Art & Process

So What’s Going On?

Ayin Es1 Comment

I never know what to write on this damn blog. I’d say it’s like the red recording light goes on and I freeze up, but it’s not like that at all. Because when I used to record music, that red recording light would come on, and it was like the very best would come out of my bones and muscles.

I think it’s more like where do I start? How do I catch up from the place I was before? 

Usually, when I write, I seem to work out my troubles just by typing out the words. So maybe I should start there.

Lately, my mind has been chaotic. Too many untied loose ends everywhere, and this has caused me to start making lists again. I’ve been doing it for the past several months, but I haven’t been super neurotic about keeping up with it – which is a good thing. I used to have a list problem and I don’t want that to happen again. I used to make lists every day, sometimes more than once, and even if I did something that wasn’t on the list, I’d write it on there afterwards, put a box next to it, just so I could put an “X” in the box.

I think the medication has really helped me with being so crazy about lists. I haven’t made any in years. But lately, I’ve had so many miscellaneous things I’ve had to finish, that I had to make a list, just so I wouldn’t forget to finish up on all the things I really needed to get done, because I was starting to really forget!

But the more things that went on the list, the more overwhelmed I have become with how much shit I need to get done. Especially since everything isn’t even on the list! There are pending items as well.

For instance, I applied for a table at the next LA Art Book Fair at MOCA. If I get in, then if I thought I was busy now, then the shit is going to hit the fan! Not only will I have to get all my books together (not that big a deal), but I will be trying to get my new book together: Carol Es une Monographie de Lignes, and make a few original drawings inside those, plus drawings for the new chapbooks I still haven’t yet drawn in.

I also will want to make a bunch of new prints, like 16 Dans:

16dansdetail

 

Some embellished etchings:

embellishedetching1detail

 

I will also be making prints of the cover of Today’s Quandary.:

dickvector

And a few other drawings I have up my sleeve…

If I don’t get it, I am still going to be busy in February because I am doing a small pin installation for Shulamit Gallery at the Palm Springs Fine Art Fair. It was almost a year ago now, when I went there last year and wound up crying my eyes out at that stupid fair, but I have a feeling that this year it’s going to be much, much better. 🙂

Speaking of fairs, as you know, Miami week is coming up and I will be with Shulamit at booth E21 at CONTEXT. They will have a large drawing installation of mine there, as part of my Journal Project, so if you are going – please check it out and tell me if they installed it correctly. 😉 Just kidding, I know they will. I trust them.

I have been working on my drawings for the new book, while finishing up two small paintings that I started in the summer, and of course, I stupidly started yet another. But it’s only like 11 x 14 inches, really small, so it’s like not starting any new painting at all, right? Right.

I finished the little 12 x 12 inch one. I just haven’t been able to get a good picture of it.

My hair is different now. I still have dreadlocks, but I brushed out about 15 of my front dreads, and cut them into bangs – which was a giant decision! Then I colored the ends of  many of my dreads so that they could actually be deciphered as separate dreadlocks because it looked like I just had a pile of brown poops on my head. Now I look quite a bit more festive. mjp took a picture, see?

carolhair2013

 

Quick EDIT:

I thought it would be fun to show you a sneak peek of the Shulamit booth at CONTEXT MIAMI:

Art Miami 2013 November 7, 2013 Shulamit Gallery (1)

What am I? Winner? Loser? Role Model for Narcissists?

Ayin Es2 Comments

I’ve been working on that COLA grant and not much in the way of art. I forgot about that damn thing. Saying “the COLA grant” is just a short way of saying the 2014-15 City of Los Angeles’ Department of Cultural Affairs Grant Program Application for the Individual Artist Master Fellowship. 

I have applied for this grant every year since I have been eligible. You are eligible when you have had 15 or more years of professional experience. The only year I did not apply was last year. I guess I was just disheartened and felt like it was useless to apply anymore, so I don’t know why I am applying now, but I am. A friend of mine won last year. Actually, a friend of mine wins every year. Every year, at least one or two people I know pretty well wins. Same goes for the CalFund.

However, I applied for the Pollock-Krasner award seven times before I finally got it. I’m sure I have mentioned that thousands of times. I mention that because I want to be encouraging to other artists to keep trying. Don’t get discouraged. Stay on track. Keep going. Don’t let those poopers get you down. Yet here I am complaining.

You tell me. How can I express my own frustrations and honest insecurities while trying to be some sort of role model? That’s a toughy. Because I try to be candid as I possibly can here. I’m not full of shit. I might be full of myself, and I might not even be anybody’s role model, but I really do want to help other artists that are trying to do what I’m doing. I certainly know what it’s like – the feeling of running in place and getting nowhere. You look down and see that you’re just digging a hole into the dirt. And when you do that, there’s nothing else to do but climb out of it. There is nothing else to do. No one else is going to pull you out either.

Sure, you might have the good fortune of having a loving partner or friends, or a loving mom that tells you that you’re wonderful. That your art is fabulous. “You’re the biggest genius on the face of the Earth!” That’s nice to hear. But you and I know it goes in one ear and out the other when you don’t feel the same way about it than they do. YOU have to feel it. And you can get grants and awards and win the MacArthur (wouldn’t that be something!?), but other than taking you out of poverty for the moment, it’s not going to change how you feel about your art. Trust me. You have to believe in yourself. That’s why there’s nothing else to do than to dig yourself out of the hole and keep going.

But I wasn’t even going to talk about that. Nope. I really wasn’t. I was going to show you a few of my mediocre, colored pencil drawings that I happened to scan from some of the Today’s Quandary. books. Here are a strange few:

4

14

21

22

23

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Lastly, but not leastly, I have another painting on the Huffington Post’s Image Blog! That’s always nice. Good promotion. I think anyway. No, I KNOW! I am grateful as all hell to be on that site. It’s kind of surreal that I have my own art on there, and that I can blog on there whenever I want as well. I just need to get my article writing chops up to par.

Anywho, thanks for reading, you!

Now I’m going to make a CD for my little sister of music that I myself have played on as the drummer. But I have to make it “age appropriate.” Now that’s going to be a challenge. No, not from the Extinct. It’s the band Circle of Power that’s going to be a problem. She loves rap too. A real quandary that is.

Books, Grants, Loss, Work

Ayin Es2 Comments

Things are going, you know… Life. Always flippin’ busy and I don’t say that to be a dick or dismissive, it’s just when I get caught up on one thing, more stuff comes and piles on top of the pile that was just about getting smaller – or the pile was a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be.

Like Today’s Quandary. for instance. Part of me thought I could just make the art in those the minute I got all the books in hand. Not possible, as I found that it’s taking me about a half day to do one drawing. I’m slow anyway – in more ways than one – but that’s the way it’s going, so no biggie, I decided it was better for me to do them as they were ordered for the most part anywho. I rather liked customizing them. Still, there are still at least 10 or more I have to send out to galleries and my book dealer that must be made, so I need to get those done. I want to get those done so I can get back onto the drawings for Monographie. <–That’s what I’m going to be calling Carol Es une Monographie de Lignes from now on.

monographiecover1

Then, I guess because it’s October, I am applying for three different grants and helping to put one group exhibition proposal together. All four of those tasks take up an immense amount of time because of the intent/proposal parts. You have to word them just right. You’re always second guessing them because you are trying to angle them from the panel members’ perspective and what you think they want to hear. Then you wind up scraping all that and going back to not caring at all what the panel might think and re-writing it all from scratch in your own voice – which will probably also be a losing battle because then it won’t be “professional” enough, so either way you go you’re just screwed. Yet, for some reason, you try to do this every year anyway, and for what?

I don’t know either.

Not to mention all the formatting. Each grant wants you to write your letter of intent in so many characters or less, or so many words or less, or even your resume – which is near impossible, especially if you also have to show at least a 10 year history of professional exhibitions. Some grants want eight copies of everything, or eight copies of your resume, but not your letters of reference, but three copies of your signed insurance forms, and two copies of your application, etc, etc. It’s confusing for the ones that want hard copies, and yes I’m talking about the C.O.L.A. Mailing that grant application out is like putting a 20-pound trout in a giant envelope through the postal system. Those guys need to go electronic already!

So, I’m in grant writing hell right now.

But truthfully it takes the sting out of losing yet another close friend recently. Or rather, it’s been distracting me.

I can beat myself up about this seeming to be a habit, but I have learned from others that good friends, and very especially old friends, do come and go. You grow apart, or things change, or maybe you bring up an old wound you’d like to fix and it’s just too much water under the bridge. It’s the lesson I never seem to learn, or the lesson that keeps on giving: I just can’t have expectations of others or else I’m going to set myself up for disappointments.

Bottom line, I love this person and respect her. I always will. I just can’t make her be the way I want her to be, and that’s okay. She’s the best person she is the way she is, as am I. Maybe one day we can work it out. Or not. I really don’t know. I couldn’t keep going the way it was going. It was killing me. But finally bringing my pain to the surface didn’t go well. What can you do? I’ve thought of several options to make peace and they all seemed dishonest, so here I sit, frozen and sad. Mourning. I just sucks.

First A, then T, now J and none of them are even remotely comparable. Wait, I take that back. They all have something very much in common.

Anyway, I’m hoping to get through this week with a lot of catching up of drawings. I’ll try to start scanning them. I haven’t been doing that. I did scan one:

quandary18

By the way, the TQ edition is more than half gone now, so if you are waiting, please stop waiting. It’s not a great idea.

Bye for now.

 

 

Busy Bizy Buzzy Bee

Ayin 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.

wattsbackship

wattsfountainroom

wattsfrontpath

wattsalicia

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?

Ayin 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.