trying to write an artist proposal

Right now, if I could have a show at any gallery space I wanted, what would I choose to show? Probably nothing that I have right now.

I am an artist, but I am not a professional.

I am an artist, but I don’t want to make art.

I am an artist, but I am sick of projecting meaning onto junk.

I am an artist, but more than that, I am a believer. Or, at least, I desire to believe.

A dreamer? But a dreamer means nothing.

Take me home!!

That’s all that it is: a search for heaven on earth. Where the hell is it?

In service. I can honestly believe that the secret to happiness is service to others.

Perhaps I am so unsettled because I haven’t stopped searching. No. More than that, I am beginning to believe that I am unsettled because this is not my true home. I desire the Garden of Eden and the way things were meant to be, and so I will never find it. I must come to terms.

I know I am going home in the end so I should just enjoy my time here, right? The end. Stop thinking. I can try that.

But I can’t shake the cursed blessing of being a privileged American. How dare I “just enjoy my time.” It’s checks and balances: wealth and poverty. I am privileged that I may be of use in helping the unprivileged. Or, perhaps I am privileged that I may challenge my fellows: the other numb-suckers with two cars and nowhere to go.

Okay, I’m done. This is turning into a rant.

spiders are friends

Remember those African cave spiders you saw that arrogant man eat on an episode of Fear Factor? They looked hard almost, like they were wearing armor over their whole body. In this dream they were crawling up my bed in 655. They weren’t ‘out to get me’ they were simply coming to tell me something. I was afraid of them at the same time knowing they were my friends. I wonder if they were offended that I was afraid of them...”

There was, again, that strange feeling of complexity in my dream last night. An institution through which to navigate.

A landscape of bricks consisting of puzzle pieces in riddles. In order to finish, I needed to solve the appropriate riddles. They were difficult, philosophical, and pretty much over my head.

Someone actually checked me in to this place. It wasn’t a punishment but it was definitely frightening - as if there were some devastating end to avoid. I wasn’t being chased but there was a sense of urgency. Almost as if I were racing someone or being watched and recorded.

There were characters. I would touch someone or some thing and they would be activated.

I need to go back that I may capture some of the creatures and solve the riddles on this side.

a peaceful disaster

"Heh, your entire foot fits into the sole of his."

"Is that bad?"

"You saying my foot is big?"

"No. No. I'm just saying." We all giggle.

Hillary walks into the room with Mathew.

"Hillary, look. There's a tornado coming." She's looking around frantically, checking the house. "Are the paintings okay?" She's pacing and starting to breathe heavily.

Now the house begins to shake, stronger and stronger. Soon the house is tumbling; it's picked up by the wind and it's floating across the landscape. I can't see out the window but I imagine the city skyscrapers and the country fields spreading out below us. "Don't lean on the wall!" I struggle to get people to balance out the movement of the storm.

I want to crash. I want to feel the end so that I can stop focusing on breathing and anticipating the impact. It doesn't come, but I fabricate the feeling, over and over again. It's a good feeling, like the gentle throbbing between my legs. When we crash, there is no visual, no sound, only a feeling. But I wake up before the climax.

talent reserves

The doctor told me I had spots of cataracts already on my eyes. My retina looks like that of a 40 year old. Macular degeneration he called it. He asked if there was any history of albinism in my family and warned that my kids may be albino and even blind if I "choose the wrong match" - like I can control who I fall in love with. ("Stay away from the Norwegians").

So now, a couple of years into my thirties I have actually lost my vision. He once warned that I should wear good sunglasses at all times when outside, now I wear them like my skin. My beautiful blue-green eyes have been glazed over by cataracts and I cannot see more than through a heavily fogged window.

When once my art practice revolved around an obsession with color and a unique visual interest, now it consists of blind strokes and the records of my fingers tracing faces. Tragically I cannot use the tools on which I relied so heavily, almost exclusively. I used my eyes to see my art, to paint and draw, to write, read, and day dream, to learn dances and admire God's creation. Star gazing, God! I am near tears now as I think of all the things for which I once used my eyes.

They are so precious to me.

Like a dog losing its sense of smell, an ant without feelers, a cheetah without legs, a bat without ears.

Now I turn to singing. That talent I used only selfishly, timidly. I write songs about things I observed when I could see, the pleasure of seeing. I write about my family, ambitions, beliefs, and philosophies. The words I used to hide in the pages of my journals finally make it to a public forum. I don't know how to write music, or even to sing properly really, so I write and sing into a recording device. My partner helps write the music for others to read. I have a faithful band of musicians expressing themselves with me - alongside my frustration, anger, and still constant peace and joy.

Guitars, violins, drums, cellos, flutes, pipes, piano, organ, and instruments we find in the places we travel.

I have a personal trainer who helps me keep my body strong. [Wow, would I even care if I couldn't see myself in the mirror? Yes. Hell yes! Even more than before because all I would know is how I felt, how my clothes felt on me.]

Would I be afraid of the stage? How could I?

When I dance I throw myself into the music. I move the way the rhythms move me. The stage would have to be fenced off, enclosing me in a gentle cage. This way I would feel safe knowing I could move freely and not fall into the crowd or down the stairs or into the drums.

I would throw myself into my music because it would be all I had left.

I am frightened. I am warned.

But I'm excited, nearly eager.

How sick.

art makes company

It was one of those effects in which I knew who the character was, but I can't actually remember seeing her face. Hillary and I were in the living room in a house which appeared similar to our Roscoe layout. There were nights of revelry, tricks, and single encounters flashing through my mind (I was myself. I was watching myself. Isn't that how dreams are? I don't recall ever not seeing my own face. My mind stepping out of the body.).

Back in the room we were talking, but I was not focusing on the conversation. Babies in bonnets, Victorian lamp posts along dark velvet streets, spiders behind bed posts, and a standard sized portrait hanging on the wall behind Hillary. It kept changing. The image was beautiful. The animation in a style that brings to mind Pan's Labyrinth. The colors were brilliant heavily contrasting the deep shadows. The subject was holding a bundle of blankets shaped like a baby. Or maybe the baby simply had no face. Then there was a rather large woman swinging on a hammock dangling a wooden heart from a string, then long figures lazily marching in slow motion, willowy and ghostly. "I made it with you in mind." Such a compliment - to think that someone would have me on their mind enough to make a piece in my honor.

Standing in the room with us was another figure. A tall, willowy girl in a tattered old wedding dress draped elegantly over her bare body and lacing up her neck. Tiny buttons studded the seam down her arm and down her back. I could not see her head, though I recall whispering strands of curled brown hair escaping the frame of her face as she struggled to stay up-right. She was plastic, but still so real. "Oh!" I jumped when she leaned into me. Her tiny feet were elevated on their tip toes.

Two beautiful pieces of art to keep a lonely girl company - to charge a dull, static room with mystery, possibility.

it was a familiar game

He wears a mask - golden and elegantly carved with high cheek bones and a longer pointed nose. The lips curl up and back lusciously, though with no implication of human emotion. Pure gold shields the eyes, allowing no glimpse of the soul. And yet, kissing this face was the aim of her search, the treasure at the end of the game. We were jousting, playfully, along the chain link fence lining the playground. Trees framed the scene, blocking the landscape beyond our immediate occupation. In a way we were tense, there was a bigger story behind the charade that I cannot fully recall. But I know that at the end of the game, when the winds shifted and she paused in her attack, it was because she sense his presence. She turned, fear and awareness in her eyes, and met his touch with reservation. The black cloak covering his head draped elegantly along side the face, flowing around the entire body. I saw no hand caress her skin, no movement below the waist. It was a lean, a whisper, and a hush.

starting out in fragments

On the ground between the sidewalks and driveways, kelly green spears grow upwards, thin and delicate. There are less people around, but just as much, if not more life; a potent humidity of energy replaces breathing lungs. Small, velvety wings in bright patterns flap silently between flowers dripping wet in fresh paint. Squirrels, soft brown boas punctuating their miniature frames, chase each other up and around trees. Birds fly from branch to branch... (jumping) Were we going back in time instead of forward? My mind, foggy in a progressive state, is digging in the past for something I do not understand.... (jumping) From a promising winter wonderland we enter some barren neighborhood being buried alive in dead leaves. That distinct golden cast, the one that keeps the bite of winter in an irrelevant future, fights for the beauty only seen in autumn.