In an effort to look more prolific in regards to writing, I’m going back into this thing.
I’ve got an art show to look forward to at a warehouse in west Philly. I submitted pictures of paintings in progress, some sculpture works, and some sketches which I posited ‘could be turned into paintings of any scale’. Well, no bites.
The curators much to my pleasure asked that we show my CV. They thought it was really funny. What’s more they like my writing, and when I put it to them, they said they like the bitchier stuff; and I’m painting with a broad brush here, but I felt understood. So I’ll be a part of a visual art show as a writer, and have got to think up how to write for it, or how to display writing, or whatever.
I’ve taken a practice of non-possession even of thought- that an idea worth doing is either going to get done or is worth showing in its intermediate stages, or shared in words. So, what I’m thinking for the show is a book. A little book. That’s all I can share for now (so much for transparency), because I have a few amorphous ideas floating around up in there. So I’m writing a little bit up to the date, that I taper up, that I wax self-aware.
Monday, May 7, 2018
Johnathan’s Show in NYC
New York trip went moderately well. I read on the bus in preparation for a big essay day. I’m up early this morning for reasons that are centered around my stress about these essay, essays fro Fem:ReConstructs. Technically I don’t need the college credit, but the stuff matters and it’s a good excuse to actually learn citations etc.
Up and down on a bus, nothing too much to speak of. I napped on the way up. I feel that I am in much better mental health today than yesterday. I was regular deadpan in New York, perhaps a better case than some kind of mania, or ego modality which I perceived was how the rest of the carachters at the art opening were operating. I met this cool dude named Anton Bashkin who self-identified as a neo-Hellenist artist, to which I blinked. I heard a lecture on animation where the lecturer was asking the audience to notice blinks in a digital short; “Blink!”, he would yell each time the character in the short would blink. The pacing of the thing was defined by his blinking. It was like a shutter release- the mind taking something in as a dose. Blink!, next concept. I aimed to suppress a jealousy from Anton’s orientation in regards to the works that he makes. “Shit, what the hell am I? I want to be a new-Hellenist, maybe I could just be that. What’s that mean? A focus on nature, animals, satyrs et al? I’m jealous, though it could be limiting, so maybe I’m not.” I thought all in an instance, in a blink. Anton was smart. He’d just curated a show and produced a postcard with th show info on it. His gallery was just up the street at 181 Orchard and closed in twenty minutes, so telling him I’d go and see it, I went on a walk. The gallery had closed ten minutes early so all I could do by the time I arrived was loook through the glass windows. The show looked good. The show looked contemporary, and by that I mean maybe one to three figures in a composition, flat design, texture, mythical narratives, in the school of Gauguin, to me.
Looking up Anton’s work, the new-Hellenist thing makes sense. He’s pulling direct from Hellenist literature, plays and poems. I have to be happy for him.
Jonathan’s show was beautiful looking. The room I’d mentioned was dynamic in a silly way, like undercurrent at the beach, the backdrop of vulnerability was palpably understood, no help from the phone checking, and for that again I was greatful for my deadpan. I sat down and wrote. There was a reading from Johnathan’s gallery book. I bought one for twenty bucks. It has all these pictures of asses, and poetry. Jonathan signed it.
Outside on the street I helped a guy find his bus. We shook hands. He was going to Tennessee.
True to plan, I got a single cake roll and a lotus pastry from a Chinatown bakery, and got on a returning bus, back to Philly. I ate my treats and read with a reader light all the way back.
Up and down on a bus, nothing too much to speak of. I napped on the way up. I feel that I am in much better mental health today than yesterday. I was regular deadpan in New York, perhaps a better case than some kind of mania, or ego modality which I perceived was how the rest of the carachters at the art opening were operating. I met this cool dude named Anton Bashkin who self-identified as a neo-Hellenist artist, to which I blinked. I heard a lecture on animation where the lecturer was asking the audience to notice blinks in a digital short; “Blink!”, he would yell each time the character in the short would blink. The pacing of the thing was defined by his blinking. It was like a shutter release- the mind taking something in as a dose. Blink!, next concept. I aimed to suppress a jealousy from Anton’s orientation in regards to the works that he makes. “Shit, what the hell am I? I want to be a new-Hellenist, maybe I could just be that. What’s that mean? A focus on nature, animals, satyrs et al? I’m jealous, though it could be limiting, so maybe I’m not.” I thought all in an instance, in a blink. Anton was smart. He’d just curated a show and produced a postcard with th show info on it. His gallery was just up the street at 181 Orchard and closed in twenty minutes, so telling him I’d go and see it, I went on a walk. The gallery had closed ten minutes early so all I could do by the time I arrived was loook through the glass windows. The show looked good. The show looked contemporary, and by that I mean maybe one to three figures in a composition, flat design, texture, mythical narratives, in the school of Gauguin, to me.
Looking up Anton’s work, the new-Hellenist thing makes sense. He’s pulling direct from Hellenist literature, plays and poems. I have to be happy for him.
Jonathan’s show was beautiful looking. The room I’d mentioned was dynamic in a silly way, like undercurrent at the beach, the backdrop of vulnerability was palpably understood, no help from the phone checking, and for that again I was greatful for my deadpan. I sat down and wrote. There was a reading from Johnathan’s gallery book. I bought one for twenty bucks. It has all these pictures of asses, and poetry. Jonathan signed it.
Outside on the street I helped a guy find his bus. We shook hands. He was going to Tennessee.
True to plan, I got a single cake roll and a lotus pastry from a Chinatown bakery, and got on a returning bus, back to Philly. I ate my treats and read with a reader light all the way back.
Saturday, May 5, 2018
End of Semester
recap on the semester.
Today was overcast and people on the street looked cynical and abrasive. They looked ready to get into a fight. I think everyone is spending too much time on their phones. I had many encounters today of a sharp rude look followed by a checked phone. What’s on your phone friend?
I bought dinner and a month metro pass for a friend named Joseph, who made a parallel account. Today is the fifth of May, Cinco de Mayo, so the yuppies were out in full force drinking and littering. There’s all this polemic on the internet about race and gender and stuff, but when I take a walk all I can see is indiscriminate yuppie culture- entitlement and plastic and corporate groups. Corporations are like crews. Alliances are formed, qualifiers are set by prices, and social groups develop, and haters, too. I called my mom, and she cut it short. She didn’t want to hear about plastics. Grandmother had a stroke. She went to the hospital, then back to her home after a while. Expressing worry to my mother, concern for her mother, she said blankly, ‘No one’s getting out alive’.
My parents are coming up in a week or so. I told them to bring walking shoes. I want to exercise my parents, and to go on beautiful walks. We could all use it.
I’m supposed to go to New York tomorrow for a talk in the evening at a gallery in Chinatown. It’s to see my professor Jonathan Lyndon Chase, at his show. Jonathan would be one of those teachers fo me who I’d say helped me come out mostly figuratively speaking.
I took Feminist Re:Constructs class and read more Maggie Nelson. We read other stuff too. One from NorbeSe Phillips really got my goose, and I hoped that it was not because I was deep down racist. I’m doubling down on my first impressions from the reading though, and although Phillips experiences racism in the text (Bus to Morocco), it’s terribly (tactfully) written and reckless.
That class had me all upset sometimes, in conjunction with being perpetrator and victim in the most subtle and turned passive-aggressive display of racism, and some reading that I got into a little bit to help give me insight. When a victim claims discrimination, and that we should talk about this stuff, then closes up and retaliates, well, it hurts. I read a little of Racial Matters and a little from W.E.B. DuBois, and a smidge from The ISIS papers. I’m reading Gayatri Spivak, and that’s the best remedy I’ve found; she is constantly zooming out for broader perspective. Suffice to say systemic racism is real, as evidenced in Racial Matters of FBI’s long history of undermining black liberation movements to put it lightly, and we’re all a bunch of no-goods walking on borrowed time and stolen land, drinking out of plastic cups, and buying cheap sombreros on the fifths of Mayos.
That class had me all upset sometimes, in conjunction with being perpetrator and victim in the most subtle and turned passive-aggressive display of racism, and some reading that I got into a little bit to help give me insight. When a victim claims discrimination, and that we should talk about this stuff, then closes up and retaliates, well, it hurts. I read a little of Racial Matters and a little from W.E.B. DuBois, and a smidge from The ISIS papers. I’m reading Gayatri Spivak, and that’s the best remedy I’ve found; she is constantly zooming out for broader perspective. Suffice to say systemic racism is real, as evidenced in Racial Matters of FBI’s long history of undermining black liberation movements to put it lightly, and we’re all a bunch of no-goods walking on borrowed time and stolen land, drinking out of plastic cups, and buying cheap sombreros on the fifths of Mayos.
Last day of school I took a bike ride out to west Philly to talk with Larry at The Spread Bagelry in hopes of weekend employment. I’d be taking the job in friend Megan’s summer absence- holding it for her return in the fall. I might get an interview, and a job come Monday tbd.
I’m slotted to get a job with the school for the summer- that’s the rumor, but I’ve yet to hear anything concrete from the bureaucracy. I’ll stay in Philly. Having a (small and diminishing) trust fund has a way of disqualifying you from opportunities; scholarships, need-based grants, school jobs, residency opportunities, and I suspect some of the school’s bigger cash awards. When I graduate, I may a gaunt resume based on discrimination due to privileges. I’ll do fine nonetheless, and in the meantime, in a state of dysphoria.
Summer plans include working day jobs and painting. Painting comes to my fingers so quickly on the keyboard, yet the paintings I can readily up and do are not my paintings, I don’t think. I wrote this phrase ‘convenient time to have an opinion’, which infects my thoughts when it comes time to deviate from the norm. It’s designed like a koan I think. I intended it fro a thesising student. Oh, year four- opinion. A joke for BFA’s is to not do an MFA because ‘it’ll fuck you up’.
Even in the BFA here at PAFA, and it’s self imposed- but I do want to not paint the classroom picture much more. I’ve started zooming back- like Spivak, to paint the context of art school. It’s funny; a bunch of easels, all serious, studying looking at a furniture construction of a teacher with nude models somehow in there. So this summer I’m thinking of just working with contractor types, and janitorial types, and gopher types within the school, and then in West Philly on weekends immersing myself in yuppiedom at the bagel shop. While I work and stew, a goal is to make honest and direct art, not separate from the cancerous culture which subsumes ecosystems. I’ll work in the belly and serve lemonades in plastic cups, and keep up my mediation, and learn a register.
I’ll come back from New York night of. I don’t want to spend money on a hotel room.
My parents are screwing the pooch by coming up three days after the big PAFA Annual Student Exhibition showcase. I feel simultaneously unloved and disrespected, all on the most topical level. It means more stewing and playing a hidden hand/ long con regarding my art, all while it becomes clearer by the day that my parents, as well as most anyone, is disinterested in my art- what I do, etc. Makes me think of terrorism as art, who’s else names go out there? It’s a stupid thought. Also, just words. Terrorism is a spook word. More liberally applied pop culture, and Facebooks data mining might be considered terrorism, to kick a dead horse. There’s a well written song by the Drones called Why Write A Letter That You’ll Never Send. This song puts it better than I ever can.
I’m on this album by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, her new one, The Kid. It’s almost arbitrary what we settle on, and while going through an album list, I got stuck on this one and have been going through it for maybe fifty cycles now. It’s pretty.
I got halfway through this Roots Of Romanticism Book. I have a silly pile of books to get through. Yet another reason to stay in town this summer and work. I want to live out a little cycle of my Eric Hoffer fantasy. Also I’m sticking around because I’m already paying for a nice apartment.
One more round in the privelage backfire thing. I lost to some conceptual painting stuff in an oil painting prize- that’s subjective, but has me wondering if there was that kind of bias that goes ‘I GET it!’, and the person next to them goes, ‘I also totally get it!’, and paintings of girls in chairs is not a good M.O., but in an undergrad at an academy, come the fuck on- my paintings were hot fire and they lost out to out-of-the-tube things on store bought canvases. Once I won a car in a raffle, then had it revoked because during the event I jumped the fence to get a towel- it was a pool lock-in, hop out hop in, and was disqualified. The car was given to the daughter of the school front desk admin, deservingly so.
There’s this concept called negging. I told this person on tinder that I had herpes once and she said, “weirdest negging ever”. I thought I was being forward bc she was beginning to be sexual in tone. I feel sometimes I’m undergoing a kind of negging by some imposed socio-economic political ideology etc. It’s boring, but I feel it. Moving along. Also, a negging by parents means I’ve maybe outsourcing my attention seeking behavior in the arts in some sort of silly long con.
I met someone and we use each other for sex. I asked for space. I feel used.
I’m interested in seeing someone for personal mental help, on the basis that I’m paying for school healthcare and ten free sessions with a counselor are covered. I like to get personal quick, to which might not be considerate to others, yet I don’t fucking get it bc I want that sort of trust and vulnerability from others too. I don’t want to mess up this new friendship with my sex partner by using them for therapy. So my summer plans are bagel, wall repair, and therapy.
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Okay, having reviewed my sculpture, it’s not that good. I mentioned that I hardly looked at the thing while I was sculpting it. That’s true. Also, the lines drawn onto the surface were easily modified back into a surface texture that made sense. My sculpture had a ton of heart. I woke in the middle of the night from dreaming (NIGHTMARING) about it. It’s consumed me for the past three days.
The judge made his conclusions based on academic sculpting. I’d take mine over the others any day. Um.. but I would like to know the academic stuff. This has helped by bringing up something again- what I run into. I mean, first off, I am a kind of hack. My roommate had gone to art highschool, and has been at it (though my skepticisms lie in to what capacity) for about as long but with different focuses. He’s younger, and I try to be careful not to digress into ageism. He’s actually really good. I don’t mean to sound like a journaler from the turn of the nineteenth century England, but sometimes I think I do; that’s a digression but if you’re ever pained by my false-d pining into a blog site; endlessly ironic and cliche, so am I. I’ll say again I write this thing on a public stage, so you can share my sentiments. Eric Hoffer said that there’s something about the moderately boring that bring out those brilliant thoughts (maybe I lost the competition to a moderately boring piece!). I hope this can tickle your intellect in that moderately boring way. I want to bring light. Full disclosure; I like artists like Gauguin, Van Gogh, Tintoretto, Bla blah, the infamous. Gauguin was funny by the extent which he excitedly waited by the letterbox in Tahiti to hear whether his infamy had matured, whether he had made sales, or news, and as to wether it would be a good time to make his grand entrance back! What a diva!!
I’m super blessed that I’m around people that can tolerate me. I’m super blessed that I can be in the northeast, with terribly capable people. Ps. My homeland is of no salable novelty. What have we got; gators and bath salts man.
I’m super stoked to be in the big leagues of art colleges. I think PAFA’s the best, and what arrogance I bring with me is my mistake alone.
See how good I’m getting?
I want to write a little about the walls I keep hitting, and the things I’m good at.
I’m good at drawing. Seeing and putting it down; and I’m not talking about seeing a rib cage and drawing an ellipse bc fuck that. I’m good at value, and color. A teacher told me I have perfect pitch, ie I can mix the perfect relative color for a painting. I’ve painted a lot. I may be approaching that silly ten thousand hour mark in both drawing and painting, and I’m probably closer in drawing. I’ve done rough calculations, and I’m close-ish in drawing as of two years ago. Um . . I’m not good at anatomy- not really. I can draw maybe half of what’s topically visible, and that’s pretty poor. What’s more is my sensibilities to anatomy spacialy. This is why I lost the sculpture competition, for one. I made an entire sculpture off of silhouette matching. It looks like a Stephen Balkenhol sculpture, which I love. It looks like a chainsaw art sculpture, which I still love. I run into this problem/non-problem sometimes. the fact is if you can do it then you can choose to do it or not do it. But if you can’t do it, then you can only not do it. I mean, duh, but, that’s the wager, and while in school, especially an academic training school, it might be a great time to learn to do it- so rather than try to look smart with teachers that talk about my perfect pitch (this guy’s also an awesome awesome teacher), I’m thinking I’ll take some sculptural anatomy courses forthcoming.
The judge made his conclusions based on academic sculpting. I’d take mine over the others any day. Um.. but I would like to know the academic stuff. This has helped by bringing up something again- what I run into. I mean, first off, I am a kind of hack. My roommate had gone to art highschool, and has been at it (though my skepticisms lie in to what capacity) for about as long but with different focuses. He’s younger, and I try to be careful not to digress into ageism. He’s actually really good. I don’t mean to sound like a journaler from the turn of the nineteenth century England, but sometimes I think I do; that’s a digression but if you’re ever pained by my false-d pining into a blog site; endlessly ironic and cliche, so am I. I’ll say again I write this thing on a public stage, so you can share my sentiments. Eric Hoffer said that there’s something about the moderately boring that bring out those brilliant thoughts (maybe I lost the competition to a moderately boring piece!). I hope this can tickle your intellect in that moderately boring way. I want to bring light. Full disclosure; I like artists like Gauguin, Van Gogh, Tintoretto, Bla blah, the infamous. Gauguin was funny by the extent which he excitedly waited by the letterbox in Tahiti to hear whether his infamy had matured, whether he had made sales, or news, and as to wether it would be a good time to make his grand entrance back! What a diva!!
I’m super blessed that I’m around people that can tolerate me. I’m super blessed that I can be in the northeast, with terribly capable people. Ps. My homeland is of no salable novelty. What have we got; gators and bath salts man.
I’m super stoked to be in the big leagues of art colleges. I think PAFA’s the best, and what arrogance I bring with me is my mistake alone.
See how good I’m getting?
I want to write a little about the walls I keep hitting, and the things I’m good at.
I’m good at drawing. Seeing and putting it down; and I’m not talking about seeing a rib cage and drawing an ellipse bc fuck that. I’m good at value, and color. A teacher told me I have perfect pitch, ie I can mix the perfect relative color for a painting. I’ve painted a lot. I may be approaching that silly ten thousand hour mark in both drawing and painting, and I’m probably closer in drawing. I’ve done rough calculations, and I’m close-ish in drawing as of two years ago. Um . . I’m not good at anatomy- not really. I can draw maybe half of what’s topically visible, and that’s pretty poor. What’s more is my sensibilities to anatomy spacialy. This is why I lost the sculpture competition, for one. I made an entire sculpture off of silhouette matching. It looks like a Stephen Balkenhol sculpture, which I love. It looks like a chainsaw art sculpture, which I still love. I run into this problem/non-problem sometimes. the fact is if you can do it then you can choose to do it or not do it. But if you can’t do it, then you can only not do it. I mean, duh, but, that’s the wager, and while in school, especially an academic training school, it might be a great time to learn to do it- so rather than try to look smart with teachers that talk about my perfect pitch (this guy’s also an awesome awesome teacher), I’m thinking I’ll take some sculptural anatomy courses forthcoming.
SO it’s said you gotta write to know what you think. I’ve thought a cycle over the past couple hours.
I sculpted for the last couple days, well few days. Annual PAFA competition. My roommate won.
Roommate skipped half the first day, half the second day, etc. kinda diddled.
Judge said a bunch of stuff about intellectual efficiency and awarded the prize, negating his high claims. I thought it a cop-out, and easy out- to which his selection reflected. ON one hand talking about shorthand notation and language- and the competition is based on rhythm, some other shit and some other shit.
Judge copped out and picked the sculptural equivalent to Muzak.
Tbh just very safe and detached, like the judging.
The cycle part of my thinking is that this doesn’t mean anything for my future - the judgement was a social one, as made concrete in his critiques, offered afterward. I took him up on the crit, and he drew garbage on my sculpture; literally circling areas and speaking about the regions as if reading a textbook, yet my solutions were valid. He drew a center line over my center line, like a dumbass, didn’t look at the thing. By the measures he’d proposed, he was just trying to sound like a sculptor.
My armature was badass, I spent six hours on the armature. Another ten minutes on the armature, then six hours blocking, then cutting. Today I spent six hours cutting, and basically matching the silhouette. It was a tour-de-force. I hardly looked at the thing, so when the judge went on about the sculpture being a product of process and intellectual investigation, then selected the object which was furthest from his sky-high statements, I knew he was a shill, and full of shit. So, I won. That’s the only way I can live with myself. I mean, I know I didn’t win, but I gave it my best, and I won’t take this judgement as some sign for more things than it is. If it means anything it’s that I alluded yet another curse of validation in exchange for clarity.
No humans were harmed in the posting of this blog.
I sculpted for the last couple days, well few days. Annual PAFA competition. My roommate won.
Roommate skipped half the first day, half the second day, etc. kinda diddled.
Judge said a bunch of stuff about intellectual efficiency and awarded the prize, negating his high claims. I thought it a cop-out, and easy out- to which his selection reflected. ON one hand talking about shorthand notation and language- and the competition is based on rhythm, some other shit and some other shit.
Judge copped out and picked the sculptural equivalent to Muzak.
Tbh just very safe and detached, like the judging.
The cycle part of my thinking is that this doesn’t mean anything for my future - the judgement was a social one, as made concrete in his critiques, offered afterward. I took him up on the crit, and he drew garbage on my sculpture; literally circling areas and speaking about the regions as if reading a textbook, yet my solutions were valid. He drew a center line over my center line, like a dumbass, didn’t look at the thing. By the measures he’d proposed, he was just trying to sound like a sculptor.
My armature was badass, I spent six hours on the armature. Another ten minutes on the armature, then six hours blocking, then cutting. Today I spent six hours cutting, and basically matching the silhouette. It was a tour-de-force. I hardly looked at the thing, so when the judge went on about the sculpture being a product of process and intellectual investigation, then selected the object which was furthest from his sky-high statements, I knew he was a shill, and full of shit. So, I won. That’s the only way I can live with myself. I mean, I know I didn’t win, but I gave it my best, and I won’t take this judgement as some sign for more things than it is. If it means anything it’s that I alluded yet another curse of validation in exchange for clarity.
No humans were harmed in the posting of this blog.
Thursday, March 8, 2018
Stevedore
It’s spring break now for PAFA.
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.
______
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.
______
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.
Monday, March 5, 2018
Dream Notation
Night before last I dreamt of being strapped to the front of a tourism gorilla, like a baby in one of those front pouches, we bounced around. It was an unfortunate leg of an African trip. I’d flown on a small plane in, then took a train, where I lost my childhood gymnastics team duffel bag. It’s funny what the mind does with the stuff you load into it. When I have dreams, even weird ones, I’m comforted- it’s much less harmless than accusations and hostilities posited by peers in waking life. What a shame that we castle into our disadvantages. I’ve been paranoid.
Last night in a dream I inhabited a world not unlike Silver Springs, Florida, where my family camped a couple times for family reunions. I was under eight at the time. This place caught my imagination like a sweater thread, and if you asked me to unravel, it might have something to do with the glitter of the sun across the lake, or the pine needles outside of the rent-a-cabin, or the wooden paver-blocks making a coral for the family van. SO in my dream, I was myself, my age, and an artist in residence, violet and creamed whites, -pthaloey blacks, small flares of macaroni orange-yellow. My residence was a tow-behind camper. It had water leaks and sat crooked, it was parked in a kind of playground, Kentucky-made hydraulic trailers abounded, the neighbors were the type of my step-grandmother, and blood grandfather on mom’s side- working class mechanics, truck drivers. I had a stoat, or a stoat was present, an ermine, a white one like in the Leonardo painting. (I can’t tell purples from blues, so isn’t it funny to dream of one and not the other? ). The stoat became a black Pine Martin, and joined a less dynamic Red Panda. They climbed onto a playground fixture before I came to.
In the middle of the night I awoke with a vision of a bronze horse. Id sculpted it and was making a drawing and planning to paint it. My painting was anticipated by spectators and adulators. In dreams, darkness envelops and details float, This may be why those old paintings were so dark. I’m making darker paintings recently. Part of the gig is up regarding plugging in past solutions to PAFA paintings. I had a crit the other day, and my solutions were regarded as ‘banal’, and ‘contrived’. It was a relief- they were. I posted a video to social media and was replied to with praise, but I knew the crit was spot on. I was over the paintings and buffed them. The attitude to preserve paintings for posterity and to start on fresh surfaces each time is gone, I’m looking forward to painting over these older paintings. Yes, I did document them with a photograph first. This same dream but a little earlie I remember a haunting feeling. My work was haunted, I am haunted by my work- one of these things. I didn’t eat before bed, tapering from lunchtime, and I could feel my body heal in the night, going through whack food I’ve been putting into it. I wrestled restlessly like in grips of a fever, but it was my body going through the poisons I’d put in to it.
I thought the other day how I didn’t have dreams of painting, and wasn’t that peculiar because I Shane so much time doing that. Now it’s clear to me that I am painting in my dreams, it’s a calling from the ether, with visitors, and hauntings. It’s vivid, it bleeds.
Last night in a dream I inhabited a world not unlike Silver Springs, Florida, where my family camped a couple times for family reunions. I was under eight at the time. This place caught my imagination like a sweater thread, and if you asked me to unravel, it might have something to do with the glitter of the sun across the lake, or the pine needles outside of the rent-a-cabin, or the wooden paver-blocks making a coral for the family van. SO in my dream, I was myself, my age, and an artist in residence, violet and creamed whites, -pthaloey blacks, small flares of macaroni orange-yellow. My residence was a tow-behind camper. It had water leaks and sat crooked, it was parked in a kind of playground, Kentucky-made hydraulic trailers abounded, the neighbors were the type of my step-grandmother, and blood grandfather on mom’s side- working class mechanics, truck drivers. I had a stoat, or a stoat was present, an ermine, a white one like in the Leonardo painting. (I can’t tell purples from blues, so isn’t it funny to dream of one and not the other? ). The stoat became a black Pine Martin, and joined a less dynamic Red Panda. They climbed onto a playground fixture before I came to.
In the middle of the night I awoke with a vision of a bronze horse. Id sculpted it and was making a drawing and planning to paint it. My painting was anticipated by spectators and adulators. In dreams, darkness envelops and details float, This may be why those old paintings were so dark. I’m making darker paintings recently. Part of the gig is up regarding plugging in past solutions to PAFA paintings. I had a crit the other day, and my solutions were regarded as ‘banal’, and ‘contrived’. It was a relief- they were. I posted a video to social media and was replied to with praise, but I knew the crit was spot on. I was over the paintings and buffed them. The attitude to preserve paintings for posterity and to start on fresh surfaces each time is gone, I’m looking forward to painting over these older paintings. Yes, I did document them with a photograph first. This same dream but a little earlie I remember a haunting feeling. My work was haunted, I am haunted by my work- one of these things. I didn’t eat before bed, tapering from lunchtime, and I could feel my body heal in the night, going through whack food I’ve been putting into it. I wrestled restlessly like in grips of a fever, but it was my body going through the poisons I’d put in to it.
I thought the other day how I didn’t have dreams of painting, and wasn’t that peculiar because I Shane so much time doing that. Now it’s clear to me that I am painting in my dreams, it’s a calling from the ether, with visitors, and hauntings. It’s vivid, it bleeds.
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