Transition

October 9....

    I started today in the bowels of LIRR just north of Grand Central.  Twenty-two flights of stairs down, and then up again at the end of the day.   Its dark, dusty, and cavernous.   The guys are great, and hopefully the company will keep me in spite of the unusual schedule.  Just a few weeks ago, I was nesting in the Observation deck at Hudson Yards, 1200 feet in the air, eagerly awaiting a change.  Fortunately, I  had a chance to say so-long to Johnny P.  Actually, I said, "see you down the road", because that is what we say to each other.  What a treasure of a human being. I will miss his wisdom and his warmth.

    Its odd processing these changes.  I work side by side with someone, day after day for more than two years, and then "poof".  In my Journey to Wakanda class, we learned about the Toureg, nomandic African tribes who customarily cover themselves in protective layers of indigo and in the shade of a tent from evil spirits during times of transition.  This resonates greatly with me, as this transitional time has left me vulnerable to strange feelings.

I had to get my hustle on to renew some licenses.  I took the suspended scaffold refresher class. I was so glad to see Gene M, who will always be the person who introduced me to 580 at the Freedom tower 7 years ago.  Johnny Rock is retiring, and I was thrilled to get some time catching up a little.  My gratitude to 580 is immense, as I would not be able to do what I am doing now without it.

Hudson yards was a wild ride, fraught with challenge.  I have to say, I had a great time. 

First Critique/Sarah Sze/Lee Bontecou

     Our first critique was on Tuesday.  I left work on Monday, stopped home for a few hours to do what I needed to do, then went to school with the intention of starting in the evening and working all through the night, which I did.  Having twenty four hour access is a windfall; it plugs me into my favorite thing--being able to haunt places. I have always taken pleasure in being someplace that is not my dwelling, where I have somehow been granted access , even if it was granted to me by myself, where I am (mostly) alone, and where I feel like I am haunting the place like a ghost at all hours of night.  The campus becomes more lovely to me with every passing day, but it is at night, when the ground flowers are softly backlit , and the grass and buildings are so beautifully maintained, the asphalt walkways have no cracks, and its quiet quiet quiet...

      I worked all night and completed these pieces. When I showed Susan J.  the Yellow Building, she said it was too literal, so I de-literalized it.  I began and mostly completed this piece, called....I worked in a collaging frenzy until it was time for class.  I didn't even brush my teeth or put on makeup.  It felt wonderful, and when my classmates started coming in before class to their own studios, I was genuinely glad to see them.  I had done enough work, that even if the critiques went bad, it was not for lack of trying.

     Professor Eto was first.  We spend a half hour on everyone, and it was thrilling to see what people had been working on.  All good work.  I was last, and the first thing Eto said was, "this seems like it should be an installation."  My memory always becomes a blur when it involves public speaking, but I spoke a lot about what I had made, and Eto responded,   "it seems like you are not doing what you want to be doing".   Mike S. said, I bet that pile of metal under the table means more to you than any of these drawings.  I told them both that they were right.  I knew it was not a negation of the value of the work I'd made at all. 

     Then I had my crit with Archie.  Again I was last.  I was late because I had run off campus to buy a cigarette and junkfood.  It was raining hard and the sun was down.   The elevator too the 5th floor was slow, and stood there in the blindingly white hallway waiting for clunky thing to come.  When I got to my studio, there was Archie.  He was going through everything, my sketches, my portfolios.  "Where are you from?" he asked.  He keyed into my issues with place.  The white background.  The lack of horizon line.  The facility I have with placing figures and objects in space.  He said my compositions were reminiscent of those who had been disenfranchised.   Then he went on a bit about women and how THEY have always been marginalized.   I kept my mouth shut, but silently revolted.  Our conversation was about "place" and he told me to give this some thought, and he left.

Bushwick open Studios

I was fortunately dislodged from my apartment by art gang to go to Bushwick open studios this Saturday.  What a great couple of hours.  I am so lucky to have my friend, Eleanor, who although not an artist herself, is a relentless appreciator of the arts, and a tireless sender of emails about local events.  Here are some highlights: 

Nick Greenwald—Walls covered with intricate graphite drawings. Human charactaes with bulging eyes and forced perspective. Complex intricate compositions with the details in the background so detailed and minute, I had to wonder how he accomplished it. But the real treat was further in the back...tiles of venetian plaster coated in many layers of graphite and polished to a high sheen...some burnished with wax, so that they shone with a mesmerizing steely luster. He was generous with descriptions of his process and answered all our many questions. Figures the best artist of the day is the one that has no website.

Dwightcassin.com --Before going into Dwight's studio, we discussed the etiquette involved with walking into an artists private space and what the interaction should be like. I felt a little guilty about treating the last few like galleries.  The artists are right there and part of the experience is to interact with them.  Dwight's work features wooden biomorphic assemblages embellished with “pin nails”. We loved their colorful playfulness, and the four of us sat and chatted with him for a bit. 

Another artist, Hunter Renolds, makes art about living through the aids epidemic in the 80s. Although postcards fanned out on a table showed him in his early years, a handsome, young, and brazenly wearing a tutu on the steps of the nyc public library . He said Giuliani made nudity legal for the day, knowing the gays would be doing it anyway, and didn't want to be bothered with policing them. The man in front of us, however, had a  disfigured face. His nose appeared to have completely come off and had been reattached as a twisted  band of flesh that was fastened to his forehead. You could see openings in his face where it had come unattached. We barely noticed though, because we were enjoying his banter and his encaustic art, which was of special interest to us since we had just taken the encaustic workshop for my birthday. 

@heajungpaints

@heajungpaints

Encaustic Birthday party.

      What a suprise this was!! My birthday is Labor Day weekend, so usually most of the world is out of town, and this year was no different.  Raya asked me to keep a day late in the month open, and to bring two images that I would want to work with, and to meet her at the Bed Bath and Beyond in Sunset Park. What the ...?

     When I arrived, she brought me up to the top of the stairs and through a vast network of service corridors, prompting me to ask if this was "the beyond section"...can't take credit...I stole that from Family Guy.  When we finally arrived at the destination, there was the gang, with food laid out, and all the materials we would need to learn how to make encaustic paintings.  I have been working with microcrystalline for years, but never knew the proper methods.  We used real beeswax, and our teacher showed us all kinds of techniques.

      The best part though was this.

       When Raya, Dorothy, Stacey, and I went to Cuba last New Years, I gave Raya a bra I had purchased which I thought was too uncomfortable. She eventually decided she didn't like it either, so she gave it back. So of course I snuck it into her luggage when we went our separate ways.  Months later, the bra wound up in my coat pocket after some event.  The next time I went to her apartment, I used her bathroom and stuffed it deep between her towels, thinking it would be years before she found it.  Well, the bra showed up in one of my bags not too long after.  Then, we were at a dinner party, and I had packaged the bra in a gift bag, and when I dropped her off near her place in Park Slope, I had my passenger pass the bag to her as an afterthought when she had one foot out of the car, and she wouldn't accept it so we threw it at her. Totally clumsy, but off my hands none the less.

      Among the food items at the encaustic party was a big weird-looking cake piled a little too high with strawberries.  As I cut the cake after blowing out my candles, I was hearing a clinking sound as the knife hit something in the center.  "Thats just the custard." Raya said.  Didn't make any sense, but I kept cutting.  After the cake was divvied out, an upside down glass, the "custard" in the center turned out to be holding...guess what....She got me good, but I am already plotting a spectacular return strategy.

Beloved inspirations/Semitophile

   

    Today, I had the pleasure of meeting up with one of the most influencial people in my life, Susan Josepher, who was the department Chair at Metro State which I attended from 93-99.   We met at The Chocolate Room on Court Street, owned and run by her daughter.  Its a place that oozes chocolatey warmth.   Susan is smart, sassy, powerful, warm and funny.  My time at Metro was enhanced by her presence.  In spite of being a busy department chair, she made time for our conversations in her office, where she would explain details about art history that I found confounding.  The New York City Happenings of the 1950s and 60s, Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism for instance, were considered "important" by our art history professors.  When I asked her confidentially what was so important about them, she said, "You had to be there".  Now that I live in NYC and have experienced my own happenings, I get it.  She is the embodiment of why I am a semitophile.  Also, the image of a sane, intellectual, powerful lady in the arts was stabilizing counterpoint to some  of the flakiness I had observed.  After I told her (I thought she knew) how influential she has been to me, and how she is the primary reason I going to Brooklyn College (It is her alma mater), she was a little stunned.  "I was just doing my job", she said.  It was a chance for both of us to reflect on the people who have buoyed and pushed us, and whether they know what a  powerful lasting force they've been in our lives. Her work can be seen here.  http://www.susanjosepherart.net/home

     Not suprising in this time of colliding worlds,  and speaking of powerful forces, I find myself seated in the Chocolate Room beneath a  Jonathon Blum Piece.  Note the dog with cake on its head in the above photo--a commission by the family to commemorate beloved dog.  Jonathon Blum, the titular Rabbi Painter, is my first real NYC friend.  We met at a loft party, where I had a painting up, and he, in his ever slightly exasperated manner, charmed me into coming to see his storefront studio on 5th ave in Park Slope. He has a printing press, and makes mostly monotypes.  Before his kiddies were born and before I had to become an adult, we would spend long nights making prints and talking about life, music. and art.   Jonathon is a Brooklyn maven.  It takes a certain personality to have a storefront studio on a busy street where doors are open to anyone who wants to wander in.  He is kind and patient with the wide range of humanity that stop by.  He has encouraged me relentlessly for the entirety of our friendship.  We have an art date this coming weekend!  His collage techniques are embedded in my pscyhe, and are the technical inspiration behind much of my mixed media work.  

https://www.jonathanblumportraits.com/

Tracy Emmins/ Death of the Author

     


     

  One of my teacher's said, "Sometimes, its almost like even making your lunch is art."  She was referring to how when we immerse ourselves in art, study it inside and out, eat, sleep and breath it...its hard to tell anymore.  .I find this slightly alarming, as I have fallen deep into that rabbit hole.  Its a loss of distinction.  The capacity to discern.  Criticism, judgement, differentiation, filtering, sifting, discarding....they are all a part of the creative act.  So building that from the ground up, a good place to start is what I do not care for, what I do not agree with, what is not inspiring.  Re-embracing the judgement that one must be rid of in the name of all-important open-mindedness.
         We are tasked with the assignment in school now to write an artist statement by our Master Thesis Professor (MTP). I met with him to go over a few things.  into these new resources which I have been starving for.  He gave me some very good feedback, including one bit that I had to chew on. 
     I am having a difficult time separating myself from the ideas that are motivational in my work.  This compulsion to write my own story, which I personally find fascinating, is limiting me.  It lacks sophistication.  It fails to reflect the complexity of my worldview. I was directed to the work of Tracy Emmin. A "confessional artist", in the tradition of Louise Bourgeois, her work is about barfing out her personal life.  Louise Bourgeois, whose work I always liked, seemed much less interesting after learning that her work is motivated by the trauma she suffered after discovering her father was having an affair with the governess. 

     Radical vulnerability can be useful in art, and in human relationships. However, it is so potent, that maybe a little goes a long way-too much can be offensive, like garlic. 

       Also, my recent experience with cleaving my way out from the grip of a narcissist  has left me raw with distain for that weakness of egomania.  MTP also spoke about the origin of the art in me, what is getting sent, and what is getting received.  After rereading Death of the Author by Roland Barthe, I needed to get through that initial response of (grad-school-green) acceptance, and settle on certain points.  Very reactionary.  Why does the author have to be dead?  Why can't they just dial it in?   A work of art is a product of billions of choices; in this state of fluidity, it reaches a certain audience across a rather vast spectra.
     MTP encouraged specifics:  good answers to good questions.  Inquiry--deep inquiry, even if its the very beginning of a deep inquiry.  He also suggested reading up on semiotics.  This may have been a response to my blurb about "the failure of language".
 
*~*~*

Collaboration

  I have to admit.  I dread the idea of collaboration, but it is not unfounded.  It has to do with crippling social skills, my lack of ability to understand where other people are coming from, a lack of confidence that I am being understood, and a sort of laser-like focus on my own ideas, and a burning fear that I am not getting done what I feel I must get done-lack of patience.  My efforts to combat these has often left me feeling helpless and stuck, and very lonely, which may be part of the reason I started making art in the first place when I was a little kid.  The teachers were always telling my Mom that I needed to "get checked out".  I was checked out by a doctor.  I spent nights awake in laboratories hooked up to electrodes. For some reason, I had to be sleep deprived, and my Mom (bless her heart) would keep me up with coloring books and drawing supplies.  The results always came back the same.  "She is absolutely fine.  She just likes to look at clouds."

On the flip side, I will never give up, ever, on being the best version of myself possible.   I adore companionship and am well aware of the positive outcomes of collaboration when it goes well. That mysterious synergy. I experienced it with the Madagascar Institute.  I did not participate in this production but here is an example of what these brilliantly creative kids put together.

.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CBcaK45WT0



One of my classes this semester is called collaborative studies.  I enter in this with the greatest of open-mindedness.  Our teacher swore the pairings for the first assignment were random, but I have to wonder. I was paired with a man named Alberto Bursztyn.

                                                    albertobursztyn.com

The assignment for us to take turns assisting each other. Within a short time, improbable parallels emerged between our works.  We have a friend in common who curates shows from time to time, and now we will be in a show together in November!  I learned so much already from this project, and leaves me feeling so optimistic.

Incidentally, I still love looking at clouds... ~*~*~*