My dear sweet (and very talented artist curator friend) Lisa keeps asking how she can help by setting up an Amazon wishlist or some sort. Everyone's been so generous already that I don't think it's necessary. But, that said, I did lose all my art books and have been slowly rebuilding by buying used interesting art books. The one I'm reading now is this smart little book about the art market and auction world. Truly, I bought it because it's so pretty but the author, Judith Benhamou-Huet, is clearly and articulately pointing out again and again how messed up the entire auction, collection and market system is for art.
I've been skeptical for years about the too close ties between collectors (the rich and nouveau riche) and protectors (curators and museum folk) and especially because I think the value of art is not in it's rarity but should be in it's everpresence.
I guess what I mean is that by making and sharing and connecting and distributing and encouraging and shouting about art we are truly serving the social purpose of art. We don't make art for money (at least I don't know anyone who does), we make art because we have to, because it can make good, because it can be shared, not purchased for ridiculous amounts of money at notoriously nefarious auction houses by people who will covet, hide, and use objects to bolster their social status or support their ego. I think most collectors collect because they love the things, but is love hoarding objects or sharing them?
I have more idea sorting to do and am still reading. And yes you can send me a booklist of things to read. I have 2 (count em!) library cards and no real desire to hoard books like I have before, ideas are weightless but books are heavy...
long holiday weekend coming and plenty of time to think, paint, read and sleep. Ah! May yours be as lovely, take care
Rachael

I'm feeling it. My mornings and odd moments in the squatter studio are starting to pay off and I picked up some of my ceramic pieces including a successful experiment using glazes as a patchwork pattern. Here's a visual sampler and my warm regards. I'm not talking much today just trying to keep at the thinking, reading, drawing, painting and feeling back on my feet.


take care,
Rachael

My day job has been busy this week, a blur of people and phone calls and requests and connecting folks to the art education they want. But it has been good to be able to sneak away at breaks and before or after work to paint or draw in my squatter studio. I've been messing around glazing and collaging and combining and mucking up the bits and pieces of paintings that made it out of the old place. I'd forgotten how much fun it is to glaze and glop paint.
And I'm a little glazed over from thinking about how people make art as well as the why we do it. What's the reason we're all so compelled to make stuff?
In my meager moments to spin around the web, I found:
Danny's good little step by step up of his illustration process
This nice opportunity for sculptors
and the Haida house in Brooklyn I needed to see today.
thanks for all the compliments, dear new friends, and for all the support, dear old pals, take care,
Rachael

Today, at a friend's suggestion and thanks to her kind gift, I started reading some of Donald Hall's poems about the illness and death of his wife Jane Kenyon. These are powerful and painfull stuff, more meaningful the more I sit with them (and I only learned of it today and have only cracked the book open a few times.) I am thinking again of the healing, processing, and communicating power of poems and pictures in times of loss. We were so lucky to have not lost human life in the fire but I am struck by how quickly things can change, how temporary our lives are, and how much we can give to each other in the telling of our stories and the sharing of our experiences.
I'm finding now that my potential painting pile (those pieces changed but not gone) is large. I'm hoping that if I can imbue them with some more truth, color, energy, and honor the history of their "being smoked out and dampened", and let them say something about this whole process, this story, they will be better. They will be done.
At least until the next fire, flood, typhoon, war, seizure of art, etc. All things are temporary. Nothing can be guaranteed, so a few drawings in the sketchbook are in order and then a good nights sleep. I urge you to do the things you are compelled to do tomorrow, take risks, skirt the edges of your potential. Be of use as Marge Piercy so aptly put it in a poem that moved me today.
take care, Rachael

Well I have been working on making art again after the re-adjustment. It's a lot of sketchbook work and now I am officially squatting an unused area at my dayjob as a make-shift studio. I've had these squatter spaces before and I like 'em. The trick is to find a space where you can have supplies hidden or locked away, at least some time in the space alone, a way to keep it clean (ish, I am a messy painter after all), and access to light, water and coffee. Squatter spaces are by their very nature temporary but can be crazy productive for me (in part because I know the space to work won't always be there...I simply have to make myself go there and make art.)

My first squatted studio happened after a summer of teaching intensive art camps at an art school. One camp consited of a 2 week, monday through friday, 9 to 5 rotation of teaching drawing and paintingt to teenagers. I love teens, I love teaching but at the moment that gig ended I needed to lock myself in a room and paint. So I noticed that the classroom space wasn't going to be used for 2 weeks and I kept the key. When monday rolled around I went to the classroom as I had all summer but instead of teaching I took over the space. Because I could still discipline myself to work 9 to 5 and because I had been teaching all summer, the ideas just poured out. Literally.



So then, we'll see what happens in this squatter studio and as my husband and I start the process of buying a house. Each day we feel more adjusted and comfortable with the change, lucky that no one was hurt, and happy to have the support we do. Even if some of the paintings above are...well I won't say ruined...different now.

I've got some painting to do...

take good care,
Rachael