the voodoo that you do so well

i am wiped out.  5 days in new york is a whirlwind experience.  especially when things like swizzels and pickle backs are involved.  good lord.  my liver must hate me...  but my diary sure loves me.  ;)  there are tons of things i will write about but i think they're better off confined to the nebulous curves of poetry and prose than a blog post.  at least for now. besides, i'm still trying to re-acclimate to being home.  this time around, i was actually ready to come back to oakland.  i wanted my own bed and my friends and my music.  i wanted more than two pairs of pants and two tshirts.   i wanted to sit for a minute and write.  i really have gotten to a place where if i go for more than a day or two without writing i begin to feel very anxious, very displaced.  i need the slip of ink to reel me back in to the Here and Now.  words hold me in place.  they hold me together.  it isn't enough to take pictures.  i need a deeper sort of record.  i need a place where i can roll around with my experiences.  i need the license of poetry, the lens of art and romance, the flex and freedom of language itself.  on my last night in new york i finally got to sit and write for a beautiful hour and a half inside a diner in the Bowery.  i had fish and chips and a pina colada for dinner but ordering food was really just a smoke screen for claiming a warm place to scribble.  it was so cold that night.  the air was frozen and it shot right through the front of my jeans to sting my thighs horribly.  i am not used to a little thing known as the wind-chill factor.  california doesn't have that shit.  not even close.  and that shit is real.  not just real, but really ridiculous.  it can basically make an otherwise pleasant evening feel like the 7th circle of hell.  several new yorkers laughed at me for my reaction to the cold.  apparently, it was warm there for this time of year.  hooooollllly moley!    it doesn't necessarily curb my desire to live there though, i'll just need a better wardrobe.  my leather jacket wasn't the best foil to such weather.  i was ill-prepared at best.  my return trip did work to cure me of my love-sickness for New York though and i am thankful for that.  i was so heart broken after coming home last time.  this time, i cruised the streets less frantically and with far less need to hunt down a reckoning.  i felt at ease this time.  i knew that i could come back and would come back.  i knew that it isn't as hard as people make it seem.  an inexplicable thing happened:  i ran in to a girl i went to art-school with in this tiny tiki bar called Otto's Shrunken Head in the Lower East Side.  she moved to Brooklyn a year ago and just so happened to shoot over to the city that night.  i walked in the bar and heard someone call my name and it wasn't my friend anne.  fucking wild!  she and i had studios right across the hall from each other in school!  small weird world!  and anne and i had just been stumbling around directionless in Brooklyn earlier than day!  we watched a musical tribute to Queen and drank pina coladas and ate voodoo chips at the bar.  in fact, it was these particular pina coladas that got me to order a pina colada at the diner in the Bowery.  i haven't had one in years but something about the chill in the air and being with a great friend in New York City and feeling completely at rest, completely free and festive made ordering such a drink make perfect sense.  as a child i used to always order virgin pina coladas whenever my family would go out to a restaurant for dinner.  it wasn't that often so the drink seemed so special to me.  it felt right to revisit that feeling in New York.

 pina coladas

 voodoo chips

drunken bathroom portrait photography

elated

the opening friday night was wonderful. and insane! it was so packed with people the gallery got hot! :D and that's 3000 square feet of tremendously high ceiling space we're talking about! it was amazing! the art-going public in san francisco rarely disappoints. they come out in droves and love to laugh and smile and join in the fashion parade too. it's impossible for a people-watcher to be bored here. if you're bored in san francisco you might have sadly been born without a capacity for joy.

i've been lost in my elation even since. :)

and i finally got to meet the sweet and talented and absolutely adorable artist Amanda Smith. if you don't know her work you are missing out! it is fantastic! gorgeous! and with a splash of darger on it that is unexpected and beautiful and just so intriguing! it was so wonderful getting to speak with her and we totally had one of those cute and awesome moments when you meet an artist who's work you love and you both say "I LOVE YOUR WORK!" at the exact say time! hahaha! :D i am so happy to have work on the same wall as her.

and this morning, dark and early, i took the first steps toward a few new year's resolutions and enrolled in spring classes. german and ceramics. i'm probably one of the extreme few art-nerds who, in high school, did not take 2 years of ceramics. i think i had one semester and then focused on drawing and poetry as my electives. anyway, i've been wanting to learn how to make crazy plates to hang on the walls for a couple years now so i figured why not now? especially after getting up close and personal with Amanda's work and seeing how beautiful ceramic art truly is. and the same goes for learning german. so many of my favorite artists and writers are from germany and austria. i'd love to be able to read the work of elfriede jelinik and herta muller in the original. though the translations are absolutely beautiful, it is apparent that some soul has been lost. and so here we go! i'm a bit nervous but also very excited! it's been a goal of mine for a very long time.

the month that stands between now and my first day of class is going to fly by in a crazy, wonderful blur of work and art. in the middle of the reception, Freya and i were already working out a plan for the january exhibition. :)

i am stunned by all that has happened and is happening.

awesome!

so many people came through Slingshot yesterday! it was amazing! and here i was, all set to spend the day quietly crocheting, greeting the few people who might come in to look around, drink tea from the coffee shop next door, and just kick back in such a beautiful space for the day. nope! my retail you-had-better-greet-every-single-person-who-walks-in-that-door experience kicked in and i did not get much crocheting done at all! there was a constant flow of people all day long. so many people from the neighborhood came in to wish us well on our venture and express their hope that we'll get to stay in this space for a long, long, LONG time. i can't tell you how many people told me that it was wonderful to see a gallery pop up that shows this kind of art. awesome!!! :D i can't even tell you how good that makes me feel.

we are already busy planning the december show. it is the last month we are guaranteed to have the space so we want to do the best job we possible can. it's such a wonderful opportunity and just so rewarding. the beautiful artist Meagan Donegan is at the gallery today. i love her drawings of sheep. LOVE! if you're in the are, pop on in and say hello!

sunday afternoon (2-6pm) is the reception for 'tiny' at Studio Gallery which i am very much looking forward to. i love just being in jen abd rab's space. it just plain ol' feels good to be there.

i tell ya... the last few weeks it has felt so amazingly wonderful to be a working artist. :) i am so so so thankful.

GIFT!!!

.





this is my very first zine! YAY! and i want you to have it! all you have to do is click on the above image so that it gets BIG, right click to save it to your computer, adjust contrast if necessary (which it very well may be- my scanner is on the fritz so this is photograph), print it out, follow these instructions, and you have a new zine for your collection! WHOO HOO!!!

this is what it should look like when you're done:



front cover



1st page



back cover

HAPPY FRIDAY!!! :) ENJOY!!!

YAY!

i spent the day yesterday teaching myself how to screen print and i had so much fun! i think i've got the hang of it now but it actually took totally ruining my screen to figure a few things out. so i'll have to buy the toxic chemicals necessary to reclaim the ruined screen and also buy another screen as one simply isn't enough. but, if all goes according to plan, i will be a TOTAL T-SHIRT WHORE soon! i mean, more so than i already am! hahaha!

LET'S PLAY DRESS UP AND BE SISTERS!

.


i'll be kathleen. you'll be kathleen too. <3







(please do not let being biologically male stop you from playing. everybody's welcome. grab your magic marker.)

advice???

as i go through the portfolios and photograph all the work, a certain dream of mine starts to tug tug tug at my brain. for the passed several months i've been playing with the idea of putting together a book of drawings and i'm thinking the self-publishing route is the best route to take. check out amy king's essay on the subject here. so...

where to start??? and what has your experience been? enjoyable? futile? worthwhile? easy? can a novice do it? and what about templates? any and all experience/advice/critique is totally welcome. in fact, it is BEGGED FOR!

and in the meantime, here's a nice little pair of drawings. :) one thing that keeps happening during this documenting process is i keep finding things that are really great as diptychs and triptychs! it's so exciting!

friday morning hijinks!

wrestle around on the living room floor, get your dog in a leg lock, and grab your camera, kids!





Inga as Frank the Bunny


:)


p.s. polka dot pajamas: very necessary.

"I get my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine."

rainy days are dancing days.

DANCE, i said!

good morning, all my loves!

i stayed up so late last night! so late that when the alarm went off at 5 i didn't even hear it. and when my sweetie tried to rouse me 45 minutes later, i sat up, looked at him, and my sight was shaky- something that used to happen to me during my last semester in school when life was GO GO GO and sleep was a rare gift. so i grumbled "one more hour" and laid back down and slept for 3. ha!

i went out to the city last night for one of my friend's openings. the show was gorgeous and i was so inspired and happy to be there. and i lost track of time laughing with people and meeting new people and, before i knew it, it was 10:45 and i still had an hour and a half drive back home, out here to my little spot in the countryside. but i had a fantastic time. it was one of those nights where it's so hard to pull back on the reigns and detach from the happiness at hand. amazing. well worth being tired. well worth the snag in my "schedule". ha! besides... it's friday and drizzling and i've already given myself permission to say the weekend has arrived. :)

lately, i've been spending my weekends with my nose jammed in a book and it has been such a gorgeous experience. i count myself incredibly lucky to have been exposed to the work of such amazing and skilled writers. and reading is so integral to my practice. such a necessity. this huge influx of ideas is my favorite environment- tall grass to roll in, warm and without judgement. and taking in all these words, all these images and metaphors and philosophies and theories and poems and gestures is so much like drinking hot chocolate with whipped cream on top. so comforting and safe. it's an experience in which i feel completely myself, completely at home. i hope the used books i ordered from amazon show up in my mail box today. especially "A Lover's Discourse" by Mr. Wonderful, Roland Barthes, my love. swoon swoon.

and of course, our big built-in excuse to be BIG FAT POETRY NERDS! YAY!!!!!

yesterday, after posting the first poem of the month by the untouchable Sharon Olds, i got in a wonderful email exchange with Jeff Callico about her work- how forceful and hard and gorgeous it is, and how, like Bukowski, she doesn't mess around with metaphor... she wanders the autobiographical and presents the shit, the mess, the joy, the jumble of living. and it made me want to read all her books all over again. to dive in to these black lines and float there on the rim of her life, the memories that crawl back and back again, that twist the present, that caress or corrupt a day.

so let us hold on to her black rope again. a double shot. she is worth it. and she is required reading, for sure.

a poem for Good Friday. ;)




The Pope's Penis




It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver seaweed, the hair
swaying in the dark and the heat- and at night,
while his eyes sleep, it stands up
in praise of God.





(from The Gold Cell)

and speaking of having the courage to be yourself...

let's jump start this new month with more than tad of glamour and fun. don't fight it.

"beauty's where you find it" :)

i keep forgetting to mention...

tomorrow, there's a huge drawing event at my gallery. a whole bunch of us artists will be on-site with our paper and pencils and whatever else we feel like making marks with, and everything we come up with will be priced firmly at 50 bucks a shot. super cheap! i'm definitely planning on beefing up my art collection tomorrow in addition to making some creepy, pretty things of my own. if you're in the bay area, stop on it, bring a friend, help us drink the wine, and crack some jokes too. we'd love to see you! my drawing time is the last round from 3 - 5pm but i'll be hanging out the whole time. we start at 1pm. see you there!

coffee tragedy...

so...
the WORST thing that could've happened to this night-owl did...
my coffee maker broke. :( and after screwing with it, hitting it, and pushing all its non-specific buttons in a wide array of sequences, the damn thing finally pushed my buttons to the point where i angrily resigned myself to utter failure.

the truth is,
i bought one of the cheapest coffee makers i could find but that was only 4 months ago! arg! so i finally boiled a pot of water and dumped it through the filter and wa-la! i'm drinking coffee and back in action! necessity... the mother of invention: word. i just wish i'd thought of it sooner and saved myself a whole lot of time and aggravation.

but with a full pot brewed (by hand) and a bag full of new art supplies (i went shopping today!), the night feels young and full of potential. i finally scored some more chocolate-colored glitter so i can finish the print edition i started a few weeks back. i've been so caught up in painting and drawing that i completely forgot about the prints! and with only a few more to go!

between that and the big yellow painting (which isn't really all that yellow anymore) and the 4 other canvasses i've got going, this week is pretty well booked. i'll happily give in to the urge to stay up all night painting and playing, lose sleep if necessary, and get a bunch of work done. i don't want any loose ends to tie up, with paintings or otherwise, come the new year and, with only 8 weeks to go, i'd better hustle.

ZINES ARE WONDERFUL! HOORAY FOR ZINES!

one of the zines i got in the mail last week is EVERYBODY'S BOOK OF KITTENS by Gemma Correll. this zine wins the gold medal for squeal-out-loud cuteness! EEEEEE! it is so adorable!


the concept behind the zine is pretty simple, very straightforward, and that's one of the reasons it is so successful and great! i love it! it has quickly become the most prized zine in my collection. it's awesome.

if this is work after your own heart as well, i'd pick up a copy fast. it's an edition of 50 and the first round of them sold out with a quickness over at Little Paper Planes. It seems they've got a second round in stock now but i'd still make haste if you'd like to have one of these little cuties in your collection.

i also got 'daddy's little girl' by Ericka Bailie Byrne, a collection of letters she wrote to her father while they were estranged.


it's a very personal, very powerful zine. reading it, i couldn't help but be awe-struck by the bravery it took to even put this zine out in to the world! i am amazed by it, to say the least. this zine offers more than just the story of a girl's strained relationship with her father... it offers hope and comfort. Ericka's got an etsy shop where you can pick it up: FIRST AND FRANKLIN.

the wonderful thing about zines is that they can be (and be ABOUT) anything... which also makes them sort of daunting: no rules, schematic, or prototype to follow. the form is wide open and can be endlessly reinterpreted. zines can be used toward any end, or to no end at all. this makes the production of a zine a pretty personal enterprise, in my opinion, even if the subject matter isn't personal at all.

and i just love zines so much! i have turned in to a total fanatic about them and i don't care who knows it. i think everyone needs to get on board and support the zine-makers of the world. zines are wonderful. i hope the people who make them never stop doing it. i appreciate their work so, so much.

lazy days and scary movies...

after building and stretching some fairly large canvasses the other night with my sweetheart, i ended up needing (and taking) a bit of a break from the whole art thing in general. it's been pretty nice, actually. my new zines came in the mail a few days ago so i've been re-reading them every few hours for the passed three days (fun!), and have been forcing myself to watch scary movies (i have no tolerance for them at all and am trying, slowly, to get over that). and i think i'll spend the rest of the day today doing more of the same and have one more day off from production and introspection. sometimes it is completely necessary for me to take a big step back from the work. the ideas i generally deal with aren't exactly happy and fun and getting so wrapped up in them can become pretty exhausting... not to mention, sad. it's just a good idea to get back to playing with my dog, being outside, and talking to friends... remembering the small pleasures in life. and so i'm indulging those desires and smiling about it the entire time. :) hope everyone had a great weekend and that the new week is off to a great start! being that we're so close to Halloween now, there are a ton of scary movies on TV... check 'em out! or recommend a few of your favorites to me so i can be less of a baby about them. even the most silly, unbelievable bad B-grade horror flicks scare the pants of me.

old loves and new thanks...

hi everybody! first off, i just want to send out a big ol' THANK YOU to everyone who's been reading the blog lately and commenting on the work. i really, really appreciate the fact that you've taken time out of your day to let me know what your thoughts are. it's extremely helpful to know what people respond to, what turns them off, and what might just make them smile. i am grateful and smiling and totally giddy. thank you so much!

so today i've been working on some small pieces, just sorta playing around and seeing what happens. sometimes it's a wonderful thing to just work as fast as you can and without a lot of thought - it short-circuits the self-censoring mechanism and you end up doing things you normally wouldn't, acting upon ideas you'd talk yourself out of, and the resulting images are evidence of learning in action. it's great! here's some small pieces from my art adventure:




Blackland #4
7" x 7"
mixed media collage on paper
2008



untitled personal indictment
6 3/4" x 5 1/4"
mixed media collage on paper
2008


obviously, my default aesthetics kicked in on these (my beloved black and white!), but i also picked up my old love of texture and disparate materials and just rolled with it: black masking tape, film negative (that's what makes them shiny), scraps of paper and a love of abstraction. it was fun and i really enjoy seeing that, though i was working quickly and not really concerned with what the results were, the primary ideas i've been dealing with are in this work as well. pretty ingrained, i guess! :) and that's a good thing!