Open studio night

Open studios night was on Friday night; last night. I cleaned out my studio, then hung what I thought would work well in relation to other student’s studios. I hung a couple ‘hits’, some newly arrived at works, and a couple dozen sketches; mostly recent. I had my screen printed shirts for sale draped over the back of a type of bentwood chair, and I wore a suit that my dad bought me for Christmas. The night went off well. I played defense mostly, and tried foremost to make people who entered my studio feel welcome. Visitors brought energy, and I got a nice high throughout the night. Some good advice was given. I feel like I have a lot of work to do. 

I have been modeling up some stuff fro 3D printing, and printed four of one design of kind of humps on a plinth; something simple. The idea is a procession of rocklike forms, to be used as a mockette. Thing is, once printed, I’m thinking of painting the objects themselves. I would like to design a project and outsource the painting. I’ve long wanted to outsource. It’s clear that many arts are taken for granted (as they are irrelevant craft) and relegated to hobby. I’m thinking of adult coloring books, and warhammer figurine painting mostly, but now I’m thinking of background painting for traditional animation etc. (largely extinct, but I think of the Korean animation houses from time to time). Point being, if I could get an audience; people that buy everything I make, I could have a good foothold on a large an proficient labor pool, and be a good boss. I would like to be a good boss. For the 3D printing stuff. I’m thinking having the printers running all the time, and mixing the colors for a dark-to-light painting scheme, premixed a la old school Disney cel painters, and again, outsourced. That suit must have had an effect on me. 

Something else I’m thinking of a lot now is style. Something that Alex Katz said in one of him interviews is that style is all that matters. It’s true. Also, I need to love myself, because when someone likes my style, I shouldn’t pretend I’m on my way to somewhere else. I am where I am, and it comes with its influences. 

I ought to do some painting, Brave painting; willing to knock some things out entirely. The work is not worth much. 

landscape class

 Things went better than my mind would allow myself to believe today. I made studies of light out in landscape class. Martenson eluded to a scholarship (or was I projecting?) Martenson also spoke kindly of me, to me, saying I had humility. I’ve been into Alex Katz recently after a friend of mine asked me to name the greatest living painter. I think Katz is that. I was thinking of Alex Katz in Landscape class today. I watched a couple interviews with him. I made a run of screen printed shirts- cyan ink on green tees. The design is of a cartoon of me carrying a stretcher bar canvas support, with text that reads ‘Kemmy does PAFA, c. 2019 A.D.’. I bring up Katz and humility and this shirt because the content potentially incongruent with humility, but Katz argues (not expending much energy, he is efficient) that style is more important than content, and I agree. Some that have seen the shirt say ‘that’s very you’, and I’ve heard before some commentary ‘most Kemeys thing ever’, and often I’ll draw something true to my aesthetic, not for some class or whatever, and so I do think I have a style. Today I junked a graffiti piece I thought was cool. I don’t think my Graffiti got very far into ‘my style’, but at the same time, I think Graffiti is kind of wasteful the way I was doing it often times. When I matured graffiti wise, it was characterized by much smaller and more intimate tags and pieces, not blockbusters etc. 

So I like this Kemmy shirt. I thought $15, but now I’m thinking $12. I probably printed 20. 

Things I am supposed to do: make 3D models to print for 3D print class 

Watch 1-31 demos for premier pro 

Read reading for Moving Images class

Read syllabus for moving images class, to stay on track. 

Bring gouache kit to school. Or watercolor kit. For landscape class. 

Work out a few thumbs from memory of landscapes from Wednesday’s class 

Make flyers, business cards, and advertisements for shirts in photoshop 

Distribute flyers like mad 

Print the larger sizes tonight 

Plan out panoramic under the bench composition of procession of rocks, draw, sculpt, light, paint (long kite)

Build 8 by 58 stretcher. For Lexi. Do small studies for it. Cutout like Katz 

Clean studio 

Bring and scan Henry and hang and gift for open studio. 

Build several small figure armatures 

Get an apple for Friday morning class 

Prepare a sculpture for Friday morning class. 

Bring in Bridgeman

Drum kit has arrived

This morning I went first to the post office after meditating. I was to pick up my 70 pound package which held my drum shells. The package was delayed by about a month, but it was alright. I heaped the package onto my back like a Jewish slave in Egypt and walked it with my head down for a mile home. I almost threw up and felt lightheaded when I got to my porch. Up the stairs, I quickly assembled it and I heard my roommate warming up his guitar next door and invited him to jam. We jammed for about fifteen minutes, and it was good. We were both pretty noodley. I was badly out of practice, but we met somewhere in the middle. 

I went to school and saw a little bit of a talk by artist Leroy Johnson. He was a great artist, you could see it glowing from him. Magnificent. I got a business card and said thanks. In images class we went over tutorials and watched some anti-video conceptual videos. The mfa students shrugged and left class. I heard the next section of the class, which was bfa students, got all riled up. Indeed the undergrads have more fight in them, the mfa students are just punching the clock; in preparation to punch the clock. I walked home from school yesterday and today. I’ve put in some walking miles this week. I ran from school to old city in the snow on Friday night to go to gallery openings. I didn’t paint on the big snake in a chair painting this weekend. The thing is in a dangerous spot. I don’t want to rush it. 

Open studios is this Friday. I have to prepare my studio, and screen print t shirts. I’m going to stick with ‘Kemmy does PAFA’, because it’s not funny if it’s Kemeys- that implies I’m too serious. I mocked up the design with Kemeys and it didn’t look good either. I feel like a Hercules, my back and stomach muscles are tight, and my legs are firm. I got respect at school today, and had a genuine swagger on my long walk home. 

I’ve been listening to a band called Orange Juice; the earlier project of the guy from Momus. I love both bands. Patrick Mickinney who I played in a band with once said to me ‘how cool to have Aloonaluna under your belt, at such a young age. He was right; that band was awesome, and anywhere I would go from there I would keep the quality up. I learned a lot in that band. The Frenchman, Thierry was a great bassist, and felt blessed to be playing with us. He was so good, we were blessed to be playing with him. There was so much mutual respect in that band. 

I worked a little on a bunch of unfinished paintings today. No bad moves, everything worked out. 

On the walk home I thought of this artist statement: “I have to make art. It’s like tearing off a piece of flesh every time”

Also a bio:

Robert Kemeys Goethe’s childhood was spent primarily in Florida, where he did gymnastics, graffiti, and played in bands. He always drew, and made communion with animals. He attended Ringling college of art and Design for two years studying illustration, and now studies painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. 

Break up again

That girlfriend I spoke so highly of a few weeks back is no longer speaking to me. That’s okay. I wrote a letter to her outlining my side of things. Hopefully it helps her along wherever she’s going. My tinder account got banned. I know it’s suspicious to say I didn’t break conduct, but I didn’t. I suspect my ex girlfriend reported me. Looking it up online, it seems that it’s the case that when (especially males) get reported tinder errs on the side of automatically banning. To get my account back, I would have to file a claim, which seems like murky territory and not wroth doing in the very short term. Long term however, what a blow. Outcast from one of the best talk-to-people-of-the-opposite-sex tools. What a shame. 

I called my mom twice this month. My girlfriend would accuse me of my treating her like my mom, and this bummed me out. She’d put up walls when I tried to talk about my thoughts. Men tend not to have anyone. I’m in nowhere land. One thing my mom and I did talk about was my sleeping at school so often. “Do you not like your roommates?”

And no-one had asked me that question, but no. It’s alright, but I get attitude all the time. I live with two couples. Couples bug me because they, after accepting one another, join forces in being shitty together. My four roommates count as two ego teams. They don’t reply when I say hello when I come in after being away for three days. I feel unwelcome and burdensome, even though I wait for the shower, wait for the kitchen, often sweep and do their dishes, and supply amenities such as coffee, soap, and olive oil in bulk which gets annihilated. It won’t be enough because I’m not their shit ego team. 

Some other things. Love is a lie. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said ‘I love because to hate is too difficult’. That’s true enough, but the process whereby to get to love is just that. I don’t buy the love is all there is. Love is giving up. If you’re worried that I’m an advocate for hate, please reread this paragraph with the concept that our inherited language is flawed insofar that it’s dualistic and reflexive. Love and hate are intertwined, in balance. The presence of one is not the absence of the other. 

That’s it. 

alright, one more thing. I think most people want most of all to be told what to do. Myself included, sometimes. I want to know what I’m being told to do, and most often I say ‘fuck you’, but pretty soon I’ll be out of money so we’ll see how that works. I think I will be a good entrepreneur. This week I will make shirts, to try to flip at PAFA’s Open Studio Night this Friday. I’m thinking $15, but part of me thinks $20. I’m thinking $15 for students, and $20 for outsiders. It says ‘Kemmy does PAFA’, but now I’m going to change it to Kemeys because I fucking don’t like Kemmy at the end of the day. When I put it on the screen it didn’t sit right, so I’m going to redesign it to Kemeys. I’ve put some effort into this name, not for nothing. 

Alright now that’s it. Toodles. 

Sleep schedule, phenomena, and to do list

My routine has been to stay up late and work in studio, on coursework related studies, and to sleep for a four or five hour stint, before morning classes; doing this for a couple days at a time, then crashing for a long sleep which I count as my weekend. Upon hitting the pillow after long stretches of work I tend to crack up in laughter, like I’d pent up joys, or maybe more like I’d gotten away with some villainous thing. I first noticed this behavior in Jacksonville, or maybe preceding in Tallahassee, maybe it’s been there all my life; I think it has. Hitting the pillow and laughing. Maurice Sendak includes in his life story his mother’s account of his laughing as he was delivered. ‘What a wonderful way to come into the world’, he recounts. Sendak saw many dark things, especially in his childhood, childhood is much more acutely life or death. Instinctually one fears the dark, and all that. When I hit the hay I feel like I have cheated, or maybe that it’s that I have earned something, like I am happy because I worked so hard; but that would imply smugness. I’ve thought to curtail this laughter by telling myself that there’s no reason to be smug, and to tell myself to be humble, but I don’t think that’s where the laugh is sowing from; it feels that it’s coming from within. Also, although it coming from within might imply that it has nothing to do with god, but I think it might have. To do with my habitual communion with god. As a kid the idea was introduced (washed in) to me, but god became a concept at some point, and one that I find useful. I think the laugh comes from the feeling of union and engagement with all things. No dread. I’m happy when I make art. 

I slept late today, until 2 or so. I can feel my body healing when I wake up, I think about my body at the fishy service station being cleaned up by little cleaner fishes. I think of my inside knots unknotting. I think of my racing mind discharging into the hassle-free REM cycle. 

The realizations for today are that I do not have to sacrifice a big painting that I thought I had to. The painting might go titled ‘procession’ or something- a 9 by 3.5 foot still life painting. Same goes for an oil painting, I’ll go through the process of painting what I think they need in order to be finished. But the other things I’m thinking about are at least a couple newish ideas. The whole comic book thing has to do with putting many different drawings (a process of confession or oversharing) onto a largish canvas all together. White, oil primed linen, 9 feet by 7, landscape orientation, and oil cartoons in juice thin vandyke brown oil paint. The process is to collage preexisting scans into a larger composition, whereby 200 cartoons will cohabitate a plane, then project those up onto a large prepared surface. The pixelated cartoons will be blurry, so I’ll keep the originals close at hand for reference. This will be a form of enlargement. If the oil cartoons don’t work out, I can wipe them away with a rag or a q-tip. The surface will develop a patina. I can paint into certain images with color, impasto, erasure through white, sanding, etcetera. The painting can balance in an of itself, and the images can be read as confessional spots. I can hang studio-type detritus around the hung work to expand the narrative into ‘real space’. This is very close to Sean Landers’s words on canvas paintings, but better; as I’ll be fucking with images, which tell more and les and less and more. The result will bring into play graffiti, tattoo, I can have words if I want, I can do Graffiti names. I like this Idea; it will be a lot of work. A viewer can stay with this mind-map, getting lost in the nodes, moving quickly or slowly, in a contemplative and museum space. The Ulysses quality, and the romantic/enlightenment relationship will be laid bare. The inexpressible in the space between images, thoughts- independence and interdependence. Okay so that’s one idea. 

Another is to build a rocker for a graffiti piece, and a rail up front. I’m not going to explain this one. It’s also going to be a lot of work- woodwork and some metalwork..

I wanna do the big dog painting, about that old hippie woman who would let me into her house with her Irish wolfhound and her English sheephound when I was young and jogging. It was such a sensual and taboo place, in a ‘stranger’s’ house with these massive dogs- I was flushed with love and adoration, and her house was colorful and earthy. 

The snake painting is a primary concern still. It’s getting into the world of specificities, so I’m looking at it now with its problems in relation to other problems. I know I just need to work on it. It’s complicated. We’ll make it. 

I have this big charcoal sketch of a nude girl who was a muse (how embarrassing to participate in such an artist trope!) of mine for a while. I kind of owe it to her to finish the painting, but also at this point the whole thing means something else. I want to do this painting. I like the sketch. Everything’s oversized, her boobs will be huge. 

I wanna build panel for some paintings I have floating around in my studio. PAFA’s open studios night is coming up on February 8th, and I want to have a little show that looks like I’m in control of things, which I am. Now it’s time to show that. Annual Student Exhibition is on May 10th, and that is kind of like when my life is ending in a way. I’m going to weigh everything against that, the largest opening I’ve had. 

Tonight I would like to take a nap, go to the computer lab and mock up the cartoon collage, and watch two dvds of artist talks, work on my acrylic paintings. Do some 3d modeling. Do some video editing. . Apply for the ASE. . . These are vague. . I’m gong to write a little more in a notebook so for this blog list, that’s it for now. 

Switched class

Switched out of Ecorche class in exchange for 3D printing.

Rob Roesch’s Continuing Education section of 3D printing didn’t run. I found this out on the morning wher I had overslept and missed more than half of my Ecorche class. I cut losses and didn’t go at all, because John Horn is a slow teacher and I was aware that on this day the class would only be constructing a rib cage. I went down to the third floor where the vending machine coffee is, and got some synthetic joe, and popped y head into the CE office with an inquisitive thumbs up or thumbs down. The guy in the far office, behind a glass wall returned my gesture with a thumbs down- the class would not be running. With a flood of intuition I went straight to the bursar and asked to switch into the 3D class. Thereby I relieved myself the absence (and I’d already taken Ecorche with John Horn in the summer), and maintain my credit hours, while taking an interesting and useful course, taught by someone I highly respect, and that might pay in the way of politicking. I’ll also receive some money back from the CE department as a refund. Life’s good.

One day into Spring Semester, Maybe 1-10-19 or so

Another video Idea: one in which I take a pill (melatonin) and go to sleep and then the shot is either in the morning or at night, a rotoscope (consider a dream sequence, like moby plays starlit sky) of a god figure, much larger in scale or maybe just a hand pressing down on me. Or like a big person dancing on my back. Something like that. 

The school has been okay over. He past couple days. I worked last night til midnight in bed. I got some good work done and some reading too. Winter break was hard to consider a break, as I had internet the whole time, and that’s where my time went. However, at home, I do not ahve internet, and it opens up the possibilities for me for the person I more want to be- that one who is well read, and has many ideas. I drew some ideas last night. One was straight from a book on Francis Bacon by Giles Deluze, when Jesus is a kind of kite up in the sky. Without seeing the painting he was referencing in his writing (or lookingit up) the image I got from the text was so fun. I put it down. Christ is on the cross, about fourth feet in the air over seaside grasses. A beach exists in the background, and waves and an ocean. Christ’s cross has been tethered to a steak (like one which has nailed him to the cross), driven into the ground, so within the composition, he is alone up there. Has the kite flyer gone to lunch? Do actors have sex for real in movies? I can’t think of a specific scene, but I imagine the answer is sometimes. A quote from a Modest Mouse song goes ‘wake up early and you’ll live to regret it’. Often when I wake early, and know I have the choice to seize the day I choose to defer. This morning I clocked in waking up at 10:30, not bad. I’m concerned abut school. This last semester is going to be the hardest I have faced I think. Last night I stretched my knees for ten minutes before bed, and they feel way better. My physical health weighs into it, I’m in pain on these concrete floors. I’m also running low on money. I’m going to switch to my credit card, much to my dislike, as I have the money. I think I’ll order a debit card from the same company that I have the credit card with, so I don’t get interest payments or late fees. I’ve been masturbating to level me out. I’ll probably get off it soon enough to get some edge back. Our school is full of girls. They’re usually 80% of the class makeup. I like school. I’m already ready for this semester to be over. It seems frivolous in a way. I’m getting senioritis maybe. Digital moving images class is going to be hard. First class was on Thursday and it was clear there was going to be a lot of reading, and learning a handful of unfamiliar programs, and a lot of tutorial work. This is one of those classes that could swallow the other courses, or swallow my studio practice. I can’t wait to be done with this snake piece. It’s looking kind of good. I do have to fix the drawing of the snake up. Other than that, I don’t know. I might have to fuck around with a photo of it in Procreate. I have a joint I haven’t smoked. I meant to smoke it towards the end of last semester, but didn’t find the time to. Maybe tonight; I could use a soft reset. This first week I have classes every morning except Monday morning (which I intend to spend painting on the snake, after sleeping in the studio with it), three meetings with critics, hang a show, and two other meetings. Monday I will work on the snake from early morning to lunchtime, then go to an Annual Student Exhibition meeting over lunch, then go to Moving Images Motion class, then work on a moving images project, maybe taking a walk and getting more footage, maybe (probably) sticking around and futzing around on a library computer to learn the software, checking out a library laptop in the library. I’ve got a crit with Sarah at 4:30 that day too. Tuesday I’ll have a morning class in the cast hall, lunchtime hang a show, afternoon meeting-type class, evening sculpture session. Wednesday morning class on 4th floor likely, crit with Jan Baltzell, lunchtime meeting about Draw A Thon, afternoon class. Thursday morning class, crit with Clint, afternoon class, portrait club. Friday morning class, afternoon sculpture session, go home. This semester is going to hurt me. At the end of it, it’s my senior show. Okay, that brings us back to the snake painting. This Saturday (today) I hope to put in some hours, in the day time. Maybe I’ll go home afterwards, I don’t know. I’ve got to be smart, I mean, really at this point I just have to keep painting, fixing things. It’s on its way. I kind of do know what to do on it. It has to do with rendering out the bottom third, then sweeping again upward. The concentration detail wise should be at the bottom, so the painting holds its own when walked up to and gives and gives with how it’s painted. Maybe I could switch to oil for the stone pavers, thinking because the little flecked rocks would be more of a pain to do in acrylic. Acrylic is much more exacting, and oil is like a cheater’s medium- smudge and it looks intentional or good. I should also sand some ares of the painting, thinking of around the snake and a little in the background, to open up the surface again. It’s that time in the painting for some drawing attention and whole surface TLC (tender love & care). Today’s work will be of the workshop, and hopefully a genius shows up tomorrow.