In the past couple weeks, I’ve been feeling anxious about a lot of the drawings I have online. I’m not sure exactly what prompted this anxiety. I suspect that what happened is that some part of my brain feels that many of the themes that were coming out in the drawings need to be laid to rest.

A lot of the drawings are about feeling sick (from lupus), having migraines, feeling lonely, searching for artistic identity, and… I get this overwhelming sense of explosive artistic energy that needed to go somewhere… and never really found outlet in those drawings. Ultimately, I stopped the project, because I felt like it was too much of a burden to have to come up with something daily– especially when the drawings usually turned out so poorly.

I started the “sketch a day” project on December 16, 2007. On September 7, 2008, I didn’t do a drawing, and noted the excuse, “sick sick sick”. On September 15th I didn’t do one– the note was “malaise. incurable malaise.” On September 18th I put the project on hold indefinitely.

I respect the impulses that led me to do that project… but it no longer feels appropriate for many of those drawings to be public. I have a much stronger sense of artistic direction now. I have very concrete ideas about what I want to do. I continue to work on those things when I get a chance (which isn’t much). In general, I like some things more, and some things less.

I remember that when I was a young adult I was very confused about the concept of “preference”. I wondered how people could have such strong preferences for things. (Food, clothing, music.) I realize now that I was so afraid to assert my own personality that I just assumed I didn’t have any preferences or personality at all. What strange times…!

Anyway, I want to sing those times a lullaby and put them to rest.

Here are the sketches that remain public.

Moth, 2008

I have been feeling down lately, and I think it is during these times I want to pull inward, withdraw all my feelers, and make myself invisible… Someone who has 15k photos on flickr can’t really do that. (However, should the federal government or the FBI ever need build a psychological profile on me, they will have ample pre-existing material, and I will have done them a service by being so transparent.)

During the times when I want to hide, maybe it should help me to remember all the times when I have been helped by a stranger’s willingness to “donate information to the Internet”. Usually we think of contribution in terms of technical facts or artistic techniques– but information in memoir form is also helpful. Sometimes I forget how enormously useful it has been in the past to realize that I am not alone.

In some ways, I think my willingness to be share information on the Internet is a reaction to how my parents viewed information. For example, my stepmom believed that all personal information could and would be used against her, and so she guarded it carefully. Even from me. She also snooped through my room and read all my personal diaries when I was a child. Nothing was really mine, and I was allowed no personal boundaries.

A few thoughts on how this experience affects me as an adult:
- Preemptive sharing may be a way of protecting myself from someone taking
- I really understand that information is valuable, and so when I share it, I’m making a gift

When I was in the Scientific Illustration program at the U of Washington, we learned that it’s wise to share information about the “artistic experience” when marketing our art. Non-artists like to understand what artists do. They want to know what the artist was thinking, what their life is like, where they got their inspiration. They want to know how the piece was made and what the process was like, from start to finish. Of course, not every consumer of art wants to know these things, but… I think it’s safe to say that artists of all kinds can increase the value of their work by being more open people. An artist gains much by sharing! And since we’re all artists of some kind… well, you get the picture. :)

Tiny moon, 2010

This type of abuse still doesn’t make me as mad as the abuse of antibiotics by doctors themselves. (Until recently I didn’t know that doctors will actually prescribe antibiotics for viral infections.) It’s hard to blame the public for something they don’t really understand… but doctors have no excuse.

This is actually supposed to be a post announcing the start of a “Thing A Day” project here at the Beemouse Institute. I’m going to be writing about my Things over here, on a posterous blog, so I do not risk offending the casual Beemouse subscriber (no doubt used to my chaotic, haphazardly spaced updates), with regular posts about Things every Day for an entire Month.

What thing will it be today? I have no idea! I love mysteries.

Mission San Juan Capistrano, January 2010

(painting by Bend, OR artist Mark Rada)

He had bought me a painting of crows and power lines when he was in Bend recently for the national cyclocross championships. I burst into tears. I haven’t done that since he proposed to me. Crows and power lines… two of my favorite things!

If you guys think buying jewelry or clothes for a girl is risky, imagine how risky it is buying art for an artist. But he did it anyway! And I freaking adore it!

Bew hew, I still want to cry whenever I look at it… I don’t know why. I feel humbled by his love.

This is a great opportunity to check out the space if you haven’t yet, and also have a chance to see other art at Capitol Hill venues (see a venue list here). If you come, I will show you my babies (I mean photographs) and explain my fascinating artistic process (it involves malfunctioning neural synapses) and tell you about the photos, and I will also tell you about creating plastic spiders with lasers.

Why? Because you see….

#10, 2007

He had to be eliminated, 2008

I am a jealous god, 2008

Of course, I took the idea from some found-paper artwork I found on the wall in an acquaintance’s bathroom in 2007, which was much better than my pieces and Austin Kleon’s pieces. I have no idea who the artist was.

*I don’t know if validated is the right way to explain it. It was the opposite feeling of seeing something and saying, “Hey, I could make that!” (much to the annoyance of everyone around me). It was, “Hey, I made that… and it was kind of boring.”

But I am inviting you to enjoy a moment of Beauty by gazing at this lovely free background that my sharp-as-a-tack friend Ballookey created. Check it!

Prints are for sale at Imagekind. I BOUGHT ONE TODAY, and if you buy one today, your wall may ultimately look as awesome as mine, I will have received this poster BEFORE you did, and have all kinds of seniority.

Enzo Staiola

Parts of the plot of Slumdog Millionaire are kind of cheesy and unbelievable, but not the important parts. (I’m referring to the plot device where one of the main characters, shown as a young adult, plays a game show, which allows the story of all three of the main characters to be told retrospectively.) But without this game show thread, I think the movie might only be fit for artsy film festivals, for people that can watch hours of really, really depressing stuff. (Like me!) Now that I’m thinking more about it, I’m kind of amazed at what a good job the directors did– sugar coating the movie just enough to make it watchable by everyone. (A spoonful of sugar helps the realism go down…)

The controversy surrounding the film is worth reading about online. It was touching to read about street kids’ reactions to the movie in this article.

Ayush Mahesh Khedekar, Rubina Ali, and Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail

On Monday I put up a little show of photography and some illustration at the Santosha Yoga studio located in Madison. I debated whether to include my illustrations; I pondered over whether I should price “for the recession” or normally; I tried to figure out how to show off the photos in the hallway where light filters in from the west with a yellow-greenish cast (choosing items for the red wall was very easy); I remade my labels for everything; I stood staring at the cubbies for storing personal items for a long time with small nails poking out from between my lips and a hammer dangling in my hand; I spilled coffee on the rug in the entryway and knelt there for a while, sopping it up with my handy absorbent utility blanket things that I use to protect my framed photographs.

Anyway, I’m pleased the photos are up, even if nobody buys them. I think they look great and I know the yoga people will feel happy looking at them. Maybe they will wonder how the hell anyone has the patience to paint that many bones. Maybe they will learn the secret about why that African lion is pawing at the ground! (In the reference photo it’s playing with hippo poo, which is like catnip for the lions.)

This is the sidewalk out front of the courtyard from where Santosha is located:

If I just took the old adage, “There’s nothing new under the sun” to heart, this wouldn’t be so painful. I would just do my art, when I have the time, because it’s something I have to do and need to express, and if there’s someone else out there who’s kind of doing the same thing, we can be like, “wow, love your work” and it’s no big deal. Because really, the more “connected” I am, the more likely it is that I will find works that resonate with me. It’s just a probability thing. Before the [angels trumpeting] Advent of the Internet, I never would have known about these artists at all, most likely.

But every time I run across a body of work that is very similar to something that already exists in my head, I just want to poke my eyes out with paintbrushes!

Urngh. I think this is a problem for another day. Today’s problem is studying Standard Precautions for the prevention of the transmission of bloodborne diseases, as outlined in OSHA standard 29 CFR 1910.1030.

For people who hate words:

Nuclear power plant, 2009