Art & Process

This 4th of July Weekend

July 7, 2013July 7, 2013Ayin EsLeave a comment

I’ve been working on my artist’s book Houses, pretty much non-stop. I did, however, take a break to go to the Hollywood Bowl last night to see Bugs Bunny at the Symphony II, which was fabulous! I have lived my whole life in Los Angeles and I have NEVER been to the Hollywood Bowl! Isn’t that something? Aint I a stinker?

This was an early birthday present from my amazing boyfriend, who got us perfect seats, right smack! in the middle, just above the sound board. I also quit smoking (again) on Friday night, so yesterday was my first day without a cigarette, and it wasn’t so bad. Keeping busy really helps. And the patch. And live music. And Bugs Bunny.

I know I have probably said I have quit smoking 100 times on this blog, but you have to understand that I have been successful at this before. Many times in fact, so don’t think just because I keep falling off the wagon that it means there is no hope for me. There is!

First of all, I’ve smoked since I was 12 years old. I quit the first time for six months when I was 19. The second time for two years when I was 28, and 11 years again when I was 31. I smoked six months in between that last time.

Then, when my dad was dying, I smoked for a couple of months. Not even in fact. Picked it up again three months later when my mom got dementia, and then it was on and off until last February. That’s when I quit for a good six months after I wound up in the hospital with pneumonia. Why I started again after that has been the biggest mistake of my life.

Now, I have my excuses, like almost going crazy and stuff like that, but I haven’t really tried quitting again. It’s easy when you’re sick in the hospital and can’t breathe NOT to want to smoke, but once you can breathe again and feel healthy and WANT to smoke, how do you quit?

One thing is for sure. You can’t wait until you don’t want to smoke anymore. That’s not going to happen. I started again by bumming ONE smoke off someone during an art opening and I thought I could just have one – once and a while. HA!

I’m a smoker. Always have been, always will be. I love smoking, but I’m not going to sit here and type all the reasons why – let me count the ways – when I’m trying to quit now.

Today is day two, so give me a fucking break.

Okay, so back to the book…

The colophon has been printed. There is no turning back now, however, it looks like the Giclee print is not liking the Arches – not the kind I have in my arsenal anyway. Tomorrow I have to go find a brighter, whiter Arches that’s less absorbent.

I also have to get some spray mount too. I ran up against a wall this morning when I was working on the embroidery page. I need to spray mount that piece of linen on top of it before I sew into it. This is the page that is going to take me the longest. It is pencil, ink and collage. Plus I have to poke holes into it so I can see where I am going to embroider into it from the back of the paper, but the fabric has to be kinda stuck on there a bit before I do that. You get where I’m coming from without me having to show you pictures? Because I’m not showing you any yet. If it all goes as planned, this will be my favorite page in the book. Trust me, it will look cool. The piece of linen is a kind of pocket shape a covers some of the “scene” in a way.

…Maybe because it was all so shameful and private? Just thinking about that now. Weird.

Oh! I know what I will show you, the text from the poem that is letterpressed on the opposite side of the page I am speak about above, and how it is broken up:

Homes where sounds / of broken dishes lay / Murdered paintings admired / left in her past /she killed / HOUSES

And, the colophon reads like this now:

Houses is based on a poem written by Carol Es, copyright and published by Careless Press, ©2013. Special thanks to Bill Roberts, Stephanie Mercado, and Poli Marichal. This handmade book is limited to a signed edition of eight copies, all slightly varied because of the original touches throughout.

Four of the inside pages, plus the front and back covers were letterpressed by Bill Roberts of Bottle of Smoke Press, Dover, DE. The two etchings were printed at Paper Doll Press in Highland Park, Los Angeles, CA (thanks Stephanie) with Master Printer Poli Marichal.

Papers used throughout are Artistico Fabriano, Rives BFK, Strathmore Artagain, Mohawk Superfine text, Moab Kayenta 205 gsm., Daler-Rowney Canford 150 gsm, various cereal boxes, and imported flower-pressed and gold, imported handmade papers from Nepal.

Each 20-page book contains an original drawing on black paper, a hand die-cut cover, two original watercolor paintings, four digital pages in Epson Ultrachrome K3 inks, two etchings, a block print and a Sumi ink painting on gold paper, and one original pencil, ink and collage drawing with sloppy hand embroidery over a bit of linen fabric. Each book also includes a 5 x 5 inch, full color Giclée print of the painting, “Home is Near the Sea” on hot pressed Aqvarelle Arches watercolor paper. Originally 30 x 30 inches, this painting was created in 2001 in oil and paper collage on canvas. The print slips out from an acid-free, laid paper pocket adhered to the page.

Pages of this book are French folds, with the exception of the end papers. The binding was Japanese stab bound by Carol Es with waxed linen thread from Ireland.

How’s that?

The second most complicated page there is to do is actually the first page. It’s a kind of detailed watercolor and I’ve only done one! Seven more to go.

As much work as I have to go on this book, I hope to have it completely done by the end of the summer, if not sooner. But I say that now. It really is a lot of sewing (not the binding, but that embroidered page)!

Still thinking about price. This will be the smallest edition I have ever done. Not only that, most of the pages are original. It has to be more than 1-SELF, but less than All Done But None because it is not hardbound. I ordered some simple lime, vinyl envelopes that I pray they will fit into as dust jackets. We’ll see.

What the Heels Been Going On?

July 2, 2013July 2, 2013Ayin EsLeave a comment

Lots and lots. There’s never a dull moment around here. Just dull people.

Lists and lists. I’m trying to stay away from them, but they are still going on, but I’m glad to say they are tapering off a bit. I have Xed out so many out of the four pages I made for myself. So what’s left? Some things won’t make sense to you, but I can help you a little by telling you that I am back on the artist book I started what? Two years ago? Houses. I’m finishing up my back yard, tying up loose ends, I’m about to fix up Arctic Memory, and have a few new projects coming in from the back burners. That kind of means… Old chapbooks become new again. You’ll see.

McMannus & Morgan
Letterpress plates
Santa Barbara Sage
Bricks
Trims
Watercolor Pages
Pay Bills
Finish Edition Tags
Embellish etchings
Wire grid the climbers
Dentist
Letter to Elizabeth
Anne
Prep Panels
Jonathan
Arctic Memory
Rxs
Cut flower paper
4 digital red/blue pages
8 digital/embellished pages
Print Giclees
7 Gouache pages
8 pencil/ink/embroidery pages
Print colophon

And that’s my last page of shit-to-do.

Yesterday, I finished the Colophon for Houses. Wanna read it? Of course you do!

Houses is based on a poem written by Carol Es, copyright and published by Careless Press, © 2013. Special thanks to Bill Roberts, Stephanie Mercado, and Poli Marichal. This handmade book is limited to a signed edition of eight copies, all slightly varied.

Four of the inside pages, plus the front and back covers were letterpressed by Bill Roberts of Bottle of Smoke Press, Dover, DE. The two etchings were printed at Paper Doll Press in Highland Park, Los Angeles, CA (thanks Stephanie) with Master Printer Poli Marichal.

Papers used throughout are Artistico Fabriano, Rives BFK, Strathmore Artagain, Mohawk Superfine text, Moab Kayenta 205 gsm., various cereal boxes, and imported flower-pressed and gold, imported handmade papers from Nepal.

Each book contains an original drawing on black paper, a hand die-cut cover, two original watercolor paintings, four digital pages in Epson Ultrachrome K3 inks – although one of them (the one with the grass) is embellished by hand, two etchings, a block print and a Sumi ink painting on gold paper, and one original pencil and ink drawing with sparse embroidery with bits of linen fabric. Each book also includes a 5 x 5 inch, full color Giclée print of the painting, “Home is Near the Sea” on hot pressed Aqvarelle Arches watercolor paper. Originally 30 x 30 inches, this painting was created in 2001 in oil and paper collage on canvas. The print slips out from an acid-free, laid paper pocket adhered to the page.

Pages of this book are French folds, with the exception of the end papers. The binding was stab bound by Carol Es with waxed linen thread from Ireland.

In Love With the Line

June 25, 2013June 25, 2013Ayin EsLeave a comment

I’ve been falling back in love with the line. I mean it’s been going on for a while now. I just haven’t talked about it. I suppose I was embarrassed, or figured it would be boring. Who wants to hear about the simplicity of drawing?

For years I’ve kept my little moleskin notebook by the bed. mjp got me my handy and wonderful Space Pen – that I swear by – which is obvious since I’ve talked about it in several blog posts now, and I used that for the purpose of jotting down my most obscure thoughts – as I’m falling asleep or waking from a dream. Moving my body one iota would take the images away, and fast. If I am on my back I can reach for that notebook and pen, and write upside-down if I had to. I wouldn’t have to move my head and shake my thoughts clean.

Then, I even made a little Artist’s book of a few of those drawings from that moleskin book: Horsebucket. I turned them all into gouaches first, to make them a bit more interesting. I felt I stayed true to the original lines. It was all about the line there…

But about six months ago or so, I started seeing Ellie Blankfort for career consulting and she had me keep another type of sketchbook (like I didn’t keep enough already) and that was the one that made me begin the realize how out of touch I actually was with the line. So, within the first few weeks of the exercises, I started to watch what I was doing. It was like starting all over again, like I was a child with a crayon, and now I’m just in love.

Whether it was apparent or not (it probably wasn’t), I used to be such a perfectionist about my lines. The thickness of them had to always be consistent. I’d spend so much time on a painting making sure of that. It was so hard to break away from this habit too, but my tremor got worse and there was just nothing I could do about it anymore. I had to learn to like the wiggly line. And I learned to appreciate other artist’s wiggly lines. I mean, I would kill to have one of Charles Schulz’s later wiggly Snoopys, wouldn’t you? I just saw that everyone had their own special hand and I began to love that too. It’s what makes me love art in a general sense.

So now I’m just so in love with the very basic line. It’s everything to me. I once hated that I “outlined” everything, and maybe everything doesn’t need to be, of course, but lately I’m just into it. My hand is skilled enough to paint a damn good line, tremor and all. I don’t have too much to worry about when it comes to that, and I can always go back and thin them out when I put the color down.

Here are a few I started over the past day and a half.

The one on the big easel is an older painting from 2003. I decided I wanted to fling into the ocean, but beings that I don’t live anywhere near the ocean, I am going to salvage it and turn it into something better. It was once part of this horrible triptych called Full Person:

It even exhibited a few times, and once at Bentley Gallery in Phoenix.

And here was that part on it’s own, which was called Not a Bulletproof Vest:

Now I’m turning it upside down and going to make it a kind of pink and lime, keeping those stitches in. We shall see…

I’ll do something with the pants too, but I will free the head, which is called Blush and see if anyone would like to buy it during the sale.

WHAT? You don’t know about the sale? You better sign up on my newsletter list so you can get in on it before July 21st. I think this one will be 75% off. Uh…Yeah! No kidding.

This

May 25, 2013May 25, 2013Ayin EsLeave a comment

I was working in my EyeBook yesterday, the one where I write in on one side and draw on the other side. I talked about this in a previous blog entry here. I haven’t been able to get a good/usable sketch out of it for a while now, but the writing has been very therapeutic.

So yesterday I was writing about how I felt that the series I have been working on is pretty complete – in terms of it being a basic body of satisfying imagery, palette, shapes and forms where I can now continue to communicate from – for a little while at least – even though I’m just at 12 in the series.

A lot of artists like to name their series. I suppose I have too; “Dan,” “Pattern Paintings,” etc. but those are kinda obvious. I think I will just call this new series, This.

The only one painting I may want to spring board from is the pink one. There are still complexities in that one that I still can’t manage to let go of. Whether it’s the narrative, the painterly-ness, or the autobiographical/narcissism, I’m not sure which, but I know that I would miss nixing that sort of painting all together, which is why it is going to stay in the series. It has to be there to mix and mold, and evolve with the rest of these fuckers.

I suppose I should feature the last two pieces that I finished in this series in this blog post, since I don’t remember if I did or not. Let me check first….

Okay, I already featured Survivor, but I never showed Rabbi Says. The one that happened to take the longest for whatever reason. It must have been painting around all those letters. So here it is:

Rabbi Says, 2013. 24 x 24 inches. Oil on birch panel.

Shit, did I talk about this before? The quote is taken from the late Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (Reb Moshe). And it’s just part of a whole quote. The painting says:

The whole quote is actually a comment on a section of the Torah. It’s hard to explain, but it’s about a troubled rabbi not being able to enter a holy place because of a dark cloud, and this seems to keep happening to him, while his solutions had been: waiting for others to pull him through, waiting for the black cloud to go away, etc. And Reb Moshe’s comments were:

There are many times when a person feels that he cannot move forward because a dark cloud hangs over him. One should know, however, that nothing can stop him! Sometimes one can make a path through the cloud, i.e., he can navigate through his troubles without becoming embroiled in them. This is the preferable course, for who knows how he will emerge if he gets caught up in a struggle?

If one cannot go through the cloud, he should look for a path that has no obstacles (just as Moshe waited for the cloud to depart). However, if he can neither go through the cloud nor find another path, he should push forward anyway with a firm conviction that Hashem will take him by the hand and lead him through.

So, I wanted to honor at least part of this view of Reb Moshe’s comment. I thought it had many important elements that confirmed what it was (for me) in being Jewish – ambition, faith in self as equal as faith in God or the universe, yet it not mattering which, and tenacity to survive (not leaving your life to fate).

And okay, so I wasn’t going to go into this, but I figured if two people already asked me this, two more people might ask me, and so on. And maybe I will stir up shit, I don’t know. It’s only how I feel and I can’t help that!

I was asked why I made the rabbi so silly looking. We all know that I make silly cartoon characters anyway, but twice I received the comment that it looked as if I was making fun of him, and this is correct. But it is not I that is making fun of the Rabbi, or the strange Jews in the black hats, or the Jews in general. It is not me who sees the Jew with the big nose and a scary face, or the orthodox with shards of bad, archaic teeth, or Jews throughout time with their hands out for your money while entertaining you, while balancing on a stick, or making you laugh. Nope. Not me. Maybe it’s me who is tired of that though.

I see those “funny Jews” that study day in and day out coming back to the community that wants to listen to them, give the kind of insight you just can’t get anywhere else.

Anyway, back to the studio.

Oh, speaking of the studio, I added new pics in the studio section of my site. Take a look!

How Thouse Thou Blog?

May 17, 2013May 17, 2013Ayin EsLeave a comment

I keep telling myself that I will start writing a new blog post at least twice a week. How do people do that, I wonder? Especially working artists. Especially working artists that are also writing a book, with friends and a life, that go to art shows, that have partners, that like to garden and watch a bit of TV, go to a couple of movies a month and have a dog?

If you have the answer to these questions, please reply, or email me. I’d like to know.

Since I have blogged, or rather, wrote the little review about the Avenue 50 show, Seven Beauties, on the Huffington Post, I have finished a couple of new paintings. Perhaps one of them I finished before that, called In Training. I mentioned it in a previous blog post. I was nearly finished with it then, but I had to allow that yellow to dry before I went back and cleaned up those black outlines. So here it is finished:

This is like the rest of the series: 24 x 24 inches, Oil on birch panel.

Yellow takes forever to dry, as I am learning – so does orange! I am still working on Rabbi Says. So in the meantime, I finished up another piece that I now know is my most favorite in the whole series! It only took two days, but I thought about it for a month. I even want it to be the cover for my book, if that’s possible. It’s called, Survivor: 24 x 24 inches, oil on birch panel:

Still wet, I took these and about 4 others with me to Shulamit Gallery yesterday down at Venice Beach. We had been trying to set up a meeting for a few weeks, actually for a studio visit, but that’s not going to happen until July. So, they asked me if I could come there with a few originals and paper works along with a few of my artists’ books. I would up staying there for nearly three hours. It went very well and we all know each other a little better. What will become of it, I do not know because I’m not absolutely sure I want to be in a gallery again just yet.

But maybe by the time they offer me something, IF they offer me something, I will be.

In the meantime, I just feel so good about painting right now, I’m just going to keep on going on my merry way. I am loving this path.

Speaking of the book, I finally got back to working on it just a bit. I even interviewed a couple people from my past and I think that is going to help me a little in writing this because we don’t always remember things exactly the way they happened. I probably will only use a fraction of these interviews, but I think it’s good to reconnect, let people know they might appear in the manuscript, and in what context – especially if I am going to be making fun of them.

No one gets made fun of more than me, and that I can guarantee all of them!

One of them was an ex-boyfriend. He is significant for a few of reasons. First of all, he pretty much turned me on to oil painting. The relationship was a whirlwind: very unlike me to move in with someone so fast, and then it ended as fast as it flew together, yet I learned a lot about art: the application of it, a little bit about the sales of it, the dichotomy of it, and some of the hard lessons. I think he was the first person I dated outside of my own circles and I learned a lot about sharing, compromise, tolerance, acceptance, all in such a short amount of time. At the time, I am not sure I even knew I was learning this. Ha!

I also am importing in a shit load of data from, get this, on-line forum dialog! I have typed more about my viewpoints on art than I have even talked about to any one person. So now I have to weed through all of that stuff and use it where it’s usable.

I was also lucky enough to make a couple of sales in the past couple weeks so I could get more panels – small ones – so in the next couple months I will have more affordable works on hand, which I think is smart.

That’s all for now.