I'm an artist, as well as a writer. I've had a hard time in my life, trying to find a way to mix the two. I decided I wanted to be a writer around the same time I decided I didn't want to be a professional artist. I never wanted to put myself or my family, when i had one, through what my father (the photographer, the filmmaker, the arTIST) put us through. An artist couldn't earn a living. Making money off of art was impossible. I thought.

Strange that I've never connected the two things before, I wanted to be a fashion designer for the longest time-- through junior high school and the first couple of years of high school-- and then, didn't want to be in art anymore. In fact, I went to a college that specifically wasn't an art school. Art was work, I wanted to write stories and poetry and novels and all that stuff. I even tried to give art up. Really I did. It lasted for about four months before I realized it wasn't something I did, it was something I was.

I tell you, that's a realization. Because if you ARE something like that, then you can't possible let yourself be half assed about it. Okay, fine, I couldn't. I wanted to really get into what art was. I wanted power. But I hadn't a clue how to get it. I had been taught "pretty." I knew how to draw, how to compose, how to use color, how to draw a picture that pretty much looked like what I was trying to draw-- but what the hell did it mean? What was I trying to say? I wanted to stop drawing what I saw. Stop drawing the surface.

Ironically, at the same time, I was being taught that with poetry and fiction, I should stop trying to tell everyone what I wanted them to know, and start trying to SHOW them. Show don't tell. Show don't tell. Write the surface???? And that was supposed to help us know what was being written about?

Interesting. With an art form that was about showing the physical reality (atleast classically) I wanted to find out how to show the internal reality-- the feelings and thoughts and emotions behind the pretty face. With an artform that was created solely from ideas, (and what else are words but ideas that we pass to another person?) I wanted to find out how to make them solid and concrete and real enough to have a surface to experience.

Honestly, I've never seen this connection quite so clearly.
Ahh, the power of words, that stringing a few together could change how you view the world.

I think I have understood words much better than I have understood art. I mean, I was an English teacher, that helped me understand what words were about a lot more.
Only recently have I devoted enough time and energy to art to go deeper into it. To travel into it whether I understood it or not.
I have been making a book-- no, not a book of words, a book of art. Well, yes, words, too, but they were there to begin with. I'm taking a published book of Sherwood Anderson, called "Winesburg Ohio," and painting over all the pages. I keep some words, and all the chapter titles. In fact, I make his chapter titles be my art titles, and they all have to connect, in some way with my life. It hasn't been easy. It's been a journey and a challenge, but I am almost done and am really proud of it.

I've been showing it to people. As many people as I could, and the response has been outrageous. I've seen their eyes as they turn the pages. I've seen them stop on a word, and laugh, as if it makes sense to them, too. I've seen the looks on their faces, as if they believed they could, too, they could paint, they could write, they could share who they are inside with the world.

I think they understand that it is the story of my life-- not my whole life, just the last few months. I think they get it on a level that is NOT about words. The words there are don't tell the story, the hint at pieces of it, maybe, but the story is in the images, and the images hit on a level deeper than words.

I don't know where they come from. Even when I am painting them, it's almost like they are from deep inside my gut, or way out above my head. And I think that's where people GET them. Not where we're used to thinking, a part of us that's primal, maybe, or maybe enlightened. I can't figure out which-- maybe both. Is that even possible?

Someone told me today that when he first read my book, his mother had just died, and something in it just connected. It meant something to him. I don't know what it meant to him. It's probably not the same thing it meant to me when I did it. Or maybe it is. Maybe human emotion is really that similar.

Someone also offered to buy it. For three hundred dollars. If it were ten years ago, I probably would have taken her up on it. But today, I recognize that this book is my life. My future as an artist. Well, no, not my whole future, but the begining of it. It's worth much more than three hundred, or even five hundred cash (her next offer).
A world class curator wants to see it when I am done.
Someone I know knows a publisher who might want to print it.
There's a place I know where I could get a grant to live for a year, just for doing it (and I'd get to TEACH, too! Teach artist's books! [am I psycho to get excited about that prospect?]).
I kind of like the idea of putting it on line, so anyone who wants can log on and turn the pages. The intimacy of that is almost like holding it in your hands and being able to touch the pages. I don't really know enough about technology to do that right now, but I'm thinking about it.

It's wierd that after so many years, I might actually be starting out on a career as an artist. A fine artist, not commercial. The kind who wear berets and drink red wine. It's kind of exciting.

I think I have to get me a beret.