updates
oops i forgot to blog about anything for several months again! Whoops
been a little while, obviously, but i’ll try and summarize what’s happened in the last few months and what i’m currently working on. i’m still in school, full-time now and digging it, and continuing to work on… um, everything.
expozine 2023 was. Not amazing, for me. didn’t sell many zines, didn’t sell practically any prints, sold a couple patches. it was very disheartening and while i might sign up for a table next year i will have a drastically reduced amount of stock- at the end of the day i did at least break even, so that’s a positive. i submitted Atlas to the award judges, but i won’t know until this october/november or so if i’ve been nominated for anything. that’s how it goes i guess!
in january i released an ep under the name “mackerel sky” that hopefully will get turned into something more polished in the coming year. am writing more songs for the project and recording demos. this is 100% just for fun; i don’t expect it to go anywhere or to perform it live at any time. really it was just very fun to speed-write/record an ep in a month flat.
into the nitty gritty: i have two large format projects currently going: The Pathetics and the as of yet untitled hood/mask thing i’m making. the pathetics is going to be a massive collection of drawings of mass-produced porcelain figurines - i’m aiming for at least 50, but if i keep churning them out it might be more by the end- framed and displayed together to overwhelm the viewer. i have to write up a little statement about it that’ll more efficiently explain the point lol
the hood/mask is more in progress insofar as i don’t know what its end format is going to be, but i’m going to document all the parts of making it as thoroughly as i can and maybe turn that part of it into a zine. i have been kind of constantly shying away from making art about anything objectionable and this is going to be a step in that direction.
the hood is kind of a great signifier of the twin stars of my art practice: distance and violence. (it’s kind of crazy how often i find myself coming back to that. i really don’t consciously set out to, but then the more i think about things i’ve made the more i’m like aw shit i did the ol’ dist vio again.) it produces a distance between the wearer and the audience- that of anonymity- and is itself a symbol of violence: the popular viewpoint surrounding bdsm is one of whips and pain and etc. it’s extra cool because despite conjuring up such violent imagery the hood itself is strictly tied to submission- thus the onus of producing the violence conjured is centred on the audience. it is, to crib another piece of mine, which is a weird thing to do feelingswise but i’m doing it anyway, an ultimate surrender.
i plan to use it for some kind of performance art or at least for reference photos for a self portrait but we’ll see about all that.
anyway that’s most of what i have to say right now. as you can tell i’m starting to get more cerebral about stuff i’m making, which is both fun and annoying bc i can physically feel myself get more irritating about what i’m making the more i think about it. whatever! if i don’t make it in the official art world i’ll just let go of the high concept shit and start drawing stuff for no reason again and nobody will be the wiser. yay
hope you’re doing well. will probably write another post in six months given my current apparent posting frequency.