Pumkin carving skills are rusty. Would not have gotten in art school with a carved pumpkin.

Not that I went to Art School, proper. I have a Liberal Arts education for some reason.

I was going to bail on Halloween this year. I'm not a costume person. Go figure. Nor am I a witty pumpkin carver person either. My artistic skulls end at bad puns, painting, making stuff out of nothing and a ghost of other things. Being the Martha Stewart of pumpkin carving is not on the list.

It might help if I were to design a pumpkin, working up some sort of blueprint in advance. It might also help if I were to use my woodcarving tools instead of a jackknife. And perhaps the slasher approach is a bit hasty. Nonetheless, a pumpkin is on the front porch, and there is too much candy in the house.

Not such a good day for trees.

Guess where I was yesterday.

˙ɯooɹ ƃuıʇıɐʍ ǝɔıɟɟo s,ɹoʇɔop :ɐ

I am drinking pedestrian coffee this morning because I wanted the 32 oz Chock full o' Nuts can.

I grew up in a Maxwell House coffee drinking family. I believe at a certain point my dad switched over to either French Market or Cafe Du Monde. Next time I visit, I'll look in the garage for old cans. I am sure they are there.

This is a deadline week.

I don't think I should log in again until I can check some BIG things off the to-do list. My mantra for this week: Art office work is the result of art studio work.

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Perhaps I work better under pressure.

I seriously need to quit facebooking and blogging obsessively out of nervous avoidance.

I've been so focused on the crap-ish stuff this year, that all I've done is work in the studio painting away like a troll while rehashing my day in word documents as therapy, and facebooking and blogging in lieu of recreational drug use.

And now, end of OCTOBER, (like when did that happen?) I'm suddenly aware of all the good stuff in the works and the momentum needed to adequately prep for these things. I'm good with time management. My friend Meg thinks so. Other people think so too, though they haven't seen my venetian blinds or the protective layer of dust and dog hair around my water heater. For God's sake, I was drinking moldy soy milk on my cereal and didn't even know it. I smelled like bleach all day after that discovery. Not to imply that I drank bleach, but that I scrubbed the inside of the Tupperware jug until it sparkled. Sparkled. Time management comes at a price.

First up, is to finish my grant app for the Los Angeles Dept. of Cultural Affairs. I have noticed a pattern this year- whining about stuff, reckless procrastination and finally, determination and action. It takes what it takes.

Next up is a benefit auction for the Dharma Zen Center, November 7th from 6-9. I think the works will be available for purchase online. (Not sure about this yet) All proceeds go toward the Zen Center. I thought the image below was very zen like. It's from 2007.


The following week, November 14th and 15th is a group exhibit, ARTRALA. There will be a catalog available of the exhibit.This should be fun. I would love to haul my flatfiles over there or at least have a table available for works on paper. I need to start thinking about this. This could be the best idea I've had all year.




Between now and mid-November, I've been asked to submit some images and a statement of the work I created during a residency at Kaus Australis (Rotterdam, Netherlands) in 2004. Carl Berg is putting together a catalog of artists he selected for the residency. I'll repost when it becomes available.

And last, but definitely not least, I need to stretch some 11" x 14"s and probably order some more 5" x 7"s and maybe some 16" x 20"s before the end of the year.

There could be more, but that's all for tonight.

Alrighty, then.

SOSSOL, 2008
30" x 24"
mixed media on canvas

Life is very funny. I wrote the following post late last night after angsting over whether the above painting was too rough around the edges to be a catalog image for an upcoming exhibit. I will tell you the punch line after the post.

An assistant would be nice. Today, for instance, I could have wasted even more time making Brushes sketches. Instead, I slogged through real work. I had to pick an image for a catalog for an upcoming exhibition and was procrastinating. I really like the image I selected, but it's not very pretty in the traditional sense and it falls under the category of, Odd Paintings I Make. It's not exactly a one-off, it's more like a deviation. At the last minute though, I chose to add an additional image, a prettier one. Choices are so hard.

Speed Trap, 2008
mixed media on linen
14" x 16"

I was playing favorites with SOSSOL. Why? Because I was feeling super contrary and SOSSOL appealed to my super-contrarian outlook yesterday. Trying to be objective, aka second-guessing myself, I began rationalizing that SOSSOL might not appeal to as many people as Speed Trap and if there's a chance to sell some art, as opposed to pretending I live on air and am satisfied with merely exhibiting my work for the greater humanitarian good, maybe I should promote peaches, not potatoes. I included the bottom image, Speed Trap, as a back-up in case I had lost my senses. I have no idea which image they picked, but that's another story.

Okay. Now for the punch line- Today I received a call from an art consultant* I recently began working with and she wanted to send out an email blast with- you guessed it, SOSSOL. (She picked a few other images, but I was terribly excited that she picked that one and another one from that body of work.)

Today, I feel very brilliant. For some reason, I love it when people like my schizoid paintings. (Mwahahahaahhaha)

* I was trying to play this down, but since it's L.A., what the hey. I thought having my foot in the door with a consultant that rents to film production companies might be an interesting way to spice things up. I once rented a couple of paintings to a set designer for the production of Blink when it was filming in Chicago. It's a little weird to think about art contextualized this way, but probably no more so than any other contextualization.

I shall talk about practicalities versus ideals another time.

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?

Addicting.

No wonder Hockney loves Brushes.









(some of them get stuck before they finish and you have to hit replay, but overall, not too buggy.)

Showtime.

OK, I figure when I see three references to the Brushes app within a week, it's time to download it and give it a whirl. I love being able to see my decision-making process looking so stream-lined. I'm hazarding a guess that in the studio, it's quite a bit messier. I'll do an abstract later on.