Does Being an Artist Make it Harder to Art?

I threw up a quickie poll on my Instagram Stories last week, asking how many people make art every day. I expected most people to respond with "no." God knows some days I feel like I'm slaying at life if I just manage to put on pants.

But after 24 hours and an admittedly small sample of responses, it was almost half and half. And among the people who said they DO make art everyday, I noticed a little more than half of them don't seem to self-identify as artists, which raised a question.

Does being "an artist" sometimes make it harder to "art"? Is there something in choosing to wear that mantle that puts barriers in our way?

I think for some of us the answer is yes.


I recalled a conversation I had with a friend just before I started work on my MFA. He, too, was the holder of an MFA, from a much fancier school than the one I was enrolling in, and he had a nice long exhibition record and even some interest from galleries. I told him I was starting my degree and how much I was looking forward to it, to the inspiration, the camaraderie, and to kind of feeling like I was earning that title of "artist." I asked him for any tips he might have to offer. He looked at the ground for a few seconds, and finally said "Graduate school made me afraid to do anything. Try not to let it do that to you."

Sure enough, graduate school put a little bit of a kink in my flow. I felt myself get more thoughtful, which on one level was good. But "thoughtful" kind of degenerated into "paralysis by analysis," and I sometimes found myself NOT creating because it didn't feel thought-out enough or serious enough or important enough. And I have had conversations with non-grad-school artists who, after becoming serious about putting themselves out there, found themselves reining in because now they were thinking about things they had never considered before, like target markets and portability for fairs and whether something was sellable.

You don't have to do this to yourself. Selling art isn't what makes you an artist. Making "serious" work isn't what makes you an artist. Getting in a gallery isn't what makes you an artist. You're an artist if you spend a lot of time 1) making art or 2) worrying about not making art.

I don't make art every day, although I try to be as consistent as possible and have created a fairly reliable routine for myself (more on that much later). I know a lot of us rely on teaching and other activities to supplement our incomes, and that takes away from our art-making time. Plus: families, friends, household chores, pets, West World rebroadcasts, and American Ninja Warrior. You get what I mean.  The trick is to understand what you need to do in order not to feel like shit uh I mean to feel fulfilled as an artist, and really, that definition is entirely up to you.

So you might want to make art every day or might not feel like that's necessary. We're going to experiment with an art-every-day challenge on Instagram in a couple of weeks, so please follow me if you'd like to come and play. And we'll also talk about tips for creating habits and systems that support you, so you can create art in a way that feels authentic and natural to you, whether that's every day or every other day or every week or every now and then.

Busting the Bullshit Myth of the Starving Artist

by E. Marie Robertson

Society loves the "starving artist" myth, and we creatives are fed it from an early age. It infects us, and it infects the people who are potential buyers of our artwork. The poor struggling artist, painting feverishly in his or her sparse freezing garret, is a universal stereotype that is played out everywhere from classic literature to the nightly news. But there is some insidious doublespeak going on at the same time. Consider this: even while describing the desperate situation of "many artists" in a recent article about subsidized housing programs for creatives (one featured artist was, in fact, homeless), Bloomberg Business also heralded artists' "bankable cache."


So which is it? Are artists struggling, unappreciated, starving, broke? Or are artists "bankable"?

That. Is. Such. Bullshit.


I'm a sincere believer in the idea that we become the stories we tell ourselves. If you're trapped in the "struggling" cycle, breaking out might need to start in your head. Here are some important points to address to remove the labels and stop living the stereotype.

1. Watch Your Language. How do you describe yourself to others? What kinds of words do you use to characterize your life, your work, the lives and work of other artists? Stop painting yourself as struggling, starving, broke, unsuccessful, unappreciated, underpaid, etc. in your everyday conversations ... even the ones you have with yourself. You're only making that stereotype stronger, even if you're under the impression that you're just kidding when you say it. Language creates specific pathways in your brain that affect behavior. Don't create any more of the "wrong" ones.

Steps to take: First, just try to notice every time you use a derogatory or negative word or phrase in normal conversation about yourself, your work, your financial standing. Make a list of the ones that appear most often and the situations in which they come up. Now, create positive or nonjudgmental replacements for those negative turns of phrase so they don't come to define you over the long term. Make this a continual practice! You will be shocked by how automatic self-deprecation can be. 

2. Explode Self-Limiting Beliefs. Many of us have swallowed whole the fallacy that poverty and struggle, especially for emerging artists, is some kind of  litmus test to gauge how "good" or "serious" we are about our work. The next time you tell yourself you're broke because you are truly devoted to your craft and make "serious" art, think about whether or not Cindy Sherman, Ai Wei Wei, Gerhard Richter, Andreas Gursky or Chuck Close make "serious" artwork, or seem "devoted" to their craft. "Serious" is not the opposite of "saleable," nor is "real" the opposite of "successful."

Steps to take: Remove judgement from the equation. Make your work. If your response to the list above was  "But that's them, that's not me. I'm no Chuck Close,"  ask yourself why not? If you're doing something you believe in, you are no different than them. If you find yourself feeling tinges of jealousy over other artists' success, transform that emotion into confirmation that artists CAN be successful, and that includes you.

3. Kick Your Fears to the Curb. Do you have specific fears connected to success and prosperity? This can be linked to #3 ("If my artwork is popular, it can't be very good."), or can be much more personal ("If I succeed as an artist it will mean my mother, who always told me I would never make any money as an artist, would be wrong and I can't make mom wrong."). You might even be worried that if you make "too much" money, you'll draw the negative attention of the IRS or have to set boundaries with a deadbeat relative who is always asking everyone for financial help. It doesn't matter if the fears are large or small, totally illogical or highly likely. It's our most powerful motivator, and can keep you trapped in a very tight space for a lifetime.

Steps to take: Make a long exhaustive list of everything that worries you about potential success and prosperity. Include everything you can think of, no matter how tangential or silly it seems. Now go through that list and carefully, realistically consider the likelihood of that fear coming to pass ... and what it would mean and what you would do about it. Understanding your fears in context enables you to address them so they no longer have power over you.

4. Begin Evaluating Where You Need Help ... and Get It. What's holding you back? Money blocks? Creative issues? Deep psychological conditioning around success and failure? No understanding of how to sell your art or promote yourself? There are coaches on top of coaches available to work with you, and many of them offer very solid free introductory courses or training sessions online. You'll also find many of these concerns addressed in best-selling books and online vehicles like TED Talks and blogs. Depending on where you live, you may also find some great options locally,  like artists' guilds and collaboratives, small business advisors, or other community college or Learning Annex courses to help you approach your practice like the successful positive experience it should be.

Additional Resources:

Oldham, Jennifer. "Dream Apartments for $582 a Month -- If You're a Starving Artist." Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, 20 Nov. 2015. Web. 10 Feb. 2016. <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-20/dream-apartments-for-582-a-month-if-you-re-a-starving-artist>.

Zaidi, Nida. "Top 10 Richest Painters of 2015." Smart Earning Methods. N.p., 22 Oct. 2014. Web. <http://www.smartearningmethods.com/top-10-richest-painters-world-2015/>.


Coming up next week on ArtLifeNow: Breaking Through Creative Blocks

Irony Sandwich ... Art Show in AVN!

After a series of random connections and pleasant events, my first art exhibition in the 3D virtual world Avination is now open. It doesn't have an official title, but I'm thinking of it as "Irony Sandwich," not just because of the work, but also because of the way it came into being.

First, the important details:

Show star: Me. Only in Avination, I'm Winterlight Cazalet. Now you know. :)
Show location: Oasis of Art, Inspiration Terrace, Southern Bay sim, AVINATION.
Reception: Sunday, June 10, 4-5 pm PST (that's 7-8 pm eastern, and midnight to one for all you fabulous euros).

I would LOVE for anyone with a computer that has the chops to join us at this reception. Even if you've never set foot in a 3D Virtual World for any reason, please do so for just this one hour. It's absolutely free to join, it's easy, you will not receive a lot of stupid email spam for joining, and I will not be bothered at all by a lot of noobs at the reception. In fact, the sight of a noob in AVN thrills me to death!

All you have to do is go to the Avination sign-up page, create your account, download the Avination viewer, and log in. If you're already in Second Life, you can keep your SL name and even use some of the same viewers to log in (Firestorm and Imprudence both work just fine for AVN viewing and have the grid already listed among their login options; all you need to do is fill in your AVN avatar name and chosen password). Once you are inworld, just use search to find my avatar name, and send me an instant message if I'm online or use the landmark in my profile to get to the show.

I have 15 works on display. Now for the "Irony" part: they're all digital photographs of real-world things; works that I've actually produced and shown in what people like to call "real life." They're "real" pictures, but they're digital. And now they're being produced and shown in a "virtual" space. Given my ongoing interest in blurring and underscoring the arbitrariness of the separation between "virtual/digital" and "real," you can perhaps see why I find this amusing on a lot of levels.

So, come have a look at my Irony Sandwich. It will be up throughout June and maybe longer. And for all you artists already working in other 3D VR environments, please come have a look at Avination. I have a dream of this place becoming "the artists' grid," and I'll need your help to get there.

Deep Analog

I've had a lot of ideas over the last few days, despite being sick (or maybe because I'm sick and I'm not actually leaving the house for anything other than feeding the horse), and I've gotten several new pieces into production. I am working on probably six different things right now; they're in various stages and represent a huge range of techniques, approaches, concepts, and goals. Encaustic is one of those artistic pursuits that involves a lot of waiting, interspersed with periods of hyperactivity ... kind of like chemical (as in, old school analog) photographic printing, actually, which is another one of my favorite things to do. One piece I loved, then ruined, then saved, then ruined again, but that's okay--I have a pretty good idea of how to re-save it, and because I'm working in encaustic, re-saving is in fact possible. Encaustic is kind of magical in how it permits the artist to undo what's been done up to a certain point; aside from oil painting, very few working media have this characteristic, and it's a quality I as a rank beginner really appreciate.

Even though I've always been primarily a photographer, I'm having trouble finding a way to combine my images with encaustic that feels "right" to me. I am still in the early stages of this investigation, and there are so many variables that it's mind-boggling. Slowly I'm lurching toward something, although it's still a process heavily in the "trial and error" phases.

More appealing to me, as you'll already know if you're one of the 2.3 regular readers of this blog, is the combination of oil paint with encaustic. I am not painter and never have been; I can't make a decent line with a brush on canvas, but for some reason using my fingers to apply oil paint onto surfaces or wax and then applying more wax (or more paint) is incredibly fulfilling. The paint, especially if you're using cheap oils, does amazing things when you fuse it into the wax; the pigment and oil separates somewhat and the liquid quality of the wax as it heats lets the paint move and flow into strange and interesting patterns and pathways. Higher quality oils will still run with the flow of overfused, liquid wax, but resist the interesting separation that creates such odd patterns within the painted sections. So I am using a blend of high quality and student-grade oils, with the cheap stuff where I want interesting scumbling and patterns and the better stuff where I want the paint to maintain its integrity when it is fused with the wax.

So far my favorite surface is a raw birch panel made specifically for use in art. I like being able to see the grain of the wood through the wax and feel the texture, and there is also something appealing in the idea that I'm using a host of organic materials in this process: pigmented oils, beeswax, wood, natural bristle brushes. (Certainly some of these organic materials can be wildly toxic, but that's nature for you.) And I'm also using my hands a lot, because that just seems to feel right. When you get right down to it, I have gone deep analog with my artmaking, and at the moment, it's incredibly satisfying.

Here are a few works in progress which I like, in various stages of development:


working title: Pink
Encaustic and oil on acrylic panel


This acrylic panel is transparent, so it will be interesting to see what it looks like when I remove the backing. I think I will probably apply one final overcoat of medium and overfuse to a smooth glasslike surface, then buff to a high shine.

working title: Rorshach
Encaustic and oil on cardboard canvas
panel

 This piece started out as a pure experiment, but now I'm thinking it's a study for a much larger piece that I'll produce in the future. (This is 6" x 9".) The  black is applied wax, which I allowed to cool, then added some simple lines with student-grade white oil paint. I then fused the paint into the wax by heating the surface until it liquified. I think to complete this piece I'll add some high-quality crimson oil paint to the line at right, and fuse lightly to preseve the integrity.



working title: Woodflow
Encaustic and oil paint on wood panel

 This last piece I feel is almost finished, although it needs one more thing ... I am not sure what that thing might be. I enjoy being able to see the grain of the wood through the paint, and the way the white paint (the student-grade paint) has separated a bit and started spreading in the middle of the panel. You can see here how the gold paint (artist quality) retained its integrity even though it was fused at the same time and to the same degree as the white.

I know there are a lot of little details in this new artistic practice that I need to get better on, like cleaning my brushes and paying better attention to safety details. Although really, I've spent so much of my life up to my elbows in black and white photo chemicals, if I'm going to be poisoned by something there's a good chance I already have been. And I might one day learn how to actually deliver oil paint to my surfaces with a brush. But right now this slap-dash, experimental, deep analog place I'm in feels just right to me.

Looking At Process

In tandem with my last post, I thought I should offer myself and the 2.3 regular readers of my blog a little roundup of the encaustic practices and processes I'm gravitating towards. This is, obviously, not going to be an all-inclusive list, and in reality it's just a little reminder to myself of the techniques I've tried that seemed to "work" for me very quickly. There are plenty of others that I imagine I'll find more appealing once I become better at them.

Here's the short list:

* Using paper to provide color. A sheet of really interestingly-colored paper used as background (either across the whole surface or in a strategic part of it) adds controlled color and brightness. This works best when I'm not planning to put a lot of layers of medium or other colors on top of the paper; the added wax soaks into the paper and dulls the colors or makes it take on the colors of whatever is layered beneath it. If you're using colored wax underneath the paper and planning for this effect, however, it can yield quite interesting results.

* Stamping on paper and integrating this into the image. Can either be a small piece of the image or the full background.

* Applying oil paint on the surface with my hands before augmenting it with pigmented wax and clear medium.

* Applying oil paint on the wax itself with my hands, and "sealing" it by fusing. I can't paint on canvas with a brush, but for some reason I can paint on wax with my fingers.

* Mixing up the application of wax and medium to the surface, so that some areas have wax and other areas are bare down to the surface (usually painted).

* Very simple straight carving into the wax, overfilling with an accent color, and scraping back to find the line.

* Moving pigmented wax around by overfusing it and letting it run on the panel.

* Using heat on a wax-dipped brush to spread pigment thinly.

* Adding scrapings of different colored waxes to the surface of pieces and expanding them in fusing.

* Overfusing generally.

* Burnishing the finished pieces to a glasslike shine.

* Creating diminsionality with a build up of layers of wax.

I haven't yet figured out how to use my photographic images with encaustic ... that's one of those things that I can already anticipate needs to be a bit thought out. The image and the wax have to make sense together, t enhance each other in order to make a cohesive statement. I'm working on this, though, and I don't think it will be long before I hit on an approach that makes me happy. I have a feeling I might enjoy working with colored inks also, and much more translucent colors. So far I've only used bristle brushes, but I'm reading about artists who use foam brushes, pouring techniques, and splatter approaches to distribute wax on the surfaces they use. In addition, there's a whole world of surfaces that I am anxious to try, and my investigations of those will most likely change the way I work.

I'm glad to have found this medium. There is something about working in it that feels right to me, in the same way photography and video did at the beginning, but also includes the hands-on aspect that I find so appealing about book arts. Maybe I did actually always want to be a painter ... with encaustic, it feels like maybe I am.

Looking Past Process

I'm one of those people who just can't stand next to their own work at a show. And if it's a solo show, I'll kind of slink around trying to look like I'm paying attention to what people are saying without really paying attention to what people are saying. I think this is fairly common; it's not that I don't like to talk about my work or that I can't talk about my work, I just don't like listening to what other people are saying about it. I've heard some weird comments about my work (one woman once said "It's too bad they're not airbrush.") and some vaguely dumb comments about my work (one guy once said "I just kind of don't like things that are out of focus."), but no one's ever said anything really bad about it. I just become nervous about what people respond to, and how they respond; it feels as if I'm evesdropping on something personal. And actually, that's not a bad thing.

I recently put some more images of encaustic work up on Facebook, and that apparently got a lot of people to look at the whole album. And people started leaving comments and noting their favorites. No one said anything bad, because my friends wouldn't do that, but I was a little bit surprised at which pieces particular people seemed to like.

The first issue is that my favorites, which I consider the most in the style I think I'd like to follow, got very little commentary. A couple of others, which I do consider successful, got some very positive responses. I have one artist friend in particular whose work I just love and I admit that I have her paintings in my head when I'm making encaustic work--for some reason I have this idea that I might be able to approach in wax the magic that she makes in acrylic. Interestingly, the work that she responded to most positively was the piece that to my mind was the furtherest away from her own style of working.

But that got me thinking about what  people were really commenting on, and really seeing. The specific comments were about content and meaning--what the image was about, and what it said to them--not about the colors or forms or approach. At the end of the day, that's really what I want. When people don't see the process but instead see a message, specifically a message that seems tailored to them, that's when the artist has truly done his or her job.

And it's also illuminated what's so frustrating to me about the work I'm doing now; I'm mired in process. Because I don't have very much experience with encaustic, I don't know the impact of different approaches and techniques and I don't really know how things will look. So I have to go very slowly, and instead of being able to let the medium speak, I'm still working at how to understand it at all.

Sometimes I can enjoy the idea of pure experimentation, but it's so frustrating when I start to see a direction and then I flub it up with inexperience or some technique doesn't turn out the way I thought it would. And there are so many more processes and practices I've yet to try. But I'm so anxious to find my voice in this medium and make things, wonderful things that speak to people, and get them out into the world. I don't think I was like this with photo or video or even installation. Maybe I need a mentor. Or maybe I just need to keep going, until eventually I can as the artist look past the process and see the meaning inherent in my practice of it.

Everything Old is New (Genres) Again ...

Ask five people about "New Genres," and you'll get ... five different blank stares.

Oh. Wait.

OK, now ask five artists about "new genres," and there's no telling what you'll get. If you ask Google, you'll get 6.6 million responses, one of which is a "working paper" by a researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and one of which is a very fine 13-year-old book about public art by Suzanne Lacy. But nowadays (and from a perspective perhaps different than that of the National Bureau of Economic Research), "new genres" seems to be used to mean "conceptual" or "many-media" or "interactive public art" or "Photoshop, Flash, Lightroom and Dreamweaver" or, sadly, "this is what we call all the stuff that's not painting and sculpture."

The San Francisco Art Institute has an entire New Genres Department, yet manages on their web site to be vague about what genres it thinks might actually be new. One eventually gets the impression that it's all about hybridity, mulitple modes of expression, and conceptual ideas ... although SFAI has a nice shiny new Center for Interdisciplinary Study that is supposed to be all about that (to which, SFAI's web site notes, the New Genres Department "contributes and builds bridges". Hmm.)

UCLA, in grappling for its definition of New Genres, mentions installation, video, film, audio, performance, digital, hybrid and emerging art forms, and suggests "New Genres is a practice which begins with ideas and then move to the appropriate form or media for that particular idea, sometimes inventing entirely new sites of cultural production, new methodologies, technologies, or genres in the process."

So "New Genres" is starting with an idea and picking the most appropriate mode of expression for that idea ... er, silly me, I thought that was the basis of almost all Contemporary Art and postmodern expression. But I see too that New Genres might also be defined as anything containing something new, although that idea is qualified by the expression "sometimes," and so means you could be looking at New Genre work and not actually see anything new, and in fact, you might actually be looking at a new genre that is not itself New Genres, but could be contained within New Genres! Hey!

Sure, that makes sense ... NOT.

All this comes up because I've been perusing job postings, and several of them want someone to teach "New Genres." They are very emphatic about this fact, they are "especially" interested in having someone teach "New Genres." And while I have an idea what I mean when I use the term, I have no idea what they might mean by it, and these job postings frequently offer no further clues. This comes most likely not from ignorance or an interest in being difficult, but instead from the very well-known tendency of academic institutions (especially large ones, like the one that currently employs me) to talk to themselves in their own secret code, and to expect everyone around them to understand.

I wouldn't mind this so much, but in an academic job search, every little advantage is crucial. Not being able to pin down quite what they want makes it very difficult to craft one's cover letter to show off one's most relevant skills, if you see what I mean. In addition, although I possess the insane bravado necessary to feel certain I can teach "it" no matter what "it" is, my enthusiasm definitely wanes somewhat if we are talking about teaching college sophomores "Photoshop 1" or "Web Design Basics", as opposed to, say, teaching college sophomores "Introduction to Net.Art" or "Artist as Activist" or "Exploring Site-Specific Installation."

New Genres as an art term was coined quite some time ago; I've even seen it used in reference to late 16th and early 17th century Italian painting. I think it's safe to say that every genre was a "New Genre" at one time or another, and the category is not fixed but fluid. A number of "genres" that I first encountered massed under a "New Genres" heading have grown and expanded and are now their own genres, but may often still be found categorized as "New Genres" (video and public art come to mind). And the next "New Genres" remain hidden, lurking just below the horizon of public consciousness, waiting to be identified, to further conflict and confuse us all.

Yoko Loves Me

Now back in Berkeley, fully caffeinated with an appropriate number of cats "assisting" me, I want to step back a couple of days and revisit Friday, Day 3 of the College Art Association in Dallas. In particular, I want to try to describe the experience of seeing Yoko Ono.

I'll start by saying I've always loved Ono's artwork. The sense of outreach, of inclusion, was a huge hook for me; her works always make you, the viewer, not just an audience but a co-creator—sometimes in a sly way, sometimes more overtly. This is, of course, a core principle of the movement that came to be called Fluxus, of which Ono was a central figure along with John Cage, Joseph Beuys, Allen Kaprow, and many others. But rather that mosey off on an art history tangent, I want to take a more personally meaningful one. On Friday afternoon, I got to be in the same room with Yoko Ono, and it was nothing short of a spiritual experience for me.

I was about two-thirds of the way back in an enormous ballroom that was packed to standing room by those of us who had come to hear her. She graciously came to Dallas to accept an award from CAA for her "Lifetime Body of Work," and to participate in a traditional post-award interview, but the atmosphere was more like that of a rock concert. When she came out onto the stage, I was struck by how tiny she is--an incredibly petite figure in black pants, black hat, dark glasses and a bright red jacket. The only camera I had with me was my pathetic cell phone camera, yet I got this picture of her, which I think is incredibly representative: she's a very small woman with an almost impossibly large spirit.

I can't adequately describe this experience; after writing and re-writing this blog entry many times, it seemed too journalistic (well, I was a journalist for 10 years, so don't hate me for that, it's kind of second nature at this point), but worse, it sounds trite. This was anything except a trite experience, and all I can do is say that.

Her capacity to give profound answers to mundane questions was astonishing. She discussed her early years as an artist, and the "naming" of Fluxus. The interviewer noted, "You were a very young artist at that time, weren't you?" and Yoko turned thoughtful for a moment, then replied "I know I am 75 years old, because you all keep telling me I am. But I have no sense of being 75, I only have a sense of being me. It is the same sense of being me that I have always had. So if you were to tell me I was a very young artist then, I would be surprised!"

Her conversation, comments and work shared with us that afternoon struck me like pure love with an optimism so strong that it was irresistable. She brought gifts for us all, to include us in two of her ongoing projects. The first, "Onochord," asks us all to participate in "covering the world with love" in order to save it. We all got a tiny penlight and a postcard with the Onochord poem and sequence to use to make our lights say "I love you," over and over again, as often as we can, to everyone we can, from everywhere we can. She showed a brief video of the project being introduced in large arenas all over the world, to a soundtrack of "Give Peace a Chance." Within a few seconds, the whole conference audience was flashing their penlights at Yoko and each other, whispering with delight; Yoko had her own penlight and flashed back at us. I held mine as high as I could and sent her a heart-felt "I Love You," and in return I felt her light hit my face and flash back the same message.

She talks about her family and friends with great affection, talks about John Lennon with enormous love in her voice as if she just left him in the other room. She is energetic and bright and profound without any thought to it at all. She is modest and playful and funny and so optimistic ...

Which brings me to our other gift, the second art project. The other gift is a shard of a shattered enormous Japanese vase. She brought the pieces out in a large box and tumbled them out onto the edge of the stage, and invited everyone to come up and take one. "In ten years," she said, "we'll all get together again and we'll reassemble the vase."

Ten years, meet Yoko. I have it on my calendar, I'll be there. And I have every faith that Yoko will be there too, one way or another.

Everything old is new again ...

I have found myself over the last few months in "starting over" mode, as if some huge cycle was completing itself and I was rising from the bottom of the ocean to the crest of a wave, finally able to breathe, to feel the sun and see the sky.

And of course, it all has to do with art.

Last month, I went from 100%-time employment to 90%-time, which means I get two days off per month that I can devote to art. Almost immediately on making this arrangement, several other things fell into place, as though the Universe were applauding my commitment. It's too soon to say for sure whether all of the wonderful opportunities I seem to be presented with at this point will come to fruition. But it does seem the universe is in resonnance with me again, or I with it. Anyway, I'll tell you about two of them now.

90%-Time

I regard my "work" as my art, and my "job" as the thing I do during the day that makes the money I need to pay my bills. My "job" has been increasingly frustrating, in large part because I find myself anxious about having to be there when I know I should be focusing on art. I finally decided I was not going to be making innovative work, securing gallery representation, applying for grants and residencies, getting out to see artwork and keeping "playdates" with other artists if I had to continue to spend all day, every day, in front of a computer in an office. My new arrangement enables me to take, roughly, every other Monday off and I am spending that time on art in some form or fashion.

The drawback to 90%-time is, of course, 90% money. But I had so many new project ideas within a week of making this decision that I think it's money well-spent.

On my first 10%-time day, I went out to Pt. Reyes and revisited the trail that was the subject of my year-long walking and photo/video art project "Exposures," which was shown in the "With the Earth" project space at Gallery Route One (Pt. Reyes Station) in 2005; I updated the project with new video and sound work. My next two 10% days were spent moving into (drumroll) my new studio space. That brings us to ...

New Studio!

Almost immediately upon making the commitment to go to 90% time at my job, I found something I'd been looking for for several months: a wonderful studio space, perfectly sized for me at a price I could afford, less than half-a-mile from my house.

My old studio setting was, initially, interesting and edgy, weirdly balanced in its positive and negative qualities. It sat just behind Rosenblum Cellars, which would annually ferment grapes literally outside my front door. The building itself was an all-concrete bunker, formerly the power station for the electric trains that used to run thoughout Oakland; no drill bit was strong enough to carve enough of a hole in those walls to hang something, and they were painted an odd yellow color with blue trim. I had no running water (there was a hose across the parking lot at the back of Rosenblum that produced water smelling strongly of ... something not consumable) and I had to go into yet a third building to use the bathroom. The land it occupied was contaminated enough to be classified as a "brownfield" site, and was downwind from a crematorium. And it was a 20-minute drive from my house, albeit a relatively painless 20-minute drive.

My windows looked out on the Oakland Estuary. When I first moved in, I had an unobstructed view of the estuary and of the enormous container ships being turned around right in front of my window. On an average day, one would encounter a few guys driving forklifts or an occasional hard-hatted worker going by on a bicycle. I called it "Happyland," and I did indeed love it there.

But of course things changed. The construction of the West Coast's largest ship elevator and dry dock facilities 50 feet from my building changed my view to gigantic ships completely wrapped in flapping canvas tarps and the dozens of people in orange vests and hardhats whose job it was to work on them, essentially 7 days per week. The winery workers began to forget that I was there and to sit in front of my windows to take their loud afternoon smoke breaks. A new tenant in an adjacent building appeared and took over ALL of the parking spaces that had been so convenient for me. Heavy equipment was everywhere. And the general chaos level of the place increased by about 1000%. It no longer felt safe and comfortable, especially at night. So it was time to go.

My new studio began its life as a garage, then became a studio apartment, and is now an open space of about 325 square feet; it sits in the shared backyard of two large beautifully-kept Victorian houses in a quiet residential neighborhood. There are lots of windows, it is light and airy and painted a pleasant cool white inside. Immediately outside are trees and birds and an organic vegetable garden and a big back yard; the tenants who use the yard are young families and graduate students and older folks who proudly admit being hippies in the 60s. It has walls that I can hang work on, my own bathroom, and adequate on-street parking. It is a two-minute drive or a 12-minute walk from my home.

I made a lot of great work at Happyland, and I know the texture of the place influenced the work that was made there. The texture is completely different in my new space and I know it will change my work somehow. I'm not sure how that will play out, as I'm still getting organized and haven't actually made any work there. But I have decided to take on the role of the observer in this case; I will endeavor to notice and possibly document but not fight any changes that appear in my artistic approach, interests and output.

I hope I will learn a great deal more about myself and my commitment to art, which continues to suprise me with its intensity and significance.

Next time: more NEW stuff! Check back for pictures--I promise!