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I should be painting.

I should be working on thesis related research.

I should be making art and working towards exploring my BFA project.

I should be learning from others and expanding my understandings and experimenting and getting these summer assignments done

I should be painting, I whisper, as I submit yet another illustration to artfight

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How do you research ideas? How do you keep up with the world?

Tumblr! Pinterest, google, all sorts of image searching. I’m part of a few art forums where I constantly lurk and hoard images for idea generation. I’m also a big fan of book reading. Researching historical clothing styles or like, food and architecture is great. Reading fiction that explores those things is better. I love learning more about things and being able to pull that for work, even if it’s in little ways.

A lot of the research I’m doing now is in like, socializing and discussions with people around me. I’ve been spending time learning about family history, and getting friends to talk about how their home situations are in a past vs present vs hopeful future thing. I’m really interested in the way we build our environment around us to make a place more homey, and how that relates to dislocations from home spaces and loss in that way. Like, rebuilding as a way to come to terms with change and remaking a nest or whatever. I don’t know. I’m not as good at explaining these things as I’d like to be.

I’m not super good at keeping up with the world generally speaking? My family failed to keep cable and tv available so I’m not used to keeping up with news. I read almost everything that comes across my dash though, and I’m subscribed to a few newsletters that I read when I can. I try to pay attention when happenings occur, but I’ve been known to be completely oblivious even to major events. 

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What is your preferred method/medium of working? What part of this “is working”? What do you want to change?

Weird way of wording that. Hope I’m understanding here. 

I’ve always been into watercolor for working, since my father started me with a set when I was 5. We used to compete to paint landscapes, beaches and stuff, lol. Watercolor just feels natural, but admittedly I haven’t really experimented with effects in it, I mostly just use it like I’d use colored pencils I guess? I’m new to the dripping and splattering and flows etc etc.

Other than that I love working digitally! It’s so accessible for editing and playing with colors, and its affordable with no having to repurchase things. (Though adobe seems to be trying to change that.)

As far as working--for me, it’s the time and money consuming aspects that make it work. After spending a dozen hours on a piece and not yet being half done, you gotta step back and look at it. Realizing how much is left and resigning yourself to the work ahead totally makes it more of a job. And having to continually buy supplies. Using real supplies makes it feel more like actually working. I also sink a lot of time into color and comp studies. 

I think I’d like to get faster at everything, so I can stay in that headspace of ‘making a fun piece’ more, if that makes sense. I enjoy playing with lots of dif media too, and that gets expensive fast, so I’d like to be able to scale back my impulse purchases lol. Other than that I’m generally okay with my processing, it’s just time consuming.

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+2 pieces to end the term.

following that change from being dragged all over every year by family to that moving out and getting away and being able to make your own space and decide how long you’ll stay

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Working out my plan for my BFA project next year.

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My recent work has been about people and their relationship with “home,” whatever that may be for them. Having spent much of my childhood in varying states of homed and homeless, struggling to find a sense of belonging, finding a place to call ‘home’ (whether within a house or not), and having that variety of home-places be only temporary, I find it to be a recurring theme I return to in my mind and in my work. 

Within these explorations of home, what it means, and how it can be experienced, I want to communicate the kinds of emotions that wanting, having, and losing a home-place can elicit. I work to portray that loneliness of lacking a home, the peace and serenity of finding a home, the pain of losing, the constant changing states of homes, those places where one belongs, and how those changes affect our growth and maturity. How have those who have always lived in their childhood home had differently lived experiences to those who have only known constant change? How does discomfort or unease in the place you should call home affect your emotional output and understanding of the world? These ideas I want to explore are rooted in my own experiences, but my goal is to communicate many issues around that sense of place and belonging, and how it affects ones sense of self and emotional/mental state. I want to communicate a variety of feelings and views, centered on one’s home, their place of belonging.

In my midterm work, I did four watercolor pieces. The titles are all tentatively given by a friend, so no one can blame me if they suck. I think I will never title a work again. Outsourcing them is so much easier and way more fun.

You Carry It With You - The bag lady work is based on the feeling of having to keep your home with you. Could be read as a homeless thing. The bag lady, anxiously trying to protect herself, looks uncomfortably on as others around her enjoy the light of the sun and relieve themselves of the (relatively small) loads they would have carried on their own backs, if at all.

Your Source Of Content - The blanket kid work is based on that kind of, this single thing in my life (gifted by a loved one) is the only warmth I have in the chaos that surrounds me. Their room torn apart, window covered in plywood, plants dying. An attempt was made at making their space home, but it has been ruined by outside sources.

You Will Never Unpack It All - The box child is based on that idea of constantly changing homes, or unstable living situations, where you may never be able to get things out of storage, or unpack anything more than your necessary clothes before the next unexpected move.

The Only Constant You’ve Known - The pale one, surrounded by poisonous plants and signs of death, a soft draping fabric tangled about them. This one is based on that unending depression, the decades long experience of quiet suffering, and the comfort that only comes from the consistency, and the inevitable death as your final ‘home’

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. . . and that’s a kind of home, isnt it?

Hi blog~

Momentarily forgot you existed.

(yes, a moment can be three weeks long)

My midterm works should probs get posted here yeah? 

Next post will be about my thing for these guys. You know. The Thing™. The explanation thing. Thoughts. Et Cetera.

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Looking//Listening

Spent my class time at World Cup Coffee, in Powell’s.

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This came up again recently for me –

Vent Art.

Urban Dictionary defines it as this:

Art that someone makes to let out a feeling, usually a negative feeling like anger or sadness. Venting your feelings out on the canvas.

EX: During my depression, I no longer took commissions as I was spending all my time on vent art.

I haven’t really utilized the process of creation to let out my feelings. I think, once, I was angry and decided to try it out, but it only made me feel worse, as I lingered in that mindset and explored the feeling. I think I tend to prefer letting things wash over me? (I say ‘I think’, but I’ve actually known this for years probably.) In viewing and studying a lot of other artists work, especially those around me, it seems like vent art is really popular? I’ve known that for years, too. It’s weird to me I guess?

I’ll be babbling a bit on this topic below the cut. Click below for mental ramblings

I’ve been feeling inadequate specifically because I’ve never been into vent art, or exploring my negative feelings with what I make. I feel like I’ve faced enough shit in my life, and I would rather not linger on any more if I can help it thank you very much. But then it’s like, I feel lesser specifically because I’m not, idk, exploring my feelings and letting out all that negativity, and seeing where it takes me. I’ve been getting this sense that what I make—whatever it is I’m making—is . . . fake? And not deep? And everyone else around me is making deep work, that relates to the Tragedies Of The Youth. (altern: their young adulthood, their past year, their etc time period)

I don’t particularly enjoy making work that pertains to the Tragedies Of The Youth. I could make tens of paintings on my homelessness, but I would rather make something more . . . vague? Accessible? I kind of get the idea that by making personal work, it becomes more personal for others. I would rather make something related to homelessness, without putting my soul into it and having to spend time with my past self. Same with foster care. Same with depression. Same with abuse, mental illness, familial struggles, my sister’s death, etc etc. I don’t enjoy spending time with those thoughts, and making something out of it.

But then, just two months ago was the 15th anniversary of my sister’s death, and I did make a couple paintings that my mind eventually related to that event. The paintings started as an assignment, and turned toward that. And it wasn’t the worst experience for me?

I wonder how I can go about approaching works to express those issues for me, without turning it into that emotional investment that comes with vent art. How can I trick myself into making work about the TOTY, without falling into those mental spaces?

I may be making something out of nothing, unnecessarily. I just feel like whatever I’m making isn’t standing up to that of my cohort, because it’s not exploring the depth of my queerness, or the suffering of my traumas—it’s also not really exploring my own happy moments either, it feels? I may be being too vague in my work overall.

Do I have to make it personal, to consider it art? I’ve never really called myself an artist (I’m a drawer, or a painter), and I don’t call my work art (It’s a drawing, painting, a ‘piece’ or ‘work’). That could stem from not taking myself/my work seriously. And that could stem from the vagueness, and the inability to work with things that are serious to me.

I guess this is more about emotional work overall, and not specifically vent art. I would like my work to have an emotional content, I think. But I don’t want whatever usually comes with it.

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A List of Occurrences, Chronologically Ordered.

2008

Father invites a ‘friend’ from two town hops ago to live with us, offers my room. I sleep on the floor for a month before she suddenly leaves.

Parents move my brothers and I into a single room in our apt, so father can further his... hydroponic garden

5$ bill colorized, confused for months but pleased with the change

Obama elected. I am pleased to have . . . helped my parents make their vote

2009

We are able to move into a house for the first time since foster care. I have my own room at 16. The State will be pleased.

Swine flu outbreaks, make many pig jokes. MJ dies, confusion—why is everyone crying when he was bad??

In helping father’s gardening, I finally receive a paltry income. I waste it at Utrecht on too many supplies I will not use. I’m briefly content.

2010

Tomato shortage.

Deepwater Horizon explosion, BP oil spill.

I go to Japan with a small group of classmates. It’s the happiest I’ve ever been

2011

I waste my time drawing digitally, and playing bejeweled. I fail to graduate on time. I start physical therapy (again) for the CPS

The owners of the house foreclose on us with no warning, we move back into an apartment. Father downsizes his garden. We return to foodboxes.

Best Friend’s family moves back to Texas for fifth time. She is sick of it, moves in with my family until she can afford her own place.

Ai Weiwei is arrested/detained. Occupy Wall Street, Osama’s death, DADT ends. Political drama seems constant for the first time.

2012

Trayvon Martin’s death. Aurora Shooting. Sandy Hook.

 I begin taking online commissions, and ‘donating’ plasma to help pay rent.

Disney purchases Lucasfilm. Why is this a big deal?

2013

Boston Marathon Bombing.

BFF seeks help with world creation for novel series. I get involved with writing again.

I draw uncomfortable topics for money. Why are people even asking for this. How do I sell landscape paintings instead.

 Apartment complex transfers hands, we are briefly homeless again. Find stay in a motel. Garden related issues involve local authorities. I fight to keep my brothers together and well until it blows over.

 I start at PCC, get recruited into a few art classes, make a single friend.

2014

No one will rent to my mother. The motel is so cramped.

I take many classes with my new friend. At ‘home’ depression hits new levels. Anxiety.

Take a fiction writing class. Enjoy it immensely. Once again escape into film and novels.

Mother is laid off, desperately seeks new job. No one will her hire for months.

2015

A deviation in my norm occurs. New friend is now new datemate. Drama begins. I have never felt so confined in the motel room.

I stop drawing. I didn’t know depression could take away what it had given. There is no escape anymore.

2016

I barely finish my transfer degree at PCC. I get into the dorms at PSU with datemate. I can breathe for once.

BFF nearly cuts all contact with me. Parents demand visitations.

I force drawing again, and attempt to ignore issues around me. Datemate pushes for me to “seek help.” It’s not happening. Imposter Syndrome worsens.

2017

Accepted into BFA program at PSU. The self-doubt has quieted (for a short time)

I take a few commissions. I work on improving my environmental drawings. I wish they had illustration classes for more than just the GD students.

2018

How many times must the CPS resurface before the doctors decide that maybe phys therapy isn’t enough?

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I’ve always had a focus on humans and figures, so seeing that reoccurring throughout my work is no surprise to me. I’m often inspired by our interactions with the space around us, how we change and react to it, as well as how we change those spaces. The way that one enters a space, and is able to conform to it and make it their own is of interest, and I enjoy trying to create these characters that relate to their space, fitting into it. I’m also interested in how one may be uncomfortable in a space, feeling out of place, and how to represent that. 

Lighting conditions, and how to utilize them to create a mood, is another thing I find myself drawn to. I find most of my memories are filtered and focused on light, and that’s played a large role in how I view the world. I struggle to remember people, faces, things, but the way the sun hit golden on a friend’s cheek, the neon glow of the emergency bus lights on a sleeping child, and the overcast blue everything takes on at 4am in mid-march, all allow me to retain those faces and places better.

Recently, I’ve been inspired by a great many artists and illustrators who do character driven work. I think I favor work that involves a narrative, story element, or that shows a facet of who someone is. Most of whats already up is exploring those ideas. 

Things I’ve been thinking about lately:

I’m in a constant state of trying to improve my mental library, so I do a lot of exercises in drawing from memory and without reference to develop my creativity. Only a few of these works had references(and they were for small things)-- you can tell I could be using them more often to get higher quality results. I’m still thinking about the working from memory vs reference for my own work and what it means.

Portraits, it seems, have two approaches--focus on the face, the likeness, the emotions of the person; or focus on how they choose to present themselves, who and what they surround themselves with, how that relates to who/how they are as a person. It’s definitely an option to combine those, but more often than not, the work I see is one or the other, which is interesting. 

I’ve recently been very focused on plants and wildlife, and they’ve always been an inspiration to me, so going forward I’d like to put more emphasis on those things.

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What do you find more important in your work -- the subject, or the way it's executed?

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What do you enjoy most about your work? Least? Why? What are you proud of?

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What's your background and why are you drawn to those things you focus on?

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close up of a companion to the previous post. 

this one is also unfinished, hence no full image, but I like how this portion is coming out atm

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digital reference for a larger, currently unfinished piece

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late