We’re all traveling a million miles an hour through space, pinned the side of a spinning green and blue rock by magical forces we try to explain with charts and graph, and then we have the audacity to act like we’ve got it all figured. Then on top of that, we get mad when someone else doesn’t see things the same way we do.
Humans. Am I right?
The holidays were fine. My immediate family has still managed to dodge the Omicron bullet, but everyone we know is getting sick so it all feels inevitable. If gravity quit working tomorrow I would not be surprised.
Both my day job and my work with ECA have been very busy since the new year started. The day job has been going great. ECA was denied a couple of really key grants we needed (one from the NEA) which has been frustrating, but also a good learning experience. I mean, what else are you going to do when the government gives you a hard pass? Evidently, transitioning to a nonprofit creates some cognitive dissonance within yourself, and it becomes manifest when you discover your story isn’t coming across as clearly as someone else needs:
“You are a new organization. Really young. We want to see what your impact is and know you have longevity before we give you these dollars.”
“But, we’ve been an organization for 10 years. We said so in the application. The nonprofit thing has nothing to do with our longevity.”
“Yeah but the legal org itself… you’ve only been a nonprofit for like, a minute. We don’t know what your long term impact will be.”
“But, um… ten years and dozens and dozens of shows with dozens and dozens of artists in a town that has almost no outlet for them to do the kind of work we show, mostly by bootstrap and volunteer effort…”
“Mmm-hmm”
Anyway, we will write more grants and get better at the parts that help those giving out big dollars understand what our impact is. Next time we will use crayons and shiny words.
In the meantime, the drawing continues unabated if not fractured into annoyingly small bits of time. According to stats provided by some app I did not give permission to send me stats, I spend about 18-22 hours a week on meetings. Much of this time I cannot work on other things I need to do and still listen effectively at the same time. Such is the plight of thought-worker labor. If my camera is off on a Zoom call I’m either:
Doing push-ups and wall sits
Pacing
Organizing my patch cables
Drawing at my art table
This fractured time does not always make for good work. Auto-pilot drawing can provide time to refine what you do, but I have found that new moves I’ve made lately felt boring fairly quickly. So I drift back to what I know. This past week I hit a stack of paper with some bright spray paint colors. It creates a bumpy texture that eats at your pencils in a satisfying way. You can also erase back through the paint which is… something. I don’t know. It’s a thing. To get into a satisfying “deep work” headspace you really need a good night’s sleep and a block of a couple hours. This is not my life at the moment. I will be in a show I’m co-curating coming up in April. I need time to make some decisions.
To add insanity to the nonsense of my unavailable time, I’ve continued to mess around with making videos to support my audio outputs. If you recall in my last post I shared some audio experimentation I put to some random video I shot. I’ve made a couple more since then. One features a bunch of footage I shot while waiting to pick up my son downtown and driving home. It became a slow minimalist burn about time stagnating to the point of feeling like you will never reach your destination.
Don’t worry. The video ends.
The other new video is a live performance with my visible human body seeable with your own eyeballs. The threatening audio sample featured in this live improvisation was one of those idiotic robocall voice messages coming from some random city you’ve never heard of.
I keep a growing pile of interesting voice messages. This one was actually sent by my old school homie from way back, Spencer Reynolds - a talented artist who owns the dope gallery Semi-Aquatic down in Brookings Oregon. Highly recommended.
I’m looking forward to performing live music again. I’m really focused on getting better at the current setup I have - eurorack can be a wild beast that misbehaves - so I’ve been setting up performance-like conditions and filming them to provide the right kind of pressure.
In the meantime I have two paintings up for sale in my shop. They’d look good over your couch or newborn infant’s crib. I’ll be adding some more drawings as soon as I find the box with the camera battery charger so I can take proper photos.
This is the end of the post. May gravity be your friend, and provide just the right pressure. I’d hate to find out you are hurdling through space all by yourself.