News

Pneumonia Redux

Ayin Es1 Comment

It’s down to the wire. I have too much going on for my pneumonia to be relapsing, but here it is. Second time in a year, second relapse in a three week span. This happened back in February to March. Now again this last month. The relapse is not as bad as the first two weeks of this shit, but I am still suffering from a rattling cough, constant need for sleep, body aches and a light fever. I’m about to start a second round of antibiotics today.

And I don’t have time for this! I have way too much to do! I have all kinds of shit going on that I need to tend to. My Kickstarter project was funded successfully and I just ordered all the glass flasks for the specimens. I have created the new website for the project, although it’s not fully completed. Now I have to thank and send out all the rewards to my donors. There were 33 in total. I just ordered a set of some very nice Thank You cards that should come this next week. I will be writing nine personal thank yous. Some people will get original art that I have yet to make, and some that I’ve already made. I have a lot of work to do and a lot of mailing to do. Then I have to start putting those specimens inside the beakers and tag them all, but I can do that at a slow pace as they are sold…

What I really need to get finished is all the work for my UCLA show, Bioillogical, which installs on the 9th of January! This is going to be at the Geffen Learning Center at UCLA Medical Center in Westwood. It’s a solo show about my illnesses and also made up biological craziness. I have all the work completed, sans three pieces. One is a 30 x 40 inch oil painting that is taking a while and I’m only about 1/4 completed on it. It has some yellow in it that I just laid down on Thursday. You oil painters know about yellow! Some of it is rather thick too. I brought it inside the house to work on because there is more heat in here than in my garage studio, so I hope that helps it to surface dry by installation day.

The other two pieces are pretty much cake. One is a super small gouache. I can knock that out in an hour or so. The last one is an 18 x 11 inch piece that is not exactly a painting at all, but a kind of hand-written piece with a small illustration on it. It is a kind of make-shift patient exam for clinical Multiple Sclerosis, but I’m putting it on a Style Card that is used in pattern making.

THEN, I have to work out what the hell I’m going to say on Sunday, December 18th at the Palos Verdes Art Center for my book presentation and poetry reading! How the hell did I get myself into that one? I blame Edie Abeyta. Don’t get me wrong, I love her. She asked me to do it and I said, “okay!” like a fool. It’s probably good for me to do it and it’s good exposure for my book works, but I’ve never read any of my poems out loud to a group of people… Shit, the more I think about it, the more crazy nervous I become. Stop making me think about it! The “performance” is called A Book in the Hand and it starts at 2 PM. Please don’t come.

I’m also being interviewed by Mat Gleason – on camera – for a webisode he’s doing. I’ll be doing the interview next Friday, so I better not be sick. I don’t know when it will air, but it will be on the internets for all to see my fat ass.

So I have four pages of “stuff to do” before I go out to Joshua Tree for Xmas. I have not “celebrated” this holiday in many years. I’m a Jew you see. But when I was a young teen, I found my own self-made family where I had very very special Xmases that I will never forget. these were some of my best and dearest memories of my entire life. Now, Tracey, my friend who made those times possible, lives in Joshua Tree. I will be seeing her for this holiday after not spending it with her in over 20 years.

Yeah, I better not be sick.

Working vs. Sleeping

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I’ve been working towards an exhibit that I will be hanging the first week of January at the Learning Resource Center at UCLA Geffen School of Medicine called Bioillogical. It’s going to include a couple paintings and mostly drawings on pattern paper, plus a few of my specimens in glass Erlenmeyer flasks — speaking of which, I have put up a KickStarter project to complete this entire series. PLEASE HELP! There are some great incentives for you to contribute there.

I say I am working on the pieces for this upcoming show, but I have to admit, I am doing a lot of sleeping. I am STILL going through a long bout of fatigue that has not let up very much. I am embarrassed to admit just how long my daily naps are exactly, but I believe they are just not normal. I’m looking forward to getting back to what was once normal.

I’m also considering adopting a new doggie. I am going to take my Bordie Collie and myself to meet Spencer on Wednesday to see how we all like each other. If it goes well, I just might bring him home with me.

The novel is coming along slowly. I’m chipping away at it little bits at a time. I am still not even at the best parts, so it feels boring. While I’ve written in parts of my life at 40, stories about a few key people, a few tragedies, and my parents’ histories, I decided to then go chronologically from the beginning of my life and now I’m not yet nine years old. I’m at the part where my family finally got back together after a long separation, drove across the country from Pennsylvania to Los Angeles, and we are about to rent an apartment in North Hollywood on Coldwater Canyon Blvd. The bulk of the shit has yet to begin, but I’m at 52,000 words (200 pages) into this rough draft now. And I still have a lot to write.

Me and my brother with “Gigi” our doggie in Culver City, circa 1973.

Stuff n stuff

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I’m not so good at blogging as often as I used to be. Sorry. It’s just that I have been using all my writing energy for my book these days. Didn’t I mention this before? I’ve been writing a book. It’s been a couple years in the making, but the past six months I have been really been focused on it, more or less, on a daily basis.

It wasn’t until then that I un-fictionalized it. Plus I got The most incredible program called Scrivner, which has made organizing the process about as easy as brushing my teeth. It’s a God send for anyone who is writing a book, screenplay, or what have you. I highly recommend it! It was a difficult decision to make it an actual autobiography of non-fiction. That was quite the hurdle actually. Now I am walking on very thin ice when I think about publishing it after it’s finished, but MJP was in my ear for over two years about it – telling me how I had to do it. The best thing about the entire story is that it’s all true. He has a good point there, but it’s not easy to then out my friends and family, and myself in a public manner about everything under the sun, moon and stars. It’s going to be difficult. And if this thing actually gets published by a real publisher, I’m probably going to get sued by a couple of people at least.

In other news, I am in an article on the Huffington Post that Mat Gleason wrote about the private studio tours he did during July. I had a few people come through my place and it was very fulfilling. Mat did a good job of describing the tours he did.

I also made my very first YouTube video! I have never tried to do such a thing before, so don’t be too critical:

Machine (In progress)

I’ve also recently applied for a grant at a NY foundation (pending) – wish me luck, and another residency at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY. I’m also in a new group show at Hebrew Union College at USC right now, but the reception date has not yet been announced. The show will be there until December however.

Here is a painting I just finished:

I’m also still working on my Artists’ book called Houses. I have 4 more pages to go, plus the covers. Times that by six copies though. I still need a couple of months at least. Slowly but surely…

Lately

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What’s been doin’ lately? Things are moving along, but slowly. I’ve been doing a lot of resting, but I’ve been getting some art done slowly here and there too. Not as much as I’d like to, but that’s never the case, so what else is new?

I managed to finally print those etchings last week with Master Printer Poli Marichal. We actually used my old studio in Highland Park, which now belongs to Stephanie Mercado and she has an etching press there. She gave us the key and allowed us to use it. It took us a couple days, but we gotter done and the prints look great.

Before that, one of my best friends, Yolanda Gonzalez and I were hanging out and somehow she managed to talk me into going back to her studio with her after breakfast one morning to mess with ceramics. Now I usually hate ceramics, but she somehow made it so much fun! Maybe when I tried it before I had a shitty instructor. I took a class at the local community college a few years ago when I was living in San Pedro. Actually, I didn’t even take a ceramics class. I took an open-ended, self-instructed arts term and the Chair made me do ceramics. I was totally reluctant about it, but I did what he said because I figured he was the “professional.” I wound up hating every minute of it and the potters’ wheels were designated for the men.

Anyway, Yoli and I wound up having a great time and she helped me to make Fire Dan!

I’ve also been doing this strange thing where I am taking paintings that I have already painted and doing miniature renditions of them. here is the first one of Danarama. the original is 36 x 36 inches, but this one is just 6 x 6 inches. I have a briefcase that fits about 10 small canvases and I am going to make them all mini versions of my bigger paintings so they can travel with me. It’s a silly little promotional idea I had, like old timey salesmen used to have smaller versions of furniture and pianos they would take with them in order to try to sell the real deal when they were out in the field. Crazy, I know. me and my silly ideas.

The rest of time time has actually been eaten up with helping out my best friend Tracey. She is finally moving back to SoCal from Pennsylvania after being out there for nearly nine years now. I found her a house in Joshua Tree that she is about to move into and I have been taking care of the whole organization of the thing. It’s been a little bit of work, but I must say I like doing it and I am so excited about her coming back and being just a couple hours away from me, that I jumped at the chance to do it all. She actually just left on the road today and is making her way west now. I’m going to the new house early next week to spiff it up and let the movers in and get it all ready for her. All I can say is I fucking hope she likes it!

Back from Joshua Tree

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I just got back from my little trip to Joshua Tree where I worked on a little project for Art House Co-op called The Fiction Project (the site is being revamped at this very moment, so the info may not be there when you click on the link, as they are also promoting their next sketchbook project…), which I posted a little preview of on my website here.

The book is called Inside/Outside. It’s a 40 page lined sketchbook that is mostly handwritten text with some art in it. I did it all in five days in a beautiful rented vacation house right near the west entrance of Joshua Tree National Park called the Skylark House. This was all made possible from a grant provided by the National Arts and Disability Center, or else I would not had been able to stay in such a great place for that length of time. The book was a documentation of my stay out there, so it wasn’t exactly a work of fiction, but more like creative non-fiction. Well, 99% of it anyway. Dan appears in the story a little bit, but in many ways, he has become real.

I was also looking for a rental for my friend Tracey there because she may be moving there from Pennsylvania. She is moving back to Southern California after being away for nearly nine years now. I have been scoping places out for here in various locations and JT was one of them. I kinda found the perfect place for her there, but I’m not sure if she is taking it. There might be other options, it all depends on where she feels most comfortable since she has been living in quite the rural situation for the past many years.

When I got back I found out that I did not win the People’s Choice Award for the Artist’s Wanted contest. I feel bad making all these people vote for me daily. I thought I was really close to getting it, but I guess I was not close enough. Of the first 100 people who entered I was at least 500 votes beyond any of those artists, but I had no way of knowing how many votes the rest of the artists were racking up – apparently a lot. I wound up with roughly 1200 in the end. Not enough to win. *Sigh* …but I am so very very appreciative for everyone who wanted me to win and tried so hard and voted for me so loyally. I have learned, however, not to enter such contests like this again.

I am constantly applying for things, and that’s fine. I get rejected from most everything I apply for, but this is something that winds up disappointing all the people that were trying to help me too. Plus I had to hound people to vote for me, and that was like panhandling in front of a 7-11 for change or something. I know I was a such a nuisance and I hated it. I’d much rather apply for things the regular way without bringing the whole world into the process.

Now that that’s over, I’m moving onto other things. I got my letterpress pages back for my Houses book today and they look marvelous! I still need to print those plates I made and start the watercolor pages now that I got these letterpress pages back. There’s much to do, plus I have to make a miniature version of Danarama for strategic purposes… Install my dolls and The Deal at 18th Street for the “Los Angeles-Instanbul Connection” show on Tuesday morning and get to work on a painting that’s been in my head for the last month! I will tell you that it involves a stuffed snake! 🙂

Plus, did I mention that I’m going to be in a show called TEL-ART-PHONE, curated by Mat Gleason? Here is the weird painting I made that will make more sense if you see it in the show: