I had an art consulting session today that was more cathartic than my usual therapy sessions.
I see Ellie Blankfort once a month, who consults me, not only about my art career and creativity, but for so much more – it’s in fact really hard to explain. Today however, I happened to bring a few of my artists books. She had never seen them before, not in real life anyway, and she was rather impressed. And I suppose, I aim to please. It’s actually a life-long problem of mine, like an albatross around my neck that Ellie may have helped me to cut loose today.
She handed me the right kind of scissors anyway.
Look at me, I aim to impress the shit out of you! Yeah, me and a million others.
I am so sick of all that ego-sucking-non-HERE-and-NOW-dishonest-energy-melting-worry-wart-mental-mind-fucking I have done to myself. I am so done with it all. Thank you Ellie.
Bringing those books turned the conversation into story telling, which turned into telling my story, which turned into the fact that I’ve been writing this book, and now…
that’s the last you will hear any mention of this endeavor of mine.
Why?
Just because.
That doesn’t mean I won’t be talking about writing in general, or things I have already written, and maybe even artist’s books I’m working on – like Houses, for God’s sake! How long has it been since you heard me mention anything about that? It’s still something I plan to do! All I have to do with that – next anyway – is carve out the block for the block print. Most of the pages are done.
You know, it’s been almost forever since I have kept notebooks of lists with little empty squares next to them. For a while I thought that was a good thing. I thought that it meant I had recuperated, or combated my stupid little obsessive proclivities. But I think I need to start doing it again, but for the same reasons as I did it before – which was for a sense of accomplishment. I need to because I am forgetting my goals.
I know that sounds absurd. How can someone, particularly ME with relentless ambition, forget their goals?
Crazy, right?
What’s crazier is: I was sitting in the back yard yesterday and I could not remember how I got there. This happens frequently – more frequently than I care to believe or want to believe or than mjp wants to know or hear about. I wound up tracing my day of starting to sweep the floors of the kitchen and hall way, cleaning the bathroom, and following my rag along the top and bottom moldings of the room. I thought about the two sconces, and at that moment, I felt like I split in half.
There I was in the garden sitting next to myself, and now it was harder to remember all that cleaning, so
I figured she must have done it.
Luckily all this lasted but a few moments. Maybe five minutes at the most. But why can’t we forget shit like that instead of all the great, creative things we want to get done in this life before we lose our marbles?
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.
Yesterday, late afternoon, I sent out my Spring Newsletter. It was the first time I ever used Mail Chimp, which is an email marketing/list manager. There were some good things and not so good things about it, but even worse, I was so impatient to send out the letter in the new template, I neither proofread it or edited it!
Now I am mortified.
First of all, in my Google account, my contacts are beautifully organized. I have my Newsletter List: People I know want to receive my seasonal newsletters because they specifically signed up for them, or I personally asked them if they wanted to be on the list – and they agreed. Then I have my SoCal List: Local People I promote to when I am having a significant exhibition in the Los Angeles Area; my Promote List: Galleries and news media that might like to know about a press release that relates to art, particularly mine; No Spam: People that do not want any mail from me unless it is personal; Family: A group of top priority people that are, or might as well be, family; Book Promote: BookArts people that I can promote to when I have a new handmade book to pedal.
But, when I tried to import my Newsletter List into the Monkey Mail, it pulled in every contact I ever had. So, I have annoyed every contact on all my other lists. Shame, shame, SHAME on me!
Now, for the actual writing in the newsletter, WHAT AN EMBARRASSMENT! I probably started three different chains of thought that I never even finished. I just left them floating out in space like some kind of airhead. THEN, there was reference to spin art that I DID edit out, yet I referred to it later in the paragraph, giving the reader no sign or signal as to why I would mention LSD or “spinning,” which only made me look like a complete ding dong!
What I meant to say there was: what if there was an artist that created circular spin splatter paintings, and that was all he did for 20 years? Every day, he went into his studio and created these paintings that all looked extremely similar to one another and he sold every single one of them for a large amount of money. Enough money to pay for his house, his car, his wife’s, and put his three kids through college. A LOT of money. Do you think he is doing these paintings for himself, the money, the process, his audience, the father that never loved him, some or all of the above?
That was really the question I was posing.
What I didn’t share then afterwards, was my own personal strife, outcome, realization, etc. regarding the same question: Who am Itrying to please? And all this time before I recently pondered this question, who was I trying to please?
Wow, so many people other than me. Mostly, the made-up God in my head. Do you have one of those? In psychology it is called the Super Ego. That was usually my problem, and not just with art.
Now, it must be me. Id, id, id, id, id! I want to paint what I want to see. Period. Life is too short to try for anything else. That million dollar idea…what if I didn’t like how it looked? It would probably look stupid. Look at all the other million dollar ideas out there. Would you want that over your fireplace? There are very few I would want to own. I know what I like and I know I can make it, so there it is.
Now, I know there were some other points in that newsletter I forgot to tie up, but I’m starting to get spaced out again. So, until I can just trade my brain in for something better, see you on the flip-flop.
I have not been working on my book for a long, long time. It’s so hard to juggle all that I have, but I’m not taking on any new shows for a while, so I hope that I can dedicate some time to my writing when I’m done with these eight paintings
Shrapnel in the San Fernando Valley, as it it is called for now – and I don’t foresee changing it – has been the toughest project I have probably ever had to do. I am reliving all the parts of my life – all the hardest parts of my life. Sure, I will be editing out the boring, the non-pertinent, the lengthy rants that are similar to my blog (because in using anything like those, they won’t necessarily be to promote, protect or to entertain), but the rough draft inevitably needs to be written. I’m living through all of it just the same.
It is much harder to remember it and write it out than it was to experience it at the time. Doesn’t seem possible, right? But when you are going through a traumatic event, you go into survival mode. We all do. We dissociate to some degree, or we find a way endure it. We have to. Then we move on. Because we have to. And in moving on, we most likely do not think about it. That just works wonders.
Diving in and out of this book is bitter sweet. I like writing about the first time the light bulb went off for me in terms of art, music, love, friendship, independence, and stuff like that thar. I’ve been writing pretty much in chronological order, so knowing that something horrible is coming up, just makes me avoid getting back to a writing session.
I wish it was done, really. I’m 75-80% finished with the rough draft. That is far from done. That is bare bones stuff. I have never written a book before. I know nothing about how it’s done. I only know how I am going to do it before I hand it off to the editor. She might change everything, but I know exactly how I am going to structure the thing – section by section, chapter by chapter, because sometimes the helicopter flies high over miles of mountain ranges. Sometimes, it flies lower and circles around a camp. And many times it will land so the pilot can get out to get a really good look at the dirt.
Some future problems with this thing that I needlessly worry about are:
SUBJECT: What the hell is this? A memoir? Autobiography? Creative non-fiction, Artist memoir? Family memoir? Music biography? Women’s biography? Religious biography? Dark humor – non-fiction, …and HOLY SHIT! I’m sorry. I was just reading something that I did not realize on Barnes and Noble. Is this true? Someone please tell me if I am misunderstanding this:
Is PUSH fiction???? It is filed under fiction. I’m having a heart attack! I did NOT know that!
I am totally baffled now. I will be back when I get my head on straight. I am just….baffled. I can’t finish this blog entry right now. Sorry.
7:16 PM Okay, I am back now. I’m over it. I painted. I got some stuff done. I made decisions. I feel better. Fuck it.
When I read The Color Purple, I was well aware of Alice Walker. I guess I was stupid enough to think that Push was actually written by a young, illiterate girl who experienced these things and still on her way to becoming educated despite being such a young, single mother.
Now, both books do not lie. I am not mad that it is fiction, because it is not a fictitious story. My mind was just blown, that’s all.
All this time, I have been somewhat modeling, or rather just thinking about where my book belongs in terms of Push. That book was giving me courage to tell my story! I figured it would be, if published, close together on the shelf in the bookstore. I felt like, if people accepted her story
and believed it
and still loved her
maybe I had a chance of receiving the same reaction.
Ha ha ha! What did I call the last blog post? Change of Plans: No More Seven or Eight? I find that funny. Because I have changed my plans yet again! Call me crazy. Actually, no don’t. Don’t call me crazy. That would seriously offend me.
Not only will there be a seven and eight, there will be a nine and a ten and a so forth. The numbers will keep going up if you know how to count.
Number 3:
Red Scarf, 2013. Oil and pencil on birch panel.
I don’t care about size. (Who said women care about size?) I don’t care about price. I don’t care about rules or regulations.
When I was a kid, my grandfather – well, he wasn’t really my grandfather – he was just Jack, my Nana’s 20th husband or something like that. He was a genuine Fuller Brush man, but that’s besides the point.
He used to come over to my house and grill me about how I should make a neat and tidy list of “RULES ANS REGULATIONS” and stick it on our refrigerator. I’ve probably mentioned this before. But it’s because it’s so ingrained into my head. Even the sound of his scratchy voice and Brooklyn accent, “Ya have to follow those rules and regulations so you know how to behave!” And all this because the fucking television was on in the living room when he came over for Thanksgiving one year.
It was probably on so we didn’t have to hear him bitch and moan.
So, as usual, I digress.
I have spent the last five days going over this whole idea of rules and regulations, about galleries, the economy, painting smaller, and pricing. Other people’s opinions, the “art world,” the supposed tos, and all that crap. Even the opinions of real people in your life that actually do matter, like the people I love – even they don’t even matter! Sounds harsh, but when it comes to your art work, YOU have to love it. If your mom hates it, too bad. And that goes for your boyfriend too.
I feel like I looked at all this shit from every angle until each element turned into a piece of fruit. Yes, I said fruit. Why? Because I have been eating a lot of fruit these past few months, and I have lost 25 pounds by the way. (Yaye. No one has noticed.)
So I chopped all this fruit up on a cutting board and slid it into a giant watermelon bowl (as seen below) and tossed it with some really nice, wooden salad tongs I got in a little, off-the-beaten path town in Italy that you will never find.
Then I served up this very interesting fruit-salad-of-art-quandary to both myself and my very opinionated boyfriend and… it tasted like shit!
It was so bad, we both could not eat it. I had to put the entire thing into the garbage disposal. Bye bye.
So I had to go fruit shopping, by myself, cut everything up, by myself, and eat it by myself.
The metaphor here means absolutely nothing – so stop trying to figure it out. I’m off the fruit thing.
Starting Saturday, I went through my entire database and repriced all my work, raising the prices for aaaallll the increments that were missed over the past six years — after I did the print residency at Self Help Graphics, which put me into almost a dozen international museum collections. Then, when won the Pollock-Krasner Award, landed a fourth, upscale gallery in Nashville and had two solo shows there. I had another important solo show at UCLA Hillel, and won two more grants from the California Arts Council, and most recently at the Artists’ Fellowship in New York. Not to mention had my hand painted book, All Done But None purchased for the National Museum of Women in the Arts collection in Washington, DC and UC Irvine. Plus, I had more of my Artists’ books purchased by The Brooklyn Museum, , Otis, UCLA, and a half a dozen private collections (both books and original paintings).
Never were my prices raised.
So at this point, to be shy about a crappy economy, taking financial and/or aesthetic advice from a gallery I no longer am represented by, or be scared to utilize my larger inventory of blank canvases – it’s all a waste of time time. I’m moving forward with my own gut.
mjp was actually a great motivator on helping me to raise my prices, I have to say. He’s been telling me for years to quadruple+ my prices, but I was too scared. I also wasn’t free to do that either. And as an artist, you can’t go backwards once you do raise your prices, so it is a big risk. However, I have nothing to loose now.
Learning to get Mad not Even
Some people may or may not agree that being mad, at times, is not only healthy, it’s a great motivator.
Well, this has been a lifelong problem for me. I fear “mad.” I fear anger. My own, other people’s, etc.
We all gravitate towards the familiar, so if you’re used to bad habits, of course it’s going to feel odd to make a change. It’s like learning to walk or something, but I’m working on it.
Because all it’s gotten me is depression (turning the anger inward on myself) and rage (stuffing it down and suppressing it).
Sometimes I even wonder if I could deal with these kinds of complex PTSD issues, how much brain chemistry would be left to medicate? The same amount? Very little? None? It makes me think.
So I’ve been working on these “rage letters.” I would never send them out of course. But they are starting to become healing and at the very least, getting me in touch with my anger.
The first ones I wrote, my therapist read them and laughed at them. She said, “This isn’t rage.”
I wrote things like, I am very upset and sad and feel you should take some responsibility for this situation…
I guess that is pretty funny. That doesn’t even sound remotely mad really. It sounds like I was giving the person some sort of option. Ha!
Eventually, I’ve been able to write things more like, “you’re a nasty bitch that deserves life-long baldness and your toenails removed with a rusty pliers…”
So at least I’m getting there.
Okay. Want to see the preliminary sketch for Number 6?
I’m working on Number 4 today. It’s lots and lots of black outlines, so maybe I will take a pic when I’m done with this part of it. We’ll see.
