Thoughts

Maybe I’m Feeling Better?

Ayin EsLeave a comment

It’s a no-go on Yaddo. I got the rejection letter yesterday. Oh, boohoo. Whatever. I expect another letter from Montalvo mid-April. And I haven’t applied for anything else besides the California Community Foundation grant, and that one is practically impossible to get. I mean, I said that about the Pollock-Krasner and I somehow won that, but that was because they had a couple of drunken panel members who were also blind and possibly on fire. I don’t know how I won that thing! They probably got sick of seeing my name – “Give it to her already! Or she’ll never leave us alone!”

Went to therapy today. Yeah, therapy. They still haven’t fixed me. And I have to say I really love my therapist. It is really hard to find someone to trust and feel comfortable with. I think about people I know and the stories I have heard, and even a few stories of my own! It’s not easy to find a sane therapist. Many get into the field because they are not stable themselves, so it’s no wonder that there are plenty out there that are creepy or hippie-dippy, or just bad.

Before I went to mine, I researched thoroughly. Those of you that know me know that that probably means I went to each of their houses and took blood tests and asked for their birth certificates. I knew what kind of therapist I wanted and I didn’t want to fuck around with someone who didn’t know what they were doing because I had my face in psychology books for the last 10 years, and they were about specific issues you might want to call rare.

I found a winner. She is highly intelligent and understands everything I have been bringing to the table. So now, especially since I’m going through major medication changes, I want to see her once a week, at least for a little while, and that nice lady made it doable for me. 🙂

Then I came home a stood in my studio, too tired to really paint, but I have been thinking a LOT lately about setting up my drums. I began taking measurements and figuring out what to do about this electrical outlet and that plastic bin, and my drawing table, and where to put my carts, and long story short, I think I have it all figured out. It’s going to take a couple of days and I have to visit Home Depot, but I just might have a little drummer area up and running by next week. I have to squeeze it in – between paintings and doctor visits, and all my other dicking around I do.

I was going to talk about how fucking disappointed I am about how HBO cancelled Enlightened, but I need to get back to the easel, so I’ll bitch about it later.

First of the Three of the Six

Ayin Es1 Comment

So I have been working on the first of the three pieces of the six ideas I have mapped out with preliminary sketches. I swear, sometimes I just wish I had a magic wand that transferred my original drawings exactly the way I drew them on the smaller paper, and magically make them appear onto the canvas (or panel). Wouldn’t that be something? (White people’s problem.)

I tend to crush on the quick and messy, original sketch. BUT, if I did have it exactly as I drew it in the first place, all those new and unexpected things might not happen. “Mistakes” or just new happenstances. They usually do. And I usually like them. I just get fickle in this in-between time when the composition is laid down as good as it’s going to get and parts are getting painted and I don’t know exactly where it’s going until I dig in deeper with the paint. You know, the fun part. 🙂

I’m doing these paintings in chronological order – the way each idea came to me. I think that keeps a kind of excitement going because I am wanting to accomplish the ones I’m working on so that I can get to the newer ideas as soon as possible, if that makes sense.

The first idea, like a few of these, came out of my secret EyeBook. I keep a few different sketch books. All of them have different purposes and ways I use them in practice. I can’t tell you exactly how I use the EyeBook, but it’s the most important of all my sketch books. Up until recently, I worked in it every day. The exception lately has been because of some serious depression and a long, drawn out change in medications. I have worked in it here and there on the days I am feeling like myself, but I don’t think there is one page in it in March yet.

The EyeBook sketchbook is about being able to see your own work in an objective manner, partly. The sketches are not supposed to become paintings, unless they just so happen to command it. It’s also about identifying (and clarifying) how you feel about (your) art, and your emotions, and knowing the difference. The point is, one of the first ideas came about because I was so preoccupied that particular day, I could not do the exercise. I wanted instead to get outside and start sanding and sealing all the small panels I had left stored under my work bench. I wound up drawing a quick, abstract sketch of someone sanding a panel – “The Sander.” I painted all the black outlines in oil on that one already. I’m waiting for that to dry so I can paint the rest white and tan. There will be a small rectangle of fluorescent orange because I marked that page in the book with one of those sticky tags.

Another day, I looked in another sketchbook of mine, I just call it the “drumset book.” It has a red drum set embossed on the cover. One of my collector friends – Kel, from North Carolina, sent it to me, and I love it so much. I try to only use it when I have a worthy idea to put in it. I am going to be sad when it is totally filled and I can’t use it anymore.  But anyways, I found a sketch in there that I thought was a great idea when I drew it (right before I fell asleep), but then I woke up the next morning and decided it was really, really stupid.

Later, I took the drumset book with me when I went to Palm Springs and I added tiny little lines to it while I was thinking about whether or not I should leave my gallery and what I wanted to do with my life as an artist, and I started to really like it. I thought, “Why did I think this was so stupid? Because I thought the gallery might have thought it was stupid? …Well too bad.”  Working title” “Four Thinkers.” It’s mostly black with fluorescent green, red and a bunch of pencil lines.

And the one I started on a pretty birch panel today I think I will call “Red Scarf” because if I call it “Rainbow Eater” then it might make people think it’s a face, and it’s really not. It is abstract and has no representational meaning. There is a curved area near the top that I took into Photoshop and colored it red, but I also colored another one purple.

I spent two days flipping back and forth between these two images, asking and re-asking mjp, “red or purple?” yet, not really listening to his answers because it was ultimately my decision.

Here is where I can sometimes go a little nuts. (A little?) Yeah, maybe it was three days. It wasn’t easy, but I made it red and to me, it was a scarf. And to me it was REALLY important. I love this composition and now it’s kinda different now that it’s on the panel and slightly different than the original sketch. There is a spiral in it that is now stout when it was kind of tall and thin. There is an extra band of light yellow above the main area of coverage. All the horizontal color bands are thicker and the foot (yes, I just love putting feet on things these days as you can plainly see) is a little bigger than I first drew it.

Is it ruined? No. Just different. I am just getting started painting all three now, and I have most of the week for quiet painting time. I am so happy and we’ll see where this all goes.

Thank you for reading without any images. It must be quite boring and quite difficult.

 

Today, the Last Couple Weeks, and the Other Day

Ayin Es1 Comment

I picked up my last piece from Billis the other day.

amusementparkdetail

(Amusement Park,  2004. Acrylic and ink on dot marker paper, 38 x 27 inches.)

 

It wasn’t weird. You’d think it would be, but it wasn’t. Like I said before, I didn’t burn any bridges there and I feel that Tressa and Brooks, and even George remain my friends. I’m still listed on their website though. That change might take a while. I think they hire their webmaster but three times a year.

Just a couple of weeks out and what’s really interesting is the amount of ideas that have been coming to me since I gave my notice. I’m working on six pieces – five on birch panels (24 x 24 inches) and one of the same size on canvas. I am kinda crazy happy about all of them.

Arctic Memory will have to wait a bit, but it’s still set up in the studio, little broken threads laying all over the floor just in front of it. I realized that I did not paint the landscape under the letters after all. As I applied water to the paper, it was easier to pull them off and there was nothing but white, primed canvas under there. I then realized, I couldn’t have painted oil under the letters because I put those things on with a clear, acrylic polymer. Duh. Now I’m debating if I should just paint right over them (the Hei and the Kuf) and work on pulling off the other three since those are practically black. Whatever I do, it’s a back-burner project for now.

arcticmemorydetail

(Arctic Memory  (How it might look after the change, 2013). Oil, paper patterns, pencil, thread, embroidery on canvas, 40 x 60 inches.)

 

I am waiting for results from Yaddo to come any day now. I applied at the beginning of the winter, hoping to do a one month residency. This will be the third time I have applied. No, wait, the second time. I have applied to the MacDowell Colony twice as well. I’m not counting on it. I had written to them beforehand and asked them what the age range was in their last pool of selected artists. The oldest was 35. Yaddo was 40. I once applied to the Skowhegan School and the oldest ever was about 40. So I’m not counting on it.

I am hoping to make it to one of Peter Clothier’s One Hour/One Painting events – particularly the one on Miriam Wosk at SMMoA on March 23rd at 2:00 PM. Peter has a book out right now about the art of looking at art called Slow Looking. I highly admire Peter as both a writer and as a person who practices meditation regularly <– something I was never quite interested in until I began to know Peter and started to read his blog.

Anyway, I should get back to this canvas I’m painting. I am going to be hoarding the new work, so I will have to start thinking about what sort of pictures to insert into my posts. Here is a random elephant:

images

Match Closed

Ayin Es1 Comment

My “Little Sister” has gone to live in Corona with a new foster family that may or may not permanently adopt her. She’s been through this scenario before. A few times actually. In fact this time, papers were being processed by this family to adopt her straight away from the foster family she was currently with while I was mentoring her, but she ran into a few problems. These problems were not exactly new however. Mainly they were stealing and throwing tantrums. Alicia was not new to throwing tantrums. They came after she would find out when an adoption fell through, and in this last case, one of her younger foster sisters was being adopted by her current foster mother – in the house she had lived the longest since being in foster care at six years old. Yet, it didn’t seem clear to her foster mother that this could’ve been the reason Alicia’s antics suddenly escalated. She stole from school (pens, clothes from Lost & Found, art supplies), from Macy’s while Xmas shopping (jewelry, hair accessories), from her foster mom (quarters out of a glass jar she kept in her bedroom). The quarters quickly added up to $60 and she purchased and sold candy at school for a profit. Candy she was not allowed to eat – at all. She has some enamel deficiency on her teeth so she is not allowed to ever eat candy. (Can you imagine a 10 year old forbidden to eat candy?)

Well, her foster mom had quite enough of all these broken rules, so she called the agency to give her 7-day notice to get Alicia out of her house.

I tried to get along with Mrs. M. I was very respectful. She is an elderly, old-school, traditional Mexican grandmother that has successfully raised several children of her own and through Social Services. Her home is spotless. All the kids have impeccable manners (including Alicia), and she is very strict – which most of these kids probably need: structure. But psychology was probably not her strong suite. She knew about Alicia’s past, but had some unrealistic expectations of her regardless. Alicia had come a long way since coming into Mrs. M’s house.

I was told that when she first arrived there, she had only one outfit. The one she had on. It had holes and was deeply stained with grime and still had a stench after washing. Her socks did not match, her shoes were worn through on the bottoms. She had no idea what hair conditioner was. She had never used eating utensils. She had no toys. This was her fifth foster home. She just turned nine.

Her father died when she was six. Her mother was an addict and her older brother was molesting her. Social Services took her away and placed her into a foster home where the adult male was found to be molesting her in addition to what she had already gone through. She then hopped from foster home to foster home until she arrived with Mrs. M, which was the first Latino home she landed in. Alicia is Latina.

Now she is in Corona. Mrs. M told the social worker nothing about the Big Sister program, and the social worker would not return CBBBS‘ calls. Match Closed.

I will reapply in May.

We had some fun together. We made paintings, puppets, t-shirts, bracelets, We went to the movies a few times, we tried different restaurants, we went swimming, we went bowling, listened to music, she came over and we decorated the Christmas tree, we talked, we went to the arcade, played a lot of Tic-tac-toe, and kept a activity book together. We danced to Beyonce too. For the most part, we did have fun. At times she was shy. At times I was shy. She was very disconnected (understandably) and she had pretty significant OCD, which made it hard for her to have “fun” in some instances. I still wonder if I was any good as a “mentor.” I hope she knew she was important to me and that I love her.

alicia - Copy

Bows and Flows of Angel Hair and Ice Cream Castles in the Air

Ayin EsLeave a comment

And feather canyons everywhere, I’ve looked at clouds that way.

But now they only block the sun. They rain and snow on everyone. So many things I would have done,
But clouds got in my way.

Remember when I said I thought I could get away with three coats on those panels? WRONG! But then it rained. And then I got the flu. I still have the flu. And while I had the flu, I got paranoid that it was a fatal side effect of one of the many new medications I have recently been put on.  It doesn’t help that I already have anxiety, or bouts of paranoia, or that “flu-like symptoms” are listed as a warning sign as a “serious” and “sometimes fatal” condition for a drug you have been taking for a few days. And let us add to that the general anxiety of my recent career choices, and the fact that my “Little Sister” has been lost in the Riverside foster care system for the past several weeks. I probably won’t even get to see her to say goodbye to her, and I would really like NOT to be depressed before I have any business taking on a new kid to mentor, I mean, ya know?

If I wasn’t sick right now, I’d be out there finishing those panels, but then again, my gardeners come sometime today, so it would not be a good day any way. I was hoping I could get them finished because I am picking up the rest of my artwork from George Billis Gallery tomorrow, which I already know is not going to be easy. I will bring a small box of tissues, for myself at least. Tressa has to be professional. I’m the artist, so I can be a wreck.

In better news, I designed a piece of art today that I really like. I say designed because it doesn’t exactly exist yet. I drew it in my sketch book, then I scanned it in. I scanned it because I meant to play with it in Photoshop and decide on the color palette, but that never happened. While I was trying to get the drawing centered onto a square, something kind of really cool happened. I was coloring the background color, which was set on a yellowish color (like the coloring for the birch panels) and without thinking, I just started swooshing it with a large white brush. “Oops.” But then, I left it alone. And I love it. I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t have happened had I not recently read an article about provisional painting. It’s an older article in Art in America from 2009 that Ellie Blankfort introduced to me a couple months ago, and it totally inspired me.

Anyway, I would show you this image I made, but I am trying to decide if I should start hoarding my work-in-progress until they are completed, and in fact, I’ve even considered waiting until I’ve had eight matching pieces. Isn’t that mean?

Okay, okay, I’ll tell you what I will do. This is much, much better than my idea/design anyhow.

This past week I fell IN LOVE with a piece of art you should all see. It’s by local, Los Angeles artist, Valerie Wilcox. And it’s the first thing you see when you go to her site, so you immediately fall in love before you make your way all the way into the site, making her some kind of master of strategy.

untitledworange

This is titled, Untitled w/Orange, 2012.
Acrylic, graphite, polystyrene, paper, 26 x 21 inches.

GOD I LOVE THIS!!!!