Prehensile Penis

I posted a picture on my instagram of a figure atop boxes in a warehouse with an extended erection, in a rockstar contrapasto. I titled it Sex god, then toned it down to sex vision, then changed it to sex dream.

Friend of mine asked me to explain, that it needed more words. Another friend sent me a direct message, relaying a story of a conversation that we’d had about wriggling and writhing dicks. It was when about we were going through the doggy days of adolescence, and our infatuations were sex-centric. I’d seen pornographic films young, and my earliest inmpressions were the dicks. How they seemed to have a life of their own, glossy and weighty, and I imagined they had some prehensile capabilities, and that that was what would account for adulthood. These independent limbs, serpent-like and heat seeking. To the friend who relayed the story of our conversation, I sent a recollection of my own from that time, which was a hovel for the Weimaraner and the schnauzer. The schnauzer was neutered, I don’t think the Weimaraner was fixed. I remembered this section of the garage, and the color of that hovel under the stairs where the Weimaraner would go. It was a hot honey hovel, and smelled thick like dog, and I’d made peace with the dogs and could go down in there and sit while my friends talked and argued with their parents.

The vision of the figure that led to the drawing was photographic in nature, like a film noir still in a vast warehouse. Kind of German looking still image, with a kind of prosthetic prehiensile, multi-kinked cock, like a jungle vine or an uncoiled snake.

I’ve been wanting to make a hoe account. I joked about it with my lover; it would be called kemmy’s_hoe_account and it would be public, with pictures of me and my body etc. I want a little headroom, but don’t want to alienate anyone who might just opt in for the drawings, or whatever. Headroom. Some girls I know do it and it seems like a good set up.

Also, from some of the women artists I know, I’m very inspired by the body. Some women have their nudity out there. This isn’t exclusive to women. I think of those nude photos of Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s like a holding- a here I am. I don’t think about people nude, I think art school has casualized nudity for me in a very healthy way. When I see a friend nude I feel cared for. I was a counselor at this Jewish camp and all the Jews (but not the Gentiles) could go to the lake at some point in the summer and swim nude together as a sort of, well, I don’t know what, communion? It reminded me that I’m not in some club. I feel unheld from the club I was supposed to be a part of; the Christian one, where youth group consisted of knock-off Nickelodeon channel games, chubby bunny, toothpaste trivia, hipocracy, and censorship. With graduation comes a certificate that reads ‘congrats on wasting your youth on superstition’, and an ironic ‘good luck’.

I care very much about this image, the posted one. I keep checking in on it. I’ve got some guilt yet maybe, checking in; ‘is this okay?’ all the time.

In 2013 I was twenty three yearly old and in Berlin. I’d met some friends in a hostel and, one month in to a European trip, became involved along with my friends with the idea of applying for a visa, and posting up in Berlin for a while. I began looking for a studio pretty immediately. One studio I found in Neukölln was to be shared with three gay artists making gay art, and one artist in particular painted comic like sequential paintings, and I recall one where his dick grew to monumental size, and he went into god mode. I kind of didn’t know what to think of him after seeing his work, but I sometimes think of him, and the work seemed to parallel the powers of himself.

Obsessed with polemic, what could it mean that someone has a good experience? Obsessed with competition too, likewise.

I was in no way ready to move to Berlin. I met a group of Aussies and hanged with them and went to clubs, and kind of got disoriented, and in the times I wasn’t with them I was in this miserable perfect apartment in Prenzlauerberg (the equivalent to Park Slope) either making paintings that would disappear because they were unfinished, cursed, or some combination of the two, or being terribly sick and thinking I might have HIV developing, not joke.

Another story along with the Berliners. More recently, I met this rap artist. Always interested, I asked him for his contact, or how I could look him up, and he pulled out his phone, googled himself, and we proceeded to listen to five consecutive songs of his, all to my chagrin about typical rapper bullshit, and periodically he would narrate to the side irl, “see, I’m not like those other rappers just rapping about guns and money and bitches.” (Which is something I’ve heard from many rappers in similar arrangements) But I tell you here he was!! One song went ‘I’m a king, bow down to me’, on repeat, and it was such a curious experience while his girlfriend stood next to us, and the video was all guns pointing at the screen and money, and literal asses shaking to the camera. In good show etiquette, I reserved any sign of judgement, and said thank you, and also, secretly, quietly, inside, wondered of all the illusions, qualifiers, screens each and every ones of us maintain all the time, to make anything, judgements, or products, or work hours, whatever; it’s all suppositions. There were no judgements to be passed to be honest, and somehow, that rapper remains a king in a self-declaratory way at least.

There’s no way to wrap this up. Hope you like the painting and thanks.

Hurt feelings, hurt knees

A quick re-cap on the week. Had a wave of anxiety and sadness come over me, as a handshake agreement was not kept. I was homesteading a studio at PAFA, on the agreement that I’d be out by the middle on June. June 7 I get an email saying renegotiated terms- by this weekend, the 10th. I replied within ten minutes, and checked periodically that day on my things, ad a crew had begun the clean out process (being a gang studio, there were about ten spots with a central shared area, and being the summertime, naturally, I spread out my things into a mega-studio). Things looked alright. My things were being touched, but it looked more like consolidation than anything. Fast forward, I get off work at 4pm, go up there, and my stuff is gone, a lot of it. Paint, paintings. I take a lap, look all around. Some of my paintings made it to the trash. A work on paper crumpled in the bin. I go upstairs to 10th floor to try to talk with perpetrator. He’s gone, but I see my stuff in the hallway labeled ‘free’. My paint has been decimated; lost probably $400 worth. Two finished paintings, gone. I thought to quit school. 

‘Quit school;’
 It’s nothing new, it comes in waves, and any undergrad can speak to it. $15,000/ six months, etc. The wave that came felt like clarity, might have been. What’s it to wake up and go to where your stuff is? What you remember as familiar, etc. What’s it to paint? To own paint? To own paintings? To make them? To be enrolled? This is weak sauce; suffice to say I felt like a failure to my parents at some point, and collected my things and wept, and noticed the feelings wane as I re-gathered and reconsolidated them in what I understand to be my next-year studio, which is also not a safe spot- that’s soon to be used for low-res MFA students this summer. I left a big handwriting note in there, relaying my sob story, and leaving my number. I’ve got to find another spot for it all, homesteading once again. I tried to leverage the loss into a free studio, but it felt strange to ask for reparations. 

I called my future roommate, asking if my living there was contingent on my being enrolled in school, and she said no, and kind of laughed it off. I felt back again, like I had options, and that was all I needed emotionally I think. 

I cried today because I missed my sister. That’s two for two in crying days, and I came so close the day prior in therapy when talking about my late uncle Larry. 

I’m taking therapy, seeing a therapist. The school pays for 8 sessions, and I figure while I have the summer, let’s see what’s under the hood. It’s been mostly geneograms so far. Periodically, the therapist will check if I’m in immediate danger, and I think hard and say no, (and mean no). It’s been fodder for much genealogical research including calling my immediate family members, which has been a sort of therapy in it’s own. 

My therapist suggested I hadn’t reached closure about his, (Larry’s) death. I wonder if anyone has. His wife died two years after him, of a broken heart- drank herself to death. When we went to her funeral, all of the eulogies talked about Larry, and her broken heart, and it was in the same church, and the same reception restaurant, it felt the same. It was a second Larry’s funeral, and Jodi’s first. On that trip too, unpon visiting the house, my immediate family learned that Jodi had been building a carriage house for herself next to the house she and Larry shared. She hadn’t touched any of his things after his passing. She was going to keep the house as a kind of shrine. Nothing was the same for her, and she died. 

This painting summer job hurts my body like crazy. I feel my knee cushioning is thin if not worn through (my physiological knee cushioning- the built in stuff). Went to a colleagues house last night to hang out, which is a rarity, but it was rewarding, and wouldn’t be opposed to visiting again. He’s a good painter, and between him and a couple other employees of the school it’s becoming clear the advantages of graduating with a community etc. , especially MFA, where it’s basically a feeder for cheap labor for the school. From an established professor side, it’s got to be terrifying without tenure, but from the chop-licking greenhorn side, you’ve got a pretty good chance at getting a gig within the school you graduate from. I’m learning a lot about the art school system for a $9/hr summertime wall painter, and gleaning free supplies from raids such as the one I fell victim to ( /graduate clean-out open calls) , and free food from the cafe, such that I haven’t paid much in the way of food for a few weeks. Alas, I’m paying way too much in rent, and it’s still a bleeding calf story for at least another year (tuition)- the freebies are meager consolation. 

That’s gotta be it for now. I’m listening to Ulysses a second time over now, and gleaing some of what’s happening, between my A D D flourishes. I’m loving the book (on audio), and will put more weight on it, especially and until round three. 

I might see my lover soon, that would be nice. 

Post show- summer channel

Had a show in West Philly. It was on my birthday, by chance. I made a zine of cornbread. It was called Kemeys Goethe’s Indiscriminately Esoteric Cornbread Zine. 

I’d made cornbread the day before the show, and drew on top with siracha. The design was pleasing after having been baked, as it darkened and fissured and cracked with the ‘bread’ crust. Otherwise leading up to the art show, I was caffeinating and tryin to write ‘bitchy’ essays, making polemic, clearing myself a wide path perhaps. I was having a difficult time. Mark Twain said there is not a man that truly cares about finding the truth; it tapers at some point, resolution dovetails with fatigue. That’s why adults are full of cockaninny. My lover sent me an interview with the author of ‘Tex’, in which he’s asked if writing is a form of self-punishment, and he said yes. He said that all young writing is a from of narcissism, and what’s more, that acknowledging it is the capstone narcissism. 

What a sad thing, to make things. Of all the uphill battles, a self-defeating one. 

To copy-paste from something I’d written earlier today; and that will wind up on my website likely soon enough as an artist statement: 

Kemeys is interested in how things change depending on how you approach them. A fried egg tastes differently when camping than when ridden with gluttonous heartburn. There’s this one artist, who is accused of killing his lover. He says something like; “when someone learns to read, they forget how to make art- because they think that everything has to mean something- but it doesn’t. Art doesn’t mean anything. It just is.” 

That’s a right modern thing to say. Has some truth to it though, doesn’t it? 

Is it any less true because he may have killed his lover? I don’t mean to be an apologist. 

Embarrassing Though it may be, that bounce in my diction has to do with my listening to Ulysses on audiobook. I don’t understand a bit of it. I’m trying, by reading cliffs notes and a Wikipedia entry. I’m listening at 2x speed, so that doesn’t help, but my idea is to get through with it, so I can go in for a second round and hopefully get something useful. It’s bespeckled with anti-Semitic anecdotes from a character, and lots of interesting linkages zooming from ancient times to post-industrial. I’m thrilled to have embarked on this touchstone from 1918. My inclination is that I’ll go for a third listen too, that I’ll somewhat need it. 

I’m painting (repainting) the school (PAFA), over the summer for nine buck an hour. It’s miserable work on my joints turns out. I relayed my physical pains to a friend and he asked how old I was. I said twenty-eight, and he said, ‘yeah, you got it.’. I guess that was validating, in a way. I think he actually said, ‘you’re there’. I feel in some way I am there, aside from making close to minimum wage. I am greatful, no doubt, don’t get me wrong. People I love and respect, when I tell them about my job, they say ‘good for you’, and ‘keep it. It’s hard out there’. I trust them. I’m happy for the income. 

Painting of PAFA model Emma sold out of the student show for $500, happy about that. 

Went to Kayla Gray to ask about employee benefits and she said basically I had none, but to let her know if I was ready to apply for another position, to let her know. Trying to put together her sting of a sentence, I think I was being offered a job, or to know that I had something in the bag or something. People have been treating me real nice at PAFA as of mid-last semester. There must have been a big meeting. All of a sudden, when I’d talk to people they’d say ‘you’re going to do great things’, and that sort of stuff; or ‘you’re already doing great things’. The coming of age story is prefaced by a non-acceptance, and followed by a welcoming home; the ringer, the gauntlet, the paces. It’s no wonder men aren’t interested in truth when they can have comfort; life is god damn (great) hard. 

I’ve got a ‘felt’ painting idea. It originated with ‘felt’ graffiti, then went though it’s own stages, then the word fell off the thing. It’s like a poster, but without words now. The design is wicked without text. I’m in the process of converting it into a felt painting. I thought I was going to collaborate. I had a friend design the word ‘feely’ in graffiti, then scrapped that, then designed it myself, ‘feelie’, to be sewn by another friend, changed it to ‘feelies’, then after consultation from another friend, dropped the word and just kept the background. I mentioned in a former post the idea of being a loud mouth about processes, and it’s by this modality that I credit the evolution of this piece. I’m happy to be bouncing the ideas around. In a way I feel much more comfortable with the process of creating now that I’ve got some experiences and crackpot rules to abide by. 

I’ve applied for three mural gigs, no replies. So much for experience, as I’m about ten years deep into Graffiti/muralism. I wonder who (in an open call format) could be more qualified than me? 

____

Went out to get more felt. I’d budgeted $300 for the project. I spent $150 on commissioning the word design from a friend. He needed the money anyway. That the design was scrapped is sad. I was going to pay the tailor $150 for sewing the piece, but alas, last night while prepping materials for her, I learned that hot gluing the cut pieces into place serves the ends I want from the piece. The piece idea is one I’ve carried around for maybe five years; graffiti made from felt. I’d heard some art criticism that someone’s work was ‘done, but not felt’. This I thought was a funny companion anecdote to the concept. (The antithesis to this would be an unfinished work that pained me greatly- ‘felt, but not done’). So this being my last summer of college before I go ‘into studio’, complete with critics and thesis panels, I think it’s a fine time to flush out a bunch of old, ‘bad’, ideas. It’s like my home stretch to make art. 

So, so much for outsourcing. The labor of the felt piece falls back squarely on my shoulders. Luckily I have a process to manifest this one. 

I have enrolled in a political cartooning class with Steve Brodener through SVA’s CE department. It’s not my first time doing CE with SVA (my first being three classes in 2013). Those 2013 classes had such a lasting effect on me (especially Skip Sorvino’s graphic design class), that I thought to give it another go. I’m still all upset about someone who’d mentioned to me that a long term goal is to do political art, and I felt that I knew exactly what she was talking about- that’s the pinnacle! Steve Brodener seems to feel this way too, and seems to live having  inscribed the principles of ‘the blend’- ie placing two things next to one another to create an effect, to say something- akin to Puck publication, into is heart and intellect and career. It’s an online class, described as half lecture, and half drawing. 

The art show went along alright. I showed up fatigued from a week’s labor painting at school. I’d in a mad dash cooked up five cornbread dishes with designs alighting the tops, photographed each, digitally collages them into a zine format, and ran back from my apartment to the school, where I edited and printed about twenty of the zines, and picked up display supplies. At the show, I met Grace, who I’d met earlier when she was touring the school with her mother with interest to transfer from Cooper Union. She’d made the switch and had made a day trip out of coming to see the student painting show, and when I knew about that I appealed her to come to this punk warehouse art show, and she did. I showed up two hours late to an art show I was to be featured in, hugged the hosts, found a corner, and sat down with my bags, wherefrom I pulled out pre-wrapped sections of cut cornbread and zines, and a digital projector, which I plugged in and shined onto a nearby dark wall and image about 14 inches square of a picture of cornbread. I handed out zines and cornbread til I had run out, and that was my piece. 

I get all heated at work sometimes. I feel that time is being wasted, and energy. Sometimes the boss man is coy about it, so it’s like we’re on the same team, but most of the time he is belligerent and wasteful. I feel more qualified that bossman in regards to team management. I wonder how this will mature- it would seem that I will do alright somehow, that’s more and more the picture- that things will be alright, yet my low wage and already hurting body encourage impatient thoughts in me. I’ll always be below some older negligent person, and above young ones with two left feet. The other week a coworker asked me for advice on how to handle painting with the door. Looking down, I saw that my coworker was asking about underneath the ajar door itself. On hinges, I swung the door to demonstrate that all parts of the floor were accessible to paint by nature of the moving part. These moments are forgivable, but it has stuck with me and made fodder for inner chuckles. 

I’m slotted to participate in a art market coming in two days. How strange it is that this far in (and I experienced it with the art show too), I have not much ‘product’. I don’t think art’s like that. Product can be derived from craft. Art market to me then seems paradoxical, or oxymoronic, I don’t know which. That explains my cornbread piece, too. I felt good about the cornbread piece. Someone said it was their dinner. It was mine that night too. 

Roommate’s attending bartending school. I meant to write a collection of essays for the group warehouse art show, for this time of transition; one essay on ‘major themes’, which I did manage to get out became more of a stream of consciousness thing and digressed into guilt for adolescent lasciviousness. I couldn’t publish that! The next essay was to start with the line; ‘If you make bad art, there’s nothing like a pop-up show’, and was intended to undercut, then frame the night itself into a new context, that now that the polemics had been expressed, the night could go on. Now I think that’s how comedy works, the ‘everyone’s thinking it’, sort of thing, and or ‘at least I’m not that sad rat’. Another essay was to be entitled ‘A letter to my future Roommates’, and start out ‘Dear roommates, I’m using you for cheap rent.’ 

Suffice to say, and as already mentioned earlier, these gestures were to give myself space, and to guilt dump, and I felt wholly unmotivated to produce the terrible writings. It’s for the best I think in this case. The cornbread idea was much better. . .

Now I am less in transition than in a channel. The summertime is portioned out this time in eight hour block of painting labor. Mornings of never-enough-sleep, and evenings despair and  of never-enough-studio-time. I still have money; I am blessed in that way, but I can feel a kind of grinding away that nags is it worth it, and motivates me to (feeling ever less artificial of a threat) get far away from this sort of shit job. 

Thank you for your time in reading this, and I hope you are well.