Japanese Style on Western Pop Stars

I was randomly looking around on a rare trace of wireless Internet last night, and in my recent interest in Kylie Minogue, I came across a long lost music video that brought together Kylie's vocals, Towa Tei's lounge like dance music, and Stephane Sednaoui's shaky yet stylish direction into a single video. I was amazed by this clip, which is actually centered around an imaginary typeface that is personified by Kylie. The whole concept was killer, as well as the utilization of modern and traditional Japanese elements and the inclusion of Kylie as a westerner. It's called GBI; German Bold Italic, off of Sound Museum



I was recently researching the Geisha tradition and found out that Arthur Golden betrayed a famous geisha's trust by including her in acknowledgements for his bestseller "Memoirs of a Geisha," even though by tradition she is bound to keep client information secret. Not only that, but Golden is a scholar in Japanese art, speaks Mandarin, and has studied abroad in Asia. I suppose he's not stereotyping and inaccurately portraying geisha life as much as I thought he had.

Which brings me to my next video, Nothing really Matters, by Madonna, which features the artist as the misunderstood and rivaling geisha from Golden's novel (mentioned above) Hatsumomo. It's an interesting take on the subject, as it adresses both past and present elements of Japanese style while having a person of European descent showcasing them.

Welcome!

Welcome to the official blog of the n.c. simko studio. Here you will find new releases, new projects, and general art findings from the internet.

This is my first independant blog and I hope to uphold it's currency in regard to the present, while still providing new and relevent information about my art, other's art, and as well as the synthesis found in artmaking today.

I am currently enveloped in Protege, a project that is continuously being revisited and revised in preparation for the AP exams in the spring of 2007, as well as for portfolio reviews in the later winter. It explores several levels of artmaking, from symbolism to the vast array of marketable CD-R formats in the music industry. While it is already immense, there are numerous areas for perfection, such as the creation of an artists book to house the material and expansion of other topics covered in the first concept book.

I have been working on Protege for over a year now and seek it's completion sometime this fall or early in the winter. While I feel able to continue with some of the material, alot of the subject matter doesn't apply itself to my life as much as newer imagery and ideas are dominating it in the present day. That is why I will also keep updates of a newer project that is currently in pre-development, so I may paralell the ending and completion of Protege while documenting this new endeavor from moment zero.