What I Did for Love

I just watched “Every Little Step”, a documentary about remaking the musical, “A Chorus Line.” It came out when I was 10 years old and is seared into my consciousness—unappologetically raw about what it takes to be a dancer.
Watching it again, I realize it speaks to all the arts. How difficult to be an artist, how much sacrifice. Especially the parts about trying to win parental approval for what you do, and always falling short. Parents don’t seem to understand, or give enough support. I hope I’m not that sort of parent. I want the best for my kids (success, ease, family), but I also want them to know that if they have that drive to be an artist, then that’s it. Settled. Your life will be hard, but I will be proud.
Painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1982

Happy Thanksgiving

The Blue Mosque, Istanbul, 2009

Funhouse Painting

I’ve been painting a lot recently, several hours straight each day.
For the past two days it hasn’t gone well: colors and light not quite gelling, paint not the right consistency, texture too precious. I worked on a different painting each day, trying to stay loose, knowing I wasn’t improving the pieces, but pushing through. I have to figure out how to salvage these two paintings, which could work if edited well.
Tonight I opened my studio for the monthly public showing. Didn’t want to waste the hours, so I threw up a new painting. After about 30 minutes it dawns on me I’m painting well, that it’s so easy, that my brush picks up the correct colors each time, even thought I’m being interrupted by people asking questions and friends stopping by. I love that little creeping feeling that I can’t make a wrong mark, and as confidence grows, I paint better.
There’s no clear reason why I painted well today and poorly yesterday. I just have to accept my rollercoaster abilities, be happy for the highs and work through the lows.

Ladies

Saw this at Fahey/Klein gallery on La Brea. Rasmus Mogensen's "Perfectly Natural" photo exhibit of very tall, thin models, made taller and thinner by Photoshop, was perplexing. How should a feminist react? The artist didn’t hide the fact they were creations, and monstrous, but many in the opening crowd didn’t seem to understand them as altered. We are so used to seeing the supermodel image, we accept it as fact, although unreachable.
After looking at the huge prints for a while, and not feeling outraged or intimidated, I decided they were so foreign that they had become objects to worship. These were not to be hidden in the bathroom or bedroom, but displayed in modern living rooms or above the brave boardroom table. The angle from which they were shot, the smoothness of the skin, the impossibility of their existence, made the women strange angels.
The next show I’m curating will be “Women by Women.” I want to explore a specific vision of womenhood in Southern California. Do we buy into the perfect form because we are surrounded by it? Do we rebel against it? As third-wave feminists, can we embrace the erotic while not commodifying it?

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.

New Day

I’m formally declaring my bad luck streak is over. HEAR THAT?
Happy bday Gram, miss ya.

McM

My Irish grandmother, Frieda McM, circa 1915. I also have and wear the locket in the photo—it contains a tiny photo etching of her mother, whose name I don’t know. That’s the extent of memory.
Happy St. Patrick’s.

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.

Whoo Hoo!

Painted floor today, a lovely chocolate brown! Now the space is empty potential, waiting for all my supplies and paintings.
Start of a new chapter!!!

44th

Finally.

Girl Friends

Count on me.

Exploded

I am at a complete loss.

Greek Paintings

Here are some of my new paintings. Showed them to a few friends last night, the reaction was mostly positive.
I have only a few more days left to paint here. Then my time, sadly, is up.

Worrying Signs in Lalaland

• Went into a Subway the other day, all the workers were behind plexi. I thought it was for sanitary reasons, but the cashier was also enclosed. He told me they’d been robbed multiple times, along with the other businesses around. This was in an OK neighborhood.
• Went into my bank, and there were big signs to take off hats and sunglasses. Again, robbery, in a supposedly safe, upscale suburban neighborhood.
• Went in to teach, and found out the week before the entire school had been shut down and classes cancelled for a day. The brass handles on the water main had been stolen, which meant no water for flushing.
• Went to a pretty classy dessert bar in the downtown area. There was an armed guard at the door. He was nice. Explained that earlier there’d been a shooting. Right there.
Angels are falling. (Artwork by a student.)

Rules

K: We have rules in our classrooms.
02: Like no talking when the teacher is talking.
K: Exactly, my students listen to me.
02: Well, they’re grownups—of course they follow the rules!

Love Song

Your love, dear one, is as lovely to me
As sweet soothing oil to the limbs of the restless,
As clean ritual robes to the flesh of gods,
As fragrance of incense to one coming home
Hot from the smells of the street.

It is like nipple-berries ripe in the hand,
Like the tang of grainmeal mingled with beer,
Like wine to the palate when taken with white bread.

While unhurried days come and go,
Let us turn to each other in quiet affection,
Walk in peace to the edge of old age.
And I shall be with you each unhurried day,
A woman given her one wish: to see
For a lifetime the face of her love.

New Kingdom Egypt, c. 1200 BCE

Another Death

Yesterday an artist colleague died suddenly, relatively young. Although I was surprised, I also understood. He led one of those hard lives we traditionally allow creative people. We want our artists to experience life sharply, extremely, and give this information back to us in their work. And so these men and women are fragile emotionally and physically, and they sometimes die, like Heath Leger, before they should have.
But we don’t consciously choose these highes and lows, this non-stable lifestyle so different from the norm. Most of us can’t really help that we crave deep, often painful experiences. It feeds our work, and our work makes us hungry for new ways of being. Not all artists are like this, but many, including me, are.
(Another Martin Puryear sculpture at MOMA.)

To My Sister

You are holding me up.
Thank you.

Beautiful

Christmas.
love,
Kloe

Funeral

Got through it. Party was good. Everyone exhausted.
That evening we saw a Black Crowned Night Heron. It stood in the light a few minutes, and then unfolded it’s squatty body into a huge and graceful W as it took off.
Am going to NYC tomorrow to be with friends and see art.
Take care of yourselves,
Kloe