Knowing you did your level best to create something worthy of hanging in an Art gallery, in a beautiful home. Knowing that gives me joy,
I love etching. I haven’t done a “real” etching in about 40 years; since high school. We had a brand new state-of-the-art printing press. It had been installed in 1978 and here I was, a couple years later in advanced art classes with the finest teacher I ever had, Mr. O’Hara. At the time I did not think I liked the man, he was always on my case, pushing me and prodding me to expand my horizons. All I wanted to do was get high and draw my trippy burnout monsters. These were the days of Frank Frazetta and Heavy Metal The Movie; my dreams were filled with animation and album covers. But Mr. O’Hara had this printing press. And he intended to make me use it.
First it was wood cuts. Hmmmm…This was pretty cool. One block, lots of options, different colors, placements and copies! Prints everywhere! I had written a poem about a nuclear holocaust, Mr. O’Hara had us make a book…I was impressed, and so were my Peers and parents. Which was unbelievable, they never turned the TV off long enough to know what color my hair was any given month. (It was many different colors, but not like today. We just had blue/black and red and blonde… I tried them all.) Getting back to the printing press, my curiosity was really piqued. Then we did a lino cut…again, very cool. I was into it now. Then he gave us some history and some homework.
Etching. Renaissance. Rembrandt. Etching. Albrecht Durer. Zinc Plate etchings. I was enthralled: Oh the detail. The crazy details. It was better than smoking dope! I am so grateful today to have had the chance to be taught by Mr. O’Hara. I have often wished I could contact him and thank him for pushing me. He really cared, and I will always be indebted to him for seeing who I could be.
These pieces aren’t etchings, they are oil pastel sgrafitto. To me, though, they have the feel of etchings. The tiny lines, intricate detail. Not like a finished etching, but those wonderful moments when you are scratching the eensy-weensy picture onto the plate. I have even gone so far as to ‘etch’ a lamp globe and a mannequin in the past few years! Oh, the long lost love of mine!!
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Do something! Say something! Move a muscle, change a thought!
All seems to be running smoothly-till it’s not, and it’s not; right now.
How? Every thing seemed peachy-‘seemed’ being the operative word here. I seem like I’m young and beautiful-but is it truly the case? It ‘seems’ nice and comfortable outside-until you open the door and the 100°, 90% humidity slaps you around. Then it ‘seems’ like you are dying of heat stroke(which you may actually be if you don’t wise up and dash back inside).
I have been on this couch for hours. Hours! I wake up, try to get up. Ponder it for a few dazed minutes. Then, with a sigh, I melt back into the blanket, squishing my head into the pillow, praying for alertness to magically reach in and yank me into an energized reality. It has yet to. Although, I must admit I did rise long enough to walk Kleo, feed the cats, her, and me. Then, drawn into the couch’s magnetic field I succumbed again.
Someone may say, oh, you must need the sleep. Your body knows what it needs. No, I humbly disagree. My body knows how to seek a place to hibernate, sinking into the very fibers if this sofa till only my hands and feet will be left on the surface. Mute witnesses to the me that once was.
I must fight this lesser nature, fill my mind with the memories of zestful living, long for that movement, yearn for that freedom, strain to break free!!
When will living feel like less of an epic battle? Probably never. Does that mean I should give in, give up, throw in the proverbial towel? No! The opposite: FIGHT, SISTER!! THROW OFF THAT STRANGLING BLANKET! RISE UP AND FIGHT FOR ANOTHER DAY!
Whew!! Ok! Ok, I will, I AM! I am motivated, I am engaged, I am leaping back into life!
In…just…a…minute. Right now…yawn!…I think I’ll just stretch out for one second…just…one…sec…
Oh, the joys of waiting to hear if you got the “Call”. That’s what we artists refer to when we apply for a chance to get into a show, or to paint a mural, or design a sculpture, etc. It’s a process fraught with anxiety, not for the faint of heart. Not for the empty of pocket, either.
This last one did not cost me anything to apply to, which was good, because I did not get it. I am always disappointed when I don’t get in a show, it is a fact of life in the art world. I am becoming a bit cynical and jaded about this. I find myself making snide remarks(to myself) about favoritism and prejudice, and I don’t like this kind of negative thinking. On the one hand I think it’s just a self-soothing mechanism-if I say the process is unjust it means that my work really is the best. That I really should have been chosen.
I don’t think this is a good way for me to look at it. This kind of attitude will just make me negative about the whole process, the art community as a whole, and make me just as prejudiced as the people I am judging. Don’t think I’m saying what anyone else should think or feel, I just know how my quirky little mind works. My father spent his life feeling jaded and cynical about “the System”, and it reached the point where no one wanted to hear him go on about it.
I mean, just think about how the poison could seep into my art. If I’m second guessing the judges then maybe I will not try as hard, not push myself. Perhaps I’d rather not try, because they “don’t like me”. Or “they won’t pick me anyway.” Or “they only choose the society types”. If I let those thoughts in then my wings stay folded and I don’t try to fly, even when the cage door is open.
No, I didn’t get the call because someone else did. Period. No trying to mind read. No presuming I wasn’t chosen for a reason. How about remembering all the times I have been chosen, when another artist got passed over. Or how about knowing that my work is excellent, but different than what the judges were looking for.
I must create my best work no matter what the call, or even if there is NO call. My art comes from a deep and secret place far inside, not to be pissed out at the whim of a stranger. Sure, a call may motivate me, but ultimately my satisfaction must come from creating.
I remember being a little kid in art school, hiding my drawing from the other kids, because my work was so special that I had to protect it. I didn’t hide it because it was not good, I hid it so they could not copy it. It was the most special thing about me, a super power before any one knew about superpowers. I could make up any little dream and put it on a page and no one else could ever do it the same way. I wish I had a nickel for all my little fantasy doodles. I’m smiling as I remember.
I drew for the sheer joy of watching my inner world pour out the tip of my pen. I inhabited those secret worlds, where I was always “ok”. I did not need a prize, a ribbon, a write up in the paper. And the wonderful thing is that I still don’t need it. Over the past seven years that I have been showing my work my focus had turned to the idea of money. Making money from my art.
Not because I needed it, but because I am supposed to want that! I bought into the sales model. The websites that shout at me to join this or that marketing plan. Sell your art here! Make 5 grand a week! Be your own boss! While focusing on the money I began to sweat the call results. Did I get in to that show? What is the payout? How are the prizes broken down? What a bunch of joy-squishing nonsense!
I could see trying to make an impression on my Dad, but I knew he would never see me even when he was alive. Well, he sure can’t see me now, so I can quit trying to impress the family with my wealth ! I’m so glad we had this talk! Thanks for listening!
(No, I did not get the “Call for the Wall”, but I now have the coolest spare bugroom, um, bedroom, in the entire city !)
Hi, fellow Art fanatics! I’m very glad you are able to visit me here. This isolation is wearing heavily on my battered little brain. Please tell your friends who love a good laugh, interesting art and insight into head injury coupled with a Bipolar Disorder diagnosis. It can get loud in here! I welcome the visitors, and also love to read your comments.
The fall I took 2 weeks ago has left a dent (it’s OK to laugh, I am-even when it hurts!) in my work production. I am dealing with BPPV* symptoms and they are fierce. I finally realized my exhaustion is more than depression again, so after forcing myself to clean house at 1:30AM, I performed the Eppley maneuver. I bent to the left this time, as I could actually discern more pain and pressure when I leaned that way, and sure enough I incurred violent vertigo and headache. The therapy helped: I am able to post this and am enjoying a cup of hot cocoa, with mini marshmallows.
This inner drive I have, the endless pressure to do more, do better…it can be so toxic when I am battling a disability. It makes me furious that I am limited in any way, and coupled with my overwhelming need for approval causes me major doubts about my ability as an artist. It’s so crazy, because I can see the art I put out-endlessly, constantly, incredibly- day after day. I see that I do things no one else can do, I read the praises people post, I hear the kind words of the curators and collectors…but I still feel like a child…that little girl with a broken pencil hiding her picture from everyone.
I have come to expect these days of self doubt. Days when the critics come out of the cheap paneling, surrounding me, poking me with long, blue fingers: “Is that all you can do?” ” What’s that supposed to be?” “My brother draws better than you…”
What the &%#$? is going on? Why must my mind be tormented as well as my body? Why?
*BPPV stands for Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo which can result from a Traumatic Brain Injury.
I know why… it’s a battle that has raged down thru the ages… And it may be that secret ingredient that pushes us to create something, some day, of true and lasting greatness. Will I? Perhaps, perhaps not-but I will never quit trying. Maybe that is my best work yet.
I’ve been living with PTSD for a couple of decades now, many years. Many years… There has been miles of road covered in my healing journey, at times I feel as if I have dragged my body over continents of rough terrain. I am road weary and saddle sore. I have a sense of who I could have been, if my road had been kinder. This does not grieve me as much as it used to, I don’t mourn as much, but I do get caught up in the quicksand of the past now and then. These days I know what tools to use to work myself free, even if I do drag some dirt along for a while. I have a support network to do a deep cleaning when needed.
But my trauma never truly ever leaves. It just gets rammed back into it’s footlocker faster, and I keep more cinder blocks around to pile on top. When the stink seeps out I open the windows, pull out a fresh canvas and paint till the air clears. Ahh, how clarifying. Washing the walls of my mind with ‘Spic and Span’, that excellent cleanser of bygone days. When the walls of my childhood home were turning brown from nicotine, Mother would open a box, make a batch of suds in a bucket and with some hard work (and many smoked cigarettes) she would turn those rooms from gloom to gleam! (Damn, I can turn a phrase !)
Anyway, that’s what creating my art does for my broken mind. So, when this call came out, “Rise Up, Remembering 9/11” I had serious emotions bubble to the surface. My memories of that day are not of one who was there, or who lost a loved one, a family member, a daughter, son, beloved husband or wife, a dear friend or even a colleague. My memories are the memories of collective, enormous grief and horror.
How could this horror be reframed in any meaningful way? Dare I even intrude on someone else’s trauma to say how I have healed? What could I show, thru my art, that might help someone hurt one smidgen less? I have just come out of creating my most painful work to date…a painting you watched come to fruition here and on IG. That piece tore my heart out and tears are mingled in the paint. This piece was going to hurt to.
I remember sitting in the darkness of my lonely room, watching videos of the towers, before they fell. Feeling guilty for watching, but needing to see the reality of what they were experiencing. Watching them clinging to window frames as the billowing jet-fueled fires raged at their backs. I was their mother, their wife, their sister, tears pouring from my eyes, mouth open matching their silent appeals for a miracle please GodpleaseGodPLEASEGODSAVETHEM SAVEUS SAVEME!!!
Then their hand is forced by the pain, or they make their decision and leap…l e a p…into oblivion. I gasp…time seems to stand still as they let go…slowly, they fall, like beautiful leaves in a September wind, suitcoats flutter, white shirts billow, sensible shoes on beautiful bloody feet, top side up, bottoms up, arms akimbo, embracing the darkness rushing at them at terminal velocity. I am them, What do I feel? Do I feel? Will I feel? Bye Mom, bye Johnny, bye Laura…
I close my laptop, sobbing silently, drying my snotty nose on the bedclothes…I feel guilty,dirty, like I just did drugs or had sex. Was I depraved to watch that? Was it forgivable. Maybe it was like the people who watched me get beat, not calling for help, just watching. No, I could not have helped, no one could. Wait a minute…
I could help now. I could change the picture! It was like a time machine! I could send an angel! A strong, loving , beautiful angel-radiant and shining- to intercept her in midair! Because that’s what really happened, right? Yes. YES!
This is Rising Up! A New Direction!
It is a Work in Progress, and a humble beginning, but this is what I missed that day…this is what really happened…
*note* John5:28,29 this gives me comfort*
Did I ever tell you my nickname as a small child? It was ‘Paper Factory’. Not Kissy Poo, not Huggy Bear…no, it was Paper Factory. The reason being that I was always sitting, round-tipped scissors in hand, with a swath of construction paper scraps strewn around me. It was like the Saturn’s rings, little pieces, big pieces and lots of Elmer’s. Along with buttons and bits of ribbon and whatever small rodent pelt I happened to have skinned off that day…I like fur, what can I say? So, I guess they could have called me Buffalo Bill, or Hannibal Lecter…Paper Factory was strange enough…
(As a side point, I did not kill the fuzzy little animals, I left that up to Munson the cat. And I especially liked mole fur… )
Anyway, I liked to build little art items, and I still do. Assemblage. What an excellent word. Assemblage. Not gluing stuff together, not making doo-hickies…Assemblage. Very noble.
My fondness for construction had few outlets in public school, except for my advanced art class with Mr. O’hara. I hated him for being critical of my work, and I loved him for pushing me to new heights. He sent one clay sculpture I made to a show in New York City, along with some other kids, and he helped me believe in myself. Even if I was a dope smoking, quaalude eating burnout. The aforementioned sculpture was a handbuilt piece, which I built on my own hand, with the palm morphing into a face and the wrist and forearm becoming a cloven hoof, and for good measure, a rat climbing thru the guy’s eye and out his mouth. Or perhaps into his mouth and out his eye. Interestingly, I cut up one of my Dad’s fine Chinchilla fur gloves and glued it to the bull’s leg…I can’t remember if I furred the rat… Anyhow, I was able to hang onto that piece into adulthood till I broke it in one drunken rage, or another. The next assemblage was a piece using syringes I heisted from Mother’s veterinarian stockpile (no needle) and vitamin tablets and capsules from Dad’s medicine cabinet. Adding a razor blade and some baby powder to my collage, and an image of an unconscious teenager, I was pleased with the result, and all Mr. O’hara did was give me an A+ and a raised eyebrow. Unfortunately, the Principal didn’t appreciate low brow art and my masterpiece was removed from the senior art show. (That’s OK, cause the vitamin E capsules had melted…)
There was a lull in my assemblage repertoire as my scholastic career ended and my addictions progressed. I don’t recall building any art for about 23 years, although I did build a long list of failed relationships, a few arrests and some stints in detox and rehabs.
Fast forward to 2014…It was four years after my Mom died, after a long depression and inability to create anything but poems, when I answered a local call to artists. I had never shown any art, but this call launched my formal art career and catapulted me into the local limelight. The call was about Treasure. The east coast of Florida, down around Melbourne to Stuart is called The Treasure Coast because of the mother lode of shipwrecks yielding tons of loot. This particular year was an Anniversary, so they wanted treasure themed art. This was for The Best of the Best show at The A. E. Backus Museum, an international juried season opening show. I knew nothing about the significance of any of this.
My piece was a sculpey carved cat head, which was made in high school 20 years prior , and left out in the garden to moulder. I brought it in, bleached it, and painted it like my deceased Mom’s beloved cat, Munson. As a huge fan of pirate movies when I was a kid, I loved the idea of a treasure chest. So I took all my jewelry, treasured hand-me downs, costume and fine, and proceeded to encrust this cathead like it belonged to the Ali Baba himself. It was a wonderment in its glistening splendor. (no, I don’t have an ego). I even put a rhinestone collar on it and a tag saying, ‘Munson, a Treasured Friend.’ It took an Award of Merit, which was pretty impressive for a first effort. And thusly, my noted career in assemblage began.
It was the tip of the iceberg, and a flurry of 3-D work ensued. A famous dragonfly made of a discarded patio table, curtain rods, gutters , roof decking and a couple of spaghetti forks came next, and a gutter snipe at it’s heels.
So, you see, my MerSea the Maid-Horse is part of a history of Assemblage excellence, by a little girl called “Paper Factory”.
PS: Mer Sea’s framework was built in 2015, while I was my Dad’s caregiver. She was all white, with an ironing board frame and wore a prom dress. I kept her in the living room after the show she was in and Dad, in his dementia, loved that horse like it was real. He would pat her on the nose and laugh like a schoolboy. I lost him a few months later. So Mer Sea holds a lot of meaning for me. Seems like everything I create does. But that is as it should be. Because it all began at the feet of the beloved one’s who first put the glue and scissors in my tiny hands. And called my Paper Factory.
A short story by Susan T. Martin…
She was never very confident. Her mother said she was ‘pretty’. She did not believe her. She didn’t want to be ‘pretty’, anyway. No. She wanted to be ‘breathtaking’, achingly ‘beautiful’, devastatingly ‘gorgeous’. A ‘real heartbreaker’, ‘homewrecker’, a ‘ten’. A ‘perfect’ ten.
Like Tracy. Her best friend with the huge blue eyes and pretty lips, nice hips and long, long hair. But she was none of those things that Tracy was. She had a sneaking suspicion that her mother was lying about ‘pretty’ as well.
The boys did not say she was pretty. Not that she liked them. Only one. Joey. He was super smart. Super duper smart. Almost as smart as she was. But smart didn’t rate very high in her circle of giggly little girlfriends. It especially didn’t rate with Tracy who thought being smart was ‘stupid’ and ‘a drag’. A drag with a roll of the eyes added on.
It seemed she was just doomed to be a ‘bookworm’, which was a term that also elicited an eye roll from Tracy and the gigglers.
Oh, how she loved her books. She longed to go to the exotic places depicted in her ‘National Geographic’ magazine that her dad had ordered for her. He thought she was beautiful, but not in the ‘Tracy’ way. No, dad said she was beautiful for her brains, her intelligence. This made her feel very good. Her and her dad would walk in the garden and he would point out different creatures and plants for her to name, from her study books in the library. Oh, that’s a salamander…or, That one is a chickadee. His eyes glistened when she got this right, especially his beloved songbirds. He could whistle just like them, he knew every call. She could not whistle, because her tooth was missing in the front. He said he would make sure the tooth fairy knew that she had to have a mouth that would whistle for her next birthday. It was coming up soon, so she was excited.
Something bad happened that next month, tho’. Her daddy had a heart attack and died, and mom said he had gone away to a better place, in heaven. She didn’t get to tell him that the tooth fairy gave her a whistle, or that she could now tweet, almost as good as he did. She didn’t believe that heaven business, her dad said that heaven was a place where the birds lived, not dead people.
She spent a lot of time alone that winter, walking alone in the garden. She would whistle all the time, and learn about new animals and birds. She dreamed about her father every night, sometimes she would sleepwalk.
One cold, rainy February night she had an especially bad night. In her dream her dad was locked out of the house. He was calling to her, from the garden, and in her dream she wanted to fly down to him, like a beautiful exotic bird. She knew if he saw her, all arrayed in bright and glorious feathers, that he would be saved, and they would be together again. If only she could just fly down there. She started whistling and flapping her arms, and running to the window, still asleep, she fell thru the glass with a crash, landing unconscious in the garden below. Her bedraggled wet little body, so twisted and broken, was rushed to the hospital.
They said she would not be the same if she ever woke up. But they did not know that deep inside her amazing little mind, she was just fine. Her and her dad had both learned how to fly, and they tweeted happy little birdsongs back and forth as they flitted about a magnificent garden.
Out of the Gutter Art 
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