it was a hot day but i still spent quite some time crocheting- black stitch black stitch black stitch, the hidden escapades and longings protected inside the twist. and also reading Wonderful, Wonderful Times by Elfrieda Jelinek in a hot, parked car, stopping to write my own flood, my own fumbling search for who knows what and then i wrote:
i feel like i am finally beginning to learn how to speak. and to let these things become documents. other people can decide for themselves what kind of documents they are. everyone will need them differently. everyone will let them be different things.
at least those who find them. my precious few. entirely precious and held dear.
i learned today and it burned away the internal, convinced-of pressures. the heat of these things lessening my anxious load. some steam released. locating new valves.
Showing posts with label trying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trying. Show all posts
Jun 7, 2010
May 29, 2010
thank you, my sweet friend
got this from my wonderful friend becca today. and it makes a great big wonderful difference.
May 18, 2010
the work work
good morning!!!!
it is another drizzly day here in wine land, another excuse to curl in to my self, my little world, my little spin spin spin of ink and oil and words. i spent a large part of yesterday writing a letter of intent for an artist residency. not easy. i have pages and pages of notes and little snippets culled from this blog about my ideas and intentions. i am trying to put them all in a line. it's time to try for the Big Stuff. in fact, i made myself a deadlines list. it's right here next to the computer so that i am forced to be aware of the date, of the time, of the schedule of the outside world. it is a good thing and i feel motivated to reach a hand toward my aspirations- even if the rejection letter comes as a result, it is good to get in the habit of trying. it is good to be in practice of dealing with rejection, not allowing it to derail you, to gain a bit more hard experience of what it is to believe in your own work. the art thing isn't supposed to be easy. how's the saying go? if it came in a bottle, every one would have it. it's true. people want to know that you're dedicated... that you mean it. and it has nothing to do with seeking approval. it has to do with standing your ground until you are the last man standing. it has to do with insistence and perseverance and a show of dedication that states you'll keep going no matter what. rejection after rejection, you come back.
i applied to this particular residency 2 years ago, fresh out of school, and was promptly rejected. ha! and i don't think it had as much to do with my portfolio as it did how i discussed the work and what my intentions were. it was a pretty crazy time in life and i'm sure the letter itself was distracted. and now, after a lot of change and struggle and wrestling with ideas, i feel much more prepared to attempt this again. the work (and how i think about it) is so much different today. so much deeper. so much more meaningful. but i'll admit i'm pretty daunted about it. all i can do is write and re-write and re-write. it's due in about two and a half weeks. the portfolio of work is compiled and ready to go. but The Letter still looms. work work work. and hope hope hope. and try try try. i've been rejected enough that it doesn't get to me all that badly anymore. the initial sting of it, the dashed dream, sucks, but it doesn't defeat me. it's worth a shot.
a pot of coffee is brewing. the morning is wet and grey and silent. no distractions other than myself. ;)
it is another drizzly day here in wine land, another excuse to curl in to my self, my little world, my little spin spin spin of ink and oil and words. i spent a large part of yesterday writing a letter of intent for an artist residency. not easy. i have pages and pages of notes and little snippets culled from this blog about my ideas and intentions. i am trying to put them all in a line. it's time to try for the Big Stuff. in fact, i made myself a deadlines list. it's right here next to the computer so that i am forced to be aware of the date, of the time, of the schedule of the outside world. it is a good thing and i feel motivated to reach a hand toward my aspirations- even if the rejection letter comes as a result, it is good to get in the habit of trying. it is good to be in practice of dealing with rejection, not allowing it to derail you, to gain a bit more hard experience of what it is to believe in your own work. the art thing isn't supposed to be easy. how's the saying go? if it came in a bottle, every one would have it. it's true. people want to know that you're dedicated... that you mean it. and it has nothing to do with seeking approval. it has to do with standing your ground until you are the last man standing. it has to do with insistence and perseverance and a show of dedication that states you'll keep going no matter what. rejection after rejection, you come back.
i applied to this particular residency 2 years ago, fresh out of school, and was promptly rejected. ha! and i don't think it had as much to do with my portfolio as it did how i discussed the work and what my intentions were. it was a pretty crazy time in life and i'm sure the letter itself was distracted. and now, after a lot of change and struggle and wrestling with ideas, i feel much more prepared to attempt this again. the work (and how i think about it) is so much different today. so much deeper. so much more meaningful. but i'll admit i'm pretty daunted about it. all i can do is write and re-write and re-write. it's due in about two and a half weeks. the portfolio of work is compiled and ready to go. but The Letter still looms. work work work. and hope hope hope. and try try try. i've been rejected enough that it doesn't get to me all that badly anymore. the initial sting of it, the dashed dream, sucks, but it doesn't defeat me. it's worth a shot.
a pot of coffee is brewing. the morning is wet and grey and silent. no distractions other than myself. ;)
May 4, 2010
grrrrr
i'm in very strange head space today. have been actually for the past couple of days. agitated is the correct word. but i knew this feeling would find me when i was working on the big snarling dog painting. i knew it was going to cut something loose. and here it is. and words fail. and all i want to do is rant and rave, hoping to locate words that don't fail. all i want to do is drink coffee til my guts explode, yell at the stupid face in the mirror, complain complain complain, and then go paint fucked-up angry images. that growl. that growl made of oil leaning against my big bookcase in the living room certainly has unblocked something deep. i am wrestling and reaching and crying for the thing i'm chasing to slow down so i can get closer to it. flailing embarrassed like a confused child, like a lost teenager. where's my knee socks and mary janes? where's my music that will strike fear in the authority figures? where's my temper tantrum? where's my F-BOMB? a bitch all in black.
Apr 16, 2010
feeling thankful for all the writers and artists maintaining blogs and talking about the struggle of this thing we do...
fear, shame, feeling wrong, feeling stupid...
these are the hitches we deal with. all of us. separately, alone, without a rope usually, without any clue of which direction to crawl in. artists and writers.
my sweet and dear friend who is an absolute powerhouse when it comes to writing, sees me struggle to get at whatever it is i'm trying to get at, and suggested i buy "The Triggering Town" by Richard Hugo. it arrived in the mail yesterday. i sat down on my stoop and read the introduction and first chapter right then. then i closed the cover and went inside and worked on a drawing. scratch scratch scratch, wandering with my pencil over the clean white, thinking thinking thinking. (in art school, teachers are told - ORDERED actually - not to yell at a student for doodling during a lecture. it is a way of thinking.) and i thought about how he said, instantly, right there on the first page, that his hope as a teacher is NOT that he can teach you how to write... but to teach you how to teach yourself how to write... that a student must find out how to write like them self.
i thought about this pretty much all day. it's something i already knew but it always helps to be told again. and i thought that it actually comes down to those hitches i wrote up top... finding a way through those things, but also going beyond the therapeutic aspect of writing. this is something i learned how to do when it comes to the creation of images. the therapeutic is often a starting point for my visual practice, but it is not an end. it moves beyond that. it aspires to more than an act of therapy. and this is a good thing! the image retains that part but it gathers other attributes, other aspects, other functions by the time the image is "completed". but i am having a hell of a time applying this know-how to my writing practice. i think sometimes, i luck out. happen to stumble out of the pen of therapy in to the yard next door- the land of art with a capital A. but it is occasional, momentary, unnoticed even. and it comes down to fear. my fear of saying the wrong thing and seeming stupid. hitch.
and then i read this post by our lovely elisabeth and i thought more and more and more about all these things, all these fears and expectations of writing and how they are inexplicably paired with the desire for love, to be a good person, to be understood, to not hurt anybody, to be fair and even and honest. and this struggle to find a true voice... and then the struggle to find the courage to use that voice...
because honesty is not always fair or kind or even.
that fact doesn't sit well with me either.
but i must find a way around it. it is a hitch.
and so i went back to richard hugo, curled up with him in bed and read read read until it was time to fall asleep. all his insights are somewhere in my brain, baking and turning and steaming.
i hear one of my painting professors voice boom in my head. my esteemed Jack, his face a mirror of robert redford's, and how i came to class all bent out of shape by Theory, and he said: don't worry about it. just keep on taking all the ideas in. you don't need to put them in order. keep taking them in and eventually they will find their way back out. their own way.
and so i go back to that day. that beginning. again and again, the beginning. the site of fresh desire, so rife with confusion and fear, is fertile ground. and trust is the sword.
how do i achieve that? how do i get my hands on that sword? how do i learn to use it, wield it, care for it, polish it?
Jack said: just paint. (for now)
Hugo says: just write. (for now)
okay.
these are the hitches we deal with. all of us. separately, alone, without a rope usually, without any clue of which direction to crawl in. artists and writers.
my sweet and dear friend who is an absolute powerhouse when it comes to writing, sees me struggle to get at whatever it is i'm trying to get at, and suggested i buy "The Triggering Town" by Richard Hugo. it arrived in the mail yesterday. i sat down on my stoop and read the introduction and first chapter right then. then i closed the cover and went inside and worked on a drawing. scratch scratch scratch, wandering with my pencil over the clean white, thinking thinking thinking. (in art school, teachers are told - ORDERED actually - not to yell at a student for doodling during a lecture. it is a way of thinking.) and i thought about how he said, instantly, right there on the first page, that his hope as a teacher is NOT that he can teach you how to write... but to teach you how to teach yourself how to write... that a student must find out how to write like them self.
i thought about this pretty much all day. it's something i already knew but it always helps to be told again. and i thought that it actually comes down to those hitches i wrote up top... finding a way through those things, but also going beyond the therapeutic aspect of writing. this is something i learned how to do when it comes to the creation of images. the therapeutic is often a starting point for my visual practice, but it is not an end. it moves beyond that. it aspires to more than an act of therapy. and this is a good thing! the image retains that part but it gathers other attributes, other aspects, other functions by the time the image is "completed". but i am having a hell of a time applying this know-how to my writing practice. i think sometimes, i luck out. happen to stumble out of the pen of therapy in to the yard next door- the land of art with a capital A. but it is occasional, momentary, unnoticed even. and it comes down to fear. my fear of saying the wrong thing and seeming stupid. hitch.
and then i read this post by our lovely elisabeth and i thought more and more and more about all these things, all these fears and expectations of writing and how they are inexplicably paired with the desire for love, to be a good person, to be understood, to not hurt anybody, to be fair and even and honest. and this struggle to find a true voice... and then the struggle to find the courage to use that voice...
because honesty is not always fair or kind or even.
that fact doesn't sit well with me either.
but i must find a way around it. it is a hitch.
and so i went back to richard hugo, curled up with him in bed and read read read until it was time to fall asleep. all his insights are somewhere in my brain, baking and turning and steaming.
i hear one of my painting professors voice boom in my head. my esteemed Jack, his face a mirror of robert redford's, and how i came to class all bent out of shape by Theory, and he said: don't worry about it. just keep on taking all the ideas in. you don't need to put them in order. keep taking them in and eventually they will find their way back out. their own way.
and so i go back to that day. that beginning. again and again, the beginning. the site of fresh desire, so rife with confusion and fear, is fertile ground. and trust is the sword.
how do i achieve that? how do i get my hands on that sword? how do i learn to use it, wield it, care for it, polish it?
Jack said: just paint. (for now)
Hugo says: just write. (for now)
okay.
Apr 5, 2010
search
yesterday it rained and rained. hard and constant. grey. dim. it felt like evening all day long. and i stayed in my pajamas, drawing and reading in bed, until it was time to get ready for dinner at our neighbor's house.
i read the introduction to Vitamin D- an artist bible if ever there was one... especially for those of us fond of working on paper. and the essay said everything i've been thinking about lately. ideas of mapping and charting personal environments... a "bedroom art" loaded with intimacy. what a perfect mirror. i eventually find myself drawing in bed at some point everyday. and today will be no different. there's just something about it, as an art and as an act, that fits so seamlessly with my interests right now. oil painting feels so final to me at present... a closed system... grand. and i don't want to do anything final or grand right now, i want to explore. if need be, get it wrong. i want to feel my way around, not worry about definitions... or anything definite. i want to crawl through the grass and pick up the fragments, stick them in my pocket, and feel around for more.
i'll move back to oil painting eventually. and probably sooner than later. but for now i need the intimacy of paper, the common attribute of it, a humble pencil in my hand.
it's the path toward "the right word" we've all been talking about so much lately... a truer language for me at this point in my life. the blacked in areas of my scratching, the white blankness that signifies loss or the unknown, the skipped over, the nexus of ALL COLOR.
and i know there is no "right word". but it is the search for it that counts. the hunting down of an honest mode. the defeat that must be overcome. persistence and honor and striving and finding. maybe these things are more important than "knowing".
Words
Axes
After whose stroke the wood rings,
And the echos!
Echos travelling
Off from the centre like horses.
The sap
Wells like tears, like the
Water striving
To re-establish its mirror
Over the rock
That drops and turns,
A white skull,
Eaten by weedy greens.
Years later I
Encounter them on the road-
Words dry and riderless,
The indefatigable hoof-taps.
While
From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars
Govern a life.
-Sylvia Plath
(from Ariel)
i read the introduction to Vitamin D- an artist bible if ever there was one... especially for those of us fond of working on paper. and the essay said everything i've been thinking about lately. ideas of mapping and charting personal environments... a "bedroom art" loaded with intimacy. what a perfect mirror. i eventually find myself drawing in bed at some point everyday. and today will be no different. there's just something about it, as an art and as an act, that fits so seamlessly with my interests right now. oil painting feels so final to me at present... a closed system... grand. and i don't want to do anything final or grand right now, i want to explore. if need be, get it wrong. i want to feel my way around, not worry about definitions... or anything definite. i want to crawl through the grass and pick up the fragments, stick them in my pocket, and feel around for more.
i'll move back to oil painting eventually. and probably sooner than later. but for now i need the intimacy of paper, the common attribute of it, a humble pencil in my hand.
it's the path toward "the right word" we've all been talking about so much lately... a truer language for me at this point in my life. the blacked in areas of my scratching, the white blankness that signifies loss or the unknown, the skipped over, the nexus of ALL COLOR.
and i know there is no "right word". but it is the search for it that counts. the hunting down of an honest mode. the defeat that must be overcome. persistence and honor and striving and finding. maybe these things are more important than "knowing".
Words
Axes
After whose stroke the wood rings,
And the echos!
Echos travelling
Off from the centre like horses.
The sap
Wells like tears, like the
Water striving
To re-establish its mirror
Over the rock
That drops and turns,
A white skull,
Eaten by weedy greens.
Years later I
Encounter them on the road-
Words dry and riderless,
The indefatigable hoof-taps.
While
From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars
Govern a life.
-Sylvia Plath
(from Ariel)
Aug 29, 2009
i must be vague...
not entirely unexpected... more like ignored. put on the back burner until i became strong enough to look at it...
i am on that horrible cusp of knowing the time has come to make the hard decision, to choose need over desire. my eyes have landed on it and i know what the clock says and what the wind is trying to do and where the seeds will land if i do not intervene. one scared hand must be raised. one small fist must curl around one small falling ember. just one. just one.
and once it is seen, it must remain so. it must. or else. and so i go back to making signs for myself and leaving them were i have to look at them. nudge myself to stop being so afraid, to know the land i stand on and run through; its' scents and hints. the hard time is here. for as much as i want to hide under my quilt and drown out the sounds... i can't. i will put it on the fridge like an "A" on a test and encourage myself to do what is right and good and necessary.
"reminder"
15" x 11"
watercolor on paper
angela simione, 2009
i am on that horrible cusp of knowing the time has come to make the hard decision, to choose need over desire. my eyes have landed on it and i know what the clock says and what the wind is trying to do and where the seeds will land if i do not intervene. one scared hand must be raised. one small fist must curl around one small falling ember. just one. just one.
and once it is seen, it must remain so. it must. or else. and so i go back to making signs for myself and leaving them were i have to look at them. nudge myself to stop being so afraid, to know the land i stand on and run through; its' scents and hints. the hard time is here. for as much as i want to hide under my quilt and drown out the sounds... i can't. i will put it on the fridge like an "A" on a test and encourage myself to do what is right and good and necessary.
"reminder"
15" x 11"
watercolor on paper
angela simione, 2009
Apr 6, 2009
re-visiting...
sometimes it helps to go back to the beginning... when you were naive and didn't know it. there was something special in those days, in that approach. something valuable and worth reaching back to.
i brought an older painting of mine back in to the studio to keep me company and remind me to slow down- to pay attention, to approach the canvas with a greater sense of wonder, to not kid myself that i've got an unbreakable handle on this whole painting thing and to explore...
roman 1
10" x 10"
oil on canvas, 2006
when i made this painting, i moved hesitantly yes, but there was also a level of fearlessness because i knew the greater possibility was that i'd screw up. i felt no pressure to aspire to anything other than learning. and the goal of learning should never leave an artist of any kind.
with this little boy hanging on the wall next to my 'in-progress' canvasses, i am moving slowly today; thoughtfully... appreciatively. and reminding myself also that...
nathan coley
...just hard work and a refusal to stop trying.
i brought an older painting of mine back in to the studio to keep me company and remind me to slow down- to pay attention, to approach the canvas with a greater sense of wonder, to not kid myself that i've got an unbreakable handle on this whole painting thing and to explore...
roman 1
10" x 10"
oil on canvas, 2006
when i made this painting, i moved hesitantly yes, but there was also a level of fearlessness because i knew the greater possibility was that i'd screw up. i felt no pressure to aspire to anything other than learning. and the goal of learning should never leave an artist of any kind.
with this little boy hanging on the wall next to my 'in-progress' canvasses, i am moving slowly today; thoughtfully... appreciatively. and reminding myself also that...
nathan coley
...just hard work and a refusal to stop trying.
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