SEEDS & ROOTS » my artwork http://www.seedsandroots.org creative exploration & expression Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:49:29 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 A New Poster I Designed http://www.seedsandroots.org/my-music/a-new-poster-i-designed/ http://www.seedsandroots.org/my-music/a-new-poster-i-designed/#comments Fri, 08 Apr 2011 17:31:10 +0000 J. Stephens http://www.seedsandroots.org/?p=4268

]]> http://www.seedsandroots.org/my-music/a-new-poster-i-designed/feed/ 0 Pellucid http://www.seedsandroots.org/blog/pellucid/ http://www.seedsandroots.org/blog/pellucid/#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 21:35:12 +0000 J. Stephens http://www.seedsandroots.org/?p=3814 I helped make this. It’s on display at MCA Denver.

Cave Image


“Pellucid by Boulder-based artist Rebecca DiDomenico is a site-specific installation featuring a gallery transformed into a fantastical cave designed as an immersive environment. Visitors are invited to walk through the space, filled with 60,000 hand-made mica scales and dangling stalactites. Pressed into each of the scales are jewel-like butterfly wings and brightly colored pieces of plastic trash…”

It was a bizzarre experience, but a cool one nonetheless. I wore a painters suit, bent chicken wire, plastered and resin’d my heart out. I also give guitar lessons to the artist’s son.

]]> http://www.seedsandroots.org/blog/pellucid/feed/ 2 art: digital collage http://www.seedsandroots.org/featured/digital-collage-2/ http://www.seedsandroots.org/featured/digital-collage-2/#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:00:21 +0000 J. Stephens http://www.seedsandroots.org/?p=2022 Have you ever found something that you were sure was gone? You see I thought this piece of art was dead in it’s original form. I made it back when Photoshop 6 was cutting edge (today we are using Photoshop CS4, the 11th incarnation)! The only surviving example of the art above was in my print portfolio which I hardly ever open. For some reason I opened it today, and out of a tucked away pocket fell a CDR. I stuck the CDR into my laptop to find the original .PSD and font files for this artwork made 7 years ago!

idol-series

idol |ˈīdl|

noun
an image or representation of a god used as an object of worship.
• a person or thing that is greatly admired, loved, or revered

Anybody who really knows me has seen this before.  It’s something I made in late 2002.  It was part of an independent study in Graphic Design I took during my senior year of college.  The study involved me coming up with a series of 6 works.  I was fascinated by the act of idolatry.  I was seeing idolatry everywhere and in everyone’s life:  the religious, the irreligious, my friends, my family, myself, etc.. We all were guilty of elevating everyday objects and experiences to the place of most importance in our lives.  I was seeing people all around me sacrificing time & money for these ordinary things they had lifted up to supreme status in their lives.  Worse yet I was just as guilty of it. Everywhere I looked, no one was immune to the act of idolatry.   It was around this time that I realized the simple truth “We all worship something.”

For some people its sex (like in the work above, our culture is rampant with sexual idolatry)
for others its power,
for some its control,
then there are some people who worship being moral,
then there are others who worship being immoral.
Some parents worship there kids,
some young people worship the person their dating,
some people worship their career,
some people worship their stuff.

for me I’m forever seeing that I am guilty of all these…

what is it for you?

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