THE REAL ART PROJECT
                                 
"Our mission is to restore the term ART to it's historic definition to describe works of aesthetic merit and lasting value."

A definition of art consists of three elements without which art cannot exist.
We call these the Three Pillars of Art.

Traditionally Art has been thought of as the creation of an object using various materials, that if it's well made and beautiful, it becomes a work of art. The following three principles seek to define Fine Art in terms precise enough that it is possible to sort out that which pretends to be art from the real thing.

1. Beauty - Sincerity
The simple definition is that beauty is satisfying to the aesthetic, intellectual or sensual. This is true because nature is a living example of beauty in all its infinite parts. And as the children of nature, we are part of this beauty, and that is why we appreciate anything reflecting nature as being beautiful. We are conditioned to appreciate a horizontal line because of the horizon, and we are conditioned to appreciate the vertical because of gravity. So as creatures of this natural planet, we have a powerful subconscious identification with nature. We call this beauty.

The other aspect of this principle is sincerity, that honest effort is all it takes: As imperfect humans, all we can do is make a sincere effort. But fortunately, beauty is relative. It gets better as it goes up the scale. High end art is very unusual among humans, but attainable in rare instances. Observe the Haga Sofia or Michelangelo's Pieta.  Beauty can also transcend the objective to characterize the intellectual. This aspect of Art is so rare it hardly needs to be raised, but for arguments sake, let's just say that conceptual art comes from this tradition and has been blindly groping about in the wilderness since Duchamp.

So that is how we should understand art. If it looks as if it could have been created by nature-- it can be beautiful. It does not require accepted cultural forms to attain beauty. Even death and destruction can be rendered with dignity. As in nature an old lion that seeks a concealed glade in the forest to wait for his death. As a great majestic ice shelf falls into the sea. The trick for an artist is to treat this subject with respect, as nature would.

2. Craftsmanship- Execution
Fine Art is well made. The form of construction is well matched to its material and its fabrication is rendered with skill to an appropriate finish. This level of quality is attainable by natural talent and long practice with materials and tools of the trade, and is readily apparent while viewing the piece.

3. Meaning - Purpose - Relevance
In the beginning, the purpose of art was illustration and decoration. In Africa the decoration of masks, tools and daily utensils predated and provided formative inspiration for the departure from classical art. All the big names of art learned from these early examples of man-made beauty and codified it into styles from cubism to modernism.

Then artists began to experiment with the image, they found that color and line and other pictorial elements had power beyond illustration. They explored the limits and possibilities of art with just the tools and methods of a visual language. They invented abstraction. Throughout the 20th century regardless of style or method, the primary purpose of art was to communicate some level of honest beauty to the viewer.

Then in 1817 Duchamp coined the term Anti Art. Others soon followed and created Concept Art which redefined art as any idea that challenged traditional qualities of art. And ever since, conceptual artists have had to go to ever more extreme lengths to validate their art.

But as each human knows right from wrong without the aid of law or religion, every piece of art will be exposed to an honest appraisal. Everyone has a natural innate ability to recognize beauty, And without misleading promotional material it will be easy to see if a work is ugly, trite or poorly made, and it will be obvious that it is not art.

The three pillars provide the criteria to allow any reasonable person to determine if a work approaches Fine Art without reliance on those in the art market, whose intentions are motivated by profit rather than honest expertise in determining what art has lasting value.
                     
Okay, So as you begin to laugh your butt off at this crazy idea, Let me ask one question: Why is it that artists and their promoters are the only ones digging art? Why does the general public think artists are a bunch of shysters and con artists? Because they ARE con artists! The art market has been pushing a questionable product for fifty years! The galleries and collectors and auction houses don't care if it's real or not, they just want it to sell. And they create an artificial environment for it to thrive in, urged along by critics and gallery owners who hype the value, and write the most obtuse and ridiculous criticism that the mind cannot but recoil at the brazen audacity of it all. It was easy, after all, because art has always had a bad reputation since they invented abstract expressionism, Now, the artists can use concept art to mean anything including empty walls, piles of rocks, cans of shit, and other stuff that is not art by any stretch of the imagination. Warhol is the best example of this idea. completely commercial, he was much more interested in money and fame than art. With his colored photos of famous people and soup cans, Warhol paved the way for fake art. Concept art might be commentary, and might even be insightful or clever, but all too frequently it is not art.

So as we contemplate the American art market today and the product they promote, we must ask ourselves, how can we permit this to continue, and what can we do to correct it. It is obvious that the market in art is a fraud and that everyone complicit in this enterprise are con artists, but what to do about it is less clear. In a predatory American capitalist culture of unregulated greed, its hard to isolate law breakers in the art world when so many criminals run rampant in every other industry.

It is the purpose of this article to start a dialogue that will expose the fraudulent art market and fake artists to the impartial justice of a panel of artists that will soon convene. These judges have selected themselves from a pool of real artists still at work today. They are certainly not swimming in the main stream, but if there was a just and viable art market in America, they would be recognized and rewarded for their work and the public would have the opportunity to appreciate real art instead of having to be satisfied with an ever lowering quality of product.

Many years ago, years after the last world war, there was an illiterate goatherd on an abandoned island in the Philippines. He lived in extreme poverty among a small tribe of primitives who managed to avoid the destruction of the war by hiding in caves and drinking from subterranean springs. The goatherd lived alone on the barren land and learned to feed himself by watching what his goats ate. In return he protected his goats from the wolves, and cared for them when they suffered a minor injury. Then one day he had the opportunity to fix the broken arm of one of his fellow tribesmen after he had fallen off a steep cliff. The goatherd used the same simple methods he'd learned on his goats and the arm of his tribesman had healed. the man was grateful hand so anxious to repay this debt that he told many others of the great deed. In time, word spread across the islands of a goat man who could work healing upon animals and men, and his reputation grew far beyond his talents.

During this period, the sea was the primary means of travel and trade among survivors of the war. Many people lived on crude boats and traveled the waters up and down the coast cultivating small plots on shore to which they would return later for harvest. In this way the story of a healer spread throughout lands that had not been as devastated by the wars.

Along the northern parts of Africa, throughout the former Algerian and Libyan nations a group of desert dwellers had faired better than some during the war's aftermath. Their traditional ways had adapted them to the harsh conditions of the desert and their land was distant from the conflicts and upwind of the toxic storms. These people had grown strong in numbers but their culture remained primitive. The leaders of these men had heard the stories about the healer and were ruthless in their desire and sent a band of armed men to bring the healer back to their capital. A great feast was prepared and the healer was required to work miracles to prove his power. The healer failed the tests and the leaders with deep anger and disappointment had him beaten and thrown into a pit of vipers. The poor old goatherd lay in the bottom of the pit with the serpents for many days. He suffered sickness and injury and dreamed he was dying.

But among his former tribe was the man with the mended arm. He had witnessed his friend's abduction and had been powerless to stop it, but he was determined somehow to help him escape. This man was poor and had no way to buy a boat, but eventually he bartered his labor for passage to the far shores where he'd heard his friend had been taken. The man made his way to the distant capital and asked discreetly about the fate of the healer and was told that he was thrown into a pit and left for dead. The friend waited for nightfall and with a willow rope he scaled the steep walls of the pit and knelt beside the poor goatherd and listened carefully for the beat of his weakened heart. The old man was still alive and with much courage and fortitude the friend pulled his body from the pit, carried him in a stolen cart to a hiding place near the wharf where he hoped to smuggle him aboard a ship for China. The friend knew that the great country of China was a wonderland of freedom and plenty. He dreamed that if he could somehow get there, he could get his friend repaired. They lived for three weeks under the docks of the squalid wharf and finally the friend was able to smuggle the old man aboard an ancient vessel for the fabled country of Hong Kong. They hid in the hold of the old ship among Ethiopian and Somali slaves on their way to be sold in Manilla and Old Macau. The goatherd's health deteriorated, one arm turned black and an old witch doctor from Mogadishu took it off with a big knife one dark night as the ship rode the high tides into the teaming bays of the city.

Hong Kong is a magical city. The war had taken its wealth and most of the original population had died or fled, but in the years after the war it had become a center for all manner of survivors seeking the illusive promise of freedom. The once grand skyscrapers had been striped of their glass and transformed into tall gray skeletons emptied of the business of the world and converted to brutal towers for wild and unruly immigrants from everywhere and nowhere. Violence and disease clogged the streets as the rats ran among footsteps of millions of people from all over the world. For six days the friend desperately searched for a safe place to stop, and help for the injured goatherd. One dark night of cold drizzling rain, they sought shelter under the awning of a shop of a wily old necromancer. He sat watching them from the shadows under a pale haze of smoke from a long pipe. Like a ghost, he said in a low voice, "Step inside my friends, rest your wet bones on this soft couch." As the friend painfully guided the goatherd to a rough sitting position. The old man could plainly see that he was very ill. He rose from his rattan chair and stood looking down at the poor goatherd. He saw the black shoulder where the arm had been taken and the wound burnt off, he saw the pale face, drawn and sickly, he saw a deep gash on his skull where he had been viciously beaten, and he looked carefully at his broken and bloody hands.

"This is a very special man", The old necromancer rubbed his chin and brought out a cell phone, "I knew this was an important day when I woke up this morning," he said to himself, even though it was night, then he punched some buttons and talked in a foreign language to the phone. The friend didn't know what a phone was, and although he was confused, he was very tired and lost in a strange place and he had done all he could to help the poor goatherd. Somehow, he knew his job was done, and he felt great relief.

Sabeni Chaldea was the old man's name. He had practiced the Black Arts of necromancy since his father, now long dead, had taught him to conjure the Demons of Etemmu and the ancient methods of control over spirits of the dead. He was delighted to learn the story of the healer, for it seemed to fit precisely into his plans. He rambled on for an hour about the profound significance of the specific Sacrifice Horizon, While he talked he drank great draughts of blood wine and ate from a huge crust of black bread. He pushed bread into the old man's hands and urged him to tell more of the healer, but there was nothing more to tell, and soon the friend of the old goatherd fell fast asleep.

The old necromancer arranged for the goatherd to be taken to a small island far out in the bay. It was here that people came to begin the rudimentary restoration that would try to mend the sickness and injury the goatherd had suffered. Life is a fleeting thing, and if the the soul of this poor man had feet, one of them would be in heaven, and the other would be on earth. Several nights passed while numerous underground experts tried their best with whatever they had. The beatings had inflicted much damage: His jaw had been broken, his remaining arm was broken in two places. His skull was split in the back. and both legs were as rotten as the arm that had been removed on the old ship. His surgeons were ingenious and their choice of materials was both clever and imaginative, for the junkyards and supply houses were in much disarray after a brutal war. But from what was available, his doctors fashioned substitute implements that provided limited mobility and a rudimentary function of speech. Although his teeth were made of iron and his chest was open to the air, his new synthetic heart was taken from the innards of one of the most advanced robot drones available and securely protected in thick glass upon his chest.

During this rehabilitation the strange old man contacted others with whom he had been plotting since the end of the war. They gathered in secret vaults below a crumbling cathedral on the mainland and planned their challenge to the current cabal of governors and tribal leaders that had fought and regained power to govern the region after the war. The plan of the necromancer and his cohorts was one of truly evil intent. He had visions of a great army made up of the shattered souls left aimless after the war. Millions of these people wandered the cities and countryside, starving and hungry for food and direction. Many of these people were deeply mutated into a transient zombie state from the effects of the nuclear winter that had persisted over much of the globe for years after the war. Their minds were gone but their bodies would stay animate as long as they were fed a steady diet of special drugs. With this army, Sabeni would create an unstoppable divine force that would sweep out the small minded governors and retake the southern China coast and rule the great city of Hong Kong and all the riches of the world would return to his control. In Sabeni's unbalanced mind the lowly healer would become the Central Messiah of this new religion. It felt right to him, he was sure he had found the perfect individual to answer this call. To celebrate the final piece of the great plan, Sabeni went out into the dark night to find a special innocent, one of similar height and weight as he, and with a reasonable set of clothes. On the main thoroughfare under a streetlight, he saw a tall man exiting a carriage. Sabeni approached the man from behind and deftly slit his throat. He then stripped himself nude and took the clothes off the dead man and put them on himself. Then, with a flippant gesture, he strode back to his shop with his deviate purpose satisfied.  

In 2177 the official Messianic campaign to take over Hong Kong started in ernest. The humble goatherd was presented to the world as a genuine  God on Earth, with a strange inverted denial as proof of his profound humility and as thus, provided further undisputed proof of his Divine Nature. His birth was touted as much earlier than it actually was, his handlers claiming he was over 200 years old, He was carefully groomed and dressed in God-like clothing to form the centerpiece of a new religion based loosely on the Prophecies of the Pascha Elders. with the dark faces of the Vengence of the Inquisitor as internal security. The cult grew quickly in influence throughout the far east and the great army of the stoned zombies successfully stormed one government institution after another killing all resistance and in some cases actually eating the vanquished.

During these hard years the goatherd was drugged and held in brutal captivity. His physical body was all the Elders needed to illustrate their twisted proclamations. His manufactured utterances were held as sacred and published far and wide. For six years the Elders spread a message of confusion and fear, and amassed a great fortune. But the bigger the movement became, the more unwieldy and difficult it was to manage, and as they lost control, the Elders tasted panic. During their ambitious push into Africa the End itself became manifest. Deep in central Sudan, in Wad Madani, the old necromancer himself conceived a desperate plan to save the movement, they would actually crucify the Messiah, and by this momentous event they would regain valuable credibility and enough time by which they could resurrect their failing empire. Having no better solutions themselves, the Elders agreed with Sabeni, and in profound ignorance they carried out their plan.

High on a barren hill, carefully chosen for it's impressive dominance over the windswept desert. The Elders set out to stage their last performance. A rude wooden cross was planted in the stony ground.  They sent runners to the four directions of the compass to call for the faithful of the world to bear witness to a final act of divine justice. As a Betrayer of the True Way the Messiah must be crucified.  As a symbol of Evil, they claimed that had now brought them to such extreme measures, the poor Messiah was transformed into the Beast. Before the squinting eyes of many thousands on the vast empty desert, as the wind turned cold and the sky darkened, the goatherd was brought forth in chains. His body was raised aloft and the sharp metallic sound of hammers driving iron nails rang through the dry air. The thin wrists tore loose and ropes finally tied his slack form to the black body of the cross. The healer was left to die as the faithful abandoned their faith and wandered off aimlessly into the wilderness. The Elders stood too, blankly watching the spectacle's final moment, and becoming dimly aware that they were finally alone, that they had bet everything on a false idea, that all they had left was a deep regret. 

And among the last to leave was an old man, standing a respectful distance from the foot of the cross... waiting for nightfall. The old man was the last friend of the crucified healer and he had one more task to do. He had to take the body down from the cross, and secure it in a cave a hundred and forty meters from this place of dying.

_________________________________________________________________

The laboratory was cold, and darkened-- except for the center of the room where a broad metal table sat under a bank of the purest white LEDs. Two men stood looking down at an object that was finally, firmly in their possession, or rather in the possession of the BBFR, the Institute of British BioFuture Research. They were Dr. Soren Lischentoff and his assistant, Richard Davis. They had been relentlessly pursuing this object for over six years, ever since it had surfaced in the Netherlander black market masquerading as an ancient Zoroastrian religious artifact.

"I know we need to record this guy on a matrix, doctor, but where to begin?" said Dick as he pulled on a new pair of white cotton gloves. The doctor seemed mildly amused as he looked carefully at the strange contraption in the form of a figure on a cross laying on the table in front of him.

"We will refrain from overreaching opinion at this point Richard," he said, "Our procedure will be to catalog all material and whatever method we can deduce without adversely affecting the object, with special care to isolate human remains and any earth based artificial technology."

"I could divide this chart with one vertical line, and label one column Human, and the other synthetic." Richard glanced expectantly at the doctor.

"Four columns, I think," said the doctor rubbing his whiskered chin and gazing at part of an old African Loom that formed the left hip of the figure."The first should be "natural', with subheads to include human remains, animal bones and anything thing else that isn't manmade. Then the remaining two can be Technology broadly defined as old and new. If we can keep this fellow on one matrix, all the better." The doctor seemed to relax with this decision, as if he were making this up on the fly-- which he certainly was.

Richard had one more question. "What about the light doctor?" he asked looking into one of the empty eye sockets on the ancient polished skull. Richard had been thinking about the "light" for weeks, anxious to begin experiments that would discover the origin, mechanical or otherwise that was responsible for the barely perceptible signal that had indicated on their most sensitive instruments. According to their electroneuronograph "something" was still alive inside the figure lying on the table, after how much time... four hundred years... or a thousand? who could tell?

Richard was not the only one who wanted to know the answer to that question.

The old man had been sleeping in the crawl space for three days now, undiscovered by the squatters in the house above. His stench had not yet found it's way through the floorboards to announce his secret place, and he covered himself every night with mud and cinders to mask the smell of his rotting legs and the heavy gas that still seeped from his ass while he slept. The fingers of his right hand were finally scabbed over from his homemade print removal, and his left hand was still tied behind his back. He lay cramped in a fetal position under the black floor joists. In the morning before the family stirred up above, he was just able to see well enough under the edge of the blindfold to scratch a few lines on the oily back of an old field manual.

"By misunderstanding is existence marked." He mumbled out loud, then shushing himself with a bloody finger, he wrote on. "Love is a stony precipice, above a raging river." He looked at the words with wonder and confusion, "The River was older than Solomon, the King of the sandy Persian veld, The River took advantage of the wide valley, rushing through in haste to lay claim to all before it, to all geography, all opportunity, all desire and all hope. The River owned the valley and sought the next one beyond. And each by each it took over the land and conquered it and came to the sea."

The old man lowered his head onto his arm and rested, He repeated his name to himself, "Simon Naught." He thought the name as useless as anything else, "Simon Abraham Naught." He watched the River in his mind, washing the soil and large boulders before it, tumbling through the forests, sweeping villages and people downstream into the Sea. The River was keeper of wisdom that people could not know. The River was a teacher without a lesson plan, without a curriculum and without students.

The wind ran before the water and through the trees with great force. The sound like a huge train on tracks of iron, like ghosts fleeing imagination, like the last feeble threads of comprehension from his mind. Simon slept, and awoke, his dreams like the net of a fisherman, grasping at memories of his wife, his children and his lost life before the storms.
"Let me count the ways," He said quietly to himself under the old house, "All the ways man will find himself... unafraid," He wrote this on the yellowed cloth cover, "All the ways man will forsake his past---  and embrace the future-- the empty space between myth and reality." He scratched out the last line and wrote, "The most authentic thing man can do... is die.

Then he crawled further under the house through a snakelike a depression he'd carved out and down into the original basement. It consisted of a ten foot room with a badly crumbling field stone foundation and a dirt floor. The ancient coal furnace was gone and where it had stood was a deep hole straight down nearly eight feet into the earth. Simon lowered himself to the bottom of the hole and crouched like a rabbit feeling around for his cave. He had been digging the earth for many weeks until he had formed a tunnel roughly horizontal to the vertical hole up to the basement. The floor of the tunnel was a smooth hard material like polished marble, or like black glass. It felt cold to the touch as Simon crawled over it through the tunnel, but if he stopped for any length of time, it would begin to warm up to match his body temperature.

Simon crawled along and the floor of the tunnel curved very slightly downward. Ahead was his cave, a leveled out area which was large enough to sleep and store his supplies. In his excavations Simon had discovered voids in the earth which were handy to fill with dirt that he'd carved from the walls of his tunnel. The sleeping area was about ten feet in diameter and the ceiling was four feet off the floor. One one side of the cave at the bottom of the wall was a void that was impossible to fill with dirt. He would scrape the ceiling and push the dirt into the bottom of the wall and it would never compact, would never stop accepting more dirt.  In this way Simon was able to expand his cave and make it large enough to live comfortably without having to carry the dirt all the way out of the tunnel. Over time he had created a self sufficient place to live, well stocked with scrounged cans of food, canvas bags of old rice and three empty coke bottles that he would carefully position in a depression to collect the drippings of moisture that seeped from the wall.

In this way Simon lived. And when the storms came again he was safely asleep in his burrow far below ground and when he was awakened by the noise and the rumbling earth, he ventured out far enough to discover that the old house had been destroyed and had filled the basement with rubble. In the darkness he examined the wall of broken timbers with his good hand, he felt the fractured concrete and dirt and understood that he would need to retreat back to his cave and reconsider his situation. On his way back he thought he should dig out the soft area near the bottom of the wall, the place that he could never fill with dirt.

He set to work that night, for deep in this tunnel night was the same as day. He dug a large hole at the bottom of the wall, and the more he dug-- the more the dirt gave way and fell in. It was as if the dirt disappeared beneath his digging. In this way he dug for three days, building a new tunnel just big enough for his prone body. He slept when tired and paused only to eat three peaches from a can he'd brought with him.

As Simon dug-- the earth gave away more rapidly, at times easily revealing the smooth floor, and the further he progressed-- the more he noticed the tunnel descending. He was definitely heading downhill. And the more the floor curved downward the easier the earth was to dig. On the forth day Simon began to notice the earth becoming wetter, but as heavy as it was with moisture it was still easy to push to the side and continue on. Simon drank the water by squeezing the dirt in his hand and dripping it into his mouth. Now all he needed was more air.

On the fifth day he felt a slight anomaly  on the floor. It was very subtle, but as he was very familiar with the smoothness of the floor and a small discrepancy caught his attention. He followed what felt like a seam with his fingernail. It was maybe a sixteenth of an inch deep and went across the floor from wall to wall of his little tunnel. He stopped to rest and wondered what to do. Deciding to follow the seam, he began to dig both directions at first, but to the right the dirt was softer on his worn hand. His breathing was becoming very painful now. The air was thin this far under the earth and his work had caused him to use more oxygen. He fell asleep and slept for a long time on the smooth dark surface.

Simon dreamed that the seam led to a hatch which opened to a sunny garden with fresh air and flowers. A garden with vegetables and a stream with clean running water. In his dream, he breathed deeply of the sweet air and drank his fill of the pure water. He then fell asleep in the shade of a great chestnut tree.

http://www.thefineartmagazine.com/

Shows, Competitions, partial listing:

2007-    Herron Juried Alumni Exhibition, Indianapolis, IN
2002-    Retrospective, National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, Chicago. IL
1995-    Critic's Choice, Indianapolis Art Center, Indianapolis, IN
1995-     Critic's Dialogue, Indianapolis Art Center, Indianapolis, IN
1993-    NUVO Educator's Art Awards, Indianapolis, IN
1992-    Alliance Gallery, Art Museum of Indianapolis, IN
1992-    Hands on Society, Richmond Art Museum, Richmond, IN
1991-    2 person show, 431 Gallery, Indianapolis, IN
1990-    Arts Council of Indianapolis Competition
1989-     Photo Ventures IX Indianapolis Art League, Indianapolis, IN
1989-    Indiana Artists Postcard Series IX, Indianapolis, IN
1988-    Photo Ventures VIII, Indianapolis Art League, Indianapolis, IN
1988-    Indiana Artist Postcard Series VIII, Indianapolis, IN

Commissions, private Collections:

2009-    James Dezso, Vashon Island, WA
2008-    John Brooks, Indianapolis, IN
2008-    Christopher and Audrey Rosebo, Indianapolis, IN
2003-    Matt McGraph, Verona, NJ
1998-    J. Tucker, Dana Point, CA
1984-    D. Heinzerling, Phoenix, AR
1982-    S. Peiker, Denver, CO
1978-    Judge F. Talbert, Logansport, IN
1975-    R. Eagerton, Indianapolis, IN

Illustration, Published work, Press Review:

1995-    Ad Busters Magazine, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
1992-    People for American Way offer to document Richmond Show controversy, Wash, DC
1990-    Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN
1989-    Boehringer Mannheim Corporation, Indianapolis, IN
1989-    Saturday Evening Post, Indianapolis, IN
1988-    Indiana Arts Literary Supplement, Indianapolis, IN

Education:

1968-    San Francisco Art Institute, Accepted for undergraduate work
1972-    John Herron School of Art & Design, Indiana University, BFA
1974-    Independent study: Amsterdam, London, Paris, Spain, Morocco
1970-    Republic of Vietnam, Infantry, 2nd /8th,1st Cavalry

So you're a self taught artist huh?

Self taught? Are you kidding? is there any other way? Are you telling me that a person has his head wrapped in furnace tape until until he goes to school?

The big schism between self taught and store bought is bullshit. All us humans and animals educate ourselves from the moment we're born, We're programed to educate ourselves. Self education is the natural way to mature, to grow up. There is no alternative. To assume someone is not educated because he didn't go to school is to make a big mistake. Life is education, and it has better teachers than any store bought school.

As far as higher education goes, bad teaching is rampant in this country, from pre-school to Harvard. Everything depends on the teacher, and nobody has any idea how to teach teachers, or how to measure teachers, or where the good teachers teach. 85% of the students coming out of US schools are not any smarter than when they went in. Often LESS smarter!

Take me for instance. I'm stupid as shit! and I went to college! I have a degree from a big time university, and it's not worth the paper its printed on. I spent lots of money and four years of my life and I can count the stuff I learned on one hand. Why? Bad teachers is the main reason. Not only do bad teachers get to teach, but they also get to administer their own tests. They actually get to test their own students. Then to top it off, they get to pass judgement on the test results and decide if their students learned anything. You think they're gonna blame themselves for bad test results? Think again! Worse yet, if they think you didn't learn anything, you think they care? Hell no! They'll pass your ass right out of the school and give you a bogus degree and let you go flopping out into the world none the wiser! I said NONE the WISER!

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time I had a big beautiful piece of art hanging in a museum in Chicago. A representative from the Outsider Art Museum in Baltimore happened to wander by and was impressed.
I think he was anyway. The museum called me up and asked if I had a degree from an art school. They said the Baltimore Outsider art museum was interested in the piece, but I had to be an outsider artist to get anything in the museum. I said well. uh... shit, yeah I got a stupid degree, not a whole lot of good its doing me, said I. So then the guy said, well tough luck. Your stupid degree just kept you out of the Outsider Art Museum in Baltimore.

I pondered this for a moment and wondered if this means I'm an INSIDER artist. Unlikely I thought, A handful of gallery showings, no sales, no representation, no past, present or future in art, how can I be an insider? I am a new category of artist, a Failed Artist. One who has somehow picked up the finer points of the craft, but through no fault of anyone but me, and even though I've been making kick-ass art all my life, I have failed to become an artist of ANY KIND! Inside or Outside! And this judgment from the Baltimore museum of outsider art, is rendered after inquiring about one of my pieces. Followed by an abrupt rejection on the strength that I didn't fit into the Outsider Box. Can you believe that? A category called Outsider that you can't get into? That's like a trash can that rejects trash or a pot you can't piss in!

Okay, so the Outsider Art Museum rejects outsider artists who wasted their money on a stupid degree. But the smart outsider artists, the ones with no education at all, the ones that can barely talk, now they get right in. No problem! So follow me here, I'm dumb enough to have blown four years and lots of money on a bogus education, and dumb enough to have wasted my whole life doing art nobody ever sees, and dumb enough to have failed as an artist, BUT, too smart to be classified as an outsider artist! And yet, a genuine bum, who sits down by the river and whittles a cool little frog out of a piece of driftwood gets his stuff right in the museum.