I've successfully gotten my kicks.

Much to write about, much of it too much in the personal diary vein to be appropriate here, I think. I've recently completed my move to Oakland, California. Although perhaps that "completed" is a bit premature. The studio apartment we're currently renting month-to-month in the Laurel district has a bit of a flea problem, so we won't be staying long. For now everything is in storage except two suitcases, two plates, two cups, and a pot and a wok, plus an air bed and two sleeping bags. We have no internet so I'm posting this from the local Whole Foods, but we spend our days reading newspapers, playing cards, looking for work and exploring. Yesterday I spent the day at Baker Beach in San Francisco watching dolphins, starfish and a lone seal cavort in waves that humans aren't allowed to swim in for fear of drowning.

It's a cliche, but people are different here. I saw a nude man on the beach with a red parrot on his arm and a dog smaller than the parrot at his feet. A circle of women took turns disrobing and bowing face-down into the waves while the rest of the circle chanted, clapped and shook maracas. There is a man in my apartment building who looks like Samuel Beckett and talks like a toothless prophet, only about things like parking and bicycle tires. Our next-door neighbors have 6 marijuana pots in their backyard, partially shaded by an American flag. Plants are different as well; succulents are no longer for pots, but take the place of grass on the small urban lawns. Palm trees abound, as does every variety of eucalyptus known to man. Adjusting is fun and feels a bit like vacation. This will probably be the case until my cash runs out.

Our road to California was more or less the all-American Route 66 path, with some detours. Several minor disasters along the way (camping during a monsoon in New Mexico, a gallon of paint losing its top and turning the back of our truck my favorite gray, the loss of my iphone and nearly running out of gas in the Mojave) kept the vibe a little less than jovial, but it's funny how time changes things. Even the day after a let-down, I would find myself looking at videos from the day with a sort of nostalgia. Scratching my myriad bugbites with almost wistfully. To be sure, a great many good experiences took place, including a rare glimpe of the Milky Way from atop an Arizona peak.

But the most striking thing - and I this really struck me as we were eating a terrible lunch in a 1950s themed diner - is how the whole Route 66 experience had been gobbled up by THE ROUTE 66 EXPERIENCE. The best parts of our journey were the little discoveries made by mistake, not the cheesy "Indian Gift Shop" stops or diners that routinely served food that barely passed for such and called it "The Big Bopper Special". Scrambled billboards and rusted out Buicks dot the landscape as much as cattle, and there's truly a feeling of not visiting the past, but visiting something that has passed. I'm not sure if I'm able to communicate this properly yet. As soon as I have the capability, I'll upload some photos that will hopefully express it better than I can.

Works in progress have not progressed. Shamed.

In three weeks I set off on a week-long road trip that ends with me living in California. I'll know in a few days where, but Oakland is most likely the case. I have had no time for work, as I've been working like crazy at the day job. Finally slowing down, but what use is oil paint when it has to be dry so soon? In the meantime, I'm storing up ideas. I've been toying with the idea of some three-dimensional pieces in porcelain, but I have no access to such a studio, at least for now.

I still, as always, feel that a major flaw in the way I live my life is that different interests and aspects of my personality are categorized and separated from each other. I need to work on developing a greater integration between what I think about and what I do, as well as what I do during my on and off the clock times. I haven't figured out how to do that yet. But I think this move will be an opportunity for a great reorganization and refocusing on what I actually care about.

I wonder what that will turn out to be.

Works in Progress

2010 Chicago Art Open

I'll be participating in the 2010 Chicago Art Open at River East Art Center.



This painting will be on display. If you happen to be in the River East area, check out this juried group show of up and coming Chicago artists.

New Camera.

Today at a thrift store I purchased one of these:


A disc film camera from the 1980's. I'd love to start using it; if anyone has any idea where to buy film, please let me know. They discontinued it in 1998 apparently, although it's still possible to get it developed. I'm ever-so-curious about the quality of the prints.

Unearthed

With awareness of the fact that I don't produce enough drawings to sustain my painting practice and the goal of regaining a skill that I have somewhat lost, I have started going back to unfinished painting ideas to make them into drawings instead. One image I found while looking through old photographs of my past studios is this one, based on a drawing of the United States I made from memory in 2005. Unfortunately, I cannot play this game with myself any more because I've compared the maps I make to the 'real' maps of the US too many times. The images I remember are no longer tied to my knowledge of the US but to my knowledge of US maps, so the goal of an honest representation of what I think the United States 'is' is unattainable. But here's what I thought once upon a time:



This painting was from a time when I was (even more than I am now) lost in the wilderness of painting technique. I'll be using this image to make a drawing from in the future, but for now it's just good to look at.

Updated Artists Statement

I'm applying for the 2010 Chicago Art Open, and had to update my artists statement. Thought I'd post it in here, so you can get an idea of what I'm thinking lately.

I intend for my work to be an entry point to a discussion of the failures of visual communication and an exploration of the shortcomings of the visual storage and transmission of data. I seek inspiration from etymology, diagrams, museum displays, the written word and other arenas where the visual is the chosen mode of communication. My work seeks to highlight the parallax between the attempted/intended meaning of the pure visual object and its new—and perhaps more real—meaning, once filtered through the stored knowledge of the viewer. I attempt to find the objective ‘truth’ of the transmission in the space between.

Visual artifacts—I believe—are often more isolated from their meaning by the passing of time and the adaptation of surrounding symbols than words are, due perhaps to the frequency to which we use (and adapt) our verbal symbols as compared to our visual. I believe it is imperative for the artist, as one who has chosen the visual to communicate ideas, to acknowledge this gap, and I have chosen to work with it and highlight it in my own work.

I'm also taking some more photos of newer work; I've come up with a way to light them so they don't look totally amateur, just a little.