But meanwhile back in the small world of art...

I am occasionally amazed at how art affects us. I mean, really affects us. While I'm mucking around in my studio, I never think about what someone else might think of my endeavors. After a work is finished the thought might cross my mind, but only after I've questioned my own integrity and the act of making is done. And then it's usually at some base level of aesthetics or "skill" or conceptual prowess, that I try and imagine all the critical voices trying to get a word in edgewise.

So to think about what stirs people, what inspires us, what motivates us to walk in a studio and make something when no one is looking, just never enters my mind. I've always thought I just do it because it's there.

Why I feel that act needs to be justified and why for some reason I can feel selfish and self-indulgent for engaging in this pursuit is a secret struggle of mine. For one, I sabotaged myself at a very early age so I would force myself to have fewer options. My dad actually thought I might grow up and be– I'll never forget this– VICE-President of a bank.

I won't go into details about why banking and why VICE-president rather than president, but suffice to say, the first thing that occurred to me was VICE-president? The second thing that occurred to me was that it felt like wishing your daughter would go to prison. (My dad died shortly after I received my BFA, so just for the record, he appreciated art and encouraged me as a kid, though again for the record, I'm pretty sure he wanted me to paint nature and wildlife scenes because he would summons me into the room whenever Bob Ross was on television.)

So, in an early attempt to remove options, I decided around the age of 13, I would never learn to type. And apparently I decided never to paint wildlife scenes, perhaps because of Bob Ross's hair, but probably because I had been reading Artnews and Art in America since I was 10, thanks to a gift subscription from my aunt and uncle. Voila! It worked. I took a typing test once for a temp job and I typed something like 18 words a minute, using two fingers. They put me on phones. I don't do phone either. Thank God no one called, but I wrote haikus on post-it notes for 8 hours just to keep from going crazy. Me in a center cubicle of a property management company on one of the top floors of the Sears Tower. Nothing else in the room, but me, a phone, a desk, glossy pictures of sexy hi-rises, post-it notes and a pen. Maybe they felt sorry for me and installed a prop phone, because I swear NO ONE called. Oh and I'm pretty sure I wore my "funeral dress" and pantyhose with my Doc Martens.

Anyway, I was recently and pleasantly reminded about the larger dialogue we all engage in when we make and look at art. And how big that world is. And that I'm really not a selfish mofo for stubbornly clinging to my desire to walk in my studio and pick up a paintbrush for no apparent reason other than I can. And that it's okay to be homesick occasionally and that all of that, along with everything else I've written thus far, filters in the making somehow.

Whew. I love being an artist.