keep working
use what feels right, throw away the rest
Before I get to the biweekly sharing of things, I wanted to first let y’all know there is a new post on the blog! As I mentioned a couple of updates ago, I’ve been mulling over this post for a few months now, the first half of the year having been a total emotional roller coaster from a professional perspective. It is easily the most candid of my “burning bridges” posts written while still in a role. So hopefully my boss doesn’t read it…Just kidding. It’s honest but it’s mostly positive. And frankly, I’m just tired of faking it. Anyway, I may write more about these ideas in the broader context of my podcast newsletter so stay tuned for that.
On to some random stuff:
I enjoyed a long weekend all to myself a couple of weeks ago and caught up on a few projects around the house, but also spent some time in the studio (got two newish projects going, both somewhat related to my previous body of work) and watched several art documentaries, including Frida, which I really enjoyed, and an episode of PBS’s Artbound about Heath Ceramics. I love Edith Heath’s story and think it would make such a great biopic: her experiences growing up during the depression and then working during the WPA, an era that has always fascinated me, her move west, her scrappy approach to life as an art student and teacher in San Francisco, her search for the perfect clay which she ultimately found near Lincoln, CA, outside Sacramento (a clay pit the company still uses), and then her experiences growing a business with her husband at a time when there weren’t as many women doing so (plus the fact that she did not have kids, which was also more unusual for a woman of her generation).
The wee Heath mug I use for tea most nights. I also watched Carol and loved this brief exchange about talent, Therese being an amateur/aspiring photographer (shopgirl by day…another great movie):
Carol: Is that what you want to be? A photographer?
Therese: I think so. If I have any talent for it.
Carol: Isn't that something other people let you know you have? All you can do is keep working. Use what feels right. Throw away the rest.
I also, finally, resumed making my way through the 113 page Google doc of all the blog posts I wrote about/while in art/grad school and came across one time I took the Chinatown bus to NYC for the day and saw Pipilotti Rist’s 1997 film Ever Is Over All, which inspired Beyonce’s 2016 video for Hold Up. I adore how simple Rist’s website is. I don’t actually have any memory of this, but I wrote at the time (April 8, 2007) that stills from the film at SFMOMA a few years earlier had inspired the palette (turquoise and red) for my 2005 wedding.
I also wrote about having seen Christian Marclay's Graffiti Composition, a portfolio of 150 digital photographs he took of blank music sheets he pasted up around Berlin and then went back and photographed the graffiti they collected. This (my visit to NYC) was in 2007. Looking it up again, turns out a composer turned that graffiti into music a few years later (the performance and recording took place before I saw the work in 2007 but an album was released in 2010…you can listen to a few pieces here). This is what’s so great about writing about stuff—whether it be private journaling or public blogging—and revisiting what you wrote years later (who wants to give me a book deal already?!?).
One thing I like to do every now and then when I have time (or I’m killing/wasting time) is play all the covers of a particular song one after the other, like Gerry Rafferty’s Right Down the Line. My fave is by Lucius but I also really dig the version by Sam Evian.
The above rabbit hole of sorts left me pondering bottled water company Evian’s mid-90s slogan, which was “another day, another chance to feel healthy.” I had a full-page magazine advertisement with this slogan hanging inside my closet during high school, I guess as a daily reminder to, you know, feel healthy (I also loved their facial misting spray, which was/is probably a total racket but I swore by it at the time). I feel like I’ve tried to extend this idea to other parts of my life as well and recall a former coworker reminding me as we wrapped up for the day, “tomorrow’s another day.” In other words, the work will be there in the morning, waiting for you. No point in taking it or the stress of it home with you. Anyway, Evian changed their advertising strategy in 1996 to focus less on health and more on “purity.”
Planet Money published a recent podcast episode about how Pantone has a monopoly on color. Speaking of Pantone, I don’t know what these are called (color boards?) but I love the sporadic USPS ones. See an example here.
Approaching the Parthenon, summer 2007. Since my MFA thesis exhibition was, at least on the surface, about the Parthenon, I am creatively obligated to read and share any news about the contested Parthenon Marbles, aka the Elgin Marbles, housed in the British Museum in London. The new museum director’s “lending library” idea “would allow the works to go back to Greece without leaving the British Museum collection.” Hmm.
Latest GoPro MTB footage (riding Phil’s Trail in Bend, Oregon a few weeks ago) finally edited into a video which you can watch here.
Finally, I finally watched the Indigo Girls documentary It’s Only Life After All. What can I say? I loved it. It’s now streaming on Netflix so you should watch it this weekend.
