Who do I make art for?

I've been thinking for all this time that I'm making art for myself, that it's a selfish act, but I know that's not true. I make it for other people, to try to get them to feel what I've felt, to share my experience and the inspiration I get from it.

And that's why my marble is somewhat flat. It's cool, don't get me wrong, but it has no feeling.

Maybe I'll get some in there somehow.

 Happy Black Friday! This is from last night.

I'm working on a stop motion project.  You can see by the picture on the left sort of what it's like. I've built a wireframe skeleton, and I'm going to router the base so I can move threaded rods around and animate it. The threaded rods will allow the parts to move up and down. It'll be a pain and a half to animate but it should be worth the trouble.

That's going with this whole concept of growth and struggle. I'm going to be working with a dancer, who will be wearing a dress soaked in paint that will splatter everywhere as a symbol of progress and making a mark. As the short progresses, animated plants will start to surround the dancer. Eventually she'll grow into a topiary, a symbol of constant growth and emotional stability.

 This is a big project. It'll take a while to do but I have a potential team to help me.

Oh, and here's the marble I'm working on.

And these are the tools I'm using! Sort of. Not exactly the same, but close. The hammer's the same-ish.

228 days

228 days ago I was brought to NYU Medical Center.

208 days ago I got out.

46 days ago I went back in.

16 days ago I got back out.

Tonight I'm depressed. Earlier today I was laughing. Before that I was motivated, carving marble. Earlier still I was depressed.

Yesterday I went to an art gallery opening, Lucia had stuff in there and there was a chance I would have an animation playing too. I don't know if he'll play it eventually or what but it wasn't playing for the opening so it doesn't matter.

I used to be a pro at schmoozing. Now I don't give a fuck, I just want to make stuff. I used to know the value of it, now I could care less.

I'm tired.

I don't know what I'm doing.

I don't know where I'm going.

I'm so tired.

This is an animation I did yesterday. It was satisfying to paint and left me competely depleted.

Here I Am

I'm dying to sculpt in marble. Dying. Positively actively deceasing.

So, I asked my parents if I could get a christmas present consisting of these tools and these classes at the Art Students League.


Isn't that exciting? And I'll probably be taking some good art history classes at SVA, since I'll be a FINE ARTS MAJOR! Can't wait for that.


God I'm so moody. I get depressed so easily, trapped in a gradually derailing train of thought which often ends in, "Well, I'll just kill myself" or sometimes, "Well, I'll just cut off contact entirely." Sometimes those are the easy answers. It's extreme black and white thinking, something we talk about often in therapy and DBT.

I hate being like this. I hate being not sane. Radical acceptance. It's okay to have a pity party for a few minutes and then move on. The whole concept of sanity is incredible to think about, as always. Einstein said, to paraphrase, "Insanity is doing the same things over again and expecting a different outcome," so sanity must be learning from your mistakes, by his logic. I do learn, but I still keep making the same mistakes. I'm trying to learn as much as I can through indirect methods like DBT and therapy, but I can't learn from my mistakes directly since I don't understand fully why I make them, or even recognize that they're happening.

Pity party finito.

Jessica's performance yesterday was just so gorgeous. There will be a webcast of it up some time, maybe a couple days from now. I'll post when it's up. But seriously, it was absolutely astonishingly beautiful, the program was perfect, enthralling. I didn't want it to end, and I teared up six times.

I also took a ton of pictures, and while we were at the zoo and such I got a bunch of pictures taken of me. I'll post them here when I get them.

Where am I?

I went to Pittsburgh for the weekend to see my sister's masters concert - she's getting her masters degree in flute performance. I have a serious case of Akasthisia, an obnoxious psychotropic drug symptom that manifests itself as a sort of inner restlessness which causes me to require constant change in stimulation and gives me anxiety if I have to sit still.

There's a lot of potential for some severe issues during Jess' concert, but I'm just so proud of her for doing such an amazing job with school and improving her performance ability so much. She's really got her game together, something I envy. My life has completely fallen apart. I'm comparing myself to her as I sit in her tidy, organized apartment with abundant decorations and I can't help but feel left behind. I'm so tired of having so many issues. I want to feel normal, with normalized anxiety and alleviated depression and none of the symptoms of complex post traumatic stress disorder affecting me. It's overwhelming to be a mental patient, to be legally certifiably insane. I'm going to be certifiable soon, actually, so it's not official yet. I'm not sure how it works but it will help me with getting more medical care and potentially help me get food stamps.

I desperately want a normal life. How did I get to this point? I showed so much promise a year ago, but I was miserable. Yet I was accomplishing so much, and now what am I doing? I don't even know where I'll be tomorrow, much less a few years down the road. Hell, where will I be in an hour, emotionally? Will I make more life changing, mind altering epiphanies?

I need to rest. This is too much.

New Wireform

Yep, just chillin out on the table.

I've been working more on the second wireform.

I've designed her for stop motion filming, so I experimented with sitting her in different positions. That was fun.

I like to think for this one (-->) she's saying, "Where's my head?"

And this one is just a basic sitting on the floor position. She's mostly going to be in the fetal  position, not sure why I didn't photograph that.

Anyway, I still have lots of work to do on her. I'm debating taking all that polyester out of her and lining her with fabric so it's smoother before stuffing that with polyfiller.

I also tried feathers. Bad idea. She looked like she'd been tarred and feathered. I thought it would be poetic but no. Don't do it.