The internet works! An anonymous internet donor (hi, mom) has funded some art supply buying! New canvases have been stretched and primed, and await paint. At the Art Institute of Chicago last week I saw a painting by Brice Marden which had some beeswax mixed into the paint. When I used to use encaustics (pigmented beeswax), the texture of the paint was always somewhat distracting. But this painting was smooth, the paint beautifully matte and opaque. I think this could be something to consider in my own work, as I tend to paint in thin layers and the texture of the canvas shows through.

The animation is slugging along, and I'm thinking of taking advantage of the printmaking studio that opened up in my work building to make a set of screenprinted 'ex libris' labels. Mostly just for fun, but fun is good, too.

A bit of personal bragging: DAVID BYRNE CONCERT LAST NIGHT. Those of you who know me in the analog world know my love of the former Talking Heads frontman, so it's no surprise that I would cough up however much I did to sit in the dark and listen to him do his thing. I saw him in '04 in Rome (I think it was the Grown Backwards tour?) and swore I would see him whenever I could. This show was promoting the Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, which I linked to because you can stream the whole album digitally. It's a collaboration with Brian Eno, which meant that they played a selection of old Talking Heads songs which were also a collaboration with Eno. Which means awesomeness. Fantasy-goal of dancing to live performances of Life During Wartime, Houses In Motion, The Great Curve and Once In A Lifetime fulfilled.

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I think I have mentioned my lack of funds on this blog. I've decided to use this time to make a short animation along the lines of the squid animation I did in college (which I perennially lose every time a computer dies and therefor cannot link to). I am going to animate the man in a ditch drawings into a short piece.

I decided this when I woke up this morning. I have my best ideas before noon.

I heard on NPR this morning, while washing a mountain of dishes, that the type of TV people watch influences their dreams. I kid you not, last night I dreamt an entirely original, full-color-animation episode of Futurama. I remember waking up afterwords, in the middle of the night, thinking that I had to remember that I dreamt that. But I didn't remember what 'the episode' was about.

It's a shame, because I could have sold it to Matt Groening for some money, which is exactly what I need right now. I've got 22 paintings hanging on my walls and three more unfinished in the studio, but I'm out of the supplies I need to continue. I've got a few oddly sized stretcher bars left, but no canvas. Work is slowing down, a combination of seasons and economic hoodoo, and I lack the funds to go out and buy more at the moment. [Next week?]

I'm trying to continue the visual presentation of information idea, but the paintings still feel a bit empty. The conflict I'm having is that that's kind of the point- they are intended to not convey any information. Ideally, they point to the fact that the 'informational' images I am using don't actually convey any information themselves. I'm just having a hard time getting them to convey THAT and not just look like failed nature studies or something. I'm hoping that as a group it will start to make more sense. That the connections between the individual pieces will lead the viewer a bit. For now, I'll be trying to work it out further in drawings I guess. Which could be a good thing in the end, I always let my drawing practice die.

In other news, there is a website now! If you got to this blog through a link on the site (Hi, Mom!), you already know. But if not, here's a link to stephanierohlfs.com. You can see a decent (and hopefully quickly expanding) selection of paintings and photos there. No drawings up yet.

a few of these for now.

I feel like I'm getting better at the Holga, although I can see how the accidents of the film (especially the blocks of tone shift in the first few) make it more interesting in a way that I can't. I like the alchemy of a Holga photo. It's a somewhat disorienting thing to take a photo without really focusing or metering or timing the exposure. It's always the shots that I'm not looking forward to getting back that are the best; the most surprising at least.

I would like to be able to see in a way more appropriate to a Holga. I think right now I see in a 35mm SLR way. I would like to have an eye with a bit of chaos in it.

I included that last shot (well, a little bit because it's silly) because when I looked at it just now, going through which to post, i had this moment of 'oh, my god. that's me'. And I don't mean my face. I mean, that's me, sort of half-visible and floating. Transparent. I'm moody lately, and homesick, it's true. But even more than that I feel this strange pull between being disgusted by the fact that I don't do anything that I want to do, and this weird stagnation/lack of interest in doing those things.

I feel like that's exactly what I would say to a psychiatrist in order to get a very interesting prescription.

But I'm trying, I guess. It's more accurate to say that I'm trying to try. I'm reading Slavoj Zizek's The Parallax View, and it's re-connecting some neurons. [I always hear the word parallax pronounced in the Russian accent of the girl in my college physics class. pah-rhah-lahx.] It's inspiring me, but I still feel so dwarfed by everything. I also checked out recently a book on German history, which should help me start to contextualize Gerhard Rohlfs a little bit. What I'm doing is sort of like trying to explain to someone the history of Chinese grammar, only I don't speak a word of Chinese.

I like the idea of making a movie that's about him, but simultaneously about my making a movie of him and about that movie. That's the loosest possible way I can explain this, I think.

In the meantime, I've more or less stopped painting. I've been dragging my heels to finish one particular canvas, but I haven't taken the time to stretch any more. It just doesn't feel right right now. I can't honestly say if it ever did/does. I enjoy it, but a life's work...? I don't know. Thinking feels right. That's all I've ever known. And lately I've let myself get out of the habit of even that.

No more.

brain flash

Over-stimulation/under-stimulation -> death of symbols.

humans need symbols -> need to think abstractly ->structure of language

death of old symbols -> birth of new symbols

world too large? -> too many people? -> symbols no longer universal

uninterpretable symbols -> bad art

red moon (2005)

tonight i saw a red moon
and grey clouds drifting across
and i thought of how you were real
and how much that scared me.
and i thought of how you give me
little moments of laughter
gurgling up from inside,
even when you're not around.
and i thought of how many times i've come so close
to messing this all up
and how glad i am that you
just laugh at me and go on.
and in my head i sent you a postcard.
wish you were here.

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(i used to write love poems)

the shell (2005)

i ground it right into my skin.
straight through the thin of my back,
pale and luminescent in the moonlight under that bridge.
my spine arching through my skin
to taste the powder
now mingling with blood.

i could have imagined it.
afterwords,
four shards remained
-the only evidence of a treasured gift-
like little white teeth worn
down from gnawing my body.

the rest of it gone.

blown into the river below, perhaps,
dust settling on an intrusive bullfrog.
likely most of it was left on our perch,
unseen by the little boy zeus and i
long tired from climbing and sweating together.

at night, when my body misses you most
-the lonely hours when i pretend it's not the sheet touching me but your hands-

i like to think it's been absorbed.
sneaking in somehow through some crack in my spine,
sleepwalking up to rest, maybe, in the space behind my eyes
or joining the fabric of my skin.
Or better, hardening into my nails,
the very ones i use to dig your back.
we hurt each other like this.