My Reading Year 2014

Here I go again, for the sorts of people who might be interested in this kind of thing. Also, since most of these were audiobooks I am using the words, "read" and "listen" interchangeably, as a shorthand for, "I have absorbed the content of this book in some form or another." If this bothers you, well, I think I know who you are. Anyhow, on we go!

Book I Read That I Liked Well Enough, But Was Glad When it Was Over 
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tart
I’m not sure how I feel about this book, exactly. Greatly enjoyed it in parts, got fed up in others, and breathed a sigh of relief when I was finally done. Overall I would describe reading it as a stressful experience, one that put you into the same frame of mind as the mind-bogglingly unfortunate protagonist.  

That said, I think the whole tome was worth it for this paragraph alone.

Best Book I Read that Came out in 2014
Thunderstruck, by Elizabeth McCracken. Stories that capture loss oh-so-perfectly. And leave you hungry for more. 

Best Book I Read That Did Not Come Out in 2014
The Pale King, David Foster Wallace. For many reasons, this one hit home. And it had several moments that left me laughing hysterically on the Metro and causing fellow passengers to look at me funny. 

Best Art Book
The Art of Richard Thompson (see my gushing here). 

Best Revisiting Childhood
Dear Mr. Henshaw, by Beverly Cleary 
I'm always going back to my favorite children's books from time to time, just because. A few months ago I stumbled on Dear Mr. Henshaw in the used bookstore, and read so much of it I finally decided to pony up the $4 and buy it. This book is sadder reading it as an adult but it also makes you remember certain truths about being a kid that seem worth carrying in the back of your mind, like the way a compliment by a well-respected adult could have you glowing for days.

Book I Felt Kind of Guilty About Abandoning, Then Didn't When I Read Nabokov Wasn’t a Fan Either. 
Crime and Punishment, Fydor Dostoevsky. 
Says Nabokov: "Dostoevsky is not a great writer, but a rather mediocre one-with flashes of excellent humor, but, alas, with wastelands of literary platitudes in between." 

From Truth is Fragmentary, by Gabrielle Bell

From Truth is Fragmentary, by Gabrielle Bell

Books I Abandoned Without Regret
The Woman Upstairs, by Claire Messud, and Us, by David Nichols. Like most people, my first reaction when abandoning books is to say, 'I didn't like the characters.' Which is always true, but also never the real reason the book isn't doing it for me. It's more that the characters didn't inspire curiosity; I didn't care what they'd do next, and didn't want to spend any time with them; their reactions to their situations were too dull/predictable/implausible. Which is mostly what happened here. 

Best Comics 
Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast, a comic memoir I picked up on a whim and devoured in under 24 hours. This is a funny, brutal account of the complications that arise dealing with aging parents, all the more horrifying for how clear-eyed it is. 

I also read Gabrielle Bell’s Truth is Fragmentary on a trip to Istanbul, which wound up being the perfect thing to read when bopping around a foreign land by yourself.

Worst Movie Adaptation from a Much-Loved Novel
Please please please never watch the movie version of A Long Way Down, especially if you’re like me and adore the book. It pained me to turn off a film starring Aaron Paul and Toni Collette after fifteen minutes, but I couldn't bring myself to watch more than that.  

Classics that I Probably Should've Already Read by Now, But Hadn't 
Last year it occurred to me that I hadn’t read anything published earlier than 1999, so I tried to get better about finishing books that have actually stood the test of time. My favorites: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, Nine Stories, Raise the High Roofbeam Carpenters / Seymour: an Introduction by J.D. Salinger. I also may have been the only person who hadn't read Of Mice and Men in middle school, so I did. And then it made me cry on the bus.  

Anything you read this year you recommend? As always, let me know in the comments, or become my friend on Goodreads. 
 

Cartoon in progress

A new cartoon I've been working on: 

IWillNeverBe-FinalWeb.jpg

Here's how it started in my sketchbook:

And on the right is a super-embarrassing first attempt that I am still on the fence about sharing in the first place.  

Will I draw this again to get it perfect? Maybe. Will I keep going on this one and overwork it within an inch of its life? Also a possibility! 

Drawings for Sale

This can be yours. 

This can be yours. 

If you are like me, the onslaught of ‘BUY THIS! SHOP NOW! SPEND MONEY!” emails you receive this year make you want to throw out half the things in your closet and never buy another sweater or garlic press again. But if you are also like me, you have lots of unsold art in your studio that could use a good home, frankly. In short, I’m not sure how to play this one. 

Anyhow, I have a handful of drawings left over from You Can’t Put Art on a Pedestal. You can see the remaining ones here, and buy them for $55 a piece.  

 

 

The Art of Richard Thompson

Usually when I “read an art book” it means I look at the pictures and skim the text. The newly-released Art of Richard Thompson is the only one I’ve ever read cover to cover, feeling genuinely sad when I was done. Fortunately, it’s good enough to go back to repeatedly and enjoy a place of honor on my drawing table. What really makes this book is that a) Richard Thompson is a superb writer as well as artist and b) the people who worked on this book are all superb writers who can gush about Thompson's work repeatedly without it getting old. And at least half of the writers are superb artists, too, notably Bill Waterson and Nick Galifianakis. One of my favorite paragraphs is the Nick Galifianakis introduction, when he describes seeing Thompson’s portfolio for the first time: 

"Richard Thompson’s drawings staggered me. Their deftness, humor, and depth made mine feel amateurish, self-important and shallow. In an instant, I saw not only just how long the road was..I was astonished to realize I wasn’t even on the road. Ability? Sure. Effort? Absolutely. But how does one convince the gods to fashion your visions, and an angel to guide your hand? 

BewareOfPig-RichardThompson

Richard provided me with the “aha!” moment of my creative life. This book exists partly because I want current and future artist to feel as worthless a I did.”

As one of the book's contributors David Apatoff points out, Richard Thompson knows how to “draw funny.” This is pretty much what it sounds like; sometimes a picture can crack you up without any text. You don’t need to be a good artist to draw funny, and not all great cartoonists can draw funny, at least not reliably. But it certainly doesn’t hurt. I mean, just LOOK at that pig.

(Sidenote: Other artists who could draw funny: Hieronymus Bosch , Flannery O’Connor  (no, really), Saul Steinberg.)

In short, everyone I know is getting this book for Channukah, and if I don't know you, you should get one yourself. You're welcome. 

The Illustrated Guide to the $14 Cocktail

I am still not sure if this passes the will this be interesting to someone who isn't me? test, but I'm working on it. Anyhow, here's the backstory: when I was in Spain last October, my friends and I stumbled upon a wine tasting at a fancy white-tableclothed restaurant. For some reason I wound up taking notes: 

I did the same thing for a sherry tasting a few days later in Madrid: 

Research. 

Which led me to start on my new side project when I returned to DC: "The Illustrated Guide to the $14 Cocktail" (which certain parts of DC has become very familiar with). Some sketchy progress so far: 

Sketches from the Metro

One of my more boring-yet-defining characteristics is that I am Someone Who Has a Long Commute. Lately I've been filling my sketchbook with fellow Metro passengers bundled up for winter. 
 

Commuters

Fine pen and ink drawing is usually tricky-to-near-impossible on trains because the motion causes my line to wobble, but it's good for broad, uncareful brushwork like this.

Of course to "draw from life" nowadays means to "draw people who are looking at their smartphones" (though the advantage here is that they are not as likely to turn around and see someone starring at them with a sketchbook in hand). 

 

Art and Audiobooks, Part 2

My devotion to audiobooks began in earnest in art school, when I realized that I could crank out drawing assignments at two in the morning, while the great Jim Dale narrated Harry Potter in the background. I was an avid reader, but not always a diligent student, and throughout my college years I tended to phone it in for any required reading. Chalk it up to the arrogance of youth. Why would I read what anyone told me when I could devour Michael Chabon or Jonanthan Franzen or Zadie Smith on my own? Or suffer through Marshall McLuhan when I could listen to Frank Muller narrating Beach Music, all while cranking out an animation assignment to boot? Senior year, I ignored writing a term paper for an art history class, opting instead to finish Confederacy of Dunces on the couch in the illustration lounge. What could I say? It wasn't a fair fight. The book won. Ironically, my being a devoted reader had the effect of making me a crappier student. I was less inclined to read anything assigned, because I only wanted to pick out my own literature. In my mind, books were supposed to always be interesting and personal, and if I didn't find one so, I had no patience for it. A book you selected on your own was meaningful; a book you were assigned to read just meant you were doing your homework. 

See if you can find the Infinite Jest quotes in this one. 

Because I listen to books more than I physically read them, and because I often draw when I listen to books, my reading life and my artistic life seem intertwined. Last summer I painted walls of Flashpoint Gallery while listening to The Love Affairs of Nathanial P.;  Lines from Infinite Jest have snuck into certain drawings, and I spent this morning listening to to Stephen King's writing memoir while doodling commuters on the Metro. 

I've gotten into heated debates with a few friends who claim that audiobooks don't count as reading (one even said that I was being deliberately deceptive by using the terms "reading" and "listening" interchangeably), but for some reason these friends never are the ones who read a lot to begin with. My friends who read the same way I do—the ones who feel vaguely uneasy if they aren't in the middle of a novel, and don't have another one lined up on deck for when they're done—never get bogged down with distinctions about what does and doesn't count.  And sadly, many conversations about books invariably turn into conversations about guilt over books not read. As though reading is still seen as something that you should be doing, like recycling or going to the gym, and not one of life's pleasures that you can enjoy for its own sake.  

For audiobooks at least, I think the tide is shifting. Every three-to-six months there is an article in the in the New York Times with an, "Audiobooks are a Thing Now!" type-headline, not unlike the articles written about comics with the same lead ("Comics! They aren't just superheros anymore") on a similar news cycle. And celebrities are narrating audiobooks, which can't hurt. 

This past summer I installed my show at the DCAC while listening to House of Mirth, and it occurred to me that I am shifting too. Finally, I am in the stage of my life where I am ready to appreciate early 20th novels (also, I was an idiot—Edith Wharton is superb). I don't know why all the books I so readily dismissed as a student when they appeared on a syllabus are suddenly are becoming appealing, but I am haunted by a line of Henry David Thoreau: “Read the best books first,” he said. “Or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”

ArtCrank DC

Photo by Francis Tatem. 

Photo by Francis Tatem. 

I am pleased to announce that I will have a poster in ArtCrank DC, which seems to consistently show a variety of amazing bike-realted posters.  I am also beyond pleased that the super-talented Anthony Dihle will be helping me with the printing, since I haven't screenprinted in, oh, nine years now?  

Francis Tatem of BicycleSPACE photographed me in my studio and asked me a few questions about my poster. Read about it here. 

You May Have Noticed

From You Can't Put Art on a Pedestal

Why yes, I do have a new website. Thank you for noticing. And while we're at it, a few announcements: 

  • My aforementioned show, You Can't Put Art on a Pedestal at the DC Art Center Nano Gallery has been extended to October 5th. About half of the 57 small drawings on display have sold since the last time I checked, so get 'em while you can. Each drawing is $55. And speaking of which...
  • The closing talk for my show is on Sunday, September 21 at 5:00 PM. The lovely Philippa Hughes of Pink Line Project fame will be moderating, so this should be really be a fun time. 
  • I am almost sold out of The Bachelor Cat comics, in case you will still like one. (There was a brief uptick in sales when this article came out in the NYT last month.) 

 

You Can't Put Art on a Pedestal

My new show, "You Can't Put Art on a Pedestal" is now open at  at the DC Arts Center Nano Gallery, in Adams Morgan. It contains fifty-seven 4x4'' goauche-and-ink drawings, all thematically-related the experience of museum-going, which may sound familiar for those of you keeping track. There is an opening party Friday, July 11 from 7-9 PM that I hope you can attend. In the meantime, some gratuitous preview shots below:

You Can't Put Art on a Pedestal - Installation

You Can't Put Art on a Pedestal - Installation

You Can't Put Art on a Pedestal - Installation

You Can't Put Art on a Pedestal - Installation

The Whitney Biennial Curator's Statements, Edited (sort of)

I don't have a whole lot to say about the Whitney Biennial. Overall it wasn't a very good show (as a lot of other critics have pointed out), with many of the paintings looking not unlike ones you often see getting hawked at Eastern Market, except maybe with more penises, and several pieces requiring you to read the accompanying exhibition text in order to appreciate them. Raw materials were seldom disguised. If a support beam was used to hold up a sculpture, for example, it was not sanded or carved in any way, but appeared as though it was hauled directly into the museum from Home Depot. ("I have those glasses at home," my friend remarked upon seeing a hanging installation made out of IKEA-esque glassware, which is probably not the response the artist was going for when making her piece).

But the curator's statements were by far the worst things in the show, just begging you to roll your eyes before even setting foot in the galleries. They were perfect examples of everything that's wrong with the way the art world talks, a mess of convoluted nonsense that falls apart the moment you attempt to take it seriously; the kind of writing a college freshman would crank out at the last minute, hoping the professor won't bother to ask any follow-up questions. It may seem petty to get up in arms about a few paragraphs, but this kind of thing rankles me, especially when it's done by prestigious institutions. As I whined about before, I see universally-accepted bad art prose as downright harmful to artists and just plain annoying to everyone else.

Anyhow, my companion and I later amused ourselves over beers by editing them for clarity, pictured below:

FourthFlor
FourthFlor
ThirdFloor
ThirdFloor
SecondFloor
SecondFloor

Art and Rejection

WorkAtAMuseumWebDiscussing how many things you get rejected from is probably bad PR, unless you're already so successful that it comes across as reassuring. Talk about it while you're still trying to make a name for yourself, however, it carries the risk of sounding whiney or even worse, naive, setting yourself up for averted eyes and hastily changed subjects. There may be, after all, a very good reason your work isn't making the cut, but everyone is too polite to tell you.

So, at the risk of both of those possibilities, here goes: I have applied for about nine art exhibitions in the last three months or so, and have received, roughly, seven rejections. (The remaining two I haven't heard from yet.)  A few of these were easy to shrug of (the artistic equivalent of getting dumped by someone you weren't sure you wanted to date in the first place) though there were one or two that stung in particular, mostly because I'd assumed they were in were in the bag. In my head, I'd already pictured myself in the show, booking tickets to the location and posting triumphantly on Facebook. Yes, yes. Embarrassing now. Added to the pile are an influx of bait-and-switch commissions, which aren't rejections per se, but nonetheless deflating: "We'd love to have your work for [something really cool sounding]" most of which tend to fall by the wayside for whatever reason, once logistics, such as money, get in the way.

The odd thing about rejection, I've found, is that it is both dispiriting and galvanizing at the same time. You are left with the impulse to show them, show them all ("them" of course, being strangers and acquaintances who have their own lives to worry about and don't care—your friends and family, who are rooting for you all along, you take no pleasure in showing up) but also wonder what the hell is wrong with you. Or that you are playing a game that you don't know the rules to. Or that maybe you shouldn't be playing the game at all and taking up a different sport. The most reassuring thing I've found is that I will keep drawing anyhow, because that is how I'm wired, but also because drawing belongs to some other realm where rejection or acceptance or getting into museums and galleries isn't quite the point. That is, it's important but not the point. Even with an inbox overflowing with email from people who 'regret to inform me...', my art results in my having a better life than I would without it, but not in an easily quantifiable way.

The "Bad Art Writing" folder

In my Gmail account, I have a specific folder called, "Bad Art Writing" where I file any particularly atrocious art press release or gallery announcement that gets sent my way. This happens fairly regularly, if you are an artist who is on the receiving end of gallery and artist mailing lists. Bad Art Writing (sometimes known as International Art English), is basically Academic English (AE), which David Foster Wallace probably eviscerated best in his brilliant Harper's essay, excerpted below. Simply substitute the word "artist" for "academic" and "scholar" and it amounts to pretty much the same thing:

…I cite no less an authority than Mr. G. Orwell, who 50 years ago had [Academic English] pegged as a "mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence" in which "it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning."

...the obscurity and pretension of Academic English can be attributed in part to a disruption in the delicate rhetorical balance between language as a vector of meaning and language as a vector of the writer's own resume. In other words, it is when a scholar's vanity/insecurity leads him to write primarily to communicate and reinforce his own status as an Intellectual that his English is deformed by pleonasm and pretentious diction (whose function is to signal the writer's erudition) and by opaque abstraction (whose function is to keep anybody from pinning the writer down to a definite assertion that can maybe be refuted or shown to be silly). The latter characteristic, a level of obscurity that often makes it just about impossible to figure out what an AE sentence is really saying, so closely resembles political and corporate doublespeak ("revenue enhancement," "downsizing," pre-owned," "proactive resource-allocation restructuring") that it's tempting to think AE's real purpose is concealment and its real motivation fear.

There's an addictive, "fun-to-hate" quality about this sort of writing. It's similar to the way I can gleefully despise Sarah Palin or the show Girls, and still be compelled to click on every single knee-jerk piece of click-bait that comes out on those respective topics. Not that this is something I'm at all proud of. As any creative-type knows, hating the work of others is much easier (and lazier) than producing something of your own that's any good, and so far as I can tell, I am no wiser or better off for having read about the societal implications of Lena Dunham's gratuitous nudity or Palin's latest outrageous tweet, or whatever other distraction was making the rounds last week.

But my hatred of Art/Academic Speak is a little more personal than hating an inane politician or a TV show.  I think all artists are done a disservice when this type of writing is seen as perfectly acceptable. How can the phrase "questioning the commerce or carelessness of re-appropriation through producing a space-as-document," or "our cultural presentation of identity and contain ambiguous or potentially contradictory statements about their creator" be uttered with a straight face? Why are "notions" of [insert perfectly stable art form, such as painting] always being "challenged?" (Which of course, always just translates into, "The artist decided to do something different.") The reasons this is a detriment are obvious (I hope). Terrible art writing is a distraction from art that's actually good, it makes the artist look insecure at best and like a disingenuous jackass at worst, and artists who would never dream of writing this way feel obliged to, so that they may join an exclusive little club of People in the Know. But unfortunately, bad art writing is mostly shrugged off, on par with going to the Scottish highlands and complaining that everyone there speaks with an impenetrable accent. (Well, of course they talk that way. What did you expect?) And as International Art English cofounder David Levine points out: "The more you can muddy the waters around the meaning of a work, the more you can keep the value high." Maybe that's a handy insider's trick, but hearing it said outright is heartbreaking. Has it come to this? Is squelching clarity really the key to the kingdom?

I Had No Plan

One of my 'hard to explain' drawings.

Here's the thing that makes me a tad sympathetic, however: writing about art is hard. Very hard. And even harder to do sincerely, maybe moreso for artists than anyone else. When artists create work I suspect many* are not even in the same universe as words; they are hanging out in some meditative zone where language itself ceases to exist. My absolute favorite aspect of drawing—and also the thing about it that makes it easier and more enjoyable than almost anything else I do—is that during its creation, I do not have to talk about it. Because I can't, or at least, not very well. There is literally nothing to say; the image is handling the Saying part for me. Thinking and explaining and making a case for oneself is never the point when I draw. But admitting, "I just wanted to see what happened when I expanded this shape," or, "this composition felt right to me after looking at a book of Saul Steinberg drawings" doesn't sound all that smart or interesting, and yet again, it's easier to revert to vague, nonsensical prose.

Still, I'd like to think we artists can do better. We can omit needless words. We can sound like human beings and not like random adjective generators. We can admit that these things are not easy to write about, and be honest when we don't know what we're doing instead of disguising it in blabber.

Too much stuff

One of my least favorite aspects of art-making is that it takes up so much space. Yes, I know. That's kind of the whole point. But in a way, I hate that part too--the sad knowledge that the activity I enjoy the most will, at the end of the day, result in my producing another thing, in a world that is arguably already overrun with too many things. Not that it'll stop me from drawing, of course, but it's kind of a depressing thought to have while cleaning your desk. Not that I dwell on this all the time. To be fair, I've been enjoying the holiday season more than I anticipated, actually relishing walking past Christmas tree sales, enjoying the odd snow day and boozy holiday parties and all that, but the appeals to shop are exhausting. I am tired of stuff. Tired of being a Yet Another Artist Trying to Sell Stuff, frankly; I just want my work to go to good homes to people who happen to like the drawings and not do any of the uncomfortable-but-neccessary work required to entreat people to buy it.

And, um, now that I'm done kvetching, here are a few pieces of art I have for sale.

 

Map of New York

Map of New York

Map of New York

And I added a map of New York to compliment my map of DC since we all know New York enthusiasts tend to be much for fanatical than DC enthusiasts. This is also available on Society6.

And as always, any art-lovers and/or Christmas-shopping procrastinators who would like to purchase original art are welcome to contact me for prices and availability. As I mentioned earlier, the drawings are starting to pile and need good homes.

My Reading Year: 2013

Bookshelf - Dana Jeri Maier

I realize this is probably only interesting to a handful of people and has little to do with art, save the fact that I listened to a good number of these while drawing. But for fellow readers, here you are. And please note I'm using the word "read" interchangeably with "listen to" since most of these books were audio versions, except for the comics, obviously, and a few I read on my Kindle. (If you are the sort of person who thinks that audiobooks don't count as reading, well, I have nothing to say to you.) Looking at this I am wondering if it might be good for my psyche to read a book that came out before 1996, but I guess I'm a sucker for modern fiction. Plus anything at all by Lionel Shriver.

Best books I read that came out in 2013 Big Brother, by Lionel Shriver My Dirty Dumb Eyes, by Lisa Hanawalt Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish, by David Rakoff (though the illustrations accompanying the print version seemed to counter the tone of the poetry) The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P, by Adelle Waldman

Two Lionel Shriver short stories I read this year were excellent: Kilifi Creek, in the November 25 New Yorker (probably one of the most memorable things I've read all year), and Prepositions, about the subtle difference between what it means to die on 9/11 rather than in 9/11.

Best books I read that did not come out in 2013 Half Empty, by David Rakoff Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems, by David Rakoff Fraud, by David Rakoff Tenth of December, by George Saunders An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, by Elizabeth McCracken 21 Dog Years, by Mike Daisey Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walters I Don't Care About Your Band, by Julie Klaunsner A Perfectly Good Family by Lionel Shriver (I am two books away from being a Lionel Shriver completist, people!)

I finished Infinite Jest on Saturday (started in June), and am currently listening to the footnotes. This is a lot more interesting than it sounds.

Books I did not finish I abandoned The Wisdom of Psychopaths, Silver Linings Playbook, Lost Memory of Skin, The Good Nurse, This is How, Benediction, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!, and The Creationists. I feel vaguely guilty about not finishing the last two, but not enough to revisit them.

Comics Comic-wise I read Paying for It by Chester Brown (an autobiographical comic that somehow managed to make a year of sleeping with prostitutes boring and self-congratulatory), Heads or Tales by Lili Carre, and The Infinite Wait by Julia Wertz. I'm pretty sure Paying for It would be much more interesting if the plot stayed the same but the book was written and illustrated by Lisa Hanawalt.

Book I was surprised to like as much as I did Lean In got a lot of flack for offering contradictory work-life balance advice (and yes, the phrase 'work-life-balance' definitely go off into a corner and die). But it also contained some of the most eye-opening statistics about women in the workplace, and how they often shoot themselves in the foot by underestimating or downplaying their abilities. I felt a very reassured and less alone after reading this, and genuinely wish it had been around for me to pick up five years ago.

Book I was surprised not to like I wasn't a huge fan of Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane, despite it getting rave reviews (though to be fair, the only fantasy books I've ever gotten into in my life have been the Harry Potter series). But I will say that Gaiman is an excellent audiobook narrator.

Books I read that I enjoyed, but didn't feel like shouting from the rooftops re: how much I liked them or anything Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, Gone Girl, The Cuckoo's Calling and Me Before You

For books I read in 2012 and earlier you can refer to an old flowchart I made, or become my friend on GoodReads.

Maps, Coasters and Cats

Lately I've been mass-producing stuff mostly for its own sake, including a new coaster series. (I'm not sure what to do with these, exactly, other than leave them in bars and hand them out to friends, but I tend to have a 'shoot first, ask questions later' approach to a lot of art-making.) coasters_large

I've also created a map of DC that I've doodled on obsessively and printed on chip board. You can buy 'em for $8 on my shop.

DC-MapWebBlack

MrsTheCat
The Quetzal, a.k.a. Mrs. The Cat. 1994-2013

I was also very sad to learn that Mrs. The Cat, who is documented in The Bachelor Cat, has recently passed away. She was a good one, to say the least. Our thoughts are with her surviving Cat Bachelor.

Some praise for the Handbook

A friend of mine who read a late draft of The Unsuccessful Artist's Handbook had this to say about it:

Also first off, it just bowls me over with its honesty. It hits me in the heart. I don't know how you feel it, or what your awareness is, or whether it costs you or comes naturally. I'm really envious. I am not, in life or art, forthcoming or straightforward or candid. Not because I don't want to be those things, but -- but this isn't about me [he said, dodging further reflection and revelation]. There's a quality to the honesty that hits me in the heart, that I'm envious of, that I think we're all a bit thirsty for.

 

Again, you can buy a copy here. Makes a great Hannukah gift! Or not.

When in doubt, draw a fish wearing a scarf - Dana Jeri Maier
When in doubt, draw a fish wearing a scarf - Dana Jeri Maier

In other news—well, there isn't much at the moment, except that my new coaster business cards came in [see right], and I am fairly pleased with them. Also, I have been having fun with my Studio page, which contains semi-regularly documentation of my studio. (I'm a shameless snoop when it comes to other artists' studios, so I figured it would be kind to return the favor.)