Welcome back!

I should have mentioned at the beginning of my blog that I have a rather ornery chronic pain problem, a result of nerve damage from my above knee amputation back in 1991. Twenty plus years of chronic pain is not exactly conducive to getting things done (hence, why I don't yet have my doctorate, which I definitely plan to get - my New College degree from the University of Alabama in "Comparative Mysticism as Embodied in Religion, Philosophy, and Art" means I either get a doctorate or I work at a fast food joint. Or maybe Denny's... that wouldn't be so bad, I've had a lot of strange experiences as Denny's. But to get back to my point, from time to time, due to the pain and medications I'm on, I tend to drop off the face of the Earth now and then for extended periods. I'm doing a bit better right now, and I thought it was the perfect time to get back to my long neglected blog. I don't know if anyone is still reading this, but maybe the occasional person will be ensnared by Synchronicity and stumble upon this humble blog.

Stay tuned for more posts, I tend to post in bulk when I get back to something like this or FaceBook.

BTW, the photo triptych above was taken by me a few years ago when I was taking a class in Black & White film photography - for those young 'uns, film was what we old people used before digital cameras. I not only took the photos (with some help from my mother to help make sure I was centered for the most part), but I also developed them in an actual dark room, no photoshop or computers, the special effects in the first image were all done in camera using some not so difficult methods, though getting it to look right is apparently harder than I had known at the time, I just got lucky. Old school. The pieces are titled (in order) Body Image I, Body Image II, and Body Image III, and believe it or not was partially inspired by Aztec mythology. But that's another story. I submitted this work to an actual art show, put on by the American Association for Orthopedic Surgeons, they were putting on an art exhibit for both ortho surgeons who are artists, as well as artists who had orthopedic problems at one or more points in their lives - I figured with my extensive orthopedic history, starting at age five with a rare and "terminal" (so they said) bone cancer, an Extraosseus Ewings Sarcoma, if there was any art exhibit I had a chance of being in, this would be the one.

I had actually submitted some drawings for their previous exhibit, despite having never been trained in the technique, not realizing this was a real deal art show with lots of professional artists, and to my shock and joy they accepted one of my drawings. The second exhibit I heard about from AAOS was to honor Wounded Warriors, and since amputations are a common unfortunate type of wound in wars, and much of my art is introverted (not all of it concerns my amputation, of course), I thought I'd send in some photos that I'd taken while I had learned photography, and submitted the Body Image triptych and another photo (in Infra-Red B&W), and they accepted both! Not only did they publish both works in a book for the show with all the other art, the exhibit went all over the country, including the Russell Senate Office Rotunda in Washington, DC (right across the street from the Capitol Building), and I actually sold the triptych to someone who was not a relative, it is apparently hanging in the waiting room of an orthopedic surgeon! I had earlier sold a print (not a digital print, an actual dark room one) of the triptych to a local photographer who saw it at a local art exhibit it was in, so although I'm quite new to the art world, I'm already doing better than Vincent van Gogh did during his lifetime, so obviously expect great things from me in the future! Yes, I'm being sarcastic.