Welcome to the latest edition of the Lovelorn Poets Saturday Special. I’ve taken a bit of a break from these features over the summer so it’s nice to be back! The Saturday Special features information about the artists from Flickr and YouTube whose work appears on this site. I hope you enjoy reading about these talented individuals and visit their websites to see more of their work.
Robert Nunnally
Name: Robert Nunnally
Where to Find You:
www.gurdonark.com
Lovelorn Poets Featured Message:
Missed Connection in Nashville, TN: I Wish We Could “Lay Like Broccoli”
broccoli looks harmless
Duration: I’ve been an artistic indie since 1967, when, at the age of 8, when I won five dollars in a newspaper cartoon caption contest. I co-own the netlabel Negative Sound Institute (founded 2006), and have recorded Creative Commons electronic music as Gurdonark since 2002.
Education: I have a physics degree from the University of Arkansas and a law degree from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. My creativity surged best when I re-learned the children’s computer language Logo, with its string-art opportunities and conversion of the mathematic into the aesthetic.
Autumn 1 (Logo Program November 2008)
Influences: The stained glass in the Cathedral at Chartres, ambient netlabel music, James Thurber cartoons, Ogden Nash, trite but amusing business posters of every stripe and slogan, Harry Partch, Second World poster art, David Alfaro Siqueiros, old episodes of Romper Room, tenth grade geometry, string art, spirograph, and Charles Addams.
Preferred Work Environment: I work digitally, using either simple hand-drawn illustrations created with a drawing program, or programming images in the Logo programming language.
Searching for a Green Planet
Philosophy: I believe in sharing and in the redeeming power of whimsy. I release most of my work using Creative Commons licenses. I foresee a coming time when images, songs, and text are freely licensed for widespread sharing, to create a new way of dialogue among participants in our culture.
My images fall into two categories. In one way of doing things, I create simple cartoons with captions. Then I license them for Creative Commons use, post them on flickr, and enjoy when they are picked up for websites and weblog posts, particularly in a business setting.
My other way of doing things is to create computer programs in the Logo programming language to generate string-art images. The endless permutations of possibility coupled with the joy of random, unstructured elaborations of angles makes this work both clinical and personal. I’m a huge believer in the DIY ethic, the joy of the amateur, in a move away from the “high” arts into a more viable way of sharing the arts, and in the endless virtues in simple designs.
Ducks on a January Texas Lake
It’s people like Robert Nunnally that make the Creative Commons section of Flickr so amazing and fun and seemingly endless with interesting gems of creativity. Here’s a person who draws comics in MS Paint, creates visual representations of complex mathematical algorithms AND takes some haunting natural landscape photographs. Thank you, Robert, for licensing your work through Creative Commons – and best of luck with laws, physics, and the laws of physics. If you can figure out a way to get me out of the “gravity clause” in my life-on-earth contract, let me know! 😉
Name: Jay King
