The text is a condensed version of the one I wrote. Elegantly condensed, mind you–I’m happy with it; though I would never have written about “challenging conventions” (my wording had referred to “received understandings”), since I love conventions, revel in conventions, would be the keynote speaker at a conventions convention, but still.

I have a feeling about that yellow… color. But no matter.

I’m going to try and whip my studio in to shape, maybe shake off some this of case of the January hate-the-worlds.

Okay, I know that LCD picture frame Christmas ornaments fall squarely under the category of “things that do not need to exist,” but since they do exist, and since they were on sale for under ten bucks at the Canadian Tire (marked down from fifty dollars: if you are willing to pay fifty dollars for one of these things, you should not be allowed control of your own assets, I’m sorry), clearly I had no choice but to buy two.

The screen itself actually isn’t that bad. Mind you, anything that requires use of an eyeglass screwdriver just to put in the two AAA batteries not included in the fifty-dollar purchase price can only be the handiwork of bad people, but still: a one-and-a-half inch LCD screen inside a ball has some potential. The metallic green casing, though? Not going to work.

I must say, I’m kind of alarmed that I was able to successful disassemble the thing without destroying it. Especially since I don’t actually own an eyeglass screwdriver and was just using an X-acto knife with the tip of the blade cut off, but there you have it. Granted, disassembling it forced the realization that an actual human being in China assembled the thing in the first place, which made me feel like an awful person, but what’s done is done. And I can’t really promise that, if there remains a big stack of them at Canadian Tire next time I’m there, I won’t possibly buy several more, just to have on hand.

So, basically, I am an awful person.

But, once I get the casing spray-painted white, they might actually be kind of handsome, albeit in an unforgivably tacky kind of way. I haven’t the slightest idea what kind of images I would display on the them, but I can sort that out later.

I don’t think that I’m ever going to write this, mostly out of laziness but also because it’s really hard to explain to someone how, yes, you wrote about how his or her artistic practice has a distinctly genocidal je-ne-sais-quoi (or «je-sais-quoi,» I guess, if one assumes that a person must know what he or she is talking about, if they went so far as to write an essay about it, which would be incorrect) to it, but you didn’t mean “genocide” genocide, and it’s not really such a bad thing, anyway.

The title, which fell upon me like inspiration or a piano as I walked home from the grocery store this evening, is this:

Cell Block Tango: Performing Sincerity and the Genocidal Impulse of Relational Practice

For starters, the astute reader may ascertain from that title the identity of one of the artists who would be a central subject of this, the writing that I’m probably not going to write. I’m not going to name her here, because this is not a hill I’d especially like to die on, and Google is some serious shit. She’s a fairly prominent figure in Canadian art, and, I’m sure, a lovely woman with nothing but non-evil, non-genocidal intentions. But she was responsible for a performance here in Windsor that directly caused one of the most severe panic attacks I’ve ever had (bear in mind that placing an order at a restaurant is sufficient to cause a panic attack for me), and I’ve been trying to figure out for nearly a year why, even after I was again able to breathe normally, the premise of that piece remained problematic for me. (The piece was an unannounced tango lesson, billed as a regular artist talk).

The second thing that should be mentioned is my personal and probably-irresponsible usage of the word “genocidal.”  When I refer to “the genocidal impulse,” I’m not talking about a literal urge to kill thousands of people. That is, I’m not talking about “genocide” as an act but rather as the wish, which I see as foundational to much of social interaction, that a certain class of persons did not exist. I’m also operating on the assumption that the act of representation is borne out a desire to delineate, control, and so negate the object of representation. In this construction, Prop 8 was and is genocidal, the North American foster care system is genocidal (and here the Uhuru movement agrees with me, though I think we’d differ on the matter of extent), voting Democratic in the 2008 election was genocidal, class pictures are genocidal, demanding that the members of one’s wedding party wear a particular color is genocidal, and it only gets more ridiculous from there.

Basically, what I’d want to write about is how relational artistic practice, in all its interstitial, interactive, “democratizing” (frequent) feel-goodery, is ultimately about an artist wanting to eradicate their audience through inclusion (which may be voluntary or not) in the work of art. When my actions become someone else’s artwork, they cease to be fully my own actions; when my subjective experience is coopted by someone else’s artwork, my own subjectivity is jeopardized. It’s not an evil thing, but it’s interesting (to me, anyway).

It may also help to know that this imaginary essay would be part of an imaginary collection of essays called Art Ruins Everything (I really need to cross-stitch that sentence onto a sampler to go on my studio door), and the take-home message is this: I should be an artist and not an art critic or theorist, because, barring the improbable appearance of a scrap of sensitivity in my person, I would invariably become the Kathy Griffin of Art Criticism. This idea is hugely appealing to me, and that it why I should see to it that it never happens.

In other news: Celine Dion is playing the casino![!!] There were five or six billboards between Ohio and here, and I got into town super-psyched about being able to witness the insanity firsthand. But tickets cost $230! $230 Canadian, but still! I feel that, since a section of my thesis support document is going to be about Celine Dion, I should be able to get the school to foot the bill for my ticket.

I’ll report back on that one.

cam not-infrequently says to me something along the lines of, “I don’t think even you know if you mean what you say, most of the time.” I would suggest that everyone read Sontag’s  Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors for a number of reasons, but know this: cancer doesn’t “mean” anything and neither do I.

I found this dorky acrylic boxes at the Hobby Lobby in Hamilton (Ohio), and I had hoped they might work for Untitled (Bilirubin); a series of cubes filled to varying levels with oil glazing medium tinted with Indian yellow pigment. They… will not. They’re not really square, and, since they’re to be filled with turpentine and other things, I need for them to be really and truly airtight. These are decidedly not that.

But I made up the tinted medium for the first time tonight, and, after a bit of fussing (more oil, less turp, and with the addition of some wax and a dash of fluorescent yellow to get the color extra-lurid, it looks more or less like I remember the stuff mom and I had to remove from her external port (and measure, and record). So, hooray that?

I’d been back in Windsor for less than four hours when the first wave of crushing depression hit, but I managed to work through that (with the aid of Ladyhawke and some angry muttering–also, if you’ve not heard that song, stick with it through that stupid into part; it does become eminently worthwhile). So, hooray that, as well?

Cover illustrations for the book I’m putting together to accompany my thesis show(s). There are more pressing things I could be working on, but whatever.

Untitled (A Long December)

Why yes, I did take a flag case, fill it with confetti, title it after a Counting Crows song and call it a day. You can get advanced degrees in this shit.

Happy New Year.

T-shirts with this as a design will be available for order in a couple days.

In unrelated and arguably contradictory news, this video very nearly made my heart explode:

Oh, right. Because I never remember: since I’m at home in Ohio, I have access to a whole closet full of old work (mostly from my undergrad career) that I’d be happy enough to get rid of. I’ve posted the bulk of it here. People should feel free to email me (wreckingball at gmail) if there’s anything they want. If I know you (rather, if I know you and like you–if you’re unsure, I probably like you, as I am nothing if not a terrible liar), you can ignore the listed asking price. I don’t sell things often, and I usually get flustered and just give things away. Also, I nearly always owe somebody a birthday or Christmas present.

I’m heading back to Windsor this weekend, so if there’s something you want, you should let me know before Friday.

Also, because this is the question about my work I field most frequently: I’m not selling my stuffed animal paintings. I did not sell them to Kent Monkman, when he inquired about them (I am, you see, an idiot), and I am not selling them to anybody else, either.

In part, documenting the old work was an excuse to test out my new Speedlite, and in the process I hauled out this unfinished painting from my undergrad thesis. I had remembered it being much more awful, though it is super weird to think that I used to spend a significant amount of time and energy thinking about painting. Who does that? Really. I have half a mind to try and finish the thing; now that I don’t really paint in any concerted manner, I could stand to bring it on as a hobby.

Though I can’t remember if I mentioned it already, I’ve been on Gawker Artists for a couple months now.  I knew that a bewildering number of people had seen my profile there–enough that I was, for a time, the “most popular” artist on the site by whatever rubric they use to measure popularity–45,000-some, as of today. In real terms, I get between five and ten extra hits most days. I don’t have comments enabled on my site, and nobody’s emailed me or anything, but whatever: it’s gratifying enough just knowing that some number of people have seen your work.

Still, knowing all of that, I’d never actually seen an image of my work show up on any of the Gawker blogs. I wasn’t exactly put off by this, especially since I do most of my Jezebel-reading via a newsreader. But then, tonight, there I was heading to the comments section of a posted item about bra size, and, uh, there I was.

It was startling.

The high points of my vacation so far have been these:

Cats! So many cats! Thousands of cats! Or six. Whichever. I spent a portion of the afternoon, today, waltzing about the “great room” of my father’s house with Amelia (pictured above) while listening to the most recent Christine Fellows album. If that’s not spinstery enough for you, hold on.

Today’s trip to the Hobby Lobby was very nearly a religious experience. I only went to pick up some yarn, but it, predictably, did not stop there. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the flag frame, but it was 50% off, so I may return and buy several more.

Also, I purchased a cauldron. It needed to happen, trust.

What an awful state this is.