Lordy...

This is (almost) everything I've made since quitting my day job, meaning since 1 November...not counting a couple hats and 3 pairs of pants that have no photos. 2 weekends craft shows, an art show up and down, and another one-night group show event.
Can haz go to Hawaii now?

What I did today... Fishy Business...

Working on a tattoo design for Lisa. Here's ze sketch... fantastique, non?
I think I may kill the flowers. Anyway.

The Chillin' Productions Holiday shindig was pretty amazing, except I never know what to do in those situations. I feel an overwhelming pressure to make PROGRESS. NETWORK. ADVANCE CAREER. But I don't know who the hell anyone is and they don't know me from every other San Francisco chick in a dress and shit-kicker boots. And I am NOT a friendly-in-crowds type... more a stand in a corner until I can politely get the hell out type. So I wasn't really sure what to do with myself and walked in circles a lot. BUT. There was some seriously awesome work. Also some seriously stunted, overpriced, smeared-out-of-the-tube shit. Ah well. AND I may have sold a piece to the owner of 111 Minna, which would be, in truth, pretty awesome. Not to mention that the piece in question is a self-portrait, so I shall hang in his house and STARE AT HIM until he realizes how PROFOUNDLY AWESOME I am, and that his gallery simply MUST have my work!
My plan cannot fail!

That is what I did today.

Voulez-Vous...?

Here's my last additions to our Fabrications show. These are 5x5" on wood panel and may be the cutest things I've ever painted.

We hung the show yesterday. Of course, now that it's up I hate it all. My work looks like the mind of an ADD schizophrenic. Where it ought to be a smooth, streamlined style of saleability, it is instead a collage of sizes, colors and ideas. I am not so good with this being a stable brand thing. May be that should be my selling point: " I'm effin' NUTS! Buy the products of my restless psyche!" Perhaps that's the ticket...

Anyway I hope you like it.

Halloweeeeen! I love and adore Halloween, but I will admit it always gives me a case of the mopey let downs. I don't know what I expect from poor Halloween, but it's always something...more. A deeper, more sacred, more meaningful ritual, than, um, just getting wasted. Again. Am I wrong in thinking that we, collectively, yearn for something bigger, and not knowing what to do, leaderless, just default to booze? Every year I fail to find something that feels like the proper recognition of the holiday and get a bit morose about it. Then, of course, I realize what an abject POOP I'm being and feel bad about that too. Ah well. In any case, I sure do love to dress up.

Alice

Living in San Francisco, I'm lucky enough to have the post-Halloween prize of Dia de Los Muertos. Fuck yeah. This is such an amazing night...here's a lot of the sacredness and respect that I think Halloween has lost. The whole Mission comes alive with dead people. Candles, flowers, drums, and everyone a variation on the same theme. It's thrilling and vibrates you right to the core, feeling life through feet and skin and hair.

On the art front...ugh it seems I work all day and get nothing done. I'm really hoping that I'll feel "caught up" at least a little soon. Either that, or Hawaii will happen. Too bad, jerk! Didn't think of that, didja? I have a show in a few weeks at Mission Comics. Here's art!Fox To Be

I'll spare you any other thoughts on art, as that's like opening a portal to boredom-mopey-HELL. I'm forbidden from talking about art until I can do it without whining or sounding even a little angsty. And until I eat my vegetables. Now put on my dunce cap and go sit in the corner.

Oh, and I still want my life to exist in the world of Harry Potter. Just sayin'. That is all.

new stuff starting

Some new pieces beginning... I seem to be drawn to working in pairs; every piece I've started or conceived so far has a twin. I'm sure I could think of something deep for this to represent about my current state of being, but I'll save that for later.

These are "You" and "I". Something that came to me while sitting in the sun in Jumpin' Java, regarding the nature of where my head is at recently... open-hearted and excited but with a touch of the lonely-melancholy. Eyes closed and turned inward but also mirroring and connecting to the outside--world and individuals. A duality, in the sense of a double meaning, and also in the sense of the way I connect with others, in a very one-on-one, personalized way... that would make it a triple meaning, wouldn't it? Hell, let's go for broke and see how many layers of meaning I can get! The wings and stars come up for me a lot in my own library of symbols; they run the gamut of dazed, confused, open, full of wonderment, etc...here they're serving me to talk about being is a state of dazed curiosity; open-mindedness with a touch of spacey disconnect.

This is why I avoid artist statements and why I trip on talking about my work. It, like my own thoughts, has lots of meanings going on. It's hard for me to narrow it down to being about one, concise, easily-stated thing. Maybe by the finalization of these I can spit out a nice sound-bite about them, but for now it's "they're about this but also that and oh a touch of this over here... " But honestly, that's what it feels like in my head... clarity through a whole lot of sound and fury, plenty of strength but very little certainty.

it continues...

"You" sketch and first layout



"I" sketch and first layouts

Done.

Oh yes, and 5thousand is officially done, signed, varnished, put to bed. Thanks to Jason for the loan of his jawline, his persona and his lovely, tempestuous self.

beautiful untrue things

My GOD my world is covered in dog hair! It's like she's undergoing a slow explosion.

I'm exhausted. I tried to fit too much progress into one day. I'm really trying to dig into my work as a conversation with myself; a way to think and talk about things visually... talking to myself, yes, but also to the world at large, or at least I hope so. I find talking about my work to be very difficult, which is, as someone trying to work towards making a living as an artist, is pretty fucking detrimental.

"So, what do you paint?"

"ummmm.....people? Birds and stuff?"

It's an incredibly hard question for me! My work is figurative, but I wouldn't label it as portraiture. I don't have a soundbite for it. What is this current, juxtapoz-mag young art style called? Lowbrow doesn't cover it properly anymore. I like to use figures, but they are elements, characters, instruments to convey a feeling or situation. I also am continuing to build my own library of personal symbols; the elements that show up again and again in my stuff. Scarves, wings, stars, hands, etc. Some of these have assigned or static meanings, others just have a sense of weight and significance but no direct translation. Some of it I just aesthetically like, but that's not a very deep reason, so don't tell.

These four are precursors to what I'm working on now. I did these in a frenzy, at the beginning of this latest personal upheaval and artistic push/refocusing. They mark a shift from me trying to be somewhat commercialy viable to saying "fuck it" and coming back around to some personal fundamentals. This is me remembering that I like to draw. This is also me pouring alot of frustration and gut-wrenches out.

Here Again.

Almost

Not Listening

Can't Deny Nature

Jess' Bridal Box, and another step on Still-Not-Officially-Christened...

Jess's bachelorette party is coming up next month... we've had a running joke about how one of my main duties as a bridesmaid will be to reel her in when she gets inevitably overwhelmed and cranky. This has always theoretically involved lots of pictures of kittens and candy shoved indiscriminately into the blushing bride's face. To make this dream a reality, I'm making her an official Bridal Survival Kit, complete with AWESOME CARRYING BOX. Here's 2 photos of it's progress... I'll keep you posted on the final product and its goodies.

sketchy...

painted, awaiting glitter!

The Unchristened Painting living currently under the working title of Colonization, got a bit of attention this week. It's slow going. Dealing with those buildings should have been fairly simple but for some reason took me a lot of half-aware tedium time. In any case, acrylics are done and I started in on the oils today, which was also a half-aware process as I seem to have a cold or allergies or swine flu or whatever and was pretty dopey. And to make that even more fun, yesterday I inhaled at the wrong moment during fire spinning and singed out most of my nose hairs... turns out that those are important in keeping one's nose from running...

5thousand almost done and my head's in a hole...

... oh look, it's trent reznor! just kidding. i'm a tad surly and giving way to bad jokes. it's the first day i've had to myself in a while and i'm celebrating by being a mopey-pants. my life is in a lot of limbo recently and i'm not sure when it might STOP... i suppose it's up to me to make it stop as well, which is, of course, not the answer i want. what? take control of my own happiness? inconceivable! of all people i trust to make decisions, i'm the last on the list! alright, enough melodrama, really now.

5thousand is almost done... i have no real process shots of this one as that's something i've just picked up as habit... apologies. Here's a couple sketches and the painting as it stands today though...

chilling in the red room...

...detail...
this one, like a lot of them, has several levels of dialogue. it's about questions, change, the pain of growth and the pain of waiting for it. the moments of poignancy that make up an experience, and the knife's edge of uncertainty we sometimes linger on; scared to jump and scared not to. it's also about a friend, so while it's a conversation with myself, it's also a conversation with someone else. I like to work with people as subjects and as symbols in my work, and it means so much more to me if i know the face i'm using... when i paint you, i'm talking to you, about you, and, finally, using you to talk about myself. i hope you don't mind.

wednesday...

Blocked in some more. Slow changes. Short on time today between gym class and a night of poi practice in San Jose (which was AWESOME). I love active days that feel like progress was made, life was lived, sandwiches were eaten, muscles were tired, flowers were sniffed, fire was spun... FULL. Wish I could live more days that way and skip the days that feel like a lot of small pockets of time wasted and leave me frustrated and exhausted in an apathetic haze. Shhhh... focus on the good stuff...

today's work; starting a new one

I used to stick to finishing one piece before starting another, but recently, particularly since getting back into playing with oils and their glacial drying times, I've loosened up into letting myself have several paintings sharing head (and room) space... both are, clearly, at a premium.

This piece, at least at its inception, is "Colonization"... unless another word floats into the magic 8-ball of my mind that suits better. I sort of hope it does. It's speaking to how love and its intense and myriad hangers-on seem to take over my mind, distracting me from myself, my work and my center to the point of draining me out. It's also a companion piece to "5 thousand", which is floating about the Red Room, not done yet. It needed a friend.

The Room with its shiny new canvas.

The Project Manager is, as usual, concerned.
Some initial sketches.
GAH!
First pencils...
Hacking out some first background in acrylics...I'm always tempted to leave it like this and call it good. I love the liveliness of the pencil sketches; it often seems like some of that is lost in the finicking of finalizing.
Some first base-layering with acrylics... it looks like a horrorshow. And apologies for the odd angles and crops; I have 4 feet of depth to get away from my work, it makes for difficult photographing.
...and now it's almost 3 am.