Jessicarant's Blog

Wasting Time

jessica does things — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:32:16 +0000

Last night I found myself not sleepy, and having around and hour and a half before bed time to do whatever I liked. It is so rare for that to happen that I could not decide where best to spend that time. Do another page of Ulysses? Work on my graphic novel attempt? Start a new color aid slinky drawing? Read some of the Sunday N.Y.Times or any of the piles of books and magazines on every table in our house?
Meanwhile, my teenage son was sitting next to me on the couch in the small room where we watch t.v. He had his laptop on his lap (how’s that for proper use of machinery?) but he would look up and chat with me or ask me a question and was content. Next to him our lap dog was content too, lying there with squinty eyes waiting for her evening walk. Just about to come on to t.v. was the movie National Velvet, which I had just read about in Vogue, and which I realized I had never seen. So, instead of doing any of those other lofty and achievement oriented activities I chose to sit with my son and our dog, Alice, and kind of watch National Velvet.
As I watched and as I drank in the comfort and warmth of Alice and my friendly child I could feel guilt seeping in to my thoughts, but I pushed it away until it was actually time to go to bed.
This morning I woke as I knew I would, feeling just horrible for having wasted two hours when I complain all the time about not having enough time to do whatever it is I think I want to do. It was like a dieter who’d eaten a chocolate cake the night before, and woke feeling like they needed to run twelve miles to atone for it.
When is it okay to just enjoy a cozy moment? When do I get to feel like I am not less of an artist, person, wife, if I enjoy just being with my child and our dog? What’s the point of having a child and a dog if I am always running off to create or clean or make proper use of my time? What is proper use of time?
Just writing this is making me realize that the time I “wasted” last night wasn’t wasted and that I sound like a lunatic thinking that it was. Now it is the next day and I have a lot of time to do all sorts of things. So, I will not sit around with Alice while my son is at school and my husband is at work. I am going to do lofty things so that tonight, if I find myself awake and with a little spare time, I can just sit there, and enjoy it, which will be the right thing to do.

What’s Up?

jessica does things — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 03:58:17 +0000

Someone asked me recently what it is like to be in my head. I don’t think it is so different from anyone else. But, maybe it is.
I wake up and do what I need to do to get my son out the door and to school. Not much thinking yet.
After that is the daily fight within about whether or not to go back to bed, or get going.
I worry constantly about money, about not being good enough. I think about what I have to do, and sometimes I need to go to my job at the library.
Every day at some point I go into my studio and turn on news and write Ulysses onto gloves. Sometimes that is all I have time to do. I listen to the news and wonder how everything can have gone so wrong. Then wonder if things are just normal, because really during every time in history there have been terrible things. Wars, Nazi’s, tsunami’s, other fascists and dictators, serial killers, slavery, genocides, oppression of women, witch hunting, poverty, droughts, bad television, insipid music, general stupidity.
I usually try to clean something but whatever I clean it leaves me realizing that there is so much more to clean. I wonder why most people’s homes look neater and cleaner than my home. I only have one husband, one teenager, and one dog and two cats. How hard is it to keep a place clean? I think about the big and small projects to do around the house. I wonder if my life would feel different if my house was perfectly clean all over.
I usually listen a bit to an audio book. Right now it is Private Life by Jane Smiley. It’s good. And it is sad. Things were pretty awful for women during the time period of this book. But the main character never once talked about needing to clean anything.
I think about all the things I do not know and wonder how I can learn more and know so little. I wish I had time to listen to an hour of music every day. I get mad at myself for not making the time.
I usually question my ability to make good art while I make it. I think about my husband and wonder if he wishes he had married someone more conventional who earns more money and has a proper job.
Eventually I need to make the child a snack and dinner and usually have to take him someplace. To a class, to a friend’s house. I need to walk the dog. I make supper for the child. I have a glass of wine and sometimes watch more news, sometimes not. I constantly check e mail and facebook to see if anyone has discovered me. Nobody has.
I think about what I would say to various people if I could talk to them. Obama, Mitt Romney, my Boston art dealer who owes me money.
I think about my age and wish I were ten years younger because then I wouldn’t feel so quite behind. I think about the two people I know who are dying, right now. Who are living with a terminal illness, and who I cannot help.
I usually read a little of the Times or the ProJo. I talk to a friend or two. I e mail my mom and another friend or two.
I make myself work some in the evening. Then I watch television with Andy and Noah. Sometimes dark things like Dexter. Sometimes sweet romantic things like Glee. Sometimes silly things like Modern Family.
Time for bed. I go to bed and always read and always feel guilty about not having worked hard enough this day. I think about famous people who woke at five a.m. or went to bed at three a.m. so they could write a book. I am glad to spend time with my family but also I wish I could just work.
In bed I read whatever book I am reading. Right now it is Farenheit 451. I pat my cat and turn out the light. I am asleep in a nanosecond.
That’s pretty much the same for everyone, right?

Bravery

jessica does things — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:43:03 +0000

My son had to write one page about someone he knows who did something brave that changed things for the good. He asked me for help, which he rarely does since he is fifteen and pretty much knows everything. So, I figured this would be a piece of cake. I come from brave stock. People marching, protesting, fighting, railing, writing, screaming, and generally annoying anyone who gets in the way of progress for the under-served. I also know people right now who are going through treatments for horrible cancers, and people who are dying from cancer but not going through treatment because there is no treatment. Brave, right? But the tricky part was figuring out who did something brave that also changed things for the good. Then I realized how easy it would be if we knew someone who was fighting right now in our military, but we don’t. The teacher who gave this assignment is older than me and I am not especially young. Probably his dad like my dad, my husband’s dad and uncle, and pretty much every dad and uncle and brother I knew fought in a war. Not my brothers. My brothers were draft age during the war in Vietnam, and both managed not to go. And now, well, sadly none of the people that cross my path as friends are in the military. I mean, I am not sad that my friends aren’t in danger, just that it’s a no brainer to say that people who are, are brave, and certainly trying to change things for the good.
I thought of myself, protesting for one long summer in front of my local women’s health center, where three mornings a week a doctor provides abortions. There have been protestors from the right to life side of things who had giant billboard sized signs with every style of bloody human baby parts oozing and dripping. So a group of us effectively got a law passed that forced the other side to at least have smaller signs, and keep them thirty feet apart. It seems like a small thing, but it was difficult and frustrating. To me it changed our neighborhood for the good, and all the neighborhoods in my city because it is a city law. But my son goes to Catholic school so they might see things differently. I’m not sure I would be considered the brave one in this case.
Finally he chose my mom, who beat down a door in NYC, back in the 70′s when there was a city wide public school teacher strike. My parents were long time union supporters but for reasons I don’t know, never knew, this strike placed them on the other side. It was a terrible time in NY. Friendships were permanently severed and there was a lot of fury. So my mom led a group (mob one might say) of angry parents to the Bronx High School of Science and beat on the door, placing her smack dab in a NT Times column calling her the catalyst for this angry outpouring of people. I don’t think it took much bravery but it did take a lot of energy and some bravery and soon after this action the strike was settled.
The point of this is that I realized I lack bravery, or I feel brave if I were needed to be brave, but my particular lifestyle doesn’t seem to call upon that part of my psyche. I take my kid to school and go to openings. I do write to legislators and I go to the occasional protest (occupy Providence, here I come!), but I don’t need to be brave. I feel guilty about that. I am not going to join the army (too old, too much of a wimp, too much of a lefty, too blind). I am not going to Calcutta. I am trying to be more brave with my artwork. Not in a Robert Mapplethorpe kind of way, but just in the context of who I am. I have to push myself because I have a tendency to want everything to be attractive and carefully composed, down to the tiniest line.
Anyway, the paper is done and the next time something happens where I might need to be brave I’ll jump right in. But now, I am off to see the dentist for a cleaning, which if you knew me, takes as much courage as enlisting.

Imagine There’s No . . .

jessica does things — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 01:26:16 +0000

I imagine things all the time. I imagine being an amazing housewife…looking like Julianne Moore in Far From Heaven, but being happy like Mrs. C in Happy Days. I imagine conversations with everyone from Rosie O’Donnell, to Patti Smith, to Barack Obama. Conversations where at first I only have a minute to speak, but they are so captivated by my wit, my directness, that a moment turns into five minutes which turns into an hour which turns into a life long friendship. In truth, I did meet Rosie O’Donnell and she barely gave me the minute I asked for, and when it was over she hightailed it out of her studio.
I imagine being a hero of an ordinary kind. Where I am walking down a city street and save someone from a falling brick, a rushing train, an out of control car. Or driving down a highway I spot a burning car and help pull out it’s lone passenger. Then days later, after I am out of the hospital recovering from my burns, gashes, bumps on the head I am feted by Barbara Walters, Katie Couric, Brian Williams, Ellen, and when I am asked things like do I really think I am a hero (no) or what made me do such a crazy wonderful thing I manage to mention something about the state of the world and the crazy republicans, and then I am a folk hero on David Letterman and giving my two cents on everything from the elections to child rearing to the greatness of Harry Potter vs the trash that is the Twilight series.
But what I have a hard time imagining is any actual success in my life. I can’t imagine going to an opening of my artwork at a big institution, like MOMA or even the ICA Boston. I can’t imagine getting calls from collectors and gallery owners. I can’t imagine going to a big white space in Chelsea wearing some new great outfit and having my picture taken by Bill Cunningham. I can’t even quite imagine having day after day to simply do my artwork. I really can’t imagine making a living from my artwork, or meeting with the head curator at a museum to discuss the installation of my work.
According to Oprah, among other 20th century gurus, the fact that I can’t imagine my success means I will never have it. There must be some part of me that believes I will get there, because I do work on my art each and every day. I sit in a chair and write on gloves and draw small drawings. I go to openings and read about other artists. I guess I believe it is possible, but I am afraid to imagine it because unlike all those other fantasies, this one not coming true is just too painful to imagine.

Not the Last Lecture

jessica does things — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 04:19:03 +0000

This week I needed to go back to the place where I get my annual mammogram. I’ve had to do this each year for the past three years. It’s always been that the x-rays they took missed some view or were unclear…never because they saw something they did not want to see. So this year when I had to go back I was annoyed, thinking this place just wasn’t especially good at taking scans. I wasn’t scared at all, until the technician told me they saw a mass that needed further viewing. After more x-rays and then an ultrasound with some time to wait and worry I learned that it was only a benign cyst, and nothing more needed to be done.
I hadn’t had much time for anxiety to really set in…maybe forty minutes to an hour. In that time I didn’t think that it was going to be life or death…more like an easy life or a life interrupted by a lot of visits to doctors, calls to friends, losing hair, painful biopsies, and worst of all, whether and how I would tell my mother, who is frantic pretty much on an hourly basis. I wondered how I would deal with the car pool, when I would do my work, who I would call for a second opinion. When the scary bits were behind me I did not think…ahhh, now I understand what it is to appreciate every day. I did go running over to Starbucks and bought myself the medium (Grande) sized latte, plus some sort of pannini, plus a croissant for my son.
The truth is that for me it is impossible to live each day as though it were the last. If I really knew I had one day left of my life, well I’d waste it by being in a tizzy all day long. If I thought I had a month or two I suppose I would spend a whole lot of time with my family, maybe try to crank out more yellow gloves with more pages of Ulysses on them. I don’t think I would read a lot but I would sign up for netflix and watch a lot of movies. If I had a year or two that’s when things would get tricky. A lot of what I don’t want to do and what I imagine I would like to cut from my life are social obligations. The sort of thing where you are invited to do something and to not do it would be rude, and messy because in this idiotic tiny state if you don’t follow social mores you are extremely likely to run into the person you stiffed. So, if I knew I were dying in a year or maybe two but I still looked great I would probably still have to answer to those sorts of obligations or I would have to answer every invitation with “gee, I normally would love to come to your talk, show, event, but you see, I only have one year to live…maybe two and I am just not that into you”. I mean…that isn’t going to happen. I think if I had a year or two to live I would be as obligated as ever, and just more resentful about it.
The very night of my breast cancer scare I had agreed to go to a talk at a gallery about collecting art. I signed up and made a reservation because I knew a few of my art friends would attend, I know one of the speakers, I know the woman who runs the gallery where the talk took place. I wanted to go…but I partly wanted to go to network with said artists, curators, and collectors. If I knew I was dying I probably wouldn’t bother to network. It’s such a slow process and usually yields no results except for another few friends on facebook. But I was fine and so I went. I didn’t mind the talk though I was sad that the main collector in RI does not collect my work. And I was also sad about a few other things, which always happens to me when I go to a social event like that. I find myself thinking too much and fretting about my stature or lack of it and I think everyone else is swell and doing fantastically and I just want to run home to my dog.
I stayed. I smiled, I muddled through and talked with people. I made a witty comment everyone seemed to enjoy. I found people to add to my facebook friends list.
I am so glad I do not have breast cancer. But if I did, I don’t think things would have changed in the way it seems to change some people. I have friends who have had to deal with cancer. They do seem better at holding on to the things they enjoy, and making choices that make them happier. I am close to one person who was given a diagnosis of one to two years to live. I think about her all the time now. I wonder how she is dealing with this new reality. It has not changed who she is though I think it has changed what she does. Sometimes I think about her when I am deciding whether or not to do something. Right now that’s as close as I have gotten to living my life as if each day were the last. That’s not profound, but it’s the truth.

Someones and Somethings Update

jessica does things — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 01:39:19 +0000

I want to let people know that I took action. I called the Someones who I thought had been ignoring me. As is usually the case in these matters, they were very busy and were delighted (or sounded delighted) to speak with me on the phone.
I e-mailed the Someone who had received the Something from me but had not responded and this time the Someone responded immediately and told me that the Something was in the hands of a Big Someone.
So, at least I can put those two issues to rest for a while.
Now I am hoping to hear from the Big Someone about the Something in her hands. If I don’t, I know it won’t be anything personal this time. But it will be a disappointment.
If I do hear from the Big Someone I will write a post about it because Everyone will want to know, and be happy for me, I hope.

Someones and somethings.

jessica does things — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 02:34:43 +0000

The problem with a blog, and with facebook, is that I am too cowardly and also too polite to write about some of the people and things that are really uppermost in my mind and to say what I want to say about personal matters, friends, misunderstandings, and all the juicy things that eventually become a nice bestseller.
I used to worry about my journal, the one I write in with a pen on actual sheets of paper. I once thought that it too could end up in the hands of people I had written all about and could hurt them or make them angry or burn a bridge or two. But now I know I am being quaint. Who does anything with journals anymore except carve them up and turn them into art books?
So, for this month I am going to have to write in the conventional format because the troubles I want to share are too personal to share. Good grief. How silly is that?
I shall say that all my life I have been the oversensitive sort. I always think someone or more than one person is angry at me for putting my foot in my mouth. I often think people have forgotten me when in fact they are just busy or not so great at communicating. I know this about myself and I have tried to change it. I have gotten better but like people on diets who yo yo their whole lives I have never gotten the hang of being carefree in that particular way.
So, lets just say I could use a little t.l.c. from certain people who will have to guess who they are. And of course they won’t. They won’t have any idea. All the people who always love me will respond in case they are the ones and the actual ones won’t even read this or will read it but not have any clue that it is they are The Ones.
And I am crushed by not getting a response to something I sent to someone even though it hasn’t been very long since I sent it. I am crushed but also afraid to ask what the mystery someone thinks of the mystery something in case that someone hasn’t had a chance to look at it or hasn’t had a chance to respond to it or hates it so much that to tell me would cause an unbearable rift between us and the someone doesn’t want to do that. Or even worse that the someone hates the something and is so embarrassed for me that the someone is going to pretend I never sent the something.
Does that make sense?
The one fact I can say with a little more clarity is that I have a close friend who is a curator who is not on fb nor does she read blogs. I love her and she loves me but sometimes it is more than a little frustrating to listen to her go on and on and on about artists whose work she thinks is fan-fucking-tastic even though there is room for those artists and me. Especially me because at the moment my art is on a table in my studio not making any waves or ripples or anything. It is piling up because the older I get the more driven I am to work because I might die at any moment and I don’t want to leave this world without some tiny bit of success. And by success I don’t mean beautiful family, nice enough house and all that. By success I mean a show in a museum or gallery in NYC, a review in Art In America, and decent prices for my work.
Wow. I hope that spilling of my inner self doesn’t come back to haunt me, but the truth is that as soon as I hit the PUBLISH button I shall be haunted.
Here goes…

It’s Life and Death

jessica does things — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 03:06:59 +0000

Two weeks ago I found out that someone very close to me has a terminal illness. I have seen death up close before. But this seemed to have come out of the blue, and she is not very much older than me. She didn’t want to speak to anyone for a little while after she got the diagnosis. I didn’t know how she was so I imagined the worst. I fell asleep pretty easily but I would awaken early and conjure images of her under covers, scared, sad, in pain, near death.
She called me a few days after I’d heard the news and when I heard her voice I almost dropped the phone. She sounded strong and clear, scared of course, but still totally her.
Of course life is not a movie, and she has many months or even almost two years of living to do before her illness ends her time on earth. The ability to exist with that information is as puzzling and difficult as the news of her illness.
Being human I think of myself most of the time. Everything that happens turns into some parable about my life, my problems, my days and nights. Even this, which should be all about her, has become about me. I mean I always wondered what I would do if I had X amount of time to live, knowing it, having a date. It’s like lottery fantasies, only sadder. So, I think about it more than usual. Would I use this information to get a residency at Yaddo or MacDowell? Would I quit all my jobs (not that the loss of income would make any difference) and devote my time to Noah, Andy, and my artwork? Would that devotion mean anything in the big scheme of things?
I never believed that a person who wasn’t actually facing imminent death could actually live life as though it could end in an instant, because I think that except when you are in a war, a death camp, a prison, a cancer ward,the bottom of a canyon, you never really and truly believe that your life will end in an instant, so you go on worrying about dustballs, irritations with family, the cost of gas, politics, polar bears, global warming, missed movies, and a hundred other silly and important things.
I am always aware of time and of money and I always feel like there is never enough of either of them. I want to finish my gloves and my slinky drawings, see my son graduate from college, maybe find someone to love, win a Tony award. I want to renovate my house, replace old carpets with cat poo stains, thoroughly clean my whole house.
So, I have to think about this person who is dying with a capital D. But I guess it doesn’t do any real good to imagine my own death unless it will make a difference in the way I live. And the truth is that I pretty much do devote as much time as I can to my artwork, my son and husband, and my friends, as I can. I miss a lot of movies. I think that most of the time I make good choices about how to spend my days, but I’ll never know. I am angry that it has taken me so long to be driven…if I were ten years younger I’d be right on track. But I have been granted this much time so far and it’s a lucky thing, because I am a late bloomer for sure.

Am I Worried?

jessica does things — Thu, 26 May 2011 20:24:15 +0000

A friend and fellow artist wondered if I worry about the fact that the materials for my Ulysses Glove project, which are utilitarian yellow rubber gloves marked with sharpies, will eventually degrade.
If this question had been posed a decade ago, the answer would have been “yes”. For a while I was selling prints which are part of my Broomstick Series. They are giclee, which basically are laser prints. When this technology first came on the scene it was wonderful for artists like me, who had images many people wanted, but not many thousands of people. It didn’t cost much to have prints made, and you could buy what you needed…five or ten at a time, instead of say, a thousand. So, no storage worries, and no huge investment.
I was selling the prints for around $125.00 each, give or take, sometimes matted, sometimes not. Some stores wanted them and in those cases I provided a frame too.
It’s embarrassing to tell you how much I worried about the possibility that the inks would degrade, the print might become faded, the color might turn from a bright red to a purple-red, to a faded purple-red. I wondered how I could ever make it up to my customers should this tragedy ever occur, how much I could lose, how I could keep track.
While I am deeply appreciative of those people who have, and still do buy my prints, I have stopped worrying about what happens five, ten, twenty years down the road. For one thing, most people know that if you hang any sort of artwork in the sun, colors will fade. But really, for $125.00, some of which goes to presentation, for buying the prints from my printer, for shipping, should I worry for my entire life that this item will have a life beyond mine?
I have read about Eva Hesse, Julian Schnabel, Andy Goldsworthy, all artists who made artworks without spending one second worrying about the consumer of their product. Especially in the case of Schnabel, who was throwing plates onto oil paintings, it was obvious that gravity might do some damage to these paintings. When they did, it wasn’t the artist who was on the hook to repair the work; it was the consumer. In the case of many of the works by Eva Hesse, anytime a museum wants to mount a large exhibit of her work, they have to pay to re-create pieces that have disintegrated long, long ago.
I’m not going to be the judge of what is right or wrong about this, but I am not going to worry any longer about the ramifications of artwork not lasting forever, especially when I am selling it for a pittance.
In the case of the gloves, I am funding this project completely by myself. I am buying all the gloves, retail, and the pens, also retail. I am going to spend approximately three years making it. If some grand institution (MOMA, can you hear me?) wants to buy this work, for say 10, 20, 30 thousand dollars, it becomes their problem.
Also, this project is deeply personal and is partly about life and death. It seems appropriate that someday, the gloves will turn to dust, just as I have, just as everyone does.
Anyway, I am excited about the prospect of creating something that needs a custom made case or a specific air temperature, proper lighting, and maybe a team of people to restore the work should something happen to it. By the time it does, I hope to have spent my big money, and done it without a worry in the world.

A Big Week?

jessica does things — Tue, 03 May 2011 14:46:51 +0000

I am going to begin with a quote from Emmylou Harris, which I read in the Sunday NY Times:
“Sometimes you have to just go and look in a completely different direction and completely change your environment to break up your logjam.”
I feel like I am in a logjam. I am not sure in my case if that is a bad thing. I think it is, but the reason I’m not sure is that consistency and boundaries inform my work.
I am still adding new drawings to my slinky series. These drawings are popular and good. I have tried to break out of the small size and sometimes use unfamiliar colors, with excellent and not so excellent results, but essentially they have not radically changed over the past two years, though they have changed. I remember the very first ones I did, which were on 5″ x 7″ paper. I had no control over the slinky so they were always tilting this way and that, mostly from left to right. Now I can’t help but have control, so if I want them to be straight they are. I’m sad about that. The lack of control added an element of surprise.
I struggle every day with wondering if my work should be bigger and more, if there should be more of an idea behind them.
At the gallery that sells my slinky drawings, Carroll & Sons in Boston, there is about to be a “show” incorporating a dancer on some sort of digitized Sol Lewitt floor. I had always hoped to have an exhibit of my drawings at this gallery. My work has been in the flat files for over a decade. But I can see that regular drawings on paper have no place in the scope of what the owner, Joseph Carroll is trying to do in his gallery. He shows installations with sound, film, chanting, huge quantities of knitted fabric which the viewer can add too or take from. I mean, I could see my gloves there but so far he hasn’t offered.
If I had a show of all the slinky drawings I have ever done I think it would be a beautiful and important show. But they are dispersed in different homes, sold to different people. I don’t even know how many Joseph has at the moment. I am working on a new one now. I think I am running out of steam for these, or perhaps they are about to morph into some other series that will last me a number of years. Is it a logjam, or is it a boundary I have made for myself, that allows me to push inward instead of busting out?
Is there any place anymore, any large institution where beautiful drawings can be considered a force?
Am I too old to consider the thought of being an important artist? Should I just keep doing what I am doing, enjoy the process and not worry about where it leads?
These are the thoughts that are swooshing in my head this late morning, while the things in the washer swoosh also.
By the way, Osama Bin Laden was shot dead by U.S. Nave Seal (soldiers? guys? commando’s? forces?), the night before last. Naturally there have been mixed feelings about it. I am glad he is gone from this earth, in the ocean, also swooshing until he becomes food for the fishies. I worry about the consequences. I am glad it happened under Obama’s watch. I am slightly ashamed of being glad about that. Everything I think has a counter thought. It’s tiring.
This Friday I am having a lesson in intaglio printing. Maybe this will be just the thing to shift the logjam, but not bounce me out of orbit.