Thoughts on MY creative space

I have always set my studio up to facilitate my production of art. I create art works in series, rather fast, very prolific. I like to use the same colors for specific types of tools and spatter paint is now my standard for a ton of things. I love a lot of colors, color is my life now, the next studio will see a bunch of infrastructure “stuff” getting the Matt treatment as I like to call it. I love to Paint things, I love to make things “mine”, I don’t need any owner name tags on stuff, It’s obvious who this stuff belongs to. Peace

repurposing our stuff

So kids, I have acquired over the last couple of years several free standing wood cabinets/bookcases, a ton (6) of Ikea drawer units, several rolling storage carts, four metal tool boxes, a couple of metal tool boxes, you get the idea. So I’m totally for changing the use of any or all of these items and how or what I store in them. I like having optimal availability to my tools and supplies. My art creating is fast paced repetitive in the nature of the materials and tools. I have mastered several disciplines over the years thus I have “tools” and '“stuff”. It will all find a home in the new Casa de Cuckoo III.. Deja Vue all over again. Peace

AND IN OTHER NEWS

Well we are in the process of relocating, going to stay in the Phoenix area. I have shut down my studio and packet it up, needless to say I’m not making beautiful things right now. I do have several “projects” I will be sharing with all you wonderful people over the next month or so. We have some experience in this moving thing, it isn’t a horrible experience it once was (I learned some shit along the way). I will start sharing some of my projects, some of my thoughts on life and art, and as always it is old hippy created and old hippy approved . Peace and Love

META SUCKS T*RDS

So kids, I have left the Meta world, been off of FB sense Nov 2024, left a place keeper on IG. Meta owns these platforms, they make the rules, they change the rules all the time. Meta is a tool for the company to make money, they create the algorithms that control their world. This is my website and I can post MY content how I like without jumping thru a bunch of everchanging hoops that supposedly will help generate followers. so I will attempt to post here daily about my art and life and what’s going on in FRAZZERRATT land. Peace and love

mY FIRST YEAR BEING A FULL TIME ARTIST

So kids, my first full year of NOT working for the man was great. You gotta learn this retirement shit, get all your shit straight and continue to live like I have always lived. Creating full time is interesting in itself, being an artist is the best when you tell people what you do. I like the surprise in their eyes when they see “what “ I do. I attract my people in public, maybe cause I wear tie dye every day, I get tons of comments on my apparel and style. I will continue to bring happiness and joy to “my people” with color and hippy style. Peace

PERSONAL GROWTH

Well a new year has arrived, seen a couple of these before. My standard thought process on a new year is seems like yesterday all over again. I choose to make time here on earth run as a stream of conscience behavior 24/7 until I check out of the system. The years don’t mean a whole lot to me now except to track what I have done in the past. I will strive to grow my style, and color choices for this year and see what new and exciting Hippy Shit I can produce for “my People”.

MY PEOPLE

So I sell my “stuff” at flea markets. I sell my stuff to “my People”. If you get what I’m doing, you may be “my people”. If you think my “stuff” is cool, you may be “my People”. If I provide you with lots of choices and that makes picking one hard, you may be “my People”. My “stuff” isn’t for everyone, my stuff is made especially for “my People”.

Wizard sticks II

So, I wanted a trekking/questing/wizard stick, I made one for me that contains a number of my talismans and will contain even more over time, this is a living thing. I produced a run of 8 Wizard “starter sticks” with the intent of the new owners can add their own talismans and write their own story. People got it, my people got it they embraced the concept and purchased their own Wizard stick.

more on materials

So kids, I decided to make indoor pieces, leading me to use indoor materials such as plastic. Now I have never really looked at the plastic “stuff” at the getting places as I had little or no use for most of it. fast forward to now and I absolutely love the materials I have found so far and it is cheep to purchase at the getting places. I get to learn about all this new plastic stuff, mostly its limitations and issues when combined with other materials. I’m currently having a blast creating at full tilt and seeing future iterations of these designs. I have several directions I cant proceed with which is good for me as a creative. Peace

know your materials

So kids, this story begins 4 years ago with me producing a ton of art for outdoor use. I use a lot of glue, my relationship with super glue is long and sticky and is weather resistant. The other two adhesion materials I used at that time were hot glue and E600. Unfortunately both these glues are not water proof. Lessen learned, lots of take apart and reassembly was involved and other adhesion have taken there place that are all weatherproof. This is a good thing because my pieces were created with the thought that they would all be hanging outdoors.

So now I am making indoor pieces utilizing recycled plastic, and guess what, E600 is the only glue I have that will stick to a lot of this plastic. I grabbed my glue tote (yeah I have a lot of glue) and pulled 8 tubes of E600 out to use on my creations again.

It is a 70’s thing

So yeah I was in High School in the early 70’s, I make “stuff” predominantly for me, I wanted one so I made it. Now if other people think it’s great and all, I really like that and will produce more of the variant. While in High School, I had art class both my 3rd and 4th year of school, and 12 hours of ceramics at MWSC, now jump 50 years and here we are. My “stuff” works in progressions if I made art it will be original I need to move forward and growth and change is all part of the story.

New Series, old thought process updated to 2024

So Kids, I have been working on this new indoor series. Very liberating gathering “stuff” for this work, I can now use all sorts of interesting plastic pieces. This is a new experience for me as in the past I was concerned about the piece surviving in the great Arizona sun. I realized my designs are based on tribal geometric line tattoo produced in 3D. This realization took 4 years to crystalize as I knew my style had roots on art deco, mid century modern, brutalist, and geometric art. I wasn’t quite sure where my pieces originated at the time of creation but I knew I was doing “original” work. check out the pics over at works in progress. Peace

New series started

So kids I started a new series of pieces, these will all be wall hangers, something new to me, additionally they will be indoor pieces. I have been doing my usual extended submersion in style and color studies before actually making anything. I have been gathering pieces and parts to produce my style of art, repurposed recycled “STUFF” as I like to call it. New to me in this series is the prevalent use of plastic. I have shied away from plastics in the past due to the inability of plastic pieces to maintain shape in a hot outdoor environment. I have now embraced to plastic god at the getting places (Goodwill, Desert Industries, and dumpsters). Pictures will be up in works in progress soon. Peace

OH BTW ILOOK AT THE PAST

I’m an amature astronomer of sorts, I own a 16 inch MEAD dobsonian telescope

TRUTH

"I’m not too concerned for the Mother Earth, seeing how the Universe is approximately 13.772 billion years old, the Earth is 4.543 billion years old, and humans are a mere 200,000 old and civilization is approximately 6,000 years old. The Earth will do just fine without its human infestation as it has for more than 4 billion years. Unfortunately, the good Earth will not be inhabitable or recognizable in several hundred years. Like kids left to their own devices we do not poses the intellect nor the foresight to comprehend all of our actions we undertake for purely selfish reasons. It’s been a great run lots of fun was had and all for what? Well the future will be great for somebody someplace even if it’s not on this rock circling the sun in this solar system."  

ok then

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i will leave this here

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THIS IS ME

Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others.  

Three reasons why people are motivated to be creative:

need for novel, varied, and complex stimulation

need to communicate ideas and values

need to solve problems  

In order to be creative, you need to be able to view things in new ways or from a different perspective. Among other things, you need to be able to generate new possibilities or new alternatives. Tests of creativity measure not only the number of alternatives that people can generate but the uniqueness of those alternatives. the ability to generate alternatives or to see things uniquely does not occur by change; it is linked to other, more fundamental qualities of thinking, such as flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity or unpredictability, and the enjoyment of things heretofore unknown. 

All who study creativity agree that for something to be creative, it is not enough for it to be novel: it must have value, or be appropriate to the cognitive demands of the situation."

I’M A CREATIVE

In the last 5 years I resurrected and embraced the creative side of myself. Along the way I started to wonder about  how does this creativity thing works. I resurrected this creativity thing from a much earlier Matt from about 1970. Fast forward 40 years and here I am again creative Matt. So here are some general observations on the nature of creativity.  

Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others.  

Three reasons why people are motivated to be creative:

need for novel, varied, and complex stimulation

need to communicate ideas and values

need to solve problems  

In order to be creative, you need to be able to view things in new ways or from a different perspective. Among other things, you need to be able to generate new possibilities or new alternatives. Tests of creativity measure not only the number of alternatives that people can generate but the uniqueness of those alternatives. the ability to generate alternatives or to see things uniquely does not occur by change; it is linked to other, more fundamental qualities of thinking, such as flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity or unpredictability, and the enjoyment of things heretofore unknown.

 All who study creativity agree that for something to be creative, it is not enough for it to be novel: it must have value, or be appropriate to the cognitive demands of the situation."

more back story

I will begin this interaction in very late 2019 and progress into early 2020. This incarnation of Matt Houston started with an invitation to attend Burning Man  as part of an established village. My son Matthew's partner Heidi Mader is a Burner she was aware of my interest in attending a Burn and invitation was extended for Burning Man 2020 planning started immediately.

I had decided to create latter bracelets using reclaimed stone and glass beads that my wife Vickie and I had gathered with the sole purpose of repurposing the beads. My initial thoughts were to help defray the entry fees to Burning Man I would produce and sell these bracelets and would gift any left over at the event.  Below is some  of these Leather latter bracelets.    

The next step in my progression involved the use of 1.5 mm nylon cord. My lovely wife Mrs. Vickie was creating beaded woven bracelets using very fine cord with beads. I went with her to the getting place and found this nifty 1.5 mm Nylon cord.  This cord is incredibly strong, color fast and durable as well as colorful. On this path I learned a lot about 1.5 mm nylon cord which did not come easy even after extensive searches online. The issue at hand was that the getting place had a very limited color selection and did not have 2 very important colors, yellow and orange. I eventually found a source in Los Angeles with a huge color selection that for what I can tell is the manufacture in Mexico.

Progressing on from the nylon my next choice of materials was cotton cord both 1.5 mm and 3 mm in what I call old school cotton string/cord colors. This cord is also referred to as bakers cord in the 1.5 mm size. These cords are easy to procure and have wide availability. This cotton cord is soft and very pliable wears well as I can tell from having them on my wrist for 14 months. As with the Nylon I pursued all combinations and variances I could create. Peace 

The introduction of Tie Dye T shirts to my pile o fun started about March or April of 2020. This led to the use of my dye's to color natural cotton cord and cotton cloth. I use Jacard Proxom MX reactive dyes. These acid Dye's require the cotton that is to be dyed to soak in a solution of soda ash for 20-30 minutes minimum which allows the dye into the cotton fibers making these dyes very bright and very color fast after the first wash. Peace    

Late April and into May of 2020 was an interesting blur of creativity and creation. I started producing Glass Spiders, spiders made out of wire and beads.  I started to make bracelets out of a 3 mm nylon cord commercially sold as "prayer" cord roseries. These bracelets were macramé with metal claspes  I produced the first Moon and Stars piece which incorporated all the materials I had on hand for making bracelets. I dyed all the macramé, cotton tassel and cotton beard pieces. From the very 1st piece in the series I had already developed design ques that I would continue to refine and use on almost every piece.