Report from the train car studio:

I had a super productive day in the studio yesterday. Like heightened sense of awareness productive. At first I was going to attribute this to my car being in the shop and being marooned at the studio on a freezing cold day. I was also going to attribute it to having left my glasses at home, so I was unable to check emails etc. But no. The mechanic called just after a few hours, so I retrieved my car, went home to get my glasses, shot myself up with an Americano, stopped at the art supply store on the way back to the studio to pick up white paint since I was also marooned without white paint, and painted out everything I had done to date on that painting- at which point it was looking to be a prehistoric landscape in a cave with a stripper pole to heaven. Perhaps that theme will be occur in another painting, but the scale was off this time. So when I reworked everything, the scale changed by maybe 100 and it turned into a more or less observational still life, present day. I worked until 4:30ish on only one painting, taking my grilled cheese, ff, and coffee break at 2:30 pm. The deli knows to put mustard packs in my bag. I like mustard with my fries.

I'm trying to refrain form posting these works until it's closer to the show (131 days) but I like it for reasons I am embarrassed to admit: it doesn't look like I painted it. I mean it does, given the direction of the last couple of years, but theoretically, I have eschewed having a recognizable style, because I like being uncomfortable. On the other hand, there are only so many places I'm interested in exploring/mining at present.

I'm chomping at the bit to post some recent works. I'm in one of those places where I'm really excited about them and I don't know if I've lost touch with reality.

One more thing regarding productivity. I made a playlist called Studio Repeat. It contained only a handful of songs and I played it maybe 30 times. I'm too embarrassed to tell you what the songs were.

Choo Choo Choose Me.

Today was the preliminary look through and meeting. Got keys, parking pass and building pass. Counting the bathroom compartment, I think there's a total of 4 or 5 compartments. One of the most gut-wrenching decisions I have to make will be whether to take the coffee or espresso machine. Assuming there's wi-fi, I have a feeling community video coffee break will be back under a new and improved name of course. It was a good meeting. I'm looking forward to this.

It's Halloween.

I pretty much sifted through all the good candy (gummy mummies, kit-kats, reese's pieces and whoppers) all week so whoever comes 'round tonight gets stuck with the B-list. I try. I really do.

At this point it's safe to say I'm blogging to make myself accountable. Feel free to tune in or out.
Here were my slack-off Sunday plans:
Walk
Yoga
Movie
Paint
Here's what I really did:
Scrubbed kitchen floor.
Scrubbed den floor.
Scrubbed most of the dining room floor.
Rearranged dining room in effort to make it into my winter studio  as opposed to the previously discussed living room studio. (The dining room gets MUCH better light than the living room, plus once I rip the wallpaper down, I will paint the walls walls. Oddly enough, ripping out wallpaper does rank as a priority on my todo list.)
Moved dining room furniture back in place.
Rearranged furniture in spare bedroom to accommodate one piece of unwanted dining room furniture and 3 chairs.
Moved easel from living room to dining room.
Moved Bazille chair from living room to dining room.
Tried to identify what I believe to be a 60 hz hum coming from center of house and attic. It's ever present, but I only notice it occasionally. I was obsessed with it today.
Brought oil paints inside.
Repainted old wooden bench thing where I keep my mobile paint bins.
Listed vintage camera gear on eBay.
Decided I am not the arts and crafts type after all and ditched Plan B for the time being.
I'm a tad freaked out at my need to scrub floors so frequently. It's not at all like me, but with rototiller dog, I don't have much of a choice.

I'm so thrilled with my new easel. Might I remind everyone I never used an easel until about 4 years ago. I've never painted an oil painting sitting in a chair either. How or why I've become so genteel in the studio is a mystery, but as seen here in two more paintings from The Birth of Impressionism Show at The Frist Center, those gents weren't pacing around slinging paint all willy nilly. And since I am in the process of reincarnating myself into a 19th c. painter, I, too, will sit at my easel this fall and winter. A gray wall. That's what I'll paint the studio wall.

A Studio in Batignolles Quarter by Henri Fantin-Latour. 1870.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Frédéric Bazille at His Easel. 1867

Dead Fowl. Will NOT be bringing dead fowl into the house, but I'm sure I can find a substitute around here. Dead plants, dead bugs. dead leaves, gimp furniture.

I am working, even though I do not know what I'm doing.

The two on the left and the last one on the right are in progress. The one of the far left has been in progress for a couple of months and has already transitioned through life as a pure abstraction referencing nothing, and life as a quasi- referential painting of a stump in the backyard. I had a good painting day on Thursday. I call these dejected abstractions. I trust at some point I will make large happy go lucky light and carefree work, when perhaps I am feeling largely happy lucky go light and free of care, but for now, I am enjoying the muted colors, solitary portraits, or otherwise clandestine meetings going on in this work. Did I mention I had a mouse in my studio? I saw him scamper across the floor and into the wall. This wall. The Wall of Progress. 

The Vexilologists

I don't know exactly where the flags come from but they sneak in every so often. I think of them as markers, a kind of triumphant declaration that I have been somewhere or conquered something, or perhaps they function as a sign that someone was there before me, maybe even me, in a previous incarnation. I finally will call the painting above finished, which means I will remove it from the working studio and place it in the living room viewing studio, which in all likelihood will become the winter working studio.

In progress, not yet titled.

I'm into slanted surfaces now where things could slip. I should post a better pic. I'll swap out later. Speaking of which, I also need to swap out my photos on flickr. They're too lo-res to share. 

I bet you thought I was kidding when I said I was going for the Bazille studio look. If only it worked. 

Note the Bazille studio chair. Fancy, eh? I sat in it the other day and stared at some paintings. Big news: I'd like to welcome my new easel, the Mabef M-09 to the indoor studio. It was on sale at my local Plaza art supply store. I just finished assembling it this evening while making cornbread from scratch in a cast iron skillet. I will now be able to work on small and medium size canvases when I am too much of a wimp to work in the freezing cold. I'm really happy I went with the M-09. I have the M-18 outside in the garage studio and the mast is too high for the ranch house ceilings. The M-09 clears the indoor ceiling by maybe inch. I still need to be careful. I am a big fan of Mabef. The movers bent one of my thumbscrews and Mabef sent over a new one from Italy, pronto. (It was the wrong one, but they're sending another one.) Mabef has a lifetime warranty on their easels and they're better priced than the competition. I should paint that red wall another more neutral color, but on my list of todo, it's just not that big of a deal for me. I need to paint-proof the floor though. I've become a neater painter now that I'm working small, but not that neat. Not that it matters, because for all practical purposes, I am invisible here, but that is another  story.

Oh, and about the movers. I rec'd a call from a detective up in Northern California and apparently one of the movers had my credit card number and my moving contract in his possession. I was not alone. The guy has been arrested on multiple counts of fraud. He was with Lighting Van Lines. It was a no-name van company located out of Northern California. The detective totally sounded like a detective, which ironically made me kind of suspicious. I imagined he was clean cut and wore a suit. He was pleasant though and gave me the task force website so I could double check everything.

Matt emailed me this Albert Oehlen painting from the Museum of Contemporary Art. He said it reminded him of me. Not the deer, I am assuming, but the style in which it is painted.

Curious.

I took all the figurines out of the curio cabinet and arranged them on the table like it was comic con. I call this prep work. 

Indoor/Outdoor

I worked on another corner of my universe this week-mainly because I needed a space where I could do studio visits that wouldn't be suffocatingly hot, and also because I wanted to play with how the work might be hung for the show in September. And also, as a test to see how Suburban Flatfiles or Suburban Flatfile Exchange would be laid out. At first I was against hanging the work in groupings or clusters- I thought it would be visually chaotic. I also didn't want someone to think it was a holiday art show of "small works." Notice my dismissive tone at the dine and dash baggage that smaller paintings carry. I can't help it. Elaine Mari recently revealed more or less how long she spent on some paintings and it made me want to do the same. I believe starring at a painting should be included in the time spent working on it. In fact, I have willed most of my work into being simply from starring at them. That's right, no hands. All mind work. Telekinetic painting.

This corner is in the Living Room, though we never lived in it. The furniture is formal. We used it at Christmas time. It is the room where as a child, I learned how to remove scotch tape from a wrapped package with technical precision of a bomb squad. I'm certain I have discussed this skill before.

But back to the paintings. The director's cut of the show title is officially:

Fluid: Elusive Chapters from The Passage of Time. Vol. 1. The Lost Months. Vol. 2. Pools and Flowers. 

The gallery will never run with that, because along with my name, the lettering would block out the sunlight on the gallery window, but I'm just letting you know, That's the show title. I don't know why I like long titles. Maybe it's an attempt to pack in more information, you know- like, please, I just need to tell you one more thing.
The wall here at home was already painted red and it will have to do for now, but I kind of like the work on a painted wall too.

Here's a new piece I've been working on. It might be done. I'd like to muck with it a bit more, but it would be dicey. I can tell I've already crossed over from the land of "There are no such things as mistakes," to "Damn, I just ruined the entire painting. Now I will have to kill it." Sometimes, I think I need to drag these inside and hide them for a bit and move on. The part I'd like to tweak is the diamond ring. I want to make it a bit more over the top gooey. I have tried a few times and keep washing it out and redoing it. I'm going to bring it inside for a few days.

The Engagement Party, 20" x 16" oil, spray paint on canvas

(Notice how I'm running with titles all of the sudden. I swore I'd never get behind titling the works again, and I meant it.)

Below is what it looked like last month: 

And this is what it looked like before leaving Los Angeles:

It's hot as hell here. Heat index today well into the hundreds. The motorcycle is all good now and I LOVE riding it here even though my only ride so far was to the mechanic's shop to fix my mirror, after which I took the longest way possible to the grocery store. The garage is a little tricky to maneuver in and out of, but I'll deal. Got a ride scheduled this weekend on The Trace. Woo-hoo.

Have I mentioned how much I love my studio?

Honestly, I've never been happier. It's like it's been waiting for this its whole life. Imagine how I'll feel when I install my clamp lights.

The Palette. 2:38

The Palette, part 1 from Mary Addison Hackett on Vimeo.

Show (Title) Time

iPhone studio shot of 2 paintings yet to be titled.

You may remember these from this post.

I had a good day in the studio today. It was one of those days where things go click and I didn't feel like I only had five minutes to live, so I could focus on one or two paintings, which I did. They still need a little more work. Details, details.

It's may be a bit early (6 months) but I'm on my way to nailing the show title. To be fair, I believe I have nailed it, but since my moment of brilliant insight was less than 48 hours ago, I will sit with it. (I'm so excited, I can barely keep it to myself, but I will until it's time for the press release.) For the time being, I will say the title was inspired by a book I own called, Parlor Amusements and Social Etiquette, published around 1865. I will also tell you that I googled my rough draft title, discovered a subdivision of my original concept and read about it on Wikipedia. This led me to a link on YouTube, where I watched a video, twice. For all the sudden aha-ness of the title, it seems like it's always been the title. It doesn't feel forced. It's fun to ponder, and I'm not embarrassed about it. I will also tell you that John Ruskin is alive and well in the work, but I felt it too easy to borrow from him again, even though my set of Modern Painters is a bible to me.

(It just occurred to me that my mind works like a Rube Goldberg Machine.)

I am a terribly, terribly intuitive individual. I applied for the Pollock-Krasner grant last year and knew that it would take a little bit of time to hear back from them, but lately, I had been watching the mailbox a little harder than usual. Finally, I figured what the hell, I'll start on next year's application, and so I did. Today, right after finishing the rough draft of my cover letter, I checked my mailbox and opened my first rejection letter from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation. I say "first," because unbeknownst to me, some people have applied 5, 10, or more times before being awarded a grant. Forge on, I say. Unfortunately, one has to wait a year from rejection to apply again.

Turns out I might know what the work is about and how to articulate it after all.

And, I might add, without mentioning specifics. Unfortunately I did not tape the convo, but no matter.

I had a studio visit today with a woman who used to be the curator for the Skirball Museum. She's conducting a class in conjunction with a George Segal piece recently acquired by the museum. Because of the nature of this piece, the class will be focusing on artists and their processes. The class will be visiting different artists' studios and she has included me in the schedule later this spring.

She stopped by this morning for an initial meeting and although I cleaned up a little, I pretty much just showed her what's been going on in the studio the last few months. I'm always surprised at myself when I make sense, get to the point, and don't drag in messy details that are directly responsible for the work. It was also the first time anyone has seen the work in the studio since late last summer-the new direction, if you will. I showed them along with some of the earlier new works and talked about the relevance. I talked about scale and gesture, time and space, specificity and abstraction, control versus lack thereof, and linear narratives. I'm writing this down here so I can remember it. It was a good visit.

So although I have yet to write an updated statement for the work, I discovered I have internalized it to the point where I can speak about it with some sort of distance. It's been a year, after all. The paintings have become some sort of residue. This pleases me.

I felt better after the studio visit. She noticed last month's moribund floral arrangement sitting on my painting table, along with yesterday's fresh buttercups, and commented that I work from life. If you looked at the paintings, you'd be hard-pressed to identify the flowers as coming from real life. I explained that it was more about the concept of setting up flowers in the studio as a marking of time rather than the actual need to paint from them verbatim, though I do try for some sort of accuracy in the beginning. I mentioned the garden club calendars.

I've been feeling disconnected from the seemingly important and uber hipness of the art world here in L.A. or anywhere for that matter. There's so much hype for the trendy and popular, the gimmicks and the one-liners. It seems I am better when I forget about how, when, or why my work does, or does not fit in, and just focus on the work. It's nice to have the work appreciated for what it is, rather than dismissed for what it is not.

Wow. It's like I'm purposely collecting a mountain of To Do's.

Three or four opportunities are sitting in my inbox right now, things which are no brainers.

The mom sitch is still at code yellow, though orange alert seems inevitable. I am well aware that I need to not ignore my life in the process of making phone calls and getting advice. I should probably start an anonymous blog about the whole mom thing rather than spill my guts here.

Which brings me to my day today:

• Insomnia. Probably due to expecting....
• Early morning phone call with mom's doctor.
• Coffee.
• YOGA!!!!! (20 in a row days, I'm on a streak.)
• Walked Fang before the rain started again
• Took Fang to vet for routine "senior panel." No he wasn't a guest speaker- $273 worth of tests and thyroid meds. He was such a great guy today. Mr. Mellow.
• Correspondence. By the way, anyone out there teaching Photoshop or Illustrator? I've been asked to teach a class next fall and am looking for some interesting projects to assign.
• Spent a little time on FB in a thread discussing Abstract Art in the 21st century. Good to know it's still a relevant topic since just last week I decided my pools and flowers were abstract, and not representational. Hah. Solved that issue.
• Fixed lunch. Not that it was broken.
• Started one of my inbox proposals.
• Continued work on 3 paintings.
• Mulled over titles for solo show.
• Connected dots.
• Checked in with blog.

I have a gift for finding furniture on the street.

I mean, who doesn't, right? But I consider it auspicious that on day two of 2010, I have scored a most spectacular piece of furniture left on the street. It does eat up some space in the studio, but after a little refinishing and some casters, I will have a painting rack/storage combo with a false wall on the back side for hanging works. It will be easy enough to build an extension for the top, should I want to go that route. Plus, I should be able to shift some things around and lose some plastic crap furniture. Score!

Alright then, I'm back to f*cking around in the studio.

The studio sale is in about one week. Lo and behold, I've never done one before. It's at my friend Meg's house, so I won't be carting over everything I'd be tempted to offer up in a studio sale if it were at my studio. Meg and I both are hesitant to be enthused about having a holiday studio sale. The very name conjures up patchwork and straw wreaths if you ask me, but I am taking my works on paper and... drum roll please.... grab bags. Yes, grab bags. I am excited about the grab bags. They are priced at $50 and $100. Not to sound like I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I can promise that it's one of those incredible deals you really shouldn't miss. At least one drawing in every bag is worth the suspense. And, I might add, the bonus of owning two art pieces in one: for unopened, the grab bag becomes it's own little artwork hermetically sealed for future generations. Brilliant, aren't I? Definitely something for the savvy collector to consider. I've been working on them today and tonight. The fun part is going back through the pile of need-to-be-reworked drawings and finally doctoring them up. It's like collaborating with myself. You can't tell from the scan, but I went back with this one and painted the disco ball squares with silver gouache.

And here's a mashup that will be in yet another charity auction exhibition to be held next Friday. WTF, it's a good cause, but for the record, I believe most auctions should give the artist 50% and the other half go to charity. Technically the organizers are ripping on the Incognito exhibit where no one is suppose to know whose work it is, but I seriously doubt my blog will be mobbed by the guest list prior to the event, so no worries on breaking my anonymity. They asked for a recycled drawing. I hate making things for themed shows and usually don't, but this was different because it occurred to me at the 13th hour to glom 3 drawings together that were aimlessly wandering around my flatfiles. The top drawing was a possible logo for myself. The middle drawing was done at LAX in front of the Starbucks kiosk while waiting for a flight, and the back drawing was some freaky-ass experiment that I couldn't toss out. The brad in the middle keeps them together, and you can rotate them, if you so desire.

All in all, a good day in the studio.

A peek inside MY drawers.

I wish I could take credit for that scintillating title, but Tracy came up with it first and I'm not feeling very creative in the post title department today.

A huge part of my oeuvre is works on paper. Oddly enough I haven't exhibited them much and the flat files are stuffed to the gills. Unless it's being held for an exhibit, most everything in the drawers is for sale. Don't be shy. The photos are all iPhone, so forgive the crappy resolution.

First of all, everything in my studio is on casters. I like to move things around. One day, maybe it will all be just so. Until then- casters. Currently the flat files are by my sink with an old dropcloth protecting a piece of white laminate I had cut to size. The white laminate makes a nice top for the files just in case I ever want a clean, unobstructed surface. After I wash my brushes, I lay them on the top to dry. I also have several bottles of water stored on top. Most of the water is flat and one bottle specifically serves as a place to hang my studio keys.

Part of my rock collection is in a tray on top of a small table on top of the flat files. I recently acquired a large paper cutter, so it lives on top of the flat files for now. There's also some crap I need to put away. My seller's permit is framed and displayed conspicuously on the wall above the files. I can't even remember the last time I wore those rubber gloves. Rubber gloves give me the creeps.


The 2009 paintings are small. Most of them are on linen and they live in the top drawer now. I think I can fit one more inside. The rest are on the wall or on a bench. They look gawdawful squished next to each other like that. Talk about a visual cacophony. Jeesh.

The second drawer used to be the first drawer. It contains the smaller watercolors and gouaches on museum board and paper. My scatological drawings on paper live here as well.


The third drawer is where the unframed Tornado Face Drawings hang out, along with miscellaneous works on paper.

The fourth drawer is where the large watercolors live including watercolors from the late 1980's. Some even larger ones live at my storage unit.

But wait there's more! Still in the fourth drawer, we have even more watercolors and works on paper of all sizes. It's a veritable watercolor bonanza in there.

The bottom drawer is where my stockpile of blank paper is. In case all hell breaks loose, my goal is to have enough paper to last through Armageddon so that I don't have to dash to the store in the middle of it. God, I would hate that. Traffic would be a bitch here in L.A. and I'm sure there would be a run on art supplies with people trying to record the end of time and all.


I bought my flat files from a second hand office supply store. I left the former owner's labels on them. By the looks of the handwriting and the contents, I'm guessing NOT a painter. I can't remember if the arrow magnets were already there or if they were an impulse buy I couldn't live without.

And what recent post would be complete without my new obsession, a Brushes animation?

In a few days there may be a flurry of new posts.

Or Not.
I keep writing snippets, short paragraphs about one thing and then I have to get back to work, so I move on, thinking I'll get back to whatever it was I was writing about.

Currently we have the following topics on hold:

• The Burchfield Exhibit
• Inside My Studio
• How the grantwriting app is coming along
• My inner conflict with painting representational.
• My inner conflict with painting small.
• Sudden dissatisfaction with my studio after looking at everyone else's studio. I am so never satisfied. What a princess I am.
  
• What's it all about, anyway?

I may post these unrelated posts as was, but meanwhile what I'm doing right now is unpacking a box of art supplies that Matt boxed up for me when he and his siblings went home to empty out his parent's house. Matt and I are still on speaking terms and I guess we're doing a decent job at being friends, considering.

My mother-in-law was an artist, not a professional artist, but a woman who raised six kids and taught kindergarten in a small town in Wisconsin and made art her entire life. After retiring, I think she worked mostly with pastels because she and my father-in-law traveled around the country quite a bit in a motor home. Pastels and beading were easy to carry around while traveling and doing the motor home camping thing.

I worked with pastels in my 20's when I had insomnia once, but I thought they might be nice to experiment with for some sketches. Unfortunately they didn't survive the Media Mail transit very well. By the looks of it, they drag the boxes behind the mail truck when it is marked Media Mail. There was also a bunch of brushes, some paper, some vintage how-to books and the big surprise was an extensive rock collection, most of which is labeled. Matt thinks she might have used this in show and tell.

The Civilized Furniture

I couldn't help but notice none of the artists in Fig's book mentioned nary a word about blogging their guts out as part of their daily routine. (Big spike in hits coming up; everyone wants to know about "my routine".) I bet Anne Truitt would have mentioned it had time and space and technology aligned.

I think we all should take a moment to describe a typical day.

I loved the work table question. It made me think about how important some pieces of furniture are and my history with them. I'm a scavenger, so none of my furniture is custom-made, so to speak. I constructed a bench to hold my large paintings, but since I am not a carpenter/woodworker by any stretch of the imagination, I got too attached to it. It's the only example of my patience, precision and ability to make something normal, aesthetic and functional, so after a few years on studio duty, I gave it a nice mahogany stain to match a homeless desk I found and refinished, and brought it in the house to live amongst the civilized furniture.

I also need to mention how oddly weird and refreshing the photo of Charles Burchfield working in his studio is (see previous post) compared to all the white cube, lofted, sky-lit spaces we tend to associate with real artists. It's nice to remember that while ideal workspaces are great, they're not mandatory.

Reading room:

Charles Burchfield painting in his studio, Gardenville, New York, 1966. (William Doran/Hammer Museum).

Charles Burchfield opened at the Hammer this weekend and there's a lunch talk on Wednesday. I will be there. I am excited.

Christopher Knight wrote about the show in today's LA Times. Here's an excerpt from the review, which will segue nicely into my following paragraph.

An artist's show
"The rich and provocative show, which travels to Buffalo and New York next year, was expertly organized by artist Robert Gober, who worked with Hammer curator Cynthia Burlingham.

It feels very much like an artist's show, one that springs from an empathy for working studio process. Each room includes vitrines with fascinating adjunct material -- magazines, tools, sketches, correspondence, catalogs, etc. None is more poignant than the final display, featuring two precarious stacks of more than 60 manila folders carefully cataloging a selection of Burchfield's voluminous annotated journals.

We can't look inside them, sheltered beneath their plexiglass cover. But the display is an eloquent testament to the fact that, with an artist of Burchfield's deep and prodigious gifts, we will never get to the bottom of it. In the meantime, we have his paintings."

Thanks to Tracy's rec, I pounced on Inside the Painter's Studio, by artist, Joe Fig. I, too, have always loved looking at studios and reading about studio habits. For instance, it delighted me to know that Ross Bleckner's decision to have a separate work space forces him to interact with the city. At the very least he stops and grabs a coffee on the way from the apartment to the studio. I'm working on the hermit thing because really, I'm not as anti-social as I might sound. Not at all. I just love working in the studio.

With regard to my own studio, there's so much to write about in terms of process and where I'm at. I guess it's exciting but it feels like those episodes on Lost where they were flashing back and forth in time way too much and everyone was getting nosebleeds.

Perhaps I should look at my coffee addiction.

I didn't mean to sound so jaded with the contemporary art scene in yesterday's posts. It's more about my own struggle with beauty and painting. There's something reassuring and faithful about painting- comforting, but still sexy after all these years. Paintings are mysterious. Some paintings more than others. Maybe that's what I look for in art- mystery and substance.

I'm still reading through The Beat and the Buzz and I can't decide whether I should be embarrassed by admitting this or not. Like whether it's too close to admitting one reads the National Inquirer. (I don't.) I came across a passage talking about a small consortium of collectors as art hedge fund investors. I think I may have been introduced to someone like this in a studio visit earlier this year. I deleted most if not all of that particular post. Restraint of Wacom pen and tongue.

More importantly, I found 2 boxes of Chemex coffee filters at The Coffee Conservatory in Culver City, the last bastion of independent coffee houses. You people do not know how I have suffered. I was giddy at the prospect of having my coffee this morning and am already excited about brewing coffee tomorrow.

Carla posted some pics of when she lived in a trailer in the 90's. Suddenly, I found the idea of a trailer a very attractive option. I don't know how Matt and I going to divide the house. Sometimes I think it might be nice to offer a 1-person artist residency for a modest fee or convert the office back into an attractive guest bedroom and rent it to out-of-town art peeps. I wouldn't charge anyone for Thursday. That's when the yardmen invade the neighborhood and the garbage trucks come by. Thursday is rather nerve-wracking.

Here's one of the places I lived in the early 90's. This was the loft I lived in right before I was accepted to grad school. I think it was $400 for about 1000 square feet. There wasn't a kitchen but there was this long industrial kitchen sink, the kind you see in restaurants. There was virtually no divison between my art and my life. The bedroom and bathroom were lofted above. After that, it was a a blur. There was a bay of windows up top. It was more like a sunken loft space. I'd freak out if I lived like this today.

I'm back from Nashville, Part II

And speaking of Picasso...
While waiting for my mom's car to be fixed, I read the Carroll Dunham review of Picasso's Musketeer show at Gagosian (Artforum, September 2009). At first glance, just seeing Dunham's name and the images of Picasso's pirates and cubist soldiers made me laugh. The connection seemed so obvious and for a moment it was like looking at stills from a body swap movie.

I've been asked impromptu-like to participate in a 3-hour artwalk in Torrance next week. I'm thinking of doing it as a public art project. Coincidentally then, I see Sharon Butler's post on FB about her Washington Square art fair and I'm now figuring out ways I can be ultra-portable and compact. I have some work from the ITBICD series that would be perfect, plus it's an opportunity to do some live painting which I've secretly been wanting to do. I love the idea of a portable studio, well portable anything actually, which explains my fascination with casters.

I spent most of the day having a ménage à trois with Apple and AT&T. Sadly, I'm still not satisfied.

I've been having a voicemail issue with my cell phone, which I might add, I use as a business phone. I'm so not down with receiving voicemail 24 hours after the fact, but kept postponing the dreaded techsupportphonecalltimesuck. I'm not going to punish myself by looking at my calendar to see if the first time I noticed a delayed voicemail was 28 days ago, because if it had been, I could have walked into an Apple store and walked out with a new or refurbished iPhone, if indeed, the problem was the phone. AT&T is saying it's not on their end, but Apple is suggesting it could be the SIM card. Nonetheless, here I am 27 days after my warranty has expired and so I am troubleshooting EVERYTHING with the nice Apple kid outside of Dallas who at one point told me to "right click" something and I was like, "What? Did you just tell me to right-click?"
1) I've been using a Wacom tablet and pen for about 12 years and 2) I know that's dark side talk.

At this point, it seems like I'm getting voicemail within 10-25 minutes, which, while not exactly bomb squad worthy, is better than 24 hours and acceptable until I have replenished my patience for the next level of troubleshooting.

And yes, I was supposed to be painting today. Before the techsupportphonecalltimesuck, I grabbed some more paintings from storage and had a studio visit with a friend who is trying to turn a friend of hers onto my work. I say "try." I'm not sure my work would fit above her fireplace. I'm not being snarky, but people who have measurements in mind kind of freak me out anyway. I'm aware not everyone has my any port in a storm hanging mentality.

It will be a late night. This week was kind of chopped up with appointments anyway, so I knew it wouldn't be ideal, but next week, I only have one studio visit/breakfast scheduled and unless something outlandishly fantastic comes my way, I'm implementing bankers hours until this project gets done.

27 days past warranty. I loathe planned obsolescence.