January 23, 2018. 2:30 AM. for the first time in 9 years i consider giving up on trying to be an artist. my mom wouldn’t argue, she’d let me move back home. i could drop everything, the entire struggle, and watch my brothers grow up. i could freely be helpful for people who love me instead of grinding through a job at a company that barely cares about me, to scrape by and just barely manage to make rent. i have never thought these things before and i am haunted believing that all my aspirations are out of reach.
this website doesn’t exactly have a strong following, so i’m sure it went generally unnoticed that i haven’t written anything for the past year and a half. i’m trying to write something without subtle references to politics or metaphors. i just want to write something straightforward, didactic an banal.
2016 had ended on a note that felt good and hopeful, but 2017 soon cascaded into a nightmare of events that felt degrading, slowed my work and left me exhausted. 2018 doesn’t look like it is guaranteed to fix anything but there is a more substantial basis for hope that i can turn everything around.
the political turmoil of 2017 is very public and i don’t think i’d like to delve too much into that, so instead here is a list of events that have nothing to with you and everything to do with me.
in january i finished a residency with a group in my hometown area that had no idea how to properly work with a young artist. they were determined to revive the culture of the downtown. it was clear that this meant a revival through gentrification by the time i was done with them. this was disappointing. in exchange for use of their space i had offered half of the work i produced there with which to start an archive. by the end of my time there, they had forgotten that essential “with which to start an archive” and wanted to make sure they had the option to benefit financially from the work they were left with. perhaps the one benefit was that the work they were with was not marketable in the local area (very rural, with little connection to urban art centres and therefore urban taste) and that an archive was forced upon them in unsellable inventory. still, it leaves me unable to track the work and The September Collection is now likely scattered beyond reassembly. the experience with them left me destitute financially. i trusted them too much and let them control the marketing of an opening which was, in the end, very poorly handled. the turnout seemed to hinge almost entirely on the efforts of two individuals that i hope i have maintained a positive relationship with since these events.
left broke after that in a new city where i only spoke half the languages necessary for work was really rough. it meant i couldn’t rely on easy work behind a cash register or counter and had to look for work that only required i speak english. before i found work in the overnight shift of a call centre i did these things:
- wrote motivational articles for $30/week under the pen name “Richard Prince”
- offered classical portrait services
- took commissions for (ugh) pet portraits
- tried to make dirty art to profit from people’s perversion
the graveyard shift is now something i’ve promised myself i would never do again. i’ve never felt so endlessly tired.
the gift and the grain 