Thoughts

Catch Up

Ayin EsLeave a comment

pages14-15

It’s been forever since I’ve blogged. Forgive me. I’ve been both busy and lazy.

Today I finally finished a giant proposal for the National Museum of Women in the Arts Library Fellows Program Artists’ Book Grant. I have totally revamped my Houses idea into a new edition of 125 – that is, if I get the award. Everything is different now. The poem, the images, the papers, all of it. If I don’t get the award, I’ll have to revamp it again for a new smaller, special edition.

It took me all week to write the proposal, the budget, and create a dummy book, but I am happy with all of it and I am sending it out first thing tomorrow. I haven’t had much time to do anything else. Now I can get back to my busy schedule, which I have been lazily not doing. I have three paintings started – one is from a year ago! and I have not been working on painting since the two new ones I made for the “NO JOKE” show, which is still up until the end of the first week in July at Coagula Curatorial in Chinatown.

Well wait, that’s not entirely true because I did paint a couple little watercolors for the dummy book. One is a gouache, quite simple, and the other is a full-color watercolor and ink. They are both 6 x 9 inches.

housesmoved

I don’t know if I have mentioned that I have been mentoring an artist named Idelle Steinberg. I am trying to help get her career going and giving her as much inspiration and as many tools as I can. We meet about once a week and go over plans and it’s been a nice artist’s friendship so far. I actually put an ad on Craigslist for an apprentice who I could mentor in exchange for a little help in the studio and got a ton of responses. It was wild. I picked Idelle because she has a wonderful imagination and a super distinct style that I felt deserved nurturing. I had no idea I’d make such a good friend, but I did.

I am still waiting on being assigned my young teen girl from Create Now to mentor. I am very excited to meet her and do art with her. I wish there were such programs available when I was 13. If there were, I never knew about them. I believe this girl takes residence in a nearby orphanage. I am hoping to meet her at least twice a week.

If I have not mentioned this before, I got an editor for the literary book I have been working on for these last couple of years. Her name is Lisa Teasley. She is an award-winning novelist published with Bloomsbury and she is committed to taking on my book. I am still on the rough draft, but I am more than half way finished with that now. I wish I could, but I can not rush the process. I estimate I’ll be getting it to Lisa in a little under a year’s time.

I didn’t win the COLA, nor the California Fund Fellowship, but onward. I apply for those two grants every year for maybe 10 years now and I’ve never won, but I always know someone who wins them, which just makes me feel like I’m that much closer. But does it mean that? Maybe not.

I’m going to be in a group show at the Sunnyview Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation in Troy, NY in October and also another group show at the JCC Gotthelf Gallery in La Jolla, CA in December. Something to look forward to.

Who Do I Think I Am?

Ayin Es2 Comments

I want to help artists, but I don’t know how. Especially now. I used to pride myself on being a real big shot when it came to self-promotion, organization, artistic discipline, and building a career in the arts. However, these past few years have put me into a tail spin where I have lost half my representation, made less sales, and produced the least amount of work in 2011. What on earth happened? Can I fully blame the economy? Now I know why it was called “The Depression!” These setbacks have me reevaluating the meaning of success. What qualifies me to help artists that are starting out on their career paths if mine is suffering? Is mine even suffering? I’m going to say NO.

Tuesday of this week I got word that I was rejected from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. I wanted to attend this residency so badly because it promoted that I would leave there a completely different artist than the one I came in as. Now that I was turned down, I had to think about my desires for wanting to go. Why did I want to be a completely different artist? If I don’t like the artist I am right now, that’s a bad sign. Do I really need to go to Maine to correct that problem? Is that the real problem? It was a little bit more complicated than that. It was more about a multitude of rejections I was internalizing that got me thinking I needed to be a different artist in order to be accepted…

Accepted by whomever was rejecting me at various places I was applying to: Galleries, grants, residencies, etc. How soon I forgot that I won the Pollock-Krasner Fellowship in 2009-2010. That’s nothing to ignore, yet I was feeling like some kind of loser for not getting some other new accolade. That, and a couple of my galleries dropped me, sales were getting bleak, and rejections were rolling in. Suddenly I felt like I had no career.

Then I thought about what advice I would tell another artist if they came to me with these very same woes. I would remind them that the body of work that they have created and all the sales, honors, awards, and acknowledgements they have received throughout their career is theirs for life. It never goes away. And all that, along with the rejection of all the attempts of having tried bravely is a mountain you can stand on top of and be proud of because these are things you accomplished yourself through tooth and nail. So why the hell don’t I feel my own advice? I’m sure as shit qualified to help someone at an earlier stage in art if I can help myself at my own stage, right?

I know I don’t make the most commercial, salable work around. It’s pretty odd and personal, childlike and crude, but besides that, we are in a pretty bad recession. There was a big story on 20/20 about how the Art Market is not suffering, but unless you are Damien Hirst or some other artist in the $20K-$10 Million range, you are feeling it if your work doesn’t appeal to a mass market. The way I see it, for artists like me, it is a time to create, invent, explore, and experiment. If a sale comes, great (I just sold something to a collector in Canada as a matter of fact), but I’m not counting on sales at this time.

What I’d like to do is work on a couple new series for 2012 and exhibit them in 2013 sometime at my LA gallery. I’d also like to help out artists where and if I can.

How can I help you?

Whatever…

Ayin EsLeave a comment

Got word today that it’s a no-go on Skowhegan. I will not be going there this summer. This is the 3rd, wait, make that the 6th residency I’ve been rejected from. More if I’m counting that some of those places declined me twice. I was looking forward to Skowhegan the most in that it was a school. Oh well.

Just so happens that last night I got a great idea for a new series of work. I’ll be busy all summer anyway.

I sat down here to write a really long blog post about things that I feel and that have been going on internally with me, and now I don’t feel like it anymore.

I sold this watercolor the other day:

Carol Es

“Childhood Centerfold,” 2011. 8.5 x 14 inches, Watercolor and ink on paper.

Never Ending

Ayin Es1 Comment

Day 39. Oh, I’m way better, but I am still sick! I read about how long this could last and it can take a couple of months, so I suppose I’m right on target. I’m mostly just tired. I do little things throughout the day and they wipe me out. Yesterday I packed up 17 small pieces for the Folktales show I’m going to be in next month at Nichols Berg Gallery in Philadelphia with artist Lynnette Shelley. I was ready to die after that.

The day before, I did a bit of under painting on a small stretched linen piece that was inspired by a loose sketch I did, which will be the beginning of a new body of experimental work for me.

Today I wanted to work on that painting, but I am really sleepy and distracted. I’m wondering if I should talk about it here or not. I’m still thinking about it. It’s about how personal I get with my art and my words – publicly. I ran into conflict about it this morning and I already had reservations about it as it was. I always do. It’s a double edged sword being an open book. I don’t know. I’m thinking if I should stop. Maybe it’s not brave at all. Maybe it’s stupid.

I have reservations about the book I’m working on too. I’ll definitely write it/finish it. I’m 63,600 words into the rough draft as of now. When I’m done, what to do with it? I really am torn. I’m torn between two titles too. I don’t want to give them away just yet.

I also still have to finish two unfinished art pieces. My artists’ book Houses, and a 36 x 36 inch painting that’s been sitting on my easel since last fall. It’s working name has been “the one that will have the snake” because I am going to sew a stuffed snake around the edges to it when it’s finished.