I notice the sound of my hands on the paper as I smooth down a piece of collage. So quiet and peaceful. After days of no break, no studio, no writing, no quiet time, this feels right. It’s been a stressful week, politically it’s been just like FUCK!! Keeping up with the news is a fulltime affair, what kind of crazy shit is Trump going to do today I think as I get out of bed. Please don’t let us be entering another war or starting a new war. I obsess about what countries could hit us with a bomb, could we be invaded and taken over or is America going to just obliterate every population of people that disagrees or get in the way of “American Interests”? It’s frightening, so when I get my break, babies asleep, I NEED to write and paint, even if it’s just for an hour. So many things have happened lately I’ve wanted to write about. Sweet things being mom. The other day when I was packing our picnic for the beach I wrote everyone’s name on our sandwiches with a sharpie. When I got to mine, I wrote “MOM”, her name came into my mind at the exact moment. “Mines the one with Mom written on it” I say to Danny as he’s handing out the sandwiches from the cooler, on a sunny shore, Point Reyes in February, we celebrate our freedom. Alan is upset because I don’t have Dad written on his. “It was personal” I say. I can’t think of the right words to describe the emotions I’m feeling. But it was because I was thinking about my mom, how we were a family, Danny, me and Mom. For the first time, I realized I’m the mom in our group now, in our family. I have entered mom’s role, taking some of that space, breathing some of that air she used to. I call myself mom for the first time and own it. I just now notice the fan blowing. My hands are cold and I realize I am running out of time in my studio. I have several paintings started, I want to get more painting time. Yellows and blacks and whites, collage, notebooks, need to add some marks. Need to get back to painting before I’m back in the house, in my life of wonderment and surprise.
Tag: memory
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I’m doing something bad right now. I’m drinking a cup of coffee and eating cookies, it’s 1:00PM in the afternoon. There goes all that hard work on the spin bike, here comes a night of possible insomnia. But it tastes so good, so right. Now I have that rush of warmth, a full belly. One hour into my studio time. Dunce Nation and Dead Moles. Experimental Music, screeching, and hollering in the background. Already gone too far on a piece, want to keep working on it to “fix it” but we all know how that goes. Now, 2:46PM. Good painting session so far, see I told you I would feel differently again. The highs and the lows, the ups and the downs. Now the fan is on and The Bells by Lou Reed. The ambient noise is perfect for quiet awakenings, for R.I.P. Mole, and new beginnings. Perfect for reminiscing about yesterday’s daisies and tomorrows brunch. Do I come back to this moment or do I walk up the stairs to the dog house and the dead mole. “Oh no, the poor thing, Billy killed a mole. Don’t touch it. Should I bury it or throw it over the fence for the hawk or an owl? I should throw it over the fence. Poor thing, Billy killed it, it’s dead.” I tell Jack and Fiona. It’s right here, right in front of us. Happening live, I can’t hide reality. Maybe two’s too young to understand death, understand here today, gone tomorrow. I’ve never got the image of my mom’s mom lying in her casket. I imagine her in a light blue dress with a white lace collar, her casket taupe. My mom said I had to stay home because it wasn’t appropriate for little kids to look inside a casket. I’ve never seen anyone in a casket. I’ve only spread ashes. Felt the bits of bones run through my hands, had the wind blow my ancestors’ through my hair, in my mouth, on my teeth. What brought me here? The dead mole? My job as teacher to Jack and Fiona, reminding me of all my knowledge, all that I know. I had a good day in the studio today.
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I’m doing something really bad right now, something that I normally wouldn’t do. It’s naptime, 1:28PM and I just made myself a hot cup of joe and it’s good. I never drink coffee after 10:00AM because of insomnia, but I’m so tired from last night, not sleeping well after the Room Opening I said “what the hell, I’ll take my chances for a soothing cup of coffee in the afternoon, the quiet afternoon. Now I want to go paint, but I need to write. Painting writing painting writing shit. It’s easier to drink coffee when I’m writing. But if I don’t paint and the babies get up from their nap and I have an uncontrollable urge to be creative and I start getting resentful of the babies, wait, calm down, I’ll bring some stuff up here and painting can be our afternoon activity. It’s settled then. Me and myself need to have these conversations, we need to run through all the different scenarios, it’s not sane. I wish I was normal. OK back to why I need to write. I should start off by telling you that nothing in my last post, “Anxiety” that I wrote yesterday prior to the opening, about things that I was worried about were worth worrying about.. But just because I know this doesn’t mean I won’t worry again.
The GAP show at Room Gallery looks amazing, all four of my solo works were chosen to be hung, I try to keep my ego out of stuff but here it is. I wanted to show those paintings badly. I received much interest and positivity about my work, but no sale so far. The other solo work hung, by Carl and Verad looks great too, and the collaborative pieces and Dis/locations Book Collection look great. It all looks great.Great.Great.Great. But something else happened last night, there was real interest in what we were all doing, in us as a group of artists connected and working together and apart. It brought an energy to the gallery. Inquisitiveness, the book collection brought the visitors inside the show. It allowed them to interact with the art. It was really great and broke the ice. Visitor participation. The next opening in April I’m hoping we can do an interactive art piece with the visitors. I can’t believe I just drank that whole cup of coffee. And I used the word great five times in the past three sentences.
Last night we walked in to the gallery a little after six, there were already a lot of people at the show. Jack ran in looking at all the people, some familiar faces, some not. Fiona was more reserved and I wondered if it had to do with her hearing aids, the gallery has high ceilings and the volume of conversation was high. They both looked at the art, especially the Dis/locations book collection. The picture on the front of one of the books is the babies’ grandpa. He was my mom’s dad, he died when I was very young. He was adopted and worked as a car salesman. That’s all I know about him. I found the picture in the box of old photos from my mom’s house that I’ve been using to paint from for years, but never actually used physically in a piece. The day Alvaro, Carl, and I met up to work on some collabs I brought the picture. Carl said he wanted to use the picture in something. I was stoked, I think it’s such a cool picture too. So here it is on the front cover of our collab Gap book “Yellow” displayed in the gallery. This is the kind of information I wish I was able to tell people in the gallery at the opening. I find myself being vague and generalizing when talking about the works to visitors. I see that now. It’s hard under pressure to remember these interesting, personal details. Grab onto something personal. An intimate detail and tell the story. Next time.
The babies, Lindsay, and I had gone out dinner and cocktails before the gallery opening. The babies didn’t have cocktails! There was a table beside us with a lady named Jean from Chicago and her Daughter and son-in-law. Jack was taken by Jean. He noticed her right away and called her grandma. He looked at her and covered his hands over his face. She did the same and they started playing Peek-A-Boo. Her hands were worn with age, her body shrunken, her hair grey, her smile beautiful, her eyes and spirit like the warmest spring day. Jack threw her his Blue Blue, with his little tiny baby hands, and his wet, plump, baby face, and his sparkling eyes. Jack and Jean made a connection. Despite their age difference and unusual meeting place. Later Jean and her daughter and son-in-law stopped by the gallery. I had told them about the opening, that was where we were headed. I started talking to Jean outside the Gallery, we made a connection, she told me all about how her daughter wanted her to move out here to California, and how she didn’t want to leave Chicago. That it was a great city and I had to go. Then she started telling me about the babies she met at the restaurant, I said those are my babies, and we started laughing. She hadn’t recognized me from the restaurant. Which is understandable, it’s dark in there and I was sitting with my back to her back, turning to talk only a few times. It was great (this word again) to get out into the world and socialize and get to have Jack and Fiona experience it with me.
I hear the babies waking up now. They didn’t sleep long. Maybe they’ll go back to sleep? I’ll have to end my post now anyhow. I want to write my proposal for “The Peace Book” a part of the GAP Dis/Locations book project. If you’re an artists and you’re interested in participating in this project let me know! I will post the full concept soon, but my vision is that the book circulates all around the world, drawing attention and support for parts of the world suffering from endless wars.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 