Here We Go!!

As an artist, I have always looked for ways to exhibit my doodles to unsuspecting friends. It is thrilling when they take the time to understand what you have createdpieced together, but it becomes less conversational when you describe with limitless passion that it took copic markers, prismacolor pencils, and countless hours of shading to achieve the effect. My friends are engineering geeks like me and it’s hard for engineers to be artists and vice versa. I know I know what you are thinking!!! I am not an engineer anymore – but then again I am not claiming to be much of an artist either. Every once in a while, I finish something that IMHO deserves exhibiting. I totally enjoy the creative process.

One Monday morning at work couple of years ago, I ran into “Uncle Ray” (real name hidden to protect the innocent) at the coffee bar. He had a wicked smile as though he had discovered a fire tattoo on his forearm that he never realized he had. He was flitting around the room with childlike abandon. I had no choice but to ask him what had happened over the weekend… Uncle Ray and his wife had just completed their first fused glass artistic pieces. They had meticulously cut glass, stacked them into designs and kilned them. They have since made a number of masterful pieces for friends and family. They have fallen in love all over again. They too love making art!
Over centuries, people have become artists for the sheer enjoyment – the fire to create, in what ever form. We are living through a period of prolific and possibly unparalleled global growth in art. Urban and youth genre arts such as tattoos, graffiti, anthro, manga, and comics are not yet well cataloged in collections and museums as they are in the free spirit of the open social Web. Arts are neither going to be sustained by weekend warriors artists like Uncle Ray and myself, nor by a global set of underpaid artists.

We are creating Voottoo to drive vigorous commerce in youth genre arts and patronage of artists through mass personalization of everyday branded products with crowd sourced art. More to come…

Welcome to Voottoo!