Peter Yumi

My New Years Goals

Yumi — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 02:49:05 +0000

Research more
Talk to more artists about their work
Read more poems
Read more novels
Read more non-fiction
Listen to more music
Ask artist more questions
Work more, at the end of my life I will have said I should have worked harder.
Cook more for more people
Grow my own food this summer
Photograph more

Exercise more
Sleep in
Ask more questions
Stop giving answers
Learn new songs to play on my guitar
Sing more ( it’s yoga for the inside of the body- Stephen Colbert)
Write about other artist MORE
Interview artists
Learn to bbq Ribs
Learn to smoke meat
Set up my wood shop
Fix my girlfriends car
Create a flower garden for my girlfriend
Be patient when I am trying to learn to speak Portuguese with her.
Love more

Top Ten Collages of 2011

Yumi — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 03:43:05 +0000

Top Ten Collages of 2011

This is a list of my favorite collages of 2011. There are hundreds more that I would like to include in the list. I picked these collage for a number of reason, some because they influenced my work, some because they are just gorgeous and deserve to be seen by as many people as possible and some I picked because they are funny and made me laugh

NUMBER 10
Prayer Time : Nicholas Lockyer this guys work is just poetic and dream like. I emailed him a few months ago and asked if I could put some of his collage on my Collage Fancy page. I still need to do so, I have been neglecting collage fancy.

Number 9 Nick Sitton

This work is really influencing my current work. I really love how simple the process is but they create complicated forms and shapes. WONDERRFUL

Number 8 Vanessa Lamounier de Assis

Vanessa’s work is beyond amazing. I look at her flickr page often, sometimes waiting for her to post new work. She is truly a remarkable talent.

Number 7 Diego Gravinese

I really was blown away by the sheer raw power of these collages. So simple of a process but a beautiful poetry exists from the selection of images.

Number 6 Lewis Minor

I can’t say anything but GORGEOUS ! I love this work.

Number 5 DECK STYLE

This KILLS

Number 4 Derrick Tyson

Bizzare and wonderful use of abstraction of form.. check out more of his stuff it really is remarkable.

Number 3 Mumuri

This collage was a real stand out for me when I first saw it and made the rounds in my email with several other collage artists I know..

Number 2 Otto Magnus

He has been one of my favorite collage artists over the past year, his work is absolutely wonderful, what I like about his flickr page is that he is not afraid to show is process and his progress. He is really a dedicated artist and is always commenting on others work and really making more work than other artists I know..

Number 1 lucas chimello simões

This work continues to inform my work every single day I work. I am constantly looking at his process. If you look through his flickr page he has a few photos where he shows you how he made these truly unique and amazing collage.. I suggest you go back in time to his very first photo that he posted on flickr and then you really get a chance to see how his style developed into what he is doing today..

Bottling pears and banishing turnips

Yumi — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 02:20:17 +0000

There was that day of days when days floated like days and in between softness and haze more dazed that appeared. There was a day that when dazed floated and in between the saltness and laze that sprained. That was their daze of daze when days filtered like daisies and in between taught and praise more days appeared. They were that dime of daze when days flaked off days and in between seaweed and trumpets more craze that strained. There were those diseases that insisted whilst diseases forcibly persisted and in between butter milk and lifted.

Hilda Hilst: Of Desire (IV)

Yumi — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 05:54:50 +0000

VI.
What if I tell you that I saw a bird
Upon your sex, should you believe it?
And if it isn’t true, the Universe will not change at all.
If I say that desire is Eternity
Because the moment burns without end
Should you believe it? And if it’s not true
So many have said it that it could be.
In desire we are touched by sophomania, ornaments
Immodesty, shame. Why can’t I
Dot with innocence and poetry
Bones, blood, flesh, the now
And everything in us that will become misshapen?

IV.
Se eu disser que vi um pássaro
Sobre o teu sexo, deverias crer?
E se não for verdade, em nada mudará o Universo.
Se eu disser que o desejo é Eternidade
Porque o instante arde interminável
Deverias crer? E se não for verdade
Tantos o disseram que talvez possa ser.
No desejo nos vêm sofomanias, adornos
Impudência, pejo. E agora digo que há um pássaro
Voando sobre o Tejo. Por que não posso
Pontilhar de inocência e poesia
Ossos, sangue, carne, o agora
E tudo isso em nós que se fará disforme?

Lies and lies and lies and…

Yumi — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 18:25:08 +0000

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Cirrcuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

We are magicians, we artists, we are liars to the core, sometimes our delusions of our art, our desire to communicate what we want can come in the form of lies that are not part of the art.

No nothing new

Yumi — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 02:23:56 +0000

I have been following the Occupy Wall Street Protest now since its start. I cannot get enough of it, while I am a virtual house plant working away at my cubicle job, barely able to keep up with my bills and save, I can really relate to the protestors, I am there in spirit, sadly I am not able to be there physically.

I have still been slugging away at my daily practice of collage making, but I have changed my routine slightly, I used to listen to NPR or some other news source while I was working. I had to turn off NPR because of their lack of interest in reporting on the protest. While listening to Talk of the Nation the other day I couldn’t help but become irritated at the hosts question “where as the left gone?” The left has always been here, they have been ignored by what many of us now call National Petroleum Radio. So now I listen to music and enjoy soothing sounds instead of out of touch pseudo-liberal mouths afraid of actual journalism because the cow toe to the radical right who have taken over this country.

It’s been nice to work in this new manner and my work has changed because of it. I’ve started thinking about how to work with my images with the idea in mind of working with negative space and have started to develop means to create “accidents” with overlapping of images. The way I have gone about this is I have started looking at the root of the image, or what makes up the whole of the image I start with, then after staring for awhile I start looking at it’s parts and then look to see what parts of the whole do not add up to the whole and start removing those. Before I was looking at things as wedges, things that came in between the complete image and starting images, which created this issue of either part of images, could be included or they had to be excluded, there was no room for allowing for a plurality of images to work together. So I’ve started photographing bits of paper, rubbing out inks with erasers, photographing, again and scanning images in and then introducing new elements by cutting on top of dissolved and distorted images. This week I’ve given up on having different images in my collage speaking to each other as opposites or rhymes and started melding the images together into a cohesive whole. I am really excited to see where these images take themselves and me.

Cooking

Yumi — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:40:16 +0000

Julia Childs said ““The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.” This goes the same for making art, making visual art and the art of cooking are very, very similar. Both use primaries in their making, visual art the primary colors, red, green, blue, yellow, black, white, cooking, bitterness, saltiness, sourness, sweetness, Umami (savory). A blend or harmony or disharmony of these selections can make all the difference in the world in how one communicates their creation. We can get into all sorts of subtle nuances as well in our creation of food or visual art, what we choose to put into our creation is just as important as what we don’t put into our creation, foods, like visual images carry a cultural and political significance to them just as an image of a clock melting or a a lily pond can be loaded with signs and signifier.

I have been taking this approach to making my artwork and to my cooking, taking great care to find the proper ingredients to make food or collage. Cooking, like art, the medium is the message. How we prepare, what we prepare, how we consume, is deeply interwoven into the fabric of our entire planet. Do we buy factory raised meat, do we buy organic, do we boil, do we fry, or do we use oils or acrylics? To be bake or do we use a wok, do we photograph or do we sculpt, you get the picture. But in the end it comes down to what we are trying to communicate, I sometimes like to make an elegant dish of vegetables and meat, slow cooked and carefully deciding on the spices and how to create sauces, I also like to sometimes indulge in hot wings or greasy hamburger and fries. When it comes to art, I try to keep my palate just as diverse, consuming some classics and appreciating on the same level paint by numbers, but in the end I want quality, I don’t want to eat a 99 cent McDonalds hamburger and I don’t want to consume art that doesn’t provide nourishment. You are what you eat.

Apples

Yumi — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 04:27:04 +0000

Have I told you about apples ? if not I will tell you again. When i was 22 I decided I wanted to get rid of the meaning of apple, so I bought like 30 pounds of apples and in the middle of the night I went to a lake and threw all of the apples into the lake. Sadly the apples landed amongst a gaggle of geese and the geese took the air making a terrific noise in this quiet neighborhood. Lights of all the homes around the lake turned on and I kept throwing the apples into the lake, one apple after another yelling at the top of my lungs. It cured me of giving meaning to anything, including being considerate of people sleeping near a lake.

Servants and their masters

Yumi — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:50:05 +0000

Unprofitable servants. There were unprofitable servants, they were unprofitable servants, and their master never thanked them for what was asked of them… they have done what was asked of them to do. Which of those who have servants have asked their servants to come and sit down with you after they have labored for you? But instead you will say, make me my supper, bring me my bread, clean this house. After you are finished eating and drinking you will say to your servant, it is ok, now sit and eat and drink and rest. Unprofitable servants.

Classic Masculine Scent and Time Ticks or Ticks of Time

Yumi — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 01:21:04 +0000

I can’t stop thinking about Gertrude Stein today, I was thinking about her quite a bit last night while I was working on a collaborative video project with two LA area artists. First let me say that working online with other artists is like working online with other artists, if you are making art with artists online you are making art online and if you are online making art you are online making art, making online art or online making art. Either way or which ever way you look at it making art or online making art or being online and making art online or making you essentially are making art. So if you are making art online you are for certain making art while online if you’re online making art you are most likely making art online.

Cycles or being in a cycle or making things that cycle back into another cycle is something that I am really concerning this new video with. It came to me while I was in the showering, showering in the shower I thought about how I was in the shower showering and if I was not in the shower I would be in the shower again at some point or another, it’s a bit of an annoyance to me that some of the best ideas come to me while showering or to be more apt while showering the best ideas come to me. The Devil must have decided to come into the shower and interrupt me with ideas while in the shower, the devil could not come into my head while I am sitting in my studio working, instead I am in the showering and the devil decides to interrupt me while in the shower showering. Which brings me to my newest brand of soap that I recently purchased that I really love that this soap I purchased has on the bottle that I purchased that reads Classic Masculine Scent, right on the bottle of soap that I purchased, what does that mean anyway ? Classic masculine scent, some other masculine scents are not classic, I am interested in knowing what the soap that is not classically masculine smells like, the new hip urban scent, what does that smell like? Smells like bullshit to me. Showering has its moments where it provides insights like the soap that one is washing ones self with and washing of with soap provides insights into the moments that one is showering with. It came to me while I was in the shower the other day while I was showering in the shower that if I was not showering I would at some point or another be in the shower at some point using a classic masculine scent at some point showering with a scent that is class and masculine.

So I am making a video about cycles about things coming back into things, about time that does not really become new but really time becomes something that once was because it’s the same thing as it was before but at a different time. Moments are like that, they become a translucent tick, not the kind of the body, but the kind that attaches themselves to the body, ticks sucking, who knows what they suck but they suck something, that tick is not time itself, but rather what the tick sucks is what nurtures it and makes it time. So sucking time is what a tick does and a tick is time and sucking time is what makes a tick time. Why is the tick translucent? Have you ever seen time? I haven’t but I have seen things that let me know that a translucent tick is about sucking time. That is what the video about, how things grow and decay and then become new things all the time, growing off time, really when we say we are aging we are just saying that time is transforming us into something new, a tick of time has attached itself to us in a way and what we see as decay is really just changing into something new or to put it another way we are changing into something new as the tick of time attaches itself to us.