Phew! In time for the January 15th deadline, I have my application for a prestigious and simply wonderful art opportunity ready to send. I don't wanna jinx it and my fingers are so tightly crossed it's a little hard to type...but the feeling the relief of putting the whole package together is nice.

That's about all I've been doing (aside from day job work) this week, but I did start a painting class. The teacher is one well known for his honesty, his ability to push painters hard, and his humor. So far the combo is very helful and the other students are focused, smart, and productively painting their own work, at their own pace, in their own way.

Community is inspiring, as is a kick in the ass to make the work better, better, better, keep looking at it, keep listening to it, keep engaging with it. That's the whole fun of painting, drawing, even blabbity blabbing in this forum.

Ah, yes, but now, I am ready to sleep. See ya!

Rachael

Good movie . Visually rich, fantastic music, and a story that kept me amused and amazed. But then I really liked Rushmore (guess I'm not alone) and The Royal Tennebaums too. Just something so satisfying about seeing this particular smart parody of scientific documentaries.

I've been reading old national geographics and looking up the trees in my area and thinking about how the things that grow where you are have a presence in the person you become. I'll work it all out but to do that I end this little blogentry and get back to drawing and writing.

Take care,
Rachael

Sometimes a poem is all I need to spark new fresh thoughts. Marsden's dogtown looked different after hearing Charles. More poems here, (more Charlie Olson) free, and freely told by those who wrote 'em.

Cold, beautiful winter days make me want to travel to the end of the earth and think, paint, and share.

Reading Anna's recent entry about the way she uses the internet in her work has me thinking. I too am pretty amazed at the ways this web of working artists, art lovers, art thinkers, and civilians has been helpful in my own process. I am inspried by the community here and even though I hardly get a chance to reply to comments or emails, I read 'em and think 'em through. Honest.

And honestly, I'm obsessed with the story of the American Chestnut. Blight. Regrowth. Big beautiful trees. I wanna find a tree...

One benefit of working in an arts education program is that I can learn as well as help others learn, so my class starts soon and I'm hoping to get some help in pointing my work in a slightly different direction. I ordered some new stuff last week and stocked up at the post christmas sales but I can't keep my hands off my new schtuff. All my school supplies will be major mucked up by the time I show up at the first class. Oh well. So goes it.

take care,
Rachael

by the way, more residency links are here

Often, in assessing my day, I will consider a good one by saying "well, no one got hurt." Today, in my little world no one got hurt. My talk went well (i.e. I didn't babble like an idiot and I did stop to look again at the painting), I managed to answer most of the frantic phone calls at work, I found time to eat my lunch, and all of my fancy new art supplies came in the mail.

Things are good then. But there's such a lingering sadness over the Tsunami situation. I heard a powerful commentary by Annie Dillard on NPR this morning that stuck with me all day. So many people got hurt.

I often think of scale in terms of art and size but it's so easy for me as an American to forget the magnitude of this tragedy...how many others lives and deaths are just dots in blue water...

Vija Celmins seems appropriate here.



More people hurt, more people missing, more people traumatized seems like more reason to make art to me, to help others, to connect as human beings in this big messy world.

More soon, but again, take care of yourself and others,

Rachael

and Dad, I love you, nice to know you are reading

The past two days have been a tremendous blur of activity at work. Good stuff but busy. And then at the end of the day I spend a bunch of hours trying to pull this graphic novel project together and a bit of time trying to sharpen my ideas about the talk I'll give this week and then some time just spilling paint and moving a pencil around to ease the stress and calm my nerves.

Big thanks to Jennifer at simpleposie for the canadian art links, see the exciting new section to your left and feel free to send me more to add.

I got my Art Papers in the mail today and felt a tinge of missing the ATL but mostly I wondered why they won't cover the south like kudzu. Once they did, now ArtPapers is so diffused as to be...um...boring. I promised I'd be honest. I used to love the artist's projects pages in ArtPapers and when I first moved down south that was the only place to learn about contemporary art in the south but now like most art mags it's ads, blah-blah-blah-ticles, reviews of shows that are over over and more over, and ads. Barbara Schrieber had a good living the art life/survival series of articles for a while but if they're gone so is a big chunk of relavent content. I have faith that that magazine can find some sparkling new perspectives, some real relavent ideas, and some distance on the market. The glossier it gets, the farther away ArtPapers will be from the non-glossy lives of those folks who make art in places like Atlanta, Nashville, Austin, Charleston, you know, those places that aren't big and aren't apples. People do make art in places that aren't on subway lines...

Ok, that's me and I'm off my soapbox to paint again. Like I did last summer. Sorry.

take care,
Rachael