May 19, 2008

FROM THE ILLUSTRATORS’ PARTNERSHIP

Call to Action
Last Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed their Orphan Works Act.
It is now headed for the full Senate.

If you’ve written before, now’s the time to write again.
Urge your senator to oppose this bill.

Because it has been negotiated behind closed doors, introduced on short notice and fast-tracked for imminent passage without open hearings, ask that this bill not be passed until it can be exposed to an open, informed and transparent public debate.

We’ve drafted a special letter for this purpose.
You can deep link to it here:
Contact your Senator in opposition to S.2913 NOW

The House Judiciary Committee is considering H.R. 5889, the companion bill now. Please write them again:
Contact your Congressman in opposition to H.R. 5889 NOW

2 minutes is all it takes to write your senator and representatives and fight for your copyrights. Over 68,000 e-mail messages have been sent so far.

Don't Let Congress Orphan Your Work

Please forward this message to every artist you know.

If you received our mail as a forwarded message, and wish to be added to our mailing list, email us at: ipa@twcny.rr.com
Place "Add Name" in the subject line, and provide your name and the email address you want used in the message area.

FROM THE ILLUSTRATORS' PARTNERSHIP

A Reminder:
Tonight, Tuesday, May 6 at 6:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time (U.S.)
Don’t Let Congress Orphan Your Work
An open forum to oppose the Orphan Works Act

The Society of Illustrators
128 East 63rd Street
New York, NY 10065
Admission will be free

Panelists:

Terry Brown Director, American Society of Illustrators Partnership, Director Emeritus, Society of Illustrators


Constance Evans Executive Director, Advertising Photographers of America, artist


Dr. Theodore Feder President, Artists Rights Society


Brad Holland Artist, Co-founder, Illustrators Partnership


Cynthia Turner Medical illustrator, Board Member, Illustrators Partnership


William Vasquez Photographer, Co-Chair, Advertising Photographers of America/NY Chapter


This event will be streamed live here: [link]
If you are unable to access it tonight, it will be archived for delayed webcast, starting tomorrow

Also: stay tuned for a link to our push-button letter-writing website: Take Action/ Write Congress
The link to this advocacy site will be emailed to you directly

Please forward or post this announcement in its entirety to any interested party.

If you received our mail as a forwarded message, and wish to be added to our mailing list, email us at: illustratorspartnership@cnymail.com
Place "Add Name" in the subject line, and provide your name and the email address you want used in the message area.

Are there changes you would suggest be made in order to prevent other employees in the same work section from leaving? If so, what are they?

I've never met an artist who was willing to pledge allegiance to a punch clock, but there's always a first time. I may have noted a preoccupation with the appearance of propriety outweighing the actual, substantial work being done, but I could be mistaken. I've had a good experience working here, and I respect both my supervisors and my co-workers. My reason for leaving mostly boils down to needing new surroundings and new challenges, as well as more time to live my personal life.

On Valentine's Day two months ago, I put in writing my 2.5 weeks notice, ending a job I've had for 12 years.
I'd been feeling desperate to move on for a long time-- there wasn't a single week in the last 2 years when I felt like I was where I belonged.
12 years ago I was freelancing, barely scraping by; I was isolated and frustrated; lonely and broke. I got an internship at the State of Colorado as a graphic designer because I knew someone who worked there, and because I lied about my experience with computers-- I'd never worked on one at all.
The internship had gradually evolved into seasonal temporary employment, and eventually became a permanent full time job, consuming 12 hours of my day, five days a week. My hypervigilance regarding the passage of time had become completely insane, and the weekends disappeared in the blink of an eye; people would say to me, "Thank god it's Friday," when, from my perspective, Friday night was practically Monday morning. As in, "Thank god it's Monday fucking morning..." Trouble sleeping, trouble digesting food, but with enough money to pay a doctor to tell me I was having trouble sleeping and digesting food...
The constant argument in my head about whether I should quit my job had reached a gridlocked stalemate-- 50% for security versus 50% for freedom-- I was paralyzed intellectually, but I gained some peace when I promised myself that if something happened that made me feel any worse about the situation, I'd go ahead and grant myself permission to quit based solely on that feeling. And, sure enough, something happened, and buddy, did I ever quit...
Coming home from work on Valentine's Day with the decision finally made and my written notice handed in, I signed on to deviantART and found that none of the browsers that worked on the operating system of my old beige Mac could parse dA anymore-- suddenly, I couldn't full-view anything, couldn't select any favorites, couldn't upload any art-- it had happened within the last 24 hours, possibly at the moment I was signing the paper that assured I wouldn't be seeing a steady paycheck again for awhile...
There are times in your life when you have to let things go-- times when you have to stop fighting the direction your life is taking and just run on faith and instinct.
By the following Friday, though, I'd decided to empty out the remainder of that month's bank account on a new iMac; by the end of the month my final paycheck arrived via electronic funds transfer, and I slept easier about the new computer-- among the many things I've had to let go of in the past 12 years, deviantART isn't one of them, yet.
I haven't been anywhere near my old job for a month and a half now. I didn't burn any bridges-- I left on such good terms, they'd probably even hire me back.
12 years ago, having a secure future seemed like an impossible dream; with the passage of time it had become a nightmare from which I was barely able to escape...
Punch the clock; punch it when you come in, punch it when you leave-- you know what? Punch it any time you leave the office; punch it when you go to the bathroom...
The incident that finally triggered my exit was a written warning that my accumulated leave time had fallen below 40 hours-- we accumulate 6.66 hours of it per month-- and if I were to show up late again prior to earning back more than 40 hours, I'd need a note from a doctor to excuse the absence. When you agree that your time has been bought by someone else, that's the kind of policy you're signing up for.
People who are otherwise totally decent will treat you this way when they believe they have you by the balls; if they do not, in fact, have you by the balls, you can't let them act as if they do.
At least, that's the gist of the one single Valentine's Day card I wrote this year, to my former employer...

Last Tuesday I was working on a complicated graphic in Adobe Illustrator when a co-worker who's a friend of mine came into the office. I acknowledged him distantly, not wanting to divide my attention from the work I was doing, but I could tell that he was troubled. "You okay?" I asked; my friend is often troubled.
"Yeah," he said. "Listen, give it five minutes, and then read this," he said, indicating a folded page that he put on my desk.
"Sure, okay," I said, assuming it was a copy of something he'd written to a girl he's deeply in love with. Occasionally he'll do this-- ask me to go over one of these private messages with an eye for grammar and an opinion as to whether or not it makes any sense.
"You outta here?" I asked, nudging my layers and layers of vector art around.
"Yeah, I'm not feeling so good," he said, and turned to leave. "See ya later."
"Alright, man," I said, and he closed the door behind him.
Half an hour later I went out for a smoke and took my friend's note with me. I opened it and found that it was a message he'd written directly to me; cryptic stuff about opened doors that can't be shut, Satan, stress, worry, and needing to hear some more cowbell...
I pulled out my cel phone and gave him a call; it went straight to voicemail. We've both been bitching about our day jobs for many months now; we've both been complaining about various things in our lives for ages.
"Listen," I said, "if you're talking about making some changes, I'm right with you, man; there's, like, a million things we can try... there's just millions of choices here. You should've talked to me-- we should've talked. Give me a call, man; I'm picking up some glasses at the mall tonight; give me a call, brother..."

When I was thirteen, a close friend of mine committed suicide. I hadn't seen it coming at all, and even in retrospect, his darker moments never seemed to add up to that kind of finality, to me. What I found was that, if you have a friendship with somebody who makes that choice, it's like you've swam out with them to the deepest part of the coldest, darkest river in the world, only to find that they've disappeared completely, leaving you to either sink down with them or start swimming back to shore on your own; it's a long way back, and by the time you've made it, you've pretty much decided you don't want to swim that distance again any time soon...

The Sheriff's Department called me an hour later last Tuesday, telling me that my friend had phoned his wife at her day job and had said many of the same things he'd written in his note to me; where I'd assumed my friend was talking about quitting his job and making some changes in his home life, his wife had made more astute assumptions and had called the police. Sheriff's deputies had arrived at his house to find that he'd swallowed half a bottle of whiskey and three Percocets; he'd been uncooperative with the police and so they'd tasered him; he was now in the hospital under a 72 hour "mental hold." This is someone I've talked, laughed, and argued with for years; it's as if the deputy on the phone is making all of this shit up on the spot...
In the days that followed, I've had lots of conversations with my friend in the form of text messages on our cel phones; conversations with his brother, his wife, and the girl with whom he's in love.

Here's the one thing I have learned about people, and the friendships you have with them:
The decisions you make about them when you're by yourself are important, and valid, and deserve all the attention you give to them. But it's the decisions you make about them when they're in the same room with you that matter the most; they're the ones that actually define the friendship.

Whether my friend's actions last Tuesday amount to a sincere attempt at ending his own life, or a dramatic performance calculated to emphasize his current despair for the edification of his family and friends-- either way-- in the coldest and most exhausted part of me, he just became a very bad risk; a lousy swimming companion out here where the water's deep and treacherous.
But I have no doubt that once we're in the same room with the opportunity to talk about all of this face to face, I'm going to be looking at a close friend of mine again, when maybe I should be keeping my eye on that disappearing shore line way back there...

God grant that the life jackets we've cobbled together from art supplies and good intentions retain their warmth and buoyancy; God grant our friends those same attributes. And happy new year, anyway...

My Mom, a veteran coffee lover, had never seen my legendary vacuum pot in action, so I invited her down to behold its crazy magic. We drank too much coffee and had a conversation about art and religion too long to get into here, but this part is still swirling around in my head: Religion might be a paralogical version of Art.
Logic dictates that you add up a series of facts in order to arrive at a conclusion; paralogia starts with a conclusion and distorts the facts in order to arrive at this predestination.
In The Sopranos, a great work of art, I think, you have a guy like Ralphie Cifaretto, someone you come to hate so much that you find yourself praying for his violent death; you've written him off as something other than human, and easy to kill. But, just a few episodes later, you feel such profound compassion for him that it's disturbing; you don't want to feel compassion for this guy, don't want to feel his humanity; it tangles you up inside to feel anything but a straight line of malice towards him... But you've arrived at this point honestly, and there's no way back. Love your enemy, Christ instructed, and religion intones the same; The Sopranos doesn't insist that you feel anything at all for Ralphie; you arrive at this point in spite of yourself, based on the honest facts presented to you.
When it's done its work properly and honestly, art grants you the opportunity for compassion that just might be the essence of real Christian philosophy.
But then again I don't know; we'd really drunk a lot of coffee at that point in the conversation, my Mom and I...

The power went off at 3:00 a.m. last night, shutting down the fan I run to put myself to sleep with its purring white noise-- I woke up to deafening silence, all alone in perfect darkness...
It's the second time this week the electricity's blacked out for no apparent reason-- our winter weather hasn't even started yet.
That feeling of being swallowed up by total isolation, when you wake up to a world of sensory deprivation; I got out of bed and went stumbling around for the flashlight I keep in my travel case.
Looking for light all alone in the dark could be any artist's job description, since the work tends to take place in a state of isolation-- it's only when you're feeling inspired that you don't feel alone; it's like an umbilical cord so compelling that you can forget to feed yourself at times...
There's all kinds of isolation; some of the most painful takes place in a crowd, in a rush, in grim solidarity for the bus caught on time, the deadline met, the paycheck finally cashed...
I laid awake for a couple of hours, glad that I was taking the day off for my Birthday, so that I could sleep late.
The fan came back to life somewhere before dawn, and I dropped a million miles into absolute sleep.
3:00 a.m. is also the time listed on my birth certificate-- the power had cut off pretty much at the exact anniversary of my birth-- I felt like Harry freaking Potter when I realized it this morning...

The starving artist business doesn't come with a great set of benefits; I haven't seen any kind of doctor in twenty-six years.
Not that I've been pining away for one; the things that make for interesting television shows-- doctors, lawyers, police -- any alliance whose rules can supersede the ones you set for yourself-- are things I try not to get close to.
Even with a full time job now, and benefits to boot, I didn't find myself in any hurry to head towards a hospital like the one my father had died in, many years ago. But there is this Center For Traditional Chinese Medicine downtown that I've been curious about for a while now; I went in for the first time on Saturday with more than a little hesitation.
I wasn't introduced to anyone with a formal title; instead, Helen, Alexei, and Nell (none of whom are Chinese) asked me a series of questions about my general well-being, took my "pulses," and then went off to discuss a strategy.
I hadn't known that acupuncture is what they mostly resort to at the Center For Traditional Chinese Medicine, but just a few minutes later I found myself on a bed, staring up at a ceiling of painted blue pipes and duct work that ascended to what looked like the depths of outer space, a small silver needle in my forehead, another between the thumb and forefinger of both hands, two in my stomach, and one at the top of each foot, listening to sobbing violin music...
The needles go in easily with a quick little thrust; painless, except for the one in my right foot-- Helen went hunting for "qi" with that one, and found a psychotic killer bee instead-- I nearly fell off the table.
"Chinese style acupuncture requires that you seek qi with the tip of the needle; Japanese style requires that qi find the needle on its own. We're going to try Japanese style, for you."
Good call; turns out qi hurts like a serial killer...
Besides a long history of insomnia and occasional stomach trouble, I don't have a lot of concerns about my health, but it did seem like as good a time as any to come in from the cold, medically speaking; if only to have an opinion besides my own.
I left the Center an hour later, very relaxed, happy to walk to my bus stop-- I'm scheduled to go in again next Saturday and I probably will, because sooner or later, everyone's qi finds the needle; it's probably best to not be alone when that happens...

The kite from Green Giant brand foods lifted up in the breeze, riding the wind as I stared in disbelief-- I'd never managed to get a kite further than twelve feet off the ground before it would turn and pitch violently back to the Earth-- but the jolly green giant had real magic in it, and I fed out the line til it was a hundred feet in the air, the thin cord tight in my hand, transmitting the atmospherics of the sky directly to my spinal column...
I'd never been up in the air, never known flight, but the kite's surface sent news of every breeze down the string and into my heart until the prison of gravity was something I no longer believed in.

Shang Ding's During Rehearsal, at the Artists Of America show in 1997, oil on canvas; the artist had rendered not only the precise likeness of a ballerina, but also the light that hovers around her-- a phenomenon peculiar to human sight, possibly a consequence of seeing one thing with two eyes, but a halo, just the same...
I'd never been in that room with her, never known the warmth of her body, but the canvas sent her to my eyes and into my heart, and I stood there long enough to realize that the only thing keeping me tethered to the Earth was the strength of that artist's paintbrush...

Has an image ever done that for you?


(and what's a punk like me doing in The Kiosk?!)

Feng shui expert Raymond Lo said that according to ancient Chinese belief, the Year of the Pig is symbolised by two elements -- fire sitting on top of water.

"Fire sitting on water is a symbol of conflict and skirmish, and this may bring a relatively less peaceful year with more international conflicts and struggles," he said.






Happy New Year, everybody.

My niece is two years old with big, green eyes where most Raffas have brown; they're full of tiny colored lights tonight, not a minute of sleep in them. Her Mom is at the Hospital, giving birth to her little brother; it's 1976, so he's born in the year of the Dragon...
My niece won't go to sleep and I've got school tomorrow; her eyes are full of Christmas lights. Her hand reaches absently for a cluster of them on the lower branches of the pine tree in our living room; she'll clutch briefly now and again, but their plastic edges aren't what she's longing to touch at all, so the hand just hovers in the air, knowing it's as close as she'll ever get...
She'll look at me occasionally and see me smiling at her, her eyes close tight with the sudden smile she returns; her head pivots back to the lights, and then quickly to me, indicating where my attention should be, so I look at them, too: a hundred plastic lights wrapped around a displaced tree. She settles her gaze back on them once I've complied, fully engaged and perfectly mesmerized; filled with the wonder they bring, but longing for what lies just behind them, or inside them, or somewhere near them; I look at what she sees and all the plastic is gone; there's light and color so pure and abiding that it makes me want to laugh and cry in equal measure...
It's two weeks after Christmas, 1976, and this little girl will endure terrible things in the next thirty years, but the wonder in her eyes never diminishes; she shows up at my door a week ago with a CD that Elvis Costello recorded with Allen Toussaint, and tells me that she thought of me when she heard it. We're both in a hurry; we hug and wish each other a Merry Christmas, and I neglect to mention that when I think of Christmas, it's always her eyes, full of light, that I remember most, and the way she showed me how the eye of the beholder can transform what's beheld into something more than it might have been, left on its own...

That alarm clock, 5:30 in the morning, always bad news-- cut it with five cups of coffee and it's still bad-- jazz, because that's public radio, and beats the living shit out of waking at the behest of shrieking car salesmen...
Bus driver's early, and don't mess with him-- his son was gunned down at a party more than a year ago; he's a good guy, understandably temperamental. Big crowd, and bigger every week-- SRO before we hit Colorado Boulevard, I thumb up the volume on my iPod and root in deep near the back.
I've got my own office at work, but don't expect it to last-- they've moved Graphics around so often that we're known as gypsies-- we can break down the whole works and relocate in less than a day.
There's an art museum two blocks away and Watercourse bakery with its fresh supply of coffee even closer.
Bus ride home; push, shove, and negotiate, hit deviantART, hit the drawing board,
(the brush meets the canvas and you fall awake; engaged in a way that divides you from the whole of the day; bright green oil paint-- you saw ivy today through grimy bus windows-- oil paint makes it grow into the letters of a poem a gifted young woman has written; how would light refract through ivy that's grown in that way...)
hit the bed before things get too crazy;
(eyes shut and laying flat, you're still painting, you drift off into something the paint will only guess at tomorrow, sooner than you think,)
it's frantic horn music from that alarm clock again...

She'd guide my way like religion; like a constitution I'd renew my allegiance to every morning. I've never believed in anything as fervently as I did in her, and when I wasn't with her, I wanted to be painting her...
Art is a place where you can have some control over outcome, afterall; where you can demand that the results of your efforts measure up to the standards the subject deserves.
The loose ends and half-kept promises we made to each other still provide me with the energy I use to recommit to the drawing board and easel on a regular basis; all of that unfinished business becomes material for each new painting; people leave you with as many new holes to fill with paint as they ever provided answered prayers for your heart.
The unfinished business you have with anyone your heart felt a strong connection with is as essential a resource for your art as what's left in every tube of paint you own...
This is the only balance I've ever known, and the putty that can keep even the most badly broken heart beating just like new.
If I love artists more than other people it's mostly because of this: they don't settle for lemonade, they make transfusions of inspiration from the bitter fruits of despair. And they tend to have better record collections, too...

A dragon lives forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys
One grey night it happened Jacky Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar

The old guy's got my number, alright; I've been in this same kind of trouble since I was in the second grade. He looks like Commissioner Gordon from Batman comics, but he sounds exactly like Ned Flanders from The Simpsons. He locks eyes with me at the job interview and tells me frankly, "I doubt your work ethic; I think you've made it clear that paintings are your major priority."
Yeah, well...
In the 10 years this thing had gone from internship to part-time temp work, then full-time 6 months out of the year, then 9 months out of the year, I'd grown increasingly less optimistic about it turning into any kind of secure position.
But 5 years ago, I'd been commissioned to do 5 paintings in 6 months and, besides not coming anywhere close to meeting that deadline, I'd also learned that I did not want to paint full-time; my art is a direct and urgent response to the hard knocks of bus rides, daily responsibilities, and difficult friendships; full-time painting brings out the depressive hermit in me.
Even so, after 10 years I was in the process of saying goodbye to my day job; two years ago I'd arranged to have Mondays off, and in the past year (my first under Commissioner Flanders' watch), I'd been showing up increasingly late in more and more casual attire-- I never missed a deadline, but I clearly wasn't taking this thing seriously anymore.
Then a series of bafflingly dramatic exits in the graphics section eventually led to an unlikely opportunity to interview for the very job I'd been courting for 10 years...
I explain some of this to the old guy without becoming defensive, and I end up getting the job despite his continued misgivings-- my supporters had more pull than my single detractor-- but he actually does hate me, I think, and he clearly means to make the most of the 1 year probation attached to new hires.
Easy enough not to screw it up, so long as you don't find yourself still painting at midnight, or goofing around on dA first thing in the morning...

His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane
Without his life-long friend Puff could not be brave
So Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave

I do finally see it now-- that moment when people give up this business of dreaming on paper and become the grown-ups they're supposed to be; I get it in a way I never did before. But tomorrow's my 46th birthday, and it's way too late for me: that magic's the only thing that can redeem the hard knocks of bus rides, daily responsibilities, and difficult friendships.
And lately, the dragon's been whispering crazy things about giving acrylic paint a try...

Listening to: My Favorite: Burning Hearts
Reading: Sarah Vowell: Take The Cannoli
Watching: Lost, Season 2

The part-time temp job I've had for 10 years turned permanent and full-time almost a month ago; I've made adjustments to make sure that I'm also painting whenever I can, but my participation in deviantART suffered a little bit; I'm still here every day, but mostly for frustratingly short visits...
There've been times in the past two years when dA was the only thing I wanted to do; there are times right now when it still is.
I love dA5's color scheme, and the way our galleries look. I love the little icon that allows me to visit my friends' pages whenever I want; I love having 5 deviations on display at once, as well as 2 favorites (I find myself favoring 2 at a time these days), and 2 wishlist items.
But my initial response to the new dA was an odd kind of withdrawal; I found myself just browsing in stunned silence... Then, a deviant faked his own death, and I recommended what turned out to be a bogus piece for a daily deviation; $lolly unbanned a bunch of deviants, one of my current favorite artists joined the site, `kolaboy submitted another masterpiece, and two of my very best friends on the site completely stopped participating--
Wait! Maybe it's been a typical month on deviantART afterall...


One of my deviations has 3 oranges in the Artist's Comments. The first person to correctly identify the title of that deviation by commenting in this journal wins their choice of a.) A print account; b.) A one year deviantART subscription; or c.) Any one of my prints (but not printed on canvas).
Fun, fun, fun...
Edit:The insanely talented *frolix8 has won my first ever contest, handily... I'll do another one again sometime, soon.

Listening to: Tori Amos: Cars And Guitars
Reading: John Twelve Hawks: The Traveler

Listening to: The Brilliant Green: Hello Another Way
Reading: John Twelve Hawks: The Traveler

Francine was the first authentic punk I'd ever met.
Tiny but tough, with a pompadour and motorcycle boots, always dressed in black; owner of a pet lizard with a badly damaged spine named X. Each of us students carried around identical black portfolios with our work and tools zipped inside of them; hers had an explosion of abstract expressionist colors she'd painted on its front; neither the book nor its contents resembled anyone else's. People steered clear of her; she looked as if she might be dangerous...
We were assigned as lab partners together in photography class; I felt like Ron Howard sitting next to the Fonz. It didn't take long to discover that she was one of the sweetest people I would ever meet; it was as if she'd taken all of the hostility that most of us keep bottled up and had adorned her outer self with it, leaving a childlike and wide-awake personality left to thrive unhindered by it. We loved the same strong coffee and loud music; we'd exchange taped compilations of the music we felt the most passionate about.
In my work, I try to get to the core of what I'm fascinated by in the first draft, and then I step back and refine it for months; sometimes years.
She would always finish a piece in the same session that she'd started it; she felt that refining was akin to apologizing, and that a painting was a complete thought the minute her first impulse to paint it had been spent.
Our work didn't resemble each other's at all, but among the many things I learned from her was that great music doesn't necessarily require great musicians, and that honoring one's initial impulses is a battle worth waging.
And there's every chance she's a member of this Web site, and that we'll bump into each other again some day...

Listening to: Rainer Maria: Catastrophe Keeps Us Together
Reading: Dennis Lehane: Shutter Island

Allow 6 months to one year before varnishing...
I read those words like they were my own death sentence; I'm the most impulsive person you've ever met; I don't make plans that cover more than a single week...
But oil paintings don't evaporate in drying, they oxidize, and that takes a long time to happen. I couldn't imagine holding out for that long-- waiting an additional year after finishing before I could actually call it finished.
The things that hapened this year... old friends lost, lost friends regained, and new friendships springing up without any warning; constant upsets and surprises at my day job, with more on the way; if it ever does stabilize down there, we'll just be bored, but boredom can sound like a state of bliss when you're on this side of it.
Me, I've changed so little; tough to be objective about it, but I seem to be exactly the same guy I was a year ago.
Today, I varnished my very first oil painting, though, and let it dry out in the sun while I wrote this journal.
If you've hesitated to try your hand at oils because of the long drying time, I gotta tell ya, one year can go by with nothing short of terrifying speed...

Listening to: The Breeders: Huffer
Reading: Michael Connely: The Poet

I've learned the hard way that I can't get the same nourishment from art that I do from people, but art is a necessary consequence of being involved with people on any level.

Harlan Ellison once wrote a short story whose premise was that your imagination is your soul; I absolutely agree with that.

Music provides ice for my imagination to skate on.

I've been drawing portraits of people I know since I was in the second grade, having only a vague idea of what I've wanted their reaction to be; recently, *artistm0nk did one of me, and I experienced exactly what I've wanted for the people I've drawn: the weird thrill of seeing yourself, through someone else's eyes, and having a souvenir of it.

I always begin a new drawing or painting in a peaceful state that approaches bliss; there comes a point in the middle where I become hateful and angry, nearly violent-- a condition I've come to know as Poisonhead. Finishing always takes place in as peaceful and contented a state as I know of.

People tend to prefer my black and white work to what I do with color, and they might be right: I always know the finish line with a pencil, but I'm seldom sure of that with paint... There are multiple finish lines with color, which must be crossed simultaneously.

I know I'm doing good work when I completely lose track of time. Time is my sworn enemy, and I seldom have any idea how long any of my pieces actually took to get finished.

I'm glad to know that I'll always be an art student; being an artist requires an admission of ignorance and a commitment to go on learning.

I used to go to the art supply store once a week, more to touch base with other artists than to purchase anything; thanks to deviantART, I only go to the store for supplies once a month, so I'm constantly running out of everything.

When forming real and actual friendships, nothing compares with what you learn from eye contact, except maybe... deviantART is different from other internet communities because you get to see what stirs behind those eyes.

_{(title stolen from Harlan Ellison)}

Listening to: PJ Harvey: A Perfect Day Elise
Reading: Dennis Lehane: A Drink Before The War
Watching: Deadwood, Season 2

My first real job was working at the Fox Aurora Theatre, starting when I was 17. It had been built in the 1940s and had retained the exotic and mysterious style of those times; thick glass and heavy chrome, pink stucco walls, maroon drapes and curtains; an art-deco palace built to double as an air raid shelter. It looked and felt like no other building in the area.
We'd grown up seeing everything from The Magic Sword to Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid there, always in the form of double features. When they consented to allow me to work there, first selling tickets and popcorn, then as an assistant manager, I couldn't even believe it; it was a job that I never took for granted and was easily the best part of my highschool years. I worked there til I was 21, my first year of art school.
There were sudden rumours of the theatre's impending doom-- someone wanted to tear it down; someone else had it declared as an historical landmark, saving it only temporarily. Ownership of the theatre had fallen into dubious hands and, one weekend, a fire, full of curious insurance money repercussions, gutted the theatre's interior and, overnight, this cathedral of celluloid dreams had become an empty husk surrounded on all sides by the blight of pawnshops and liquor stores that had gradually replaced a thriving neighborhood. It was now just a question of when they'd get around to knocking down the walls that had held all of those dreams together for so long.
Years went by, and the executioner's hand would be stayed at the last minute by neighborhood groups and rebellious city fathers; finally the property was claimed by something called the Arts Council, and, one summer, they repaired the interior faithfully, bit by bit, making it a venue for live theatre and musical productions and, eventually, replaced its projector and big screen.
It's now the site of the Annual Asian Film Festival out here every June; a major film venue debuting the works of directors from China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and more. This year, two of my pieces,

hung in the show that corresponds with the Festival at The Other Side Arts gallery nearby.
One week ago today, I watched Zhang Yuan's Little Red Flowers, which served as the Festival's closing performance, deep in the belly of the same theatre that had, in turn, watched me grow from child to teenager and now to teetering adult. The movie told the story of a child who could not bring himself to conform to the rules, and who sees, at the end, that it would always be this way for him, that he'd never be able to comfortably fit in.
I walked away at the movie's end smiling to myself, thinking of the countless secret things this place and I had shared in all of our years together, and hoping that whatever mystical and benign forces that had conspired to rescue it would continue to look out for me as well...

<sub>di·a·pa·son
n.
1. A full, rich outpouring of harmonious sound.
2. The entire range of an instrument or voice.</sub>

Listening to: REM: Let Me In
Reading: Ian McEwan: Saturday




There's this painting I've been working on for almost six years now.
Years.
In my studio, I have two large drawing boards, an easel, and my computer station, all vying for space. This painting is 48" x 60", and there's barely room left over for it.
When I'd first sketched it out, it was to be a painting about women and their relationship to music, but somewhere between the finished pencil drawing and what got transferred onto canvas, the attacks of September 11, 2001 happened, and in the weeks that followed, I grew preoccupied with an image of empty chairs floating down from the sky; that image eventually crowded its way into this piece, making it a painting about the importance of women and their relationship to music at a time when the world seems to be on the verge of apocalypse...
There are many reasons why this painting has lingered here for nearly six years now; why it'll sometimes languish for months on end, tucked away wherever I can find room for it, while I work on other things.
One of the five women in the painting is the closest friend I've ever had, and this will likely be the last time I ever paint her; we haven't spoken for several months, now.
Every painting carries significance to the artist that won't necessarily be apparent to those who view it; this one in particular is the record of an astonishing and important time for me; of sudden changes and amazing friendships; Japanese music and brand new mediums; a time in my life when anything seemed possible and full of a crazy kind of beauty.
I worked on it all day Sunday with the sincere intention of finishing it very soon, but I'm not kidding myself here: this one's going to be difficult to say goodbye to.