Working on this weird oil painting on panel…
Thoughts
Revitalized
I had the BEST conversation the other night with one of my artist friends, Rochelle Botello. I had been floundering lately about what sort of body of work I should do next. I had an idea about it, but I felt unsure about it until I spoke with her. She helped me to get back on track probably because she and I have such a similar art-making process.
Rochelle asked me some key questions about my new “idea” that made me see it all clearly, like what exactly was interesting to me about it, and I found that there wasn’t anything specifically interesting to me about it at all, and therefore, it was not a good enough idea for a whole body of work.
I realized, I was putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. And I was thinking too much about what would be interesting to display in a show instead of what was going to hold my own interest. It’s very important (for me) to be engaged in the painting process, and to also have fun – while also challenging myself. I work instinctively usually, so making such a plan before I had even started on painting one was not the way to go. The organic evolution usually takes form and I will inevitably create an entire body of work that will wind up looking good together – without thinking about it so much.
What was interesting to me about my idea was not the imagery itself, but the narrative behind it. I had been telling myself that I need to take out the narrative in my work because some people don’t like it, or I’m doing it too much, or blah blah blah. But I came to the conclusion that WHAT I will be painting is a lot less important than how I approach it. It’s a matter of trusting myself to pull it all together as I go along. I can’t stress enough how important it is to ignore all the self-doubt or outside validation in cases like this.
Therefore, I won’t be creating a body of work that resembles the forms I had in mind in the first place. Instead, I now can see the “look” is going to be entirely different if I address the story behind how the forms came to be. From there I can make the first piece, and that’s all that matters. Because the first will inform the next – and rather than a laid out plan, I will watch and discover what comes into being. THAT is more exciting to me than a plan.
So, rather than a laid out plan, I will watch and discover what comes into being.
Feeling revitalized. Thanks Rochelle. 🙂
Catch Up
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.
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.
You Carry the Cure in Your Own Heart
This article just changed my life.
Who Do I Think I Am?
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?