How we live & what we do

After 39 years of further review, I have to say, the journey seems way more pertinent than the destination.

When we process together, we realize that we’re never ‘there’ - a final place at which everything is resolved, perfected, and done.

For our entire lives, we’re moving forward, conclusions serving as springboards for new ones, a never-ending process of discovery, chewing, and digestion.

So what if we took that to heart?

What if being something was more important than going somewhere?

It can’t be about arriving at a fully-delivered future state, but rather understanding and intentionally embracing the idea that we’re always on the path, and that how we live and what we do while on that path is where it’s really at.

It’s where the color is… on the way ‘there’.

Already where we need to be…..

This year's vibe is: energy management

Instead of going on about my guilt with respect to not writing more often of consistently, I’ll just go ahead and get to it…….

2022 is an interesting number, a wild time, and the present.

As we’ve transitioned to a new calendar over the last month plus, I’ve settled into my lens for the year, a way to summarize my vibe. A color with which to paint, a confined canvas on which to create.

It feels like the the first culmination (conclusions are just platforms for new conclusions) of a lot of creative and community work in which I’ve been able to test, iterate, optimize, refine, and expand.

IPaintMyMind’s revenue was up 171% in 2021, the spaces are getting bigger (physical and mental), and it’s time to focus. It’s time to hone, and be selective, intuitive, concise, and breezy.

We’ve all had our energy fucked with over the last few years and it’s time we stop just dealing and start taking the bull by the horns when it comes to what we prioritize, and what we spend time and energy on.

We’re all trying to jump off the hamster wheel, so why don’t we?

How do we need to manage our energy this year? How could doing less really mean greater impact? How does not chasing our tails mean the restoration of our energy and the focused channeling of our abilities and gifts in a productive, growth-ful way?

Incursion or opportunity?

‘Post All Bills No. 291 (Venice, La Decima) - Option A & B’ (view on Instagram)…

Shared space has as many definitions as there are instances of it. What it looks like to you and me when together, is unique. The same goes for the alchemy of any two humans interacting. We all come to the equation with our own experience of it, our own categorization for it, and our own approach to letting others in and showing them how much we’ll let them into our shared space too.

How do you think of intimacy? Incursion or opportunity?

The color with which we paint, is the flavor we impart, offer, and gift. It’s our contribution, where the upside resides.

Open, give, receive.

New Limited Edition Art Prints Available on EvanLaRuffa.com

It’s go time!

The process of growing our creative muscle and trusting what we make can vary, but I feel really good about how I’ve been able to work with, learn from, and listen to artists, makers, and activists for years now, and what that will mean for what I make in the future. A repository of conversations, ideas, styles, lanes, and offerings that bounce around in my head when I think of all I could do.

Some of those thoughts have influenced this project… like creating prints that are 1 of 1, never printed again in that edition, and made extra special for any of my collectors.

When you buy a piece from me, I won’t print in that size or format ever again.

The prints that are now available via EvanLaRuffa.com/shop were made predominantly over the last few months in Chicago and Los Angeles, although there are a few that date back to last year. My work is abstract, gritty, street, and textural. Just liking the composition or color is all you need. It doesn’t mean anything, other than what it reminds you of or makes you feel.

I like capturing moments, remixing them, and making them ours.

Thanks so much for being a part of it, even if passively, and an extra thanks for any of you who decide to click a couple times and purchase one yourself.

One note: There is a particular print set, two complimentary prints, for which 100% of the profits with be donated to the Sandra Bland Center for Racial Justice. Art with extra impact. I can’t wait to see who gets those.

Feel free to reach out with questions about framing.

THANKS SO MUCH!!

evanlaruffa.com/shop

Art on Saturday

This Saturday I’ll be releasing a new batch of limited edition prints of the fine art photography work I’ve been making.

I’ve also added an Artist Statement to the About page on my website, but you can also read it here…

For all my life, really, I have made art. Illustrations as a kid, which gave way to a lot of writing, then the visual arts after college with illustration and line work, and then most recently, photography. I am attracted to ideas more than process, and love how new tools flatten the earth, and give more and more of us a chance to be creative.

My photography has run the gamut - from the dark room in high school where I seemed to love multiple exposures more than most, then live concerts, an emphasis on black and white architecture, and dabbling with SLR’s, until coming to my most recent body of work, which is a series entitled ‘Post All Bills.’ The series was born in New York City, where you can’t help but pass by various Post No Bills walls, of which everyone, quite predictably, posts bills. Ads for concerts, products, anything, really. As they are worn, tattered, torn at, and obliterated by humans, moisture, sun, and wind, they yield layers, segments, and compositions that please me to no end.

Finding them is the first part. Being lucky enough to coincide with them, temporally. After that it is up to me to turn them into more, to discover what else they have to offer, manipulating them in post-production, creating new moments that never existed.

This series has been shot entirely on iPhones. I am not a purist, a snob, or one of these people that thinks because they spent more money on their equipment that they are inherently better at what they do, or that photography isn’t actually more about awareness and light than tech snobbery.

My work is accessible, born from the street, made in cities, and the product of one question: what does it look like from over there? And how can I bring this to life in a new way, a way that makes someone feel good, lose time, and enjoy.

Everything cultural is art

For as much as art is minimized, everything cultural is art.

Movies, food, & music are three titans of the culture game, and the list goes on to encompass basically every genre and sub-genre of creative production known to humanity.

We work (almost endlessly) to spend our money on culture, then often decry it as being of little actual value. If we look at the budget, we can clearly see art & culture isn’t nurtured enough on the ground in our communities, yet the most notable happenings in our world come back to creativity, and necessarily, commerce.

A piece of art is just one instance of culture. A million pieces of art IS culture.

Whether delicious, delightful, or pause-worthy… culture for the win.

What piece of the culture gets your dollars?

Did you always think about that as art?

Maybe you should. :)

Lin Manuel Miranda and cultural icebergs

Every once in a while, things bubble up to the surface in our culture. Whether art, music, or politics, that thing rises above the cultural sea level and we all see it.

It’s a pretty big deal when this happens specifically with respect to representation.

What do I mean?

I mean, that when a culture that is not part of the mainstream is held up so that it can be seen by the entire culture, that that is a HUGE moment.

Moana and Coco are great examples. But so is Vivo, by Lin Manuel Miranda, which you can see on Netflix.

Vivo is a kaleidoscope of Latinidad, of Latino culture, specifically the islands from which many immigrants in Miami come from; Cuba, Puerto Rico, & The Dominican Republic, just to name a few.

But no country is left out, at one point Miranda sings as the voice of Vivo, the cute little monkey and the movie’s protagonist, “Tango like an Argentinian,” which of course caught my ear.

But this animated cultural offering is exactly that - a chance for everyone else to understand something outside their experience, even if the package it comes in is a cute, musical, bilingual monkey.

In watching Vivo a jillion times in the last few weeks, it’s resonated with me that these moments are sooooooo incredibly huge for diversifying, broadening, and enriching what the mainstream culture actually is.

It’s also huge for those of us who identify with cultures outside the mainstream, and it’s even more incumbent on us all to be more conversant once these cultural icebergs float above the surface long enough for us all to catch a good glimpse.

What cultural icebergs have you seen lately? What questions should you ask that you haven’t yet?

What’s more, how can we all be better at seeing those icebergs all around us? And what does their buoyancy mean for where we are going?

Be Dennis Rodman

I have never made a shot, all net.

Every single one of my ideas or projects is the result of a rebound I run down and put back in the net.

Life isn’t pre-packaged.

Of course we need to run it down, mix it up, & make it happen.

Be Dennis Rodman.

Get really good at predicting how the ball is going to bounce off the rim.

Journey to the End of Night

“Travel is useful, it exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue. Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength. It goes from life to death. Peoples, animals, cities, things, all are imagined. It’s all just a fictitious narrative. Littre says so and he’s never wrong. And besides, in the first place, anyone can do as much. You just have to close your eyes. It’s on the other side of life.”

- Celine, Journey to the End of Night

This quote opens the film The Great Beauty, one of my favorite films and works of art of all time.

I just spoke with my friend Levi for his podcast Movies For Humans about The Great Beauty, why I love it, and the notion that great art is transcendental in that it makes us feel like it’s OK to die, that our brief, intense ride on this planet is everything it needs to be.

It’s a fun listen.

‘Post All Bills No. 285 (Venice, La Cuarta)’

‘Post All Bills No. 285 (Venice, La Cuarta)’ … paper is such an important part of the work.

Both in capturing the moment and in the production of my limited edition prints. These walls, these recently outdated advertisements, give cultural snapshots interrupted by the haste that followed.

But the haste is the action that rips the paper, and as I said, this work would be nothing without that dynamic.

Found, collaborative, temporal, timed, fleeting, impermanent, gone forever… and this never existed, but you can have it.

You can view this piece via my Instagram… @evanlaruffa

It's pudding, move it around

We’re super heroes to our kids, in most cases. At least at the beginning.

I’d like to think I’ve retained a bit of my super hero-ness for my 5 and 3 year old’s, but I also believe that being an example that shows just how squishy things are helps children trust themselves, love themselves, and gives them more margin for testing and discovering who they are.

I’d trade everything for being a Papi.

It’s exhausting, challenging, exciting, amazing, overwhelming, humbling, and incredible to be a parent. I also think that we soften the blows, round the edges, and provide a more practical, apt, and functional view of life and the world when we model the ways in which our experience doesn’t fit into tidy little boxes.

When we show that you can color outside the lines, blur things, and approach life like a multiple exposure photograph, we show our children (and ourselves) that alignment is something that happens when we engage enough to participate, to co-exist in space and contribute.

Life is pudding, move it around.

It's not real in our head

In our heads we keep things theoretical, huge, intertwined, unwieldy, and undone.

In the real world, things get concise, intentional, practical, tangible and catalytic.

Today I’m making another limited edition art print available in my shop because one thing shipped after the other is a career. Well, that is true, but it’s really less about that and more about how much fun I have making these things.

But it does strike me as interesting that a career is a timeline of the stuff we made real.

Hmmm…

https://www.evanlaruffa.com/shop/post-all-bills-no-1113

Number two

My second limited edition art print release goes live on Friday (2pm EST / 1pm CST / 11am PST). It’s been really exciting to plan and launch these prints. This one is an edition of just 3, and I only see them getting more limited! I want them to feel extra special to you and to me.

They are all signed and numbered and are printed on Canson Aquarelle 310gsm matte finish paper and look really great.

I’m posting videos, close up shots and other process videos on my Instagram - @evanlaruffa.

If you’re into red, this particular release might be your thing.

https://www.evanlaruffa.com/shop/post-all-bills-no-1113

I imagine a fire raging nearby.

Books and covers

Don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Hell, don’t judge people based on superficial extrapolations either.

We’re living in a weird time where multiple social issues are colliding. We’re all trying to figure out how to be human beings again, while the crux of our social division is precisely that separation.

Demographics divide us more than ever, sometimes in ways they hadn’t before, and assumptions are ripe.

I know we’re all doing our best to emerge from the longest winter ever, but I think it’s important that we depersonalize all of this a bit.

I’m doing me, I have to do this, I, I, I, I…

And that’s fair. We all do. I don’t know how much of a slogan it is though.

This timing requires we buffer all this reactionary thought.

Every action has a reaction, but I worry that all of our personal quests, the most important story in America, are really the product of of this lack of connection, dating back to before the pandemic.

Do you, by all means.

But how does redefining the subject change the vibe?

How does other people being the focus change how we feel and the way we communicate?

Discernment

Figuring out what to do at what point in time is the essence of strategy. I need to accomplish this now because it moves the needle is a lot clearer and productive than, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!

In an increasingly fast-paced world, slowing down is the tonic.

We make our list, buffer resistance to get at priorities, then act. And discernment is the skill we need most. The ability to filter the static from the signal, to tune our station to the most dialed-in, clear nuggets.

It can’t all happen right now as impatient as we are…

So what can happen now? And more importantly, what SHOULD happen now?

My first limited edition print release... and more to come

On Friday I released my first Limited Edition fine art photography print in an Edition of 5. I've been making this type of work for a few years and released open editions on Society6, but it's been really fulfilling to produce and share it in this way.

I'll never reprint this (scouts honor), and 3 buyers already made a move, so there are two copies left!

https://www.evanlaruffa.com/shop/post-all-bills-1115

The process is a mix of meditation, found art, photography, and digital manipulation. I'm kinda always wondering, "what does it look like from there?" It's a thought that feeds a certain type of discovery spawned by a remix.

After I take a ton of photos, I pick the one with the most satisfying composition, then play with it in post, adjusting, color, contrast, and everything else until it hits.

Thanks for taking any interest! :)

P.s. More to come…

I make art.

For some reason that feels like a slightly odd thing to say, even though I have been making art my entire life. Mostly with my pen as a kid, but also in illustration. I also played bass, drums, made videos, worked in photography, wrote poems, etc.

I have always been so much more about the idea than the medium. At times it has made me feel spread thin, but it also has allowed me to pull ob various creative threads without attachment. My art, regardless of medium, is often much more intuitive than intellectual. For me, things need to just feel right. Whether lighting or texture or angle.

Over the last 10 years I’ve worked in photography specifically, a lot of digital work, post production, and focus on textures, vignettes, microcosms, and a mindful awareness that sees the art before it’s real. It’s a meditation and a creative practice at the same time.

I’m releasing a few of my photographs as Signed and Numbered Art Prints on premium quality papers in a Limited Edition of 5, at most. Some, even less. I’ll be making a few prints available as voted upon by friends and followers on my Instagram page.

The first of those releases will be ‘Post All Bills No. 1,115’ which will be available on Friday, June 25th at 2pm EST / 1pm CST / 11am PST via my newly published shop page, EvanLaRuffa.com/shop.

I’ll be in Los Angeles shortly to pick papers, review prints, and sign them. I’ll be sure to keep you posted via this newsletter before and just as prints go on sale.

Thanks in advance for any and all interest! The idea that my art will live in the home of appreciative souls makes me feel really good.

I see it looking amazing in a baroque frame, but I’ll leave that up to you. :)

I just added ‘Artist’ to my LinkedIn profile. That feels like a big one!!

P.s. I also wrote this little reflection when I posted this piece on Instagram a few weeks back. It feels like a necessary part of the offering…

‘Post All Bills No. 1,115’ … radical feedback is the theme of the week, the air feeling more Iike pudding as I walk and simmer. It’s amazing how intentionality creates the tip of the spear. How focus breeds clarity. How insight (should) spawn action. Growth doesn’t happen in a vacuum and communication is a two-way street, even when we’re talking to ourselves. It’s not a dialogue as much as a reckoning for those intrepid enough to be a pudding-traveler.’

Everything is an experiment

Everything is an experiment. Don't forget that.

Polished answers and lightbulbs descending from overhead are better for fables than user manuals.

I've had plenty of good ideas, but none of them were amazing until they got tested.

It's just a theory until you try it.......... so, go ahead.

I believe in you.

HOW is a path forward

"I already did that" is just resistance. Especially since there are so many ways to do any one thing...

Maybe you built a website, published an e-book, launched a blog, started an organization, or worked day and night to get something done. Way to be gritty.

But you need more than grit.

The question is not, WHAT did you do?

It's, HOW did you do it?

You can cut a pie any way you want. But people tend to cut pieces radiating from the center because we've found out it works well.

There are 37 ways to do anything.

Saying "I already tried that" is running rough shot over strategy, nuance, clarity, focus, and in the end, getting anywhere.

This is merely resistance dysmorphia. And she's like water, she'll find a new way...

But HOW is a better question, and it helps us get better. Rubbishing an entire project because "it just doesn't work" rarely works for people.

And it doesn't feel good either.

HOW means we can do something about it. HOW is a path forward.

Great outreach

Outreach means connecting with people. It means extending oneself, offering support, and helping.

Great outreach converts at 8%.

And ‘great’ can mean a few different things, including care, kindness, generosity, empathy, and most importantly, good solutions.

But shooting out flares that are more like extinguished sparklers as a method of outreach won’t work.

At the end of the day, there are two main bullet points:

1) What

2) Why

The rest is about being authentic, earnest, and transparent.

Great outreach doesn’t give up after one email.

It also doesn’t pretend that one-sided communications will prove to the people you serve that you can be trusted to do so.