I'm really thrilled for 2020 - I'm thrilled for any new year, honestly, because I like the feeling of being able to begin anew - and I think there's no better time to do that than the new year. This year, I'm trying to have better habits and better discipline in all areas of my life. Recently, I 'upgraded' my art Instagram to a Professional account so I could post more and get metrics for the things that I posted. It's been really interesting to see where the views come from, how many there are, and how much hashtags help. I've been doing some fun projects with friends lately. One of them is Build Your Own Sad Night Crime, which is a little handmade card deck that I make with my own imagery and with others'. My friend got one for his partner, and sent me some of her poems to use as imagery for the deck, so that was really helpful. The other is Sad Night Crimes: The Experience, where I've been repainting a smaller Sad Night Crime on a watercolor postcard and mailing it to a friend. I love mail as art - I absolutely lived for those Griffin and Sabine books by Nick Bantock when I was younger - so this is about as close as I'm getting to that. This is a really good example of what can happen in the mail - this postcard went to South Dakota, where it's of course snowing, so it actually got splattered with water without detracting from the overall piece. I'm glad I made the choice to do some of the lettering with a brush pen, or else it wouldn't have gotten that quality. I've been doing a lot more work recently, due to both being temporarily unemployed and also to making a last-minute decision to apply to grad school. I'm hoping that this time will work out. In the past, I've always had to put all my eggs in one basket due to finances. Although I can't apply to very many schools this year, I will be applying to more than one. Even though I think my portfolio is unique and my undergraduate transcripts are stellar, that doesn't always mean you'll grab a seat in a very limited program! So I am trying not to think about how difficult things have been in the past and maintain a good hope for the future. This year I am also trying to read more (problems of output are problems of input), so here's what I've been reading lately: The first book I read in 2020 was Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House, which is a memoir of the author's experience living through an emotionally abusive queer relationship. That's a very, very simplistic description, as Machado weaves her experiences in and out with changes of genre and references to folklore. It wasn't completely what I was expecting at all, and it was really beautifully written. I'm also reading Coosje van Bruggen's book on John Baldessari - it's been really illuminating so far, and I always enjoy reading about other artists' processes and what their opinions and thoughts are. John Baldessari recently passed away(on January 2nd!), so there's been a lot about him and his work floating around the internet. I really enjoyed this video about his life and work, narrated by Tom Waits. I also have a huge stack of to-read books from the library (which I just added to today, despite the stern voice in my head telling me to cool it), which I've been dipping in and out of - some books of poetry by Mary Oliver, and some books on Buddhism by the Venerable Thubten Chodron. I'm an atheist, but I've really enjoyed reading books on Zen Buddhism (Zen Speaks is my favorite - little parables and teachings on Zen in comic strip form - it is out of print, but you can read it or download it on archive.org), mainly for techniques to calm my mind and for the cessation of obsessive negative thinking.
What are you reading? What are you listening to? What's new?
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AuthorArtist, essayist, divinity school dropout. Here for a good time, not for a long time. Archives
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