A Strange Facial Expression

"Silence will not betray your thoughts

but the expression on your face will."

-- H.G. Mendleson

Self portrait (collage) 12-11-14

"The face is more honest than the mouth will ever be."

-- Daphne Orebaugh

" ... it took her some moments to recall

what her normal face even looked like,

but after several attempts she was able 

to settle on a reasonable facsimile."

-- Haruki Murakami, IQ84

"I want freedom for the full expression of my personality."

-- Mahatma Gandhi

I have been working away on this particular self-portrait for quite a while.

Cutout hands, glue, adhesive spray, X ACTO knives, razor blades and magazine pages have littered the floor of my workspace since about August.

I tinkered with it a little here. A little there.

In literal bits and pieces, this collage has evolved over the past few months. The good part is, it's finally done.

Yeah, I know, it's a little bit strange.

I won't bore you with inadequate words trying to explain what this self portrait means to me, or what it says about me. 

I'll just let it speak for itself and if it says something to you, that's great. 

If it makes you feel something, that's even better. 

If not, that's fine too.

A Portrait Of The Artist

"It's important to let your subjects be themselves."

-- Herb Ritts

Mackenna 12-8-14

"Your subjects have had a history --

try to reveal it in your picture."

-- Howard Pyle

"Why not use other art as a subject of art?"

-- Gail Cadnuff-Nash

I've been taking senior portraits for Mackenna.

Mackenna is Leo's girlfriend. But that's not all that she is. Being my son's girlfriend is just one small slice of who Mackenna is. And I, for one, strongly believe that it's not fair to always define a person by a single relationship that they have with another person.

I also strongly believe that there are a multitude of ways to do portraiture that have nothing to do with the subject's face. 

Mackenna is more than just a girlfriend. She's a dancer, a scholar, a reader, a scientist, a musician, a daughter, an artist, and most of all, she is herself. 

So it was no surprise that she wanted to attempt an unconventional senior portrait that encompassed more than just her lovely face. It didn't include her face at all, in fact.

Quite some time ago she described her idea to me, so it's been tumbling around in both our imaginations for a while now.

Yesterday the lighting was right, we both had time, I'd scouted a good location, and so we let the idea out.

Mackenna gathered some of her favorite things -- her pointe shoes, her violin, the books that mean the most to her. 

I grabbed my camera and tripod and lenses. 

Leo came along as driver, and muscle, to carry Mackenna across the muddy ground so she wouldn't get her toe shoes dirty. 

Together we three braved the cold of a chilly December afternoon to capture this portrait.

It was a group effort, but I think the result is singularly personal -- a portrait that is almost a still life of sorts -- a portrait of a life that is very much in motion.

It always makes me nervous to try and translate someone else's artistic idea.

I hope I did good.

Christmas Colors

"Give crayons." 

-- Dr. Sun Wolf

Crayons 12-5-14

"My childhood smells like a box of Crayola crayons."

-- Terry Guillemets

"Artists are just children who

refuse to put down their crayons."

-- Al Hirschfeld

Every year for Christmas I restock my little niece Sophia's art supplies.

Sophia is a true artist, and her voluminous output is pretty damned impressive.

She draws and paints and colors a lot.

Sophia's artistic fervor reminds me of myself, and I hope she never loses her delight, her need or her persistence in putting color to paper. (You can read about my personal love affair with art supplies here.)

Crayons 12-5-14

The world is a lot more colorful because of who Sophia is, and because of what she creates, and I want to be one of the people who encourages her to keep doing and creating and making her art.

So yesterday, as always, I went a little nuts at the art store and bought her a fresh supply of crayons, markers, colored pencils, paper and paint.

Sophia has come to expect this particular kind of gift from me. And I am OK with being a little predictable. I want her to know she can count on me. Sophia knows I'll get her art stuff just like her brother Marco knows I'll give him pickles and olives.

It's my thing.

And I happen to think it's a good thing.

Found Objects

"Did you find anything special," Blackie asked.

T. nodded. "Come over here," he said, "and look."

-- Graham Greene, Shock!

Found pink rubber bracelet 11-30-14

"And isn't the whole point of things -- beautiful things -- 

that they connect you to some larger beauty?"

-- Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

On the windowsill in my mudroom is a collection of random objects.

A purple plastic magnetic number "2." A small wiffle ball. A feather. The plastic trailer from either a toy train or a toy truck advertising Leikeim (a German brewery) "Limonaden" (lemon soda). A miniature bobble-headed toy cat.

I found each of these things on my walks. 

I often find interesting things on my walks, sometimes on bike rides. 

Lost things.

Discarded things.

Fallen objects.

Sometimes I pick these fallen objects up and put them in my pocket and bring them home. Yesterday was particularly bountiful. By the time I returned home, I had a pocketful, and a handful. It was like a treasure hunt.

In a four-mile trek around my town I'd found:

a deflated balloon bouquet
a rusty razor blade
a cheap silver bracelet
a broken rubber bracelet
a rock painted pink
a theater ticket
a pinwheel
a gold star
an Easter egg

Sometimes I photograph the objects. Some I photograph here at home. Others I leave where they are and return later to photograph them in situ.

Yesterday's collection got me thinking.

I've been on the fence about whether I want to do a 365 days project for 2015. Mostly because I've been waiting for an idea to strike, an idea compelling enough to get me excited about sustaining my streak for yet another year.

I think I found it.

I found it in the stuff I found. 

I was photographing this dirty, broken pink cancer awareness bracelet imprinted with the word "strength." It's just cheap rubber. A bit of trash. Found on a roadside. Nothing special. Broken. Useless. 

But the image of it struck me as somehow lovely. Beautifully tragic. Ironic and incongruous. Hopeful? Hopeless? All of the above. I look at it now and this simple, fallen object tells a story.

Artists make art from found objects all the time. (It's the best kind of recycling. It's also a helpful way to clean up the neighborhood.) So for next year, I think maybe that's what I'll do. 

Who knows? It might be a good idea.

Look out for fallen objects!

The Art Of Good Taste

"Cooking is an art,

but you eat it too."

-- Marcella Hazan

Portrait (tomato paste on paper) 11-25-14

"You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces --

just good food from fresh ingredients."

-- Julia Child

"The preparation of good food is merely another expression of art,

one of the joys of civilized living."

-- Dione Lucas

A new specialty foods store opened here recently.

They specialize in Mediterranean ingredients imported directly from Greece, Spain and Italy. 

My little Italian nephew Marco loves olives, so I buy him several jars a year for Christmas and for his birthday. 

So yesterday, Mackenna and I braved the extreme winds to do a little Christmas shopping and to check out the new store and to to explore some new tastes and possibilities.

We came home with two large grocery bags stuffed to bursting with not only several varieties of delicious olives, but also sardines, and pastas, and rice, and pastries, and wine, and coffee, and pickles, and cheeses, and meats.

I was especially excited to find tomato paste in a tube. I fucking love tomato paste in a tube. It's genius. None of it goes to waste. You just dispense it like toothpaste, or oil paint, just a dab at a time. I bought some with basil in it.

When we got home I used much of our tasty bounty to prepare supper. 

I made thick, crusty sandwiches with salami, melted smoked provolone, and roasted wild goose (Yes, goose. Canada goose. Leo shot it on Saturday.)  

I made Orecchiette pasta -- small round pasta that looks like little ears. Mackenna picked it out. I tossed it in a sauce made of butter and olive oil infused with herbes de provence, along with some wine, lemon, fresh parmigiano reggiano and a few squirts of that basil-y tomato paste. 

I popped a bottle of a wine I've never tried, a Pinot Nero, from northern Italy. 

For dessert we bought a bakery box filled with a sampling of decadent cakes and cookies.

I live in an area driven primarily by amusement parks, water slides and tourism that caters to families with children and other people who like chain restaurants and familiarity, whose tastes are mainstream and boring and predictable. 

Around here, anything new or different or a little bit exotic -- anyplace that doesn't serve chicken nuggets or have a kids menu -- eventually atrophies and dies because people just want the same old shit.

Not me. This store is like a culinary wonderland. It's like an art supplies store for people who like to cook and eat and experiment and expand their palettes, er, palates. 

Palates?

Palettes?

I happen to believe that food is art, so let's just go with both. 

Good Sharp Blades

"This is no toy," he told her.

"Be careful you don't cut yourself.

The edges are sharp enough to shave with."

-- George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Razor blades and X-Acto blades on magazine image 11-4-14

"Dull blades are dead blades."

-- Jay Riggio, collage artist

I've been killing time working a collage self-portrait that involves lots of hands cut out of magazines.

As a result, my work room is currently littered with a bunch of random cut-out paper hands and the torn-out magazine pages from which all of the hands were taken.

Anyway.

Good sharp blades are essential when I'm making a collage or other cut paper artwork. A dull, raggedy blade can seriously fuck up the whole process.

So I try to keep lots of fresh new ones on hand.

Junk

"One man's trash is another man's treasure

is a third man's raw materials for their

planet-buster earthquake machine."

-- Seanan McGuire, Deadline

Rusted Chevrolet hood 10-5-14

"To invent, you need a good imagination

and a pile of junk."

-- Thomas A. Edison

Rusted Chevrolet hood 10-5-14

In my travels hither and thither, I see lots of interesting shit that might be classified as junk.

But to my eye, old junk is often a whole lot more interesting than shiny new, pristine perfection.

Every day I ride my bike past this house that sits alone on a road with nothing else going on but corn and soybeans growing in fields.

There is always something intriguing sitting in the driveway or the front yard of this house -- bits and pieces of dismembered cars, motorcycles, trucks.

But it's not trash.

Whoever lives at this house is a wiz at re-configuring the dismembered members into one-of-a kind hot rods and choppers.

The house is surrounded by huge containers and a couple of out-buildings covered in old rusty fuel station signs and Coke advertisements.

But it's no junkyard. The place is meticulously kept. The yard recently mowed.

This old Chevrolet car hood has been catching my eye for the last little while. So yesterday after my bike ride, I drove back out with my camera.

Not wanting to trespass or draw the attention of the two dogs I've seen rambling around the place, I stayed in the road at the end of the driveway. A few clicks later, a bearded, gruff, not-too friendly sounding guy busted out the back screen door and shouted at me "Hey! Waddaya doin'?"

Aw, shit.

It was really windy, so what I said back got lost in the breeze. I cautiously walked closer and repeated that I was just a curious photographer appreciating the look of this really cool, welded hunk of metal.

He liked that.

After I complimented the piece, I could see the gruffness and suspicion yield. I was no longer a potential intruder, or trespasser. I was a fellow artist. We were on common ground.

Me: I've been admiring this hood for a while and wanted to photograph it.

Him: Yeah?

Me: Yeah. I tried the other day but the shadows were too harsh. The lighting today is perfect. I hope you don't mind.

Him: No. No. That's fine. Take all the pictures you want. You wanna see the rest of it?

Me: Absolutely.

He pulled a tangle of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door to a garage full of carcasses in various stages of dis-assembly and completion. There were tools and parts and signs and dirty calendars with naked girls, the atmosphere suffused with that heady combination of rust and oil and dirt and sweat.

It was the kind of place those two guys on "American Pickers" would jizz themselves over.

The "rest of" the car that went with the hood out front was a low-slung vehicular sculpture-in-progress made from a melange of Chevrolet, Ford and Cadillac parts.

I say sculpture, because I've seen the guys' finished work out in the front yard. He's not just a mechanic or a hobbyist. This guy is an artist who happens to work with fins and fenders and hoods and chassis.

He talked to me about a few of the pieces he was working on, including a truck he'd recently convinced a reluctant seller to sell. He said he'd been trying to buy it since he was 12 years old, which had to be about 40 years' of persuading.

These weren't just cars, they were his soul. And I could see and hear in how he talked about them how much he loves what he does.

We were two strangers, but we were talking like old friends. Art will do that.

As he locked up, we shook hands I thanked him and introduced myself.

Me: I'm Erin, by the way.

Him: I'm Beaver.

And we weren't strangers anymore.

He was Beaver and I was me and we both knew a good thing when we saw one.

Graffiti

"Everyone has to scratch on walls somewhere or they go crazy."

-- Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion

Graffiti 9-10-14

"Some people become cops because 

they want to make the world a better place.

Some people become vandals because 

they want to make the world a better looking place."

-- Banksy, Wall and Piece

Graffiti 9-10-14

"If it takes more than 5 minutes, it's not graffiti."

-- Mint Serf

When I was very small we lived for a while in a house near a train underpass.

That underpass was like a magic tunnel, its walls completely covered in a confetti spray of layered and peeling colors, words and pictures.

To me it was beautiful. I anticipated passing through and tried to see as much as I could in the split seconds it took to get to the other side. 

Probably its a good thing I couldn't read yet, because I'm sure there was some not-so-beautiful stuff written there. But small details aside, the overall impact of a graffiti-covered wall still gets me.

I've been a fan of street art ever since.

I like it on walls, on buildings, on trains. I like it done excellently by talented artists, but I even appreciate it done shittily by rank amateurs. Sometimes if it's too good it takes away the immediacy and the urgency of the art form.

I have even dabbled in graffiti myself. A-la Banksy, I won't reveal when or where. But I've done it late at night under the cover of darkness. I might even do it again if I need to.

There's a train underpass near where I live now where people write graffiti now and then. But the city keeps power-washing it off, and covering it with flat, gray paint. So the walls, now, are a patchwork of big gray blobs. 

But graffiti writers gotta write. And they keep trying, using the renewing gray walls as their blank canvas.  

To me, saying that a graffiti artist can't use their spray cans on public surfaces is like saying a sculptor can't use chisels on stone, or a potter can't use their hands on clay, or a painter can't use brushes on canvas, or a singer can't sing the notes with their voice, or a writer can't use words on paper.

Your art is your art. And you don't always have a choice in what your art is. I won't be cliche and say "your art chooses you." But it kind of does. Mostly, I think it's just there, in you somewhere, until it ultimately burbles up from your personal ooze and demands expression. 

You either let it speak, or let it die.

A paint-covered wall is a small price to pay for saving an artistic life.

I'd like to see what would happen if the city used its resources and manpower (and paint) elsewhere and left the underpass walls alone and let them bloom into an explosion of color and expression and art and opinion and emotion and secret messages and voices and feelings. 

Some, I'm sure, would call it vandalism and brand the graffiti-writers criminals.

But not me.

I think it would look good.

Maybe even magical.

A Chip Off The Old Block

"There are certain traits that God puts in each one of us.

There's no escaping them."

-- Brad Meltzer, The Inner Circle

Old cement block, chip, hammer and chisel 4-28-14 

"You inherit all kinds of things that you can do nothing about.

You inherit your identity, your history,

like a birthmark that you can't wash off."

-- Hugo Hamilton, The Sailor in the Wardrobe

Whenever I witness one of my less-than-desirable traits emerging in one of my sons, I cringe.

Be it my anxious mind, my irritable bowel, my twitchy face, my acne-prone skin, my shitty housekeeping skills, my emotional volatility, my food sensitivities -- when I see any one of those little bastards coming down the genetic shit-chute I want to shut it down, stuff it back in the tube, throw a wrench in the works and scream "No no no no no! Not that one!".

And yet for all the crappy traits I wish they didn't get, there are a few gems I don't mind seeing, and am even happy to watch develop and grow as my two boys make them their very own.

From my good stuff, Sam got my quick wit, my biting, sardonic sense of humor, my love of coffee, and my jawline. (Apparently everything else in his packaging came from my husband.)

Leo got my love of exercise and pushing my body to its limits. He got my athletic intensity (which can be a good or a bad thing, depending how you slice it.) 

Leo also got my hunger for reading --  he's a teen boy who actually loves books and asks me for recommendations. [Applause!] I've passed along some of my favorites, books like A Prayer for Owen Meany, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and The Catcher in the Rye. He gobbles them up and then feels the same heavy sadness I do when a good book ends and he doesn't get to commune with its characters anymore. Love that.

He also got my hunger for art. He draws and paints and likes to meander around the art supplies store looking for possibilities, just like me.  He's a dreamer, just like me. He likes to visit the art museum, just like me. (For a while the screensaver on his iPhone is his favorite Karl Schmidt-Rottluff painting.) He'll roam around the woods with me, camera in hand, just to see what we can see.

Leo also likes to paint birds, just like me. He can get lost in his room for hours, just like me, listening to music and painting, say, a teeny tiny duck on a little block of wood. 

Just like me.

I've been drawing/painting/photographing birds my whole life. The first frame-worthy, rudimentary bird rendering I did at age 10 (of a robin on her nest) hung on the wall in my grandparents' den for years.

And yesterday, Leo's painting of a pair of Cedar Waxwings won honorable mention in an Earth Day student art contest sponsored by our local MetroParks division.

I guess he's a chip off the old block.

And that is just fine with me, aka the Old Block. In fact, it's more than fine. It's really good.

As flashier, trendier distractions vie for my son's attention, I hope Leo never loses his appetite for creating and making and escaping into art. It is a trait that has served me well my whole life long. It's a good thing that I am more than happy to pass along to my child.

Um, sorry about all the other shit, buddy.

A Day At The Museum

"... that's how I felt at the art museum,

both safe and elevated."

-- Janet Fitch, White Oleander

Solidarity, Georges Minne (marble) 1898

"I believe in walking out of a museum

before the paintings you've seen begin to run together.

How else can you carry anything away with you in your mind's eye?"

-- Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves

Leo is on Spring break this week. Spring, sadly, seems not to have heard about this arrangement and is vacationing elsewhere in some far-flung, idyllic locale.

Hey Spring, could you at least send us a postcard? Tweet us a picture? Do something to let us know you're OK and weren't eaten by sharks?

No? Nothing? (sigh of despair)

So while Spring is busy coming in like a lion and going out like a goddamned sonofabitch, we decided to head to the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Before going any further, I want to apologize for the quality of today's photo. I had to shoot it with a cell phone because I was a big stupid head and forgot to put the memory card in my damn camera, which dangled, useless, around my neck all afternoon. This shot was the best I could do under the circumstances. The circumstances being that I am a fucking idiot.

Of course, it being a museum and all, we looked at a lot of art that cut across genres and eras and styles and time. There was a special exhibition of Van Gogh's "repetitions," which I didn't love, but didn't hate. It was interesting, but wasn't necessarily my cup of decaf.

There was also a traveling exhibition of Japanese art from the Tokyo National Museum which was also not my favorite.

I was bummed that the contemporary gallery was temporary closed, and the photography exhibit was still being installed. Grr.

In the permanent galleries I stopped in to visit a couple of my favorite pieces -- Picasso's La Vie, Degas' Frieze of Dancers, Modigliani's Portrait of a Woman, Church's Twilight in the Wilderness. (A few years ago I drove all the way to Cleveland just to see Twilight in the Wilderness when it was first installed. I couldn't find it, so I asked three different helpful museum guides "Where is Twilight in the Wilderness?" They all directed me to the bottom of the basement stairs, where the restrooms are. I finally figured it out. They thought I was asking for toilet in the wilderness. Some of their English is a little shaky.)

I found it interesting how certain pieces always grab my attention -- after multiple viewings they still pull me across a gallery for a closer look -- while others don't speak to me at all. And some, well some just stop me in my tracks and leave me speechless.

That's how I felt when I saw this marble sculpture of two nude boys standing in a little boat, holding onto one another for balance. It's called Solidarity and is the work of Belgian sculptor George Minne. Before reading more about the piece hours later, I allowed my imagination free rein to ask questions and fill in the blanks. (I like to form my own ideas and first impressions before letting the art historians and experts tell me what to think. Call me a rebel.) 

These two skinny boys -- all sharp knees and elbows, ribs, hip bones and scapulas,  holding on tight to one another while their little boat bobs and rocks on the waves --  made me feel something deep inside. Simultaneously they look delicate yet strong, their hold on each other certain, yet tentative. Who is steadying who? Are they lovers? Friends? Brothers? Are they afraid? They seem anxious, yet unusually calm and secure -- protected -- in each other's grasp aboard their storm-tossed boat.

I lingered a long time on this one before reluctantly leaving it behind until my next visit.

At dinner afterwards, I asked Leo if there was anything he'd seen in particular that stuck with him, that he was still thinking about. His phone was full of pictures -- paintings, helmets from the armor room, a bronze eagle from the Japanese exhibit. He said his favorite, though, was Self Portrait With Hat by Karl Schmidt-Rotluff. For my husband, it was a vase with peonies and butterflies.

But for me, it was those two skinny naked boys, who, it turns out, are brothers.

Art for me is like wine. Either I like it or I don't. 

And I liked this one. I hope to visit it again and again. That's the good thing about museums. The art stays there and waits for you to come back, hopefully next time with the memory card in your camera.

Fresh New Art Supplies

"Life is about using the whole box of crayons."

-- RuPaul

A well-used lemon yellow crayon 3-27-14

"A box of new crayons! 

Now they're all pointy, lined up in order, bright and perfect.

Soon they'll be a bunch of ground down, rounded, indistinguishable stumps,

missing their wrappers and smudged with other colors.

Sometimes life seems unbearably tragic."

-- Bill Watterson

What is it about fresh, virgin art supplies that makes me so giddy?

I think it is the vastness of the untapped potential and possibility that lies within them -- in each box of new crayons and pencils, in each tube of paint, in each pristine tablet of paper, in every straight edged brick of fresh, untouched clay.

New art supplies still hold the unsullied hope and promise of perfection, of wild and ambitious visions that haven't been dashed by mistakes or blunders or disappointment. They could still become anything I can dream of.

Leo and I went to the art supply store yesterday to re-stock. He needed a couple of tubes of oil paint, and I needed some acrylics. We also bought brushes and I picked up a fresh linoleum block and some Super Sculpey. I got a huge roll of black paper to use as a photo backdrop, and I also grabbed a box of little markers with points like brushes. I always try to find something new to experiment with and they looked interesting.

I don't have any particular plans for my new stuff. But they'll get their chance. Inspiration will strike. It usually does.

My love affair with new art supplies goes way, way back.

My dad was a high school guidance counselor, and when I was little he was also the Santa Claus at the annual high school employees Christmas party. (I was clueless. The suit and beard totally fooled me.)  The teachers and office staff all filled his bag with pre-wrapped gifts for their own kids, and then my dad distributed them as if he'd brought the stuff all the way from the North Pole.

Every year I got a box of new crayons. Not just a regular box, but this HUGE flat of 124 (and not the fat, little kid ones, but the slim, pointy big kid kind) all laid out in a single layer, each crayon resting snugly in it's own little space in the specially-molded plastic tray. 

I have three sisters, and the rest of the year we had to share our crayons, which were all dumped into a jumbled grubby mess in common ratty shoe box. As far as I was concerned, having my very own pristine box of 124 crayons was the true Christmas miracle. 

I was always just a little afraid to start using my new crayons. I didn't want to break the spell. There were colors in there I'd never even seen.

I distinctly remember finding the silver crayon for the first time, with its sparkly metallic flecks embedded right into the wax. I took it to the kitchen to show my mother, cradling it gently in my cupped palms like an injured baby bird.

Me: (breathless) "What is this?"  (I still too young to read the words on the wrapper).

Her: (bored) Silver. (Her unspoken "duh!" rang loudly in the subtext.)

I carried Silver back to the family room floor where I was coloring, and began.

The only word I knew how to spell at the time, besides my own name, was "love," which I wrote in sky blue on a piece of blank paper. Then I colored all around the letters with my new silver crayon. I soon discovered that the harder I pressed, the more metallic glitter it released. So I colored feverishly until "love" was surrounded by a solid sea of silver shimmer -- until my beautiful crayon was a ground down stump in my hot, sweaty little hand.

Resting back in the tray, Silver looked oddly shortened and rounded next to her slim and pointy friends. 

I loved her all the more for that.

Which ... Ding! Ding! Ding!

Brings us to the first ever "One Good Thing Coloring Page!"

I made this special picture of fresh new crayons just for you, so you can print it out and color it in however you like. You can use crayons, paint, lipstick -- whatever. You can even color it digitally on your computer if you want. You can make them any color you want to.

There are no rules, because rules suck. 

Have fun!

New crayons 3-27-14

Words To Live By

"Art is not optional."

-- Nathan Sawaya

Self portrait in the best t-shirt ever 3-20-14

Some things are non-negotiable.

One of those things, in my life anyway, is art.

That's why I love 365 days projects like this one, because I am committed to pursuing art every single day.

Aside from this daily blog, however, my artwork doesn't reach beyond my own four walls much. In the grand scheme of things, my work doesn't make much of a difference in anyone else's life but my own. And that's OK.

But there are artists out there with much grander vision and far greater reach than mine who make it their mission to change the world with their art. People like Nathan Sawaya, a New York artist who sculpts awe-inspiring life-sized creations from LEGO bricks, and whose words adorn the t-shirt that I'm wearing in today's self portrait.

I bought this t-shirt because obviously, it's awesome as fuck. But also because of the cause behind it.

"Yellow," by Nathan Sawaya

Nathan is contributing funds from his t-shirt designs to a cause called Art Revolution to raise funds to help put art supplies in kids' hands, and arts education back into America's schools. The foundation's mission is to advocate the importance of art in everyday life, and is driven by their stand against the "alarming devaluation of the arts in today's schools and communities."

In a scary time when art is falling victim to budget cuts and state mandates, when our children's creativity is being starved out, artists like Nathan Sawaya and others are trying to turn the tide a t-shirt at a time.

Buying a t-shirt may not seem like a super revolutionary act, but if enough of us each does a little bit, maybe it will make a difference and change a life somehow, somewhere.

And if that's not a good thing, then I don't know what is.



(Special thanks to my friend Kelly for turning me on to this t-shirt and its inspiring mission. Pass it on!)

Making Something Of Myself

"Everything is a self-portrait. A diary. Your whole drug history's in a strand of your hair.

Your fingernails. The forensic details. The lining of your stomach is a document.

The calluses on your hand tell all your secrets. Your teeth give you away. Your accent.

The wrinkles around your mouth and eyes. Everything you do shows your hand."

-- Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

Self portrait with self portrait (acrylic and spray paint on paper) 3-14-14

Of all the genres that I dabble in, self portrait is, by far, the one I turn to most.

Volumes have been written about why artists through history have incorporated themselves, or made themselves the primary subject of, their own drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures.

There are lots of dark and thorny psychological and artistic theories about why artists choose their own faces as subject matter. And I've definitely used this art form to explore both the dark and the thorny. But I've also followed its path toward the humorous and the whimsical. But behind all those theories lies a more practical consideration that I think the historians sometimes overlook. When there is no other subject available, the good thing is that an artist can always turn the brush or the camera or the pencil or the clay on his or her own face.

This particular self-portrait took me a few days to finish. It was a process that incorporated photography, drawing, painting and sculpture (if you consider a large hand-cut paper stencil a kind of sculpture, which I do.)

I think I like this piece particularly because of how the paint on the eyes bled around the stencil and made them look like the mysterious ink blots of a Rorschach test. (You'll have to look into them yourself to determine if there's something dark, thorny, or humorous behind them.)

Self portrait is an unforgiving medium. It's definitely not for everyone. It requires brutal honesty and a strong stomach. I've created literally hundreds and hundreds of self portraits, using myriad media, some straightforward, some convoluted and complex. Self portrait has given me a way to explore unfamiliar techniques, to experiment and try new things, to stretch myself artistically, to learn and grow. And even though the portraits are literally of my exterior, each one is more accurately a glimpse (or a long, hard look) at what's happening on my inside.

Playing Make-Believe

"They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff

and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing."

-- Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

Butterfly on flowers (spray paint on paper with pipe cleaner stems) 3-7-14

"Leaving the world of reality behind 

and disappearing into a world of make-believe and imaginations, 

is a solace you get from nothing else."

-- Sanhita Baruah, Uff Ye Emotions

One of the things I'm most grateful for in life is that at the ripe old age of 46, I still have custody of my robust, little kid imagination.

Paper, paint and pipe cleaners may be the standard art supplies of preschools everywhere, but that shouldn't make them off limits to big kids.

So yesterday I built a little world with them and, using my camera as an imaginary portal, took a brief vacation there.

And even though the big round thermometer on the fence says it's 25 degrees outside, and even though  the ground is still covered with snow and all the growing things are held captive by frost, inside my imagination it's sunny and warm, and the flowers are blooming and the butterflies are flitting.

I took this picture during my visit, just in case you don't believe me.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Which brings us the One Good Thing "Plea On Behalf of Imaginative Children Everywhere":

Please don't ever, ever, tell a child that they should stop pretending, or day-dreaming, or making-believe, or living in a fantasy world. Sure, children's imaginary lives are sometimes inconvenient for grownups to deal with. They can even be a little bit scary. But instead of fighting them, next time try spending the same amount of energy indulging them, or just leaving them the fuck alone. And for chrissakes please, pleeease, pleeeeeeease don't ever tell a child to be more like the other kids. Same old, same old children grow up to be same old, same old adults. And Lord knows the world has enough unimaginative, boring grown-up drones trudging around staring at their phones all damn day. Being a responsible grownup does not mean you can't still have an active, colorful imagination. It just makes being a responsible grownup so much more interesting and way more entertaining.

I once heard that children don't necessarily remember what you say to them, but they never forget how you make them feel. And if you make a child feel stupid, or flawed, or deficient, or pressured, or unacceptable, or unloved simply because you don't understand or won't understand their imaginary tendencies, then shame, shame on you.

Go ahead, spend your life like Sisyphus with your head down, eternally pushing a boulder up a hill. That's your boring choice.

As for me, when I exit this life, I'd rather go out like Icarus -- in a blinding flash, harnessed to a pair of homemade wings that I built out of art supplies, believing I might really touch the Sun.

The Therapy Side Of Art

"Art can permeate the very deepest part of us, where no words exist."

-- Eileen Miller, 

The Girl Who Spoke With Pictures: 

Autism Through Art

Abstract 2-25-14

"I am a lonely painter

I live in a box of paints

I'm frightened by the devil

But I'm drawn to those ones that ain't."

-- Joni Mitchell, "A Case of You"

Sunflower 2-25-14

"... in art therapy, your inner world  of images, feelings, thought, and ideas

are always of primary importance to the experience."

-- Cathy Maldiochi, The Art Therapy Sourcebook

I know full well that whenever I launch a new 365 days project, there will be good days and there will be bad days. It's simply part of the bargain. Part of the journey.

A project like this one couldn't exist without the bad days. If it did, it would be a fucking lie.

My very first year-long project was spawned by bad days. It was a year of self portraits that I didn't show to anybody except the therapist who suggested I use my photography as art therapy.

That was over 3 years ago, and I am still using my art as therapy when things get rough and tough. 

Like this week.

I'm in a little bad patch. A bit of a skid.

I'm struggling with some stuff I thought I had conquered, but now is back, and I'm discouraged.

It's been a difficult 3-steps-back kind of week. I've noticed that look in my eyes again. It's a look I only get when the darkness creeps in -- my brow crawls down into a knot between my eyes and my jaw clenches, freezing my mouth into a perpetual grimace. I look like I'm bracing for impact.

I'm scared of how I feel.

But as in the past 3 years, when it feels like the ship is sinking, there is a tiny life boat that floats me away from the downward spiral.

Art.

Even when I don't feel like it, I know that immersing myself if something, anything creatively engaging will help me stay afloat until the rescue helicopter comes to airlift me out.

Yesterday it was finger painting. Yep. Good old fashioned kindergarten-style finger painting. 

First I turned on K.D. Lang's Hymns of the 49th Parallel (the only music that can reach me at times like this). Then I put on my art apron, rolled up my sleeves and schmutzed paint around on paper for a couple of hours.

It helped.

It didn't fix my bad shit, or make my bad shit go away. But the feel of cold paint on my hands and the sound of healing music in my ears did something to my mind that helped me forget the twisting in my guts until I was able to catch my breath. 

I made two paintings. They may not be any good. Art critics might tear them to shreds. Real artists might think they're crap. A passer-by might think their 4-year-old nephew could do better. But I didn't make them for critics or artists or passers-by or anyone's damn nephew.

I did them to lift the pressure of the paws of the beast that's been sitting on my chest and panting its hot sour breath in my face. Kind of like throwing a stick for it to chase. He'll be back.

It doesn't matter if my finger paintings are any good.

Making them was good for me.

I Don't Need No Stinkin' Paintbrush

"We become what we behold.

We shape our tools, and thereafter, our tools shape us."

-- Marshall McLuhan

Peacock (acrylic on board) 2-8-14

"The intentions of a tool are what it does.

A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift.

They are what it is made for.

But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know.

Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing."

-- Philip Pullman,
His Dark Materials Trilogy:
The Golden Compass/The Subtle Knife/The Amber Spyglass

I'm afraid of paintbrushes.

Potato, palette knife, wine corks, comb and pencil 2-8-14

There, I said it.

They make me anxious.

Probably it's because I never learned to use them right. I've just faked it all my life, and not very well.

I don't know what it is. Something about painting with a brush feels too formal, or fussy, or proper, or unforgiving. Painting with brushes is intimidating -- like making forced conversation about topics I don't understand with people I don't like at a cocktail party where everyone's drinking 30-year-old cognac in crystal stemware when I'd be so much happier just shooting the shit with my best friend on the backyard patio over a bottle of $3 Merlot in Solo cups.

At the art store, I never know which brushes to buy. The choices are overwhelming, and good brushes aren't exactly cheap. If I fuck one up, it's gonna cost me some coin. And I don't take very good care of the brushes I do have. Just ask them. I let paint dry in their bristles all the time, or else I leave them soaking for days in Mason jars half full of paint-stained water. When I finally rescue them they're all frayed and fuzzy and stained. They look startled. Shell shocked.

Nevertheless, sometimes I do get the itch to paint a picture. And when I do, so as to allay any fear or anxiety, I typically don't reach for the brushes. I go for more non-traditional tools, non-threatening tools, familiar tools, tools that aren't specifically meant for painting at all.

I once had a ceramics teacher named Martha who taught me that "anything can be a tool."

Like potatoes. Or a comb. Or a pencil. Or wine corks (n this case, the rubberized kind from that cheap Merlot I was mentioning.) If I do use a painting-specific tool, it's more likely to be a palette knife than a brush. I like to scoop big blobs of paint like peanut butter straight from the jar and then glop it around. Smushing and smearing wet paint around with a potato feels good. So does zipping through it with a plastic comb.

As with most of the art forms I dabble in, painting is about therapy. I do it for the feeling I get while I'm actively engaged in it, not necessarily for how I feel about the piece that results from it. And if painting with brushes makes me anxious, well then it's not therapeutic. It is counterproductive. And I'm not about that life. Not anymore.

I don't know if my peacock painting is any good. And I don't really care. All I know is that while I was painting it, I felt happy. And feeling happy is always a good thing, no matter how you paint it.

My Art Apron

"I like my smock. 

You can tell the quality of the artist by the quality of his smock.
Actually, I just like to say smock. 

Smock smock smock smock smock smock."

-- Bill Watterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

Self portrait 2-6-14

When I was a little kid, my friend Susie had an older sister. A high school sister. Who painted.

I remember standing in her bedroom doorway watching her at her easel. I remember the music wafting out -- probably Peter Frampton or somebody else really cool. Her name was Lisa and she was beautiful and she wiped her paintbrushes off right on the faded thighs of her bell-bottom blue jeans.

I thought that was so cool. I thought those jeans were so cool, all dabbed and smeared and speckled with paint of every color, like confetti.

I, of course, was not allowed to clean off my paintbrushes on my jeans. I wasn't even allowed to paint in the house. We always had to "take it outside" onto the picnic table, the "it" being those terrible, dry, hard little cakes of watercolors in the flip-top plastic tray, with paper Dixie cups for brush rinsing.

Now that I'm grown and no one is the boss of me, I can paint where and when I want. And guess what? I wipe my brushes off on my thighs, just like Lisa did. Except instead of using my jeans, I wear an apron that covers the thighs of my jeans.

I never wash my apron. I guess it's like that weird tradition about not washing your karate belt. I don't want to risk turning back time and forgetting everything I've learned while wearing it. It's a map of sorts. A memory. Evidence of where I've been and what I've done, and the art work (good and bad) that helped me navigate the terrain.

It's actually a cooking apron from the Hard Rock Cafe. I don't even know who gave it to me, or when, or why they brought me an apron instead of a t-shirt.

But every time I put it on, I have this momentary flashback to where I'm standing outside Lisa's half-open bedroom door looking in. The lights are low and she looks impossibly cool in front of her easel, with that sexy music wafting out, and her feathered blond 70s hair spilling over her shoulders. She's wearing those faded blue jeans with the paint smears all over them. When she turns toward me, it's in super slow-motion, and she smiles and there's a paintbrush in her hand and she breezily wipes it off right there on the thighs of her jeans, like she does it all the time, which she must judging by all of the other paint smeared there. And my knees almost crumble underneath me because it is so incredibly cool.

I'll never be as cool as Lisa, and I'll never be much of a painter, but something happens whenever I wrap my apron around myself and cinch it down -- a little thrill goes through me that it's time to make something. It's time to create, and explore, and get messy.

That feeling is a good thing.

It means it's time to start an adventure and see where it takes me.

And another good thing?

It always starts at Lisa's bedroom door.

Playing In My Room

"Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe,

and the rest of the world is missing out."

-- Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

Wine corks 1-26-14

"Some of my best childhood memories are of being alone in my room --

writing, reading books, listening to the Beatles, living in my mind.

It's always busy in there."

-- Renee Zellweger

"This is the real secret of life --

to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now.

And instead of calling it work, realize it is play."

-- Alan Wilson Watts

I have a room where I go to to get lost, regularly, willingly and blissfully.

It's a room all my own, filled with my all my own art stuff, and costumes, and toys, and tools and supplies.

It's an extra upstairs bedroom that could have easily become a neglected "office," or a pretentious, little-used guest room for guests who rarely, if ever, stay the night. Instead, I have a big work surface in there where I can stand and work (if you can call it work). It can be as messy or as neat as I want it to be. It's OK to get paint on the table, and wood shavings on the floor. I'm allowed to shove push pins into the drywall, and stick stuff up with tape, and use spray paint, and take off all my clothes, and nobody tells me that I can't.

As with all of my previous 365 days projects, there are days when I go into my room with a specific idea, a strong intention, and I make it happen.

Other days, I  go in with an idea but something happens to it. It changes. It morphs. As I play and explore, it becomes another thing entirely. An unexpected thing. A better thing than I could have thought of.

Oftener, I go into my room without an agenda, with no idea or even the hint of one. My head is empty, but that's OK because my room is full. It is a space flooded with natural light, and also possibilities. All I have to do is trust it and go in there and begin. Pick up something. Start smushing this and that together. See what happens. Try something. Then try something else. Rip it up, then take pictures of it.

My room is a place where my grownup self goes to hang out with my inner child. There are no rules or age distinctions in there. Sometimes the grownup takes the lead. Sometimes the child runs wild. Very often it's a mashup of them both. Together they commune, and create. They explore. They discover. They laugh. They cry. They struggle. They fight.

But mostly they just play.

If you need us, we'll be in our room.