Art & Process

Busy Bizy Buzzy Bee

September 30, 2013September 30, 2013Ayin EsLeave a comment

But no painting.

Nope! No painting. I haven’t painted in months! It’s been all about the books Baby. Not baby books! Who said that? I didn’t. I don’t make baby books. But I might someday. I’d love to make some children’s books. You know, when I have some time? Who has time though? I don’t.

I have more time now than I used to, but I still don’t have any. I say “No” more now. No more now. No more yes-yes-yes. Yes, I will do that for you. Yes, I will show in that show and this show and that show. Yes, I will help you re-write your resume. Yes, I will meet you for a four hour lunch. Yes, I will build you a new website. Yes, I will come to your opening and stand on a cement floor for two hours. Yes, I know it doesn’t look like I have MS, but your cement floor is killing my fucking legs! Yes, I will keep smiling.

It’s just that I forget. I forget how to take care of myself. I forget TO take care of myself. I am genuinely interested in you and art and whatever I want to help with. I wish I could help more. When I was a kid I wanted to be a nun, and I wasn’t even Catholic.

In any case, I had a nice Saturday. I took Alicia to Watts Towers where there was a big drum festival, plus the gallery was open, and we got an official tour of the towers.

Then, when I got home, all my Today’s Quandary. chapbooks arrived from Bill in the mail! Woo hoo!!! They go on sale tomorrow for 25 bucks! You can email me and reserve one before that if you’d like to get yourself a low number. The first 10 are almost all reserved already. Almost. I have #9 sitting here that I’m about to make an original drawing in.

I’m also trying to get over a cold. Or is it a flu? I don’t know what it is, but mjp gave it to me and he still has it too. He got it on a plane coming back from Atlanta on business. Then, when he came home, it got really windy that one day. Remember that day? It was right after it was super hot the day before. So a huge branch of the tree in our backyard broke off. It was about a quarter of the tree! I found out that when trees get very, very hot, they get weak. Well, we have a Brazilian Pepper tree, and right now it’s bee season, so getting it hauled away proved to be tricky. In the fall, the bees from all over the world come to our pepper tree and eat the blossoms that this tree creates from the second week of September to the third week in November.

So if you want a very busy pet bee, YES! I can help you get one.

…5:17 p.m.

So, I’ve been out in the studio for the last couple of hours making drawings in these new chapbooks and I thought I would take a break. These are going to take quite a while, and I thought to myself, self, take your time. I kinda like the idea of knowing who I am drawing for. Since the first eight have been reserved, and they are reserved in a specific order, I know who is getting which number. The few people that I happen to know personally are getting custom drawings – because they are on my mind while I am drawing them. I can’t help it. So, while they are signed, I just might keep the drawing part open until they are ordered – at least some of them. I think that might be a pretty good idear there.

Anyway, I can’t get over how nice these things look. They sure are gorgeous. You should buy one! Such a deal! Especially because they have original art in them.

Oh yeah, I wanted to talk about how I did all this research the the perfect colored pencils and I finally got them today (perfect timing, right!?). So I was just trying them out. I wanted something softer than my Prismacolors, and after much research and speaking to experts, I decided to invest in a small set of Caran d’Ache Pablo Colored Pencils. Okay, NOT cheap, right?

I’m trying them out just now, and if you ask me, they are harder than the Prismacolors AND not quite as brilliant. I mean, that’s just my opinion. I know many people will disagree, but this is what I am seeing.

I work under a daylight white florescent light, but I also have the left side of me open to the outdoors. I mean the entire wall, so I’m seeing this mostly in real daylight. That is, until 5:15. I think I had a good assessment of seeing and comparing. I think the Prismacolor pigments are brighter.

Good thing I only got a set of 18 of the Pablos. I’ll still use them. They are still beautiful. But they made me appreciate what I had more.

I’m going to put these up for sale now. Have a good one!

Up To?

September 6, 2013September 6, 2013Ayin Es1 Comment

I’ve been in deep self-study as my year comes to a close. The High Holidays came early and it seemed like — heh, who am I kidding? It didn’t seem like anything. It was. I did: I got into a manic state of working just before Erev Rosh Hashanah. I worked on the new book, Carol Es une Monographie de Lignes. I worked on it before all of Houses were bound. I re-wrote my statement for my new gallery’s website. I applied for a grant. I wrote an essay as a submission for a small press publication, which then turned into a brand new project — a 26 page chapbook called Today’s Quandary. And I plan to release that one even sooner than the new book.

Then, I walked through the doors of my shull and I listened to my Rabbi speak. I started to feel a little different when I came home that night sometime around 11:00. And then the next morning, I thought about how Alicia is coming back into my life – I didn’t announce this, did I? She is! Soon. And I thought about what she is going to think about Outside the Lines. I pictured us working in it together with colored pencils.

While watching this video that Souris posted on her Tiny Iron Fists site, I could almost remember being that age. It reminded me of my very first contact with art, and how amazingly excited I was then.

Lulu and Moebius (01.14.11) from souris on Vimeo.

I have scattered memories: brief, fuzzy flashes of being very, very young, trying to grip the crayon. But what I remember most was a kind of limitless feeling. Art was limitless. That, and growing excitement in my belly. I think I was experiencing happiness. Real, true happiness.

Oh no, I’m going to cry.

Thanks Lulu.

I Miss You!

August 14, 2013August 14, 2013Ayin Es7 Comments

It’s been far too long! Like a month, ya? Almost. My God! What have you been doing while I was away? Whose blog have you been reading? I am so jealous. I sure hope it was worth it.

Well, I have been busy. Aren’t I always? But this time, extra, extra busy. I pretty much finished Houses. Just putting on the last touches, like the last bits of embroidery, making the slipcases (YES, slipcases I said), and I built this page so you can start ordering them if you feel so inclined, or, can afford the price of these babies.

And did I mention that the Neil Farber | Carol Es book is now officially on sale!? Talk about price – these astonishingly rare book-works of art are at a hair-raising steal of just $125 a book! Yup. Not a joke in any way, shape or form. Chance Press is just cool like that. Oh, but you better get a move on because I hear that there are only like nine books left! And that was about three days ago – so GET ON IT!

This is the collaborative piece I created with Neil. It’s crazy cool!

Speaking of books, and confessions. What? Okay, maybe I haven’t been moving on binding up the Houses books as quickly as I should have been because I have been preoccupied with other things – and maybe just one of those things is the preparation of my next Artist’s book. I know, I know: I shouldn’t start a new project before I’ve completed the last, but I am just so fucking excited! I feel like if I don’t work on it just a little bit, I will pee all over the floor!

It’s pretty ironic though, don’t you think? I haven’t made a book out of Careless Press in over five years, and then suddenly, here comes two. Well, I’m telling you now that this next one will not get released until the beginning of 2014, and it is going to retail for way under $100. Not only that, it’s going to have more pages than any other book I have made so far! That’s mostly because it’s going to be offset printed. I would never be able to make a 120 original page book – at least not in five months. Ha!

So as you can tell, I already know a lot about this book. Do you want to know more? As much as I know?

Nah… Why would you want to know such silly things?

Well, I think I’m going to tell you anyway, whether you are here reading this or not. It’s my diary. Not yours.

I titled this book in French because it sounded way more fancy. It’s titled, Carol Es une Monographie de Lignes (a Monograph in Lines). What that is, is like a mini autobiography done only in black pen sketches. Only one page will have an original, colored page in colored pencil and ink. It will have somewhere between 45 and 75 drawings in it, eight chapters, and a letterpressed, hardbound cover.

And that’s a lot of information. The only thing I’m not giving you are the names of the chapters and the visuals. Hmmm wait. I know. There is a chapter called, Preliminaries. Here is the preliminary for Wrong Mom, 2001.

Okay, enough of that. I told you I was busy this last month, right? Well I had meetings. Meetings all over the place. Some were at my synagogue where I finally learned to read Hebrew! I bet you thought I already knew how, didn’t you? Well NO, I didn’t. Otherwise, I wouldn’t of had to pull Arctic Memory apart and repaint it, now would I? I was busy doing that too. I finished it. See?

That’s what it looks like now. Now the Hebrew is correct. Now I KNOW the Hebrew is correct. 😉

The Hebrew classes were not only informative, but fun. I thought it was going to be so incredibly hard to read a new language that had a completely different alphabet in different looking characters, and I mean, it’s not like it was a breeze, but it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. It is a fairly simple language, much simpler than English, as far as the sounds of the consonants and vowels and those rules go. It was a short class so I didn’t get deep into grammar yet, but I loved the whole experience enough to want to continue and even become an official member of the temple.

Sales have been up, so I just had to purchase this nifty case for my studio to hold all my very important brushes and other tools of the trade. My studio, Rubber Soul, as I have called it, gets dusty easily since it is just a converted garage, and I H-A-T-E that my beautiful brushes get dirty before I use them! There isn’t a sink in there. I have dreamed of having such a case for years! I have owned most of my brushes for some 25 years. I take damn good care of them and now I can take even better care of them, and the new ones I add to them.

I also like some of the synthetic brushes, and while those don’t last too long, I think I can make them last a lot longer than possible, and with the case keeping them clean and pristine, it will make that even easier. And of course, all my sable brushes thank me for having a proper home, even in their old age. I just love this thing. It’s perfect for an anal retentive, meticulous control freak like me.

Finally, I had other meetings. The curator for the show I wound up in at USC Hillel, for instance (see my news page), and a local gallery I have been talking/negotiating/courting for a few months now. And, after this last meeting we both decided to work together, so… Expect an official announcement real soon.

Tail End of Houses

July 26, 2013July 26, 2013Ayin EsLeave a comment

It’s getting there. I haven’t been working on it every day like I would want to. I’ve had other things coming onto the front burners now.

I’ve been rearranging the way I’ve been working on my literary book and am almost writing in it again with some enthusiasm, now that the last of the traumatic incidents have been recorded. I’m all about discussing the reorganization and how I’m laying out the first draft, not so much the content, but I am very excited about how I am putting it together.

Secondly, I finally pulled Arctic Memory out and have been making the changes on it I want in a hurry now for a couple of studio visit reasons: I have people coming on August 1st and on August 6th. I will be participating in a group show at USC Hillel that will be curated by Sara Cannon (Director of the Museum Education and Tours Program at the Municipal Art Gallery and Hollyhock House). The other visit is a gallery I’ve been talking to for the last several months.

As for Houses, I finally found those see-through plastic envelopes with the string-tie closure that will actually fit a 6 x 9 inch document – I just don’t know how well it’s going to fit until I bind one and slip it in there. If it’s perfect, this can keep the price down. I had all kinds of ideas about having a custom-made box created for these, which would cost me no less than $45 each plus shipping. Plus, they wouldn’t have hinges. They would be a box you would lay down on a coffee table or something like that. I wouldn’t want you to shelve it, now would I? But we’ll see how it turns out.

I have three pages of eight left to do, and some are already done. Here is the checklist. Some pages have a few steps to them.

Dishes Page:

Draw: 1-8 Done

Holes: 1-8 Done

Linen/Fixatives: 1-8 Done

Sew 1: 1-3 Done

Sew 2: 1-3 Done

First Watercolor Page:

Draw 1-8: Done

Painted: 1-2 Done

Inked: 1 Done

Gouache Page:

Drawn: 1-8 Done

Painted: 1-2 Done

What does all this mean? It means I have 18 pages to do before I start to bind them all together. Time wise, (for the pages), that’s about 106 hours of work left to go. I still plan to release it at the beginning of the fall.

As I have endorsed and promoted before, I have been using Scrivener to organize and write my book in. I can not recommend it with more of my being if you are about to embark on writing anything long. It will make your life so much easier and you will thank me. And no, I don’t work for them.

I am still using the program, but because of the many subjects I was writing about, I was starting to get really bummed out and all but ceased to work on it. I knew I had to write about the troubled stuff in my life, and because I was writing in chronological order, I would begin to dread some of the things that were coming up. I would sometimes pick other areas, since the folders were already laid out before and after, but truly, that wasn’t working for me since my mindset during those times just after was changed substantially.

I began to think about this, and the thoughts I have about myself – just in the last couple of years. I don’t see myself as a victim. I never did, especially the more I grew and the more I became self-aware. Bad things that have happened to me, to us, do not define us as people. And so this chronological list of folders with sub-folders (much like the way your computer files work) seemed so one-dimensional to me. And Scrivener is capable of so much more – like Photoshop!

I have said, as many other people have too, Photoshop is like an onion. You can keep digging and digging into that program and find so many more things that it is capable of doing. If Photoshop can have all those layers, what about a person’s life? And how would you record and organize those layers into a program? It’s quite like a database, which is essentially what Scrivener is: a database program! So I got this idea to assign layers to my life, with the “ID#” or the main layer being Carol the person. That is the constant. What I think. That’s the main layer. Then all the other layers can be built around it and I can move them in and out, and all around the timeline as much as I feel like it.

In essence, this will not so much be a first pass, but more like a true first draft, but I am much further away from being done with it. So that’s the trade off.

What Are the Updates, You Ask?

July 13, 2013July 14, 2013Ayin Es1 Comment

No you di-int. You didn’t ask me shit. You don’t care. I often wonder who I am talking to, but it’s not like I mind if it’s anybody at all, or rather, nobody at all. I don’t mind one iota. I just like to type. I just like to hear myself talk. Type talk. Whatever it is I am doing here. Thinking out loud through my finger tips. Yeah, that’s what I’m doing. See, if you were here, you might think that was kind of cool and fancy free. Sort of inventive, or somewhat clever. At least clever for a moron.

Anyway, I’ve been working all day today. mjp has been, well he’s been up and about, but he’s supposed to be resting his fucked up hip. Instead, he’s been helping the guys from Milk get their website back up and running. Why? Because he’s a lot like me. He’s a lot like a lot of people. He can’t say “No.”

Speaking of websites, I have been dipping my brain back into picklebird.com again. I think I’m going to buy a better WordPress template and just tinker with it from there. I really don’t want to code a whole new site from scratch, and there is actually a database running on it that all ready to go. All I need to do is snap pictures of everything I own and enter the data. Oh that won’t take any time. Buuuuut, once I get it set up, I sure would like to start selling some work. Some art and some books. At least see if I can.

Today and yesterday, it’s been all about Houses. I embroidered another one of the “Dishes” pages. I finished all the cut-outs on the covers, and today I made the blue pouches for the little Giclée prints. I also printed the Giclée prints. That wound up taking forever and you know why? Do you? Because I realized that the file I started off with on my computer sucked ass!

SO, I went into the back of my garage, right next to the dead rat that’s been rotting there for months, and I pulled out the painting that is kept in back storage, Home is Near the Sea, 2001.

I brunged it out so I could re-shoot it, which I did. I mean, I had to unwrap it first. I was quite impressed with how well it was wrapped, I must say.

Then I pulled it into Photoshop and did a couple of tests before I was able to print up eight little 5″ Giclées. Nothin to it! I hardly wasted any paper at all. Not like before when I had a crap file to begin with. I wasted a LOT of VERY nice paper.

Let’s see what the hell else did I do? Oh, I got the gold paper from Nepal and was able to slice those up into book sheets, so those are now ready to be printed on with my crappy block prints. I’d like to try those tomorrow with mjp if he’s not too sore. I need him to assist me because he’s a block print wiz. I bet you didn’t know that about him, did you? Well, there you have it. He’s really good at it. Remember his first three chapbooks? Well those covers were all linoleum block prints that were pretty pristine – and he made 50 each – so he got pretty good at it. Plus, he had been making block prints well before that. He’s my Block Master Printer, I guess you can say.

I bet you’re wondering how I’m doing on my smoking plans, right? Well, it’s not going as planned, but better than it could be I guess.

I used to smoke 1/2 to 3/4 of a pack a day and it’s been eight days since I “quit” and I have since smoked about a half a pack in total. …I’ll get there. My goal is to be fully and utterly a non-smoker by July 20th, which is my 45th birthday.

If you feel the need to get me something for my birthday, I mean, please don’t, but if you’re one of those people that treat adults like they are still children and celebrate their birthdays with “Happy Birthday!”s and presents and cards and balloons and shit, then you can waste a total of $1.61 on a #72 Chinese White pencil for me at Dick Blick. Or, if you’re not racist, you can get me this #2200 Ink Black Inktense pencil for $1.79.

I was also hoping to lose more weight before I was 45 years old. I got up to 177. There, I said it. Some of you have known me to be a mere 100 pounds most of my life, so that might be very shocking to read. But that’s what had happened to me over a long period of time. It happened for many reasons. Being with mjp for a long time (we like to watch movies and eat ice cream), laziness, bad diet, eating late, not exercising, medications, getting older, and genetics.

Since January I have lost 27 pounds. I changed my diet and my meds, and I started walking a little bit. I have 15 more pounds to go to get to my goal and the rest is just bonus because I was always dangerously underweight when you knew me before. My range is supposed to be 128-148, so I picked 135 because it was in the middle and most realistic.

Anywho. I’m tired now, so I’m gonna go. Bye.

Oh wait…

Recently on Wet Canvas, there was a thread where someone asked one of those desert island questions about which 12 books would you bring… but then it got expanded to films, music and art picture books as well (because this particular island had a dvd and cd player that worked in some magical way…) And if you felt like it, you were to talk about WHY you made your particular choices.

So here were my lists of 12:

My reads:

1. The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966, Charles Bukowski, 2002
2. Ham on Rye, Charles Bukowski (Novel), 1982
3. Hollywood, Charles Bukowski (Novel), 1989 (Funniest book I’ve ever read!)
4. Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness, Charles Bukowski (Two Volumes of Short Stories in One), 1983
5. Wait Until Spring Bandini, John Fante, 1938
6. Full of Life, John Fante, 1952
7. The Big Hunger, John Fante, Stories from 1932-1959
8. Riding Out the Dumb Silence, Michael Phillips, (Poems/Stories) 2006
9. No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July, (Stories), 2008 (UNBELIEVABLY great writing!)
10. Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, David Bayles, Ted Orland, 2001 (Changed my life!)
11. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway, 1926
12. The Grapes of Wrath, John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr., 1939

Pretty Pictures

1. Friedensreich Hundertwasser: the Complete Graphic Work 1951-1986
2. Amy Sillman: Works on Paper by Wayne Koestenbaum and Amy Sillman (2006)
3. Amy Sillman: Suitors & Strangers by Claudia Schmuckli (2007)
4. Dana Schutz: If the Face Had Wheels by Cary Levine and Dana Schutz
5. Charlotte Salomon, Life? or Theatre? by Charlotte Salomon and Judith C. E. Belinfante (1999)
6. The Diary of Frida Kahlo
7. Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing by Emma Dexter
8. Peanuts: A Golden Celebration: The Art and the Story of the World’s Best-Loved Comic Strip by Charles M. Schulz
9. The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918
10. Paul Klee (Temporis)
11. Russian Jewish Artists in a Century of Change: 1890-1990
12. Mary Ellen Mark: 25 Years by Marianne Fulton

MUSIC

The biggest collections and/or box sets available for:

1. The Beatles in Mono
2. Bob Marley: Songs of Freedom
3. Miles Davis (during the period he was actually playing concievable jazz)
4. Stevie Wonder
5. Elvis Costello
6. Mozart
7. Chopin
8. Neil Young
9. Aimee Mann
10. Steely Dan
11. Van Morrison
12. PJ Harvey
…And perhaps I could trade in a Chopin compilation in for some Sly and Robbie productions?

FILM!

1. Citizen Kane, Orson Welles, 1941 – The FIRST, the ORIGINAL and the best. The film which all other films are based on, copied from and want to be.

2. Rope, Alfred Hitchcock, 1948 – A Masterpiece of stage acting and directing. Only one camera used, but the film is so good, you would never notice this. While modern-day movies wouldn’t dream of doing this (keeping one shot going for more than mere seconds), Hitchcock sticks with the same camera the entire time and only breaks to change rolls.

3. Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock, 1954 – Classic Hitchcock with (I think) the best of his two opposite actors with the best chemistry for tension and romantic banter.

4. The Apartment, Billy Wilder, 1960 – STILL funny! Timeless. Jack Lemon will always seem this way to me.

5. A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick, 1971 – The classic Kubrick. It had a great impact on me as a child. I saw it when I was way too young, just a few years after it premiered. I was eight! Of course again later, many times. It’s a thinking film about what is more surreal: the violence or the blantent surrealism, and it continues to pose the same questions. It’s just as difficult to watch now as it was when I was eight.

6. Barfly, Barbet Schroeder, 1987 – For observational sake, yet it has a vibe all its own. While it wasn’t exactly what Bukowski had envisioned, it did capture some of the grit and a little of the secondary world of the mind of the writer – and how the world around him, whether rich or poor seemed like a dream. Perhaps because these are all semi-fictonal stories about stints of his drinking life (he did not write much about the many years in between when he did not drink). Rourke played an “idea” of Hank, but not a good job in any sense. Hank was very displeased. Schroeder was more concerned about getting the shots done and the movie fully funded. All in all, I found Dunaway riveting.

7. Swoon, Tom Kalin, 1992 – After “Rope,” I became Leopold and Loeb obsessed, so I sought out this film and was quite surprised at how creative it was. I can watch it again and again, and even love the obvious plants of modern day gagets (new director-itus): it didn’t bother me because it’s excellent film making.

8. Pi, Darren Aronofsky, 1998 – Not only was this just a GREAT movie, when I heard about the budget, I nearly fell over. AMAZINGLY talented young man. This film had an intense impact on me, although I could have done without the ending. It had everything to do with bringing me back to my interest in Hebrew Mystisism.

9. Happiness, Todd Solondz, 1998 – One of the most hilarious films I have ever seen.

10. Tarnation, Jonathan Caouette, 2003 – Inspiring. I even bought my own DV cam and started to film my family, but realized that it was not as easy as he made it seem.

11. The Squid and the Whale, Noah Baumbach, 2005 – I wish every movie in the world was a LOT like this one. This is my kind of movie and I am always looking for this sort of dialog writing/dysfunctional, complex relationship/characters in film.

12. Science of Sleep, Michel Gondry, 2006 – Some people love Eternal Sunshine (I do too) but I liked the “handmade” quality of this one (which he started before Eternal Sunshine). There are a lot of quirky “behind the scenes” special effects that are like film school style that I like, that mix with what he brought back from doing Eternal Sunshine to then finish this film.

Now, bye!