memoir bit part one

Last November I wrote a memoir, inspired by NANO (national novel writing month) to just sit down and write 50,000 words in one month without editing or worrying about anything other than just getting the words out, I completed my story about hitting the road and finding my way to my self. That journey as most of you know, led to me living in Vermont and making art. I've yet to edit it and do anything else with it, I did open it up the other day and read the last few pages to see how I ended it. Last month was much quieter for me and filled with bigger chunks of just being and doing with less urgency. I realized that prior to quitting my massage practice and leaving arizona, for as screwed up as I was, I felt like I had some power. Power because I had a decent income. Power because I was a veteran therapist who wasn't worried about where the next client would come from. Power because I had a 'story' about myself down pat and the groove had worn wide. I realized I'm in a much more powerful place now but I haven't allowed myself to feel it or believe it. At first glance I feel less powerful because I have no steady income, I have few connections with people here other than tod and I am totally unsure of who I am anymore when I am 'out there in the world'. I felt more powerful after reading what I wrote. I realize I am growing as a person and that is ultimately more real than a job or money. These were just my thoughts and feelings about art, I'm breaking it up into two posts so it doesn't get too long. It kind of inspired me and made me feel some kindness towards myself, made me realize this whole art thing is more than just showing and selling art.

Can I even begin to relay what I have experienced and learned through my art, through accessing materials for my art, through experiencing the showing and the selling of my work? Through the encounters with others because of art? How is it I still do not understand how art itself is valuable out there in the world when I know how important it has been in my day to day experiences? There is a bigger picture and I am only seeing pieces of it. I'm not there yet. I know in my head that there is room for all of us. That we can all find a place in this life for success, health and peace. I've not been able to assimilate that into my own experiences though. Not yet. Not fully.

Take people out of the equation and there is me and art. Me in that basement sitting there working on, working with, working FOR it. It has a life of its own. It reflects back to me everything that is good, bad, ugly and beautiful. It speaks to me it yells at me. Actually it doesn't yell at me. I yell at me. It is the patient faithful dog that waits for me to shake it off and come back. Art is alive. The process of making art reflects my strengths and my weaknesses. I'm not one of those artists who makes good art when I am miserable. I don't drug myself up with stimulates or depressants and work like a crazy wizard. That’s how I know I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. It is in my health that I am able to create, not my disease.

You see, I’m learning patience, hope, peace and joy through this wormhole I've gone into. Art has helped pull me out of my head. It was art, or the possibility of becoming an artist that got me motivated to leave Arizona. It is art that carried me to this point. I still have fears that I won't make it. I’m worried I am not going to find a way to live doing what I love, I'm floundering financially. I've spent all my savings and live month to month somehow selling enough art or driving the taxi just enough to buy me more time. This isn't how I want to keep living and I'm completely unsure what to do next. There is still this knowledge that I have to keep making more art. This is a valuable time I have living in this house rent free. This is a valuable time to push through and continue working as much as I can so if and when an opportunity arises I shall be ready.

I’m willing to let it all go sometimes. Thinking this is too hard and I should just go back to working some grunt job full time and saving for my future. I know I couldn't do it though, not for long. Mentally, physically and emotionally it would kill me. That is why I have to find my way. I can't quit now, I have come too far too fast. I can't stay away from art even if I pretend I can. I haven't even begun is how I feel deep down inside. I feel like there are things in me waiting to come out that I have no idea about. There is a life waiting to happen that I cannot comprehend. I'm not willing to settle for a life subsisting, accepting whatever scraps I can. I want to make my life work and be involved with something bigger than myself. I can't know what that will be but I can keep putting one foot in front of the other. It is about me connecting with myself more than anything. Time and time again I marvel at how in the process of making art I change. It is hard to explain how making something abstract changes you. It could be that it is nothing more than connecting with a part of yourself that you were blind to. In my mind there is no difference between a woman getting dressed up, putting on make-up, doing her hair and looking in the mirror to admire who she is. It's kind of an awful analogy, especially since I'm not one to do any of that anymore, but I know when I did that, and when I watch other women do that I can see that they have changed when they are dolled up and looking at themselves in the mirror. They are seeing what they believe to be a better part of themselves. Bringing out the beauty they think is only deep within and not obvious from the outer shell? Or perhaps they are seeing someone they wish they were but cannot be until they go through this ritual and then look at themselves and have others see them as this amplified person? Art is actually similar feeling except more substantial. I am putting something of myself there. Those objects I place together, those things I do that ends up turning into a piece of art, feels like a part of me that had no other way to be seen.

Looking at something I made with my own two hands is as close to finding that appreciation for beauty within myself and even outside of myself, that I know how to do. It isn't an admiration of what I did as much as what is possible, what can happen through me if I get out of the way and let it happen. It feels like magic. It is shocking and so right sometimes that you question if it is really that easy. How could putting totally irrelevant objects together feel so good and complete? I do not know, but I know it is real. And it feels like a discharge of energy that prior to the making of it, had no place to go to, and at times never would have existed. The energy is like a micro burst happening suddenly and seemingly from nowhere, art can feel like that when it is being created or has been finished.

The Boys of Baraka

Tod rented an amazing netflix dvd, we watched it last night. DVD excerpt:

In an experimental program to reduce the rate of juvenile delinquency, the city of Baltimore sent a group of 12 year olds deemed "at risk" to a boarding school in Kenya, affording the boys the rare opportunity to turn their troubled lives around.....

I was so touched by this DVD, it becomes clear to me that the things that touch me the most usually have something to do with where I am at or have been in my life. No, I'm not a struggling black youth in a bad neighborhood, but after a few hours of talking with Tod there was a resonance with dreams being squashed. With something in your youth being killed. I seem to butt my head up against the wall of hopes and dreams and for as bizarre as it might seem to some, I was right there with those boys when I watched them. My heart went out to them and of course all I could think was how selfish it seems (to me) to make art when people need hope, help and just a friend or mentor; which led me to trying to understand more of why I am doing what I am doing now and how can I move onto my own level of health and functionality so I can be ready to make a real difference in other peoples' lives.* I'm not there yet, and I probably sound naive to some, but this is my experience and I'm just sharing.

As for the documentary, it's painfully obvious that those kids needed not to be stuffed into bad schools where they were just sliding by and not getting brought up to speed with their education. I don't want to ruin the movie for people if they watch it so I wont go on about what else happens. I feel very affected by the movie, anything that can stimulate the kind of conversation and awakening about your own life and others' is worth it's weight in gold. Inspiring and touching, it can't not lead you to at least some self examination, desire for growth and belief in empowerment for everyone.

*dont give me grief for saying that about art, this is me trying to understand still why art is important because I obviously don't yet get it. no matter how much i talk about it with people for whatever reason i have a block about my own value, about art's value etc. that is part of what got woken up by this movie, me asking me what do i do that makes any difference? art feels selfish and yet i feel like i have to make it. i'm trying to understand where i belong and how i matter, how art matters especially when i see docs. like this one.

Maybe

Maybe my homeopath is slipping Thorazine into my remedies....maybe living atop a neutral ley line node site for four years is finally starting to balance me out....maybe, maybe it is something else, all I know is yesterday I heard myself tell Tod that maybe I wont make art for awhile and that is okay. And it felt okay.

I can look back and see that in my handful of art making years I do seem to go through a dry period in winter. In the fall I always think I will work away during the dark cold months when in reality I usually don't. So far I really haven't made art for awhile and it is okay. I have my one experimental project I'm working on at my leisure and that is it. I've been invited to submit my proposal for Sculptcycle 2009 and if I'm going to do that I've got a few more weeks to come up with something. I fight it because I've only had to 'come up with something' for a commissioned piece and in the end the piece was nothing like what I proposed as I never really know what I'm doing until I do it. I fight it because I'm in a weird place with art. To make something just to make something, that is the question. I think you guys know that more and more I'm attracted to more functional work, I always have to fight with my brain that wants to think and judge things and I'm overwhelmed by all of the stuff that is out there. I could try making a functional sculpture if I had space and tools and on and on. I guess I have to figure out if I have the drive or not. Maybe I have nothing to prove right now. Maybe I'm just taking a break and letting new mojo accumulate. Maybe one day in hind site I will see that I was just being steered into making whatever it is I will have made. It could be as simple as that. It probably is.

Maybe this year I will work more and get out of debt and save a little so I can move on and get a real studio or tod and I can finally get our own space and live a bit more freely. Maybe it is okay if I make fewer, stranger works that no gallery will show, maybe it is okay if I don't always have new work to submit. Sometimes I swim so fast and hard in my head that I'm worn out by the time I reenter reality. Maybe I will just float for a little while and give myself a frickin break.

not art, just life

I'm not one to post pictures of 'my day' but I am trying to shake something up in me so I thought as I said a post or two down, I would take my camera and take some pictures of my world when I do venture out. I realize I'm not really a good action photographer, not someone who is terribly motivated to take anything other than close up pictures of abstract designs on objects and buildings. Well never say never and sometimes when you have no art to post you have to make do with whatchoogot. I notice these things...the way I feel like an alien in the bank drive-thru as I'm forced to stare at a graveyard during my wait. Thinking what a waste of land, how obsessed people are with preserving everything. The toxic diesel mitt sign that I'm always attracted to when I see it and the completely hallucinogenic feel of being in the car wash while having the taxi cab washed.

I realize how uncomfortable I am taking pictures when most of the roads are two laned and clogged with snow. Hard to just stop and get out and shoot something. It feels challenging too to point a camera at a persons' home or face, I feel like I am violating someones privacy. Like I don't have a right to take a picture of something that isn't mine. I've often wondered how real photographers do it, how they take pictures of people who are suffering, poor, handicapped or otherwise odd enough to warrant a photo. I rarely even stop to ask if I can take a photo of someones property, especially when it is run down and crazy looking, it feels exploitative.

what makes me laugh

Tod makes me laugh. He goes about his day and most of the time is unaware of something as ridiculous as how his feet look. He has the flattest feet of anyone I have ever seen in my life. The other day he was walking around and I looked at his feet and lost it. His socks had morphed into platypus like noses. There isn't much more to say about this, I just laugh every time I look at these pictures. I have his permission to expose his feet on my blog, thought it was time I posted something funny for a change.

75% of your time

I was watching an art documentary last night. Bits and blips of curators or whatever else those important art people are called.....the only thing that I retained and paid attention to was this:

' if you are willing to spend 75% of your time marketing yourself and only 25% of your time making art you might make it.'

I'm not going to make it if that is true.

Right now I'm having this little struggle with wanting to just do my own stupid stuff. No photo pieces, no clocks. Just this strange 'thing' I'm working on for me and Tod to live with, even then we might not want it when it is done. I know it is strange, not pretty and maybe even a real mess. The constant battle is to allow myself to spend hours and hours a day doing this when the brain says make something that will sell. Make something that a gallery will show. Make something that counts. My heart says shut up. Leave me alone. This is how I want to spend my time here on earth, today, now. It's okay to experiment and make a mess and waste time and materials if you don't judge it. Hard to justify though when you want to push that invisible boulder out of your way and see or feel some progress. It would be easy to keep making the same thing over and over, take what I think is the easy way out and keep making things I know will sell just for the sake of having something in a gallery. Easy doesn't = satisfying though does it.

driving home from the blood run

On Sundays I do 'the blood run'. Sounds horrible doesn't it? Try as I may, substituting 'lab run' just hasn't stuck. It is THE BLOOD RUN. In the winter a small clinic is open for injured skiers and to the public in general and the taxi place is contracted to pick up 'lab samples' which are taken via a cooler to the hospital in Morrisville. I'm the person doing it. It takes me just over an hour and I make, after taxes something like $8.51. It is usually the only thing I do, no rides that day because the dispatcher and I don't understand each other and I'd rather not deal.

Today I decided to bring my camera to see if I could wake my dull self up. To see if I could find anything worthy of a photograph. I don't feel I did. I kind of did but it was harder than I thought it would be to stop and take pictures in the cab because even in rural Vermont idiots are out there driving on every road like bats out of hell. God forbid I stop and try to focus on anything. These were all taken while driving, literally. Only the first photo was at a stop but I was harried by other cars turning and being unsettled at a cabbie sticking a camera out the window. I sigh. I feel annoyance at humanity and search for beauty.


I see and feel desolation. I've never experienced a place like Vermont. After having lived here now four and a half years I am beginning to wonder where I will go next. I feel stuck here, but I might feel stuck anywhere because I am stuck in my life. How much is the dreaded pre-menopause, which I really think contributes to the flatness I feel. I hate to throw hormones into the mix but I'm 47. I've lived hard. My body is still reeling and I may be up for a bumpy ride. How much is from poverty? I made just under $7,000 last year. How much is from being stuck in my creative world, not knowing where or what. How much is from the bleakness I see everyday. The poverty. Stowe isn't real. It is a bubble filled with tourists heads floating around mixing with the uber rich 2nd home owners or hedge fund moguls. Drive just 10 miles out of town and you see the barns falling apart. The yards filled with rusted out autos, homes stuffed with debris clogging up the windows. People fighting for free clothes at the dump. I'm one of them.


And yet. People have hope and dreams. People think spring will change things. People think politicians will change things. The older I get the less I know what anything means. I'm here, I have no idea what I'm doing or what is next. But I will keep looking and experiencing whatever it is that is there in my view.

a gift, more stuff, excuses & dreams

I got a surprise present earlier this week from Tod, he knew I've been hemming and hawing about different tools, a dremel being one of them, and low and behold I got one from him! It was a complete surprise, and a very thoughtful and generous gift. Should make it easier to remove rust from objects which up until now I've had to do with a big clunky grinder that isn't handheld so I have to try to shove whatever object I can under the furiously spinning grinder wheel. According to the manual these dremel tools can do it all, if you get the right attachments you can engrave on stone, glass, tile or whatever else your brain and come up with. I doubt I will be needing too many attachments, mostly I just need to grind things or cut pieces of metal that are small and in the way.

For those of you wondering about the cow bowls, I went there today and was a little disappointed but also a little relieved that the bowls weren't 'pretty' like the three I have. These were smaller, not as bulbous, and the patina was pure rust. There were still rusted nuts, bolts and attachments connected to the bowls and I knew I would never get that stuff off without losing my mind. I guess I am relieved a little, I am feeling a little cramped for room lately and depending on the day not sure if I'm going to ever make another piece of art again! I did get a few more of those hay drying things that I made our shelves out of. More to come when they take the rest of that mechanism apart next week.

The one thing I think that stops me from really forging ahead is space. I look with envy at artists in documentaries who might be poor as dirt but at least they live on their own land with buildings and enough space between them and neighbors to use tools and make noise and fill up their yard or shop with stuff. We all have excuses, I'm sure this is an excuse at times, but mostly I marvel I ever make anything given the circumstances. To do one simple thing I have to lug everything up into the garage, move the car and am always needing to go up and down the basement for something else I need or forgot. I don't have a real work table out there or a place for anything, I am in competition for space with the gardener, she is forever pushing her stuff into my little space and we are always at odds with each other. In the winter its almost impossible, the dread of going out there and freezing and having poor lighting usually stops me from even starting. It's just not my space and I can't leave stuff out. Have to be quiet when people are here. Can't work on anything in the garage and keep it out there so whatever it is has to come back down the basement. This may not sound like the end of the world to anyone, and it isn't, but when you are trying to do something and don't know what you are doing lets just say efficiency isn't even in the ballpark and it doesn't take much to loose concentration or mojo. In a perfect world...I would have helpers. People who had good tools and knew how to measure and cut and I would say do this and do that. I would get to learn and help but mostly I would get to dream up ideas and have others put it together.

But I'm here and this is what I got. I know there are plenty of artists who have kids in the way, spouses to deal with, all kinds of distractions and restrictions. I guess the question is how badly do we want it? How important is it to make whatever it is we want to make. How important is anything? Only as important as we make it. It's still winter, probably not the best time to consider all of this, gotta keep that one day at a time thing going and trust the passion will return when the mud and bugs come in the Spring.

chain-chain-change

Change is inevitable. It is, other than your own demise, the one thing you can be certain of. Everything changes even if you were to lock yourself up in a room and never leave, things would still change. I guess your relationship with change changes depending on where you are at or how you are perceiving your reality. If you think you are in control then you think you are the one changing things and believe you have control. If you feel overwhelmed and out of control change can feel threatening. You don't have control, only choice. Being in control isn't real anymore than being out of control.

Thinking you want things to change is different than experiencing the reality of it. How often do I really welcome any change? Not very often. Sometimes being adaptable feels tiring when the truth is that what is tiring is fighting change. It is the holding on that is tiring. Letting go, freeing that tightly gripped fist and letting your hand open up to embrace the next thing ~ how can that be difficult? It is, when the brain doesn't let your hand freely or willingly open. It's going to happen, change, the question is, are you going to flow with it and let yourself feel it and experience it or cling to your fear and beliefs and rules and watch it fly over you and leave you frazzled and rigid.

I'm thinking about art and life. Noticing changes that aren't immediately obvious as to what is changing, only knowing it isn't the same as it was. When nothing much is going on that is when I feel like nothing will EVER change [ironically when a fury of activity is taking place I dread change, I want to hold on and never let go]. Obviously if nothing much is going on, then change is already on its way or else I would be doing what I normally did. It's tempting to voice what it means. Where it is heading. Truth be told I have no idea. It's hard and maybe not even worth writing or thinking about, because it is just speculation. Just my brain wanting to fill up unknown space.

Feels BIG but then again, feels so small and seed like. I could get dramatic and say it feels terrifying to think I'm letting go of something I thought I wanted. Feels overwhelming to think of how to go further down a path that has HUGE boulders to climb and I have no known equipment or stamina to do it alone. I hope I catch the wave though, swimming in a different sea for awhile feels like a good thing to do.

how's that for a cryptic little post

dairy delight

I was perusing craigslist and saw this:

Disassembling antique barn..
All interior components that ran dairy farm.
Silo made from Ceramic Blocks. Many different uses for the ceramic blocks.
2 sets Hay hooks.
Cow stantion.
Watering bowls.
Cow dividers.
Louden Hay Dryer app. 1940's
Block and Tackle Pulleys

I started SALIVATING. I checked the site out they linked to and saw it was an antique type store/house and worried they might be off the charts expensive. Not even sure they had what I want, but those clocks and hay shelves I made from the watering bowls and hay dryer equipment are to me, precious materials and I want MORE even if I have to buy them. I'm starting to get excited, so far the emails come back saying yes, they are those bowls that I want. Yes, the picture I emailed showing the hay things I have are indeed what he has. He has about FORTY of the cow bowls at a price I can live with, my one concern is they aren't rusty or crusty enough since the ones I got were stuck halfway into the earth and corroded (beautifully so). I'm getting excited thinking I could make more clocks, hell with forty I'd have another limited edition works in the making!

I have been thinking about what I want to make, where my art is going if anywhere, and mostly I come up with wanting more materials, especially farm stuff. I'm sure to some people my ignorance of exactly what things are called or used for is annoying but that's not the point for me. I see an object and like it for it, not what it was or does. It can be interesting to know what it was but I invariably forget it's correct name and how it was used and only see what it could be. I feel like I'm in a dry spell art wise. There is a gestation going on and I just have to respect it and keep busy with whatever I can. It's tempting to focus too much on what my restraints are, lately the basement just feels so nasty and dark, I feel like I'm suffocating in there. I don't know how to change my work and living environment. I already know that driving a cab part time isn't going to change anything. It's best to just stop the thoughts before they fester. To quote an artist friend, 'just get to the next day'.

*irony. I just talked to the guy and its the same place I got the hay warmers just a few months ago! he is a salvage person who has taken over the disassembly of the barn. god I wish I had a warehouse...I would take it all!

tri-strip cryptic script #80/100

I haven't worked on a Limited Ed. RR Clock since last November? Hard to believe I have actually made 80 clocks on these railroad plates. Twenty left, I figure this year I will complete the series and that will be the end of a three+ year journey. For anyone who has ever done a large series before, you know that it is a journey in and of itself. Looking at all the clocks I have made in chunks of 10 or 20, shows me the progress I have made in my technical abilities as well as my willingness to push some boundaries of what I thought was possible. I feel already a sadness for it coming to an end and wonder what else if anything will be as much fun as these RR Clocks. I always have about 7 or 8 clocks up in our living space, only one or two actually ticking away with a battery in them. It is more about the art than the clock for me, perhaps the hands are symbolic of something bigger than an actual telling of the current time, I honestly cannot imagine these plates without the clocks in them. Those delicate little hands hold the piece together. Each clock I make it always comes down to the hands. Which shape hands will I choose and lastly and most maddeningly (at times), what color to paint them? It is the very last thing I do and often takes more time than you would even want to know, it is the deal breaker for the piece when all is said and done.

Applause for OVATION TV

Curlicue Sculpture, Judith Scott, 2001

Heads up for an INCREDIBLE 2 WEEKS of programming on Ovation TV (channel 157 in my hood). Last night I watched 'What's Under Your Hat?", a documentary about Judith Scott who was born with down syndrome as well as deaf. She was a twin and during her childhood was taken away to be institutionalized. Her sister Joyce got her out later when they were adults and so begins a healing, amazing journey through creating art. This is one of the most spellbinding documentaries I have ever seen. Judy was a participant in California's Creative Growth Art Center so you also get to see other artists with mental and physical disabilities who make art that in the words of one 'normal' artist, puts you to shame!

I watched this twice. I was working on my own art and mostly listening so when they repeated it later that night and Tod was watching it I sat and watched. For the next two weeks they are having a massive "I heart my art" festival showcasing Visions and Obsessions of outsider artists. From what I can see it is a nightly thing so you wont be missing anything during the day.

The Ovation channel has also been showing a lot of designer based shows filled with fantastic people and works. Here is a link to their schedule of shows. Sunday they are showing James Castle, Portrait of an Artist, it is going to kick some ass. James never learned to read, write or speak and yet made an incredibly wide range of art. Here is an excerpt from a write up of a book about his life and work. 'As a child he developed his favourite medium and method of working, mixing stove soot with saliva and applying this "ink" with sharpened sticks and cotton wads to such found materials as product packaging and discarded paper. These everyday materials have given his works a singular, immediate, and appealing natural quality.' Can't wait to see this one!

january

I sold two pieces of art in January. One in a gallery and one through ETSY. yay!!!

This is the piece that sold in the gallery. Great feeling and no one was as happy as Tod was for me. How nice to have someone to share the sales with. I crept into the bedroom and said in a hushed tone bent sold! bent sold! It wasn't nice to wake him up but I was truly caught off guard by the email from the gallery saying it sold. I was busting at the seams with happy! He finally woke up and was thrilled for me. Great way to start the day.

I call this piece Bent for obvious reasons. It is one of the coolest scrap finds I have ever found. Every time I look at a picture of it I feel this fast swishy movement from below the photograph, as if the piece is somehow connected to the train that the photo is of. I found that piece of scrap at an old dump site close to home that was being cleared out for a housing development. This was back in 2005 and at the time I hadn't made many mixed media pieces. Tod still remembers me finding it and thinking I was nuts...I kind of felt nuts too as I had no idea what I would do with it, just knew it was too fun to pass up.

Just thought I would share a sale for those artists like me out there that need to know people are still buying art!