pictures! pictures! pictures!

okay, so wura told me she likes looking at my pictures. so, w, this post is for you.

for a while lately, whenever i look at my art supplies (of which i have many, since i inherited all my mother's old oils, watercolors, and pastels...), i get drawn toward my japanese calligraphy brushes and inks. so i set it all up. the thing about japanese calligraphy is you don't usually redo a stroke. so it's all about practice, practice, practice and then you decide to finally do one on "real" paper and hope it goes well. for last night's session, i just used scrap paper. i started with characters. then i moved onto figures. here are my attempts at making whippets:

the bottom one is my favorite. i think i tried to do about a dozen whippets and these were the best ones.this was a short study of color gradients using water mixed with ink. it was HARD. it looks so easy when the masters do it...
the main exercise all master calligraphers do first is to write "ichi"--"one." this is one of the "ones" i did last night. it was out of several. this is my favorite.

then i saw i had lots of ink. and when you make the ink, you wanna use it, because it's actually pretty labor intensive to rub that ink stick in the ink stone. so i thought, hey, i've never done self portraits in ink! so here are some i did:

self portrait 1: pretty simple.
self portrait 2.
self portrait 3: as a dyke, i have many many many many drawings of my own hand. this is the first time i've tried it with a brush. it looks pudgy, but the pudginess is pretty idiomatic.
self portrait 4: a surprisingly accurate version of my body. the head, well. sometimes i get heavy-handed. yes. this is really close to what my body actually looks like. (i'm a hairy boy.)
self-portrait 5: this is one of those japanese school children drills where i drew my face using hiragana characters. it's called "henohenomoheji." they say that one always tends to draw "henohenomoheji" to look like oneself. how'd i do?

(the scrap paper i used was actually old scripts from that play i was in. [insert silly emoticon here])

on portraits

ever stay up late at night, talking with your bedmate, and then you realize the silliest things...

lovely partner and i were up late one night insulting our dogs. lovingly, of course. mila was a tiny little puppy when we got her. but she had big paws. we've always called her "man-hands." and then there was the name her breeder gave her, "smudge," which we liked, but couldn't quite adopt as our own name for her. shota also has a name his breeder gave him, "pinstripe." we refer to this as his slave name (since his breeder did engage in some....dodgy...uh....practices).

we realized that we could all have various nicknames.

we also realized that we haven't taken any family portraits since mila arrived. so i thought i would draw them.

the image above is us with our "mob" names--based on our faces. from the left: shota, mila, kt, lovely partner.

this left image is obviously about hair. i suppose this would be our bloodhound gang personas. or something like that. although, could be mob-ish, too.

and then there's this right image. it's more about our bodies. poor shota. he's been having this eating problem for over a year now. he gained a lot of weight back recently, but when he's thin, it's pretty sad. you know, whippets being naturally prone to thinness. and, if you haven't guessed, he's tan. and, since i did post a whole entry on my cup size, i hope you can infer correctly which one of us "boobs" is.

not funny #4

ever see those goddamn commercials, with the lady who is like, "i was given two months to live by my doctor. and then i went to Super-Duper Cancer Instituter and my new doctor told me: you have no expiration date." or those fucking pharmaceutical commercials for chemo blood supplements that are like, "i'm ready to fight." i'm get so sick of some of the language surrounding cancer. i understand celebrating the survivor, and keeping hope. i know these are real necessities. but sometimes it goes too far. and i feel like commercials like these are thumbing their noses at the rest of us. like it's my mom's fault she couldn't "kick" cancer. two of the strongest, bravest, most hopeful people i know had cancer. and they still died. the strength of will can be powerful indeed. but sometimes illness is just too real. it's not just in our heads.

not funny #3

when one of my best friends was going through chemo, i remember very distinctly that moment we were watching TV and she turned to me and said something like, "you know it's not just my head that goes bald. i feel like a 9 year old...." she giggled, but bitterly. i think the thing about chemo and cancer in general is that a lot of it is just romanticized. the throwing up, the balding, the pain. there is something about these parts of sickness that seem heroic--a type of vulnerability that rears its head. but then there are the other things. like constipation, or uncontrollable gas, or returning to pre-pubescent genitalia. i don't know how anyone could see these as heroic. but they are a reality.

not funny #2

here is my second bumper sticker/t-shirt piece. i have never underwent chemotherapy myself. but i watched both my mother and one of my best friends go through the vomiting, aches, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, etc. of chemo. logically, i understand why chemo is a very effective form of cancer treatment. but emotionally, it has never made sense to me why you need to make someone very sick--usually sicker than they already are--to make them better. i wonder how many oncologist encounter moral dilemmas when they watch a patient retching and screaming in agony because of their prescription. "first, do no harm" seems like a joke at that point. as an onlooker, a caretaker, a friend, chemo has made me sick as well. it's hard to explain. maybe it was that gleam of courage, fear, vulnerability and stubborn determination in my mother's eyes as she sat with an iv in one hand, sipping apple juice with the other. it was just so overwhelming. it made me feel ill. growing from the pit of my stomach and barely staying at the back of my throat. maybe it was my own fear physically manifesting itself in my digestive system. maybe it was pangs of sympathy. i don't know. i only know: chemo makes me sick.

on humor

did a lot of writing today. about an hour of it consisted of brainstorming a series of bumper sticker/t-shirt slogans surrounding my newly found closeness to mourning. i hope to post more of them as i draw them out (we'll see how that goes). if i do, the series will be called, "not funny."

process, process, fucking process!

okay.
so, because i mentioned that damned comic to all of you, i have actually been trying to work on it all week. and then i read this comment by la rebelde and something hit me. maybe i can actually post it without all the fanfare. maybe i can reveal to you my crappy sketches and my chicken scratch handwriting. maybe this isn't the project to get nit-picky and super anal about. maybe imperfection has its charms.

and so it goes. it's not like i'll win a macarthur with this comic. geez! and then i can cross something off my damn list! woohoo. okay, so in the interest of respecting the creative process, below i am sharing every bit of this comic with all of you. i beg your patience. please note that if you click on the images, they will open bigger on a new page. (incidentally, i have played around with the comic medium. you can see some examples of my comic post cards here and here.)

draft one:

the text reads: panel 1: *a 'funny' joke from the shop...*; "hey, why are women so bad at measuring?"
panel 2: "he, he. i dunno, why?"
panel 3: "cause they think six inches is this big!"
panel 4: *in my head, i think of a funny response...*; "hmmm"
panel 5: "why are dykes so good at measuring?"
panel 6: "'cause when six inches is this big, they return it to the store!"
panel 7: "he, he." *smug look*

well, this was really rough, which was fine. so then i began drawing a more refined version of it in pencil, here:


and then it hit me. it wasn't necessary to cram eight panels into one sheet of paper, since it wouldn't show up so well online (as the scan above shows). so then i started drawing individual panels at about two per page. my plan was to sketch out each one and then trace it with pen onto vellum.

so here is page one:


and here is the first image traced onto vellum:


second page:


of course, the fatigue sets in and my drawing slowly got sloppy:

but note the valiant effort of trying to perfect my hand grasping the makita brand sander.

and finally, i tried to start the next one with my hand beginning to cramp:


and then i thought, "like i'm gonna get a macarthur with this comic! just post the fucking thing!"

voila!

on happiness

i just got back from the wedding of one of my oldest and dearest friends. it was a strange experience, seeing the girl i've known so long at the alter, with a minister, wearing a $4000 dress (that she apparently bought for $500 on ebay), smiling and crying. i still remember that morning in sixth grade when, in the moments before the bell rang for homeroom, she pulled me right next to the radiator and whispered in my ear, "i got my period." being who i am, i of course said, "what?" but once i understood it, we were really bonded for life. i knew i was the first person besides her mom and perhaps her sister to hear this news. and ever since, i feel like we have been a kind of family, albeit not always in touch.

it was an overwhelming weekend for me. i got to hang out with a few other friends from my adolescence. i left massachusetts when i was 13 to move with my parents to japan. even though that experience was confusing and strange, i took it as it was. having moved to the japanese countryside, i took it as a given that my new friends would look at me as some exotic presence. but i never thought the friends i left behind in upper-middle class wellesley would see me any different. having gone back and experiencing a strange aura about myself, this was the first time i realized that what had been very matter-of-fact for me was actually out of the ordinary for my friends. i was not only their friend that moved away, but their friend that moved abroad. not only was i their friend that moved abroad, i was the friend that somehow fully assimilated the language and culture of that new and very different place. i guess as much as i see our world as transnational, it dawned on me finally this weekend how that experience might have seemed, well, glamorous. even though i felt it as an experience of deep estrangement, from the onlooker, it was an experience of broadening.

and here i show up--men's suit and all, wearing a bowtie and designer haircut. when asked what i did, i said, "i used to work at university of texas as a lecturer, but now i'm trying to be an artist full-time. meanwhile, i work in a woodshop, sanding." my friends took it with aplomb. even though going back to my place of origin made me realize exactly how different my trajectory was from many of my friends, i was really heartened by a certain bond that radiated warmth and renewed compassion.

you see, during my years of college, i learned to hate many things about my childhood. i hated my upper-middle class background, i hated the wishy-washy liberal values, i hated the manicured lawns and preppy clothes, i hated the perfect, hetero-normative families. but my opinions slowly softened since college. my hatred turned into critical observation, into contemplative problematics. now, instead of hatred, i enjoy exploring the tension between loving collective politics and procedure with an undying desire to get rich. my once radical politics are a bit more pargamatic, and somewhat lazy. and even though i see the problems with marriage, i also notice myself staying home on weekends and savoring domestic bliss with my partner, so much that i find myself daydreaming about our future decades together; marriage seems like my kind of bag.

and there i was at a straight wedding, surrounded by upwardly mobile young professionals, bawling my eyes out.

my friend had planned for everything. it was a moving ceremony and a mean after party. it kept me thinking about what my own "wedding" might look like. who knows? the room was mostly awash with urban professional asian americans. i believe there were something like 40 yale mbas there. lots of lawyers, bankers and doctors. it's not the kind of room i'm used to working. a kind of culture shock. but i was smiling all weekend. and then the bonny bride (she really was bonny, glowing, in fact) took the time to call me and another old friend to her honeymoon suite just to spend some time talking with us. she was so in the moment, happy and yet caring, i was overcome with emotion. it was really inspiring.

somehow, the weekend has made me very contemplative. nothing like a blast from the past to help me assess where i am right now. how is my current state fitting in with my plans? how am i going to get where i'm going? and how am i going to do it, even if i don't win the lotto?

more lotto plans

in the past week, i have imagined yet more ways to use the money in my imagined lottery win. the first idea came to me while i was in one of the locally-owned bookstores. i saw many books, trinkets, and puzzles that could only be sold here, not at chains or even amazon. we are lucky enough in austin to have many independent bookstores. these stores encourage local art and community building. yet they are always in danger. i think the stores in austin are doing okay, partly due to the "shop locally" campaign of austin. but it made me think, if i won the lotto, i should try to help these places out. how would that work, i thought. then it came to me: i could buy books from these stores and have then sent to... local prisons and schools! how great would that be!

my other idea was one i have had for over a decade. i want to start an organization for artists of color. something that would grant money to artists as well as provide gallery and performance space, host retreats, and so on. i still haven't quite figured out the specifics for this dream, but it has been bothering me for a while. the beauty of funding such an organization with lotto money is that by sheer virtue of the large endowment, it can afford artists of color more "plush" grants that would hopefully enable them to refuel from the too-often cobble-together living we tend to have. because even when we do get grants, from people of color organizations, too, the most it will do is pay for a couple months rent. and usually we are required to put in some administrative or educational labor, which can be anti-creative to some. i myself love to teach and work with others throughout my creative process, but i know many artists who find this part of funding to be particularly tedious. with my dream organization, i would fund artists for at least a full year, on an upper-middle class wage, and only require them to do what they wish with the organization. or something like that. it would have to vary. flat out grants to some, residencies for others, lectures, and so on.

of course, the question i ask myself when i have these fantasies is always: that's good and all, kt, but what can you do now to work toward these ideas? i often fear that my lack of funds hinders my ability to help myself and others with the resources i do have. it also makes me wonder, if i'm doing so little now, what makes me think that having a lot of money will make me do better?

when people talk about the ethics of art, they often only refer to the image, metaphor and message art often embodies. but what about the ethics of process? what about the entangled web of representation/ideology and commerce? we are not so virtuous as we like to see ourselves. i would love to run this blog and my personal site free of advertising, but i would also love to earn money from them. it makes me think of played-out metaphors between art and prostitution. and the best thing i can think to do in these moments is fight as hard as possible against paralysis. which is difficult, because it means i will inevitably make mistakes.

but then again, the best place to make mistakes is in one's art, right?

on clerks

last tuesday, i stopped by a gas station to pick up my tickets while filling up my gas tank. i actually didn't think they would have lotto tickets, but i was pleased to find they did. when i got to the counter, the clerk was a young effete man, wearing a middrift-showing teeny tiny shirt, very tight jeans, and a red ballcap slightly askew. he also had long hair pulled back in a ponytail. his eyelashes were long, dark, and perfectly curled, while his eyebrows were two perfect arcs. i enjoyed talking with him, even though he was very indifferent to me. i kept imagining the fierce drag queen he must be once he clocks out in the evening.

the thing about the clerks is that they have thus far occupied marginal parts of society. they have been latino, south asian, and queer.

even more evidence of the strange places in society that the lotto occupies.