the artist is concentrating

I'm working on them.  It's been very very busy.  I've got the large ones going downstairs and the smaller ones coming upstairs and little tiny ones sitting on another table.

I feel sort of intense with all this activity. And of course there are strange and wonderful accidents happening every minute.  But soon I will be able to post some of these new things.

I know when they are done they will probably all look like contented little children posing for photographs.  That always happens.  But the painting of them is anything but contented.

I'm back I think

Well in a sense I'm back.  I went to the we used to be geniuses bar and nobody knew nothin.  I've never had an apple experience like that before.  But thank god, I pushed and pulled on enough buttons I was finally able to get some pictures to load.

I am just trying to find a way to make pictures. -Jasper Johns  And when I get messed up on this blog it gets even worse.  I look at these old pictures (weeks) and now I think what was he trying to do? What ARE these about?  Of course I love that smoke.  It's not so easy to get either.  You've gotta have a good thick beeswax candle with a good thick wick.

And they've gotta burn just long enough to build up a flame and close to the surface.  These green ones, well they are a different story, you gotta use ink, nail polish, oil stick, oil, and watercolor.

Then, once you've picked the materials they just happen.  Except at the end when you walk around a big long table picking through scraps of paper  looking for one that goes right there.

And sometimes I imagine a Japanese mailbox in some small northern city, some place where Paul Jacoulet used to live.  In the late 40s my grandmother ventured up there by train to go see him and while there carefully picked the least expensive picture to buy.

Of course it would be easy to beat her up for that, for of course the room must of been stuffed with beautiful pieces.  But that wasn't my grandmother's speciality.  She could only pick up on the spirit of a place and try to take back something that would remind her of that day.

bigger ones

Sometimes you are tearing through them, trying to get them mostly on the blog.  and then on the better days they just happen that day, you photograph them and upload them and hi how are you there they are everything is groovy.

But sometimes you are making multiple size pieces and it gets very confusing as one is partially drying and three others are simple and content drying together on the stove happy comfortable, while you keep struggling with a monster downstairs which you don't know if you like or if it likes you and you can't take its photograph because it is too big....and your inner conversation is weird and disturbing and it seems to not want to adhere, not cooperate, not to look anything but ugly and its looking at me....

I gotta move off this...

halt

Well we gotta stop posting now.  I can't load any more pictures on to my computer.  I don't know why they just won't load.  So now I've gotta wait for my friend Andy to get here.  He said he was coming but I don't know when...

I guess it's alright.  We all need a break huh?  Well I don't. I don't want one at all.  I just don't get it and when I look up what I should do it all sounds like tech indexers speaking gobble-dee-gook to each other.

And I'm struggling with this new size right now.  It's a a lot bigger, at least to me it is.  And I've got to store these bigger things.  But I have also been working on smaller things too.  Valentine's Day cards if you can believe it.  They are fun too but I can't find my right tools and so this morning I've spent the last three hours just sorting through all my junk separating things into smaller parts and keeping my eyes open.   

I don't like this kind of work cause it feels like work and it's boring to me.  I gotta run up and down three flights of stairs and look in every box...! Yuck.

I'll start posting again as soon as I can.  Hopefully my friends in New York can help post some stuff to the 2011 section.

Breton into the future

As we all know well by now the price of dada has fallen to an all time low.  But even though it is now free it is still falling.  Artists have to beg people to take their work off their hands and then put it in other hands who can then transfer it to hands that are very clever so to speak and finally make money from nothing.

Of course there have been these dadaists forever looking at the invention of the toothbrush.  What can I say that could alter this fact?  Nothing else except yes or no. The same really.

stop.

It is impossible for me to conceive of a joy of the spirit otherwise than as a breath of air.  How can it be at its ease within the limits imposed on it by almost all books, almost all events?  -Andre Breton

When will the arbitrary be granted the place it deserves in the formation of works and ideas?  What touches us is generally less intentional than we believe.  A happy formula, a sensational discovery make their appearance in the most miserable form.  Almost nothing attains its goal, although here and there something overshoots it. -Andre Breton