Proud Big Sis

My brother Jared just started a blog, which I'm really happy about, as I enjoy his fresh perspective. He's got a good eye for photography and intelligent things to say. And that's coming from a totally unbiased source.

Also, if you happen to stumble over there, he turns 20 today, so wish him a happy b-day.

All of the siblings together on thanksgiving:

Amy, me, Jared and Scott

Instant Gratification

Instant Gratification: a polaroid party opening reception will be Saturday, January 9 from 6:00-9:00pm at Copro Gallery bergamot arts complex 2525 michigan ave. T5, Santa Monica, CA 90404. Be there!


For more info check out www.ISMcommunity.org/FAQs.

Come and see if you can find some of my photos:






Instant Gratification August '09 at the Hibbleton:

Me with my friend Leslie, who also has Polaroids in the show

My mom and I

 The bearded dude in the hat is my brother.

Chairs at the laundramat by my old apartment.

A Return to Objectivity and Formalism

With the ninja-like approach of winter, my sudden discomfort with being alone has transformed into a craving for solitude. Not the kind you get locking yourself in a room, but the kind you take with you into the mountains with a good book or a new set of watercolors. There is something alchemical about the twilight hour between fall and winter. leaves may be dying, but I feel more alive. Maybe it's the shock of the cold- like jumping into a freezing pool.

Life has been very real this Autumn, and imbuing my "paper bags" painting with loaded metaphor left me feeling strangely raw. As this semester draws to a hasty and whirlwind close, as I dust off the dead leaves of bittersweet fall (and as I wax relentlessly poetic), I feel increased need for objectivity and detachment. Maybe not so much detachment as his much more optimistic cousin, non-attachment. (Much less bitter, and with Buddhist sensibilities!)

My intellect is exhausted, my emotions are expended, and the conceptual artist in me may in fact need to hibernate for the wintertime. And I intend to let her sleep.
No more emoting, no more searching for truths and hidden meanings. When something wants to be found, it will present itself. No more self inquisition and pseudo-psychic intuiting. At least not 'till January. Haha.

For now: thinking not feeling, observing not analyzing, representing not imagining.
I don't need my unrelenting thoughts telling me to infuse every creative expression with spiritual meanings, references, simile, or my innermost (yet universal) desires. Blah blah blah. I don't even want to feel the need to provoke insight with the obscure a la Hugo Ball.

I just want to see something, break it down into colors and shapes, and make something that resembles that something. For the first time in a long time, I just want to paint, draw, write about, admire objects strictly for their formal elements. It's like a meditation.

Indeed, sometimes they do go up in smoke...

The Subjectification of Objects.

 For my painting midterm, the assignment is to compose and paint a picture of paper lunch bags. I see the potential to project human emotion onto inanimate objects: I see relationships, not just of color and scale , but ones based on human emotion. 

I envision an inflated bag standing over a prone, deflated bag. I imagine piled body-bags, bags crowded together joyously in celebration, or a single lonely bag. I feel love and loss, and the whole trajectory from indifference to immediacy to intimacy and back again. 

Maybe that's strange: a "portrait" of bags. Why not? If it means I'll care more about the project, and really put my all into it, then it can't be that crazy.

20 thumbnail sketches due by next Tuesday. Hopefully I'll have something raw and conceptual that will want to be painted so desperately, that when I'm finished, I will stand back and ask, "Oh my god, did I paint that?"

I feel a little ridiculous. I'm falling in art-love with paper bags. 

This must be what you would call dorking-out.

(completed painting) updated 10/27. I just had crit. today, and got a really good feedback. Also it was said to have drama;  so I think my metaphor carried through.

My First (Presumably) Finished Still Life in Oils

Horrible quality phone images, yes. But this is my first still life homework from painting class. Being just as conceptual, if not more, than I am visual, still lifes (lives?) often make me develop a shorter attention span. Mostly because I have no emotional connection to the objects. For homework assignments, I get to pick my own objects to paint representations of.
Naturally all of these items are either significant to me, metaphorically symbolic, or just really attractive to me visually or in a tactile way. (hint: recognize anything round and blue?)

Mystic Orb Journey

Here's just a preview of the long ago promised photos from my conceptual art project, the Mystic Orb Journey. Only the first in more of such explorations, I hope. The actual Physical art objects that will be a result, or lasting document of this adventure are coming along... slowly but steadily. (It's difficult to do with a full load at school, but it's gonna happen).

These photos are the last of the Mystic Orb Question segment of the trip. For some reason blogger deems it right to upload and place in a backwards style. That's fine.
More to come soon!