Future Perfect, Present Tense

And after several weeks of murmuring and developments in a strange, shady world that I don’t understand, the video production team has completed the mini-documentary based on the article that I wrote about Danny and which, if you’ll remember, I implored you to vote for so many weeks back. Have a look:

Yes, Danny is sharing the spotlight with wealthy baby boomers, but hey — guess who’s most likely to watch public television?

A Small Victory for Good Taste

Regarding this post and this post, in case you’ve been on the edge of your seat, know that my piece won. Thanks for the votes! Here’s one more painting.

He’s genuinely a talented guy, I have to point out. See more of Danny’s work at his site. And yes, I will let everyone know when the video is ready.

Future Perfect, Round Two

Hi all.

You may recall that last week — or a paltry two posts ago, if you want to get snippy about my productivity — I asked you to read an article I wrote about Danny Heller, a painter here in L.A., in hopes that it would get enough sexy clicks to warrant being made into a short-form documentary. If it gets made, the world will get to learn a little more about the talented guy who makes paintings of midcentury modern architecture. They look like this:

(via danyhellerart.com)

Well, now this might actually happen, thanks to people like you and maybe thanks solely to people like you, for all I know: My piece and another article are facing off, head-to-head, and the one that gets the most votes will become the subject of the next documentary. In short, I’d like your votes, please. You can vote for my piece once a day, and the voting runs through Sunday. So please, if you have a spare second, can you click on over to the voting page and toss a vote my way? (That is, Danny’s way, since my name doesn’t appear on the voting page?)

Please click here and vote when you can.

The Epitome of California Beauty (or — A Request for Two Clicks)

Hi there.

I haven’t written in a bit, I realize. I’ve been busy with work that keeps me writing in other places, and please understand that’s a good thing, since those places pay immensely better than this one does. In fact, one of them allowed me to produce an article that I’m actually rather proud of. It’s about the guy who made this painting:

(via dannyhellerart.com)

The painting depicts a house in Palm Springs, and while it’s not photorealism, exactly, it exhibits a level of detail that approaches that mind-bogglingly intricate style. The artist, Danny Heller, makes paintings of midcentury modern architecture — particularly of such buildings standing in Palm Springs — and he does so very well. And while that’s intriguing to me on its own, I find Danny’s art interesting because he represents a phenomenon among twenty- and thirty-year-old Americans with a particular aesthetic sense: He’s into a style of buildings whose heyday arrived and left long before he was born. Why is it that you have these children of the 1980s making googoo eyes at buildings our grandparents might have lived in? Or, even more strangely, buildings they might have dismissed back in the day as being angular, awkwardly futuristic and rather stark compared to what all else might have been fashionable in the day?

These are the subjects I explore in the article. You should read it. I welcome your feedback. I look forward to how the clever minds who might read my blog could further the conversation I began.

But here’s the thing: I also would just like you to click. See, the way articles work on the website hosting my piece, the most clicked-upon, most-Facebook-liked articles get put in the running to become a short-form documentary, and that documentary may even run on TV. So I am asking you, loyal readers of Back of the Cereal Box, to hit that link (step one) and click the Facebook button at the top of the article (step two), all in an effort to have this be the most heavily trafficked, most “liked” post this week.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.