Bruxist

Uno, dos, tres

2012-01-06T13:18:00.001-07:00

I take a light rail train from my home in the factory district to downtown, where I catch a bus to Santa Monica. Yesterday, a man walked slowly up and down the crowded train car, slowly spelling out his name: "D"..."O"..."M"..."I"..."N"..."I"..."C"...followed by counting to ten, over and over, in Spanish. As he walked, he would look people directly in the eyes before passing them. He walked to the end of the car, and slowly pivoted before walked back to the front, while counting. At first, it was the sort of funny that's pitiable--the drunk old man singing to himself. But he never stopped, he had been performing this action when I boarded and was continuing after I left. It became almost threatening.

The little boy, probably only six

2011-12-23T19:23:00.000-07:00

I found this pencil at work while looking for something to draw with.

Commerce

2011-08-20T10:17:00.001-07:00

Look, look! I have an etsy store with things that are too expensive for anyone that I know. I have priced myself out of my social circle. Good work, me.
(click on pictures to be taken to the magical land of commerce)

2011-06-27T11:32:00.000-07:00

I took the train from Salt Lake City to San Francisco. Sleeping through half of it, I woke up to the news of a death and the landscape of central Nevada slipping by.

In the suburbs of Salt Lake, I am a visitor from a distant place, someone who lives in Babylon, who doesn't own the correct clothes or the ability to speak the same anymore. They have supplies are laid up in basements and closets, carefully marked and maintained, waiting for the day. But the day doesn't come, though they know it will. They love me, but they don't understand how I can live without this preparation, so close to Gomorrah, so close to the end.

MFA Thesis Show

2011-05-20T08:09:00.001-07:00

At last!

I install the show today. All of the work is finished within this semester and some it still isn't finished (though it will be by Sunday).

Open Studios, Spring 2011

2011-04-07T10:36:00.003-07:00

This is my last one as a student.

Sand

2011-03-26T10:55:00.000-07:00

A small child runs towards me--his small face set and grim, a thin string of mucus dried above his lip. "Hello there," I say. He hurls a fistfull of wet sand at me.

Two Camilla

2011-01-22T13:42:00.000-07:00

The beach in winter is mostly vacant, but it's still warm enough to walk barefoot through the shallowest ends of the waves. No orange skinned half naked people engaged in rituals on colorful blankets. The tide brings up mundane things that become strange. One day, I find ten separate gloves, none of them a match to each other, coughed up on the sand by the water and left alone.

Happy birthday to me. Yay.

Co-Lab: Xkot vs. Camilla

2011-01-07T11:39:00.004-07:00

We saw long necked sphinxes with perfectly shapely tiny breasts at the Getty Center. Later, when we escaped from the rain at Tony's Darts Away, I re-drew the buxom monsters with Xkot who was in town from SLC.

2010-12-14T08:00:00.001-07:00

The mustiness evokes memories, unbidden and inevitable. But memory evoked can be both pleasurable and painful, and she recalls the closet stuffed with winter blankets, the cramped attic, the small spaces of a house. The memories evoked are of space that is small and cramped, a space that perhaps one could have fit into when young during a game of hide and seek but is now much too small to accommodate the adult frame of the viewer. It is perhaps of a linen closet in a relative’s house, or the tiny fragmented space under the stairs.

"No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me," he wrote. "An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses...with no suggestion of its origin...
"Suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was of a little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings...my Aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea....Immediately the old gray house on the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set...and the entire town, with its people and houses, gardens, church, and surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being from my cup of tea."

Co-lab

2010-12-13T13:52:00.003-07:00

A whole bunch of art jams from being bored in class.

THese are by Justin Schaefer, myself, and Chris Whose-Last-Name-I-Can't-Recall. We are very productive students.

Monopoly

2010-10-18T09:00:00.006-07:00

When we played the boardgame Monopoly, in which you pretend to be a tiny venture capitalist, there’s an extension of the rules called free parking that we never ceased to enforce. All of the fines paid in multicolored game money were placed in the center of the board, to be awarded to the lucky player whose tiny metal car, hat, or shoe lands on the “free parking” square.

The official rules of Monopoly never mention free parking being used in this way, and the game designers only intended that square to be a break, not a sudden windfall, going so far as to insist in interviews that to play this way, to structure the game to have such a big random award, is not to play Monopoly at all.

Everyone wants there to be a reward just for participating, something so good that can happen because you chose to grind away in the system.

The reward at free parking perpetuates the game endlessly, as no one will ever be bankrupted, so like a sitcom past its prime, the players have no risk and move around the board endlessly.

facebook public page for camilla taylor

From the side

2010-09-11T15:47:00.003-07:00

A coyote runs across the street, from the school to the neighborhood--disappearing.

2010-08-23T19:19:00.002-07:00

I am expanding out ever farther like dandelion fluff.

Many things

2010-07-13T10:54:00.003-07:00

ON|PAPER opened. I calculatedly made and wore an elaborate necklace as I figure it's always good to stand out at a reception and give people a reason to talk to you. It's sort of a financially motivated form of "peacocking."

David taught me how to spot weld with a MIG set up, and while I am not very good at it yet I'm good enough for my purely structural purposes.

I have new pieces up at Twentieth Gallery, in the front window, in one of the back rooms, and a little doll brooch that's probably at the sales people's desk.

Castle

2010-06-30T23:13:00.002-07:00

Dreams of finding new unexplored places in familiar houses are like the locked chamber in Bluebeard's castle: the empty unoccupied places never offer actual habitability.

No music dance

2010-05-25T12:33:00.000-07:00

From the GLAMFA photoshoot. I'm the rat.

Apogee, Cont'd

2010-05-16T17:55:00.003-07:00

At the opening reception for Apogee: Drunk guy stabs at one of my sculptures accusingly and says "WHO is THIS?!" gets a beer from the cooler, and stuffs a second beer in his pants. As he leaves, he pauses by the door and whispers "There's a second beer in my pants."

The three of us screenprint on t-shirts and paper in the back of the gallery for $10, but end up doing them all for free, too grateful to our friends for driving out to the event in the middle of finals to charge them.

Apogee

2010-05-11T20:32:00.001-07:00

All the way over in Orange County, I have a show opening this Saturday. It's myself and two other artists. Sure, I could tell who who the two others are, but this blog is about me, me, me!

(Tyler Ferreira and Rob Brown, who are both, like myself, printmakers.)

It's in Art from the Hive in Santa Ana.
Pluses: open bar, next to the Amtrak Station for easy getaway, LIVE! screenprinting on stuff
Minuses: far away from other stuff that isn't Santa Ana, and maybe you just aren't awesome enough for this show.

Anyhow, should you be so inclined, it would be nice if you stopped by.

This Weekend

2010-05-06T10:15:00.004-07:00

(images aren't mine, but are from the showcards)
Tomorrow night in Phoenix, AZ, at Pravus Gallery:

I have a single piece in the show: a powdered graphite on paper portrait of my friend Angela Brown.

And then, on Saturday in Long Beach, CA at Phonebooth Gallery:

The piece in this show is a portrait of Filiz Osman.

Two more shows the following weekend which I will post about later.

I've reduced the prices on some of the old pieces in my shop, so stop by and have a look.

Morsel

2010-04-02T23:06:00.004-07:00

Walking to the bus stop after spending a day watching the gallery, a man stopped me on the street by tapping my shoulder. He looked into my eyes, pulling his brows together slightly. "You belong to me," he said. I've just returned to LA from the other side of the country.

I can see it there, and I know it's not intended to be mine. But even so you have so much, so very much, that surely you won't notice when I take only a little bit--wrapped in tissue paper, placed carefully in a breast pocket, or tucked into an used jewelry box in the decaying cushioning foam while your back is turned, your attention diverted. Just an imperceptible amount removed to store away and take with me.

And the next time I see you I will take just a bit, each time nothing more than a tiny fraction. You won't notice it's gone, but I'll get home and add it to a small pile accruing on a shelf, hidden behind the books. Perhaps sometimes you will give it to me even, offer it up or nod agreeably as I take a pinch. You won't know what you're doing, what you're really giving away slowly, bit by bit, is everything, not just that portion of it.

It will take a very long time, but eventually there will be a critical point and it will be mine instead of yours. You won't have noticed, but at some point, and not for a very long time, I will have more than you. I don't know if you will take it back or not; I don't know if you can.

Winter tan

2010-02-22T00:21:00.008-07:00

Slender young women with cultivated winter tans walk past me, their foreheads dotted with ashen grey targets, as they walk past and away from me their pants command or entreat me with single words emblazoned across their ass.

On Friday, I give a demonstration to the students on simple relief printing, over enunciating the Japanese words and mentally pen an autobiography in 100 words or less. Entire years compressed into two words, influential portions omitted for the sake of propriety. I attempt to resist my natural inclination to come off as a bit of a wet blanket milquetoast.

Graduate Shmaduate

2010-02-09T11:42:00.001-07:00

I was awarded the Southern Graphics Council Graduate Student Fellowhip. The award includes a solo show at the 2011 SGC in St. Louis, MO, $1,000 towards creating a body of work for the show, and giving a presentation at this year's SGC in Philadelphia banquet dinner. Yay!

I almost hyperventilated from excitement when I found out this morning.

The Irritant

2010-01-18T16:07:00.003-07:00

I also made it a gif, but I think it looks better as a video.

My knees hurt from crouching on the ground. Next time I'm going to do something on a table top instead of on the floor. Making something fall slowly is surprisingly the most difficult part of this.

These fellows are from my old series "Invisible Coterie," and I'm selling some of them in my website.

Spin

2010-01-10T15:37:00.002-07:00

My first stop motion animation! Made using the little dolls I make. I want to make an animation using much bigger things that is longer, so this is my practice to see if I can actually make a stop motion at all.

I sell these dolls at Frosty Darling in Salt Lake City, if'n you're interested.

Bunching up in the armpits and waist

2010-01-02T17:35:00.004-07:00

Time and distance push you ahead and apart. We stand in a circle holding varisized tumblers, waiting for someone else to say something after the first gulp. Children are larger, and you're less prepared for the ice and snow each time, each year owning fewer and fewer of the things which made the season bearable. Bundle up in inadequate Southern California coats, one on top of the other, bunching up in the armpits and waist.

The sidewalks are roughened, salted, and won't let you easily slide across them. The air is thick from the atmosphere above it pushing it down, bowling it into a mass, refusing to allow it to waft away. The poison gathers up, bunches itself, falls to the ground with the snow and re amasses. Conversations are awkward and littered with self corrections--cuss words unsaid, recollections of what particular detail is appropriate or not--and suddenly an entire year was spent doing nothing worth mentioning.

I've added some old pieces to my shop.

Science!

2009-12-17T15:52:00.001-07:00

I met Bill Nye the Science Guy. I immediately called my sisters to brag about it.

Globules of Ice

2009-11-15T16:27:00.002-07:00

The painters I know have more blue eyes than any other group of people I can quantify and label. I'm taking a class intended for painters. Their eyeballs float around the room, suspended in their faces, little globules of cocktail ice. Clink clink.

The miniature is defined by its physicality. The only ways to describe the miniature is through ratio and relationship to other objects: the story of Tom Thumb, the fictional tiny hero, who had a walnut shell as a cradle. We are given the intimate knowledge of Tom’s size through a gluttony of vivid physical description, but only of the size of Tom.

In the painting class, one of the students showed his recent work which included a miniaturized copy of a Franz Kline painting. The discussion of the piece was largely a discussion of ratio—the size of Kline’s brush compared to the size of the brush Jordan used, the difference in studio size, canvas used, etc. Everyone found the painting funny because it was small, a joke that one only “gets” if one already possesses knowledge of the large painting that was copied. The miniature is not only defined by its physicality, but also by its familiarity. You cannot see a miniature something if you have never see a normal sized something before. Without foreknowledge of the miniaturized item the miniaturization is undetectable. I am in on the joke of the miniature Kline painting, but my own experience with Kline’s work, I realize long after my “in crowd” chuckling, are of photographic reproductions, images that are even smaller than Jordan’s reduced painting.

The miniature is of the antique and the timeless, a tiny piece signifying timelessness, whereas the giant is most often involved only when his, and the giant is usually a male, death or defeat is predetermined. Cyclops was blinded by Odysseus, King Arthur and his cronies battled and killed numerous unnamed giants, and even London’s Og and Magog are defeated and chained, forced into servitude. In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver, when in the land of Brobdingnag, home of the giant people, was perpetually confronted with the repulsive nature of humanity. The breasts of the giant women are mentioned at numerous intervals, the breast being the most idealized part of the female anatomy they are the perfect example of the horridness of the large. The color, the odor, and the sheer size of the breasts of the aristocratic giants are described in lavish disgusting detail, and just in case that were inadequate, Gulliver also throws in the tail of seeing a beggar beset with breast cancer. The breasts of the giants are so large that Gulliver can only see one at a time and only a small part of it--the nipple surrounded by downy hair a hideous furry hillock--this all encompassing experience is grotesque.

LAPS 20th National Opening and Panel

2009-11-05T14:47:00.001-07:00

People actually looked at my print! Extraordinary!

I'll be part of the panel discussion on the 21st at 2pm, 4800 Hollywood Blvd, LA. Come prepared with uncomfortable questions to ask me.

APE 2009

2009-10-15T23:23:00.002-07:00

That's me! Table 242. I have specially screenprinted paper bags for putting purchases inside.

APE 2009

Saturday, Oct. 17
11am - 7pm

Sunday, Oct. 18
11am - 6pm

The Concourse
620 7th Street
San Francisco

Swimming

2009-09-20T17:20:00.001-07:00

Swimming
Originally uploaded by Camilla Taylor

Twinkle

2009-09-11T09:59:00.002-07:00

On a bus stop bench: a complete set of men's clothing. The shoes side by side on the ground huddled together like cockroaches, the socks sunken into their heels, collapsed upon their emptiness. The pants restfully lain across the bench with a crumpled shirt atop. The Rapture came and took the only good man in the world, leaving behind his clothes and bus fair and the ruins he had left in his wake, the redistribution of air into the vacuum shaped like him left behind upon his departure, the world continuing unknowing of what had just happened to it.

We used to call it "twinkling" because of the passage "in the twinkling of an eye" found in Corinthians referring to this rupture in the ages of man, when someone circumvents the terrors of old age and death: Springheeled Jack aloft, giving you a leer and a wink on his way up. The Christian universe a great petulant neighbor child, refusing to follow the rules of the game he had devised once they inevitably became tedious. It's got an appeal, though, hasn't it? Much like spontaneous combustion. An admixture of oudated science and a looming vastness of unknown things, a recipe for some of the most exiting of things that you just want to think are true even though you know that really they aren't. They just can't be.

My bus arrives, and I push through the high school students in khaki pants and blue shirts.

"Among Us" opens Sunday the 13th at the Dutzi Gallery in Long Beach, CA. The few things I have will be artfully arranged so as to seem like more than they really are, and I promise to leave silly referrences to apocalypse theology at home.

Twinkle

2009-09-03T17:43:00.007-07:00

The great and mighty task

2009-08-25T22:50:00.003-07:00

I've been intending to finish my website all summer, but never did much besides become irrationally enraged with the complexities of XML and other mysterious code language. My professor an another graduate student had made a pact to finish their websites by the end of the summer break, and I had thought about how I should really do the same thing. The only real reason I did get around to finally figuring it all out was because I thought classes started a week earlier than they actually did, and since I found myself with another week's worth of vacation I had no excuse but to finish the task I had avoided for the past three months.

There are still quite a few little problems that I can't figure out no matter how much I try with my limited knowledge, like why the cursor doesn't change when you mouse over some links even though those links still work. But, I'll get that done eventually and it's rather small when compared to all of the other bits I finished, like getting functional flash galleries up and having a reasonably navigable site with little foreknowledge of html.

the Website

Summer Break

2009-08-10T13:45:00.003-07:00

School resumes in two weeks.

This summer break I have traveled nowhere, and attended few parties or events. I have worked. It has been the summer of responsibilities.

Overhead Lighting

2009-08-01T15:34:00.001-07:00

Painting from pictures of people when they look the ugliest--head jutting forward, stomach protruding, slouching beneach bright overhead lighting and naked in mid summer, their skin dappled with the uneven contact of sunlight. The light sends the shadows down their faces, dripping from the sockets of the eyes and out of the nose. I promised the subjects that no one would ever see these photos, and I flip the pictures facedown whenever someone visits.

I have not left Southern California at all this summer. Instead of travel, I've stayed inside during the day and worked until the sun sets and only then venturing outside to tend to my tiny herb garden and to swim slow laps in the pool filled with sidelong evening light.

Black Lipstick

2009-07-14T11:33:00.005-07:00

Skin turns to parchment in the heat. Curling up in papery layers, pulling back from the flesh, and exposing it in warm pink stripes.

A friend, to explain a complaint, told me that poverty is not typified so much by a lack of money but by the attitude that everything is irreplaceable, and so the poor amass yogurt containers, mop handles with decaying sponge heads, dishes in boxes unused and ugly. His complaint was towards my own habit of hoarding, assigning more importance to the funds which might be spent replacing the ephemera in the future should I find a use for it once its gone than to the money spent on storing the ephemera in waiting for this phantom purpose. Still I can't shake the desire to hold onto anything which passes through my possession, and go out of my way to amass the detritus of other people as well. Yet I get a luxurious pleasure when I assign the shoe rack, which I know I could make into something else, to the Goodwill pile. It feels rich to value space.

Purpling the pavement

2009-06-12T13:48:00.003-07:00

When I first visited here, the jacoranda trees were in full bloom, and now a little over a year later the blossoms are fading, the trees turning over to green as the fleshy flowers purple the pavement. When I don't wear my glasses, it looks like a low lying violet fog beyond the fence, thick with the fecund smell.

The visions people have when their mind is turned off, the blood flow stopped and their body liminal between life and lack of it, are repeated by the ones who saw what they wanted to see. A divine and loving power urging them to return to the earth, their goodness and rightness reiterated.

In the early mornings, I hear someone knocking on the door and pressing the bell repeatedly. I stumble out of bed, wrap myself in an old quilt, negotiate the complexity of drawings and fabric to be cut laid across the parlor floor and dazedly answer the door.

There are other stories which haven't born the repetition of inspirational talk shows and New Age-y large print books. Some poeple have been slipped jelly like to a different place, lost beyond thier bodies in a place with no light. Something else is there with them, something that isn't lost and is looking for them. Being a cynic, I don't view the phenomenon as much besides an inexplicable. The thing in the dark, searching out the quivering ego, could be nothing more than the instinctual remnants of an animal whose ancestors for millenia were susceptible to nocturnal hunters. In the unplumbable depths of the brain sits the patient idea of the hungry night dweller, still waiting for a slip up, for the unwary to forget.

At the door the cold seamisted air wakes me up. No one is there. Each time I have the half dream the urgency increases. The knocking gets louder.

Activity Quest Adventure Challenge

2009-05-25T22:57:00.001-07:00

This could very well be the most important self published zine style non comic book anthology you will ever be involved with.

Also:

the dark

2009-05-06T23:54:00.002-07:00

A cockroach in the hallway today displayed none of the behavioral symptoms of cockroach-ness. It failed to run away, it peered at the light, and it didn't crouch down when I did so to investigate it. Its antennae flicked lazily back and forth, tasted the air as I disturbed it and sent tiny molecules of myself, regarding me as I regarded it. It and its peers have survived unmolested by evolution for centuries because of their desire to be together in the dark.

To be in the light alone is to die for a cockroach, and not only the limited range of species who've moved to the apartments and restaurants of the urban undergrowth. In rotting logs and beneath fallen leaves moist with decay stoop the tiny millions of them, unrecognizable to us accustomed to only the date brown of the kitchen dweller.

The ant and the bee, the tireless metaphors for labor--the tiny women of work who have become so accustomed to their own task that they will pursue it regardless of the presence of their thread waisted siblings. Not so the cockroach, for whom solitude is anathema. The ant and the bee are marked and modified numerous times by the fractional change of mutation, but today's cockroach would be indistinguishable from one thousands of years previous and thousands of years hence.

Why, little cockroach, don't you want to huddle in the dark?

PS If you ever want to buy any of the art I post, please message me. All of my work is for sale as long as it hasn't been sold yet.

PPS I have a piece at the UAM in Long Beach, with a reception on the 14th of this month. You should come and pretend you don't know me, and then say something in an outside voice about how wonderful that one piece by Camilla Taylor is.

Salt

2009-04-27T22:11:00.000-07:00

Every year, they look smaller and smaller; their skin now appears like confection--the kind which must be eaten just after preparation, before it falls.

Dice

2009-04-04T19:25:00.010-07:00

Nate stabs at the wobbly coffee table with two fingers. "Two! Two to beat!" My friend transforms into a hustler as he teaches me to play Threes. He taps at the table with his two demoralizing fingers and I realize that if he had achieved a perfect score of zero he would not be able to perform this piece of intimidation theatre, but then, if he had achieved a perfect score there would be little reason to haze the other players. I perform a series of actions with the dice and come up with a higher score than two. Tom follows me, and with a worse score. Nate collects the three dollars from the center of the table while simultaneously convincing me to deposit another dollar in the spot my previous dollar had occupied. I'm suckered, and pull the bill out of my wallet. As the winner of the previous round, it has been explained to me, Nate rolls first. Finishing his turn with a perfect score, his gloat floats up through his barely structured imperturbability. Before the round is over, he and Tom are already reminiscing about previous games in which other such improbable feats were achieved. Tom and I take our turns more out of adherence to rules than to any expectation of winning.

We are at the party held in an illegally occupied loft because of a promise of wildness. I arrived with two girls who I had met only an hour earlier, and upon arrival I immediately set off to explore the premises. My exploration was significantly shorter than I had hoped it would be, as I was locked in a stairwell suddenly--the door shut behind me as the proprietor of the establishment was securing the more personal spaces in the loft, such as this stair well packed with bike parts and assorted items stacked in milkcrates. Instead of being frightened, I'm instead excited by what I perceive as the element of the unexpected materializing. But I'm quickly retrieved from the locked room, and the musicians in the main room start to play a slow dirgelike jazz. The dice came out in an effort to engender some seediness into the otherwise staid and respectable party.

Girls I knew in the past have disappeared, unfound despite the vast wealth of interconnectivity offered by the internet and its promised destruction of mystery. They've slipped away from themselves, from the selves I knew, like an insect moving into its next phase of life, leaving behind the empty carapace of yearbook photos, emails sent form a defunct address. They've changed their names and passed into a new identity and all accept it with the ease of habit, as unremarkable as a haircut.

We leave for another illegally occupied loft, this one with promises from one of the newly met girls of a much greater degree of illegal occupiedness. Yes, this is the sort of place one could get stabbed in. I attempt to explore again, investigating a couple of pup tents in a corner and a cursory look reveals that these are in fact the bedrooms of the occupants. The veneer of childishness slips from us and we resume our spot next to our box of gas station beers and sloughed off layers of coats.

It snowed

2009-04-01T11:38:00.004-07:00

To Chicago I went, where I learned things which can only serve to contribute to further failure to get to work, returned home feeling like someone had spent the duration of the previous night in attempts to kill me by slow throttling. THe blame for this sudden onset of sickness I place upon the great masses of children I came into contact with while in Chicago. Children are filthy and carriers of disease. That is an accepted fact.

At an Arial Pink show (or Oral Pink, or Aural Pink, I was never quite sure which), Nate, my new Chicago friend Akasha and I danced like 5 year olds and got yelled at by other more staid music appreciators. A hairdresser told me that I had a great haircut, and I embarrassed myself with my enthusiasm for the complement.

The conference I was ostensible in town to attend I spent as little time at as possible. After vainly attempting to attend the overpacked demonstrations and panel discussions, I ended up spending the majority of my time with my resident Chicago friends and getting cold walking through weather I'm not well suited to.

haircut

2009-03-24T14:26:00.002-07:00

Every time I'm about to leave on a trip, I always have this desire to call it all off. I've had disastrous travel experiences: fights in subways, robbed, sexually assaulted (by a professor!), lost, temporarily homeless, etc. But I'm going to go to Chicago anyway. I'm certain that now I won't be getting drunk in public, I won't resort to fisticuffs, and I certainly won't carry all of my money in cash and on my person.

This sort of Depression era habit of poverty has me perpetually cutting my own hair, despite being able to probably afford a $35 appointment every few months. But why pay someone to do something well that I can do poorly for free?

What's in Chicago? Cold and printmakers at the Southern Graphics Council Convention and for a short period of time I will be in Chicago. I bought a winter coat just for this trip, as I haven't really had a need for a winter coat in the last 5 or so years I don't own one. Printmakers reassuring each other that our medium is not dead, is still relevent, is still viable, and maybe even believing it, too. My friend and his daughter; she is 3.5 years old and I've never met her.

http://printoftheweek.blogspot.com/

Sugar

2009-03-01T12:28:00.002-07:00

The first time I went to the restaurant, I noted a particular desert on the menu. Cotton candy, spun maple sugar. But, the menu noted, it was only available when Miss Dingle was working, as she was the only person who knew how to use the machine. I opted for something else instead, though, an unglamorous chocolate cake, perfectly serviceable and unmemorable.

The second time, I ordered the spun sugar. A woman carried it out, Miss Dingle I assumed, wearing a winter hat with earflaps and a flannel shirt dusted with flour. She held it up high, at shoulder level, and it floated towards us through the tables. The few remaining people eating made little sounds, sighed as the desert passed them. She set it before me, a great mass of sunset colored cloud that swayed with the little movements of the air. I pulled a bit of the fluff and ate it. And I remembered the last time I had cotton candy, nearly twenty years ago. At an elementary school fair, with the little booths staffed by parents and older students, the plastic games that they had played when they were our age. Easily won, the prizes cheaper than the cost of the ticket to play them. After collecting numerous worthless little treasures, a plastic elephant with a slit in its back for coins, a tiny cup holding even tinier monkeys with interlocking arms, most of the gamestands were being taken down, the blacktop being swept.

The man, some father of a child or retired teacher, who brought the cotton candy machine every year still had a long line before his big metal cauldron. It was late, so much later than I had ever been out before. I joined the lined that extended up the grassy slope behind the playground, and the sky darkened above us as we waited. The stars burst out in tiny explosions of light, covering the sky with a brilliance. The cotton candy was spun around and around in the machine, wrapped around the coiled paper handles, tiny wisps of pink fluff caught in the air and floating away, flying up in the sky towards the stars.

Second time

2009-02-13T00:07:00.004-07:00

More from Lou O'Bedlam. These were shot just before the Los Angeles Art show at the Marriott.

I was all jittery and nervous for the demo I was going to do at LA Art, so I don't think I was really working at my best, but I really like how these came out anyway, but that's probably more due to Lou than me.

Economy

2009-02-01T14:15:00.004-07:00

Photographing artwork in slowly failing evening light.

Students in the liminal state between attentive and distanced pass me on their tour of facilities, assuring the university of their intent to retain all fingers and various other necessary appendages for the duration of the time spent in this facility remark quietly about my prints, saying methods as questions, waiting for confirmation.

Last night, I delivered the entry form and images for an exhibit; the directions took us on a circuitous tour of Los Angeles, through the curling pearl necklace streets of Beverly Hills, with the occasional sad handpainted sign directing the interlocutor to where star maps may be purchased, guides to see people whom they will recognize and know intimately but won't recognize them, the tourist playing out the role of the reject, the unbelonging, in larger and larger spheres--up to the steep and comfortable manicured dilapidation of Laurel Canyon, the shops mimicking the drowsy friendliness of small resort towns. The prices I left for my work on the entry form are optimistic, an attempt to align with the economy of where I am as opposed to the economy of where I was and who I knew.

Hotel Room

2009-01-27T01:47:00.003-07:00

My birthday I spent in Los Angeles, sleeping in and then taking a nap.

4th annual

2009-01-20T20:02:00.003-07:00

I found these in a book while doing a late night rearranging (see photos of books arranged by color). I don't know why they are there, or where they are from. What occasion did I memorialize and subsequently forget by pressing asters in a book about Chagall?

My birthday is on Thursday. I'm going to spend it at the Los Angeles Art Show, doing demonstrations on printmaking techniques. For all of my complaining, I think I secretly relish the ghetto-ization of the medium I work in. The mystery of it, the secret knowledge, the potential that no one knows much about how the image came to be, not because they just don't care to find out, but because such processes are concealed.

Anyhow, happy 4th annual 25th birthday to me. I'm going to give myself a set of taxidermy eyes.

PS:

Message me for address if you've met me in the flesh and you've a fairly good idea that I don't find your presence intolerable.

Tents

2009-01-06T01:48:00.004-07:00

The streetlamps hold up taut gauzy tents of incandescence at night in the thick fog that comes in off of the Pacific. I'm unaccustomed to the cold still, even this milk toothed California cold.

I heard a story about a troop of Boy Scouts years ago. I always resented the Boy Scouts, because the domesticated and diluted camping that the girls got. In the story, the troop arrived at the campsite late, and it was snowing heavily. Most of the boys were handicapped by the cold, chattering and shivering, incapable of erecting the tents and lighting the fires needed.

One boy, though, worked quickly and efficiently. He was the same size as most of the other boys, and wore similar clothing. An adult asked him how he was able to work so efficiently in the cold. "I accept the cold." he said.

One of my studio mate's grandfather was in "Lawrence of Arabia." That's the sort of information, one's relative being in one of the most famous and influential films ever made, that is commonplace and told offhand here. I'm re-watching it for the umpteenth time, all four plus hours of it including the overture, in segments.

There's a scene near the beginning of the film that I would mentally refer to all through my adolescence. Lawrence lights another soldier's cigarette, and then snuffs out the match with his fingers. The soldier becomes a background character and Lawrence speaks with a higher ranking official. The soldier toys with a match, and tries to replicate the action of snuffing it out with his fingers. "Ouch, it hurts!" he says. Lawrence says "You ignore the pain."

That's how I recalled the scene. But I was incorrect; all those years a false reel was projected against the inside of my skull. What he says is "The trick, Potter, is not minding that it hurts."

Incidentally, T. E. Lawrence did not smoke.

Lou, cont'd

2008-12-26T14:29:00.003-07:00

I like this sort of slow revealing of photos from a shoot. Now that I've all but stopped trying to work with photographers, the occasional unpaid shoot with a great photographer is more pleasant, and seeing the photos is a lovely unexpected surprise as opposed to an eventual end to waiting for my share of the TFP work, or seeing if the paying photographer will even deign to let me see them at all.

Anyhow, photo by Lou O'Bedlam:

Also:
Photo by Laura
Photo by Laura
Photo by Lou

Cover-alls over thermals I wear today, to venture to the unoccupied print shop to hoard the solitude.

Shop shop shop

2008-12-02T13:36:00.008-07:00

Bedlam

2008-11-25T12:07:00.002-07:00

I shot with Lou O'Bedlam a couple of weeks ago, and he posted one of the polaroids from the shoot up on his meticulously maintained blog.

Tom Jones is on "Morning Becomes Eclectic", the morning music show on 89.9 that I listen to sometimes. It's funny that I feel the need to clarify that I like Tom Jones sincerely, not ironically--that enjoyment could somehow be ironic.

2008-11-21T01:08:00.000-07:00

It's still there, in my neck, bothersome, achey, and invisible on the surface. I was told that it doesn't need to be removed, at least for now, so instead it's there, slowly expanding and contracting like a heart which takes days to complete a beat. Sometimes I forget it for a while, and then it heaves a great lazy demanding child sigh, and I recall it again--rub up against it with my hand to remind me of the mystery there, the unknown nestled up against my spine.

Metro Rail

2008-11-13T11:53:00.002-07:00

I don't live in Los Angeles. When I travel, I sometimes tell people I do, but then add the addendum "Well, I actually live just outside of Los Angeles in Long Beach." You can see their faces fall a little. They thought they had just met someone who had made it, who had arrived in the glittering city to the West, but then they found out they were just talking to another plebian like themselves. LA isn't far from me, 15 to 25 minutes in a car in good traffic, but I don't have a car which means it's 2 hours away on the Metro.

Ah, the Metro. Think of all the strange things you've witnessed on public transportation and then put them all together in one single trip. The homeless man who keeps dropping little plastic packages and then shooting across the train car to retrieve them and then breaking into deafening laughter; the smelly man sitting across from you who openly and ostentatiously picks his nose and then runs his fingers through his hair; the tall young man with the looks of an Adonis who regaling boards the car to hoots and whistles from the teenage girls, he nods at them only briefly before taking his seat like it's a throne.

J lives in LA, and I had yet to visit him up there. I have school every day, but Tuesday was Veteran's Day so I had no class. This seemed an ideal time to make the great trek up to the 7th and Flower stop, plus I was motivated by the opportunity to shoot with Lou O'Bedlam.

His friend Laura Taylor came too, and the above shot is by her. She, with a sleek digital camera, and he with a persnickety little double lensed antique punctuated by the rare use of a polaroid camera. It was fun, though I haven't really modeled for anyone in ages. Maybe I will be able to work with them again, given they're aowed love of hotel rooms and my easy access to one.

I returned home to Long Beach, again on the Metro, and finished printing the accursed thing you see above. I wanted to make something pretty for the print exchange Tyler and I set up to help fund a trip to Southern Graphics Council this March, because I wanted to make something that would sell. What I did not anticipate was that a great many people see someone drowning in that image. I did, however, finish another print on Tuesday that I am happy with which you can read about in the print blog. If you want one of these prints of a person swimming lazily/drowning, they are available for $20 and there are ten available for sale. Shoot me an email and we shall discuss.

Thinking about printing fills me with horror right now. I do not want to assist great hordes of undergrads on how to not destroy their awful poorly done prints today, and so I look forward with great anticipation to National Indiginous Persons Day, only because I can have the printshop all to myself.

Winner

2008-11-05T00:43:00.001-07:00

We fucking won.

I've never, in my entire life, voted for winner before. I'm told this is what cocaine feels like, only better.

Ape? APE!

2008-10-31T00:25:00.000-07:00

APE=Alternative Press Expo

I'm going to be at APE this year.

Will you be at APE this year?

I'm at table 202.

Glasses

2008-10-14T12:37:00.004-07:00

A week and a half ago, I stayed up late making a portfolio case because my other case was in my professors office containing prints awaiting grading. I needed the case in order to apply for a scholarshop grant. I found out yesterday that I recieved one of the three scholarship awards from the Los Angeles Printmaking Society. I shall be buying so much fancy papers and great sheets of wood in only the finest grains with this money.

The LAPS requests a print, a flat one on paper, for their collection from awardees. I get to choose the print, and I've got till December to figure it out. In the meantime, I'm trying to find any images of mono-screenprints online. There are none!

Oh, and also, new glasses:

Print of the week

2008-10-03T15:07:00.003-07:00

It's back up and running. I post a print every Friday, along with a little work history on it.

Print of the Week

I just spent way too long trying to track down the origins of the Lilith myth and just how apocryphal it is for my art history class, then I got sidetracked finding out that the story of Cain and Abel as I knew it, the one I was raised with, is not the traditional version at all. And then I read about Nephilim, which are not the offspring of my brother in law Nephi, but the angels who walked the earth and got it on with earth ladies. And now I haven't got any work done today at all and must make up for all of this tomorrow.

Men

2008-09-30T21:52:00.003-07:00

I've been working, in a rather desultory manner, on this series of prints of men I know. This idea is a blatant rip off from a couple of friends of mine, who were doing paintings and drawings of women he's kissed and another of women with whom he's friends.

The trouble with my endeavour, I've found, is that most of the men that are important to me do not live in the same state as I. Because of this, I've been getting source material from the internet, but most of my male friends are apparently very virtuous in that they display no outwards indications of physical vanity. This dearth of photographs has brought my project to a halt for the time being, to be resumed when I can personally photograph the individuals. I did consider simply asked everyone for pictures, but what if they take terrible ones and I can't use them but they think it's personal? What then! For now, though, I've got three fellows all finished with. The above picture is the plate, after printing, for a collograph of David Bessent, done with carborundum grit and tape. It looks a little like him, though apparently it also looks a little like Lenin.

This week has been one of many packages. My new camera arrived (witness above photograph), as well as my new knives for relief print carving. Yesterday, bis for Veganerotica were left on the porch, which isn't terrifically exiting, but today an entire couch and chaise showed up, all wrapped up in plastic. My camera can perform its function underwater without any deleterious effect to itself. How wonderful is that? Very.

Did you know that a few months ago I got a tattoo? Despite it being significantly more painful than I had anticipated, almost immediately after its completion I wanted more. Like the reasons for which cigarettes were abandoned, financial reasons are an impediment.

Sternenfall

2008-09-10T17:50:00.007-07:00

A little poem surfaced yesterday, perfectly preserved in the recesses of my brain, reappearing now as waters shift in there.

O Sternenfall
von einer Brucke einmal eingesehn--:
Dich nicht vergessen

Stehn.

Translation:

Oh, falling star
once seen from a bridge--:
to not forget you

to endure.

~Rainier Maria Rilke

I don't know any German, not really, but I'm rather good with remembering seemingly meaningless ephemera--foreign words; the precise dates of occurrences inconsequential to me, happening to strangers; someone's face, still puffy with sleep and the old narrow bed; tiny objects held only briefly.

Figure modeling is excellent for memorizing things. You scan through reams of text in your brain as you hold still, so still, and when you come upon something you don't quite recall, caught on a snag, you worry at it, like a bad memory or a bad tooth, thumbing that page over and over in your brain until you can resolve the inaccuracy. I don't know what disturbed that snippet and made me recall it so vividly and suddenly. I stopped working and said the German words aloud. Rather poorly, I suspect, but there was no one else there to hear me torture the language. After writing it, Rilke changed it a little and ended "Der Tod" (Death) with those lines. Rilke said that the last three lines (the ones above) burst in on his brain unbidden, and resolved it suddenly.

Just won an Arty award for being a super genius. Sadly, I probably can't attend the awards party, complete with tantalizing open bar, because I don't actually live in Utah. Maybe I will allow myself a rare beer tonight to celebrate and make up for what I'll miss.

Someone keeps buying things off of my wishlist on Suicidegirls, but sending the gift to themselves or it is lost and absorbed by the postal system. I keep expecting these phantom gifts, in a continued state of mild expectation, checking for little brown packages on my return from school. No packages ever arrive, no stop motion animation DVDs to fill me with the half poison nostolgia from when Tommy and I had a non-dialogue film festival just for us two and his cat, the three of us curled on his couch having thought better of sex and diverting it into obscure sensualities, no behind-the-times comic books for my niche friends to remark on how I just barely started reading that. Is the phantom the gift?

Ping pong

2008-09-03T12:22:00.001-07:00

I played table tennis, or rather ping-pong, at the group studio of my friends. The men are kind, gentlemanly, with me when we play. They compliment a good hit, and fail to keep score, patient when I repeatedly lose the tiny white ball. With each other they curl back their lips and expose their incisor teeth as they serve.

On the airplane ride home, I surreptitiously watch Olympic women's single table tennis on my seat mates television. Young asian girls with manly, unflattering haircuts play an awkward and ungainly game, and for some unknown sportsman's reason, players must retrieve errant white plastic balls by themselves. Climbing over barricades, and scrambling around after the ball only serves to make the sport that much more undignified. These girls, however accomplished they may be, will never be the subject of the fantasies of men too old for them, the realm reserved for half realized Amazonian women like countless gymnasts and volleyball players.

I attended the orientation for incoming graduate students three days ago in the courtyard between the college buildings. I don't yet know the better routes to take, and had to carry my bike up stairs in various places; sweat begins to gloss my forehead and back as I arrive at the half circle of unoccupied chairs, the little folding table of juice and chips. Early, I arrive early but am uncertain until I ask. Other people mull around the little galleries ringing the courtyard, filled with the artwork from other schools. I compare my age to their percieved age. Am I old, or young, in comparison to this group? The same question is better translated as "Am I accomplished or am I slow comparatively?" I do not come to a conclusion. My foot is trod on when I try to find a seat, and still I go unnoticed until I bring it to the attention of the person still standing on me. It's a photography student, which I find predictable in the way that personal prejudices are always noted when confirmed. Of course a photographer fails to observe her surroundings. I prefer to feed this dislike of people who have skills I don't have, rather than admitting that I'm the one who made myself omittable.

When the Olympic table tennis player serves the ball, she twists it in her hand, cupping it and turning her wrist around, concealing the action behind the paddle, flicking the ball out suddenly--graceful and deft, like a magic trick, like a promise. I doubt what it will be before the ball reappears, struck by the ready paddle and bouncing across the tiny taut net--perhaps this time it will be something else instead.

Graduate Student Open Studios
September 7th
2pm till 9pm

PS I just broke my camera. I was considering making some thing, like more teacups, to raise money to replace it and then realized that I now had no camera to photograph the items to sell to buy a working camera. Damnit!

Break

2008-09-01T11:51:00.004-07:00

Consider this entry a break between the ridiculously overwrought and obtuse entries, because you know that's precisely what the next one will be.

Demon Tamer went live this morning on Suicidegirls.com. Take a looksie, should you want to and are in a place where naked girls are ok to look at.

Do any of you have pictures of the gallery during "Secret"? My pictures of it are predictably horrid.

Open studios this coming weekend at my new school. It's on the 7th, and by the 7th I will have been a graduate student for 6 days. Because of this, all of the stuff I'll have in my studio will not have been made at CSULB, but I'll also have the cleanest studio. Come and gawk at me and my stuff.
GLAMFA and Open Studios

All is Well Within the House

2008-08-18T14:25:00.005-07:00

Years ago, before I moved to the terracotta dust storms of Phoenix, before I moved to the small big town Long Beach, when my life was still unpredictable, when two full meals a day seemed almost extravagant and cheap wine and gin weren't inconsequential expenses, I was spending an evening at house of a man whom I had known briefly, but in that sort of way that lets you imagine you knew them better than most. He had a beautifully preserved beetle in his house, hung on the wall in a glass case. I had taught a mutual friend how to re-constitute and move the limbs of dead insects without shattering their exoskeleton, slowly hydrating their tiny strange reverse muscles till it was possible to pose them. I saw the beetle, alien in its perfection, in it's completeness, and I wanted so badly to smash it. The desire to destroy to, to make it into tiny pieces no longer recognizable as perfect and wonderful or even as beetle bits--I could taste that penny taste in my mouth that you get in a fight when you know you will lose but you keep on anyway, because to run away, to leave and preserve yourself, is unthinkable in that moment.

I recall it now. And it tastes the same.

For the first time in over ten years, I heard an old family lie. Initially, I was so saddened and outraged by it, this false image of me. But now, I envy this fabulism, and I dream about that glowing, fictitious naked child, so strong with nascent victory, and feel the reality of me to be so wormlike in contrast, cowering as I am, and recieving unprotesting, where she took what pleased her and destroyed when she had tired of it. She is powerful and full, like a new butterfly over filled of potent new blood so that it drips out of the ends of its wings.

But so many, people who knew me the best I thought, believed in her, in that shining ideal evil, all bright eyed and deliberate. Believed, that at least briefly when I was pushing my nymphette years to their last, that I was her. In "1984," Winston is asked where the past is. He responds that it is in memory.

I did not destroy the beetle. I just saw it a few days ago while on a trip to Salt Lake City, in a different house but still owned by the same boy.

"You look so healthy." I told him.

"It is because I am full of poison," he said.

Far Below, post reception

2008-05-17T14:59:00.003-07:00

The show which I have referred to often, in hopes that someone will praise me for the massive amount of work it required, as the show which was produced in one month. Thus far, no one has been terribly impressed, which leads me to believe that I over-estimate my own endeavours. Anyhow, the show looked lovely, a fact which was largely ignored by most of the gallery attendees.

You see, Pravus Gallery is divided into three spaces, and my show "Far Below" occupied the middle of the three spaces. The first space had a group show of custom vinyl toys (Moodys, actually), and was a great testament to horror vacui*, all tiny details and bright colors. The third space is occupied by Synthetic Compound, a vinyl toy shop and a similar description as above can be accurately applied to it. And there was my show inbetween, with big pools of space between the pieces and bereft of any colors besides the black and white of monochromatic relief printing.

Perhaps if my work cannot visually compete, then I should re-think my approach to art. I should do this, but I'm not going to. Instead, I'm going to assign the smaller crowd that my show attracted as the inevitable sifting that intellectually superior art must do. See what I did there? I took a situation which illustrated my artistic shortcomings and made it into the opposite. Because I'm deluded like that.

Because of the short notice of this show, I was unable to do much in the way of publicity for it. But my friend at the local weekly wrote a short piece on it, mostly about how I was shortly to leave Phoenix. And now everyone asks when we're going to move, and we respond with the reply, disappointingly lacking in urgency, that we leave in a month and a half. It's like putting on the turn signal blocks in advance of the actual turn.

That's me with the backpack. I have to wear gloves nearly all of the time for reasons that I won't go into. Suffice it to say, they are not fashion inspired reasons. So I'm up against the inability to dress reasonably well with gloves and not looking very gothy, or not looking like a pretensious nance, wearing gloves in a Phoenix summer. Do you have any glove wearing recommendations? They must be full gloves, no thug-ish looking fingerless nonsense.

The Fish. I'm most proud of the fish. It's the first piece I've made that skipped the intermediary step of making a blank of the pattern to test it, and then to draw the image on. For the fish, I drew the original pattern and the drawing directly onto the material before cutting, and didn't know if the whole thing would work until after printing it and sewing it together.

By the by, we're now accepting submissions for Super Fun Activity Challenge 2, Activity Quest.

Far Below

2008-04-30T19:18:00.001-07:00

Ah, I've never worked so hard for so little before. Come and be disappointed in me! I'll be the mousey looking character trying to blend into the wall

Super Fun!

2008-04-19T13:35:00.003-07:00

Last night was amazing! Not only was Super Fun Activity Challenge a great and wonderful success, but I then went home exhausted and had a sci-fi dream about terraforming Mars and inadvertently becoming immortal.

I had two entries in the book, and this is the finished product of one of them, "Make a Homeowners' Association":

My now super famous and successful friend Trent Call. Trent just had a two page feature in Juxtapoz, with full color and adoring interview. I was so jealous that it took me two whole days to congratulate him after seeing it. But, ever the opportunist, I invited Trent to come to APE and table with us in November, riding the wake of his success to sell comics and toys.

Do you want a Super Fun Activity Challenge? They are exceedingly easy to procure! All one need do is send me $5 for the book and $2 for the shipping, and I will send you a lovely copy, guaranteed to be chock-a-block with super fun. Message me for my paypal address. If you're in Phoenix, you can bypass the $2 shipping and stop by the Trunk Space, at 1506 NW Grand, and pick one up there for $5.

I've got another show opening on May 2nd at Pravus Gallery in Phoenix. It will be called either "The Ocean" or "The Deep." I haven't decided which, but I'd better decide soon as I'm making the cards tomorrow. All of the work for this show I'm making in the month prior to the opening. I've never done something so last minute before, so I'm both eager and terrified to see how I make out.

Long Beach

2008-03-25T20:58:00.001-07:00

Ahh, Long Beach. The word "seduction" was mentioned more than once by the faculty and current grad students I spoke with while I was there, and I must admit that it was not inappropriate. The presses. Oh! The presses they had there sent me into such flurries of anticipation. What large and unweildy useless things I could make with access to those presses.

The Los Angeles area is so green. It's positively vulgar the amount of herbivorous procreation that goes on there on an daily basis. Having grown up largely in the desert, I can identify most of the native and nonnative plants that grow here, but there, I'd no idea what most everything was. It sort of all blurred together into a giant green mass, smelling strongly of unidentified lilies. My decision on school is still officially unmade, though I'm still terrified of the winter at the other option. Like most major decisions, this one is being made by a spreadsheet.

Asphalt and Air did an email interview with me, and reading through it I sadly realize what poor editing skills I have. But I take solace knowing that I'm a visual arts major, and being able to spell with any degree of literacy is an achievement.

Emily B, a wonderful fiber artist, featured some of my work on her blog.

And Found Object did a little feature, too.

All of this blog-related exposure convinced some poor sap to buy this fellow, of which I, of course, could only take only take the worst of photos before mailing her off:

Figure modeling, that old standby of wellpaying and extraordinarily dull work that I find myself regularly swearing off of and then returning to whenever I'm at all hard up had produced these two paintings, or, more accuratley put, David Alvarado and James Buck produced these two paintings marginally related to me holding still for too long.

Tentacle

2008-03-15T13:39:00.004-07:00

Yesterday was Pi Day, and I'm certain you're already familiar with it. It's the sort of made up holiday that I find not nearly as insufferable as the others. On Pi Day, what does one do? Calculate the diameter of various circles, and see how far you can name off its various digits? Far less irritating than saying "Arrr" after every phrase. My friend Kevin's birthday was also yesterday, and never before had he realized that his birthday coincided with a made-up holiday. He's the one who bought he monkey, so I went to his party, even though I usually find most of his friends about as sufferable as Talk Like a Pirate day. We visited the monkey, hung from the porch rafters and bestrewn with ropes of LEDs. I'll admit, that despite my better self, I was worried about what would happen to this, my largest of all creations, once it was in Kevin's possession, and I was pleased with what he was doing with it. I cannot ask for anything better than being well lit and with no severe damaging.

All schools have written back, and I've not been rejected to a one. The letters of acceptance are hung like trophies from the print drying rack. From a school in the great Frozen North, a letter came describing the various grants and scholarships of merit that they had awarded me, the total of which was somewhat more than I had made last year. The amount stared up from the paper at me, beseechingly. A great wadge of institutionalized money, just waiting for a kind hearted person like myself to spend it. But I must remain strong! I steal myself against the sad saucer eyes of the Minneapolisian money, and decide to see if the school in Long Beach might see their way to giving me some sor of similar amount. Truth be told, I'm terrified of living somewhere as cold as Minneapolis. My personal insulation isn't much, and I don't know well I'd function at those temperatures. Next weekend the boy and I will travel to the coast to wheedle and coax, and perhaps there will then be an additional chunk of institutionalized money whose feelings I must consider.

A few Phoenicians, some Chicagoans, a distant Argentinian, a couple of Los Angelinos, an affianced San Franciscan, a homesick New Yorker, and a great variety of Saltines have or shortly will recieve a single disembodied tentacle. For the sake of my wallet, I restricted the list to only those whose company I have physically been in the presence of. I envision a small town's worth of people, having consternation clearly read on their faces as they empty package's contents to find that single tentacle. Because, my darlings, I love you, but in a way that is best expressed through the language of perverse fetishism.

If you were an attendee at my last solo show, ages in the distant past of last year's Autumn, you may have remembered these blank fawns that I made. They sold out within the first 45 minutes of the show, mostly because they were evidently the least disturbing and lowest priced of my extensive scion. But now, they can be had at the Frosty Darling Boutique in Salt Lake City, and The TrunkSpace in Phoenix. But if you aren't in either city and still want one, you can get it from my website just as soon as I find my way to updating the damn thing. And if you aren't one of the lucky few to be counted as among my most best beloved, then you can pretend you are by buying a tentacle from Synthetic Compound.

Phoenix is host to particularly fine weather right now. I don't have any delusions about how long it will last, but I'm rather pleased that I get to see the city with a smattering of green over the dust and brown. It still isn't half as pretty as most places I've lived, but it's tolerable for now, and I'll be leaving in the next couple of months while it's still pretending that it's a habitable place.

A great pallet of Lorica arrived last month, and orders that had backed up for weeks and months were suddenly addressed. I've beening doing nothing but make belts for what seems like ages now. And now I'm nearly done, and I don't care with what you keep your pants aloft, so long as I've nothing to do with it.

Super Fun Activity Challenge

2008-02-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

Deadline extended by two weeks!

Also, I heard back from the first school, and I was accepted to CSULB. Two more to go before I make a decision, but pretty awesome nonetheless!

2008-02-16T16:14:00.002-07:00

Sometimes, as I fall asleep I compose elegant sentences descirbing what I've done that day and what I will do the next. I use words like "rubicund," to make simple bruises or poor complexions seem more exceptional and wonderful than they are. Only rarely do I ever commit those lambent words to a physical form, and then I realize just what I hideous pedantic egoist I am.

Before hanging the Kite show a few days ago, Caleb and I had to take down the monkey from where he was hung from the ceiling of the Trunk Space, looming. I tied his arms to his spine, and tied his legs and tail together, so that what was intended to be carried aloft by seven people, could be transported by just the two of us. Someone finally bought the great puppet recently, for a rather paltry sum, that I find kingly knowing that I was shortly to cut the monkey down and throw him away, having run out of patience for finding storage spaces large enough to accomodate him around the house.

The Kite show was only marginally successful. When it rains in Phoenix, as it did last night during the opening reception, Phoenicians panic and approach the weather as though it were an transitive beast, uncertain where it may strike next. Their prior experience with light drizzles ending in only creating more muddy clay around the city they adamantly ignore, and stay locked up inside residences waiting for when the rain turns to something more insideous. Phoenicians have read far too much Hemingway. Nonetheless, nearly all of the artists did come, and the sprinkling of artists' girlfriends and boyfriends made it seem like a far more successful turnout than it actually was.

I made tetrahedron kites with reduction style woodcut wasps on them, and I steeled myself against an evening of listening to people comment on the "bees."

The next reception for the Kite show is on First Friday, March 7th. My next solo is at Deus Ex Machine in Phoenix, opening May 2nd.

Ants

2008-01-20T16:58:00.000-07:00

Ants.

Stoic

2008-01-06T14:23:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I modeled for Dr. Sketchy's. It was unbelievably cold, and in most of the pictures I have a sort of pained and stoic expression on my face. Most of the people drawing didn't take off their coats, and a couple wore gloves.

The panties and hosiery were made by Lipstich Cyanide.

Applications for grad school were sent to Austin, and Chicago. I'm working on the other three, and nearly done. Not much else to report at this time.

In suits

2007-12-29T13:33:00.000-07:00

New poster art. I think I'm going to try to sell the original on gigposters.com or something. The last one I gave away, and the one before that was just a photoshop composite of painting with text overlaid, but this one I've actually still got and I need some W.A.M. soon to deflect all the costs of making slides, and getting transcripts, and paying fees, and overnighting packages.

My first show for 2008. I was much more excited when I was initially invited to be in this show than I am about it now. Most of the artists aren't printmakers, but I guess that just means I get to show everyone else up with my sweet actual printmaker action.

I'll be modeling for Dr. Sketchy's tomorrow (Sunday, December 30th) at Trunkspace in Phoenix, 1506 NW Grand from 7 to 10 pm. I need to dig up something remotely burlesque-y to wear.

Old rejected set. Say stuff about it, if you're so inclined.

2 to 3 years

2007-12-16T19:38:00.002-07:00

One day, I want to meet Cory McAbee, so that my mouth may fill with cumbersome rocks, impossible to talk around.

For the past few years, each time I curate a show, I always invite him to participate. He's yet to accept, but always responds with witty demuring emails.

Suicidegirls recently rejected this action:

In this series of photos, I illustrate the American style pronunciation of Roethke. Very informative. Click on the picture if you're the sort interested in that manner of thing.

I'm knee deep in graduate school application nonsense. I've narrowed my list down to 5 schools, and am laboring away at the essays, attempting wit and brevity and brilliance in short 120 eighty character lines. The great morass of slides was reduced to a coherent and Spartan 20 (15 for Austin), but I'm afraid that I can't find any of my old ethings to include. Hopefully, that one oversite won't cost me. The hope is that Long Beach, Austin, Chicago, Providence, or Minneapolis will be my residence of 2 to 3 years at least.

Any of you Phoenicians reading this should consider attending the last Phoenix Dr. Sketchy's of 2007 at Trunk Space, Dec. 30th. I shall be there, this time for reals.

Salt Lake, Again

2007-12-02T16:31:00.000-07:00

At my friend Xkot's salon, Elegba has a spot in the corner, next to the door (where Elegba should be) and I imagine, that given Xkot's reputation for being so adept at cutting children's hair, Elegba must lose quite a few of his lollipops. Xkot gives people a slightly different version of themselves, the well coiffed and groomed version, so it seems fitting that Elegba is there to be ingratiated to at this occasion, this switching over. I went to a printmaker's lecture once where the artist showed us slides, and before she turned the lights back on to resume the lecture, she gave a small offering to Elegba, because she didn't know what would be there when the lights went back on. That's how I first met Eshu, first heard of what he was responsible for.

Above Elegba, my dinosaur and nervous hospital pony stand next to Xkot's heart. Xkot gave me a hair cut, and it took him not quite all of five minutes. Xkot has my two favorite dolls from this series, or at least he has them in his salon until I take them back or someone buys them. I keep meaning to take those two, the nervous pony, and the bighanded cautius little man, but always decide that whoever buys art from a salon with Elegba in the corner in Utah of all places, must be a good sort and a deserving home.

My sister's children adore me. I find it's easy to maintain such adoration when you see someone rarely and always bring gifts when you do visit. And well worth the getting of presents to hear the crimson haired hellions yell a garbled version of your name shrilly when you arrive.

My favorite gallery was sold. After January, Kayo Gallery will be in the hands of a some strange woman, who may not be so lax about display methods as Kenny was. I tensely await the outcome.

Sketchy

2007-11-20T17:40:00.000-07:00

This is, I think, my third time modeling for Dr. Sketchy's Phoenix.

I'm bringing the monkey.

Some Souls

2007-11-09T11:25:00.000-07:00

The Monkey! All paper mache, excepting the spine which is filled with metal pipe, and insulation foam. That's me with the fake mustache.

After many trials and tribulations, not least of which was the spine suddenly snapping, the (squirrel) monkey is finished. David B. and I endured much wheatpaste dried on our arms, and sunscreen was used liberally. David V. swept in at the last minute and gently persuaded us to believe in the merits of structural integrity. We were dapper in our bowties and tophats, but as soon as the hats came off, we just looked like nothing more than a gang of disgruntled wait staff.

Now I need to think up excuses to bring him out again.

These photos are by Kevin Patterson.

All Souls Procession Website

skills extend to

2007-10-31T13:21:00.000-07:00

My skateboarding skills extend to moving in a fairly straight line, avoiding inclines, and doing that little jump to get over cracks.

Acrylic on wooden deck, shirt.

The pink one in the middle:

Show info here.
Closing reception on November 2nd.

I highly recommend you buy one of my decks, because I really don't want to have them after the show comes down. How do you even store that thing? It's shaped all wonky.

Paper mache in process, results forthcoming:

Bizarre sunburn

2007-10-10T15:21:00.000-07:00

Super Fun Activity Challenge!

That, the above, is the never show I'm putting together. "Predilection" is at an end, all that's left is to get checks cut and mail portfolios to the out of state artists.

The Super Fun Activity Challenge is open to everyone, but there's limited space so not all entries will be used. So make yours amazing.

I push sunscreen on people like it's an addictive substance that I've a large stake in, and use it myself with such devotion, it's a wonder I've not been whited out entirely. Sadly, all of that discipline was for naught, and I got a bizarre shaped sunburn while working on what will become a giant monkey skeleton. Now it's all itchy and painful and weird looking, like a half assed attempt at those insipid wing tattoos.

The monkey skeleton is that of a squirrel monkey. Squirrel monkeys have the greatest brain to body ratio of all simians (1/17, whereas we humans are at 1/35) and the females of the species number among the exclusive membership of those possessing pseudo peni. My squirrel monkey is made out of paper mache, and is intended for the Day of the Dead Parade coming up soon in Tucson. As work as progressed on the monkey, I've become less generous with its company. Initially, we were going to let anyone who wanted to help carry it around, but now we're only letting people who've actually worked on it (with one exception) tote it around on dowels. That unsatiated itch on my back might have something to do with it, and the tiny piles of wheatpaste, dried on my skin and then picked off, throughout the house might have something to do with my miserliness as well.

Two other artists and I went on a four day long roadtrip to Salt Lake City (two days driving, two days in SLC). One had never been to SLC before, and the other hadn't lived there in years and only had family in the city. I was careful about which of my friends we hung out with, choosing the most gregarious, clever, and friendly (a journalist, a musician, and a painter) of the bunch so that the out of towners wouldn't feel alienated and weird. By the end of the trip, Steph and David had this utopic vision of SLC (it is pretty cool), that all the artists in the city had great stories to tell, had sudden parties filled with adorable cyclists, and accepted strangers with open arms. I nearly drank the draught too, and was filled with nostalgia for my hometown. But I'll return a champion and victor or nothing at all, and elusive victory is not yet mine.

It snowed the second day we were in town. I was not dressed for the weather.

Phoenicians, you all should come out for my second Swap-o-rama-rama this Sunday, the 14th. The last one got a "Best of" award from Phoenix New Times (though the yellow journalists of the rag failed to cite my name, and only included the names of the venue owners). I even screenprinted posters. How's that for DIY ethic?

Good Way

2007-09-17T15:14:00.000-07:00

I'm so busy I think I may vomit from the stress, but, you know, in a good way.

baser emotions

2007-09-10T17:59:00.000-07:00

Preliminary sketch for Jason Webley poster. Antlers? Yes or now? I think that they are necessary, just as much as the accordion. I'm going to burn the screen for this tomorrow, so I need to finish it up fast. I would have drawn it faster, but I spent a good portion of my day futzing around with fliers.

Deck! No, I don't skateboard. In fact, when given a deck for a skateboard, I render it useless. If you asked me if you could use this for it's intended purpose, if you may ride it, I would respond "No. No, you may not." And that is the title of the piece. This is for a show opening at MonOrchid in Phoenix on the 20th of October. Here's a little gem 'o' knowledge for you: monorchid means "one testicle." I think I know something personal about the gallery owner, and I've yet to even meet the man. If you really want to know why I participated in this show, I will tell you. MonOrchid is in this grand warehouse. It's gorgeous, and every time I go to a show there I want to be a part of its little loose stable of artists, just to show in such a space. There's always a door in the corner, ajar, with sounds of muted merrymaking coming from behind it. But there is also always a miniature pencil skirted woman behind the door, stopping any unwanted entrants with "this is a private party." And now, friends, now I can get into that private party. And by god, if there's no private party for this show, I'll go buy a sixpack and a tent, and an automated tiny doll shooing other interested people away. Yes, it may appal you to find that I am subject to the baser emotions of envy, but there it is.

The aforementioned futzing really shouldn't have eaten up so much time. I mean really, look at this. The other fliers aren't much more complex than this one. And because this one is so lacklustre, I'm going to invest even more time in the bowels of Photoshop vainly labouring at making a better one.

wet

2007-08-31T23:28:00.000-07:00

Self explanatory:

These pictures were taken by David Bessent for the purpose of entering Nerve.com's monthly photo contest, but I don't think they loaded. I'm ok with this, as I was just pleased to go swimming. And we went swimming twice! Because the first time the lighting was terrible.

And I cut all of my hair off. Again. I make decisions when I'm hungry and irritable.

Have you ever seen Swingers? I had an experience eerily like a scene in that movie recently.

I went to the Hell City Tattoo Convention last weekend, to spend a day being asked where my tattoos were (no where) and to hang out with my friend Zoetica while she was in town running the Suicidegirls booth. One day at a convention and I'm still exhausted. And not surprisingly, not a soul could pronounce "Roethke" with any degree of ease. Sometimes I wish I had chosen something easier. There's a few blurry photos over on my Flickr, but for the most part, I was in the photos, not taking them--smiling like I was about to eat your eyeballs direct from the socket and vulgarly jutting my hips out because showing off that extra sternum in a lowcut shirt doesn't really measure up to all of the ladies with something other than sternum to show off under there (and believe me, it was hard not to stare).

Upcoming soirees and to-dos:
Predilection: Print Exchange
Opening concurrently at Kayo Gallery in Salt Lake City and Trunk Space Gallery in Phoenix on September 21st.

The Deck Show
Opening at MonOrchid in Phoenix on October 28th.

I'm in process proposing some other stuff in the LA, Phoenix and San Francisco areas, but I'm scaling down my somewhat unweildy exhibition schedule. I've had a few bad experiences with galleries as of late, so now I'm going to make an effort to only show at places where I know them or where my friends know them.

Pasties

2007-08-15T12:40:00.000-07:00

Dr. Sketchy's last night: Big hair, tons of makeup, and ridiculous outfit.

I got to live out the secret childhood dream to have pointy ears. I had given much thought to how to execute those ears, and they turned out so well! Sadly, I don't think anyone actually drew them.

I made all of the stuff day of, inbetween making sudden urgent orders for g-string dildo harnesses. Then I found out that the organizers would have provided a costume had I asked. Oh well, now I know how to make pasties, and a now useless set of paper mache horns.

Of the drawings, here's a couple of my favorites. You can click the picture to see my Flickr with all the other photos I took.

awkward jerking motions

2007-07-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

The first thing upon arrival in Salt Lake City was to get my hair cut at Blitz. The mohawk had grown out, and the mullet-hawk was attracting way too many red neck lesbians. Xkot had opened a new salon, and he traded me a haircut for a doll. I came out the winner of the deal, as I was givng him a doll anyway. I wanted a pompadour, but I don't really know how to style it now, so it's not nearly as tough looking a coiffure as I had hoped for. I do not foresee anyone getting the impression that I can handle myself in a knife fight, but at least I look groomed for the opening.

The recent extensive fires in the Salt Lake City area filled the sky with ash and debris. As soon as I landed and up until I left, I felt like someone was squeezing my lungs, hacking and coughing as though I had never quit smoking. It's strange to long for the sunbaked Phoenix air.

Onto the show. Everything went off perfectly, or as much as one could expect. Everything arrived on time, the setup was fast, and Kenny even loaned me a frame when I said I was going to try to find one at a thrift store. Kayo Gallery was the perfect space, with it's high white walls, white ceiling, and dark black floor. In other galleries, my black on white stuff has to compete with all of the more colorful decor, and it often loses out, but at Kayo, with its clinical sterility, it looked wonderful.

The sign, "You may gently interfere with their lives," was viewed as another piece, and a couple of people inquired about purchasing it. But I simply couldn't justify selling a bad ink jet printout, and told them to just make their own.

More children than ever showed up this time, though, and the way they behaved was telling of the way they were raised. One kid wouldn't stop kicking things until I asked him and his mother to leave. Children are terrifying to me. You can't actually stop them from doing stuff unless they're your offspring, and sometimes those progenitors are reluctant to do any stopping. For the most part, though, the children who were there were very well behaved. One little girl, when given permission to touch the pieces, looked terribly confused. It seemed that gallery and museum etiquette had been drilled into her, and now here I was, undoing all of those lessons. So she and I talked about how it's ok to touch things in galleries if someone first tells you it's ok.

Brian Staker wrote a nice piece about the show, which came out post opening, so maybe it will drum up some more sales. Hug This

The catmen have hair in their little vials, and as always, I was asked many times whose hair it was. "The Russian's hair." I would answer. "Where's he?" to which I could honestly respond "Russia."

Salt Lake City at large:

We had brunch at Broken Record Bar and Grill, formerly Todd's Bar and Grille. It seemed near scandalous to me to be in a bar so early in the day, even if I wasn't drinking. The most debauchery was Matt getting a Bloody Mary, though, and the music being too loud.

Atop the light fixture suspended over the pool table, was a tiny plastic rabbit. And I pocketed it. And then I tried out the macro setting on my new camera.

Four of my friends have bought condos since last I was there. Condos are the next step in being a grownup, but I'm hoping it's a step I will skip. Matt showed off the newly installed harwood floors and took us on a tour of the grounds, the repainted walls, yet to be grouted brick walkways, and we stood on tiptoe to peer over the barricade at the pool, mid refurbishment and with signs warning about the toxic levels of chlorine currently in the water. The doors have high tech peepholes.

The space that Kayo Gallery used to occupy now is home to Nobrow Coffee. The only coffeeshop I've ever been in that actually has consistently good art shows. This time, there was an installation, with columns of beans and wire, and little yarn bouquets on wheels on each table.

New shoes from Frosty Darling, that I tortured extensively over before purchasing them.

Saturday evening, we reluctantly went to a BBQ. Despite the hostess thinking that chicken wasn't an animal, it was pretty fun and I never got hassled for my nomeat burger. Two of the guests were these pit fighting or cage fighting guys. They're job is to beat each other up in front of a crowd. They discussed the economics of this profession, how they refuse to fight one particular contender because they'd lose, and the participation money wouldn't cover the cost of stitches afterwards. I tried to engage one of them in a conversation about the Ultimate Warrior (the old WWF wrestler) but he's more interested in talking about actual fighing, and I realize that I prefer fiction over reality in most situations, and excuse myself and start a hulahoop contest with his daughter instead. Later, I taught them all how to play Cowboy/Ninja/Bear, and consider myself very clever for thinking of a game that can be played by both drunk cage fighters and 6 year olds without anyone getting terrible bored or confused.

I've lost some friends since I left SLC, and I don't know why. One simply won't acknowledge my existence. I'd really like to know what happened, what I may have done or failed to do. But if he won't call me back or answer the phone, there's not much I can do about it than realize there's one more reason besides the air in SLC to kill the nostalgia. But, I did find that someone who I thought disliked me does not, and even danced gracefully and prettily next to my awkward jerking motions.

Baby hobo super fast illustration for a satirical article about running away from home. Drawn from a photo of my newest nephew.

Did I tell you I'm trying to get into illustration more? Well, consider yourself told. Should you need an illustration of anything, then you should contact me.

And now I'm home, and getting back to work and trying to calm down the people who want their floggers right right now, immediately, maybe even five minutes ago, and finishing up piles and piles of belts and dildo harnesses.

Pedestrian drugs

2007-07-10T12:54:00.001-07:00

I have this habit of taking on too many tasks, all of which I'm eager to do, and overestimating the amount of time it takes me to finish those tasks. I'd say I need to manage my time better, but I do manage my time well. Yet, I'm still four illustrations behind schedule, and quite a bit of sewing is left, too.

Last week, I ran out of coffee, and loathe as I am to leave my house and venture into the too bright out of doors, I drank strong black tea instead, waiting for the sub100 degrees opportunity to strike out and purchase the much needed caffiene. Now that I have it, I've been overcompensating and drinking too much. My drugs are so pedestrian.

Show card for show! Want one? Send me your address. Stateside only, if you please, unless you've purchased something from me in the past. Overseas stamps are too much for this venture, I'm afraid.

My alma mater of overdrinking and flirting with trashy band boys has an article about Solecist. True to form, they initially spelled my name two different ways and spelled the name of the show wrong, until I sent them an email gently correcting them. Too much reliance on spellcheck leads to lazy proof reading, but who am I to judge? I can barely manage to credit quotes accurately, and that not even all of the time. To be honest, I didn't really understand the article. What's not well thought out about the name?

Hey, ho, the gangs all here:

For sale at The Trunk Space.
This is the end of paper mached heads. I'm moving on to other time wasters, time wasters of more epic proportions.

I had a set, shot by Lorelei in Tucson, go up at the ol' SG last week. Heretofore, I had no idea how many men dislike short hair on women.

swim

2007-06-28T17:13:00.000-07:00

Hair dying ritual

Friends of Trunk Space swimming party

Charming

2007-06-18T21:49:00.000-07:00

I'm a criminal,

but only of the charming variety.

At long long last, I knuckled down and opened a wee Etsy shop. Ebay has left me terrified of those sorts of affairs, what will all that ugly layout and great masses of messy code. But, into the breech I went and came out pretty ok in the end.

Other activities of note:
Set which you really ought to take a look at.
Repository of photos documenting activities and friends.
Document attesting to my presence on another website.

It's made from paper

2007-06-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

My friend David and I got a tad over enthusiastic about the Mail Art show at Trunkspace, opening this Friday. I had this clever idea that I told him about, and I only planned on making one or two heads. But he had never done paper mache in his entire life, so we went overboard a bit, and there still more heads to go.

We collaborated on some, and did some on our own. The washy brown ones are mine, the bold inky ones are his, and the ones that are a bit of both we worked on together, staying up too late and drinking chocolate tea.

These are made from the College Times, because they have no staples in their publications.

Coat monster

2007-06-07T12:20:00.001-07:00

A friend loaned me these rejected passport photos, and I used them as models:

These were made a few days ago, by me. Either I'm terrible at painting flies or people have no idea what bees look like, because a couple people have commented on how cute my "bee mugs" are. Bees have four wings, not two, you silly people. Flies are the only winged insect that have only two wings. Even coleopterans (beetles, my dear) have elytra, which are chitinous nonfunctional upper wings, so they officially still have four wings. My computer committed sepukku, and so I can't get onto Horseflesh until after I find my friend who's hosting it, so let me know if you want to buy any of these in the meantime. I'll consider trades, too, if you're feeling adventurous.

This last one is from my friend's cafe in Couer D'Alene, Bella Rose.

This speaks for itself, I believe.

Off the top of your head, without referring to a dictionary, do you know what the word "predilection" means? What about the word "solecist"? These are not hypothetical questions.

Half cents

2007-06-06T01:17:00.000-07:00

Warren Ellis blogged about me. Granted, it was in a completely perfunctory name and image posting only minimal information given sort of a way. But that isn't what counts. What counts here is that Warren Ellis blogged about me. My brother is going to be so jealous.

Oh, Kinkos. The relationship I have with you is just not healthy. You charge 8.5 cents per copy, although you insist, at least in print, that you only charge 8 cents. Are you saying I can't do simple addition, Kinkos? Really, now you're just being insulting. I had to account for those extra half cents, Kinkos, and that's why I took your gluesticks. Really, you drove me to it.

Gentle readers, I direct your attention to my newly added list of friend's blogs over there on your right. Those people, no doubt, have far more interesting things to say than I.

Shameful and shoddy

2007-05-28T13:14:00.001-07:00

Lorelei shot this of me at the Hotel Congress in Tucson. Posing for SG consists of this: arch your back till you feel silly, point your toes, and SMILE! SMILE! SMILE! I made the skirt, shirt, and brooch and the sheets are from my bed at home. Then the plebians at SG rejected the photos. Plebians! I've got nothing else I can do with the photos, so I entered them into their Second Chance Sundays thingy. If you're a member, and legally an adult, etc, you can view the rest of the pictures here. Let me know if you think I should have done something differently or not, please.

I've been trying to remember how to make free-spine books. It's been years since I made a book, so I used some shoddy materials to jumpstart my memory.

I used a pair of a friend's old pants for the bottom cover, and I can't recall who sent me the shirt for the top cover, and I used the wrong board, the wrong glue, the wrong thread, and the wrong everything else. But I'm not going to use pricey materials until I can get it right again. I used to be so good at this, and now look at the loose stitching on that text block! Shameful. There's further process photos on my Flickr, so click on the picture if you're interested.

This doll, "She was better prepared for misfortune," was purchased ages ago, but I only recently got around to mailing her off to the saintly patient purchaser in SF. Not only was she made out of my favorite winter coat, that I only cut up when I realized that I'd most likely never wear it again as there's no call for a floor length hooded coat in Phoenix and it was too big to travel with, but she was also ridiculously hard to balance. There's giant metal weights in all those little feet to keep her face from toppling her over. Is it creepy that I talk about my sculptures as though they were people? Behind me are the prints for Solecist, all ready to sew. The fabric is from generous people with expansive wardrobes. And now I'm all out of black ink and must order more before I can print anything further.

What did I do for this long holiday? I've been painting flies and listening to Maria Callas sing about murdering her husband and children. Sadly, I've yet to see Medea performed live. That, and stress out about my stuff waiting to clear customs tomorrow. When it does clear, I don't know how I'll transport it from the airport to my house, and I don't know where I'll put it in my house, but I do know that I'll be making belts, floggers, and dildo harnesses all bloody week, as I've now been twice back-ordered.

Oh, and lastly, do you know what "solecist" means without looking it up? I was recently told that my show titles have too many $1.50 words in them, and it puts people off. So now I want to if I'm being confusing or not.

"Irrefragable"

2007-05-22T17:36:00.000-07:00

Should you be reading this, diptegenarian Illinoisan, I hope that I did not contribute to your decision to delete your journal. If I embarrassed you, I apologize and I'm willing to delete my past journal entry if you wish. Please let me know. My plan was to try to convince you to send me your old clothes, because I'm always on the hunt for more materials. But perhaps I'm a bit too much of an opportunist.

Currently, I'm in the process of printing and carving for my next show, Solecist at Kayo Gallery. I'm also at the baby stages of a collaboration with a local comic book artist, and I'm beginning to suspect that he's far more talented than I am. My intention is to become more talented by proxy, or through osmosis. This is the shirt I made him after he gave me the Zardoz shirt:

Yet again, I ventured onto Frontpage. But this time, it was because I had scanned some new images to use, and knew that my harddrive is going to commit sepakku at any moment. I had to get those images online before they dematerialized, especially as the amount of guff the scanner gave me was not something I was willing to put up with twice.

Nerve (highbrow adult content warning) has a monthly photo contest, each month with a different silly theme challenging photographers and models to come up with something sexy. I won third place in last month's contest, whose theme was "Laundry." The judge called it spacey and that I looked vaguely unhappy. Evidently, these are positives. This month's theme is "bubbles," and even though I'm all psyched to try again, I'm at a total loss for ideas.

Thanks to the Westboro Baptist Church for informing me of the existence of the word "irrefragable." It was committed to memory by whispering it under my breath as I did laundry, telling the modest little piles of separated colors in one word that it was incontestable, and could not be denied.

Excessively Self Involved

2007-05-20T21:22:00.000-07:00

That shortness of breath and rapid heart beat? It's because I'm far too excited for my own good to go see The Wolfs perform tonight, in only a few short hours. The lead singer manages to have an eerie resemblance to Charlie Brown, yet can sing songs about specific sexual positions without being creepy. Most of the lineup for tonight is from Salt Lake City, so I'm preparing to be assailed by great waves of nostalgia and sentimentality when I get to the bar, especially since summer is speedily approaching Phoenix, reducing its inhabitants to reverse eskimos, baring too much skin and constructing their lives to facilitate maximum exposure to A/C.

My desire to be back somewhere with tolerable weather is of such power that I was actually manifested in SLC. Yes, my sister saw me walking across the street last night.

It was, admittedly, in Tracy Strauss's painting form, but I take it as an auspicious sign. That, and the plane tickets, destination SLC.

While searching for a particular article about me, so that I could cite it in my press clippings, I came across two somewhat perplexing things. Firstly, there is a racing horse named Lady Camilla Taylor. I hate horses. They are horrible animals and I hope to stay as far away from them as can be physically managed.

This is secondly:

Have I yet elucidated how explosively hot Camilla Taylor is? She's hot. That's it: I must age six years in the next fifteen seconds and fight her (probably) sleazy, horsecocked boyfriend. The future is looking bright.

Why, oh why, is Camilla Taylor 26?

Seriously, Knox, internet, go fuck yourselves. I am overreaching, and to a greater extent than usual. And it is your fault. And now I am going to do homework and think about Camilla Taylor and be mopey and wish that I too could be an extraordinary weirdo genius troubled by a devilish imagination and a sickly constitution. Alas!

Huh.

Huh.

Quoted, not linked, because being an aspiring Lothario (look it up, it's appropriate) doesn't merit potential mockery and unwanted attention, in my mind anyway. My reaction to reading this was alarm, but not really of the sort that one would expect. Sickly Constitution? Really? I've always thought of myself as rather hale and hardy, albeit with an irritating belief in the merits of sunscreen, but healthy nonetheless. I don't foresee a romance between myself and this young scribe, but I'm somewhat baffled that my age, a difference of 6 years, is such a barrier. Six doesn't strike me as that big a difference. I once dated someone that much younger than me. He looked chokingly beautiful with his shirt off, played the cello, and I snuck him into bars when I should have known better. Evidently both of our friends had adviced as against it because of our age, and perhaps they were right as he and I don't really talk anymore. Or perhaps I'm getting all nostalgic about him because Rostropavitch just died.

But then, maybe that kid talking about a different 26 year old Camilla altogether.

Additionally, the first entry reminds me of how much I loathe eighties teen movies and the way their conceits have infiltrated society. Yeah, I'm talking about you, John Hughes.

Pretty new things in my shop. I've got big elaborate plans for my website, which will be implemented later in the week.

I'm finagling a trade out of Abbyjane. How does she make those beautiful birds and how does she keep them from toppling over? Some sort of black arts, I suspect.

Oh, and if you've got old button up shirts that you don't want, then I recommend giving them to me. I'm nearly out!

Highly Effective

2007-05-15T17:33:00.000-07:00

I hate updating my website. It seems like it will be such a treat when I wake up and think about how I need to finally switch out the old stuff, and show off all my shiney new stuff. But it is not a treat at all. Frontpage was not designed as an intro to web design, it was designed as a highly effective means to leech the souls from its hapless users.

After all that soul-leeching, I've now got some new (and some old) shirts for sale, new wristbands, and finally posted the teacups and a hideous internet abortion that I will continue to direct potential patrons to.

My upcoming solo show in July at [URL=http://kayogallery.com/]Kayo Gallery[/URL] is simply too exciting for words. I'm working on new pieces for it and sewing like crazy. And somehow, I want to engineer some sort of demonstration on medium and technique. When you understand how something is made, it completely changes your approach to it and the manner in which you think about it, or so I think. Understanding the process makes it approachable and, depending on the process, gives it that edge of artisanship or let's you know that a preschooler really could have made it. Mostly, though, I'm just really excited to see my siblings and friends. I've already got a box full of presents to give to people.

I grew a tomato! Oh, come on, I live in Phoenix. If you have any idea how hard it was to grow two tiny tomato fruits, you'd be excited too.

Last night, I met with David B., and I gave him a shirt that was not even half as awesome as the Zardoz shirt he gave me. And then I neglected to get a picture of him in it even though I had brought a camera expressly for that purpose. Now I'm all giddy to have a new friend, and I'll probably end up just creeping him out instead.

I've got a new goal for the year. A new way to measure myself and probably find myself short, but it's the attempt that matters. Or so I think, but then, I'm addicted to fear of failure. It's my cocaine.

LA Times

2007-05-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

Last night, I drove. In a car. All the way to Willowhouse.

It was terrifying.

In other news, there's a picture of my work in the LA Times. They've got the wrong title on the piece, but I don't care as long as they spelled my name right.

Culpable, II

2007-05-06T16:04:00.000-07:00

Last night, I had a weird dream about one of my favorite internet comics. Mr. Jeffrey Rowland, true to form, wore an animal costume throughout the dream, and we ate large tomatoes together. His animal costume got sticky in a completely nonsexual way.

Onto more relevant blog subjects. Friday was the second reception for "Culpable" at Trunk Space Gallery. It went amazingly well. I sold quite a few pieces, and all to people who I was happy to have bits of me in their homes.

I had a completely new piece for the show, that I finished just minutes before the reception. Nop one purchased any of the edition for the new piece, but it was recieved pretty well anyway, and I'm very pleased with it. It was whipped out in less than a week, including sketches, mockup, carving, printing, and finally sewing (although, I was only able to sew two of the projected 60 in the edition).

In contrast to the last reception, people engaged in a little less "family making." Here's an example of bullying by proxy:

Although, one man went through the gallery and hugged all of the pieces. It was lovely to watch.

Noodle, the homeless gallery cat, made a brief appearance and sniffed around, before he finally got scared away by the crowd.

The show got some great publicity, which I'm certain helped to get people there and convince them to spend some money. Lilia Menconi did a studio visit with me, and was kind enough not to mention the ridiculous filthiness of my studio, or dwell too much on my bondage gear business as I'm way too familiar with journalists doing when ostensibly writing about my art.
(click on the image to read the article)

Lastly, and most importantly, I got the most awesome rad thing. And this thing, this most wonderful of things, arrived in an appropriate way. A quite boy who I had just met, after buying a piece fromt he show, returned to the gallery with a package secured with a big bulldog clip. What I found inside made me squeal and make horrible noises, so overcome with excitement was I. If you don't understand, it cannot be explained to you.

Culpable--First Reception

2007-04-21T17:59:00.000-07:00

The turnout for my show last night can only be described as abysmal, but I sold 8 pieces outright, with two ore promised to people when they get the cash, so who the hell cares how many people turned up?

I did the only sensible thing after the show, and got wasted at the tiki bar next door with my friends. I have this funny habit when I get drunk. Inebriation turns me into an overprotective mother hen, and I become overly concerned about everyone's wellbeing. I take it upon myself to make sure the passed out girl gets to bed, and that she doesn't fall asleep with her shoes on. I prevent my loquacious friend from insulting the doorman, or sleeping with the married girl. And then I sober up and stop caring about people and whether or not they sleep in shoes.

The next reception for it will be even better, and I'll have five new pieces that I intend to finish by then.

For the opening, I made a sign and framed it, and hung it on the wall. It read "You may gently interfere with their lives." Giving people permission to touch art started out by just making them nervous, and eventually grown men were lying on the floor talking to inanimate objects.

I had set up all my creatures in two opposing armies, facing off across the room from each other. Everyone after than placed them into little groups, and made sure each creature had a friend. I tested this by placing a few in corners on their own, and sure enough, the next person immediately cooed over them in concern, and either brought another guy over to keep them company, or ushered them into a larger group.

(thanks to Jeff and Jefferson for the photos)

Sullied

2007-03-10T02:56:00.000-07:00

I might just have gone cross-eyed and blind from working on my website, but at last! It is done! Huzzah, and drinks all round, my friends. The bit of the website that I'm specifically referring to is the doll gallery. In an attempt to rid myself of these little bastards, I'm listing their prices.
In addition to this blatant commercialism, and sullying of the purity of art with crass monetary concerns, I'm also willing to consider trades. Mind you, I'm a picky lass and won't accept some sad effort unframed ring-binder sketchbook drawing, but that doesn't mean that you needn't try. I've got over a hundred of these, and I once thought of them as my precious darling children, but now I think of them more like the friend who keeps assuming it's ok to crash on your couch and eat your Cheerios. I still love them, but now I want them to stay at someone else's place for a change. In short, they're taking up space and I'm working on new stuff, stuff that will take up loads of space.

If you'll allow me to be so bold, I will recommend the following particularly scrumptious pieces:

There's been quite a furor locally regarding a gallery so common as to host a $99 art show. I'm consistently reminded of my lack of idealism.

Print hovel

2007-02-25T09:59:00.000-07:00

I accidentally printed some thread on the face of one of the faun. I'm going to use it anyway, even though variety isn't necessarily a good quality in an edition.

I've been seeing all of these beautiful studios lately. Studios with quaint charming furniture, perfectly organized, and brightly painted walls. Studios your effervescent friends would be eager to get a peek into after dinner parties, and where you'd lounge about on cute furniture, having sparkling conversation with pretty people. In comparison, I'm working in a print hovel. Fie on those people who work in clean pretty places. FIE!

Their parts will be sewn together to form the pieces. This is one of the first steps in my "sculptural" prints.

I realized that all of my upcoming shows, not counting the one that already opened in Salt Lake City, are restricted to participants only of my gender. First, GIRLS in Portland (at DebraJeans gallery), Invisible Coterie in San Francisco, then Seven Brides Electrified at Jail Gallery in LA, and you could even count my solo show here in Phoenix as one too. Strange, isn't it? Mind you, I'm in no way complaining. I only find it odd because I personally know so few female artists.

Invisible Coterie opens Friday, March 2, at Femina Potens Gallery. I bought new shoes for this opening, that I've yet to wear. I absolutely did not need new shoes, but these shoes just ooze with some ineffible quality that produces the urge to buy vast amounts of art from the wearer of the shoes. Or so I'd like to think, anyway.

GIRLS opens Thursday, March 1, at Secret Tiger Club Gallery