8/7/2021
"Exhaustion," bedtime sketches (cont'd.), Substack art newsletters, and "Voice Above Water" (video).
8-7-2021
I had just finished telling my partner that I was feeling exhausted (although I felt physically tired, it was really more of a mental and emotional exhaustion), when I opened my e-mail and saw this newsletter: “You’re Still Exhausted” in Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study. She sums it all up pretty well:
“Look at all these goodies we have to get us past our communications problems. Computers and social media and Zoom. And yet. We’re still exhausted. Maybe it’s the trauma of the last year and half? Maybe it’s the trauma of realizing, in a very physical way, that our society is broken? That we have to come up with something better?”
I count myself lucky because I’m not in the path of a fire, I have a place to live, an income, a dear partner, and art. That said, I know that change is all around me, and I’m aware of it in a way I hadn’t been prior to 2020. Air Quality report: Today’s air quality is “good” according to AccuWeather’s air quality index (by evening it was “excellent.” However, there is a bit of haze—from PM 2.5 particulates drifting in from fires to the north and east of us. My son just got back from a driving trip to Portland and said the smoke in the northern California leg of the drive was really bad all the way back to the Bay Area.
ART
I continue with my bedtime sketching/doodles, countering the urge to scroll social media (it helps that I closed my Twitter account). Here are the latest (untitled for now), slightly askew, with the bedcovers as backdrop, and my beside table’s desk lamp for midnight (more or less) lighting.
I like the smallness of these images. I like the intimacy and portability of small images, and the fact that they don’t aspire to overwhelm, to dominate, or take up a lot of room. Small works encourage you to look closely.
I do all my art photos with my Android phone, and it’s limited, to say the least. Everything I photograph starts out with a blue cast that I have to correct – yes, even when I photograph on manual setting and adjust to lighting, and even though I’m using a ring light. But I admit that my photography skills are limited, too. While I have a decent Nikon camera, because I work several contract jobs, I don’t have time to learn all the ins and outs of using that tool. Can’t afford Photoshop. I do have open source GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation; but it’s incredibly complex and takes too long for me to learn.
Recently I downloaded Pixlr E and it provides a good solution for me. It’s fairly intuitive, free (though you can upgrade) and does the best job of editing in the shortest amount of time. No, they’re not paying me to say this, and I’m not going to get any perks from you clicking on the link.
NEWSLETTERS (on Substack)
Prem Krishnamurthy’s “Commune” newsletter seems worthwhile reading, providing a realistic and compassionate approach to design and curation. His latest post features “Musings, Music, and Mindfulness in May.”
From art writer and gallerist David Gibson’s “The Other Side of the Desk” newsletter: a quote from Joseba Eskubi (Bilbao) in “What Is the Function of Painting?” (June 7) strikes home to me. And I would say it also applies to writing as I see it: “I view the practice of painting as a constant drift from previous expectations, a process susceptible to the unexpected and uncertainty. Each painting serves as a thrust for the next, and in this way the work flows through time, becoming intimately linked to one’s life experiences. Each person will find a different way of dealing with painting.”
“Sneaky Art Post” by Nishant Jain. Drawing “ordinary people on ordinary days.“
ONE
Just one general link today:
Dana Frankoff’s film, “A Voice Above Water,” observes 90 year old Wayan clearing plastic from the Indonesian Coast near his home. Click on the link immediately below to see the whole short film https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/08/dana-frankoff-voice-above-water/
OK, I’ll stop griping about getting old now.
Trailer:
That’s it for today. Until next Saturday . . .