APA/LA Presents:
The Art of Estimating and Bidding
Thursday November 13, 2008
Social 6:00-7:00
Presentation 7-9:30pm
Helms DayLight Studio
3221 Hutchison Ave., Los Angeles 90034
*Parking is Located on the North Side of Venice Ave and Helm

I have a very strong opinions about beauty and the industry I grew up in. This is one of them.

Please donate to the Movember movement. People from all over the world will be growing mustaches to raise money for prostate cancer research. I’m sponsoring my friend Kilian Kerwin who has pledged to grow and maintain a mustache upon the naked canvas of his goofy face for the month of November. His donation station is here. It only takes 30 second to give a few bucks to a cause that benefits us all.

The Movember site has thoughtfully conjured a groovy way to bring the spotlight upon a serious issue. Check out this video. Meanwhile to honor the effectiveness of the Movember campaign, I’m going to make an appointment with a man with a glove.

Read this article by Paul Boutin. It is one of the best pieces I’ve ever read about the internet.

Seek out blogs written by individuals who are having a good time. Two of my favorites are cellophane66 and Paul’s World of Funk Stuff. The blogsphere isn’t going to die, but finding the choice places to spend your time is getting as difficult as finding a cafe that’s not owned by a corporation.

When I started in the fashion industry, Macy’s department store was where I went to pull clothes for model tests. They were also the one of the biggest clients to the modeling agencies in San Francisco, cranking out ads and catalogs from their in-house studio, Studio 71. The Macy’s name was synonymous with the upper tier of the industry. I never realized how much a part of my life they were until I saw this ad celebrating 150 years of Macy’s.

If you have any memories of your association with this iconic institution you’ll love their latest ads.

Eventually an ambulance took notice of the kid and stopped. I was relieved assuming that with the ambulance stopped at the cross walk the other cars would follow suit. They didn’t. It was absurd to watch driver after driver craning their necks to see what the ambulance doing while still racing through the cross walk.

Finally, the fed up ambulance driver illuminated every single light on his rig an shut down the entire boulevard so the kid could cross. It was awesome.

I tell a story from my distant past about how I ran into an amateur photographer in Yosemite who was cursing at a breathtaking landscape in front of him. He was angry that his wife forbade him from bringing his good, but more clunky, medium format gear - leaving him with just a 35mm camera to capture the scene in front of him. I argued that a good photograph was relative to the eye of the shooter not to the price of the equipment capturing the image. He argued against me as he let me snap a few frames. We parted ways agreeing to disagree.

Eight months later I received a note and check for 100.00 from the amateur shooter. He had printed, and hung on his wall one of the photographs from the day I met him. The note explained that, although he loved the image, he couldn’t understand a nagging feeling of disconnect from the photo. The image was in fact one of the frames I snapped to prove my argument that he had forgotten about by the time he got home from his vacation.

My philosophy on the matter is unwavering. But, it is a point that is increasingly difficult to illustrate in a technology obsessed society. So I was thrilled to come across this video of designer Bob Staake creating this weeks New Yorker magazine cover. He uses Photoshop version 3 on a Mac running system 7. A configuration that was bleeding edge in 1991.

Talent is everything.

It has been an insane few weeks of very long days. The launch of the next iteretion of Blinkbid, version 5 actually occured last Thursday at 1 AM, but it took took the weekend to recover and catch up on sleep. Not only did we revamp the product, we revamped the site. The home page features up and coming creative types (a new image every time the page is loaded). This was an important feature for me. Running around talking to different groups about the industry, I get a chance to meet young photographers with extraordinary talent. It’s thrilling to have the opportuniity to showcase them.

Ibarionex Perello, man with coolest name and coolest radio voice ever, interviewed me for The Candid Frame over the weekend. I had a great time talking with such a brilliant dude. Seek out his writing and check out his work.

So now that I feel human again, I’m going to try and convince my girlriend I’m not missing, and get back to some writing.

In a world where art galleries have had a strangle hold on distribution, allowing artists’ access to serious collectors, and finances, typically collecting 50% of the sale, this auction will be demonstrative of far more democratic distribution and business model. Now anyone who has the money will be able to have a chance at collecting a well known contemporary artist without the right connections.

The galleries have decried this auction as a bad business move. And indeed Mr. Hirst does run the risk of diluting his own brand by offering so many lots to just anyone with money. But I feel very strongly that Mr. Hirst and Sotheby’s are taking a pioneering leap. If Mr. Hirst’s auction pulls in the anticipated 120m dollars he will have proven that good art, art that’s in demand, can do quite well without the propaganda tactics of scarcity propagated by the galleries.

I’ll be watching this event with a hawkish eye. As my own industry goes through a total shakeup, I’m optimistic that we will see a new, viable business model emerge from the confusion and chaos. If Mr. Hirst and Sotheby’s pull this off well, I’ll feel that my optimism is not misplaced.