Fears

I was talking to someone the other day about my abject fear of airplanes and boats. It got me thinking about how emotionally distant I tend to be from my own work. I rarely work on the places that scare me. I try to control, define, master. I often fail, on many levels.

The anxiety I generally feel when creating is not unlike the anxiety I feel when one of those big-button fears gets pushed. Like an unruly, oppositional child my work defies me. It is frustrating and draining, and making failure after failure often challenges my motivation to continue working.

Another definition of work is Function. Art is such a constant presence in my life that when the work isn't working, it seems that nothing functions well, like a record skipping a groove: I lose my place.

There is no endgame, I am realizing. There is just the work. So whether strapped to a chair in the middle of the sky, or floating on a boat in the middle of the ocean, or staring at a blank canvas, or a pile of clay, or that piece of wood, the horizon is the same--the unknown goes in all directions.

Do I contradict myself? Yes, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes. ~ Walt Whitman

words for autumn

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by. Now overlap the sundials with your shadows, and on the meadows let the wind go free. Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine; grant them a few more warm transparent days,urge them on to fulfillment then, and press the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

The benefits of an injury

For the last several months, I have pushed through physical pain so that I could continue doing my bread & butter job, massage therapy. While I have part time gigs doing other non-bodywork things, I have depended on massage to make ends meet for almost the last 12 years. Despite regular self care--ice packs, salt baths, liniment rubs nearly daily, and receiving bodywork (roughly every 2-3 months --not enough, really)--my neck and shoulder decided they had enough and I wound up dislocating my collarbone after a particularly strenuous shift.

The soft tissue around the joint puffed up like a souffle. I spent 2 days under an ice pack and was finally able to get the tissue and the joint treated with acupuncture and medical massage. As I allow myself to rest, I feel my body becoming aware of itself. I notice how my body uses energy as I move, and enjoy the transition from forcing my body to work beyond its capabilities to respecting my limits.

Naturally, this has consequences in my life. I cannot work (do massage) right now, and while this makes my body happy, my bank account is losing an alarming amount of weight rather quickly. Trade-off.

Fluxus is the watchword of the day as my entire life moves into ambiguity for the next month or so: work, health, school, money. The constant of spiritual practice helps me stay grounded, as does the support of my amazing friends, yet I also feel a crisis of faith--I was called to my path, but lately it is steep, rocky, hard to pass. Can I make it?

This injury is a blessing in disguise because it makes me rest and consider my next move; I am forced to make choices that support my calling--letting go of a safe, secure job that drained me of the energy to make art and opening my hand to receive the next right thing. Scary, but also exhilarating.

Dash Snow

Mixed feelings about the passing of 27 year old Dash Snow, an itinerant graffiti artist/debaucher extraordinaire. A descendant of the American Medici--the De Menil family--I find great (unintentional) irony in his choice to distance himself from the greatest art family in the US by becoming an artist himself. Way to rebel Dash. He died of --what else?!--a drug overdose. Another casualty at 27, along with Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix and Dash's likely alter-ego/inspiration, Jean-Michel Basquiat.

I wonder about the transgressive culture that breeds these feral creatures only to document their self destruction and then profit from the sale. I question the culture of sensationalism that says this brand of living is somehow more intense, or more intensely lived than someone living a more private, interior intensity. I don't prefer being hit over the head with obvious, ham-handed metaphors, thank you.

And I am so very tired of attempts to convince me that his short life is so valuable because he chose to be transgressive, or that he is somehow original. Dash, it's all been done, son. I can appreciate the curiosity of living outside a mainstream population, but that does not necessarily make a person daring, interesting, or original. Perhaps it just means they are homeless, and without a certain, shall we say, pedigree.

Anyway. I am sorry for the loss for his obviously devoted friends, his girlfriend, and their 2 year old little girl. There are so many that will miss the human role he played in their life, regardless of the many opinions about his contribution to art.

More figure studies

Figure with Gray

colored pencil on Ingres

Man Sleeping
charcoal on Ingres



Man
charcoal on Arches

Woman

conte on Ingres

space

What a nutty month June was! 3 professional exams, 2 academic exams in my art history class, 2 continuing ed classes for my massage license, plus work. I didn't work in my studio at all in June, and the disconnect feels foreign and awkward, like seeing a lover for the first time after a big fight.

July allows more space; my exams and continuing ed courses are finished, and my work schedule has evened out. When I entered my studio yesterday, just taking stock, the sense of absence was palpable. Noticing that fire in the belly to just work, take the ideas from my sketchbook and make things happen. Yeah.

Guardian UK Art and Design Blog

I have wondered what the model's experience is like since I am always on the looking side of the easel, rather than the one being looked at. I happen to like it that way--being seen is not something I feel entirely comfortable with. (As a child, my favored superpower was usually invisibility, a la Violet from The Incredibles.) But this entry on the Guardian UK Art and Design Blog details the experience of one model as she sat for painter Diarmuid Kelley. The finished portrait--above-- is entitled "The King of Spain."

CFAM--Andy Warhol: Personalities

Until next January, Warhol's Polaroids will be on display at Rollins College's Cornell Fine Arts Museum. Just couldn't resist that one of the Governor of Collie Fornia.

Quote of the Day

That for which the public reproaches you, cultivate. It is you. -- Jean Cocteau

Quote of the Day

Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic. - Ambrose Bierce

Skull A Day

This is the book cover for Noah Scalin's Skull A Day project. His work evolved from a blog into a book, and now asks for submissions to continue the daily project.

He made skulls from food, trash, paper, traditional art media, etc. Definitely worth a look.

I love this guy, partly because I enjoy El Dia de Los Muertos, and skulls are a major motif of that holiday. Also, I was impressed by his ingenuity with materials.

(I like materials.)

Weather

The weather has blown hot and cold this week, uncharacteristic for this time of year. My herbs are still alive on the porch, a little dry and curled from the wind, but opening back up under the warmth of the sun.

I am re reading a good book in slow, deliberate moments. A chapter here. A few sentences there. In between quotidian things I steal these words like kisses and savor them. They are bringing me back to life.

Like my windblown, beleagured herbs I too unfold, emerge, open back up under the warmth of the sun and well chosen inspiration.

I have returned.

Hibernation

It has been two months since my last confession--I mean, post.

For the time being I will be taking a break from this blog while I pursue some real-life things that need attention. I will be back.

Be well.

Listening Post

Bowmboi by Rokia Traore

The Silver Tree by Lisa Gerrard

Songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder

...mp3s don't have art on the covers...because there are no covers. boo. hiss.

Reading List

Reading Judas... (Pagels and King)

Seven Days in the Art World (Thornton)

Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)


I noticed a bigger ad campaign for the electronic reading devices at the bookstore and on amazon. This makes me sad; though no Luddite, I mourn the way technology takes over our experience of the world, and bleeds it of sensuality. I much prefer the sensation--and delight--of opening a personal letter, in someone's own handwriting, partly because I know they touched the same thing I now hold in my hands.

Books are also a conscious experience--the feel and weight of the paper between my fingers, the way the page sounds as it turns, the smell of ink (ahh, "new book" smell). All those words seeping into the imagination...

study from life

Steve

On Bullsh*t

The Emperor has a "wardrobe malfunction."

Recommended Reading: On Bullshit by H.G. Frankfurt

Curiouser and Curiouser...

Thus spake Alice. She must have been in art school.

This one time...

I am dating myself here, but I loooooove Schoolhouse Rock. My favorite was Grammar Rock Verb; it sounded a little funky, like the music I was raised on--namely anything on Soul Train.

Soul Train ruled. I still remember seeing the Gap Band perform on the brightly lit stage, and Don Cornelius ending every broadcast with his deep voice intoning "Peace.....and Soul." So, imagine how green I turned when Cameron Diaz got to dance under the Soul Train sign with her Soul Train aisle made of people instead of stuffed animals (as mine always were) in "Charlie's Angels." Sigh.

Now, if only I could get my hands on some Pop Rocks, this reminiscing would be complete.

still life (apple)

oil on canvas, 6x6

still life (pears)

oil on canvas, 11x14

pearls before swine?

Holding a grudge: drinking some poison every day expecting the other person to die.

(author unknown)

acrylic figure study

acrylic and charcoal on illustration board, 8x10

Speechless

So, there is an artist/baker named Kittiwat Unarrom in Thailand making body parts out of bread. And it's edible. He is an MFA student who painted portraits as an undergrad, and has since found his new medium to be bread dough, apropos because his family owns a bakery.

If you can't resist seeing more, here's a video. It isn't in English, but who cares, really, when seeing ...bread...?

figure study, from life

charcoal on arches, 22x30

Ripple

This piece is my response to an assignment in my advanced painting class earlier this term. We were instructed to respond to the word "chair."

My take on "chair" corresponded with the collapse of the economic powerhouses on Wall Street; for me this seemed ironic because the economic meltdown occurred over the anniversary of 9/11. I drew a correlation between the apparent decay of personal civil liberties arising from increased government scrutiny of individuals while the government simultaneously turned a blind eye to the rampant greed and speculation on Wall Street.

Sprawl, finished

Sprawl

acrylic on canvas, 36x48

I added a gloss medium over the just the figures once it was completed, to add a more plastic effect to the painting.

Kumi Yamashita

Origami

2005. Light, Aluminum, Shadow

Description: The each color sheet on the wall, lit from the right, casts a silhouette of a profile.

(from http://www.kumiyamashita.com/)