Let me introduce you to my new friend, the Los Angeles Freeway System.

Last night I documented a friend's performance at the Brand Library and Art Center. I was hoping to finish up in time to get to an open studio, also on that side of town, but by the time I was done, it was a crapshoot on whether I would have made it. Considering I'm not too good with finding my way around the Los Angeles foothills in the first place, I drove straight home instead. Straight, being the key word. I scored a perfect 100 for not veering toward the wrong freeway exchange at any point during the evening. Embarrassing as it may sound, when I don't pick the wrong exit on the freeway, I am elated. Countless times, I've had to pull off at the next exit, turn around and try it again. Painful. The drive home was nice but bittersweet. LA is beautiful at night with all the city lights twinkling; I'm driving a nice little sports car, and I have William Orbit, Strange Cargo playing. I felt like I was in a David Lynch Film and it made me a little sad. The whole trip was about 50 miles or the entire cd plus track one repeated.

All work and no play....

For some archaic reason I aim to stay tech-free on Sundays, but it rarely works. My father-in-law passed away this morning. I felt obligated to post that since I've posted everything else.

I had a fairly good day in the studio on Friday with some new paintings. For another archaic reason, I try not to paint on Sundays either, so I'm just kind of hanging out listening to the wind and the plants scraping against my window. I am sitting on the sofa and Fang and I are attached at the hip.

This morning I was at a brunch/project meeting with about 25 other artists. It sounds like an interesting project. Essentially there's an archaeological museum in a Ameila, Italy and for the first phase of the project, we've been invited to exhibit a introductory work in the museum. The second phase involves making something more site-specific for next summer. More details to follow.

I should probably try to do something fun soon. I could use some side-splitting fun. Otherwise, we're likely to become a scaled down version of The Shining over here.

I am back. I am very slow.

I'm back from Florida where the accident took place. My mother-in-law was killed instantly; my father-in-law is still in a coma. I'm still going through a divorce. I'm sad. That's an understatement. I've been back for a couple of days. I've slept through the morning alarm twice in a row now. Fortunately, I haven't had to be anywhere first thing in the morning. I've walked out to the studio and have noticed I have several small paintings in various stages. While at the hospital, I kept thinking what it must be like to work in a hospital. I'm not really into bodily fluids, other than my own, so I'm not sure I would make a good nurse, but for some reason I kept thinking about these people who work around sickness and injury all the time.

We brought in a Reiki practitioner one night. We pretended to understand what all the numbers meant on the monitor. We read. I learned than John Smith of Jamestown was somewhat egotistical, to say the least. I struggled with what to do with a box of See's candy I bought at the airport. Should I give it to the nurses? Leave it for other family members coming and going? Take it back home in case I wanted to eat a box of chocolates all by myself? I chose the latter.

Before all this happened, well, not before all of it happened, but some- a friend suggested I read the prologue to The Alchemist. It tells the story of Narcissus, only in the prologue, the author invents another ending, an epilogue, of sorts. In this version of the story, we read that the lake where Narcissus contemplated his beauty, is weeping for the death of Narcissus- not because Narcissus was so beautiful, but because in looking up at Narcissus' eyes, the lake was able to see its own beauty.

Tomorrow I will double up the alarm and get to work in the studio again.

I made a casserole because that's what we do.

Warning: personal. To skip directly to art content, scroll down to Paragraph Two.

I am in sadness today. We've had a tragedy in the family. Not my immediate family, but Matt's. I made some phone calls and a casserole. I haven't been able to work in the studio but I haven't been able to concentrate on much anything else either. Everyone else's life is going on, the wheels of commerce are still being greased and yet for some reason making art seems like a choice today. I don't want to make a black painting. I don't want to make a painting about death or the details surrounding it. Stepping in the studio to continue yesterday's trajectory using yesterday's palette doesn't feel right, but there's not much else I can do now either. I dropped some hints earlier, but Matt and I are splitting up, so it's a particularly difficult time even without the added weight. The bright side, if I can say that without sounding vapid or glib, is that death brings out what's important and removes the petty shit. I've been able to drop my stuff and place someone else's feelings ahead of mine for the day. Tonight may be a good night to catch up on reading and writing. I'll probably be flying across the country again this weekend.

Welcome to Paragraph Two:
I mailed my 2 little watercolors back to the Santa Monica Museum of Art for the Incognito show (May). The most creative thing I did today other than make a mac & cheese casserole from scratch was to title the watercolors. Titling is a serious endeavor for me. I don't like slapping a title (no matter how good) on a painting unless it fits the painting. So, sometimes, a month or more can go by and I'll notice that the painting has the wrong title if I cannot recall it immediately. When this happens I have no issues with changing the title if the painting is still in the studio. And needless to say, I don't like paintings to go out with the wrong title. I don't think they ever have because usually there's a lag time between the making and the showing or selling. Maybe I make too much of a big deal out of titles. At one point in my work, I had an elaborate alpha-numeric system and believe it not, knew more or less what each piece was. But then the whole thing got out of control, not to mention, it was rather robotic.

The titles I came up with today were,
"Portmanteau" and "The Girls Can Flirt And Other Queer Things Can Do." Of course, I know which is which. So obvious, right? I posted these about a month ago, but at the time they were untitled, so here we go again-

Pictograph

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...