More on the Rose

The latest links:

The Boston Globe
Greg Cook on the Rose closing as well as Brandeis' money.
Modern Art Notes: Tyler Green
CultureGrrl: Lee Rosenbaum

Shocking News

The Rose Art Museum is closing. I went to school at Brandeis, and having Rosenquists, Warhols, de Koonings hung just mere steps away from my art studio was the best way to learn about art and find inspiration.

Photoshop.

I am learning it, learning to love it. Yeah.

I'm back being artsy already.

Even though I'm "in transition" now and without a studio, I just can't stop making art. Making ambitious oil paintings is not convenient, but after a quick trip to the Met (just 5 hours away, yeah!) I was inspired by Degas to do pastels. I think I will eventually try some giant ambitious pastels, but for starters I am doing portraits to figure out how the hell to work with "chalk." I've been wanting to do portraits since I watched a documentary made by my neighbor about Alice Neel. (That was just before moving-- because one always gets brand new interesting neighbors just before moving out of a building.) I'm starting with self portraits, because I'm always available. And eventually I'll draw my family. After which I will draw friends... and new friends. Anyway, after a couple ass-scrambled drawings, I was able to make this:



Which isn't a bad start, but I still have a lot of work to do. I just wish I was a more interesting subject. I need to change outfits like Susanna Coffey does in her portraits. So right after this sketch, I tried to change myself up a bit:



But I struggled on this one. Mainly because it was 2am but I didn't know having not paid attention to clocks. All I know was that I was watching Notting Hill and it had finished and started over... and finished again. That's when I realized I had been drawing too late and too long. It shows in this portrait. And the pastel is still not natural. It's a bit muddled because I haven't quite figured out how it works and how to plan out my layering in my head as a draw. I always have to know what colors to lay out first and what to hold of on until the end-- but it takes time to know how different colors of the pastel interact with each other. I know oil, and I have an intuitive sense of each paint and it's qualities and when and where to use it. But pastel is unfamiliar territory. My main frustration is how Degas gets such small and fine detail. These sketches are 11x14 and very loose. His pastels are smaller, and I know he is probably using a much different (and better) pastel. I did a quick google about Degas' pastel drawings and found out enough to know that he got very meticulous about his pastel process and materials. But I must learn about his process if I can! More research is in store.

I'm no longer a Los Angeles artist

I have relocated to the Boston area (more specifically to my parents house) due to lack of job & money and the promise of getting a job or money for the foreseeable future. I've been supporting my painting habit with a day job in advertising. Apparently that wasn't as stable as I thought. Oops. So I'm regrouping. I won't be painting for a while since there is a complete and utter lack of space where I am. Once I am back in the artistic mindset I will be back to blogging here.

Humble announcement

On Griffith Park Blvd there was a white banged up old car with "Everything is Horrible" painted on the side of it.

That pretty much sums things up.

I wish I got a picture of the car to illustrate, but it was gone in a flash. But I did get a picture of this street art outside Palazzo Gelato on Sunset:



(I'm sure it will be gone or defaced by the time you seek it out. That's why I always carry a camera and take a moment to capture it when I see it.)

But back to the car and how horrible everything is.

Yesterday I got laid off from my job. I was surprised, yet not surprised. My company has been on the rocks lately but I thought financial disaster had been averted. Not so.

Now I am unemployed in Los Angeles once again for the first time in 2.5 years and I've forgotten how to do it. I used to scrape by on pennies from here and there but the days of being able to pay all my monthly bills with $1200 are long gone.

This whole year has been a bit of a question mark. I didn't know what it was all adding up to until this week.

It all started with Paris. Yes, I love Paris. It was like going home, with the crepes, croissants, art, and walking in the footsteps of Degas, Manet, Van Gogh and more. When I returned LA just seemed blah. I hated the giant SUV's, the unromantic clothing, the lack of history. So I set out to act like I was in Paris. I changed my clothes, got a European bicycle, took the subway every day, spent hours in cafes eating croissants. But it's not the same. Los Angeles is ugly and way too full of actors. I dont' have family, and friends seem to always be over-scheduled. I've realized I've fallen out of love with LA and I can't picture myself pursuing art and life here anymore. But I haven't said it out loud until now. Now that I am unemployed, again.

While my former company is making overtures to me about bringing me back when they have the money, the truth is I don't think I should fight to stay here anymore. It's not like after 8 years in this city it will suddenly get better.

So I've made a tentative decision: Get out. Get out while I'm still young and unattached. I'm moving to Boston. To be with family. To finally have seasons. To meet people who are not actors, directors, or screenwriters. To move forward with my life and actually put down roots somewhere and finally grow up.

I have to move fast since I have no way to pay my November rent or bills, and I am doubtful about October's. So there is a very good chance I will be gone from Los Angeles by the end of October. It's very sudden, and I have had only 1 day to seriously think about the weight of this. I'm scared, but the only thing that scares me more is committing to another permanent job in this city and not having the guts leave Los Angeles again. Because I am certain I will not grow old in this city, or even grow middle aged.

The way I see it is this, to make a very silly comparison:

Staying in LA will be like voting for McCain-- following the same stale policies from 8 yrs of Bush. In my case, 8 yrs of Los Angeles. Leaving Los Angeles will be like voting for Obama. it's unknown and unproven, smelling of east coast elitism, but full of hope.

So this is my little announcement of things to come. Maybe I will have one last giant get-together before I go, if I am not too stressed with figuring out how to get all my paintings safely moved cross country.

Rest

It's been a busy year of shows and I think I'm done for now. I have no more deadlines planned and unless something unexpected pops up, I'm going to take a break to focus on painting for a few months.

Deadlines are good for initial motivation-- but I'm finding right now that they are getting in the way of me taking the time I need to really explore and take risks with my paintings. In a crunch I will always fall back into my comfort zone or take shortcuts, and I have to start being harder on myself.

And I think having 6-8 shows in a year with new pieces is a bit much. I want to focus on fewer and better quality shows. For now I want to develop some new work and play with new ideas.

I'm thinking of trying a completely different direction and doing some portraits. Portraiture was may first love, and there's a part of me that just wants to capture people. But I may also try some new things in my current direction: new style, color, series. Who knows where I will take it-- but I'm just excited that I don't have any schedule.

In the meantime, I got tons of finished paintings here that need to find walls. Though I assume this is not the best economic environment to sell paintings, but it would be nice to clean house right now and make a truly clean start.

Where the Inspiration Is

I'm in the midst of starting some new pieces, but have been in a bit of a creative funk lately. I've been having a show pretty much ever other month this year, which is great, but has caused alot of disruption in my creative process. I've been using the shows as motivation & deadlines to create new pieces. So I paint madly for a month or so, drop everything off, hang it, go to the opening on next to no sleep... and then promptly pass out for 2 weeks. Then I repeat. So it has been this constant stop and start all year instead of a fluid and steady work flow.

So when it comes to ramping up for another show after a period of sitting in pajamas watching Project Runway reruns while painting my toenails, I have a hard time diving back in and picking up where I left off. I'm working on a piece (or pieces...?) for a small September show and I'm stuck. I rarely get stuck. But it's not that I don't have ideas. It's that I am not fired up, and that is causing some doubt about my direction. I need to feel inspired.

When I need inspiration, I don't go to galleries or art museums.

I try something new or go somewhere I've never gone before. Like the Natural History Museum.



So there are dinosaur bones that are millions of years old, and I decide take a photo of their shadow. But with the big dinosaur exhibits closed, most of what I saw were displays with contemporary animals, some which were endangered but none were extinct.



I liked the polar bears, but I don't know if they were really inspiring for paintings. Okay, so what I really wanted to see were woolly mammoths and saber tooth tigers and dinosaurs. Where can I see the really really cool old dead things?

I guess they're not at the Natural History Museum. But this was:



Does this really fit in this museum? I'm not sure. But of all the things I saw, this is the sort of thing that should be extinct.

All in all, it was great to finally see this museum. But it wasn't what I expected, and it didn't get me fired up like I hoped. What I really wanted to see was something that made me contemplate how infinite and old the universe is. Because even though I hate feeling small and insignificant, I feel like much of my inspiration lately comes out of being uneasy or scared of things bigger than me.

Changing Gears

Photo: A golden sneaker. Found hanging around at Sunset & Hyperion.

I've been a relaxing a little lately, with one ongoing show and the next show not until September (more on that later....) I've been stretching canvases and hope to start sketching my next large piece. Hopefully I'll be in the full swing of painting by the end of next week. But we'll see. I've not been terribly disciplined lately with my art.

Instead I've been focusing on perfecting bicycle commuting. It takes time to switch from cars to bikes, and it's a gradual learning process. Right now I'm obsessed with it. I don't think I'll go completely car free, but having a car (and car payment, insurance, gas) is getting increasingly silly. It's starting to irk me, maybe I'll have to do something as the biking becomes more natural. I'm down to 1 tank of gas a month now. Which actually isn't that special of an accomplishment since I only went through 2 tanks a month before I started biking. But 50% is good. I'm biking to work 3 days a week now. Eventually I'll work up to 5. I'm still getting used to the exercise, and my commute time is doubled by biking. I get pretty exhausted but I assume that will go away over time (I hope.) When I bike to work, it's 10 miles round trip, plus a bit on the subway. Maybe someday I'll bike the whole way, which would make it 16-20 miles round trip depending on the route. The commute is becoming a routine now. So on top of that I'm picking destinations and trying to get there without a car: Echo park, Hollywood & Highland, Downtown, North Hollywood, Burbank. On my bike I get all my groceries, pick up dry cleaning, go to the hardware store, Target, Arclight, go out to clubs in Hollywood (no more $10 parking!). It's awesome.

Blessed

I feel like some paintings that I make are blessed. As if the planets aligned and allowed a bit of magic in while I paint. Sometimes I don't know it at the time, some times I do. But when the painting is done, everybody can see the magic on the canvas.

I love paintings like this, and I hate them. I love it when a painting comes out awesome. But I hate it when I try to harness that magic for the next painting. It's not that can always be controlled.

So there's a tendency for some paintings to be more precious than others. And I feel like a precious painting is the enemy of a good artist. It traps them into trying to always recreate or one-up that painting, instead of thinking truly creatively or independently.

Not only do paintings like this trap me creatively, I get emotionally attached to them so I don't want to ever part with them. They are one of a kind and never again to be created. The longer I have them in my space, the higher the attachment and the price tag I would put on them to give them up.

So how do I proceed when I've created such a beautiful monster of a painting? Do I get sell it low & move away from it as quickly as possible for the sake of creativity? Or do I keep it for the sake of emotional attachment?

It's hard not ever being sure what a painting is really worth, and if it even matters at all. If I'm just painting for the love of it, maybe I should just let people name their price. But on the other hand, I've always been the type of painter who would prefer to never let anything go at all. I love covering all my walls with my work and let it stare back at me. If I had the money, I'd probably buy more walls instead of selling pieces.

Memories and Cross Processed Film

I am a bad photographer, waiting so long to develop my film. I always run out of money after buying the film. And then it piles up. Until I have a drawer of unprocessed rolls.

But I'm trying to work my way through it bit by bit. This is from a couple rolls that I cross processed. It was risky shooting in and around Paris with experimental photo processes, but I didn't want to take tourist photos, even if I had no clue what sort of image I would end up with. This was my 1st time trying cross processing so I really had no idea what to expect. I was told Fuji RXP would have an ethereal greenish haunting glow. And that Kodak E100VS would have super saturated colors.

Well, the Fuji RXP is awesome. It's kind of what a memory would look like, if it could be photographed. Fuzzy and kind of green. That's what you see above used to photograph Marie Antoinette's fake peasant village she used to play in with her friends. There are more pix over on flickr. It was very chilly an cloudy when I was there so there was no direct light. I generally hate photographing when there is no sun, I like waiting for the light to fall on a certain thing in a certain way and create images with alot of contrast. But I actually think the cloudy sky worked for me in these images, because everything came out a soft green. It has a very haunting quality. I don't know how sunlight would have affecting things, it may have given an entirely different feel to the photos. Maybe (when I have more money) I will shoot some more X-proccessed Fuji RXP.

The Kodak E100VS was not what I expected. It was very strange. I guess when I was told it would be very saturated, I pictured something like one gets pushing the exposure (or is it pulling, I always get the two confused.) But this came out looking like a child had played with all the filters in Photoshop. Here's an example (I did tone down the color a bit in Photoshop so it didn't hurt my eyes so much):



Many places where there was bright color just came out flat and two dimensional without much gradation. Plus it didn't help that many of the photos were blurry, no doubt a result of my inexperience with a Holga, and my tendency to be shy about taking photos of people on the street. I tend to rush and try to sneak photos unnoticed but that causes camera blur. I am much better at sitting with someone taking a few pictures as we chat. I think the difference is someone who gives me permission to shoot them and someone I have to sneak up on. I'll never be a good photographer of street scenes like I would love to be.

But for now, now that my latest art show is getting hung as I type this and I no longer have an imminent deadline for my painting, I think I will go back to photography for a bit. I need a change of pace.

Though it may not be for long because I already have my next show lined up for September. And I already have some paintings in the back of my head waiting to be brought into existence.

6hrs in Chicago

If I could get back all the time I spent in waiting rooms, lines, jury duty, the DMV, cafes, subways, and stranded in between things to do. I would probably have 2 more years worth of life to do other things. But I would also have significantly fewer sketches like this.

We are

Wilting



With barely enough shade



To cover our faces.

From Copenhagen to Los Angeles

(image by me of a woman biking in Vienna outside the Hofburg)


Okay, today I'm not blogging about art.... it's bicycles instead.

I've been cheating on LA and starting to read some European biking blogs (www.copenhagencyclechic.com, www.copenhagenize.com. Ever since I accidentally stepped into a Vienna bike path and was nearly hit by 30 bicycles coming straight at me, it was true love. So when it came to choosing a bike for myself (something I've been wanting to do for a couple years and not having the cash or the guts to bike alongside cars) I thought maybe I'd want a European looking bike since that is what first inspired me. And because to me, spandex and aerodynamic looking helmets are not sexy to me. I don't want to look like that. I had to do it my own way. Which is slow. And by slow, I mean dressed nice, casually cycling over to Figaro for a pain au chocolat or to Trader Joes for fresh mozzarella and avocados. To me this is how life should be lived. Slow and casual with plenty of small pleasures and sites to see. I've been biking to work and while it's changed my commute time from 20 minutes to 60, I am out in the sun meeting people, stopping for a casual muffin, and developing legs of steel. I know to some it sounds ridiculous to triple my commute. But so far I eat better, sleep better, feel better, avoid traffic & parking & gas, and feel more intimately acquainted with things around me. So when I read about the Slow Bike movement on Copenhagize.com, I decided I had to bring the concept to LA.


(image via copenhagize.com)

And why not? People in Los Angeles are all about style. We can just shift that from driving in Mercedes to cycling around on a Velorbis bicycle. Or for those who can't go all out and have a bike shipped sight unseen, to to Metropolis and they'll hook you up with an Electra
bike (get the Amsterdam model!) So I want to encourage all you Los Angeles girls out there to get dressed up and get the ultimate accessory, a bicycle. Let the boys can have their spandex, and we don't need to give up our heels. We'll be green in our own stylish way.

Also, just a note for the fearful: it's not that scary to bike on the street. I just take less busy roads or suburban streets or walk my bike across the supremely busy intersections. You don't need to dart in and out of traffic, fighting with cars to get in the left turn lane. Just take a deep breath, relax, go sloooow. If you get there 10 minutes later, who really cares. It's 10 minutes more of sunshine and freedom.

Making the best of Jury Duty

I recently had the pleasure of getting Jury Duty. So I tried to make the best of getting stuck in a room for 8 or 9 hours with complete strangers. It was so cramped, it was hard to discreetly draw people let alone move around and get a good angle on the real interesting faces. Yep, you see real interesting faces of all different types when you got Jury Duty. And they're all holding still for the most part. I didn't do much drawing until the end of the day when it was looking less likely I would be put on a jury. And the crowd had thinned out a bit by then. I think I missed some of the really interesting subjects, but I pretty much will draw whoever sits in front of me.

This first guy [below] had a real leathery face and the most amazing wrinkly eyes. He was also pursing his lips in a weird way that I couldn't capture. Before I could make a second attempt, he was gone.




This man had a very thick mustache that was baffling to me. It nearly hid his mouth. And the center parted hair made his face overly symmetrical I think, which I kind of liked. It was long on top and short on the side and elongated his face a bit. I was tempted to draw a caricature of him but resisted as best I could.




This woman had a very elegant profile and luckily held still long enough for me to capture it. There was something classical about it. I'm always glad when I find a face that lends itself to nice lines, it's rare when you're drawing from people sitting around.

magic.

Gesso vs. Oil Ground

Oil priming is the way to go. It is more messy & smelly, but the surface is a million times better. It has a smoothness and shine that just takes paint beautifully. While acrylic gesso has a rubbery plastic feel, and absorbs oil paint in a way that is not as graceful. However it is cheaper and faster and much less smelly.

I'm painting on gesso this week, mainly because I realized it is more cost efficient for the price I'm selling my paintings at right now. It doesn't make sense to put $$$$ into my paintings (plus much more labor), when I only get $ in return. I am only doing this on tiny paintings, and I feel guilty for it because I want to use the best materials possible. But I only have so much money to pour into my art right now, and until I start more money flowing in I think I have to cut some corners and compromise a little so I can pay my rent.

But I'm realizing I really really don't like gesso surfaces for oil. (For Acrylic it's fine, but I only used acrylic with mixed media because it doesn't eat away at cloth/paper the way oil does.) To me, using acrylic is like shooting video instead of film. It just doesn't have the softness that oil does.

I was reading this book the other day called Chemistry & Artist colors. Most of it is way over my head, but I did start to get a hint of understanding of the molecular constitution of oil paint and how it changes as it dries. It was very interesting. I'm curious to know about the make-up of acrylics. I'll have to keep reading that book. But it's slow going with all the symbols of molecules and how they interact with other molecules. I have to reread sections quite a bit.

NEWS NEWS NEWS

Here's round up of what I've been up to lately:

Currently on view are some of my small pieces in “Persons of Interest” at Art Slave Gallery in Downtown Los Angeles. The show is up indefinitely, I’m guessing for another month or so. Visit Art Slave Gallery for more info.

Starting in early July, I will be a part of a group show called “Diverted Destruction” at The Loft at Liz’s on La Brea in Los Angeles. More specific details on this coming soon. This will be a really great show, so please come see it if you can!

New today is an interview with me on Spraygraphic.

I’ve posted a new painting on my website, go to www.bekkateerlink.com to view it.

Lastly, I am in the process of making framed prints and other things available at www.cafepress.com/bekkateerlink. I have a few things available there now, and much more on the way, so stay tuned!

let's all take the train instead

how the night finds us