For a list of Diary Topics, read here
Tomorrow, February 26 2005
I am looking forward to talking to David Chelsea on the radio tomorrow. Sometime in the 80s I met him. He was part of the New Yorkers from Portland group which would meet once a year at the Christmas parties of Nick Hill. It is kind of odd – I hardly know David but when you spend Christmas with someone, you get this feeling of connection. Those parties comprised my Christmas for several years. David wrote David Chelsea in Love, a graphic autobiographical novel set in the early 80s in NYC. He is quite the illustrator today. You can see his work all over, including the style section of the New York Times.
From what I understand, he has no agent and creates entirely his own career. I am really interested in all of that --- not just the work itself but how he gets it out into the world.
collage by Ken Butler
What to Sell, February 26 2005
I have one artist friend who comes over and we always get entangled over art career questions. Funny, we hardly talk about art per se. He even confessed to me that “you probably like art more than I do.”
Maybe that is why ‘the game,’ as he calls it, disturbs him. He doesn’t love art enough to put up with it.
He says the whole process of selling art is absurd and meaningless and that the world doesn’t need more art. As long as there is, in his words, ‘rice on the table,’ that is what counts.
Right. So for me it would be a question as to how to get that damn rice on the table.
Would selling shoes be preferable, more honorable, than selling paintings? How about selling dope? Or just my plain old self? Cause I’ve done it all and I’m here to tell you that selling paintings was a lot more rewarding as opposed to selling all that other stuff. It is not more ‘noble’ in my book to sell something else.
My friend said: “You know this is something I do all of the time, talk to artists about how they can live as one.”
It occurred to me as we were having this ‘to have or not to have an art career’ harangue for the umpteenth time, that it’s a waste of energy to go there and I’m not going to do it anymore with him. What a sad way to spend time.
But it also dawned on me right then and there that these kinds of conversations are ones all the big players never have. That kind of struggle is not for Jeff Koons or Mary Boone.
I remember Ken Butler telling me that if you looked at all the heavy hitters – not so much the Johns/ Rauschenberg generation but afterwards – you would see one great education or slush-fund after another. These people have never wondered how the hell they could get out of Starbucks.
That Process, February 24 2005 (or: Art is Work)
Many artists (and those who are not) romanticize the process of art making. I think it’s great if your process is joyful but it bugs the shit out of me if you think it MUST be, and that something is terribly wrong if it’s not.
An artist friend confessed to me: “It’s always tough. Sometimes it’s terrifying or uncomfortable.”
I recall one artist coming into this vintage clothing shop I used to work at (called Keep ‘Em Flying on NW 21st) and we got into a conversation about the making of our work. He thought it was wrong to be tortured and that you were doing it wrong it if you were. It should be very easy, he said (like how it was for him).
Recently I was asked how my painting was going. I am finishing up a work right now which I wrote of before, that one in green and purple, inspired by fields of lavender, a Killer in Provence. In fact today it will be finished.
But that last coat of paint is Hell. It is indeed a wonder to behold but far from a wonder to make.
The young buck who asked the question declared that the opposite is what it is all about for him, if he is to keep on painting. “It must be exciting” he says.
I wish you joy. How nice for you and I sincerely mean that.
But I could tell that art as work was a foreign concept. Funny how we all call the thing ‘work’ but then again we’re supposed to be exhilarated all the time, like in the act of sex (though come to think of it, good sex can take work too).
OK. I want to make something which charges a room. Again and again, years from now, there it goes again. I don’t care how I have to get there. It could be fun but in my case, it’s really often not. Hey, it’s work! It is the result which matters to me. When I get to that result, then I am joyous and all those things I was supposed to be while I was making it.
Right now all of my paintings for this upcoming show are lined up in my attic bedroom. I go to sleep with them and I wake up with them and I am spending this time with them. They are holding up. They are still at it. And that is what I am after.
What I am definitely sick of is this idea that you can take a shit in some very interesting sort of way, some process, a unique shit and then you spread it all around and hey, that’s what we get. It is just shit and awful to live with but wow! What a process!
Blogs and Some Old Gossip, February 23 2005
Modern Kicks touched on something I spoke a little bit with Carolyn about: the word blog. I just don’t like it.
Is it indeed just the way it sounds? Could be. It just doesn’t sound like something I would do, just the sound of it. So when I read it over and over again from various sources, I cringed. If it’s on the Internet, it must be a blog I guess, but otherwise I have kept a diary since 1969, through many changes and ups and downs and all just for myself. Carolyn mentioned how she liked the fact that no one else read it.
Hmmm. That is not always the case. But you just have to go on anyway.
I’ve caught several people reading my diary. It’s never turned out well for them. Here’s a good one:
I am visiting a friend I used to live with in PDX, early 80s. He’s now shacking up with another friend I used to live with, so it would seem to be all cozy, yes?
But I could tell upon arrival that something wasn’t quite right with her. She didn’t seem happy in some kind of vague way. When I mentioned it to someone else, she said: “Well, Nicholas is sleeping around with Caryn again. But Andrea doesn’t know it; she just knows something is afoot.”
I am not one to gossip for pages about someone else – it is my diary after all – but put it all into one sentence: “Andrea is upset because Nicholas has returned to Caryn.” That was it, one sentence.
The notebook was left on a side table and I went out into the world. Andrea came downstairs and found Nick reading my book. “What are you reading Eva’s book for?!” she exclaimed. He seemed upset. “What is in here anyway?” and she opens the book.
And this was how she found out that the rat was having an affair.
I never knew any of this till a year later. Andrea then left him, moved to San Francisco and in with me, into my flat in the Mission. It was only then that she told me the tale. So reading my diary didn’t work out too well for Nicholas. I lived with both of these people at one time or another. I wonder if they read my diary as a matter of course?
Debut, February 22 2005
The first time I showed these big Vive-chromes was at the Haze Gallery, in their inaugural exhibition in November 2003. Mine was the only painting that I recall. Mostly it was installations of piles of dirt and the like.
That’s a joke really. Only one artist had a pile of dirt. One friend went on and on about how awful most of the work was, but there are plenty of people out there who think paintings are elitist art objects of yesterday, and conceptual art is the way to go.
(This is a subject for another entry entirely, but I am with David Hockney in the belief that paintings are conceptual too -- good ones at least -- and I in no way will hand over the corner on the market of brains and concepts to ‘conceptual’ artists alone.)
I did not feel too bad about it though. People stood in front of my painting and stared. I can’t say they all loved it; some were not sure what to think, but they were looking.
And for a lot longer than they did at the pile of dirt.
One local painter, a successful one, took my painting apart with her friend and I watched the scenario from close by. She obviously did not know that the artist was right beside her.
I saw them discussing it and she started at one corner, looking very closely and went all over that entire canvas to the other side and then up to the next corner and so on. I thought it was kinda funny, for one corner looks pretty much like the others. Then she turned around and folded her arms and dismissed it. I could tell that painting really got under her skin and she did not like that. Oh! I had a good time!
One thing that often happens in these cases is that a show gets announced, work gets rounded up and often these artists work on something right then and there for a show. I mean they work on something for 2 days or 2 weeks. I remember one artist said he visited a gallery the week before the opening so he could decide what to make for it.
That’s OK but I think it shows. I don’t care how good your concept is.
Notebooks, February 21 2005
Yesterday I talked with Carolyn on the radio, asking her about her art and her life (like I do with an artist every Sunday).
As she maintains the website Dangerous Chunky, I knew that there was more to be covered than just the visuals she makes. I would ask her about the website and how she started it and all. But I wasn’t really prepared for the fact that she is a longtime diarist like me. She has kept one since the fifth grade and like me, everything she writes for public consumption has probably been funneled through her own private writings initially. I wonder how many notebooks she has.
The fact that she has kept at it for so long is very impressive. Over the years I’ve had loads of pals start one and go on and on about how great it is. Pretty soon they’re telling me and all the world what is what as regards the diary business. But eventually they drop it – after all, it’s a commitment and can even seem like, well, work.
Not for me actually. I wandered off awhile around the age of nineteen, thinking I was done, but I just couldn’t keep away for the long haul. Indeed diary writing is a thing for the long haul and it fits me hand in glove.
Art can be the exploration of knowing what you like, what interests you and asserting that. So the diary is very helpful in just discovering what the heck that is. I’ve often thought that I could survive just about anything if you will at least provide endless notebooks and pens.
Still, there was that brief spell when I got uncomfortable with my writing and myself. My writing couldn’t keep up with me. I just didn’t have the skills to record the inner revolution which occurred around the age of nineteen and it showed. One diary --- it was number thirteen --- took almost 2 years to write and it didn’t really convey the story.
I sort of felt like what I had been writing was a lie, the surface lie, yet most of us are rarely trained to write the whole truth. It was like ‘truth’ was hidden from me. I realized by then that I was to live the life of an artist and I didn’t want to record the mundane.
Not that an artists life can’t be filled with that too, but it was very difficult to go back and reread it. And so while in Greece in 1976, I threw away book 13. By 6 weeks later though, I had already recommenced the art of the diary, while working on that archaeological site in York.
That first entry was over 16 pages long. I declared I would write a truth, my truth. This was difficult to do and I didn’t always achieve it, but at least it was a start. My plan was to burn all the rest of those old notebooks once back home in the States. But in my rereading I saw that while awkward and far from the whole story, truths were there. I just didn’t always like them.
Interviews, February 19 2005
Tomorrow I interview Carolyn Zick on the radio. I met her briefly at the Chroma opening, where she has a piece, and feel like we’ve talked just about the right amount of time.
Which means actually not that much.
A lot of artists want to get together with me before we have our time on the air and ‘talk about the work.’ And some have even said: “I want to talk about what we’re going to talk about.” Big mistake. I never do that now.
That beautiful heartfelt initial expression will never come out the second time as well – I’ve learned this the hard way. I remember another interviewer once introducing an artist and saying: “We’ve already had a nice chat and I feel like I’ve already done the interview.” Uh oh. Not good in my book.
You actually have to go in with a bit of an edge and a feeling of the unknown. Sometimes this has to do with the work and sometimes it is about the person, but in an ideal world there would be that degree of the unknown in there. The worst interviews I did were of people I know very well. Until I learned more and then I really screwed my head on and made out like I knew nothing about them (as in the case of both Kenny Higdon and Lauren Mantecon, who are my friends). That works.
So in Carolyn’s case – I’ll be frank – I don’t know the work all that well, it’s not like I’ve been to a bunch of her exhibitions, nor chatted with her on the phone. This is not such a bad deal though.
Three different camps need to have their own needs met as regards Artstar Radio: the listener, the artist and me. The listener needs to be addressed, communicated with. The artist needs to get their message out. And me, I want to learn something.
It’s interesting to see how the artist reacts to the potential audience, that element that we cannot see but which is surely there.
One time I met a really interesting woman; she had all kinds of wild, deep things to say. I said I want you to come on the radio with me. Please let me know when you have a show. Oh, I don’t show she says, as though this is way below her (of course I know it’s much more complicated than that). I then say well, that is not good for me and she then goes: “Oh you are just marketing then. You’re just promoting.”
I don’t agree at all. It’s that audience factor I consider. What do you tell the audience? I am having a fascinating conversation with someone who is inaccessible to you. Just imagine if you will.
More than one person has called me a promoter and in fact one artist, who I interviewed, said she would like to interview me when I had my own exhibition and “promote the promoter.” I cringed when I heard that. I feel like I inform rather than specifically promote.
Berlin, February 15, 2005
In Berlin by the wall
You were five feet ten inches tall
It was very nice
Candlelight and Dubonnet on ice
We were in a small café
You could hear the guitars play
It was very nice
Oh honey it was paradise
I have a promo for my radio show at KPSU using this song.
The promo is just the little recording DJs can play which promotes something and many radio shows right at the station have their own little advertisement of sorts.
I had the show for over a year before I ever made one, wanting to have my chops down before I started to push it. In a way my guests were my best advertisement. Every week I interview a new artist and many of them have egos. They’re going to tell everyone that they’ll be on the radio, that’s what I figure.
Still I wanted to get a bit creative and get across the life of an artist in some way. I worked with Dr. Kronik on the production, all done in a computer. He pieced together all the music visually. You could actually see on the monitor how the music had a bar brawl cacophony at the very start and how it then winded down into a bleak piano solo.
I’m speaking of Lou Reed’s Berlin. What else so well captures the art life gone wayward? While I am a positive person, I’ve never wanted to sweeten up what can be an isolating life, the artists’ life --- I wanted to honor both pleasure and pain. And so I chose Berlin.
That whole album is one great work of art, beginning to end and my favorite of his by a long shot. As a young woman I romanticized that whole experience: artist, beautiful young woman in the city. Then a ‘miserable rotten slut’ and speed freak (his words, not mine).
I never was the miserable rotten slut or speed freak (I swear) but I understood much of the rest. The need to be creative and then parade it. And not having much cash flow to finance the project.
This album went right to the wrist slashing. Her children are taken from her and she kills herself. Lou shows you the bed in this music, the bed where it all happened, including her suicide.
They're taking her children away
Because they said she was not a good mother
They're taking her children away
Because of the things she did in the streets
In the alleys and bars no she couldn't be beat
That miserable rotten slut couldn't turn anyone away
One time someone was in my home and they had really displeased me, hurt me, and it was the kind of situation where I had no words. I put on that Berlin album, really loud and they got out of my place in a flash. That’s what that music can do: alienates them, tortures them, lets them feel my pain. It will also clear out a tiresome party in an instant.
Design, February 14 2005
A comment I have heard occasionally about the design of this site (and my previous online diary) is that it is hard to read. And that I should consider changing it for more ‘accessibility.’
These people have obviously not spent much time looking at my paintings. You think this is hard to look at? Try some of the below:
When Bob Kochs came over to my place and saw the work, he said: “I could see how some people would have a hard time looking at this.”
Stephen Hayes saw a couple of my paintings about a year ago and said: “There is a lot of work around that is difficult to look at because of subject matter, but not much around that is difficult to look at based on aesthetics.”
So for the record, this is not about easy. And while I try very hard to communicate in a forthright manner, these words here are not for everyone. Part of me is populist and another part is thinking no, this is my time. This is my space. And this is art and about art.
When the Internet first caught on, many people talked about how it would change so many things. It would be inventive in content and inventive in form.
As the years went on however, it has been observed that people tend to go to the same sites over and over again and it is not as exploratory as it had been imagined to be. One thing I have enjoyed though is the look into the private life and views of individuals that I did not have access to before. I get their view.
My view is like a nightclub, dark and lit in neon. Yes, it is hard to see sometimes. It is hard on the eyes, my eyes too. Shit I am going blind making these paintings, much less this website! But at least I am getting my view across and in a world which sees itself as alternative in their uniform presentation of white and grey, that is something.
Changes, February 13, 2005
In an exchange at Bare and Bitter Sleep, we talked about making art, especially a ‘revolutionary’ art, as we age. This is something I’ve thought about a lot the past few years-- ‘cause, as Sandra Bernhardt says: “I’m still here, damnit!”
I explained it was a reason why I was happy to see old Monty Cantsin still in the news. Not because I am attuned to any particular message of his, but just the fact that he has one. Still.
There’s that quote and I know not who said it, but something to the effect that “it’s easier to be a talented 20 year old that a talented 40 year old.”
For me, that’s not just about the nature of the achievement, the pressure to be better than whatever you were before. As an artist, there are just so few rewards, unless you make it big. Even then, I’m not even sure what that is. But at 40 you do have to face more than just your brilliant ideas.
In a class we were taking apart the gallery system. It was obvious that the Prof held it in disdain, as did many of the students. One young woman offers: “Well you can make your art and that doesn’t mean you have to be a part of the gallery system.”
Let’s look at that for a moment. In fact let’s look at that in the expanse of at least 20 years.
You make art in your youth. At a certain point, you might need more than what working part time (in order to make your art) offers. You might need health insurance, a dentist. Maybe you want to mate, to breed, have a house, a car that is not dangerous, go home for Christmas for the first time in a decade. You get the idea. I know plenty of artists who have a shitload of art but that’s about it.
So the gallery system isn’t offering you that. A job will, a fulltime job. You still, miraculously, as the years go by, make your art. Of course you’re not showing it or selling it cause you’re not schoomzing it. You are not doing the slide thing, the meet the curator thing and so on. After awhile -- let’s say a few years -- you might not even tell someone new that you’re an artist. Because the baggage involved with that statement, it’s a big fucking suitcase you don’t want to open.
But hey you’re still making the work. At some point though you may have to ask yourself some long and hard questions about the expense of your art, if indeed you did have kids or taxing health problems or the many other things that other people spend their money on. Painting, for instance, is like a heroin habit. Need something everyday. So as time goes on, you have these conversations and these justifications on a day to day basis. Painting for who and for what, just for starters.
And often you have these conversations with just yourself. After all, you’re not in that system anymore, you’re not meeting people everyday who are interested in what you are interested in, sharing your battles, sharing your goals. Fuck, I was selling shoes on Fifth Avenue by the time I left New York. How engaged with art can I be? Engaged with my own art, yes I could be that, and like I have stated earlier, I kept a very important relationship going with Dead Artists (via places like the Met). But the contemporary art world?
So you get kind of stuck. In my last entry, I said that “…for years I was engrossed with….” -- but I wasn’t just engrossed, I was stuck. Because who was going to push me? Where were those vital conversations, on a daily basis (and yes you need that) to push me? Where were those exchanges?
But I didn’t need them, right? Cause I didn’t need the quote unquote gallery system.
In this class I told everyone some of this story. Since they are all mostly at least 20 years younger, it is just that – a story – may as well be Jane Austen. I also offered that if indeed you hate the gallery system so much, then change it. Open your own. That is what I did with Lovelake and while it may have not changed the world, it changed my world. I hold on to that name in part just to keep living that beautiful, empowering change with me.
Ghosts, February 13, 2005
Carolyn visited that watercolor show out at the Marylhurst Art Gym, which I have not been able to see so far. Watercolor as a medium tends to be low-balled, but I have had my fun with it.
All of my New York life I had no separate studio, save when I went to the Art Students League. I painted where I slept. This worked for awhile. At some point though any smell of oils and turps (even that nice Gamsol I’m so wild about) was intolerable.
So I drew a heck of a lot and acquired a certain facility in watercolor and pastel chalk. One good thing which came out of this time was better drawing skills in general.
You can’t help but be more involved with the line since you don’t really have the space for an orgy with materials. I was very gratified when Jesse Hayward, who makes dense paintings that are the very epitome of a materials orgy, confessed on the radio with me that ‘the line is the toughest.’
For years I was engrossed with ghosts in architecture. I stripped it all down to the brass tacks of black and white and a bit of blue or yellow thrown in. This watercolor of the Whitney might be one of my best examples of that era. Like everything I made at that time, it was for only me to enjoy and remained on a bedroom wall for a long time.
When I moved to Portland in 1997, I was still involved in this palette and this idea of ghosts. The first show here was called Night Paintings, held at 333 studios. I had eight canvases of PDX structures but also a wall I called ‘the source wall.’ Here were all my smaller works and photographs, newspaper clippings, pastels, polaroids. And watercolors like this one.
My friend Miriam Rose, gallerina par excellence and artist, suggested this idea. She observed how my small bits and pieces were really the meat of my oeuvre --- maybe not by choice but it was the truth anyway – why not show them? My own flat always had a revolving set of images connected to my current work, a wall of collage. In a way, the source wall was a tribute to process.
Plus what the hell, something might sell. The wise woman Miriam observed that small works sell in this town.
I sold only one painting but many small works from the source wall. This told me something. People liked the work but would not pay for paintings.
As I sold out so much of that source wall, many icons of New York City left me, for this was indeed a transitional show, where I showed images of NYC and PDX side by side. But this Whitney watercolor never did sell and I’m glad actually. It is still a favorite.
Academy Fight Song, February 10 2005
Last night I was out with another painter, someone I have known since before I moved here. Our ways of working are perhaps in complete opposition (as are the results), which has never bugged me one bit. I often wondered how comfortable she was with that though.
At one point she says to me how she’s looking forward to my show and also: “Our work is really different but you know I really love your paintings, Eva --” Right away I say: “Do you really? That was never so apparent. I wouldn’t think you would necessarily. And that’s OK!”
Perhaps I disarmed her with that kind of honesty. Maybe she expected the more typical art world babble and ‘supportive’ response, an acceptance of anything approaching a compliment, no matter how questionable it might be. Normally I would go down that “well thank you” road but lately I’m enjoying the confidence and fuck-all attitude that approaching 50 brings.
This was all just a prep for the real question though, one that I think has been on her mind for a long time as regards my work and an issue which unsettled her, something she wanted to reconcile. Am I a Modernist? And how can I be in a Post-Modern world? I’m just giving the short version of a convoluted question.
Something I’d like to state first before I give you my response: studying art history has given me a lot of illumination as regards that very question. Art history is written by academia, of which my friend is one. As a living, working artist, I can see how things play out. Artists did not declare themselves Modernists for the most part, and many living artists declared that they are not Post-Modernists either.
And so my response, quick and easy, was that this was her problem to solve, not mine. I have things I want to see and I live in the present. We could have a long talk about aesthetics, but then again, we never shared those anyway. As to what my art means, I can give that story too, but that would not necessarily reconcile what you’ve put on the table. That’s your academia, not mine.
Oh, she didn’t want to hear that! As artists we fancy ourselves on the outside, even when we’ve spent years on the inside. But I’m sorry, you can’t have it both ways. You’ve got 2 degrees and teach in a university and there are some comforts and advantages to that. Please don’t disown it when it suits you.
Besides, so many of the new and interesting artists are done with that question. A local example would be Jacqueline Ehlis, who will have a show at Savage in June.
Hard Times, February 10 2005
Celebrities often say that they always knew they were destined for great things. And many people just starting out will also say they are meant for great things, that they know they are special. They might be right too, yet we may never hear about it!
The trend today is to think that everyone is special, that we are all equal and up for cool achievements (and maybe for our 15 minutes).
I sometimes see it in art events and art jobs here. The search for excellence is not the issue. We’re all excellent, that’s the idea. I don’t believe it. And this is not because I think I am so excellent.
As a kid I didn’t see anything particularly unique about myself. As I aged, however, I was repeatedly blown away at how mundane most folks want to be, how similar they want to be, how much they follow their neighbor or “pop culture” as a way to establish their own identity. Most people follow a trend, not create one. Lord knows the shit you get for that.
Everyone is an individual, sure, but I see lemmings flocking to Sex and the City and in some other decade it was Dynasty. I never saw Dynasty but when my makeup clients in the 80s told me to “make my eyes look like Donna Mills,” I had no problem figuring that out. Just pile, ever so artistically, the paint on.
Maybe that is why I am not all starry-eyed over art which is quote unquote influenced by pop culture. Like you can avoid it!
Just the act of creating --- anyway anyhow --- can be very alienating to all involved: those who make and those who stand by.
Once the thing is published, performed or exhibited, exposed -- all may join, share, get it or not, as the case may be. But up until that time, we are going to a place others cannot. Art is making something out of nothing. It is hard enough for me to even go there sometimes, much less bring along my mate or a friend. It can be an issue in any relationship.
Ash Wednesday, February 9 2005
I am unaware of how Fat Tuesday functions in religious lore, but I do know that so much of established religions pick up (or rather co-op) something else and calls it it's own.
Like St. Bridget. She is the patron saint of farmers and artists and supposedly comes from Ireland. But it has also been suggested that she was a Celtic pagan goddess, helping the farmers long before the Christians got ahold of the area and of her.
Still, Bridget was good to me. I ran across her in St. Patrick's and asked her for help with my art. Next day the art school calls me up and says I've got a scholarship. I visited Bridget many times after that.
I started noticing all of the saints and what they were about and how you had to do all these Hail Mary's and count beads and it all was so fascinating. So warm, the churches, the candles, but it was like a movie to me. I grew up with nothing like it.
I grew up with the ideas of karma and reincarnation. I still hold these to be truths but I will confess that they do not have the warmth of forgiveness that Christianity offers. There is no one looking down at you telling you that it’s all going to be OK.
Sometime in the 90s, my neighbor left his flat behind to be taken care of by his parents. He was an opera singer who had a tiny studio filled with a baby grand piano. Sort of a typical artist story of New York: nothing in that room but one glorious piano.
--- Then he was on a death bed somewhere in Florida; he left behind a bunch of nothings. Still the super asked me if I wanted anything. I took his collection of rosaries. I still have these today, plus a photograph of him at his piano.
I remember the first time I experienced Ash Wednesday in New York. All those gray smudges on the foreheads, the soot in the cold. I was impressed by this form of temporary tattoo. I do associate the gray ash with the dead of winter, a much colder one than we have here in Oregon, with snow and an old fur coat and hanging out in Soho, drinking coffee at Dean and Deluca and then heading on over to St. Thomas to get my gray cross.
Up he comes to me in his magic, his mumbling words, affixing me with his brand.
Today I saw the most perfect cross on an old woman's forehead. It looked like a Malevich, like something from the Russian Avant Garde.
Saying No, February 7 2005
There was much unsaid in my last entry about embracing style. When I say style, I mean creating a world of the ideas and things you like, that you choose, that you say yes to.
And that would mean saying no quite often. This is a long process for most of us and you get feelings of guilt sometimes. When young or just simply on the outside, you can feel that the art world is way too exclusive and they say no too often. But the longer you hang out there the more you realize that you just can’t say yes to every thing and everyone.
The ‘everyone’ is the hard part. People want to exhibit and curate their friends, me included. I started Lovelake with the thought that I would show my own friends and to hell with the system that did not pay me enough respect….
This was successful in some ways and backfired in others. First of all, I had some talented, hard working, well defined and under-exposed friends. So things could work out to an extent.
But some of those people, through the long hassles and misadventures which comprise ‘art business,’ are no longer my friends.
This is not to say that the personality doesn’t matter. There are few artists I’ve gotten involved with based on the work alone and then when I got to know them (like right there in the DJ booth), I regretted the whole commitment. So you live and learn.
But back to saying yes or no. In some ways it goes back to liking or not liking everyone’s art. I still maintain you can like someone and respect their art but this doesn’t mean you have to like it. It was actually quite refreshing when I met Michael Knutson the other night and he said right up front: “I’ve seen your art online. I’m not sure if I like it or not but I’ll check it out in April.”
Right now I am reading a Christmas gift, I Bought Andy Warhol by Richard Polsky. He often goes to great lengths to describe what an asshole some dealer is. They are just not interested in 90% of what is out there. I’m beginning to understand why though. A certain part of developing a relationship with art is saying no.
Embrace Style, February 5 2005
Last night I went to a bunch of openings on the East side, where I don’t go enough. I had a great time and met lots of new people but sometimes it all can blur together.
I wish there was more creativity in the names here. Too many places beginning with a P (as in Portland) or with an N (as in New). Let’s get out there a bit and be creative. Create a name that is truly an identity of its own.
Example: When people hear that I remember ‘the olden days,’ they try to spit out ‘PCVA’ but can’t quite remember the name.
That’s what I liked about places like International with Monument.
What did it mean?
What does that matter? Maybe a little, maybe a lot, but it had flair. You remember a name like that. And it becomes truly associated with a time, maybe a movement, a group of artists. Long after it is gone the name stands for something.
I can see how people refrain from something like that though. It is a statement and some kind of commitment, and for some reason people – even the art crowd – seem to fear eccentricity. Sort of like we are all together, homogenized, creating ‘a place for everyone’ – almost like avoiding style.
But the best, most memorable places embrace their own style.
Coffee, February 2, 2005
Tomorrow night I will be meeting Carolyn Zick for the first time, who makes art and runs a cool site called Dangerous Chunky. Turns out she will be in an exhibition called Chroma, curated by Telegraph and hung at Gallery 500.
The card above she sent me as a good joke. I had mentioned how people often ask you for coffee and how strange this seems to me. Others have also suggested “take him out for coffee” when I had something important to bridge, like asking a dealer for a show. Now I can see just how much this is just not me.
I don’t go out for coffee with my old pals, or very rarely, much less new ‘friends.’ Recently there was a small bit in the New York Times called Not so Happy to Meet You which hit most of the nail on the head.
Straight forward works fine for me and is the most respectful. Want something? Just spit it out. Everyone knows I'm curious. But please don’t tell me that we’ve got to hang out in the middle of the afternoon. Do I sound like a bitch or what?
I stopped by 500 last night to see the progress and there’s a load of good art in there. Something tells me Jeff Jahn is behind much of it. There are two sculptures, delivered by Jesse Hayward that are to die for, solid colors to seer your eyes.
Let Substance Reign, February 1 2005
In this diary I occasionally speak of my personal past, 40 years of single life. I want to give the whole picture of life as an artist, but can give those kind of blood and guts sparingly. This is probably due to the fact that I exhausted myself with it all in a regular paper diary. So much so, that when I review and look back, it's hard to read it.
From 1990 to '98 or so, I am swept up in my looks, my body, the hormones, my job, single survival. They are all intertwined. No one seems to care all that much for my great mind, so why market it. It is sad what can happen to single people. I was going to say "women" but men face a market place too. They just have different wares to present.
I know I am still reading great books and making good art. But I write little of it, more a record of it than any discussion. You would hardly know of it at all save that the work survived. It was put away into portfolios before I hit the town that night, the neighborhood bar or some party, where I showed myself off. I was restless, I was lonely, I was tired but charged by hormones and desire.
During this time I am acting and dancing on stage too but for so many actresses this is not all that different to marketing yourself in the single life. Often the same things matter.
Sometimes I've been angry at my mom for abandoning me, for making men and drugs and her beauty the priority, at the time I was a child and needed her. But I sort of did the same thing to myself years later. I sort of abandon myself. The best of me is my mind and probably art, but for a while there it seems the best of me is my legs and breasts and whatever else makes everyone stop talking about whatever they were talking about when I walked into the room.
Think people don't really act that way? Of course they do. And the moment you mention the archaeological site you worked on the spell is broken. Not that the spell was going to get you anything but humiliation in the end, but that was the only power you really had at that time.
I used to keep another online diary in a big community. For awhile there, when it was going great guns, many different diarists were recording lives that came under critical inspection by the quote unquote cool, intellects of that crowd. But I was never all that critical.
Those rites of passage, saved for the beautiful and the lonely, for the wayward brains put on the back burner, I know that journey. To those who think "why doesn't she get over herself?"---well then let her. Just let her! Let substance reign. Yet it very rarely does.
My brain never did take a vacation. And I think that is true for many who put on a grand surface show. But some of the worst nights were when I let the brain march out, unencumbered, and shine a severe spotlight into the eyes resting upon my breasts. In some way it was like snapping my fingers and saying "Hey! I'm up here!" And pointing to my eyes and visage and to the unmistakable expression of someone who has not had her Stepford Wife pill for the day yet.
More recent entries: January 2005
For information about the diary, read here