It also amazes me how nowadays you can actually communicate with people you’ve seen on television just like they were anybody else. I left a comment on a wall recently commending some people on a TV show I’m currently following, and two of them actually responded– not directly to me, but still they responded to something I posted. How weird is that?

Someday, will someone do that to me? Think, Wow! Paper Man just responded to my “like”! . . . Funny.

My visit to SAM on Sunday was very pleasant. I got lost in front of the Bierstadt, as I thought I would; I honestly don’t know how long I spent in front of it. I stood back to take it all in, I moved close to examine all the tiny details, and every so often when my eyes found another perfect spot on the canvas, my brain cried Look at the light! How did he capture it so beautifully? I am amazed and humbled. I have a visceral response to that painting that I really can’t explain. I am engaged emotionally in a way I haven’t been with many other works. For me, there is something magical about it. I might even be having a relationship with it.

Funny aside: I took advantage of the Member Appreciation Days 20% discount and bought a couple of books. Turns out I bought a Taschen book on Turner that I already own– and had bought from SAM two years before. What a dope!

I’m really enjoying watching Work of Art on Bravo on Wednesday nights. It’s amazing to watch how these creative people work. I also like having the bird’s-eye view; the artists comment on each other and their works behind each other’s backs, and sometimes they’ve misread the person and sometimes they’re just being bitchy. I wonder sometimes what they thought of themselves and the things they said when the watched the video back. Were they embarrassed?

Art is so weird. It’s completely subjective. In most of the arts, such as fashion, dance, haute cuisine, architecture, there are standards and usually a set of rules most people have agreed on to determine whether one’s creation is, in fact, fashionable, enjoyable, edible, etc. In visual art, SO much is entirely subjective that it really depends on who’s doing the judging. I’ve seen a lot of art I don’t like, or understand. I’ve seen a lot of art that takes my breath away. Who decides whether it’s art? And then, who decides whether it’s good art?

Art is what happens between my work and your brain (don’t quote me on this; I’m quoting someone else and I can’t remember who). If there’s a reaction, it’s art. If there’s not, it isn’t. But only to you. Someone else might respond to something that left you cold or (worse!) indifferent.

I could go on, but it’s late and I have to get up early. Note to self for next entry: wunderkammer.

I feel so ignorant.

Oh, my God! They are gorgeous!! This is the kind of work I hope to be able to do.

I’ve been thinking about my favorite artists, and have come up with a short list of the “usual suspects” (that is, artists so famous almost everyone knows their names):

• Salvador Dalí – Surrealist
• Vincent Van Gogh – Post-Impressionist
• Pablo Picasso – Cubist/Modernist
• Joan Miró – Expressionist
• Hans Holbein the Younger – Realist

Contemporary artists:

• Edward Gorey
• Dawn Ackerman
• Aimee Trayser
• Nita Leland
• Frank Bergmann
• Don Li-Leger
• David Robinson
• Andy Goldsworthy
• Phillip Craig

I’ve been working on trying to set myself up a price list, but it’s kind of hard. I’m trying to set up a guideline based on the type of work (collage, painting, etc.) and the substrate (paper, board, panel, object, etc.) as well as the size. Cost of materials is really hard to calculate, since a lot of collage is done with found materials (i.e., free), but I can’t just factor in “free”. What happens if I do a collage with all purchased items, but it’s the same size and support as one with found items?

Anyway. Another problem I’m having is with all this deep, what-does-your-art-mean stuff. I have ideas for a few pieces that actually have meaning, but a lot of the stuff I’ve already done is just because I wanted to play with a color, texture, or technique, just to have fun. I hope that’s okay for “serious” art!

I wonder how ambitious I should be? I’ve been messing around with an idea for an image of depression, based on something i wrote in 2004:

I think futility has got to be the worst feeling ever. Hopelessness. It’s like you’ve hit bottom and there’s nowhere to go but up, but there’s no way to get there. Like being at the bottom of a well, and you can see light and people walking around up there, but they can’t see or hear you, and you don’t have the energy to call out anyway, so you just stand there, looking up at the mouth of the well and wait to die.

I suddenly decided I should use an odd-sized support, long and narrow, to emphasize the emotional distance between the top and the bottom of the well. I guess art is just what it is, as the support, colors, materials, etc. will be whatever the subject matter demands in order to be fully expressed.

On one level, art just “happens.” It unfurls from the artist’s brain and fingers, spontaneous as well as meticulously planned, and it turns out to be exactly whatever it is supposed to be, even if that surprises the artist.

On another level, art takes a great deal of hard freakin’ work!!