Macie sent me an article from one of those "thought for the day" things you can sign up for. This one has a spiritual/self-help bent. There are a lot of good bits in the article, even for Juliane, a serial zoner-out while reading spiritual writing. A Bartlett's-worthy John Milton quote ("The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven.") and a call to Be The Change (yes, Juliane, you can control your destiny): "Experiment with a circumstance that you might normally interpret to be distinctly unpleasant and see how your state of mind influences that experience." She sent it as a unexpected bandaid for a spiritual paper cut I was dealing with. All good.

But one thing here was new to me--or at least said in a new way I don't want to forget.

The article describes two men who were kidnapped and held--together--by terrorists in Beirut in the 80s. “We both instinctively knew never to share weakness until you understood it,” writes Brian Keenan. “'Share only strength' was an unspoken motto between us.”

Good point.

five minutes

Go! Now!

one, two, three

1. I did something mildly wrong--truly a teeny boo boo--at work today and wasn't reprimanded exactly, but a change was made to my workflow that I felt was unnecessary. I had to create my workflow in the first place and, in this case, I had to hand soemthing off long before it was ready/necessary. So I didn't catch La Boo Boo. My real irritation with this is...I take it so seriously. I want to be perfect. Because I do so little here, I want to be meticulous about that which I do do. My average has taken a hit. This boo boo means nothing, but there is a void where my sense of work fulfillment is supposed to be, and things like this quickly expand a la Sea Monkey in the space. See...I'm calling it "boo boo" to put it in its place (Down, Boo Boo!) but obviously it irks me enough to blog about it.

2. Matt says I need to give myself 5 years to learn how to work for myself. 5 years!

3. I moved things around in my office this weekend and it's brilliant! Not settled yet, but still encouraging because I moved in my drafting table and out a piece of furniture which wasn't working very well in my 8x8 box. And...a drafting table is a slanted surface, thus discouraging the paper piles. Genius! Matt helped. So did Elke. It was a little family project.

good juju: a professional digression

Matt just told me that "Year of the Dog" got into Sundance. Not a huge surprise, but let me take a moment to enjoy my good feature juju. Of the seven features I've worked on, four have gone to Sundance and two are in theaters now. The last--astoundingly--sold for $2 million to some poor sucker at the Cannes Film Market. And both TV shows I've worked on were breakout stars in ABC's fall lineup of new shows. I am amazing.

That Sundance Lab indie feature that didn't hire me went back to Sundance last but didn't get distribution. Ya hear that, producers? Hire me! It can't hurt.

a confession

I hate the word "crafty." There. I said it.

an official introduction

Hubby Matt says I should do this and I have been known to take his advice, so...

I grew up in LA, in the same house for my entire life...my parents' first and only. I loved school and most subjects, particularly history and history of science, music, English and Spanish. Even math. My parents are lawyers and we ate dinner together at the table every night. I have a brother and a sister, so there are always options, alliances. My family is close...my bro grew up thinking our functional family was "normal" in this world and found out that it's not.

I went to jr. high for nerds and loved class more and classmates less, but--heck!--we were all 13. I went to high school for music nerds and loved all of it. She is that happy-go-lucky child, you are thinking. I was, in fact. My Mom can be as cynical as the best of them but called me "Happy Spirit." Then I went to college--Yale--and some kind of second puberty set in. Out of my little happy shell, I had to face making my own decisions and knowing myself. I suddenly wasn't good enough and couldn't figure out why. I loved the atmosphere--the choices--but suddenly got shy and--my God!--suddenly intensely self-conscious for the first time in my life. I think I thought I would come out of college a Rhodes Scholar or something. At the end of college I had a degree but no clue.

My twenties--back in LA--were full of insecurity. I felt free and thus not empowered to pick anything. I worked in the Children's Court and felt useful, sort of. Far from the action. I felt like my decisions were doomed to be bad ones. When people asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I could say "I have no idea" with complete honesty. Why? Maybe chemicals...my turn to be all mixed up inside?

So naturally I self-medicated with film school! Somehow I survived USC and the emotional beatdown to realize that I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. Ha! So I worked in the good the bad and the ugly of reality TV, then a Sundance doc. Then a little movie called Me and You and Everyone We Know came along. I was the art coordinator, it was my first feature, and had no idea what I was doing but I did it.

Rest and a little soul-searching made clear the art department was right for me. But my official training--art history, film production, studies in randomness--did not make me supremely confident that I was ready to go. I'm catching up. I worked for an art director who told me that his--our?--kind fall into two categories: those who can draw the sh%t out of things and those who are taskmasters. This is encouraging and I'll end up somewhere in there, but there isn't much of a career path to follow, so I keep working and guessing.

(I just got married to a great guy, so that little life issue is resolved.)

I don't consider myself a fine artist (although Wikipedia and my MFA seem to say otherwise), but I'm an inventive, musical, witty, crafty, crafty, individual who, after all this moaning and groaning, still plays a mean bagpipe and is pretty darn capable of living in the present most of the time, working hard, and loving life.

But...while I'm spooling a little at work, I'd like to put my hands on something fun. I am slowly convincing myself that 100% originality is not important, I just need to make something that people can respond to. And is affordable. Maybe funny and surprising. Not very deep down I am a jamon serrano. And while I'd like to keep it somewhat homemade, it is in the realm of possibility that I might need to consult outside experts.

I used to be afraid of seeming too dilettante, too Gemini, but who cares? Try everything. You only live twice.

P. S. Just because Friedrich Nietzsche is usually such a warm and fuzzy guy, I leave you with this tasty little nugget of jamon:

"You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star."

God bless America and God Bless the Internet.

four things I'm thinking about right now

(1) Illustrator's pen tool is a mother effer.
(2) "Follow me" is the motto of the US Infantry School. Not a good place to be when you can't pack heat.
(3) I am a drama queen. (see #2) I know it but I can't always control it.
(4) Sloe Goods will "smooth my cuticles," I hope. (see #2)

I'm not making any sense so I'll go pound my head against the wall. (see #3)

Seriously, I don't mind doing most things so long as I know why I am doing them. Theoretically, if I am my own boss I will be able to explain things to myself to my own satisfaction, or at least yell at my boss about it. My blog is swerving over the line into "journal," and for this I sincerely apologize.

Very naice?

My desire to create is outstripping my man-hours at the moment. I have a lot of ideas kicking around in my head (zing! zing!), and I feel like I need to get my life set up so that any time I have a free hour or two I can pick up something and DO IT.

Something I am extremely excited about at the moment is the Holga, a magnificently trippy and irrational camera developed by the Chinese in the 80s. It is the camera responsible for shots like this (thanks again, Flickr):






So very acoustic and awesome. I already have a few projects in mind for the time in the very near future when I come by one of these puppies. Which brings me back to point A--Juliane is easily distracted by bright and shiny objects--my workspace and already well-populated (thingulated?) project list.

I need to reclaim my space and time. I have a allowed a tottering stalagmite of guilt to grow in the place where my office once was. Goal #1 for the weekend is clearcutting...
creating a navigable workspace and a plan for dealing with the projects (like those undone Xmas presents tht have suddenly become topical again). Goal #2 for the weekend is finishing off the little Noel dealie I x-acto knifed into a Xmas card two years ago into a graphic soon available on Cafe Press or Zazzle. It's now or never, baby.

I leave you with this!



Thanks to psychic_heart and deborah lattimore and the 3 other trusting souls on Flickr whose photos I ripped off for these blog entries. I tried to find you! After the fact! I failed!

I forgot to take care of #4 on my to-do list: Make Blog Jump the Shark. So here you go:

Now I am completely off the hook. But before you go, click here.

Maybe some content later. Thrill my many fans with a to-do list for the long weekend.

I'm back, briefly. Haven't been motivated this week, but I know what the first three projects I'll be working on will be. Sometimes the brain seems off but it's actually on simmer. The projects have nothing to do with one another except that they all indicate directions I might head in. This decision gives a little cred to all the branding thoughts. Let me stand in this high place for a moment...

Back on the ranch, researching the world of design on the Internet (I can't believe I've never done this before) is inspiring and depressing. Good design does not require originality, but when I find someone like Tobi Wong out there, blazing away, I feel a bit slow out of the gate. Again, it's fear, uncertainty, a desire to please. I would say a desire to pay my bills, but Tobi seems to have lived a de facto squatter lifestyle when he was getting started, funneling his money into his work. Or maybe it's all hype. Going through my head as I leaf through his website: funny, "why didn't I think of that?", cold, obscene, everything I hate about contemporary art, damned clever, timely, when is it daring and not stupid? I even--often--get a rush from conceptual art, but sometimes a turd is just a turd, and when you polish it so publicly it suddenly becomes...target practice?

What's worse, I didn't even find Tobi Wong for myself. Daily Candy delivered him to my mailbox.

I also find myself more and more offended by stuff that no one can afford. Say what you will about the Disneyfication of the worls, but Target and even K-Mart have made a priority of making well-designed things for the masses. And the masses are buying. Democratic design, only I want it all to be homemade and personal as well. Me crazy.

Or not so briefly. Have a brilliant weekend!

Ok, one more from J. otto Seibold's Alice...

Getting inspired today by two websites:

http://www.laeyeworks.com/

Love the games that are on the site for no reason. Like all the vertical design elements, the random, the sense of fun. The style is a little glossier than I had in mind but I can homespunify and ludditize it.

Another one I stumbled into belongs to Gordon Wiebe, an artist based in Toronto:

http://www.gordonwiebe.com/

Simple. Stylish. Quirky. Fun. And the illustrations on the page are very much like those I'd like to create for my SF Book (see more projects Juliane hasn't quite gotten a handle on but have potential, really they do). My original thought was J. otto Seibold (bitchin', very much without a "g": http://www.chroniclebooks.com/Interview/Seibold/interview.html), but now I have another thing to think about. If everything I've read about children's book publishing hadn't said "don't get your own illustrator unless you're doing it yourself" (in a very mean way) I'd send the dude an email. I might anyway.

market research: groovy or grandpa?

Here's my rental car: As a card-carrying member of Retro Is Fun and Ugly Can Be Cute, you would think that I would like this car. The hip salesdude at Enterprise--head shaved to a zero--described it as fun. And, I had to admit, it sure beat the Taurus station wagon parked next to it. But boy do I feel old driving this boat. What is its problem?

To me, it can't decide whether it wants to be a Jag or a Buick. It has child-bearing hips like the Sebring convertible...and George Jetson's car. All glide and no guts. A slightly more flattering photo from the Chrysler site:

But still... And in LA, where everyone judges you by your car whether you care or not, I'm amused by the old fogey statement I'm making (see feelings on being 32 year-old Art PA). It's hard to drive a car that complete strangers can't make snap judgements about. Used to be you could buy something generic a little generic like a Toyota Corolla and people would think you were practical, or gas-saving, or didn't care, or weren't in a place to spend money on your car. Or whatever--it's a Corolla. But now those hybrids have almost knocked out the Corolla's affordability/practicality matrix, while being cuter and hipper!

What do you think? Groovy or grandpa? Why?

It's a new day, a Monday...I've found a place for the 1,000 nagging cranes and started my car on the Road to Wellville.

Good signs. I guess I'll start.

I'm blogging because I'm a 32-year-old Art PA on a mission to keep myself occupied on my own terms. I am lucky to have been involved with quality projects rather than Scheiss, but Art PAing is still Art PAing. As I slowly acquire the necessary days to prove myself worthy of IATSE Local 800 (insert rant about necessary evils here), my morale wavers minute-to-minute from inspired to bored to frustrated to stripped bare. In the past I've found outlets in the form of other peoples' projects.

Now I love other people as much as the next slightly jaded 32 year-old Art PA, but at a certain point--too often, too soon--my original interest in the project becomes entangled in a web of logistics, personalities, production difficulties, miscommunication, lack of help and day jobs. Sometimes these things grind to a halt with everyone deflated, wondering where we lost our way...

Maybe the problems are exacerbated by my being a little bit older, being aware of what one could do if one had the time and could really communicate...I think if I were the 20-year-old I wish I had been, I would be fearless and empowered.

But while I am often a mystery to myself, I do know that I won't lie to myself about what I like and--more or less--what role I want myself to play. So I'm taking a stab at starting a little business in which I make things that are fun and other people can afford. What I hope to accomplish, shorter term:

--give myself an outlet for all that project-creation energy
--create a little income and temp less between gigs
--finish things...that I can be proud of
--learn new techniques and skills

I'll start with textiles and paper and move on--hopefully--to furniture and...??? I'd like to create things with a sense of humor or at least fun. I want recycling to be a huge part of it. I want to work giving something back into the financial structure.

It will start small, and hopefully I will dig deep and find the chutzpah to continue. Wish me luck.