Still getting moved into my new studio so I’m in that weird place of having the logo plate from a 1950s furnace but no nails.

Inktober ’23 Prompt 1: Dream

My relationship with ink is murky. I love the work of really good inkers but I’m rarely satisfied with my own work.

But it’s Inktober and I could use some prompts so I decided to try something for today.

The first prompt was “dream”. I started out doing something very planned and very geometric, but … ink and I got into our usual back and forth.

So I fell back on the old art school trick of working loose on scrap cardboard and I think it came out okay. It’s actually two pieces that ended up working well together.

India ink and a couple of pens.

More about Inktober: https://inktober.com/

Mister David

When I lived in Anchorage, there was a checker at grocery store near my house who was trying to do the Mandated Thank The Customer By Name by reading my name from the receipt. Probably not having run into a lot of Scottish surnames in the country of her birth, she looked briefly consternated then quickly smiled at me and said “Thank you, Mister David!” She called me that until I moved away in 2009. It’s become more common, and I’m fine with it. It’s a weird looking name. Easy enough to figure out if you have time, but a weird sequence of letters, especially if English isn’t your first language.

Today I learned that there is a paint color called “Mister David” and I quite like it.

Alternate realities are as close as a faulty memory

Sometimes I’ll learn something that seems completely out of left field but also seems like something that I should absolutely have known about at the time and trying to absorb the information feels like looking into an alternate universe. Did I know about this and forget? Did it just slip by me?

Today that thing is threefold:

1. Willie Nelson and Richard Pryor performed “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain” together on TV
2. Richard Pryor played saxophone
3. Richard Pryor had a children’s show

Someone just rolled down my street at cruising speed absolutely blasting Erik Satie.

A new version of Starsky & Hutch but their best-known informant is now a big gay man who works as a Scandinavian design consultant and goes by Hygge Bear.

Every time I see a reference to the band Wet Leg, I think it’s the name of a song by Dry Cleaning.

Public Art? Infrastructure?

People in this neighborhood wanted a bridge over the creek, which had no crossing for seven blocks. The city couldn’t provide funding for and infrastructure project, but someone got the idea to get an art grant and they hired an artist to create an art installation to span the creek that people could walk on.

https://www.dezeen.com/2021/08/06/drift-pedestrian-bridge-fort-worth-texas-volkan-alkanoglu/

A cassowary is a tactical emu.

Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities

Activist art in the United States has historically arrived in bumps and waves. Sometimes it makes a significant and lasting impact beyond the art world (think the AIDS Quilt) and sometimes it makes a splash then just as quickly fades away. When Erina Duggane stumbled on twelve boxes of archival material relating to the 1980s movement Artists Call in the vaults of Museum of Modern Art Library in New York, she discovered a body of work that involved hundreds of artists working across the US and in several countries in Central and South America.

continue reading “Art for the Future: Artists Call and Central American Solidarities” →

Today I wrote the first full draft of my letter of intent for my MFA application. It is appropriately appalling.

photo of some trees on a hillside
I went on a hike and took some photos. Here is one.