Still working on Houses.

Ayin Es2 Comments

I try to make an Artist’s book every other year. They certainly are major projects. This one will be my smallest edition, of only six. It is because there will be two hand-embroidered pages in each, plus three original watercolor pages. The covers have a hand-cut die, plus I still have yet to carve the block print. I still have lots to do and I haven’t really been “on it” the way I should be. I last did the sketches for the watercolors a week ago. Today I realized I will have to score each page about an 1/8 of an inch inside the binding for the pages to flip better. Yes, lots to do, but a good deal is done as well.

All the letterpress is done – there was a lot. The two etchings are done, and the digital art is done (four of those pages.) Here’s a peek at a couple:

HOUSES is based on poem, written in 1999 by me. I updated it a bit for the book. The papers I’m using used throughout are Artistico Fabriano, Rives BFK, Strathmore Artagain, Moab Kayenta 205 gsm., various cereal boxes as the front and back covers, and imported handmade flower pressed papers. The pages are going to be all French folds and then Japanese stab bound with waxed linen thread from Ireland.

Here again is one of the etchings:

I am still trying to think of a clever box or leather casing to put these in. I have thought of a wooden box, mini suitcase, etc., but I’ve also considered a kind of tattered leather pouch with embossed lettering. Still thinking about it…

SLOTH

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I’m going to come clean. The last week or two I have really haven’t done anything. I have made one drawing and have worked on my book very little. Last weekend I was at a resort with my best friend for her birthday, and the rest of the time I have been meaning to clean my house, but I haven’t. I have been mostly sleeping because I am dealing with CRUSHING FATIGUE!

I deal with a lot of fatigue anyway, but lately it is getting worse and worse. Can I just complain a little here? I am so sick of it! It makes me feel like an unaccomplished loser. Meanwhile, my mind is swelling with ideas and I can’t execute any of them. I physically don’t have the motivation. I’m lucky if I can do some dishes, then I have to lay down again. I’m good for sitting down and writing a bit, but that’s about it. I’m now about 40,000 words into my rough draft of the book. I tinker with it pretty often, but I can only write a little under 1000 words a sitting.

Never have I fully disclosed what is fully wrong with me. I have been conflicted about it for so many years for so many reasons. I don’t want to be the artist with a disability. I don’t want people to treat me differently, because they have. I also have issues with thinking that people wouldn’t believe all that is going on because it’s kind of a lot. I also don’t want to appear like I am kavetching or whining.

If you are seen with/in some kind a apparatus, like a wheelchair, people will define you as such. It’s just the way it is. There are times when I need such things and have met people, then met the same people when I was without the chair and they do not remember having hours long conversations with me before. It really sucks.

I have Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis and Lupus. To boot, I also have Ulcerative Colitis. If that’s not enough for you, I have Bipolar disorder. Isn’t that peachy? Maybe you think “No wonder you’re tired!” but I don’t give myself much of a break because I’ve had most of these things for years and have managed to produce a LOT of art and exhibit in many shows. I am only 43. Why am I now getting so very very tired? I have too many ideas to have this happening right now. I just hope this isn’t the beginning of some relapse. I’ve been in remission for some time. But remission is not all it’s chalked up to be. It’s not like everything is 100% in working order. You never bounce back to your “normal.” You’re always left with residual and daily pain, ups and downs and “Hi, how are ya! I’m a new symptom, pleased to meet ya!”

There’s arthritis, electrical pain, weakness, dizziness, headaches, fatigue, tremors, buzzing, vision problems, depression, stupidity and brain fog, memory lapses, rashes, and pee issues you don’t want to know about. I don’t complain all that much about it, considering, and never to friends, but today, I just feeling like punching a hole in the wall. That is, if I had the fucking energy.

Thinking

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I’ve been working on this project for over two years, but I don’t have the money to finish it, so I am considering doing a kind of lottery. Not sure yet, but if I could get enough people to buy lottery tickets, maybe I can raise the money to finish the project and the winner of the lottery can come away with a piece of art. I wonder what readers think about this? I need about $2500. The money is for the glass flasks for this so that they all look like these inside the glass.

Uh like so:

Stuff n stuff

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I’m not so good at blogging as often as I used to be. Sorry. It’s just that I have been using all my writing energy for my book these days. Didn’t I mention this before? I’ve been writing a book. It’s been a couple years in the making, but the past six months I have been really been focused on it, more or less, on a daily basis.

It wasn’t until then that I un-fictionalized it. Plus I got The most incredible program called Scrivner, which has made organizing the process about as easy as brushing my teeth. It’s a God send for anyone who is writing a book, screenplay, or what have you. I highly recommend it! It was a difficult decision to make it an actual autobiography of non-fiction. That was quite the hurdle actually. Now I am walking on very thin ice when I think about publishing it after it’s finished, but MJP was in my ear for over two years about it – telling me how I had to do it. The best thing about the entire story is that it’s all true. He has a good point there, but it’s not easy to then out my friends and family, and myself in a public manner about everything under the sun, moon and stars. It’s going to be difficult. And if this thing actually gets published by a real publisher, I’m probably going to get sued by a couple of people at least.

In other news, I am in an article on the Huffington Post that Mat Gleason wrote about the private studio tours he did during July. I had a few people come through my place and it was very fulfilling. Mat did a good job of describing the tours he did.

I also made my very first YouTube video! I have never tried to do such a thing before, so don’t be too critical:

Machine (In progress)

I’ve also recently applied for a grant at a NY foundation (pending) – wish me luck, and another residency at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY. I’m also in a new group show at Hebrew Union College at USC right now, but the reception date has not yet been announced. The show will be there until December however.

Here is a painting I just finished:

I’m also still working on my Artists’ book called Houses. I have 4 more pages to go, plus the covers. Times that by six copies though. I still need a couple of months at least. Slowly but surely…

True Validation

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I haven’t blogged in a while, so I guess it’s time for an update by now.

I have been in Joshua Tree for some weeks helping my best friend move there from Pennsylvania, after her absence from Southern California for almost nine years. I found her a house in J Tree back in April and it seemed perfect for her, although I was truly nervous about being responsible for being the sole picker-outer of her new home. It worked out and she loves it, but it was a big job working out everything for her on this end. I arrived at the house the day before the movers got there while she was still driving across the country, which proved to be quite the dilemma because the moving truck couldn’t quite make it onto the dirt road that was closest to her driveway and they wound up having to tote her belongings for the paved road about 1/8 of a mile from the house that went along a long, gravel driveway. They were pissed and shook me down for an extra $150 bucks, but I have to say they earned it. However, they dumped all her stuff in the middle of the living room, and most of it was upside down. I ended up having to move everything myself into the proper rooms and turn everything up, sliding the furniture on cardboard and whatnot as to not to scratch the wood floors.

I also cleaned the hell out of the place before she got there, made sure all her utilities were turned on, and had to fix little stupid things in the house. It’s not the kind of house where everything is super stellar, it’s more like a large cabin, so you get it as it is and you don’t really call the landlord unless something is majorly awry.

When my friend Tracey got there, she was in a bad way from all the traveling, plus she has been very sick. It took her a few days of recovery before she was really able to start helping out, but she started to come around and she is very happy with everything and I am just so glad she is just two hours away. I stayed some weeks with her and helped her set up and did a lot of house shopping with her, introduced her to a couple of J Tree people and we even went to the Gay Pride festival there and saw my friend’s band play. Artist Shari Elf has a wonderful space out there called Art Queen, which was where the festival took place, and her band The Kittens played. We had a great time.

You might ask why I would do all this for my friend, or maybe not. She is my friend and I would do anything for her, but she is something very special to me anyway. When I was a kid, Tracey took me in when my life was very volatile at home. She is eight years older than me and I met her when I was probably 12 years old. I lived with her when I was 13 or 14, and she took care of me when no one else would, like my own parents. She taught me to be a responsible young adult and helped me to become a good person. She saved my life actually. So I would do anything for this woman. She is an incredible person and she needed the help right now.

While I was away, many changes took place in me, and I found out about a few art-related/career-related opportunities that became major disappointments. I was rejected by the California Foundation, then the next week I found out I was denied the MacDowell Colony residency, then finally I was rejected by the City of Los Angeles Artist’s grant. It all started to wear on me and I got depressed. Tracey, who has known me all my life pointed out some things to me that at first seemed to me like she just didn’t understand about the art game, but it was actually good to get her viewpoint because she has known me for so long and she is outside of the contemporary art world. She was worried for me that I had been after this kind of prestige and/or looking to beef up my resume on the grounds of trying to be impressive in turn for considering this “success.” And she was absolutely right.

When I got home, I did a lot of soul searching. I realized I could just replace this word “prestige” for “external validation” and I might as well just harken this back to my mom and dad. This cognition appeared after speaking with MJP, who knows even more about me and my internal issues regarding all this and watches me on a daily basis working my ass off towards my unreachable goals. He tries to put my feet on the right track all the time, but I am always so manic and focused on I-don’t-know-what, pushing and trying to get to that next rung on that ladder – a ladder that leads me to much misery and often takes the magic out of creating art.

I am grateful that I am in galleries, that I have won grants and awards, shown in museums and am in important collections. These are great accomplishments, feathers in my hat, etc., but it seems it has truly taken me a lifetime to learn that a person’s value is not measured by their accomplishments – that has been a foreign concept to me, as ashamed as I am to say it. That does not mean I have judged others in this way, but myself. I have been all too hard on myself and have expected impossible things beyond my ability at times, and it’s never been good enough. It’s long overdue that I be good enough.

After all this realization occurred, i was rejected from my last ditch effort on a NYC gallery. My friend took some original work into her gallery there to see if they’d be interested in my work. I couldn’t have received a better type of referral than that one, and all my eggs were honestly in that basket because I have now exhausted every gallery lead I have in NY, and this particular place couldn’t have been more perfect for me. I waited by my computer after 3pm on word of what went down on the day she took my work to them. They were not interested.

Normally, I would be in bed, depressed for a couple of days after news like that, but I wasn’t. Disappointed, yes, but I was fine. I don’t care anymore. I make the work I make. This is not going to change. I will always do what I want to do art-wise. If someone appreciates it, that’s great. If someone does not, that is fine too. There is no “right” person appreciating it when it happens – that’s what it comes down to. I have a lot of people who love my work and those are the people that make it all worth while. I don’t need Mr. Saatchi, or a New York gallery, or Christopher Knight to tell me I’m doing it right or wrong. I only need my own internal validation, and I have that now. FTW!