A swim

Late entry today:

It occurs to me that even in the subconscious are we conscious. 

There’s a memory of bonding with a model- ha- I remember now- it was last night. She said that most of her clothes are gifts- and that she trusts the taste of others over her own. This has broad implications. I related about my framing up a composition- I kind of hold onto my seat, and work with the picture as it develops. Sure, I have developed an eye, but I am a big proponent of not overthinking it. She said plus, that she preferred used clothes, and things. I relayed this memory too, about my preference of used things. It turns out, my parents must have picked up on it. Once, as a young adolescent, my dad picked me up from school with a gift of a football. He said that he’d found it in the ditch, while clearing weeds that day. It had some topical scratches, which I noted, saying so, and that I believed his story. I loved the gift. We threw the ball and it was a true joy, not separate from reality. Later on, by a few days, I found the box and the receipt for that very football. It would seem that he made the effort to rough it up, so that he could tell me the story of his ‘finding’ it. My model friend said that that was such a sweet story- and I had a flush of realization that it truly was. I thought later- wow- what is having a good dad relative to my social relationships? What about telling the good? Or seeking to tell the good, again, not separate from reality. 

I have a pair of shorts that appeared to me in the same way. Upon a visit to my parents house, a pair of newish (but it looked that they were washed a handful of times) little shorts. They were suspiciously small- they could not fit either of my parents. My mother asked if I wanted them, and I said yes, They were exercise shorts and at the time, I was not taking good care of my body- I digress. 

This morning, rather than waking very early and running (my calves are so tight, it would be a bad decision (and mostly very very painful) to do so, I slept in till 7:30, which felt not-good. I ate breakfast, then in class during critique, became very tired, and laid down and took a nap on the floor. Today was field trip day, and after critique we found our car-buddies, (mine was Aaron, who has a bachelor’s in Psychology and likes to talk heady art concepts), and went out to Bird Key Park. I’d thought ahead and brought swim trunks (procured on last Wednesdays field trip, after visiting the Ringling Museum). Aaron and I walked out to the cape of the park overlooking the bay, and I set my things down, and looking around, stripped and slipped into my swim trunks. I took a quick walk to survey the scene, checking entry and exit points, and I was asked what I was doing, and I said going for a swim I think, and some other students arrived too, just in time for me to make a great leaping dive from the apex of the cape, and out into the bay I swam. I’d mentioned to Aaron that it would be a good idea to swim across the bay and back, and he agreed. In the water, I turned to my classmates, who seemed in good spirits, and said “Call me Lieutenant Dan!” as I did a back-reclining breast-stroke, and out into the bay I swam. I turned over and breast-stroked most of it, with some freestyle mixed in, and some backstroke. the water was brisk, and the colors of the great sarasota bridge reflecting into the bay were marvelous. I’d seen dolphin in here two weeks ago. They tend to come through around sun set. I thought about sharks a fair amount, but also of their relatively small size. I was more worried about being worried, than regular worried, so I swam, because that was a thing to do to get through, or across respectively. Another concern was boats, and I kept an eye out for them periodically. One passed by- through the columns of the bridge. I estimated the trajectory, and understood that I did not need to slow down, or break pace, but we would be close. As they passed they turned around to look, and asked in a sheepish tone if I needed help. They half-understood that I did not want to be bothered, but for courtesy’s sake, they asked. I said no, without a thanks, for I was in mid-swim. Toward the far end of the bay, reaching the other bank there was a fair amount of sound in the water from propellers of boats. What havoc humans wreak with recreational boats. I approached a seawall, and wondered how I was going to get out of this water. I saw a Quaker family on the sidewalk by the seawall, and to my left by twenty feet, a couple big rocks jutting out of the water near the wall, so I swam toward those to climb out. Before getting to the rocks, the bottom came up, and I could stand and walk. My breathing had been regulated and my whole self vibrated at a new attunement. The eldest man of the quakers, with a big white beard met me as I waded up to where the concrete wall met the water, extending a hearty outstretched palm to me. What a poetic solution! I grabbed hold of his hand, and he hoisted me out of the water. I stood with the family. There were two little kids, in quaker head-wear, big sparkly eyes looking up at me, and two women, and a younger man. They gathered around me and asked if i’d swum all that way, and if I was scared of the boats, which I said yes and no, and then I saw Aaron! I said “gotta go, there’s my friend”, and went to Aaron, who’d told the painting class teacher that he had to ‘get something out of his truck’ then drove across the bridge to come pick me up. My whole self was ringing with serendipity and bliss, as I rode in the back of Aaron’s truck back to painting class, where I receive a good-humored welcome. 

Runner's digest

This is morning number two waking at 6, and running. This one I was sore and tired for. I went a little less far. I had breakfast afterward too, eggs, oatmeal, a pancake, a hash brown, and a cup of coffee. That'll probably be too much for me. I've got an appointment today with my student advisor so that I can drop a class- thing is I don't think (anymore) I'm going to drop a class at all. It's an 'I got this'. kind of thing, and I think I really do got this. I'm sick, still, somehow. After the run this morning, I went to the gym and rollered my calves out (though not all the way out).. I laid down in corpse pose, and fluid came into my windpipe and I began to cough a lot. What's wrong with me? It was funny dying there on the gym floor because not a week before I was in the same pose, hungover, looking at the ceiling in a parallel, but different altogether state. How funny life is, and how great that we have the control to 'change'. Peace for now.

Switching gear

Rough bedtime, thinking of lonesomeness, too much caffeine, sickness, coughing up yellow. 

Wrote a list- to go into 'super-sayan' mode. Fuck healing, I'm too behind.

Morning run in the dark. Like a quick little fox, a remnant of the night. 

No food yet, listening to my body- clear mind, stuffy nose. A vitamin. 

Class- I stand in the back for the demo. In the computer labs I email. 

Out to run errands. My transcript goes out to PAFA in the mail.

I take a picture of a stump, for reference for a linocut. 

Hey

There’s something stuck into my head almost immediately this morning upon waking. I don’t know where the bad attitude started but maybe it was when drinking- which was fun- liberating if nothing else. I hope maybe I can flush out my dreams from this morning. I recall waking and realizing (initiating dialogue with myself) that it takes a self to pull out of sleep. I wondered if there was something in me that could be removed, like a part of my brain perhaps, like my ego or something, so that I could love wholly, more.. without end. But here I am on the verge of working. I’m slotted to work today. My first deadline (for a collaborative project with friends) is today- this evening, some bird sculptures for a film. I am powerful- someone told me that a few months back, but then also again yesterday over the internet. How I recall the power that you had- something along those lines. I apologized for blackmailing that teacher in a meeting. She said she didn’t remember it, and that I was young. Yikes. I cast my former self in a negative light sometimes, but I wasn’t that bad, and I’m not too terrible right now either. I got sick, and it probably had to do with drinking and smoking, and having a sense of lack of purpose. Socially, it was fun, and I got a ton of numbers and business cards, but as it goes in Florida, mostly from do-nothings and mouth-breathers. I read this book, which is close to the best I’ve read, by T.J. Clark called The Sight of Death. In it, TJ goes up to these two paintings from Poussin nearly every day. He’s on this residency at the Getty museum in LA. Part of the reason I want to get out of here is the people, truly. People are the same everywhere mostly, it’s true, but these young worrying, self-centered yet not self-aware ‘Ringlinger’ types are the worst. They are uncreative, and walking echoes of mass consumptive culture. They sport bed-wear including elastic eye-shades in the day time while they work, to demonstrate how long they’ve been awake and at it. I am sitting next to one right now, he’s not made a move on his digital image in about twenty minutes- he’s fried. He takes sips from a water bottle with much pomp and sound. He’s self-righteous. I guess it takes one to know one. So in this book: TJ is on a residency at the Getty, where he walks into a room where two paintings are hanging- Gallery 20. One of the Paintings is Landscape with a Calm, and the other is Landscape with a Snake. The authors ideas about the paintings are fleshed out over the course of his residency, including poems, tight crops (studies), and supplemental plates and texts to enlighten throughout. The area I had was not too much. Last night I was being pseudo-racist with my friend outside of the dorms. It’s funny that when you try to explain your purity, that you show your ugliness and flaws. Or rather, if you try to grasp at the notion that you are separate from racism, then does it claim you. I guess racism is systematic, such that there is no escaping it. It is in the air we breathe. That’s the newest information from the new-left I’ve heard. Anyway, waking up I thought about this pool, where there was a big thing going on (in the James Bond sense). I was a part of some team or something, and a black friend came up and I changed my vocabulary- talking about some bitches around the pool. This goes into some of my distrusts. When a (let’s say) white person alters their speech to sound more black, it’s one of my biggest peeves. Though language is flexible and important, I do not think that it should be dumbed down for the sake of others- that’s retarded. Here’s where getting out of the south would be good. There’s a bunch of idiots down here, and to have a little something special is nearly toxic. So I said this bitches by the pool line to my black friend, and I woke up, thinking god, I’m fucked up. It’s not the worst, I was trying to relate. I won’t get too wordy here, because words are so damn slow, they could not express the complexity of my thoughts, or I would be stuck here writing on a moot topic, wrestling with myself as to whether or not I’m racist. .Hey. 

The day before I got accepted into PAFA

1.) I had this dream, and I was either the protagonist or the antagonist. There was a guy in front of a camera- this guy was a beefy one, he was a hippie-dip. He had a long term girlfriend who was perfect for him. Now wondered if he was the more capable one or she of the two. He had that air about him where he’d been rehearsing and motoring out for a long time, and she was a little more humble about it. He was fixated about his specialness. I read this poem last night, and it had to do with the fact (which I don’t know how closely it relates to truth- to fact/ is fact) about Eric Garner’s hobby of planting plants It talked about his hands, putting things in to the ground, which would house small creatures, and produce food and in the end help us to breathe. The ‘help us to breathe part was the part which kicked you in the butt. 

I”m in class now. We’ve got to have these linoleums cut by Monday. I might be in a bad mood- or a good one. I’m not sure. I’m sick. This semester’s end is gnarly because I don’t know whether I got into PAFA or not, and thus I feel no motivation to stress out over these big projects that are being proposed. I’m feeling really sick. Is it from quitting drinking, or smoking? Or have drank and smoked at all? Is it from lack of sleep? I am trying to figure out why I was so motivated before. What was I doing? I felt so healthy. What is true is that I am not healthy right now. I have slept little, and I feel as though I have a cold. This is augmented by the demands (albeit less engaged) of the program right now. I have many things to do. I Should really drop out of a couple of classes and free up my Tuesday Friday’s. What’s the problem with this is that I might no longer have access to the glass and metal department, and my digital hand might go less developed. What would be good about this is having free hours in the morning. This would have me likely staying up late on Monday’s and Thursdays, and sleeping in until noon afterwards- it is difficult to say whether this would be a positive choice or not. I wonder if these as free days would be useful, or just disengaged. My motivation to work for these classes is not terribly low. I work on glass-work every day. The thing is, it requires my attention and about six hours a week. When a teacher is too touchy with the female students, I lose respect for him, and cannot be taught directly by him any longer- not dropping names, just thinking of a phenomenon that I have experienced. 

2.) The bro-hero proposes a challenge- that he survive in the great ocean (like lake Eerie) big and clear and fresh, (little salt) We propose that the waves are too big, but he goes. At the rest, I become him, and  catch the wave and go under, and get tumbled and pummeled by the water. I don’t know if I’ll make it- I might die. Here we learn of the plan of our hippie- it’s to move mountains, figuratively, and he’s got a plan to move four thousand people by exploiting their apartments, doing out with design-of-yore characteristics- having the architecture slither and wrap and condense into a small space. It was like captain Planet. Four thousand people were displaced, or condensed as the great clear ocean swell took over. 

Spring Break

Hey. 

I started to write this blog post earlier, but at some point I thought, ‘I want some beer”, or “I could use some beer”. So I went to the bar and and shut it down.  I’m a bit tired. I thought at some point today to write about one-hundred things I dislike about Ringling. Now I think these instead can be categorized as either art school problems, or societal-norm problems. There's little escaping these within an/any art school. I want to go to a different school not because this one is (particularly) broken, rather because I want to learn new things- different things. I am not seeking a degree, rather knowledge. One difference I anticipate in leaving Ringling will be more independence, and a new system to adapt to. One problem I would  like to address at Ringling is light pollution. There's no reason to keep so many lights on here. The night hours on campus are characteristically bright due to the 'saftey' lights all around.

Otherwise, my goings are as follows: 

I spent the spring break by taking out a rental on a car. Angie and I left directly after her final class (before the break) at about just after sunset. We went straight to Crystal River- to go to my family’s ‘quadruple birthday’ party- a celebration of life put on by my mom- to bring in the big years of my grandparents- while they’re still living. My Eula turned 85, Donna 75, Hugo, 80, and Grammy, 90. They all are alive and well, though all showing signs of their age mentally (what have they got to lose? ). 

I was very honored to have Angie in tow. She’s got a boy-f, which is whatever. I hope to someday have a forever-relationship with either Angie or a cosmic equivalent. 

At some point, a friend of mine said, she’s ‘almost perfect for you’ , and that was funny. Somehow, Angie is this, where she escapes the radar of eligibility, or something. She was a great road-companion though. We went to Crystal River, where we checked into our hotel (paid for by my mom/dad), and then went to a bar. We looked a while for a bar that would be likely to serve an underage asian person, and found one, where we ended up running Angie’s card to pay for our beers, because mine was so fucked up (from spreading clear gesso across surfaces to paint on). We slept well (I think) and then went to the big quad-party, where Angie and I spent much time going through much of my old files of paintings. I wonder how much of my life has been so self-focused. I found my karaoke song- it’s “what kind of Fool am I”, which my local karaoke spot does not have on file- whatever. 

We went to the party and had a grand time. I met a couple New-Yorkers in my distant cousins (in law) Jessica and her husband. They run a sheep farm out in CT, and it’s appealing enough to illicit a visit. 

Angie and I, after the party, drove to Orlando- that I could visit my friend’s show- the show of Jackie Jurasiti, a former lover of my roommate and a person, whom I helped change a tire on her car in 2012, and an MFA grad of FSU, and an art therapy grad, etc. 

I saw her preparing this show on IG and I though that I should go to the opening (it worked with my spring break dates) and buy a painting. I dod buy a painting (they were under-priced, and 90% of the show was sold by the time I was ready to buy). I bought a flat work on paper for one hundred dollars, as opposed to what she was asking- sixty. She agreed to ship it me (my parents address) out of the frame. The venue was cool- and old coffee bar- and we bought a couple books apiece and got a couple beers bought for us by  this guy john, whom I asked whether he played music (my new trick). From there, Angie and I wen tout to get Tako-China, another trick, and then went to a bar where a metal show had taken place, but ended. Angie wished she’d seen the show. At some point, half-way through that beer, I tapped out, and was ready to drive- somewhere. We got in the car and went south, and south further, until we stopped somewhere south of Coco Beach. We got a hotel room, and slept on a smallish bed. Neither of us thought twice about it because we were tired. In the morning we took a walk to Waffle House, then back to the hotel to check out (there was a line at W>H> and we needed to hedge our bets). I made the decision that WH was in fact our best bet, and we had a great brunch on that Sunday morning. We drove south further still and got to Miami at about four pee em, whereupon I brought Angie to her friends place at FIU, and we smoked a ciggy, and I peaced out.

I drove for a little while- wondering if a friend would come-through with a couch- but nothing came, and I rented this hotel room at a spot that I was familiar with from a few moths back during winter break (Art Basel Miami '16). I got the room for 89$ a night, and booked it for three nights. The next day maybe, I went out to the Oyster- an old house turned state park, then to the Fairchild Botanical Gardens. I got a frosty at Wendy’s and wondered ‘what have I become’?, as per usual. The next day I don’t know what I did, but I ended up going to the PAMM, where I saw Jeffery Whatever from Ringling, and some cool-ish art pieces. From there, I went back to the hotel, then out to a wine-bar with an old friend, Heather (a name which I have an affinity for). I met Heather’s friend too- A—something- a dancer, and we exchanged info. They left at some point around midnight, and I had it in my mind to get drunk, or to stay, or whichever. I did both, and befriended the bar-staff. Turns out, and old friend of mine from Tally maintains the gardens there- at the Lagniappe, and so I went back the next night to say hi. Eventually, after a model-turned-lover time in the hotel room (not Angie), Angie and I returned to Ringling, where I find myself now, and gearing up for another go at a big semester. 

I have a pending submission to PAFA, which has little to do with the work-to-do in the long run, but in the short term, is something close-by, that’s fun to talk about with ‘Ringlingers’. It also splits my mind in two, and every for every step I take here at Ringling, there is a sensation of mutiny, and a great unknown.

I hope at PAFA to learn how to make a painting that is built to last. How to develop a painting from start to finish is not in our curriculum at RCAD (transfering a sketch, glazing procedures, etc.) whereas visual development courses are nearly standard- it's just different), and instead it's a trial by fire environment here. (which, as an engaged young adult, I tend to thrive in). I want to ensure that my paintings do not fall off of their supports as a result of my lack of understanding of materials and techniques. These things do happen, and misinformation abounds. The knowledge is guarded and thus it is important to be within a lineage.

There's a good example in an (relatively) outsider (self-taught) artist, Odd Nerdrum. Classic case- he was mid-career, and using his own formulas, and he's approached by a collector at a trade show, "come over to my house and take a look at the painting that you sold me". So Nerdrum goes to look at the painting in the collector's home, and to his horror, it's falling off the support! Yikes! So Nerdrum, in an effort to preserve his name, offers to paint them a replacement, no charge. Well, he gets caught with the painted replacement, and the government of his country accuses him of selling without paying taxes- tax evasion, and throws him in jail for a few years, without the ability to paint therein. They made an example of him. Anyway, I want my paintings to last, and to know about what Im' working with, beyond the ol' fashioned trail n' error art-school approach.

Garden Painting