Cabin Overwhelmed

Cabin Overwhelmed By the Sun
2016.  Pastel on sandpaper, 18-3/8 x 9-3/8 in.

The disappointing news?  The studio cooling installation has hit (yet another) snag.  This time expert reinforcements are required, and in a summer like this HVAC professionals can set their own schedules.  We will have to get in line and wait.  Again.  Still.

So the studio continues to run an interior average of 95 degrees, and to languish in the state of profound disarray the installation project has created.

What this means:  No painting.  No work on the promotions or ancillary products for October Open Studio Art Tours for which I need photos of the work, and to get those I need the use of the studio.  No preparing of the artworks or the space for display.  Canvases, mediums, and paints roasting at temperatures they were not made to withstand.

One thing I can say about pastels, in which I worked for years:  It’s a dry medium that is not bothered by heat, usually on a substrate of paper which is also not bothered by heat.  I didn’t realize how good I had it.

Cabin Overwhelmed By the Sun was part of my pastel collection Additional Dimensions:  Disappearance and the Homesteads of the Mojave , which arose from sketches I’d done over the years of derelict homesteads in my neighborhood.  My own studio cabin is not derelict; it is loved and cared for.  But it is most decidedly overwhelmed by the sun at the moment.  As am I.  This is a hellish summer.

We are all Mad Men now

Prayer Flag (Manganese Blue)
2020.  Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 16 in.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ll be participating in the Morongo Basin Open Studio Art Tours this October.  In anticipation I’ve been doing a lot of reorganizing in my studio, discarding and updating.  That process is interrupted now due to the cooling problem (still with us, but very close to solved).  In the meantime, I’m working on some of the ancillary tasks, ones that I can do in the cool of my office, such as designing greeting cards that I will have for sale at Open Studio.

These cards will include several images from the Prayer Flag series that I completed in spring of last year, such as the Manganese Blue pictured above.  At that time I sold 10 of the 12 Prayer Flags through Facebook, in a very short time and without having intended to.  I’d never done any “marketing” through social media.  But of course, it was covid, galleries were shut down, and I had started posting my work more frequently in response.  Folks liked them and asked if they were available for purchase, and so that happened.

Marketing rules in America these digital days.  Rules all, pervades all.  Marketing of self, marketing of brand, marketing of product, marketing of cause…it never ends.  As soon as Americans got their hands on the technology, the all-consuming self-promotion began.  As an artist I’m supposed to be marketing…theoretically the work, but really, in the current style, myself.  Forget the artwork, I’m supposed to get you to like me, to relate to me, to…I don’t know, want to be like me?  Own a piece of me?  Self-promotion is an end in itself now, ubiquitous, weird…grotesque, frankly.  Rude to say it, I know, but seriously:  grotesque.  In my best moments I see it as sad but tenderly human.  But my more common reaction is a combination of nausea and fright.

And I’ve done it myself.  In the earlier days of the internet, and the earlier days of my career, I was pretty good at selling myself.  Ultimately, though, it made me recoil with a kind of loathing.  I felt trapped by my own “brand” and by the tyranny of the performance.  (Hence, my continual tiresome ambivalence towards this very blog you’re reading now.)

I don’t want to judge my fellow Americans just trying to survive in Late-Stage Capitalism.  We all gotta make a living.  But I think there’s a lot of self-selling these days that does not result in a living but at most reaps a kind of dumb fleeting attention and at worst results in being celebrated for one’s ability to self-promote and literally nothing else.  The celebrity, of course, being the apotheosis of this sad scramble.

The model is not a healthy one, my friends.  Not healthy for society, not healthy for individuals, not healthy for the earth and other living things.

This is not news, I know.  And it makes for a gloomy post.  But I’ve been wrestling with it, because I have to make decisions on how to promote my work at this stage in my career, at this stage in my life, and at this stage in American virtual culture.  I don’t like the array of options I see.  One longs to “opt out”. 

Consumerism has consumed itself.  Let’s see if there’s any place for the spirit in the vacuum that remains.

More Heat, But Cooling Ahead

Snapshot of “Chimney Rock”
June 2021.  Acrylic, graphite, charcoal, ink on paper.  8 x 11 in.

It’s not news that we’re under another heat dome.  It’s actually hotter than the last one (118 yesterday, briefly hitting 119) but perhaps won’t be as sustained.  Once again hiding out in the house, shades drawn against the searing air.

But what IS news is that there is progress on getting cooling back in the studio!  The unit finally arrived after ridiculous and foul delays, and my installer has begun work.  However, the roaring temperatures are interfering with the next steps, notably laying a small concrete pad for the compressor; curing cement does not like these kinds of temperatures and will want to crack.  As well, he has had to take out a window and will need to do some work on the outside wall before proceeding with the inside installation, and, frankly, it’s just too dangerous to be working long in these conditions.  So, progress is hampered.  But we persist.

Once confronted with the reality of the unit in 3-D we unfortunately had to change  some of the plans.  Instead of placing the inside unit above the west window, we’re now removing the small northwest window and putting it there.  This window was the most expendable, being essentially the old original “bathroom” window, with the bottom half frosted and very leaky louvers that constantly sieved in drafts and dust.  But, on the other hand, it was a good source of ventilation in the west part of the room, and I will miss that.

Plus – sigh – I love my old cabin, and it distresses me to change any part of its humble, original self.    But the fact is, it’s suffered 60-plus years of desert brutalization and it needs upgrades to keep it standing and serving.  For example, the old asphalt shingles have had every possible modification to keep them operative but they are simply disintegrating right off the walls, and in the next year or two I will have to come up with a replacement plan for the siding.  Things have to change to survive, I guess.

So for now I’m trying to concentrate not on the losses but rather on how incredible it’s going to be to have modern, reliable cooling in there.  And, of course, on getting back to work.

The image above is another snapshot of a recent work on paper, from the same group as “Drought, 115 Degrees” that I posted before.  The palette again was just ultramarine blue, raw umber, black, and white. The photo is rather dingy but that’s just what we’ve got for the moment; I shot it on the floor with the phone under fluorescent light.   I look forward to getting a proper shot of it when the studio’s back to rights; right now it’s all in an uproar, of course, and will remain so until the cooler work is done.

I rather like this painting, which recalls to me the backroads of Utah and the wildness of the rock and the weather.  Younger days.  It was all so very exciting.

Snapshot

This morning I dropped a couple of pieces by Gallery 62 for showing in the Members Room through July and August.  Yes, we’re doing this again:  exhibiting artwork.  Feels natural, feels weird.  Anyway.  The gallery is open Saturdays and Sundays, and the main show is “Space Is the Place”, showcasing artwork that is inspired by outer space.  Just to be clear, my work is not part of that show and has nothing to do with outer space; inner space is enough for me at present.

I included for the gallery two acrylics from last winter, and you can see them in the above wobbly shot of my studio wall – the one farthest to the right and the uppermost.  I’ve posted each of these on the blog before:  Damastes here and Untitled (1 5 21) here.  They’re on the wall because I’d just put hanging wire on them.

The other pieces are all recent work/in progress that you haven’t seen because I’m still unable to set up a proper photo session due to the excessive heat.  The studio cooler problem continues, and the replacement plan has been stalled on the vendor’s end.  Hopefully we’ll be able to start putting in the new cooler late this week; my fingers are crossed.  In the meantime, snapshots are what we got.

It’s a motley group, I know.  But I believe in all of them, and they represent several different threads that I continue to pursue.  The two larger black-and-whites on the left are in the Carbon group.  I’ve started working a little larger with these, 14 x 18 in. in this case.

That can’t-miss-it red piece is a companion to The Heart in the Bardo, featuring my usual heavy black gesture but on saturated color rather than white or gray.  Makes for a very different animal.

And the final one on the bottom, in white, black, gray, and raw umber, is in the same vein as Urchin and Pause Point and has been much fussed over.  I’m determined to bring it in; I think it’s getting close.