6:11-6:30 am Wednesday

I am thinking about the figures more as a film director, filled with hubris, a large able crew willing to swing from a limb to get the shot... The thing I am getting is that I take for granted when I am developing these pieces is that though I work on one area at a time, that somehow when they are complete, the viewer will be able to swing around them as if directed by Wenders to enter the space in a slow sweeping loop that draws them in around and up...
Since this is not possible, I am frustrated by the static eye of still photography, I cannot find the Kertesz oment that reveals the mystery...

Of course, I am exhausted...Not sleeping well. Left my flash drive in the lab. Bad thing to do.
Today I must finish grading the studio classes, retrieve my flash, go to a retirement party for Marilyn, shoot the torsos for a proposal due tomorrow, and then do a final layout for the book cover, which they now want right away (I am holding everything up, even though the design work was completed in February) and pack for Boston, buy new tires or rent a car for the weekend?

I am headed up to Boston, hopefully to spend a relaxed weekend with my sons, meet with Dylan and Ronni and maybe show the torsos to Pam from Clark Gallery in Lincoln.

I wait until everything is at a critical mass to try to achieve something that might better be done at another, more relaxed time, but this is the week I have to set something in motion to carry the work through next fall as far as gallery support. Everyone disappears in July-August.

I will be teaching the Painting section that begins June 4 and possibly the 101 at Andrews. I should be glad as it is the most money I ever make but the schedule is a bear and will require better ADD meds. I missed my last shrinker appointment, but that will just prove the meds are not working very well and need to be adjusted. Reading over my treatment record from 2001-4, I see how much time has passed out of my remembering, knowing.. caring(?)

ill considered outdoor environments?

this is going to be much harder than I had anticipated. Somehow, in my mind they figures would be more political. First the scale is all wrong. Even lying on the ground is is not quite right. This one is probably the best, but it is out of focus (cropped from another shot...)
There is this decorative thing that seems to come out that resonates from some ancient review of my work... such good taste.. I wrangle these things from a process that is so dirty, so non-elegant No one accuses me of good taste when I am covered in slurry, smell of copper dust, and burnt wax... And my nails... ? And the skin discolorations from little burns here and there... see, It is not going very well, and immediately I am this whining female with broken nails. I wanted to stop at the mud flats in South Jersey, but the tide was wrong, the light was wrong.. and even the nastiest little bog looked elegant.
Tomorrow afternoon I will take them to the landfill nearby and see if I can do something there.

But the idea of lying in the garbage to get the right angle is a bad one... I am going to have to ask for help, someone to help me lift them and adjust them to get the right light. And what made me think I could shoot without a tripod? I am rushing this.. It should evolve at its own rate. I am projecting my needs on them and they are already out of control.. I will have to wait. My dream of them was better in the middle of the winter when bare purplish brown vines and snow, rooted leaves were everywhere.

I need the shots for a show proposal, so I will have to do a pristine thing (where you can see the piece ... and maybe I will find some place to shoot them on my way to Massachusetts. I should probably make friends with someone who has a much better camera in any case. Along flat grey rock in Maine would be nice or a lobster pool.
now this is even more decorative looking... the wisteria is quite lovely but not at all what I want... I was rushing and trying to hard to squeeze in potting geraniums for mother's day, cooking a roasted pork loin and answering the phone.

well. this is all wrong. I don't know what I was thinking. I had to start somewhere I guess, but the green is not right. Where is the toxic waste?! to evoke a conversation about something ...GOLF? Even my mom's raggy yard looks toooooo sweet. Time was running out. and there are other problems, like the scale. eh!

silence

drifting in and out of uneasy sleep
the sound of raised voices in the middle of the night
a scream and silence

working in wax 7am in the sculpture lab
there is no sound to break my concentration
joining a piece of wax here to form a line, a plane, a surface,
my eye examines the subtle brown wax terrain,
cut, bruised, marked ,and smoothed again
I lose my place when raised voices come from across the field
carried on the wind,
broken and faint a siren
now closer and then past the building

I hear it and it is gone

The sharp sound of the ringing phone cuts across my dream and I wake
I wait to see if it will ring again.
The clock says 2:30. I know it is a dream and sit
my vigil slowly fades into soft breath and silence.

The cat cries, a thump and crash , I wake again
to silence
Where is that shifty fellow?
He is not of my dreams
Slipping in and out of the cracks of fear, he brings me news of raccoons in the kitchen squirrels in the library and a mouse in the house.
He is not to be ignored.
The silence is a good sound.

I live alone.

no one to take notes, confirm or refute my story.
events play out on a large scale
the thumps and sirens are there for all to hear...

More often it is my mind that breaks the silence,
a wake up call to an anxious moment and then silence.

pickin out the investment material..cutting, polishing and getting it together

The last two days I spent thinking about the group of figures and how they might be shown. My first plan was to make these bases from wood, but now that doesn't really work... Maybe I will take them to NJ and photograph them on the beach or the jetty rocks.. maybe place them in a stream like nymphs or in the woods, naiads... or in a garbage dump... like.. waste sentinels...
All I can see are the things that are wrong. They are naked in this sand blasted state. Like bisque ware in ceramics, they lack subtle shifts and depth ...

One of the students mixed up an azz load of slurry, so Sarah asked me to make something.. I used some of the wax pieces that were left from the February melt down and have two pieces in the works. One small torso and a head. I vented them more carefully. I ask the bronze to run along the horizontal and that makes for trouble and incomplete casts.

Melissa called yesterday to ask me for slides for the fall show at Washington Square and Gallery 10. Hopefully I will have a brochure by then.

stop whining and get to work

Robert Altman in an interview said, " Mediocre artists have too few ideas, good artists have too many and great artists have one.. "
...persistent, obsessive.. idee fix...
Santayana said something similar about persistent obsession, when you have lost sight of the goal or hope of success...

I return to the figure. The arena of identity. The shell that carries the story.

Altman says the best films are the ones that ask the viewer to make the narrative, come into the frame and draw their own conclusions. I create space for the viewer to project a story of individual and group in the figurative work. It began out of necessity. I didn't have a lot of money for paper, so I overlapped figures in my life drawing sessions in the late 1970's. At first, I was only aware of the compositional choices I was making to fit several poses into the frame. When I looked at the finished (full) overlapping figures, I had inadvertently accomplished relationship, a social dialogue.

The potential of story arrived in the figures.

Casting

We cast the last two part figure this morning. I am too tired to know whether it is any good or not. The heat from the furnace was making me ill. Dehydrated... the taste of copper in my mouth wont go away. My ear got fried from a bit of wind that carried the heat under my face shield.

end of semester....

I spent the weekend digging out my studio, recovering the space that had been devastated by mildew, water damage, raccoons, mice.. I had a sort of epiphany regarding my age and the time I have left to do my work.
Hoping to form a supportive art community, I have diluted my energy in projects to support a larger community agenda... discovering that in the end, community is not a bank where I can make deposits and withdrawals.

Most art students and professionals I encounter in academia have never had flourishing art careers, support from National and Private Galleries, great press from national newspapers, grant funding from state and local agencies... and they simply can not know how transient these things are or easy it is for them to fall into memory... What I know is of no real use to to any one but me.

I am not sure if it will be possible to find my way back. I feel old, tired. up and down the stairs carrying bags of damp and moldy plaster, finding a stack of wood block prints soaked with piss... drawings eaten by mice.. my knees swollen.
the confines of the dust mask, the cut and scratches that instantly swell up from the allergens. Oops. I pull my hand out of a box of collage materials and there is a needle stuck in my arm. I use these sometimes to inject glue and stabilizing materials into the layers of collage materials and for restoring chine colle. For a moment, I stop and think, great... how are you going to explain this! I remember that I have had recent tetanus shot and continue to carry the heavy bags to the curb.

This is the fifth great flood/wet garbage event in my studio life. Broken pipes in Boston, flood in PA, and three separate events in Maryland.

By the time I had the last flood, (the sump pump had shorted out) I dragged what could be salvaged up into the main part of the house, shut the door and gave up. So, now going back in and going through all that was damaged, I realized that I would have to handle this if I wanted to keep making art.

I have to do what is important to me. Whatever time is left to me, I will make art.

Gallery of student work

This work was created by students from my Painting I, II classes. Many had not painted before coming to this class and none had painted from direct observation. The have all begun to use the brushes to make painterly decisions from direct observation to describe and fully inhabit the picture plane. The balance between teaching skills and encouraging students to find their creative voice is often very challenging. If they dont have successes, they get easily discouraged and lose interest.