congratulations

i hate rejection. somehow, for some reason, it's inherent to the way the system functions. for every person that receives an award, there are thousands of people who don't. in my eyes, this is just wrong. it kills self-esteem, it discourages, it humiliates. it starts when we're little kids, and it continues on and on and on. my brother, when he was just a little kid, kept a ledger in his tiny toy safe of awards that i'd won versus awards that he'd won. the scales weren't balanced, it was self-destructive, it wasn't fair to his ego at all. it was a symbol of an unjust system, the competitive dynamic for approval throughout our childhood, throughout our lifetimes. in my perfect utopia, everyone does what they're best at, and they aren't judged or rewarded by anyone but themselves. in this perfect world of mine, there's no greater than or less than. there are no expectations. everyone is recognized for their individual gifts.

i recently applied for a grant. i worked really hard on it, i had a great idea and i felt that i articulated it well. i was among hundreds of the best artists of washington state who applied, and i was rejected. when i got the customary email saying sorry, nice try, i cried. it's not that the money or the recognition are so important to me. but it certainly bruised my ego. it teleported me right back to my 19-year-old self, and the day i got the letter of rejection from western's art department. that letter said, more or less, you're not good enough to study art here. coming from a public school, where i thought education would be equal opportunity, i was insulted, angered, and hurt. so i worked my ass of, and i tried again, and the second time i got admitted. but i never forgave, and i never forgot.

Today, i scoured the grant winners. I wanted to see firsthand what they had and i didn't. and of course, humbled, i was able to glean some inspiration. congratulations to me.

"I think all great innovations are built on rejections." Louise Ferdinand Celine

a breakthrough

there's something funny that happens when i spend the day busy with other things and then oops! the day is done and i'm altogether too tired. still, i have my painting to do. i whine and i piss and moan about it, and i feel so tired i can barely keep my body in a vertical position. and then i pick something simple without much deliberation, and i barrel through it. ironically, usually this gives me my favorite results. call it sloppy, call it loose, call it gestural, call it impatient, call it rushed. call it what you will. could it be that my best work is done when i'm running out of time, in a hurry, or totally exhausted? perhaps, i may just now be realizing. when i was a student, i was so preoccupied with my personal life that i forgot to do the work for one of my final critiques. i wasn't winning awards or impressing my prof much, and so i loathed painting because i felt i wasn't getting anywhere. the night before, i brought my boyfriend up to the studio with me and i impatiently tossed something out in an hour. it was still wet when i brought it to critique the next day, but much to my surprise, the teacher loved it, he picked it out above all the others, he made it the example of what to do. finally, a breakthrough

Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain. Carl Jung

harmony

“After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say ''I want to see the manager." ” William S. Burrows

At some point this summer, i was in what i might consider to be the best athletic shape of my life. I was running three miles every other day and filling in the other days with yoga. I know running is hard on the old bones, and some people say it can cause as much injury as benefit, but i ran as much for the scenery as for the exercise. My ritual was to run one mile to the river, stretch, run a half mile out to the iris farm, then run back. My route, incidentally, is what i consider to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. Its not unusual for me to see hawks, falcons, ducks, geese, cormorants, songbirds, river otters, salmon and deer, all in one half-hour interval. the intensity of the visual experience heightens the senses and charges my battery. But a couple of months into my routine, it all came to an abrupt halt.

It was a bad week, maybe. followed by another bad week. maybe the odds were all off. but every time i went running, i was witness to some measure of unpleasant carnage. it started with dead birds in the road, the birds that had already been hit long before i found them. a pheasant, mallard ducks, goldfinches, and more. each time i saw one, i'd stop my run, pick it up gingerly, stroke its feathers, take a good look, soak up the intensely precious beauty, say a little prayer and give it a resting place proper somewhere in the grass. but then, one day, it was live. the first time, it was a pair of flirting kamikaze robins. i stopped my run at the liquor store, picked up a box, and carried them home for a funeral. next, a bird collision with a windshield, right in front of me. the bird was flung lifeless through the air, my legs went numb and i struggled to bounce back. it was followed by the bird who hovered over the remains of his buddy in the road. as if to commit suicide, he stumbled directly under the tire of a minivan, and i heard the crunch. i promptly quit running, and tried to brainstorm an activity that involved less brutality. according to studies, autos kill 50-100 million birds a year. i wonder: am i the only one who notices this kind of stuff? and paranoid, i now slow down for birds while i'm driving. my passengers tease me about it, but it sure beats the alternative.

thumbs up

inspired by the lavishly colorful and expressive portraits of jeremy okai davis, i decided that today's painting would be a portrait, modeled after a little photo of gunther i have pinned to the wall at my table easel. it's a photo i look at every day, taken back in the old days, when the lucky dumpster first opened and the sparsely filled shelves were red and green. those days, gunther was spending a lot of time in edison helping wes & andy remodel their building into a gallery while living in his van. gunther would work his ass off, dry-walling or sanding or doing whatever kind of grueling manual labor to make a buck, and he'd come over often and we'd eat meals together and walk the dog and sit around campfires like good friends do. gunther always lived like a gypsy. he always had a positive attitude, and was uncompromising in his lifestyle choices. he lived without fear, and for the sake of fun, and for the love of his friends. i look at this image of gunther every day, in it he's grinning that trademark crooked grin, giving me and you and everyone in the world the proverbial "thumbs up". this image makes me smile, rubs a little gunther off on me, giving me the confidence to get through another one and keep on laughing. i miss you gunther. boy do we all. you were a great ball of fire.

dance

reserved for t. north

i can't help but love sunday nights at the edison. it's not a young crowd, or a particularly stylish crowd. but man, do they dance. it's more stimulating than any kind of television i've seen, and it's pretty much the best people watching to be found. you'll see every kind of dancing style properly represented, and every person's face beaming with that rare sort of youthful enthusiasm. sure, i've been known to cut a rug a time or two, and i love to dance with the older fellas who know how to spin a lady proper. tonight, with the help of some zydeco rhythyms, i did a high kick and a dip and a spin and a shake, along with some newfangled kind of entangled waltz. and i loved every minute of it.

these boots

so what's in a shoe? many an artist paid their due to a shoe or two. warhol got his start illustrating shoes, for example. van gogh & thiebaud painted shoes. and due to some strange habit, i find that i always look at someone's shoes when i first meet them. it seems to me that shoes, of all things, can say a lot about a person. shoes can tell you whether a person is athletic, or if they like to walk through mud puddles, if they've just mowed the grass, or if they work in an office. shoes can tell you if a person likes hip hop or country music, if they are rich or poor, if they are a sloppy painter, if they ride motorcycles, or if they are a skateboarder who can ollie. they can tell you if a person walks a lot, or a little, or if they're old or young, in fashion or just plain out-of-style. i find this notion fascinating. when my friend john simon passed away, i inherited two pairs of his shoes, brown slip-on loafers covered in little tiny splatters of every which kind of color of paint. they speak to his fury and passion for paint, and they're some of my most precious possessions. and since i moved to the stix and my tired old feet started hurting, i've been extra shoe conscious on the home front. i find myself prioritizing utility over aesthetic, flat over heel, and cushion over fashion. how my collection of "granny shoes" has grown! and so, considering my forty or so pair of second hand sneakers, boots, galoshes, mary-janes, clogs and sandals, i wonder what someone would say of me at first glance.

these here ropers pictured above were traded to me by my dear friend karie jane who, mind you, is just as shoe crazy as i. she coveted a pair of snazzy white wingtips i found while thrifting, and i relented. but as far as i'm concerned, i think we both traded up.

"What becomes of the broken hearted? They buy shoes."
Mimi Pond

joy

reserved for c. jepson

lacking inspiration, feeling wrung out like a dirty dishcloth, i asked james what i should write about tonight. he said smugly, "the happiest most joyous thing you can think of. " perhaps that was a response to my surly mood. so what, said i, maybe i'm coming down with a cold. i feel all funny and grouchy and tired and boggy.

here it is folks (insert drum roll): the truth is, i was stumped. i, for the life of me, couldn't even think of what the happiest most joyous thing could possibly be. i mean, really. come on. seriously? just then, as if mr. universe himself was answering my call, max the cat (aka. maxi-pads, max-a-million, max-a-covious) started swatting a leaf around in an aggressively acrobatic manner on the floor. he quickly moved on to bigger and better things, attacking my shoes, grabbing one and rolling onto his back, kicking with both hind legs, and then pouncing up, using them as a blind to attack the crumpled tissue in front of them. i laughed out loud, and let out a sigh of exasperated surrender. my cats, i love them, they make me happy, they are so ridiculous they make me laugh out loud, they make my day, every day. every stinkin day.