New Road

This bike/skate/jog path was finally constructed after years of fighting between environmentalists (area is a wildlife sanctuary), train enthusiasts, developers and politicians. The final solution involved placing large metal bridges over the top of the abandoned railroad tracks. The bridges are a lovely brick red, making the whole path one of the most spectacular in all of SoCal now.
All I know is it’s an amazing skate.
My life is also possibly on a new trajectory. Some things must be given up it seems. Hopefully I’ll still be happy when the dust settles.

Conflict and Peace?

So I got what I wanted, I hope. I hope what I wanted was not too risky. I hope the risk will pay off.
Here’s some lovely work by Iva Hladis. She sews delicate pressed leaves and flowers onto used circuit boards. The effect is golden like a Japanese screen.

Borrowed Time

Should we live like we’re on it all the time? Why am I so afraid?

Ides of March

Busy weekend. Am emptying out my house of art junk, and filling up my studio. Both things feel great! Also setting up a special area in the studio where my kids can make stuff, although today they just wanted to have target practice in there (with easels…)
A new friend dropped by with a painting she was working on and we talked about what was right and what felt off. I think I was able to help. And in turn she looked at my work, picking out what caught her eye—very helpful to me.
I’m thinking about starting a figurative drawing group for women only, where we can model for each other. My other drawing group couldn’t meet last month, and am anxious for them to see my new space.
If you want to join either, please contact me!
Here’s a funny photo of my Art Orientation class. We studied sculpture, and for a break, made bugs out of candy.

Matador

You know when you’ve seen something and you just know it's right for you? When you’ve been searching and researching, hoping to find just that perfect thing, and finally you go in a door, and there it is, in all its ruined glory? And it sort of comes on you all at once, but only later you realize that yes, it's not an illusion?
That’s what happened to me today. A perfect thing.
Now let's see if I can get it.

Stuck

Look at these beauties… my idea of a house, my idea of a painting (by Dave Fobes). And guess what they’re made of… duct tape.
Much better than getting a mad dog set on you when all you’re trying to do is see the view, no? After teaching 7 hours straight?
It was a long day.

Hope and Glam

Last year I participated in a performance directed by Grown Man Naked Projects. About a dozen artists agreed to be “interviewed” in public by a panel about artmaking. The interviews took place inside a gallery, like in a fishbowl. The conversations were projected onto a screen, so the public outside could read what was happening. It was a great piece, technologically, and content wise—about how we talk about art, promote ourselves, interact with those who judge us and our work.
I dressed in my best 1950s outfit and wore a mink stole, and of course the panel pounced on me for that. I’m nothing if I don’t make a visual statement…
My new studio will be in this neighborhood, and I’m hopeful and excited about moving in early next year. With all the depressing conjecture about the future, I need to concentrate on something positive.
I hope you all can find something bright in your future, too. If nothing else, try on some bright red lipstick and your grandmother’s old hat and gloves.

Sequined Bras in the Window

Flew south again.
It’s almost always good to get out of your life/routine/stressload/head for a few days, especially if you can get into someone else’s life (try on their underwear, metaphorically). The people I compare myself to up in NoCal are as close to me in life situation as possible, but have made very different decisions.
What I come away with is an awareness of how selfish the artist lifestyle is, how focused on obscurities that most think trivial. I had to stop myself from talking about my work, cause I’m enthusiastic, but don’t want to bore my friends, or make them think I’m as self-centered as I really am. I need their clear-eyed input, but lately I think I'm sort of manic in the number of projects I've started. Oh well, better than the alternative.
image taken in Chinatown, San Francisco

If I look a bit ragged, or seem distracted, you know why.

I have been manically flailing around the past year to find something to replace, at least in part, teaching. Every month I apply for grants, try to get exhibitions of my work, work on other writing projects, paint, do occasional commercial jobs, learn new software, apply to teach at new schools, look into business opportunities, shoot teaching videos, make artworld contacts, attend openings and museums… in addition to prepping six courses and taking care of my kids.
It really burns me when my colleagues who are tenured complain. I know insecurity is the buzzword of the day, but come on.

…

I am trying to process what has happened, so I can see the bigger picture. I will write about the specifics later. But for now I can tell you I have lost my best teaching job.
It is a new experience for me to lose a job like this. It has profoundly upset and angered me. Now I understand what many people have gone through, how depressed they feel, how out of control… to be told, “it’s not fair, but we can’t do anything about it.”
If I ever have employees, I will remember this experience, and take care of those who work hard for me.

I am OK.

I think things will be OK. It was traumatic, but now that I’m calm, I can handle it. Isn’t that just so like life?

What is Coming

What do you do when there is no happy ending to the story? When every possible outcome is painful? You can know that it is coming, but it still blindsides you every step.
This is what I’m faced with.

No Self Control

Oh, bad Baby Kloe, very bad!
But, Baby is happy with some things lately (be careful)…

Fallen in Love with a Neighborhood

Since returning from Turkey I’ve felt ambivalent about living here in SoCal. I’ve realized I hate the suburbs. I’m a city girl, at least at this point in my life. City or country, but not the burbs. I’ve missed being able to walk to work, to the store, or to get coffee, like I could in Turkey. I need to have more contact with the arty crowd that understands me, not the conservative SoCalians who live around me and are sometimes horrified by my work. But I currently reside in a lovely place, where 99.99% of the world’s population would die to live. (I am not joking, it’s like paradise here.)
So what’s to do? My fantasy is to get an artist studio in this neighborhood I have fallen in love with. This hood is just that: ratty, a bit dangerous, and urban. But it has possibilities, a raw hipness, a risk involved. It is not Disneyland on the water.

Stalled but Not Beaten

Around the New Year I ceased to think of academia as a career option. I’ve now been out of grad school for seven years, had numerous call-back interviews for positions, a Fulbright, and am no closer to landing a tenure-track job. Arnie has killed public ed here anyway. And I’m getting older. Time to stop messing around.
So I decided to start a design business. And was promptly swamped teaching two lecture classes to 150 students, unable to proceed with my freelance plans. But the end is in sight, only one more month of madness and then summer is here. Yes, I’m teaching summer school with any luck. But I’ll be able to again focus on getting some clients and building a portfolio. Also continuing to paint and promote my own work, of course.
Then I’ve got this other thing in the back of my mind, tickling me. It’s good to let go the idea that teaching is the only or best way for me. A friend on the other coast is making the same decision…

April Fool

I am a Good Girl, Happy in Every Way!
And I have so much time to enjoy Life!
I spend long lazy afternoons doing nothing!
I love teaching Art History!
My paintings are selling!
I have enough Money and Friends and Love!
Etc, etc, etc!

Two Easters

Last year I spend Easter Sunday in Istanbul at the Hagia Sofia, one of the most famous and beautiful buildings in Christendom. Afterward we went to Starbucks with a carpet toot. Just today I got an email from the Turkish friend who traveled with me, I haven’t heard from her in months. I hope she stays in touch.
This year I spent Easter Sunday with a big Mexican clan eating ham in the backyard while the kids searched for plastic eggs in the lawn. It was about 85F—forget spring, summer is here already.
Don’t know which was more surreal.

Old and Alone

I have this friend, J. We’ve been close for years, and it was his 80-something birthday a few days ago. I took him to lunch and brought him some Turkish glass birds (he believes in Luck). He’s had an incredible life, but a hard one: war, injustice, prison, short marriage, lost kids, voodoo, underworld, poverty. He’s always lived life on the fringes.
Now he’s old and alone. He may have always been alone, but when you’re old, it hurts more. I tend to think, that won’t happen to me. But I’m fooling myself. Being alone in old age could and does happen to anyone, even those with large families and money. J isn’t homeless only because of the social safety net and because of being a WWII vet.
I’m not feeling very optimistic today.

A Bad Year

Note: I normally try to keep this blog from being too personal. Kloe wants to talk about teaching and art and politics. But sometimes my life cries out to be explained a bit. So don’t read this if you just want to think of me as a cute doll in SoCal… or maybe it is comforting to know that Kloe, as perky and privileged as she is, also has bad, terrible years?

When I was a young Kloe, I thought each year was better than the last. So being 10 years old was better than being 9, 17 was definitely better than 16, it was better to be in college than high school, better to be a senior than a freshman, better to be married, better to be a mom, etc. I’m normally quite optimistic.
But this year, the last 12 to 14 months, has not been better. It has, in fact, been a year of tremendous loss, with very few gains. My prestigious grant in Turkey finished, where I was a faculty member with a big studio-office, and I returned to my role as an adjunct living out of her car. I miss my hard-won friends in Turkey, and realize I must work on my friendships here. I have lost my gram, one of the most important figures in my life.
But mostly I have lost love. My lost loves suffer me heavy grief, I almost can’t cope. I know this time will pass, and I’ll be happy again. But my naive idea that life continues to get better is obliterated, although it had a good, long run.

Lack

Well, my Valentine’s Day totally sucked, how was yours?
Felt under-prepared for my art history class, although have a couple great students who want to talk Middle East culture with me… sat in my car eating a sandwich and studying while it poured rain… taught into the night.
But at the end of my class, a student gave me a music CD after we’d listened to it while drawing. And that one little act of kindness almost broke my heart. You see I’m sort of a wreck now.