ryanadam.com

Band:

http://www.myspace.com/ryanadammusic

Family:

New baby on the way. Due in October.

Work:

I have to go there most days.

I think I’ve always been a little cynical about art.

I was probably nine or ten when I was first exposed to art outside of school. In this case, the art came in the form of paintings when my mother developed an interest in works by Matisse and Monet. The paintings in our house were actually big 24×36″ exhibition posters. While I found some of them to be interesting, they didn’t light any sort of spark in me.

At some point shortly after the framed Monet posters started appearing on the walls, she purchased a small oil painting at a local gallery. I found this painting to be slightly more interesting due to the physical structure of the paint - something which the posters lacked completely. I remember staring at tiny sections of the painting looking at how the various layers of thick paint crisscrossed each other. But still, this painting of what might have a been a summer day on a street somewhere in Tuscany didn’t move me.

In sixth grade, we were introduced to the works of M. C. Escher. These paintings, as well as the ones by Dali I would discover a little bit later, caused me to marvel at both the technical execution and the twisted thought processes that must have gone into their creation. But still, tho I littered my own walls with the likes of “The Persistence of Memory” and “Bonds of Union” my emotions were never inspired by any of these images.

I remember trips to the National Gallery where I would wander the whole thing, following behind my mother who seemed to be marveling at every other painting. I recall being intrigued by the size and scope of something by Jackson Pollack - but I know now that I was too young to appreciate it beyond the fact that there were cigarettes and other shit stuck to it.

The most memorable of these trips - probably the last time I went with her and which would have been when I was in high school, I recall being touched for the first time by a painting. It was just a small one - an outdoor scene of an olive orchard or some other trees (and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was or who might have painted it) but it blew me away. I was first entranced by the technical execution. The whole thing was dabs of paint - but it wasn’t a blurry catastrophe so I’m sure it wasn’t a Pissaro. It was sharp and in focus even close up. And to my surprise, I found that when my brain was finished thinking about what had gone into making such a thing appear on a canvas, I realized I could feel a shadow of what the artist had been feeling as he stood in front of that scene.
On Sunday we went to the Baltimore Museum of Art.

We first wandered through pre-Columbian art from the Americas then ventured into an exhibition of American Modernist paintings. The memory of what it felt to look upon that small painting years before was barely registering in the back of my mind as I walked through the collections on the museum’s first floor. I could remember that I had been moved, but I didn’t remember the feeling.

Erika was determined to see the Rodin sculptures so we checked the brochure and it said they were located in the Cone collection. This was on the 2nd floor, so we took the elevator up and stepped out into a huge hall which was lined with ancient mosaics from the Roman Empire. Again, my art appreciation was entirely cerebral - I marveled at the size of the things, at how old they were and how much work it must have taken to get them here from halfway around the world - and from under tons of earth.

All this changed just a few feet further down the hall. A door on the left opened into the Cone Collection. As you step into the first room of the gallery, you are surrounded by Matisse. These were some of the same images that had been on my mother’s posters but the difference was staggering. The colors were incredibly vivid. Where the posters were flat and lifeless, the texture and thickness of the paint made these pictures seem alive.

As I walked among these paintings - slowly and carefully, trying not to miss the slightest detail, I felt a warmth growing inside of me. I went from room to room and found that while the Cones certainly had a lot of Matisse, they didn’t have a lot of any other single artist. The other rooms featured works from Renoir, Cezanne, Monet, Picasso, and tons of abstract expressionists I’d never even heard of. As I took in all of these, some did nothing for me and I found at these points my mind was engaged, thinking about the details or what went into the execution. Others just caused me to stop and take them in, with no thought other than to stand there and absorb the sensations coming in.

And then it happened for real. I had just turned from looking at a very blue Picasso - a work which made me think about the technique - and I found myself looking at a pair of boots.

It’s not a very big painting. It shows two boots - one upside down, the other looking worn and ragged. They could be inside next to the front door or outside next to the front step. Whatever the case, I could only stand and stare, my mouth hanging open like an idiot. I felt my stomach lurch and I had to take a step back because I thought I might fall over. Hanging next to it, and painted in a similar style was a small landscape with trees and a woman walking toward a house in the background. The feeling was still there when looking at this one, but it was stronger looking at the boots. It was such a strong feeling that it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that these particular boots were never worn again because their owner -some close friend of the artist - had just died.

The cards next to each of these paintings said, “Vincent Van Gogh.” What they didn’t say - but which was instantly clear to me - is that Van Gogh had more passion for painting than could be found in a combination of any ten other artists whose works were hanging on these same walls.

I had never shown any aptitude for art in school, but I left the museum feeling a need to draw or paint.

So here’s my first stab at making art. I know it’s not perfect - the glass doesn’t seem to actually be on the table - but it’s a start.

I actually went and updated my My Space page.

http://www.myspace.com/ryanmadam

ryan

Here are some photos of the latest project.

I’m pretty sure I’m keeping this one.

Custom Mahogany Telecaster 

I’ve been asked to do some modifications on a batch of guitars.

I’ve been dealing with things as mundane as installing new pickups to things requiring more precision — like fitting new necks to existing bodies & drilling lots of holes which damn well better all line up when I’m finished.  I’ve also been installing custom circuits in some of the guitars - one gets an active EQ section, another gets a tone-booster circuit, and another one gets a gain/distortion type circuit along with some other custom control mods.

Finally, all the instruments get proper setups which includes truss rod adjustment, setting the action and adjusting the intonation.  All of those things pretty much go hand in hand, because if you change one you affect the other two.   All in all, things are coming along nicely.

I’ll just provide anyone viewing this a word of advice:  Don’t buy cheap guitar hardware.  It might work.  It might not.  But man-oh-day are you gonna be pissed when that bridge or set of new tuners doesn’t fit where it’s supposed to — or worse yet, when it doesn’t work at all.

Cheap hardware is usually made for cheap guitars — so the budget pickguard you find will fit your Mexican Strat.  It won’t, however, fit an American Strat.  Same as the money you spend on genuine Gibson replacement parts is wasted if you’re trying to upgrade or change the look of your Epiphone  (I still hate cream pickup rings, so I’ll live with the mis-matched screw holes.  Just need to do something about the trashy binding.)
Anyhow, here are some photos of the recent work:

Guitar Modifications.

Here are some photos of a custom guitar I did for a fellow earlier this year.  Carved tops are no fun to make by hand, but it’s quite a feeling when you finally get to look at the finished product.

We had a baby on May 2, 2006.

Roland Przemek Adam weighed 7 pounds, 14 ounces. He was born after a long, induced, labor and his mother was very glad to have him finally come out.

There are lots of photos of him in the photo gallery I set up online - you can access it through the “Image Gallery” link over to the right. —>

My mother came to visit this weekend.  She brought a pig.

The pig is from Sears and is wearing a sweater.  She also brought some Pooh shoes for the baby.  He seems to not mind the shoes (even tasted them to be sure they were OK.)

But - he loves his pig.  I’ll see if I can post a video to go along with this later on.  That baby really likes a pig.

I’m still building and working on guitars whenver people ask.

There’s a GUITARS link on the sidebar so you can check out my rickety old webpage with some examples of my work.  I need to redesign that site and post some of my newer projects.

I’ve spent a big portion of the last few days browsing through themes. I still haven’t found a theme I like even well enough to modify for the photo gallery, but the one I found for this WordPress blog is actually decent right out of the box. The leaves at the top remind me of a few things which I hold very dear, so they resonated instantly.

To get some idea of where I’m coming from, you’re welcome to read the novel I put together last November for NaNoWriMo - a national novel writing festival where millions of people join in spirit to write a novel in only 30 days. I did just that, so it’s not perfect and it still needs a rewrite. I’ll attach the PDF file to this post so you can download it. If you’d rather get your hands on a real-life hard copy, you can order it from lulu.com, at the link below.

Order Falling Leaves (172 pages, paperback) from lulu.com

Download the PDF to read on your computer or to print out yourself.