the woman who tames paper spiders

If you were to send me back 18 years, I'd probably look like this right now. Some guy came into work and punched me in the face.......actually that didn't happen to me but to the owner of Cottage Inn. You know, the really mean short stout pissy man that would be the type who spits in your food. Some guy apparently came in a couple minutes after we left and leaned over the counter, and punched him in the side of the face while he was on the phone. To top it off, he knocked over one of those coolers....the Fago cooler to be exact. The entire place smelled like grape Fago.

I know this is not relevant, in fact it happened like a week ago. You know what else happened a week ago, someone stole my 900 dollar camera.....some week egh. Fuck it, shit happens and at least I wasn't jumped like my roommate (ohhhhh schnappppppp) money is money, and I shouldn't be one to bitch and moan because I've had a hell of a lot of money that I've just blown away on useless shit.

I think I could narrow it down to 5 specific things I've blown money on over the past 15 years.

1. Band T-shirts.

(Might I add, X-large Metallica and Marilyn Manson shirts that I surly cannot fit into anymore. No seriously, I have an entire box at home filled with concert edition t-shirts from Korn Metallica, Blink 182, Weird Al, and yeah....................I should be ashamed.)

2. Comics + Comic Books HERO Action Figures

(Oh I don't know............3 of those long dorky comic book boxes you see at comic stores, in which each comic, is individually wrapped with archival plastic and matt board backing....EACH......(taking a breath).........COMIC. Action figures are another story. I think I've already talked about the x-men series from blockbuster that were actually "manufactured mistakes" that I freaked out about because I thought they were rare mint condish collectors items..............found at blockbuster. Now that I think of it, I should have probably put the two together and saved my money.

3. Clothes

(You could say this was my first step towards acting a little...............how do you say it..........not as masculine as every other guy who wore solid color polo shirts to school everyday. I mean I usually wore the same thing days on end, but....I just liked getting new clothes. And in fifth grade I LERRRRRVED getting bowling shirts from TJ Max. When I found out about the mall, it was just a downward spiral from then on. I remember actually getting my very first.....chain wallet, that attaches from your wallet to your belt loop......yeah.....I'm not gonna lie, I think those are gonna come back in style soon, not the long obnoxious ones, but like the tiny one that isn't even long enough to go past your pocket.

Those are bad ass.

4. cd's

(not even as a joke, I had to personally make a wall shelf when I was in high school for all my cd's. Jim and I busted out the saw's and hand crafted a triangle shelf (because my ceiling was at a slant) for all my frickin' cd's. The last time I counted (which was freshmen year of high school) was 320. Now i've gone backwards in time and have become enamoured by the power of vinyl. And that's just bad news for my checking account in the future.

5. wood + paint

(so yeah, i'm in my early twenties (I just think that sounds pretty bad ass) and I've spent probably over 2 grand on paint supplies and 4x8 sheets of wood in the past 2 years. reasons that will hopefully make me a recognized artist in the ever so dramatic art wold we hear about in school. It'll all pay off, but the best is when you can't come home for mothers day because you don't have enough money in your checking account for even half a tank of gas. So imagine saying this. "mom..........I bought too much Pine and Cherry wood the other day.....I'm negative 40 bucks in my bank account, can you come pick me up tomorrow morning?" ultimate humility, but in the way that just solidifies the fact that you're a dork and you buy wood for a living.)

Money ain't nuffin'.

I found an interesting poem by an artist today at work. It was actually on the back of her book flap.

"I'm the pedlar of chimaeras, the pedlar of simian dreams, of arachnid deliriums....I'm the trickster, a trickster with overpainted photos, distorting enlargments, overprintings, out-of-focus close-ups, distorting lenses...I'm the teller of lies, the messenger of false premonitions, of dubious loves, of suspect memories..............I'm the woman who tames paper spiders."- Annette Messager

(the last part is my favorite...............TAMES PAPER SPIDERS....that's something devendra would say) here's some of her work, check her out dude, it kind of reminds me of Janelle's work

WHAT THE FUUUUUUCK

ummm so there's this photographer named Bernard Faucon (which really sounds like a superhero named Bird Falcon) who has had over 250 solo exhibitions..............in the last 25 years...............that's like...........a million shows every 2 years........

it's back to hair ties and book reports

As the days go by all of this comes closer to a screeching halt. College is almost over which means.......I've been in school for 17 years. SEVENTEEN years. 28-11 years. HOly MOLEY. The best part is yeah, I still can't tell you who the first 10 presidents are. If only I could go back in time and actually take notes during 2nd period of 3rd grade. damn right I'd whip out excel and grid that shit. So do we now spend the remaining, say 65 years re-learning that stuff? I need the "What You Didn't Pay Attention to for the last 19 years Book for Dummies"..............book.

O well, I already have my summer reading lined up. And I plan that out every winter but never actually get to it by the end of summer. Maybe things will be different after I graduate. I can just picture it now. Snuggled up on the couch with an afghan watching re-runs of Rosanne after work........eecch.

Then again, I can't wait to actually get everything done on my own schedule for once. Working at home!!!! HELL YEAH! That means I can actually start cooking my own food again while having the TV on, WHILE PAINTING ALL AT THE SAME TIME. No more Kresge cockroaches, no more annoying studio spaces. No more kids that think it's cool to draw on peoples shit. No more ballerina stealer's. No more fucking Georgia O'Keeffe knock off of flower studies that don't even look like real flowers. Okay, I'm being mean. But there's a flower painter in every class, and that shit needs to stop.

This week started off very chaotic, and by this week, I mean yesterday because today is only Tuesday. But you know what I mean. Lists save my life, and I just learned that moisturizer saves you from wrinkles.

Beeb is going to shit a hairball when we move into our own place next year. I'll be able to get a couch from Ikea, and one of those bad ass coffee tables. I never thought it would come to this, but I'm ready to decorate my own place. Is there a way to arrange some type of "party" for that?

I want a few crap jobs that I know I'll only have for one year. Why? Because it'll only help me move on to bigger and better things. I don't mind offering my time to galleries in order to build my resume for a year, I don't care if I live off pennies until I get into grad school, why, because next year will be "my time year". And everything that I have during that year will be because of my own decisions and actions.

Yeah it would be much easier to move home and live out of the fridge everyday for free. BUT WHAT THE FUCK? You've got to make that decision in your life when you say to yourself, "wait........do I really want another year of my life to be like this?"

You bite the bullet, you live on pennies, and you start making your future day by day. Living at home is grand and all, but comfort provides cushions to fall back. No moral support, no one around you to say, "HEY, shouldn't you be painting." instead it's, "did you set the table yet?". I say "nnnnnnn" to all that, there's no way one would survive the initial stages of moving to NY right after living at home for a year. It's called instant depression. Why, because you'll be living without all the things you've had for an entire year. Why not get ahead of the game and learn how to take care of yourself by yourself.

Of course there's balance to all of this. Weekly visits home and what not, but fuck dude, no one's going to make your life worth living for you until you place your own two feet firmly on it.

And if money is an issue, then fuck it. You get the necessary jobs you need in order to pay rent, utilities, (tv and internet) and you buy bulk pasta at Kroger for months on end. It honestly works......grilled cheese is also a way to go. Ignore saving up for grad school, it's called a "fellowship". And that's called "working your ass off for a year in which all the sacrifices you've made over that year are payed off tenfold in the end." It's also called putting at least a third or half of your paycheck in your savings account in order to save enough money to move the hell out of Michigan.

most importantly, it's called "steps". No step is ever too small, as long as it's a step forward. But most importantly it's called praying and having faith that Allah knows how to protect you even if everything in your life seems to be in a downward spiral.

I plan on sitting in front of TV watching The Little Mermaid while planning out the next few years of my life all in the comfort of my own home, which will be financed by my own crap jobs.

I need that cooling off period where stress is only brought into my life by how many canvas's I can make before the end of the year. I want that feeling that I can go into one room, work for three hours on a painting, then go directly to bed and wake up at noon the next day and just paint in my boxers for hours on end with no one around. Yeah that could causes vomitus behavior for some, but that sounds better than pancakes in the morning if you ask me. I want to walk around my house with a robe that has coffee mugs on it (yeah I'm referencing Fight Club) for hours on end.

MAYBE I DO WANT TO WATCH OPERA ON A DAILY BASIS next year.

I wonder if Walt would let me use the wood shop next year if I volunteered to clean up the wood shop every so often. Probably not. I want to take an Intaglio class at LCC. I think it would be bad ass to get a masters in Printmaking thus becoming a "master print maker". I miss playing with nitric acid, it totally reduces the aging process for your skin. Just kidding.

Picked up two books on Cicily Brown just now. She's kind of perverted but in a "where's waldo" kind of way. I envy her colors. She makes me want to work on canvas again though, not that I ever got good at working on canvas in the first place, but who knows. It's a lot cheaper than wood, which means if things work out between me and miss unprimed canvas over here, someone might just have 20 huge frames for next year. It would be fun to work with Rabbit Skin Glue and Gesso at the same time. I envy Janelle's work as well. It's very uninhibited?

All in all I'm just talking to myself, this all feels like just another list written down. I need that though. Or else I'll lose track of all the decisions that need to be made.

I look forward to the day when I don't have to make so many lists throughout the day. I know it's not always going to be like this. In the back of my mind I keep telling myself that one day I'll be relaxing on some mountain in Florence right after having a big show someday. Dreams like that only happen if a) you inherit a billion dollars, or b) you start making sacrifices for the better.

I will end this sad bastard blogspot with a famous quote by an exceptional and "gentle" man.

"Gypsy, give me your tears. If you will not give them to me, I will take them from you! "

Oh so where's the bird's bird creature gone, he would have surly joined me in a song.

http://tomstyle.com/frogeyes/ I like this website very much. It's almost as if you don't even need to know the songs in order to sing in the right rhythm. It would be nice to write songs of this sort. The kind where, when they're sung, they sound amazing, but when they're written out, it's more of a story. Mercer you would. He once said that getting that drive to do something is more of a daily thing instead of basically "waiting for it". I can't fall out of the realm of doing art everyday. I've decided that even if I have to, I'll offer my time for free to some galleries just as long as I can work there. Why, because somewhere there's a hookup or a show, I'm sure of it.

yup, this is a horrible blogspot. School has been non-stop. But it's almost as if I've found my nice within it all. At the same time, I have no time for anything else really. It's come to waking up in order to do something art realated, even if it is going to buy wood on a saturday morning for a frame. Last night was fun though. I haven't been out in a while. I feel like I'm slowly making my way out of kresge step by step until graduation day, or should I say until I step foot on the plane for Austria, that will be my last day of being in kresge. I could go for more nights like last night though, even if I did feel underdressed. It's finally nice to know that I'm never going to wake up with a hangover anymore.

Ummmm and Denny's. WHAT THE FUUUUUCK. Since when did their dinner menu become so bad ass. Maybe it's because I came to the conclusion that their breakfast kinda sucks ass and it's always a let down. I could use some of those seasoned fries right now....shit.................now I'm hungry.

I would write more, but I have to leave work, find some food somewhere, get my paintings, and do a whole lot more that would just take up the next few paragraphs and send them into the realm of being "filler paragraphs on blogspot".

any new bands I should listen to? Does Carl Orf's "Carmina Burana" count as a new band? cause ughhhh, i've been listening to that non stop in my car. (insert Interlochen All-State program summer of effing 99') (i even missed The Deftones concert that summer while I was at band camp......how lame is that........) but yeah......I played the whole piece on trumpet....take a listen/gander if you can find the recording. Don't worry, I already checked the LP out from the music/art library. IT'S NOT A BIG DEAL.