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.