A flier I made to promote my show. 10/29/13.Some photographs I took tonight while setting up at Sun-Ray Cinema.
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Last week I got a package from Taylor, which included a book called “Selling What You Make.” It wasn’t really the information in the book as much as its tone… I read about forty pages before I decided that I needed to get up and make something happen. Why wasn’t I trying to get stores to sell my prints or hang my paintings? I went to a few places downtown and a bunch more in Riverside trying to talk somebody into letting me do something. I was feeling pretty okay about the general responses I got early in but – when I decided to take a chance on the movie theater – I was kind of stunned. I only told a few people over the weekend ’cause I had a hard time accepting that it wasn’t going to fall through for some reason; It just seemed too cool to be real. The theater’s owner, Tim, took a look at some prints that I had brought with me and told me that I could come back on Monday to hang up (pretty much) as much of my artwork as I wanted (and after looking at all of them today, whichever pieces I wanted as well). It’s gonna be on display for the next month and I couldn’t be more excited (or grateful – for the opportunity from Tim, as well as the inspiration from Taylor).
Between the photos and the flier, you can gleam a lot of this info but… Sun-Ray Cinema is at Five Points in Riverside (at 1028 Park Street). And not only do they play movies, they’ve got an awesome kitchen and the seats in the theater have tables. It’s a really cool place and it’s been around since the 1920s. And it’s only a mile or so from my house. I guess it’d be cool to have a show at an art gallery, but an independent movie theater gets way more traffic and (probably) gets a crowd that’s a little more likely to “get” what I do. So – yeah – really, really excited. Tomorrow, I’m gonna flier the fuck out of this city and contact all the arts/weekend papers. Tonight, I’m gonna go to bed!
“Face Thing.” 12/12/12. Oil pastel and watercolor. 12×34″.
For a long time, I thought this was the most embarrassing thing I’d ever made. I was hesitant to even call it “art.”
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Immediately after figuring out how I felt about myself, I decided to see if I could use the same approach to figure out how I felt about the girl. With my non-dominant hand, I wrote until I had completely filled the two sheets in front of me (taped together earlier for some other purpose). My only pauses were to change colors and even that was done without real consideration – a quick swap when I felt the urge. I tried my best to be totally blunt, perfectly honest, and entirely concentrated on my feelings. I didn’t want to rationalize, bullshit, or otherwise fuck myself up. I wanted what came out of me to be real. I’m not sure whether or not it was…
Some parts were written in such a way that they wouldn’t make sense to anyone else – and there was no punctuation in any of it – so I’ve made a few minor edits.
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Your first group, the buddhist monk we had coming was running late. I was manic but I caught myself and asked the group to keep me in check. I didn’t want to be a spazz on your first day even though I preemptively disliked you. (You seemed too level-headed and assembled to like me).
I didn’t like the way the other guys talked about (and sometimes to) you. We didn’t talk much but you were nicer than I’d assumed and smarter too. When I ran into you after getting kicked out, you were so sweet to me. I thought, “I’d like to have sex with her.”
I didn’t really understand friendship but ,when I came back, we became friends. It was outstanding. We were exceptional. I liked it when we’d touch but knew that was the limit. We had both made that mistake in treatment before. Our counselors said they were worried about us getting too close. We talked about it and you said, “If this were last year, we’d be in trouble.”
We respected the physical boundaries we were given (for the most part) but got carried away otherwise – we loved each other too much. I didn’t know what was real. A pretty girl, an interesting boy, codependency issues, rehab and limited options… Was it love or something like it, or just compulsion and fear?
You didn’t seem too interested when I presented my life story. (Punishment for how I acted at your first step?) It hurt. That and more. It got worse. I needed to talk. I still don’t understand that night. I got mean enough to get rid of you when all I really wanted was for your door to open.
I couldn’t handle it. I told the truth and you denied everything but, in between, I realized that I really did care about you, contrary to what I thought and said when I first spilled our guts to everyone, while you were away. It gets worse: I think i love you. I admit, I’m still not 100% but I’m going with it – even if you hate me. And not ’cause I wanna be tragic.
I still want to have sex with you but, mostly, I want to be friends.
For real.
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Two months later, when I had my coin out, the staff decided that we should have an “art show” – everything I had made since arriving (more than one hundred pieces) was hung up on display in the group room. Each had a title card with a short statement. The one next to this piece said, “If this thing actually ends up on the wall at my coin-out then I am way fucking braver than I have ever suspected. And way more honest. Well, honest about disclosing my art and my thoughts from the past (as evidenced in my art). There’s very little that’s honest about this thing in and of itself.” I’m not totally sure how I feel about that. The things I said with this piece were definitely honest when I wrote them… By February though, I had convinced myself that I had been seriously deluding myself – to such an extent that “the truth” was something completely beyond my reach. Today, I think that was probably an example of my “putting walls back up” to protect myself. My feelings were real and I shouldn’t have tried to discount them just because things played out a certain way and I now (then) felt silly about them.
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This piece was later cut up and merged with its title card and a related piece I’ve also thought of as “embarrassing.” It’s listed for sale in my webstore but – if anyone wants it – you can name your price. Seven dollars should cover postage and (beyond that) I don’t care about the money.
Update (a couple hours later): Wow – kinda funny. I just looked at the Storenvy listing for this piece and it has a different statement that I wrote back when I first listed it for sale (sometime in August, I think). It’s interesting how much my attitudes and perceptions shift over time.
“Why I Fail.” 12/8/12. Tempera, watercolor, oil pastel. 9×12″.
Initially, this was to be a painting of me and this girl, having a picnic under the shade of a tree. You know – cute, innocent. Except not really.
Toward the end of 2012, there were a couple times in the van when I took out my headphones and noticed that the female patients were a little more giggly than usual – and talking about trees. On both occasions, I was the only male in the van and had been listening to music but it was still pretty dumb insofar as it was painfully obvious. Trees was a code word (and not a particularly clever one). I didn’t say anything though (who was I to ruin their fun?) I just rolled my eyes and put my headphones back in.
But that’s how I got the idea and I thought was really clever. On the surface, it’d be really sweet and innocuous but – underlying that – something a little bolder. I wanted it to say, “Hey, I like you, you like me, we’re really cute together,” as well as, “I know what your little code word means and – oh – here’s a picture of my dick — how ’bout that?“
So I set to work. First thing’s first: I needed to trace my penis (you know – the “tree” under which we’d be having our picnic). I chose not to start tracing from the bottom edge because I wanted to leave a little ambiguity. (Like, “Is this the whole thing? Maybe! Maybe not!”). After all, you don’t wanna give it all away, right? I still needed to camouflage it to some extent with branches and leaves, but I decided to draw the two of us sitting in the grass first.
I couldn’t fucking do it. I couldn’t get the characters to look the way that I wanted. I erased and began again over and over until I got frustrated. And then it occurred to me: this wonderful new thing (art) that had recently come into my life — I didn’t enjoy it because it was a way for me to showcase my dazzling fucking wit (or my penis), I enjoyed it because it was a way for me to legitimately work through my feelings and express myself authentically. This – what I was currently engaged in – was bullshit. And what do you know? Like so many of my mistakes and fuck-ups, both big and small, what was at the root of this misstep? My dick.
I changed course, painted without intent, and looked at the page. Yeah – there it was, right in front of me: WHY I FAIL.
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Aside from a commission, my first sale was for two pieces: this painting and a drawing.
My first sale as an artist was a painting of my dick.
The buyer had to have seen it, right? Jacob certainly spotted it when I posted it on Facebook back in December. I opted to respond vaguely with comments like, “Eye of the beholder, my friend!” (even when he posted his own derivative work on Imgur to support his interpretation).
I think I was scared because if I acknowledged it, anyone that saw it could play mathematician based on the dimensions of the painting. Unless I also added that it wasn’t my entire penis. And then I’m suddenly the kid on the internet writing about how “my dick is at least this big (and who knows how much bigger?)!“
This was an assignment at the end of group one day. I forget the specifics, but I think it pretty much amounted to “here’s the outline of your brain – fill it in.”
While everything here is rooted in truth, there’s obviously a self-deprecating humor underlying it all.
I started to write up a statement but so much felt redundant when taken in conjunction with a lot of my other writing that’s already online here. Since it’s really sort of an index of my brain anyway though, I decided to use this entry as a sort of directory. In the course of compiling it, however, I came to realize a few things…
First, I’m great at pointing out those weaknesses of mine that make me sympathetic (lovable), but am significantly less inclined to open up and and shine a spotlight on my more deplorable faults and flaws. Especially when it comes to dishonesty, manipulation, or anytime I’ve caused another person harm.
Second, when it comes to the things that have really hurt me: same problem. Hurts that I’ve conquered, I’ll talk about all day long because it feels like victory – but the things that really left a scar: not so much. I’m embarrassed by them and they make me feel weak. (This is especially true of events from childhood that now seem petty or trivial).
Third, for a recovering heroin addict that still thinks about heroin on a daily (if not hourly) basis, I don’t seem to ever write about heroin, except in the past tense, like when I’m telling a story.
Fourth, while I’ve shared more of my thoughts on it than a lot of people ever will, I’m still pretty meek when it comes to writing about sex – at least relative to my approach to lots of other socially taboo subjects.
Anyway, here’s the little directory I put together with regard to each “segment” of my brain, as depicted in this drawing from December, although a few are either curiously thin or entirely absent…
Lovesickness (girls, relationships, and associated consequences)
This… what you’re reading right now… the fact that I’m still making this fucking list when I know that I really ought to stop, elaborate on the things that warrant elaboration and not just keep thinking up pieces that fall under each of these headings. But I’ve made it this far and I don’t want to feel like this was all for nothing….
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It was at this point that I paused and rewrote the introduction to this entry so as to include the things I learned about myself in the course of “curating” this directory. Although, remember – you can always use the search box at the bottom of every page to find content related to whatever you might be interested in. The tags just below the title of each entry can be useful too, although I haven’t always done a great job of using them as well as I really should. (I know of at least one tag that’s never been misapplied to an unrelated entry though)…
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This entry is TOTALLY two to three hours past due but I was locked out of the site for a few hours on account of all the super 1337 h4x0r5 that have been fucking up my shit (and my webhost’s server) these last few days. I’m just glad they weren’t able to do any serious damage, so I’m not gonna bum out over the little stuff.
“Diminishing Returns.” 2/16/13. Acrylic paint, peptol-bismol, glue, on cardboard. 6×13″.
Of the ten paintings in my series, “The Weak End,” this was the seventh. I had spent the last forty (of my waking) hours painting and it had begun to feel mechanical. I didn’t feel productive, creative, or fulfilled; I felt dull. “This is a television in the same sense that I’m an artist” means two things. First, that the thing in front of me, occupying all of my time, might as well have been a TV insofar as I had lost myself in it and was now just wasting time. Second, that while I might be performing the same functions as an artist, no one should ever mistake me for one; I was just some asshole, playing with paint, for nothing.
Initially, I titled this piece “Stop Now” because I felt like that’s what I ought to have done at the time. Instead, I told my inner-critic to shut the fuck up, set this piece aside, continued on to the last three pieces in the series, and – today – couldn’t be any happier that I did. While my self-deprecating title for this series of paintings is a reflection of my hurt feelings and self-loathing upon discovering (Monday morning) that I’d be moving out of Tranquil Shores, all of my experiences between Friday and Sunday (primarily comprised of this paint marathon), I think, were exactly what I needed to propel me forward and back out into the real world.
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This piece is available for purchase in my webstore
“All I Really Need to Know, I Learned From a Drunk 14 Year-Old at the Mall.” 10/25/13. Acrylic and spray paints, resin sand, and food coloring. 18×24″ stretched canvas.
Revision (10/30/13): This entry, as published, had no real statement or details. I wasn’t ready to share what was really happening at the time. I am now.
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It’s one thing to spill my own guts publicly – it’d be another to spill my girlfriend’s…
I guess the reasons aren’t so important – what’s relevant is that it’s been a rough week. As it goes at times like this, she pretty much shut down all lines of communication. She doesn’t say anything to me and responds to anything I say with as few syllables as possible. I (as usual) have plenty of work to distract myself with (and I did just that) but I did it while feeling shitty and unloved. We exist under the same roof, but totally apart from one another. Life goes on for the most part as if nothing’s wrong but everything is very clearly wrong. The first couple days, I took it with understanding and compassion. And – to her credit – in moments, she catches herself; on Tuesday, she apologized for “being weird” and told me she loved me. But it didn’t end there. By Thursday, I felt emotionally drained and physically exhausted.
Yesterday, I went to Sun-Ray and found out that I was about to have my first art show. I haven’t told her about it. I’m too excited, and too afraid of how she might respond. Totally devoid of enthusiasm or support… I don’t wanna be in a position where I’ll have to figure out how to process something like that.
Maybe I should tell her and give her the opportunity to prove me wrong. But I just feel so detached.
After I got the news about Sun-Ray, I decided to budget in some canvases; I wanted to have a couple new pieces. I started painting this late last night and just finished. It took me about ten hours in all. The smaller caption says, “I don’t need anything, I don’t need anyone, I don’t even care.” This is the kind of sentiment voiced by wounded little kids, shouting through their walls of affected apathy – and by twenty-somethings soaking in grimy, self-loathing punk rock. (I ought to know, having been both).
It’s really easy to not care. It’s about the safest thing a person can commit to. It’s a middle road of low highs and high lows. Eventually though, it all goes grey; it’s not sustainable (or isn’t for me anyway). And the rewards that come from caring (from giving a shit)… I like to think they’re worth it – hard as it may be to recognize that while I’m actually down.
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Note: I feel obligated to remind anyone reading that this shit isn’t fair. My girlfriend is wonderful and human but – in any case – I’m pretty sure that, from her vantage point, things look a little different. And I’m almost equally certain that she could tell this same story – just as truthfully – but with me as the villain. It just so happens that I have a website and she doesn’t. But my intent isn’t to cast anyone in a negative light, only to share my process. I hope that comes across and that no one takes this for anything more than a reflection of my feelings in a moment.
Like Bats left to start their tour late last night. Though I recently made some adjustments to the cartoon I drew for them (for use as a tour poster) I was up before 6 AM this morning, so I figured I’d draw another cartoon inspired in part by one of the songs on their upcoming EP.
When I checked back in at Tranquil Shores (after getting kicked out) in October 2012, Like Bats had a show in Tampa just two days later that I was (consequently) unable to go to. It wasn’t until a month later that I found out they stopped by Tranquil Shores the next day to try and visit me. (Since I had just been readmitted, I wasn’t allowed visitors yet and they were turned away).
It’s been years since I saw Like Bats play live and I’ve never even met Matt and Alec, who stepped in when Kyle and Joey left the band. Seeing them play and seeing Mike and Dave (who’s on tour with them as usual) is one of the things I’m most excited about for next week.
It’s been a strange morning. (“Strange” being code for “I don’t feel like acknowledging what’s going on). When I first went outside today, it was early enough that it was still dark. And it was cold enough that I had to put on my jacket for the first time since February. I sat outside with coffee, pop tarts, cigarettes, and punk rock and thought about how much I missed rehab. A few minutes later, I realized I was sitting in some really shallow self-pity. I didn’t even know that I was necessarily upset, but I was embracing anything that made me feel sad – and reveling in how tragic it all felt. I was enjoying it in that way that kids like us do but – at the same time – I knew that a well-targeted attack/word could probably pull my pin like the Death Star and reduce me to a puddle – which would certainly take the fun out of it all.
I texted with a friend for a little bit and then drew this cartoon. I think I’ve got a grip on my day now.
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If you’re in any of these areas, go see Like Bats this week. They’re one of the best bands in existence today.
10/24- Boston, MA @ Fort Warner w/Peeple Watchin’
10/25- Hartford, CT @ Whitney House
10/26- Brooklyn, NY @ Lulu’s
10/27- Bethpage, NY @ Mr. Beery’s w/ Iron Chic
10/28- Baltimore, MD @ Charm City Art Space w/ Sick Sick Birds
10/30- Greenville, SC @ CFR
10/31- Gainesville, FL / The Fest
11/1- 10/31- Gainesville, FL / The Fest
11/2- 10/31- Gainesville, FL / The Fest
11/3- 10/31- Gainesville, FL / The Fest @ 1982
11/4- Athens, GA @ Flicker Theatre and Bar w/ Two Hand Fools
Here’s the first song I ever heard by Like Bats; it’s called “Lousy” and I love it as much today as I ever have.
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If you missed it, go read the short story I wrote that Razorcake posted on their website yesterday. It’s about me fucking over Rational Anthem in the desert.
