Killed projects

and other things

Oooo its summer! And in San Francisco that means its foggy and cold with hot hot days in between. The days my mom and I go up to the cabin are welcome and horrifying- a 96 degree weekend a few weeks back- followed swiftly by a brisk foggy 65 degree week in the city. The duality of summer in Northern California!

I am currently finishing a bunch of paintings for a show next month which I am very excited for. I will have about 6 paintings in the smaller side gallery space at Chefas Projects at the end of July- there will be a larger solo show by another artist happening at the same time. I cannot wait, I visited Chefas Projects a few years ago and had a smaller piece in a show of Lisa Congdon’s work (also a dream!), and I had hoped back then that I would some day get to show there too, I am such a fan of the artists that Stephanie chooses to show.

Now I do! I am really looking forward to the opportunity. So my days have been focused on painting, finishing paintings and sketching and working on client work. Most of the client work is not time sensitive so I have been able to work a little slower (you might wonder how I could work even more slowly??) on those and have some wiggle room for my paintings. I have been trying to focus on enjoying where I am right now in the process. I think I get so focused on the future or the end goal of projects that I forget to be in this moment. Getting to make these is a dream, and something I have been hoping to be able to do for awhile now.

I am also 6 months into Parakeet, a class run by Beth Pickens on writing and while I have struggled mightily to hit my word counts the last few months, I have loved every minute of this class, even the uncomfy bits. I just met with my writing group and we each shared about 3k words with each other and I have never felt more invigorated than when I am in generative, encouraging conversation with other creative people. It just makes me so grateful to be here and be alive and to be able to spend this life making things I am excited about.

I am writing a campy, funny, strange, horror novel of sorts and the gals in my group are admittedly not huge fans of horror but man do they sit with me through the squishes and the squelches of zombie descriptions and fire me up! What a cool thing. I feel equally excited about what they are making, reading their work, helping them work through places they are stuck- it helps me in my own work. I have wanted to quit this class a few times (more so at the start), but each time I stopped and asked myself what was behind the resistance and it has always been that this feels hard. The hard part is the doing something and not being good at it, or doing something and not knowing where it is headed. Sharing writing that might not be good with other people is a nightmare, and yet, when I do it, I have never felt more alive. The real hard part is never doing it at all.

Some reflections

In the evenings I have been doing my computer work and part of that work is that I have been slowly trying to organize files from the last year. In doing so, I ran accross these killed sketches for another street poster project for the City of Albany. I did Posters for them last summer, and they brought me back to work on sketches for the winter. I loved working with them last year, and sometimes even when you successfully work on a project for someone, it doesn’t always work out the second go around. It usually isn’t personal, a thing that I would have struggled to accept a few years ago, it’s often a result of a bunch of factors. I was making these mocks and sketches when I had just lost my dad, and I was a little relieved to not have to work through any more revisions. These are like one round of revisions in a series of a lot of revisions- but I liked these ones the best.

I made these sketches in pencil on paper first and then photographed them and brought them into procreate. Makes a big difference to work through them by hand on paper initially.

I loved the way color brought these to life, I might try to remake these but change Albany to another word or something.

Thought I would share, since I only usually share the things that get made- and we don’t often hear about the ones that don’t! Projects do get killed, that’s why there are kill fees in contracts! It’s honestly a miracle that things get made at all when you consider how many people are involved in making something happen when it comes to client projects! So it is actually a little reassuring to realize that creative projects also die through no fault of our own sometimes.

Touching Grass/ Seeing art in person!!

I talk a lot to my students and honestly to myself about how important it is to step away from computers and see art as it was intended to be seen.

Slowly, in person, with our eyeballs.

It’s different. There is a reward for seeing art away from the screen, actually a few rewards. The first being that you can see the texture, the small details, sit with the feeling of it, view it again, take a lap, grab a snack and take another lap. It’s an intimate and thoughtful experience that cannot be replicated digitally. The second is that it builds community when you see your friends’, acquaintances’, peers’ work in person! By showing up you are telling them how much you support them, you care about what they are doing and you build connections.

I drove down to Santa Cruz last week to go see Dan’s show Sky Garden at And Friends space on the East Side. Dan took Night Class with me a year or so ago and I was excited to see all her work up for her first solo show! It was beautiful and I highly recommend visiting, she made a series of I think approx. 30 small paintings that were from her night sky series- they were hung in a grid and so colorful and sweet and then she had a bunch of medium and larger works! I have one of her pencil on panel pieces and there were a few more that did the same technique that were beautiful. I left feeling really excited to get back to my paintings and to expand the world I have been developing.

You don’t have to go to every show, every opening and honestly, even if we wanted to, it isn’t possible. That said, try going to one! Go to one this month! Go and go alone or go with a friend and talk to someone you don’t know. Get a treat after! Remind yourself that art making isn’t a solitary thing but something rooted in our shared humanity, that community is built by being vulnerable and putting ourselves in situations that can feel uncomfortable (Being social in rooms where you don’t know anyone! Hello!). These are important tenets of the world I want to live in. I want more art, more artists, more shows with cool work in every nook of every town I love. I want more fun and encouraging conversations with people I just met, strange paintings and drawings that push against the confines of my mind. So that means I have to participate in those things when they are happening, because they are happening! If you don’t feel like they’re happening where you are or in the way you envision help make them happen!

Take a class with me!

Night Class for Summer/Fall is happening starting next month- the first class is July 16th. This is a 6 month long class on practice! It is so much fun, its about sustaining your practice, about committing to showing up for your work as you move through life. You meet and make friends with other people doing the same. You can learn more and sign up here.

Ok thats it!

Thanks for being here, stay weird earthlings!

Warmly,

Lindsay