addendum

more and more, i'm starting to see mainstream media, entertainment, things that look pretty, and the agents of consumption in general, as insidious tools by which our minds are numbed and drawn away from larger political injustices. i am trying to not be placated. it is important to me to not be placated. i will not be placated. be skeptical of pleasure.

indefinitely detention

how to change the world is a question that i think and self flagellate about a lot. a lot a lot.

lately i've noticed a change in my perspective which may be a function of adulthood, or upward class mobility, or perhaps both. that is - a shift in thinking about how things are terrible for myself, to thinking about how things are terrible for other people. it's amazing how much the world widens when you do so, because no matter who we are we cannot experience the entire terribleness of the world in just one body. and all of a sudden, peering into the fabric of society, you just see so many holes that need to be patched up.

it has been deeply paining to me to live in a proclaimed democratic society that is not postracial or postfeminist, that is blind to issues of class, and that undertakes authoritarian measures against people expressing their first amendment rights to assemble. simultaneously i feel the call to act, the call to do something, while being caught up in my generational fear of losing my source of income and ability to support myself and the people i love. i realize that i can't do everything at once all the time, so i persist in making changes when i can, preserving my integrity, striving towards my dream of being an artist, tending the metaphorical garden that my circumstances allow me to keep, but at the same time, feeling deeply pained by everything that is still left to solve, within and without of myself.

this is why adults are so grumpy and can't sleep at night.

things i've thought, but have not written about

the wintering in my soul, the immense capacity of life for change, the tenuousness of hope, the brightness of the future. how we got to where we are, a stopping point, a layover until some force sends us hurtling off to our next adventure.

what it means to be just, what it means to be real, what it means to be true.

occasional

lately updates to this blog have been haphazard, the reason being my interest in having my personal life on the internet has waned. this is separate from the idea of cultivating an online persona as an artist, an enterprise which i take very, very seriously. but sometimes there are still thoughts that don't fit into this mold of a joyous, working artist, which yearn to be expressed in a form less private than a diary. like how i return to cat power every few months or so, and how her voice makes me melt inside - not that soft romance novel kind of melting, but a violent, hot, viscous jolt in a place somehow inside yet deeper than my body. this woman is ridiculous, and the sound of her voice reminds me that there's something good and powerful in the world, even when we try to bury it, even when they try to bury it. sometimes i'm so caught up in daily life that i forget to visit that place that keeps us real. it takes me there.

grunge revisited

GRUNGE REVISITED by carolarola

lately, my inner self has been throwing a fit of existential proportions, and this is what it has to say:
decay! decay! the city is in a constant state of decay, robert smith's caked on runny teary makeup is all on my mind and i am resenting the parts of me that have become proper and minimal. rather than smashing things, i am resorting to materialism and moodboards as an expression of my inner being, which in itself shows how much i've -eyeroll- become part of the system, but nevertheless, it's time to bring back the grunge. and to start, i've stopped keeping track of how often i wash my hair.

the fledgling

if you must know, i've been busy learning to fly. oh, and listening to a sick amount of the cure.

work in progress

be excited. i think i've stumbled upon something g-ood.

on artist statements

me: i thought of a phrase that will describe my work to pretentious art audiences.
bf: oh cool, what is it?
me: [sounding pleased with myself] "hybrid identities and heterotopias".
bf: heterotopias... that sounds homophobic.
me: no, it describes a pocket of alternative space in a world where everything is homogeneous.
bf: but it has the word 'hetero' in it?
me: yes.
bf: still sounds homophobic to me. the art world hates homophobes.
me: it's a phrase from foucault. they'll love it.
bf: foucault - that homo.

nightdriving

me: that rosy glow over there is really pretty.
bf: it's from a penitentiary.

thoughts populating my brain in the past 24 hours

-i am unnaturally troubled by pack rat behavior in others (a house that bleeds with objects, an inability to fly free and leave everything behind)
-survivors of trauma often find highly intense situations to be more soothing than everyday activity, because normalcy is relative
-new order still rocks my socks off

sketches

it took me 6 months of toiling away at my new job to realize that a scanning enabled copier was just 8 feet away from my desk. doh! here are some drawings that i made recently. they were created on a night when i felt sleepless and shaken. i share them with ambivalence because, like all things i make, they are from an unspeakable place inside me, and i'm trying to be less confessional with my work nowadays. if being an artist means laying out every bad thing that ever happened to you for the public to see, well, then i'm not doing it anymore. i'm working from a place of resolve right now, a place equally deep, mysterious, and unspeakable.

reminder

i need to read more books, because it is starting to perturb me that the beliefs in my brain are from two years ago.

on separate news, i think bf and i are unconsciously falling into becoming a version of the handsome furs.

a good friend is hard to find

b: what do i hate the most about this?
me: um... [quizzically contemplating the possibilities] ..everything?
b: correct.

thought

a year ago i was slumming it on a life below a living wage, unable to afford art supplies, nice clothes, or studio space. this experience of being at the margins isn't uncommon to me, and you might say has formed a large part of my outlook on life. right now my life could not be any different - i am can run across the street to the art supply store at any time, and my paycheck is prettily parceled into middle class luxuries such as a retirement plan. i think as artists we need to be honest about the myth of the starving artist - you can't starve and make art at the same time, and the people in residencies or galleries probably have a family member that funds these activities. the irony of living at the margins is that once you get out and have a chance to escape your situation, you feel like you're leaving an intrinsic part of you behind and letting a lot of people down. i'm happy with where i am, i just don't want to become an urban gardening, post-modern crafting, over-privileged asshole in the process. i try to remind myself to stay real every day. one day i might need you to remind me of that too - in the form of a swift blow to the head.

current projects

i bought a sewing machine. because a life needs secret plans. and curtains, but mostly this beauty will be reserved for my secret plans.

i've spent the past couple of weeks moving closer to my workplace and the ocean, and am almost completely settled into my new abode. i'm just missing a larger tabletop and some shelves for my studio, and then i can finish the sublime drawings that i began back in january. i've started describing my practice to others as "used to do animation, now branching out into textile and drawn explorations of multiplicity and every day life". thinking about nomads again, the color red, and texture, weaving.

personal preferences

summer is the best season, and it may be correlated with school being out (thank you alice cooper). my affinity for summer probably has something to do with the experience of spinning outside under the trees, catching the sunlight winking through the leaves in between spots of green, until one is dizzy and out of breath, the world an exciting merry-go-round of sensory experiences smashed together and melting like scoops of icecream on the sidewalk. it's a wet season - monsoons, watermelon, sweat. it is wild, it is sweet, it is sticky. time, represented by increasing doses of sunlight, becomes this beautiful golden thing that you can stretch out over distances without fear of end. summer is possibility, is running in the dusk with your arms outstretched, is the music of your back porch and the cicadas, is feeling free. it is not young and crying like spring, but it is not ready to die like fall.

so fucking special

following up on the topic of my brain and the youtube generation i clicked around to the 90s radiohead relic, 'creep', and hoh-ly crap, talk about a treasure trove of colors themes and lighting that i think about ALL THE TIME. chiaroscuro lighting that is highly conscious of black and white photography but with warm acid colors toning the highlights and shadows. that feeling of uncontrollable light that softly through yonder window breaks. the blue faces of the palpitating crowd forming a warm moist and violent womb. butterfly lighting elevating thom yorke's cheekbones into the ecstasy of st theresa. first week of photo class, finding magic in damaged photo negatives but not quite sure how to explain it to your professor. plato's cave.

diptych of youtube screencaps stored on my computer; window into my existential interior

top: april skies
bottom: dreams

i could make a career out of painting screencaps (the spaces in between) from music videos. why don't i?

cookbook lust

Ancient Grains for Modern Meals

this is no surprise revelation, as i have secret plans to name my children quinoa, bulghur, and pilaf.

mandatory shoegazing

friday workplace subversion day continues (i have to do this. being around business students makes me feel way too straight laced, no pun intended). when in doubt, repurpose your old and disgusting chucks with some acrylic paint.

i looked up this morning and saw a sliver of light

when left to my own devices i'm drawn to the following: quietness, white space, constancy.

the good, the bad, the ugly

if you haven't yet caught on, i'm been trying for a while to make sense of my texas upbringing. the veneer of toughness with which i meet everyday life has become an object of curiosity to my southern california peers. why do you constantly think the world is out to get you? they ask. and they're right - i have very little to fear in the state of free love. but i lived for many years in a state that joyfully electrocuted 361 inmates before 1977, and boasts a record 466 lethal injections since. i'm only starting to realize the lasting impact the existence of a death penalty can have on an personal level. it didn't matter that i didn't think one should kill others - the state did. judging by its dogged interpretation of the 2nd amendment, it also thinks other people should be able to kill you. the idea of survival takes on a radically different tone in this light. it's no longer about feeding your family. it's about not getting shot by your neighbor.

i hear you like the punk rock

i have no intentions of becoming a style blogger, but this grrl on the bus was too awesome to only exist in my memory. last time i saw her she had a dollop of elmer's glue on her left ear - a consequence, as some of us know, of flipping one's head upside down, massaging in said glue and vigorously blow-drying to reach desired levels of spikiness.

from the vault

the current political standoff over reproductive rights is frightening, and sickening, and makes me wish we still lived in a climate where we can say the following about the right wing. but we're kind of afraid of calling evil by its proper name nowadays.

"fuck has as many connotations as does the word art and I’m far beyond the point of sitting down and casually complaining about this problem to the right wing control freaks who are the main offender of destroying art. I won’t calmly and literally complain to you I’m going to fuckin kill. I’m going to fucking destroy your macho, sadistic, sick right-wing religiously abusive opinions on how we as a whole should operate according to your conditions. Before I die many will die with me and they will deserve it. see you in hell.
love kurdt kobain."

—journals

p.s. sign a petition here.

look at the stars / look how they shine for you

star painting, 2011

'star painting' consists of 9 sheets of paper in which a map of the stars is depicted using pinpricks. backlit by a lantern and situated outside, 'star painting' creates a micro cosmos on earth, while paying homage to the night sky it faces.

new work

untitled, pen/hair/tape on paper, 2011

you may think this is only a sketch, but like a photograph of your thoughts, it has already developed. my hair is long, and i am losing it everywhere.

happy birthday to me

i'm 23 today. so young and so old, all at once! odd numbers and i have a good relationship. this is what my girl holiday has to say:

"You'll display your visionary powers, and others really catch on to your train of thought. In honing your leadership qualities, you'll shape the future. Good luck in May will broaden your financial horizons. Family additions happen in June. July brings a welcome change of pace. Relationships will be a source of fun and adventure. Leo and Gemini people adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 13, 2, 44, 38 and 16."

this year i want to take my accumulated wisdom, and work more for causes i believe in. reproductive justice, local and global environment, youth development, and ARRRRRT! hold me to it.

current love: psych rock gospel songs

chalk this one up to paradoxical statements that aren't, upon closer examination, a paradox. i've always had a problem with spiritual truth being spoken by white people in high places, but not with spiritual truth itself. in fact, i've come to see spirituality as a way to hold all the parts of yourself that don't otherwise exist in a rationalized, structured society. doesn't it make sense that spirituality is experienced deepest by those who have gone into the darkness and come out the other side? and in the narrative of american history, what region has been more battered from within and without than the crumbling american south? a region struggling to stay alive through decimation and poverty, yet a victim of its own historical actions. these two songs stake out the last claim before desperation and hearken back to what i think is the original purpose of rock and roll - saving your soul. ignore the ill-advised britney spears slideshow.

dream

yelling at my father. i throw a wine bottle at him, it shatters, he picks up the pieces and pushes a shard through my left hand until it is cut up and bleeding. everyone said i deserved it because i was yelling.

live chickens for sale

after a weekend of succumbing to my parents' insistence that they buy me things (alexandra wallace, eat your heart out), a corner of my workspace now looks like a microcosm of chinatown. everyone who has come by has been gracious enough to not comment on my assertion of ethnicity.

p.s. the theme of my diet this week is "just add water". i am making my way through lots and lots of cup noodles.

press release

i'm not going to grad school this year. the results of my applications were split into two piles, one teeming with debt-ridden financial aid packages, and one expressing sincere regret that i was not among the 2% admitted. and as an artist who doesn't expect to sell physical objects to wealthy benefactors, and who has worked way too hard to become self supporting at the age of 22 and 11 months, debt was not an option. instead i am planning to move into a larger place with room for a studio, by the ocean, and continue creating for opportunities next year, or a couple of years down the line. if my goals as an artist are to be self sufficient, continuously creative, and publicly recognized, well, i can still enable 2 out of 3 goals from where i am right now. the summer is nearing, and i am forging right ahead.

we now return to your regular scheduled channel surfing through twentysomething life.

winning

this is by far the best shirt that i have found at my neighboring goodwill. tuck it into a schoolgirl skirt and daydream about hot trysts in cool forests.

art projects a-brewing

fund me here!

p.s. this is currently my number one contender for album of 2011. i'm a sucker for anything shoegaze. will the raveonettes unseat them when their album comes out on my birthday? the drama!

dream

i am given bags of pink cake balls which turn out to be ferrero rocher eating bunnies in disguise. one of them gets into a pile of ferrero rocher and bounds around in a ferrero rocher wrapper. i chase after it trying to whack it with a book.

so there you go. i am a girl who dreams about candy and bunnies.

the powers of horror

even though i grew up in a hippie area of texas and am fairly privileged and empowered now, this is why i got the fuck out of dodge. this is also why i will go to the grave kicking and screaming that misogyny exists in its worst forms, and will the real feminists please stand up.

love story

la threw a nasty tantrum this winter. it poured for days, the sky was gray, and i finally understood why the stereotypical chinese used water for torture. last week on the day when smog and rain fought for atmospheric dominance, and a homeless person took off his pants on my nightly busride, i received a phone call offering me a chance to relocate. clouds thundered in my heart. the next day la, trembling with the penitence of an errant lover, parted its clouds and sent birdsong through my window. the sun shone, it was perfectly temperate, and i could even swear the smog has lifted, because the colors in the trees seem brighter than usual. it has been like this for 3 days. i should threaten to move to the east coast more often.

wino forever

in case any of you were wondering, oprah winfrey's tv channel (OWN) does in fact include work by white people (post-racial sociopolitical analysis another day). i know this because in a burst of desperate channel surfing i landed upon a presentation of little women. the book was immensely formative for me, though i have no idea how other girls of my generation relate to it. were they all too busy with the boy band du jour? do they even know the book exists? i am of course jo, the bookish firebrand who sells her hair and takes up with an older gentleman, but how i desperately wanted amy's vocation and beth's grace. meg was always horrible.

today according to camerafone

smog-filled morning prescient with rain. i continue my friday tradition of subverting normative work dress.

leaky faucet behavior

my mother emailed me today to say that she and my father were visiting california for their spring break, and i started crying. crying because parents, i've realized over the last two years of living alone, are the only two people in the world who make it a priority to be unconditionally nice to you (that and older siblings, younger brother dearest). you'd think that this isn't a quality hard to find in other people, but it is. people can be nice, but rarely unconditionally nice, offering up themselves no matter who you are or what you have done. or maybe i'm just jaded from living in the city, where crossing strangers on the sidewalk is like brushing up against 200 grade sandpaper. crying from lack, and crying from relief.

thought

is what sets me apart from other women an internal sense of savagery? or is it what keeps us alike?

re: our mutual codependency

this one's for you, magda.

style icon

i am sitting on my fingers as my hair grows a millimeter longer every day, teeth clenched in my latest test of my will. we have to challenge ourselves every now and then, and mine is to let my hair grow out, to face that terrible word - normativity - and to own it. in the meantime i keep right clicking pictures on the internet, and saving them to an archive of the grrl i used to be.

instructions on achieving nirvana

1. turn on where is my mind.
2. imagine the world around you falling, like that final scene in fight club.

worker productivity on the rise

i mean, so what if i did spend this morning making a post-it menagerie?

random fact

i love felix gonzalez torres.

fly on the wall

i'm only starting to realize that most of my life has been shaped by an acute awareness of being the 'other'. always being the new kid in school. being one of 3 asians in a white suburban texas high school. arriving at art school and finding that no one else dyed their hair or wore fishnets. unconsciously, i've always expected other people to be not like me, because that had been the truth of my education. i hadn't realized this about myself until i moved to california, the state of plenty-and we're not just describing the avocado supply. people of modge-podge identities glide on by without stopping to think about the strangeness of their modge-podge world. i wonder often what it would've been like to grow up with this unfettered mentality. would i have felt compelled to be an artist?

sex on a stick, batman!

this has got to be the most attractive thing (besides my significant other, of course) that i've ever seen.

space age nostalgia

having always had a fascination with cover songs (who originates them, who covers them, who pulls it off), i spent the past few days digging through youtube for david bowie treasure. these are my favorites:

dear lacma:

there are some terms which may be deemed inappropriate (or progressive?) for an exhibit documenting 18th century european fashion.

dream

we see a boxcar full of quilts we want to buy. i have to climb up two ropes to get to the quilts. i am at the top of the ropes but unable to swing onto the platform. we are redirected to a backdoor opening. we go in and go up different flights of stairs but all we find are skulls and dead ends. as many of us leave the building as possible but some are still trapped inside. the owner of the boxcar tells us that if we take the wrong way we'll die.

on happier news i am off to build a school garden today. happy volunteerism day, y'all!

new year, new work

this month has slowly cranked and spluttered into action. i've been finishing up my school applications and making a drawing of a house. it's not quite sublime yet, but it's a workable blueprint for getting there, and encompasses most of what's been on my mind lately: monuments, constancy, repetition, grace.





i'm also wrapping up my participation in the sketchbook project, which i started last fall. if you have ever wondered what i dreamed about between the months of august and october 2010, well, it's coming to a library near you! here's a taste of the journal's contents:



it is not final yet, but there is a 99% chance that i will start work as a web designer for UCLA in the coming weeks. i'm excited about no longer being dependent on the us government. hopefully i'll still have time to draw some roman aqueducts.

currently thinking about

"those verses one writes in youth aren't much. one should wait and gather sweetness and light all [her] life, a long one if possible, and then maybe at the end [she] might write ten good lines." — our favorite german

my hero

when i was 13 my parents decided to drive over the border to mexico. that excursion lasted all of 3 hours. things i remember: parking on the street and being led by a local to a bazaar with stone elephants for sale. my parents pressuring me to bargain shop in spanish, growing increasingly terrified that the locals will steal their car. escaping to a supermarket and seeing myself in 60 years, an old lady nonchalantly strutting about with purple rinse in her hair. my parents' fear of mexicans reaching its apex and, as we say in texas, getting the hell out of dodge.

this snapshot from a photoessay by steve mccurry brought it all back.

new year

my resolution this year is to make with integrity, and to not question purpose when it comes my way.

lately i haven't posted much because i've become self conscious of appearing superficial or flippant, like 99% of the internet.

did you see the movie black swan? i had resolved to not talk about it, increase the flutter of hype about it, and it certainly isn't innocent enough to qualify for a favorite movie, but it keeps sticking in my mind. like the title character i often feel that something beyond my comprehension is waiting to break out from underneath my skin - it is so close i can see it undulating in bumps. i have a feeling that this will be good, but terrifying, and i am just going to accept it.