Working on a silly, but hopefully fun idea I was suddenly hit by... When I was a kid, everyone was talking about "The Joy of Sex", I guess because it was breaking new ground in making sex something that people could talk about, and think about, without being considered perverts. Given the time of year, I was also thinking about "The Joy of Christmas"... And the two sort of collided in my brain! I'm close to reproducing the icon book cover, with some festive changes:
I felt a bit guilty, I guess because it seems sort of silly and 'popularist', but actually:
- It's been fun to really study the font and placement of the original
- It's been useful to explore my different tools and how to deploy them together
- It's an excuse to play with Generative AI again, and refine how to direct it towards the places I want it to go...
- It's a way to explore humour, and how I use it in my work
- The more I reflect, the more it can carry a more serious message under the 'silly' one (about our more unhealthy attitudes to Christmas and to sex)
And is being 'popularist' really so bad? Does art have to be obscure and inaccessible to be 'worthy'? The more I study, the more I feel angry about the way that art world seems to lock people out - there seems to be a lot of emperor's new clothes - the harder I look, the more sure I am that the emperor is often stark bollock naked. In want my art to mean something to people, I want my art to be seen by lots of people. I want them to be able to consume it on whatever level they wish. I admire things that can hide subtle messages under more accessible ones... Like a virus hiding it's true nature behind a coating so it can slip unnoticed inside. I want to make art that can make some people laugh, while making others cry, or ideally, both at the same time!
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