Portrait

I often joke about the pool we belong to being a cult. We hang out together, we volunteer for stuff we don’t want to do because it’s necessary, we share food and parenting duties. But it’s a cult I’m thrilled to belong to, so it’s OK.

Years ago, I team taught a senior seminar with a sculpture teacher. We were far too like minded and both tended to shrug a lot when we couldn’t find anything to say. The students were awesome so our input wasn’t truly necessary. I very clearly remember a student showing us a large oil painting and we both struggled to make meaningful comments. The student was frustrated and asked if we even liked painting.

“Sure, but it’s not my thing.” I replied.

This resulted in a long discussion of classical approaches to art. I don’t remember that part of the conversation but I remember thinking that I actually did like painting but I didn’t feel like doing it.

Flash forward 20 years and I’m painting with watercolors a lot. I’ve decided that I like painting now. Elizabeth Peyton’s portraits occupy a special place in my heart and so this might be my new cult.

building monsters

There’s a great article by Stephan Jones titled Like Father, Like Son. He is the son of People’s Temple founder Jim Jones. He talks about a terrible memory of his father throwing a giant rock into their yard. I can’t recall if this was aimed at his mother, it probably was. In his memory, the rock and his father’s figure merged to create a monsterous silhouette. It reminds me of the story in Blind Assassin by Margret Atwood when the narrator’s sister see their father dressed as Santa. It wasn’t that she thought he looked different with the hat and beard (there may have been a candle or two on his head) but rather that he finally looked the way she had always imagined him.

Visiting

I think a lot about dreams. I feel like the filler, the comfortable narrative structure is gone. Our brains create hierarchies separating sensory inputs, memories are grouped and regrouped.

A lone figure can become a monster, a house becomes a sanctuary and it’s components can become talismans. A pet serves as a symbol. We classify and reclassify to make little mountains.

Sometimes pain becomes sticky for me like the game Beautiful Katamari. Small hurts and worries become unbearably large, looming over the landscape like a giant.

Maybe the dream-time version of our brains is the opposite of Beautiful Katamari, our own coded sorting system choosing a representative from mental piles to construct a showcase we can’t decipher.

Destination

I think it’s interesting to think that what you start out making is not going to be what you finish with. The intent is the starting point but the process changes the content as you go. That needs to be OK. Sometimes the longer I work on something, the closer it gets to the intent. Sometimes the distance grows.

Can I burn this now?

One of my greatest teachers was Sarah Bagley, my childhood weekend art teacher and family friend. She used to say that only 10% of what you make is going to be good. No one piece of advice has helped me more. It’s so important to remember that you need to make a lot of work to get to that 10%.

Chase

I’ve always liked watercolors. My best friend and I took a weekend class in high school and I must have committed our teacher’s every word to heart.

It’s kind of cool to have an art making process that hasn’t changed over time. So much about video and animation is about the changing tech and learning new programs.

I’ve been painting pictures of the crowds of 9/11 and also Ja’Marr Chase of the Bengals.

Witches

I’ve been trying to think about word loss. People with memory issues often flip words or names but there is usually a rhyme to the reason. Pants become towel depending on the person. I think that the threads of association are how our or brain compress memories.

Concrete and bricks and pie crusts have cracks. On rainy days, our neighbor would let us stand on her porch while we waited for the bus. So I associate widows and perfectly styled Mary Lou Retton hair with foggy bus lights and the silent neighbor who lived across the road. If my mind stopped sorting correctly, what would I associate with witchcraft?

Echolocation

I wonder if some people are tuned into the presence of others better than others? Can you tell when you’re alone in the house?

Smile, you’re on candid camera

It’s interesting to think about how accustomed people are to being filmed compared to 30 years ago. Analogue video and film were a finite resource so there was almost always a moment of tension preceding it. You can almost see the guarded expression, the squaring off of shoulders, the leveling of gaze.

Loss

I live with a certain amount of clutter. Having worked in media for years, so much of it is on VHS or dvd. Do I convert it or let it go?

Move forward or archive the past?

When it feels like the walls are closing in

I’m going to paraphrase Nadia Bolz-Weber here:

Remember that millions of human beings throughout history have lived through worse political situations and still managed to make art, and find joy, and share meals and resist despair.

Toymachine

I saw a Toymachine bumper sticker yesterday. I had forgotten how much I liked their Tallly Ho. Maybe I’d forgotten the connection to Ed Templeton? Maybe I never knew and liked both entities independently.

Ron Tammen

I had the same penpal for 35 years. He was a kind soul with a foul mouth named Brian. His Grandmother called him Brine and when she passed away, I started calling him by the same name. We met on a Project Close UP trip in Washington DC.

In high school, I was pretty caught up in the web of romantic intrigues so it took me quite awhile to realize that a boy writing me long letters on a regular basis wasn’t rooted in romance. I blame teen romance novels for this skewed worldview (I’m open to a class-action lawsuit, if anyone is interested). Luckily, I didn’t let my idiotic mindset keep me from staying in touch with him. Handwritten letters turned into emails in 2001 and we wrote to each other consistently until his death this Spring. We talked about dating, politics, religion and unsolved mysteries like Ron Tammen. It’s a very strange thing to be connected to someone in only one way — Brian didn’t do any social media that I know of so I only knew something was wrong because our communication ceased.

I have 580 emails from him and dozens of letters. I realized (in a foggy state) that his words are my words now. There will be no more transmissions from the young man from Alaska with the low voice and the big smile.

I’m sorry I didn’t write more.

dreams from future media

I’ve always been a little skeptical of the originality of my dreams. I have a pet theory that they are crafted out of tv shows from the future. We perceive time as linear but what if I’m pulling material from tv shows I’ve watched in what I perceive to be the future?

Security Camera

Memories are so strange. I wonder if younger people remember their past differently because of the proliferation of imagery they consume? Do they remember imagery differently than I do, in picture form, because that is the way that our past has been presented to us? Can you remember gestures and movement or impressions? How did the existence of photography alter people’s memories? Do my sons remember the past in motion?

Visual literacy

Once upon a time, I taught visual literacy for a couple years. The concepts were deceptively simple: how people read pages, where your eye is drawn, how memory effects image processing. We talked about picture books a lot which was really fun and prompted cool discussions.

It’s easy to say the words, your memories affect the way you process visual information but it’s so much larger than that. It ripples over everything. If you’re pushing a stroller, trash cans on the sidewalk catch your eye. If you’re worried about the weather, you look up at the sky. If you’re grieving, you notice the signs of funeral homes.

Falling

I did a series of painting of people falling. Technically jumping as a lot of them were of people cliff diving. But, underneath it all, are the images of people jumping from windows on 9/11. I don’t really have the right words and I don’t think that’s necessary. Sometimes, letting things echo is better than speaking.

marks

My friend recently if I knew how to draw. It was a strange question that I’ve never been asked before. People that know me have seen me leave pictures here and there. If they know me better, they have probably seen me draw or drawn with me. It’s something I do a lot.

Anyway, I’m going to scan some old slides and some new drawings.