The Trees Won

Every year around this time the cottonwood trees bloom and send billows of fluffy seeds tumbling around, as thick as a snowstorm.  Unfortunately, this signals the blossoming of every flowering plant in creation, and that combined pollen output had me sick as a dog for the past couple of weeks. So that's where I've been, basically, just sniveling around feeling like shit, megadosing C, sucking on my inhalers, laid flat out by histamines SICK.  The effects are very like a lingering cold, if a cold was accompanied by abominable itching and puking up snot.

There I was out in the yard, barfing up literal guts in my Maidenform Bra...

Sorry about that last post, btw. I hadn't slept well in four days (wonder why?)

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I finally got out of the apartment today.  Lovely Spring day.  Perfect weather. I took a walk around my neighborhood and felt pretty happy about the whole scene, babaloo.

Then I went to Value Village.

Value Village is a resale department store here in the U.S. It is by no means the cheapest one but it is the most reliable.  See something you like in any pricey retail shop around town or online?  You'll find it for so much less at Value Village, minus the taint of religion.

I was able to score two canvasses and some snazzy household necessities and do a lot of people watching.  The vibe was really great.  I think everyone there was high on good weather too, just like I was.

Canvasses? You ask. Yes you do. Don't lie.

I have it in mind to make myself a Soviet Constructivist piece (anybody here a Franz Ferdinand fan? Then you know what I mean.)  

Not this one, Lord no, but...yeah.      

What I do is I find home decor prints or art school stuff (we have several colleges and universities  nearby and those kids are not budgeting wisely, to my great delight) and I re-use the grounds, otherwise known as scraping off impasto with the side of a spoon and using bad cusses.

I've been doing abstracts for years, mainly collage-tissot-mixed media stuff. That makes it sound really sophisticated, right? It's not. At all. When I do it, it's strictly an act of craft, not art. 

 I like it though, and during warm weather it's just way more comfortable to work on something that has you moving around, than to sit in one spot under a harsh light embroidering or doing calligraphy or whatever I do. I don't know.  What I do know is that I was for a long while a pretty fair representationalist,  until I woke up one day and realized that I really don't like representationalism at all.

I am a picture of MT RAINIER DAMMIT and I will always be a picture of Mt. Rainier just sitting here on your wall like a fake window with unchanging scenery!  Lake, trees, mountains, weird cloud, FROZEN IN TIME DAMMIT, catching your eyes with my vastness and mountainness.  Dammit      

I feel like representational art is begging me to look at it as though it were a living thing, and wanting me to concoct a specific story or feel a specific thing, and seriously fuck that.  The reason I feel this way is that I grew up with the walls of my home covered with pictures of Jesus and the Saints* - and they were a JUDGEMENTAL group. The Saints were all showing you just how much horror they'd suffered unselfishly for your sake (no, no, don't thank me, just...I just wanted you to see the torture I went through in all it's bloody, sickening detail, here on the wall of your kitchen. That's all. Just...show you. In your kitchen here.)

Jesus was the absolute worst. He was either making you feel sorry for him or making you feel deficient in faith, devotion, loyalty, love, piety... or just showing you his bleeding heart all stuck full of thorns, ON FIRE, with this expression on his face like you personally struck the match, and you know what, Jesus, you live in this house and tell me if I need to feel any worse, OK dude? was my thought.  

Do you see what poor me goes through on your behalf YOU SELFISH SINNING BASTARD?  (alternate caption:  "Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?)  

This is also why I decorate with abstracts and graphics. You will not find any family photos on my walls - oh HELL no.  All the family photos are kept in a box, where they belong for a number of reasons, but  I digress.

So that is what I'll be doing today, is spraying over a god-horrid canvas decor piece with Krylon to achieve a neutral ground that I can cover in geometric shapes and shit like that. With an eye to the Soviets. Like you do. 

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*Ooooh but they're weird and they're wonderful, oh Jesus he's really kaayn, he's got electric boots, a mohair suit, you know I read it in a magazay HIIIIIINE, oh hoooooo...Jesus and the Saints...