3 March 2010

thank you

I can breathe a bit now, and with that breath I want to thank Paul Karabinis and the students and good folks in Jacksonville for hosting me last week, and for reminding me just what the damn point of all this is…

I’ll admit it – the last few months have been really difficult, what with hardly any paid work and long days and nights in the studio, working much faster than I am used to doing. I prefer the slow ponderous drag of daydreams, not the high-pressure deadlines of an approaching show, but who ever has that luxury? I had a backlog of things I had started or sketched, and it was great to get at them finally, but I never realized how important reverie is to making good work. So many great ideas and details come from the glance and wander….

Luckily, it is, in fact, quite easy not to go out and spend any money in New York (particularly if one likes cooking at home as much as I do) although I think my friends have started to give up on me some… Indeed, I have rarely been happier than in those small moments of pure artistic myopia, thinking of nothing but the piece in front of me. It’s just a shame that reality keeps knocking on the door, demanding to be let in. It’s those moments that make the Art Life seem so sad and ridiculous. Why work so hard on little silly things that so few people will see? Why dig around so deeply in the uncomfortable depths of one’s life? Why not be a Responsible Citizen and work all day for someone else to pay your bills on time…? (Okay, I know the answer to that last one.)

One sure way to get the other answers is to surround yourself with people who actually appreciate what you do, and with talented students eager to dive into the same water you’ve been treading for years. There’s nothing better than having someone understand your little artistic in-joke, or to see the fire lit in someone’s eyes by the same spark that got you going, way back when… Again, I can’t thank them enough.

And now, onward.

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