artist statement

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sometimes...

sometimes sometimes sometimes...

(manchmal...
quelquefois...    )



sometimes art is only about your own ridiculousness...



sometimes art is only about how lonely you feel, how separate, how insecure. sometimes art is only about the text message that went unanswered.  sometimes art is only about the pain that sweeps through you silently and unseen on the train as you careen home, alone, wishing there was someone to hug on the other side of your own front door.  sometimes art is sentimental and sticky.  sometimes art doesn't give two shits if it's pretty or not or if it's got a red face when it cries.  sometimes art is only about the fact that it's fucking 2am and you're drunk and tired of feeling alone and separate and insecure and that's exactly why you're drunk in the first fucking place.  sometimes art isn't about any of the fucking theories.  sometimes it's about your dead mother and sometimes it's about your absent father and sometimes it's about how estranged you've become in this wide world of christian morals and families holding hands on sundays.  sometimes art is about all those nameless regrets...  because what is it to regret something that was never really even a choice or a deed, simply an event...  like childhood.  sometimes art is only about that deep ache to be touched.  sometimes art is only about the need for a good, hard slap on the ass and the fact you have to find a way to go on living tonight without it. sometimes it is so fucking Freudian there's no way around it: we want what we want.  and sometimes that's all art is.  sometimes that's all it possibly can be. sometimes art is just a girl, alone in her room, drunk on vodka at 2am, wanting what she wants and yet barred from it all, staring wide-eyed at her own desires and crying over their absence.  sometimes art is only about longing.  sometimes art is only about desperation.  sometimes art is only about finding a way to believe life is worth it.  sometimes art is only a way to convince yourself that your own life might actually matter, somehow, to someone else, somewhere.  sometimes art is only a way to remind yourself you have a sister and you have a brother and, if not for yourself, then for them.  keep drawing (breathing, working, trying, aching, striving, smiling) for them.  sometimes art is only a way to keep yourself sane.  sometimes art is simply a reaching toward faith.  a way to build faith.  a way to believe in something other than your own solitary breaths, exhaled in white puffs in a cold, empty room.  sometimes art is simply the life-preserver you throw to yourself.  sometimes art is the only window you've got.  the only friend you've got.  the only mother you've got.  the only god you've got.

sometimes art is another way to pray.




sometimes i'm 8 years old again, alone and afraid of the dark, and dreaming of a savior...



i reach for my pencil.  i reach for my pen.  i reach for my hook.  i make a drawing.  i make a poem.  i make a blanket.  i take care of my fucking self.

sometimes that's all art is.


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we hope that your rules and wisdom choke you.

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a sentence and a landscape:

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just drive

i finished reading The Female Eunuch and i think everyone needs to read it or re-read it as the case may be. especially the section LOVE. and especially the section HATE. and then definitely especially the section REVOLUTION. there is a difference, germaine greer states, between Reaction and Revolution which i think is a very important distinction to make. and very important now. very important in our time, all these changes and ideas, all these plans, all these wings on hinges, all these words floating around or being cast across vast distances like arrows. i have arrows in my eyes these days. reading all the time. it's the best thing for me and i feel so glad that words matter as much as they do. i'm so glad that poetry still exists even after all the damage that's been done. i'm glad to know that art and poetry and music can all be made out of anything, even ruins and left-overs.

words make the world. i'm glad to know that language changes, morphs, slides perversely against itself and births itself anew.

it is such a cold morning. and quiet. soon i'll need to get dressed, get myself on the train, and get my ass to work. in a few days i'll be driving down the I-5 to southern california to attend the show at Craftswoman House. there is so much to do between now and then and i'm trying not to think about it, just do it, just get it done, so i can get in the car with a clear heart and DRIVE DRIVE DRIVE. i'm looking forward to the length of the drive, all those hours by myself behind the wheel in the isolated desolate plain of central california. the heat and the wind. the closed rest stops. the horrible cattle farms. but space. endless blue above. the road itself an arrow of purpose. images in my eyes and heart and hands, a song on my tongue. i will listen to music loud. i will pull off the road to write.

(half the time i wish to be incredibly beautiful. the other half of the time, i wish for incredible ugliness. i think after a certain point, everything becomes Amazing and labels like Beautiful and Ugly fall flat but, for now, i am in this land and on this dirt and it is what i am attracted to.)

i am anxious for coffee. let's get some lipstick on this mug and get this show on the road.