This is the art journal I started in April 2020. Obviously a BIT of a hectic time here on this planet, and especially in New York City. There was lot of processing going on in these pages.
I tend to note the date that I start my art journals, and not the date I finish them. (Often, I will write “established on xyz date” inside the front cover — this one was on established on April 20th, 2020.) But I never really consider them “all done” because I always feel free to go back in and do more. (in this type of a journal, I don’t go from page to page sequentially, I build layers on multiple pages over time.) In filming, I did see a few pretty unfinished pages, and one entirely blank spread! This hardly ever happens. I’m tempted to leave it just as an indicator of what an unusually disorganizing time it was.
I worked on this book most actively through the Fall of last year, when other art journals began to capture more of my attention. But because I tend to work on each art journal most intensely during a specific period of time, they really do end up being something of a time capsule. It’s funny how many pages I’ve already totally forgotten about, just a year later. And some of these pages have already gone on to have additional lives as inspirations for other art works, or as art works on their own.
May 2021 Art Challenge Calendar
This month is all about the mermaids. It all started with the original “MerMay” launched in 2016 by animator Tom Bancroft. The “official” MerMay is still around, with prizes furnished by Wacom — but it’s also launched an ocean full of spin-off challenges and prompt lists. I’ve gathered some of the cleverest ones here.
Now, if mermaids aren’t your jam, you can always take the prompts in any direction you want. Candidly, I wasn’t immediately thrilled when I realized that the best art challenges this month were all on this theme — I’d prefer a little more variety, but hey, I’m just the curator. Still, a little research revealed that mermaids are an ancient and global myth, heavily freighted with stories and symbolism that could be quite inspiring. (Also, I cannot tell you how hard it was to avoid puns in that last sentence.)
Let’s play the first prompts game! See if you can match the first prompt to the challenge it belongs to — click on the challenge to find out if you’re right. Some of them are once again quite tricky!
First prompt
Moonlit Serenade
Donut
The World
Angelic
Ice
Key
15th century
See My Art in These Upcoming Exhibits
I have four paintings that will be on exhibit starting in May. (August 2021 update: Two of the paintings are still available, see below for details. If you’re interested in purchasing, please contact me!)
“Sea/Sun/Set.” Mixed media on canvas, 18 x 24 inches. Included in Art of Water V at James May Gallery. May 1st - July 31st, 2021.
“The Dancers Dance the Dance.” Mixed media on paper. 7x10 inches. Included in Mujeres Mujeres Mujeres at Raices Taller 222 Art Gallery in Tucson, Arizona. May 1st - June 12th, 2021. SOLD
“Completing the Thought.” Mixed media on canvas, 12 inches diameter. Included in Neuroanatomy at Stone Valley Arts, Poultney, Vermont. May 15th-June 27th, 2021. SOLD
“Brain in my Heart.” Mixed media on canvas, 9x12 inches. Included in Neuroanatomy at Stone Valley Arts, Poultney, Vermont. May 15th-June 27th, 2021.
On Art Supplies
Like most creative people, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, and trying out, the tools of my trade. The actual substances that I use to create something, whether analog or digital, are a forever partner in my creative process. As the artist Anni Albers said, "we must come down to earth from the clouds where we live in vagueness, and experience the most real thing there is: material."
Let's not pretend this a chore — when I have free time, I can’t imagine anything better than going supply shopping. When I emerged from lockdown, the very first store I went to was McNally Jackson Goods for the Study, and I literally cried. It's possible I became a writer because I love stationery, and an artist simply because I needed a reason to buy art supplies.
With that said, my resources are limited and I so I have some basic principles that govern what I buy for my studio. Additionally, I've noticed that there's a lot of...let's say "mishegos and magical thinking" around supplies for both art and writing that are well worth discussing. (And note, when I say art supply, I mean supplies for both visual art and writing.)
So let's dive in:
1- The best art supplies are the ones you already have.
There have been many times that I've waited to start a project until I got a certain supply — a certain type of adhesive, a color of fiber, a particular kind of folder to store my reference materials, whatever — and when I finally got going on the project, I didn't use it.
Or, I got fed up with waiting and created a solution that worked just as well with what I already had.
So, I try to remind myself that new art supplies are really entertainment. Excellent and necessary creative entertainment that feeds my soul, but not a reason for delay or procrastination.
In practical terms, this means when I go on an art supply mission, I browse extravagantly — but my purchases are mostly limited to replenishing what I’ve used up.
Exceptions are:
A) I am going to collapse with desire if I don’t get that thing — and that thing costs less than $20. ($20.01 and I have a 24 hour waiting period.)
B) I’m going to buy mixed media materials, such as materials for collage — a whole different category, which I'll discuss a different time.
Another exception was during the pandemic, when there was no real browsing. Then, I signed up for a surprise art supply box service — I did Art Snacks and then Sketch Box — that fulfilled my desire for novelty very nicely.
This is also important for me to remember when I see an artist I respect (or a teacher whose class I'm taking) use a particular tool and think, my life will be perfect if I have that too. This is magical thinking. It's never the tool, it's always the person who's using it.
2-The best art supplies are the ones you have and use.
At an earlier time in my life, I bought a lot of art supplies and didn't use them. Partially this was a lack of time for art projects, and partially I was waiting for...I don't know what, to get better at art, for a worthy project, something like that.
In writing this would play out with doing research and then not wanting to "use it up" on this a particular project. Maybe I'd wait for a book, or an essay for the New Yorker that was definitely going to be assigned to me at any moment.
This is folly. Life doesn't last forever. It's amazing, but what seems magical and precious now will not seem that way in a few years, all different things will! I try to remind myself to use the best of what I've got and use it now.
I like how the actor Mads Mikkelsen frames this: "Everything I do is the most important thing I do. Whether it’s a play or the next film. It is the most important thing. I know it’s not going to be the most important thing, and it might not be close to being the best, but I have to make it the most important thing. That means I will be ambitious with my job and not with my career. That’s a very big difference, because if I’m ambitious with my career, everything I do now is just stepping-stones leading to something — a goal I might never reach, and so everything will be disappointing. But if I make everything important, then eventually it will become a career. Big or small, we don’t know. But at least everything was important."
3 - The best art supplies are whatever is in your budget.
Most art teachers will tell you to avoid "student grade" paints, low end paper, cheap brushes, and so on.
This advice is well-intentioned.
Professional-grade art materials are often just easier to work with — they're more consistent, you can often use less of them to achieve a good result, the paper doesn't buckle as much, the brushes don't leave bristles all over your page.
You're not fighting with your materials, in other words, which is nice when you're a beginner because you have enough to deal with.
However! There's also a lot of snobbery that goes along with this, along with some idea that the difference between "real artists" and rank amateurs are the art supplies they use.
This may be true in some very traditional corners of the art world, but in the larger sense this is total bullshit. Pay attention the next time you watch an art documentary about a Big Whoop Artist — you will not see fancy wooden paint palettes and porcelain brush holders, you will see paper plates and recycled coffee tins. Jackson Pollock and Pablo Picasso both used house paint in their art practice, Jean Michel Basquiat made precious, multi-million dollar art work son demolition debris, like doors. (When they become fancy artwork, these substrates are called "vernacular objects.”)
Of course I'm not saying there's no difference between fine oil paint and house paint, but since good art supplies cost a pretty penny, it can be hard to get over that and actually use the materials without stressing out about "waste." A good teacher I once had would tell us to imagine that paint is free, which was a helpful idea as long as I could hold the fantasy— but of course, paint is not free.
I should say that I was already inherently suspicious of the exhortations to spend more money on art supplies because of my experience as a writer. I already knew, from myself and from my students, that the most beautiful blank journal in the world could remain that way forever, while a bunch of crumpled napkins from a diner would be scribbled over with ideas. (And yes, with writing the materials are literally meaningless to the final product, which is not the case with visual art, But that doesn't mean that writers don't obsess over pens, paper and various software just as much as artist stress over their supplies.)
So here's the truth: I was able to make the most progress in my art when I bought a set of craft paints from Michael's and used them on old magazine pages, rather than attempting to use my lovely but pricey Acryla gouache paints on a $27 sheet of Arches paper.
Also —SHOCKING NEWS— not everything is worth what it costs! Sure, some fancy brands have a discernible difference in quality, but honestly, I have both extremely expensive Kolinsky Sable paint brushes, and one-third less expensive synthetic brushes, and I prefer the less expensive brand. (This isn't a financial anxiety about "using it up," which really isn't a factor with well-cared for brushes, it's really just that I like the cheaper ones better.)
Now, for some artists, this is not an issue — for whatever reasons, they aren't wired to worry about money in this way.
But because the way you make progress in art is by making a lot of art, this can be a formidable obstacle.
In which case, the best art supplies are the ones that cost what you feel comfortable spending.
I have a fairly exhaustive guide to the art supplies I most use right here.
TV Journals - Spring 2020 and Spring 2021
Almost every night, we watch the news. And almost every night, I sit with my sketchbook and draw some of what I’m hearing. I draw the words that I hear, sometimes the people I see on the screen, sometimes just things that pop up into my mind. (Usually because someone on television will use a noun or a verb that I decide to draw.).
Last Spring, when the morgue trucks and moving trucks became a fixture on the streets of New York City, this practice was a way for me to hold on to sanity. When the US death toll went over 10,000 in early April, I decided to start noting the ever increasing number every night. (At that point, the US death toll was virtually indistinguishable from the New York City death toll.) And when the death toll hit 100,000 on May 28th, I stopped.
Then, I was using simple materials — brush pen, black ink. (I have a neat hack on this that I’ll share below.) It was all I could manage in that moment.
I took a little break from this practice, roughly between the election and the insurrection. I was mainlining news at that point nearly constantly and didn’t want to make any art about it. (There are a lot of flowers and cats in my journals in that period.) Also, I’d started weaving. Any repetitive fiber art is an enormously soothing activity to do while watching upsetting things on television!
Anyway, the news hasn’t gotten any less upsetting, really, but I picked up the practice again.. Now, however, I’m in the mood for color, which maybe is a hopeful sign? Some then and now images from the sketchbook for your viewing pleasure.
Materials: The 2020 journals were made with black ink in a brush pen. I love Kuretake brush pens, but I try to stay away from anything non-refillable.(Because the environment, and also because I’m cheap. ) These waterbrush pens, or anything similar, can be filled with any kind of ink. (They’re not really meant for this purpose so if you’re moving around with them, I’d keep them in a plastic bag in case of leaking. But this wasn’t an issue in 2020.) After extensive trial and error, my favorite black-black ink is Noodler’s X Feather.
The journals themselves are 9x12 Artist’s Loft sketchbooks from Michaels. They are also totally affordable, good quality, and get the job done. The 2021 journals are on magazine pages, which I cover up totally with Posca pens and then Copics and Tombows.
Your Brain on Pandemic Standard Time
You can add me to the list of people noting that time itself has gotten so weird during the pandemic. It's true: My sense of time has become totally suspect!
I've long had routine of reviewing a month's worth of journal entries, at the beginning of a new month. I make some summary notes of what went well, what didn't, ideas I want to pursue and so on.
It was through this process that I started to realize over this plague year that my sense of time was getting a little...hinky. As I read through my daily journals at the end of the month, I've been startled when I realized that events that happened only a couple of weeks ago, felt like that they happened much longer ago.
It's so disorienting! As best as I can figure it, events have become pretty unattached to their correct chronological time in my mind, after roughly 48 hours.
For example, I'm writing this at 9:45 a.m., and I can easily remember what happened yesterday and when in time it happened: exercise class in the afternoon, what I photographed and edited in the morning, what I had for breakfast. I can pretty much do the same with the day before.
Reaching back beyond that though, my memories lose their "time stamp." Monday might as well have been a few months ago. I'm not going to say I remember events from earlier in the week in the exact the same way I remember things from college or high school twenty years ago — but more recent events have that darker, fuzzier, sepia-toned quality of a memory of a time much longer ago.
I've struggled to explain this, even to myself. This isn't an issue with my memory per se, I remember things just fine. (Or just has fine as I've always done — I remember conversations and events almost with complete recall, I've never had a good memory for proper names.) It's memory by chronology that's gotten warped. My mental filing system has gotten— and this is the technical term— fucked up. The memories are fine, but if feels like the "metadata" has gotten corrupted.
As I mentioned, a lot of smart people have been documenting the pandemic's effects on our mental health and on our very brains themselves. If I'm reading all of it correctly, we're experiencing collective brain damage. Our sense of time is all about how we encode memories, and that process is dependent on dopamine — and life in lockdown and/or stress and/or fear messes with our dopamine levels, among other delights!
If we’re all brain damaged in similar ways, I suppose that make it…the new normal? I don’t know. It’s a comforting thought, anyway. If you are also experienced corrupted memory metadata and want to feel a little better about it, I recommend:
This episode of On Being with Krista Tippet, “What’s Happening with Our Nervous Systems?” I listened to this as I was feeling the side effects of my second Covid shot, and it was very soothing and informative.
What is Happening to Our Sense of Time During Covid? One of the first things I read that clued me in that I wasn’t the only one experiencing the time warp, and that it was a real thing and not just more pandemic bitching.
This study on “Novelty Input and Novelty Output” during quarantine, if you like reading studies. (I started taking some steps to increase my novelty inputs, which I’ll probably write about in a later post…if I remember, ha.)
April 2021 Art Challenge Calendar
This month I've selected a number of smaller and niche art challenges. I suspect many artists are still wrapping up their #100 Day projects, and/or recovering from #MarchMeettheMaker, both of which are stadium-sized challenges!
Here are the first prompts for this months' challenges — can you match them to their correct host? (There are a couple of tricky ones in here!) Click on the art challenge to see if you’re right! And don’t forget to sign up below to get next month’s calendar in your inbox.
First Prompts:
"Coastal Classic"
Mushroom
Undead
Everything Easter!
Fennel fox, desert plant, magnifying glass
Cycle of Life
Forget-me-nots
Introducing the Monthly Art Challenge Calendar!
Art challenges on Instagram, when considered in the scope of the history of art — are pretty darned new. I've enjoyed participating in a few of them, but it's generally been a haphazard thing. I see someone I like talking about it on social — or hosting it — and then I decide, wtf, I'm in!
The thing is, art challenges are time consuming if you take the time to do them right. By which I mean:
Completing a reasonable percentage of the prompts,
Checking out other people's work on the hashtag,
Commenting with something genuine and actually meaningful — not just a series of click-baity emojis.
(Some people also make a really nice piece of work announcing their participation in the challenge ahead of time. I rarely have done this, but it's very cool when people do! )
This level of participation has led to a lot of really nice things for me. I've gotten to know a bunch of new artist's work, made some cool art friends, been pointed towards some interesting opportunities. Not to mention, of course, creating some interesting art that I might not have made otherwise.
In my experience, doing an art challenge half-assed isn't really worth it. But, like all things to be done full-assed, a little advance planning is helpful — something more than wtf, I'm in!
But since there's no central clearinghouse of info on these challenges, I rarely find out about art challenges I find interesting until I stumble across them. (And sometimes I'd find an art challenge better aligned with my style or my goals while I was in the middle of one, and unable to take on any more, which makes me grumpy.)
So because I am a weirdo who thinks it's fun to make databases, I decided I would organize this mofo.
My plan at the moment is to publish a curated calendar of art challenges available on Instagram. I'm not republishing the prompts themselves, because I'll provide a link to the prompt list on Instagram, which you’re going to need to look at anyway. (As well, there are a couple of excellent Instagram accounts that repost challenge announcements and the prompt lists —Promptosarus —is a really good one.)
What I wanted to know is:
When each challenge starts and ends,
The general subject matter,
The scope of the challenge (i.e. the number of prompts, over the period of time.)
And how crowded the challenge is with participants. (Smaller ones mean you're more likely to make meaningful connections with other artists, larger ones have a ton of variety and an outside chance of becoming a STAR!)
Am I missing something important? Let me know in the comments!
At this point, my plan is to publish a new calendar each month. April will be the first one, and it’s dropping on Monday, March 29th! If you want to be emailed when I do:
And if you're hosting or participating a challenge in May or beyond, let me know! I'll add you to the list.
The Inspiration Behind My Latest Series: Wycinanki
My latest series of work was inspired by wycinanki, or Polish cut paper art. It's pronounced vee-chee-non-kee. Before you get too impressed, let me say that the only other words I know in Polish are "thank you" and "grandmother," more on that in a moment.
Wycinanki are symmetrical designs cut from folded paper — pretty similar in basic process to the blend between origami and paper cutting that kids use to make paper snowflakes. The results can be monochromatic, or, with the aid of layered papers, multicolored. Generally, they're made in folk motifs. Here's a cool quick stop-motion animation on how it's traditionally done.
While I'm not super interested in the traditional motifs, I immediately wanted to try my hand at this. Because while I feel like my truest identity is "New Yorker," I'm inspired by/greatly interested in the arts and traditions of different cultures — Asian, African, Indigenous peoples in the Americas and elsewhere. I have loads of books on these cultures, photos from museums, as well as from traveling I've done to places around the world inspired by this interest.
The issue here is that these are not my native cultures, so I'm well aware that this inspiration can only go so far in my art practice without creeping from appreciation into appropriation.
It's less problematic for me to more directly reference my own heritage, and I do have a grab bag of cultural ties to choose from. My grandparents, as either immigrants themselves or children-of, offer an interesting melange of possibilities. On one side, there's Russian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, and, if you believed my grandmother, gesturing at her almond-shaped eyes, Mongolian. (I mean, there was a lot of historic forays into the general region by Mongolians, so I guess it's plausible — if so, that gives me a little toe-hold into Asia. And if that's credible, then I think I can also find some link to the Caucuses.) And on the other, there's Poland, by way of Spain.
All of that made me feel legit entitled to explore and incorporate wycinanki which evidently has a long history in Jewish communities in both Poland, and several of the areas with which I have a genetic connection. Traditionally, these pieces were made with the intent of warding off the evil eye (of course!), celebrating holidays, commemorating the dead
For my wycinanki-inspired pieces, I used both the positive and the negative shapes of the paper cut outs. (This means I used both the design I cut out, and the paper I cut away.) I started with found papers which I painted intuitively, rather than working with plain paper. Once cut and glued, I painted on them some more.
I really enjoyed the element of surprise in this — you draw a design on the folded paper, or just freehand cut (I did both) and when you unfold it, you get something that's both the idea you had, and that unpredictable little something extra that the process creates. In this way, it's akin to printmaking — minus the ink fumes, which alas, led me away from my experiments in printmaking a few years ago. I'm looking forward to exploring this some more. You can take a closer look at these works right here.
Stretching my Sizes!
This month in the studio, I’m experimenting with different shaped substrates — and really pushing myself on size.
Up until now, I’ve preferred for my work to be intimate in scale. Back when I was taking studio art classes, my teachers were always urging me to get larger paper, larger canvas, and I kept resisting. Eventually this led me towards making jewelry, where I was really working on a small scale. I was wearing magnifiers every day, and, for a time, I was in heaven.
When I set jewelry to the side, I returned to working pretty small — my max is usually 11 x14 inches! One of my friends pointed out that I like to work in book size. This is true. (I also like to make books.)
But for some reason, as the pandemic has worn on — for reasons I haven’t quite really been able to pin down — I’ve been feeling the urge to work larger and to take up some more space. So, when one of the teachers I admire offered a class called “Big and Little” — all about scaling up work, I was immediately intrigued and signed right up.
I didn’t expect that the first step would be to work in different shapes, but i felt very enthusiastic about that. This piece above, still in process, is six inches in diameter, so still pretty small. BUT, I have purchased 12 inch round canvas…and even larger square and rectangular canvases. (like…18x24 inches gasp!). So now I’ll want to use them. More as it happens!