nervousmotion artworks blog

All daily photos here.

As promised, daily photos from my trip to Washington DC. I took plenty of other photos that I will be posting to Flickr, but these are it for now as I happened to pick up a fever on my trip. 

 All daily photos here.

Kári asked me to draw him a bath. Because I am a smart ass, here it is:

[ Yeah, I guess in my drawings, he takes a bath with his glasses on. ]

So, one of my totally amazing friends bought for me The Artist’s Guide To Making Money that I blogged about earlier. I have super duper special printing #58 out of 1000! SWEET!

This was a neat and especially fortuituos surprise to get after a really rough weekend at my day job. I read and thoroughly loved the ‘zine/book/independent publication while taking a hot bath in the clawfoot tub in the apartment that I slaved over a coffee grinder all day to be able to afford to live in. (Please do not question the validity or the grammar of that sentence. It’s been a hard couple of days.) I especially enjoyed the brilliance of Kate Bingaman, who draws out her credit card statements and sells the drawings in order to make her monthly payments. Brilliant! Also, her drawings of her daily purchases are charming and awesome.

It reminds me a bit of Donation Derby done by Dorothy of Cat and Girl fame: give her some money and she’ll draw what she does with it! Awesome! I even have a friend who sent her some money once and still has the drawing she sent him in return. And he let me touch the hem of his garment.

I won’t be quitting my day job soon, but perhaps I’ll do more collaging with my receipts as a commentary on the over indulgent consumer society in which we live. Or maybe I’ll just take a picture of my new pants from the Gap because they are truly, truly amazing pants.

[photo by Amelia Bidwell]

I’m pretty envious that my good friend Amelia got to go to Berlin, it’s one of those places I’ve always wanted to visit - I even threatened to move there for a while (not having been to a place before doesn’t stop me from making that sort of threat. I’m currently threatening to move to Buenos Aires).  While I was living vicariously through her Flickr set I was especially envious to see that she had visited the Holocaust Memorial Maze. I am, you see, something of a Holocaust dork.

The Berlin Holocaust Memorial Maze was the most interesting of the Holocaust Memorials that I read about back when I took a class on Art & The Holocaust back in the fall of my senior year at Hampshire. Most of the theory behind memorials is even more astoundingly boring than the monuments themselves, but I liked the idea of the maze.  It’s very interesting to see the reactions specifically of the German people in regards to the Shoah as the nation contained both victims and perpetrators.  How do you embody that in a piece of art? How do you pay homage to the suffering and destruction of a people that your nation caused? The designer of the maze says that he didn’t want to create a place that was filled with an overwhelming sense of loss - perhaps this is because that loss is still too much to bear for the people who will see the Memorial and be reminded that they or their families were on the other side of that particular coin.  After all, 60 years is only too early to erect a memorial for a pain that you took part in inflicting.

For sale on Etsy.

As an artist, I can not even afford the $16 plus shipping for The Artist’s Guide To Making Money, but I wish that I could even if only for the “DON’T SLEEP” page.

Because yes, it is nearly 4 AM and I am trying to decide between sleeping and doodling. I will probably do neither and just remain online, but the debate is certainly there.

I’ve thought about putting work up for sale on Etsy, and my current financial situation could stand to be improved, however incrementally.

So, tonight I took an outdated stack of “Now Tasting” cards from the winter promotion at work and started creating a little mini-works line. I’m hesitant to put anything I might normally show on Etsy as I fear it would somehow drive down the prices of what I did eventually put in a gallery - no one’s going to buy anything on Etsy for over $100, and why would someone pay gallery prices for something they could get on Etsy? The solution, as I can see it, is to create separate pieces specifically designed for sale, as opposed to the more “serious” works which may end up in a gallery someday.  Or just sit around in my studio waiting for someone to please just take them away.

Anyhow, you can buy my mini-works at my Etsy shop.

This piece should be on its way to the mother of a longtime internet friend of mine. She purchased it even before my show officially opened this past month at AS220.  It’s a good thing that she did, it was a big hit at the show, the favorite piece of many of the people who were there. Had she not bought it, someone else undoubtedly would have.

This piece was in such high demand, that someone actually went to the lengths of stealing it off the gallery’s walls. Its rightful owner is getting her money refunded and I, as the artist, am having a small ulcer. I never imagined that someone would go so far as to just steal my work. I didn’t insure my work before the show because theft was the last of my worries. I have learned my lesson and will be purchasing insurance before putting up my next show, which will only be my third. Am I hot shit or what?

What sickens me more than the actual theft is the unknown motivations behind it. Does the thief simply want to display this piece in their home? Do they want to destroy it? Worst, do they intend to pass it off as their own? If they do display the piece, what will they say when people ask about it? Who will they say made it?

What meaning do I as the artist have when my work is stolen? On the one hand, it’s the ultimate fuck you - just taking something that I made without paying me for it, saying that it’s worth having but not worth paying for. On the other hand, as it was a piece that had already been sold, it’s sort of a bizarre form of flattery that someone would want it so badly that they would just take it.

Theft is a bizarre thing to me, an upstanding citizen who hasn’t ever stolen so much as a pack of gum.