Window Shopping

On the eve of my departure, I’m faced with the fact that traveling is expensive. I’m going to have to spend money I don’t have.
Met some artists for a glass of wine and venting last night. Some are not working at all, others very little, like me. What can we do? Temping like after college? Art aiding in the schools? Crafting in nursing homes? What do over-educated, out-of-work teachers do?
(One thing we don't do is mope on the couch. At least now we have time to make work.)
Some friends don’t have health insurance. They had small problems, now fixed, but now are denied insurance when they apply. Others of us can’t afford to keep paying the insurance we have now.
So I’m going to Turkey on an extreme budget, staying with friends, eating on the street. No buying clothes, and you know how Kloe loves fashion…
My next post will be from Istanbul.
When I get back I begin my new life as an entrepreneur.

Bird Project

At a local art fair I photographed this project, which is similar to the Trade Show formally. An artist collective called Paint Night Group sent panels with a robin stenciled on them out to various countries, where artists worked on them, and then sent them back. The PNG then re-worked the panels.
I talked to some of the organizers about presentation. They reported most effective was to have maximum white space around each artwork, not stacking the works, like they had to here in the small art fair booth. They also framed a few of the pieces, and anyone wanting to buy one could choose framed or unframed.
It’s an interesting project, but I was sorry not to see more of a voice (ooh, that pesky voice) from the different countries/cultures. PNG admitted that sometimes the panels got overworked.

Packing Up the Trade Show

Leave for Istanbul in one week. Carrying all the work on the plane in tightly wrapped packets. It’s a lot…

Taco Crawl

A few nights ago I went to a fiesta encantada.
We met at the hostess’ house for chips, guac and margaritas. I didn’t know many, but it was a fun group.
We then walked en masse about six blocks as the sun set, passing local points of interest, such as where you can buy a mariachi outfit. This was East LA, not a neighborhood I could normally cruise by myself.
We finally arrived at a parking lot filled with food vendors running grills by generator, and had the BEST tacos, gorditas, crepes filled with cream cheese, juices, churros…
Algunos no creian que una guerra como yo podria hablar un poco de espanol...
And we then waddled back.
?Quien dice que nadie anda en LA?

Endings, Beginnings

Some pretty big projects have come to an end. Others are starting, including this lovely loan that rolled into my house yesterday. Thanks, Cuz!

HappyHappy

Saw these two sculpture installations, both titled “HappyHappy,” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art by Korean artist Choi Jeon-Hwa, en route to the Pompei show (more later). Also free jazz that night. I’m so amazed at the LA cultural scene: totally racially integrated, huge crowds, kids, transvestites, the whole world enjoying art and jazz…
Anyway, the fence piece is interactive, inviting viewers to tie their own piece of plastic to the chain link. But it’s not magical in the way that the hanging plastic work is: you can walk through it and bump up against it, like some kind of colorful carwash. And it’s right next to the Chris Burden lampposts, creating this interesting conversation between gray concrete and colorful colanders.
Read a review here.

LA, Cont.

That black cloud behind Disney Hall ain’t bringin rain. Temp read 108 in the car.
LA opening went well, my work stood up to the other work in the show. No sales, but didn’t expect any. I haven’t sold a painting in a LONG time.
Sweaty sigh.

Armageddon

I’m in a show this weekend up in LA. Driving into town was an incredible sight—the mountains behind Downtown were blazing. This morning the fire apparently jumped the freeway. Luckily there are no Santa Ana winds, or those expensive La Canada homes would be burnt tacos.

Little Art Entrepreneur

Since he could speak, Kid.01 has been very focused. He’s particularly interested in and sensitive to food and taste. Very strong opinions about cooking, and just loves to eat.
Kid.02 has been more of an unformed child, sort of all over the place. But recently he’s been making art in my studio, with only slight encouragement. He’s now preparing a collection of masks to sell for Halloween at an upcoming art show. And they are pretty great. He’s so excited about the prospect of people buying his masks, he can’t wait to get into his “store” and make more. The best part is his self-motivation, something more valuable than good looks or super intellect.
I'm not creating this monster, he's doing it himself.

Bills and Bees

Did you ever notice, when you have no money coming in, bills seem to mushroom? Like WATER bills in my town have gushed through the roof? Like cars break down, teeth need cleaning, and kids seem to eat everything you put in front of them and ask for more? Like a swarm of bees decides to move into your compost and take up residence? (Funny how that works: bees are valuable, but it costs almost $200 to have a beekeeper take them away to a new home.) Now my trashcan compost has bee pheromones all over it, and I have to buy a new one… argh!
The hot months and fire season are just around the corner. Calmate tia.

Hot States

Six years ago, when kid.01 was a wee-thing, I painted a map of the States on the blacktop of his school playground. Needless to say, it needed re-doing. So I bought the lead-free enamel and have been near heat stroke as I slowly repaint each state. I work partially during recess, so the kids can watch, and “own” the painting.
After the first weekend there were skid marks from bikes crossing the states. The teachers were distressed, but it’s typical. It proves my thesis, that there’s an innate need to make marks. It’s not even malicious.
The kids are really cute, they say, “Wow, you’re doing a great job. You really know how to paint.” ☺

Poker Face

I just love this video. I love his dancing, I love his accent, I love that no one's watching, I love the whole project.
I really love the ribbon waving.
My kind of performance art.

Planning my Return among the Turks

Finally getting excited about my upcoming trip to Turkey. Have started to collect the gifts to bring to my friends there and organize where I’ll be staying. Will start out in Istanbul, then travel to Eskisehir, then maybe Izmir (many artists from the Trade Show are from this city, and I’ve never been), then back to Istanbul for the opening at Isik University on September 23. May have to get over to my gallery in Ankara too, but time will be short for that much bus time.
I imagine walking in my neighborhood, the sounds and smells. It will be hot. The Istanbul Biennial will be in full swing with fantastic shows, I hope. But mostly I’m looking forward to seeing the friends I’ve missed so much.
Image: Trade Show, Edgar Varela Fine Arts, Los Angeles

Downtown LA Artwalk

Thousands of people, you can barely walk on the sidewalks.
Great 2D, video, installation, sculpture.
Innovative use of empty storefronts, second floor parties.
LINES to get into some galleries.
Second Thursday of every month, between Little Tokyo and Skid Row.
Totally free.
Go before it gets too big and corporate America gets in.

No Voice

A friend recommended me to the gallery director where he shows. Because of this personal contact, she looked at my work and was nicely encouraging. She liked the most conservative of my paintings, which I agree might suit her clientele. Perhaps some time in the future I’ll show there, but the point is to make the connection.
This woman then recommended me to another gallery down the street as perhaps a good fit, as they mainly show figurative work. So, I took a deep breath and walked in for a cold call. The young man behind the desk said ok, bring in the work. I’m not sure what happened then. But he didn’t spend more than a minute looking before he dismissed me, saying the following:
“You have no voice.”
“You should research galleries before you approach us.”
“Never work in series.”
“There’s no consistency here.”
“Forget everything they told you in school.”
“No one will remember this work when you die.”
What did I glean from this battery? I’m too old for this gallery, which was showing more illustrative, graffiti inspired work. I confused him with different styles of painting; maybe he’s used to reading work quickly. I look like I’m on my last legs…
To be dissed by someone half my age, who obviously had the vocab of education, was eye-opening. I’m still glad I did it. Just shows the power of a personal recommendation and a bit of background. I could have laid into the guy, but what would be the point? It’s his gallery, it’s his powertrip.
Leaving the gallery, I walked next door to a Ralphs to shop and saw five cops flatten a kid for stealing a bottle of water. Over-reaction on all fronts.

Considering Mesopotamia

As I prep to teach my one remaining college course, an Ancient Art History Survey (aka “Caves to Cathedrals”), I got this note from my former department chair, who was very sorry to have to cancel my life-drawing class a few weeks ago:

Teacher meetings start Monday, and due to the state Budget crisis - we will be canceling all classes that have less then 20 students enrolled by the close of business Monday night. To complicate matters - the college district dropped all students who had not paid their fees last Thursday - changing classes that were once filled to now under-enrolled sections.
Academic Armageddon is coming next week....

This is particularly crazy because many community college students are not used to registering until the last minute, and classes are still a week away from beginning. For those who did register, some may not realize they need to pay the extra $6 per unit fee increase.
Are the community college districts web sites screaming, enroll now? Pay your fees? Classes are being canceled? They are not. Wait and see what happens when all the out-of-work Californians and returning GIs try to go back to school this fall…
(image from The Citadel, an outlet mall off the 5 Freeway in Commerce)

Second Opening of Trade Show

Was a great success. Everyone really loved the work and I met many of the artists from LA. Thanks to everyone who helped so much.

Re: Kloe is hoping to be the Rachel Ray of drawing…

I heard an interview on “Fresh Air” about the preponderance of cooking shows on television. It seems that the activity of food preparation may be wired into us genetically through thousands of years of human development. We may not do it in the 21st century, but we like to watch it.
Could it be that preparing images is also hard-wired? Is there some fascination about making drawings/paintings/sculpture (or watching others produce art) that started more than 50,000 years ago in caves?
Would you watch a plastic babe draw for 22 minutes?

Trade Show opens tonight in Lalaland!

Trade Show in Los Angeles

Overheard while Pruning the Bougainvillea

“In this town, everyone dies.”
Kid.02
Anish Kapoor at MOMA, gouache and pencil on paper, love it

Stories and Scars

Placenta Accreta
… after birthing my son, I started to bleed heavily. The doctors made an emergency decision to save my life: they gave me a hysterectomy. I remember the first time I saw the scar, I was in the hospital room with my baby boy nursing at my breast, and I couldn’t help but be angry at my body. The gift of creation, of life, my uterus, had been ripped out of me. I struggled for years with issues surrounding feeling like a woman since I had lost my ability to create.
It is six years later, and when I look at my scar now, I see that it has physically changed along with the emotionally traumatic fears I initially projected onto it. Today I see beauty, I see strength, I see survival…

From Ted Meyer’s “Scarred for Life,” in which he pulls monoprints directly off bodies. The exhibition is a moving combination of words, design, graphic photography and abstract, primitive images.
We all have our scars, but can we transcend them without art?

Let Me Tell You My Story, Again

Install finished. It looks so different in it's second, much more natural, setting. See more photos at Art of Kloe.
Read a review here.

Coming Soon to Lalaland

Have been a busy little bunny, hopping here and there. Even up to a rooftop for a garden party high above downtown.
Finally arranged LA showing of the “Trade Show,” on August 13 at Edgar Varela Fine Arts. Hip, hip, hop.

Smarter about PR

I’m not really good about public relations. I like to concentrate on my work, not on how my work is presented or sold. This blog, for example, has never been promoted, or had ads, or even a counter. I just write it for me, and a few friends. You!
(By the way, this is my 763rd post.)
Now, however, I’m being forced to reconsider PR. I must be more pro-active in marketing myself, job situation being what it is.
I saw this exhibit a few months ago at Rosamund Felsen. The paintings were sort of nice—loopy, ice cream colors, what I think of as California abstraction. Nothing great, though, and the person I was with hated them.
On the way out of the gallery I saw the poster. It’s a masterful story of romance: sexy yet sensitive artist, gorgeous studio, hint of the hip scene, whiff of wealth, hot Mediterranean garden… and it explains the paintings. It could be all made up, the guy could be the gardener for all we know, but the paintings are now much more marketable.

Re-Install

A friend and I created a public sculpture that was temporarily installed on the waterfront. But it’s been in storage for years now. It was supposed to go into a new library, but the first shovelful on that project has yet to be turned.
And so we found another place to put it up, a peace garden, and it’s going to be beautiful!

From an Artist Friend:

“… so sorry to hear that you have lost most of your teaching jobs. This economy is really taking its toll on all of us. So many galleries are closing. I know that I am struggling to keep up with my studio space, as well. So I wish you the best of luck with your efforts. Is there some way for serious, professional artists (like us!) to survive when the teaching gigs and galleries dry up? I am trying to figure it out!!
“And I am totally with you when it comes to supporting the models. We are lucky to have so many excellent professional models here in (our town), and they are struggling, too.
“What is an arts community to do?!? Even during the depression, they had the WPA to hire artists and craftsman for public works. We need that now!
“Well, keep up the good work and don't loose heart.”
(Photos are to perk us all up: those seaweed looking things are actually two different types of seahorses!)

Can’t Say It Better

“The bright flatness of the California landscape needs a dark, vaulted interior.”
Raymond Pettibon, 2003

“Drawing with Kloe”

Here’s my OTHER big project, besides the “Trade Show” and the bungalow restoration, both of which are pretty much wrapped up—a series of videos in which I teach drawing. (See a little plastic Bratz lecture on proportions of the face, etc.) I’ve been working on them for a year, gradually getting more technically professional equipment and expectations. Now I’m really serious!
More to come.

Make Love, not War

Student work, Kloe style.

Patriot

Oh dear, I’ve gotten quite behind in this blog. Spent the 4th of July sitting on the porch of a house overlooking a neighborhood where people set off lots of amateur fireworks. After so many years of synchronized civic shows, it was refreshing. And nothing caught fire!

Kloe’s Prozac

Here’s what I recommend for depression: heavy exercise. It’s like a drug. I can be miserable before I get on my bike, skates, or walking shoes, but, moving into the sunlight, I begin to calm down. I start to think more clearly, I get hopeful again.
Of course it helps to keep that fantastic-plastic figure of mine in shape…

Coping

Over a year ago I realized teaching as a career wasn’t going to work out for me. I started to look into other options. But really, there’s nothing to compare to teaching at the college level for autonomy, creativity, and compensation. Not to mention the respect other people have for college professors.
Earlier this year my private college let me go, along with most of their other part-time teachers. Now the State of California is finishing us off. My normal teaching load was 4-5 classes per semester/quarter, or about 250 students. This fall I’m down to a three-hour-per-week art history lecture. Possibly one other short course through an adult ed program.
Those 200 students I won’t have in my classroom will be out of luck, because we adjuncts are not being replaced. I’m hoping this is where the public will be outraged, because these are not the poor or elderly who are affected, but the average taxpayer and his kid. I have an art historian friend who lost both of her upper division Renaissance classes. That means anyone trying to finish an art history degree won’t be able to, as the classes required no longer exist.
Anyway, it’s amazing that, though I knew the destruction of my career in education would happen, I’m still shell shocked. It’s like when you expect someone you love to die, you prepare for it, but when they do, you still can’t believe it, and your mourning is no less intense.
Well, life is short, we shouldn’t waste it, right?
A fitting masterwork, and one that continues to disturb: Giacometti’s “Woman with her Throat Cut,” 1932 at MOMA

Bad News

Lost my main teaching job for fall, my only studio cancelled. Can't even pretend it's OK anymore.

Surprises by Post

One of the best parts of curating the Trade Show has been getting the works in the mail, from both American and Turkish artists. It’s so exciting to open up a fat envelop and fine incredible artworks inside. Nothing has been damaged, although unfortunately, a few things seem to have been lost in transit (my fault).
I’m still accepting works—send me something!

New York and my Little Corner

I didn’t get a chance to write about my New Your art trip earlier this summer. Saw wonderful stuff--glad I did, as now I’m so down on art (or maybe it’s just the horrible prospect of me and most of my friends losing our jobs).
Anyway, went to Mary Boone, saw this highly designed paper work by Jacob Hashimoto. It was both lovely and cold somehow. The space is impressive with exposed rafters. It’s also a reminder not to show too much, not to overfill walls with work.
Last night my studio building was open for the first time during the local gallery walk. I had several series up, but it was overload.
Just opened two boxes of paintings from almost 15 years ago that were in storage. Don’t quite know what to think. I don’t even remember doing the paintings, which are citycsapes. They were produced right before I entered grad school, when I quit painting entirely.
Have I improved/developed/matured? Can’t say. Am not thrilled with the old work, but that’s typical—the only work I’m ever really happy with is what I’m doing NOW.
The best thing about last night was that Kid.02, on his own initiative, put prices on the stuff he’s been making in my studio, and sold a pirate painting for $5.

Swallow the Fish Hook, My Friend

I took my advanced students to a lecture on “How to approach a gallery with your fine artwork,” in which a colleague shared her knowledge about the multiple gallery systems. Obviously, it was an optimistic topic.
It’s been 12 years since I seriously embarked on my career, starting with my MFA. By now I know, it’s who you know. Pure and simple. There are so many artists making good/fascinating/complex/deserving work. Only a handful will be seen. Everyone else will give their work away, give up, or keep toiling on in obscurity.
My colleague was honest. Degrees do count, and the better the school, the better your chances. Your famous professors are probably your ticket into the gallery system. You must spend 10% of your time creating the work, 90% marketing. My little-big town has a permanent inferiority complex, so artists from here are ignored for those to the north or south.
Blah blah blah. Doesn’t mean people don’t want to learn to draw. Although come fall there will be precious few classes to help them learn how.
It’s all just too depressing.

First Opening a Complete Success

The first opening of the Trade Show looked great, and the opening was packed. Am still recovering. Glad all that work will be seen several more times in different cities.
Am barely teaching but busier than I’ve ever been. How is that possible? Is the depression making us manic?

Suddenly, Summer

We experienced our usual May Gray and June Gloom here in SoCal. Just when you’re ready for some heat, the weather bores. The best months of the year are January and February, when the air is startlingly clear and the rest of the country is in blizzards…
But a few days ago we awoke to blue skies, and by 10am it was HOT. Bamm, summer is here. Tourists crowd the streets wearing the most god-awful outfits, welcomed for the money they bring.
Our new reality is water rationing, which makes us realize how long and hot the summer promises to be. No running through the sprinkler or taking long showers. No watering the lawns or washing cars.
I particularly suffer at the moment, as my car air-conditioning is kaput. I drive around with all the windows down, kids complaining in the back seat.
Reminds me of when I was 23 and drove cross-country in my non-ac-ed orange GLC with one of my best friends. She was about to leave for what would turn out to be a four-year Peace Corp stint, and I was moving to DC. We made a huge arc in the dead of summer, tent camping through Yosemite and Yellowstone, the Badlands (oh, what we saw!), moving through the breweries of the Great Lakes, then down through the Bible Belt (relatives must have thought me damned forever), Kentucky where we bought shot glasses and used them, to end up in New Orleans somehow.
It was a great education for two freckled-faced young women. Driving with the windows down, drinking lemonade, adventures waiting.
Love these bloopy paintings of donuts and beer by Tracy Miller.

Trade Show Opens Tonight

I’ve been working on this exhibition for about six months. Tonight is the first opening; next month it will move north.
Tonight I’ll be showing about 120 6”x6” 2D works, including paintings, photos, prints and mixed media works. I’m completely satisfied with the work that was submitted--it’s exciting, challenging, beautiful and interesting.
Not to mention, a bitch to hang.
I’ll be adding more works as we go along. As the show grows the main structures will be more apparent, but right now I can see themes of politics, spirituality, the body (especially feminine beauty), connection to nature, and the process of artmaking.
Usually I’m afraid that no one will show up at my art openings, but with so many local artists participating, I think this time there will be bodies.
Above artists:
R. Reiss, USA
T.F. Ucar, Turkey
S. Aksoy, Turkey
M. Guieu, USA
L. Muller, USA

Artist Flees Turkey

And I thought I took risks.