Walls on the way out

I took a motorcycle trip to Sarasota the other weekend. I got sunburned on the way down and rode through thunderstorms on the way back up. While in Sarasota I visited Angie and her boyfriend, and Aaron Persh and some other friends too. I retrieved a canvas from the school storage racks, which had been a monkey on my back for a little while. The canvas has a sketch of a nude model I'd been working with while at Ringling. 

I'm working on this big wall at Fancy's Pets in Crystal River. It's about eighty feet long, by twelve high, with a deep stucco textured surface. The wall is going well. It's subtly stylized and it's been a kind of long term relationship, with big corrections, and moments of vivid inspiration. All in all I'm trying to keep my head on about it. Recently I emailed a picture of it to Shaun Thurston for critique, and he obliged with a long phone call, while I stood in front of the wall, and we talked about the painting and physics (light) and life. This is what creative community and friendship are all about. 

I began working on Fancy's wall at different times of the day, and experienced different people (who get off work at a certain time, etc. ) coming to talk to me. Captain Tim came up to me and said I was his guy for a mural that he wanted on his building at Pete's Pier. On his suggestion I drew up a wall and bit an Al Parker illustration, pretty directly. I put in a day's work on it today. My dad bought the paint for it. My family has been really great about supporting my passion. The paint helped to hone in on the palette in efficient time. Captain Tim's giving me 200 dollars for the wall. The plan is to wrap it up tomorrow.

I've been talking with the City of Crystal River to do a mural in city hall. When I sat down for a meeting initially, I told them that I as basically doing Fancy's for the cost of paint, and they wanted that too. I asked if they wanted to pay me, and Molly (really, it was just a meeting with Molly) gave the empty promise of exposure, and I kind of said well I don't really need the wall. And then I kind of entertained the idea and kind-of rolled and apologized for being a diva, and said yeah, it could work. So I've been working on that sketch, and contacted a biologist for consultations regarding native flora and fauna, and have gone through revisions, and the city payed my way in to Three Sisters Springs Park for research, and it's been pretty good and I have a design in development. Now that I have a decent sketch, and also now that I've got two distinct paying exterior walls, I went back to the city and asked Molly for 200 dollars to do this mural, and otherwise I don't feel very motivated to do it. So I'm waiting on a call from them. I'm sitting on a good design, so I'm happy and sitting pretty. 

That's it. Shaun pitched a wall in October for a mural festival in Jacksonville, to which I jumped. I think I'll have a mural portfolio I can stand by for a little while pretty soon. I'm twenty-seven years old now. 

Motorcycle Trip

Plan has gone not terribly, but not operating at a ten. A friend of mine quotes some study (he read it in a book about quitting smoking) that stating intention offsets motivation to preform the task. That’s not written too clearly, but I guess some relief occurs, or sense of accomplishment by stating, you get the idea. 

I’m very sore now. I’ve been sore for a week, escalating due to my engagements. Habitat for humanity had me erecting interior frames, which was harder work than I was used to I guess. Since, I’ve been waking later, missing the most recent Habitat shift entirely. The work on the wall has been equal in hours per session, but it seems the nature of the work has changed, as I am fatigued. I like the feeling somewhat. It helps to justify the downtime as healing time. After I overslept for my Habitat shift, I geared up for a motorcycle trip down to Sarasota, to close loose ends. These included picking up my big sketch on canvas of a model. I called Ringling campus police that let me into Bayou103, where I ripped it off its eight by five foot support, folded it up, and got off campus for the last time in likely a long time. Another thing I went down for was to see Angie before she headed off to New York for a few weeks before her next semester starts up again at Ringling. Turns out, her boyfriend (whom I like), also had plans of spending (as much as possible) time with her before she left. Angie and I got some conversation in anyhow. 

I’ve kept to meditating, but after the Sarasota trip, I feel that the drive is gone. The motorcycle trip down there I left my arms bare to the sun, and got a good red bake on my forearms. I didn’t eat much while in Sarasota. On the trip back there were scattered thunderstorms, for which I took breaks, and made rain predictions and risky stretches on wet roads. I took a three hour break half way through. I controlled my breathing and kept an eagle eye. In total the trip back took eight hours. When I got home, the parents were gone somewhere, and the house was staged, and lit, and outside there was a heavy fog and cold light. I rolled a joint. 

That motorcycle trip had me questioning the existence of a higher power afterward, and again, my meditation habit has been in question of late (not that it would reason to be). Then I saw some video with Elon Musk suggesting our likelihood of being actually in a simulation, and also the existence of a higher power as one of two-hundred billion versions of ourselves that is in control of the simulation. I entertained that the motorcycle trip was carried out by the god version of myself; the in-control-one-in-two-hundred-billion self. I had a one in two hundred billion experience. 

Yesterday I painted on the wall. The business owner came to our house directly and asked me to change the design of the wall. This was after three design meetings, with approvals all along the way. Now, I’m kind of free-painting on the wall, painting blind. Today, I went to the wall and felt too pooped to start. I’m taking the weekend, and we’ll see what comes. I need to think about the painting in a wholistic sense as it comes to a close. I’m getting closed to finishing, maybe. 

I’ve got a couple offers on the table for other mural projects. I won’t go into details, but it would be special circumstances indeed to take on more mural projects at the moment. 

I'd dropped off four glass sculptures with Debbie at the local glass studio before setting down to Sarasota, and she fired two in my absence. They did not turn out. Whereas my experience in school and my understanding from reading stated a fourty-hour kiln cycle, Debbie tried to get away with a four hour cycle, keeping the glass at 1500degrees for ten minutes, rather than two hours, with relative abbreviations throughout. Luckily, she chose a good couple to experiment on, and I'll be shopping around for a kiln-relationship in Philadelphia tentatively. I bought some plaster-silica mix from her, and said goodbye for now. The idea now is to make a bunch of molds, and weigh out my glass, to take to Philly to try to get a glass caster's kiln to use. 

Also before Sarasota, I went diving in Three Sister's Springs, for reference videos to assist with the design of a mural for City Hall's Visitor's Center. The dive was like the motorcycle trip- cold, wet, eerie, with an acute earthy deathy quality. The springs were nice and scenic, however without sun on that day, the swim out to it in the river with tannic black water, was unsettling, and again, the cold. 

That's it. Looking at the calendar, it's more about wrapping up here in Crystal River than spreading out. Let's see if I keep my cool. Who am I talking to?- this could be a simulation. . .