"I love mess."
Same, Marie Kondo, same.
I like paper clay. Making it is methodical, time consuming, and controlled, but the ingredient measurements are imprecise. And using it is about mashing bits together until before you are beholding a beautiful, horrible lump of thought, a bit of something taken straight out of you and drying on the table like an organ you've expounded on. Even after it dries, you can still press more wet clay into it and more and more and more. The fiber substance creates work that is a living document forever and ever that, once completed, can still hold change.
In my journal in 2020, I wrote, "I am not a minimalist artist. I want my art to be everything all the time." I dream of covering everything I own in paper clay and, because of the material, being able to fuck up over and over again until it's just so. The perfect, untoppling pile of art. Diane Budd from Curbed says, "It's about the power and necessity of plurality and tapping into what makes us human." And she's right. She's definitely got it. What is a life but a pile of all our experiences layered on top of one another? What is art but materials on top of materials on top of more materials?
above (from left to right): my desk in 2023, my desk in 2020, my desk in 2017
My favorite thing is when I step back from a piece, with several half-finished pieces buried beneath the top eight layers of paint, and I laugh because it doesn’t look anything like what I’d imagined. And then I think, “what if I add a frame shaped like pieces of chewed up bubblegum around the edges, that would make it even funnier. Even better?”
Maybe: when faced with struggle, pile on chaos instead. Chaos can make it, at least, fun. At most: perfect. Put yourself in a position where what is usually neat is replaced by what is usually avoided. Bring the mess in! Make big piles of paint. Tape ugly shit to pretty shit. Spray foam with spray paint to see what it does (it melts the foam, turns out). When you run out of space on paper, squeeze the rest of the word into peculiar shapes. Do the weird thing. Do it, do it, do it.
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( I’m off instagram in less than a month. :o )
One of my bud’s projects (“All My Homies are Sad”) is accepting submissions here.
Now that I’m out of school, I’ve developed the perfect “watch every new movie added weekly to lifetime movie club” schedule.
American Hysteria’s newest series of episodes is about Jackass (which I, yes, did almost spell as Jack/Ass). Listen here.
June 17 - NEPA Horror Fest
June 24 - Earth and Me Maker’s Market
July 1 - Another free bookfair with The Rolling Library
July 30 - Greenpoint Handmade Market
At all of these events except the horror fest, I’ll be offering live bad cowboy paintings.