Getting To Know You Better Poems: You’ve come to the right place!

I’m pausing regular programming here on this blog to bring you. . .  what you’ve been asking for.

As you savvy readers probably know, when you sign up for a blog, you don’t only get an empty screen on which to collect your thoughts and fling them out into the world. You also get a cryptic, statistical representation of how your blog is used by said world. You can click on “blog statistics” and see what words people googled to arrive at your blog. Most commonly, the search terms are along the lines of: “dressed-up penis” or “nails in paintings” or “Jesus karaoke funny thing.” I suppose those are to be expected.

Unexpected –at least to me– have been the persistent pleas for “getting to know you better poems.” I’m talking a good TEN PERCENT of all total searches. I don’t know if it is one relentless poetry-starved googler who consistently forgets that he’s already clicked on my blog, or if it’s what lots of people are looking for— and then, sadly, not finding. Did you think that getting-to-know-you-better poetry was best left to romantic comedies with Shakespearian plot lines? Think again! I for one am rather touched that people are hungry for poetry as a means of getting to know their acquaintances and friendly-hopefuls.

So today, rather than disappoint yet another soul, I will offer you some getting to know you better poems.

Ahem.

{disclaimer: I know nothing about writing poetry.}

.

what’s that on your lip
some food
or maybe your ex
here like a booger
unbidden
unforgotten
and
dear

.

your hair falls from behind your ear
clumsily
effortlessly
each time like a giddy question
like a puppy
not knowing
when to
stop

.

maybe this elevator rendition of
and she was
is not so bad
if it gives us reason
to look up
give a knowing look
and smile
(did you fart?)

.

i think i know you from before
when you were who you are now
not who you were then
draped in black velvet
in the l.a. heat
you didn’t complain
always
pious

.

perhaps
if i knew you
we could paint our arms blue
(we would have many arms)
and sing in sanskrit
taking dutiful
pauses
to smirk
to
remember
our minds

.

here’s a bear hug
and here are babies clinging
here’s a hairy chest
and here’s a nipple leaking

.

sweet boy.
(really a girl)
that hula hoop shimmies
between
two
worlds.
thank god
your parents are hippies

.

nothing says i love you
like pebbles
in the sand
nothing
says i want you like a
stone
in my hand
i think it has a smiley face

Warm Streams of Logic

I’ve started a new blog, where I’m writing about stuff that doesn’t fit on this here art blog. I’m using it like a sketchbook for my own art practice, and also as a catch-all for sundry impressions. I try to write on it every day.

Eco-Macho, Not-So-Macho, Thoughts on Bloggery, and a Media Invasion

[Susan Robb, I Am A Land Animal]

“Eco-macho…taps into that old and apparently endlessly rich metaphor of the Northwest as a place rooted in the interpenetration between the urban and the rural, a place that’s both somehow ahead of the mainstream and off the grid. The idea has been cultivated by Northwest artists and writers from time immemorial. Just to name a few recent examples: Charlie Krafft, with his Mystic Sons of Morris Graves crew and his weapon ceramics; Gretchen Bennett, with her Native American blankets, street stickers in the form of Mount Rainier, and colored-pencil adaptations of Kurt Cobain on YouTube (not to mention the Aberdeen native himself); Claude Zervas, with his Eva Hesse–like Northwest rivers and passages made in thin, white cold-cathode fluorescents with their dangling wires; Susan Robb, with her both hopeful and dark insistence on humans as animals. This is the current Northwest School.”

I just read this article by Jen Graves this morning, though it was written last April. It is so directly pertinent to our conversation about Regionalism. Talk about forgetting our own art history; even one that was articulated just one year ago! Or, in my case–rather than forgetting–just now learning our art history. For various reasons of life and cliff-hanging tumult, my attendance to all things art-related in my three years here has been spotty, at best.

I am very excited to be becoming a part of this art community, but I don’t really know that much about it, yet. It is with this confession that I named this blog; I started writing as a way to get to know the artists and spaces in my city. Also, my baby was taking twenty minute naps (which, to any babies reading this, DOES NOT REALLY COUNT as a nap) and blogging was a way to do something creative, at home, in a short amount of time. This medium is ripe for someone with a rather impulsive personality. I get all excited and worked up about something and make some seemingly-confident statements, click “Publish” and proceed to be overcome by the urge to run and hide under the nearest pile of dirt. Maybe this is just another extension of what it means to try to make your life as an artist — sticking your neck out; submitting to likely rejection; passionately, unknowingly, reinventing the wheel.

[Gretchen Bennett, Mountain of Dirt Sticker]

Sometimes the abundance of what I don’t know hits me like a sack of glass bricks, and I’m humbled by people that really do know a lot.

Seattle’s art-writing media are changing in nature, and I wonder how this will change the content. We are losing the model of the few people (i.e. “critics” that are invested full-time, employed, and published on real live paper) that know everything, and we’re gaining many voices (many of them artists who are already spread thinly across many projects, with time to write only in the wee hours of the morning) that know some things about some things. It is mind-boggling to me that I, for example, now have a platform not too different from that of some people who are much more entitled to it. Despite this fact, the seasoned critics have been nothing but gracious and welcoming to us renegade blogging artists. They could have relegated us as cocky, hapless, new-sheriffs-in-town; instead they’ve added us to their blogrolls with open arms, declaring that if people aren’t reading our blogs, they’re not reading about art in this town.

[Claude Zervas, La Bûche]

Likewise with some of the art spaces here. In the spirit of exercising my rights as the gushy, why-not-lay-it-all-on-the-line artist, I wrote my letter of (intentionally unrequited) love to the Henry, never thinking they’d entertain my ideas. (It simply felt necessary go through the motions of asking the question, if that makes any sense.) Now Betsey Brock wants to meet me for coffee and help me with an exhibition proposal.

So, in light of our collective examination of what’s missing in the Seattle art scene, this here is a gleaming representation of what we’ve got. Instead of an art establishment that turns up its nose at artists challenging the foundation, Seattle has one that joins in.

[Charles Krafft, porcelain firearm]

The Critical Limitations of an Artist

Along with an MFA, I left grad school with an unofficial degree in criticism in three variations: snarky criticism, constructive criticism, and criticism of the shock-and-awe variety. All were thrown about wildly during critiques as sport. Which form would be offered up today by which professor? The visiting artist/critic always had the most freedom with shock-and-awe, because they could drop a bomb and then catch the next plane home. (I remember Joanne Greenbaum said in the car to the grad taking her to the airport: “Get me outta here!”)  Fellow grads generally tried to maintain a respectful balance of gentle criticism and either silence or praise of each other; at the same time, we knew some level of actual critique was expected to keep the ball rolling. Otherwise, what would we all do for 45 minutes? Most of the time, I enjoyed critiques; I like debating.

When I first had the idea to start this blog, I thought: What a fun chance to let some pent-up, post-MFA-doldrums snarkiness fly. What an opportunity to constructively share how any variety of artists’ work could be better. In school the latter was always prefaced with some phrase like, “I’d like to see . . .” or “I wish that . . .” I’d like to see hundreds of these paintings shown all together to really bring home the concept of commodification through repetition. I wish the hot dog throwing had taken place before the soliloquy on capitalism. Ah, the good ol’ days.

Today I came to terms with the fact that I can’t have both. You can’t be a critic and an artist, at least with your peers. If you do, you’ll just go around burning bridges. I thought about creating an alter-ego, maybe named Polly Coffers, who would be the bitchy one with a bone to pick. It would be like the cartoon character with the cartoon Angel on one shoulder and the cartoon Devil on the other. This blog would be our conversation that I imagined going something like this:

SB: It was kind of refreshing to stand around and talk about painting in an “old-school” manner. The artist seemed like a nice guy, genuinely trying to capture some sense of nature in his abstract paintings.

PC: Yawn. Old white guy making more color fields. You know, SB, that if he were a woman, or brown, or young, none of this would go over well. It wouldn’t be “enough.” And by the way, I smell business.

SB: You smell rain on a crisp October afternoon. And we are finally attending an artist talk, isn’t that great? Shouldn’t we just appreciate him and his work for what it is and lay off on the cynicism?

PC: Why? Why spend the time when there is better and more interesting work to be thought about? Why feed the romantic mythology of the old white male modernist with his big brush?

SB: I think somebody’s jealous.

PC: Wait– what century are we in? Is that really his autograph on the front of the painting? Let’s ask him why he decided to do that.

SB: Enough from you! We are out in the Seattle Art Scene, with no baby I might add! Can’t we just savor this? I’m fitting into my pre-pregnancy jeans for crying out loud. Isn’t it sweet how people are telling him they enjoy living with his art? These people are just glowing with appreciation.

PC: You glow too when you’re shopping.

SB: Ok, who should we try to meet after the talk. Hmmm…. that would be two gold stars in one week. I wonder if I can make an online star chart with all of the stars I’ll be collecting. I love collecting things, and it would look so cool if it were hand–

PC: and did the gallery director really just say —–

So you see my point.

Something to do with having your cake and eating it too. Maybe this will be good for me. I will try to focus on the positive, on what I do like. Unlearn that knee-jerk reaction to critique. If that’s possible.

The Beginning

It’s not really the beginning, as I’ve lived in Seattle for almost three years. But, I’ve been here and not here at the same time. I went to the end of the world, nearly fell off the edge, and came back with a baby. Maybe when I know you better I’ll share details. But I’m healthy and he is healthy, and, in short, everything feels new.

New is my decision to not be quite so cloistered in my studio, and insert myself more actively into this community.

So last night at First Thursday, in my new-found social enthusiasm, I went up to Greg Kucera (might as well start at the top?) during the Vice-Presidential debate-induced lull at Platform and:

SB: Hi I wanted to meet you. You are Greg Kucera. I’m a painter. I live here.

few long seconds of silence

GK: Well, good.   [as in, for you]

Not really so good. But, you know, he is a pristine mammoth and I am a struggling young artist so how else could it have gone? After this little intro, I initiated an awkward conversation about encaustic. I respect the man, I admire his gallery. Maybe I’ll make myself meet some new fancy person at every First Thursday. Then I’ll give myself a gold star when I get home.