February – 2014

From A to E

February 25, 2014February 25, 2014Ayin EsLeave a comment

Dang IT, dang IT! I have SO MUCH to tell and so little time to tell it in. And I’ve been off of my blog for so long, I don’t even know if I can remember all the little holes I have to fill in since I’ve been away from it all.

Okay, I went to Palm Springs. That was great! I had fun, fun, fun! Why? Because:

a. The Diebenkorn show was beyond phenomenal!

b. Shulamit Gallery participated in the Palm Springs Fine Art Fair.

c. I got to see my very close friends, whom I stayed with while I was there: (Dennis and Jean).

d. I went to Joshua Tree to shoot some Kickstarter footage.

e. A surprise interview happened with Colliding Words TV, a YouTube channel for art and artists!

I think if I stick to from A to E, I will be fine. So here we go:

The Diebenkorn Show

I knew I was going to really like this exhibition, which was why I thought of it as a destination in and of itself, but something very significant happened when I got to the museum.

First of, for some reason, I dressed up. I wore a dress! I never wear dresses. It was for practice I suppose, because I was going to a dinner a couple nights afterward, and I wanted to wear a little black dress that night, so I wore a little blue dress just like it to the museum. I didn’t think I was going to run into anyone, but I ran into Mat and Leigh. That was fine because they are my friends. Even if I looked ridiculous, I would have felt half way comfortable with them, so that was good.

But when I turned the corner to see the first paintings of Richard Diebenkorn’s, oh my God! There were three beautiful abstracts hanging straight away. The one in the middle was the largest of the three, with little poles and wires on the ground so you wouldn’t come within three feet of it. The others had tape on the floor I think, for the same idea. These paintings were perfectly painted. You would not be able to know that from just a picture. You’d have to SEE this in real life.

berkeley-no-8.jpgBlog-238x300

Then, I just kept walking through. I saw more abstracts and it just got better. I thought I’d be done at that point, as far as being impressed. I’m not one for figurative, much less still lifes. But Jesus! It kept getting even better! This guy painted EVERYTHING perfectly! I couldn’t believe how in LOVE I was with his brushstrokes, and how much permission he gave me, FOR ME to paint anything I wanted too! What an inspiration! If you missed that show, you’re just nuts!

Okay, so anyway, The Fair. The Fair was great. I was in this fair last year, as some of you might remember, with not so great results, and I’m not talking about sales here. Fuck sales. That’s not what this is about.

I was afraid to go to Palm Spring this time around, honestly. I didn’t want there to be a repeat of last year. I didn’t want a bunch of disappointments, nor did I want to have any expectations – which I didn’t. I don’t think I really had any major ones last year either to be honest. I only wanted my work in the show. That was all I really “expected,” as that’s what I was told. But bygones, and all that. So, this time, I didn’t even expect that – seriously!

When I got to the Shulamit booth, I was very pleasantly surprised. Shula, Anne, and Lauren were there, (wo)manning the booth, which was curated, might I say, superior to every other booth I walked passed on my way to theirs. It was sparse, and very well thought out, capturing subtle coloring from Jona’s photographs, to the veins of Soraya’s sculptures, my And and Not painting, and David’s interactive light piece. It was beautiful!

I think I have to come back later to do C, D and E. I am just so busy with other crap at the moment. Hey, I tried!

Parallel Paths

February 12, 2014Ayin EsLeave a comment

Today I am getting ready to go out to the Palm Springs Fine art Fair. I’m leaving early tomorrow morning. While I’m there, I’m not only going to go to the museum to see the Diebenkorn show, but I am hoping to shoot some footage for my upcoming Kickstarter campaign. I realized that if I don’t land some kind of residency out in Joshua Tree, I am going to have to fund my solo show project in some other capacity. Getting some minimal footage while I’m out that way will be enough to at least make the video teaser for the campaign.

I don’t want to give away the title of my show yet, but I’ll let the cat out of the bag as far as my plans.

I talked before about learning Hebrew and my interest in Kabbalah. I’m going to get more into that, if you don’t mind. Just some basics. It’s interesting, I swear. Okay, maybe only to me.

kabbalah

First off, Kabbalah is often misunderstood, and I first talked about that in my post right before this one. I mentioned the cult of the Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles, but it was misunderstood even before that. A lot of people have considered it a kind of “black magic” or even an “occult” side of Judaism, and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Not that there isn’t a kind of magic to it, there is. There can be, and there was at one time, but that’s not the kind of Kabbalah I’m interested in. That is called “Practical Kabbalah,” and I will skip that.

To oversimplify it, there is a fundamental, kabbalistic concept of G-d, as the Ein Sof, the Ten Sefirot, and the kabbalistic tree of life.

Now this part is right up my alley, and that is, that the true essence of G-d is so transcendent that it cannot be described, except with reference to what it is not. I love that! This true essence of G-d is known as Ein Sof, which literally means “without end,” which encompasses the idea of G-d’s lack of boundaries in both time and space.

The Ten Sefirot (Sefirot) are emanations, or qualities, and in this case interactions – how G-d interacts with the universe. G-d has both masculine and feminine qualities, and the Kabbalah pays particular attention to the feminine.

Okay, there’s that much in a very small nutshell.

This is mostly where my meditation interest came from. And as far as the Torah, I’ve been reading that too. It’s taken me a long, long, long time to read Genesis. You’d think that would be fairly easy, but I have been torn between several translations of it and several ways I wanted to understand it, in different perspectives I guess you can say: metaphorically, historically, religiously, and from the viewpoints of many sects of Judaism and Christianity.

And now I am beginning Exodus with a much different perspective than I had when I started Genesis, and so much has happened in my life since then too. So much death, so much growth. And my art, wow! How can I describe how far that has come?

This project means more to me than just putting together a solo show. It is a perfect plan without a plan. I’ve assembled the framework where all I have to do is place my feet along the stones in the path (there I will be grounded) and my head and hands will be free to do whatever comes naturally.

path

I guess I’ll have to wait until next time before I start describing the stones on that path. Sorry Charlie.

I do know that all I need is 10 days out in Joshua Tree. I can get my preliminary work done in 10 days.

A Brief and Boring History

February 6, 2014February 6, 2014Ayin EsLeave a comment

I have been on-again off-again studying Hebrew. I might have mentioned this before. I got interested in Kabbalah years ago, otherwise known as Jewish mysticism. But this tends to get confused with that shit that Madonna and Sandra Bernhard were doing at the Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles. That was actually nothing more than a cult run by a guy named Phillip Berg, I kid you not. I don’t say stuff like that lightly. I know of what I speak. I actually will go so far to say that I’m rather the expert in the subject of mind control and cults. So there.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about art.

So, I’ve been most interested in the mysticism behind the Hebrew alphabet really. I got really into the aesthetics of their shape and form, and how they developed in history as hieroglyphs, etc. I started to read about their numeric values, their overall meaning in the Talmud because of their form, and all of this lead me to some interesting places in my art, and, quite frankly, in my spiritual growth.

Now, many years ago, I gave up on anything that remotely resembled the “spiritual.” In most ways, I am still a realist. I am not going to get into religion so much here, but just for the sake of relaxing and focus, all of this Hebrew letter shit got me to start meditating. But not like how you think! I wasn’t sitting cross-legged on a pillow chanting, “Om,” or levitating, or some such goofy thing like this, I was just not thinking upon the work I wanted to do.

I’m not sure if that makes any sense.

A few years back I was doing these paintings with garment patterns arranged as Hebrew letters set as the main compositions. This was back when I first got interested in this stuff.

I only did a few of these kinds of pieces before I could really dive into the whole process…

Then life happened. Or death rather. I got sidetracked. I’m not sure what happened, but I lost a lot of focus for a really long, long time. And it’s not like I didn’t paint. I did. I painted a lot. I was just busy, with Dan

(this Dan above is from my new, upcoming book by the way) and busy with gumballs and so forth:

Now, I’ve been feeling totally rejuvenated with the last few dozen paintings I’ve been doing, and I’m really focused – like so incredibly honed in – that I want to apply what I have been doing

into my original plan from yesteryear.

Next, if you’re not asleep yet, I’ll tell you all about how I plan to do that – out in the desert.

Blah Blah Blah

February 3, 2014February 3, 2014Ayin Es1 Comment

I’ve been setting up the picklebird site again. Just a simple Word Press blog. Very bare bones.

The bottom line is that I need to start selling off my art collection, or at least some of it. Now, when I say that, that doesn’t mean art by me. It means art by other artists. I just wanted to make that clear.

We not only don’t have the room for it, but it’s time to raise funds, simplify our lives, and start preparing for the End of Days. …not really on that last part. Or actually, if you thought I was serious, keep thinking that. You’re quite the character.

I’ll most likely be auctioning things off on Ebay under the picklebird name, but rest assured, I’ll be telling you all about it on my blog here too.

So I finished the layout for my book in Adobe InDesign! I know how to work it, and I know how to work Illustrator. What a feat that was. I’m no pro ar anything, but I basically know both programs now, InDesign more than Illustrator of course, but hey, I’m damn proud of myself for picking up two new skill sets. Do you think someone would hire me? A 45 year-old artist with great writing skills but needs to go to the bathroom every five minutes, needs several naps a day, requires two hands to lift a coffee mug to her mouth, and cries after every one of her 15 panic attacks per day? I only get overwhelmed if you give me two tasks at a time. It’s not so bad. My social anxiety only kicks in when I have to talk to an actual person and the pain in my legs, hips and back only persists for the hours I am actually awake. I think I can easily get a job.

My favorite thing is when people think I don’t have a job.

“Oh you’re an artist? I would love to have free time all day.”

“Since you’re not doing anything, can you run to the store for me?”

“You’re so lucky you get to dabble in paint all day.”

I also love it when people say, “There’s no such thing as a ‘self-taught’ artist.”

People say that! I hear it all the time. It comes from other artists, mostly artists that went to school. They are very adamant about it too.

“You learned from somewhere. A book, a video, from looking at a painting. Society.” They think it’s so far-fetched!

What if I bought or stole some art supplies and just tried it out? What if I kept doing that until I seemed to make it work out? Good Golly! I must be some kind of magic genius!

“The paint taught you!, not yourself! How dare you take credit for what the art supplies obviously taught you! You are anti-teacher.”

Anyway, it goes on and on. Sometimes it’s almost that ridiculous.

I finished this little painting finally. I named it, Runaway Slinkies:

There was more I was going to say, but now I forgot.

Happy February.