I’ve been having conversations with myself again—about a whole slew of topics. Then, applying the answers to my own questions, and turning them into projects, artist statements, and brainstorming things as notes and scribbles. I’m not sure where any of it is going yet. I mean, the ideas that are still abstract are maybe too abstract. Or something.

I feel like I do learn more about writing as I age, and as I become less obsessed. When you apply for grants, residencies, and write exhibition proposals, you tend to get better at clarity. (I think?) I don’t know if I’m getting any better at clarity, but maybe I’m getting better at begging for funding.

Sometimes, you’re asked what kind of artist you are. Sometimes, I wish I could just choose the “artist” box. But it’s never as simple as that, or even simpler than “visual artist.” I’m also a musician at my core (as much as I don’t want to be), and I write and design websites, too. Where’s the box for all that? I’m already in too many genres! I do too many things, and I mix them all sometimes.

I used to call myself a mixed-media artist, but that never felt right, so I started saying I was a multidisciplinary artist, but that’s not right either. I don’t just make different, distinct things in different media separately. I sometimes make things that are part of bigger things, using a variety of media all at the same time. That’s interdisciplinary. There is a difference, though not by much, really. There’s also cross-disciplinary too, but I’m not even sure I know what that is, or the differences. I could be a cross-disciplinary artist for all I know. I guess I’m still deciding which art box I belong in, but what’s the saying about not wanting to be a member of a club that would have you as a member?

This morning, I had a plan to add the collaborative movie I did with Jonathan Nesmith and Susan Holloway to my CV, but I didn’t know how. I’ve shown it four different times (so far). Sometimes it was just screened, and a couple of times it was incorporated into an installation (inside the camping tent). It was hard to organize that concisely into the resume and not totally fuck up the formatting. I think it’s okay, though.

There are a number of projects on the back burner that I want to—no, need to—get to. And I finally finished everything for my upcoming show. I finished the last painting last week:

Now I have the time (after I rest), I can focus on new stuff. So, I’ve been jotting down a lot of random, and not so random ideas while organizing them into categories and projects. I like doing that organization part of my work…

There are two artist book projects that I’ve been planning, one more than the other. One is more like a chapbook, or what the kids today mistakenly call “zines.” The other is more of a proper mixed-media artist’s book—the kind that usually takes me about a year to complete.

Then I have a more conceptual-type project that looks at different types of dementia, a new short, partially animated movie about trans youth, a research project, and another project that’s slated to start in November of this year.  That one is almost like a giveaway of paintings to whomever for whatever they feel like paying, if anything. That one is tentatively called Keepers of the Story. I’ve been building the web page for that, but that project needs more meat.

So, Saturday, Hannah and I took professional photographs of all my newest paintings. I was going to pay a professional, like I normally do, but Hannah stopped me. I had to cancel my appointment with the photographer. She thought we could do it ourselves. I highly doubted this. Taking pictures of art is an art unto itself. But Hannah thought we could figure out. She bought a set of good professional lights and we set them up in the living room—a super tight squeeze. They seemed to take up the entire room. Our living room is tiny, though.

When we started, Hannah began lighting up the first painting, and I almost broke down and cried. I could see that it was going to look like shit. There was light bouncing off all the brush strokes all over the place, and creating dozens of shiny sections on the painting. It was so discouraging. I kept saying myself, “I knew I should have hired the pro. We wasted money on these lights and now we can’t return them.” My anxiety climbed up through the roof. It reminded me of being 18 years old when I saved part of my paycheck to buy some decent lighting. I worked for an illustrator at that time, and she helped me set everything up, and this was back when I used a film camera—my Nikon FG.

When the pictures came back, it all looked like absolute crap. I eventually learned that taking pictures outside in the shade was superior to using indoor lighting, unless I could afford to hire a professional art photographer. I eventually started doing that some 25 years ago, and never really regretted it. It was just very expensive.

I feel like I hired every art photographer in Los Angeles County to find the right one. I mean, I really think I did. At least five of them, and I settled on one who gave me a bit of a discount and whom I got along with really well. I used him for 20 more years. But that relationship wound up going to shit and I never found out why. I decided I’d probably go to Martin Cohen after that. One of my galleries hired and paid him once. He’s an astrophotographer, but he took some amazing shots of my Exodus show in 2015. I always had him in the back of my mind. But a friend of mine uses Gene Ogami, who I also had in mind. Gene was willing to come all the way out here to Joshua Tree. He’s the one I cancelled to move forward with our experiment, which was seemingly going down hill at first…

But Hannah was determined to keep trying, adjusting the lighting, squaring it off, snapping another picture, and trying again and again until she got it right. It took all afternoon, but it started to work. Then I felt bad that I didn’t have the faith in her that I should have had all along.

It’s nice to know that, over the long run, I can save money not hiring a professional. Hannah is more of a fine art photographer, but now she knows how to take pretty great pictures of artwork. That’s a good skill to have, and I can be her trusty assistant—that is, if I don’t break down and cry before things start looking right.