-Kierkegaard

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

To those guilty eyes, this is the last I will say about that.

Time flies when you're not keeping track of it.

In an effort to remain awake until 8 am, I am writing a semester's end post. I come to you from a truly vulnerable state, having spent the last week putting every ounce of my being into a set of 3 paintings, only to have them turn into a kitschy triptych (hardly compelling enough to attract even the most oblivious collector of student artwork). Disappointment is always so rich at 5 am.

So what does one do once they realize their most grueling semester, and consequently, undergraduate life as they know it has nearly come to it's end? Come up with silly, and yet troubling questions that never seem to attract a thought during the daytime, of course.

Would you rather have painter's hands or a dancer's limbs?

I feel surprised that the obvious answer doesn't feel like the right one. The artists resign themselves to the constant position of observer and transcriber, while the dancers act out. I appreciate the ability to visually describe myself fully and with lucidity, but I often feel like no one is asking the questions I feel so eager to answer. I fear that the melancholy I have so porously accepted these past few years carries no weight outside of my own body. That weight is so heavy for just me. I am envious of those long-limbed creatures to whom release comes so gracefully.



I think it's time to retire this lovingly abused gesso brush.

Small Victories.

How To Be Good is in the final stages! She's going to the press tomorrow morning, and then will be hand bound into a hardcover series this week. I can't even begin to describe the catharsis that taking on this project provided me. I truly don't know of a better way to be empowered than turning latent experiences into something tangible.

Updates of the finished product to come, but for now, a little peek at the cover and colophon...

'Tis the season...

. to look my procrastination in the face

. to fold sweaters and wrestle mannequins every night into the wee hours

. to have a hoodie pulled over my head at all times

. to have the annual nervous breakdown over the phone while my mom (so graciously) tries to toe
the line between stern and soothing

. to watch old favorites like Pride and Prejudice a thousand times while I paint, taking pleasure
in lines such as, "Oh, the glories of nature. What are men compared to rocks and mountains?"

. to dream of the coast and make plans for a spring road trip

. to never really catch up on sleep until mid-January

Are we there yet?

an unfavorable vanitas

My dear friend and soul sister, Hayley, recently posed the question of "where do you put your anger?". What a beautifully complex and personal answer everyone must have to this one. While she likes to clean her room from top to bottom, scrubbing as a coping mechanism, I do the complete opposite. It is easier for me to purge outwardly, whether that be deleting Facebook friends whose posts are too painful for me to look at, ignoring texts, or just plain turning my nose up at things I find distasteful. Inwardly, I pine for everything lost. That layered mess you see up above is my own personal avoidance of the responsibility to keep myself composed and orderly. I've spent the months since summer in an absolute daze. Despite some moments of precious lucidity, I've scattered clothes and thoughts alike all over without any consideration as to when I'll need to come to a conclusion. It's at the point where I'm extremely uneasy when anyone enters my room, and I'll urge them towards the door with as much subtlety as I can muster. To glimpse the inside of my room is to peek at the maelstrom swirling in my head.

That painting in the background? She's probably my best yet, but progress is coming along so slowly. I can feel the cracks in that collapsing house. I don't want my brush to slip and eliminate that legitimacy.

For someone making books about coping mechanisms, I feel like I am more so emboldening a question mark than forming hypothesis.

Some Kind of Nature

(lyricz by gorillaz)

I've been having a blast digging through advertisements from the 1940s-1960s... so much insane imagery they would never dare publish these days.

Undelivered Compliments (Way Past Due)

A man stands in front of the microphone and raps about Jesus Christ, his right hand rigidly enunciating each syllable. "He's the one that wants to get your soul out tha blenda." That red face is going to burst with concentration. The flypapers hanging from the wall are full of black spindly creatures.

I'm self conscious of these words as I write them down. I cover them with my hands so that the honest looking boy next to me doesn't judge me the way I am judging the man rapping into the microphone.
"SEE YA LATA, HATAS."

The honest one turns out to be Bjorklund from Iceland, and as he plays his guitar and sings about coming home to an empty house, I decide I am his. By the time he returns to his seat, we have already spent years together, had our fights, made the choice of failed fate. I've decided I hate his haircut. We are through before I lean over to tell him his words were lovely.
"Serendipity is the theory that you can choose your own fate."

In another life, my love and I gripped each other and moved about as a single entity in the coldest room of the tallest building in North America. Boulevards stretched out for hundreds of miles in front of us like glittering veins that summer night. I felt like I could reach from Chicago and touch someone in Joliet. Everything my eyes could see was for me to have. In the middle, I thought I'd found my soulmate. In the end, these lovers needed lawyers. He tried to reach for me, but I rolled out of bed, gathered the secrets and memories I had flung about, and tiptoed out. I don't believe in soulmates anymore. I smiled at someone I scorned long ago. I held hands with another and walked the same haunted path, pretending to be a stranger. These glorified others never lasted. High school lovers don't know how to adjust to these altered landscapes.

I will smile at these men who sing their autobiographical lyrics like I know them.

Runaway

If you haven't watched Kanye West's "Runaway," starring himself and the lovely Selita Ebanks, do yourself a favor and set aside some time to do so. These 35 minutes are packed with delicious sounds, imagery, and the sneaking suspicion that a vision beyond the obvious society-persecutes-the-outsider plot line exists. I want in on it.

Raphael Mazzucco

I want to take a moment to pay homage to someone who has been a favorite of mine for years-- artist/photographer Raphael Mazzucco. His photographs and multimedia pieces are rich, sexy, and a complete aesthetic pleasure. I would die for a copy of his impossibly gorgeous (and comparatively expensive) "Collected Art" book... for now I'll stick to clicking through his website for hours while I procrastinate.

Sometimes the most effective self portraits aren't of your face.

I'm working on the second book in my "How To Be Good" series, which deals with questions of spirituality. As I dig through the archives to contribute my own personal history to the images, I've discovered that I have a large collection of snapshots I've taken of my feet throughout the different chapters of my life. I love the idea that old images can take on new relevance when examined in retrospect.

This girl scribbled curse words in her sketchbook all day.

Thank you, Modest Mouse, for accompanying me tonight on my first detectably chilly drive home of the year.

Sometimes I feel like I've been rendered speechless by the implications that I've made myself aware of. 

(Some things are better expressed without words.) 

Tonight I watched Art School Confidential, and I would  recommend it to anyone who has recognized the hypocrisy and irony that rules the artistic environment, especially hideously long critiques and defensive classmates... gah. Despite my slightly off-put attitude towards artmaking following the movie, Max Minghella was positively lovely to stare at for 2 hours or so... ladies.

Some people mistake the idea of "finding themselves" with never having to be unhappy again.

Damelo

When I am at my most vulnerable, honesty escapes me when I least expect it, and I am rendered helpless by these stolen authenticities. It is essentially revealing something intimate to someone you don't know, like mentioning you were shopping for shampoo when describing the backdrop to a larger story. Doesn't everyone take a moment to wonder at the lather, rinse, drip of stranger's hair at moments like these? Also, I am often surprised with how flawed I find my own philosophies to be. It's as upsetting as seeing a employee who treated you poorly embracing a lover outside of their workplace. Their shared tenderness is jarring, and confuses my instinct to categorize them as a soulless other in my quest for compartmentalization.

I don't think it is narcissistic to study oneself closely. As Milan Kundera would put it, I have always tried to see myself through my body, and I want my truth to be a good one. The first thing I do when I come home from a particularly heavy experience is carefully examine my face, to see which traces have been left behind; if my own errors weigh heavily around my eyes, or if I have managed to thwart them until their next repeat. When I loved, I tried to understand what made my skin and eyes brighter. It felt like an outward expression of my inner wholesomeness; an appearance I rightfully feared would make an unceremonious exit. I am trying to withhold criticism of these blemishes and small imperfections, and rather see them for what they are; the open wounds of life. As they disappear in passing weeks, I project onto them my own marvelous perception of the human body and the ability to heal itself. If my skin can do it, then so certainly can my soul.

fear

"And at the place where time stands still, one sees lovers kissing in the shadows of buildings, in a frozen embrace that will never let go. The loved one will never take his arms from where they are now, will never give back the bracelet of memories, will never journey far from his lover, will never place himself in danger of self-sacrifice, will never fail to show his love, will never become jealous, will never fall in love with someone else, will never lose his passion of this instant in time.

Lovers who return still embrace in the shadows of buildings, but now their embraces seem empty and alone. Soon they forget the centuries-long promises, which to them lasted only seconds. They become jealous even among strangers, say hateful things to each other, lose passion, drift apart, grow old and alone in a world they do not know.

Some say it is best not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but it is noble to live life, and without time, there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case."



-Alan Lightman