I am ashamed to admit that due to some ill-advised investments and a series of disastrous marriages I had been reduced to the financial condition of a cave-dweller.
My skills as an artist, trained in the finest academies in the former Soviet Union had prepared me for nothing more than hack illustration work and teaching part-time in a private middle school for Mennonite girls.
Ever the pessimist, I never anticipated the redemptive call from Silicon Valley. How BlissIntuit.com got my name, I'll never know but my fortunes have dramatically changed now that I am the "official voice" of their popular guided meditation series, Think Again.
So please spread the word! Maybe I could narrate a few audiobooks as well!
As an art educator, as someone dedicated to the the intellectual well-being of young aspiring artists, I always expect my students to keep fastidiously up to date with Timmy Black's important podcast.
I am amazed and I am grateful to this great country, The United States of America! To be featured on Timmy Black's podcast, The Lives of Contemporary Artists is literally a dream come true. I hope you can take some time to listen (it's only about 6 minutes long) and I hope as well that you can share this with your friends. If good things happen as a result of all this publicity, I may be able, at last, to retire from teaching. (I promise I will not run for political office)
At one time, teaching drawing and painting to art students was a difficult job. Now it's as easy as delivering a baby. Like driverless cars, smart sweaters and mold, agency and intention are strictly optional.
When I was at the Academy in the former Soviet Union, if we dared to draw anything but the strictest rendering of the perfect worker's body we risked expulsion. And that's if we were lucky.
Here in the great and soon to be greater United States of America, there is so much freedom, an art professor can make all manner of claims and assertions and nobody will care. When I started making instructional videos for my students my motive was fairly straightforward. While they watched I was able to read the paper and check my email.
I noticed that my students were doing the same (except for the reading the paper part). It then occurred to me that I could sneak into my demonstrations a few deliberate mistakes and no one would be the wiser. I did this under the pretense that as a newly minted American artist I could pretend that I was producing a piece of post-modern, conceptual, neo-Dada, performance art.
... and wouldn't you know it .... I was just invited to participate in a very high-profile exhibition called GenderlessZen Entropy which will open in the spring at Humlout & Girth! I love this country!!!!!!!