Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Keep Art Alive :: Aaron Kraten

"Tremelo"
Keep Art Alive; art by Aaron Kraten

Keep Art Alive :: The 10 Questions Project :: Aaron Kraten

1. What music (or other art form) inspires you when you create your art?

I dig a lot of post punk music, Joy Division, Dead Can Dance, Fad Gadget; this music is very inspirational to my work because most of my work is about pop culture.

2. Long-distance road trip: What three people do you invite along? (Fictional or non-fictional, dead or alive)

Frank Tovey, Collin Newmen, and Bob Rochenburg

3. What is your favorite breakfast cereal?

I really like Sugar Golden Crisp; that bear kills me, and what better way to eat puffed wheat?

4. What is one thing that is currently hanging on your bedroom wall?

A skateboard made by Mike Giant - Amazing artist.

5. What smell/scent evokes strong memories for you?

Trabu *perfume* reminds me of when I first met my wife, and all the fun times we had in our youth.

6. Coffee or tea?

Coffee, its like liquid cigarettes.

7. What has been the most impacting compliment, or criticism, you have ever received?

1 am, I walked out of a bar and walked across the street to a Mexican food place to get a snack and a kid walked up after me and was talking to his friends and one of them started motioning in my direction.

A few minutes later the group of kids came over and asked me if I was Aaron Kraten. I said yes, then one of them got super excited and took off his shirt. He had a bunch of tattoo's of my artwork , and proceeded to hug me and tell me how he loves my work. I was super stoked!

8. Three words that best describe you?

Funny, nerdy, and down to earth...wait that's more then three words.

9. Cartoon character crush: Who was, or is, yours?

Velma, from Scooby Doo.

10. The world is ending in ten minutes, and you get to listen to one - and only one - song: Which song do you choose?

Cross Eyed by Slowdown Virginia

***

Find out more about Aaron at his website: Aaron Kraten Art and at his Facebook and Myspace.

Current work for sale can be found here.

I would like to thank Aaron for participating in the Keep Art Alive :: The Ten Questions Project, and for being inspirational to my work, and writing.

Go now go and check out more of his work, visit a gallery showing, and buy something if you can.

Keep Art Alive and show your support.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

I'll fall right in to keep you out




"I know, what I know.
I know,
this last time around,
I'll hear it in my head real low,
turn into,
the only thing you ever know."


Turn Into :: Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Been five days since he's walked past the newsstand, choosing instead to travel half a block out of the way to avoid them, keeping his head bent low and hands tucked deep into pockets; there will be stories, he knows, mis-spelled accounts and accusations. They will drum up the vitriol spillings from that night, the scratches down his arms, her screams that echoed down the alley; he’d seen her, though, the folded paper passing between, tucked quickly in her bag. She’d stood on her toes, balancing, eyes narrow and strangely focused, denying and swearing over and over; no no no no no.

She had felt so small in the crook of his arm, almost breakable, nights when he’d bury his face into all that barely-there skin, toying with imaginary strength. The space of this too-big bed grows exponentially now, widening as he lies awake, lips going dry, the buzz of hours ticking by; squeeze your eyes shut and block the sound, scare it down.

Could reckon them songs, just notes trickling up and down the ladder-steps of his spine, slightly curving as they reach the base of his neck; its there where the pull lives, the sharp deep drag of need.

She hid things from him, keys to unlock lost digits, scribbled postcards sent from the other side of the world, from him, all those between-the-line apologies; he watched as her smile turned snide and cunning, full of knowing, making the tops of his hands itch and bleed. Wasn't meant to be this way. Never, never.

Can make it round this last corner, he knows the way, could find it with eyes closed, even with all this shaking, count the steps to his door; only three flights to climb, then maybe a coaxed cuppa tea, a word of kindness, a smaller space to grasp at wearied sleep.

He'd gladly return to that wedge between the wall and those intersecting angles of elbows and knees, the old familiar game of push away, dream-soft undercurrents of nothings, and everythings. Knows the spells to break this clanging, he does, those mumbled whispers that shift thoughts and turn the tides; and he needs him now, more than any rolled up treasure map, more than this fortune hold of take-this-and-forget.

On the other side of this door he can drop to his knees, hold his hands open, palms spread, showing all the tales that stain the tips of each finger.

Please open the door now, it's all closing, and I can’t make chase anymore. I need to turn into something new.

They ride the roads as they bend

Hit the Ground Running :: Smog

5 Things this song reminds me of:

1. Change is just around the corner, a mere four days away, and though the past week I was plagued with worry and doubt, I'm feeling very good about it all now. I'm ready for this and I'm hoping that I'll hit the ground running.

2. That I'm tired of bitterness and feeling held in a state of limbo. So many of the voices around me on a near daily basis are filled with pessimism and dark clouds - and though I have them myself, I'm tired of it. It rots all of who you are, and I'm in no mood to go rotten.

3. I love discovering music I didn't know about the day before. This morning it was this song that I stumbled upon, and have listened to on repeat for the better part of an hour. Everyday is another chance to fall in love with a new song.

4. If you could leave today and go anywhere at all, where would you go?

5. There are things I will miss about the town I've called home for almost four years. I thought about some of them while driving down Myrtle Avenue this morning. Library park with its Mark Twain statue sitting on the bench with a book, the movie theatre just around the corner where Max saw his first "at the movies" film, and the comic book shop I liked to walk to with a coffee in hand (picked up at the local shop also 'round the corner, though I won't miss it, their coffee was always pretty lousy).