This week Iv’e been hired by the school to clean up MILA walls for the forthcoming student exhibition showcase. MILA walls are modular and can join at a straight, a right angle, and at t’s. They’re honeycombed aluminum, with composite board and hardboard, which you adhere vinyl to the broadside and paint. Our job (a crew of nine) was to strip the old paint-and-vinyl layers off the wall sections, patch the holes (from art hanging), and adhere new vinyl. The job is supposed to last all week but we put a hell of a dent in them today. I kept thinking of Eric Hoffer’s Working and Thinking on the Waterfront, even though I’ve since ceased to read it. I’m putting in time to a handful of books. I’m reading The ISIS papers, by Dr. Cress, and W.E.B. Dubois’s The Souls Of Black Folks. There’s a preface to the former which references another book as required reading, so I’ll be reading that soon- about FBI’s active resistance to American Civil Rights movement. I’m reading the Roots of Romanticism from Isaiah Berlin; a collection from his public lectures compiled and published posthumously. It’s a whip-ride that’s made for a lens, same with the Dubois, however I’m fresher into that one.
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It’s day four on this job. I keep thinking of Eric Hoffer’s Working and Thinking on the Waterfront. I parallel myself to his stevedore. We’re making great time; we’re ahead of the clock even with taking yesterday off on account of heavy snowfall. It’s Jose and Jotham and I in one room and another small crew in the other room. Our team rules.
I drew and blocked in this painting yesterday, during the snow day. I had a dream where bodybags lined the periphery of a pool environment. The bags were blue, and referred to as ‘sacs’, as in egg sacs, like those of a shark. Although the bodies had lived (they were adult sized), and there was a connotation of their death- a morbidity, it occurs to me now that the figures inside were in gestation. The bodybags bobbed, and I moved around. I think I was in the pool and all that, on the pool deck, etc. Plenty of options in dreams.
Oh yeah, the painting. Well, first a painting idea; from that dream, I imagined a clear cylinder, six inches in diameter, filled with clear (mildly tannic) water, with soil debris. The cylinder would have a stirrer and stirbar arrangement, and an illuminated base, that the vessels contents glow (like an illuminated aquarium, so the light could be at the top too, no problem). Vinyl decals would cling to the outside of the glass, in the pattern of fan coral (this is a secondary thought to the vision). An obscuring shade would go around with designs (but what?). . I think of the sacks, somehow, like paper cutting. This outer ring-shade would revolve around the glass vessel in an animation like some Muybridge zoetrope. . Finally a pinhole would flip this animation and project it on to a plate of opaque glass.
Okay, the painting. The painting is a still life. It’s a still life of a couple pieces of paper, cut out and pasted to a full sheet of notebook paper. I’m enlarging from 2” by 3” to about eight inches by 16. I know those ratios don’t add up, but just add bleed with the notebook paper’s full sheet. The cut-out paper says “convenient time to have an opinion”.
I could write about it. It fulfillls so many categories for my painting curiosities; at once polemic, ironic, dogmatic, self-deprecating, self-indulgent/centered/less. It’s a veritable mirror. I can’t speak to what others see in it. It’s democratic, intellectual, stupid. I love it.
It’s on a panel that’s five feet long; inhabited by other compositions, at once, dada surreal, boring, etc. I think I’ve hit a nerve and I’m excited to paint.
A buddy I used to skate with had a theory of skating on shitty boards for years, that you would get good with poor equipment, then blast off once you get to a pro-level deck. I’ve been painting a lot of models in chairs. I wonder if that’s any equivalent.
I dropped a class on the basis that I could use the time to paint, rather than be political, which is what was happening in that room- critiques with political centers. How boring. I am tempted to drop another class on the basis that the PMA is open late that night, and I could use the time to learn and draw from the collection, rather than analyze literature. It’s a Feminist Reconstructs class. I took it so that I could have a finger on the pulse, and get some guidance on reading supplements. It’s been good, but I’m balls deep in paintings now and I’ve got the reading done, and I keep thinking ‘buy low, sell high.’ I do not need the class for my major.
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It’s day four on this job. I keep thinking of Eric Hoffer’s Working and Thinking on the Waterfront. I parallel myself to his stevedore. We’re making great time; we’re ahead of the clock even with taking yesterday off on account of heavy snowfall. It’s Jose and Jotham and I in one room and another small crew in the other room. Our team rules.
I drew and blocked in this painting yesterday, during the snow day. I had a dream where bodybags lined the periphery of a pool environment. The bags were blue, and referred to as ‘sacs’, as in egg sacs, like those of a shark. Although the bodies had lived (they were adult sized), and there was a connotation of their death- a morbidity, it occurs to me now that the figures inside were in gestation. The bodybags bobbed, and I moved around. I think I was in the pool and all that, on the pool deck, etc. Plenty of options in dreams.
Oh yeah, the painting. Well, first a painting idea; from that dream, I imagined a clear cylinder, six inches in diameter, filled with clear (mildly tannic) water, with soil debris. The cylinder would have a stirrer and stirbar arrangement, and an illuminated base, that the vessels contents glow (like an illuminated aquarium, so the light could be at the top too, no problem). Vinyl decals would cling to the outside of the glass, in the pattern of fan coral (this is a secondary thought to the vision). An obscuring shade would go around with designs (but what?). . I think of the sacks, somehow, like paper cutting. This outer ring-shade would revolve around the glass vessel in an animation like some Muybridge zoetrope. . Finally a pinhole would flip this animation and project it on to a plate of opaque glass.
Okay, the painting. The painting is a still life. It’s a still life of a couple pieces of paper, cut out and pasted to a full sheet of notebook paper. I’m enlarging from 2” by 3” to about eight inches by 16. I know those ratios don’t add up, but just add bleed with the notebook paper’s full sheet. The cut-out paper says “convenient time to have an opinion”.
I could write about it. It fulfillls so many categories for my painting curiosities; at once polemic, ironic, dogmatic, self-deprecating, self-indulgent/centered/less. It’s a veritable mirror. I can’t speak to what others see in it. It’s democratic, intellectual, stupid. I love it.
It’s on a panel that’s five feet long; inhabited by other compositions, at once, dada surreal, boring, etc. I think I’ve hit a nerve and I’m excited to paint.
A buddy I used to skate with had a theory of skating on shitty boards for years, that you would get good with poor equipment, then blast off once you get to a pro-level deck. I’ve been painting a lot of models in chairs. I wonder if that’s any equivalent.
I dropped a class on the basis that I could use the time to paint, rather than be political, which is what was happening in that room- critiques with political centers. How boring. I am tempted to drop another class on the basis that the PMA is open late that night, and I could use the time to learn and draw from the collection, rather than analyze literature. It’s a Feminist Reconstructs class. I took it so that I could have a finger on the pulse, and get some guidance on reading supplements. It’s been good, but I’m balls deep in paintings now and I’ve got the reading done, and I keep thinking ‘buy low, sell high.’ I do not need the class for my major.
