Metaphors Are Everywhere

My younger, angrier, blonder, self.  Everybody loves a mouse.

I can’t seem to ever just paint something pretty, though a part of me would really like to.  For me, there’s always a deeper meaning screaming to be let out. 

Case in Point.

While in the “Indiana Jones” line at Disneyland, I was marveling at how fabulously entertaining the line is, an immense, imaginative installation piece, really.  While my younger, angrier self would have shaken her fist at how expertly Disney pacifies the masses, herding us through a world of over-consumption, my parent-self was telling my kid “now remember, the line is part of the ride.”  The person in front of us was impressed by this way of looking at things.  And I realized, there are probably a lot of gems hidden in the crevices of the happiest place on earth.  By the end of the day, I was more holier-than-though than I started, a better person for sure.

Disneyland Life Lessons

Life Lesson #1: The line is part of the ride.

Life Lesson #2 Fake people are scarier than  real people.

Life Lesson #3: Just because it has the longest line, doesn’t make it funner (people will stand in a long line because it’s a long line).

Life Lesson #4:  Some danger signs are imaginary and some are real, but it can be tragically hard to tell the difference. Examples: “Warning, High Voltage Area” (fake), “Do Not Climb on Rocks” (REAL!) and “Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts” (possibly real).

Life Lesson #5: Makes no difference who  you are (when you wish upon a star).

Life Lesson #6: Princesses are EVERYWHERE.

Life Lesson #7: Your favorite ride is the one closed for repairs.

Life Lesson #8: It is a small world.

Life Lesson #9: Nobody likes a person who cuts in line, no matter how cute their kids are.

Life Lesson #10: Money really does buy happiness, if you replace the word “happiness” with “shopping”.

Life Lesson #11: If you close your eyes, you’ll miss the fun.

Life Lesson #12:  It’s more fun when you wear a costume.

Life Lesson #13: If you tell yourself that pirates are funny, they are

Old Dog

New Tricks.
 It was great to spend the weekend painting in an absolutely gorgeous studio space.  I definitely learned new things about painting.  It is a "wet on wet" technique.  I didn't feel like I "finished" either painting.  I spent forever on the portrait trying to get the skin tone colorful enough before moving on to actually put her face on, which meant I was left with about an hour to suddenly pull a full portrait out of my...hat.  Both days I found myself working up to the very last moment, no choice but to call it "done".

Painting Class for the Painter

I am taking an oil painting intensive this weekend.  I got my little supply list and gleefully went shopping, buying more brushes than what was on the list, just in case.

You might find it surprising that a person can go to Otis Art College for 4 years, get a Bachelor's degree in Painting, and have never been given instruction in painting.  The fact of the matter was that my painting classes were more about art theory/critique.  The teachers were very up front about the fact that they don't teach you how to actually apply paint.  That's for you to figure out.  And I did.  Absurd?  Ironic? Yes and yes.  But realism was very passé in the 90's, so it wasn't relevant to the work most students were doing.

The Sky is Falling

Here is one of the pieces I did while taking time away from art.  A local gallery was having a show with the theme "chicken and egg", which I used for inspiration.  The painting is in fact a veiled portrait of someone I know, a proverbial "Chicken Little", who always imagines the worst is happening.

Will paint for food

What most people don’t realize is the tremendous energy and time it takes to be an artist.  It’s like working two jobs.  Unless your day job is a trust fund, in which case it’s like having one job (making art is still a respectable way to not make a living).  Or maybe you do what I did for years and work less than full time but live as a pauper.  So when your friends say, “Hey we’re going to see this band tonight.  The cover charge is only $3.”  And you’re thinking “THREE DOLLARS!  That’s 15% of the phone bill I haven’t paid!  That’s two espresso drinks! (which equals 4 hours of getting to be somewhere besides my crummy apartment).”  I’m realizing now that the artists I knew who magically didn’t have to work are the same ones with bottomless bags of money for going out.  Art making is not comfortable for those of us on the bottom edge of middle class, I guess.  We end up having to choose between having basic comfort and making art.  For most of my life, I chose art and for a lot of it, I didn’t really notice what I was missing.  In this drawing is a room I lived in.  It was a dining room, really.  On one side was my bed (a futon folded in half so it would fit), on the other side was everything you see in this drawing.  And down the middle was the path my roommate took to get from her room to the kitchen (her room had a similar path through it for me to get to the bathroom).  But I was so happy to have the luxury of not sharing a room that I drew this picture and proudly titled it “a room of one’s own.” And then I tied burlap sacks to my feet and walked 6 miles to school in the snow.

Willa goes to Hollywood

Eventually my interest in combining words and art led to making a book titled “Willa,” a story about a young woman moving to Hollywood.  I made it just before dropping out of art school, at a time when I was completely fed up with living in L.A. (not coincidentally, it was shortly after the L.A. riots of 1992).  Although there were kernels of autobiography in the story, it really was about inventing this character, a naïve and hapless Willa.  Each page was a collage of fabric and found objects and it was all sown together. Some of the pages have parts you have to open, push, or otherwise move to be able to read the text (which makes it hard to photograph).   Of all the old work I have so far pulled out and sifted through, this is the piece that most makes me want to rediscover that old path.  Take it up again where I left off, wherever that is.  More to come.

I wish everyone thought I was as hilarious as I think I am

Since my second year in art school, my thing in art has been that I tell stories by combining text with images that reflect (or twist) the text. In those early days, I would write stories about life, romance, heartache, hope, joy, disappointment, things people grapple with in their college years.  The text came from magazines, or things I would hear people say or sometimes I would just make it up.  This text comes from an article in Mademoiselle about visible panty line, go figure.

Happy New Year!

I'm Back!

figure drawing studio, December 2010

Back at square one, drawing figures like a first year art student.  It feels like my slate was accidentally wiped clean.  This is both exciting and mildly depressing.  It’s exciting to be going to this weekly open figure drawing studio on the island.  It’s exciting to be back in that moment that is all promise, of learning how to really see, of building skills, unaware of the upcoming salt in the wounds that is artmaking.  For now, it feels like a warm bath with Epsom salt. 

It is mildly depressing to imagine where my work might have been had I not stepped away from it for these past twelve years.  So many of my college friends kept their nose to the grindstone and their work has grown and evolved and they exhibit nationally, internationally.  I have posted links for some of these brilliant peers of mine as well as some of our teachers, mostly because I like putting myself in their company, but also because I genuinely like their work, and these artists were influences for me in my formative years.  My Rosetta Stone.

Figure Drawing circa 1990

One of a handful of drawings I kept from my foundation year at Otis (then Otis/Parsons), definitely the most grueling year of my life.  We had a six-hour figure drawing class every week, which included about 15 hours per week of homework (including drawing ourselves nude).  Our teacher, Gary Geraths, taught us to draw the figure from the inside out, starting with the skeleton.  We would have a live model in front of us, but as you looked at all the drawing boards, they were filled with skeletons.  By the end of the first semester we finally had worked up to adding muscle, and then skin.  In this drawing you can see some of the bone and muscle structure the drawing started with.  We used large scale paper to be able to get more precise with the forms. The model had to hold this pose for several hours (plus breaks), which is probably why she is lying down.  I remember she had a navel piercing, which I had never seen before but thought was really cool.

Up and at 'em

Dipping my toes back into artmaking.  I have a studio space set up for the first time since my initial post-art-school efforts.  I started hanging recent work to see where I was heading.  Then I added 20 year old figure drawings to figure out where I had been.  Hmm.