What's Logic?

So my nifty website hosting service provides this totally addictive tool that lets me see which pictures people click on, sliced and diced in many different ways.

Its ended up being both a blessing and a curse.  If I'm having a bad time at the day job and kick over to the photo site to get a pick-me-up from my photo stats and they're bad for the day (or the week) well then its not super helpful.  And when its good it make me crazy because I've never been able to determine a correlation between what people click on and pretty much any action I take.  I mean sure, I see a spike before and after a show.  But sometimes on a random Tuesday I'll get a couple hundred hits.  And they're almost never for my most recent pieces.  Because what's logic got to do with it.  Sometimes they're not even for my classic pieces that sell well.  Hello random tulip photos from three years ago on a random Wednesday.  <shakes head>  The order I arrange the photos into in a gallery doesn't seem to affect the pattern.  Posting on social media doesn't seem to affect the pattern.  It frankly makes me batty because my other world of geekdom and computers is all A-B testing and clear cause-and-effect.  (Well unless the firewall crashes for no reason anyways.)

Bookmarks maybe?  Perhaps one day someone will walk up to me and mention that they've concocted some master evil plan and have bookmarked all their favorites on the site so they can find them easily and my mystery will be solved. And as a bonus hopefully a sale :)
 

visit Samantha Byrnes' gallery online..

Not my story but a version of theirs...

Painted Lady

Most people are funny / frustrating. Whenever I talk about my artistic process, about instinct and balance and Zen they seem disappointed, like the fact that I didn't struggle against a conformist society (enter irony) or live in some broken down shed while finishing upteen years of school or live hand-to-mouth working menial jobs makes me somehow lesser.

This romanticized idea of an artist's journey...  It's like the idea that everyone is amazing in their own way of they'd just get out of their own way is somehow anathema.

Granted I'd probably sell more stuff if I'd shut about about Zen and light and be vague as all fuck about it all. 

Other artists also don't want to hear it but in a different way. They want to hear struggle and education and the battle against the man, the fight to find self. Again no to balance. To justify their own struggle perhaps. And I guess I can see why some chick with a nice car and a good day job rambling on about balance and the idea of art-through-directionless-intent would be frustrating. That thought line of "wait... you mean I didn't have to suffer..."  

What neither group seems to understand is that finding balance and flow was its own battle, evidently a battle not meant to be shared. Like satori - one gets it or they don't but asking misses the point.



visit Samantha Byrnes' gallery online..

"Expires June 2016"

Some days I worry my sister's worry that I'll soon be too old to start anything new in my life, especially a new relationship. The rest of the time I simply enjoy the silence. This idea of some invisible bar code stamped across my forehead "Expires June 2016" baffles me.

Sometimes to invite growth into one's life a space has to be opened, and over the past 18 months Ganesh has definitely shaken things up. My relationship, most of my friends, my house, and most recently my job at the awesome start-up.

An opportunity to redefine myself without color commentary from bystanders it definitely is, and I've recently taken the opportunity to add shades of begonia to my wardrobe. At the same time I keep having to remind myself not to fall back into old patterns just because they're comfortable. I'm no longer the heavy. No longer the mean IT person. No longer an accessory. And it feels, well, weird.

visit Samantha Byrnes' gallery online...