I HATE e-mail & voicemail

Out of 23 items in my in-box this morning only 2 of them were from actual people... the rest were advertisements. Yes I know how to unsubscribe. And yes I will take 40-45 precious minutes out of my day to do so.

I don't hate ALL email... I do like REAL email from friends wanting to catch up, invitations to meet, etc.

Voicemail is worse... especially since I have caller ID... LOVE Caller ID. HATE voicemail. If you phone me and I don't answer I will see that you called on my caller ID and when I am able to return your call I will. Don't leave me a message because to tell you the God's honest truth, I don't listen to them. I hate dialing into VM to retrieve my message, entering (yet ANOTHER) password, listening to the stupid lady say robotically: You have SEVEN. MESSAGES. To listen to your messages press ONE. ONE. First message. Sent: December. First. etc... etc..."

ARGH!

Ok, I feel better now!

In other goings on, the other day I was able to visit my love: THE BOOKSTORE. Oh, how i love the bookstore. I think I would like to LIVE in a bookstore. I could browse browse BROWSE ALL DAY...! sigh... I love books. And magazines. I noticed there was a new issue of Artful Blogging on the rack, and I automatically picked it up and gave it the ol' flip thru. And then I put it back down. Shockingly!

You see, I've rambled on and on about my distaste for the Cult of Pensive Girl with Tilted Head Art. Well there, amid page after page of "artful bloggers" were several pages of Pensive Girl with Tilted Head Art Blogs. So I decided I'd had enough and put it down. I actually did not spend my money on it. Obviously it's time for me to go in a different direction. Even though I haven't painted or drawn in WEEKS.

The dealio is no matter WHERE you go you will find a cult or clique of something. One of my first art infatuations was with commercial illustration... so I've been exploring quite a bit of it in the bits of spare time I have. I've been especially smitten with mid-century modern illustration lately... the VERY talented illustrator/animator Ward Jenkins has a HUGE sampling of it over as his Flickr Photostream. I've also been going back in time with my old childhood books: Classics like the "Harry the Dirty Dog" series, the Little Golden Books, comics like Little Lulu, The Archie series, Richie Rich and of course Peanuts.

One of my biggest influences was a book entitled "Something Queer is going on" by Elizabeth Levy, and most importantly illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein. I thought the illustration style was fantastic: great characters, crazy perspectives, arrows and diagrams and little details... I never got tired of exploring the details and dynamics of the illustrations, and of course I still have the book!

Perhaps my biggest influence was and artist by the name of Jared Lee. I discovered his work through a magazine entitled "Dynamite" , which was aimed at grade-school kids of the 70's. Mr. Lee illustrated a feature in the magazine called "Bummers" and after seeing his work I knew that there was nothing else I'd rather do than be an artist.

I guess what I've been doing lately is going back to my drawing "roots", the influences that planted those original creative seeds. Maybe it's because I have a child now. Maybe it's because I'm STILL trying to figure out where I want to go with my art.

Anyhoo, it's fun to think back and remember our influences...

What artists or books influenced you when you were growing up?