December – 2013

Suffering Succotash

December 17, 2013December 17, 2013Ayin Es3 Comments

This just in!

All this talk about Carol Es une Monographie de Lignes. All this work. All the drawing is easy. I love it.

But all the scanning. All this Photoshoping – cleaning up little specks and pencil markings, discolorations and formatting the images – it’s all been getting to me. It’s just taking a long fucking time and I have been obsessing over it way too much, and that’s MY fault. I created my own deadline, and I create my own suffering. Me and only me. I do this to myself!

I think I can’t go back into the studio until I accomplish x,y, and z. I’m not the only artist that does this. It’s common. At least it’s common for those of us that are dedicated to the work. It’s a workaholic thing too. Either way, it’s some bullshit. We don’t have to do anything. Not if we invented it in the first place. We can create, and uncreate. Invent, and uninvent.

I invented this deadline for a few reasons and none of those reasons are important enough that I can’t change it. In fact, I’m not even going to make a date! Carol Es une Monographie de Lignes will get done when I finish it. It is hereby a “spare time” project. I’ll work on it (in Photoshop) when I’m bored. It is no longer the “front burner” project. In fact, there is hereby NO front burner project!

The only thing I “have to” do is make a pin drawing on a small panel, then map out a few more as an installation I will be doing at the Palm Springs Fine Art Fair February 13-16, 2014.

For now, I would like to get back into the studio. That is, if I have my own permission.

May I Carol?

Yes Carol, you may.

Okay. That’s it.

Now, before I forget, I would like to take the time to thank my friend Peter Clothier for mentioning me and my blog on his much more interesting blog, The Buddha Diaries. If you get a chance, please check it out because, not only is Peter a wonderful writer of art, art criticism, fiction and poetry, but he writes about everything under the sun, moon, and stars – including his personal life (and personally, I find that stuff the most interesting – the voyeur I am) – and, you just might find yourself discovering new things about the spiritual self you didn’t know you had. Seriously!

Also, I know it’s late in the fast-pace game of the art world and the world of media, but Mat, if you’re reading this, or if not (either way), I wanted to congratulate my good friend Mat Gleason for getting the cover of Arts and Culture section of the LA Times! A full article was written about Mat and Coagula, and the gallery, which you can read on line here. Mat doesn’t need the LA Times to legitimize his place in the Los Angeles art scene. We all know who he is and have seen the no-bullshit empire he has organically built from the ground up, honestly, 99% all by himself – punk rock style – over the last 20+ years. I just think the article is a damn BIG deal. At the same time I think it’s funny how long it takes the mainstream NEWSpaper to catch on to the Truth.

Just Wanna Hug my Easel

December 14, 2013December 15, 2013Ayin Es1 Comment

I finally am getting a handle on this book of drawings. Carol Es une Monographie de Lignes is going to have 60 drawings in it and I have finished many of them. I have 23 more to go and I don’t know what a handful of them are going to look like yet, but that is part of the fun!

What I really want is to just get back to painting. All I have been doing is thinking about painting and I haven’t painted in so very long. Drawing is important and I see how very important it truly is. It’s something that needs to be a daily practice if you want to be a painter. If you want to be an artist. If you want to communicate visually on a consistent basis. It exercises that part of your brain and makes it like a muscle that works itself out. You become Hercules! Lifting giant boulders gets to be really easy – but you’re going to get super bored if there are no boulders for you to easily lift!

Get me in the studio for Christ sake! For the sake of the baby Jesus, or for the sake of my sanity. I have never even met the baby Jesus, but I have met my bad brains, so just get me in there already!

A couple things I started – eons ago…

I started it at the same time I started the little one that I finished very recently – the one that I just posted in my last blog post. All I did with that one though, was added a spot color of turquoise, and it was done! I didn’t expect it to just happen like that, but that was all it needed. It was hard for me to walk away from it at that point too, but I did.

This one above, I have simple plans for as well, but not as simple as the last one.

Then, I have been thinking a LOT about my older work. I mean, not that old, but my work with all the patterns in them. The pattern paintings. And you know I stopped making any paintings with patterns in them this last year (don’t know if you noticed) because I thought I “should.” But between you and me, I actually have quite a lot of fun with that process! I have loved collage from as far back as I can remember.

I think I thought that I would not be evolving unless I gave it all up and just used paint, and nothing else for a while. Which I think I did. I have. But lately I have had an itch I need to scratch. I want to incorporate what I have been doing: the drawing, the painting, the simplicity, the new ideas – and bring it into the pattern painting process and see what happens.

I posted this piece as a Work-in-Progress on WetCanvas a couple days ago…

and someone said there was a foreboding feeling about it, which was very interesting.

I said, “this is actually a painting from 2004 or 2005 (I’d have to look it up because I signed it in the Hebrew year at the time.) It was part of a vertical triptych that I grew to dislike very much, so I decided to wreck it by breaking it up (recently) and I turned the middle piece (called Bulletproof) upside down and started painting the black arc lines.

Some of you guys got me thinking, as well as some others, and MYSELF, about my older work with the patterns. I felt like I HAD to give it all up or I wouldn’t be evolving, but maybe that’s not the case after all. Maybe I can incorporate it still and take it to another level. So it’s been on my mind.

So with this one, I feel like I was just playing around. I will finish it at some point, maybe before the new year. I hope.

The arc was like an entrance to something else – a new place, but still, a dark place. Or at least not a “funny” place. A serious place.”

But… I don’t know what the hell I am saying. All I know is that I’m just feeling a bit overwhelmed lately not being able to finish anything in particular. My list of things to do just goes on and on and on with no feeling of accomplishment in sight. Well — it’s in sight, but not for a while and I’m an impatient nut when it comes to finishing the task at hand.

I hope to finish the drawings for the book sometime in January.

I’d like to cut away from those book drawings and paint for a week straight the week of Xmas.

All I wanna do is spend some time in the studio. I wanna hug that easel of mine and welcome myself back into the fold.

A Swell Field of Rye

December 3, 2013December 3, 2013Ayin EsLeave a comment

Okay, so here’s a new painting. It’s called. Don’t Wait Up. It’s only 12 x 12 inches. (Oil on birch panel.)

But I haven’t been painting. I finished that like two weeks ago. Or something like that. I started it in the summer, if you can believe it.

I’ve been inundated with books. That chapbook. Houses. Then the one I’m working on now: Carol Es une Monographie de Lignes, which has become a lot more work than I had originally planned.

I originally planned 12 drawings for the first chapter, 29 for the second, eight for the third, and 10 for the fourth. That’s not the case at all anymore. I already have 16 and going for the first, 35 for the second, and hopefully I won’t go over on the last two. I may have to edit.

The thing is, I haven’t drawn all the drawings yet. I start them in pencil, then I go over them in black ink, then I try as hard as possible to erase whatever pencil is still there (but that’s impossible). Then, I have to scan them in and bring em into Photoshop, bring them up to 400% and go over every millimeter to make sure there are no spots, hairs, or light pencil marks on them. Whew!

Many of you Photoshop geeks probably think I should just use the magic wand on them, but as you know, that fucks up the edges of the natural line and makes them weird. I don’t like how that magic wand handles that, even if I contract them by 1 pixel, so I don’t like to use it. So there. Bleh.

So… I do it the hard way and go over it with my eye, and, very carefully, take a paintbrush and white out the specs of dust, and NO, I don’t have one of those mouse pen tablets. I do it with a plain old mouse, like some kind of savage!

Each drawing takes forever is what I’m telling you. Some take more time than others. For instance, editing this:

takes a lot less time than, say, something like this:

That’s just an example of the sorts of drawings that will be in the Invention and Preliminaries chapter – because they represent two different stages of my work over the years.

I may not even use that particular angel. I might use a different one. Or I might use another one, or even a few! I mean, I painted angels for a good 10 years.

Oh, you didn’t know that? Good! I’m not all that proud of it. It’s like hearing the music you played with your band from when you were a teenager. It’s a little embarrassing, although a lot of people liked them. I sold a lot of angel paintings. I must of made a few dozen at least.

Breaking away from that was weird. For years I could have sworn I was creating them under the ~~idea~~, or feeling, of lament for a lost lover. Someone I couldn’t get over for years and years – but then – one day – I realized…

Aaalll those paintings; all that paint; all that creativity, time, planning, emotion, tears and sadness; my guts splattered all over every canvas wasn’t about him at all. It was about me. I was the angel. Not him.

So I think that’s what made me stop painting angels. I’m pretty sure. Oh…that, and I fell in love with mjp.

Anyway, so off track. I sat down here to write because I wanted to vent. I wanted to get my feelings out. Ever need to just do that? Well I’m super-dooper in need of that right now!

You know what I remember most about Catcher in the Rye? It’s probably what everybody remembers for all I know, but it’s the end when he steps off the curb. I read it such a long time ago, so I don’t remember where he was going, but he was somewhere in Manhattan and he’s walking and he steps off the curb, and it was like he entered into the other side right then and there in that one step – out of reality. And in that moment, he goes into a dissociative state that he never returns from. Translation: he goes insane.

And it hits you that this is the point in the book where he goes crazy, yet it also hits you, that you’ve been on his side the entire time – he’s the protagonist after all – but it occurs to you that he has been crazy the entire time, but neither you nor he knew it.

When people said he was practically yelling, speaking too loudly, asking him to lower his voice – you realize now that he was in a manic state, not just passionate. It wasn’t the other people like he thought were weird. It was him! I don’t know about you, but right at that brilliant ending, all I wanted to do was flip back to the first page and read it all over again, having this new epiphany and a completely different point of view on Holden Caulfield at that new moment…

My point in all this really was not to talk about one of my favorite books of all time, no.

*sigh*

Lately – I am walking and I am feeling like the next step will be the one that goes on forever off the curb.

And I’m not sure what to do about it.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

I have a good friend coming over tomorrow after I see my doctor (my Lupus doc) and she is going to help me get a grip on my ultra awesome sewing machine that I’ve had for a long time (years) but really don’t know how to work. Maybe that will make me feel better?

Thanksgiving Television

December 2, 2013December 2, 2013Ayin Es2 Comments

It’s already December 2nd! Right smack in the middle of Chanukah, and Thanksgiving flew by like, like…like some kind of bat out of hell!

I hope your Thanksgiving was pleasant. Ours sure was. We have a tradition here: Turkey pot pies.

No, I don’t make turkey pot pies from scratch. Wouldn’t that be quaint? How Martha Stewart of me! Can you see it? Those of you that really know me, can you see me doing that? Yeah? Well stop laughing, because I actually do bake sometimes! I even own a beautiful apron I bought from Anthropologie, one of my favorite stores, I must admit. However, I have to wait until they have extraordinary sales, which they do.

But back to baking turkey pot pies, which I did NOT do for Thanksgiving. Why would I when Marie Calendars makes frozen ones that taste amazing!?

So Chanukah, turkey pot pies, and a few episodes of my new favorite show: Orange is the New Black.

I am in love with this show and I am sadly almost finished with the season. I’ll be watching the last episode tonight. I hate when that happens! I hardly like television, but when I fall in love with a TV show, I really look forward to watching it every week. It gives me something to look forward to that isn’t art, and that requires absolutely nothing from me. I don’t have to leave the house or speak to anyone or “be” any way. It’s a brainless activity that keeps me engaged – fully engaged – where I can escape without using an ounce of my energy or resources.

I mean, I’m sure that is no different than why most people watch TV, but I have to say that TV has always been a very strange radiation death box to me throughout my life. I have been, for the most part, anti-television. I’m not sure why exactly. It was never used as a punishment upon me as a child or anything like that. We were free to watch as much or as little TV as we wanted to. It was always on. Always. And even at age 7, 8, 9, etc., that just bothered me. It made it impossible for me to focus. So maybe that’s why.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t watch it. I did. Certain shows were like heroin. I could watch them over and over again. Anything with Snoopy in it, which only played during the holidays anyway (so it was a treat every time!), Bugs Bunny and all Warner Bros. animation, and other animated shows, such as Mighty Mouse, Tom & Jerry, The Flintstones, Popeye, and Heckle and Jeckle – if you can remember them. When I was really young, I was absolutely crazy for a cartoon called Kimba the White Lion. It’s the cartoon that that was completely ripped from the dead hands of Tezuka Osamu (the inventor of anime), stolen to create the very successful Lion King via Walt Disney. Just remember that every time you see those Disney characters with the BIG EYES.

Of course Disney claims that all this is coincidental and blah blah blah, so I have to state that the above is purely my personal opinion and based on my “feelings,” not at all a proven fact and untrue; nobody stole anything from anyone. They are just two very similar stories. Kimba the White Lion and The Lion King are both great though.

Besides animation, of which I am a great fan of – it probably influenced me to become an artist in fact – there were other shows I could watch over and over, like The Twilight Zone, I love Lucy, and ……………………well, everything else was shit. It made me want to drill screws into my toes or drive a nail gun into my temple, or push a staple gun into my forehead, or hammer a needle nose pliers straight up my nose. Whatever tools you happen to have lying around, I’ll use them if someone doesn’t turn off the fucking TV!

I just didn’t get why it was on all the time, even when no one was there watching it. If you wanted to talk to someone else, there’s a television on, and it was either set to the news or on a game show, or somehow, some way, after I left home, anytime I came over, Married With Children was always on. But when I was there, it was The Jeffersons, Happy Days, One Day at a Time, The Love Boat, or some other kind of torturous bullshit.

When I moved out, I lived at Tracey’s and we didn’t watch much TV, and when I hopped around from place to place, I missed a few more years of TV there too, and then when I got my own place, my parents gave me their old TV, which was really nice of them. I just didn’t know what I would do with it. I didn’t plug it in for a couple of months, but my boyfriend at the time, Scott, brought home some “rabbit ears” for it and plugged it in. We were able to get a few channels, some more furry than others, but they were watchable. I told him that I’d like it if he would just do me the favor of not having it on if he wasn’t watching anything specific.

I watched TV with him one time. I was bored. I don’t even remember the program. Oh, actually, it was the Honeymooners. He was a big fan, but I just wasn’t my thing. You may throw tomatoes at me now if you please.

Your tomato window has now closed. Back to the story.

At the next two places I lived, I had a TV, but I didn’t plug it in until I got a VCR machine. Hmm. Maybe I had the VCR Machine when I lived with Scott. I seem to remember my mom stealing us one and Scott talking me into accepting it, which sounds reasonable, so maybe I rented movies back then. The only problem was, it was a Beta Max. That would only last me so long.

For the following 10 years after that, I just never had a TV that plugged into an antenna. Never had channels. Never watched TV. Unless I was renting a movie (I finally got a VHS machine), I was pretty cut off from popular culture. I caught glimpses on MTV when I had roommates with the band, heard things that people told me, but most of all, it was quiet, and I painted. I’d listen to my records when I lived with the band, mostly to drown out the sounds going on outside my room, but by the time I found my own place again on a quiet street, I was back listening to the birds.

But for someone who rather despises TV, there are a LOT of shows I absolutely love that have come and gone, and have recently started.

Orange is the New Black, Getting On, Masters of Sex, Ray Donovan, Enlightened, Girls, Shameless, Nurse Jackie, The Big C, Boardwalk Empire, Mad Men, Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, Big Love, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The United States of Tara, Weeds, Flight of the Conchords, the Sopranos, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, Sex and the City, and Northern Exposure. I also kind of like Pawn Stars and the Jeff Lewis shows (the house-flipper/designer guy), and a few other house remodel shows and an occasional House Hunters.

I wouldn’t have known about any of these had it not been for mjp who introduced cable to me. He was totally dialed in when I met him, and he had every episode of Northern Exposure recorded already, and many other shows that I just couldn’t get into, but that one became a religion for me.

When it comes to TV and even movies, I’m extremely fickle. I either like it or I really don’t, and if it can’t keep me fully engaged, my mind goes elsewhere and I am not really watching. I tend to disassociate, and that’s never good.

Well, that’s a LONG leeway announcing that I’m finally on the Shulamit website!

Hope ya’ll had a great Thanksgiving.