In the home where I grew up, on the inside of the bathroom cabinet door, were two crudely drawn boots along with the phrase:

“WE DON’T MAKE BOOTS HERE”

Why someone would scrawl that there has plagued me for thirty years. Perhaps “plagued” is too strong a word.

A Bunch of Jung

An eagle-eyed pal spotted this piece of artwork dangling in the background of everyone’s favorite train wreck du jour. It’s not one of mine but shares the composition, subject, palette and aesthetic of much of my recent work. Should I chalk it up to collective subconscious or sue for custody of the kids?

A few years ago, the Mrs. and I donned backpacks and scooted our backsides across Europe. One evening, on a train ride through Germany, I had a German beer and Dramamine-fueled epiphany. Luckily, my wife captured the bloated bloviation on film.

I’ve transcribed it for your reading pleasure, prepare to be underwhelmed:

“Come here… I get it… standing here, drinking my beer, looking out the window in a train from Prague to Frankford… I get it.

All that stuff that we see out there from the window seems like unimportant, little values and shapes and sizes and colours and blips and blops… large pockets of dark, some of which have been slightly industrialized or settled, some of which have been left completely natural… but it means nothing. It’s just kind of a backdrop. It’s the ambient noise and the ambient visuals that go on in the background of a train ride.

BUT, how many times have we found ourselves, sitting in a small town or city… or in the countryside and we see a train go by? …and that is the ambient noise of our afternoon… so we’re now impeding on their peacefulness.

So, we are taking a single line, from point A to point B, and all we see are the Infinitesimals and complexities of life, lower and higher, for hundreds of thousands of miles, stretched out on either side… and we sit by a little train window and look out… and they are next to nothing to us and we are next to nothing to them… except for a little yellowish light that stays still as we whiz by or a yellowish light that whizzes by as they stay still.  Get it?”

A brain is a terrible thing to wash.

Every “system” should have an expiration date.

As a service to e-voyeurs everywhere, I’ve recently taken up the self-indulgent hobby of twittering. In addition to keeping strangers abreast of my geographical whereabouts and pseudointellectual musings, I intend to post guerrilla art alerts. Stay tuned via the sidebar of toddmarrone.com or follow me on Twitter.

When someone pays someone else the compliment of having “good taste” they actually mean one of two things:

He or she likes the same things I like.

He or she likes things that are expensive.

Apple has no problem with throwing the word genius around. At 55, founder Steve Jobs continues to be touted as a “boy genius”.  The Apple Store unapologetically bills a collection of four stools and a T-shirt clad techie, as the “Genius Bar”. Following form, this week Apple released version 8.0 of their flagship software application, iTunes, complete with its own built in “Genius”. Being an inhabitant of the venn diagram overlap between music geek and tech nerd, I was thrilled. (more…)

Someone who performs magic tricks = Illusionist
Someone who speaks convincingly = Orator
Someone who performs magic tricks and speaks convincingly = Messiah

I’m often asked, “Todd, what cool art related things would you recommend checking out in Philadelphia?” to which I typically reply, “Don’t call me when I’m at work, mom.” Well, I finally got around to writing the definitive insider’s guide to the Philadelphia art scene. (more…)