wild child

there's nothing like coasting home after midnight, a blues program on the radio, no commercials--pigs don't scare you because you've got nothing on you...just this magical dazed coasting. exhaustion like thick glasses
except with that weight inside your chest of the impossible week. i'm slipping back, my priorities are getting tired. i miss my rock and roll.
king khan & bbq show
darker my love, viva viva
bill kirchin
coyote kolb

i'm sorry.
i'm too worn-out. i know i can't lead these two lives right now.

It's the first Advent tomorrow, my parents gave me a gigantic chocolate pretzel, and advent calendar with chocolate behind the doors, an Entrance album ("Prayer of Death," which includes liner quotes taken from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Uwais El-qarni [a Sufi mystic], and James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time), and my mother gave me her old motorcycle gloves!

Anyway, "Prayer of Death" is kind of all about death, and, being artists, we're probably all kind of healthily (or unhealthily) obsessed with it. I love Guy Blakeslee's lyrics, they are rambling and passionate and honest and reflective and powerful. They are complete on their own, yet fit into the structure of the music in such an unexpected way. Right now I'm feeling way more inspired about music than about my art. I dislike everything I'm drawing, except the Don Juan cover. Everything's from this photographic reference and it just looks so fake, it makes me ill. The things from my mind freak me out too much to draw, it's shit. fucked-up bodies limbs and patterns that don't make sense. i don't have a cute cartoon-y style, just freak disjointed rambling line experimentation. i hate looking at it or drawing near it. i have to skip a page in my sketchbook.

i want a wild man for the winter

let's get together tonight

C'mon Everybody
Eddie Cochran

I've been really getting off on old rock and roll this year.
Link Wray, Dick Dale, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Wanda Jackson, Ernie Chaffin, Gene Vincent, Bill Haley, Carl Perkins.
It's attractive to me because it's easy to dance to and it's pretty badass in the context of its time.
I still don't like Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis and nothing's gonna change my mind on that.

By Thursday I'm usually completely worn-out. Wednesday is my break-down day. Last week was pretty bad in Advanced Drawing. I felt really guilty and so much of an under-achiever and then Margot yelled at me and I started crying in class and I just can't wait until all of this is over. Maybe I will stay in Boston an extra day over Thanksgiving break and try to catch up for those two junior classes. Last Thursday my mama came down to visit me after class and we walked around the North and South ends and Chinatown. I revel in the real dirty, gritty parts of cities and she hates it, but I still went the same way I normally do, down that loading area, stench of fish and garbage, concrete so filthy you wouldn't want to pick up a quarter if it was there. We went down into the Channel Cafe (positives: really pretty, well-designed, has live music and a gallery! negatives: does not have any liquor other than beer and wine, is expensive, is out in the middle of nowhere) to check out what was in the gallery but what we were REALLY in the area for was the ICA. The Tara Donovan exhibit was amazing!
It was a total visual trip. I was like, WHY IS THIS BLURRY??? It shouldn't be blurry.

All of a sudden I'm having trouble with the Johnny Cupcake's design. I don't like his line and I really don't want what I think is cool to be sold to the people that buy his stuff. How bad is that? Yeah, it's bad.

me in a year:



i can't get over this.

i'm sorry.


I got a squash court for the senior show! I feel good about degree project. I'm havin' fun, baby.

shake shake

This was my first monochromatic piece and I'm still not sure how I feel about the colours, it's so alien to work that way.



I don't know what sort of music you guys are into, but I love dron-y shoegaze-n-roll psych and one of the best bands out there doing it is The Morning After Girls.
This is a segment they did for a radio show, it's quite long but if you don't have time to listen to all of it, go to the middle and listen to the song because that one is really beautiful. I wrote them this a while ago:
i was putting together a short (there are four) list of songs that are currently, purely auditorily literally turinng me on and getting me off
and you've got two. so here's what i think
Lazy Greys: breathy count-off ...3, 4. the bass line is so interesting, i imagine it is fingers flickering over your warm skin and a body rolling around with you coming in and out of you, the reverby guitar i'm a junkie for is like the feeling in your throat you get when you're real turned-on and kind of nervous and the vocals are the way you breathe in when someone touches you just right. the harmonica is you trying to control yourself.
i can picture how you would play this, it's slow but i don't think that's less sexy, i think it's more because of the passion you can put behind everything. it'd be like grinding yourselves into your instruments, it's a total seducer song, i'd love to listen to this and panther-seduce someone
and Run For Our Lives i would just have a lot of fun fooling around with dancing to that live. the guitar makes me move and the bass line is such a perfect backup to fall onto plus the tambourine's has that killer backbeat that's the easy way
yeah!

you can find those two songs on youtube.


ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT NOTE:
Stop looking for approval in others.


As Mavis Staples would say, Respect Yourself.

(from Wattstax)

Detour semi-final

To Do:
darken shadow for car
define top right fight scene
bring over atmosphere to reclining woman

anything else, sugarsugar?

Okay

Andy Fish has inspired me to do some self-reflective contemplating through his post on his art school daze and the e-mail he sent me.
I'm a very passionate person, but this passion can progress or regress in the same intensity, especially when fueled by negative feelings. It gets dangerous so fast. If I feel like someone is challenging me in the slightest, everything goes to shit.

she gets off baby off baby off baby

I SPENT 6 HOURS ON THIS! you fuck
I deleted it off the UCF site because someone's comment made me really violent and I needed to prevent myself from attacking his passive-aggressiveness and insulting his manhood in what would have been a tirade that sealed my fate as a non-illustrator. Look, I can't work with your deadlines, I can't make myself do what you want. I'll get it done, no question, don't start lecturing me. Oh my god. If he has the actual huevos to bring that up in front of me, he's going to get it. I hope he doesn't because it's going to reveal my incapacity to be professional. Whatever. I have issues with passive-aggressive people. Don't fuck with me.

this is how i feel.


RTX is such the perfect soundtrack right now. feedbackkkkk distortionnn howling guitarr in distance, coming together, socking you in the face with building drums THEN weird metal tone " Well I'm the garbage collectorRRR *metal double
okay.
ciao chiquitas and chicossssss

The Evolution of Detour:

- one million ideas
- in thumbnail/sketch phase, sudden unexplainable loss of about 9, 999,996 ideas
- combination of two ideas
- 50 thousand sketches
- stalemate
- 50 thousand sketches
- slooowwww progress on final drawing/painting.
- lack of confidence.
- fear that it's too overtly sexual.
- fuck it.

The last two nights have been good because I've been going out and dancing. It grounds me, it keeps me sane, it makes me happy, it rejuvenates me.


I was looking at some old footage of go go dancing on youtube yesterday and I can't find the one I wanted to share, but this one is the best out there. It's probably new to you,



If I still end up going to NYC this weekend, I'm going to get those silver go-go boots at Trash & Vaudeville. Anyone who reads this and enjoys this type of music should go to Cheap Thrills. It's every Thursday at Zuzu, mostly it's free, but if you're going with me, and it's not, I can give you the password.
Also anyone who dabbles in 70s hard stoner acid psychedelic garage rock should, aside from Orange Sunshine (YES I WILL FORCE YOU TO LISTEN TO THEM), check out Dzjenghis Khan. I'd recommend a link to a clip of a show I've been to, but either they have basically no picture, or shitty sound. I spent a good chunk of time with them whilst in Holland, and they're worth your time.
Here, I'll make it REALLY easy for you to listen to Orange Sunshine.



I was dancing exactly where the camera attempted to zoom into the crowd until the operator realized that there were no distinguishable bodies and only an inky black blob. Jesse (see Khan) and I were freaking out over Arthur's guitarage skills, Carson (see Khan) was probably disgusted at how sweaty I was when he was trying to grab my waist, and Graveyard was standing right behind us.

word. SUGGGGG

heavy heavy

DO YOU LIKE THE EDITED BIT? YES or NO?




I feel like everyone carries around this immense sadness. It sits around us, hangs off our limbs like some fucked fog.

I'm beginning to SEE what I want to do with degree project.
I'm doing an installation, and there's no space on the 11th floor that's all that conducive, so I might have some work up there, but have my REAL thing somewhere else in Tower. If in Tower.
I hope that the location doesn't discourage people from checking it out.
My group in class was really helpful and I felt inspired after talking with them. I'm definitely going to project STUFF on top of other stuff and I want to make a teepee or some sort of structure people can go inside of and feel really peaceful amidst all of the sound and visual stimuli.
I want to make a headdress and matchbox altars.

On another note,
here are two more pictures of the unreal fabulous Lady Jenny





AND Heaven by Dead Meadow.

I just want to skim right off the radar for a while.
New York City

my art has been a direct reflection of my life

RTX
Cheap Wine Time


and "Knightmare and Mane"

This woman kicks so much ass. Who WOULDN'T want to be her??
I introduce you to: Jennifer Herrema




I've "discovered" RTX through my friend Amanda. Who is a new friend as of our "interview" two weeks ago. I feel like I should post my topic proposal for Degree Project so you guys know how all this fits together. Amanda is about RTX like I am about Spindrift or Orange Sunshine. We just get injected with this unreal excitement and convey so much insane enthusiasm about them that the person we're talking to rides on our energy straight to giving the group a listen.
Okay, here is my topic proposal. Hope it's not boring.
HAHA

The Groupie and the Rock & Roll Lifestyle
I’m teetering on the verge of completely immersing myself in the shallow, delightfully wicked pool of the rock and roll lifestyle known as the reality of tour. I open my arms to its delicious trappings. It’s been several years since I’ve dared to dream of this unconventional lifestyle, but from sheer passion and self-belief I finally managed to crawl to the edge of this fucked oasis and lap at its outer ripples.
Rock and roll is a poisonous, addictive culture, fettered with romanticism and glamorization. Rock and rollers are outlaws not by choice but by the necessities of their passion. Unlike any other existence, musicians are encouraged to wallow in negative feelings. The only true romantic bit of the rock and roll lifestyle is being in a bed of creativity, where it is conceived, and being a part of that conception. And that bit overrides almost all the darkness, the unnatural stress on the physical that tour demands, the emotional rollercoaster, running dry and yearning.
At 17 I found that there was a name for the way I felt about music. I wanted to be a groupie because music had saved me and had grown into such a beautiful beast within me that it gnawed at every inch of my expression and that from then on, I knew I could only make it with people who felt he same as I did. Shows became a platform during which I could crawl out of my stomach and become this pure thing; it was like I could finally breathe.
It took years to get to where I am now, at 21, and I’m still sort of floating in the middle, trying to live two realities, trying to balance priorities with this innate need for the live music experience. For those of us that wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for music, we are intrinsically tied with it. There is a community whose members all possess that same edge. The communal nature of music is unique, as it affects multiple senses and willingly or unwillingly involves anyone in the area. It is malleable, alive, and interactive. It is a passion that everyone loves but few live. It takes an enormous amount of drive to live music, you have to let every atom of your being become absolutely possessed by it, it has to consume your life completely, you have to willfully give yourself over. There is no pretending that you might have the freedom to do anything but. This is why I can never completely be myself, never be happy or comfortable with someone who doesn’t share this passion. Music is in my blood, it is my savior and my lover, it is everything. People who don’t feel this way will never fully understand that. I have no choice, I didn’t choose this path, I accepted it.
I find that I have an incredible amount of love to give, and I want to give it to the people who create what moves me. As much as I want to be their muse, I need them to be mine. The relationship between a musician and a true groupie is a symbiotic one.

I want to visually explore my experiences as a groupie, and I plan to do this in a myriad of formats, culminating in an installation that will utilize the sense of hearing. I am especially interested in creating transgressive art and manipulating the viewer into having an interactive experience with my work. I will explore the different aspects of being a groupie and will discuss these aspects with other groupies. Topics of discussion may include, but are not limited to, how being possessed by this manic love affects our lives, how we see the world, how we create our own world, the addictive nature of rock and roll, inspiring and being inspired, the aesthetic, the image, the love and the loneliness. I’d like to give people a look inside one of my existences.
I’m a collector of images, and I want to continue to collect images that speak to my topic and fit them together. I will stay away from literal interpretation and will create and use a dictionary of personal symbols to represents concepts and people. I will read memoirs and watch documentaries and make lists of the aesthetics and potential symbols, and look at how they relate to my own.
I’m not interested in using traditional formats to present my art, and this project will also be an exploration of alternative presentation formats for my illustrations. I plan to work chronologically through my history with the rock and roll subculture.
I want my art, like humour, to shock me in a dry, honest way. I like art that involves the fourth dimension of time and decays and disintegrates and that is functional. I need to keep my art organic and imperfect. I need it to be in a constant state of flux because I cannot allow my creations to be stagnant.

Amanda fits into this because she was in Pamela des Barres' latest book "Let's Spend the Night Together," she's not really a GROUPIE, she just happens to have relationships with musicians, and she's the coolest rock and roll girlfriend EVER.  She's also a professional photographer so it was incredibly enlightening to talk with her about how she goes about balancing and interweaving her passions.  I aspire to be like her one day.  Soon.  It'll be soon.

This is not about my art.

I'm just going to show everyone these pants because i'm absolutely in love with them. If they were a man I would definitely lay them. If they were a man and they rode a motorcycle and they danced to rock and roll and we ate greek yogurt with honey and strawberries and he played on the swings with me and brushed my hair and we went skinny dipping in rivers and he played a mean slide guitar and harmonica, I'd make love to him over an extended period of time.
but alas, they are not. so they'll just make snug-glove-love to my legs.



if you like at least three things in this picture, we have really important things in common.

SONG OF THE DAY section.
I've been listening to The Kills lately, and I'm not usually one. Actually, I'm NEVER one for drum tracks or overly-electro elements, but there's something real dirty and authentic rock and roll about The Kills that just fucking makes up for it.
It was their video of "The Good Ones" that turned me on. Maybe it will do the same for you.



I guess I just like the level of intensity of their interaction.
I've liked every other song I've heard, but my favourite right now is "Last Day of Magic"
I just want to talk about music but I know you guys are going to get bored so I'm going to contain myself.

Talk to me

the pretty finished 7" wraparound.  I'm going to play around with the sky in the the upper left because I liked it better left white.

Since I'm a complete junkie for music, I want to turn each and every one of you into an equally obsessed nutter.  It's a little bit like being a religious fanatic I guess.

I WANT TO SHOW YOU GOD

cuz god is love

"god dog sex death" - Serena's motorcycle

let us begin.

"Screaming Gun" by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Wow that was a hard decision.  I changed my mind three times.  I guess it's not TECHNICALLY the first song I've shared with you, since I just uploaded Cheval Sombre's "I Sleep" and posted it as an edit in the previous post.

I was going to do a classic, "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" by the Temptations, but I figured you've probably heard that before.

So here's something new.

It has harmonica.

This is my absolutely rejected test piece for Degree Project:

 

I agree with the general consensus that this expression does not correspond nor relate my experience whatsoever.  It's aesthetically decent.  Minus the background.  But now I'm in this thing where I'm drawing thirty feet of doodles, on assignment to come across my style.  In my senior year, with a month left to come up with two pieces.  

overwhelmed. escapism is always the answer

well i sleep to get back to you

yeah i sleep to get back to you

well in the daytime, i can't find you

in the daytime, just don't know what to do.

well i sleep and i couldn't dream of you

from "Sleep" by Cheval Sombre

Today I met Charlie and we talked for over an hour about his musical history and tours and at the end I asked him about muses and he says it's a drive, the need to express yourself.  That especially performing music, because there are people in front of you.  That's what separates live music as an art media from visual art, it's what makes it so much more pure of an expression.  He had me hold one end of my necklace chain and we held both ends, taut and he said this is Time, between us, right now.  We are only not alone when you and I are here right now.

oh

Now I've got to do some sketches for Word and Image's alphabet book assignment, finish the Isabella Stewart Gardner piece, interview Charlie Sawyer about groupies, go to court, and go out to eat with Liz' family in celebration of her birthday if I manage to finish any of that.

I can't believe Obama actually won.  I had NO faith left in the American people.  It felt like a dream when Stephen told me.  I started pinching myself and everything got really surreal.  I can't believe the American people were able to deal with themselves and do something good after all of these years of SHIT.  The streets erupted into cheering and cars were honking and we ran outside and I kind of danced on the sidewalk and I was smiling so much my face hurt and I couldn't concentrate on work anymore and when I got home Pepperanne escaped and tried to hide under the porch and Nadia and Mike were drinking whisky on the couch and we watched Obama's speech except we realized it was THE WRONG ONE when he was like, in a week's time, we will ask ourselves if we want the Bush regime for a third term.  On November 4th....

Mike and I were like, uh WHAT?  What do we not know about this crazy idea of a third term?  And then we realized it was the wrong speech.

Oh classic Kerstin.

did i just finish a piece??!

Global Warming piece

"You know why I call him Ozone Man?  This guy is so far off in the environmental extreme we'll be up to our neck in owls and out of work for every American."

-George Bush Sr. talking about Al Gore.

Compositional options for self-portrait poster

The biggest one is the one I'm leaning towards.  I'm really attracted to the square format, and I like that my hand will be interacting with the logo of the museum.