Annotated List of Inspirational Ephemera Hanging on My Studio Wall

1. NYT Magazine dated January 22, 2017, opened to an article about the White House mailroom during President Obama’s second term. (Notes: small stories of ordinary human lives, letter writing and language as form of connection, many parts of a whole.)

2. Backside of Fruiting Bodies showcard. (Notes: look, you have shows sometimes.)

3. Press release for The Way of Flowers at the now relocated Dust to Dust project with one line highlighted. (Notes: Line reads “Ephemeral and vibrant, they [flowers] remind us of the impermanence of all things while also invoking desire and vitality.”)

4. Stack of mind maps racing in subject matter including: wish, wanting, salt, dissolve, dandelion, solidity, possess. As well as a few poems about salt cup.

5. Page from a photo publication, with a grid of photos and a poem by William Trowbridge, address stamped Oregon College of Art and Craft, 8245 SW Barnes Rd. (Notes: attempting to capture things that are unnameable, repeating subject matter, photography as impulse to remember, RIP OCAC)

6. Showcard from More or Less Wet by Ali Balter. (Notes: I take good photos of art and my friends make cool art.)

7. Showcard from Re: Surface at C3: Initiative. (Notes: ditto above, also books as documentation and subject matter.)

8. Gallery text written by Sydney Haliburton for Colors So True by Clifford Prince King, at MF Projects with notes on front and underlined notations throughout. (Notes: Front notes read “Photograph as archive/Photography as proof of existence/Photography as diary” underlined portion reads: “Through a display of vulnerability and intimacy, the black gay body gently exposed in King’s work remedies this trauma through the act of knowing and being known.”)

9. Showcard for Ann Hamiliton’s Habitus (Notes: Holy fucking shit, was this exhibition amazing. Thoughts on home, place, experience.)

10. Showcard for Zanele Muholi’s exhibition at SAM, Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail The Dark Lioness (Notes: Ditto above. Thoughts on self-portraiture as performance, self-portraiture as catalogue of many selves.)

11. Fragment of broadside that reads “And suddenly the memory revealed itself.” Attributed to “Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time.” (Notes: Memory as subject matter, remembering as subject matter.)

12. Postcard from Soul of a Nation seen at The Broad in LA, showing a painting titled “What’s Going On” by Barkley L. Hendricks (1974) (Notes: What a great exhibition. Also, concealment and reveal, pockets, overlap.)

13. Letterpress printed postcard from Hoarfrost Press that reads “I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.” attributed to Annie Dillard. (Notes: unrealized potential, a single moment revealing who you are, even to yourself.

14. NYT Magazine dated June 10, 2018, opened to a spread depicting specific times throughout a single day of documenting New Yorkers. (Notes: fragments of lives, small stories of ordinary people, love as a subject matter.)

Currently Absorbing

For the month of August, Melina and I have to move out of our studio in the Yale Union building. They bring a group of Japanese residents in for a program called End of Summer. As such, I'll be spending the month not actively making physical work (aside from the ever present Fragments.) But doing a lot more reading, writing, and listening.

I've set up a little desk in our garage, Steele's studio, and am trying to get out here as much as possible to write and write and write. It's been a long time since I've written anything real, and my brain feels clumsy, like my fingers are swollen and they can't type what they mean. But even so, there's so much stillness sitting at this desk under the window, looking out onto the garden.

But really why I'm here is to record two recent pieces of writing/thinking that I've digested today.

The first is the most recent episode of the podcast Dear Sugars, with Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond. This episode was on Creative Dreams, and there were so many good nuggets of wisdom, but I particularly liked this train of thought from their guest George Saunders, on taking a practical day job to support his family.

So maybe as a way of gaming myself I said "Ok, look, if you're a writer you should be able to find material even here, everywhere." Since these are human beings gathered together, this must be percolating into my artistic machinery, therefore it's not a waste.

This is something I wrestle with all the time. The need to pay rent, while also wanting to take my time in the studio seriously. I may never get to a point where that side of things is supporting me, so learning to be okay with a day job is something I'm going to have to do. It was so nice to hear these issues grappled with honestly and openly.

The second is a piece of writing that Crystal Moody linked to in her weekly newsletter, Agnes Martin Finds The Light That Gets Lost. Written by Larissa Pham for The Paris Review, it's an essay about art that makes you feel something real and true about the world. About chasing that feeling. And also, about Agnes Martin, whose work I adore.

When my traveling companion asked where I wanted to go, I always pointed at the bluest mountains. I wanted to be inside that heartbreaking lapis-lazuli blue, not stuck down here with the mortals among gray-green sage bushes and dusty-red ground; I wanted to be both there in the place and able to behold its beauty at the same time. I wanted to feel the way I feel standing in front of an Agnes Martin painting, where if you stand back you see one thing and if you get close you see another, and all it takes is leaning forward to fall into the details of how it’s made and what it says.

Please go read the full essay. Reading it felt a little bit like falling into the open sky for me, a big 360° inhale.