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Some similarities I noticed between making a person & making art:
I've also had some ideas for a series of photos or drawing or paintings...basically about loss of bodily control and how it connects infanthood, pregnancy/birth and old age/death. Hopefully I'll be able to culminate that into something tangible sometime soon.
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I don't intend to announce anything over internet, but I am pregnant right now and that seems to be pretty naturally preoccupying me. I've always been a little underwhelmed by paintings because they 'didn't change without me'...they have such a stillness about them...when I leave a piece in a certain state I return to it as is. Making a person I imagine will be quite the opposit experience. I'm a bit nervous about how I will find time to continue working, but I also really trust myself to figure it out somehow.  This was a quick wash painting I did pretty sketchy early into finding out I was pregnant. I painted it by making marks and seeing what showed up. For me it represented very clearly this experience and other big life experiences that we consider to be major personal transitions. What I see in this image is a nude person wading into the unknown. The nudity is the inability to really be prepared, a sort of rawness and a sort of vulnerability. The thing with the unknown is there will always be a chorus of people to 'tell you how it is'. To me this can either be comforting- in the form of family and friends sharing their own experiences- or irritating- in the form of media trying to get their hands into your incertainty to make you uncomfortable and sell you shit. It IS uncomfortable. Your friends and family can never really 'tell you how it is' they can share with you and hopefully let you feel some sense of connection and mammalian warmth in our hopelessy gigantic, space-filled galaxy. Ultimately this uncertainty is something you go into alone, because no matter how many other living creatures have lived, died, birthed, etc- your experiences are yours alone and are always new to you. Thoughts like these are both comforting and revitilizing for me in what sometimes feels like an over-populated junk filled world.
Life has been incredibly rough lately for a number of reasons, most of which I'd rather not announce to the internet. One thing I can refer to is a recent local tragedy- the loss of a great artist and good friend to many. I want to use this space to commemorate the life & work of Ben Gregory. If you met me selling art on the street in New Orleans and pay attention to such things there's a very good chance you met Ben and saw his work too. He was relentless in pouring himself into his work and his work into the world. Ben was one of the first people I met moving to New Orleans in 2004. We weren't best friends, we often made plans to hang out and would later be nodding in understanding at our mutual flakiness. We both still have books leant to the other a number of years ago that never got re-exchanged. When I first heard the news that was what really got me- Ben was someone so familiar and comfortable to me I assumed I would just always see him. My favorite times were when we didn't make plans and bumped into each other and loitered for hours and shared awesome twisting conversations about art- about techniques and materials, about intentions and results and about what we were working on and what was actually coming out. Here are some stray bits of those conversations that spilled over online: 2007- hey do you want to see some of the pictures that im makeing for jackson square?!
2008- thes are the pieces that i was telling you guys about. got a long way to go, but getting there. still pretty sloppy. but its getting some where. may work on it a bit more
Aaaaa tring to paint a composition over detail...
As a person Ben was genuinely kind and unpretentious. As an artist he was extremely original & restlessly dedicated. I fucking hate that this is post-mortem and I can't shake the nagging sense that Ben was right in the middle of his work when he got taken out of this world. If anything, I'm hoping we can still share the vitality of his work, so if you haven't been exposed here is a small portion:      
If you'd like to see more of Bens work, there is quite a bit posted on his facebook:https://www.facebook.com/ben.gregory.3910?fref=ts
 I never know who I'm writing to or what about in these boxes. My thoughts about art are too convoluted and tangled and tangential to reach a clear sum here. We moved into our house about a month ago. Right now we are doing plumbing and electric. I'm also in transition with what was my miraculous work space that I always knew was a temporary grace. wi
But accomplishment kind of bores me right now. I watch this world, all of us striving and reaching. I can't shake the sense that there's nothing really to 'get', that we're just here and it's fucking weird and inexplicable. And it's uncomfortable so we make up stories and insulate our thoughts to the human/societal realms. I've never done too good with the society thing..understanding it, finding my 'place', feeling comfortable with it all. Lately I am inspecting again my decisions to sell art... When I first started 11 years ago I loved being on the street. I felt adamant that 'regular people' should get art and it shouldn't only be presented to some self-elected elite in the confines of a gallery. Now I am getting sick of answering idiotic questions, of watching humans swarm around me in pursuit of an ever cheaper trinket to show that they too visited new Orleans. I'm sick of hearing artists talk and scheme about how to churn work out even faster and with even less soul. But I'm trying to tread water at the same time and find myself considering printings out some giclees. Bah, not sure that my website blog should be the place to muck around all these confusions, but I don't know what to write here anyways.  I'm set up at the Frenchmen Night market through Jazz fest. I haven't interacted all so much with the jazz fest tourists before because usually I'm out in the day time when they're at the festival. I've always pegged them as 'good tourists'; meaning- people who come to visit year after year. They become somewhat regular, they get to know what places they like and learn how to pace themselves to really enjoy their time. Statisically they're older than the frat boy crowd and have learned how to let loose without being assholes. I don't know if it's just that I haven't been out much lately and my skin has grown thin or I've been dealing with all this depression and that has me feeling sensitive or what, but overhearing people commentaries was exhausting. One woman nudged her girlfriend, "you could draw that" I can't help but harp for a little while and analyze little comments like this. I've recently been bringing out my life drawings and I think they're beautiful. I've noticed a lot of people are dismissive of them (I heard one guy say, "art school student work" which is kind of funny since I'm a highschool drop out and self taught). It seems like anything exhibiting skill is regarded with some suspicion and derision. This seems to be a mentality that has been growing in our society for some time. And what the hell? Why should we develop skills anymore? Soon we just be spectators watching machines impress other machines. Until that happens I'm gonna keep going to life drawing and bringing them out and analyzing the reactions of strangers. Well, I suck at blogging. I'm not sure why because I ramble & write quite a bit. Anyhow, it's only taken me a year to update this. A lot happens in a year. In the personal realm- me and my partner (bf? Fiancee? I hate all these terms...person I plan to be with till we're dead...maybe I can just use that as an acronym). Me and my P.I.P.T.B.W.T.W.D bought a property. It hadn't been touched since the storm & had cats paw growing up through the walls. About 6 months ago we were still working on it and living in an apartment when we suddenly got evicted. The natural instinctive reaction to this was to buy a tent and move into the backyard of the property. 
Where white trash meets Better Homes & Gardens
This arrangement has been working out surprisingly well. We hope to move into the actual house in the next month or so. And when it has plumbing & electric YOU are welcome to visit! Because it will eventually...one day...be a home too for life drawing groups and off the cuff art shows & hopefully, maybe, one day, some kind of atelier. A friend of mine also appeared when we got evicted and hooked me up with what has come to be the best studio workspace I could hope for.
Drawing of my P.I.P.T.B.W.T.W.D & dog sleeping.
Something I'm pretty excited about- I'm going to be showing 10 of my recent bigger paintings in a show this coming Friday: (If you're local come out and eat cookies with me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) 
END OF BLOG POST.
 Photo by Brandon Robert It's been awhile since I last wrote, so plenty to tell. Thankfully the summers gone...in September The Decadence parade rolled through my office. This, like plenty other events in New Orleans, attracts the holier than thou - the jesus freaks who come to save us from ourselves with hand made signs and bullhorns. Since I grew up as a homeschooler messianic Jew (jews for jesus) I know better than to argue with religious zealots. Since I'm Italian (why not blame ancestry here) I lack the self-control not to loudly refute things I find irritating and begin spasming with gestures. When I saw them coming down the street prior to the parade I talked to myself "Yeah, be cool, just let them pass..." And then they started hollering about how we all deserved Katrina happening and we're all going to hell and then the spirit took hold of me too and I started screaming back that they all needed to go home. Bullhorn prophet stopped in the middle of the road and gestured back at my paintings on the fence, "And Lord Jesus, Curse this girl! Curse her business! Let her make no sales today! In the name of the Almighty!" Even though I was steamed up and really wanted to continue arguing this just confused me. Doesn't 'cursing' someone sound a little bit, I don't know, witchy, maybe a little pagan? Is putting a curse on someone really in the good book? Anyhow, their prophecy didn't hold much water because I ended up selling plenty of paintings & then the parade came and made it even better.
The one that bothered me the most was a big blue rectangle, probably 10 ft tall by 2 ft wide, it was made of some kind of shiny plastic looking material and was displayed resting against the wall. If I could liken it to anything, I'd say it looked like a piece of McDonalds playground equipment that they had ordered in the wrong size. Just looking at it exasperated me (see! it IS art because it got a reaction out of me! But with that logic...the mousetraps in my kitchen get an even stronger reaction from me when I hear them snap across the house...therefor mousetraps must be art.) I looked at the little plaque next to me for explanation and it was titled, "Why Not?" I'll tell you why not! Because someone had to carry that thing up the stairs! Because here I am in a museum which is supposed to house our most precious cultural artifacts and this big blue rectangle is taking up space where something that doesn't just provoke a 'reaction' (like every single thing in the world does) but provokes a sense of curiousity, wonder...maybe even 'awe'. (Remember Awe America!?! When something actually stopped you in your tracks and made you stand still for longer than 30 seconds and you didn't even have a word for it so you just stood all gape mouthed and went 'awwwwe') Anyhow, I tried to find a picture of this piece of art to post here, but couldn't find one. So here's a rendering I made that should pretty much give you the same effect. 
On the other side of things I recently discovered 2 artists who's work is really exciting to me:
As for me....painting is going really well. I've gotten a lot closer to being able to visibly merge together the 'seen' world (working from reference) and the 'unseen' world (random intuitive mark making). I this is the closest I've gotten so far....not sure how well the details in the body show up through a screen. 
I've got a bunch of markets coming up before the holidays. If you're passing through New Orleans anytime contact me and say Hello!
Summer is always rough. It's soul sedating humidity and not enough tourists and locals bullshitting about one or the other of these topics. Every summer I feel a scramble and I SCHEME. One year I went up to Burlington Vermont to sell on the street there. One year I went out to CA to trim. This year I went to Virginia for 2 weeks to visit my family. To commemorate my mothers 60 years on this planet I compromised my artistic-metaphysical pretensions and painted a simple bowl of fruit that MATCHED HER KITCHEN. (This is a service I offer ONLY to the person who birthed, bathed, read to me at night & cleaned my boogers off the wall.) 
This is actually a painting of FAKE fruit in her kitchen. (see? metaphysics always creeps in...) This was a fascinating thought, albeit a morbid one on my mothers birthday...thinking that this painting doesn't necessarily give away it's plastic immortality.. once we're all dead and gone and this painting makes the rounds of Colonial Beach yard sales who's to ever know that these apples & pears never really did LIVE? No birth, no growth, no rot, no grounds for an empire of fruit fly hell. To paint it I actually mixed water color patched and held them up against the coloring of her wall (which is yellow). I warmed the yellows so they'd come 'at' you. I snatched little brick a bracks from her shelves to match the reds, though they still ended up a bit purpley (but purple is complimentary to yellow sooo.....) All of this effort should indeed secure my position as most beloved child. (That I live so far away and cannot pop in to do my laundry also probably secures this position.) Back home in New Orleans I immediately implemented my most recent SCHEME. I sublet a friends space in the Quarter and tried to turn it into a temporary art space.
I dont know if I'll ever have a more satisfying display than this makeshift crucifix.
Ah...NEXT summer...the ultimate SCHEME. Until then, I'll just do this: 
I didn't get any sleep, stayed up working on a big painting. Around 6 AM I figured, it's the Royal Street Food & Wine Fest- there's gonna be people, the artists are gonna be quick! I may as well get out there now to get my spot.  A big painting..for me..about 40" x 40" Turned out the street was totally empty. For hours I was the only one set up. It was a day of minor physical mishaps. My pants ripped on the ride down, once arriving I realized I'd forgotten the clothes pins I use to hang my work with. A kindly, talkative canadian lady watched my stuff while I went to Rouses. All they had were obnoxious pink/purple/blue plastic clothespins. Ah well..the canadian lady bought me some coffee & I drank it blinking, trying to stay conscious.  Another artist showed up, she told me about her other job as a waitress. Said she loved the place, the entertainment factors were high, about a wild day last week involving guns & bath salts. (New band name anyone?) A guy walked by with a cartoon hand grenade tattoo. I stopped him and asked, "Why would you get that tattoo?" He stopped and looked surprised. With an enthusiastic gesture he said, "It's me!" "What do you mean...internally you identify as a cartoon hand grenade with eyes?" "No! It's ME! I'm the giant hand grenade down the street!"
A lady who works at a gallery near by came over & bought this piece: 
And even left me with a gift of their own work:  Drawing by Dana Burrell
This crowd stayed in their 'designated' area. They hardly wandered over. At one point I asked a guy walking by, "Don't you want to engage with us at all?" He said, "No, I don't engage anything." And hurried off in a little bubble. So, yeah.  This image pretty much sums up my experience of the Wine & Food festival. To which my sentiments are: Ya'll Hella Boring. Then I packed up & rode home and SLEPT & SLEPT & SLEPT.
 It's been rainy, so I'm not out. It's kind of nice to have the excuse to have the day off, plus I gotta re-build my rickshaw since the original is made out of cardboard & it is currently 'out of service'. My boyfriend is helping me (really pretty much building it for me) & we've got a pile of wood and bolts set aside to build one that will hopefully last much longer. The last day I was out these folks walked by and a woman caught her eye on a piece and said, "Oh, that's like me when I'm worried.." She seemed taken by it, but there's plenty to see in the French Quarter & so they walked on. A block down her husband turned around and ran back. Quickly & quietly he bought it for her and very covertly we put it in his bag. They strolled back by about a half hour later and the women looked for the piece. I caught on and got up and acted like I wasn't sure which one and then said reluctantly, "oh..that one is gone.." It was hard to keep it up because she looked so disappointed, but her husband was trying to hide this wild grin and it made me want to be there later on when he surprised her with it. I think about things like this...that I wouldn't have gotten to see this part of the exchange if I were selling through a gallery. As useful as paying the rent is, it's just as much a necessity of living to see demonstrations of love & care. She initially identified with it as herself worrying, for me, him buying this painting for her said, "I love you, and I'm with you- even when you're worrying." I didn't get their info because of how 'sly' we were being to surprise her, but hopefully they will contact me & I can thank them for sharing the moment with me. Another pleasant random act of kindness was Richard, a friend from around the Quarter, who appeared with tiny cupcakes. 
Yes. Please do feed the artists.
I thought that THIS was going to be my biggest frustration today: 
New Orleans doesn't have four seasons that lead into one another gracefully. We have bug seasons. Now it's catepillar time & these guys fall out of the trees..and if they fall on you they sting you with their terrifying primordial spikes & it feels like fiber glass under your skin. *If this ever befalls you empty a cigarette into some water, tobacco juice relieves the sting. What could be more disturbing than this??? 
John Tarlton Olivier- Louisiana Supreme Court Clerk of Court
Geez, he looks like a nice guy. I have no idea why- but for some reason John sent an order for myself & other street artists (with legal permits) to NOT display our work on 'the states' fence during French Quarter Fest. Why a Supreme Court Clerk of Court would send a private security team, and finally NOPD to run off local artists, with threat of arrest & confiscation of our art is entirely beyond my mental reference. Here is what I've already written to explain the situation: More frustration for New Orleans 'creative class' (that is supposed to be experiencing some kind of renaissance in the form of studio lofts priced for lawyers & poor city communications?): 
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