Day before spring semester 2019

The days since returning to Philadelphia are hard to characterize. I am at least alone, which is better than with subversive company. I have some guilt about winter break. I spent much time watching YouTube videos, and reading Reddit. I meditated and slept in all the time and regrounded my drawing practice. The big thing that went undid was ‘serious’ reading, specifically The DuBois Africa book, which is biblical in its lists of tribe names, and a reading from CJ at PAFA that regarded enlightenment thinking in the shadowy wake of the holocaust (The Dialectic of Enlightenment). I did get back into Ulysses on tape (this might be my fourth listen?) and was able to keep pace with Joyce for longer stretches than previously. I found a good YouTube Series about Joyce’s Ulysses called The Omphalos Cafe, and the ‘cafe’ owner, really has anti-academic take, which is fresh and refreshing. Among other things, he quickly touches on why Joyce ‘needed’ to bring in Bloom so soon, what he couldn’t do with Stephen, and how Bloom is the scientific to Stephen’s poetic. Bloom is suggested to be an Uber mensch. The host of the video series touches on Bloom in fact not being Jewish (how rich, for so much speculation rides on this assumption; and it represents an anti-Semitic booby trap for the academician!). Stephen is suggested to a be a young buddha-to-be, and Molly (though not stated by the host of the video explicitly, is a fully realized god being!)

I grew both closer and more distant to my parents. I became heated one night, and kind of fumed thinking about how I look forward to moving all of my things out and being alone and not needing to interact with them. They look forward to the same things. I must admit a projected audience for this blog is kids or grandkids, to sort through. I want to polish it up at some point, leaving in the ideas, while leaning up the verse. I don’t know who with or when if I were to reproduce, but it’s not in the foreseeable future. I can be rude when questioned about it by my parents. It would seem older parents make better parents, and art parents make the best parents. My career it would seem is not copacetic with settling down at all, so I’ll have to postpone until later on. I’ve got about ten grand in the bank now. I’ve whittled down an inheritance over the past seven years; made it stretch, and grow a bit, then plugged into and paid for four years of art school. I’ve seen some real mouth breathers get employed, and I love teaching painting, so I think getting out I might have a shot at getting some real money flowing back in in under ten years. I don’t think I want to sell my paintings yet. I think I want to collect my own paintings, and have them viewable digitally. I’m glad I gave away all of the paintings that I have, but there’s a time an a place, and my inventory is what I’ve traded my bank account for, and my time and years, and all that. My knees are a little bad. I’ll have trouble later on. 

Amy Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama is not that good. I don’t think she has a thorough understanding of drawing in relation to the structures of the face. I looked up a handful of British painters today; the group I’m a little familiar with is that outlined in a book called Edward Bawden and his circle. I would like a copy of that book someday later on. I’m all about the Brits when it comes to painting, what a fresh group.

When I got back to Philly, I went to school, not to my apartment. I spent the night there, and took out a couple paintings, and resumed, after the two weeks intermission in Florida, working on them. I was fresh and lucid. The break did me some good. 

Also on the break I watched this godawful video called why Hitler hated the Jews. There was antisemitism throughout and large sections from Mein Kamf, but very informative. I hope to read Mein Kamf on my own. Probably there’s a PDF online. Suffice to say Hitler was delusional and the Jews to him were a scapegoat, and the Jewish people and the Romani and all that. Many have traded knowledge and understanding of the holocaust for blissful ignorance, but for some reason I found it very enlightening his inner turmoil nightmare-trip-coming-of-power thoughts. Media literacy; same with reading DuBois. Also on the topic of the holocaust, I’m reading Hannah Arendt’s The Banality of Evil, Eichmann in Israel, which is a blessing in its clarity and force. Famously, this book got Arendt in trouble, and later she regretted the word choice of the title, which she surrendered caused her much unnecessary stress. 

I’ve got his neighbor who has a baby with colic. It wails for hours. I feel bad for him; poor kid too. 

My drums have yet to arrive in the mail. They are three days late tonight. I should call the service number. 

Trump has shut down the government and I don’t understand the situation in full, but we’ve been largely desensitized culturally at this point, myself included. I find it not wroth pursuing, which is how Trump I feel is so capable of moving along in his unique way. It’s divide and conquer, and seems to come naturally to him, in addition to his cultivating it. We have something similar to interwar Germany in disenfranchised and economically unstable populations. Our hegemonic dominance can collapse from within, and with Trump at the helm, it’s ever more plausible. Trump and the majority of his entitled generation are the toxic top of this country, bastards all of them. All I care about is plastics, and I don’t even care enough about it to change my life around avoiding them, I’m part complacent. Hitler blamed the Jews for bringing in basically smut and globalism. Of course I don’t think Jews are the problem. it’s funny about Hitler because what’s his beef but his fellow countrymen buying porn, and taking out loans and buying into individualism. “History is a nightmare I am trying to awaken from”, says Stephen Daedalus in Ulysses.

I’m on this big painting now. Ten feet by eight. It’s a snake on a garden bench. nice painting. People like it. It’s all acrylic, super flat and absorbent. I’ve spent the night with it twice, working in long 14 hour spurts, then a 4 hour sleep, then another 4 when the natural light of the sun comes up, then I’ll go home and cook and shower and sleep for 12 hours and repeat. School starts tomorrow and I won’t be able to do this routine (though I might be able to get in four hours in the morning) The painting might need some body in the form of heavy-body acrylic, and oil has been suggested too. I went in a direct painting approach, and I like it better than if I had projected up a big drawing or something like that. If I paint tomorrow, I’ll not do much, mostly look at it, maybe get supplies and mix a few colors and put them down in shapes. That’s painting I guess. Friday I might have some time on it, and spending the night would open up a long session on Saturday, and spending another night would do Sunday too, and I hope to finish it by then. I’ll have a critique on Monday and it would be cool to get it critiqued. 

I got a handful of cartoons that I’m really pleased with. Small and outlined with a rapidograph pen. Good ideas. One’s an old motif of a clown towing his little circus behind him, except in this rendition he’s on the edge of a cliff and doing a hailing a cab gesture. The hail is also like a heil, so I gotta acknowledge that; like, that I’m interested in being bad, like Philip Guston. Sad clown hailing an unseen cab standing on the edge of a cliff, and there’s another clown behind him too, with the same motif, and his little thumb sticking up like a hitchhike, also on the edge of a cliff. I stood on the edge of a set of cliffs in Iceland. It was windy and the ocean in that latitude is wicked. You can tell even from a couple hundred feet up. The grass and rocks beneath our feet were wet with rain and we took pictures by a cliff side. What’s the difference between that and towing around a bullshit ideology? That’s what keeps me up at night. 

Actually, that’s really the only good cartoon. I kind of got preoccupied with making a series, and ran out of sparkle I think, but I have eight inked drawings in total. 

In Florida I made a few collages, some inked drawings, some mock-ups of business cards, (I think I’m going to do the business cards on the school copy machine, zine style, and gluing a front sheet to a back sheet. I have nicely inked drawings for them, and I think the shitty/hand touched aesthetic will actually represent me and the work that I do much better than if I were to send off my drawings digitally to a company to be printed and cut etc. I’m accustomed to hand-done production- it’s my thing, so that’s the card). I worked a tiny bit on some essays for scholarship consideration, but those need much more work. I compiled a list of over 150 ‘after school’ plans as a project and I now feel free as a bird that they’re annotated. I might publish them here on the blog, because I think it could help out another artist, or might just be funny or interesting to some readers. That’s most of it! Wish me luck on a good semester! 

Addendum:

Also, some things I have to focus on in studio. I think I should work digitally for my cartooning work as far as inking and coloring goes, because it’s so much faster and intended for reproduction anyways. I think I’ll be spending much more time on the ipad in procreate. I’ve been playing with it over the break and it’s been going well so far. Otherwise, I get lost in the transfers and scale-ups and redraws and tracings of traditional cartooning and lose momentum and motivation. Digital means I can keep the freshness of the thumbnail, and its proportions. It’s time to stop being ignorant to this fact- what’s important to me about the work is not the product but rather the image. I’m most used to the image. The product is secondary in the age of mEchanical reproduction . . . Walter Benjamin. 

Another thing, I should learn how to get great captures, and to edit well photographs of my studio compositions. Again, it’s the image that’s important and my metabolism is much too fast to hunker down to paint every still life I find inspiring. Rather than beat myself up over how slowly I paint and constipated I get in my stream of ideas in relation to time (there’s not enough time blah blah), it would serve me better I think to flik it and be over it and edit in post. 

Another other thing, I should be sensitive to when something needs to be a big deal, and when a simpler image will do. I’m thinking of my ‘studio block’ cartoon page, which hit it spot on in a stream of consciousness tour de force versus the couch painting, or other projects that I scaled up or took too seriously. What did I need from them and why were they a wash? Most things can be said simply, (my ideas at least). Small is fine. As is going over the original sketch. As is using pencils as inks, fuck it, that’s what you’ve trained in.

Next Semester Plans

Plans when returning to school 

Upon returning to school I hope to have a chill semester, and not be carried away by fear. If I can keep my head on straight, I think some good might come from it. I will take much more sculpture than painting courses. Painting takes so long to learn, and I have a good head start, and sculptural techniques are specific. Sculpture at PAFA is very strong. I will take a mould making course, and a 3d printing course. I will take a sculpture studio course, and attend an extracurricular sculpture studio. I have oil based clay, and I’ve gifted some out too, so not enough for something larger than two or three feet, but it would probably be best and easier on my hands to work in water based clay mostly, and to work small. Sculptural anatomy is so much more precise, and I’m excited to get more deeply into it by taking an echorche class with John Horn. I’ve already taken an Ecorche class with him over the summer, but I’m not sure to what extent it’s burned in there, especially the lower arm, and muscles of the face, and I hope to dig in and challenge my teacher in this department, and to generally set myself hard tasks throughout. Briefly I’ll outline my sculptural studies forthcoming: 

Mondays: 3D printing with Rob Roesch. The head of our sculpture department, well versed in digital and public installation art. 

Tuesdays: Extracurricular figure sculpture session with Elizabeth Heller. I should work small (actually, medium, 10-18 inches) and fast in here, and in water based clay. I should make sure my armatures will fire, so I can have fired figurines as product from the sessions. Just a thought. Otherwise, oil-based and use potentially for casting class. 

Thursdays: Ecorche class in the morning> Figure open studio class in the afternoon. 

Fridays: Mould making in the morning with John Horn. 

As for painting, I’m taking a Wednesday landscape class with Doug Martenson. Doug is a jolly madman I think. He’s thoroughly in your corner, no matter who who are as long as you’re respectful, which I think is the perfect figure for an art school. I was weary to take classes with him as I sustained a polemic that his school of painting was inferior, or not rigorous or thorough, but having taken a class with him last semester, I can say that his guidance was invaluable and I made way more interesting work with him than in other classes. I tended to take his advice, and I felt free to riff on it too. He is a reader, and recommended me a few good books and articles most of which I dutifully read if it didn’t bore me to tears. The landscape class will be two sections, both the morning and the afternoon. It will interfere four times throughout the semester with my crit times with Jan Baltzel, but somehow we’ll make it, (maybe I’ll stay in that day, or commute on my own to the spot where the class is, outdoors somewhere). In this class, (of which I think of second most frequently, after the Moving Images MFA class I got accepted into) I hope to live-truly-live out one of my paths. Doug is so accepting of a person, I think he might think it’s cool.  Many of my post-school daydreams are centered around painting outdoors, and interacting with curious onlookers or patrons. I’ve done it before, and it’s one of my favorite things to do. In Miami in 2013 at Art Basel I hung out with Willie Rose- the Rose Man, who taught me how to make Palmetto roses, and we hawked them on the street. That experience of busking with him was a rush. He chided me for giving out an inferior product one time, and taught me about the flow of the day; when to give one away, when not to, etc. Since, I’ve set up a shanty store a handful of times; and every time I think I sell something, and these are my fondest memories of art; on the street; making something while waiting like a fishing trip I for someone of a curious mind to come by, and to interact with them. I did it in New York, and Amsterdam, and Berlin by the wall, and in Jacksonville a handful of times, in Sarasota, and yes even in Philly before I went to school there. I sold a drawing in the Rodin Museum. How fondly I think of these times! For Christmas I got a metal tongue drum from my mom. It can fit in a backpack. This is the first true ready-to-go full percussive sounded instrument I have had, that I can bring into a busking situation. I want to, on these trips with Doug Martenson’s class, bring along a tongue drum and a little gopro camera (for the film class, for nature captures), and probably my ipad with it’s pencil. This is the yuppiest pleinair/busking setup but, eh, fuck it. What superstitions are worth getting rid of if not the last one- that of being considered a fucking yuppie. So I hope to make landscape studies in a sketchbook with a pencil, and bring them to solvency, then to photo them into ProCreate and digitally paint them. The digital painting I’ve been doing recently has been fruitful in terms of those things in painting I rarely am able to get to by nature of other problems arising, or shortsightedness. namely, these are edges, edge quality, textures, and color. Truly color is dependent on what you take out there in regards to tubes, and textures (arguably) come from tools you take out there. The French easel weighs in at about 40 pounds fully loaded, and you’ve got your brushes, and your palettes, and your tubes (which,can limit your range if you don’t bring a good combination of pigments) etc etc., and your painting surfaces, and then once you paint the scene out of doors, you’re tasked with bringing the wet painting back somehow to a safe location where it can dry, and also if someone wanted to buy it off you, it would be terribly wet, and you’d in selling it risk someone else’s destroying it with miscarriage. And say, as I do, you work in a series, so you have five paintings each outing- you have to house 5 wet oil surfaces somehow. One solution obviously is to build a carriage, but then you will be shackled to a specific size. Another solution (one which I’m fond of ) is improvisational construction of a carrier from found materials. This method has one diggin through trash cans and looking for boxes behind stores, and making improv sculpture en-Plein-air, yielding a learning and physical experience. Okay, so that’s a plus to this side of the argument, but I digress. 

The alternative to all this is to just use the ipad and ProCreate, and the luxury this affords me naturally is to bring along an instrument to relax, which may in turn lure people in where I will have taking points, and business cards, and printed matter to gift and printed matter to sell. I truly hope to learn about life! Life in the Landscape class! 

The other painting I will be doing will largely be in studio, and my critics will respond to it. I’ve selected and gotten Clint Jukula, a grad of Yale School of Art and our Dean; Jan Baltzel, an abstract painter; and Sarah Peters, an in-her-stride sculptor. From Clint, I don’t know. I’m taking him for the ‘I don’t know what will come of this factor’. It could go badly. He’s very stern looking; maybe cold like a nihilist. Since he’s so high up in the chain of command, if it goes well, the move might be a politically advantageous one. We’ve spoken a bit. He’s approached me with some foreknowledge somehow of me, and with respect, and I reciprocated. I’m curious how sharing I  can be with him. Perhaps he’s wicked and self-aware, to which I would be interested to dig around in ugly polemicisms. His work is potentially wicked. I wonder about his paintings because they’re like monadic and archetypal figures, with patterns and colors- all the boxes are ticked- yet they seem to give a heavy ‘get fucked’ vibe and I’m curious if they’re mean-spirited. What motivates this work? It’s not ugly. 

Jan Baltzell I would like to interact with because she’s broad minded it seems. She is interested in keeping a ball rolling I think, and I’m taking her fro that reason, like a cypher; perhaps we can riff and ad lib through the crit process. I didn’t take a class with her that was a field-trip drawing class, (maybe negging) because it sounded so unstructered and schleppy; moving all your stuff hither and yore, and convening periodically for group critiques- kill me. But I think she will make for a perfect critic. 

Sarah Peters is a wild card, but I understand she looked at my friend’s work which was a photo of a classmate lying in a forest with sculptures laid over her, and said “you know what people will think, right?- They’ll think this is a dead black body in the woods etc. etc. , so just know that that’s what they’ll think”. This is such a retarded comment, yet, perfect for a critic in a way, so I signed up for her. I don’t mean to speak negatively about Sarah in any way. I imagine she’s speaking from being burned moreso than idle speculation, as her work might tread towards appropriation etc. Just the idea that she’s awake to the entanglements of contemporary multicultural inclusivity and is making strong work makes her a great candidate to me. This in addition that I will be investing heavily in sculpture this semester, and that’s her specialty, and her proximity (in) the New York scene (informed), and that I understand that she’s kind perhaps in a legendary way. I wonder. 

I haven’t mentioned a class I’ll be taking with Bruce Samuelson. First, I was skeptical upon seeing his work. Then, I looked up a video of him done by a Jonathan.. something, who was an alum. The video interviewed Bruce at an opening of his in Philadelphia. Bruce mentioned that he stopped working from the figure 30-40 years ago, and blah blah. I was more skeptical, in a tensiony way. He did not die in my imagination, and I wonder if he’s got something. He seems to. He’s ungrasping, it looks like. I’ve heard good things, and that he’s broad thinking in his classroom. A student friend of mine was making relief sculptures in his figure drawing studio class. His poses I’ve seen other student’s paintings of are often of figures lying prostrate; is he masochistic? Or chauvinistic? If it’s anything art school has taught me, it’s that painting is quiet and subversive, and in time might turn any one into a doll-painting, beheading, taboo-delving depicter of what’s most perverse. Perhaps to be misunderstood is the currency. A modernist fiat? Perhaps; and the postmodernists have returned in response to a radically democratized form-aware illustration. To flip unless, as my experiences have thus far proven (I’m usually entering the curve at the lower third- true to my socioeconomic placement), riding it up and cashing out before it’s too hot, might mean to return to a modernist/romantic digression language. Yikes, I’m on the side of modernists. It’s all the same and tops turvy. I was smart to study Illustration and fine art both, both at the foremost schools of their disciplines. I’m a switch. All this to say I don’t know what I’m going to do in that class. 

The class I think about the most is a class called Moving Images, taught by David Dempewolf. It’s an MFA class, which is just like its BFA counterpart, but with more theory reading, and potentially I’ll be in a more diverse and older and different pool of people than I’m used to seeing in a room. Okay, so there’s a couple undergrads that get on my nerves. I’ll be kicking myself if the undergrad section fills with brilliant people, which, now that I’m thinking about it, it very well could. Oh well, the section is right after the MFA section, so I could sit in or spy a bit. I’m hoping in this course to incorporate musical recordings into videos. Gosh, there’s so much tech. I’m doing good to write this down. I’ve been thinking about this class all break. Shots are one thing but I don’t think that’s going to be the class time concern, and I have to stay vigilant about wherefrom I source my imagery, so that I don’t bring to the table just shots of school hallways, or other cliches. I’ll have to take my gopro around everywhere, as mentioned before about my landscape class plans. I have some footage of diving in springs in Crystal River that I could use for something. I did that neo-benshi poem assignment a year ago and that’s what I’m thinking about doing in the class over and over basically, little talky-poems over video, or percussion-over-video poems- like playing drums and recording and editing etc. in response to video. Something. I’ve shipped my drum kit from my parent’s house in Florida to Philadelphia and it will arrive a few days after I do at my address in West Philly. It cost $157, already worth it, unless it gets lost or destroyed in the mail. It’s three boxes. I also have footage of me meditating for 20 minutes one morning from last semester sometime. I think I’ve been thinking in video since 2012. I’ve sketched out video art pieces in my sketchbooks in response to some video art I was exposed to long since. I saw Paul McCarthy masturbating with his feces in the Tate Modern in 2008. I saw Carry Upson’s ‘House Hole’ video sometime in 2016, and No Nose Knows. I saw Tameka Norris’s Monkey Banana video sometime in 2014 in New Orleans. In 2013 I made and posted a video piece of me rolling up a giant joint in Amsterdam, but the joint was made from craft paper and filled with studio garbage. This was after being a lover to a filmmaker, and preceding our trip together to Iceland, where we talked film. I made a video performance piece last year, and posted it, and got it critiqued by Didier William, who mentioned I had too much junk cluttering up the composition- that it did not look very intentional. Yet, I don’t think this type of work will be the meat of the course. Dempewolf makes his living between teaching and doing VJ sets (video jockey) to avant-garde jazz music performances. I walked in on his ‘Avant Garde Video’ class last semester (the aforementioned undergraduate section of the ‘moving images’ I’m taking), and I saw a live VJ-type setup, with an overhead projector and a camcorder live-feeding to a screen, and students huddled around an under lit glass plate moving glitter and bullshit around like a trash-ocean fun art divination table. I loathed what I saw in that room, and that again is what accounts for my choice to stick to the MFA group. I intend to be let down if I focus too much on my comrades however. I think Dempewolf will give a talk about possibilities in the softwares employed, and give demos, then let the class work on their projects, and come around to give one-on-one help is needed. I am familiar with the format. I think I will be in between Adobe Flash for animation, Final Cut for compositing/ video making, photoshop for html5 animations and gifs. I want to do some work in a program like c4d, or animate from 3d models somehow; maybe in Sculptris, or in sketch-up via screen record. I want to do some cell animation- recording moving parts like a puppet show. I have some good materials to try out for this, but the scales are incongruent sometimes. So, for this I would like to do digital rotoscoping in flash. I have parts cut out for this. Maybe I could do some talky poem with some all-traditional captures of my sculptures, and rotoscoped animations (both traditional puppetry and digital), with also some percussion improv. I’m thinking a trash-ocean nihilism commentary poem about wading into waters, dreamlike, and a high fidelity shot of my rubber moulded sculpture of Felix panning around, and some overlay of some divination-table-like paint and glitter fuck stuff maybe, and some found rope/cordage in there too. This clip only about ten seconds. In html5. Looping, drum kit no wave. Maybe one kick and one snare/hh flam that loop. Okay, so that’s one piece. I would like to accomplish something of my take on Ringling’s motion design department. They did stop-motion, and parabolic arches, and moving sculpted type. I would like to do some traditional and digital sculpted type. What program was “we minded” done in? I also want to do a specific couple of projects. One is of a beaker, with cut out silhouettes adhered to the outside. A light shines from above and dirt and detritus spins from inside the beaker filled with water by means of a stir bar. This has to do with a dream I had where bodies for rebirth were encapsulated in the sacs of leopard shark eggs, around the perimeter of a large blue above-ground pool. The mood transfers, and that’s what I’m going for. Another is a clear plastic dome (I have) with kokepelli-like silhouettes adhered on the perimeter, in a zoetrope fashion. Underlit by a heat producing element, and its heat dispersement to be captured by a fan, spinning the zoetrope, like a roof turbine. I have the silhouettes mapped out. The turbine part is the stumper but maybe I could use the venting of a building in center city, there’s a few good alleyways. Bad clarinet would be useful to go with this. Another project which is dear to me is the graffiti beef animation. The goal would be to screen capture graffiti handstyles of well known artists through history and overlay spray can sounds and overlay a hip hop beat over top, and periodic ‘shit’ commentary maybe, ‘oh’. Maybe I could put my own name in there, though I just thought of that now. It’s about a pissing contest. This to-do list in conjunction with the reality of the course-to-be and also whatever theory will be introduced. (I asked for reading over the break, but the teacher did not respond over email, so I let it go). I’ve looked over a little William Kentridge last semester. Hopefully I can keep a ‘less is enough’ approach to the whole thing, and make moving images. 

Concerns with the public blog:

My concerns with the public blog format have to do with how it affects my relationships and reveal those thoughts I hadn’t had the wherewithal to voice in the moment. Suffice that this blog is like a superhero comic- those utterances which might get me in trouble, and also a sort of tell-all users guide to anyone who would care to know or read about how I write, (and maybe therefrom try to think about how I think). 

I play both protagonist and antagonist on here. I try to suss out my thought’s in isolation, though usually I’m thinking about steps of a project. 

Sometimes I delay posting because I’m in the middle of some social cold war, and temperance dovetails with procrastination. Other times I’m just busy, even for months at a time. I think this blog serves a social function for an imagined wide base of support, though it is not so wide. Sometimes I get six views. Have I alienated people? What is it about this content that does not encourage a bookmark or a revisit?  

This seems blasphemous to write, because I would tear the blog apart if it got too big. I’m part alienator, somehow. Maybe it’s a learned behavior. I think of it as fueling my practice. Maybe I’m attached to my anger, something I’m very critical about in others. The artist is that one who listens to the blend of sounds that come from a radio tuned neither to one station nor the other; hearing both and nothing and something else too; dredging from ether, and wearing on the patience of anyone else who might like to tune into to some specific thing. What an annoying person.

When the artist leaves home, he cannot return. This quote has been on my mind recently. Even at home I cannot return, it’s over in a way. 

My student colleague and I were joking that our experiences mean more for having questioned them. That’s about the same sentiment as stated above- it’s a way of making something from nothing. Polemic. I love polemic. I think I seek it out, and it’s natural for others to too. This curiosity precedes social justice et al, which I think accounts for the inflammatory rhetoric of those of privilege, who also consider themselves romantics, myself included. Only upon returning to reality do we have a chance at humility. 

What could it mean to have humility as a goal? 

I went to bed upset last night. I feel put down here. 

At the beach now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Latter half of summer and Ringling in Sarasota

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

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

Thanksgiving Break

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

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

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

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

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

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