idgonemad.net/about/vanity


_about/vanity
define : the quality of being vain; the state of being vain; conceited; pride in appearance or accomplishments
describe : a page about me to offer visitors information to help them get a better idea of who I am, what I'm doing, some of what I've done, and a few pictures

I am : George Arthur Dodge IV
I am Also : George to those who have known me; Arthur to those who know me on-line; gadiv in my art; Black Arthur, Dr. Static, and Black Static to those who have known me since Prodigy; Nevrek, Arynis, Ysri, and Zhiirab to those who know me from GemStoneIV; meltartosatlan in bed; Mutate on newsgroups and e-mail; and mechanized on several hobby and interest forums; Apocalypse Throb in the Kingdom of Loathing; MrPasserby on eatpoopucat.com
Age : 29
Location : Chester, Virginia
Occupation : Student, Zombie
Schooling :


Notable Interests : Art (assemblage, sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, etc), Visiting Galleries and Museums, Writing (short stories, poetry, plot treatments), Psychology, Publishing, Religion, Death and Dying (but not in that ridiculously romanticized black gloomy dark Gothic Emo sort of way)
Other Interests : Science Fiction, Machines of All Kinds, Engineering, Astronomy, Mecha/Robots, Horror Films (especially those involving Zombies), Old Video Games (Atari, NES, SMS, Genesis, SNES, etc), Transformers, and entirely too much more
Favorite Music : KMFDM, Dead Kennedys, Mindless Self Indulgence, Misfits, Spahn Ranch, Gary Numan, Esham, Black Flag, Kidney Thieves, Voltaire, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Christian Death, X-Ray Spex, Insane Clown Posse, PIG, Rob Zombie, World/Inferno Friendship Society, Rammstein, Ministry, Bella Morte, Bauhaus, Fugazi, Lords of Acid, Crass, the Clash, Sex Pistols, Quincy Punx, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Current Favorite Movies : Paper Moon, House of 1,000 Corpses, Donnie Darko, Night/Dawn/Day of the (Living) Dead, Kung POW, Evil Dead films, Return of the Blind Dead, Star Wars films, Matrix films, Ravenous, Kill Bill, Brotherhood of the Wolf, Nightmare on Elm Street films, Dead Alive, Mars Attacks!, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, A.I., Alien Quadrilogy, Star Wars, The Life Aquatic, Planet Terror, Sin City, Robocop, et cetera
Current Tolerable Television : Deadwood, Wonder Showzen, Robot Chicken, Heroes, Carnivale, LOST, Sanford & Son, Thundercats, Transformers, Pushing Daisies, Boston Legal, Star Trek (excepting Voyager and Enterprise), and very little else.
Current Favorite Diversions : Ultima: Quest of the Avatar (NES), TimeSplitters 2 (PS2), Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour (GC), Metroid (NES), The Legend of Zelda (NES), Smallville (TV Series), MXE (TV Series), Sonic the Hedgehog [various] (Genesis), Connect Four, Chess, R-Type Final (PS2), Castlevania [various] (also various), et cetera
Currently Reading or Referencing : Night's Daughter: Tales from the Flat Earth (Tanith Lee); On Death and Dying (E. Kubler-Ross); Art of War (Sun Tzu); Memories, Dreams, Reflections (C.G. Jung); The Soft Machine (Burroughs); Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens (Patricia Lynne Duffy); 1984 (George Orwell); Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond); Tales by Japanese Soldiers (Kazuo Tamayama and John Munnelly); Gray's Anatomy
Art Direction : Abstract, Abstraction, Multimedia, Experimental, Assemblage, Sculpture, Photography, Photomanipulation, etc
Current Projects : work on the My Little Possessions dollhaus assemblages, experimenting with polyurethane, work with ceramics, painting, perpetual work on several plots and preliminary depictions of characters for comics and web comics (details withheld until I have something utterly copyrightable for display), updating past writings for web site display, work on idgonemad.net in general, and going to school.
Tools of the Trade : brushes, pastels, pencils, charcoal, screwdrivers, drills, other brushes, Dremel rotary tool, fire, saws, cameras, lenses, razors, chisels, sculpting tools, and rudimentary fabrications as needed.
Material World : acrylic, steel, rubber, canvas, nails, wire, tubes, ink, nuts, bolts, wood, film, polyurethane, paper mache, plastic, leather, cloth, machinery, paper, latex, and whatever else I can get my hands on.

_motivations?


Much of my motivation in art rises primarily from a desire to simply create something, to engage myself intellectually with a project and see it to fruition, often finding meaning in the product after having a dialog with it as an audience. I find I like to work in various media and see how well they interact with one another, both because I want to be well-rounded as an artist and because I am interested in virtually everything. I see potential in nearly everything, and as a result I have a lot of junk laying around and stuffed into drawers and bins, awaiting use.

I try not to force-feed symbolism into my works because I find art to be psychologically revealing in itself. Due to this, I try not to taint that revelation by ham-handedly laying too many layers of convoluted symbolism into my works; nevermind I find such insertions to often be jarringly obvious and thus uninteresting. It is much like admiring a Pollack work and seeing shapes or images in one of his paint drips - those images are not really there, they are what the observer is picking up from the painting on his own; inference versus implication. What do those perceived images say about the viewer? When I create an image, this is one of the things I ponder; "Does this piece say something about me?" As useful as this approach is, I am very cautious in its application; I try to have an overarching thesis to every piece I produce, as I find a more hollow experience is in the art that is simply produced and abandoned like an orphan at a convent for the audience to sort out. As a psychology student, this sort of introspection proves valuable when trying to build functional behavior/motive models and their application, as well as aiding in understanding the myriad theories floating around in psychology today.

At the heart of it all, I am a slave to my imagination and compulsion to create.

_visage^


A few pictures of me, to illustrate, somewhat, how I became the person I am.


Seventeen or eighteen, here.


Roughly nineteen.


SEE MY SKULL.
Roughly age 21.


July 2003.


November 2007

More to come...

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