I added a high-quality feature to the hallway outside my studio this past week.
Art is constantly in dialogue with its context; it’s important to remember the creative possibilities of dabbling in context.
While this deep basement hallway has neither windows nor airflow, it does in fact have someone who hangs out in a corner of it who knows about taking care of plants in non-optimal conditions.
Optimizing the non-optimal … I wonder how I got so good at that.
We’ll see how he does. 🙂
So far greg is thriving and has me remembering my old plant-filled apartment from back before certain accumulated experiences of harm wrenched my life into the underworld for a time. That time is becoming less and less relevant to my day to day. Good.
I was often drawing little drawings like this back then, which look great on a wall or a shelf among plant friends.
Maybe some new ones will start to propagate again before long.
Even though it was extra cold today and spring has yet to sproing, things feel quietly alive down here.
We’re just over a week since my art show launch (really? only that long??) and it’s amazing how much getting over the hurdle of making my first show in five years visible in the world has energized me.
A lot of my energy has been directed towards deep cleaning, organizing, repairing old torn canvases and scuffed artworks, and in general just making the spaces I participate in nicer to exist in.
And on a more metaphysical note, throwing away all the judgmental and degrading opinions that have been clogging up my space.
When you’re real, there is no “buffer” between peoples’ rudeness and your actual self. Which is why a lot of artists protect themselves with a persona of some kind. Then when that persona gets judged, it’s a sort of armor that defends the real person.
I was ashamed of myself when I realized life was a costume party and I attended with my real face.
—Franz Kafka
People can costume up if they want. In my perspective that feels like treating peak “culture” like some kind of tween drama. It strikes me as both immature and cowardly.
For better or worse, that’s never been my style and I can confidently say it never will be.
Have I faced consequences for that? Oh you bet your butt I have.
But that doesn’t mean I have to get hurt all the time. Another way to deal with it is to develop the kind of self respect that more or less functions as a shop vac for peoples’ bullshit.
DOWN THE CHUTE, a charcoal drawing I made by my dad’s bedside in his last days while he was dying of cancer.
The only reason a lot of people are as full of shit as they are is that they’ve never actually stood in front of someone they knew could see all the way through it.
When you think everyone is too stupid to know you’re not being real, you’re going to treat everyone like they’re too stupid to help you take your stupid mask off.
Maybe people aren’t stupid; maybe they are too busy doing the hard work of being real to care about the costume party you think they should dress up for to buffer them from the consequence of authenticity.
And maybe curating a fake face doesn’t make you better than everyone who has the spine to be seen for who they are.
The posts are flowing at a steady clip right now and that’s because I have a huge amount of work that has long awaited finding a place in a context like this one.
So the mighty several of you who jumped in and subscribed to my brand new email updates are getting quite the blast of content.
I’m not about to apologize for that—presumably you’re here because you like what I’m about. If you didn’t I’d surely have repelled you a long time ago by now. As I mentioned to several folks over banter about my art at my show opening last week, a lot of what I’m saying and doing is “not exactly subtle.”
However I wouldn’t call it exotic or “out there” either.
Years ago I bought a shirt which I wore to shreds because I loved it so much. It was an album shirt for Thom Yorke’s Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes. If you’re unfamiliar Thom Yorke is the lead singer of Radiohead.
If you stood facing a mirror wearing that shirt, you’d see reflected back underneath the geometric design the phrase “THE TRUTH IS ORDINARY.”
Correct.
Observer/Fabricator, charcoal drawing. Another feature in my show, Medicine of the Forest.
Getting more specific, the truth about me is ordinary.
I’ve had a lot of people frame me as some kind of rebel. The thing is, in order to be a rebel there would need to be some kind of authority I am supposedly rebelling from.
What authority am I actually under, which I am going against? Who am I going against by continuing to exist? If someone thinks I am against them due to the fact that I am continuing to exist, wouldn’t it seem that they perhaps need some support for their emotional and mental health?
Because my existence is not a political stance or an ideology. It is a purely neutral fact.
Me taking care of my basic needs so I can continue to create value in society and support the people I love is not some kind of extremist behavior.
