Ramblings

i have a weird thing where i need to get my web site done before i can finish a batch of work. been like this for years; i build a website out of consideration for the ideas in my head / projects i am doing in real life, and then from there consider the architecture / what will be the best way to present the work, while also showcasing everything from before.

i’ve got about 8 oil paintings nearly finished right now, with another 5 in some stage of progress. i also have two substantial text-based projects coming up, one beginning this week, but i can’t really finish them until i put a bow on all the rest of this; really just the front page and some assorted details.

this is all to say i have a more functional relationship with my processes of making things than i have with any other human, probably not a great thing, but possibly good for my choice to move to LA

Trying to set up a mirror for self-portraiture

Though I’m slowly re-acclimating myself to life in an apartment, kind of, I still find myself balancing structures of plastic, unused supplies and unstable shelving units to set up a self-portraiture space. The thing is I have no clue what the ‘right’ way to do something like this would be, I just pretty much assume if I have a large piece of unsupported glass on a standalone shelf in Los Angeles it’s probably the wrong way.

Nevertheless, I can now shift to self-portraiture and, eventually, hopefully, portraiture. I’ve always wanted to make a specific type of portrait, but what I want to do takes a variety of skills and oil painting is the last one I have to figure out.

I also realize, starting this, that I’ve never actually done it before—painted a self-portrait, that is. I’ve used pencil or some kind of ink wash combination, but I’ve never actually made a painting of myself or anyone else.

I bought some lovely art from someone who used to show at First Friday events in Portland and I haven’t yet put it up on my wall because I don’t know if—in six months, when my lease is up—I’ll stay in this apartment / city / country.

This is the kind of thinking my brain defaults to, literally with every decision I make throughout the day, & why I find it increasingly difficult during times of chaos to give a shit about anything. But after the past three years of never being in the same place for more than four months, sometimes days, adjusting to the idea of thinking ahead / about the future couldn’t come at a more inopportune time.

(It’s also wild because, to me, it makes sense that now would be the time to take things seriously; anyone who fell to faith in the future under Bush or Obama is bound by the same need for the Spectacle and its institutions, and those are the villains now in plain sight. But that’s a different rant completely.)

Either way I sit and stare at this spot on my wall for far longer than it would take to hang the work, considering the time yet to be lost, but then I look outside and see how shit is going in the rest of the world and it’s like, what the fuck are we even doing with any of it anyway

(as i await some news regarding a more scheduled work day, it also strikes me how there are ways I have yet to imagine where my approach to time and life will come to clash in my immediate future—I was having a conversation about work yesterday & my ambivalence toward a situation was met with, “That’s because you haven’t had a boss in ten years, you’ll remember what it’s like.”

—it’s strange how difficult some situations are to remember until you’re in them again.)

—& as this site finally feels close to done, i am browsing through the rather complete archive… if there was one silver lining to the manner all of my life got knocked sideways by 2020, it is that most of the work i’ve done to this point feels finished; at least to the extent that there are no projects pre-2020 i feel the need to continue

it’s a strange feeling

there is still much to do, & what i have done has helped, but it still all felt like learning; a good thing, but not ready to take seriously

we shall see where this goes,