Painting Vinyl

“Ah, wouldn’t it be kind of cool to have a record player again?” He said to his shopping companion as he strolled by me. “I remember going down to the K-Mart and getting so pumped about the new records that were out…”

“You don’t need that” his shopping companion retorted.

A literal fly on the wall, I found myself chuckling as I flipped through the records looking for artists and albums on my list for expanding my collection. True, nobody needs a record player in 2022, but I was busy pondering the weird truth of how when you begin to open yourself up to the possibility it meets you on the road. What’s the expression I’m thinking of here? I love thrifting and antiquing. It’s one of the activities I used to do with my Mama that was fun and peaceful. Going to the flea markets, or garage sales was always an adventure. She taught me the joys of picking up others’ trash off the curb, of the possibility of a haggle. It’s a habit I’ve continued, and sometimes as can be the case with folks who find joys in the material realm, I pick up discards that I should probably leave behind. But until I installed my new record playing system in my studio I had never noticed records at the antique stores I routinely visit. A couple of weeks ago I was in a town for the day. I took to the internet to find the closest record store. Having not experienced a music hunt since college (roaming the overflowing bins of CDs at a now defunct Hastings) - I feel like I’m routinely disappointed that there is no such brick and mortar opportunity in Detroit Lakes, MN. However, the internet did point me to the antique mall as a place to buy records. Really? I thought to myself? I know every single one of those booths, I have taken my Mama and my Hermanitas there, I visit almost every time I’m in that part of the state. I was up for an adventure with some time to kill so I headed to SuLaine’s Antique Mall. And sure enough, I found bins and bins of records waiting for me to flip through to find some treasures. At the antique shop it’s not likely you’re going to stumble on the latest and greatest new releases. However, if it’s classics you seek, you may just find.

I have some ideas about what I want in my record collection, and I’m also trying to remain open to exploration. I once read an article about how people tend to stay stuck listening to the music of their youth, and that warning has inspired me to continue reaching for familiar and new releases. However, I don’t want to just pick up whatever is lying on the side of the road. I want to want to listen to every full album in my studio. It’s an interesting tension to observe, the desire to collect and the need to edit. Clearly, a larger trend in my life with all my collections; there is a level of discernment necessary when amassing many objects. I am seeking inspiration in my collection. As I paint I like a soundtrack that inspires me, and I seek music to light up my emotional sensibilities as I work. The creative part of me likes to be in the presence of other artists as I work. Like a painting that exists as an accumulation of brushstrokes and various moments of paint layers, albums exist as a collection of songs, which are built on layers of instruments and sounds coming together to create an experience. Many know that the abstract expressionists were listening to jazz as they developed this new visual language of drips and spills and splats and blobs. I feel the music in my bones as I work, it’s a magical conjuring opportunity. All this being said, what I listen to makes its way into my paintings, and for that I am both in awe and grateful to the artists who made the music, in turn making this moment possible for me.

“I hate how records are making a comeback” the checkout clerk said as she bagged up my ten vinyl albums, “they’re just so damn heavy… so hard to move.” I sat with her comments on the hour-long drive back home. Part of what amazes me about records is how I can take an album that was released and pressed in the 1960s, wipe it off, put it on my turntable and sounds come out. If that’s not a comeback, I don’t know what is! There is a magic in holding this album that someone else listened to, that someone else cried to, that someone else let go. It’s different than listening to something digitally. When explaining the experience of record playing to Vaimo I likened it to the difference between seeing a painting in real life, versus seeing a picture of that painting. Listening to a song on vinyl is like seeing the painting in person. While I have been drawn into the the joys of streaming music or the lure of iTunes that boomed in the mid-2000s (iPods anyone?!) I have a difficult time believing sixty years from now someone can come upon an iPod shuffle at SuLaine’s and be able to listen to it. I’m already seeing the difficulty of a wireless headphone world and the need to also purchase a vintage corded headset and the proper charging device! The fact that we live in an era of disposable tech makes the vinyl album feel like such a feat, such a meaningful technology, such a marvel.

I grew up in an era of mix-tapes. Cassettes were the hot new technology intervention for listening to music, so much so that I remember my first tape. Like records, there is something satisfying about cassettes too, and every once in a while when our 1996 gifted Chevy Suburban is running I fantasize about getting tapes at the thrift store and listening to them in the relic of the cassette player in the music console. Sometimes I dream of popping in one of the mixtapes I have in my archive from dear friends when I was in high school. This is now a bucket list activity! Grabbing songs off the radio onto a tape and then recording that onto a new tape for a mix for a friend or a crush occupied much of my free time as a young person. There was something pleasing about the weight of a cassette in one’s hand. And the various accompanying furniture to organize one’s tapes. There was also the opportunity to write long love letters in the cover, well long enough to still get the case to close, and there were joys in affixing stickers to the plastic case exterior. The sound of snapping that plastic open and closed also brings back such good anticipatory pleasure about what was going to happen in the ritual of listen to an album on cassette. Likewise, there are pleasures in the weight of a record. I think I’m drawn to this technology because of the space it takes up, the gravity of it all, that the music becomes visible in the ridges of the vinyl. I love taking in art on the 12.5”x12.5” square album cover. That size just doesn’t translate the same to a 4”x2.5” or even a 4.7”x4.7” square CD paper insert size. But I like to paint large, I want to be enveloped in the work, I want to feel all the weight of it, the work in crafting the wood frame, or priming of the canvas, and the expanse of time, the hours and hours spent moving mud on the surface.

In the daily push for more, more, more that I find myself pulled toward often, listening to a record on vinyl forces me to be present in a way that streaming music simply doesn’t provide me. There’s not really an easy way to skip ahead to a song you really want to listen to once the needle is down, nor a way to quickly or mindlessly move onto something different. With vinyl, you’re called in more often to actively participate with the listening when one needs to flip the record to the B-Side or reset the needle. The vinyl record encourages the listener to hear all of the musicians’ creative decisions. Not all paintings can be masterpieces, just like not all songs make the Billboard 100. There is joy in listening to the songs that one knows and has had the pleasure of listening to on the radio or in the car on road trips with parents, and there are deep joys in discovering songs that you’ve never heard. Vinyl transforms my “more more more” attitude from the push toward greedy accumulation into deeper connection with the musical experience of the artist.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that there is pleasure in the experience of listening to music. Today’s newsletter is a love letter to vinyl, even though I could likely write a similarly long letter to cassettes, CDs, my iPod shuffle, or the radio. Speaking of radio, imagine my surprise the other day trolling the aisles of the thrift store when I heard the DJ say, “welcome to your station for classic rock” and then over the airwaves flowed Smells Like Teen Spirit. I mean, Nirvana is classic for those of us who grew up chatting with our besties all morning on the landline phone during the Top 20 Video Countdown, but Nirvana’s classic rock now? Dang, I guess I’m a classic relic now. But, you know, it’s actually exactly where I want to be these days. May the road rise up to meet you... may you find what you seek. 

What I’m Reading

Minor Feelings by Kathy Park Hong

A gem of a collection, Cathy Park Hong hones in on the affective difficulties of naming the experiences of living as a person of color, in her case as an Asian American in the US. The idea of minor feelings is woven through each of the essays and in Stand Up (such a good play on words) she writes what she means by them. “Minor feelings occur when American optimism is enforced upon you, which contradicts your own racialized reality, thereby creating a static of cognitive dissonance” (56). Overall, this collection is so rich with deep feelings and their accompanying insights alongside the minor ones. As an Oberlin trained visual artist, CPH writes about the processes of art making and friendship and her reclaiming of important parts of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha is important art history. I thoroughly loved this collection.

Artist Offerings

• In honor of Women’s History Month, check out this amazing film Without a Whisper: Konnon:Kwe about the Haudenosaunee women’s impact on white women’s suffrage in the US. Available free to stream with an accompanying moderated discussion afterward through the National Museum of the American Indian
• Just look at these gorgeous woven and painted textiles by April Bey
• I’ve been checking in on these reflections and accounts of the war in Ukraine daily - The War Diary of Yevgenia Belorusets - If all I can do is bear witness so be it.
• Spacial disorientation is my jam on my canvases lately, I have enjoyed looking at the strategies employed by Danica Lundy of inside and outside of bodies and weird perspectives in all the ways that phrase can mean!
• This essay by Megan Pillow has been sitting with me and the poem she quotes in it by Elizabeth Bishop

Creative Ritual

Last week Vaimo and I took one of my paintings to Omaha for the ArteLatinx 2022 Biennial  and then my Hermana met us at the opening! I’ve been studying some fellowship applications and preparing my applications for some rounds of grant funding to support my artistic practice. I am nearing the end of birthing a painting, and trying to stay calm that I’m a month off my trajectory for my internal deadlines, though everyday I have been home I have been dutifully (joyfully) painting in my studio utopia. I joined a Social Media bootcamp facilitated by artist Luis Martín and am having a fun time meeting new people and learning new things. I now have 50 records in my collection! Most excitingly, my second Tiny Tequila Series has dropped!! My subscribers get first dibs on my new small works that are listed and I’m excited to share a 15% code if you make a purchase this week: enter ARTOFKCF15 at checkout (good through 11:59pm 3/22). Your purchases will help fund my new saw acquisition for a new technique I am going to learn for building my frames for my canvases. Lets make these dreams come true! Thanks in advance for your support.

Questions to ponder

What music moves you?
How have you combatted the “more, more, more” pull?
What encourages you to slow down and be present?
What sounds bring you peace, calm, joy, or creative inspiration?

Thanks for journeying with me. I hope, as always, that you take what you need and leave the rest for someone else, or for another time. 

-KCF

Tip Jar: I’m excited to share that monthly sustainers now have an additional perk of 10% off anything in my shop for as long as you have an active reoccurring donation (at any amount). Just my little thank you to those of you regularly monetarily supporting my practice. I appreciate you! Can’t support with your dollar, that’s ok, I’m glad you’re here. Could you share this newsletter with a friend? I am ready for the friends of my friends to be a part of my community. Abrazos!