Author: BYRDBR4IN

  • Getting To Know Philly

    It is a lot of walking

    The city of Philadelphia has a lot to offer and, coming from a train ride away from northern Delaware, it is a city that I would visit for Phillies games and museum trips. But now, in three and a half months, I will be moving to go to Temple to hopefully get my degree in visual studies at Tyler.

    With being on the autism spectrum, it is important I prepare and get used to how things work. So it is not a shock to my system like my first try. With not being able to drive. (Thank God!) Learning how SEPTA works is pretty important, but it was not too hard.

    Really, I chose to go to Temple and Philly in general because of the local art and DIY scene.

    More of what I want to do is in Philadelphia.

    The walks have been lovely. Been taking in the different architecture. I have just been exploring and drawing in the parks.

    Just getting use to the city.

  • My Brain And Art

    my autistic brain having a special interest in art

    I would say modern to contemporary art is a special interest of mine. It has affected my life choices. For instance, the path I chose for my college education. There are going to be visual studies at Temple this fall.

    How has it affected me consuming art?

    I get totally obsessed. I mean I made this blog to talk about it. Not only do I have to know the history, but also how it was made, and I try to recreate it by learning the techniques in my own art. It keeps me up at night. I can spend hours just sucking in a piece trying to analyze the tiniest sections. It is my life. Like I love learning about non-representational art. I am a very design-oriented person, and I can really spend hours researching a piece.

    Some things I can go on about are the impressionist being inspired by Spanish painters for their looser style. I can go on and on about Marcel Duchamp and dadaism. Currently, they are hyper fixated on dadaism right now, for instance. Talk about the history of college art. There is a lot.

    I cannot be normal when I see an artist’s piece I have been studying, because I get really excited about it. I will talk my mouth off if I get the chance to talk about a movement I have been studying. It can get exhausting because of how much it consumes me. That is why I say it is a special interest, because of how much it affects my life. At least it gives me a ton of inspiration.

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  • Sensory Input and Collage Art

     am never satisfied with a digital piece of. It never feels finished and I never feel accomplished. I do not find it that fun.

    I need to feel the art supplies. I need that sense of “oh shit I fucked up” to then layer about stuff to fix it. The smell of the paint and ink. Watching the ink flow all around the paper. Just feeling the material in my hand and making something gives me considerable pride. I sensory seek with my art.

    That is why I love college, because I can do weird shit. Add some weird textured paper or using some cardboard I found lying around. Mixing mediums to make something dope. It is freeing. I can get sensory satisfaction. Art is a sensory experience for me, and I cannot get that with digital art. For example, throwing down a matte medium and pressing paper into each other. The medium dry in my hand and peel it off. Just another thing apart from the experience. Making my collage art is about the experience of letting out a feeling.

    I crave the tactile nature of traditional art.

    Messing with materials is a big stress relief and I wish I could get that feeling by working in Clip Studio or Photoshop. It just does not fill the void why I make art. 

    I either make an abstract piece or I go representational. It is what is best for capturing what is going on inside my head and I need different textures to make my point.

  • Music Notes Stuck In My Mind

    I have ideas and the knowledge but I need the resources.

    I want to get back into performing music again. It was so fun and freeing. I want to have a good time and others to have a good time. The inspiration came from Atom and His Package, and Chumbawamba. I do like folk rhythms, so I kind of like what Pat the Bunny is doing with Friends In Real Life.

    Really I just need to get my hands on a midi controller and start making beats

    With the research I have been doing it really making me want to make music again!

    I do have a list a instruments I do want

    • Euphonium
    • Guitar (electric and a acoustic)
    • electric bass
    • a better trumpet

    I love how music brings people together and how it builds community. I miss being in a music community and would love to be more active in it again.

  • Music feeds my brain

    I had 69 days worth of hours of music listening in 2025

    How my music taste naturally came to me. Middle school was 2000’s emo and pop punk and show tunes, but then quickly I went into my hyperpop phase listening to Vocaloid and anime openings. To find then discovering Midwest emo in gym class to completely falling down the folk punk pipeline throughout the rest of high school but listening to Will Wood on blast. While trying to feel superior that I was not like the TikTok Will Wood fans but wearing the same hoodie everyday my senior year. To now listening to whatever sounds good to me.

    Recently I have been listening to a lot of Hip-Hop. It is a very satisfying genre to listen to. The music nerd in me has ample respect for how the songs are composed and how the artists make the different samples fit nicely.

    My politics have played a big part. In high school, I was going back and forth if I was an anarchist or a communist or both. Punk songs that were angry towards the government or on mainstream society felt like I had a place to fit as a young teen trans boy. Let us just say I listened to a lot of Laura Jane Grace when I was fourteen. Though a band that has always been my top is AJJ. Their songs have always seemed to fit into a different period of my life.

    But I liked hyperpop, because it was over stimulated and fit the void when I need a lot of sensory input.

    My music taste summed up is does this make my brain feel good, or do I really like how the lyrics flow and is an output for my anger. I am not person that lies when I say I will listen to any genre! I don’t bullshit about that.

  • Transing Your Dadaism:

    Gender is Stupid a Rant Of How I’m Inspired by the Dada Movement.

    Started with a deep dive into Marcel Duchamp and seeing his alter ego, Rrose Sélavy. Then later falling down another rabbit hole on gender in the Dada movement.

    But the wheels were turning, how the themes of the Dada movement can play into many gender non-conforming artists and my own art. How to be rebel against the conservative culture on gender. Especially within the trans community. Which people have set expectations that someone who identifies as non-binary has to be androgynous, a trans woman has to be dressed 100%her best and feminine, and a trans man has to be dressed so boringly basically and be 100% masculine. That the gender police will question one’s gender because they will refuse to fit in a box. Just absurd. Even in our own community, people bring conservative fascist bullshit.

    Mainly thinking about Hannah Höch’s line of artwork and how she would call out gender roles.

    Not only with the theme of cyborgs in dadaism, but because of the new plastic surgery and prosthetics, because of the injuries from World War One. It is a theme that has been in my head. The idea of adding parts to myself when I feel more masculine. To take off my breasts and add a bulge. The non-binary body and how some days wanting a different gender body. Themes that can definitely be explored more.

    There is a lot to explore and to rebel against.

  • Relating To Wassily Kandinsky

    Art arranged as music. It is something that I have not been able to get out of my head. For the past few weeks. I have been researching digital music making to college making.

    Well, how does that relate to Kandinsky?

    It had all started with my modern art history class and learning about Kandinsky and his different groups of artists.

    How they captured movement.

    I have been totally obsessed with and have done some deep research with the help of an old professor of mine.

    Mainly, because Kandinsky thought about his pieces as musical compositions. Something that I have not figured out is how to portray the compositions in my head.

    BUT! I did make a piece that is part of my recent deep dives for an upcoming summit inspired by the world of digital music making and how musicians use sampling. While I brought that in college form using found objects, for example, like old receipts, figure drawings from another class, random shiny paper I had, graph paper, and test paper for testing out acrylic ink. While layering acrylic paint to physically represent the many layers in a song.