May 24th

I know-it's Bob Dylan's birthday.
But also my Dad's and also my parent's anniversary.
They'd have been married 66 years-jeezus-if they were alive.Dad made it to 90 and Mom to 89. Both long-lived and bothhad a fairly good death, if there is such a thing.

Today I remember their wedding, (which I did not attend) and, oddly enough, thinkof my grandfather, Poppy (as he was known to me)…I imagine him smoking at the wedding and wonder about his thoughts. I wonder just what he thought of my Dad-or for that matter, his daughter…

A practical man, who could do anything, fix anything and (as I believe) always wanted to be a farmer and till the land to make his living. He was a baker among other things.  I have a terrific photo of him, braced against the side of a barn and (seemingly) racing his bicycle. He was wounded in the Great War-a sapper on the front lines in (?) Belgium or France.

I always thought my Dad could fix anything, but I now know that he could and did not. He sure as hell made a good show of it…I think only his insecurity let him down and he second-guessed himself and left certain problems untouched.

One of these problems he left untouched was his shyness. He (seemingly) never questioned it and it saddled him AND my Mom.  As a result, my parents as a couple rarely mixed with others and even family parties could present a problem.

I said to someone the other day that I'd grown up very shy. There was disbelief in their eyes.
Guess you could say I've come a long way since I used to hide behind they house when I heard a stranger approach down the street….now I have a hard time shutting up.

This is a ramble, but that's just what i meant it to be….

I'll attach my latest, which is a re-do/re-working of a sculpture-i think this one finally "works"
for me…Bill

Layering

Considering I'm about to go and move my new (to me) heavy etching press (with the help of some well-paid movers), the word of the day is layering.
A concept new to me. One that I've not trusted in the past-I was and am inclined to think that the more you put on, the better your chances of coming out smelling like a rose.
Perhaps I confused the issue and, because I liked art that showed layers i thought that this must be too easy. Sorry- that was not very clear, but I'm not ask very clear about this whole layering thing.
BUT, all that being absolutely mangled, yers truly has started to think more in terms of layers and layering.  This is pretty important in printmaking-they seem to refer to different layers as "drops".
Wrapping my brain around the idea that I'll be putting one pc of paper through a press many times is a real challenge. Sure, it can be  a problem but quite exciting as well.
I will tell you that so far, most of my layered print work has NOT come out smelling like roses.

Happy?

That was the title for some old PIL album…

 "The way to achieve happiness is to try for perfection that is impossible to achieve, and spend the rest of your life trying to achieve it." (Winston Churchill)

Since my last post was about the futility of trying to make important art (no, I never did publish or finish it), i'm gonna try and be a bit more cheery this time around. The above quote seism to suffice for my life efforts, but I could modify it as I am no perfectionist-or maybe my idea of perfection (at least when it comes to making art) does not match anything I've ever heard or read. Oh god, you say, here comes another boring rant on the artists' thoughts. Nope.

Despite all my complaining, there is one thing I can't argue with: the drive that keeps me going, that keeps me making new stuff,  is a unique gift that I need to be thankful for on a daily basis.
Lately, I've been burning rubber making lots & lots of prints in the Community College workshop.
You'd be seeing them here if I could only get some photos (read, if i would only take some photos)…
I've signed up for another class to replace the one about to end ( I'm already having withdrawal pains about this) and this week hope to get a little used etching press delivered to the studio. Not that little, As i've hired folks to move this lil' monster….
Painting is going well and no one is more surprised about this than me. I'm finding that i do not debate whether or not to change a painting that has some good elements to it-this has been fatal to my painted work in the past…I kind of get stuck on a "nice" part of the thing , which turns into an anchor of sorts and makes me sacrifice that whole to leave the beloved part intact. No more. It was a painful process to jump in and paint over, modify or scrape out at first, but the rewards here have been good. The rewards being that the challenge remains. The end product? Well, be it good or bad I get to reap the good part of the process and all the learning and all the effort that entails.
Sculpture has been taking a back seat lately and i feel as if some of the 3D working has been a bit trite.
I do not feel "rutted"about this as there has been so much other stimulation in the painting and printmaking.

and there is still a constant flow of new ideas, brimming over in the old brain.
Who needs a bucket list-I hope to be able to pass some of these ideas on before I croak.
And I really feel - even beyond becoming a teacher- I can still inspire folks around me to make more different better art.
Yet another "blessing".

Doubt

How often does doubt come for a visit?
Doubt came in today and has not yet left. Ok, ok, so we are talking about a matter of an hour or so. Maybe it's just the contrast: I've been riding pretty high lately on some of my recent (so-called) successes in the printmaking area. I conjured up some older images of my work on Google today and it gave me pause-what was I thinking?
And, worse than that, where am I going? I've no great plans to head off in a new direction (at least with my sculpture)…
This makes me wonder all the more if success is definable as those with the greatest degree of self-assuredness and bravado, aka the biggest cojones. Today, EVERYONE's work looks better than mine: deeper, smarter, cooler, etc.
Is this necessity-a "dues-paying" required by all artists? Like living in a garret and starving (of course, I've done both!). Or is this why everyone else's' work is crap-or so we jealous folks see it-to bolster our own crummy work?
I'll try and pass this off as a mood and not such a good one at that.

It's a good thing-I'm going for a hike- no art working for me today.

monoprint workshop

This class I've taken at the SF Community College is eating up all my spare time. For the money, I can't think of a greater bargain: a weekly 5 hour class with 3 days of open studio available-that totals about 20 hours of working time…
I'm pulling about 5-10 prints a week (wasting print paper, which ain't cheap, just like I always threatened I'd do!).
Exhausted from thinking in such a different mode-my studio is presently gathering lots of dust. If anyone from back home should ask me if the move out here has changed my work, now I can give them a hearty "Yup!", as I'm still thrilled with the new painting and even that excitement has been superseded by this class in mono print…
I do have to take some snaps of the above mentioned-I'm so far behind in taking shots of my work…if I ever needed help in the studio, that's the one place I'd ask for it.
Seeing a new therapist for my back/sciatic issues and so far so good. Still in pain (I expect no instant cure-all here), but I like the tack she is taking: that i should get to know and read my own damn body and start intuiting cures/care, etc. Meanwhile, it's business as usual in Santa Fe-they really do have the most interesting forms of medicine and curative arts out here...