ARTORBUST, INC.

Going backpacking on Monday

Published on June 19, 2010. 0 Comments

I’ve been really trying to get back to NATURE. Picked up an Adbuster’s about ecopsychology and then read the book Ecotherapy: Healing with nature in mind. Basically it was great to realize that my mind is connected to my body, but now it is even greater to know that this package of self/ego is also connected to everything. Say it a million times, but feeling it is a tad bit harder.

My first attempt to reintegrate into absolute nature is going to be a six day backpacking trip into the Presidential Range in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I’ve been planning for over a month and I’m set to permeate this Monday! The picture below is what I’m bringing to sustain myself in the wilds for a week. This is an attempt at lightweight backpacking with a total weight of around 30 pounds including fuel.

stuff

Pretty sad that this is minimal when I see a picture of Gandhi’s worldly possessions.

gandhi

Artist Statement

Published on May 6, 2010. 0 Comments

What is ARTORBUST, INC.?

Art first, I wake up thrown into this incubator; my art heals my pain, my shame, my being-in-the-world, my being-with-others. The journey – multiple, no longer binary, complex, layered, permeable, interconnected – will uncover through events and experiences that I got soul – WE ALL GOT SOUL!!!! ARTORBUST, INC. is a work-in-progress, an event – energy. ARTORBUST, INC. wants to create sustainable jobs for people at-risk and in need through the arts, specifically: publishing, bookbinding, music, and multi-modal visual arts.

Why a corporation?

Money – so much is in the media about corporate greed, deception, and evil that the dream is for ARTORBUST, INC. to be a honest corporation, that provides shareholders with meaning and pride of ownership in a sustainable, earth-friendly, peace-loving way as a creative model for future entrepreneurship, worker-owned business, healthy capitalism, creative entrepreneurship, and the greater good.

Can ARTORBUST, INC. guarantee dividends and a return-on-investment comparable to the corporations started by magnates such as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates?

Nope and never, but we can promise to deliver ambition and hope for a better future on a much smaller scale. When you become an investor in ARTORBUST, INC. you will be invited to the annual shareholders event to help plan the course of action for the upcoming fiscal year, you will be invited to become involved in a corporation that wants to care, you will even get a dividend check…. or the bust part…

How will ARTORBUST, INC. make any money and/or create any jobs?

ARTORBUST, INC. officially incorporated with the Maine Secretary of State in 2009; however, its true birth began a decade earlier when the founder and CEO, Russell Ouellett, started making books by hand. What he now knows (but didn’t then) is that this unconscious drive to make books was a way for him to cope with the trauma and the existential angst of his own life, upbringing, and culture. Over this decade Mr. Ouellett has sold over one hundred of these books, sometimes commanding prices as high as $300 for a single tome. The basic business plan for 2010 is to make some books, sell them, and then make some more. In actuality the plan is much more complicated, but is not developed enough to share at this current time. Stick around, it will become more clear.

Who is Russell Ouellett?

He is a book foraging, metaphor masticating, dream metabolizing man of action; he is a graduate of parochial high school, a large state university with a BA in English, and now in his last year of a MA in Expressive Arts Therapy from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. He works full-time as a licensed alcohol and drug counselor in a year long adolescent residential substance abuse treatment facility. And if that wasn’t enough, he is a new father and proud husband.

What is the A.I.R.V. III?

This officially stands for Artist-In-Residence Vehicle the Third because this is the third motor home that Mr. Ouellett has had the opportunity to utilize as his personal art studio. The latest incarnation suitably named, A.I.R.V. III, is currently in the remodeling phase and is not a working art studio. Sometime in the summer of 2010 the A.I.R.V. III will be finished. It will include a bookbindery, publishing imprint, and screen printing studio. This is a very exciting project for ARTORBUST, INC. and more information will be available as this project writhes free from the tediousness of renovation into the excitement of art making. Through this project ARTORBUST, INC. is hopeful that the mission can start to move from an attention seeking prank to a real business with value.

Notes From the Studio

Published on April 18, 2010. 0 Comments

I purchased a very awesome tool to help with casing book covers.

I purchased a cow hide to help make smooth book covers.

I purchased a 30 foot motor home to renovate into a mobile art studio.

I guess you have to spend money around here to have any fun.

My “A Community of Scholars” Presentation

Published on April 6, 2010. 0 Comments

For the second year in a row, Lesley University in Cambridge, MA has hosted an event that promotes a smidgen of the scholarly people within its social atom. This year they allowed me to give an hour long presentation! I recorded the audio for posterity and am posting it here for all to hear!!

It was really fun to tell my story of bookbinding in a rehab and then have a dialogue with the nice people who came to check it out. Also, the flier that Lesley put together was super fab.

After listening to the audio I must say that um, I like say, um too too much. Also, I say whatever comes to my mind, maybe something to work on.

Bookbinding in Rehab by Dance Anarchist

brochure

Bookbinding in REHAB

Published on March 12, 2010. 0 Comments

It took one hour a week for almost six months to get this project completed. Sometimes I thought it would not happen, but now I can rejoice because we did it! The basic premise was to do a bookbinding group with the residents I counsel in a year long residential substance abuse facility. In the end, they made twenty four one-of-a-king journals. During that that time many clients came and went, but through the help of all of them the final product came out great!

here are some shots taken during the process.

Dance Anarchist EAP (a leaf falls) EP

Published on February 12, 2010. 0 Comments

So I have been dabbling in electronic music making for my own healing and I am now – unabashedly- releasing my first EP. When I finished this project (including an limited edition CD of one) I realized that it’s not always about creating the most superb masterpiece ever, but instead I have a strong feeling, a weighty feeling, that any superfluous project finished is encroyable in its own right.

This short, <20 minute album, is just a few random songs I made messing around in my kitchen tagged onto the title track. While not truly "musical" I composed the title song as a response to my feelings of being repeatedly inspired by Erik Satie's Trois Gymnopédies. The official title, "9 year old fighter pilot shot down over Nam (a leaf falls) guilt regret shame fame", is from a poem I wrote and also a poem written by ee cummings.

9 year old fighter pilot shot down over nam ( a leaf falls) guilt regret shame fame by Dance Anarchist

So here it is – my first EP:

you can download (a leaf falls) by clicking this link

Meta-analysis: ARTORBUST, INC – what it is – no grand narrative here

Published on February 1, 2010. 0 Comments

My first semester of grad school (I’m half way finished the degree now) equaled a real homecoming. Instead of just creating a world, I became part of a world that had already been created, a world I now know as expressive arts and expressive arts therapy. That first semester and every semester since has been – but not limited to – a mix of experiential learning, interpersonal relationships, intrapersonal relationships, and lots of ambitious reading. It has been the equivalent of learning a new language; I understand what is happening because I have been living in the arts, but now I have a whole plethora of words and phrases to explain what is going on. The funny thing is that you would think this would make it so much easier, in fact the opposite is true. Each nouvelle experience, network, etc. leads towards more uncovering until you get left in a pile of academic literature brow beating Cartesian dualism, poststructuralism, and the eventual path of existential phenomenology! This is good, but the fact of the matter is that I do the work daily. I utilize the arts in healing for myself and for the clients I work with in a residential substance abuse treatment facility. This is the first time on this blog that I have written about my work. The rumors are true; I am a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor in the state of pine trees (Maine). The goal is to help as many people as I can. Just like they say in AA, you can’t keep it unless you give it away. And I do.

Despite all this rambling disclosure I really wanted to mention one certain essay from that first Fall that hit me and hit me hard; it was an essay about being an artist-in-residence and the idea that by creating and making your own space for expressive arts and healing, people might watch and see and eventually start their own process of healing. At least that is what I remember; if you want to read it, do so and get back to me, eventually I will reread it to see how much got lost in the muddiness of my cognition and phantasies and projections…

Allen, P. (1992). Artist-in-residence: An alternative to “clinification” for art therapists. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association. 9 (1), 22-29

So ramble on parce que, je suis artiste. I just had a client say to me that I contain multitudes. How did he remember that Walt Whitman quote? I had typed it onto a piece of paper and given it to him one day months ago when he was really suffering being. And out of nowhere he pulls a classic “I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I?”

ARTORBUST, INC is not polished and shiny. ARTORBUST, INC is in the trenches doing the work, living the ideal of artist-in-residence, artist as healer. Freud said psychoanalysis is about finding love and finding work and that is just what I am trying to do.

Please enjoy the short video and this work-in-progress… become a share holder someday!

NOTE: the whining in the video is our little dog Salvador Dali

Projects

Published on January 24, 2010. 0 Comments

bookbinding in residential substance abuse facility (Lesley Community Of Scholars presentation March)
hundreds and hundreds of little hand made journals
life in a year
la musique
finding more shareholders
finding artists

Change in technique

Published on December 9, 2009. 0 Comments

For the last ten years I have been using the same steak knife to cut paper. A couple of months ago I bought a serious paper cutter and today I tried it out for the first time. In the time it took to listen to the sweet sweet Animal Collective – album Merriweather Post Pavilion:

In that short amount of time (~60 minutes) I was able to finish what was going to have taken at least a month to complete. The steak knife makes for a softer edge but sometimes you have to compromise. This is going to be a series of approx. 500 books so gonna be working enough?? (let’s see I might be lucky to finish by fall, 2010)
Here are some pictures from my studio which is a real mess!!!!

That is approx. 6,000 sheets!!

The liminality of travail!

Published on November 22, 2009. 0 Comments

These rituals break the week in two and make me feel less overwhelmed. 2009.
Triptych.
Acrylic on canvas,
each panel, 14 x 12 in.

This is the first post of the rest of your posts

Published on November 20, 2009. 0 Comments

Lily and I decided that using the ARTORBUST official website for personal pictures was weird and that is why we moved the personal blog somewhere else. We can email the address if you want:) This website should just be about ARTORBUST, INC.

From a letter by Franz Kafka:

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? …we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.