(Not Just) Another Day

 

Above: palette (might make for a not-too-bad painting)

    Recently, I ran into a young artist that I know in the stairwell of our studio building. I asked him how things were going in the studio where he works as an assistant and he replied "not bad". Then I asked, "How are you?" and he replied, "Well, you know, just another day..." I was on my way out to grab a couple of snacks from the nearby supermarket and once I was outside and on my way up the block, I thought about what he'd said, "...just another day..." In the past, that phrase might not have bothered me that much, but for some reason it hit different this time. My thought was, no, this is not "just another day" and it kind of saddened me a bit because we seem to be conditioned to view each day as just like any other in our routines. 

    Now, the phrase "just another day" is often used as a metaphor for "nothing special is happening, I'm just going about my regular routine", which is often the case. There's a certain amount of surface sameness in a lot of our everyday lives which makes it feel like one day is just bleeding into another without any kind of distinguishing value. On the other hand, "just another day" can also elicit feelings of heaviness and/or sadness, coded language for "this is just another day of drudgery and misery"

    I feel like this is symptomatic of how work culture in the U.S. tends to drain as much joy out of our daily lives as possible. There is so much outward sameness with our routines around jobs, going about our daily tasks and other things that repeat hour after hour, day after day that it's hard not to think of each day as the same as the last. All of us here need to figure out how to bring money into our lives just to be able to live day-to-day. That often leads us to be employed in jobs that we don't like, that I think most of us would quit if it weren't for whatever our needs are. 

    What I believe I heard in the young artist's "Just another day" was this: "It's just another day of giving my energy to someone else's pursuits, dreams and goals". I know that's how I felt during the years where I worked in retail jobs while also making art and having shows. No matter how much I liked where I was working, and I had a couple of favorite workplaces, there was always that feeling of frustration in the back of my mind about giving over so much of my energy to a job that advanced someone else's goals and not my own. In 2020, I got to walk away from my last regular job to pursue my life as a "full time" painter. I put full time in quotes because no matter where I worked in the past, I always prioritized my art life over the steady job. When you're an artist of any discipline, you're never divorced from what you're creating because it's always on your mind. When I was at work, I'd be going over ideas and possibilities in my head about what I wanted to do the next time I was in the studio. 

    Even though those days weren't strictly the same, the overall feeling was that they were because of the baked-in repetition of tasks. Some days, I'd feel more annoyed than others that I had to be at the job when I sorely wanted to be in the studio working out whatever my latest ideas were on the canvas, paper or panel. At times, it was visceral and others, not so much. I remember saying in response to "how are you?" something along the lines of "Same old, same old" or "Another day, another dollar", etc... just to keep from sounding too negagtive. Now that I get to come to the studio and do what I want to for myself, I've come to better understand how different each day really is. It's all perception; if it feels the same as yesterday, then it's the same to you. The reality is that this day and the next and the next, are entirely new. There's so much that's new that it's easy to take for granted if you aren't tuned into it, or even able to be tuned into it because of whatever else is going on in your life. 

    I think my take on each day being new and treating it as such also has to do with getting older and realizing how much less time is ahead of me than when I was younger. These days, I'm trying to make sure that I acknowledge every day as a new, original, never before seen day. Even as many of my days include some tasks that I don't always feel like doing, it's all for the greater good of advancing my creative priorities. I do my best to not take any day for granted because we aren't promised anything. Just waking up to a new day is a blessing that I embrace with all of my might and am thankful for. I now truly understand what my elders were saying when they said something similar when I was little. I really get it. 

Changing lanes

New work-in-progress (detail)

     I've been on a social media hiatus for almost three weeks and counting. I'm not even sure if I mentioned it in this blog, but earlier this summer, my main Instagram account was hacked and I had to start over with a new one. I was pretty pissed about losing access to the old account since I'd put a lot of time into building up an audience, plus I there's a ton of specific posts, photos and things in the old story feed  that were specific to that account. Most of the photos I have but all of the archived stories and so forth are still on there. I've been unsuccessful in regaining that account and at this point, I've pushed it back on my priorities list. 

    Honestly, by the time the hack happened, I was already growing tired of how I was feeling about my time on social media and how I engaged with it. The continual manipulation by the platform admins and whomever else is responsible for the algorithms was becoming annoying. The overall strategy of all social media platforms is to maintain your attention on that platform, which means introducing and manipulating features to keep you in the content loop as much as possible, both taking in others' content and making your own. I remember seeing a note from Facebook on my feed saying that (I'm paraphrasing here) "People trust you more when you respond to a direct message within a short time" Maybe that was referring to brands, but still, it manages to feel like you're being mentally pressured to do more and more while receiving less and less value from these sites.

    There's a lot of value to be gained from social media, especially for visual artists and other creatives. I like sharing thoughts and photos online and have done so in a variety of ways on as many platforms. I've made a lot of great contacts and have managed to get a fairly solid following, not counting the bots. However, it's really important to take some time to evaluate how we engage online. Lately, I've had several questions come up for myself that I'm evaluating in an attempt to figure out what role social media plays in my life right now:

- How do I feel about social media now? What do I feel when I'm engaging with various types of content?

- What do I get out of it for the time spent engaging with platforms?

- What are my goals are with it? What can social media help me with in this moment as an artist?

- How much time do I need to put in with commenting, liking  and otherwise engaging with others' posts?

- How is social media affecting my behavior?

    I'm sure there's more, but these are the main things that have come up for me in the past couple of weeks of not being that active on social media. I've been thinking about these things in an effort to reimagine what I do online. Top on my list is reinvigorating this blog and making good use of my studio newsletter. 

    

    With my "summer social break" that I've extended into September, I've reduced my engagement to just checking in on my FB and IG feeds once or twice a day, usually in the morning and evening. I've not posted on my main feeds nor story feeds. I've been tempted to a couple of times, but so far, I've been good about that. I'll make a post about a dear friend who passed away last week, but that's the extent of my posting anything until mid-September, maybe longer. 

    

     I don't really know how this experiment will affect how much other accounts engage with mine. I may lose some followers over this period and may gain others, I don't really know. What I do know is that I have to do something different. My very non-scientific research shows that people don't really engage with older posts much unless they are just discovering your feed and "like" and comment on a bunch of older posts. Other than that, the algorithm only shows the newer things. So, what you thought was a great post never gets much more notice beyond the initial impressions. Just after mentioning that I was taking a break, there were a few new follows over a period of a week later. Since then, as expected, it's been a ghost town and understandably so. Even when I find new-to-me accounts that I like, I mostly look at older posts and leave likes and comments on newer ones. 

    Over the past couple of weeks, I've found that my mental state of mind has improved. I concentrate much better on my work in the studio and I'm not so tired from the eyestrain of looking at my phone screen so much (I still need a couch in the studio for naps, but that's another story). Experiencing the difference in my ability to concentrate has been amazing. I feel like I've been able to return to a state of clarity that I had years ago that slowly eroded a little, I think. 

    Purposefully shifting my social media habits has been really enlightening and I'm sure there's more to gain from this change as time goes on. I'm still planning on being active online, but just in different ways. As I mentioned above, posting more on this blog has already made me feel better. I enjoy writing longer entries without the noise of social media around. It might not be for everyone, but I'm hoping that people start coming here to check out what I've been putting out over the years. 

    I'm also planning on integrating more of my general interests here, as well-it's not always about art or the making of it that matters. Lots of other things figure into what I do in the studio and I mean to include more of that here. I'm kind of tired of compartmentalizing everything at this point. Like I said to someone recently, life is art and art is life. What I mean is that life is created as we move through our experiences and like most of art, there is no playbook. All of this is made up as we live it. With art, we're constantly making new worlds and universes as we create paintings, dances that change how we experience space and movement, stories and books that transform our mental landscape.  In life, a lot of us are constantly creating and remaking ourselves and our environments to accommodate new information that we take in; taking a new walking route, changing a decision and going to another place instead of the original one and so forth. It's all an act of making, of charting new paths whether we recognize it or not. 

    TM

    

New flow

    

    The past couple of days here in the studio have been really great. I feel like I'm finally REALLY settling in. I'm beginning to feel comfortable moving around the space, although I have to keep an eye on where I leave whatever tools I'm working with. I'm back to working on several things at once and now that there's more room to move around, I tend to leave things all over the place. Before, in my smaller apartment studio, most things stayed within arm's reach, give or take a couple of yards for some things. I'm not complaining at all, just observing the difference in how I use this space. 

    Having the room to spread out also means that how I think about my work is changing. Being able to leave something out to marinate on one wall, while working on another and having room between the two things is a wonderful feeling and one that I'll never take for granted (not that I did in the past). It makes a huge difference in my creative thinking to be able to walk away from a work in progress and have room to not have to have it in my direct  peripheral vision. It makes it easier to develop what I consider a proper relationship with the work where I can really step back and see it without making visual and mental compromises with all of the visual clutter of the older space. 

    I was thinking earlier about all of the work that I have here in storage. It's nice being able to put it up out of the way and I'm having less attachment to it, as well. All I can think about is the work I'm making and am going to make and barely contemplating the older work. Some of it I feel like I want to keep around just for reminders of what I've learned, but much of it can go. I'm sure I'll look in one of those boxes in the loft months from now and be relieved that I still have certain things and more than I might want to keep.

    I've had some strong feelings about the demands of social media and a creative life. I'm doing my best to not become a slave to the algorithm and keep a good boundary between it and my life; mostly by not posting about everything going on in my life and keeping what I do post to a narrow lane of mostly art, some cats and an even smaller amount of other things. I've softened my feelings about making reels in the studio a bit and only a bit. I'm slowly finding my way around what I need social media to do for me and how I can make the best use of the tools available without giving over every ounce of creative energy to it. For instance, I've come to see that I can film certain aspects of my studio life without feeling like the action is interrupting my creative flow. This has been a revelation and one that I'm glad to have come to. In opening myself up to certain possibilities, I'm better able to find peace with that side of marketing myself and my work without it making me feel angry and rejecting all of it. 

 On another note, I forgot to give an update re: my Covid experience last week. So, I'm all better now and have been since at least Saturday. I was feeling sick most of last week, starting on Monday and by Friday, I was pretty much back to normal. I don't know what this means long-term, but so far, so good. My energy was fully back on Saturday and has held pretty well. I say this all of the time, but it really does make a difference when you realize that you're not sick any more. 

TM

Covid: Day four

         Being able to get up and take a shower  when you’re sick is one of those things that feels amazing and a luxury, honestly. When you're feeling unwell and able to keep some semblance of a normal day. I even put on deodorant, even though I haven't gone outside, yet. I’m feeling better today than yesterday and the day before that, so that’s a win. Again, this is feeling like a bad cold, as opposed to the more extreme symptoms of Covid. I’m really grateful for vaccines and the ability to access them. Otherwise, I’m sure this would have been worse. Hanging out with Cooper, Sage and Banjo all day has been pretty cool. 

        I didn’t want to just lay around in bed all day today, so I made myself scrambled eggs before Julia had to get to work. I have to be quick in order to have something decent early in the day since she works from home. Anyway, I had breakfast and made it a point to go to the basement and start going through my boxes to see what I wanted to bring upstairs. Honestly, there’s a lot of stuff down there that I probably won’t look at much. I have a ton of old photographs that I need to put into photo albums. There’s a lot of personal papers, cards, old exhibition cards and information and a lot of random things that I’ve saved. Just like looking at things once I got them to the new studio where I’m feeling less connected to older work, I also find myself feeling less nostalgic about a lot of the stuff I brought here. The things that I feel like I value most are my old sketchbooks and journals. Everything else is just kind of *there*; I don’t feel as connected to some of the other things. 

        Before I moved, I thought that there was so much more that I *needed* to have around me, but that's not true any more. The older I get, there's a difference in how I view certain belongings. Perhaps it's not so much the belongings themselves, but how I incorporate them into my surroundings, or not. I think that's where I am right now. There's definitely a class of my personal things that no longer serve me. They belonged to a certain time in my life, good, bad or otherwise, but enough time has passed that I no longer need to keep them around. Practicing gratefulness and detachment are wonderful things to incorporate into daily life.  These days, more often I'm thinking about what's going to be left behind when I'm gone and who will care. I won't know nor care what happens because...death. However, since I'm still alive, I still experience sentimentality and even nostalgia, to a certain degree and those things always color how I feel about whatever I'm considering for keeping or letting go. 

      

      Keeping some markers of one's earlier life is important to me. It's a part of remembering, much like keeping a journal and rereading it can connect us to a part of our life that we may have forgotten about. For example, before my studio move, I rediscovered a number of letters from a friend that I worked with years ago when she traveled to and lived in London and later the Pacific Northwest. I'd completely forgotten about that time and how I used to actually write to people when they moved away. I don't know if I really need to keep them, but so far, I am. 

TM

On art and social media-an evolution of personal proportions

So, for those of you who may have been wondering, yes, I'm still hard at work in the studio, as usual. Regular visitors to this blog (or my other social media outlets) may have noticed that I haven't posted any photos of newer work in the studio in the past few months. At some point during this past summer, I made the choice to pull back from posting so many images of works-in-progress and newer pieces because I've needed to change some things about my social media interaction as it relates to my studio practice.

I photo-document a LOT and enjoy sharing images of my work and studio with those who don't live near me and a studio visit might be out of the question. However, a lot of that sharing began to muddle things for me. The sharing of works-in-progress began to feel like over-sharing. I felt a real desire to return to the mindset that I had before having a presence on the 'net became almost mandatory for artists and others to gain an audience; just me in the studio working out whatever issues that I might be having with the work and inviting people into the studio once in a while to discuss what I'm working on and so forth.

 It's tricky for creative people because we often like to have our work validated in some way and social media is a great way to have your peers (and others) weigh in on what you are doing, even if they are miles or countries away. I know that I enjoy getting a peek into what other artists are working on. The dialogues that can happen are wonderful and can be creatively invigorating. However, I found that after a while, the self-imposed "need" to post began to over take more serious considerations with the work in the studio. For a long time, I thought about how having a laptop or tablet in the studio would enable me to make constant updates from the studio. I resisted that idea and am glad that I did.

It has been a few months since I began to change the relationship between my art and social media, but the differences that it has made in how I relate to my work recently undeniably positive. Much like having painted over years of marks and drips on the wall , resisting the urge to post every movement that I make in the studio has cleared pathways for new things to happen in ways that the world doesn't need to be privy to, at least while they are happening. All of the outside stimuli has an effect on you, no matter how small. Over time, it all builds up and one day, you are wondering how you got so far away from your original intent. The proliferation of marks on my working wall wound up preventing me from "seeing" my work and made me expend precious mental energy on attempting to block out the distracting colors and patterns surrounding works-in-progress. The same thing happened with how I used social media in relation to my art. There got to be too much other "stuff" to consider and I unconsciously created mental filters that began to alter my perceptions of my work and took me away from an honest dialogue and evaluation of it, at times.

I'm much more comfortable with where I stand now with my art and social media. I post whatever articles or links that I feel might be interesting to followers here, and on Facebook, Twitter, and G+ with a focus on art-related items, but I have released myself from feeling obligated to constantly post my own newer work or works-in-progress.  I will probably return to some form of sharing studio documentation in the nearish future, but for now, it's just me, the work, and a few cups of tea to keep warm while I figure out whether to leave this painting as is, or whether I should sand it down and start over...

Black clouds, silver lining

Portion of a new work on paper in progress

Some days the practical aspects of being an artist can seem a never-ending trial. Having had years of dealing with the issues that come up, I'm usually able to deal with what comes my way and move on. Every once in a while, the mental and financial gymnastics one has to go through sometimes are enough to leave a black cloud the size of Texas dangling over my head, like this morning. Once again, I was able to get by, but it still left me in a foul mood for a while. Luckily, I had things to do before heading up to the studio, so I had some time to distract myself, reflect, figure things out and ease out of my bad mood so that it wouldn't affect me creatively. 

Once I got up there, I was more than ready to dive into work. I've spent more time out of the studio in the past couple of weeks than in and in that time, I'd had plenty of time to think, and re-think some ideas for projects that I've been working on. No matter how rough things might make me feel, getting into work-mode always puts me in a better place. I always feel at my best when I'm figuring out problems in the studio and seeing the results of learning from the good and bad can work wonders. 

When Life Gets in the Way of Art - NYTimes.com

When Life Gets in the Way of Art - NYTimes.com

It was revealed recently that Ernest C. Withers, who photographed images of the Little Rock integration battle, the Emmett Till trial, and many more scenes from the civil rights era, was a paid informant for the FBI.

This article brings up issues regarding artistic intent and integrity related to Withers, artist Larry Rivers and joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck.

From what I've read about the Withers revelations, a lot of people are shocked and feel betrayed by what he did. On the other hand, do his actions as a paid informant change the work itself? Do his photographs now lose any artistic revelance because of his personal dealings with the government? I don't think so. A good photograph is still a good photograph, regardless of the circumstances. As documents of a social movement, however, they are now recast in another light altogether-that of evidence of a betrayal of trust.

Time slips

I've been reading this book called, "A Painter's Life" by K.B. Dixon. The novel is a collection of biographical scraps of fictional painter, Christopher Freeze. There's no story, per se, but an odd mix of pieces of Freeze's life as seen through the title character's "unpublished journals", bits of exhibition reviews, and the narrative of the auther describing parts of Freeze's life.

I'm about 75% through the book and came across an interesting bit taken from the unpublished journals of Christopher Freeze where he's describing a local watering hole:

"A dingy, low-lit place filled with the unwashed, the uncommitted, and the unemployed, Arnold's is one of those existential hog-wallows that prides itself on a dubious set of bona fides. A sort of retro stage set, it paraphrases another place and time-a place and time we readily assume to be realer, more substantive than the one we now inhabit."

The latter part of that passage really caught my attention, about Arnold's being a place that recalled a time the we remember as being more authentic than the present. That's the rub about the present, we're always busy trying to figure out where we are because time just keeps marching on. The past provides us with a stage where we can stop time, relive or reconstruct moments in time and imbue them with whatever significance we want, all in the service of gettring away from the present. The present, where nothing is certain, aside from the standys-death and taxes. There isn't even a *now* since time is in perpetual movement and we can't even begin to decipher the meaning of the present until some time has past.

It's no wonder that human beings cling to memories, real or imagined, of times and events gone by. The present is filled with so much anxiety and uncertainty because we can barely wrap our minds around how fast the present becomes the past. Things are happening that may take years to understand. We have little understanding of whatever is going on in our lives or around the world. Situations change in the blink of an eye and we have to retune our minds to accomodate the new reality. It's no wonder we like to retreat to "a simpler, more innocdent time"-whatever that might be for us. Trying to imagine how rapidly tthe present is changing is like tyring to understand the vast distances that light travels from places in outer space to Earth. Mind-blwoing, really. The idea of the ungraspable aspect of the present is what inspired one of my exhibitions, which I titled, "When Is Now". There is no now. We say that there is because it's in our nature to categorize things and time is one of those mysterious things that we have a very tenuous grasp on.

the slow move

I haven't been too inspired to post here lately, but the thaw is coming. My mind has been pulled in several directions over the past few months and I'm just now beginning to get a hold of things.

Things are taking form in the studio: paper, panels, paint, collage, a bit of this, a bit of that. It's happening slowly but surely.

This fall/winter has been a little rough: bike accident back in October, computer crash/loss of information, finance issues (who doesn't have those, not counting the CEO's of certain companies we've helped finance. That's all I'll say about that here...) and a general lack of focus in the studio for a while. Of course, it all has not been bad: I did Open Studios in October and sold a small painting, I gave a talk at West Virginia University, met some great people there and saw some paintings of mine that I hadn't seen in almost a year.

With that said, I'm moving on with some new work. In a way, I feel like I'm in a pitch-black room, feeling my way around for a switch. It's getting done and how it turns out is anyone's guess, but that's how it usually is, actually. My studio schedule has been pretty scattered for the past few months but things are coming together.

And now for something completely different:

This is going to be my new bike, hopefully. It's not ready yet and I haven't tried it out. My old bike was not exactly totaled after the accident, but there are too many things wrong with it to make fixing it worth the headache. Lucky for me, my parents-in-law super great. They are so cool that they sent money over from Australia so I could get another bike when Eva told them what happened.

I'm going with a single speed because I've wanted one for a long time and I love their simplicity. They can be works of art in and of themselves. Here's more about the one I'm getting: Swobo Bikes

short day

I didn't get up to the studio as early as I wanted to this morning, but I did pretty good with the time I did spend there. I left by mid-afternoon because my studio mate was bringing a friend and his adult art class by to see the space. She asked me a while ago if I wanted to be involved and at first I agreed to, but then thought about the timing and declined. I'm just not in the right headspace at the moment to deal with hosting anyone at the studio just before a big show...especially strangers.

I also needed to leave early because I desperately needed to catch up on some cleaning around the apartment. I've had a pile of dishes in the sink for too long. I just washed what I needed at the moment and left everything there. Between my work and hectic studio schedule, dishes aren't on the daily priority list. I got through them this afternoon, though. It's kind of nice seeing the bottom of the sink again. There's also a good deal less cat fur and dust around, too, which is good.

I could really use a nap, but not much time for that. It's already after 6pm and I have to get cleaned up and head out to catch some First Friday openings. If it weren't for a couple of people I know having openings tonight, I'd be on the couch right now. It's ok, I'll just head back home early. I need to anyway, since I have to be back in the studio first thing in the morning. Need to finish up a couple of things and then some works are going to be picked up to be photographed tomorrow evening...