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life
respite
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After a busy fall, I took some much-needed time off last month. Away from the studio, away from trying to write - I just read and read and read and hung out with my family. In 2006, I tried to go all out for the Holidays: hosting a cocktail party at my house, going to fancy dinners, enjoying choir concerts, observing Advent, shopping for The Perfect Gift, decking my house out with tons of lights. And not because I felt like I had to pretend to be happy, but because I genuinely enjoy those things. Then the week before Christmas a new job, a wedding and a death in the family forced my attention away from all those devoirs, those self-inflicted “must-dos” and dashed all of my efforts to celebrate the holidays. I didn’t realize how traumatic those experiences were until this season came around.

So this year, I let my brain check out around the 10th of December and stay holed up in the Me Motel for a few weeks. But the holidays still weren’t easy to get through. Re-living the memories of last year reminded me of Joan Didion’s memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, and since I let the decorating and partying slide this year, I had more time to be a good American and shop, which brought on a spiritual crisis of sorts that’s continuing through the New Year. The disgusted feeling lingered for a few days and came out in a fretful conversation with my husband about who was left to buy gifts for on our Nice list. “I feel like I need to be doing more,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, all this shopping - it seems so unnecessary. I feel like I should be helping others. I feel like I ought to be giving money to charity instead. We’ve had to cut back a lot the last few month but we’ve still got enough left over to buy gifts. But I still feel this pressure, this guilt about being able to do that. Like we’re still better off than a lot of people. Am I being too hard on myself? Because then again, maybe we’re not that much better off, because we haven’t been saving any money lately. But is saving money just hoarding in disguise? Which makes me think that this guilt is coming from feeling bullied by the preaching about money at church lately. But I don’t think it’s Catholic guilt, as they say. (I don’t know what people are talking about when they say ‘Catholic guilt’ - it’s a cliche.) It’s more like Virgo guilt. The perfectionism and this desire to serve and help other people.” Deep breath.

He looks at me warily, not quite comprehending. “Capricorns - we’re driven and ambitious, but we don’t really get into all that.”

“I know, the holidays are a special time to show your family and friends that you care about them. It’s just… why do we need stuff to express that? Why do we spend all this time and money and looking for crap that they don’t need?”

“Because it’s the holidays and that’s what you’re supposed to do.” (now shut up and quit worrying).

When the Big Day finally came, I was spared from all these dreary ruminations. I became rather ill with stomach flu about 20 minutes before my family started opening gifts on Christmas Eve and spent much of the night and next day making donations to a porcelain collection bowl. While this wasn’t the most merry way to observe the birth of the Lord, and on an ordinary day, I’d just think, I’m sick and it sucks, but Christmas forced me me to find a silver lining: I think the universe was telling me, it’s not ever going to be Perfect, it’s OK not to be Perfect, so let go. Literally.

After all recovering from all the throwing up, I threw out my back while playing with the dog a couple days later. I was back in good health on New Year’s Eve, but dry weather and high winds spoiled the 5-mattress bonfire I’d been looking forward to. Yet another Act of God. I took that as another sign to extend my vacation another day or two, and naturally on my first day back at work, the gears were a little squeaky. My back had finally healed so I headed to the gym last night to start melting away any Santa belly I may have gotten over the previous month. Exercise was just the remedy to blow away the Holiday stupor and return to my endorphin-induced daydreams and plans. So here I go again.
www, style, life
Absence makes the heart grow…
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I’ve been too busy to post on, much less check, the wardrobe_remix group on Flickr for the last 6+ weeks. I’ve been a much happier person since I quit worrying about how many views my photos got, getting comments, acquiring new things to show off, being heavily influenced other people’s clothes. My absence has also solved a quandry I’d been facing for a couple of months that had been causing me some mental “wear” & tear: what is my style? Experimenting and trying new (to me) looks since I joined the group in December of last year has been a bold, positive step forward, but I felt like I was losing myself in the process. I felt like I had to be constantly searching for the perfect accessory, evaulating every detail of what I was going to wear the next day, growing tired quickly of what I already owned, stressing about wearing the same outfit twice, and jealous of what other people had on.

And yet I couldn’t stay away, even though I knew that was the key to release. Since work and extra-curricular activities have forced me to withdraw from the group, I’ve re-discovered some things about my habits and style.
- I’m definitely a fashion chameleon, changing constantly from day to day.
- I tend to get stuck on an outfit or accessory of the week or month that I wear constantly.
- I like looking, but not buying. I put a lot of things back before I check out at the register. It’s not just the money-spending that bothers me, it’s also that I don’t want to get things “for fun” that don’t fit in. I can usually tell when I’ll get tired of something quickly or never wear it.
- I like simple, elegant, interestingly-cut clothes with bold accessories.
- Fit is all-important.
- I like black, and bright colors. I don’t like neutrals or pastels.
- This could be interpreted as subconscious/psychological: I like either prim, ladylike styles or androgynous, un-feminine looks.
- Dressing my age is important to me. So ladylike is the operative adjective in the previous item; I don’t like to look girly.
- Trends aren’t that important. I have always chosen clothes intuitively and find I am much happier when I don’t pay attention to trends.
But wardrobe_remix also impacted me positively and really helped me grow as a person.
- Best thing: I’m not afraid to experiment anymore. In the past, when I’d get dressed to go out, I’d have on an unusual-looking (to me) or potentially too-dressy outfit that would never make it outside my bedroom. I’d change into something reliable at the last minute only to regret my conservatism later.
- I’m better able to put outfits together, which I think is also confidence-related. Some mornings, I still agonize about what to wear, but for the most part I find it easier to choose things now.
- Customizing and making my own clothes has become a cool new past-time.
- Being exposed and contributing to a global, online, fairly young community has provided feasts for thought.
portrait, women, paintings, life
I’m So Glad To Grow Older
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I did this painting coming out of a bad relationship. The title is lyrics from a Morissey song: ‘I’m so glad to grow older / to move away from those awful times / I’m in love for the first time / and I don’t feel bad.’

2000

Acrylic on canvas, 20″ x 28″

$250
women, paintings, life
Lost in thought
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Depression, or, Why Do Hot Dog Buns Come In Packages of 8 But Hot Dog Buns Come In Packages of 10? A friend suggested the second title. It’s such a serious subject, so it’s nice to have a funny twist. Plus, I’m a huge Animaniacs fan!

2004

Acryilc on peg board, 24″ x 36″

Collection of Joel Sweeney
paintings, life
Would You…
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This is a painting of an old friend I haven’t spoken with in years. The wood is an appropriate surface because my memories are frozen like wood, like rings on a tree. Wood can also look alive when it’s beautifully polished, so much that we forget it’s just dead material. The life is in the tree as it stands, not the wood, not the rings.

2005

Acrylic on wood, 16″ x 20″

$300
paintings, life
Brother B
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A portrait of my brother, Rick. We sometimes call each other Brother Bear and Sister Bear because we liked the Berenstain Bears when we were little.

Acrylic on wood

2005

Collection of Richard and Ruth Rouse
culture, words, life
Notes: know yourself, fool
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My writer husband and I got into a literary conversation a few weeks ago. His position as an educational program coordinator/editor for a small publisher gives him access to several erudite literary journals. A co-worker of his recommended he take home n+1, a hipster-y semi-annual publication of essays. We both read “The Intellectual Situation Against Email,” a humorous jab on human behavior and email relationships in the Winter 2007 issue. At first, we both thought it was great, till my husband started reading Richard Rodriguez’s Days of Obligation:An Argument With My Mexican Father. He read me a few of Rodriguez’s heady, evocative sentences and compared it the writing of n+1. Following are some notes from our ensuing discussion about knowing, presenting yourself, and living as an artist.

“n+1 is like something you’d read on a blog, compared to Days of Obligation. Yet the editor of The Elegant Variation is all pissed off at the editor of n+1 for asking him to promote their print publication on his website, then totally slamming blogs in his journal as not being real literature.”

“I took the email piece as amusement. It was well, er, cleverly-written, and I thought a lot of it was good observation. But I wouldn’t go so far to take it as literature. It was mocking, funny.” I said.

“Yeah, but that kind of writing will not stand the test of time. Not like Richard Rodriguez’s writing.”

“Maybe that’s not the point? I don’t know. It was like reading Misprint. You laugh because it’s so true… at this moment. Yet there is something disturbing about it. This… alienation…”

“Well, yesterday The New Republic came out with this big exposé that David Sedaris is a fake. He made all that stuff up about his childhood and whatnot. But they don’t get it. Non-fiction can be creative.”

I said, “They’re probably just trying to re-establish creditiblity after the whole Glass debacle.”

“I think they just don’t like him because his writing is good and he’s popularly successful. But you know what? It’s all these white guys in their hoity-toity ivory towers. They think they have to be all abstract and ironic and shit for it to be good writing. I don’t buy that. Writing should connect with people, not shut them out.”

“Maybe Sedaris’ was writing about himself up here,” I said, pointing at my head, “Not out here,” I finished, waving my arms about. “He wrote about himself as a character, how he imagined things as a child. We all do that. We all live up here. And maybe the difference with these snobs, hmm… I want to say this right… is that they imagine themselves as characters. OK. But they also live as these characters out here in the real world. They are so caught up in this world that they don’t experience things as real people. They are too busy being these characters who are supposed to do things a certain way.”

“And that’s why their writing doesn’t connect. Can you imagine the writing of n+1 being around in 50 years? Or the writing of Richard Rodriguez? They have to make up this Dave Eggers shit, where the white guy has to go to some foreign land to find himself.” He grimaces. “Jesus, if you’d live your life writing about what you know, you wouldn’t have to invent shit like that. And that’s what I really liked about Joel’s stuff. He set out to describe life as a ’suburban American’ as he calls it. That’s awesome. That’s what he knows.”
culture, life, critique
Throwing Bones
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In a city that prides itself on being a supportive place where creative people can do their thang, the cost of living here is slowly killing that climate. Despite what citizens with Keep Austin Weird and No War in Iraq bumper stickers neatly emblazoned on the back of their SUVs/VWs/recumbent bikes seem to take for granted, we artists aren’t just colorful mascots or animatronic robots appearing in the hippie/hipster theme park that is Austin. We don’t wear masks just because someone expects us to perform (unless there’s irony involved perhaps). Living as an artist means quite the opposite – it’s about being truthful, whatever that truth may be, to yourself and the people looking at you/your work. Perhaps I’m being optimistic here, but art is ultimately about integrity, not survival of the fittest. So no one buys your paintings. So you don’t even show your work. Does that mean you should just give up?

Visual art is finally starting to be taken seriously in this city, even if by a small number of people. But with music, art’s (unwitting?) frenemy, vastly overshadowing the creative scene here, most people aren’t sure how to look at it.

Let me put it another way. One of music’s most unique qualities is its absorbabilty, the way it can totally wash over your mind and body, or, on the opposite end, how you can shut it out. But art is, by nature, confrontational. It forces itself upon your eye and your space. And this quality makes it more complex and sometimes prickly to support - financially and emotionally as a viewer.

The best form of support is financial, whether it’s buying a piece or simply a donation at the door. And no, unless you are a friend of someone showing, you do not “support” artists by simply sipping wine at openings, and dropping pocket change in the donation jar. That may work fine for live music, although I’m sure it pisses a lot of musicians off when audiences are yapping and showing obvious disinterest during their shows.

But a lot of non-artists I meet seem afraid of pissing off the artists with their interpretations, their thoughts – whether they think the work is BS or the most engrossing thing they’ve ever seen. What these timid viewers don’t realize is that thoughtful comments are a needed and appreciated form of support. If an artist is showing their work, chances are they probably don’t want to work in a vaccuum and are putting it out there to get some reaction. What I’m getting at is that we as artists have to be vocal about encouraging the type of support we need.

Now that I’ve aired this festering rant I hope to turn over a more positive leaf.