Open Studios

October 20, 2012: my first Open Studios! 

Only a few dozen visitors, but there was live poetry in the courtyard and an unseasonably beautiful breeze. At one point during the day, as I sat on the studio floor beside a turtlenecked fellow and a girl in a poncho and listened to them talk about literature, I felt like my little pad had become a Paris salon or bohemian cafe.  Culture, man! You dig?

It was nice. I painted a big picture of my cat Kitty on a piece of wood during a lull in visitorship. I put out a few books of old work. There were tootsie rolls and pretzels provided. A touch of class. Note to self: make business cards!

Open Studios Dorcester main page: http://dac-online.org/about-us/open-studios/openstudios2012artistsandvenues 
(list of other artists and venues by the D.A.C.)

Scroll 5: Myth vs the Common Cold

The left side of this scroll is full of lofty ambitions. I wanted it to be an extension of my third graduate paper, which is all about journeys. I read Jack Kerouac and lots of myths through historian Joseph Campbell, and thought it would be interesting to show parallel examples of the "hero's quest" rambling from one side of the paper to the end. I started by copying some sections of an amazing Japanese travelogue from the 1700s that I found at the Boston Public Library. Then I planned to add Kerouac's On the Road, various mythical elements and images, and even moments from one of my favorite cartoons, Adventure Time with Finn and Jake.

Then I wore myself down and ended up with bronchitis, and my days were filled with coughing and not enough sleeping and paperwork and school. I became overwhelmed, slowed down on the "road of trials" and maybe even sucked up into the "belly of the whale" (these are all stages in Campbell's 'Hero's Journey'-- where the hero can get stuck for a long time). For this reason, the right side of the composition is covered with cough drop wrappers and elementary school desks and chairs, creeping over the picture like mold. I wanted to show the idealism slowly giving way to more mundane reality. Although, I sort of like that side better-- maybe reality can be pretty epic and beautiful just the way it is.

Finally, it needed a strong image to pull it together, so I painted a life-sized sprawling Kitty, my cat. She's been a constant through everything so far.  Her gaze could mean many things: maybe "i feel your pain," or perhaps, "dude, stop working on that thing and pet me."

Tapestry

Each night, after work, when I'm too wound up for sleeping and too brain-weary for curriculum planning and too physically worn out for painting and too distractable for TV, I have a hard time knowing what to do with myself. Voila! Weaving! Stringy good.

What do you think... tassel? No tassel?

I've begun a weaving unit at school with my fourth grade art students. For practice and for patience, every night for weeks now I've been working on this big 'tapestry'. The loom is a large piece of chipboard with notches cut by hand and there's no drawn plan or pattern: just mental picture of a rad, red hipster dinosaur-dragon with a tshirt and a happy roar.

The manipulated weft is clumsy, since I've been figuring out how to do it as I go along. I may go back and clean it up at the end. Presently, though, I'm really enjoying it! It feels like a personal avatar or mascot or a giant hand towel or a medieval flag.