like the poltergeist, I'm ba-ack!

Movies

Okay. I was going to give this up, this blogging, but I have a lot to say. In rereading many of my entries I keep seeing the word ANGER over and over again. Most of the country is angry, frustrated, agitated...I certainly am not alone. And I have made my point. Enough about the anger.

And the blog is about art, but art is a process, a process about living, about seeing. For me it is mathematical, it is literary, it is contemplative and it is technical. Photography helps. I often do a great deal of research, both of the materials and my methods. This makes me a little bit of a know-it-all. One of my character flaws. What I don't know I ask about. I have a box full of cast off failures from 2007, but not so this year. Lately I have just sat down with a book or board and thrown down line after line, or in the case of pastels, gentle touch after gentle touch until it satisfies. There has been very little waste, there are only three or four pieces I would not present here, or offer for sale.

There is a huge historical perspective I often ignore. I have experimented with all kinds of media tools...the computer software being a large part of for a long time.It was too long ago now, lying on the floor in an icy Princeton computer lab, working with a bunch of guys to stretch code to someplace that would work for what I wanted. I didn't know what I wanted. While I was in college I had the chance to intern with some of the most well-known artists of the time, at full tuition cost of classes and dorm fees. It was hard to make that make sense when I would be a mere 2 hours from home, not the normal 12. Those internships evaporated without the direct educational institution link. And I believed my college art professor when he said I could paint and even sculpt but I would never be an artist. I sat in his studio, tears and snot running down my face at his pronouncement, after 4 years of hero worship. He might have clued me in a little earlier and I could have freed myself up more for writing and French and literature. The bastard had one of my art papers published, under my name of course....he had to think it was good, right? He had little comfort to offer beyond a rag tainted with turpentine (of course we had no idea we had been poisoning ourselves all that time). I knew I wasn't Van Gogh but it took me what seemed like an eternity to get over what was probably a simple, common, sexist assumption on his part...perhaps even merely a bad day. His education was from professors who used and threw away women, men who drank themselves to death and abused others in name of their art. The masters suffered for their art, it was natural too assume we must too. Sobbing at my last critique as not the kind of suffering I had in mind.

These harsh lessons made me a passionate and empathetic teacher, not afraid to push hard for good work but unwilling to tear anyone apart to get at it. My poor parent's car was so loaded down with bronze and metal and canvases and tools that the trip home ruined their shocks or struts. I was so car sick we had to stop at every gas station until my mother pitied me and road in the back. Fien time to tell me all that work was for naught.

When I graduated from college with my very classical art training (experimental materials required such bold in-the-face-of-the-masters when I did dare I was punished with b grades).There was plenty of greatliberal arts education. With my specialized Bachelor of Fine Arts I got 2 offers...I could earn $13,000 as a junior designer for the Boston Museum of Science exhibit department or at the Smithsonian, for just under $12,000. Really great jobs in very expensive cities. I thought of my friends in New York, sleeping in closet size rooms and fighting roommates over noise and food and money, slamming the toaster on the counter before making breakfast so they didn't toast any cockroaches. I had never seen a cockroach before. Sure, we have mice and rats and crickets and stuff out here in the "country" of Connecticut, but could I adjust to urban noise and smells, conquering my fear of the unknown for a spectacularly great job at a really low wage? I stayed with my cousin and his wife in Washington D.C. and it seemed a more plausible city to live in, but I didn't know where to find an edgy art culture...that was easy to find in Boston and New York.

One of my fellow art graduates lived alone in a storefront, which she accessed by raising and lowering those rolly metal doors that protected her from break-ins I couldn't comprehend. At 17 someone stole a good pen that was a graduation gift, right off my classroom desk, probably as I turned in a test. At 18 a poor unwell soul broke into my parent's house and stole underwear and dresses from my sister, mother and I. At school my dryer was mysteriously emptied of panties. Other than that my sister and I only stole from each other. Of course we each remember it all differently and I am finally old enough the details don't matter, but my elephantine memory can be inconvenient.

I went and stayed in Brooklyn with a good friend who found a low paying teaching job at a very progressive school. He was thrilled with the way he had adapted, and he was a genius teaching the children of well-known authors, artists and designers in any subject, without a teaching certificate. It wasn't too long after that the first Mac was released and hypertext became my obsession. It all moved so fast, and I loved riding the wave. His desk at home(with the required little Mac)was an ironing board. I was impressed yet still somehow horrified. There was a toaster oven and a hot plate and one of the things my mother taught me very well was how to cook. I did not gain weight as a freshman off to college...the food was so substandard I refused to eat it most of the time. Life still seemed doomed to Ramen noodles and tea even beyond college! The subway and train rides seemed long out that way but didn't scare me. I did cry about half the night sleeping on the floor, and sadly I have lost touch and not found him again, I was an unapologetic, ungrateful wretch as my farewell. Even if I could land a good gig what would I do with the car I just bought and how on earth would I find a date? Newly "out" as a lesbian (and a rabid feminist) I was horrified that it was $9.00 in 1984 to get into a club for lesbians. No addresses were published...you walked up and down a rumored street and the street hoped for a nod from a bouncer, so you kind of had to look like you belonged in the club. I did not look like I belonged in the club. It was a lot of wandering alone in dangerous places for a costly maybe.

I headed back to the folks' house, uncertain of what to do. That short sordid story ended with getting fired for taking the bookkeeper to a gay bar and off I went cross-country, determined not to humiliate my family by residing nearby.

Out West I did graphic design and illustration for print in a VERY low-end way. I utilized the first releases of most of the new stuff as the technology improved. I got so I could draw as well with a mouse as I could with any other tool and I played around with animation, but my New York fellow grad friend went off to Canada as a less expensive place to learn filming and film editing skills. She blew me away with her productions, with fabulous control of voice and music. MTV production remained hot dreams for many creative types I knew.

Computers couldn't hold that data, I kept maxing out my memory and waiting forever for graphics to load. It didn't take me long to figure out that I could make a lot more money in much less time selling printed products than I could designing, and the world of design was still very sexist. Men did concepts, women slaved at keyboards for much less money. Then the low-end women's jobs disappeared. If you didn't keep up, you were simply erased from the industry. I decided being reasonably dressed with earning power I directly that increased with good work made more sense.

The story is long and I am so very tired. Hopefully I will have correctly finished my play with a free software toy and you saw that already. I don' care if nobody reads it. I am back, and the word anger is banished.