Page 2

“Luna Eyes”
Graphite on paper
9.25 x 6.75 in

I finally finished this drawing last Saturday. I can’t seem to get ahead at all when it comes to art. Life keeps happening to me. Good things, bad things, and all the things in between good and bad. Just keeps happening to me. Those spaces of time I used to devote to creating art have become less abundant. Now they’re like rarities, little gems of time I hold close to my chest and don’t let anyone near.

While that’s been hard, it’s not something I regret. I feel like the way I have spent my time lately has been more than worthwhile. I feel like I have amassed a wonderful collection of memories that I will cherish for a long time, if not for the rest of my life. I really like to make memories. And even more so, after making memories, do I like to remember memories. And so right now while I may have made less memories of myself creating art, I have made more memories about being out in the world with people and just generally feeling beauty and love and fun and all kinds of other things I never thought I’d feel. Life has been surprising lately. And that’s okay. I like how it’s changed me.

Will write again soon.

Went walking down by the Mississippi River with a friend tonight and we came upon this little picturesque mud water world. It was beautiful! I wish I had taken more pictures, but most of the time we walked my phone was stored away in a backpack ’cause I didn’t want to drop it in the water.

There’s no way I would have ever found this place by myself. I tend to avoid any sort of walking that involves climbing steep rocky terrain, but I surprised myself! I handled the terrain well.

I’ll make sure to have my lynx drawing posted sometime in the next week. I have very, very little left to do of it.

Hello, don’t have much to say. Usually on a Friday evening I like to take a walk around my neighbhorhood, but tonight it seems too windy. Last week, this older man who I always happen to walk by on Fridays – he likes to sit idly on one of the bridges – told me while smiling that I looked “as bright as the sun” while pointing at the sun and I don’t know what exactly he meant by that, but I decided to take it as a compliment, and I’ve enjoyed remembering it ever since. And I wonder how he’s doing tonight, like if he’s out there on that bridge right now along with all the other Friday regulars. I’ve started to realize my neighbhorhood is smaller than I think.

My day job really kicked my bum this week. So I don’t regret staying inside. I need to draw and relax and get caught up on some art-related business. I have two art fairs to prepare for, one of which will require a giant tent and 6 foot grid walls and sandbags and all this other shit and while it’s 2 and half months away, I already feel like I’m behind schedule. The other art fair is small, will only require two tables, but it’s happening in two weeks and my inventory is not at all well stocked.

Here are some pictures I took during my walks from the last couple weeks…

City reflections in the Guthrie Theater building.

Love the shape of these trees. So striking.

This one bridge is covered in spider webs. Some of them were being actively worked on by spiders when I walked by. Was fun and unsettling to see. This was the only picture I could get that really captured what the spider webs looked like.

My lynx drawing is very close to done. I’m crossing my fingers I can get it done in the next week!

Bye.

Hello! The weather as of late has been stunning! It’s led to a lot of walk taking and picture taking on my part. Here are some pictures I took and edited for fun over this last week…

This tree almost looked like a snake that had shed its skin the way it was sitting bald and its bark “skin” was all around it. Maybe it was electrocuted? I don’t know, but it was fascinating to look at.

The river overflowed so all the sticks and and garbage and what not was floating in the water.

Soft pastel pink sky right at golden hour. Love this time of day.

There was a dreamy fogginess to the lighting on this particular evening.

This is where I’m at so far with my current drawing. Getting there, ever so slowly!

I wish I had something to say. But my mind has been really blank this last week. I haven’t felt motivated to put words to screen. I haven’t felt motivated to do much of anything, if I’m being honest here.

I hope it’s more so the rainy weather, less so me. I miss when the spring time would bring not just flowers and warmth, but a big wave of energy. I feel like I haven’t been gifted any of those big waves of energy in what’s been a couple years now. I feel like I’ve done a lot of dragging myself along. Like there are these bricks implanted at the bottoms of my feet. And I just can’t get them off, but I’ve been trying.

A couple months ago, I went to Duluth for the day. Wasn’t much for any reason, but I got to see my friend Kali and take some pictures. Think I’ll just take a moment here to post some of those pictures since Duluth is so photogenic. This was my first time seeing it in March! The lake is still beautiful, even when snow covered. 🙂

Hello, I don’t know. I haven’t been writing in this blog enough, and I want to change that. I usually love to write in blogs. But for whatever reason I got caught up in a dream where that wasn’t happening. Yeah, a “dream.”

So I learned something interesting about 5 months ago or so. I learned from someone that they viewed their life as a series of “dreams.” One dream unfolding after another. Say they lived in Chicago for 4 years? That would be their “Chicago Dream.” Moved back to Minneapolis? Then that’s their “Minneapolis Dream.” Or maybe the time they dated that one guy, whoever? “That One Guy, Whoever, Dream.”

I was in a dream for a while and now I feel I’m in a new one. And I think this new one is going to involve more writing in my blog, for sure.

Here’s my progess so far on my current drawing:

Going slow, but still going!

I guess I’m not sure what else to write about, even though there’s so much going on. The world is a surreal mix of things right now. Sometimes, because of this, it feels hard to keep my focus on art. But that’s okay. I don’t need to be doing art all the time.

Finally started this piece. I’m still not quite sure what I want the whole composition to be. I’m hoping that as I work on it, it’ll become clearer to me what I need to do with it to make it look the way I want.

Ah wow, I feel like I have so much to say. I’m feeling so many things. My personal life feels okay, feels happy actually. The state of the world however horrifies me, angers me. I feel completely helpless about… this war. I want there to be something more I can do, something beyond feeling moved at the sight of flags. That’s something I keep remembering from Sunday, just seeing all these blue and yellow flags fluttering in the wind and how they made me emotional and it’s still what I see, in my mind, and I’m not a part of this, but I want to make it better.

My poetry class ends tonight. It’s bittersweet. I loved this class. It felt like a returning to myself. Over the holidays, I visited my mom and found in my childhood room all my poetry books I used to read as a teen. It was fun to sift through them again, and I wound up taking all the books back to my apartment. And now I’m surrounded by the poetry I used to read when I was young, and it makes me feel like some part of myself has been rediscovered and it’s incredibly comforting.

I only have two poems that are “finished,” one a regular poem, the other a long prose poem. Honestly, I don’t know if they are actually finished. These are the first poems I’ve edited and attempted to finish since the last one I posted in this blog. They both might need more editing. But in the spirit of holding myself accountable, I’m going to share them. PS, they do sound better when read out loud.

–

Dreams Turning, Spiraling

The bear is a computer
freezing in the wilderness.

Its mind is silver with images.

Its paws hover, its claws click
nervously against the tree
bark peeling.

The bear is here, not there.
It’s not above the tree
like the crows that keep cawing,
cawing, the crows

that flash their wings with ill will
and make the forest
seem still.

The bear is freezing, surrendering
to the heart inside its hairy coat.

Its mind is silver with images
that load, and load…

Rose remnants of dreams
slowly spinning, and spinning,
and turning

into weeds spiraling

to infinity.

–

Scope of a Loss

+++The broken down house at the end of the field. The heart sprawled out like a welcome mat. Stand atop of it with shoes. The sound of leaves crinkling, someone leaving. The sound of waves hitting the house, hitting it until it cracks, until it falls smack onto the ground and converts into dust and sea, becomes the salt found in eyes.
+++Navigating the in-between, the inhaling of poisonous smog and the consequent awakening, the bright burn that blisters one’s dignity. The intrusive memory. The heart sprawled out like a welcome mat. Stand atop of it with shoes. The sound of leaves crinkling, someone leaving. The sight of autumn breaking, its scattered shards glittering with irony as it lays.
+++The reds and yellows paling into ghosts, into alien purples. The cold. The blood vessels as they restrict. The moments of smiling buried under the necessary, unnecessary waves, which come and go, some with dolphins some with sharks, some with bites and some with strides through the dark where the calm is eerie.
+++Space, stars, planets and beyond. The scope of a loss. Winter’s wings spanning from one edge of the sky to the next. And the small, icicle breath rolling jagged out my mouth.

–

Anyway, I don’t know what else to say, despite feeling like I have a lot to say.

Hello! This weekend I got an opportunity to work in watercolor, a medium I haven’t worked in since college. It’s been a while! I’m pretty out of practice, but I thought I’d share a couple of my experiments. It’s two faces, both loosely referenced from faces of models from a magazine. By no means did I do these models’ faces justice, lol, but I still had fun.

After doing these faces, I remembered I had some buried sketches of faces from 2017, which was back when I used to sketch faces a lot just for practice. Here’s a few posted below – all are loosely referenced from my own face.

This all has made me want to start drawing faces again, especially in watercolor… Maybe I can find a way to fit watercoloring into my life more easily, especially in the spring when my porch will be nice and warm and I’ll be able to paint out there…

Hm other than that, all I got are a couple shots of these dreamy ducks that were hanging around outside today:

It was such a beautiful day today. ❤

I’ll be back soon!

Hello. So I thought the sketch of the lynx and lunar moths I had been putting together was just about done, that all I had left to do was make a few compositional tweaks. But I think it’s been like a week now. Don’t remember the last time I wrote in here. And this sketch has been a real jerk. Real pain in the bum. To the point where I had to put it aside for a few days. Today, I revisited it again, and it’s looking a little better, less squashed. I didn’t like the way the trees closed in on the lynx and moths in the last sketch I posted, so I took the trees out. But yeah, this is still looking a little messy to me! So not quite there yet.

Other than work on this sketch, I’ve been writing, particularly for the poetry class I’ve been taking. It’s been so much fun writing poetry! I used to write poetry all the time, almost every day. And then like 5 years ago I just stopped. So I’m hoping to bring it back into my life again.

Once I have some poems finished, I will share them!

Hopefully, soon, I’ll be working on the actual drawing of this sketch and have a progress shot of the drawing to share, too.

‘Til then, enjoy this lovely song… (I’ve been so obsessed with Four Tet lately…)