Quietly Unobserved.

Newish…

I finished this painting over a month ago but haven’t had time to photograph and post it. Turns out getting a master’s in art ed (or any art ed degree for that matter) is a shit-ton of work! If only we could just sit around making and teaching art and not writing pages and pages and pages about it. C’est la vie!

The piece that I did today has this weird red vinyl paper that I bought at Recycling for RI Educators (the best place ever). The red vinyl paper gives it a bit of an S&M feel.. that and she is at least half nude and wearing a mask. The mask was the original concept – how we all have this façade depending on the situation. What point are we ourselves and what point are we what we want people to see us as?

Artistic Dyslexia

I finished this one the other day… there’s two more paintings that I finished and have yet to scan into the ole computer.

I feel like this drawing should be either titled “I give up” or “What the Fuck?!” And yes I know, I made the hands backwards. I think I might have some sort of artistic dyslexia, I seem to draw hands backwards quite often. I once exhibited a piece with the hands backwards and didn’t realize, until the opening reception that oh fuck, the hands are backwards! 

Painting the Morning Away.

I had my coffee, my paints and my itunes playing in the background.. and I had a day off to do it! I worked on three 4×6″ pieces simultaneously. One will probably be donated to Visual AIDS annual exhibit: Postcards from the Edge (unless I decide to make a fourth or fifth). As for the other two paintings, who the hell knows  – anyone want to buy or exhibit some art?

The Post-it-Note Holder.

I once worked at a retail photo studio. I’ve heard all the horror stories of working in such places. An acquaintance once told me she worked at one one Christmas and said it was the worst job she ever had. My job was okay on most days. There was the occasional client from hell, but hey you can’t please or become friends with everyone. The job paid well enough for me to not have to rely on unemployment. Unfortunately, I went to work one day and noticed I had a message on my cellphone from my boss telling me to call her immediately. I sat in the store parking lot and called her. I found out that the entire retail chain photo studio had gone bankrupt and we were all out of jobs! Oh snap!

The Christmas right before they went bankrupt, all us employees received a company Christmas gift. It was a fucking post-it-note holder. We all had a good laugh at how cheap we thought the company was… who knew it was because that was all they could afford to give us. I decided on that day, that I was going to turn it into art — it’s good to recycle — and now over a year later, I have!

I’m calling it “NWS Post-it-Note Holder.” I think it will be a fine addition to the Gallery X Low-Brow show in October. And hey, I managed to recycle the worst Christmas gift I’ve ever received!

A Long Wait.

“When the world comes to an end…I will have love you, for a long time…” -  Dirty Projectors.

One night while waiting for my girlfriend — eh, how do I define this relationship? complex — we’re “seeing other people” well, I look but do nothing about it, miss her like crazy and wish she were in the US and not Central America — anyhow, one night we had a chat date and she wasn’t home to use her computer. I received a quick message from her about this. I was extremely disappointed as I had pretty much planned my entire day around this and here she was possibly not going to chat with me! WTF?! I got out the sketchbook and drew this:

Which then turned into this painting…

Hope for the hopeless.

August 16

Every morning I get up, work on some art (I made the painting above today!), look for a third part-time job because apparently there has yet to be a send me to school for free and pay my bills scholarship, and make coffee. I’ve been making my own rather than go out for coffee in vain hopes of saving money… instead, I end up having a cup at home and at least twice a week buy some at a coffee shop. On my evenings off, I feel compelled to create bizarre black and white self-portraits… no, I don’t know why I am only inspired to do them at night. When inspired, just go with it.

Since July I have filled almost an entire Strathmore Sketch Journal. They are rather nice. The paper works with wet and dry mediums, just like it said it would! And best of all, it’s a hardcover and affordable, not like those other hardcover sketchbooks where you can hope to use your entire unemployment paycheck to buy it — oh wait who would do that?

Speaking of unemployment… according to The Department of Labor and Training, my extended partial unemployment benefits are going to run out in January 2012, because Congress decided that the millions of people who are receiving extended unemployment benefits do not count. Some rich, wealthy politicians decided all these people don’t need government assistance. It all makes Obama’s promise of “hope” seems like a distant memory.

Pop art, patterns, intermingled with pain.

It’s been one of those weeks, it feels like the past several days have in fact been twenty-five days. First, in what feels like the universe’s horrible joke, I failed the Rhode Island teaching certification exam by four fucking points!!! I guess it’s not bad for someone who didn’t take any recent, graduate level classes in the material that was covered on the exam — imagine what I could’ve done had my master’s program actually prepared myself and my fellow classmates! But oh I do get to take undergrad studio and art history classes – why I don’t know — maybe said classes might help me as an art teacher, but certainly will not help me pass the certification exam that is filled with stuff I still don’t know all the answers to and don’t hope to through the school I’m paying money to go to to learn! Is that irony? I’m not sure.

In much happier news, (sort of) a two year anniversary is coming up, unfortunately, my significant other (who the anniversary is with) is in another country and will be there during said anniversary! So happy anniversary to us, maybe the next anniversary will suck less.

For the next month or so until I return to madness, aka, grad school, I’m just going to make art and worry about the rest later… I have three shows I need to prepare for before September. Thus far I’ve done ten paintings and thirteen drawings.

The faceless working poor.

Art reflects life right? Sometimes, I hate money — well maybe not money more like what it does to people, the concept of money. It can make people greedy. It can make people crazy. I think about how many hours I’ve spent worrying about how to pay bills, or freaking out when I get a bill that clearly will take years to pay off (thanks Blue Cross of Rhode Island).  And then I see people in stores blow $200 on a shitload of clothes at Old Navy or Target. I watch them swiping their card, carefree, and I think, gee, I’d just like a new shirt, but I have to wait until shirts go on sale. Or until I can find one at Savers.

But on the upside at least there is my semblance of an art career to keep me from completely losing my mind!

I’m not sure what possessed me to paint a mermaid, but I’m glad I went through with it. It would’ve been good for that Mermaid themed show I wanted to enter a million years ago.

when I’m no longer working poor…

When I’m no longer “working poor” …oh for the day to come! When that day happens, and I never have to call the Rhode Island department of Labor and Training ever again, will be a grand day indeed. I’ll put on my Simply Vera dress (Vera Wang’s line for Kohls) and go buy a real Vera Wang dress, couture, of course. Then go donate an assload of money to a worthy cause.

Until that day comes,  I can make art about it and my extreme dislike of the horrendous gap between the have’s and the have-nots.