If you need me, I will be in the 𝓮𝓭𝓲𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓼𝓾𝓲𝓽.
Hugo and I have started work on a portrait commission for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.
You will have to guess who the subject is. I am not allowed to say anything for a year.
More Travel for Work
First, the good news: Human and I went to the nation’s capital, not to engage with the swaths of costumed merry-making students over-running the streets, but to find out more information about another video portrait. I cannot talk even talk about it yet. Things are super exciting and we haven’t even started! We are already coming up with ideas to experiment with as the work gets going.
Being in DC during the fall, I am grateful for hotel rooms that can be heated to 80f / 26c degrees with hot water that you don’t have to wait 20 minutes for. Pseudo-graffiti marks on the wall of my room won’t endear a place to my heart as much as a stellar heating/ cooling system. And good wifi.
But enough about hotels.
My year long illness gave me no quarter during my trip. With enough coffee and will, I managed to walk the mall and up down, and around the Lincoln memorial. The memorial is, oddly enough, fun and romantic, as well as inspiring and, well, heartbreaking too. people were respectful while simultaneously having fun taking pictures and just hanging out. With 360 degree views, it’s a great hang out spot! Just don’t sit on the steps and think about everyone failed by all the lofty ass notions that make up the American dr- delusional fantasy. That will depress the heck out of you.
I did have a peeve: Ya’guys need to take better care of the murals that flank the Lincoln statue! The right one is completely faded and without any proper lighting you can hardly see either of the paintings after sunset! So like what are they even doing there?
Fueled by a lot of plant based fast foods and seer determination, I saw just about everything at the National portrait gallery and the Smithsonian art museum. I have to give a shout out to Dorothy Moss for putting together a retrospective of the the work of Hung Liu. I wasn’t aware of this woman’s work. And I darn well should be! Her bright colors sing at you from the canvas! So much wow. I feel inspired and itching to create more work.
Before getting the art on however, gotta get settled into an orderly space; gotta start feeling better so I can clean house. Then- then!- tuck into a new project. Or an old project that been left sitting.
Getting on the road to feeling better again has involved intramuscular injections of antibiotics for a week. Being shot in the ass is not as funny as it really should be. After feeling the what it was like the first time, I opted to preempt the pain with an ibuprofen dose for the rest of the regimen. I don’t like taking that kind of drug daily, but it helps ease the hours of discomfort down to almost nothing.
I ‘m almost through with the injection part of the treatment and I can’t say if I am feeling better or not. I have to give everything more time. Except I’ve lost so much time not treating this illness already…
New York, Yup It’s Still Home
I walked around Manhattan during September. It’s true. It happened. I was there. Never made above midtown. I did go the the Hudson Yards a lot though.
Because the Armory Show was being held there.
It also happened to be NY Fashion Week. That meant I all at once found myself as close as 50 feet away from Very Famous People (trade mark)
I chuckled at the palpable glow of their fame and wealth. I barked a laugh as I could actually recognize one of them glittering blondely in the light rain. The distance between me there unkempt and outfitted in clothing bought at the US | Mexico border and these million dollar Very Famous People (trade mark) was purely comical. What else could I do but laugh? I am a witness to ridiculous times.
Walking the streets of Manhattan during fashion week made me feel physically small, and shabby. Being in Mexico I forget what it’s like to feel short!
I did have an excuse to visit my old home base of Williamsburg. For those who don’t know, I used to live on those street before it got big money cool. I visited the Pierogi Gallery space and CAVE again.
I did my best not to cry seeing Domino Park. Mini Golf?! And how can there be so many people of wealth and probably status pushing strollers on Kent Ave? I remember when you could get run over by big rigs going both ways up and down that street. Now it’s one way and half parking lot!
The legalization of marijuana has made the city a more curious experience. The lingering pot smoke in the air sometimes hits you like a hammer even through a double layer of masking. I’m sure I got a contact high a few times.
For all of the changes and the pandemic weirdness, it still felt like home. I would move back in a tick if I could.
At the end of my trip I went down to see the 9/11 um… memorial site for the fist time.
I cannot recommend that place. I would not. Especially if you are psy-sensitive in any way.
The place is horrific on so many levels, but what I could not handle the most was the… screaming. If you can call it screaming. I had felt an uneasiness when passing through that part of town before, but getting up close actually made a huge difference.
Thousands of soft, terrified, confused souls died very, very badly in that place.
And it was like I could feel all that sudden transition rattling my guts.
I didn’t stand there thinking about what happened. I didn’t imagine or remember anything.. I was just trying to see the giant water feature squares in the ground and trying to understand the hideous ‘artistic’ mural section of the memorial grounds. It looked like corporate street art from the 90s that did not make any sense to me. Even with that confusing eye sore assaulting my sense of taste, I was overwhelmed with- I could feel these rushes of something hitting me in irregular waves. I could have burst into tears and and thrown up all at once if I stayed there too long. I had the chills in the heat of late summer. It was like someone had told a ghost story, but no one spoke a word to me.
And the blasé mood of the people around me didn’t make me think I was channeling their feelings… Though I could have been… I won’t rule that out. But I have felt things in places where there are no people hanging around remembering so…
My advice is to never go to the 9/11 memorial as it is now. More construction needs to be done. There is a church and a performing art center than need to be finished. Without those things especially, it is an ugly, unhealed place.
With a shopping center.
Because nothing says New York Strong / Never Forget more than a new Lacoste polo shirt.