Further Stories From Japantown

That square ½ mile or so that generally makes up San Jose’s Japantown ended up being the locus of my life for a number of years, for one reason or another.

During my time at art school I took a job as one of those “artisan highlighters” for Thomas Kinkade’s nascent Lightpost Publishing (as it was known at the time, later Media Arts Group, Inc.). That experience in itself could provide enough grist for a few blog posts, as you can imagine.

I got the job my first year of college; my now-wife saw the job posting at San Jose State where she was going and let me know about it. We had no idea who Thomas Kinkade was, and he was nothing then like the media juggernaut he ended up becoming. he was, however, already successful and growing. The first warehouse out of which the labor-side of the business was run out of was in a small, nondescript industrial parklet on 11^th Street near Hedding. The nearby “Happy Smile Deli” was a favorite lunchtime haunt, their sandwiches delectable.

By the end of my second year of college that part of the operations moved to a larger warehouse, located right at the foot of Japantown on Jackson Street near 7^th Street or so, just the other side of the tracks. and there it stayed the remainder of my time with the company, before it made its next move to a much larger office park which consolidated the corporate offices and production.

I was only somewhat familiar with this little pocket of San Jose, about 3 streets worth of shops and restaurants. I’d go to work and apply lots of touches of oil paint to printed canvases, then for lunch usually walk out and down the street to buy something from then-Dobashi Supermarket, or some kakigori in the summer, if I hadn’t brought my own brown bag. If I was doing decently, some katsu don could be on order.

 
Oishii!

Then, depending on the day, I’d drive out to Oakland to attend classes and then back home to South San Jose to work on my homework assignments, painting in an extra bedroom in my parents’ house until the wee hours of the morning, or trying to digest whatever reading or studying needed to be done for my humanities courses. I also managed to do a lot of jogging late at night and was in my best shape ever (though not for the last time, I promised myself!).

It was a very intense time and I probably should’ve died in a car crash on the way to or from school (1-1.5 hour drive each way). I can recall 3-4 times when I was so tired while driving that I seriously put myself and others at risk, sadly.

This then was the second time that this small, usually not all that important section of San Jose became central to my life.

stage fright

in the performance world, one may get stage fright. this can happen regardless of the type of performance; it is an anxiety born out of, in all simplicity, the fear of looking like an idiot in front of others. i wonder if perhaps there isn’t something similar for visual artists. would the same term apply?

i don’t get much stage fright in the traditional sense. i played live a few times with my band, and wasn’t particularly struck by it (despite truly looking like an idiot). as an illustrator, i generally enjoy social events like conventions and signings, and meeting folk. but i do get stage fright when i am asked to do sketches for people at these events. it’s particulary strange since i’m an artist by trade. i earn what living i have by this skill. i’ve been drawing as long as i can recall, and probably earlier still. i’m certainly a much better draftsman than bass player or singer. yet, i get stage fright when drawing for people, live.

i don’t get butterflies in the stomach really, but there is a kind of anxiety there. primarily, it’s fear of drawing something crummy, the old looking-like-a-fool problem that vexes most folk when doing performance, giving a speech, or even being asked to say grace at the dinner table, spontaneously. i’ve certainly done my share of crummy sketches, especially early on. i’ve heard anecdotes about monks who by meditating can raise their body temperature and/or stay in extremely cold environments for an extended period of time. i haven’t bothered to look deeply into the phenomenon’s veracity or mechanics but if it’s anything like me drawing in public, i’m apt to believe them. when i draw in public i feel myself getting hot, and i’m likely to start sweating at the brow from the…anxiety? concentration? i’d like to think the latter, because i’ve noticed i get warm when i’m just at home working even where no one can see me if i mess up. and this increase in temperature happens even when things are going well. and trust me, it’s not like drawing or painting is a particularly physical activity.

so, be gentle with the live sketch requests, like for instance at the upcoming essen games fair, where i’ll be present at the hasbro booth all week. at most events the past couple of years i’ve taken to charging a nominal amount to do sketches (signings are free!). reason number one is the above, and charging limits the number of people who’ll ask for a drawing, causing me to break out in yucky brow-sweat. second is simply that some people might’ve never had it in their mind to ask for a sketch, but seeing someone in front of them get a free one, they will of course ask for free stuff too. then word gets around that i’m giving away drawings and voila, i’m sunk. this has, in the past, amounted to truly ridiculous occurrences—one time someone handed me a dirty, used pizza box to draw on because i had been doing sketches for free and he had nothing else to draw on. this may have been the first time i felt insulted as an artist. at conventions it is not uncommon for people to wander table to table, they don’t know you but they walk up and ask, “do you have any free stuff?” when i answer that i don’t, they immediately turn around as if you were the least interesting thing on earth, and go to ask someone else. third, and this is worth repeating: i actually attempt to earn my living by making art. it’s rewarding but also an extremely challenging career choice, like many others. there are lots of expenses involved, no benefits as anyone at a “normal” job would recognize them, and i get taxed extra for the “privilege” of being self-employed. and for some cons where i am not a sponsored guest, i’m paying my way entirely in terms flights, hotel, food and convention fees. from the moment each artist sits down as the doors open the first day, there may be a lot of red ink that each artist is anxious will be mopped up before the show is over. so charging for sketches is one way to erase the red ink. when there is no red ink to be recouped, i’m usually at an event where, primarily, people will want things signed. lots and lots of things signed. so, my first duty anyway is to be sure everyone gets their stuff signed, and a sketch can back up a line like nothing else can. charging then has the benefit of keeping the line moving for signings.

so, don’t be too offended if you’re asked for a paper lincoln or whatever in return for a small sketch. other artists may give away their sketches and have their reasons, but i hope it’s not assumed that all will. i don’t really drink, but i like to think of it as, “buy me a drink, i’ll do ya a sketch.” after all, hotel bars typically charge a fiver for a drink that most people will readily down in less time than it takes to sketch something, and with no lasting benefit.

spam pt.2

the only way to console myself after spending time and precious carpal tunnel usage deleting spam is to get something positive or at least mildly entertaining out of it. a year ago we reviewed some of these and so, once again, a few gems culled from my inbox:

1. software at low pr1ce!: on the face of it, this is a fairly common spam. i mean, it’s still pretty cheap to distribute pirated software, and cheaper still to simply rip off your credit card information and not ship you even pirated wares. but one thing struck me about this one: in the “sender” column, the name jonathan edwards. now, to think that the solemn puritan preacher of “sinners in the hands of an angry God” fame is ready to peddle me oem microsoft office or something is really quite entertaining to imagine.

“verily, paypal is a wholly acceptable and altogether recommended means of recompense for the receiving of much-discounted and eminently useful software, yea, even unto the procurement of various and sundry medicinals .”

2. friend be your own boss and set your own hours starting monday october 02 2006: our clever spammer missed the part where i already am. deleted!

3. dead people are cool: this simply isn’t news. corpses are indeed cold and it’s fairly cool 6 feet underground. there’s a joke about joan rivers that could be made at this point, i’m sure.

4. be careful of reading health books; you may die of a misprint: look folks, i’m simply not clever enough to make these up, as you may have noticed. i dig this email subject, unfortunately for the spammer it gives me all the information required. i mean if i clicked it, what else could i possibly learn in the body of the message?

5. [insert japanese characters here]: i’ve noticed an increase in the amount of japanese spam i’ve been getting over the last year or two. now, it is true that the past few years i have slowly (very, very slowly) been studying a bit of japanese. what i fear is the day that i know enough japanese to know what rubbish is being peddled to me in these spams. as it stands, i can delete and ignore them with impunity. the fact that quite a few of them have the kanji for “woman” in them bodes ill for the day when i can make out the rest. sigh.

when found in the subject line of spam, you can be guaranteed that the characters to the left and right of it are full of vileness.

and a winner! though i was 95% sure it was spam, the following email got me to click it:

6. some art sure is dumb and awful: this was actually the subject of a spam. brilliant! what to do? nevermind that the statement is true in and of itself, but i’m an artist and run an online art gallery. could this have been feedback regarding either of those? the vast majority of email that comes through my gallery, daydream graphics, comes through contact forms so i know to look at it. if someone emails my personal address, i’m bound to recognize the name even if it was a past customer. that’s what tipped me off that this was probably a spam: not from my webform, not a customer or fan that i remember. but given all the above, i had to click it lest i later be accused of having bad customer service. congratulations to this spammer who got me to click their spam out of thousands. of course it took me half a second to notice the telltale text signs of spam: random words, misspelled things, etc.. so i don’t know what they were actually hawking, and once again i’m left to ask: does spam accomplish anything?