Fifteen years ago, I started placing photos, drawings, paintings,
collages, assemblage work, sketchbook pages, thoughts, ideas
and memories on the internet in a blog called Art Skool Damage.
The term "art skool damage" is something I came up with to
describe the way I see things. The term came to me while walking
through the West Village of NYC on trash day. Looking at the
piles of discards along the sidewalks that were waiting to be
picked up, the order (and disorder) of all of it intrigued
me visually and I had a humorous thought: "Had I not gone
to art school I would not be seeing sculptural forms in all of
this trash. I must be art damaged." The spelling of "skool" is a
reference to the toy brand "playskool" since "playing skool" has
been a large part of my career in art education since 1995.
My blogging began around the time of the initial boom
in social media... that liminal space where MySpace faded in
the popularity of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms.
Despite the fact that blogs aren't the primary place where people
connect to one another any longer, I've continued to maintain this
personal digital space. I continue to think of my blog as an online
gallery, a visual diary of sorts, an aggregator of my interests,
interactions and a place where I can speak to "the void" as it were.
As it turns out, Art Skool Damage has not existed in a void.
In fact, it has been anything but a void as I frequently receive
emails and have other direct interactions with people who
share some of my interests after finding me here. There are
a good many people I know (or have met) that don't use any
social media platforms and some have told me that they enjoy
being able to view what I'm sharing without all of the "noise"
that the socials and its users, advertisers and "influencers"
are doling out at any given moment.
So, with that, I'm sharing a special series of images showing one of
my many well documented interests... namely records (with a few
cassettes and an 8 track thrown in)... to celebrate the fifteenth
birthday of the Art Skool Damage blog. All of these items were either
gifted to me, bought at flea markets, in record stores or online within
the past year or so. I've been banking them in a draft until it was time
to hit the "publish" trigger and share them all. This seemed like
an appropriate moment. ENJOY!
Special thanks to everyone who has continued to follow my story.
Cheers and much love to all. Stay illuminated! - CDM