from 3 to 3

oh a beautiful 24 hours. after class met the boy in the painting studio, as i sometimes do so he can look over my stuff. i'm excited about this still life which is finally so anti-photorealistic. and the painting professor says it has some punch? then, rode home part of the way on the front handlebars of the boy's bicycle, sort of fast down this hill, trying real hard not to let my feet touch the front wheel. and when we came to a slow stop, i stumbled off. hung around a bit, then to chicago to look at markus linnenbrink's show which we meant to see when it opened last week: http://www.royboydgallery.com--he was a big inspiration for my wood glue painting last winter, you remember?

realized we were in the portillo's neighborhood (again!), and stopped in for a real delicious hot dog: no onions, no sport peppers, no relish. and some fries to split. then to wicker park. at a record store the boy favors, found the soundtrack to alice's restaurant which made me happy being as how i have misplaced my arlo guthrie. unfortunately it's on vinyl and no turntable here, but to be enjoyed eventually. and only $2.99!

amazing pizza at some place i cant remember, and the boy and i argued about its goodness, whether taste can be objective and what to eat if it was the last meal: this amazing pizza or giordano's? but it gets better, vicki! met people in logan square, drinking in the park, at the stairs of some, monument. and once inside the auditorium, more drinking, until we were quite, messy. cloves, a beer, and one of the friend's glow sticks: dancing dancing dancing hard. from the beginning, even though no one else was dancing but the five of us.

but the music built perfectly, vicki: junior boys to ratatat to mouse on mars. until by the latter we had recruited so many more dancers, including a nice cluster of boys from school who we pulled to the front with us. three solid hours of dancing, vicki. maybe three and a half. and so so sweaty. someone's bright blue tie was dripping sweat. and i had my shirt pulled way up. but still dancing. even up to the end when we climbed on stage--by invitation, of course--and me, dancing on an amp until some guy pulled at my leg and made me get down. they sampled bright blue tie's holler.

afterwards, standing, talking, with the guys from all three bands. myself, mostly quiet (quite drunk). a long but short el ride home. bagel bites, a hot shower, lots of water, bed. and this morning, two wonderfulwonderful cinnamon sugar bagels from einstein, and i just can't see how anything we do for halloween can even come close to tying this.

notes until i get a chance to edit

writing/drawing/painting/sclupture v. literature/art
why doesn't art have the heaviness that the word literature has? (does it?)
i don't know why art seems like a standard, either
since when is a feeling specific? (there are things more vague than feeling?!)
i'll call probably everything in a museum art but will only feel a select few..
art and anything creative
should good art necessarily evoke analysis? (having something to say and being there to listen)
the best art will give you as much as you want it to--yes yes yes
but you haven't told me how art helps the world.

fish skin feels like wet oil paint

Why should art be this divine, unapproachable thing? Art is just language; it's communication with pictures instead of words. (OK, Sometimes with words). (Sometimes with only words).

Really, Vicki. No bad art?

You know what I think would help people understand art? To approach it as they do writing. (Because writing is actually taught in schools.) There's good and bad writing, sentences that are better put than others. Good art has an eloquence. The expression is as important as the thing being expressed. When that expression is boring the art just won't be as interesting. But good expression can enliven the subject: this is what makes the best still life, for example.

I think people get confused because they look for art to say something concrete to them: "The world is beautiful," or something. But most of it won't do that. It's an idea outside of concentrated thought. A feeling, perhaps, but less, specific.

The best art will give you as much as you want it to: a momentary passing thing or, with some analysis, whole theories. Vicki, you know art because you know poetry. Since when are you the non-artist?

you run away like a john hughes movie

not that i know, but let's say art is the name we give to the (created) things that move us and as such there is no boring art--only art that is not yours to feel.

so can we discuss instead what is good art for us? i know it is not that it gives off a certain meaning. but that i want to keep staring at it and i want to go back to it. not unlike a de-puzzling of design but more of a. sort of wonder that it exists at all? the feeling that it says something, even if i do not know what. the art i like rarely pushes me to an articulation of life--should it? (exception: magritte; i'm working backwards, here) i end up thinking in association. particles, waves. but here is what i think i think: by definition art is not boring.

and art's place in the world, jessica! where is the art that is not for artists. as a non-artist how does art change my life. the answer: it doesn't, because so little is art for me (them!). because art has little to offer me (anyone?). because i don't value that momentary feeling of wonder. (okay, but i do i do.)

Stars twinkle as air bends their light

Went to Block with the boy last night, saw Weekend. I don't get cinema, Vicki. It is too multi-tasking for me. It is an appeal to all my senses, and it is simply too much. They don't give you a chance to understand. To breathe. Also, films are killing painting. Why doesn't anyone want to talk about painting around here? And this is what I yelled when Dan tried to explain the movie too me---genres actors directors blah blah blah: "Painting is dead, and all you film buffs have killed it!" And then I took off running, as fast I could, down the block away from him.

And why did we jump into all these new art forms when we still haven't solved the problems of art's most basic media. Painting wasn't done!

Paintings sit quietly in a room with you. (Like books). (Like poetry).

Later in the night, took a shower in the rain, bending over so the water could run on my neck. This morning, overslept. The boy went off the Belmont; I called and met him there as I wanted to go shopping for his birthday. Found: a light blue cardigan, a dark blue vneck sweater, and a nice plaid blazer. For myself, tried on two vintage Italian A-line skirts, but I was too short for them.

Now, to Astronomy, the stars.

If it is all 'art,' then why do we have this word?

Art is the artist's idea. No No: art is the COMMUNICATION of the artist's idea.

I am interested, mostly, I think, in a visual communication of this idea. I do not want to read my visual art. I do not want to hear my visual art. Well, I'll read and I'll listen, but I want to see something, too.

A boring image is bad art. Bad Art is boring: you can't even hate it. An attempt at communication but something isn't working. The composition is broken, faulty, loose.

The difference between decoration and art is decoration has nothing to say. It is purely functional. It isn't lesser; it just, isn't art.

How do you tell the difference between bad art and decoration? Maybe bad art is almost to the point of communication to be nagging, subtly annoying?

i might just as well have ordered a tree not to sway in the wind

today was wet but uncommonly pleasant, a rare sort of a day but a welcome one . hm. so it's precisely this kind of mood that makes me laugh at my sorrowful ones. how ridiculous i am! (i was doing this last night, wasn't it?) that this (good! good!) life is enough to throw me down! ridiculous, jessica, but irreparable as well? perhaps i prefer it that way. it's difficult to distinguish between constructions of consolation and reality.
walking in to willard-straight before lunch there's a crowd on ho plaza. a group of students trying to "revive the high" [five]. before heading back home i stop by the library and pick up black prince from the library. the last lines:
art is not cosy and it is not mocked. art tells the only truth that ultimately matters. it is the light by which human things can be mended. and after art there is, let me assure you all, nothing.

and because i am for art. some piombino:
naming never knew. there is nothing anybody ever really experienced that needed one.
when once humankind's greatest craving was to be soothed now it is to be understood.
still, if it doesn't feel holy in your hands, what is it?

a coast to the center or a coast to the heart?
oh, the world is so large. why did plato banish poets from his utopia, again?

the world doesn't get better by itself

today in painting: two hour paintings. on canvas that he provides (him, see, we're set up well. this isnt arizona junior college!). a rethinking of your first painting. take risks, use lots of paint, but be done in two hours. and mine, i liked it, vicki. smearing paint. very abstract, maybe too expressionist for my usual taste, but its risky, you know. i didnt play it safe. anyway, literally five minutes from the deadline, he tells me, think linear now. me, what do you mean? him, i mean what i said: linear! so i add these black lines across the whole thing, which, i always revert to these stupid black lines when i dont know what to do. and i show it in the critique like this. and he just, tears the lines apart. and it felt so bad, vicki. but i hadnt wanted them in the first place! i was done. i told him i was done and he said, linear! so, i took the lines off, mostly, after the critique. but walking home, then i got it, i could see what he meant by linear and how perfect i could have made it with sort of colored half-hearted outlines on the shapes. but it was too late, and now he wont know that i do have some sense of artistic, composition. i just, couldnt think in those five minutes. and now i've thrown all the paint away.

we have no Art, we do everything well

he says, purple is not a color
and other interactions with the painting professor

He has told me to put an edge onto this saucer I'm painting: "It's not paper thin, is it? Now just stop being obstinate!" So, I have painted this edge, and he looks at me over the easel, "Now, is it a wobbly, shaky edge or a machined straight edge?" Me, "Uh, I don't know, but I'm not a machine, so..." He sighs. "Well, that's a good answer."

And I told you he is always warning us against the art world. He just walks around the room, not shouting, but definitely, pronouncements: "You're set up to have an awful awful life, and the only thing you'll have is your art! 'Sorry dear, we aren't having dinner tonight because we just bought a tube of cadmium red.' And people will pass you on the street, smile, and you'll just scowl because 'Do you know how I'm going to fix this painting?'"

Some kid calls him the Color Surgeon:
Him, "Why yes, I like to think of myself as a surgeon."
Some other kid, "But in surgery there's no going back. You can ruin a body, but you can never ruin a painting, right?"
Him, "Oh, it's just a person. What's another person? But a painting! A great painting..."

then i realized that time doesn't change

when i was in elementary school and had the chicken pox i slept in the master bedroom and my mom stayed home to remind me not to stratch. i lied in bed thinking to myself, this is the biggest room in the house and i'm sleeping in it.

there's a tall gothic arch that i walk under everyday right before arriving at my building. it takes maybe fifteen seconds to walk the steps? the other day i'm on my way home and on the other side of the steps, close to railing, there's a boy and a girl holding each other. huddled against each other. very close and very very still. both have their backpacks on the ground next to them. the girl is the height of his chin. they aren't saying anything. i can't tell who's comforting whom. but what else could it be?

today i walked home smelling of library.

we are maybe the worst bloggers ever

Hey, I say next time we try to start a blog we ought to decide where it's going to go. And oh, if we even want one in the first place?

Vicki, you told me to post. I said, I think we should ditch the whole project. You said, Do what you will. And then, um, a week or so later, But it would make such a nice, record, archive? (You used some poetic word, I think, as usual).

Now I'm posting and I have nothing to say. A Story, perhaps? Did I tell you, last week the boy and I went into Chicago to see some galleries. Playing cultured and adult, wearing that prep school blazer I bought in San Francisco when I visited him. We looked at the painting professor's stuff, all large, geometric, but color color. Smooth flat color, sometimes popping shaded color: once, a red pipe just shooting across a plane. And you remember, him telling me in class, Add color! You're being too journalistic!

Anyway, even better, same gallery (Roy Boyd), downstairs, on panel, thin thin layers of Elmer's glue over and over each other with teal acrylic polka dots showing through at varying depths. Very nice: I wanted it to be mine--to own or to have painted, either way.

Lunch at Portillo's. Very full when finished, and we had to sit for awhile to let it all settle.