hare on fire » Blog Archive » chop no. 2: revenge of the zen painter <link rel="stylesheet" href="http://hareonfire.com/wp-content/themes/little/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="hare on fire RSS Feed" href="http://hareonfire.com/?feed=rss2" /> <link rel="pingback" href="http://hareonfire.com/xmlrpc.php" /> <style type="text/css" media="screen"> </style> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="hare on fire » chop no. 2: revenge of the zen painter Comments Feed" href="http://hareonfire.com/?feed=rss2&p=9" /> <link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://hareonfire.com/xmlrpc.php?rsd" /> <link rel="wlwmanifest" type="application/wlwmanifest+xml" href="http://hareonfire.com/wp-includes/wlwmanifest.xml" /> <link rel='index' title='hare on fire' href='http://hareonfire.com' /> <link rel='start' title='chop no. 2: revenge of the zen painter' href='http://hareonfire.com/?p=9' /> <link rel='next' title='miniature experiments in scribbler too' href='http://hareonfire.com/?p=58' /> <meta name="generator" content="WordPress 2.9.2" /> <link rel='canonical' href='http://hareonfire.com/?p=9' /> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://hareonfire.com/wp-content/plugins/favicon-generator/favicon.ico" /><meta name="generator" content="Think-Press Favicon Generator v1.5" /></head> <body> <div id="container"> <div id="navigation"> <div id="menu"><ul></ul></div> </div> <div id="header"> <h2><a href="http://hareonfire.com/">hare on fire</a></h2> <h3>by eva marguerite olsgard</h3> </div> <div id="content"> <div class="post" id="post-9"> <h1>chop no. 2: revenge of the zen painter</h1> <small>8th June, 2010 </small> <div class="entry"> <p style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://hareonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/WP_Logo.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-7" title="logo" src="http://hareonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/WP_Logo.jpg" alt="" width="91" height="83" /></a><br /> <span id="more-9"></span>The logo for my design studio, <strong>hare on fire</strong>, was inspired by my second chop. I carved it while living in Berkeley, just after my thirtieth birthday, when my paintings began to depart from my training in traditional Chinese technique and incorporate the spiritual and movement traditions (Zen, Aikido, JKD, Parkour) that had shaped much of my adult life. My first chop was inspired by the small flower I have always signed next to my name:</p> <p><a href="http://hareonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Eva_Signature_Flower.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-25" title="Eva_Signature_Flower" src="http://hareonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Eva_Signature_Flower-300x127.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="127" /></a></p> <p>To this day, I use this flower as a form of micro-meditation in the midst of my eclectic modern life. Whether I am signing a petition or a receipt, the creation of my flower is the creation of a place in which my body, mind, and spirit are momentarily centered. I am generous with my flower, too. I share my eight-fold signature with waitresses, bank tellers, anyone asking me to sign on the dotted line. My flower worked well visually as my first chop and I was happy to further the legacy of my radical micro-karma movement through its larger cinnabar incarnation. But as my painting style became more primal, my first chop began to look out of place. It was too formal, too literal in its representational style. I realized I had entered a new phase in my creative life and needed to find a form that more accurately manifested my current philosophy. One day, while doing conditioning exercises in the park, I saw the lines left by my own fingers as they slid through the sand and read, in them, the first letter of my name. I had been thinking a lot about how the art I was now creating was more connected to the body and knew that I should incorporate the three lines as a reminder to stay on this path. In them, I also saw the trigram for heaven, Qián, <a href="http://hareonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Qian1.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-28" title="Qian" src="http://hareonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Qian1.jpg" alt="" width="144" height="144" /></a>which is associated with a creative expansive energy. Rendered in a primal scratch by three fingers, Qián could shift between a state of profound meaning and state of meaninglessness, as all symbols and dharmas should.</p> <p></p> <p>Circle of the eye, of the sun, of the sky, I have always felt lucky to have a circle in my name. I wanted to round the flat, square paper on which I was painting with a circle and, in the end, rounded the edges of the triangle surrounding it too. The chop’s triangle has several meanings; among the many, I intentionally evoke fire as well as feminine and masculine. <a href="http://hareonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/HOF_Chop2_MF.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-27" title="chop1_malefemale" src="http://hareonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/HOF_Chop2_MF.jpg" alt="" width="212" height="107" /></a>The modularity of the chop allows me to vary its alignment with either gender as one or the other emerges as dominant in my work. I stamped two series of paintings with my new chop before misplacing it late one night on BART. Luckily, I had just started getting into multimedia and had a scanned copy I could use as the model for my logo. Today, I use the logo to help me round all the flat rectangular screens in my life. In a sense all logos are digital chops, effortlessly stamping, in seconds, a quantity of images that even the most skilled of painters could not sign in weeks. One of my fragments is: “Language is the coefficient of our will.” If language is the coefficient of our will, media is its exponent. One of the most alluring qualities of digital work is its replicablity. I have carved another chop in the likeness of my lost second chop, but it deviates slightly from the design of my original carving. I am human. What can I say? Each one of my paintings from this phase of my work is unique, one of a kind. That batch of paintings stamped with the lost chop even more so. My digital work, on the other hand, is one thousand of a kind. In this sense, the purpose of my digital logo is closer to that of my flower’s; I am not precious about it; I share it with friends, clients, and strangers alike. And so, with the digital reincarnation of chop number two, begins the second life of the hareonfire.com.</p> <p></p> <p style="text-align: left;"> <p style="text-align: left;"> <p style="text-align: left;"> <p class="postmetadata alt"> <small> This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 at 16:45 UTC and is filed under <a href="http://hareonfire.com/?cat=7" title="View all posts in buddhism" rel="category">buddhism</a>, <a href="http://hareonfire.com/?cat=5" title="View all posts in design" rel="category">design</a>, <a href="http://hareonfire.com/?cat=6" title="View all posts in logo" rel="category">logo</a>, <a href="http://hareonfire.com/?cat=8" title="View all posts in movement arts" rel="category">movement arts</a>, <a href="http://hareonfire.com/?cat=4" title="View all posts in painting" rel="category">painting</a>. You can follow any responses to this entry through the <a href='http://hareonfire.com/?feed=rss2&p=9'>RSS 2.0</a> feed. You can <a href="#respond">leave a response</a>, or <a href="http://hareonfire.com/wp-trackback.php?p=9" rel="trackback">trackback</a> from your own site. </small> </p> </div> </div>   <div id="respond"> <h3>Leave a Reply</h3> <div class="cancel-comment-reply"> <small><a rel="nofollow" id="cancel-comment-reply-link" href="/?p=9#respond" style="display:none;">Click here to cancel reply.</a></small> </div> <form action="http://hareonfire.com/wp-comments-post.php" method="post" id="commentform"> <p><input type="text" name="author" id="author" value="" size="22" tabindex="1" aria-required='true' /> <label for="author"><small>Name (required)</small></label></p> <p><input type="text" name="email" id="email" value="" size="22" tabindex="2" aria-required='true' /> <label for="email"><small>Mail (will not be published) (required)</small></label></p> <p><input type="text" name="url" id="url" value="" size="22" tabindex="3" /> <label for="url"><small>Website</small></label></p>  <p><textarea name="comment" id="comment" cols="100%" rows="10" tabindex="4"></textarea></p> <p><input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" tabindex="5" value="Submit Comment" /> <input type='hidden' name='comment_post_ID' value='9' id='comment_post_ID' /> <input type='hidden' name='comment_parent' id='comment_parent' value='0' /> </p> </form> </div> </div> <div id="left"> <ul> <h2>recently on hare on fire…</h2> <ul> <li><a href="http://hareonfire.com/?p=102" title="ravel in mittens">ravel in mittens </a></li> <li><a href="http://hareonfire.com/?p=93" title="thread puppet study for “ravel”">thread puppet study for “ravel” </a></li> <li><a href="http://hareonfire.com/?p=58" title="miniature experiments in scribbler too">miniature experiments in scribbler too </a></li> <li><a href="http://hareonfire.com/?p=9" title="chop no. 2: revenge of the zen painter">chop no. 2: revenge of the zen painter </a></li> </ul> <h2>Search</h2> <form id="searchform" method="get" action="http://hareonfire.com/"> <input type="text" value="type, hit enter" onfocus="if (this.value == 'type, hit enter') {this.value = '';}" onblur="if (this.value == '') {this.value = 'type, hit enter';}" size="18" maxlength="50" name="s" id="s" /> </form> <h2><a href="http://twitter.com/hareonfire" class="twitter_title_link">hare on twitter</a></h2><ul class="twitter"><li class="twitter-item"> Enjoying my own private James Whitney retrospective. <span class="twitter-timestamp"><abbr title="2010/09/04 19:00:31">19 hours ago</abbr></span></li></ul> </ul> </div> <div id="right"> <ul> <h2>eva marguerite olsgard</h2> <div class="textwidget"><p>is a mid/west based writer, artist, designer, and activist currently studying interactive media. <strong>Hare on Fire</strong> is her public notebook. </p><br /> <p>When she is not painting inner space, manipulating pixels, or tweaking code, eva can be found trail running, mountain biking, kayaking, skiing, snowshoeing, and generally recreating in the remote area of Northern Wisconsin where she lives. Ms. Olsgard holds a BA in Creative Writing and Literature from Bard College. </p><br /><p>She has been trying to solve the system since kindergarten.</p></div> </ul> </div> <div id="footer">  <p> copy/write 2010 <b>eva marguerite olsgard</b> </p> </div> </div> </body> </html>