Some Things.

The art world is super small, crazy small. I'm not talking about the online arts community or any of that, I'm talking about the nuts and bolts world of people who buy art, people who sell art and people who make art, and at some point those paths cross in the physical world.

Like this past weekend, which is how I discovered that a painting I thought was hanging 2000 miles away in a private collection is actually hanging here in Los Angeles in a private collection. I was at an opening and dealer I know showed me a picture of my painting on their cellphone. And, in an even bigger coincidence, the collector was at the same opening, so I had a chance to meet him and chat with him about how he acquired my work. It was a nice conversation. He's an amicable gentleman.
Everything's legit, apparently just some really bad timing and delayed correspondence. And I might add, an error in judgement on my part, for which I am now wiser. If the sale had taken place in California, then this link would have been useful.
(Addendum: I'm still open to the possibility that there was no error in judgement and no bad timing and that things happen for a reason, and I'll leave it at that.)

***

And then this morning I read where my comrade in a parallel universe, Steven LaRose has decided to fizzle out his blog. At first I was bummed. I mean this is not a eulogy or anything, but there are certain artist/bloggers who, whom I was particularly simpatico with and LaRose is one of them, and so I will miss the dialogue. FB is just not the same.

***

I may be posting less as well, not as an intentional desire to quit writing, but when writing about things such as life and art, and art and life, it seems that messy things are well, messy and best omitted from the public spheres. And when I start having to omit the messy stuff, then I feel self-censored, which is obviously my prerogative since I am the self doing the censoring, but there's a fine line between revealing what I had for breakfast, what I'm doing in the studio and how I'm managing a couple of difficult things in my personal life. It's hard to pull the strands. My goal is to keep working as I'm working, work a little more than I think I'm working (see Perceived Exertion scale), try and be more fearless and have some faith.

I'll place the twitter feed in the side bar. Just in case...

"Why the fck doesn't everybody love me?"

True that.*

More stuff from the Side Street podcast... this time via Jeff Poe. The D.I.Y. thing was brought up again; some Lilliputian ray of hope for older (35 up) and mid-career artists who are still emerging, (a phrase that needs to die now) and a lovely re-quote attributed to Hirsh Pearlman, "Good artists embrace their symptoms."

* I've been watching too many episodes of The Wire.

Podcast Synopsis

I'm so into podcasts now.

I linked to Side Street Projects podcast series a few posts ago. Mostly geared toward uber-emerging artists and mostly redundant info if you're over 23, or live and breathe art, but still some interesting POV's. I just listened to Irene Tsatsos, currently, the Director of the Artist's Pension Trust, formerly of LACE, formerly of Whitney Biennial and formerly of N.A.M.E. where I briefly met her through my friend, Mary Claire, who also worked at N.A.M.E., where I did a closed-circuit video performance and received my first review, starting with the great sentence, "My art school training prepared me well for the 'nirvana through monotony, John Cage would approve' style video of Mary Hackett. "Dart Board Maintenance" was the first piece that people got up and walked away from...." Okay, now that I've gotten that 6 degrees of separation out there and relived a minor review from grad school.

Juried shows. I used to tell students that maybe, maybe a juried show was okay just to test the waters, and although I did a few myself, say, when I thought all hope was lost and there was nothing to live for- I think juried shows suck. I am whole-heatedly against artists paying to show their work and I think fees are a big scam. I also think it's mercenary to charge artists for information that can be had for the price of a cup of coffee.

But that's my opinion. And thankfully, Irene and Jon believe this also. The sad thing is that smaller and not so smaller institutions in the hinterlands and people who need to rely on other's opinions seem to place importance on juried shows as if they seriously means something. And in some places, it's the only opportunity for artists. So, I guess it depends on your goals. Or how sad you feel.

D.I.Y. Yes, go D.I.Y! D.I.Y. shows get big points. I am so D.I.Y. at heart. Like, right now, I want to organize a D.I.Y. event! Yes, let's!

Websites, a good website. Some curators would rather look at a website than a disk. I could probably simplify my website. I hate to choose favorites, so I use my website as an archive or an atlas of sorts. If I had to pick just 10 images, I'd go crazy. So sad, because I'm a good editor. I just think the bigger picture is more interesting for me. My website is too big. I know this.

Auctions. Sure, selectively donate to auctions, but set a reserve price.

The usual stuff about networking and getting out to meet and mingle, except us artists over 30 and 40 get a break from traipsing around parties all night long. Thank God.

Kristi's going to be interviewed in a couple of weeks, so that's pretty cool.