ARCHIVES: December 2009

okay, next
Wrestling the laundry beast

It is at those moments of repetitive unpleasantness that the passage of time shows its meanest face; here I am AGAIN doing THIS. I don’t especially celebrate Chistmas, and that is the subject of much writing to come someday, I suppose. But just the same, I spent Christmas morning doing laundry. Now, I don’t really mind doing laundry. I mind going up and down two flights of stairs four times; one long and curly flight, and one shorter and treacherous, splintery, dusty, steep flight into the basement of this building. I mind doing the laundry in the rather disgusting basement. I mind both the commercial washer and dryer that ruin certain articles of clothing I used to be fond of wearing.

I live in a mansion. Cool, huh? A real, honest-to-god mansion. Of couse, it’s been divided up into seven apartments. I think we live in the former master suite. Our rooms were pretty nicely rehabbed a few years back. It’s actually a lovely little apartment, the keyword being little. Our kitchen was built into a closet.

There is a memory from about ten years ago. I am in my old car stopped on Carlisle facing south, waiting for the light to change so I can turn left at Constitution. This would be Albuquerque. Albuquerque I loved. Albuquerque was my healing place. Life was so much easier in Albuquerque. But ten years after the fact, I can still intrinsically feel the restlessness within me. I clearly remember thinking; “here I am AGAIN, waiting for THIS light to change” after running errands that seemed to take up too much of my day. My god, to have a car again to run errands. To drive around easily. This bus thing I am dealing with now really sucks. Driving around these parts, as I remember before my car decided it did not want to be a car anymore, that only sucked a little bit less.

It is the very end of this decade. The aughts. The uh ohs. And I am as restless as ever. Measurements, compilations, quantitative containments... They only drive home the point, whatever the point of the matter at hand happens to be. I could be severely disappointed with things right now, but I am well beyond that. I am just feeling very trapped. There has to be an exit somewhere.

I remember New Year’s Eve 1999. They shoot guns in Albuquerque to ring in the new year. Until about 3:00 am, they do this. You either leave a party early to get home by 11:30, or you stay over all night. It’s not safe to go outside. We stayed home. Again, I clearly remember taking the chance to stand outside under the porch roof to feel what the new century, the new millenium felt like. And it did feel different in some inexplicable way. But wow, did we have no clue...

Y2K was the stolen election. 2001 brought a deep hole to my childhood city. In 2002 we moved here, blind as baby rats, becoming stunned as deer in the headlights. It’s been downhill most of the way since, one disappointment after another until recently. But on this wayward path I have found myself to be resilient as anything, resourceful as anyone, with my core as solid as ever. There is a slight upward swoop. I can’t see it yet, but I can feel it. In this past decade I’ve become a writer, a teacher, a publisher, a designer, a developer, a blogger. That’s got to be worth something. That’s got to take me somewhere. And most importantly, I’m still with my best guy, I’m still painting, I’m still creating and learning and growing. I’m still alive.

Brand new shiny decade. Bring it on.

posted December 27, 2009

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minor chips and beefs
Newly formed, coming into existence

More than thirty years after I began painting, and then attendance at two art schools, one graduation with honors, winning important state grants, three solid resume pages of solo and group exhibitions, multiple publications, various awards, lectures and teaching experience, I was offered a spot in an emerging artist show. Emerging?!? What the hell am I emerging from? The shadows? A cave? The primordial ooze? What?

And okay, I currently live in the most provincial of all valleys located on this side of the Atlantic, and so therefore I have found that all my previous accomplishments do not count for much when it comes to official things that are locally-based, but really... Really!

And so we bring you a smidge of poetry to honor the moment, although this was written about five years before the issue at hand. Clairvoyance? Or general annoyance? You decide.

(two verses from...)
On the So-Called Emergence of an Artist

Emerging like a baby chick
all fragility and fluff
saturated with the goo of an egg
a yellow marshmallow puff
albumen sticking to feathers
who sneezed out this stuff?

Emergence, emergency
sound the alarms
the red sirens ringing
we’ve got another case here
it’s best to leave it hanging...

'Emerging artist' is another one of those terms like “woman artist” that gets used so often and for so long it becomes an accepted part of the lexicon. I’m not an English major. Why do these things make me nuts? I politely declined the offer. I am too nice. It was a huge favor they were doing for me, or so it seemed, as I am not of the right pedigree for these parts. And ultimately, beyond my own issues, they were a fairly decent gallery. I know they treat their artists okay and that alone doesn’t happen often enough.

Achoo!

You have to listen to that little voice deep inside you. Not the crazy ones near the surface, but the calm inner voice that reminds you of your true value and worth. You can hear it in silence. As an artist who has stood the test of time, who has developed a durable flexibility, the outside respect will come. It will return. But it has to radiate from the center.

posted December 24, 2009

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sort of funny while peeing
My very favorite graffiti ever

I was in the bathroom; that semi-outdoor, climate decontrolled, slightly circular, or maybe it just had a curved wall, bathroom near the cafe at SFAI. No big deal. I was often in that bathroom as it was the only one near the main source of food at school. It was a stark little two-stall place, with those bumpy-textured walls that seem to cover every indoor space in San Francisco. It was a popular spot. And one day there it was; “Beat me, f*#k me, make me take out student loans”, staring at me so eloquently from the back of the door while seated on the pot.

I was a lucky girl. Educational grants were still plentiful in the late 1980s. Loans were for only ten years duration, not thirty. Mine cost an affordable $104 a month, and I paid it off in six easy years. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to rub this in, even though it stings. Here, have a nice dab of aloe vera. You’ll feel a little bit better.

However, I do think of the huge burden friends and family of mine have these days; recent graduates and soon-to-be graduates. Some were fortunate enough a few years back to lock into low interest rates, but those who have yet to graduate... Ouch!

Is this still further proof of the stupidification of America? A plot to stupidify America? Now, school is not for everybody. I’m not even all that sure it was for me, being the naturally self-taught type. But education is critical, as much as possible for as many people as possible, in many different forms. And a lot of those forms include higher education. We need as much of “the smart” as we can get in this country, and the sooner the better. But when wages have been falling way behind the cost of living for nearly two decades now, who can afford an education anymore? Who can afford to pay off their loans? Who can afford to be the entrepreneur or the innovator or the artist?

¿Quién who? ¿Cuando when? ¿Por qué why?

At this very same school, during the very same time period, the indoor downstairs bathroom stalls were painted black so that no writing would occur. But gesso was white. And thick. And the painting department was populous. And we had gesso. Lots and lots of gesso.

posted December 21, 2009

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just doing its job
When the morning sun pokes me in the eye

Two mornings ago I awoke to the near-solstice sun reaching into our southeastern bedroom window and slapping me across the face. It does that. I’m not a big fan of waking up, although it is preferable to the alternative. Just let me sleep a little bit longer...

I love sleeping. My dreams are strange and colorful and full of things that have found their way into my paintings over the years. And then, being a painter I notice all kinds of unusual things when I’m awake. And two mornings ago, while I was lying there with my face burning ever-so-slightly from being sun-slapped, I stared absolutely transfixed into the corner where the bedpost meets the bookcase meets the wall.

Where the bedpost meets the bookcase meets the wall? Eh, you say? Yes but, the bedpost is the orange of oak, the bookcase is painted a deep aubergine sort of reddish-purple, and the walls are painted a very dark shade of olive green. We didn’t paint them that color, they came that way. I can live with it. But here we’ve got orange, purple and green; the secondary triad of colors, with sunlight creating brilliant shapes and shadows and reflections. It was all quite fascinating, if purely in a visual way.

I commented to the boyfriend that only painters can see this, but as I stumbled out of bed I remarked that photograhers can too. But that’s only a partial truth, because there are all kinds of perceptive people out there, many of whom are not artists. And then there are plenty of painters who don’t notice these things either. I mean, I notice a lot of audio input, street sounds, all sorts of musical elements in daily life, and I’m not a musician. Not yet, anyway. And I have to stop putting that off. But that’s another story.

Perception keeps us from being bored.

I painted today; more small bloody red abstracts. Yeah, it’s just about that sporadic time of month. Now I’m writing and I have a bit of design work to do in what’s left of the afternoon. The sun is already on its descent for the day. Well, not really. The sun stays put. It’s all of us who are in motion. Even when we're asleep.

posted December 12, 2009

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leaf notes
Now that they’re all gone

Leaves are my favorite motif. I looooove cats, but I’m not big on cat motifs. But a leaf pattern will get me every time. Don’t know why. Just is.

I had the rare pleasure of travelling recently, and I took the train. The whole train! Or maybe the train took me. Anyhoo, I spent a fair bit of time with my face nearly pressed against the window watching the world go by. How can you get bored on a train, at least in daylight? The best show on earth is out there! Of course, I was the little kid, always quiet in the back seat of the car, fascinated enough by the view so that I never complained. I couldn’t care less if we were there yet when there was so much to see on the way. (This is also how I keep from screaming my head off on the bus.)

This time I took leaf notes. In a notebook with a leaf motif on the cover. Words to evoke visual images to translate into paintings at some point. Here are a few of my notes, as written:

• Stands of grayish bark, orange yellow leaves
• Pale green lime leaves against red bricks
• Row of trees, each diff color
• The multicolor trees. Green one side, red the other
• Ruby red tree, like azaleas on stem
• Yellow tree with green tips - shaped like linden tree
• Red star-shaped leaves
• Leaves - naples yellow tree next to purple madder alizarin
• Super fuzzy evergreens - brown on inside, green on outside

If I have a reference photo of a green summer tree, there is no reason I can’t change that tree into one full of red leaves tipped in yellow. I mean, that’s our job, to interpret through our own personal vision to get to a higher (or deeper, as the case may be) truth. The higher, or deeper, truth is that this tree has brilliance in it. Or time passes and it will become autumn no matter how hard we resist. Or it’s a comment on the concept of stopping and waiting, when once there was go. Or maybe we just want it to have red leaves tipped in yellow, just because, and so we paint it that way.

The leaf to the right, in its natural fall color, was painted way back in 1998.

posted December 4, 2009

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creative fun from almost nothing
Traffic lights amongst the urban blight

It doesn't feel at all like December out there, at least not today in this corner of the world. However, in honor of all the glittering lights of the hollerday season...

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. Use the commonplace everyday to inspire your art!

Visual abstraction from traffic lights
• Create an abstracted piece using only the following elements: The colors green, red, yellow, white and black, and variations thereof. You may also use metallic paints or other metallic materials. Use the shapes of disks, circles, rectangles and arrows, with these forms covering at least 75% of your composition. This can be expressed in any medium. It could even be a beaded sculpture with wires sticking out, or knotted in yarn with buttons. Don’t stop, don’t wait, just go!

Meaning
• Design a new system of traffic signage based on the questions below.
- What would traffic lights of other colors such as blue or orange mean?
- What new symbols could traffic lights use besides hand, man walking or arrow?
- What different words could there be for pedestrian signals besides walk, wait or stop?
• Include one of these new traffic lights in a scene. Set a particular mood, depending on the meaning of the new traffic signal.

Invention
• Design and/or create a new traffic light for any of the following purposes:
- An intergalactic traffic light
- For the middle of nowhere here on earth
- For the only bathroom in a crowded house
- For a busy kitchen at a popular restaurant
- A traffic light at average dog-height for a dog park
- For a public swimming pool or ice rink
- At a department store during the holiday season
- For a mosh pit. Do they still make these?

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 December 1, 2009

All images and content ©2009, Alexandria Levin