this is the end

You have reached the end of my blog as it was from January 2003 to September 2007. Not all the entries are accessible, as I made many of them private. They are probably floating out there in the internet abyss somewhere, but I have closed a lot of them off as a personal preference.

I have started a new blog on Blogger HERE, complete with the ability to comment (for now). And while I am still deciding if I even want a blog at all, I have been posting some of my thoughts and goings on there.

A blog is a very useful tool for artists on the web. It is a great way to connect, post announcements, bring in traffic to your website, create a network, bring in repeat visits, reveal personal tidbits to people who are interested in your work and to other artists who want to know about their fellow creatures. It's a sure way to practice your writing skills, define your feelings, and attract stalkers. Blogging in itself is a kind of therapy. It has been for me, and I believe it always will be. I can not give it up completely.

In all the forms of art I do, I can not help being full of sonorous emotion. It's just my way. All the change and experience I've had over the last 8 years brings me today and this moment. I don't know what the future is yet. I only know I've made it to the point where I can be in the moment, and I consider this the biggest accomplishment of my life. It is like standing on a blade of grass with one foot. It's not easy to stay like that. It requires intense balance. You'll be sure to be knocked off by the wind or a stampede of elephants, or just losing track of your thoughts, but at least you know it's possible.

Where's Waldo?

Where do I start?

It's been an exhausting summer, and the last few weeks have been especially insane with the move. It was a much bigger ordeal than I ever anticipated. Two, count 'em 2, big moving trucks were needed.

I am hardly settled in at the new place. There is still so much to put away and organize before I can even think about creating art again. I don't even have an internet connection as I type this. I have no idea what I emails I am missing out on, or if I even need to be concerned with the web as much as I had been for the last 10 years since life continues on without computers and gadgets, much to my naive surprise.

Today my computer is hooked up so that I can type out my feelings, but I really can not yet identify what those feelings are. I am happy, and I feel loss. I am confused, but I am more content than ever. I feel like my life has taken off, soaring into the sky like an eagle. The human me tries to rationalize and analyze, guard and prepare for possibilities.

This blog is still on orange alert. I don't know how much I will continue to disclose on line anymore. I have to wait and see where my art brings me. Will I work at home? Will I get another studio in LA? Will my door be open or sealed tight? It is anybody's guess, but as it stands right now I am leaning on a complete change in all operations. I am embracing it all with new enthusiasm, and perhaps for the first time in my life (really), I am positively optimistic.

Hello Goodbye

I know I may have complained about how tired I was before, but right now I really mean it! It's been a totally exhausting 2 weeks of packing, purging, paring down, organizing, and preparing for my studio sale, a garage sale, my solo show, a trip, and the move. That is far too much shit to do in a short amount of time, but we're almost at the end.

My solo show in Houston, Monogenetic Dreams From the Rag Trade, opens Thursday. I am looking forward to it, despite the weather there.

Saying farewell to my studio at Angels Gate has been difficult, but the sale went really well and that helps a lot in embarking upon all the change that is right before me. I have to thank everyone who came out profusely for your support and good wishes. I hope to get back on my feet and into a new studio just as soon as I am able. But I am looking forward to a couple months of rest in the fall, nesting into my new digs, and pacing myself from here on out. My energy is limited, and I have definitely hit my limit.

When I first came to San Pedro, I was shocked at myself for agreeing to move here. I literally went to the ends of the earth, and it might as well have been another planet from LA proper, even though (and I'm looking forward to not reiterating this anymore) it is LA! It took me some years to warm up to the idea of being here, but slowly over time, I totally fell in love with this town so leaving is bitter sweet. I'd have to have been here for generations to call myself a true Pedroan, but I still feel like it got under my skin and will always pump through my blood a little bit. It is a special place like no other in every way.

In order for me not to get too depressed about leaving this odd paradise, I have to look forward to going back to "civilization" where one can get a decent pasta dish and a dark green salad, and get into a cafe after 3:00 in the afternoon. Maybe I'll be 20 degrees hotter, and maybe everybody will be a lot skinnier, but at least I can't say I'm stuck in an 8 year rut anymore. Change can be good and I'm trying to welcome it rather than protest. Drastic change calls for drastic measures, right? So here I go.

At least I still have my memories...




















The 2 Michaels. A classic shot.




































This guy was parked at the end of our street and was totally nude.

knackered

I am ready to keel over and I haven't even gotten started packing yet. Just getting my work down from the attic (thanks mjp) and dragging it around the studio has been a couple full days work. Going through every item too: Do I want to keep this pencil? Do I already have a pencil like it? Do I want to keep this paint brush? Do I really need 6 jars of polymer? Am I ever going to use these weird collage scraps? It's been maddening! As time goes on, I see a giant pile of the stuff I'm getting rid of, but on the other side of the room I still have waaaay too much junk and I wonder where the fuck I'm going to fit it in the new place.

I haven't even started going through my garage -- I don't even want to think about it! It's stuffed with all kinds of useless shit that I will undoubtedly have a hard time parting with. Part of me really want to start all over and get rid of practically everything I own, but I can't bring myself to do that. Plus I'm in love with my art collection, which is the majority of the mass. When I was 20, I didn't drag much around with me - sans a futon, some books, a typewriter, easel and a box of paints. Those days are over. I have been lucky enough to attain a lot of art by artists I love, so now I am going to drag a museum around with me. Although it looks more like one of those Ripley's Believe it or Not museums, but it's my museum nonetheless.

If you're in the LA area, be sure to stop by the Circumventing the Soul opening tonight at Pounder Kone. I will be there for a minute, then I have to get back to Pedro to keep packing and prepping for the sale. Much to do.

Interview

I was interviewed by Angels Gate's intern Jung Lee. Here's the link. The pictures are from my last studio, but that doesn't matter much. It's still a good interview.

Be sure to check out all the interviews on the Angels Gate blog: Up At the Gate.

transitioning

I've been having odd dreams lately. They seem to scatter my sleep with residual shrapnel that confuse my waking hours as well. Jumbled thoughts and visions about moving dance around with old traumatic memories of moving. Some of my dreams have family members in them, and they mix with my current situation about moving. Sometimes I am fighting with my mother about my brother, who gets a room in the new place while I have to either sleep on the couch or fend for myself. That dream is very telling. In another yet, I am crying and suicidal that I let my studio go and trying desperately to get it back, but it seems everyone and their mother is moving into it instead, while I haven't even moved all my stuff out of it yet. This is because I am getting a lot of "who's getting to take over your studio?" in real life.

Last night I dreamt that Michael and I parted ways and I crawled up into the storage space of my studio to secretly live and the ladder fell away. I was stuck up there and the new artist moved in without knowing I was there. I was like a ghost. Maybe I was dead. Maybe I will haunt the next tenant.

Things are so up in the air, and I have too much to do, and maybe that works well together, I don't know. Today I'll finish the last drawing for my show at Koelsch Gallery and start shipping it to Houston this week. I'll make boxes and buy boxes and ship a few to NY, then pack up a few that I sold to people in other states and start shipping those. Then I'll bring down all my work from the studio attic and get ready for the sale next Saturday. It's going to be a hell of a week and I'm tired just thinking about it.

This Saturday is the opening for a great show I'm in at Pounder Kone. You have to read the press release for this thing because it's fantastic. Curator: Steve Irvin is one smart cookie. Seems it will be a good show. I have 3 pieces in it, a newish one and 2 very old ones that's I don't think I've ever shown.

As for moving. It looks like we will end up in the South Pasadena area somewhere and hope to God it will have air conditioning.

me as a simpson's character

TODAY!

I know it's short notice, but I THINK I'm going to be mentioned on Your LA today. True Cross of Scribble Couture is going to be featured on the show and she will talk a little about the bag I designed with her. It is on NBC, which is usually channel 4 around the LA basin. It should be on at 3:00 PM. If you miss it or don't get the channel, I believe they archive all their shows on their website at yourlatv.com.

Been out of town, driving around the desert, so I've been kind of out of commission to the world. It was my birthday last week and its not a day I'm too fond of, so I took off. It was good for me. Sometimes you just have to be alone with yourself without anything to do. But I should have brought my dog.



Fur my birdday, MJP got me a ggreeeeat book! And not just some schlubby book. It's an art book that was written and illustrated by Niki Saint de Phalle called Aids: You Can't Catch it Holding Hands It was released in 1987, back when people really did think you could catch it by talking on the phone with someone who was gay.Thanks to many good people, AIDS is a lot better understood, but we still have so much farther to go to find a cure.

The best part about this book is that it is signed by Niki de Saint Phalle. (She is one of my most favorite artists.) She wrote an inscription in it to a friend and even made a bit of artwork of it with her funky lettering. And now it's mine! Pretty nifty, eh? The art she left behind is such an inspiration. I am happy for her work and her life. She left us too early. Please visit her foundation.

Other than being a desert rat, I've been quietly working on my upcoming show, Monogenetic Dreams From the Rag Trade which opens on August 30th at Koelsch Gallery in Houston. So back to work for me. I have to ship this stuff off in the next week or so.


Bad Thoughts, 3.5 x 14 inches. Pencil on manila pattern paper.


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Here are some desert images from the road, through my dirty windshield:











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Today is also the birthday of my good friend Eric who died at age 23 of Lymphoma. He would have been 42 today. My thoughts and prayers are with him and his family today. I love you guys today and always.

FLYING HIGH IN THE SKY

busy pie

I finished the drawings for Islands Fold. I wound up calling it Sweetnsour Pie. Why? I don't know! I thought I could come up with a much better name, but once I started drawing a pie with my head coming out of it, it was too funny to pass up.

Now I'm working my bunions off towards my little solo show in Houston. I am very excited to have the opportunity to exhibit my Journal Project drawings, along with a lot of newer drawings that I've never shown before. All the work is on manila pattern paper, and it's pretty raw work, mostly unplanned. I think it's going to look good (and I don't usually feel that way) so that's good.

Some things in life are good.

Lately I've been hit with another big bout of fatigue. This happens when I am overstressed. I know it happens, and yet I find ways to stress myself out. The more depressed I get, the more I frantically try to fill my time with busyness, and do this to myself until I'm ready to crack up. So here I am.

Now I have no choice but to slow up and feel it. And I'm just not comfortable with that.

But I'm glad to get some things accomplished recently, now I can focus on less. Less is more ya know.

your brain on drugs

EVERYBODY should listen to this interview with Terry Gross and Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Nora is also the great-granddaughter of Trotsky. What an interesting and brilliant woman.

People don't commonly understand the mind of a "druggie," and we tend not to tolerate or pity those who have major addiction problems (understandably so), but recent research reveals a lot more about the people who are battling these issues. It aint easy for 'em. I not talking about handing them the keys to your car so they can pawn it or use it for collateral with their dealer, I'm just saying we should cut them some slack when they mess up along their sober path.

Anyway, I don't have time to write in this blog right now. I thought I'd pop on and just make a little linky to Fresh Air and pop back into my hectic schedule, but here I am typing.

Lately I'm working on fighting a cold, scanning and prepping all my drawings for the book I'm doing with Island Fold, finishing up 2 commissions, and working on more drawings for my solo show in Houston that opens next month. ...And that's not even counting some other major life-changing situations I have going on right now. I can't write about that part right now -- but I can assure you it's not drug addiction.

White Hot!

'ello!



So I recently wrote an article called "The Face of God" for international publication, Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art, which is run by artist Noah Becker. He's da shit. A busier bee than me.

My "article" is really more of a book review on Between Artists (a conversation between artists Amy Sillman and Gregg Bordowitz). It's a good introduction to what I'll be doing for the mag, which will mainly consist of having conversations with other artists and then writing about how amazing or boring the experience was.

Hopefully, some of the conversations will live up to the one mentioned above. It's at least a marker for my inspiration.

Happy 4th of July!

*Note to my town of San Pedro: Please don't burn my house down.

bag-in

I just got my new custom clutch bag from designer True Cross of Scribble Couture. This drawing comes out of my sketchbook from a page called, "Girls That Worry." It's beautifully embroidered in bone-colored thread into this lovely brown leather bag. Isn't it F'in great!?

Here's the back (click on these images for a closer look):

I consider this a collaborative piece with True. Her new company is such a great idea. I couldn't wait to work with her on this bag and get to talk to her about her inspiration. She began with incorporating kids art, but is now expanding out, working with contemporary artists. My silly cartoons just happened to lend themselves to the material kind of perfectly, so I'm glad to be the first kid over the age of 12 to be on these great designer purses.

jealous? you should be.