from a little piece of hell
Spinning the color wheel

I’ve been trying to paint the heat. The advantage of not having gallery representation is that you have no one to disappoint. There are no demands, no expectations. You can do what an artist is meant to do; explore, experiment, push your own boundaries. For me that would be pure abstraction. I’ve got the surrealist thing down and I can paint as representational as the best of them. Pure abstraction can be difficult, but I love the challenge, and have found it to be a place I can go without much trouble. Abstraction like this doesn't fight back, but it does pose issues I enjoy sinking my teeth into.

Painting my periods, with all the cramps and blood and stabbing knives, was the good kind of struggle. Stepping a toe into painting other states of being, such as being in a twist, is not too hard, and I will return there once the exterior thermostat gets turned down. However, painting heat is exceptionally tough. It doesn’t flow.

Heat like this is a solid mass. It is layered, both opaque and translucent. It weighs heavy, hangs like ancient drapery, drags old dry lumber ripe with splinters down long dusty roads. It is both headache bright and queasy dull. Or maybe it is consistently dull with spare moments of a sharp stabbing sort of brightness. I want to paint yellows, all kinds of yellows, but I am not sure if yellow is quite right. Maybe orange. We think of red and orange for heat, with cool colors being blues and greens. There is sense to that, but it is not the whole picture. Heat brings mirages, visions, fever dreams. What color is that heat-induced headache that has been my frequent companion these recent summers?

Yellow transverses both summer and heat. Summer colors are crisp white, citron, a sweet orchid violet, the cool aqua of tropical seashores, the clear blue of a good sky. I miss those summers. Heat like this is a dismal beige, a blaring yellow-orange, a tired shade of red. In some cases it is heavy and opaque, in others transparent and scratchy. Sometimes heat is colorless. How do you paint that?

I know this much: The only way to get to the crisp cool of autumn is to crawl, muddle, hobble your way through this insipidity as best you can. Half of life is a mirage anyway. It shouldn’t be, but at times like this it feels as though it is.

posted July 30, 2010

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netroots station
Vegas, baby

I’ve never been to Vegas. Oh, I’ve been to Las Vegas all right, the one in the northeastern quadrant of the state of New Mexico. Las Vegas is a sweet little town about an hour sort of north of Santa Fe on I-25, where the Sangre de Cristo Mountains meet the prairie for breakfast. I even thought of moving there once upon a time. But I’ve never been to Vegas.

I’ve seen Vegas from the air at night, back in the days when I would frequently fly between Albuquerque and San Francisco. It was lit up like a carnival, the midway of the great American desert. Back in the days when I loved to fly, my face pressed against the window looking out at everything. Back in the days when I would travel with some regularity, and I didn’t feel the need to reinvent myself every few months in the name of survival.

So, now I am a blogger. And Netroots Nation is taking place in Vegas where it’s 180 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade and I swear everyone else, well probably almost, is having a much better time than I am. Because I am somewhat bored and they are probably not. But anyhoo, as I was saying, I would rather be at Netroots Nation right now, because among other reasons involving fun, I want to become a better blogger.

In the past, before I began reinventing myself with such regularity (instead of traveling so much as I once did), I would wait until I was closer to perfection before setting out on something. “Oh no, I can’t do that, not yet” was my faithful tagline. Not so much anymore. Because the one piece of advice I have held dear to my heart, or any other handy body part, that I have gleaned from way too many pages of self-help books that I have long since abandoned, is to not wait until you have achieved perfection to do something.

And so I write my imperfect blog, poor thing still without a reliable comment process, no socially mandatory bells and whistles, just a bunch of lonely words, and again, poor thing, so terribly unpublicized. But still I write. Because in another two months I will have been dedicated to this baby for a whole year. And as time goes on, I will continue to have all this material behind me. And I will get better, as anyone who dedicates themselves to anything naturally will. And a year from now, when I am attending Netroots Nation 2011, wherever it’s going to be held, I will be there, a full-fledged blogger. An artsy lefty original blogger. A better blogger.

The last time I saw Las Vegas, the one in New Mexico, was from the train. They have an Amtrak station. Next stop Raton. Next stop Netroots Nation 2011. Next stop take my own dang advice and figure out what else I can be imperfect at that will move things forward.

posted July 22, 2010

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a topical heat wave
We're having a heat wave

Philadelphia recorded its hottest June on record last month, and this July looks no better. Of course it's hot in July in places where it usually gets hot in July. But record heat is another thing, as opposed to regular or average heat. We just had two days of unusual rainfall and flooding sandwiched in-between heat waves number four and five. It's a good thing my feet hurt and I'm better off staying inside, going nowhere. Or maybe not.

I'm one of the lucky ones with two working air conditioners and an apartment small enough to stay reasonably comfortable with just that. I'm also one of the lucky ones with an easel and panels and paint. I've been doing these small abstracts based on states of being, and I suppose before summer is out, there will be heat wave paintings. Right now they are about feet and heels and restlessness... but crazy summer storms and heat will be portrayed before August is out.

From 1975 to 1985 I lived in the Boston area. Every summer there was one guaranteed heatwave. It would last about a week, until some raging thunderstorm finally gave it the boot. And that would be it for the year. I painted the painting above in the early eighties in response to the annual Boston heatwave. It's about 30 inches across. I can't wait to paint that size again. I can't wait for cooler months and a bigger studio. They are both on the horizon. They are not a mirage. They can't be.

posted July 15, 2010

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creative fun from almost nothing
Hybrid-words

This monthly feature on developing unlimited creativity is best referenced from the two original creative fun from almost nothing entries from the archives; September and October 2009. Read those two entries, and the entry below will be all yours. In honor of all things peculiar...

Hybrid words are any two words joined together with a dash to make a new word. One example would be scarf-dog. This could be a dog that always wears a scarf, a dog that scarfs things down (like most dogs) or a scarf that is the companion pet of another scarf. Take any two things you see, any two actions going on nearby, or any sensation or exclamation you randomly choose. Mix nouns, verbs, adjectives or any other kinds of words together.

If you cannot think of any hybrids off the top of your head, begin with any of these examples:
1. box-stripe
2. pillow-fish
3. drawer-blue
4. carpet-phone
5. sky-lime
6. table-hey!

• Create something in any medium or style based on your interpretation of any of the above hybrid words.

• Do a split-comparison piece, where half is about the scarf and the other half is about the dog. This is actually quite a common approach used by artists, usually to make some kind of a statement. Think about any meaning you might wish to convey, or if it is purely about random thought and nothing else.

• Make a truly hybrid piece of art, not only inspired by a hybrid word, but hybrid also by mixing your use of materials, approaches and/or artistic styles. For example, sky-lime could be a mixed-media piece mounted on a small board. The sky could be painted realistically with blue and clouds, and the lime could be an abstract in different shades of green glitter and sequins. Sky could be on the left and lime on the right side of the board, or the lime could be placed coming through the sky. The lime could also be portrayed on the front of the piece, with the sky on the back. Maybe the sky could be made of fabric pieces glued to a large wooden lime. The possibilities are many. Strange, but many.

• Make a chain of hybrid words such as: snorkel-sofa, sofa-mouse, mouse-tomato, tomato-pond. You can loop the chain with pond-snorkel, if you like. With these hybrid words you can create an intertwined series of pieces, like an accordion-fold book or a giant domino set. Brainstorm and see what ideas come.

Excerpted and paraphrased from the book;
Creatively Unblocking Creative Blocks
Author: Alexandria Levin
ISBN: 0-9743267-1-2
Published by Painted Jay Publishing
www.paintedjay.com

posted July 4, 2010

All images and content ©2009-2010 Alexandria Levin