Rejecton

Last night I received a rejection letter from MICA. I am not taking it as hard as KT thought I might. I am disappointed, but only because I won’t be working on my painting for seven weeks straight this summer…which is, I think, a positive reaction. They didn’t offer any explanation about why I was rejected, but I wrote to them asking for feedback on how I can improve my chances next year.

In the meantime, this means that I can say “yes” to Imagination Stage summer camps and to Trixie and Lobs. And it also means I will be free to continue to make work that I enjoy. And, perhaps the work I was doing, previous to the application, was not yet ripe for picking…the warm winds of spring and summer will undoubtedly help ripen my work, for a winter harvest of another application.

It's about the images stupid...

I am going to start putting more images into the blog. From now on, I will try to put the image first, with brief commentary, and then get to the diaristic stuff…



This is a sketch that I have been working on for the Lobsterboy T-shirts. It is intended to be a Sinatraesque portrait of Lobs, full of melancholy. I see Lobsterboy as a tragic figure, he can’t tell a joke, he’s from thee ocean, so he’s a “fish-out-of-water”, and he can’t take off the lobster suit… The image was created on my trial version of Illustrator CS. I think I will need to break down and buy it in 29 days. Although I haven’t figured out the live paint features entirely, it’s a great improvement over Illustrator 10.

Deb has been working hard to get the website up to speed. I still need to do the heavy lifting of labeling everything and creating an overall look for the site. I’m thinking that I should push the sausage-on-fork motif a bit more…

Saw Hot Feet on Sunday. Don’t bother. The show needs work, big time.

My brother announced this week that he was leaving his theater carpentry job for a “new construction” carpentry job in Fairfax. I understand some of his reasoning, but it still seems fishy to me.

Kate talked me out of going up to see the MICA MFA candidates talk today. She said that it would just drive me crazy, not knowing if I was going to be in the program or not. Perhaps she’s right, but I still think that it would be good to see what people are doing up there…

I have got an image in my head that needs to be addressed. It’s a spacesuit hung on a nail. No astronaut, just the spacesuit. I have been doing some preliminary research, and I think that I like the way the Mercury astronauts looked. The space suits were silver then and not intended for “space walks” so they have a very sexy appeal. That’s what NASA could use, is some sex appeal…Anyway, I am going to go down this path and see where it leads…

Self Portrait 2006

Self Portrait, Winter 2006

5"x7" Acrylic and Paper on Wood

Here's a self portrait that Haze bought from me. I consider self portraits a benchmark for progress. This one demonstrates that my cut paper method can be used outside of the purely silly and comical vein. Its a bit more "dark" than everything else...but aren't self portraits supposed to be a bit "Goth"...

Goodbye Haze, Elephant Man

The opening went well. Where’s Osama, is still for sale. So get yer butts down there and get a good old dose of your first amendment in action…
Studio One Eight announced a membership program at the end of the opening. I am a bit suspicious of something like that, because it feels a bit like pay-for-play…and I think it belittles our intelligence that they framed the concept with the idea that there is some kinda “movement” going on here.

Haze and Trish moved out of their house today, and moved into a slightly farther away one. It is really sad that we get to know some really great neighbors the week before they move away. Not to mention that Haze is buying everything from off my walls…It’s great to have a supportive fan (that didn’t come out the way it was supposed to….)

The rest of the week has been a slow motion restarting. I was all geared up to get some projects taken to the next level, when Kate called in a favor. She wanted an “Elephant Man” image, for Olney, and she wanted it pro bono. I wound up trying to make something fast, but didn’t get the right type of info from her about the show. She has been having trouble with the show in general, and I wasn’t helping by trying to pin her down about it. Long story short: After about four attempts, I am no longer working on the Elephant Man logo.



I have got a lot of sketching to do for Lobsterboy, which I will try to do tomorrow (I’m taking a sick day…I could tough it out, but I know when its best to nip it in the bud) along with balancing out BAPA’s needs (they want me for the summer, but I told them I wont know until April 1 thru 15) and keeping Trixie warm about her sardine can…

Jarret has devised a knife throw for Tom Sawyer that he might donate to Lobs…which might be a really cool act for him, and it would be good for Jarret too…

I think I will also start to act on my impulse to make a space suit with my technique…we will see if I need to go to the air and space to do some sketching…

Lastly, Deb has started to revamp the website. It looks a lot better than it did before and the blog links from it! This means I better watch what I say….someone else may be reading this…

Where's Osama?

Late again with the weekly update. I have been working all week getting the “Where’s Osama?” out the door. It turned out to be a pretty good picture in the end. I never really did a full blown landscape before. This has a lot of expressionistic brushwork and layering. Which is fine, because it helps convey the scarred nature of Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as my psychological frustration about the war.
I have made little progress on the other artistic fronts, but I really want to keep the momentum up. I will start on some Lobsterboy stuff soon. I want to do a “black and white” horror movie kinda thing. Using colors that approximate black and white, while not being pure black and white. I also did a self portrait using my cut paper tecnique, which gives me reason to think that I can cross my stuff over to a more serious mode…

This week has also been about getting Sara moved into her new place, and getting used to my new Treo 650…

The opening is this weekend, so I will give you full updates afterward.

New Phone, Tora Bora

It’s just been a crazy time this past week. I got a new phone, which means that I am sucked into its vortex of newness and setup; it’s also a vehicle for procrastination on a painting that I have to have done by Monday. As it turns out the Art of War at Studio One Eight, decided to let me show a piece. I need to crank this baby out fast!

I started with the idea of a “where’s Waldo?” but with Osama. But I changed the idea a bit to be more subtle. It will be a mountain range that approximates the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan…Tora Bora, but done in my cut paper method…

I could talk more about it, but I have to go to a meeting with a theater group that performs in the Washington Monument in Alexandria…I fear that I will have to tell them no…

A Clean Studio, A Clean Mind

I met with Lobsterboy. He’s nice enough, but I got the impression that he is at the tail end of the lobsterboy act. He was kvetching about his days with Ian Allen (immediate red flag in my book) and cherry red. “At one point you realize that you can’t drive around with a suitcase full of dildos forever” he said. He’s 35, which is kinda spooky, cuz I have started to look at life in five year chunks, (cuz I’m turning 30 soon) and I don’t know if I will be saying the same thing in five years…Anyway, I think the meeting went well. But I am really having a tough time getting my head around people’s hesitancy about having a backdrop. I am working on ideas for T-shirts; he wants the iron on kind…

Perhaps some of my feelings about the meeting were directly attributable to the parking ticket I received…

I made some progress on the Deb logo. I pilfered the phoenix logo from Pontiac. I need to start thinking about what I want to do to my website as part of our exchange.

We cleaned the basement and finished installing the Elfa. I made huge leaps towards a cleaner studio. I decided to move the Mac upstairs, and consequentially, I purged the studio of all unnecessary detritus. I hope that this will give me a clean slate to start working from. I am scared that I have set myself up for disappointment, because I am trying to live up to the statements that I made in the MICA application. Now my procrastination has taken the form of cleaning. Soon, I will have no excuses….

I am going to the monkeyhouse tomorrow. I don’t know if monkeys will figure heavily in my next step, but I figure that some life drawing can’t hurt. It has been a long time since I sketched anything from life.

In this months Modern Painters Matthew Collings Diary has a provocative flow to it. He reviews an artist who makes paintings that recall the constructivist movement, abstraction from the 1910s-30s. He says that they are good at forcing you to think about how paintings are made and how they are good.

“…Here, instead, the muted color was muddy and the lines were lifeless. The overall effect was a deliberate blankness. The emotional response could only be disappointment, I thought, unless you weren’t really interested in the qualities that Abt’s paintings at first appear to be about….The statement is that yes these are colors and lines but no I’m not interested in that kind of thing – Who on earth would be? You realize that she doesn’t think that there is anything there in the original model worth bothering with and clearly the critical buzz around her at the moment agrees…Abts refers to something sophisticated, refuses to get involved in its sophistication and offers something crude instead. It’s a model not of a fraught moral position or contents that have to do with the meaning of existence, but of efficiency vs. authenticity. The goal is not to get people to be moved by art. It’s about trying to capture the interest of people who can’t be bothered to find out what art is and what gives it its capacity to be moving, by getting rid of anything that was ever genuinely moving about it. This isn’t an act of fierce Nietzschean individualism. It’s an act of conformity, of obedience – going along with what everyone else is doing….”

I think Collings is on to something here. Are we so evolved that we can only look back at art history for material to parody? Is blankness the new intellectualism? Making the artworld work more efficiently is a commercial goal, but what about the high falutin' goals that were real when they were employed in the past?

Slow Motion after getting my life back

My Mom came into town just as I finished the MICA application. She is always pleasant enough, however she helped complicate things. I took her to see Noises Off and Kate’s press night for the Heiress. I helped strike Noises right after she got in the air. And then went to the Phillips collection with our second round house guests, Kyle and Alexia. I always enjoy the Phillips Collection, but this time the pictures seemed a bit staid. I did, however, get a big jazz out of some of the Bonnard paintings. Seeing them in the flesh really gets my juices flowing. I really admire the visual depth and complexity that they have. I feel like I would want to own one, just to be able to pass by it every day and see a bit deeper into the painting. I really want my work to feel that way. Part of the way that is achieved is having intentionally vague brushwork, something that I normally don’t ascribe to, because in today’s world it means a lack of technique

Kate got sick, and for presidents day we installed Elfa in the basement and went shopping with Sara. I wasn’t any fun to take a sick KT to H&R Block to get our taxes done. We got significantly less than we did last year, but you can only get the “first time home buyer credit” once.

I have not been able to get my mothers bed out of the studio, (Oh the irony) so I haven’t gotten any preliminary work done. I have no real plans, but my blood is boiling. I am at the stage where I have some somewhat unrelated projects on the table, but I try to do anything else besides work on them because what I really want to do is work on my own work…but I don’t do that either! Ill be out of this valley soon. I think I will get the studio back on Sunday…a good two days after my first real meeting with lobsterboy…

The application is in the mail!

The MICA application is in the mail. It was a stressful weekend for KT (and Sara) but they did yeoman’s work and helped me make the hard decisions, organize and polish the edges to a shine. It was a bit strange to have the whole thing printed out and packed neatly into its little folder. I sent it off into the world on an overnight express…see you in a few months, little buddy…

I got some real good networking done on the burlesque front. I think that I can really get a chance to produce some good work for Lobs and Trixie. He seems to want T-shirts and She wants to talk about “animal crackers” themed tour that they are doing in LA…I am trying to get both into the idea of backdrops….

My mom is in town (double booked with Kyle and Alexia…and the strike for Noises off) so my studio is quartered-off. I am in a creative moment right now, since all work has stopped for looming application deadlines….but this will really get my blood boiling, not being able to binge after the drought….Next week (hopefully I will be in progress as the next entry comes along.) I will get my studio back, and I will start to get back on track.

I have been jazzed by the “paintblogging” entries by Pizz. I have noticed that a lot of the underground (bad name, but it will do for now) artists are starting to get their own blogs now: Pizz, John K (from Ren and Stimpy), Bill Wray…and they are offering advice and insight on their work, which I would assume the pubic finds tremendously boring, but I find endlessly fascinating. I hope they keep it up, because it amps up my creativity greatly to see these guys slogging through some work, day after day.

One week until the application deadline!

This Sunday I dictated much of my autobiography to KT, in order to get my thoughts on why I want to apply to MICA on paper. I think it has gone a long way towards clarifying why I want to go, and what I want to do there. I just hope that I can get it all done by this time next week…

I tried to learn PowerPoint, and it seems pretty simple, so that’s no real challenge, technically. It’s choosing the right photos that will get me in trouble….

I got a single word email from Peter Williams….”What?”….Which isn’t helping my case for getting a letter from him. Sometimes the most colorful professors are not the most reliable in the “future favors” department.

This coming week is the “burlesque triple header”, and boy am I excited! I just want to get through this application, and then concentrate on making some new work. I don’t have any shows or gallery showings coming up, so it should be one of those rollercoaster times for me….where not much gets done, until something kicks me in the pants.

Letters of Reference

I finally got my truck back from Rainbow auto body. I am not making my daily 1.5 mile, uphill, walk to work anymore. This means that I don’t do the same type of reflecting…i.e. walking helps focus the thoughts, and allows one to sketch…

I have been having a dickens of a time getting letters of recommendation out of people. Al loving is dead, Tom Parish has disappeared into the mists of Venice, and Peter Williams is working for U of Delaware, and not returning my emails…The other people I have lined up are Scott Brooks (who will do it, in fact he did a successful one for someone else not long ago) and Hal Crawford. Other people that I might need to ask if Peter falls through…Molly Rupert, Bill Weisnewski….Ill give peter till the end of the week to respond….

Aside from that, I have been trying to get a start on the entrance essay and the portfolio requirements. Noises Off opens this Friday, and the show looks pretty good….

Saw the Cezanne exhibit on Monday, and I think that I don’t like the landscapes very much. I do enjoy the still lives, but there were few of them. The Audoban exhibit was really good too; I saw the same buzzard as Clarks, in the flesh. I am also enamored with a French printmaker…Buhot…who does these etchings (with numerous processes, an aspect that this show was highlighting) that have other, notation-like, sketches that supplement the main etching, around the borders.

MICA interview

Here I am again, trying to write this entry under a very tight deadline. So much gets left out….The big story this week is my open house visit to MICA. I think that, based on the impressions I got over the event, that I might have a shot. I had a very positive interview, where I espoused my idea that performance art could be so much better if someone of my sensibilities could produce some. Never mind that I don’t have any real burning desire to do any performance art. But I can see how my tiki/lowbrow aesthetic could be married with performance. In fact, I am already doing that with some of the work I am producing with Trixie. My interviewer said that she would (probably) endorse me as a candidate because I have not only the technical skill, but a grasp of contemporary issues. She also said that I would “shake things up”….So, I think I will take the plunge. This program feels like the right fit at the right time.  Besides, who needs $60,000 laying around anyway….

The next step in the process is to get letters of recommendation, which is a dicey proposition (and a scary one, it has stopped me from even starting applications in the past) because I don’t have any good academic connections lately…I still have a letter from Tom Parish, but for all I know, he could be dead…(as it turns out, he’s not…just retired) I will have to go through my old files to find who else I have asked in the past.

Hearing the students and graduates give their slideshows really gave me a shot in the arm. I can really see penetrating deep into my work, but at the same time I am scared that the “rarefied air” has some poison in it. I like the idea of having a year to absorb the lessons learned from this six week immersion…I think it will keep me from drinking the kool-aid. (Unlike some of the conceptual art cult that seems to be there…) I must stay connected to object making.

The sketchbook has had nothing but words in it. This signals to me that there is a reformulation of strategy going on….Thoughts:

Perhaps a self-portrait with cut paper is the next big jump.

Rigged Carnival games…as performance? Paintings will get caught up in the figure running the game…how to avoid?

Interviewer suggested that I get deeper into research about performance art…is the convergence between my painting and lessons learned from theater really where I want to go?

The other problem is getting ones thoughts organized and in one format! (From sketchbook)

Hillary Spurling---Matisse Biography

…Till next week Cash…

Two days late

I have gotten behind on my weekly update. Here’s the chronology: Finished Trixie Valentines day flyer, finished Noises off set painting, saw Wicked, Lame party at Natasha’s, breakfast at Colorado café, buildings museum, Project Runway, Grocery Shopping, Installed Armoire, Project Runway, Started walking to work, Trixie stops design work on portal, French Indian war on PBS, Portfolio Redesign, Ritz Camera.

That, in a nutshell, are the highlights of my week. What I don’t seem to be able to convey are the profound moments that I had hoped this blog would help recount. I can say this, my upcoming MICA open house/portfolio review, has gotten me thinking about my work. More importantly, what trajectory my work needs to go in. My portfolio has two definite worlds represented. One theater, and one Painting. Most of the painting is not represented Pre-tiki.

Rarefied air

In Project Runway, one of the contestants was making a dowdy postal uniform, and Tim came in and said that it needed to be more fabulous because the judges are used to the “rarefied air” of the professional runway…Transpose this anecdote into the art world, and my “tiki” art, and you have a good idea of the anxiety that I am experiencing. You see, my work is more about seduction with comfortable images and themes. But underneath there is a color sensibility and a caustic subtext. But you have to break through that veneer first. The prejudices that these gatekeepers have against “kitsch” may prevent them from seeing the potential of this mode of artmaking. Additionally, I don’t want to change my work in order to please them, because that has led to a bad place for me in the past.

Time gets away from me again, see you next week…

New Sketchbook

New Sketchbook, blank pages

This week I started a new sketchbook. It is always a bit weird to start a new one, but it gives you a chance to get a fresh perspective on things. One of the first things that got into it is a diagram of the visible universe in relation to the size of the rest of the Universe, and a brief explanation of inflation theory. Which means that Ethan is in town for a conference. I have to report that this diagram (and the conversation that accompanied it) blew my mind…and not in the entirely positive way, either.

I have been busily working on the flyer for the Trixie Little show, a commission that I received on Thursday. I am enthusiastic about the prospects of having two established characters to create situations for, but it couldn’t come at a worse time…This is also the week that painting is moving forward on Noises Off….

New years resolution

New years resolutions have always been a motivator for me. I have resolved to start working out at the gym again. I have done so for the past two days, and I really feel my productivity and energy level increase.

The show at the Warehouse netted four sold paintings. Surprisingly, Lobsterboy bought two, and wants me to design T-shirts for him.

Got really drunk on new years. Realized how much I miss Shaun as a drinking buddy/male bondage monkey…

I sent out designs for the pink rocket to Trixie. She loves it, Ill just have to work out some details…

I am starting to get the itch again for a new set of paintings, but it will need to wait till Noises off finishes. This Saturday begins the painting hell for that show….

Blogger for word mystery

Blogger for word mystery

The blogger for word mystery is solved. It turns out all you need to do is to close outlook to keep BFW from disappearing. Now on to the next great mystery!

It has been such a long week; I don’t have time to even recount all of it in the blog. Chronologically it goes something like this:

Dropped off paintings to Molly. Weisnewskis party. Joel and I drive to Detroit. Joel wrecks car in Breezewood. Meet Ken Freeman at big boy. Cool ideas about a hand die press. KT comes in to DTW. Xmas Dinner with Gimpy Ellen. Everyone bailed on midnight Mass. KT and I go anyway, but talk about how I have too many disparate things going on, and how I should change my schedule to be a four day week with longer days. All Polish mass in Hamtramck. Chinese food and Kong with Clark and Carol. Loaded up giant cabinet and sacred cow. Uneventful drive back to DC. TACT loads into T2. Geico Estimate of $2025, with $1000 Deductible. Pickup KT from DCA. Appointment set for next week with Rainbow Auto body. Bought materials for pegboard for the costume shop with Hal. Began erecting Noises off set. Vectorworks designed some of Trixie’s rocket. Found out that Penny-farthing wheels are hard to come by, and expensive. Setup business account at Chevy chase bank. Got KT’s car inspected. Failed. Ordered a new gas cap. Shopped for NYE party fixins. Loaded up Karaoke equipment.

Not much time for “real art” in there… I am looking forward to getting the holidays behind me….

Cindy and NYC

Cindy and NYC

Cindy Lauper was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to. With the minor exceptions for the very weak singing by Sandra Bernhard and the standing crunch of the 930 club, it was really great. Something about her songs that survives the transition from bubblegum 80’s music to 53 year-old 2005 Cindy….

After that we went to NYC. Kyle and Alexia were fabulous. Their place in Brooklyn was really homey. I got the feeling that we were a bit high impact for them…but they knew what they were getting into.

After the Frick, we hit the MoMA for the Liz Murray show. It was good, but not as good as I had hoped. The color doesn’t translate in reproduction. The shaped canvases are cool, but they are a bit labored, perhaps forced…I just don’t feel like they picked the best pieces to represent her. The chronological order also seems to be almost a hindrance. The blatant way that the fluorescent paint comes out in the recent work, it feels like the jump that Frank Stella made in the 80’s, which is happily a phase he worked through… What impressed me is her open-ended funkiness…

The architecture in the new MoMA seems much like many office buildings built today. It doesn’t seem to help the art along much either. The collection seemed to be heavy on the "this begat that", perhaps more than before. The contemporary stuff seemed squished in high ceilinged rooms….Did I miss the Pixar stuff? Or was it just the vitrines outside the bathrooms?  The Redon exhibit was cool, but I can’t get over my dislike of lithography…

Otto’s shrunken head was a bit disappointment. Alexia got offered coke in the bathroom…But I did get to keep my mug…

I have done very little work, just organizing, which seems like treading water. I am a slave to my Outlook. But it is a pushover of a master. I can just move an appointment when I don’t meet expectations. However, I have actually been doing these entries since I made them a recurring appointment….

I will be sending off my paintings for Artromp 18 tomorrow. I have only completed 4 of the ones started at the beginning of the month. It’s kinda pathetic…

I have been procrastinating about the elevations for Noises; I will need to crank them out in earnest soon! Looking forward to a few weeks of hardcore scene painting in January…

I have slowly been working on a Trixie little drop in my mind…I’ve even called for a wild ballpark estimate from Theater services and supply…Ill talk to Joel about the rocket while we drive home.

Joel and I will be driving my truck to Detroit for Xmas. Ill be back early next week, so I will have another week of treading water to write about…Merry Christmas…

DC DMV and Cotton Candy

DC, DMV and Cotton Candy

It’s supposed to be icy this afternoon. I haven’t been able to get even a tiny bit of painting in. Just been exhausted, and full of errands. I got my home residency permit, from the DC govt. $66. And I think I have registered myself as a business, and gotten an EIN # from the feds. All this, so that I can have a separate bank account for my business…

The unkindest cut of all is that they have made our street a permit parking situation. The deadline is the 19th. Which means I have to Schlep myself down to the DMV and get us some permits…

That’s been taking up most of my time. I have had Xmas shopping and the Trixie little thing too…Noises off, MFA search, Art fair applications, Artromp, Jay Rees’ gallery, you know, the normal hectic schedule…. This has been preventing me from getting any painting done. I have, maybe 8 new pieces that I have been itching to get to. They are not all as conceptually grouped together as I would like. There are some straight-up flowers, two vanitas, one large rollercoaster woman, and a monkey (on a skull). These paintings (they are only in cut form right now, so they hardly have become paintings…I will start painting when I get away from this letter) don’t have the cohesion that I would like in the work. They feel like the scraps left over after a successful painting. They are all valid, but they don’t belong to anything bigger than themselves. How important is it for me to have an overarching concept, or theme, in my work? I have been working in modes, Tiki, vanitas, and coaster. But what is the overall theme? Once I have an overall theme, I guess I will be making serious work. (I might take issue with that last sentence. Elizabeth Murray is able to make fun and, perhaps, frivolous work, but it is taken seriously) I want my work to have fun and whimsy. But that whimsy tempered by a slight sinister edge. This edge should be a reflection of trouble in paradise.  If serious critique of the world has to be stodgy then I don’t want any part of that. I would prefer to have my work be like a cotton candy. Pretty in presentation. Sweet. When you take a bite, it dissolves in your mouth, leaving a sweet crystalline grit. Sure, its got little nutritional value, but you didn’t come to the fair to get your recommended daily dose of vitamins…you came to be entertained. Perhaps I should look up that Baktin guy, the one who wrote about “carnival theory”…

I like the cotton candy metaphor, perhaps I can expand on it….

I got an email from a gal who bought an Elvis painting last year, and it sounds like she wants me to be in some show…More Elvis stuff on the horizon?

We’re off to NYC to see the Murray show this weekend. We will be going back to Detroit for Xmas since Ellen broke her leg. Perhaps I can scam a ride with Joel…

Domku sales and window shopping

Domku sales and window shopping

After the Domku sale last Saturday (12/3/05) SB called and said he wanted to purchase two paintings from me. I normally don’t like to sell paintings to friends, but I felt that I might do more harm than good by refusing to accept money. So I agreed to deliver them to his place.

I started out by going to Chevy Chase bank to setup a business account. I’ve never done that sort of thing before, but I feel that the time has come to start separating my finances from my personal life. Plus, I will need a EIN # (amongst other things) in order to take credit cards, which is part of the uberplan or trying the art fair circuit.

Turns out, I don’t have any of the right documentation to get a business checking account. I don’t have a business license, a trade name certificate, nothing. I vow that I will return with these things and get back in my car. I now have an hour and a half before I have to make my delivery. Whatsa boy to do?

I decided to kill time by going to the 14th St. Galleries. Its something I should do for my personal and professional development and it was just the right time of day (and week)

I started at Plan B. Group show. The stuff was all of a medium quality (a fact that has not impressed me when I saw the U of MD painting profs work their) but I got some ideas about how my matted work should be presented. The only work of note was Ted Milligan’s watercolors. They were small tightly controlled drips. The type that you get if you take watercolor and blow a straw at them while they are drying. He then embellished them with paint, using the similar hue trick (two colors of the same hue, placed next to each other makes the eye go “boinining”)

Next it was over to the 1515 building. G fine art had Lynn Meyers marker drawings on velum. It was minimalism gone bad. They weren’t computer printouts, but they looked it. They had all the hallmarks of minimalism, with that “I’m leaving a trace of the artists hand by making easy to figure out how I did them” factor. Once I figured them out, the trick was over. All I was left with was a nagging question for her: when you started in art, did you think that you would end up making thousands of repetitive tiny marker lines on giant sheets of velum? Is that really how you want to spend your time on earth?

A brief moment of digression: I went to see Les Miz last night. It wasn’t as good as I remember….but I was reminded of the feelings I used to get when I would read the journals of Delacroix. I always wanted to go back then and life in a world where there could be nothing but painting. That is, you could have your frock coat and your crust of bread and a candle or two and just paint. (of course this is not how it really was) In the audio book I am reading, (is that the right word choice?) Interviews with Studs Terkel , one of his guests (from the 50’s ) says that we are in a time when leisure is available to all. In the not so distant past, most of the worlds people were forced to work all damn day, everyday, just to keep food on the table. This is the world that would create barricades. Today, we have a duty to make the most of every tool we have. Our leisure time is a wonderful gift that mankind has only recently been given. And even though I seem to be oversaturated and over stimulated with so much possibility, I need to take advantage of every avenue that I can. Because the life where there is no free time, no ability to express oneself is just a hairs breath away.

Some okay painting was up in Hemphill, but he place was pungent with beeswax, which I was not impressed with (contrary to other bloggers opinions). The paintings were from the bigger is better, but that means the strokes too, school. Plus he seems to ruin the work by writing OM ME PAD ME OM on the me in pencil. Like, am I supposed to think that’s deep?

Fusebox had a bunch of BAD work from Jason Gubbiotti. His stuff really seems to come from the undergrad Corcoran rave culture aesthetic. Which is looking really tired. Plus, what his work is saying or reflecting is not part of the world I want to inhabit. I will say that some of his bent paintings are touching on something, but only in a bad formal way. Someone in the ARTcity documentary said that “how boring would it be if music were to only concern itself with the formal structures of insturments and notes…why does art seem to be preoccupied with that.”


The other work in Fuesbox is W.C. (unfortunate use of initials) Richardson. Who does these sexy-looking large paintings. Wait, they are all the same size. Wait a minute, they are all hung on the EXACT same spiral pattern underneath…whoa, they are all only consisting of 3 or 4 layers of figure ground alloverness. Once I figured out the trick, it was all downhill….

After all that I dropped off the paintings, picked up the check. Ill be cashing it and putting into the business account when I get the proper paperwork together.

MICA and the weekly hump

Cash,

After a good bit of time, and a few life events, I have gotten a recommitment to the blog. I am going to try to keep up with this because of a portfolio review I went to recently at MICA.

First, it was full of kids. Lots of teenagers that were their with their portfolios, and doting parents. It made me reflect on how my education as an artist was not as nurtured as it is in these kids. I was never pushed to attend college in any overt way, it was just assumed. But I do remember asking about art school (not really knowing about what I was asking) and being dismissed by my parents. “You could become a radiology tech, and do art in your spare time” is the quote that, perhaps unfairly, rings in my head.

Anyway, hundreds of kids, all waiting to have someone (a grad student or a short-straw/low-totem faculty member) from a blue chip art school look at the drawings that they brought. I was different. I was looking for the graduate portfolio reviews. There was one. MICA had one person (from admissions…not an instructor) look at my work. I showed my slides and one piece that I brought along as an example of the things that the slides wouldn’t capture. He said that they valued someone with “real-life experience”, which I have, in spades. But then didn’t look at my theater portfolio.

The real reason I am telling you all this is because when started telling him about the work, I found myself speaking disjointedly and referencing things as “read”. This is a habit I have, which was thrown into sharp relief in undergrad, of talking about my work as if the audience has already been down the roads I have traveled, read the same books and had similar reactions to other art. It’s a defense mechanism and a shorthand. I don’t want to appear didactic, or too eager to “teach” people, but finding common ground quickly is something I try to do naturally.

So when I began to speak about my work, it was a smear of unfinished thoughts and qualifications. He asked me if I wrote. “a little” I said. Of course I write…I haven’t done any serious writing in years, but I think I could remember how it was done…what did he mean do I write? I suppose that is a fair question to ask of one of those children out there who haven’t been through their senior year of high school. I have a degree, damnit. I have written 20 page papers three hours before they were due…I always thought I wrote pretty well, too. But to answer his question, no, not for a while, other than these letters I write to Johnny Cash, in my sketchbook….which are more an organizational tool than anything.

Well, an organizational tool is what he meant. He was referring to writing about my work as a way to help organize my thoughts about it. Which is, other than a particularly pedagogic reaction to a problem, (a reaction that is not inconsistent with someone who is trying to persuade you into thinking that their institution could somehow help you “figure out” your artistic psychosis) a helpful piece of advice.

I did counter with an argument about how I don’t have any friends that are willing, or able to talk about artistic struggles (citing an example of telling an artist friend that his work was like so-and-so meets so-and-so, {both well known artists} and not knowing who either artist was) The administrators reaction? You need to get new friends (ones that MICA will be happy to provide for you for [I guess] $25,000 a year )

So, Mr. Cash, this is a long winded way of saying that I will be committing myself to using the tools I have been given at this point in history; Word, Blogspot, and Outlook, to help create a log of my activities as an artist. I will write more, which will help me organize my thoughts about my own work, which should, in turn, create better work.
I will be using Outlook to create a schedule for writing (which is better than writing whenever the mood strikes…because the mood only strikes occasionally….)

I think that “hump day” writing might be the best kind. Because it is far enough away from the events of the weekend, on both sides, that it will be a good day to reflect on where I have been and where I am going.

I, of course, will also feel free to add posts if something strikes my fancy…and I think that I will keep writing these things to you Mr. Cash. I know that you have a sympathetic ear. (I must confess, that I haven’t seen your bio-pic yet…reading your autobiography has cemented in my mind what your life was like. I bet Hollywood will just hit the broad strokes)

Hopefully,
Jared