tomorrow night we get the keys

i stumble across collections of words, phrases, and fall in to them like a tar pit, screaming THAT'S WHAT I WAS TRYING TO SAY! and loving the feeling of being stuck (so crazily, inexplicably comfortably stuck!) in someone else's writing.

i have been thinking about (fearing) homelessness for months as we searched and searched fruitlessly for new digs, always coming up empty handed, making phone calls that were never returned, making appointments that the other person always forgot, running face first in to rules that i could not wrap around my life, could not endure the strangulation, could not abide by just to end up being stuck in place i wasn't all that happy about being anyway. we began planning to put all our boxed possessions in storage and living in cars, surfing couches, buying a gym membership just to be able to take showers. i'm serious. and i thought of Genet and i thought i have no real home anyway and i thought no, wait, my real home is my notebook, my real home is this Blackland, these images i create.

these thoughts have been present and potent. they originated when my mom leaned in to death and the threat of homelessness surfaced the moment i returned home from her funeral. too much at once. and it has been too-much-at-once for months now. it was so impossibly hard to find a new apartment in santa rosa that i really did start thinking maybe God doesn't want me to live in the north bay? the fates really have seemed pretty opposed to the idea. and so we start looking in our beloved east bay again, in good ol' Oakland, and the very first place we submit an application to becomes ours. we pick up the keys tomorrow evening. we will load our boxes of books in to the truck tonight.

the reception at Project One last night was beautiful and felt like a homecoming, like a longing satisfied, like a return. art on the walls, my Worry Roses for my mom installed, friends all around, happy to hear that we are moving back after three long years out here in the countryside. three years... it doesn't seem real. it doesn't seem possible that it's been that long. a long, strange dream... not a Home.

and i needed the connection. i needed the tall white walls and people milling around with wine glasses in their hand. i needed the air, the space, the breath of these things.

i'm reading Just Kids by patti smith right now and it's the most perfect thing i could be reading. my friends freya and doug read it, one right after the other, a week or so ago and lent it to me the second they finished reading it. it's the perfect follow-up to volume 2 of anais nin's diary and the perfect preface to our move back to oakland. my fear about homelessness lifted instantly and i thought well, patti smith slept on a stoop in new york... i could sleep in my car in san francisco. what's the big deal? and then of course, the very next day, we get an apartment. God approved. hahaha!

the week i didn't write here i was dealing with all these things and a long-time friend of the family who has known me since i was about 7 years old or so that we lost track of a few years back tracked me down on facebook. still thinking of us as family, still thinking of my mother as her best friend, still thinking of my mother as her sister, she sent me an excited message asking about my mom and how to get a hold of her, she called me mija just like always, and then in her happy hunt for connection she stumbled across my blog. she read, here, about my mother's death. her best friend, her sister. and another message was sent. she left her phone number and i called her the second i got in the door from work. hearing her stunned horror was painful. hearing her voice, a voice i've heard all my life since i was just a little girl, felt like Home. she looked at my work online and felt proud of me.

and a few days ago i read this post at repat blues' blog.

"There is no such thing as home. Home becomes art, the creation of art. Turning to art, working the wound. Stew's play. Passing Strange. I've always been passing strange. I'd rather be bad at this (writing, acting, fucking) than good at X (Selling air conditioners. Public relations. Saying Good Morning. Making eye contact)."

these are the words that i am happily stuck in. all of it. each word, a bell ringing. a knock on the head reminding me of what i must do. i got out of class yesterday (my last day of instruction before two rounds of finals next week) and immediately got in the truck and got on the freeway and went to san francisco. i left this life behind and picked up another 70 miles away in a beautiful room in a beautiful city. i hugged friends and i met strangers and i had champagne.

freya brought me roses and her children painted me a little picture of a rainbow which will go on the refrigerator in our new kitchen tomorrow evening. i turned in my almost-two-week notice at my retail gig and will be back on a crazy, meandering job-hunt in no time. i think of Genet and patti smith and repat blues and my friends. i think of the struggle and i think it's so completely fucking worth it when i think of what an artist's life is. if it ever comes down to it, the roof of a car is still a roof and i can totally live there because my Home is in my notebook and the graphite on the page, the paintings on the wall, and the words that women write.

in case you couldn't make it...

YO!

.





For Immediate Release
Slingshot: Launa Bacon, Lea Feinstein, Freya Prowe , Angela Simione

What………Group exhibition: Literati
When………Feb. 10 through early March
Reception….Thursday, Feb.10th, 6-9pm
Location……Slingshot Gallery, 890 Valencia St., San Francisco, CA
Hours………Thurs -Fri 12-5pm, Sat-Sun 1-6pm
Contact……Freya Prowe: freya@freyaprowe.com, 323.350.1042

Whether taking the shape of a poem, fairy tale, diary entry, grocery list, or miscellaneous receipt, text fuels the tempo of life and identity. It establishes the contour and texture of a day. Language, in its many forms and functions, creates and re-creates reality. It is through words that the world is made.

Whether building poems from spatters of coffee, building zoos of dark fantasy from children's tales, or finding a reflection of one's identity in the life story of a writer, the artwork in Literati offers a map of how text expands our loves, fears, ideas, desires, and philosophies. The artists in this exhibition, great lovers of books and language, pay personal homage to the power of the written word.

Launa Bacon’s work is middlebrow, low-def and “creepy.” Her work is often an examination of the narratives that shape female identity.

Lea Feinstein’s performance and installation work incorporates narratives drawn from nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and other “domestic” sources. She also creates mixed media art books which include her personal narratives.

Freya Prowe’s work is lyrical, dark and draws upon the tradition of European fairy tales of her childhood. Prowe creates images that playfully prey upon the duality inherent in human interactions.

Angela Simione uses the methods of erasure to create her own "redacted" documents, making metaphors for the experiences of loss. Simione presents fragments, tiny bits of evidence, allusions to a lost history.



image:
Dutiful (1 & 2)
44" x 30" each
graphite on attached paper
angela simione, 2010

waking up...

yesterday i dropped Lineage (4) off at the gallery. my ladies are gone and on their way to finding a new home. it is always a happy/sad moment. mostly happy, but i always feel a bit of a tug on my heart when i let go of a work that i feel i really put myself in to and that canvas is definitely in that crowd. but stopping in at the gallery and hanging out for a bit always puts me in a better mood and eases my mind and heart. i've been all twisted up lately over life's big questions - a very obnoxious, uneasy, un-fun occurrence - but going to the gallery yesterday and just having conversation about art and looking at the work of others really helped me calm down and refocus on the positive aspects of life.

i'm in the next show at the gallery which opens tomorrow and the reception is a couple days later on the 3rd- my birthday! i'm really looking forward to it. really, really, really! all the little apron portraits that i've made so far (save one) will be on display (one of them was used as the image on the show postcard! yay!), along with one of my favorite mono prints and the big canvas i just dropped off. shows are always exciting and a very happy moment and it's just what i need. there's really nothing i'd rather do on my birthday than this. it's the best present ever. :) whoever's in the area, please come by! bring a friend and have some wine and some laughs and celebrate art and birth and change and work and progress with me! click the gallery link for details.

fun!

getting ready for the First Thursday art shenanigans in the city tonight! yay! always a wonderful time and it's so good to get out of the house, away from my work, and look at the work of others. plus there's wine and cheese and all sorts of things that are bad for my waist-line but, thanks to The Jog, i no longer have to worry too much about stuff like that. not that i ever really did. :) life's too short to worry about vanity pounds.

anybody who's out and about tonight in san francisco, i'll be rounding out my evening at my gallery. swing on by and say hi! especially art-school friends. it's been too long since i've seen your happy, beautiful faces.

yay!

oh, whose little maid painting is down there in the corner? :)

if you're in the neighborhood or anywhere close to it, i'd love to see you at the opening!

July 2nd
6 - 8pm
HANG Gallery, San Francisco

sunday, sunday, sunday...

intention. that word's been coming up a lot lately. i've been thinking about it for days and days and days. how to satisfy it... how to make it clear... but also, how to leave the door open to other interpretations of the image... how to be generous AND accurate at the same time. it's a back and forth, back and forth kind of thing. a buzz that lives in the line. a kind of call that slinks around in the back of a shadow. i need to go back to my art history books, i think. look and read and hunt. i need to open my theory books and underline, underline, underline... see what other people are saying, receive their insights, and disagree with them if need be...

but not today. today is sunday and the light is bright and good which means it's a day for pushing paint around. as i work, my own intentions become clearer and i feel good about what i'm doing.

last night, my sweetie and i went to the zyzzyva reception at mina dresden. so much art on the walls! and all black and white! SWOON! and an awesome turn-out too! the place was packed and everyone seemed happy and approachable (well, mostly. ha! you know how art receptions can be sometimes). it made me feel good to see that many people together in a room just to look at art and talk about art and show support for the work that artists do. heart-warming. and so today i'm back at my canvasses. i've got two side by side and i'm moving back and forth, back and forth between them- snuggling with one, bruising the other, catering to both.

a bit of this, a bit of that...

so for about that last 4 months or so i've been asked, with ever-increasing regularity, if i've got a Facebook account. apparently, MySpace has fallen somewhat out of favor for the adult crowd and Facebook is the preferred way to stay connected to all your college buddies. so, yesterday evening i set up an account and am already completely obsessed by it- my new shiny toy to break. just the way it goes for me. i've already checked it today and am now holding it up as a golden carrot to bribe myself in to getting some work done. aside from the many canvasses in my studio, there's also a sink full of dirty dishes that need to be done and a pile of laundry in the bathroom. we'll see.

later today i'm going to my first ever wine-tasting. i'm so excited! and i don't really even like wine all that much. i've recently acquired a taste for the whites (chardonnay is at the top of my tastiness list) but still no luck with reds. they taste like rancid butter to me. or dirt. plain ol' dirt in a fancy glass. but i hope to get overcome this and develop some adult taste-buds in the near future. again, we'll see.

but for all of you in the san francisco bay area region of the world, tonight is the opening reception for marci washington's solo show at Rena Bransten, Dark Mirror.



i won't be able to make it out to see it until the weekend but if you've got nothing planned, i highly recommend it. marci is not only a super great painter but a huge sweetheart and the gallery she shows with is one of my all-time favorites. the evening will not disappoint.