a favorite new phrase (giving you some idea of how my latest slant of thinking goes )

"mutton dressed up as lamb"

various thoughts on working

Experiencing more spontaneity and fluency in my work. I guess this comes from age, feeling secure, achieving more balance in my life or, maybe, just an illusion of many of these elements when I've simply been blessed with these "abilities".
Recently have done some drawings and, now absent more intense scrutiny and many questions about just where to put the next line, these works seem to flow. This flow is only interrupted occasionally and, at that point, the started drawing has a very good chance of winding up in fragments on the paper recycle pile.
These days,  I cannot save a fragments of a started painting, but must start all over again, rather than try and come back next day/next hour and try and attach good new stuff to older good bits-I know this now to not only be a tendency for me, but also that the sew-together thing will be a Frankenstein-all stops and starts with no real flow. The act of salvaging doesn't work for me in this respect.
A good feeling comes from destroying old work that no one seems to take notice of (there's too much work around here as it is!)...I'm not so sure that it is an old (good) work that is being annihilated or that perhaps that sacrifice is worth making way for the new stuff to come. Maybe this is a kind of balance or trade-done in the interest of (valuable) real estate.
It really is incredible to me that mornings are the most valuable time for me when it comes to creative thinking and effective working. A supposition: that each individual has a "perfect" or "good" time to do their thinking/working. Guess it might be informative to ask arrive, if only to satisfy my own curiosity.
Additional note: I'm starting to dream a lot more about my work...last night "returned" to an old photo I've seen (could not find it this morning)-foggy b+w scene of two air balloons ascending in a foreign field-this may lead to a new work...

A hound on a long trail....and so far, relentless...

A Grouse is a bird

Here we are, a few centuries later
still fighting "the good fight"
I cleaned the fridge today-was this a creative act?
It could be similar, causing me to ask "what good did this bring?"
"was it really necessary?" "Was value involved?"
Results (almost) the same as making all this damn artwork.
Self-gratification? Here's a big difference: the refrigerator took up the same amount of space
before AND after. Not so with this useless crap called art-is it just me who thinks of the stuff that way?
Or is it even more useless to others...why did he make this shit?
Comparisons to the religious pop into my head...am i just one more sister in workduds
calling on God, with a more non-sensical plea...
Capital "F" stands for faith, make no doubt about it....but the word "faltering" comes along, trying to oust it- poking fun at the word in all its ramifications.
Penance?
How do you get away with  spending valuable time and money on things,-no, on pipe dreams-with no discernible commercial return or integrity?

pain

It's a mystery.
Neither Laura or I know what it is.
Knowing it will not change things, but still…
After a mammography and two (count 'em) MRIs,
we know nothing except fear.

Driving home today after an early trip.
Sun bright in my eyes and, with relief,
crying to myself in the car- to the children's tune
of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star".

Pain for what might be.
Pain for what may not be.

Is this what's called failure?

Wiser (?) voices in my head tell me to stop making stuff-after all, who needs it? Who wants it?
I look around me and see what I deem to be lesser work flying out of studios, galleries, shops.
Is my work really that bad or is it that my opinion/taste is badly skewed?

A hound on a very long bad trail

Granted, I can't sell ten dollar bills for five bucks, but my salesmanship should be an irrelevant point. After all, shouldn't the work stand up for itself? Maybe not-for one thing, there's so much out there clamoring for one's attention. Or maybe I'm just so damn naive-to continue the analogy, that dog don't hunt…
A foolish thing to make work that's useless, yet to keep on with it. OK, admittedly, I think I'm doing good stuff. And besides, I do enjoy the act of working.

You'll know when I croak-watch for the huge bonfire.

A quandary along the road: more older, more confuser

I'm working on seven sculptural pieces right now.
All but one, they are all fairly well along in terms of completion.
But in working towards completion, I now question each one to the point of deadlock-
Does the piece have relevancy? Does it use too many "cliches"(conventional and/or personal)?
Am i repeating myself? Is this work too remote from "my" style (voiding consistency, therefore  credibility)? Shouldn't "good "work take longer to create?
Is this a spin with insecurity or a valid questioning?
Beginning the pieces, there were none of these doubts-I wouldn't have taken them so far along.
Working with them for so long, I'm now blind to seeing them objectively.

What old looks like

Several days away from the age mentioned in a song (First hearing this song while still a teenager, I clearly remember thinking the idea as so remote it couldn't even be a possibility), I am turning 64.
I've given up time to get to this place-and maybe some brain cells that help memory and some musculature that now causes me to recover not so quickly. Did I mention hair? Everything else seems to be still here.
I've gotten somewhat wiser, as the old adage promised (and more confused, according to another, more sarcastic adage).
I mourn the loss of many people and things, but I've always been sentimental. I've still never skied, can't swim very well, can't ride a bike hardly at all (poof! went the biker image) and cannot speak Spanish well (But I sure have tried!)
I have few close friends, but many good acquaintances. Like Superman,  I can see through artifice and, like Bill Skrips has always been, am a skeptic at every turn.
I managed to get my ass out of the locale I call my hometown-for better or worse. Spent many years in a big city and now can say I've lived in several rural locations. As any who know me know, I make art (again, for better or worse). Yes, I do other things, but this is what I got put here (or crawled out from under a rock) to do.
Yesterday, courtesy of NPR, I heard a young man interviewed who stated that whenever he left his comfort zone, things got a) interesting b) challenging  c) more rewarding than staying in his comfort zone. I had to take this with a grain of salt-not that I disagree, but it seemed almost flippant the way he spat it out-or maybe it's easy for him. Or maybe it is either the resiliency or ignorance of the young. The comfort zone is something I've struggled with a lot.
I will only say that (in my opinion) a comfort zone is where you feel  secure in your methods and products. Or you happen to be selling work hand over fist-you may not understand why or how you got there, but why rock the proverbial boat?
But this could also be a euphemism for a rut.
If this is why you started making art, fine. Stop there-read no further.
In full disclosure, if I were famous and selling work like hotcakes, my view here might go unquestioned and therefore I might not even be writing this.
But it's good and healthy to question your path/discipline/technique/subject, the life you chose to follow, especially when at it a long time. Much like car tires and water filters, check for wear (and rotate).
A comment I heard the other day was that we (artists) leave our critics and criticism behind when we finish art school. This leaves only you as the do-it-all critic for your work, unless you are a lucky sonofabitch. By this I mean you have someone you trust AND who is honest AND who is objective to offer you real observation on what someone from the "outside" sees (or finds lacking) in your work. I'm not talking about a sycophant or a groupie that loves you no matter what. A stone-cold critic is what is wanted. Too bad we can't hire talent for this, to get criticism from those who do not know/care about us, but are involved enough in the art world to proffer real insight.
Back to the young man and his comment.
It is hard to tear myself away from what I consider a good and pleasing and natural direction, to immerse myself in a strange and unknown medium. But I find painting (relatively "foreign" to me) to be the easier choice as it offers escape from my sculpture and a way out of my "comfort" zone.
But what is the result here? After getting my hands (literally) wet, can I honestly say that painting is the ticket, the way to new and earth-shattering experience?
Of course not. But the rawness/newness, the challenge, the not-being-able to work with eyes shut IS the reward. A ticket out of that comfort zone. To try and quantify the results here is akin to rating any new experience you have had in life…much like Wonder-Bread, all new experience helps to "build bodies in twelve different ways!"

Latest in toys and canines

Will have to keep you posted…I bought some circuit-bendable items on which I'm going to do some work (Speak + Math and a Casio SK 1) AND an Arturia MiniBrute, which is a somewhat serious synthesizer…course, i have dreams of teaching myself music so i can "record" just what i'll do with this new toy (outside of make some very strange sounds)…
Dropped my Letterpress class as i just feel time right now is too valuable to commit to a 16 week schedule. This may also have something to do with the new dog that I brought into the household yesterday…at this point nameless (outside of the name given him by the shelter: Mork-I'm guessing that the name just came to the shelter, and after viewing literally hundreds of shelter dogs lately, naming each has got to be a daunting and necessary task).
He's a quiet pooch so far-his shelter photo made him look a lot like Sharkie, but he's about ⅓ of Sharkies' size and he needs to gain weight. We think there is some Rottweiler in his mix, but really dunno for sure. Disappointed in his size, but after one night, i think he's a keeper. He is not at all fickle about food, which marks him as one of mine-I've always been lucky with dogs that eat everything…Sharkies' favorite is watermelon and the only thing he turns down (but only occasionally) are slices of grapefruit.

Questions about making sound

Today I'm wondering why I'm looking at an "instrument" that makes music/noise that is not recordable or amplifiable (in other words, I'd make the noise for myself-the music/noise is not repayable nor commercially viable and, unless I play for an audience as well as my own ears, is heard )…"why oh why would you want to do this? " you ask-my answer is that it's the same as making art without a buying/paying audience…the old, "if a tree falls in the forest…" routine. Does this weaken the personal experience? If there is an audience, does it weaken that audience's experience?

What about photographs? Do we make/take them to validate our experiences? To keep a souvenir or a proof of our experience? Is my experience any lesser if I do not have a camera? Is it possibly a richer experience? If i do not see your photograph does it lessen the sharing of your experience?
So here's the difference: the art making that i do creates a product. The noise/music making that i do creates a product that is ephemeral/fleeting and stuck in time. This is also true for most of the conversing I do with others. Not so true with the computer, which, I've been promised, keeps an "eternal" record of what actions or typed verbiage have been created on it.
Is this last bit for purposes of liability? A wholesale human ego trip? or just the side effect of the machines with which we are so thoroughly inextricably engaged?

Art gets made because I make art- the same is true for the noise and speech I make, which generally is not recorded. Unless we are having a VERY bad day, I do not question this-"it's what I do…" Maybe the art question has fewer issues because there is always a product (this being true for the type of art that i make)

Thoughts Overheard

From bits of an interview with Stephen Jenkinson and Justine Toms 5/21/16

"…hopefully your heart has all kinds of fingerprints on it…"

…and it has been broken and is still broken (as proof of your being alive)…

"Lets' be alone together" Leonard Cohen

This interview was about aspects of dying, losing a loved one, grief...

Lost in the crowd

I couldn't help thinking about the enormous amount of (new) films available for public consumption seemingly each and every week. Sure, we can categorize and discount many-either because of personal preference or simply eliminating those made to be candy for the eye or brain. But each week there are a huge wave of new ones for consideration.
"Art" films now seem to also be a dime-a-dozen. Increasingly, audiences want more to the point where none of the films (to this add music, visual art, theatre, ad nauseam) seem to stand out, to be able to be heard among the "madding crowd".
This seems to me to be leading to a "numbing (note the "n") down" of our senses. I do not propose to know a "cure"-perhaps it's in reality a very good thing. But it seems to me that there are so many fish in the cinematic ocean out there that many good efforts are simply lost in the crowd. Unfortunately, i find this true with the other arts as well.
Are these the effects of population explosion? Advanced technology that allows greater access to tools?  Social media laughing at the very idea of privacy and/or exclusivity? Finally, is this a good or a bad thing?
As a member of the old school and approaching what I suppose to be the geriatric, i mourn the loss of what has gone missing in the crowd…but i'm not sure that that matters anymore.

Waiting for Johnny

Could the pain be any greater if the one hurting were human and not our dog?
The guilt I feel when he is asleep, in between seconds of painful motion
or hideous wavering, when he's too stoned from the drugs to even move-that guilt is all my own…Endlessly questioning whether there is anything more I could do for him. I do not deserve this easy rest while he has simply dropped into an exhaustion from his efforts to control his pain.
And the questions about my intent-are the drugs to keep him placid and numb or for me to feel as if I'm really doing something for him?
I remember sitting next to my father as he finally stopped breathing-that seemed so quick, so easy (the nursing home was quick after that last breath). Laura and I take turns sitting as Johnny ekes out yet one more breath, hoping against hope that there may be a way to save him, that we will not have to say goodbye.
The tears come easily at first, but gradually, after you feel like you've scraped your guts to relieve the pain and held your breath and whimpered your loudest until no sound or helping person comes-then, comes the dryness. Empty. The mourning is played out in sobs more concept than real.

Nan comes with her needles and stretcher. I'm too goddamn old to dig him a good grave. Johnny is whisked away-no, only his body is taken. He still fills this house. He stands outside the glass door-somehow, Johnny is once more a bouncing puppy, eager to be in our arms again.

And today there is snow, which he loved to roll around in upside down in order to grab bites of the stuff.

Drawing

I love books. I love empty sketchbooks.
Simply put, i've always found books to be a "down the rabbit hole" proposition-In other words, an adventure. Happening by chance upon The Hobbit when I was very young ( I had time to explore the library whilst my Dad would stack up new detective novels) certainly added to the excitement of possible discoveries between paperboard covers.
Cracking open or even purchasing a brandy-new sketchbook has had a similar feel, but I feel as if this has lately fallen short for me. I do not put together great drawings or even decipherable notes. I have sketch-book envy when it comes to this, thinking almost anyone else could put together a better bunch of inchoate scribbles than me. I do think about destroying these books, so as not to have a messy trail left behind me.

Starting out

After reading an article that cited several artists' beginnings-the moments when they first knew that they were going to be in the "creative" field, I'm a bit blank.

Here's several incidents I remember:

Making something out of clay in a pre-kindergarten special session, accompanied by both Mom and Dad. After splashing some primary color on this (and having the notion that I didn't know WTF I was doing), this object came home in a shoebox. The diorama has always been of interest to me and here I am, eons later, still working within the confines of the box…calling Sigmund….

A class session in Junior high School (aka 7th or 8th grade) in which we looked at Bridget Riley's OP Art paintings and were asked to do a graphic impression of same. Turns out, I was able to draw some fairly concentric rings. This, in turn, won me some praise from the instructor. Again, I didn't know just what I was doing or why I was doing it, but it got me some sorely-needed approval.

A set of watercolor paints was purchased for me at J.J. Korvette's. Dunno if I asked for these or if this was my Dad's desire to see his son become the artist he wanted to be (but was severely torn about, as later, when things got more serious for me and I wanted art school, not college). In true form, I was given some sheet rock panel scraps to paint on, made a mess (but a mess with intention: a seascape) and forgot about the watercolors (I'm still fairly allergic to this medium).

Wish I'd some beautiful/funny/tragic story to tell about my first steps towards becoming an artist, but this is the best I've got-pretty boring, yet all true.

dream

The bloodstone ring.
The Yellow L.T.D.
Outdoor showers with sand and sunburn.
Jessie.
The attic where we found the top hat and tails
from some gone era.
Some picnic table by a forgotten Jersey lake.

Jeanie was back with me last night, like some old ghost.
She, smiling her smile, seemed to forgive everyone for her
bouts with Lupus and early death.
The dream left me with tears in my eyes.

Her visitation  preceded by Cara-she treated me
like a stranger when i stumbled into the old house,
filled with odd folks
who did not want me there, but still filled with my artwork.
I thought I had a right to be there, but was
told the opposite. We met, amongst these strangers,
who wanted me gone. We strolled around the house,
recalling some good from our past.
I left her by the strange stairway created by a hotel
that somehow got built almost on top of the old place.

letterpress

I find myself drawn to the letter form, like mathematics and straight (er) form are breaking their way into my life. I could say this is by hook or crook, but i know I have a part in welcoming them in. How long will they stay? Dunno.
I've always loved books, but not necessarily the kind created by the artist. When younger, i did some work with some old Thompson catalogs and a whole box of remaindered (and, I assume, forgotten) novels I picked up at the Salvation army store. These followed what i was doing at the time, taking a number of pages and cutting them into an imaginary topographic contour map. Then adding/subtracting successive layers…but , anyway, I love the printed page far more than the altered one.
I wonder if this will change, seeing as how, with the purchase of a LOT of letterpress equipment, my work will most definitely be influenced.
Stay tuned.

SteamPunk

Who the f%*k ever came up with this word?
Humans who use this as a descriptive for anything and everything that they are too lazy to otherwise describe should be forced to be (re?) educated in the use of the English language…
and , yes, I'm becoming a grumpy old man AND a bitter old artist…but, please let this buzz-word cease to exist and become supplanted by yet another inane bit of slang.

Same

Is it me or the area we now inhabit or maybe the times we live in?
Now that cities and towns and even lil' villages are more homogenized, that is, infected with the same American box stores and rubber stamp "restaurants", it seems that the art I see becomes more mediocre by the day.
I wonder if this is one reason that the art market is doing so poorly: more and more, everything looks the same. After experiencing the shock value art that was prominent thirty five/forty years ago and then the pink hair and punks that followed it, I found real drama (meaningful content optional). Of course this was preceded by works that needed large warehouses in order to be seen…. and earlier yet, Andy's (et al) sarcastic contribution of Pop imagery-what went wrong? Where have we gone? Or , more to the point, not gone?
Like the cliche that history is doomed to repeat itself, it seems to me little was learned. Or maybe the LCD factor has a stronger hold: "art should be about making nice pictures, about making us laugh….and about happier times (even if we we never experienced this brand of nostalgia).
The majority of what I see out there are artists who have long ago stopped challenging themselves and joined the ranks of the Sunday painter, copying themselves (or others) ad nausea.
Born a pessimist, I expect few miracles from an art community that purports to be on the beam of the contemporary ("Western" painters excepted). But when I look for a pulse and feel nothing, I think it's time to wake up and smell the coffee.

Frustration

So, with age comes knowledge-or more knowledge, so it's said. This thought occurred to me as I cracked open "Anna Karenina" for the second time in my life. Remembering far back when I tried the book in my twenties, it now seems far clearer, far more interesting than what I remember.
What brought me to the book (for the second time) was reading the list of books a favored author of mine stated as being quite influential. Using the list, I knocked off Eliot's "Middlemarch" (loved that huge thought-filled tome), Stegner's "Angle of Repose", Dicken's "Bleak House" earlier in the year. I'd read "War and Peace" centuries ago (almost in a beer-bet, just to see if I could do it) and got very little out of it-and very little of it remains with me.
Anyhow, we get to a certain point in our lives and things just seem to be clearer, our understanding growing exponentially. This is true for me with my artworking as well. I'm facile, truly capable of "feeling" whether a work has merit ( not trying to be pretentious here, but feel as if my intuition and taste is genuinely sharp) and able to plunge more deeply into the work. Finally, I "understand" painting ( I'll leave anyone who is reading this to gauge just what that means on their own) -a claim which I could never make some years back.
So here's my question: are other people born with better understanding of these things so that they do not need to claw their way up the long ladder of understanding? I'm old at this point, yet here I am with vast new chapters opening up for me. It took me so long to get to this "learned" place-so is the point of life (uh-oh, time for all those not ready for this headiness to back off) to achieve this pinnacle and then croak? Seems damn unfair that now (I said this a moment ago) all these new pathways are opening up for me. Sure, I've heard that the journey is the thing, but after all these years I'm just knocking at the door and, painfully, I know of the huge possibilities beyond, yet I'm starting to stumble from exhaustion -a "life well-lived".
So is the point to just climb up (or not) from whatever intellectual level we are born with? Acknowledging that I'm standing on tall shoulders, isn't there some sort of boatman/Charon we can pay off so we can more quickly get to the meat of the matter and use our life's energy to go beyond the "mere mortals" span and be able to plunge into the riches behind the doors?

Heaven

Having four dogs here (two are "borrowed") is the best thing I've ever  known, even tho' these guys get underfoot (not easily moveable at 60, 65, 85 and 90 pounds) and having something to eat always means having to contend with begging (course, I trained them well in this regard). Having them in the shop as companions is also terrific, even though their commentary on my work is usually nil-or at least not at all audible. We will lose Zeke soon, as his owner will return after a two month absence. Rojo has not been around too much lately, either. But i chalk that up to the boiling temperature we've experienced lately.
Thought we might be taking in another dog while we stayed in Taos, finding this black female silky-haired job playing dodge-ems with the cars and trucks on highway 68. Took her home, overnighted her  (a night spent trying to sleep in my van to avoid her barking all night long) and found her owner the next day.