Art on rkempe’s blog

Why Don’t High Schools Prepare Kids for CalArts? (Throwback Thoughts)

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:58:53 -0400

I recently saw a tweet that said something along the lines of “it ticks me off that high schools don’t prepare kids for schools like CalArts.” This idea kind of bugs me, because as someone who graduated from a magnet arts high school with a selective application process,

AI art isn't for artists (third time's the charm?)

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 23:52:34 -0400

You know what the missing piece of the puzzle was? It was that AI art isn’t for artists.

Like, it can be. But for the most part it isn’t.

Okay so here’s a “thread” I wrote back in October, in the pre-ChatGPT era, right when everyone was freaking out about AI art, and I’m pulling it out for a third time to add some commentary on which of my thoughts have shifted and which I still think are relevant.

50 Lessons I’ve Learned Over the Last Six Years

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 22:45:44 -0500

These are some things I’ve learned, or at the very least thought about, over the last few years. Hopefully some of these ideas are useful to you as well.

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read/Watched: Link Dump #3

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 00:20:43 -0500

Hi! Here is a linkdump. I told myself I would post these with really minimal context because I am too busy to summarize these things and have a really giant backlog of links I’ve been wanting to post, but uh, the writer in me won out and I failed. Some of these have way more description than others. But I do also have quotes I’ve pulled for some of them, so maybe that will help make this post more interesting.

Lee Miller’s “Hitleriana”, “Partial Witnessing”, and the Line Between “Document” and “Art”

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 16:03:08 -0400

This is (almost) verbatim text from a journal entry I wrote for a seminar I took on immersive documentary. I thought it was interesting enough to put here, even though parts of it might not make sense if you haven’t read the works I’m talking about. For context, my class had previously read an essay called “Disaster City” by Barrett Swanson, in which Swanson participates in a disaster recovery simulation, explores his personal fascination with disaster scenarios, and explores the blurring between reality and fiction that occurs in those simulations. A lot of our conversation had to do with rituals and performative preparedness and how they can be used to enable cognitive avoidance of the root causes of certain issues, creating a false sense of safety for the person practising (or even observing) the rituals.

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read Lately, Episode 3

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 20:23:47 -0400

You know the drill. In the last episode I did of this series, I said the next one would be coming shortly, huh?

Yeah, right. I lied. These come out when they come out.

Some Interesting Things I’ve Read/Watched: Link Dump #2

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 15:34:26 -0400

Here’s another linkdump—a list of links to stuff I thought was interesting but likely won’t get to properly reviewing any time soon.¹

I reserve the right to more fully review any of these article at a later date, of course. (Though at this point, it’s extremely unlikely to ever happen.)

AI was never about democratizing creativity

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 21:15:34 -0400

I’ve started thinking a little bit about creativity in the context of AI. If you’ve known me for several years, you might be aware that I’m really not a fan of the word “creativity” or of its noun and adjective form “creative”. I’ve mellowed on it a little bit over the years, but generally speaking I still believe that it’s a wildly misused buzzword with dubious meaning in the average colloquial setting, and that lots of people actually have no idea what creativity is. It really bothers me when people conflate creativity with artistic ability, or when people act like it’s some sort of gene you either have or don’t, instead of understanding that it’s a skill you can improve. But in a lot of ways, it’s the best word we have, and so I’m going to use it today.

I’m Still Not Entirely Sure What a “Poem” Is

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 23:17:58 -0400

I think there might be people out there who think I’m a poet, and I think it’s terrifying. I haven’t been a poet since my middle school days of writing rhyming couplets about hating school and my early high school days of writing terrible prose with line breaks. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure the main reason I wrote so many poems in grade nine was because my teacher seemed to have no idea how to grade poems but very strong opinions about fiction, and I felt like I was terrible at writing fiction and wanted a shot at a decent grade. Man, high school was such a great time.

Quantity Over Quality In Art (and Life)?

Fri, 27 Dec 2024 00:37:55 -0500

I’ve always been a quantity over quality artist, and what I mean by this is that rather than being intentional about what I’m doing or meticulously planning things, I typically make a lot of garbage and hope for the best. This isn’t a particularly efficient way of working, but I personally find it quite effective. There are three main benefits of half-assing my art process that I would like to point out here:

Why do People Have Trouble Seeing Photography as Art?

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 18:25:58 -0500

In some ways, photography is to visual artists what piano is to musicians. I can get you to play a somewhat accurate rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb in about 2 minutes, and if it isn’t in tune, that’s the piano’s fault, not yours. Similarly, if you have a camera, you can create an image in about two seconds, and if the image quality sucks, it’s probably the camera’s fault, not yours. But have you ever tried playing a bowed instrument? I did, for over a year. I doubt I ever actually played a note in tune, and my tone quality bordered on unlistenable. Drawing is similarly difficult; my first two years of drawings are generally not good.

My Complicated Relationship With the Visual Arts

Sat, 23 Nov 2024 18:15:54 -0500

When I was in high school, I attended a magnet school for the arts, which meant that around 70% of the students had auditioned for competitive admission to a specialized program in theatre, visual arts, dance, music, or creative writing. This meant that there were often two versions of each art course: there was the version of the course intended for (and restricted to) the students studying in that discipline, and there was the general version, intended for everyone.

The Absolute Horror That Is Dressing for Work; or, How to Navigate Dress Codes

Sat, 03 Aug 2024 01:28:49 -0400

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how I dress lately, which I think is something that happens to you when you’re in your early twenties and trying to figure out how to be a “professional”. I think dress codes were always sort of a sticking point for many people, but from what I understand, in the pre-covid era there were many workplaces with very strong implicit or explicit dress codes that (I am told) made it very easy, or at the very least, easier to understand how you were supposed to dress.

AI art isn't for artists (redux)

Tue, 16 May 2023 01:19:50 -0400

You know what the missing piece of the puzzle was? It was that AI art isn’t for artists.

Like, it can be. But for the most part it isn’t.

Here’s a “thread” I wrote back in October, in the pre-ChatGPT era, right when everyone was freaking out about AI art, and I’m pulling it out again to add some commentary on which of my thoughts have shifted and which I still think are relevant.

AI art isn't for artists

Sun, 02 Oct 2022 23:35:23 -0400

You know what the missing piece of the puzzle was? It was that AI art isn’t for artists.

Like, it can be. But for the most part it isn’t.

Like, when you think about it, if you need a bowl, you can commission a ceramic artist to make a beautiful one for you, right? Or you can make one yourself, which will give you varying results depending on how skilled of a potter you are. Or you can just go buy a bowl at Dollarama, because you need a bowl, don’t have (or don’t want to spend) a shit ton of money, and Dollarama gives you enough choice that it’s not really worth dealing with a potter or becoming one. It’s just a bowl, for god’s sake. Who cares?

I want to talk about this poster briefly

Sat, 16 Jul 2022 01:44:35 -0400

So I want to talk about this poster briefly (it’s from Michèle Provost’s installation at the SAW gallery)¹.

Mainly, I want to talk about why I dislike it.

The text on the poster was “Words will always be this clumsy approximation of something that can be best explained through drawing.” I’m not including the actual photo, because it looks terrible.

The first time I saw the poster it wasn’t even at the show – it was on a picture my friend took of the installation on her phone so she could tell me about it, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

I was thinking about what actions society inherently considers to be artistic

Fri, 18 Feb 2022 03:07:20 -0400

I’ve been thinking about the concept of art style pretty heavily lately, which has come with a lot of brain tangents.

For example, I was thinking about what actions society inherently considers to be artistic. Obviously, this kind of implies a whole “what even is art” discussion that I don’t really want to have right now. But for example, we seem to view any drawing as an exhibit of artistic skill, whereas getting up on a stage and talking at people is only seen as an art form in certain circumstances.

The word "creativity" feels like a buzzword now

Tue, 21 Dec 2021 20:19:01 -0400

I feel like the word “creativity” has become so twisted, like it’s been simultaneously corporatized and filled with arbitrary connotations concerning “quality” and “external appeal” (however the hell those are defined now) and it’s become like one of those resume buzzwords that you use not because they actually mean anything, but because they look and sound fancier and because everyone else is using them.

I wasn’t “trying to be creative” when I was a kid, I was just messing around. And I feel like that meaning has been lost, like somehow, over the past several years, we’ve collectively decided that yeah, people should be putting themselves out there and trying stuff but like, only the glossy version of trying stuff.

On Being an Artist on Instagram (and How It Can Suck)

Sat, 21 Mar 2020 00:00:00 -0400

I was chatting with one of my friends yesterday, just to check in, when our conversation moved from small talk to the topic of being artists on Instagram. We’re both pretty unknown on Instagram, and I suspect she’s just as unsure as I am about how much of an audience she actually wants for her work, but the discussion was still mostly about how “well” we were doing. And as of right now, she’s doing much, much better than I am, despite the fact that I have had my account for about two and a half years longer than she has. To be fair, she is a much better artist than I am, which totally accounts for some of her success. However, not all of it can be attributed to that. At all.