Manifestation

my plate degraded so rapidly, I could only do four. I've posted all four so that you can see the progression/regression. 

For some reason animals didn't feel right for the first time in a long time. 

This concept is definitely a work in progress since it's a direct and purposeful reflection of a mix of my current goals, wishes and a tiny bit of iconography that is representative of aspects of my spirituality.

the pencil

before the ink.

collage elements to be added after print.

'cause they won't teach me silk screen.

make sure you look at it upside down, too

"because you're a beautiful animal, and i'm weak"

hahahahahha

okay, who wants to hire me?

I've progressed a lot this year. I feel like I've felt out my direction in life and it's no longer as aimless and vague as it was the first semester. Instead of just daydreaming about what i really want to do, i feel like i now i'm using the tools i have to actually make it happen. i used to know it was possible but now i feel even closer to it.
oh tura, your quote is perfect, "i never try anything, i just do it"

This is all so common sense that I feel like it's dumb to write about it, but here you go:

So what I'm going to do is move to Los Angeles in May, find a place to live and a job within 2 weeks, begin saving money to take a motorcycle safety course and then to buy a motorcycle.  I'm going to become a regular at a few clubs and find other people with similar passions, organize an old-school go-go night at a club and have the mashed potato down by then and hopefully be dancing with people that have experience with standard dances that I'm as of now still unfamiliar with so that I can expand my repertoire of movement.

I've decided that I want to be in a film. My role will include riding motorcycles, go-go dancing, and generally being bad-ass. I'm thinking like cult film--it's so bad it's good kind of genre.

I know I need to keep really busy because otherwise I'm going to fall into existential despair. I cringe at how jaded I already am about humanity. I'm uncomfortable with it and I don't want to linger on this because it will destroy me, this is why I need to live as hard as I can. If I'm living that hard I won't have the time or energy to think about this SHIT.
I want people to be too strong and I am consistently disappointed and disgusted and I get pretty depressed. It's a little easier to live in a haze of emotional numbness towards this apparent TRUTH of mass humanity, but sometimes it's more frustrating not to feel anything (even anger) than it is to live hyper-aware and painfully.
And THAT is where I am right now.

gut

art.

today i'm going to do my next degree project piece.  i slept long and well with many dreams i can't remember.  

i'm blowing snot and blood and i'm bored with idea of being sick all the damn time.

i've got some ideas brewing.  i also have an opportunity to do an album cover... i haven't been inspired naturally yet, so it's time to look into my image banks and pull some stuff out and stare at it and piece it together.

i have no respect for reviews, i would cite this as a problem but that was my last one, so that's nice.  i think the only helpful/non-general feedback i got was from Chris Goodwin.  He gave me ideas of what to do technically, not vague suggestions or complaints about how i, (a) don't have concepts (b) that my concepts are too hard to understand.

also an interesting thing that i think two people mentioned was backgrounds.  i guess unless i'm doing a scene i just don't feel like putting one in because it feels arbitrary.  i think sometimes during reviews the reviewers kind of prepare themselves with a mental list of points and then go around to each person and apply that list to their work without taking the time to delve very deeply into the piece and try to understand what it needs.

also Emily was showing me pictures from Australia and her work is so inspiring to me.  she's just so free when she paints and draws.  i still want to feel that way...  i've got to get a new sketchbook.

i'm also sick of people talking about making larger scale work.  that's what i mean, they look for the opposite of what you're doing and assume that if they suggest the opposite, they're going to push you to do something real cutting edge.  it's so impersonal that i find it insulting.

Slinkster stone fox

(foreword: Okay so I kind of want to dedicate a post every now and then to some crazy slinkster woman i look up to or who inspires me.  lately it's been Uschi Obermaier.)

 
 


  


Can I just be Uschi Obermaeir without the heroin/speed habits and the dependancy on the men you're with as the determination of personality?
Yes?
Thankyou.

Uschi was a German model in the 60s who loved music and dancing and getting out of her head and was close with Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, and intimate with Jimi Hendrix.  She was also involved with Kommune 1 because her boyfriend was Rainer Langhans, though she wasn't terribly political.  Her soulmate was Dieter Bockhorn, who was kind of the king of Hamburg.  He was a real wild man, going on expeditions to Africa, would water ski in the Hamburger port.  The papers tried to make him into a pimp, but he wasn't, though he had a lot friends that were.  He owned shops and would handpick many of the items.  He had a monkey called Cheetah that got really jealous of Uschi.  A bit later into their relationship, he had a cafe called "Adler" (Eagle).  Together they bought a bus and made it so amazing that they received death threats and ultimatums, in exchange for the bus.  I wish there were more pictures of the inside.  They had a royal wedding in India and ended up in Mexico, where he eventually committed suicide, sick from love for Uschi, who refused to commit.  On New Year's Eve he crashed his motorcycle into an oncoming truck.  There is WAY MORE to this and it's all in her "auto"biography, but unfortunately that is only available in German at the time being.  Since I can read German, I uhh read it.  There's a movie out, though, it's called "Eight Miles High," or "The Wild Life" (the German title).

some advice from Uschi to you: "I tell them always to do what your heart says, and don’t let yourself fear, because fear in this society kicks out any kind of ambition or wild streak, so they conform. I tell them to go by your heart."

sighhhhh

also this has been insanely inspiring. thanks to Lilu.



I've been thinking a lot about my aesthetic. Mainly about how narrow it is. I think one of my resolutions next year will be to broaden my aesthetic. I feel very limited within, though the passion I do feel for it is very intense.

Yesterday after work I biked to the South End with Nadia to meet her friends.  It is so good be with west-coast'rs, we all have similar humour and I basically laughed the entire time.  Probably at things that weren't even funny.  One of them was so much San Francisco that it was painful in the homesick kinda way.  They had just drunk a pitcher and we went to this candy/antique store that smelled like dust.  Champaigne truffles among over-priced vinyl, feather fans, metal mermaid link purses 100 years old, big rings, lamps and books, gumdrops, chocolates and lollipops and souveniers.  I bought my first Oscar Wilde.  I'm waiting to read him until after I finish Dr. John's autobiography.  Maybe another New Year's resolution can be to stop reading so many goddamn autobiographies and start educating myself on philosophy or reading classic cats like Wilde.  He sold it to me for $3.  

After that the two boys bought a 6 pack of Pabst and we sat on some stoop and laughed our ass-cheeks right off.  Like Steven's story where he took methadone and blacked out and came to in an alley getting head from this guy who was taking him home on his bike and he took out his cellphone and called his friend and could only say "get here fast" over and over.  or something.  And realizing again how much fun the bay area is, especially when compared to Boston.  They were sort of name-calling some people that passed us and gave us dirty looks, "puritans!"  I don't know, Steven was wearing a pin on his knit sweater that said "I'm bi-sexual but no, I don't think you are attractive" and had these motorcycle boots that were so worn-in that they were more like slippers.  He kind of reminded me of Joel Gion.  

Oh!  I got Tepid Peppermint Wonderland for Christmas!  Also JJ Got Live RTX, and Howls From The Hills.  As well as the cougar belt buckle and motorcycle boots and Lush Flying Fox shower gel and some other wonderous gifts.

Also I think "you're a stone fox" is probably the best compliment I've never heard.  so get to it!

listen loud, it's the only way.

YOU SHOULD SHUT UP

letting go

today I had degree project and it was a really strange experience.

I came an hour late, because i'd rather go to class late than unprepared.  we were presenting our test pieces.

I felt completely railed against, and then i had to tell the backstory.  all my pieces DO have concepts, I'm still bitter about the one professor who did my semester review and wrote that my concepts are weak.  I've got concepts, you just don't have an imagination.  I guess I really like telling pieces of stories, isn't that what we're doing, anyway?  I don't know why people "can't understand" what's going on in my work.

Does that mean I'm a bad illustrator?  That I'm not communicating?

Do I care?

I don't know.  Those are all valid questions.

ANYWAY, I hate talking in front of people, and my stories are pretty personal, so I started getting really frantic and nervous and the story kind of stumbled and fell out of my mouth in this blubbering heap and I was so embarrassed by the end of it and a couple people said, "wow."  And I wanted to disappear.

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY:

That I need to let go.

Actually, I think that's the lesson of this year for me.  I don't trust people, and I guess now I don't trust myself?  I was so sure I did.  Damnit!  Maybe I just don't trust myself with art.  The big complaint in Degree Project was that my illustration did not match my experience whatsoever.  It was very fine ink work with watercolour.  I know it's true.  That's not how I approach anything else in my life.  

On a related note,

... I don't know if I'd go so far as to call myself uptight, but I know I'm definitely not laid-back.  I pretty much always want to be doing something.  It gets worse if I haven't danced lately.  I'm probably the least biggest fan of "just chilling" in existence.  Like on Friday, when Liz was taking acid with her roommates and forgot to call me and then when she did and I went over, they were all just sitting in the living room.  One girl took a blue crayon and drew an arch on a piece of paper and showed it to Jeff and was like, "Look how cool this is!  It's so beautiful!"  And he looked at it and said, "Why is it pulsating like that?"

HM LET ME THINK..MAYBE 'CAUSE YER ON ACID??

and Liz was just having Sevi teach her guitar.  I thought I was going over to party with her, you know, drink some wine, smoke, put some records on and dance in her living room till we're down to our knickers.

Nope.

The evening got even more thrilling when 4 or 5 of them left to go to the liquor store and I stayed behind with this guy who started meditating and intermittently would explode with anger at the cat, who was playing with a bell.  The worst of it was when he tried to TEACH me how to meditate, I am so adverse to being taught things without my consent.  I find it incredibly condescending, even when I know it's meant well.  THEN he told me that my body language was melancholy.

Liz' roommate Jessica came in and she's one of those girls who squeel their hiii's and I kind of cringe and throw a hey at them and pray that they go away but for some reason they decide that I am just SO COOL.  So I went to the bathroom and cried and hid in Liz' room until they came back.

Fine.  I was feeling melancholy.  But that totally wasn't what I was intending to communicate.  Plus, we'd watched a movie about letters Vietnam soldiers had sent home during the war in my 60's class that morning and I had a lot of stuff on my mind about war and what it does to people.

Eventually we ended up on the roof listening to some shit indie sleep band.  The girl was doing sexual yoga with glowsticks, Liz couldn't stop hula-hooping and was the center of attention of the guys who WEREN'T (a) withdrawn and staring at the wall, (b) goddamn meditating.

I observed this and couldn't stand it anymore.

I need to find a way to let go in a way that I won't feel compromised.  I need to extend the way I feel at shows to the way I feel when I am making art.

but how?

Goals

This is a silk-screen I did while I was in Rotterdam at WDKA.  It's one of two of my favourite pieces I produced this year.  I don't produce a lot of work.  I'm beginning to suspect that I am a perfectionist in what I allow people to see of my creative expressions.

It's for my Dutch soul-mate band, vague friends of mine... '69 dirty lysergic blues rock that'll blow out your brain.  I told them that I can't describe the live experience in any adequate way, but attempted to, using the following two examples:

(1)  like being injected with pure seratonin because I feel SO HAPPY, it's like I don't have control over my happiness and I'm just grinning and THRILLED.

(2)  as if every single atom that makes up my body and the immediate area around it had the ability to cum for the duration of the set

Basically: I love them more than life and I miss them so much it hurts.  Come over and let's listen to their records.  Seriously.  

for the near future/life plan:

-throw myself into Degree Project and Illustration IV

-create a portfolio I am proud of

-Contact Arthur Magazine, Arik Roper, Tim Clark, Mitchell Meseke, Waxpoetics

-work and save money

::: don't buy anything for myself (unless it's more winter clothes [BUT NO VINTAGE.  no, kerstin.  No.] OR the subscription to Arthur because I can't go up to Portland all that often to get my fix OR entrance to Soul-le-lu-jahSLASHconcert tickets.  What else do I buy myself, anyway?  I just am not going to allow myself to look at records.  Or vintage anything.)

-graduate on time, find a person to take over the remainder of my lease, allowing me to get to LA at the beginning of summer.

-in the two weeks following graduation, move to LA.  

-market myself, find work

::: show up often at the two bars/clubs Peter mentioned, call Steve if I don't run into him anywhere for a month.  become a networking WHORE.  yes, more than I am now.

-learn to ride a motorcycle

::: save up money for the motorcycle safety course, get licensed, then save up money for the motorcycle.

-get a job old school go-go dancing at a club.  a cool club, not a sleaze palace.

-build my legend.

-at 30 consider becoming a tour manager or an artist manager and/or moving to Europe

-at 80, buy a RV, loads of cocaine, heroin, acid, and speed, pump my body full of them and tour every single national park in America, while simultaneously teaching myself astronomy and the finer points of professional photography.

-die of a dramatic overdose or be murdered while fighting for a cause I really believe in.

I have no ounce of doubt that I am going to be a fucking underground legend.  I have way too much passion for life for anything to hamper me.  

Goodnight, my dumplings.