No, I'm even slower than molasses, but we're getting somewhere.

Seriously. It's been 6 days so far. Granted, I have fed and walked the dog, bathed, practiced basic hygiene, taken care of some other pressing matters, and even managed to leave the house for some things, but overall, I have been working on the application for 6 days. Is there a grant out there which will cover the time it takes to apply for a grant? A Paypal donation button hanging out in cyberspace, something, anything that provides immediate gratification for this type of work? There are probably boilerplate examples out there, but even if I wanted to have a nonchalant non-interest in the process, I'd end up tweaking it until it wasn't boilerplate anymore, so what would be the point?

The breakthrough news though is this. I banged out, literally, tap tap tap tap, an updated statemtn about the new work, not bothering to spellcheck or figre out thether the snestebes were acutally speleld wrie or made esne I knew what i was siting,but since i'm a 4 finger tuper, indecl tand kmiddle finerhn,mon both hand, somethings if y keys are nont in the right pace, it looks something like this. Better cutally since I was going slightly slower.

Then after I got the ideas in place, I spell-checked and added some punctuation. Total flow. I still need to figure out some wording and sentence structure. Some it it would only makes sense to me. For instance, I've misused a few words, but they're placeholders until I can get back in there and overall I was pleased at how the ideas presented themselves somewhat effortlessly.

***

I leave for Nashville on Wednesday for a long weekend. My goal is to have it in the mail BEFORE I go.

A vat of molasses I tell you.

I'll spare the details, but while working on a grant app which requires detail financial stuff, I had to re-enter and re-reconcile 4 months and 4 accounts worth of statements. And I know they had previously been entered and reconciled because after a statement is reconciled, I make an "R" on the statement, and not just any "R." No, I make an "R" that looks the the "S" on Superman's cape.

So I'm going just a little nuts from being on the computer for all sorts of things. My office is in the corner of my studio, so I've been able to sneak away a bit and work on a painting, but for all practical purposes, I'm in office mode for a while or at least until the winds of fate shift.

Ok, this is the post in which I confess that I am a perfectionist and need some balanced feedback.

Tentatively titled, Overlooking the Clouds Sea, (Fang Corners a Crow in the Backyard) 1817/2009, 2009
oil on linen
7" x 5"

It's almost an exact copy of the Caspar David Friedrich painting, Le Voyageur au-dessus de la mer de nuages, translated as The Traveller over the Clouds Sea, according to the back of the souvenir card I bought in a museum store. Fog, Clouds Sea, same diff.

Bottom line: Do I need to use macro or am I going to drive myself crazy trying to capture minute detail that the naked eye can't see anyway?

Seriously, it's ludicrous. The painting is 7" x 5". The pixel dimension of the original tiff is 1757 x 2466. At 100% view on the computer screen, a detailed section that is about 1 inch in real life is blown up to be the size of the whole painting. It's freaking me out, man. I can't deal with the appearance of verisimilitude.

I'm not going to post all 18, some of which you've seen, but I'm getting picky about shooting these in order to apply for a grant app. (The jpg I've posted is only at 72dpi, not the required 300-400dpi.) I know I'm over thinking this and getting ready to spin in hyper mode, but still. Am I expecting too much? Does it smell like turpentine and linseed oil yet? Will it ever?

Nevermind. Carry on. Nothing to see here. I was just hyper-analyzing pixels.

Let's see.

In a nutshell:

• Open house at Otis tomorrow- I give a 10-minute presentation on Drawing Fundamentals.
• In the wake of the budget cuts, I cleared out my office at El Camino yesterday. 7 years. Poof. Ran into 2 people who I apparently needed to run into. As an adjunct, teaching weekends and evenings can be isolating with no other faculty around, but there's always at least one person in an administrative position who is amazing and I'm always lucky enough to get to know them a bit.
• Am going to brush up my my editorial skills.
• I queried the brilliant mind of Steven LaRose for suggestions on portable objects for observational drawing. I've been lucky enough to work at colleges with ample thrift store-esque props. This fall I have to supply my own and transport them in 5 cubic feet of cargo space. I'm beginning to think my life is an art project. And yes, I've read Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life and Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees.
• I made a damn good spinach eggless quiche yesterday substituting tofu for egg. Dee-lish.
• Finished a covert collaborative painting, which I think turned out quite well. Am waiting to hear from the initial collaborator.
• 3 small paintings in various stages in the studio.
• Worked on version 2 of my resume.
• Time to apply for grants.
• This week's Netflix bounty: Flash of Genius, Revolver.
  

I was supposed to go dark, wasn't I?

I've decided to shelve my cutthroat prima donna act and to win fiends friends and influence people the old fashioned way: honey, not vinegar, with just a tad of strychnine, if needed. There. See. All better. Kidding. Just kidding.

I began updating my resume yesterday, the one I use for attracting employment, which is the same one I use for attracting everything else actually, it's just rearranged and the Professional Experience category is fleshed out using action phrases, like, "I designed a syllabus and conducted a class," as opposed to, "The class miraculously taught itself, while I watched in horror."

Then I started thinking about how artists always have pictures of themselves standing in front of their artwork and that I should have something like that as my profile picture. Amazingly enough, my artwork and myself are rarely seen in the same photograph. Suspicious, no? Yes, I thought so too. Anyway, like all my bright ideas, I figured I'd combine one thing with another and I arrived at my new profile pic. It's energy-saving, to-the-point and very efficient. Frida Kahlo meets an Oscar de la Renta dress my mom had when I was a kid. I'm tempted to make more of these while searching for work. The puzzle pieces are coming together.

Good day in the studio too. The joint is cleaned up, most of the floor was repainted and I'm back working on 2 new paintings. I wish I could express how much I love painting. Something new is revealed every single day I pick up a brush. I seriously thought the first batch of these were killer, but 6 months later, I'm wowing myself. I'm not 100% satisfied with how I'm photographing them and that's one of the reasons I'm not uploading them. The other is that I was waiting to debut them for the solo show with Kristi Engle, approximately 394 days away. I may put some of the earlier ones on my website, but I'm not sure. I think I'd like to keep them undercover just a bit longer. Maybe I'll just put a teaser on the website and rotate it out every so often.

Other good news. A check arrived in the mail yesterday as the result of the gallery selling a painting. And since I am now a very positive person, I decided that I would look forward to checks arriving every day in the mail.

Why do I loathe shipping & packing so much? I mean, "Damn this was fun!"

There was a major rant associated with this post, true to form for a prima donna like my badass self, but self-censorship got the best of me.

I'm working on publishing a pamphlet to accompany my next show. Perhaps it will find it's way in there.

Prima donna Post No. 1

Shipping & packing is a bitch. Not doing it anymore.

Hello, My name is...

I'm going to check out for a bit. I want to reevaluate some things. We're in month 8 of the Gregorian calendar and I'm feeling an urge to reinvent myself. The happy-go-lucky painter shtick is getting old and I'm tired of being nice. First up, cutthroat prima-donna. I'll keep you posted of how many tantrums I pull.

And by the way, summer was way overrated this year. I can't wait for fall.

Even though I knew this, somehow seeing it in writing is disturbing.

Due to severe budget cuts to the California Community Colleges, Ms. Hackett’s teaching assignment at El Camino was terminated effective fall 2009.

***
On the bright side, the art consulting firm that commissioned the recent project loved the painting and approved the shipping & packing fees I inadvertently omitted.

Game face on, people. Game face on.

Rolling tubes and Ethafoam, I love you—not as much as casters, but I love you.

I think this may be the start of a beautiful relationship.

Giant rolling tubes from Ashely Distributors, along with some Ethafoam scraps for buffering. Sheet plastic for wrapping, some tape and I'm good. Materials approximately $120. Out of curiosity I asked how much it would cost to have a pro pack it, and got a rough estimate that it would take a seasoned art handler about an hour to pack it, plus the administrative fee. So I figured it would take me twice as long to pack it at my place, but the guy corrected me and suggested that it might take me 3 hours. I assume this will include untretching the canvas. I also learned that glassine, the archival wonder material is not so archival when it comes to protecting acrylic paintings. Over time, like say, during the transportation of work across states like Texas and Oklahoma in the summertime, glassine may stick to the acrylic paint causing the acrylic paint to peel away when the glassine is removed. Nice. Apparently this is true of kraft paper as well. Hence the plastic sheeting.

The beautiful thing about this method of S&P is that (1) It's relatively inexpensive (2) It's flexible for all sizes of canvas (3) The process will be the same no matter what size canvas or paper (4) I can estimate shipping and packing easily and concisely 5) All my materials come from the same place, and 6) I can carry it myself.

Of course, this is all a relatively moot point since I have sworn off big painting and am concentrating on the small works.

It wasn't that bad.

Now that I see the light at the end of the tunnel, I'm kind of sad I didn't try and enjoy it more. It's a medium-large painting and seeing as I'm a painter, I really do enjoy waking up and going out to the studio to work on a painting that has a warm paycheck attached to it. My bank account appreciates it too.

Of course I still have the shipping and packing drama to look forward to. I so wish I had an assistant. You just don't know.