"To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are." (Lee)
A schism happened today: a choice between continued pain and suffering or extraction of the troubled branch. Sometimes, you must break yourself to heal your life, and the lives of others around you.
The poison sinks quickly into the bloodstream and erodes your bones, until you are nothing but failure and fracture. And regret and anger.
To be human is to be broken. And angry.
Underneath the tough shell, we are wired and woven by threads of misfortune and regret, by the silk of depression and seething discomfort. It is said that we are the sum of our choices, but circumstances often lead to unplanned destinations.
When fate reorients your happy path, it's hard to find it again. You think you're ready for change, and then it happens. Brutal and belligerent. You made all the right choices, and still end up unhappy. It's as if antithesis is our inevitable antimatter, bound to the fibers of our shadow selves, echoes of our fading past and the resonance of generations of the struggle
to heal.
Push the boulder to the tip of one precipice, only to slip your grip and lose everything you gritted for.
Seems to be the way of the day. Take sides. Undermine. Isolate. Strip away humanities and re-armor for war. Every choice a challenge, every skirmish a siege. Always steps away from savagery, a few clicks removed from rage.
It's been a long time coming, I know. The pressure has been rising under the surface like Kilauea, fissures and cracks spewing forth fire and destruction on a far too regular basis. The magma creeps across the scorched earth slowly and impossibly, creating a new planet and erasing the world that once was. A new earth,
built by the blood of nature. There is no divine power that can stop the core from bleeding out, once the cracks are permanent. We are insignificant, frail flowers set next to a brimming volcano, one split away from erasure,
"To express yourself in freedom, you must die to everything of yesterday. From the “old”, you derive security; from the “new”, you gain the flow." (Lee)
2018 has been turbulent year for me personally and professionally. At times, it has been a difficult ride. I may have distanced myself from this blog, but I have found much solace in the solitude of the pathway of the seretic. I have been productive, but not as evident as I have been in previous ages. These days, I spend more time creating than displaying, more time reflecting than moving.
I have a lot of plans in play for art projects and products. In fact, if things go as planned, by this time next year I will have published my first three #Xenobleed poetical picturemags (a variant of my Bonesetter's "poetical picturebooks"). Development of those has been a focal point of my year, as well as reflecting on where I want the Artemis Sere brand to go over the next ten years.
Without further ado, some of the 2018 highlights of the Artemis Sere brand.
Seretic Studios Evolution
Behind the scenes, I've spent a lot of time trying to better the seretictstudios.com experience -- from page load speed to content consistency and architecture. My lack of a core experience for Seretic Studios has forced me to rethink the user flow of this website, how much content is connected and how people can find my products. I'm far from finished, but am progressing. Cleaning content closets is a complicated task; I have been blogging across platforms for almost a decade now, and my written and visual content is scattered across the digital space and social media. Compiling a centralized gallery -- for my own sanity alone -- has been challenging.
I continue to update my Serenity Gallery (the formal name for my full, ordered collection of Artemis Sere art products, projects and creations) and my current inventory numbers over 400. The attached page hasn't been updated in some time, and I hope to have the full Gallery list up in the near future.
sereSteel
As a result of my day job, I am around the welding profession and the great artists that bend metal to their wills. I have visited sculpture parks and stood in awe of imposing, impressive works of art. As a focus for the next decade of Sere Art, I want to become skilled at welding and metalworking so I can produce my own artistic expressions using metal mediums. While I don't have a timetable for getting started on the path of developing #sereSteel art, I have decided that I want my future gallery to feature such awesome creations.
Xenobleed Gallery Show
In July 2018, I conducted my only gallery show of the year at the Lake Elmo Coffee Shop in Lake Elmo, MN, featuring many of my rarely-seen art resin, acrylic and gesso pieces that have been featured in social media and are the basis for many works in the "Xenobleed" picturemag series.
Poetical Picturemags
A variant of my Bonesetter's Revenge books, a poetical picturemag s a hybrid of digital art, poetry, and short fiction that features a vibrant array of my digital works, most of which are remixes of my visual art from other mediums. The picturemags are printed on 8.5x11, full-color paper, arranged in magazine format. The poetical picturemags are developed by me, featuring content from me, and will be available over Amazon.com for individual ordering/purchase.
Xenobleed I: X & Why
Originally slated to be released on September 9, 2018, the first book of my "Xenobleed" series ("Xenobleed: X & Why") returns to the roots of "Xenomorphine" (The Bonestter's Revenge, Book 2): a celebration of the xenomorphic ability for a human to express him or herself in artistic ways alien to our humble, stable species. The colors are wild and unpredictable, reflecting the birth of chaos. Available 11/18/2018.
Xenobleed II: Coagulum
Slated to be released on January 9, 2019, "Xenobleed: Coagulum" is the bleeding-out of the alient/artist. It's collective colors are red and crimson, and the content drips of venom and cruor. More to come in December 2018.
Xenobleed III: Shadowheart
Slated to be released on February 14, 2019, "Xenobleed: Shadowheart" returns to the "Obscurious" world of shadow and suffrage. "Shadowheart" features some of my best black and white pieces, and reflects the darker tones of love.
“An artist’s expression is his soul made apparent. Behind every motion, the music of his soul is made visible.” (Lee)
It has been a long time since I published a new blog; last year’s birthday, to be exact. Shame on me for not keeping up with the times and the tides. That’s not to say that I haven’t been busy during the #yearoftheseretic — just that I haven’t been using this platform to tell my story, rage against the world, and move the Sere brand forward. There are few in my audience that are consistently listening without prompt or payoff, either financial or personal, so I haven’t felt compelled to blog much. But I have strayed from the true purpose of this platform — highlight the continuing story of the life and art of Artemis Sere.
Truth be told, for much of 2018 I have exploring the path of the #Seretic — the sentient artist existing, observing, and reporting from the fringes of humanity and reality, employing the findings as fuel for personal and artistic evolution. Through this exploration, I plan to elaborate more on the seretic concept in the future. However, the present dutifully calls.
The Trumpeter’s Mess
The reality of the last two weeks featured America at it’s darkest and worst — the united states of madness, devolving since 2016:
King Drumpf held televised Court with a red-hatted, snake-tongued, wild-eyed Jester (Kanye West) who set racism and progress back by a century or so. (Incidentally, if Kanye West has his own “Yeezy Effect”, is that pronounced “YAY-easy”, as his first name features, or “Yeeeeeezy”, which has no relation to the pronunciation of his given name — if that is actually his real name, not just a pseudonym?)
The US Senate hired a rapist, white male-privilege judge for the US Supreme Court, despite truthful testimony from damaged women around their foul treatment at the hands of Kavanaugh. His hiring reinforces why we need term limits for Supreme Court judges. No job should be a lifetime appointment, especially when it deals with the ever-changing laws of the land that evolve as the human experience of the USA does.
Melania Trump hit back at women by saying “she’s the most bullied person in the world” and “that women should have to prove sexual assault with evidence”, immediately empowering the evil acts of the legion of good ol’ boys across the USA. Sadly, the champion of the bad grammar “Be Best” program continues the Drumpf family practice of diminishing sexual assault and reinforcing King Drumpf’s locker room brotherhood.
Hurricane Michael, a Category 4 hurricane, attacked the Gulf Shoreof the United States and is presently swinging up into the Carolinas, which is recovering from its own catastrophe at the hands of Florence, which hit three weeks ago. As the storm raged to shore and Americans clung for their lives, Drumpf and Ye merrily met in the White House to talk about alternate realities, how red caps can double as Superman capes, and how the important 13th Amendment needs to be abolished. It was less about progress and more about the ego boost of two men who have no business in the Oval Office, much less the respect of overall Americans.
And Saudi Arabia murdered a Washington Post journalist in Istanbul. Once a proponent of Saudi leadership and a proud citizen of Saudi Arabia, Jamal Khashoggi spoke out against the bad politics and brutal direction of Saudi Arabia. He was lured to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey with the promise of safety to get a marriage license for he and his fiance. Within hours, he was reportedly murdered and dismembered by a Saudi squad of assassins, under the direction of Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al-Saud, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, who is a friend and ally of King Drumpf.
And that’s all in a matter of weeks, a snapshot of what has become of 2018 — chaos, bloodshed, divisiveness and regression. It is hard for me to not pay attention to politics and the trends of our societies. Having grown up in Europe, I have a different point of view on my American homeland than nationalists who have never explored beyond the golden shores of the USA. I am a Globalist, a core and foundational position of being a Humanist. I don’t judge by gender or color or culture or ethnicity or geography; I don’t judge, period.
Divided As One
I am committed to helping us all evolve — that means stepping away from the stances that isolate us and widens our division, and coalescing closer as a creature. Though the Earth has provided us natural borders, we have drawn the lines on the map that separate us into tribes and cults and states and republics and countries. The music of this soul is unity, and that should be the harmony we all observe. Yet, we still revere kings and queens, monarchies and oligarchies, superstars and shallow artists.
We the People are our own worst enemy, deafened by the shrill voices of the cacophony, numbed and dumbed
by the will of villainy.
I cannot stay silenced. Atheists and true artists (not jesters and fools) are slaughtered daily for what they stand for by the affluent, the affronters and the religiously afflicted.
