One Weekend Left.

That's all the time I have till the show. Plus weeknights, but not a lot of time in any given one. I am pretty sure I will not be done in time at all. In that I'm only 2/3rds of my way through the draft sketch for the first panel... ha ha! And then I'll probably make some more changes! Ah!

However. It's okay. The show is open invite, and last I looked there were quite a lot of people signed up on the bookface. So...I think it's going to be chaotic. And my piece will be delicate... so I'm definitely going to keep working like I could get it done in the next 10 days, but if that doesn't happen, I will be fine with it, since setting it up in a place where it isn't necessarily safe will make me a nervous wreck.

I would rather get finished by August 1st, and have a work that is exactly right, than a hurried piece for the sake of having a piece. Overall it's been such a delight to finally feel things clicking into place this weekend. I feel right in the studio. There's a momentum when I finally drag my butt over, turn off all the internet chatting and phone buzzing, queue up the same old playlist and get to work. Also, the furniture is all being dragged slowly into place, and that's helping.

Untitled Sketch.

And the work itself, the act of making, that is such a high and a terror at the same time. You carve a whole visual world off a blank page, and agonize over where a line should go, and what should happen where and how. It's intense. Especially because my initial images carry a different visual character than the final cuts will- the pencil marks always look so different, so I get all nutty about "oh does this look any good at all?" and then I do the cuts and the method and materials add all this DRAMA, and the piece ends up very differently than it looked during the design phase. The process reminds me of black and white photography where you see the image in color, make a guess, take the shot, hoping that you got all your exposures right, develop the film and then, maybe...maybe it lives the way it existed in your head. 

So here are two sketches. The piece is sort of about water. Or maybe it's about how fish can't describe what water is like. Or maybe it's about the complexity of our participation in the world. Who knows? Something like that, in pictures, with a bit of a japanese woodcut influence.

Preliminary draft sketch, for 3 panel cut paper work.

Something big.



Right view of studio.



The last month was sort of a wash. A lot of life stuff was happening, I didn't spend much time in the studio. I did a few little projects here and there, but big ideas, big stuff, sort of on hold. Also I ordered a drafting table when I moved in, and it has given me all SORTS OF TROUBLE. I can't even type about the issues I had, because the resulting spike in my blood pressure is alarming to everyone, but suffice to say, I now have 3 table tops, and a drafting table base to dispose of, and I am starting the hunt over again.

Left view, over the top of one of 3 drafting table tops (grah!)

This brings me to this last Saturday when I was in Las Vegas (of all places!) and in my email was an invite to participate in a huge artist group show, a month from now. The stipulation was that I needed to make "floor work" only, aka nothing that goes on the wall.

Problem One. I don't have things ready to go.

Problem Two: Nothing I make is self supporting.

I tried to write an email back saying, "ha ha, no way. I suck." and then my hand stopped me, and I went outside into the ridiculously hot desert sun instead. And then the back of my brain just chugged along. "well what if you use lamps? What if you built a frame? What if you hung your small pieces in the frame..."

And then it came to me. It's perfect. It's a solution that matches some of the things I'm working with. And is there any way I can get it done in just 4 weeks with a 40 hour a week full time job?! I have no idea. But I think I can and the no really comes from fear of working very very hard and then putting my pieces out there, essentially the 2 things I need to do to be an artist. Ha ha, oh life. You are such a tricky bastard with all your lessons.

Stay tuned! I might succeed, I might fail, but either way, I forsee spending a lot of time at a hardware store this weekend.

Terrible Tuesday.

This week is not starting auspiciously. So I thought I'd focus on some good things in the world of paper cutting.

First up Bovey Lee, who maintains a great blog about the practice of papercutting has been putting up some helpful reviews and tips on materials she likes to use. Namely, some interesting word on the street about improvements to the X-Acto #11 and a review of using scalpels. I've looked into scalpels online, but I don't know enough about the options to feel ready to purchase. I'll be interested to see if she ends up switching from X-Acto to scalpel longterm.

Also there's a papercutting book out very recently that's worth a look. It's called Paper Cutting: Contemporary Artists, Timeless Craft, and it has a good contemporary survey of a number of papercutters out there.

You won't see Kara Walker in this one though, which is a shame since I think she's the most prominent fine artist papercutter, but is probably also why she wasn't necessarily featured. There was a nice interview with Kara Walker in last month's (May 2011) Art in America that I also think is worth a look. I like hearing about process and thoughts of artists. She's incredible. I find her pieces absolutely incendiary and beautiful.

Lastly, Swoon at MOCA's "Art in the Streets". I thought it was the best part of the show. First of all, she made the wise decision to pull herself away from all the CHAOS and NOISE of the rest of the exhibit, by being in a sort of tent. Secondly, papercuts galore!

Speaking of "Art in the Streets", boy. That whole thing...it's almost hard to talk about. My friend B doesn't have the same problems I do, so she just said succinctly, "a nightmare. A curatorial nightmare." She's right. It is. Its a mess. Many things about it feel wrong. Also LA people are are a mess, or at least the attendees at this show were, they were photographing everything on the iPhones, often bumping into, or walking in front of people who were trying to actually look at the show. There's something so annoying about people who are just photographing away at their food, or the show, or the concert, and not enjoying it. Relentless documentation. There were good pieces, but taken all together? It was kind of nutso. Also some of it was pretty schlocky- the homeless man house of horrors was particularly annoying and cliche.

I guess it achieved the particular quality of graffiti in that it didn't seem curated...? I dunno.



How To Steal Like an Artist-Austin Kleon

Stolen Slide from Austin Kleon's "How to Steal Like an Artist"

Go here now. It's okay, I'll wait. The above slide alone should make you hungry for more. 


My favorite quote in the comment section of that blog post:

"Oh geez. Thanks for reminding me why I hate “artists” in general. There are exceptions: people who do not have the intellectual poverty, lack of self knowledge, needy desire to be noticed, nor the histrionic, self-important need to document every inane moment of their day exhibited by the author of this piece and (presumably) those giving masturbatory back-pats to him for his “inspiring” words. Please, before you waste your youth away, put your family to shame, and bankrupt yourself monetarily and emotionally, admit to yourselves that you ARE fakes, move on/grow up, and actually contribute to society rather than sit around and try to figure out “who you are” and how you can attract attention of the public(if these are dilemmas of yours and you are an adult, you might want to do some research on Borderline Personality Disorder or Histrionic PD)."

Someone out there really doesn't like artists. How novel.  

So for my " histrionic, self-important need to document every inane moment of [my] day", here's the studio report this week: I spent portions of Friday and Saturday in the studio. Maybe only 10 hours...not too much, but a good solid chunk of time. On Sunday I felt the pull and squashed it, somewhat ruthlessly to eat brunch and enjoy the sun with my gentleman friend, but spent much of the day reading Art in America. I was looking for Art/Work, which my library only has on reserve, but ended up with The Artist's Guide instead. Review to follow.

On Friday I did some only partially statisfying sketches. I'm still trapped in a lot of questions about how I move from idea to execution for several parts of the pieces I'm working on for the disaster series and that's coming through on paper in the form of less satisfying work. On Saturday I just grabbed the x-acto and went for something abstract; mind numbing, straight-up cutwork without a purpose, just for the sake of working. It felt marvelous to walk away with shaking cramped muscles and eyes, the intense physical satisfaction of hard work. There are probably about 5-6 more hours in that piece and then, it just will be done, and mean nothing. Easy peasey.

Letters to A Young Artist

Yesterday I think I ticked off my brother. He's graduating from college in a few weeks, and I sent him a commencement speech by Anne Lamott. I was thinking it seemed like really good advice. He was upset because he went to school to learn to be a writer, and this speech essentially says, "it's really hard to get published and make money at what you do." I felt very sorry to make him anxious. I forgot how it feels to be looking out at the future through the rapidly approaching lens of what to do with you life, and how will I make money, and is this degree worth what I'm going to be paying for it over the next 5 to 10 years?

Which brings me to my little green book of prayer. It's called "Letters to a Young Artist". It's full of letters from established artists written in response to a letter sent by a fictional young artist. The letter itself isn't included- you only figure out what it must have said by what the artists write back. It's an unsettling and comforting read at the exact same time- a good kick in the head.

I like this quote from Lawrence Weiner,

 "THE QUESTIONS OF MAKING A LIVING ARE THE SAME EXISTENTIAL QUESTIONS ALL MEMBERS OF SOCIETY HAVE. THE ADVANTAGE OF THE ARTIST IS THAT THE USE OF THEIR PRODUCT IS NOT DEPENDANT ON BEING IN ACCORD WITH THE POWERS THAT BE."



LAWRENCE WEINER
SCATTERED MATTER BROUGHT TO AN ASCERTAINABLE DENSITY WITH THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD CUSPED, 2007



I've been sitting with that quote a lot lately. To me he's saying, "dude. Everyone worries about being paid. Everyone. But at least you aren't stuck, because you already live outside the rulebook." This is a great point. There's nothing inherently special in picking a field you do for love with bad pay. So do teachers and guidance counselors, nonprofit program coordinators and veterinary technicians. What is special, is that a guidance counselor can't guide without being inside a system that provides them with people to guide. Artists aren't bound by that. We get to provide our product outside the frames of society, we get to provide it even if no one wants it, no one knows they need it. We can put it on a wall in a alley, or in a house or on the ground itself. Freeing.

I hope my brother knows that if he's never published, if he struggles his whole life to make rent, his words still matter, still have meaning. Also I hope he gets a great job that he loves and forgives his sister for being oblivious.

Photo source: Marian Goodman Gallery

Hard Work

This weekend wasn't a good one for progress. I'm stuck on a lot of process details. A selection:

1. Should I change my sketch before I start making the piece that I think I'm ready to start cutting? I can't decide if it IS complete or if it only FEELS complete and I should keep pushing. If I get started there are still a number of choices to make about colors and construction. 
 2. Should I make all my sketches before I get to work making the pieces? If I do this I'd have a better sense of what the series is going to be, and be able to make the whole series more cohesive. Alternatively, making it piece by piece would let me switch things up more. Oh. Writing this out I know now, I think I need to do all the sketches first. Duh.




Hokusai would do his sketches first. When in doubt, ask WWHD? 

 

3. Should I buy some equipment that would help me now? I have several big purchases to make including a camera, a computer with a big screen and then there are some less necessary gadgets that I want and could eventually be a big help, like a good screen printing kit, an iPad*, etc. Paying for these items is going to require spacing things out, and I wrestle with which items I should buy when. So as a means of coping I've just been putting it all off and wasting money on other non essential, non delicious art supply purchases. Healthy of me, especially as now I'm traveling soon and even though I probably should get the computer first (would be good if I do all the sketches first), maybe the camera or iPad would be good things to have for a trip. Hmm....

4. Frames?! Oh no. I don't even want to talk about this. I have a frame I really like, and I got it at a thrift store. So I either need to spend some time really looking into the retail options for frames, or get custom frames. I need frames before I cut my pieces, because once I get started they're going to need a safe place to live- they can rip easily. I have a strong sense this will be frustrating, so I'm putting it off.

5. Studio logistics. Is there communal internet in my building? How can I get in on that? Will the new shipment of my drafting tabletop come soon and fix the issues I identified in the one it came with? Where in the building am I allowed to spray paint something without also poisoning myself? I should go talk to my building managers.

So that's all the minor stuff. Here's the larger stuff. I'm struggling with composition of pieces. I know in a broad sense what I want to do. And I have one piece that is perfect. I'm completely happy with it, and all it needs is enlarging and recreating in the right format. But as for the other pieces! I can't decide whether or not to skip having humans in the pieces or not. It affects the entire concept if there are people there, versus not. I've been wandering around for a week and a half thinking about it. People add human interest of course. But is presenting the subject as landscape more compelling? Hard to say. I've been wandering around thinking about this one quite a bit. Content requires a pretty long hard think well before the execution. I'm probably going to have to make each sketch both ways first.


*Stay tuned for a post tommorrow about my internal turmoil over the iPad. I am pondering one as an e-sketchbook, but I'm also conflicted. Oh iPad, are your flaws truly fatal?

Artist vs Artist

A friend of mine is getting her MFA. She and I do very different work and approach our practice very differently. My boyfriend and I went to see her program's open studios this last weekend. Among the pieces there were films of a woman undressing herself, and licking frosting off something, a woman seated who invited visitors to brush and style her hair and then take the hair home in a plastic bag, various sculptures and paintings, a huge bucket of paint for wading in, etc. It was intense and raw, and unstructured.


My boyfriend is an engineer and a musician. Visual arts aren't really his wheelhouse- but he's immensely curious about them, and talking to him about art is one of the great pleasures of my life- his questions are so big and open that they really push me to think through what I think and know. Often when I talk to him about art I find that his knowledge of music (an area where I know only that I know very little about it) is a really good touchstone for comparison because he understands something I find somewhat incomprehensible, and understands there are lots of dialogues going on among musicians that add something to the work itself- being part of the club changes how you see things- I relate to a lot of music like he relates to art, viscerally hating or liking it, but not sure why. He also gets contemporary dance, which I'm totally not tuned into at all.


So we came home and were getting ready to go to sleep, and we're lying there sort of talking about the day and he says to me, "So do you get B's work?". And that was a devastatingly good question to end the day with. Because the honest answer is as much yes as it is no.


Answer A, "No I don't get it": She's a conceptual artist. I'm much more traditionally rooted in aesthetic and materials, and in making and all of that. I make pieces that go in frames. She makes ideas, which might fit in a frame, if that frame is part of the art. The hours I've spent being an artist have been much more concentrated in skills practice: drawing, ceramics, sculpture, prints, etc. Whereas she's a maker certainly, a photographer, a printmaker in her own right, but her focus, her interest is in the IDEA, and importantly, she's rooted in a lot of contemporary art teaching- she's studied the recent history and theory of art far more deeply and in formal courses. She's getting an MFA, she spends her days with other contemporary modern artists at a very contemporary school, learning from the cutting edge.


Also, and this is one that I think is really important. Her whole life and the language of her life is completely different from mine. She has different visual resonances, different symbols and archetypes, different pop references. This is true no matter who you are- every person who stands in front of a piece is incapable of "getting it" the way the artist who made it gets it- because they simply never will be the artist, never will be that one singular perspective. "Getting it" isn't completely the point of any given work, although at the same time, to be "Got" and felt is also the singular purpose for the existence of every piece.


Answer B: "Yes I do?": So then, accepting that there are these essential limitations to me- that I can't vibrate at the same wavelength as B, that I don't know the language she speaks and the things she knows, that I am on some levels, outside her practice and her knowledge, I do also "get it". I get being an artist. I get the compulsion, the basic inability to "be normal" and live inside the time you were born with (yes it sounded so very pretentious RIGHT AS I TYPED IT. Apologies to the world). Something about the way you live as a person who makes particularly visual arts (I don't know a lot about music, like I said) pushes you in a certain direction, gives you membership in a certain club. It gives you a basic respect for a wading tub full of paint, a willingness to look it over and try and get it- get what that person was doing. I don't think I'll ever make art the way B makes art and I don't think B will ever make art the way I make it, and I don't think we'll ever resonate and feel the same things about the works we make. But at the same time, we're Venn diagram friends. There's a ton of overlaps, a desire to both hit a Baldessari show, a willingness to break into a an abandoned amusement park, combined with the ultimate decision not to because it's not sneaky enough to get away with it.


What Else I Thought about Open Studios at an MFA Program:


When we left the studios I felt so much relief. This was an odd thing to feel. Some part of me wanted to be a capital A, Artist for so long. And a big part of it for me was about being inside the club. The thought that if I were inside the club, I'd finally be valid. When I'm around other artists in a working situation I get insecure. I have performance anxiety- I get obsessed with who is winning. I've come to see this as pretty run of the mill. The book Neo-Bohemia illustrates the toxic culture of artists very well. I think it comes down to the issue of  "being famous and making a living". Knowing that everyone else around you might be the person to get famous and rich, and knowing that you might be able to make your mark for posterity and get successful if you hit it right....that can kill all but the strongest person. 


You start wanting to succeed so much that you can't see anything else, and the work itself sort of takes a backseat to all the thoughts in your head about who is going to win. This is the true secret to artist's block- its not the blank page that daunts you. Its all the pages in all the books that were already written by someone else, staring at you from your shelves. In the face of all THAT, the very reason you started to make your own stuff in the first place, in the desire to get to be on the shelf with all those heros, you start to die and doubt. And seeing those open studios I realized that for me at least, being in an MFA program would be like being trapped in a library with a blank page and books with guns that were hunting me.


My studio is the opposite of that atmosphere. For one thing I'm half in the closet. I haven't told a lot of my family and coworkers. So it feels protected. I don't participate in an artists community. I just go to the studio. And working suddenly feels like a huge relief. It's just me and the blank sheet and the choices I'm making in there for the next 5 hours or so.  There's no such thing as "the art world". I'm hoping to just make work for a long time before that changes for me.  At least the next 3 or 4 months, of just working. Reading "Inside the Painter's Studio" was a good catalyst for this- all those folks basically said, "just get up, go to the studio and do your work. Keep your head down. Don't worry, don't schmooze, don't compete. Just work and enjoy the work."


In this week's additional notes/reading: Hennessey Youngman. Be sure to check out his most awesome YouTube videos.  Also Twin Peaks, now available on Netflix Watch Instantly (so weird, so good!), and finally, I'm reading "The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving Kindness" by Pema Chodron. This is all good stuff.

The Studio

I recently leased a work studio, a fact that makes me extremely happy. Here are a few photos.

Keep Your Day Job?

 Reasons to Keep Your Day Job


Although my eventual life goal is to quit my day job, I like this article a lot. About 4 years ago I planned to quit my "art job" and just be a professional in the career I'm employed at currently. I had been somewhat destroyed by the studio art parts of my college education, so I went over to "the dark side" and chose a profession, thinking I was done with all my half baked plans to be an artist. Initially I synthesized the two by working on artist issues within the field I had chosen. However when i graduated I got a job that had nothing to do with arts in any way. The loving research that led to a paper that took two years to  write, sat on the shelf, while I doodled through meetings and told myself I could do this for the next 40 years.


Amusingly the paper that took me away from arts and into the workforce was about the workstyles of artists. I was fascinated by the differences between the reality of how artists work and sustain careers and the way that the public and policy makers concieved of what artists are and do. There was a lot of economic focus on the time on Richard Florida- who did very soft and fuzzy research on what "the creative class" was, and business types and policy makers were lapping it up (for excellent dissections of the major assumptions and flaws in the work of Richard Florida, check out Ann Markusen's Urban Development and the Politics of a Creative Class). Another really fascinating work is Neo-Bohemia which is about the ways that the lifestyle of the artist becomes a fashion accessory for hip young middle class yuppies.


So to get to the point, being an artist, and the work of the artist is often obscured by the fascination people have with the larger than life life of the artist. Van Gogh and his crazy ear, Frida Kahlo taking lovers and fighting with Diego Rivera, suicides, quarrels, studios full of debauchery, etc. Instability, poverty, scandal and madness, are seductive myths we like to hear about being an artist. After all, if art is passion, if art is a calling with uncertain rewards, shouldn't artists be willing sacrifices?


Wouldn't that be romantic, doesn't that make a great story? But in reality...artists need to be disciplined workers. Practice and repetition and perseverance is what it comes down to. For my birthday I was given a really great book Inside the Painter's Studio. In it the author (himself an artist) conducts interviews with working painters. What comes across consistently is that they work. They work hard. They work regular days, where they get up, have coffee and head to work. Not a one suggests that being an artist is mystical or complicated. They use simple tools. They have simple spaces they work inside. The core and the key is working.


Bringing me back to this article. I don't completely agree with the main point. For me, my day job is something that takes me away from being an artist right now. It makes me tired and I don't actually need that much interaction with other people- I'm an introvert who fakes a good extrovert. But there are a few points in the article that I really love. One is the emphasis on discipline and practice- making a habit of being in and around your art. Don't think that if you life changed, your work would somehow change. Potential  and talent are not as important and practice. Two is that there's nothing romantic about being poor, and it's harmful to think that way about your livelihood. Being too good to make money is not a good way for artists to live.  And the third point I like is the idea that maybe some people won't ever be a fulltime artist, but that doesn't make it worthless to do. The arts are enriching for everyone, and people SHOULD have hobbies, should be something and someone beside their jobs. I think that's a crucial concept.


Which is not to say I want to keep my day job. I aspire to fulltime artist. But for now I'm a day job with an art habit.