Art is Hard, Illustration 1, 2007

Well this is embarrassing. But I’m kind of in it now…the art of being uncomfortably honest, unclad while I draw out memories to meditate on.

I’ve had a habit since I was in maybe Junior high - whenever I need to focus on something I will put on the same album or maybe a familiar film and run it on loop in the background so I have a layer of static that won’t divert me. I recently heard that it is a common practice, but also something people do in depression. Interesting, but that isn’t where I’m headed here. In 2007 I took Illustration as part of my visual arts curriculum. We were assigned to create an illustrated book with even a suggestion of narrative thread and those were pretty much the only instructions. Struggling to start I kept hovering on the thought “art is hard” followed by the lyric “when we don’t know who we are.” And so I looped the album from which I derived the lyric, The Ugly Organ by the post-punk band Cursive.

Amalgamating album lyrics with ad hoc autobiographical thoughts, a weak attempt at character creation, layering that with watercolor illustrations derivative of Schiele and Klimt, artists I, and Jamie, were temporally inspired by, and some digital collaging I fabricated a booklet like some guileless disc jockey teetering on the precipice of another layer of self awareness.

Stumbling onto this bit of memorabilia beamed me over to 2007. I can hear the album looping in the background. Pressure to create and captivate. Urgency of a deadline. Nagging existential questions. 20 years old and having the person I felt at perfect ease with. The realization that I had fallen head over heels and held by gravitational acceleration of a distant star somersaulted into deep space and never wanted to stop. With the falling came fear, knowing what I had meant I had so much to lose and misery meandered through my mind. Jamie was my muse and I wove his image into the character.

"you're in my web now - I've come to wrap you up tight 'til it's time to bite down."