Best Laid Plans

Ayin Es2 Comments

So I’m working on a new book. I know, I know… too many books at once! But this is different because this one I’m making. This is not a book that a publisher is making for me. This is going to be a very small edition of 5 handmade artist’s books. Very fine. Very involved. They will all be slightly different because they will all be somewhat original works of art.

It’s called Houses, based on a poem of the same title. It’s a poem I wrote a long time ago and it’s basically chopped up amongst the pages. The pages are french folds, some are letterpressed, some have etchings, some are original watercolor paintings, one has a block print, some are digital prints. The covers are cereal boxes. 2 of the pages will be embroidered. That’s going to be tricky, but I’ll do it. It’s gonna be expensive. It’ll be a Japanese stab binding and have some nice handmade, flower-pressed paper in it. 6 x 9 inches. You’ll see.

I’ve only made the dummy books so far. And just got the plates for the etchings. I haven’t even filed the edges yet. I was gonna do that today if I don’t fall asleep soon. I’m going to etch them myself in the garage with hard ground, then in a tupperware bin with ferric chloride. Then I’ll print them with Poli Marichal at Self Help Graphics. I’m gonna have Bill Roberts do the letterpress work, and I’m going to “die-cut” the covers by hand. I just have to eat a lot of cereal now.

I don’t know what else is going on. I’ve written a 5-year plan, but I haven’t done much in the way of any artwork. I’ve just been planning out this new art book, signing and drawing on the Monsters on Jasmine St. book, and just taking a break, waiting for the well to fill back up. I have ideas roaming around in my head and I’ve been trying to decipher which plans to execute and which to trash. I have a couple lingering projects that need finishing up, namely my Ethereal Research Labs Project. That will be finished this year for sure – without a doubt. That’s been a long time in the making. It involves launching the first 7 editions and a virtual domain. The one that’s been parked there for a couple years now is just a taste.

I looked back on my 2010 plan and I got most of the things done, minus a couple things. I feel pretty accomplished, but I would have liked to have finished the above mentioned project and built a large paper sculpture I have been planning for years. I suppose I will try for that in 2011. I also wanted to do a big embroidery on a hospital gown. Everything else I wanted to do got done thanks to circumstances I don’t think were all in my control really. Well, maybe a little bit.

Straight Up Rape

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Today in therapy we talked about my childhood sexual molestation and how convoluted and difficult it is for victims of sexual abuse by people of whom you know. That particular situation can be so confusing. Many blame themselves and wind up having difficult relationships in their lives compared to those who have been raped by strangers. The latter is a cut and dry scenario and there is no doubt that you were an innocent victim that had been violated, assaulted, raped, or what have you. When it happens by someone you know i.e. a family member, someone close to you, a “friend,” or even a date rape, it gets murky and often times the victim will not identify themselves as a victim. I, myself don’t even like the idea of “victim” because I associate it with something weak, but I also have felt responsible my entire life for what has happened to me because in some ways I went along with it. The person who violated me was much older than I and somehow I was convinced he was my secret boyfriend even though there were times I was being fully assaulted against my will. Still, I felt I held responsibility. Yet, if I had an 11 year old of my own, I would be appalled at the idea that she thought she knew what she was doing in the same situation. So I think I learned a lot today.

The Meaningless Thoughts of an Artist

Ayin Es3 Comments

I frequent a lot of online art forums. I am crazy. I sort of salivate over an anonymous community of other artists and want to bond with them. Just not in real life. Keep it on the internet where I don’t have to have any real human interaction. Sometimes I wonder if I’m looking for kin. I never really find any. Maybe then I’d want to know them personally. I find it extremely surprising what viewpoints I discover from all the other artists out there in the world. I really do. I have strange expectations I suppose. I would think we would have far more in common than we would not, but that isn’t so. It’s not good to have expectations of anyone really. That sets you up for disappointments. I know this fact, so I really try hard not to have any expectations for any sort of life on Earth.

The general subject of dreams, images and self-expression came up somewhere and someone made an obvious point about the differences in art and mere self expression. He said, “It would seem to me that ART is something more than mere expression of self-expression. ART involves an expression which has taken a special form… employing some consideration of the aesthetic. A baby crying because he is hungry is expressing himself… but it’s not ART. A drunk in the bar who punches another drunk in the face because he said something about his girlfriend is expressing himself as well… but ART? No. A group a teenagers who fly past you on the highway screaming profanities and mooning you are also expressing themselves… but again this is not ART. Art can involve elements that are ugly, elements of the horrific, elements of the seemingly crude… as well as the skillful, polished and beautiful. Ultimately, ART employs a visual language in a manner that goes beyond mere self-expression. Art also presumes an audience who is in agreement that a given work is art. I can create something that I imagine expresses the most deeply felt and profound meanings, but if it doesn’t resonate with an audience… if others don’t recognize my efforts as art… then I’m merely fooling myself.”

While most of this is obvious, it could become an interesting conversation if this person wasn’t such a hard ass, as I’ve come to know his personality. I agree with what he says here, but not 100% because I do think you can punch someone in a bar as a form of art. And more specifically, personally, art for art sake/art therapy, and the like, who it resonates with, when mundane art can get to be “bad” art, or when very personal art can become work that comes to resonate very well with audiences – all this gets very interesting.

For instance, I agree very much on allowing the audience to interpret the work fully. My work is VERY personal and while I am making it, it borders on art therapy. But the finished product happens to resonate with my audience (in most cases). Only if asked will I disclose personal factors about the work because I think it’s important to allow the viewer their own interpretation. I feel that once the work is completed, it really isn’t mine anymore, or rather, it has a new phase in its life with a new relationship(s). My personal relationship with the work has past. Its new life begins once it is displayed on a gallery wall. It is no longer any kind of therapy. It can’t be. And I really can’t tell viewers of my attachments to these pieces either. My work becomes a public piece. It everybody’s art, not just mine.

And does art have to have an audience? I think that might be commerce he’s talking about. There is art for art sake. That’s still art even if you as the artist are the only audience. Creator and viewer in one: you still count if you were moved. The moved Prime Mover, I guess you’d be. Biased as hell, but it still counts I think. Henry Darger NEVER intended for any of his work to be seen by another human being. Did he need someone else to call it art before it was art? No.

Okay, then there was this other subject of beauty and aesthetics, and if it even matters.

I was so on the fence about that. When I started reading about it, I was do depressed at the moment. I wrote:

Sometimes I wonder if beauty matters in the contemporary art world. Maybe tonight I am feeling beaten down, sad, depressed, or something like that. It just seems like “clever” always wins. Shock, clever, ironic, kitsch, lowbrow/comic illustration, little girls with big eyes and what appears to be Encephalitis or Achondrogenesis, altercations on Ren and Stimpy, etc, etc, ad nauseum…

WTF? I looked back the next night and thought I must have been pretty damn low that night. But the subject ended up taking a turn anyway to beauty, aesthetics and the difference between that and the sublime, and suddenly, everyone is bashing Andy Warhol. Now I am not a giant Warhol fan, but come on. He did something that turned contemporary art on its head just a little now. Give the guy some props. No, they wouldn’t be having it. A half a dozen people were calling him a moron. They were taking quotes out of his journal and actually thinking he was sincere when he wrote things like:

“I never think that people die. They just go to department stores.”

Ha!

I think there are a lot of differences between beauty, the sublime, aesthetics, and what is and isn’t art. There’s are a lot of personal fucking opinions of the viewers that gauge each. I don’t think it is something any one of us can make one blanket statement about and be right on the money. There are a lot of factors and a lot of “depends” in regards to each piece of artwork being discussed. In general terms, does beauty matter? Yes, I suppose it does. I think of it from the perspective of a collector and I buy what is beautiful to me. It might not be sublime to some people. It might have imperfections, which to me makes it aesthetic to me, but that’s how I like the work I hang in my house. I like the raw, the handmade, the honest and the primal stuff. To me this is beautiful and the more pure it is, the more sublime. It just surprises me how many conservative traditionalists are out there. I guess I just expected more from artists, no matter what they create.

I just felt like rambling. Good night.

Waiting/Biding

Ayin Es1 Comment

I spent the day with artist Rochelle Botello the other day. I wrote a thing about her in the Huffington Post a little while back. She rocks. I haven’t been feeling social, but do I ever? We had a good time. We met at Buster’s for coffee and came back to my place and I showed her what I used to look like before I put on weight. Ha! Overall, we talked about some good stuff, like art and how important the moment is. She opened my eyes a bit about that. I needed reminding about how important the little moments are. I suffer from depression and I don’t focus on these little happinesses as much as I need to. Luckily, I’m about to start seeing a therapist again. Something I haven’t done in a long, long time. Not really since my parents died, so it will probably be good for me. Am I getting too personal? Too bad for you!

I’m so tired, but today I finally finished up a couple logo designs – I don’t usually do such thing, but it is for a very special organization that means a lot to me and they asked me to submit something, so I gave them a couple options. They may or may not use them. We’ll see. I’ll know by next week or so. I’m also waiting on a couple things I applied to, like the special print residency at the Lower East Side Print Shop in NY. I don’t think I will hear back from them until February though. Can’t get my hopes up. I always say that, but my hopes are always up. Who am I fooling. I think it’s funny when people say they aren’t going to get their hopes up about this stuff because when the rejection comes, we are going to be just as disappointed whether we acted like our hopes were up or not. So why not live with our hopes high? It’s all a big fucking let down in the end, or it’s not. Such is the roller-coaster of being an artist. It’s mostly rejection – we know that going in.

December I think I got 4 rejections, 2 on the same day. January I didn’t win the West Prize. (Big surprise!) But I am always applying for shit anyway. I’ve applied for the Guggenheim twice. And as for the Pollock-Krasner: the 8th time’s a charm! Last week I put in my application for CCF. I probably shouldn’t have put it in so early, but I don’t have anything coming up on the horizon to add to the resume, so I figured, why not? I want to apply for the CCI thing, but I want funding for my novel. I’m stuck not knowing how to submit my materials. Do I submit my past artwork, or do I submit parts of the manuscript? See? Who knows. I wrote them to ask and they would not give me an answer, but they encouraged me to apply for a change-up in my medium. Great, but what work sample do I submit??? I don’t even know if I’m past the deadline by now.

The novel is daunting. I work on it like a leaky sink: drip-drip-drip. Meanwhile, Michael pounds out 9000 words at a time. I’m lucky if I can write 1000 in a sitting. I have my toe in too many ponds, or whatever the saying is. If I’m going to be a writer, you’d think I’d know my metaphors!

I have a group show opening this Sunday. Do you want to drive all the way out to West Hills? I don’t even know if I do! The work is simple, but it’s all new and it’s in Hebrew.

2011 And All is Quiet

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Already the 13th and here we are. It’s going by fast, but everything seems slow. How can that be, Carol? How? I don’t know Skippy! I don’t create the universe. I only create my own. Maybe I’m not doing a very good job at it the past few weeks, I’m not sure, but things are just not as exciting as your typical log ride at an amusement park lately. I have been tinkering with one single painting for over a week and a half and it’s only 16 x 20 inches. It’s not detailed or anything, I’m just not working on it every day or for many hours.

I did take a few days off and went to Las Vegas. It was Michael’s mother’s 70th birthday celebration and practically the entire family was there from all over the country. We saw Cirque’s LOVE: the one that goes to the Beatles music. Visually it was really beautiful. And, of course, the music was great. Cirque-wise I have to say I was slightly disappointed. I’ve seen quite a few of their shows now and I’ve come to expect a certain type of amazement that didn’t come with this particular show. There were moments of it, yes, but I wasn’t as blown away as I usually am with their other shows when it comes to their acrobatics. There was just too much dancing. Lots and lots of dancing. It bordered on, or rather, it made me start thinking about a Broadway show in some moments. That’s just not my thing. I trusted both parties here. Not that I feel ripped off or anything. It was still worth the money. I’m just a little disappointed is all. I can still say there were moments that were absolutely breathtaking. There was a great display for Octopus’ Garden and Lucy in the Sky. Some aspects of John Lennon’s life were also incorporated and at one point I cried a little.

That was the highlight of Vegas, aside from seeing family of course. I gambled a little. Not much. Lost what I brought to play with, won a little on the horses. Lost the rest. Most disappointing about Vegas: no Slap Jack tables!