I apologize for offending anyone out there.  However, it is x-mas time and the Jew is bored.  So A and I did some mad libs:

Dear Sweetheart,
I lay awake all jesustime thinking of you, your warthoggy smile, and our tryst in the bolivias butt.   How Bonely, I recall our meeting, how my heart banged with blueballsidly when I first saw you.  How sandpappery you looked in that blister red fun factory bandito dildo and those two chaiffed jockstraps on your blueballs!
I cherished every moment we were together and was gassy when our date came to a close. I can’t say how horndogly I regret spilling papal fluid on your fused fingers; you were dharmamegha about it, however, for which I am grateful. You are so beautiful when you’re dharmamegha.
You’re bloated most other times. Your eyes are like deep pools of teat milk, warmed in the moonlight. Your cheeks are as rosy as facebook stalkers. Your lips are like succulent pigasses(fried). Your hair is black = “#000000″ like an animalllllllll! (muppet babies) on a summer’s day. Your non-functioning ovaries are two 2 ton hessie muscular anuses of liquid latex.
I can’t wait to fist with you again. Write soon.
Conely,
Your Friend

and I doctored up a email x-mas card.clicksy

Nothing says “Happy Holidays” like being a dick.

I feel like I am fuzed to the bed.  Reading and learning French.  Sorting out music, files, backups.  Catching up on emails, posts, and thoughts.  I posted all the 35mm Montreal pictures :

overhere

We have decided to officially host Game Night here on Saturdays at 6pm.  You are all invited.  I want to start having other things here like meditation, wheel throwing, glazing, etc.  I feel like we have so much space and equipment that it would be a shame to not open it up to friends.

I have been thinking about scales lately.  Models.  When in Montreal there were three different pieces that were works on model scale.  I couldn’t take pictures of two, but I thought it interesting that it was at three different museums.  Also, since we got the train set (!) I have been trying to think of how to make a cohesive environment for the tracks to be laid.  Now that we have a kiln I can actualize some of what I was intrigued by.

I’ve also been thinking about madness, magicians, carnivals, and hospitals.  Looking at that typed out made me think, ‘things really haven’t changed.’  But the difference is that I am not just working as a reactor and loosely manipulating what I already know of these subjects and placing them in charicatures on a paper or canvas.  I want to do the research justice.  I have found that if I am going to make it a cartoon, then instead of making 300 little vomitous representations I will sit and think before I execute.  It has been a hard habit to break, but I think I have finally reached the point where I am not just reacting (where the worth is defined by the amount and suffering).  And the comic is still going to be a reality.  Keep an eye out for news on its release.  I don’t have a name yet, maybe I will suffer through that.

Tonight is my last night in Montreal Quebec.  We spent an overwhelming four days here.  We were immersed into so many pools of interest: art texte, local artists, CCA, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Stew Stop, Metro, Architecture, Alternative Auberge, Concordia University, Peter Flemming, Mount Royal, Little Italy, Saint Laurent, and most importantly… Drawn and Quarterly.  All of the stress and tension has been worth the holiness of that structure.  It is where I want people to ask for my book in urgency.

This is the end of a long semester.  Cheers!  I can’t really vocalize my feelings on how school is going because, and I am not exaggerating here, my esteem and happiness (regarding and not regarding but influenced by), is currently orbiting directly around the sun of an institutionally defined worth.  I love so many things about being intellectually overwhelmed.  I love so many things about feeling my tired hands as I lay down.  I love the exhaustion, the will necessary to keep on, etc.  The one thing I do not like is when I fall into that trap of definition of worth based on the test or survey of another, especially when that “other” is really just a cog in the organism of a regurgitated structure (the Art World).  With all that being said, I can legitimately say that I am engaged in my work.  I am definitely refining my ways of compartmentalizing and vocalizing my ideas.  I am learning to zoom in and out of the subject at the appropriate times.  I am suppressing the urge to go insane by the multi-contradictory suggestions.  I am trying to do things right the first time.  Step quieter.  Move with purpose (mouth, feet, hands, et al).

In other news, my cousin, Dana, is engaged!  We are still at the dojo.  I still want to build a tree/hobbit house.  My hair is getting long again.  I still get tired of writing blogs instead of talking to you in real life.

Pictures to come soon, my friends.

It is 852 am. I am ten blocks from the ocean and I haven’t been able to peacefully walk and breathe in the astringent salty air after being here for over a week. I have, however, been able to walk on these not quite uniform brick streets and feel the squeak of sand in my shoes. Also, I have developed a gait. If I haven’t told you personally, after a week of being in this program I was informed that I wasn’t getting a certain loan. A certain loan that could make or break the whole education. I decided (well, someone else decided really) that the consequences of coming home would be greater than the compromises and consequences of staying here. The monetary struggle is worth the end result (or the absence of the potential result). So, I stay. I stay with vigor. I stay with an “up to here” daily mentality. More and more I am learning to mesh life and art and this  I have been working on for a long time. The night I found out about the loan it was recommended that I work in the studio as if nothing happened. So I did. I am coming to terms with the fact that my expression is my art. My art is so flat when influenced by philosophies alone. They become heavy and more approachable when entwined emotion. Even though the philosophy that I absorb is not logic or equations, it still maintains a sort of flat visual representation… for me anyway. So, the first night that I lost 7000 dollars I mentally sacrificed my place in Chicago. Mentally packed my bags here in Maine. Mentally said goodbye to this program with great sadness. However, I still wished with a process and that process was a string tied from my studio desk all the way to my wrist in bed. It took a skein of red yarn and an entire roll of white string, but it solidified my drive I think.

One of the neat things about living on the coast is the rolling in of the fog. Also, when I finally called my mom and told her about my wishful art she informed me that my father did the same thing as an undergraduate at Parsons, for different reasons of course. I found that interesting, considering that I had not been aware of that previously. Anyway, I wanted to post this process and that is pretty much all. I have no idea what will happen after this summer. I may have to stay in Chicago and work a bunch of jobs to finish off my lease. Or I may end up in Houston TX?! On that note, I leave you to start my studio work for the day.

I decided to give this self portrait to my mom. She brought up the fact that I have never given her an actual piece of art and since I will be gone for a bit, she can look at my gruesome face. So, I have shingles. Who is 29 and gets shingles? Anna Rae. That’s right.

I started packing and am nearly finished. I think it was the last thing I can use as procrastination. Favorite pillow-packed. gauze-packed. aluminum tape-packed. 15 books-packed. Cats-attempted to pack themselves.

Here is a picture of our living room wall. I finally got around to painting it however I wanted. Benefits of owning your own house!

I wanted to use colors from the India palette combined with my cartoony linear drawings.  Phil likes bright colors and I do as well.   This is the room where our fancy dining room table is in and I really enjoy having people over and this be the background.  The circles are actually a gold flake color.  One thing I would like to point out is that the tree is absolutely not a x-mas tree.  It is the pine tree in front of the house.  I repeat; not a Christmas tree.  Not.

When you listen to a song, or have some sort of interaction with a person/place/animal etc. do you ever think about how it is nearly impossible to recreate that moment? And say you did, your reaction would be skewed. I am gaining ever-growing respect for performance art and realizing the static quality of 2 and 3 dimensional art. There are less senses to pull on with 2 and 3 dimensional art and I find that limiting. If i haven’t made it clear as of yet, I find anything limiting to be a nuisance.

I added three new works to the gallery. They are flat, but they are in response to “The House on the Rock”. So, there is that.

In more perfunctory news I am leaving for Maine on June 14th. I have procured the keys to the Chicago apartment, took pictures, and measured for building shelves and lofts.From the bedroom:

PJ has had some employment issues and by that I mean that the company was purchased and the headquarters are in TX. No thank you (we both say((I think)). Regardless, Phil is staying here for a lot of valid reasons and I can’t take everything to the city, so I started an amazon.com wishlist. If anyone is in a strange but giving mood,

Also, as a sortof farewell and/or homage to Indiana I got more tattoo work done on my arm.

This first image is of a Hebrew word: Tzafah ; to gaze in a prophetic sense, root=to float. Mostly it means meditative insight. Also related to “spiritual pressure” as in the spiritual pressure of the “soul” or “mind”. Have a conversation about this with me. It is most welcome.

This is the bluebird. It is for Andrea and I in honor of taking the bluebird out of hiding in Charles Bukowski’s heart. R, N, and I all participated in drawing this. Also, J’s drawings are on there too. So all my friends are here. In my skin.

Also, Johnny Depp is still hot.

Next week we leave for a five day trip to Portland Maine. I am an mfa candidate for Maine College of Art and will spend the summer there for “intensive program”. Ready for it. What happens when I come back is uncertain. I am fairly sure that i will be living in Chicago in West Logan Square in an apartment that is just perfect. I am fairly certain that there are buckets full of Montessori jobs waiting for a dedicated art instructor and or assistant teacher. I have had one interview and a few inquires. All is settling in. However, as per usual, the monetary situation (poverty) is never-ending. My financial aid is 2,000 shy of just covering tuition. I applied for a Plus Loan, but it is based on credit. And if you are banker, ‘we don’t like your kind’.

I have been busy with art, anyway. I worked on three large panels in response to my House on the Rock experience. They were in a poorly lit show. And by poorly lit, I mean literally and, that the focus was more on local bands than art. The good news is there are more people interested in making an established contemporary art scene here in Tippecanoe county. It really is a shame that I will be leaving. Next month, at Alchemy Salon there will be the “Gun and Knife Show” that I will be participating in. We bounced around the idea that someone just has to paint ‘the prying of the rifle from his cold, DEAD hands’ but I am fairly certain that the internet has beaten us to it, in spades. Other art projects range from dollmaking, papermaking, and a woodcut print that i made  for my friend’s birthday. I need to get over there and take a picture of it for my files. (edit: now in the gallery)
Back to House on the Rock for a moment. I am sure that I am not alone when I think that this place was just overwhelming. I cannot list the contents of this place. It would take away from your personal experience. I will say that if I am a filling buckets of interactions so that I can react to them, my bucket runneth over. As soon as I get to Willow Stained Glass Studio downtown (where they are hanging as a triptych) I will post the pictures of those as well as updating them to the website gallery. There is so much that isn’t on there.

Also, here is my first attempt at webcomicking. It really is a shame that the comments are disabled. Anyone want to email me and tell me how to fix this would be a doll. A real live doll. Well, anyway, here it is.

Choices are coming in the mail. So far, since I have not had confirmation from two schools as of yet, my choices are thus:
a. I could move to Portland (ME not OR, don’t fret) with Phil, find co-ops or work with what i have, or finagle my way into the undergrad facilities, find him a job, transfer to university of southern maine. +there are really great Aikido schools there. New energies as catalysts for our innate pliability in the definion of self.
b. I could move there alone doing the same thing but with much less moral support and a one sided experience relayed via instant messaging, surely. Distancing and bringing closer, potentially.
c. I could stay here, however demand that we move, get an adviser in IN and spend my low residency in ME. If I do this, I will find somewhere that i can have a real permanent studio and set my roots here. (that makes me sad).  But the benefit is that i can spend my loan money on building a real art studio of my own to further my art career. However, I could essentially do this in Portland too.
d. I could stay here, in this house. keep this house. use some loan money to fix up a room, some other things to make it more part of my heart and enough for support the idea of living in a house without roommates.
e. Wait to see what other schools say….? State school benefits: it has other courses i could take. 24 hour access, contacts, travel abroad, teaching positions, my own studio. i don’t have to move. Less money to owe later. downfall: it is here and not an art school primarily it is a big ten school. Other private leftover, would be the best option for obviousl reasons.
f. Try again next year to same/better/more schools with gusto and have more knowledge that I learned this first time around.

what do you think?

A thought I had today:  Every book is holy.

things are getting furnaced around like this

we saw the two doe that day. their white triangles leaning towards a suicide rock.

phenomenon and silence.