Kvetches

Sleepy Working Weekend

Ayin Es2 Comments

I’ve been tired. Having a hard time getting enough sleep, so my work schedule has been going in spurts whenever I get a good dose of caffeine in me.

I have been changing too. Inside, I’m feeling a change. I’m about to turn 40. I think I’m finally putting aside a lot of baggage and issues, like caring what people think. That’s a big one, but it’s been like a little handbag and not the anvil case it has been.

Getting back into the swing of painting again, I’m starting to stress less about what to create, and rather letting myself create. I think this has a lot to do with trusting myself and giving the id permission to indulge, with little need for control.

Today I’m working on this green piece… Get it? Greenpeace?? Okay, maybe that was a stupid joke. I’m working on what seems to be a greenish colored canvas. (34″ square) It’s turning green/gold/brown/black/white. I’m just letting myself paint without too much in mind but a skeleton of an idea. It started with green drippings over the letter Pei, a car crash and some floating heads. Go figure.

I also have been fucking around with what seems to be some kind of doll. It’s so much easier to sit, relax, and sew than it is to hold up my arms and paint for long periods. I am hovering between doing both, while thinking about what to do with my 2-dollar bill.

More blabbering

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Here is another new panel piece from the Black Hole series. I guess it’s a “series” now since I keep repeating myself. Perhaps all “series” is when an artist won’t shut up about something specific. I think that’s the technical definition anyway.

Speaking of defining things with stupid art language, this is a great little quiz on C-Monster. I finally got a few non-artist friends to see why I write in that stupid way that I do sometimes.

So I have no reason to be sad today. I am making some small sales from the Bookish show, and I just got word that Sweetnsour Pie was added to the Artists’ Book Collection at the Museum of Modern Art Library in New York. MOMA baby! Fucken-A! Woot-woot and a hoot ‘n a-hollar.

I had planned on making quite a few of these Black Hole panels, and I think I still will, but not on all these panels I recently purchased. I’m not going to name names, but the guy has usually made some very high quality things for me. This time I am pretty unhappy and can not bring myself to keep working as planned on the remainder of them. Unless I come into some money to replace them with my other guy’s panels, I’m going to have to go another way with these. It’s due to the birch finish I think, although, it could be the new sealer I used, or the thickness of the face of the panels — I’m not sure, but I just won’t try to make more of these. I do not like them Sam I am!

Already June

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Oh my god, I can’t believe it is already June, can you? How did May slip through my fingers like a slippery little worm? I guess time flies when you’re very busy wasting your time working on a lot of somethings and nothings.

I am known to be hard on myself, but I must to admit I could have been working harder than I have been. I’ve had really productive days, followed by lazy days. It probably evens out to almost normal, yet still with a leaning towards Workaholic Land.

Over the weekend I got Picklebird updated quite a bit. Still don’t have the database running, but at least there’s a presence there now. If you are reading this and go there, please join the mailing list and post comments on the blog. I’m building it all up from scratch again and it will take some time before it gains the same buzz that it once had in all its glory. Glory be to the pickle god, amen, ahh-choo!

Yesterday I found out that I did not get the artist residency I applied for in Joshua Tree. I am so bummed about this. I was so looking forward to carting all my shit out into the quiet desert away from everything, bring my dog and just paint and stare at the stars. I ended up asking the committee if I was even close and they told me I was extremely close and of the finalists. That made me feel both better and worse.

I managed to squeak out another little panel and am almost done with another. Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure all the painting is completed on the Lapland piece. It’s finally dry enough to poke the guide holes for the stitching, so I’m finishing that today to get started on sewing my ass off around that thing. It’s not going to be easy. I can’t do it in the garage, and it takes up most of my office/studio. Going behind it/in front of it over and over is going to be a major bitch. But maybe I’ll finish that little panel first so I can move that whole table it’s on out of the room completely. Thinking out loud here, sorry if you are board to death. You wanted to read this far. Blame yourself, not me.

Saturday I went down to San Pedro to visit my friend Andrea Lien and it was weird being at her studio at Angels Gate. Will I ever stop lamenting my old studio? Probably not until I get a really cool studio again. My wish is to get a very small, stand-alone building in the Garvanza area of Highland Park, El Sereno or South Pasadena. I want it to look like a retail space, but make it so you could not see in from the street. I’d paint the building olive green with no signage, but perhaps there would be an inconspicuous name of the studio. I’d have to see the studio to name it. It could be a cool name like, “Studio Wench” or I may name the building “Veronica.” It all depends.

While I was there at Andrea’s, I took some Holga pics of “Loghenge,” a structure built for Native Americans to hold ceremonies on top of the hill in the park. It used to be what I saw out my window everyday.

Sorry no Holga pictures yet. Those will be cross-processed and that will take a few weeks.

Let me go snap a pic of the latest panel and post it. Hold on a sec…

Okay I’m back. Here:

It is 20 by 16 inches: oil, paper, and pencil on birch. No name yet.

HEAT!

Ayin Es1 Comment

Ahhhhh! This heat is crazy! We are in the middle of a “mini” heat wave right now in Los Angeles and it is sucking butt. It’s kinda killing me. The heat is making me soooooo tired. Everything is in slow motion. You can’t take 2 steps outside without singing the bottom of your feet. Going outside is like being baked alive. If it kills me I hope to come back as a cake. Mmm.

I am still working on the big Lapland piece. Little bits at a time, and slowly but surely, it will come together. I just have to stay as focused as possible on this one, while at the same time try my best to crank out other smaller pieces. I had to bring the Lapland piece into the house because the garage is so hot, it is a kind of ancient torture chamber in there.

I have been working more on my black hole series on panels. I managed to finish one and start another. I usually make the black holes out of industrial manila pattern paper, paint it black and then stick it onto the panel with clear polymer. Then, as always these days, I make little me’s on them in pencil and oils. Why have I been doing this so much? I have no fucking clue! I wonder if I’m some kind of ego maniac. Me! me! me!

I actually really consider them girls when I’m making them. Sure they are self portraits of sorts, as all art really is to some degree or another, but I think these bitches are more about my dilemma with being female, relating to other woman, and trying to understand what sort of female identity I can’t ever decide I want to be.

Oh! I wanted to mention this great-great-great (Sorry, the heat has stolen my ability to think up better adjectives.) blog I found called My Love For You. HOURS of art, illustration, sculpture, animation, jewelry, accessories, and fun! Perhaps many of you already know about it, but Things seem to all blend together for me – there are just so many art websites these days. Once I found it, I knew I had to add it to my list for my web wasting time right away.

Meighan is the name of the babe that runs the joint, and she updates often. There are sometimes several blog posts a day. She is an art lover all right, and it shows. I love the site, and the title. You should too: My Love For You

Out of the Closet

Ayin Es3 Comments

I do not usually post political tirades on my blog. I like to keep it generally about art, and a sort of document about what I am working on in my studio. AND it is difficult to out myself about this subject when it is completely unpopular amongst every single one of my peers; I have yet to find one artist that isn’t crazy gah-gah over Obama. And for the record, I am not against him. But I am a long time supporter of Clinton. If you want to throw tomatoes at me, that’s fine.

If you think I’m against what Obama stands for, that would be incorrect. I am all for “Change.” I just think a REAL change would be Hillary Clinton as our first woman president. Don’t you think men have run this country long enough? And I’m not only for Clinton because she is a woman. I am for her because she has a long history for fighting for our civil rights, has tried to change the healthcare system when she had a little bit of power during the Clinton administration, and has not given up despite people telling her to quit. She’s specific and cares about people. She has to deal with all the media making her look bad because they are obviously pro-Obama. I love NPR, but they are HARD on Hillary. Every media outlet has been hard on her. People have been harder on her than they have been for any man — and have expected far more from her than they would from a man. When have you ever heard the media disappointed in a male candidate for not showing his “softer side?” Boy was I pissed when Hillary had to cry a little after that whole thing. She shouldn’t have! She’s tough, and so what? It’s such a double standard, and she’s putting up with a lot. She’s the underdog, not Obama. And we just may have a nominee based on 48 states instead of all 50. People seem to be forgetting about that too. How fair is that to Michigan and Florida, not to mention all of us? Shouldn’t everybody’s vote count? Is this the hijack of 2000 all over again?

Anyway, I just wanted to come out of the closet about all this. This morning I was on hillaryspeaksforme.com watching all the videos, and I was moved to type this up.  So let the attacks on me begin.