My favorite blogger these days, artist Austin Kleon

My favorite blogger these days is Austin Kleon who I first referenced here, when Tom Perrotta sent me his hilarious cartoon sketch from the TX Book Festival. Now I check his different blogs and twitters daily and just totally dig his virtual self. Love the sketches, love the recommendations, and even enjoy his reports of newlywed delight.

And here's a new post that made me like him even more:

LETTER TO A YOUNG COLLAGE ARTIST

"The year was 1997. I was 13 years old. Green Day was the coolest band in the world. Two years previous, they’d just put out their album, Insomniac, with an insane-looking cover. I checked out the liner notes, and found out it was done by a collage artist named Winston Smith:

I had a great art teacher, Robyn Helsel, who assigned us a project where we had to pick a contemporary artist and write to them. Most of the class picked their artists out of a catalog. I picked Winston. I used my dad’s e-mail account and sent probably half a dozen e-mails to a gallery curator I found online, asking for Winston’s home address. The curator finally replied: “Stop bugging me, kid. Here’s his address.” I sent Winston a two-page letter using a ransom note font in Microsoft Word, telling him about me and my band, asking him about his technique, his influences…I even had the audacity to include a sketch of an idea I had for a piece he might want to attempt. (I have the letter somewhere…but unfortunately, not the sketch!) A few months went by. As I remember it, nobody in the class heard back from their artist.

Then one day a huge, stuffed manila envelope came in the mail...." (read the whole post here)