I'm a knife, I'm a knife- cut cut cuttin' around.

Hey, I made a wood cut.

It's a small one but I like it. It is featured in an online magazine as well as some older work. I've relocated back to Texas and my work space has gotten smaller. Like, it consists of my kitchen table and that's about it. It makes the scale of my work much smaller.

The act of creating something new was at once terrifying and like slipping on old, comfortable gloves. I've said I wrestle with depression, I've changed meds, and I'm liking the change. It makes me less lethargic and a bit more energetic.

It started out a little different as what it ended up as. My work is born from frustration. Lots of timidity on approach, continuing until my brain is shouting at me to just DO it. I was thinking of graffiti paste ups and the impact of graphics. I wanted to make something to echo that kind of immediate effect. An image that you see while rolling by in your car, bam. Just for an instant, there's an image and you're left with all the wonder and "what was that?" because you noticed it, but don't have time to spend with it. I can't throw it past your face at 75+ miles an hour, but I wanted to leave a little of that ambiguity. Remnants of Santa Muerta iconography and Käthe Kollwitz funeral procession woodcuts. We don't know if the image is in prayer or being set for a funeral. At least I don't. I'm open to interpretation. 

I was sad. I'm still sad. I might see light- an intermission.

Does anyone use these anymore? We're lonely, and this stuff makes us lonelier. It's supposed to be a tool for connecting-- yet it's all trying to sell something. Branding, marketing, networking, blugh. I'm a curmudgeon this way. I want people to see what I've made, possibly consider what I have to say (if any of it is worth considering) and myself to avoid the limelight. I've always been this way, preferring to go unnoticed but let my work speak for me.

I'm struggling though, because no one looks at work. They look at me, at all the sound and little hiccoughs of fury. I don't want to market, I don't want to be a brand. It's the reason art doesn't pay bills for me. It's the reason I work construction and grind my body down prematurely.

But all these reasons are bullshit.

It's because I'm afraid (and healthily so). I'm a type 1 diabetic. I live in the USA. Health insurance and drug prices are a tragedy. That whole "do what you love and follow your dreams" sentiment is for the privileged, or those more capable with their money. Those that have a safety net (or will never need one). I'm not trying to get in a pissing contest about suffering. Everyone suffers uniquely.

I'm complaining and I'm not happy about it. The good news is, things are picking up. I'm excited to work on things again and I'm coming out of a very long battle with very severe depression. I was taken to a print festival- It Came From the Bayou!!!, which was fantastic. I forgot how exciting it was to be amongst people who were working, and passionately at what they do. It was fun to talk techniques and ideas. It kinda rekindled some embers which I hope I'm in turn encouraging into flame. Now I just have to balance that with relationship, children, sleep and money paying labor intensive work.

Updates will be irregular (as usual) but will exist again. 

Apologies for the silence.