label challenged

In keeping up with current social media I feel the need to be on LinkedIn…trouble is I can’t define myself enough to finish my profile. Our society likes you to be one thing. well you are allowed to be 2 things sometimes like a coffee shop barista/struggling actress, or a hip hop artist/reality TV star

But child life specialist/former college faculty/former elem school teacher/artist not so much. See the problem is the connections those spheres are generally very different. And also choosing one seems to delegitimize the other. So how to prioritize?

If I say artist, my educational career feels shot through the heart and dumped in the toilet, if I say child life specialist my art feels like some mere housewife hobby conjuring Bob Ross happy trees images

1. Which do more people know me as… child life specialist based on patient census contact. Now If you go for internet hits artist will win.

2. Which earns more money- hourly… art—ironic huh-- let this be a lesson to all your parents who attempt to encourage your children to be responsible and dissuade them children from pursuing art careers.

3. Which have I invested more in… well given the cost of graduate school (okay I had a scholarship- so I have probably spent more on paints now)

4. Which am I better at…umm I don’t know? you decide…

It has be thinking deeper about our outdated linear, hierarchical, single track view of career paths, a topic I will save for discussing later.

so I guess I am destined to be LinkedIn’s Sybil?? given I read a disturbing article the other day in Scientific American Mind on the links between artists and schizophrenia—-

sometimes to amuse myself I make things out of cake…

yah I do this on occasion. I can’t do it everyday or it gets tiresome but when the mood strikes, kitschy edible sculpture projects have bizarre appeal. My cousin dean and his girlfriend jenny created the very cool short film Marcel the Shell which (by now I expect you have seen if you are internet savvy). Marcel made it into the Sundance film festival this year. 

So in honor of the accomplishment I made this for our Christmas dinner party. I crafted this marcel the shell cake out of cake and fondant. Poor smart son #3 developed this deep attachment to the cake and kept asking for marcel the rest of vacation and expecting me to make more of them…

well in case you ever need to know how to make marcel the shell in 3d cake form. You start with almond pound cake cooked in small loaf pans for the shoes, a 6” round (cut in half and remaining half used to build out the 3-d form of the shell, and some mini cupcakes (for the ends of the shells) You need  a batch of buttercream frosting and a batch of marshmallow fondant. I crafted this while watching 1/2 of the movie White Christmas (a requisite holiday activity).

Really it was pretty easy and fun… to which you will probably respond in your best marcel voice “oh yah compared to what??!!”

2011’s not quite resolution

well I am not really a hard and fast goal setter, crazy I know. I don’t do well with resolutions because well I am not the most disciplined person in the world and I actually detest overly structured things- they suffocate me (I know so surprising to hear this from an artist). Also because fundamentally I disagree with being so set on one path that I don’t take advantage of other things as they arise. I always prefer to do “end of year evolutions” instead of new years resolution (that is where I go through what I accomplished in the last year and say wow that was a great year—plus it is so much more reaffirming). I love the unexpected way opportunities and experiences unfold. This year I am semi- breaking my own no resolution rule and setting a goal of kicking out 50 paintings this year? can I do it—not sure, but it sounds really fun. So far this year I have done 6 and 3 (1/2s) and its only the 16th of January… so we’ll see what this year holds.

One of the pieces I completed this past week street view 30x40 acrylic on canvas.

this morning I stayed in my pajamas

till 1pm and painted these while simultaneously playing ancient Egypt with palmer… and then to celebrate our fun morning we made a delicious 3 layer white cake with silky chocolate buttercream frosting… (okay I did a few small productive tasks in there too, but honestly not too many)

yesterday I was thinking about color and when I woke up I was channeling hans hofmann and couldn’t do anything else till I worked it out. Its crazy how your thoughts, emotions, & conversations spit themselves out in the form of paintings… it’s a strange form of catharsis and continuation…you somehow capture and concrete a given feeling, thought, or experience.

delicious

I finished this piece for my domestic series before my trip to jordan and somehow got too busy to post it.