From The Mailbox Of Justin G. Page And Marcos de Ninguna Parte:

I have several dozen abstract drawings and a few large paintings including one dinner sized table which I made as a memorial to an Air Force fighter pilot who crashed last summer, but I dont see how I can show you my art..... where do I upload it to? My abstract drawings are all on 8.5 x 11 regular paper and each one takes between 25-50 hours to make.

How does this work exactly?? Where do I give you examples of my art?

Hello Justin!

I've learned my lesson on letting people upload whatever they want. Crashed a 2GB mail box just posting my own E-mail address in less than a day. It was all crap mostly.

You may have already seen this, but this word on image specs saves me a whole bunch of typing: Image specifications

Have a great weekend and I will talk to you soon!

-Mark

Now this is only some of them, I had 100 and something, but I threw a lot of my originals out when they never amounted to anything but wasted time so I stopped drawing them about a year ago and started writing novels, now I have 7 books done, but am having the same problem, have been rejected by 100 or so agents without them so much as reading the first chapter despite writing a thousand different query letters when i learned what matters the most is who you know and how much money you have and I have neither.

A lot of these were drawn three four and five years ago and i do not live in an area where art is seen as anything other than something idiots do because they're too lazy to work, and I try showing these to people sometimes but outside of my family they more or less call me an idiot so I don't even bother anymore.

Then I've thought about bringing them to an area where maybe people might like them, but I have no car, I live in an office building and I make 200 dollars a week at a pizza place job..... outside of that, I don't even know if these are good, or are more or less run of the mill drawings that are not at all uncommon.....

The one's that are gone are the spider web on the foil looking wall sized painting, the milk carton, mountains and moon, the one with the star maze and triangles was hacked with a razor blade into several pieces and the large board abstract design was kicked into several smaller pieces back over the summer

Hola Justin!

You have a good mind for art. You spend a lot more time on the details than I ever do, which (I can admit) should make you a better artist than me.

Thirty years ago, a fellow artist (David Manter) once told me: "You can't do quality work without quality materials" ...and you, my fellow artist, are far better than the materials you chose to express your creativity. The photography is also killing you.

Here is a link to the first six. I posted our conversation to serve as a "teachable moment" to other artists --and to save me having to repeat myself on quality standards. You'll see what I mean here:

http://en.artstudio54.com/cgi-bin/md/M10253/s1.pl

Of the 33 images you sent in, I pulled these six and cleaned them up a bit in Adobe for ya. Let me know if these are even close in color and texture to the originals. If I am even slightly off on the colors or you just simply hate this, I can delete it all in two seconds and you won't have to ask me twice. :)

The painting I'd like to see in better lighting conditions is called Chicopee:

Do you still have this one and can we get a better shot? Killer texture. The photo I have is all blue and blurry and I can't fix that without some major work on my part (and I'm far too lazy for all that).

Have a great night!

-Mark

Yeah Mark, that has kind of been the problem...... the art material I have had access to includes an incomplete 64 pack of colored pencils, regular staples type copy paper that they let me have a little stack of to draw some pictures on, and as far as that painting goes, well my cousin had two dozen or so tubes of oil based paint he wasn't using anymore in his woodworking business, and I bought a single paintbrush and just went to work with it. As far as my pictures, well they're taken with a run of the mill digital camera with the only lighting being the ceiling fluorescent light in my room.

As far as the six you posted, yes that is about how they actually look, though it is difficult to see the ballpoint pen ones i've done..... and actually, I know there is no way you could truly grasp it with the lousy photos but some of the art with just ballpoint pen is mindnumbing when you see it in person, and I dont know for sure but I estimated up to 100,000 individual pen strokes on one 8.5 x 11 piece of paper and none of them touch each other. It's cool as hell, that on something large would be, there is nothing like it anywhere and I have seen no one else do it.

So this is what I'm wondering Mark,

I dont really have a clue who you are, or what you do or whether you live in a palace in Paris or in some studio in Long Beach, but judging by your website alone you seem to me like you have a very decent handle on what you're looking at in regards to art by what you have posted on your site.

What has been frustrating the hell out of me is that I am 34 years old.... I have 7 books written, good enough books to be published and sold in Barnes and Noble all day long, my completed artwork should show what I could be potentially capable of and I can rap sing like, well like a rap singer and the poetry I've written has for the most part been a waste of time, but like the rest of it only because I dont know who the hell to show any of it to.

What I was wondering is, I dont know if you went to college, I didn't, but I was wondering if colleges like Pepperdine, or UCLA, or Syracuse, or any major private or state university will take in someone like me who hasn't been to college and basically give me an area to actually apply all of this unshaped, unpolished, not at all properly utilized potential I seem to have?? I tried something similar to this at Mount Holyoke College by writing them a 10 page letter explaining who I was and trying to show them some of my work asking for what amounted to be a job making 8$ an hour but instead of working in the kitchen washing dishes or being a janitor painting/drawing pictures, writing books or making movies and that sort of thing for a year..... basically I asked them for 25,000 for a year to see what i could come up with using the logic that in that time I could make 10 or 15 large paintings with the intricate design my 8.5 x 11 drawings are.......... needless to say my stuff got turned over to security without anyone looking at it because I left it in Mary Lyon Hall which is where all the various deans are and they basically just said 'you're crazy get the fuck out of here' without anyone looking at it other than a secretary and the police, which seems to be how it is, if you dont have money they dont care, but I cant make money because nobody will look you know.......

Do you think it would be worth it to try this again at another school, Pepperdine, or maybe Bennington College or something? If so, how do I contact these people, or Show them as much of my work as possible because in the meantime I'll just be doing nothing but making pizzas for 8$ an hour living in my office building.

I understand that I am capable of virtually anything in the artistic realm, but I bounce back and forth because I like all of them, and I dont have any actual support from anyone to just go with one of them for a year or something. At the same time I kind of feel like a hack sometimes, when in reality it is that I'm barely trying as trying 100% would mean actually being able to concentrate on any or all of them instead of just doing them because I feel like writing another book, or drawing another picture or learning another rap song.....

Good morning, Justin!

What I am is Three E-mails Behind on our conversation!

Let me get caught up on the things that pay my bills and I'll get back with you on most of everything... maybe. I get a LOT of E-mail. More than any human being should ever be expected to respond to. If you wanted the Readers Digest version of everything you ever wanted to know about the '54 but were afraid to ask:

http://dearmarcos.artstudio54.com/cgi-bin/c/dearmarcos-theartistfaq.pl

Which also saves me a lot of typing and repeating myself. You are not the first person to ask these question. :)

On the subject of college: I went to college... some seemed like enough. College for me was more like "delayed reality". I changed my focus and picked out specific (advanced) classes that offered things I wanted to learn. I sold the guidance counselor at Indian University on the idea that I was not going for a degree. I then had to subsequently convince each professor to let me into their class based on my portfolio. The day I stared working on projects with Coke USA, Tonka Toys and making holograms with Larry Lieberman in the late 1980's --school was irrevocably out.

Incidentally, the things I do everyday to pay my bills are not currently being taught in the halls of higher learning. How I went about obtaining my higher education may not work for most folks. That's my disclaimer. I have a track record for giving really bad advice to folks --mostly in regards to women.

Anyhow. Have A Happy New Year!

-Mark

p.s. I'm gonna send a copy of this to my collaborator in chief, Peter Smolenski. He is the poster child for quality work and great materials!

And Remember . . .

The Secret To A Happy Life:
Find Something You Like To Do And Keep Yourself Busy !