Punctuation Demonstration

I have recently been the recipient of some emails, penned by a Californian, that included the word “ya’ll” in their salutation line. I believe/hope that my correspondent was trying to type “y’all” instead. Now, I have no problem with non-Southerners using my native region’s preferred version of the second-person plural (although I wish they would not do so ironically, while wearing trucker hats, nursing a Dixie, and listening to Hank Williams in their old F-150’s). After all, it is kind of elegant in a way and doesn’t have that gender-specific, too-nasal hitch present in the Northern/Midwestern “you guys.” But I would ask that y’all-sayers first take a stab at understanding the etymological/linguistical/grammatical underpinnings of it before doing so.

“Y’all” is a contraction of the phrase “you all.” Again, this construction fills in a gap in English; we don't have an official second-person plural like "vous" in French or "ustedes" in Spanish. Its apostrophe replaces the O and U of “you”, so it must fall between the Y and the A. Any other position seems to result in a misspelled or anachronistic contraction of “you will.”

In addition, I’d like to remind any readers I may have of a couple of other common shapes that “y’all” can take:
-it can be possessive, as in “Y’all’s mail has arrived.”
-it can be quite expansive, when one needs to refer to more people than one has previously been speaking to, as in “All of y’all are invited to come.”
-it can take on ritualized significance, such as when the woman who minds the till at the Catfish Hole asks, while ringing up your dinner, “Y’all get enough to eat, Honey?” If you don’t hear it, you probably didn’t.

More on this subject here: http://4weddingsandafuneral.blogspot.com/2007/05/hey-yall.html
(Sorry, haven't learned how to make pretty links yet!)

Once More Unto the Breach (of my painting practice)

Apologies to my one or two possible readers for my absence. I will attempt to have more to say in the future. Here are my thoughts on part of what I have been doing.

I had an epiphany in the studio a couple of weeks ago. (Normally, I think it’s cheesy or weird or uncomfortable when people talk about things like “artistic inspiration”—maybe because I feel like art is as much about learned skill and patience as anything else. But here I go anyway.)

I’ve been struggling in the studio for a while now, I guess since I got started working in my new space back in September. As I said in an earlier post, moving out here hit the reset button on the part of my interior life where my art ideas come from. So for several months now, I’ve just been drifting, being mildly interested in things like the dramatic landscape around me (it looks especially dramatic after three years on the prairie!), trying to use that tiny spark of interest in a series of mixed media works on paper, but not feeling particularly excited by or invested in anything I have been making.

I’ve had some of my old work hanging up in my studio, in part to remind me of where I’ve been, and maybe in part to try to conjure up some of that cheesy inspiration goo. This is mixed-media, painting-on-fabric stuff that I began during my last year of grad school, when I was, once again, trying to get back into painting. I had an advisor that year who I knew wasn’t going to list all the reasons why painting was dead, so I was going for it with abandon. But then at the end of the semester, I had a terrible critique of this work. The work itself didn’t get discussed, only what my possible motivations could have been: why I hadn’t done enough research about the origins of the fabric I was using, the politically-backward implications of my making such out-of-date work (although, now that I’m out in LA, home of the WACK! Show, it looks pretty hell-raising to me), why I wasn’t making installation or sculpture instead, etc. etc. So, in short, I let the bastards get me down. I put that work away, so I could focus on my thesis and getting on with life.

So, I’ve had these pieces up. Looking at them almost every day, instead of conjuring up inspiration, just made me remember that bad critique and how it made me feel. But one day, I was looking at one of them (pictured here) while I was eating lunch, and it was as if scales had fallen from my eyes (maybe it was the sandwich—I make pretty good chicken salad). I realized, maybe for the first time, that I really love that work I was making back in the fall of 2005. I realized that it felt and looked important and vital and strong to me, authentic, like it came directly from the inner voice I have been straining to hear.

I realized that this work is what I’ve spent the past few months trying to reconnect with. Is that inspiration? I don’t know. But I think I may have a tiny toe-hold on it back.

(image is Lonoke; 2005; acrylic, screen print, and thread on upholstery fabric and pillowcase; approx 3.5'x5')

Fire on the Mountain Tonight

I could watch yesterday’s flare-up of the Griffith Park Fire from my living room window (I live in the little triangle of Silver Lake between Glendale Blvd. and Highway 2). Billowing smoke, flames, helicopters, everything. To someone who isn’t from out here, things like wildfires (and earthquakes!) are just about the scariest things imaginable. Of course, I’ve heard other folks from out here say the same thing about tornados—I guess it all comes down to which safety drills you grew up practicing in elementary school.

Besides firegazing, I haven’t written an entry in a while because I have been busy making art! I got asked to make a few new installations for some Phantom Gallery LA spaces (www.phantomgalleriesla.com). A couple of these have been spur-of-the-moment, flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants pieces. Realizing that I can do work in this manner made me feel pretty good—I don’t think I would have had the same capability to be flexible and spontaneous with my materials when I first started working this way….and maybe not even until I moved out here? So there is a tic in the pro-LA column after all.

It really does seem like a place where anything in the world can happen—you just have to be looking under the right rock.


Migration Study opens Thursday, May 10; 131 East 6th Street & 601 South Los Angeles Street, Downtown LA. Through June 14.
Marmalade Surprise (window installation) at 2926 Rowena in Silver Lake, indefinitely.

life through the looking glass

i'm sure all of this has been said before, by somebody else, in a more smart way. but i have a need to put it down for myself. LA is a hard town for a newcomer like me to get used to. it does not suck you into itself via public transportation like other big cities (new york and paris come to mind); LA holds you at arm’s length, in a state of constant sensory overload (and low-grade anxiety, if you happen to be driving on the freeway, which i try to avoid…i guess that immediately pegs me as an outsider).

everything here looks so different, so amazing, and there is no hierarchy regarding what things should look more interesting, more attractive...everything is interesting! but i see it all, literally and figuratively, through glass (of the car window, or my inability to understand other languages, or my lack of knowledge of geography, or my amazement at the extremes of wealth and poverty, or just my inability to process it all. there is too much to look at). it is all beautiful, yet untouchable and unapproachable. i can't yet figure out how to integrate my actual physical self into this situation.

and then, yes, there is the driving. i hate the freeway! maybe that’s because i have never before had to think about a freeway as a way to get around a town instead of a way to get from one town to another. you can get on the freeway and drive for miles and miles, then get off at your destination....you could live your whole life here and never know what goes on in the part of town between that beginning and ending. and that means you never learn how the different parts of the city connect and flow together. you never find out about the cute shops or cool coffee houses or dive bars in between. so a lot of times, i just take surface streets and try not to get too distracted by the looking.

art-making-wise, things aren't easy either. i feel like moving out here hit the reset button on my imagination, and like my work could change a lot (and for the better) if i could only find the right brush, pencil, or thing to look at. i find myself over-thinking and over-analyzing everything i start to do. it is hard to remember that i don't have to justify what i am doing to anyone, that i just have to be in it and love it and love making it. i am told that this post-grad-school fog will pass....maybe it will burn off, like this city's haze does, if i sit in the sun long enough.

hey there

i'm new at this, this whole thing. not just blogging, but also: life in LA; life with another person; making art on my own; living without humidity; being far, far from people and places i know.

i hope that this blog will help me make sense of these new things i am doing, trying, drawing, eating, thinking, saying.

thanks for reading!