Currently, we’re a little more than half way through the semester. Things are well. I’ve kept to meditating. I fell on my skateboard the other morning- a combination of things, primarily poor shoe choice. I was wearing these all-weather kind of hiking sandals, and a new hat, and maybe a scarf. All of these things combined made me a sort of Floridian blind missile, in combination with the whipping winds gusting through corridors in downtown Philadelphia.
I have a scratch on my face- roadrash, and road rash too on both hand’s knuckles, and one of my hands I used to break my fall is swollen still, almost three days out. The swollen hand doesn’t hurt, and I can squeeze it and explore and it feels like everything’s in it’s right place, so I’ll hang out on it. Yesterday I signed up for a marathon, and ran five miles that day too. Yesterday night I went to a ceramics workshop, which I’d been attending for three weeks, led by Bronwyn L. Simons. Bronwyn is a young master, and very humble and an incredible teacher. Fresh out of MICA ceramics department, it’s a blessing to learn from her. She speaks about ceramics in geeky terms, which a drunkard buddy of mine ( a wall hangabout at the mural wall of Pete’s Pier of Crystal River had me feeling comfortable about). “That’s what it takes!”, he said, “It’s geeky shit! And you gotta love the geeky shit!”. And I do. I love the geeky shit. That’s the difference maker- breaking taboos. So, let’s talk about breaking taboos: it’s enough to make people live in a seeming satirical modality, preyed upon by, well, it doesn’t matter- (typing myself into a corner there). Um.. what I want to talk about briefly are taboos about craft in art. Not too much, it’s a lot of what PAFA’s about and I’m surrounded by it a lot- so, that’s a disclaimer, but the more I read and refine what I’m into, it’s pictures- picture making, and picture making is hard, and it takes a lot of insider knowledge. Not just exclusivity, but like a density of provable outcomes, because otherwise its a crapshoot.
A lot of the semester I was all stoked on this poetry class with Emily Abendroth. She’s great. I still am stoked about the class, but the ceramics class I feel has taken over it’s place as the most new and unfamiliar thing. All the while I wrote this neo-benshi poetry piece for Abendroth’s class, and recorded it over a video of someone playing super Mario- a scene where Mario dives into water and swims around and collects coins. It was our midterm and it provided a rush of clarity, though the buzzer caught up before I felt it was fully fully resolved.
I wonder if I will ever make a masterpiece. I think I have actually, but I guess I mean one where I set out to make it and do it. Idk. . I’ve been surprised by little masterpieces I feel. Anyway, writing that poem helped me to express some thoughts- put them out on the proverbial table, so that I could have a look and move on a little bit. There’s a line in particular; ‘a solipsistic inquiry brings me to test arbitrary barriers. “Are these but perceived? A construct?”, no sooner am I toying with walls do I realize the irony of my experiments.’
That line gives a little nod to graffiti too, but primarily shoots the all-seeing eye back onto the reader/thinker, in a way that just helped me get over it, and that’s what I’m saying- to get over it. How should a work be judged if not on visual terms? Or with regard to it’s formal qualities? THis is what I’m saying- I’m becoming one of the army of old-skill drones maybe. It’s whatever. It’s like Don Quixote as far as I can tell- not inborn.
Tonight I was thinking about how I owe it all to Cosby. I used to say that my sister up-and-picked-up my mother’s modalities and replicated them closely. Thing is, that was at a time when our mom was a mother, and taking us to church, and school, and all that, and my sister is there now- with two kids, little girly first and a little tyke two years later, trucking them to and fro- no hate. So that was a story about replicating a shadow of sorts, a mannerism. How boring, I think I thought. Anyway, I did the same. I owe it all to Cosby, in one telling. I bit his steel-os, and I’m playing a prolonged game of Cosby, it might seem. . I thought this tonight while sculpting. A lot of my visual vocabularies come from him still. He’s in his circumstances, doing well from what I can tell, and I look back to him from time to time, and I’m lucky to still be able to call him my friend. And I differ, and grow, as does my sister. And I forgive, and I talk less and less shit, as does my sister. And I have this youthful outlook again, as I see that it’s not getting any easier, yet somehow it’s all so sharp and dangerous and beautiful. I know what dying is like. It’s like . . Okay , either I don’t know or I can’t put it into words, but. . Okay, how’s this- it’s a quote from a song- that life is a dance of energy. That’s it, so dying would just be a really funky dance move- one where you spilt into a hundred worms and grass blades and seeds and flowers all at once, where no energy is lost- really funky.
I’ve been painting big, and focusing on process for better of worse. I think it’s good to explore these processes. I’m getting closer to expressing myself through paint and in visual terms I think. Sculpture is okay, too. I’m reserving the right to become a full-time sculptor late-career by planting little seeds now (learning methods, and making little doo-dads). I made some nice little ceramic pieces tonight- one in particular is a star- isn’t that how it goes? After I hit my head on the road blacktop on Sunday, I made a killer painting. It’s a 2 by one landscape orientation, with a nude reclining female model in a cast hall, with painters all around. It was the Sunday four-hour that Scott Noel runs, and he set it up. I ‘cheated’ the sketch by holding up a plexiglass plane and tracing the scene in litho crayon, then transferring that to a panel with vellum. Once my sketch was down I pre-mixed some colors from a palette I’m working out- hookers green (to be nixed), ivory black, titanium white, Indian yellow, rose madder permanent, and severes blue. The painting was a little heater. Scott told me the tale of a British portrait artist who was mediocre until he hit his head on the bottom of a pool, wherefrom he became a highly skilled savant-like draughtsman. I told him I’d need to get back out there on my skateboard then.
Scott advised I go to Boston to see paintings by George Nick, on display now at some gallery. I might. I might too go to NYC, where there’s a show hanging with work from a David Hornung, who’s book on color I’d studied from in 2012 under the guidance of Ed Toner, unbeknownst that he (David) was a funky and skilled painter! I’d tried to see his show the other weekend by going up to NYC on a China bus, but I’d arrived too late for the opening, and found myself stranded in the city on the basis that china buses don’t seem to leave after ten pm, so I walked and ran around New York, both Brooklyn and Manhattan until figuring it out and booking a train for 3am back to Philly. All that running and sleep deprivation had me inspired and my muscles have been running at a high tone.
PAFA’s in-house open studios was the other night. I saw many studios of friends. Brandillon, a friend from tinder app joined me on the basis I that she wanted to see some other show in the neighborhood. She was good company, but amidst the excitement and exhaustion that comes with a big event at the end of a taxing week, I was fried. I wanted a beer. I wanted to stay with Brandillon. It seemed like we were hitting it off. We went to a bar, then another, then to her apartment, where I met her cat, and slept, and woke. It was such a beautiful night, and morning, and I had some coffee, and before I left, I felt faint, but I left all the same, and sat down beside a wooden fence post in the grass on a corner by a lot, where traffic passed intermittently and a man asked how I was doing and I said good, and the road was piebald black and cold and wet with lakes in crags reflecting sky, and I let the cold in and I breathed. The Philadelphia marathon was that morning, and I looked up the route when I got home, and it looked not-so bad, so I looked up some other marathon things too and eventually (a few days later) signed up for one. The idea of finishing a semester, then flying down to Florida and next-day running a marathon is helping me get by I think. It’s like a big goal behind a big goal, in front of family time and holidays at the beach. And it’s got me running.
