One Line.

This is how I feel today

I met Louise Bourgeois 10 years ago in her studio and at her home. It's a long story as to how I got there, but a bunch of us from Columbus were chosen because the Wexner Center gave her a prize of lots of money and she was too old to come and get it. So we got a studio tour and sat in her house and showed her slides of our work. She was quite old even then, and couldn't see the slides of our work very well. Her only critique of my work was to say, " finally, here is some good work about love. Love is the only thing worth talking about in this way." And that was it. It was nice because the other grads there had made more "acceptable" work according to our local  crits in grad school, she was sitting there railing them for what their work was about,  and yet my work was approved by this wonderful old amazing artist immediately. She sat in awe of my paintings and even giggled. That was the best day.

Today I feel like this.

super effing fragile istic

sofa- king better than yesterday.

My heart is warmer, I can feel the heat from the cold, yadda yadda.

If you have whiplash from the 27 different stories about austerity measures you hear every 2 minutes, your boyfriend wants to move to Antarctica for 6 months in March, you have to have a biopsy in a week, then go to a family wedding with no date a week after that, and your daughter needs to have her tonsils out, then you know approximately how I feel. Sometimes I let it all sink in and feel sorry for myself.


Instead sometimes I look at the good side. Protests are ways that the oppressed turn the tides and fight for their rights, which is good. My boyfriend loves me and I love him and we met while he was in Antarctica.  I am probably going to be ok, and if not at least it's caught in time. The wedding isn't about me or my dates, it's about my cousin and I need to stfu and deal. My daughter has had strep 9 times and needs to feel better and get rid of her tonsils.

Libras. Always needing balance. ALWAYS.

fiber=good for you= smelly farts, so smelly farts=good for you?

Things are never what you think they will be.
I was talking to someone recently about understanding feelings. We should just be able to understand them, he said. But then I realized that:  no, we don't, we shouldn't. We feel the feelings, we don't always understand them. And that's important. We can try to suss them out and make them logical but really our feelings aren't and should never be logical. Also, they are not logical on purpose, or else always understanding everything would get super boring. We need to know what cold feels like to feel warmth. Logic is meant for the mind, and the pursuit of logic is a fine course to map out.

It's a cold planet of freezing ice balls inside my heart right now.

making things makes things easier

Holding crumbling butter, sugar, and flour in my hand was the best therapy. Making shortbread is always a delicate endeavor because it had to be just right out of the refridgerator and if you take it out before it's chilled you have it too warm, too cold and it crumbles and won't form the cookie. I got it right after a little issue with some over crumble. But it was the best I felt all day. Concentrating on that stupid crumble and how to fix it helped.
I never wanted to be a famous artist, because people that are famous for their art are usually just lucky or really lonely because they forsake all others and other things. But I love making things. And I don't even believe that making things is really always the key to art, I'm not at all a person that would say craft isn't art, or art can't be craft. But the process sure does help take my brain and put it to rest better than laying in my bed does.

What I look like after big change.

Wall Street my street

I did not go to Wall St, I am sorry about this. Another time perhaps.

I ruminated the topic of Occupy with Seth Brown last night. It's made me thoughtful today about the topic while spending a rare morning by myself in an unfamiliar NJ town. It is good to visit a place I have no visual memory for other than good thoughts with my friends. My mind is a visual mine field, and I needed a break from the places I have visual explosions.
I just read this article which helped me to put Seth's words into perspective.

When studying the hegemony of our richer/poorer society and how dominance forms, I know that the dominated and oppressed can then become the dominant force. I know that through a sort of Hegelian model the thesis and antithesis can merge becoming the synthesis. (which isn't where it ends, but that's a whole other story)  I joke about my evil plans because I know that there is not real Good and Evil, it's a sliding scale. I know I'd like to side with good, but it's all on a scale that can switch. Would the poor people like to be rich? Being poor makes one very tired. Working hard can apply to a rich person that makes it rich by working hard. Who works harder? Who is more creative? Who is oppressed? Both? And once you have reached the other side, would you like to ignore the fact that you were once on the poor side? How about the other way around? Doing fine financially, then slip back into the uneasy burdens, the market gone wrong, the mistaken choices.  Obviously I question mark for the point of a question mark, to raise the question that I can answer myself with many many words and thoughts here. But it's really not up to me. It's up to Us, and We can't really make choices. But being blessed/burdened by seeing the big picture only helps perspective, not the causes. Not the winning teams.



I say change needs to happen, and will.

I received bad health news in the mail on Friday and need to have tests. A couple of hours later the man I made dreams with changed his mind and finally told me. What I thought was happening and dreamed of happening, won't. The happiness I built has been replaced with a new reality. That new reality is undefined, but just as real as the future plans I had built through love and respect and admiration. That doesn't make those plans any less real. They were real until Friday. They were what I wanted until Friday. I cannot erase them. I've been alive on this planet long enough to understand change, and when to cry and how to cry. I've used this opportunity to mourn what I once dreamed. The news on Friday changed me forever. So I will become a new person, and in that becoming I will learn to be stronger. I can only be stronger and I'm not going backwards.

I've been told that I sparkle. That I have conviction: attractive conviction. I believe it is because I use change to become stronger. I believe it is because I embrace change. I believe it is because I embrace life, even when days like Friday happen. I can learn to make a new dream and become just as happy and mystified as I was before, I can use my thoughts and visions and dreams and use this to change. I think the people that see that in me and are not frightened by it are geniuses.

Fried is my favorite flavor

It is mostly easier not to try to get off the couch when hit with triple whammy forces of evil: to succomb to the earth's forces that drive you to sit motionless, inert, one with the couch. The couch is a force of comfort and add a blanket and you are just done for. You will be lost. and what I mean is WHAT IS ESSENTIALLY YOU will be lost on the couch not making an imprint at all except for your ass into the cushions.
OR
Get up and make some noise. Counter act that force with an unequal force. Shout into your car speakers the words to songs, shout them back with more force than is coming out to make sure you can. Because you can.
I hope you know I am telling myself all this. This is meant for me to re-read. I'm sure it could help you out a bit too. My reasoning is the same as what is on a banner in my living room: "You can't mope forever". I must also point out that you most definitely CAN mope forever but my loving friends know that EYE can't mope forever because I am SuperManvillian and it would just be a tragedy to mope forever.

So I am off to Wall St, then back home to Massachusetts.

17 Favorite Things

When starting an evil plan: I do not actually plan. In art school I refused to use sketchbooks.  I like the books themselves. Libraries are beautiful. Books on shelves are beautiful. I think blank books are really white surfaced books and not blank at all.  I want to write in them. But blankness annoys the hell out of me so I usually create a dirty surface and layer my shit. I paint my canvases colors first, I can't start on white. White surfaces suck. They suck light, they shine light, and they suck. I cannot communicate on such a surface, because it's just not how the world is.
Transitively I also like casting instead of metal fab, because fabricating out of blank space is really not my style, but creating the mold out of sand makes more sense. Gestalt shift.  It is easier than blank mock ups from nothing comes something.
My painting teacher walked into my shared studio my senior year. I was painting and alone, she was obviously upset. Raving mad really. I went into her corner office, which was a corner triangle that had 4 corners because of some Pomo architect had remodeled the space, and she said: "Erica, I will probably be fired." I stood as she got red in the face, this porcelain faced cute blonde who didn't seem capable of any mean thoughts. When she would answer the phone at home people would ask her if her mom was home. She sounded 10 years old. Yet the expletives were spewing forth. I was a mute listener as usual, using my nods in support. She said " I told them art wasn't meant to be made by themselves, that would be MASTURBATION. I told them to HAVE SEX, that is the WHOLE POINT." Then she ordered me to go in and tell the sophomores that class was over and to go try to make some art that was more akin to having some kind of communication, which is how I decided to say it instead of what she was screaming. (That was the old me.)

I do marvel at plans. I see DiVinci's notebooks and things and get all googly eyed. I watch The Way Things Go and sit in wonderment about how much time and thought went into planning such an epic spectacle. I watch movie credits and story boards and get emotional at how much planning went into the planning. This is especially poignant when I see the "baby list" on some movies for the babies that were born during the making of the film. Makin and cookin a baby takes TIME. All the while I am sitting in the wonderment, contented to be Miss Viewer, I am subverting my own plans and creating my art inside my head, which is maybe mind masturbation and perhaps worse than what those sophomores were doing all those years ago. But no, I actually LIKE it, so whatever. This is how it's going to have to be folks.

I am a firm believer in cherishing what is worth cherishing. Highlighting the good things. I am good at this non sketchbook planning. Just most people wouldn't use the word planning; more like speculating concretely and thrusting forth into life as if I were caped with magical powers and winged thunderous abilities.My visual memory has been cultivated and I can now use it to plan. I can see things. I used to try to get rid of those visions. I'd force them out of my mind. Then of course I tried to deny they existed. And now I try to share them. Because my painting teacher was right. My brain is beautiful, and I'd rather communicate. It's trying to tell me something. It's trying to tell you something. But it is more like a caress than words. I will snuggle the visions and shit I see into your brain. I will kiss you with it. I won't edit much. I just hit the publish button with a squinty cringe sometimes. Like now.