Lane Ends, Merge Left

2021 felt like it would be the year I would have to accept a “new normal.” Instead it felt as if my path fractured into several different directions, different spaces, different timelines. While it seems paradoxical to even imagine something like this happening it seems to be one of the possibilities that makes the most sense to me. With “new normals” I’d still have to keep moving anyway, maybe more strategically, even if that movement would involve moving in different directions simultaneously. Wouldn’t be such a bad thing since most of these trajectories would inevitably lead me to the same place. What place? A stable art career? A stable income? Success?

My practice has been more patient, more reflective, and less contingent upon my changing views of what success is. In addition to my evolving body of work I’m also envisioning the change my mindset is undergoing –that perhaps this moment now, this specific trajectory leading me to who-knows-where, is already success; that somehow undertaking this journey is the marker. Do I have goals and milestones to which this work helps me aspire? Absolutely, and I can count those as wins and opportunities for growth, for learning. But the same must also be true for what I may feel are losses.

All throughout 2021 I vended work at events consistently. Consistently enough to make me think, “Okay, I don’t want to vend anymore but I still need to make this money somehow.” Designer Con at the Anaheim Convention Center was the last big vending gig. When I did Pancakes and Booze a few weeks after in Los Angeles and sold an original I thought, “Okay, let’s manifest more feelings like this.” And that’s actually one of the affirmations I’m bringing into the new year –I feel more things like happiness and joy and I think less. Less attachment still, even less expectation. But excited, all the time, for the path, the process, the journey. Just existing on the frequency at which I imagine the things I desire are vibrating. Imagining, creating.

Sometimes a few consecutive winter days can throw a wrench in these plans. But even that has to be okay, the traveling of these emotions on a spectrum as just an experience, nothing we have to attach ourselves to or worry about. Just observe, garner wisdom if possible. When I observe these tensions as passersby, coming and going, my fingers feel less shaky when I’m creating. My mind has more space to imagine these same renderings on sheets of watercolor paper also existing as my full body being utilized to paint a giant wall, a building or two, or an alley, perhaps.

I think this multiplicity of reality we’re all experiencing right now can be utilized best by artists, –to merge whatever realities necessary to interpret these experiences in a manner we see fit. I think that’s the new normal, lettings ideas run and play untethered to any specific location, time, or trajectory. That’s probably why so much of my work, from my earlier abstract pieces to my now more surreal explorations, are so closely tied to themes of time, space, and line –because I consider myself a time traveler, combing through aging journals to commune with past versions of myself, all artists at different stages of growth, to garner whatever wisdom I can. I carry them back and let them affect my work, even if only emotionally, tickled by the idea that something I thought of so long ago has found itself safe in my hands again.