The Troll Covets.
One of my most adored students, Meagan Segal, graduated from Pratt Institute this past week. Meagan is an artist with a great deal passion about the work she is making. I was always very excited to have our meetings and see her delightfully gross paintings.
Meagan I wish you all the best and hope that your paintings continue to make people shudder.
Our art can change the world!
Today I met with two sixth grade classes at the Meekins Library. My work has been on display there for two weeks now and one of the librarians told me this past Saturday that the classes were very interested in the work I am displaying. I suggested that I come in and talk with them. I feel that rather than stand and talk it is much more educational to show and discuss. I took the sporebox in with me and unfolded it as I gave a little history of how I became and artist and what now drives me to continue. 
A great deal of attention was paid to my hair?
The first group sat intently and listened and asked many a question. It was not until I told them they could get up and interact with the sporebox that I realized how interested they were. I don’t believe one kid left without touching the box or playing with its pieces.
The myth of the sporozoans origin becomes more layered every time I tell it. Talking with these kids really forced me to explain it in simple terms, starting from the beginning with anatomy class and drawing from the model.
I hope that the sporozoan leaves an indelible mark on some if not all of these kids; the mark of change and creativity. The mark that allows them to look at things with open eyes and balanced tempers.
In my talk I spoke of how I started drawing and my experiences with Mr. Palmer and how his prodding forced me to reexamine who I was and how I could become the person I wanted to be. Watching these kids interact and seeing their eyes open so wide when I told them they could touch the object made me realize, even more than I ever have before, that our education system is designed to fail. We teach to a test that has nothing to do with cognition and only to do with rote learning.
Art is my truth.
Get your ass out there and make some art!! Stand up and say something!! Apathy is crushing the spirit and will of this country!! The machine of art, education, socialization, war and economics have transfixed us into believing things cannot change!! Bullshit everything always changes and we have to force the issue. If you believe your art should be in the public eye then put it there. If you believe the art you see in the galleries is the best thing out there then don’t bother, you know then that you believe in the Status Quo. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” My father used to say that. That is bullshit. Just because something isn’t broken doesn’t mean it is working. The heating system in my house isn’t broken but it sure limps along like an aging infrastructure. Lets not let the aging infrastructure of everything in this country bring us to the point where we can’t turn it all around. Shake it up.
Change America with our art!!!! Fuck the Status Quo!!!!!
Get your ass out there and make some art!! Stand up and say something!! Apathy is crushing the spirit and will of this country!! The machine of art, education, socialization, war and economics have transfixed us into believing things cannot change!! Bullshit everything always changes and we have to force the issue. If you believe your art should be in the public eye than put it there. If you believe the art you see in the galleries is the best thing out there than don’t bother you know then that you believe in the Status Quo. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” My father used to say that. That is bullshit. Just because something isn’t broken doesn’t mean it is working. The heating system in my house isn’t broken but it sure limps along like an aging infrastructure. Lets not let the aging infrastructure of everything in this country bring us to the point where we can’t turn it all around. Shake it up.
Change America with our art!!!! Fuck the Status Quo!!!!!
Obvious, one liner, in your face, simple, these are all terms I do not want applied to my work. I have something to say with my art and I know that if I make the statement too simple than my work will not have staying power. Looking back at all great art it is layered with information. Viewers can come back and come back and always find something new. I believe this is because as we grow in our experience we bring to great art a newness of vision. We are able to peel away layers of the statement made by the artist. It is important for we as artists to continually ask our viewers to challenge themselves in how they view art. This in turn will allow them to challenge their view of the world and themselves.
Make art with all that you are.
Last week was crazy. I hung my show at the Meekin’s Library. Had two ballet rehearsals, worked a 60 hour week and helped Zanne make ballet costumes. When I added it all up it turned out to be about an 80 hour week that all culminated with this performance. My ballet school, Ballet Soleil, performed at the Hilltown Spring Festival in Cummington, MA. The school did a series of short pieces ranging from Jazz to classical ballet. My part is the Blue Bird segment of Sleeping Beauty. I am my teachers, Kelly, partner in this piece doing supported pirouettes, promenades and two lifts.
I can’t say that I was nervous but I certainly was anxious. I studied ballet when I was 16 and 17 but have only been on stage once before. I think of myself as an advanced beginner. For this performance I was more concerned with doing real simple moves really well rather than trying to do more flashy stuff poorly. For our June 7th recital I will be amazing.
This lift is the most complicated part of the dance. It requires Kelly to leap into my arms then for me to lift her over my head and walk across the stage with her over my my head. It looked great according to friends and family, I don’t know how much you can trust friends and family????
We are all art waiting to happen.
I am showing work at the Meekins Library here in western Mass. Some of it is new work some of it people have seen. It looks different in the library. This is a cool library, this past weekend they had three people checking out books and there was still a line. This is the same library where Izzy and I did the poetry reading for Arbour day and the same library that Zanne will be showing some of her Eco-quilts made in one of her sewing classes.
This show was unplanned. We were there for our Saturday morning of library fun and one the librarians asked Zanne if she could push her Eco-quilt show up a month. She said that she couldn’t but introduced me and suggested I show my work. We took a look at sikwenshel and made the arrangements. The library has a beautiful gallery space with lots of natural light. For the closing reception I am going to install a revised edition of “The sporozoan’s shrine to the mapping of the parasite.” and do a series of performances.
Art is my world.
Folded and Beautiful.
It is like deciphering babel. I walk into this madness and am some how able to make work. Of course this isn’t how I would like it to be. No I do not want it perfectly organized with everything labeled and in it’s place. That is not me. My creativity seems to feed on on a little chaos but…this is outrageous. None the less I spent three hours yesterday making and am very happy with the result. Well let me restate that as happy as I can be with an end result.
It is not so much that I am disorganized as that I am always rushing and because I can make art in the madness I feel less pressure to organize it than I do to make work. It just compounds it self. I move things around so I can work in one spot and then I make more insanity in the flurry on making. I find more things that I could use to make things with and they sit there waiting.
In order to accommodate everything I just keep piling half finished work in this back bit of the studio. I have a hard time finishing work. This has always been an issue for me but with limited time it becomes more so. I don’t really sketch or use a note book I just start making the things that are in my head. This leads to mounds of unfinished pieces waiting to see completion. I work very quickly and were I to have a few days of studio time the space would change drastically and some of this work would complete it self. For me art cannot finish in short chunks of time it can only begin that way. To finish I need hours of contemplation time. I am not sure which writer said it but I think it was Hemingway, “Write drunk edit sober”. I think this is my approach to my work in general. That is not to say I am always drunk when I am creating but I am certainly always inside a state of passion that reminds me of drunkenness because I tend not to think about the out come and just let the moment drive me. It is all fixable some day down the road. Polishing is slow tedious work requiring patience and serenity and I can only find that place when time is on my side.
These pieces have been hanging on my work wall 90 % done for almost two years. It is a sad state of affairs to go to the studio over and over again not able to finish something that burst from my head with such force that it made me crazy. The beginning is always so pleasurable and then the finish comes so slow that the pleasure is forgotten.