At the beach now

I’m at Panama City Beach now, spending the winter break with my family (parents, sister, in laws, and two grandmothers) at two beach condos with periodic visits to my sister’s house. I’m an uncle to a 3 year old girl called Loxie, and a one year old boy named Gideon. They’re both very healthy and very sweet. I have noticed I’m not very interested in them. Tonight I have been displaced from my parent’s condo by occasion that the niece and nephew have been foistered off onto the grandparents, and the room I was staying in is now occupied by a sleeping baby. The feeling of staying away from the baby is a natural one to me. It’s just lying alone in that room now, with my parents in another room, so strange. But it would be much more strange to me to be in there as well, so I’m downstairs with the old folks, and it feels better, and maybe I should’ve been sleeping here all along. I’m more motivated to go to bed early and wake early with my grandmothers around. Somehow I’m a little more overt in my irresponsibility when around my parents. I wonder why this is. I’m a lot more at peace in my mind now around this family group. I don’t get so angry. When something comes up, like tonight’s being displaced by a baby, talking was done on my behalf about how unbearable I was in my reaction to the news. Thing was I didn’t react. So with greater clarity I saw that my upset as instrumental to their joined production, would go on regardless of my participation. 

The attitude that’s leveled me out shines itself now in my third night away from school. I will sleep on a couch, not as planned. The attitude that’s leveled me out has had to do with fatalism, and the short term idea that assumed humility is the same as humility, that work will be of the same value coming from me indiscriminate as to how I spend my time- it’s an energy thing- what I bring, and I’ve got what I’ve got and cultivation of a certain flavor will be at the expense of another, and since you can’t please people and no one cares, might as well do what you want. Learning the world’s big, and the bigness of it helps. Also, choosing to accept this phase of my life as one of hard work. Pouring into the work in one way is likely to yield a result different from that using another method, and it’s only a matter of polemic as to better or worse indiscriminate to energies and faculties employed. Ooph, where am I? So I’m going to sleep on a couch tonight one night out of 4 into the winter break, and that’s kind of like how it has been for me in the school semester preceding. Actually, during the semester my sleeping place was half and half between my apartment and the school. 

My parents have been really nice to me, especially my dad. I’m enjoying much more independence, which, without a schedule to be accountable to, I’ve translated into poor sleep habits (who am I kidding- during school my sleep was spotty and often felt insufficient; though I would do it the same exact way again). Indeed I’m enjoying my break, and have had a good semester; perhaps they are resultant of one another. I worked hard knowing I would be on the beach, and I am now enjoying the beach, knowing I have worked hard. What’s more is I have a killer girlfriend. I am really thrilled about my girlfriend. She even reads my blog. It’s incredible how incredible she is. She is that incredible. 

I’ve been watching some Pewdiepie videos on YouTube, and it’s influenced my speech. I’m grateful for it, as he’s got an ease about him, and manages to string together words in an associative manner that seems so natural to those to whom English is not their first or only language. The blend is very charming. I’m also spending time watching video tutorials in softwares that might be of use to me for the coming semester. I don’t think our school has a  license for Maya or Zbrush. No worries, I am investing my time in watching tutorials for Blender. 

My brother in law has got a 3D printer and scanner, because he makes money and wants to be able to print prototypes for engineering projects. He’s offered me to use them. Likewise my sister has a vinyl plotter. If I were to come up with files, I could send them via mail and have them printed and sent back to PAFA. These things probably won’t happen. 

I will be taking a 3D printing class next semester through the CE department. The course is taught by the head of our sculpture department, Rob Roesch. My decision to sign up for this has to do with being under his tutelage, as well as building a professional and an interpersonal relationship with him. He is a panelist for scholarship consideration at the Annual Student Exhibition. When asked, other adults like to be demurring in regards to placing importance on the ASE, or on vying for scholarship etc., emphasizing how small this is in the grand scheme, and all that and I absolutely agree. That said, how fun it is to see black, and lose yourself in the fervor of a living breathing studio; to breathe purpose and fire! It’s all I can think about. There’s this scholarship that puts you on for another year- it’s like (and I’m phrasing it like, and thinking about it like) some sort of reality tv pageantry leading up to some big reveal. The scholarship is awarded based on the wall. I do want to keep a level head about me in relation to not hanging an ironic wall- which I have done- I have hung, about half the time,  ugly and ironic shows. Anyway, I can’t speak to what I will do, as that’s something else. 

At the beach here, I am investing in some cartoon penciling, and some inking. I have brought along traditional gouache, as it’s always a bummer to want to do color, and you’ve only got ink, but thus far, I’m wholly satisfied without color. 

I am making outlines for projects that I am following and compiling; that’s my goal while here- to design projects, compile the drawings for them, draw for them, ink, and that’s it I guess. Then, I’ll assemble them into books at PAFA when I get back- that’s the plan. 

Alas, I had a great few ideas while in the car driving to the beach, (my journey to get here was 6amPHL>ORL flight, 12pm rental car>3pm Vero Beach to visit a grandma, 5:30pm Titusville to pick up another grandma, Nighttime Crystal River to be with parents and return the rental car, then next day driving to the beach with dad in his truck), among them to make cast sculpture directly from negative molds made into the beach sand. Yesterday, I procured some quick-set cement and gave it a try. Pushing sculptural shapes down into the semi-wet sand then pouring the mixed cement, I got a few keeper sculptures and a few junkers. It was a successful experiment. I also brought along an underwater camera, and thought the natural next phase of this would be to film these sculptures in an interesting environment, namely the rocky crop of a nearby jetty. 

I won’t have time for it all. I will have to choose. 

Latter half of summer and Ringling in Sarasota

The latter half of my summer was a blast. I'd developed an M.O. in Brooklyn- waking up to get out to class (interdisciplinary writing workshop at Art Students League, switched from Peter Cox's figure class), and studio time, and figure drawing opportunities at the Society of Illustrators and at Spring Studio in Chinatown. I busked with my drawings from these sessions a few times in Brooklyn, and just the other weekend here in Sarasota with successful sales. What a great feeling it is to represent your own work, and to sell directly to interested peoples. I hope to go to Miami with my many drawings and paintings from school and otherwise, to sit with during Art Basel coming up in December.
I hung this flyer in a practice/rehearsal space in Brooklyn with my contact info on it:

One morning while in my writing/sculpture class I received a text from a Larry, one of the members of Hopeless Otis. He told me that their drummer just dropped out, and they needed someone to fill in for two short long-weekend tours. He sent me a link to their music. I listened to the songs briefly and felt a fun project in the works. The music was punk, and also positive in tone. On their website it says "from New York City. Aiming to bring back positivity to punk rock." Larry invited me to one of their shows in a public park. I went, and saw a bunch of red flags in the way of day-drunk forty-year-olds and circle-jerk music-making. I thought I was going to flake. The scene was the thing I didn't like about being in bands and this scene looked terrible. I took a short walk to weigh out the dialectic. Really, the whole thing was about adventure. The adventure would not really be on my terms- the cities, the destinations, etc., but did I want to do it at all? Yes, is the best I could come up with, or maybe with a curiosity to find out. I knew this would make a good story- almost too good- like, "what  did you do this summer?", "Oh I joined a punk rock band in New York for a tour". Pretty swag. Anyways, they hadn't even played yet and I was over a few blocks away and talking myself into joining this band, so I came back and saw them near the stage, Larry, Joe, and the flaky drummer Eddie, loading in their equipment. I watched their show, and knew some of the songs from listening to them in preparation for playing with them. The show suffered from a disinterested drummer, Eddie. I guess the band had been together for about seven years by this point, and I would not be their first fill-in for Eddie's flakiness. Yeah, he just played through the tunes (flawlessly) with seemingly zero interest. I can kind-of relate- I'd been in bands where I was done with the song before it started- but in these instances you've really got to pull it up from its bootstraps, not check out and autopilot the set. I mean, what do I know? After their set, I gave them their space, and let them pack up. Part of me was still on the fence as to whether or not to speak with them and come-out as the interested potential fill-in drummer from the text message thread. I thought about class a bunch. These boys were working men, and they wrote songs about it, and about minimum wage, and they lived in Queens, and all tis stuff. Wouldn't it be better to turn this down and wait out for a freakier arrangement of more likeminded intellectuals to respond to my inquiry. It's like I dropped a lure into a pond and hooked a catfish. So I walk up to Larry (who I perceive, rightly, as Larry, tall thick with a big little beard and crooked warm smile), and introduce myself. I walk parole with the band back to the mini-van, where they are loading-out. I tell them that it seems do-able, and that it was nice to meet them. I went somewhere else at that point, maybe a figure drawing session, as I was in SoHo, or maybe the korean barbecue spot, where I became a known regular, always ordering a taro smoothie and an order of straw mushrooms that were prepared spicy. I would always sit alone at a table nearby the reception counter.
I practiced the songs like crazy- Hopeless Otis's songs.

Thanksgiving Break

Wednesday after class, I hung around school, and worked late into the night; until 4. I slept at school, then went home to prepare food to share for a thanksgiving that I'd been invited to by Cindy, a PAFA student who is older and has had a full Nursing career, and is a world champion weightlifter. When I bring up the weightlifter, she puts in qualifiers like 'in my age, in my division, in my weight class', an I say 'no, you're a champion. You're the best one'. her flight to the world championships was delayed. The event was in Australia, and she arrived just in time for weigh in, and she was livid. She funneled that rage into her lifting and won first place.

I made cauliflower and kale, with garlic. Cindy picked me up from PAFA and drove me to her house (and later back). I met her immediate family which consisted of her husband, her daughter of 26 who was studying 3d computer graphics modeling, her son of 29 who studied sustainable ag and was bound to go live in Maine too, her oldest son of mid-thirties and his wife who were about to move to Naples Florida for the husband to work as a private chef for some rich guy, and her sister and niece, and her adopted son and his family, and the two dogs. Cindy cooked and all of the food was incredible. All of the staples appeared, in addition to a vegetable pie, which has to be my new favorite food.

Cindy texted me later to say that I was a welcome presence and that her kids enjoyed talking with me, (which was a super welcome thing to hear because I didn't know if I was pestering them). Thanks Cindy.

The next day I slept until 2pm, then went to my girlfriend's house, whereupon I slept until 6am this morning. Frances and I (oh yeah, dear reader, we got back together, it's been good for a couple months. I told her I make a better boyfriend the second time around, which is true, and although all of my red flags remain, namely the no wife, no kids, art first, we've had a mutually beneficial thing going), split in the morning to reconvene after lunch. We met at PAFA, then took a train to a suburb to go to one of her friend's pie eating event- basically thanksgiving leftovers pie-feast. It was okay, but admittedly one of those things that could put stress on a relationship, as I felt the clock ticking and the small talk was dull; despite a foray into death as a subject.

The choice not to talk about race around those who have built an identity around race reparations, work etc. hung heavy. Like I'm down to talk about race, and what we can do, but there were straw man stories that went nowhere and met with guffaws which is basically what's wrong to me. There's no story that can cleanse the shameful practices of breeding or continuing on at all, to me, I think, when I get into those conversations. On the way home I had some excess energy and two co-pie-eaters drove us back to our respective spots- I chose to return the school, wherefrom I write you. They pointed out a public arts project of giant light-up poles in the middle of the median on Broad street. Why do we need giant light-up poles down Broad Street? We went a few blocks and I said, 'yeah, I hate those lights', and I was not met with acceptance, but rather 'what, those lights?' and referring to the civic center. 'Well, those lights to are a sin'. And Frances might have smiled at the grumpiness, and I think I mentioned somehow the plastic continent in the ocean, and that that's what we need to weigh our actions against, and that was my big point for the night.
The end.

So I have to do these comics, and they're driving me mad, because they are contextualized under 'Adult Supervision', which either means they're lewd or profound, or a combination, or potentially offensive, etc. we chose this I imagine to give us a lot of headroom concept wise, but egads it's a loaded gun. So I'm writing a little bit to get some of the wiggles out, and hopefully I'l get a good rhythmic set of panels up off the ground that I can work with. In the meantime, a bunch of disjointed parts, Kemeys.

Crit with Stuart

After a crit with Dan, I had another with Stewart at 3. Since our last crit, I'd installed tables and gone though one and a half cycles of paintings, maybe two. The studio reset itself just before Thanksgiving break, with I greatly enjoyed as I became free of some paint pit paintings. I pulled out a couple success paintings from those cycles, and hung out in a studio with a big fabric work-in-progress tacked to the big wall. Stewart said he had turned around after seeing the big colorful wall, as he thought he was in the wrong studio. No, I assured him, this is the spot. He said that the big painting (the 'feelie' piece tacked up to a bedsheets with other colored fabrics tacked and sewn in, like a big fabric collage in infancy) was unlike my paintings. He said that it celebrates color, whereas my paintings aren't about color. I'd kind of thought my paintings were about color enough. . Somewhat. Like, with my colorblindenss I thought the color experimentation I was doing made them about color, but when this crit came it made sense and I accepted it. So not only was Ken Kewley's thing good and welcome, but it opened collage, which might have opened color and shapes again to me- an aspect of paintings I have been very skeptical of. When it's said that my work celebrates color and shapes, I think that person is stupid- potentially. I mean, yeah, it's colors and shapes, let's move on though because I'm trying to communicate here. 

Stewart asked if I still had that little book. It was a book of a Wilfred Owen poem that I'd illustrated and assembled. It was direct collage in a two inch by 3/4inch book, bound with tape and PVA. I did still have it outside in a storage rack. He bought it off me for $20, and I gave him a reproduction that I'd made of it in an edition of eight too. 

I have one crit with each of my critics left to go this semester. I've done somewhat of a successful arc with each of them, and I think I've done good. Where to go from here?

 For Jessica, I'm going to make some beautiful illustrations for a comic book project that I've been doing with my friends. Our next critique is on December 3rd, and by that time I'll have a cover and two pages of interiors done to show her. Last week I sat in on one of her classes, in an emergency illustration refresher, so I could ensure my submissions will be of high quality. I've got two interior pages, but I am not sure if the story is strong enough yet to justify the time and labor etc that I've yet to put in. Yikes. 

For Didier, my assignment is to give my paintings a fair try- to actually go for it in terms of scale and energies etc, and not just 'scale up' but to go for it. 

And for Stuart, it is to make make make, and be engaged. For Stuart it's going to be a lot of starts, and round the clock vigilance. No sleep, mindfulness, bycatch. 

Crit with Dan Miller

I saw Dan Miller had his sign up sheet scarcely populated the day before his rounds, so I signed up for a 1:30 critique.

I'd prepared a comfy chair and a portfolio of 2D drawings from my 666 Serpents drawing project that I'm doing for another class.

Well, he sits in the chair, and I'm not guiding him to the drawings, so we talk a bit about what's in front of us in regards to the studio- and it's moderately good news.

After the Ken Kewley workshop I took out my 'feelie' project that I'd worked on over the summer. It is a felt painting and the joke is that it is also a 'felt' painting. It looks like a flag that my mom would've hung at our old house in Fort Meyers; (my mom got into the habit of hanging seasonal flags outside of our house. They were cute, and it was fun to see them rotate.)

Dan talked about how this piece makes him think of a travel poster, and that if he were to see it as an advertisement, he would like to go there. I thought this a high compliment. I brought up Rob Roesch and a conversation I'd had about 'feelies'- a polemic term referring to works of art that are like 70's was was pedal novelty stuff, and Dan recoiled, because I think I was subconsciously asking him if he cross=thought about his work in a context of 'feelies', which, I.e. hipster bullshit. Seeing a slight panic on his expression I flipped the conversation around, to change the topic because I thought I'd hit a nerve. .

I know Dan's a conservative guy, or a libertarian, or something. He has a video where he's asked if he listens to Rush Limbaugh, and he says "I'm an equal opportunity listener", so I liked that.

I kind of chilled out with Dan, because he's an old man and doesn't need all this pugilistic foolery. He wasn't stoked on my snake drawings, (and neither am I. . ) but,  on one kind of paused and said "well, this is good, but there's no background, and you see it the first time and it's cool, but then you keep seeing it and it gets so tired. Put a background on it." so That's good. No more objects in space, or rather deliberate objects in space..

Another thing is his idea for the student show. It's confirmation of something special to me. I keep hearing it. Just 'do this'; and 'this' referring to how I organize my studio. Dan mentioned an unforgettable wall where the kid just hung everything he loved. The kid sounded by way of allusion autistic or something. Anyway, that's in contention for how I might do the Student Exhibition wall.

Thanks Dan.

Comic Panels

This page from a zone rates pretty highly on the 'hipster bullshit' chart, but it's a foray into graphic novel/comic that I'm excited about. As an abstraction, it reads as like a batman comic, which despite my inclinations to talk shit on batman (though, aside from corporate, what's not to like). . I like batman just fine. 

Panels are me in studio having brain block, individual reading, milieu of contemporary detritus, school vending machine with three selections which are on my mind often; a snickers bar, a honey bun, and a pack of gum, then the bottom quadrant is the concentration of self indulgence/ hipster bullshit. 

I've stopped loading images on here, but I think I should start it up again.


This is intended for an open call PAFA illustration zine (let's see if they take it). Maybe I'm trying to troll them. TBH I was trolling Ringling. Nevertheless media literacy should prevail; I hope. I hope someone tells me that it's hipster bullshit.

I hope someone who doesn't know me sees it's repellents and its redeemers. It's not brilliant, but different. I'm just glad it looks like a batman at a glance. 

Ken Kewley workshop and insights.

i took a workshop over the weekend with Ken Kewley, who has a website I’m pretty sure, if you want to look him up. He’s been doing these workshops for a while each semester at PAFA. I felt like after it, I had an insight as to pafa’s Secret weapon. What’s funny is he didn’t refer to painting concepts  that much (like Stewart preceding), and mentioned the phenomenon that for what’s said, the opposite is true, but through the two 9-5 days, we collaged panited papers and ran color copies then collaged into those, then greyscale copies, then collaged into those, so by the end we had about a hundred little compositions apiece.

Now I feel like I can see kanevsky, and... who else.. Thomas. And mostly those two.

Thomas. I’ve alluded to before. Thomas is a workhorse, he’s the PAFA pace-horse. That’s all I’ll say.

I hung all of my collages outside the studio, and showed Ken on his way out the building, much to his delight. His artist friends are Stewart Shils, Isreal Hirschberg, Ben Huberman, and Nancy Gruskin. He doesn’t think he knows David Hornung, but the name rings a bell. Michael Gallagher doesn’t know David Hornung either. Michael Gallagher curateda show with Ken’s work a few years back.

Ken did say something about student work when Rachel and I kind of cornered him outside our studio on his way out the building. Life is fine, and there’s such beauty, and you recognize it because it’s already inside of you - that sense of beauty- you know what to look for in a way— there’s a couple things that happen when you go out in search of a beautiful landscape- you have this Corot in your head, and you set out to look for a Corot, and you spend a lot of time. Well, the Corot’s aren’t out there. They’re made up. Well, they are and they aren’t. And you find the spot, and set up, and you look behind you and it’s way better.

The student sees it and puts it in, but it ruins the painting. The student doesn’t get that a painting is being made. The painting is different from the reality, and reality is subjective anyway, so the painting is the reality.

My paintings were much improved today. That he and Stewart are buds is funny; as Ken showed tons of Braque whose solutions were often to bring in a pair of colors to bracket in the painting, whereas Stewart (though he hardly mentioned painting terms directly) consistently pointed out the differences in colors that a plebeian might make on mix for (or maybe Braque)- the differences between the shadow colors of one window sill compared to those of another comes to mind. I’ll never forget  staring into such obscure spots in the landscape with Stuart and witnessing the ‘same’ become radically different. . Stewart didn’t say this but hyper generalization in some things, hyper specificity in others. Ken is balance balance resolve. Ken also has fun with the painting in progress, and makes frame animations of the sequences.

Small sweep

A friend of mine offered some food. It’s a bit out that I’m by some standards an anorexic. I don’t think I’m anything, but for the sake of moving on, I’d like to acknowledge that food is a lot of what I think about, and coming into adulthood, the automatic ‘I’m hungry’, or my body will deal with it has not followed. Have I been influenced by outsiders, older people? Undoubtedly, but nonetheless it is something I’m noticing, and that I can talk about it is a good sign, as it means to some extent I have been through it- through being the operative term. … I keep pulling benders (sleepless nights, long painting days; inconsistencies, mixups) to get to paintings. I’m not saying that paintings need to come from benders, but rather that paintings need to be stolen, or captured, or waited out, or come up upon, and the irregularities of life mean that the living paintings need to be found in off times and in-betweens. 

Spending a weekend with Stewart Shils was impactful. In short, it was a return to a painting-thin and fast modality, with an emphasis on color reverence, hierarchies, and brush language (or movement). It was a glimpse down the road thirty years. And I’m Very grateful to have been in attendance. 

I saw Thomas on the elevator a few days later and asked how his painting was going, and made an analogy though now I forgot about what, and his analogy was that he’d just been given a Ferrari, and had to kind of learn how to handle it, and I fucking loved that, and it’s what I think about when I paint now.. Stewart asks ‘how is this moment different from all the rest?’, and is brave in mixing his colors. He’s fast, he’s clean; he wears gloves and an apron, his mixtures (I’m tempted to characterize as blonde, though not necessarily) are complex, but not pretentiously so, and by my account are true mixtures. (This to contextualize my ‘learned’ schemes and lazy lazy shortcuts; I even alluded often to ‘hacking’ a painting, as if I knew what the fuck was going on) 

This morning it was pouring rain. Pouring. My ceiling used to leak, but no longer does and I wonder if it’s been fixed, or if I’m to expect a big break in my luck soon. I didn’t have morning class. I thought I’d maybe wake inspired to make a batch of cookies, but as it goes I woke to realize how manic I’d been, and that by the grace of god, the sleep had brought back some health and clarity, and I could have even more, so I slept in! I must have looked incorrectly at my calendar, as I thought I had a critique at 10 am with Didier William. I must have looked this morning upon waking at 10- I’d already basically missed it. I took it as a loss, and slept a couple more hours. When I went to the bathroom and pissed, and came back to the bed to lie on my back I realized that THAT was true clarity, and this, THIS is true clarity, and after a moment sat up and THAT was true clarity. I had another critique at 1:30 with Stewart (though again I was mistaken- it was for tomorrow’s afternoon), and I had to catch a trolley before I could meditate, lest I miss it. I used the last berg of my deodorant, though there’s always a little left, it’s just a matter of how long you’re going to play that bergy-plastic-sheath game before the deodorant package is considered trash. I considered breaking out the shirts again, as when it rains up here I think of Jamaicans wading through wet and flooded streets; and you have to dry your feet- so shorts would do well for wicking. Things aren’t like that up here, so I wore pants. I’m committed to pants for the season. Everything’s falling apart (clothes-wise) but I’ll make it through winter no problem.  

Williams crit last time was that I could make words but not worlds. I wonder if this is a critique of his own work. To make worlds I believe would be illustration. 

A video I watched was about someone dying of cancer, and she said, you’ll know dying when what you take in takes away rather than adds to. 

When I know I’m dying, I do not eat, and that has been a focus of mine. Because food at that point would take away; there’s no winning. 

Thus capital a Art makes its polemic through the young. It’s the taking in that’s encouraged. Taking in, taking in. But when you cannot take in any longer without dying, you must put out, give; illustrate. 

I think of Picasso or Degas here. Eat eat eat, then, shit? Maybe I’m thinking too lightly of a fantasy 60 year old composer laughing and making pictures ‘flick of the wrist’, ‘to ha e conquered the beast’. It probably doesn’t get any easier. Rumor is it gets harder; not to be shitty. 

So the illustrators are mature and wise in some ways. They don’t feign profundity for some historian’s eye. They make something clear, even if it’s disparate. 

What’s unfortunate for the young illustrator is that they have a lackluster skill set, and sometimes a shallow base of experience. It takes a great measure of self awareness and maturity to acquire the skill set and an understanding of ‘what makes this moment different from all other moments’, to make something of power. The illustrators’ impulse is profound, and the illustrators’ journey long. 

Auto-Dictated entry

 OK so although I have, well, I guess I can say here that I learned about auto dictation on the iPad so, you know, I’m talking into my iPad now and it's just what the government wants; kind of funny. So maybe we can expect my “writing style" to sound more fluid. Also less dirtiness; for some reason I think I want to see the dirty words; a feeling of taboo which I think is a big driver and kind of an engine for my work; which is kind of terrifying. But, you know, I don’t know. Okay, I want to go a little further on that yeah I think I’m super privileged despite all the weird stuff to happen so I do have to __traverse_ bad experiences and stuff like that but at the same time it's kind of hard to go wrong being the son of a doctor in Florida and shit like that going to good schools and basically having a family that we could afford to participate in raising me and especially before middle school there is a kind of team around my household. 

Some experiences like a kind of you know, between our house keeper. Her name was Mary, kind of like a nanny. Sometimes she'd babysit. She had some kinds and some nephews, and we made something of a kids and nephews crew when we got together. I think it was Mary's cousin Tony that would come over to wash and detail our cars. He had twin boys named Tony and Antonio,  and they had scraggly voices. Mom pulled one of the kids out of the pool once before he drowned. Being twins they had a language, and they called my mom "Blebly" instead of Beverly. There are also neighborhood kids all around it anyway so it’s like, you know, we want to be able to participate in dialogs even if I, or especially if I were under qualified which is terrifying but I think it may be inspiring because it’s kind of like. .  that drive 30 minutes have to interact with, thanks. 

A kid today in a critique for MFA painting looking like he was also very privileged, like he came out of a Lands End catalog. His paintings are really atmospheric and abstract and the critics don't know what was going on really. So, come to find out two of these paintings are of gazed upon, and it’s, you know, if there’s some architecture and again it’s basically just it’s a shape in the center of the canvas and then around it is like this kind of atmosphere it’s all in the US but he said he was standing in front of the city courthouse and he saw his big building so he’s a painting  homeless man and we were so far into the critique and talking about the formal aspects of his paintings that do you know what it came out that these are paintings of homeless man we kind of stuck to the formal aspect because they were larger problems or whatever but someone else pointed also there’s like a ladder and what are these all I can say is this ladder what is that and the weather was very clearly to pick it style soon replied oh that’s that’s like a symbol for this kind of superior wisdom this homeless man. OK so here’s like white guilt here’s privilege or something like that playing out so I guess it’s that I don’t I don’t grass I digress. OK so the dog grass digress I’m leaving in because this is really funny that shit is really funny OK I think that’s an entry for now.

 I’ve alluded to nothing that’s going on actually this regards to my schedule and shit like that but, dear Reeder, yeah please know that I’m getting enough sleep I’m functioning in that kind of stuff and actually my diet is actually kind of on track and down I was explaining meditation to Young student today and I said 20 minutes at night in 20 minutes in the morning and basically as like as much of a shit storm as he may be experiencing some in your mind or body or whatever these 2 20 minute intervals of peace or focus or quiet allow you to play belligerently push through those. I don’t know why but I like the word belligerent recently because it implies that you won’t know what is to be expected which is painting. 

So anyway I got into this practice like burning the candle at both ends and it was a lot of fun I had so so much fun and sometimes sometimes I watch the sunrise you know sometimes our way down you know sleep for three hours or four hours and it was hilarious when I would have to class it just felt like a big fucking joke like I felt like I knew the punchline the punchline was I’m fucking dying or something like that but also but not really the real punchline was I made a shit ton of studio progress in painting that was the punchline! I feel good! so, today I gave it up I gave up that game because it wasn’t that funny you know it’s very recently so I went home to take a nap in order for me to appreciate (recuperate), the kind of grand and in other words I went home to take a nap. I needed a nap and it felt so good. I also moved most of my drawings and graphic stuff to my home, and I hope to develop a practice desk at my apartment because when I’m at school it's a mess and there are many opportunities to stick with oil painting with oil, oil, oil, so I’m hoping you know by coming home I can wash my hands you know make this kind of clean, “ comic work. That way I can do you know that your painter at school in a way like looking out you know looking out at harvesting, and then at home looking, right, the illustrator harvests from his own or her own mind, which is you know maybe has to do with why illustration sucks but that’s a bleak outlook actually illustration to me is so import it so it shows what’s happening at all because I would I would say illustration is an essay and painting is a poem. Unfortunately this has bled into my text messages where I kind of speak in code like a poem sometimes like I feel like oh yeah I’m like an artist and I’m gonna write this like complex thing that is what you are and that has been the downfall a lot of of a lot of my ladies relationships because I’m so goddamn poetic and by that I mean terrible at poetry. OK my roommates are home I have to stop talking myself

Bellini an Madonna with child and pear

You were describing two paintings by Giovanni Balenie there a Madonna with child and there’s a pair in both of these competitions there’s a pair in one of them is it it’s held by the Christ child and in the other it there’s a pair sitting on a table or some obscuring piece of architecture in the foreground which is featured in the other painting to just without the pair resting on it.  Both of these paintings or oil on wood oil we understand found its way from the Flemish tradition into venetian paining otherwise paining was predominantly done in tempura. Both of these paintings or take offs of the furniture edition in the realism.; The  landscape seems observed the class seems observed, certainly the portraits of the Madonna at least a CM observed and specific to a person. Also from the slimmest tradition we see a fake painted gold effect used on the edges of the draperies.  Of course that’s an a side to what’s really going on in these paintings. Well one more thing from the pharmacy listen there’s a reference communication it’s not so dramatic there’s a stoicism I’m looking especially at the ladies painted madonna of the 1480s where she’s looking directly at the viewer,; it’s really captivating.  I’m also looking at the landscape and thinking of it in Flemish terms and I believe that’s because of the observed quality of the receding is the recession of space. OK moving on and I am departing from the Flemish this carries many venetian qualities, namely that the local colors are  elaborated on in a way that turns the forms there’s a sense of colored lights and color shadow there is variation and saturation as a form of turns in space.  We sensed that the design or the design you has been put there a process where the dryer is liable to be changed on the basis of the composition in someway needing it.  As is typical in the nation paining which Barnes kind of sums up is that high water mark of representational painting spaces that expressed in volumetric solids affected by the atmosphere of light or the light of atmosphere whatever. OK so let’s get into what the difference between one painting and the other.  The one of these to mom in which madonna looks straight out of the viewer arm is posited to have been painted and 1480s sometime it follows a clear interior exterior scheme as we’ve seen so many times in the byzantine tradition. We’ve seen it in the Florentine tradition, in the CNEs tradition.   Well it’s positive that the light kind of envelops the figure we can see actually in his paintings that some liberalities are applied in terms of value it’s an oversimplification to set these paintings are light that there’s light permeating I think more truthfully it’s a selective permeation of the light envelope. You know what I’m trying to say is that the first hands are glowing I mean these figures are yeah you would say and valves by light but we look you know at what they’re glowing  in relation to NBC dark fabric dart DART fabric. You know with that way we can say that what is the nation about that dark dark fabric that it has a clear color identity it’s dark dark blue it’s not just dark dark next to it is a dark dark red there’s a band of a goldish color from an architectural feature that goes across the foreground and blow that is a dark dark brown . In this way definitions merch drawing with color and I think in that way we can say yes this now we’re painting now we’ve moved on from illustrating. Now her looking. Continuing on this older painting of the Madonna and Child and it’s clearly mostly interior there’s kind of a window of the exterior and the exists on the left-hand side Of the paining in which we see a city in the nearest background you know maybe it’s a half a mile or a quarter-mile away I’m behind some fields. Add the sky on this day as depicted by Balenie is you know pretty clear it looks like there’s morning light in that the bottom side of one of the clouds is yellow.  OK that’s most of it we can say one more thing and that is that you know Christ looks like kind of static here. Before we move onto the latter paining we can just imagine if you know someone mentioned to Balenie like you know hey what’s wrong with you you’re a Christ figure and then we fast forward baby eight years and the lady sits in front of the blank canvas And he says God dammit not again I’m gonna be crazed you know not look like I did before. OK so we’re moving onto the latter paying the inAnd he says God dammit not again I’m gonna be crazed you know not look like I did before. OK so we’re moving onto the latter being the one painted in 1488 it is Madonna and child with a pair.  The composition is radical that the Madonna and Child sit in the center of the frame there’s this huge | that divides the paining into what takes about half of the space horizontally but it’s pretty central. To the right of this | is a landscape you know we can see a cloud we can seahorses we can see a field. To the right of this | is we presumed the same landscape but the | of scares so much it’s it’s hard to say and we really have to ,  I mean naturally as humans we bridge the gap and we say yeah that’s the same space and the colors are so similar but otherwise the other things in them right landscape that are different from the left and we can imagine Balenie having a good time with these kind of to landscapes. Here in the bottom receive the ladies signature it’s him not kind of inscribed on the architectural element on the rather it’s clearly written on a piece of paper and then pasted your this is all trompe l’oeil but applied to the architectural  kind of like a tag. Like a name tag. Madonna looks directly at the child she looks a little bit like if you know what young mother. There’s a clear sense of humanism that this paining and I think it has to do with Madonna‘s expression as she looks down upon this young Christ who also he looks kind of mischievous he looks kind of fidgety not as static as the Laneys other Christ child. Are the big  saying in this paining is at the Paris set down onto the kind of banister rail thing that goes in front your price is no longer holding the pair I don’t know the significance of that but it’s a large differentiating feature between these paintings that alongside you know where my daughter is looking. Yeah if we squint we can kind of imagine some kind of across compositionally that’s happening in this like a crucifix.  And that’s most of it I mean I guess we could mention that in venetian paining there are these kind of doubt the old towns in the flash and that’s that’s happening here it’s happening mostly in the 1488 fortune of Madonna him and her cheeks we can kind of see some modeled you know pinks and reds same with in Christ cheeks and that is making them look especially flashy. Flashy.

st Catherine by van Dee weyden and the Flemish tradition and a Comparable painting by Raphael.

 OK so let’s talk about the difference between a tradition and that wherever Raphael‘s wrong with looking at the painting of a Saint Catherine by VanderWeyden and a comparable composition by Raphael are these are painted a few hundred years from one another it’s almost not fair to compare except that it’s the same protagonist. Let’s talk about, I mean, the difference  is radical it’s really a drastic. While VanderWeyden uses elements of space of very liberally Raphael seems to hear more to a standard linear perspective. Rafael’s vanishing point is also the the focus of the composition it’s kind of planned out and have a very dramatic way dramatic play of light and shade of the lights are blown out the shades are blown out.;  something has clearly happen to painting. But this is not about Raphael‘s as much as it’s about the funnest addition and have a vendor white and handle things so let’s address those. Typical of the Flemish tradition VanderWeyden represents cloth as a heavy and realistic are the folds are triangular and places and then tubular in other places we really get a sense of the weight of this cough others fake gold painted onto  The edges of the cloth this of course comes as a substitute to gold leaf on a painting serviceperiod Vendor avoidance vanishing point is moot, I can hardly be mentioned because this pain doesn’t follow the rules of linear perspective it’s more intuitive nature. Are the color as Dr. Barnes would put  it is superficial and it’s application. I suppose what’s meant by that is for most that it here’s to a local color scheme scheme. There’s a lot of energy devoted to my new details in this paining and things are generalize the drawing is very concise even if we go what appears to be I don’t have 200 yards into the middle ground or the background  we can see leaves clearly painted on the trees. Going further back to the tune of a half mile we can see windows of buildings it’s it’s almost absurd. Space OK let’s jump over to the Rafael paining and I am kind of compare really quick we can see the other stuff there’s no I mean maybe there’s windows but it’s so much more felt of course Dr. Barnes didn’t do you know cold Rafael for the sentiment  sentimentalist. And you know baby that’s fair who is this Alexandria that Raphael is painted she is and ruptured and she is romantic she’s a little bit classical and we can see her breasts basically we consider the tilt of her pelvis the cloth does little to hide the volume of her figure in full  it says it’s disgusting so for all the shortcomings of the Flemish tradition in regards to its superficial Colorado location every week we go over to the Raphael and this is it kind of we got to be clear about what we’re looking at this is a new figure basically she’s closed she’s close but but the reference is gone it’s much more secular maybe it’s not so controlled by the church you know it’s argue that the funny tradition  it’s looking at nature in the paintings come from real world world observation given the prominence of wine in the design of this vendor wide and paining it’s hard to make that argument I mean what is Fandor wide looking at is he looking at this tree 200 yards in the distance or is he looking at Saint Catherine’s left die yes is the answer always looking at all that I would argue that the Rafael paining is much more realistic I’ll be at kind of gross

Verruccio and da Vinci

 Veraci you and I am da Vinci‘s painting the BAFTA bit baptism of Christ and cross-referencing in with Dr. Barnes ‘s a critique of this work. A Barnes and postulates that this is essentially academic the composition is conventional color is superficial textures are wooden drying replies on incisive line Marling up on sculpture ask light and shadow contrast and pronounce muscular accentuation . So I think what Dr. Burns is getting out here is that it’s illustration for most Teryan On the whole I agree with him it’s very illustrative for a painter there’s a lot of useful stuff in here and where Dr. Barnes wants to throw it out or dismiss this is the second rate work of art I think is fair I mean there’s really a lot of focus on as one of my teachers put it in then Tori taking you know there are  The muscles of the rectus abdominis there are the knuckles of the hand all clearly accentuated if this is a collaboration between da Vinci and brewed brood to you and I don’t know who the patient was but it was probably a flex piece is how I would call it there’s which which is held Dr. Barnes described it is well it’s all just a culmination of great talents it’s a lot of firepower  for a SortIt illustrate a concept which I am you know does need all of the knuckles of the hand accentuator like that .

 Yeah kind of file or double down on Barnes‘s statement I kind of put in a different way our Itza this is why we can’t have nice things up painting it makes me want to cry .

Ugolino di nerio

 Now we are looking over the portrait of Madonna and Child enthroned by Ugolino di Nerio.  I’d like to describe what I see his byzantine about this work although we suspect that it is the early Sienese tradition,  as well as some acknowledging why we suspect that it’s from the scene is tradition that is what is CNEs about this painting. What is your knees about this paining for most is that it is painted on panel it is painted on a kind of tomb shaped panel over to old gold leaf the halos remain on the figures we see yards of bilateral symmetry symmetry going on  which is a holdover from the byzantine tradition as well you know there’s also a peer amid all composition which I don’t mean that when I came in to be visiting ABC News. It’s very illustrative the nature of the shows for most there’s a Madonna and there’s a child there moderately generic they’re not specific people which we can attribute to visit change edition  hieratic figure typical of the seniors tradition we do see flowing lines are slowing willow he figures in long gated hands elongated figures. Line dominates which is typical of the seniors tradition and as we mentioned it was it’s a western of quality.  Curing on from the byzantine tradition is the iconographic nature of the design this figure is to look not of this earth but other world and the green complexion of the skin is a CNA is stable and here we see clearly the green cast of the skin of these two figures there’s a monumental scale that feeling of scale that we get from the madonna  I just love this pain I think what comes like that you know very naturally arm is that Madonna looks straight out of that she’s really looking at us and the Christ child you can see is looking at her we really know where to look in this paining and there’s a rhythm to the feed in the hands it’s starting to break away from what kind of inventory of elements you know we do have five toes but then we have four toes you know anon Christ and we receive  and we see not all of the fingers and then one of the hands is gone it’s behind the clock madonnas time is hidden by Christ’s tail or his foot brother and some of her fingers are turning in space so they are obscured by for shortening the negative space in this paining is emphasized the figures fit into the shape of the picture plane in an elegant way and we can imagine him Daneri really being romantic about  this outline this this kind of puzzle piece and in that line of thinking also there are the local colors they’re established they don’t deviate and that’s byzantine it’s it’s really this is a blue robe and so the folder going to be light blue for the highlights and dark blue for the shadows looking for Sydney‘s troop and maybe I could say there’s one but I am it’s not extreme if there is  

hugh mesibov

 This is in response to  The painting by Hugh Mesibov painted in 1945 and 46.  it’s oil pastel and black ink on card stock mounted on multiply paperboard it’s 14 x 11“ and I am concerned with the relating this to byzantine painting the title of the work is byzantine figure.  the size is that of a byzantine painting which might’ve been something that could be carried  The painting is non-static it’s my really rigid there’s a slight indication of perspective through positioning of the components of the pictures there’s a bilateral bilateral symmetry certainly emphasize in the picture I’m as can be seen down the middle of the figure in the foreground line dominates there’s no halo in this so it departs from byzantine depictions of  prominent figures and then that way however gold background stays in a way it’s not gilded it’s not real gold but you know we can justify are the yellow out the green I’m in the background certainly as stand-in for goldleaf the space does seem flattened there’s distortion occurring are the room space is fragmented and abstracted there’s a diss Distinctive waviness onto their composition so it kind of the parts from Byzantine art in that way too it’s kind of like a drunk visit byzantine depiction the head is not small there’s no concentration of detail save for the face.  Byzantine depiction there would be a concentration of detail and fabrics I’m in line with dominate this song this detail I would be a pattern there would Be decorative here it’s not .  This depiction does resemble on mosaic which is similar to byzantine routes abstraction dominates rather than perception or any sense of realism which is a characteristic that this and shares with Byzantine art it departs and that there are no straight lines that dominated the depiction of cloth.

Letter to Jeff

Dear Jeff, 

Hope you’re well. I’ve got a broken keyboard on my computer thing and no internet at home. Please forgive my stutter-step correspondances. 

Regarding meditation, in short, I sit in a half lotus position then cup my left hand under my right facing up, then count my breaths as described over the course of  twenty minutes, twice daily. Sometimes I wear my glasses, sometimes not. Sometimes eyes open, sometimes not. Sometimes I switch hands, or legs. I guess the idea of it is to reduce bodily variables, and just listen, let the thoughts happen, and just notice them. It will become more automatic through time.  To me, well, I relate to a sentiment expressed by Eric Hoffer, and that’s the curiosity at adult politicians or, careerists. He’s fifty-five when writing this (in his Working and Thinking on the Waterfront).  And that’s it. How can anyone be themselves. It’s curious. What’s the will to power? This meditation practice helps me realize where I am and go forth. I’ve found it’s better to wear some underwear than go nude, to prevent temptation.  

My days have been wildly interesting in a tedium and variety fourth-year student in an art factory kind of way. I have moved to west Philly, which you know. I walked home from center city last night. I’ve done this a few times, and it counts as my exercise, and helps me to sleep. I slept at the school the night before. I plan to make this a semi-regular occurrence. I’ve learned the virtues of decaf coffee after six, and reserving meal times to twice daily, another bit gleaned from the musings of Eric Hoffer. I’ve been ordering books. I got this book from Gilbert White, who was a favorite author of painter Eric Ravillious. The book is comprised of letters of the Nature of The Natural history of Selbourne, and it’s called the Birds of Selbourne.

“As the parish still inclines down towards Wolmerforest, at the juncture of the clays and sand the soil becomes a wet, sandy loam, remarkable for timber, and infamous for roads. The oaks of Temple and Blackmoor stand high in the estimation of purveyors and have furnished much naval timber; while the trees on the freestone grow large, but are what workmen call shakey, and so brittle as often to fall to pieces in sawing. Beyond the sandy soil becomes an hungry lean sand, till it mingles with the forest; and will produce little without the assistance of lime and turnips.”

I’m making a piece that’s a little poly,er-clay wall kind of like a stage set and it’s painted across with the words “western Art History” a la graffiti, which aside from being a little bitey (of artist lush), it’s I think a good idea and worth doing. Another painting-on-the way is a rip-off of the napoleon crossing the alps motif, but the protagonist is a character fom a  dream of mine, a claked figure (think lord of the rings) with a stone wheel, pocked in a helllinnistic fashion looking square into the camera. It maintains a sense of humor along with its impending. Other projects I won’t elaborate on but I’m much excited ot be “in studio” this year, and to have the guidance and encouragement from a team of critics! My critics are Stuart Shils, Jessica Able, and Didier Willliams, should you care to look them up. 

I’ve stopped going to therapy, my critics fulfill me in a way far superior. Also, the insurance deal was running out. 

My courses are as follows:

That’s it for now! TTYL! 

-KG 

On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 11:33 AM, Robert Goethe <goethero@pobox.pafa.edu> wrote:

On Sep 4, 2018, at 3:21 PM, Jeff Jones <austinjack135@gmail.com> wrote:

Mildly freaking out before semester begins

Finished reading The Roots of Romanticism by Isaiah Berlin. Wonderful book.

Have begun compiling illustrations and designing page layouts for a before-semester zine.

Had a day full of dread today. Good fodder for real work to get done. Egads.

Put a small chunk into Dr. Barnes’ book on art, in preparation for a class I’ll be taking from a Dr. Perthes at the Barnes Museum forthcoming.

Tonight some travelers will be coming through. One’s a student I’m familiar with and the other is a friend of hers. They’ll be staying for a few nights tentatively before their housings get situated elsewhere. I don’t know the situation in full, but, such is living in a home of love.

The Myth and Ariadne

Well, I’ve got a little ball rolling in regards to this blog. Seems poised for a fall off, but I’m enjoying it very much until then. Yesterday was fun. I took an early stop on the trolley and walked from 22nd and market to fairmount hardware, where I bought a water filter, a nitelight, food storage containers, an ice tray, a big pot to initiate three of my plants upgrades and a hundred pack of single edge razor blades. Later that day, I sold my bike to a PhD candidate, via Craigslist, and got 120 bucks out of it.

This morning I awoke to a phone call from someone else who was interested in the bike, and wanted to ask a few questions about the frame. This was at 7:15. I politely interrupted and said the bike is already sold- it went fast. And he went, ‘sh, awww, thanks!’. Tbh it was a good alarm. Who calls at 7:15?

My new home address is as follows 4604 Baltimore Avenue. Philadelphia 19143,  and you are welcome to write to me or send small things.

This morning after the phone call, I meditated and transferred three of my plants to larger containers. Here’s hoping the transplants go successfully.

I’m considering buying a printer, the drawback being ownership. Should I start a tally of how many times I go wanting one? What’s the answer to something like this? When I’m in school either I don’t print, (go without) or. I don’t know. What if my process (I’m thinking I could incorporate printing and copying) ends up hung nothing to do with printing and copying? I’ll continue to go without.


Finished reading Persepolis last night and was very pleased with it. The author alludes to Montesquieu’s the slavery of the Africans, and The Secrets of the CIA, and the Freemasons of Iran, and the Memoirs of Mossadegh, and now my reading list is a bit longer.

At the library today, I am checking out a book I’ve had on a list for a while: The Myth and Ariadne by Michael Taylor on De Chirico. I never knew if I was ready, we’ll see if it sticks.

Coffee Martyr

Oof. Keyboard is broke on the iPad. I guess typing on the screen, hey, isn’t so bad. Maybe just as good. I made a schedule for today and stuck with it. I made three thumbnail drawings upon waking (day four of this routine) then started coffee before sitting down to meditate. I think I liked it. I like hearing the sounds of the coffee maker, and much to my joy the sounds of the neighborhood are good too. I can hear trolley cars with their electric cable resonances from a few blocks away, and when they’re outside my building (a three and an attic walk up brownstone kind of), the idling air conditioner units that are situated on top. There’s usually people at our stop, so I can rest assured that our block is a healthy one, and I am happy to be a part of it. The trolley pulls away, and I can hear tires and engines of cars, and sometimes horns. We live just off the road (and overlooking a six point intersection). It’s all suppositions before the final fall semester of my undergrad starts. I’m focusing on sequential and spot illustration right now. Kind of meme like drawings. I have this one that’s a wrecking ball swung back, that reads ‘not saying anything’, and I wrote it in relation to political correctness, as I read DuBois and Hoffer; it’s ‘negriod’, ‘negro’ all over etc., but it’s civil and intellectual and to get to ideas, and truly used in the right way of that time, and it’s more sobering to get with their larger points than to dwell and vet and qualify. Of course such a vague illustration could mean a lot of things, so I like that too, probably better, for it matters less how we get to a thing than what the thing becomes in meaning by the journey. I have this teacher that uses ‘journey’ a lot, and I like that. She recommended a movie from our library, ‘Mindwalk’, which I checked out and watched yesterday morning first thing. I went back to a nap after making coffee and meditating and reading Freud’s intro to his Jokes book. I left my door open so if my roommates were to see in, to wonder why I wasn’t seizing the day, they could see the coffee martyr. ‘Good God, he brewed the pot to drink it not’! ‘What grounds for such boldness!?’

I hope to remember this day forever. I’m on track. 

K Goethe

Yesterdays breakup text got me thinking about the cycles. Well, anyways, it's for the best.

What's strange about 'relationships' is that lack of autonomy that seems to come with it. Most friendships last for years between contact yet in a dating setup there's an 'on call' aspect, the pretense being validation. Am I wrong?

Six Planets Are In Retrograde

Well Angie and Tim's trip went well I think. Time stood still with them, perhaps it's the season's end. Six planets are in retrograde now.

Angie and Tim walked on Saturday and brought their zines to bookshops. Wooden Shoe bought some copies outright, and Atomic Comics accepted some for their commission arrangement. I saw the transaction at the comic shop. Tim and Angie were humble. The clerk asked to see what they had. Seeing the quality, the tone of the clerk opened up and it was expressed like "yeah, we'll take these". I was very inspired by this reception. That night I made a dozen thumbnails in a comic book mindset.

I harvested from a thumbnail that I drew from a picture I took in Florida in the spirit of Ravillious. I transferred the drawing to mat board and did a watercolor painting, trying for some dry brush texturing too, and scraping back to white, exploring. Well, as anticipated, mine came out way more saturated than Eric's, and, some solutions were old hat (purple shadows), so, I'd like do it again. Reading of Ravillious' method hints that it's ungraspable. Ravillious considered his works drawings (even the paintings).

I love my new house situation.

Girlfriend broke up with me from neglect. Thank you.

Angie and Tim

Angie and Tim are coming to visit from their Summer digs in Long Island.

I took a break from eating yesterday and resumed this afternoon with a slice of pizza, a plum, and a coffee. I’m reading Eric Hoffer’s book again, Working and Thinking on the Waterfront and it’s a treasure. I may order another Eric Hoffer Book. He talks about writing about the history of the intellectual and I wonder if he ever got around to it. It seemed to be his big preoccupation in this journalistic work. Well, this might disrupt the rhythm of the journalistic format, but I opened a new tab and ordered two books from Hoffer since the last sentence. I also called my mom and asked for her password to her amazon account, so that I could download an anatomy book for reference.

I was tempted to order another book from Gayatri Spivak but goddam those writings are hard.

My roommates are out in nature somewhere taking photos of each other naked. Part of me wanted to go, and another part didn’t. When I woke up, I thought ‘yes!’ Because I wanted to see people naked, which is weak alibi. I think it’s natural to like clothes. Who wants every part jangling around all the time? Plus, with exception of some critters, we don’t have handy built in pockets.

I turned in my old apartment keys today, with my roommate, former. It was like a long business transaction, our living together, which I think is something like the best scenario for a housemate- nothing too personal. My new housemates sometimes talk of goin in on big meals together for efficiency, and if this too can be non-sentimental, it would be a good thing, whereas when it was pitched to me before I lived there it seemed like a lot of pressure I guess.

I’m thinking of selling the bike, as there’s no sensible route from my new apartment to school, and the trolley is pleasant, and most everything else is within walking distance. I’d put about $250 into the $100 bike; I think I’ll ask $150, or $180 with a lock and helmet. Oof .

There’s going to be a get together at my new place tonight, with sixteen confirmed guests, and I’m looking forward to that. I’ll pick up Angie and Tim soon enough then make my way there to clean and prepare for the night.

I signed up for two more classes during the Fall, on Saturdays no less. Whereas I try to treat Saturdays as holy days, I’m putting a little moratorium on that for the coming semester on the basis that I’m hungry for anatomy, and just want to binge on it. The classes are portrait sculpture/figure option, and Deer Ecorche. If I continue to participate in sunday painting sessions, I will be working seven days a week, which, what’s new, but also I’m thinking maybe I’m growing away from the Sunday painting practice, as it’s a contrived thing, a big chunk of time on the basis of practice, and (I don’t know) I think it’s a ego pit at this point, like I’m some star there, which is whack vibes for a room, so I think I’ll take a break on it. I never missed one last year.

Someone in the elevator here at PAFA said he’s not looking forward to the summer ending. I seconded, ‘it’s more relaxed’. he said, ‘much more’. It reminds me of David Rachoff’s profound hindsight as he neared his end, ( I think he committed suicide), “I just wish I would have enjoyed it more”. Sometime before that, on NPR, he relayed how he cut it off with his therapist, “I think it’s time to terminate”. These things have stuck with me and somehow kept me from reading his book of poems, as I am cautious as to what’s in there. I think he wrote this one; he read it aloud on NPR about the scorpion and the frog, which I think is an established poem, yet Rachoff’s was the first to put it into a pleasing pentameter.

Where should I bring my friends coming to see Philadelphia? I will try to give them plenty and plenty of space. For one thing their souls are going to have to catch up after riding a bus from Manhattan.

Black K-Swiss

Dear Clint,

I looked up the artists you’d mentioned. Looked them right up on the googletron. I looked up the painting that you said was your favorite (maybe of all time) by Bochner called the Theory of Painting. I guess it’s funny. It was made in 69.

I googled the names of those artists, and hit ‘images’ and couldn’t tell if I’d done something wrong; misspelled something, or something. Sylvia Mangold yielded many pictures of wooden floors.

I went for a walk. After going to Florida for four days to witness and attend the funeral of my grandfather-in-law I had $160 cash burning a hole in my pocket from the money dad gave me for the reimbursement for renting a car. I went to go get some shoes, I thought, but tried on a few pairs and decided not to. I was going for a pair of ‘old people shoes’, I called them. My friend said my aesthetic is “norm core”, to which I told another friend. Other friend said with exception of my not wearing New Balance sneakers, so I went to go get a pair of those. I tried on the white, with a big navy N on the side, then asked for the black on black, then went back to the white pair, but they didn’t fit as I thought they would. I wanted support. They were the classic New balance sneaker, but I didn’t feel the rumored support. I asked for better arch support, and was offered a different pair, tried them on, liked them, but didn’t like the price and left with reaffirmed loyalty for my old kicks.
On the walk home, I remembered this time when I was in fourth or fifth grade. K-Swiss shoes were going around and my dad and I went to the mall to get a pair, and I got black ones, but the fashion was white ones. I don’t know how it happened, but it all happened so quick. We left with a pair of black K-Swiss shoes and I felt strange; like the option of not caring was before me, and the bargain that I’d made to not care was in motion as we were leaving the mall parking lot. Something separated from something else and that was important because it wasn’t the shoes; it was the “inflection point”, as one of my professors says; the distance between perceived reality and reality.

When searching up a painter on google, it would make sense to go to ‘images’, but not in the case of some of the painters that taught at Yale in the 90’s- for those, you go to Wikipedia; to find out why and how come they’re important.
(zing!)

Like the black K-Swiss shoes, it doesn’t matter that much the K-Swiss manufactured them.
Like myself, it’s not as important that I’ve got backlogs of great or good ideas.
Like the Yale painting department, not enough painting.


White K-Swiss’s, actual paintings, actual paintings.

Pangs and crepescules

Yesterday morning I woke up thinking about my second girlfriend. It’s not uncommon, I wax poetic about our thing. I think we worked nicely. I think she’s with another guy, somone who strikes me as very normal. We had a sweet thing, and I think I might be painting for her. I read in Philip Guston’s book of lectures that everyone’s gotta have someone, someone to paint for. Van Gogh had Theo, he said, and he paints for Martha, (I think is his wife’s name). Well shoot, I want to be great; who am I painting for? 

There was so much pain in Tallahassee. I was a shitty adolescent and selfish sometimes, and I clashed with my family and dad and I were having a hard time making it work. Our poodle dog stopped eating when we first moved there, and came over with Addison’s Disease, and her insides kind of bubbled and sloshed in imbalances, topically expressing in nightly incontinences. I think I was in college when she bloated, and I think my mom called me and I went to the veterinary emergency center and walked the dog around the building just sobbing. You could see black and blue through her milky skin, and she was flushed of complexion like she’d aged almost all the way.

I get this newsletter from Rusty Blazenhoff and in it was listed websites created by Danielle Baskin. One of them was a domain name checker/ marriage advice site. The trick was you type in your name and the persons name and the engine checks if the domain is taken. Some mornings I’m really thinking about this old relationship I had. I typed in her name and mine, a kind taboo feeling. The domains were available, so it said we should. 

I don’t think I’ll get married. Not for the foreseeable future. Truth is I’m a (respectful) dog, with a contagious virus (herpes), who’s got not much time. I don’t feel comfortable with hooking up, famous last words. Any ways, why do I get hung up on this? 

I heard from a classmate that Edison didn’t sleep so much as he took cat naps. Her account was that he only cat napped. I want that. I wonder if Edison went through school on a regular schedule, and then sometime afterwards switched to napping only. 

Yesterday was a blast. I kicked rocks for three or four hours, got a new phone, (the same model that my poor Grammy has), and checked out a half dozen graphic novels from the library, as well as Freud’s Jokes analysis. No telling if I’m going to read them. Called my mom. 

I found a good way to buy things- it’s right when you need them and not before. Without fail buying before you need something is a kind of fortune telling, superstitious thing. I’d asked a friend a few years back if she buys before or what, because she had years of collecting and projects experience, and she didn’t have an answer, and in fact I think I embarrassed her, but behold I think the less variables the better, and I’ve subscribed to the m.o. that if it’s needed it’s needed and not a moment before, so I ran into a couple spots yesterday in sculpting. After kicking rocks for a while (it always feels like you’re rotting just before a big day- tends to), I worked on Ecorche figures, and a couple figures in clay, and I came to needing wanting steel stick epoxy, wire, and sculpey clay, which I procured. Fast forward an hour and I was out again to get some superglue, running through the streets I was having such a joyful day! The light was crepuscular and some (probably wine drunk) gals in tube dresses and pumps, one put out her hand for a high five, and I obliged and she yelled ‘woooo!’, and I thought God I love today; I love you, I should’ve told her I love you. I loved her, and probably her friend. 

I sculpted this trans person a few times and yesterday worked on the portrait and the hands, which I hope to modulate on to the figure somehow and cast it, maybe in opaque glass. For all the people saying it’s a ball or it’s a cylinder referring to structures of the face or something, yeah but it’s also a mouth. They’re lips. They’re eyes. Picasso got it. I’m reading DuBois Africa and the World now, and it’s talking about west African sculpture and how it’s better than anything that Europe had ever produced, and yeah, (though now I’m thinking of standing in front of Bernini’s deposition, but that’s a digression). It’s gotta be somehow about the polemic of intellectual capacity- the powers or lack thereof of observation, expressed through reproduction. All this to say I felt better in a kind of automatic modality of making eyes, making the mouth, of this trans portrait, and their body while I was sculpting it too, in an automatic mode, than I would have in a kind of sculpture modality. Well, here I’m trying to dismiss training, right on the coattails of imbibing in it. I learned muscles and all that through Ecorche, and now I’m putting it through the test of making figures. But I felt, connected like a creator, making eyes, (making eye balls, with hole poked into them for the blacks, then baked hard), then eyelids, and a nose, after the skull, and fingers, etc. I felt so far removed from capital S sculpture, in fact it feels like a dirty word writing it. This is heavily influenced by Guston. 

I was talking about Guston (this book of his) to my fox Ecorche teacher, and trying to talk up Guston as the mythic person he is and explains himself to be- an intellectual too, and flipped open the book to show pictures of his work, and there it was, his work, pages with a single short fat line, or another page with another single short fat line, and Diane was cool about it, but yeah it’s funny because the essays made those works kind of profound, but there’s kind of so much you can do with a picture plane huh? It’s funny I think sculptors get away with a lot. Like a figure in sculpture seems to be the currency, and you can be successful for sculpting deer or well I don’t know. I probably just don’t know that much about it. Everything’s hard. 

I haven’t painted except for a picture of an alligator tied in a knot all summer, and a little bit at the beginning some leftover school work. What’s the point of a summer if you don’t do something completely pointless? (Says Calvin and Hobbes). 

I’m supposed to be doing a bunch of writing and drawing for a political cartooning class. The weeks goal is to make an essay, boiled down to a few points, illustrated, and sequenced like a graphic novel. The fodder is ‘something that completely changed you’, and I want to write maybe about herpes. I think it’d be a good idea, considering otherwise I’m getting specific about relationships (o, that girlfriend I had way back when, it’s a little disconcerting tbh). This graphic novel called black hole seems to be about herpes. It’s a virus kind of thing, like a zombie morphism kind of thing, but the whole time reading it I thought herpes herpes. I rented a car down in Florida when I went down for my Grandfather (in-law)’s funeral. On NPR there was a statistician who cited that a common google search preceding young adult suicides is ‘herpes’. It was a relief to hear, it made sense in a way. Am I going to read these graphic novels then, or write, or what?