this drawing is going in fits and starts. i desperately want to post an in-progress image but i left eht fucking cord at home...its having an identity crisis?? All the little parts are going in interesting directions but there is no overal unity, and the more i attack it the more i worry i'll lose the transient nature, someone at open studios hada good word...cant remembe,r not evanescence, but EPHEMERAL.
anyways, very frustrated with the things i have to finish- too many DEAD lines not enough playing in the studio. Have to write an article today on Miriam Waterman, who i interviewed last night, i realy like her photographs...

wo wo wow ow owoooah wow woah wow
what a great day
came back from the bayou - last night in terrebonne benh zeitlin and annie evelyn's BIG FAMILY band played. We drank with children and slow danced with their families and then spent the night in a fleabag motel half an hour aaway wiht some local barflies and an internet jukebox.
TOdya
I wante dto go to the studio so badly, on the drive back, Ray kept playing great jams, like Glitter Penis- Andrew Van Wyngarden's ancient wacky glam project, and also the Shangri-Las make me think i should suck it up and learn to sing, and oh what else some smokey robinson and Electric Prunes and my fav zombies plus he forced bob to use his youtube iphone machine to give me hungry heart, which i craved for a musical climax, and was sadly absent from his perfect z mix.
I am so happy to be writing, so happy to be in my studio! I wanted to get here all day, but allowed for the hapy slow meandering that is my internal rhythm to bring me here.
I ate lila's lovely bread, tea and toast was lunch- sad to say that my potatoes were all smashed up in the backseat- i mean oranges, from the dance party i n my car, and the mayo made the pot salad rot overnight...
So i got on a bike becasue it was a lovely day, and the light was beautiful. and i rode to domino sound to get hte best record ever, Abner Jay's True Story of Abner Jay, to give to Justin, i hope he doesn't read this before it is delivered, and then i accidentally loved that they were playing the Gravediggaz so i tried to buy the album but they wouldnt let me cause it was something rare and so i had to buy some other great shit like a one dollar 45 that makes no sense--*****more about 45s and record collecting later, (reminds me of lost photographs and thrift stores- ok i'll just say it now: i think i look for things not to find things but for the sake of looking, and what i find with records is that i know nothing about music or hae the context or taste to find osmething objectively valuable, so i only take waht i relate to aesthetically, which somehow for record collections seems to work better than other manifestations of music-)
Having accomplished my errand, in a good mood, i went on towards my studio, riding through the quarter, stopped to photograph a building for my plein air watercolor class- ill be teaching in january at the bywater art guild, got fucking excited about biking and stopping-so naturally when i saw a book store on Dauphine, having missed the great book fair that i love in new orleans- i went last year- and myself in the market for two new sketchbooks and omse old art books, i indulged my bicycling style and went inside. I am running iwth the runons here but please allow me to- i couldn't read anything inside the store for hte sake of too many thoughts- i had to start photographing pages of books i couldnt buy and bought 50 bucks worth of books anyways. learnt about this amazing Baycaux tapestry, also found a beautiful claes oldenburg bok with his three pronged plug soft sculptre and lots of darwings- little art books like the kind Neda saved for me (like the 8 days chick book i made for BenEC). Kenneth Patchen was recommended to me for his vision as a watercolorist as well as a poet, like Blake and also HENRY MILLER who made paintings along with some love letters for a japanese woman wiht an obscure name. Lastly i picked up a book called 'the artful dodger' by Nick Bantock. The inside cover read it was about creative process of illustration- and so i flipped through and noticed PICTURES FROM MY CHILDHOOD STATIONARY SET which apparently he designed- and they came from letters he wrote to himself, or someone else fake, in an imaginary correspondence movitvated by love for stamps!!! and collage... and goodies... i really like the way its written- all autobiographical of the best nature- so i bought that too. and finally i am here blogging blogging soon drawing drawing. but how nice to bike into great music and be alble to give money to my favorite store sespcially the ones that are musty and well organized re-sellers with cats!

Here are a few photos from a photographer i discovered recently, her name is joyce kim, she graduated from mica in 2007.
The wintery one has a red riding hood feel to it, the forest is so peaceful...and the pool is so forlorn in its emptiness. the carousel i think i am drawn to because i keep finding carousel-looking houses in new orleans as i explore- soon i will post some pictures of those.



(Copyright joyce kim)

Here are the promised jpegs of new work for the man i wish i was:







apparently language is a strange vehicle.
this morning when i woke up hungover i meditated on this all day. something about the way words form in your mind to express simple thoughts gets interrupted when one is sick or twilighting or out of it, and the most FUN thing happesn- word play. misconstrued meanings. new inventions.
i am going to try to teach some classes at a guild here in New Orleans.
I am thinking, still life, with a focus on fabrics. An opportunity to create fun exercises that will build basic drawing skills while introducing dialogue about composition, material, value, lighting, etc
Portraiture- a portrait every class day, constantly changing materials, always working with the figure. We will discuss great portrait painters, their techniques, the history of portraiture, and what makes a portrait in figurative painting.

ALSO
since today was a day of ideas-
i want to paint the towers in OIL with PENCIL and whatever hte fuck else comes to mind. i cant believe i spent all this time believing i had to choose between drawing and painting. NO i dont.
What i learnt from these quick figurative paintings was that i dont' need to be afraid of my impulses with materials, and if i can use oil with acrylic, ink and thread, or oil with steel and watercolor, than why not OIL with gouache and graphite!?!
thats the plan
START the painting/see what happens on teh MDF, i already prepared the perfect surface for either, why not both and see which one takes over? let the materials have the fight on your surface, then all the energy of the studies will exude in teh work itself, bringing the spontaneity my work deserves adn i cherish. and since im not working on PAPER< who cares if there are mistaeks??? everything is remediable.!
GREAT DISCOVerY

and...
really want to paint more patterns/ beautiful intricate copying of patterns.
my gorgeous velvet shirt from leah singer, the repetition is so delightful and intricate/ and i LIKE the warm black background and the line bewteen oil and drawing that i am about to cross for myself here is going to do wonders to my interst in negative space/layers, /backgrounds/
once again, i will say, i had the worst undergraduate art professor. Her name was Tula Telfair, and she has STUNTED my growth as an artist by being Abusive and conniving. She managed to intimidate some of my best instincts out of me . Luckily i am persistent and will one day make that very clear to her. That she was completely wrong about teaching, about art, and about life. That still seems important to me, but not as important as these exciting discoveries!!!
-z

a few quick comments before i leave for the day
1- i thinkthe shakespeare painting is too bold. the colors look garrish and there is no subtlety, no delicacy at all. it is less realized than the other paintings because i have not found a way to RESOLVE the surface. i think a layer of thin wax (1/4-1/2 inch) over eberything wth maybe some thread stuck iin it to create lines or soemthing would be great- subdue the boldness, take it away from grotesque and make it more ethereal, mystical.

2- about to start new drawing, 9/11, i was going to make it fit on paper i have in the studio, but then i thought, well, how big do i really watn to make this? and i projected it and found 76" x 58" worked rather well. it was ambitious scale, so then i thought how could i make it this big without using my gigantic role of paper? rolll of paper. wellllll i thought sewing different pieces together might incorporate different elements of the drawing i just did, and gessoing over the seams or soemthing. but just talking to my dad about framing Blankey i became rather depresed, i think maybe i should stretch it? or mount the paper on board? but thats silly,and much harder to transport. i am just trying to listen to him because he's saying dont work on paper cause its hard to frame, but thats NOT MY PROBLEM if i work on BOARD it will be hard to move.
so should i just work on ONE PIECE of paper? since i have one big enough? or should i try to put pieces together? making the final product potentially much more fragile??
please someone answer this question for me!

okay- lots of feed back from wonderful Emily Farranto:
weird scale, not medium scale, or large or small.
Poised figures- a stiffened mannerism. That is what Shakespeare and the Tailor have in common.
NO ONE paints ENCAUSTIC this big. it is for SMALL paintings.
she said to check out Amy Cutler's work, that the fantasy/allegory element works with my work (fleece, blankey etc) and also Michael Raydecker.
The PROBLEm is that for the most part the painting is not integrated.
There are areas where it is working-- the hands and the gun (looks like Richard Diebenkorn the way the pencil works as an armature for the oil paint) are really rich, look FUN to paint.
EMily makes a point of , as a painter, saying that painting can be enjoyable (to look at) without even judging it as good, if it looks FUN (to do)- good in a 'secular' way.
She also told me to look up the work of Kendide Wiley who does lots of portraits.
She had me limit my palette, or consider sticking to a warm and cool of each primary--
we realized that i am drawn to the colors with a lot of white in them, the creamy colors that make MUD. i have to be careful with my mud.
really wish i could write more, but i think at this point with 5 hours left before i have to sacar los fotos, painting is more important!
zz

ayayyy! going well! about 30 hours left til i have to be done with these three paintings, and theings are finally coming togehter. just today i made the decision how to deal iwth the third and final painting, (Shakespeare). i had wanted to find a way to dael with the wooden panels, so that they didn't read as individual units, interrupting the painting, so i tried to putty the gaps, but the putty is BRIGHT yellow and also creates another texture altogether, i would have to lay a primer over hte surface, but i like the look o f the putty stripes--- so i decided ENCAUSTIC
and ive never worked iwth it before, and on my way back from driving charlotte to the airport i went to the national art and hobby and bought some wax. i also got a heat gun from the jamaican community hardware spot. i thought id melt the wax in a hot pot but not working- hot pot kept automatically shutting off- so i decided just to blast the shit out of it on a tin pan with my NEW HEAT GUN. and its great!!!
im sure not waht encaustic painters would be into- but, its a super good way to incorporate fabric too- which is essential foreign ingredient to tie this painting back to number 2 which is all thread and embroidery, and number one which is silverpoint. NOW ive got three old fashioned techniques in new manifestations.
it would be nice to get the silverpoint more detailed on the metal golden fleece, and also to get the thrid hand a little more defined looking. i got really exited painting the feet on the second painting, which i still have to title. and i had to cut up my PANTS in order to get a green cloth for shakespeare. but i can still wear them. just one leg is a little short. really exited to se how far i can stretch this encaustic. so far i havent succeeded in mixing any colors- that seems hard, more to report later, back to work.