Paint, Poetry
Yesterday:
Did 2 paintings (one commission/challenge, one for the living room). More abstract than my typical fare, but still has those damn trees. At least this time I did something different with them.
Will post pics if I can figure out how to photograph them right (though one may be too dark regardless). Did one minimalist piece that I'm not counting yet, and started two other ones: a warm, long piece and started the "Illustrated Lover in Blue", a sketch of which I posted a little while ago here.
I'm most challenged by the ILiB piece, but once I got some of the other pieces under my belt, i felt a lot more loose and controlled, so I went for it. The ones I take the time to sketch and then do color studies for I usually end up nailing down. This one I'm doing something alittle different too: I'm cutting back on the brush work and doing the body mostly by fingertips. Considering the subject matter, it seemed most apropos. I can almost feel her curves as I paint them, which makes sense.
Last night:
Had a quick reading at a nightclub, which is the kind of gig I swore I wouldn't do, but it came from the right person at the right time, so I threw caution to the wind and said what the hell. It was a chance for me to get inside a club I'd known about for along time and walk around, feeling the place out for potential business at a later date, if appropriate (the Standard lounge, which used to be the Red Zone). Big place with metropolitan intentions: multi-rooms that you traverse and wind around in, with different colors and "moods" for each. Nice idea that's real big in large cities and foreign lands. Don't know how much they play with it, but if I owned the joint, it'd be using them rooms 24-7.
The reading itself was okay. I was concerned initially that we woul dbe too close to the entrance, but we actually ended up in an okay room with the right traffic location. The sound was spotty - it always is - and the light pretty abysmal, but it's not designed for poetry readings. I went on with three other cats (Fred Kirchner (who did the invites), Louise Robertson (a WB regular) and a German woman named Susanne I didn't know) before a mostly spotty, quiet crowd. We did better than I thought we would, and I ended up reading 4 poems instead of the 2-3 I thought we were going to do.
Set:
- Loving a Lesbian When You Have a Ding-a-Ling (mild on-site edit)
- Crossing Off the Sight of Janet Jackson's Breasts from the List of Things That Would Make my Life Complete (heavy on-site edit, about a page)
A quick break, then:
- Chief Engineer Scotty's Lament (wow, I found another use for it: nightclub ice breaker)
- untitled love poem (8.1x.04) (which I read Wednesday at open mic, but these guys didn't know that)
Considering that the team going to Nats was asked to do this gig and only I ended up doing it, we presented a nice, engaging handful of work that was way more polished than expected. Fred's always pretty devil-may-care, which almost always works a cold room, Susanne was very good and Louise really got the right pieces in the right order and performed them very well. I actually felt a little out of place, but I sucked it up, hit my lick, and jetted. Considering we didn't even start until well after my normal bedtime, it went pretty well.
At work today recuperating from all the art of yesterday.
Did 2 paintings (one commission/challenge, one for the living room). More abstract than my typical fare, but still has those damn trees. At least this time I did something different with them.
Will post pics if I can figure out how to photograph them right (though one may be too dark regardless). Did one minimalist piece that I'm not counting yet, and started two other ones: a warm, long piece and started the "Illustrated Lover in Blue", a sketch of which I posted a little while ago here.
I'm most challenged by the ILiB piece, but once I got some of the other pieces under my belt, i felt a lot more loose and controlled, so I went for it. The ones I take the time to sketch and then do color studies for I usually end up nailing down. This one I'm doing something alittle different too: I'm cutting back on the brush work and doing the body mostly by fingertips. Considering the subject matter, it seemed most apropos. I can almost feel her curves as I paint them, which makes sense.
Last night:
Had a quick reading at a nightclub, which is the kind of gig I swore I wouldn't do, but it came from the right person at the right time, so I threw caution to the wind and said what the hell. It was a chance for me to get inside a club I'd known about for along time and walk around, feeling the place out for potential business at a later date, if appropriate (the Standard lounge, which used to be the Red Zone). Big place with metropolitan intentions: multi-rooms that you traverse and wind around in, with different colors and "moods" for each. Nice idea that's real big in large cities and foreign lands. Don't know how much they play with it, but if I owned the joint, it'd be using them rooms 24-7.
The reading itself was okay. I was concerned initially that we woul dbe too close to the entrance, but we actually ended up in an okay room with the right traffic location. The sound was spotty - it always is - and the light pretty abysmal, but it's not designed for poetry readings. I went on with three other cats (Fred Kirchner (who did the invites), Louise Robertson (a WB regular) and a German woman named Susanne I didn't know) before a mostly spotty, quiet crowd. We did better than I thought we would, and I ended up reading 4 poems instead of the 2-3 I thought we were going to do.
Set:
- Loving a Lesbian When You Have a Ding-a-Ling (mild on-site edit)
- Crossing Off the Sight of Janet Jackson's Breasts from the List of Things That Would Make my Life Complete (heavy on-site edit, about a page)
A quick break, then:
- Chief Engineer Scotty's Lament (wow, I found another use for it: nightclub ice breaker)
- untitled love poem (8.1x.04) (which I read Wednesday at open mic, but these guys didn't know that)
Considering that the team going to Nats was asked to do this gig and only I ended up doing it, we presented a nice, engaging handful of work that was way more polished than expected. Fred's always pretty devil-may-care, which almost always works a cold room, Susanne was very good and Louise really got the right pieces in the right order and performed them very well. I actually felt a little out of place, but I sucked it up, hit my lick, and jetted. Considering we didn't even start until well after my normal bedtime, it went pretty well.
At work today recuperating from all the art of yesterday.