2008: The year in review

January 2008:

Jeanne and I welcomed 2008 at Regina and Jheri's house in Houston. We were drinking wine coolers and playing Nintendo when the clock struck twelve. My resolution was to not be working at Texas Art Supply by New Year's Eve, 2008 (and I've kept it!).
Jeanne began her final semester of graduate school at U of H, and we mostly hung out with her fellow MFA candidates. We had fun much of the time, even if not all friendships would survive by the middle of the year.





This is a good example of the phase I was going through a month after our show at the Joanna Gallery. I hated my art, and the art world in general and this sketchbook page was a way of venting and trying to sort things out.





Above is a picture of Jeanne, who had just been crowned as head of the Department of Glitterology at U of H. Despite how we might have felt about the Joanna show, great paintings and drawings were still being made in Jeanne's studio.

February:

My attention was turned more toward drawing in my sketchbooks, especially Out, C.K. than to painting.



It was also around this time that the combination of crack- head waiters and rancid marinara sauce caused us to stop eating at the 59 Diner in Houston. There was a very delicious banana split that we didn't expect to be so enormous, though:



We were accompanied on our outings by Regina and Jheri quite often. Here they are, amused at the idea of us consuming so much ice cream.


March:

Easter came early that year, and I paid tribute to the Holy Easter Bunny in my own very special way:




This was around the time I was going back to my roots, and busting out the 64 box of Crayolas as well as using Blo-Pens for the first time. Meanwhile, Jeanne was presenting her spectacular installation piece called "You Are The We of Me" at the small projects gallery in the U of H Fine Arts building; an installation which even the famous critic Raphael Rubinstein admitted was a superb and progressive piece of art. Below is a panoramic shot of the installation:





The opening for the show was a lot of fun! We went to the big Spec's in mid town Houston with Regina and Jheri to get snacks and booze the night before, and Jeanne had purchased a snow cone machine at Arnie's Party Supply with which to make snow ball daiquiris for opening night.


April:

April was the month of Grimace. It was here that we discovered the unwholesome truth: the former purple mascot of McDonald's restaurants was a monstrous serial killer!





May:

Jeanne and I officially get engaged! Five years after meeting her, I am sure that I have found the perfect companion with whom I want to share the rest of my life!




Here we are at the MFA show standing in front of one of Jeanne's hottest paintings, "Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise". It was then that we knew the inevitable changes that 2008 would bring were just around the corner...

June:

We went to Dallas to install "Playing With Fire", Jeanne's new video/installation piece at Central Track.





July:

The month where change became something very real and scary. Early on, there was serious talk about moving back to the New Orleans area now that Jeanne had finished graduate school. By the middle of July, Jeanne was not feeling well at all and she did not begin to feel better until the end of the month. Then, on the last day of July, we got the news that her dad, John Cassanova, had fallen down in his house and was suffering from sub-dural hematoma. Suddenly, moving back to New Orleans was not just conjecture anymore- it was a plan.

August:

I spent most of the month alone in Houston because Jeanne was with her family in Metairie and I had to work. It was also necessary for me to pack up Jeanne's studio at U of H and move out all of her stuff. By the end of the month, John Cassanova was in stable enough condition for us to commence with the move. I quit the job I held for three years at Texas Art Supply and immediately began looking for work in The New Orleans area to be met with little success. (As of this writing, I still do not have a full time job.)
Hurricane Gustav loomed in the Gulf as a potential Katrina-type threat, and our move back was complicated by it. But we made it back, and managed to find a nice house for rent in a quiet neighborhood for less than $1000 a month. Fortunately, New Orleans dodged the bullet this time.




September:


Still in the throes of hurricane season, Ike destroyed Galveston and damaged much of Houston.
For once, we were on the safe side of the Mississippi River. Meanwhile, we were settling in to our new home, even though Jeanne was looking after her dad during the day. Thankfully, his recovery was rapid and his spirit was strong.
I did find temporary employment as an art instructor for The LA Artworks Saturday Academy, but this would only last for seven weeks and I would be paid a stipend of $600. Still, it was good because it gave me a chance to get reaquainted with New Orleans every weekend.


October:

I set a goal for doing one drawing for every day in October, and I met that goal. By the end of the month, Mr. Cassanova was walking on his own again and feeling the mental and physical benefits of therapy.







November:

We watched as Obama won the presidency! It was also in November that the Saturday Academy ended and I was truly jobless. There were only a couple of paychecks and my savings to go through. Meanwhile, Jeanne was working two jobs, the first as an adjunct drawing instructor at UNO, the second as an elementary school teacher in Metairie.






December:

Snow fell on New Orleans for the first time in four years!





Above is my most recent attempt at a self portrait along with a donkey cut out that I painted for a live nativity scene. Daisy is also in the picture to make the works look much larger than they really are.
For Christmas 2008, Jeanne gave me a new bike! For the first time since before Katrina, I can ride a bike again! Thank you so much, Jeanne!


January 2009:


My new year's resolution: to stop getting angry about things that I cannot change or control.

Happy New Year!

The Installation Piece at The End of The Universe

Digital collage, 2008.

A recurring dream: Jeanne and I share some sort of large studio/garage/storage complex. We are always surprised and delighted to find even more space than we had previously thought there was. Also the lighting: There are rows of light bulbs at the top, sort of like those above our bathroom mirror.

Random thought fragments I thought I'd share

Ovid's Americana
digital collage 2008

On history:

One of the worst evils ever perpetrated against the world was colonialism. That and slavery would have to be the two biggest crimes of Western civilization. I wish I could proudly call myself an American, but this country was a product of both so that is something hard for me to do.

On the other hand, history is not my fault.

On work:

God did not intend for human beings to work pointless, unfulfilling, tedious jobs for the majority of their lives. Yes, we need to work in order to live, and in order to create things that are worthwhile, but our post industrialized culture is such that only robotic humanoids are adapted to survive, while people who have genuine callings fall to the wayside.
I would gladly work ten to twelve hours everyday on something that I genuinely love and care about for little or no money as opposed to some mindless and robotic job in retail for a large corporation that neither pays me for what my toil is worth, nor for what they can actually afford to pay me.

On religion:

There is no pomposity greater than telling another human being where they will go after they die.

Artists:

Depart from ordinary church.

Looking at a painting should be like walking into a Cathedral.

A painting should always make us feel as if we are standing on the threshold of something big.

An artist who cannot change the way people see cannot change the world.

Approach each painting as a conversation, not just as a statement.

Evaluate what is good and what is of value to the culture in which you live. How does it hold up and how does it fall apart under scrutiny?

Reconcile paradoxes as best you can.

Parallel universes exist in the eyes of the artist. Much of it is playing 'what if?'

IT IS NEVER TOO LATE! Stop lamenting the fact that you were not a child prodigy or that you did not make a name for yourself ten years ago! DO IT NOW!

Art as an experience remains mostly visual; even though we may view them, we are still very rarely allowed to touch sculptures or installations. The tactile experience is reserved exclusively for its maker, not for the observer.
How is this any less self indulgent on the part of the artist than action painting or other forms of painterly abstraction?

Lamenting for no good reason... (or the Tyranny of Originality)

"Nostalgia is the Opiate of the Masses"
Mixed media/canvas, 2008.

Jesus Christ! I can't paint cartoons! I can't paint abstract! I can't paint anything readable or it becomes "illustrative"! What the fuck am I supposed to paint?

So now that McCain lost, can we put SNL out of its misery too? It really just isn't funny anymore.

How 'bout dat Obama? I'm not one to put an inordinate amout of faith in career politicians, but I did vote for Obama and I am glad to see him win rather than McCain. Time will tell, of course, whether Obama can really fix anything and if he can do more than give pretty speeches. I'm not ready to sing his praises just yet, he still needs to wow us.
As for you Republican-types out there (if indeed any of you happen to read my blog at all.), your guy had almost half the popular vote and he conceded very graciously (despite the throngs of idiots chanting "USA!" at his campaign headquarters). If you're sore about it at all, then maybe now you can appreciate how us lefty-liberals felt eight years ago when we thought we had it made, and someone who did not represent us (or very few people in the world for that matter) won the election. History will serve as a reminder of how lousy a president we've had over the last eight years, and if anybody is better than Bush, then I'm glad that that "anybody" is Obama.

Happy Halloween!

Egotism comes with many negative connotations. But we all have egos, so why is it bad to be egotistical? Is art making possible without the ego to act as a filter? Is subjectivity possible without an ego? Say what you will, but I feel strongly that the answer is no.
Every artist, myself included, is a practicing egotist. That's why it's art, and not commodity. It is shaped by the ego, not by need, by use, or by nature. Perhaps the most humble thing an egotist can consider himself to be is a mere filter through which sensory input flows.
Art is more than just the application of skill, art is a cultivated means of interpreting the outer world subjectively. This is the function of the ego for artists and non-artists alike; the only difference is that the artist has something to show for it. A master carpenter can build some beautiful cabinets and be very proud of them, but all the while his mind might have been occupied with something beyond building cabinets. But if the artist is putting the necessary amount of contemplation into his work, then the painting, or drawing, or sculpture, or whatever is the physical end result of a mental process.
Input-thought-nerve impulse-muscle movement-tool manipulation-art object. A sequence that cannot exist without the ego to act as a filter. Even photography and digital art follow this sequence, though the tools are much more sophisticated.
The cabinet-maker also follows this process while cutting, assembling, and staining wood, but at its inception the decision is not to make something aesthetic (though pleasing to the eye his work might be), but to make something functional and useful. His input is filtered through the demands of his client who needs cabinets for his kitchen. "Shall I go with cherry stain, or maple? Maple would match the furniture in the living room, so I want you to stain them maple." And, since this is his livelihood, the carpenter complies.
This is why artists are not generally hired to design kitchens. The artist might want to paint the cabinets fuchsia with chartreuse pin stripes. In fact, he might not even give a damn whether they open or close properly, so long as they look good. "Useful" and "functional" are not words commonly used to describe art.
Is art, then, useless?
Yes, it is. It's completely useless. It might occasionally serve the purpose of earning its creator money, but the art itself does nothing. It just sits there or hangs there and people look at it.
Art objects are fossils of the ego. They are records of this one human existence. The right of that art to exist is the same as the right of that person to exist. "Useless" is not the same as "worthless". An original Picasso is useless, but it is not worthless. A person can be useless, but unless you're thinking like a sociopath, then no person is worthless.
Human existence is inexorably tied to the ego, and art is a product of the ego. Art can be good or bad just like people can be good or bad. Good art might be made by a bad person, while bad art might be made by a good person.
So to say that, "He sure is an egotistical asshole" might be accurate but egotistical is not necessarily bad. Artists are extremely egotistical people, but not all of them are bad people, in fact, some are rather nice. Artists are egotistical in the sense that the ego is a vital part of what they do.

seal in a fur coat
watercolor and ink on paper
2008

There was a rush of blood to my brain when I was walking back home from the library today. It felt good, almost euphoric. It was also kind of embarrassing, so I didn't really let myself enjoy it.
I was thinking of a song I liked, and also about drawings or paintings I could do. It all just clicked.
I checked out some books about architecture that I think I can mine for good samples. I'll take advantage of being between jobs and become a more productive artist. It just sucks to not have any money.