Thoughts

writing

Ayin EsLeave a comment

I am the great Alter,
bring me your sufferings
and sacrifice your cock.
Unhook me from these power lines
& nail my hands to your hips.
I’ll be your portable guru.

That is from a poem I wrote a long, long time ago. I wrote a lot of poems in my lifetime and I was just going over some of them and realized that they all totally suck. Most are gibberish and make little sense to me now, but I was sure into feeling the feelings at the time I wrote them. I think that was the problem with them. I wasn’t writing about anything specific. I was mostly just angry, hurt, in love/in hate, betrayed or stuck inside a dark hole of some kind of injustice. Things were just flying around in my mind like random chaos.

One thing’s for sure, re-reading a lot of my writings is that I sure had a twisted, brutal sense of repressed sexual vehemence. It’s as if I could be reading the diary of a potential serial killer, or other such disturbed person. It is interesting how different I am now. I am the same in a lot of ways. I am still disturbed. I just don’t want to kill anyone anymore. And I don’t blame myself for indulging in a Mad Max fantasy – I’ve lived through some horrific experiences. I think it’s perfectly healthy to want to conquer victimhood and come out shining like a rose. I just find it interesting that now as I’m nearing 40, I no longer feel the same. My thoughts seem a lot more connected in context, and my feelings are easier to recognize. I guess I’ve reached a better place with age.

I was thinking a lot about this stuff because I was cruising around in the Bukowski.net forum on a thread about whether being a writer could be suggested as a career path. I think like any creative endeavor, it takes passion and guts, sacrifice and undying determination. And that determination doesn’t necessarily have to come from confidence in your work either. You can just be a crazy son of a bitch with an obsessive disorder. That’s what seems to be working for me.

New Painting

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I have been working like molasses. The art is coming out so slow it seems. I am still not in any kind of “swing” and especially not the same swing I was in before I moved. Working at home is something I used to do, so you’d think I would adjust after 6 whole months of settling in, but it’s just not the same. Using both my office and garage space is a bit strange. It’s cramped, and I don’t want to make any kind of mess in a place I only rent. Not that I’m a big mess maker anyway, but a wet brush flying around is never a good thing, especially around all my completed work a few inches away. I miss having at least one clean white wall with ample space around it to create larger pieces.

That being said, here is another piece I did in my office that is just 30 x 30 inches. It seems to look good with Eve’s Dilemma. I call it Head in the Soul (for now), which comes from the meaning of shin in the earliest extant book on Jewish esotericism. It’s done in oil, pattern paper, pencil and thread on canvas. The shin is stitched with black and white thread through the pattern paper, and the black & red bugs are embroidered.

Many people like to read what I write in my work, and I must say that I never mean it to be read so overtly. It is supposed to be part of the whole painting, but I can not control the viewer, nor do I ever want to. But for those of you that need to know what it says:

What words can not say:

My essence discarded,

lost in chemicals,

numb to embedded grains of dust.

Spirit bugs invade my skill

is hollow.

Buried, my hand disconnects from the magic tragedy

and creativity slowly leaks from my gut like molasses.

Hey, don’t ask why this stuff comes out of me.

I started working on a bigger piece the other day. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and wanted to incorporate my Laplandic ancestory, likened to a genetic memory. It will be mostly white with some tiny reindeer and little lavvus (which is what the Saami people call the dwellings that look like teepees.) I should probably call that one, “I Bet You Never Heard of a Jewish Reindeer Herder, Did ya?” or something along that line. I just hope that one turns out remotely close to how I envision it. These last 2 canvases started with a pretty vague composition, while the rest of it just happened as I went along. I guess that is something I should embrace, since over-thinking art is just profoundly overrated. It’s a fine line between instinct and plan. I’m always looking for that perfect balance between the two. I’ll let you know when I find it.

I Heart Chicken Dog

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I had a dream that we had a chicken dog as well as my real dog Buddy. The chicken dog was part rooster and part Border Collie. He had only 2 feet, like chicken legs, but with fur, and he also had the rooster’s weird, wobbly red stuff on his head and under his chin. It was the weirdest thing you ever saw, but I loved him. He was running around the neighborhood, unloved and laughed at. People were afraid to go near him, so he lived like a homeless person, finding refuge and places to sleep in hidden areas of people’s yards and behind restaurants and bars. We wanted him to sleep in the house with us, but like a chicken, he was very hard to catch. I was finally able to catch him as he was running through the front yards on my block. He was very sweet and cuddly, so we took him into our family, and people thought we were super strange.

Meanwhile, in another dream, my mother finally left my father and became roommates with my friend and artist Jennifer Celio in a downtown loft apartment. My mother called me complaining about the smell of turpentine and varnish (both in which Jennifer doesn’t even use in real life). She said that Jen played her music too loud and wished there was something she could do about the situation. So I had to pep talk her into actually saying something about it – very similar to a conversation we would really have. At some point in time (in real life) my mom stopped saying what she thought and instead sat on it silently, racking up resentment and anger, much of it towards herself for not being strong enough to say anything, which then lead to more depression and self-deprecation. …Oh, like mother, like daughter.

Dreams are fucking weird.

In real life, I had the spinal tap that I was putting off for 8 years. That is a long-ass time. I was so scared of it, you have no idea! But I got through it. I feel pretty sore today and I have the infamous headache they speak about. Laying down flat is the only cure, and tons of caffeine, which makes it so I don’t want to lay down at all! So instead, I built this new blog for Picklebird. I guess I heart Picklebird and Chickendog.

Also, the new Coagula is now out, so please pick up a copy at your local gallery and read the review I wrote about Rochelle Botello.

2008 Whitney Biennial Los Angeles Heavy

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The 2008 Whitney Biennial is Los Angeles Heavy

Congratulations to these Los Angelinos:

Edgar Arceneaux
John Baldessari
Walead Beshty
Jedediah Caesar
Harry (Harriet) Dodge and Stanya Kahn
Shannon Ebner
Amy Granat and Drew Heitzler
Rashawn Griffin
Fritz Haeg
Patrick Hill
William E. Jones
Alice Könitz
Charles Long
Lucky Dragons Luke Fischbeck
Daniel Joseph Martinez
Rodney McMillian
Julia Meltzer and David Thorne
Matt Mullican
 Ruben Ochoa
Kembra Pfahler
Stephen Prina
Michael Queenland
Jason Rhoades
Ry Rocklen
Amanda Ross-Ho
Eduardo Sarabia
Frances Stark
Mika Tajima
Mungo Thomson
James Welling
Mario Ybarra Jr.

These artists were either born in LA or they live here now, or both. I’d say Los Angeles is on the map now.

And I was happy to see that one of my most favorite and influential artists was at the top of the list: Rita Ackermann. If you didn’t know who she was before, you will now. And you might be able to see how many artists were influenced by her work, since she was the first to do the style she does. She is a true original. My Hungarian side would like to think she is somehow distantly related to me. In some universe, I feel we are.

GD6662576@Whitnye-Biennial-2008-2901
© Rita Ackermann

Yesterday

Yesterday I went to speak with students in the Fiber Department at Cal State University Long Beach. The chair of the Department Carol Shaw-Sutton (an incredible fiber artists who makes stunningly beautiful work) invited me to give a slide presentation and lecture there. Carol and I have shown together at the Riverside Museum of Art in a show called Material Girls, which got a lot of press and was a very good exhibition with a full color catalog and a perfect essay by Shana Nys Dambrot.

Anyways, I was nervous, but I had a good time. Some of the students really responded to the work. I brought some originals, including my books, and one girl said All Done But None was the greatest book she has ever read in her life. Granted she looked to be only in her early 20s, but it was definitely the best compliment I’ve received about the book.

Carol’s assistant is a graduate student named Susan Porteous who is also an incredible book artist. And I mean incredible. She took me back to her studio afterwards and I was able to see all the books she has made during her Master’s program, and I was just totally blown away at her originality and dedication. Her work is meticulous, and the handmade “books” are truly pieces of art. She has seemed to master letterpress, and uses found text within her art books, and plays with arrangements of making them thematic narratives by way of sculpting and using elements of bookmaking. She is going to be a Book Arts star.


© Susan Porteous

Afterwards, I saw my friend Kyle Riedel for a quick hug and headed out early to San Pedro for a meeting I had. I parked near my old studio at Angels Gate and watched the sun go down. My old studio, ironically used to be Carol Shaw-Sutton’s studio before it was mine and I thought about how we both read on out futon couches looking out into the sea. It was weird being there and seeing how a new artist is probably enjoying the hell out of the space now, as they should be. I’ll admit it was a little hard being there in the park and seeing how beautiful it is. A little hard is an understatement.

Awwww, isn’t that such a sad story? Ya well, get over it.

I’m slowly but surely getting back on my horse here in South Pasadena/Alhambra/El Sereno. It’s a pretty area. I have an amazing garden and this makes me happier than when I lived in my little house in Pedro. I’m just still trying to find my way. I have a little dream now about getting a cabin somewhere in Joshua Tree and just staying out there for weeks at a time and doing nothing but working. Kind of like a recurring residency retreat. It’s an idea, and it could wind up to be cheaper than renting a separate studio. We’ll see how it pans out though.


© Michael Phillips

Braver than Before

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Some shit dick made some comments on my last post about how much my art sucks. …As if i didn’t already know.

But anyway, i went to Joshua Tree yesterday to get some peace and molecular regenerations in my soul and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. Then I spent 50-cent on a local newspaper, but there wasn’t any news in the “all good news” Desert Star. There were few real estate ads. I’m so used to our papers being saturated with that kind of thing in LA, so i was surprised. I was looking for vacant land, which sounds a little boring, but on the way back I drove through a wind storm, a dust storm, a rain storm, a mud storm, and a rainbow.

we rented a house near Joshua tree called Space Rabbit Ranch. It’s on a 5 acre property and we were allowed to bring the dog. We saw bunnies, lizards, Eddy Izzard, dirt devils, and dancing stars.

So many stars, it’s a sin to try to describe them.

This morning I woke up just before sunrise and shot a picture of the well in the yard. It looked like a movie set. Something unsettling about it.

I filmed a little bit of nothing while I was there too. A little bit of desert schtick. I’ll edit it into something eventually.

Michael and I went back and forth between a couple of properties that we would like to try to buy and pay on for a while. We have a dream of one day building our own mud house on it and living off the grid when we’re 64. I will dream this until I get hit by a bus.

Before I left, I completed 1/12th of the painting I’m working on. The rest of the painting is the underpainting for your information! Not that I’m defending it, I’m just noting it here you bastards!

Well, I better get back to work. I have to prep for a lecture I’m giving this Wednesday at Cal State University Long Beach about my unsophisticated art that said meanie-commentor was apparently doing at age 14. I sure hope my lecture won’t be as grotesque and pathetic of a disservice to academia as my disgusting art has been to the genius world of anonymous art bloggers.

I will wear a plastic bag over my clothes just in case of any flying tomatoes.

If I sound mad at you, I’m not. I’m sorry. I’m mad at ghosts, not you.

Tomorrow I’m calling Mel Benson. I’m pretty sure we want the land that’s bigger and closer up to the park than the smaller one with all the incredible boulders on it that’s a bit too close to the highway. I’ll put in my very low, and possibly insulting, bid. All we can do is try, right?

Good night everybody. Goodnight Horsey.

PS: My friend Judith Hoffberg send me this today. Pretty funny!