*sniffle*

I'm having a lil' separation anxiety. The Boy started first grade today.

Journal Page, May 2010

This is the first time I've really had to let go of him since The Boy started day care at seven months old. Now, almost exactly five years later, he's entering elementary school early. (Most of the other kids are six-year-olds.)

He's gotten tons of attention for the past week or so as we got closer to the start of school: school supplies shopping, a visit from Po and Ya (two of his grandparents), congratulations from his kindergarten teacher and friends. So that's cushioned some of the transition. He's fine with it, a little concern yesterday once the reality started to sink in.


This morning we held hands and dove into the swirl of hundreds of kids as we made our way to his classroom. I gave him a hug, told him I loved him very much, and watched him go into class. Then I went home and blubbered a little.

I'm in!

Today I got the good news: my artwork has been chosen to be shown in the "It's Not Easy Being Green" juried art exhibit! You'll remember pieces in the show explore the "green" theme -- both the color and the eco-friendly concept. My piece is a three-fer: the touches of green color, the green-eyed monster of jealousy as the subject, and the fact that it's partly made with recycled materials.

Thirty-eight artists were selected for the show, featuring 2D and 3D artwork at the Lynnwood Library Gallery. Three winners will receive prize baskets at the opening reception on October 2nd, 11am-12pm.

*ahem* This is your Official Invitation to the reception!

The show runs from September 27th to November 18th. See you at the reception!

Exhibiting in NYC

The end of a long, tense saga is finally here.

You might remember I exhibited this artist book at a gallery in New York, about four months ago.

Photo courtesy Robert Skelton

It was a bit of a leap of faith to send "Someday" all the way cross-country, but I took a deep breath and did it. My college friend Robert and my cousins Tim, Simone and Jackson attended the reception for me...

Photo courtesy Simone Pratt

and sent iPhone photos back so I could be there in spirit. Everything was going fine. Until it was time for the gallery to return my artwork.

Courtesy Robert Skelton

The monthlong exhibit came and went, and so did the five week period during which the artwork was to be returned to the artists. I checked their website and Facebook page to see if there was anything going on, and there wasn't -- by which I mean there WASN'T a gallery, and their website had been taken down. Other artists were posting frantically on Facebook trying to find out what happened.

In a nutshell, the gallerists seem to have had a falling-out, and they closed the gallery with no notice in June. One gallerist stayed in New York, while the other went to Boston. No forwarding information, nothing. It wasn't technically theft, but because the gallerists must have known the gallery needed to be closed down and didn't return the artwork when they knew, their actions constituted fraud. So I filed a witness statement via my local authorities, who forwarded it to the New York police department precinct nearest the gallery.

Finally, an artist who'd posted on the gallery's FB page received word from one of the gallerists, the one in New York. He said he was shipping back each piece -- from all of their exhibits since April -- one by one, which was why he wasn't answering emails in a timely fashion. He answered two of my emails as well, but then stopped communicating. Just as I was debating my next move... my artist book arrived.

It actually was shipped from the Boston area. I suppose the other gallerist must have taken some of the art and started shipping it as well. Good thing I sent it in a (decorative) box within the shipping box.

Hinges torn right off. Look what happened to the outer box.

I must say that two or three of the artists I was in contact with have gotten back their art also, in good condition and in some cases, packed better than they had done themselves. But it makes me wonder: do you have to breathe down every gallery's neck just to get your artwork back, maybe in the same condition you sent it? Does this happen at the big-dog galleries too?

Courtesy Bravo TV

During this whole personal saga, I was watching "Work of Art," and there's no way I could see the Brooklyn Museum of Art treating their artists this badly. (My favorite artist -- Abdi Farah, aka "Cartoony Boy" here on the blog, won the big prize of a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum! Hurray for Abdi!!!)

Courtesy Bravo

But then again, they've been around a long time and they're publicly funded and more stable. Maybe you've exhibited in a group show or a solo show. I'd love to hear about your experience, and any suggestions you might have about finding a more trustworthy gallery.

The green-eyed monster

Remember how I said I was trying to make a deadline, and that's why I delayed posting for like two weeks? Here's what I was working on.

The painted-over, resized image of my grandfather is the focal point for a piece I've submitted to a local art exhibit. The Lynnwood Arts Commission asked for "green" artwork, in either/both senses of the word. Environmentally green interested me... but it didn't grab me and smack me upside the head like the 'green-eyed monster.'

And my grandfather's love life has just been begging me to re-imagine it. Three marriages in four decades? There must be something interesting going on there. To the divorce deposition, Robin!

My grandfather rarely said more than two words at a time, the way I remember it. But I now have copies of his divorce files, which tell me a lot more than he ever would have. I copied some of them in a loooong sheet...

... and tore up regular-sized copies to create a cave of sorts, inspired by Michael deMeng's "Cave of Pages" class. For my piece, I wired and glued together cigar boxes for two parts of the story.

I altered a painting of grandpa's house that had a deliberate rip running through it, and dripped a little green onto the rip. Then I positioned grandpa and his jealousy-consumed heart beneath the drip.

In order to age the papers as if they were burnt by the Flames of Jealousy, I did a lot of painting the text and its torn edges. A LOT of painting. Oh my God, I was so sick of painting. But the piece just wouldn't leave me alone until I'd done every last page. You know how it is.

Okay, some of them were more fun than others: The shred above is from a policeman's testimony. He and his partner caught grandpa's ex-wife making out with her boyfriend one night on the steps of the public library.

And finally, I painted the caulk/"rock" of the cave's exterior, to make it more rock-like, to marry it with the divorce paper scroll, and to connect the top with the bottom more strongly.

You know, one of the best parts of being DONE! with this piece is realizing some of the choices I made subconsciously. Like the fact that I used cigar boxes -- recycled, of course, but hey, cigars are made of tobacco leaves... and my grandfather was born, lived and died in tobacco country.

Or the doll legs: I just wanted female legs to peep through the cave door, but after a while I realized that's all I really know about her -- what she allegedly did with those legs, not what she said or thought. There was no testimony from her. But it's interesting to think about what hadn't been said about that relationship.

I find out if my piece was accepted for the exhibit on September first.

Into the woods

Road trip!

The artists head out of town to be Inspired By Nature. The "Work of Art" show producers have decided you have to go to Connecticut to find the woods, but at least they chose a public park with an impressionist art trail. Swanky is, again, thrilled by the challenge, which also stipulates they must use something they've found in the woods. Cartoony and Designated Hotness... not so much.

For these city kids, there's too much... Nature.

And for once, the overwhelmed artist sleeping while they should be working is not Tortured -- it's DH. (Okay, her cold made it hard for her to work. Whatever.)

After a little talk with God, Cartoony gets his groove back. He gathers gravel to be used as a drawing medium. Swanky has something interesting going on with acorns that has to do with her grandfather's Algonquin heritage and his love of the outdoors.

Tortured considers making mustard gas as part of his piece, but decides it's not a good idea to kill off the competition. The Mad Hatter's experience of nature is from San Francisco's parks. So after a conversation with Tortured about what her piece needs -- oh, that can't be good --

MH goes for the public-sex-in-the-park concept, throwing some risque drawings into the branches of her artwork. The stakes are actually, as advertised, pretty high. Two will be eliminated tonight. So it really is go time.

Unfortunately for Swanky, the homage to her Native American ancestry doesn't really come through. The judges get more of an alien dinosaur egg vibe from it, and most of them don't get why the artwork is relatively small. The judges like the bottom half of MH's piece, but not the top half with the sex cartoons. DH makes another cold, distant piece, since she doesn't have the faintest connection to nature or organic substances.

Oh wait, there's one of the rocks she picked up. There's the connection. Tortured makes something that makes sense to the judges. But how he got from the fungus he brought back from the woods...

... to the torture device he used to paint a random bleach pattern on paper... WTF?

After the last two artwork debacles, 'Toony is ready to go all out and take some risks. He creates a self-portrait of himself lying down, with a wash of the gravel/paint in a water line beneath. It's called "Baptism."

It practically levitates off the page with emotion. Winner winner chicken dinner! Not a surprise: DH goes home. Big surprise: Swanky, not the Mad Hatter, gets the boot.

MH is shocked too -- she all but says to the judges, "Oh no, you've made a mistake. I'm the one you're sending home." But let's face it... 'Toony kicked ass, DH had no clue, Swanky's point wasn't clear, and Tortured is the Drama.

Maybe because this second-to-last episode had some actual drama, the show didn't bother with the fake drama of watching Swanky and DH take their artwork home. I'm so ready to see the finale but I don't want any spoilers --  no tease clips! Name the winner yourself in the comments section.

You're not dragging me down with you!

"Work of Art" contestants: Cover your face or cross your arms if you're sick of these "partner up with your competitor" challenges.

Switzerland announced the remaining six artists would pair up for an "opposites attract" challenge: Heaven and Hell, Order and Chaos, Male and Female. The Mad Hatter actually said "Holy shit" at this news. To be more specific:

So it's Mad Hatter & Goofy, Tortured & Designated Hotness, and Swanky & Cartoony. At first, it looks like S&W will be the dynamic duo: great conceptual work with amazing energy.

But pretty soon it's clear no one really knows what the hell to do except Swanky and Tortured. And Tortured mainly just wants to get DH naked. For the art, of course. (Well, that's what she does; she might as well do it in a Male/Female artwork.) Speaking of manipulative little drama queens, Tortured outs himself as such twice just in this episode: getting DH to strip for their art piece (not difficult) and admitting he got Starvingartist to hold back on using a material Tortured wanted to use.

All the pieces pretty much sucked.

I think the artists were shaken because this is at least the second time in a row that the challenge is too damn broad to produce something interesting in a matter of hours. Let the blame-storming and throwing-under-the-bus begin!

Goofy says he was just going along with the Mad Hatter's idea; MH says he didn't bring anything to the table. The judges allow Tortured to suck up and throw in his two cents. Long story short, the Heaven and Hell piece was too literal. Goofy goes home. And for some reason, Switzerland actually tears up delivering the news.

Why? It's not like she was fighting for him to get a second chance! WTF? Maybe you can explain it to me in the comments.

"Tell me about your muzzer." -- Dr. Freud

So sorry I've been away for so long... I had to make a deadline for an art exhibit that I waited until the last two weeks to do. Let's go back to the episode I meant to dissect two weeks ago: Dealing with your Childhood Angst Without the Help of a Trained Professional.

As you may remember, the contestants holed up in a children's museum.

And then they were forced to create something out of the crap student art supplies that only mixed-media artists usually know how to transform into something amazing. The artwork had to show how the contestants' childhood experiences transformed them into the artists they are today. The reaction from most of the artists:
"MY CHILDHOOD IS A LOCKED ROOM TO WHICH I HAVE THROWN AWAY THE KEY."

Especially Designated Hotness, who was once -- shocker! -- the kid nobody'd sit with at lunch time.

"It sounds sad, but I would just like, go in the bathroom stall and like, eat my lunch alone." (That explains the boob job and her obsession with the male gaze). Even Cartoony Boy, who usually has great ideas right away, is daunted. Tortured Artist is ready to curl up and die because he can't use his familiar tools: "I don't wanna go home for not knowing how to use popsicle sticks."

The only people excited about the challenge are Swanky and Weird White Girl the Mad Hatter. (Look at her headgear. I had to change her nickname.)

Oh yeah, and no more immunity for winning a challenge. Ready to call Mommy now?

Speaking of mommies, Starving is even more unprepared to deal with his childhood issues. Apparently his Jehovah's Witness mother pretty much ignores him now that he's not down with the church. "I know my mother still loves me to death but she, like..." [four LOOOONG pauses, blinks back tears] "she doesn't respect my life choices."  Poor bastards: they're being judged on their artwork and who they were as vulnerable kids.

Inspector Clouseau pretty much hates everything he sees, because they're recreations of actual childhood artworks. So do the judges and Switzerland. Only Swanky and the Mad Hatter create pieces that are both symbolic and personally meaningful.

The Mad Hatter's artwork looks like My Little Pony went to a swingers' party, but that's the point. "Rainbow" references her childhood growing up in a San Francisco commune -- again, what a shock -- and the people she loved dying of AIDS. Guest judge Will Cotton offers high praise: "I don't often see a work of art that I wish I'd made myself, and yours is one of them."

Starving goes home, but not to Mommy.

Tell me what you thought of this ep, but no spoilers for the next two! I haven't watched them on the DVR yet!