, I could be super good at sports, namely basketball…  which I sucked at, or I could do something completely different but very popular at the time.  That was break dancing…  Its funny to look back at it now and think how I made friends in that hood.  I was a badass break dancer at the time, I could do it all.  The guys you would see street performing in NY…  Yea I could be in any of their crews.  Instant respect.   I danced everyday from the age of 11 to 16. Learning crazy acrobatic moves, from windmills with and without hands to these insane sideways flips and spins, to headspins, into windmills back into headspins.  So yea that is how I didn’t get beat up in the hood…  LAUGHS!!  I still have some fairly badass dance moves for an old timing man.  The Trombone Shorty show had me working it…

More later as I have time to write.

Thanks

ETS

 

 

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Published by etsphoto13

I am Eric Spangler. I am an artist currently living in Lexington Ky. My artistic focus is photography. My photography consists of images created out of the ordinary objects I pass by daily. I see things with an artistic vision in which everyday objects or other physical manifestations are re-interpreted as art, and reorganized within the photographic medium. My most recognizable and best work is abstract in character. Many of the pieces I create are studies of the coexistence, synchronicity, and interplay of shadows and light. I use light, line, form, texture, value, color and negative space placed in complex and interesting composition to try and balance the masculine (angular) and the feminine (rounded). I often use small details of found objects, and ordinary items to create contemporary abstract or pop art pieces. I work in both monochrome and color. My monochrome work tends to have warm tones to it and my color work is more contemporary and rich in color. I usually have 2-3 series' s of work going on at any one time. Currently I am working on a series studying reflections and how they change the visual reality of an image or abstract a normally uninteresting image to create something considerably more stimulating. I continually create what I term pop art images of whimsical or culturally popular iconic characters. I post new art daily on Instagram so please follow my Instagram feed (etsphoto13, #etsphoto) for new work. I currently offer work in editions of 2.

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