If you are wondering where I am, I’ll be in Joshua Tree for the next 10 days. I will be posting daily on ExodusJoshuaTree.com/blog in the meantime.
Forgive me if I don’t answer many emails while I’m gone, as I will be mostly focus on my project.
Check it out if you can. 🙂
Bye for now.
Alright, so should I get this out of my system? Should I tell the story of why I’ve had a big “film block?”
It’s a really, really heavy story. I warn you. And why would – how could – a Handicam bring about such an uproar?
Well it did.
In 2007, I had a very good year in terms of sales. I was finally able to purchase a good DV cam so that I could finally experiment with video production. I had BIG plans. I researched cameras and got a lot of advice from people in the know about how I could make an actual motion picture. I got me a Sony TRV 900. If you don’t know about this camera, it is the first of the Sony DV, hand-held cams that were decent enough to make a movie with. They are basically equivalent to buying a $5000 camera today, but I got one on eBay for $500.
It worked great, but the body of it looked like it had been dragged behind a car or something. I didn’t mind because it worked and I knew what it was really worth.
The reason I was interested in video at all whatsoever was because I was ULTRA inspired by a film called Tarnation. This film gave me amazing energy to put together my own autobiography as a documentary art film, complete with animation, footage of my parents, personal diaries, and the like. It would be very similar to what director, Jonathan Caouette did in Tarnation, but without the billions of hours of footage he had. He was documenting his family since he was a very young child! Kind of amazing. Not kind of, totally.
Anyway, people had always told me that I should write a book about my life, but I never felt I was a very good writer. I really thought that once I got this camera, it would bring out some big, talented filmmaker in me that was dormant or something.
That didn’t happen.
Nonetheless, I still very much wanted to pursue my documentary and I had ideas to begin getting footage of my parents in their weird little habitat in Las Vegas. And I realized that I would probably have to go out there quite a number of times before they would be used to having a camera in their face and start to act natural with me filming them.
So I began driving out to Las Vegas to visit them.
I think I’m going to have to tell this story in parts.
Sorry.
Part Two to come soon. 🙂
I often have dreams about places I’ve lived, studios I’ve had. They are mixed up in my head and sort of blended together, and I’m usually moving in the dream. Sometimes I am in the middle of the two places, a lot of times Michael and I are splitting up. I suppose we dream about what we fear the most. Sometimes we are just separated because someone has to stay in one of the houses while in transition. Somebody has to stay and paint the new place, spackle the holes in the old place — something like that.
Anyway, all this cleaning out the studio, and thinking about how to fit everything in some future home had me thinking I guess – had me dreaming, and worrying – about transitions.
I am getting ready for my big trip and it is going to be all about transition. Â It’s actually starting to scare me a little. Sometimes when I’m scared of something, I look it up in the dictionary. Defining it usually takes the “heavy” significance out of it for me. It gives me a sense of control or something, but this time it more or less scared the shit out of me more!
[tran-zish–uh n, –sish-]
noun
1. movement, passage, or change from one position, state, stage, subject, concept, etc., to another;change: the transition from adolescence to adulthood.
Yup! That about sums it up! That’s what the plan is. That’s exactly what I was setting out to do.
So why would I get cold feet?
Okay, it’s not cold feet. Believe me, I am excited and I am so looking forward to it. I’m just a little scared. Mostly… curious.
I think I love that the word “passage” is in the definition. Yeah. I like it. Passage… Like I will come out of this a new artist, a new person. Hopefully, an improved one. But we’ll see. You know, that’s all about confidence? It really is. Because there’s no such thing as being a “good” artist. Not really.
In other news, I have a few pictures of how Monographie is looking. See?
They are not the greatest photos on Earth, but it’s a little peek for you. At least I’m giving you something! Jeez, stop complaining.
Here’s the front:
And the back. (Clever, eh?)
I think it’s looking pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty lovely. Don’t you think? Don’t you want one?
The inside is even better! (Horn tootin’!)
I don’t know how much different this blog post is about to be from the post I just made on my Exodus Project Blog, but here goes.
I just finished cleaning and straightening up my studio, Rubber Soul. I have a studio visit tomorrow with a curator, plus it had been an utter mess for months.
I was even able to clean out my flat files and organize them. I can’t believe I got to those! People think I’m so organized already. Now I am! I’m pretty proud of myself, I must say. I was just throwing stuff in there willy-nilly, and thought I had a “system,” but it wasn’t quite working out. I think I needed to have an inoperative system for about six years before I knew how to make an operative one, if that makes sense. Ha ha ha!
Now it’s so fucking clean and organized and exactly right this time, I want to shout it to the heavens! (I get to excited about this stuff!) And hey, maybe this will work for other artists for all I know. Once I split things up this way, I was like, oh yeah, duh! Â So here are my drawers from top to bottom, and of course, many only pertain to me, specifically:
Surfaces – All the nice, clean paper I have yet to make art on. I even divided those up into big flat bags and marked them (#300 cold press Fabriano, etc.).
Wraps – Anything that will wrap a single sheet of paper/print for a buyer or to ship. Paper or clear envelopes, “stiffiners,” large envelopes, acid-free paper wrap, cardboard, etc.
Originals – Large original work on paper that’s too large to fit in any of my portfolio books.
Journal Project – All the original drawings from my Journal Project.
Cut Patterns – A bunch of patterns that I’ve already cut, plus all of the master patterns for future cuts. These are for both paintings, and the Journal Project.
Large Prints – Prints over 20 inches in either direction.
Artists’ Books – These are mostly the ones I pull out for display. I keep the “fresh” ones in boxes somewhere else.
Small Prints – I have a lot of these.
Portfolios – I keep all my portfolio books of works on paper in here, large and small.
OPP – Other people’s works on paper: originals, prints, and photographs.
Yeah, I love to organize. Can’t cha tell? If you can’t tell from the above, those are two different cabinets. I have a really big one, which is the top one, and a medium one, which is the bottom one. Come to think about it, I often wonder if my 2nd one is the smallest version of those Maylines. Not that it’s a Mayline, it’s some other brand. I’ll have to measure it sometime and figure it out.
But it doesn’t even flippin matter since it works for me. They both work for me and I really don’t know what I’d do without them. However, I don’t think I could ever afford – and I’m not even talking money – another one. I don’t have the real estate. I don’t even have the real estate for everything I have now!
I lose sleep at night thinking about how much art shit I have! How much art furniture and painting storage I have. It makes me nuts!!! It really does. If I ever had to move and I couldn’t have a two car garage with a little back extension (yeah – like where am I going to find that???), then I don’t know what I would do!
Then again, I can also consider it this way: Some artists need a studio space, and a 500 square foot studio is not very big at all. I would just have to figure out how to pay for it …again!
 
  
  
My Aunt Susie died today. She was my mom’s only sibling – her little sister. She would have been 71 this year. It’s crazy how there was a little bit of longevity for the women in my family (at least early eighties), and they both died before they were 72. What’s in store for me, I wonder?
Susan was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer about a year ago. She went through five rounds of chemo and miraculously won. She was in remission for a few months.
Just a few months
Then it mastisized all over her brain, and progressed rapidly, yet, at the same time, slowly. I don’t know which it was. All I know is that the last month has been a blur. She’s been confused. She’s been totally lucid. She’s been in denial. And she’s been lovely, as usual.
Not four months ago, her only daughter, Lisa, passed away at 40. She literally JUST given birth to a sweet baby boy named Sammy. So Susie took on Sammy, as well as Lisa’s other child, (who just turned 10), Damon. Damon also has autism by the way.
I suppose I should also mention that Damon and Sammy’s father could not live without Lisa – took her death pretty hard – and a week before my aunt collapsed and entered hospice, he also died.
And so today, Damon and Sammy, over the past four months, have lost Mom, Dad, and Nana – who was really their entire world. They are currently in the Alabama (Tuscaloosa) foster care system.
Susie has been taking care of Damon since he was born. She actually adopted him from the get-go, and Sammy too was/is (I don’t know – WAS) in her legal guardianship as well. My cousin and her husband, though the nicest people you’ve probably have ever met, struggled with addiction for many years. Luckily, Lisa stayed clean throughout her pregnancy with Sammy. He is a strong, healthy boy – and honestly, he’s not going to remember much of what has happened over the last few months. Anyway – they were never going to get legal custody of either kid because of their antics.
Now Damon… He’s the cutest kid. Everybody says that about their own family, but I swear, spend five minutes with him and you’ll be laughing and crying at the same time because  he’s so fucking, hysterically cute!
That poor kid, Jesus Christ!
Well, can you believe this? My brother is going to adopt these boys.
It’s going to take a little bit of time because the laws are whack, and bureaucracy is like a bag of shit on fire under your nose, but everything is going as fast as humanly possible, and we should have these kids here within three months, maybe sooner.
With all the death we (my brother and I) have experienced over the past few years, finally something beautiful comes with it.
#cancersucks   #adoption   #death   #autism