5 Answers 2024

I write everything longhand, ink on paper, as the first composition draft whether it’s a haiku or a novel. In any art form, the challenge is taking the idea that’s inside and then express it to the outside. Pen and ink works best for me as the bridge between idea and expression, it creates the least friction. I have a favorite pen that was a gift and I write in 5-subject college ruled notebooks, and I’ve carred a small moleskine notebook with a clicky pen in my back pocket for the last thirty years. Even after my words gets typed into a word processor, I edit the hard copy by hand, ink on paper.

My process is my life. They are inseparable. Every action, experience and evolution informs my process. Materials and tools are part of that process. They are simply shortcuts in proceeding along my path.

Imagine a giant unlimited source of material that, through your process, you keep adding to. Which inspires you to keep working with and enjoying and needing more. Rinse. Repeat. Ad Infinitum.

With the Button Museum, I’m always looking for buttons that have interesting designs, historical significance or elements that help paint a picture of the zeitgeist of the time.

1-physical
2-visceral
3-emotional
4-visual
5-satisfying

each material has its own wisdom, it’s own way of being and moving in the world, so I try to tap into and ride with that.
I also really enjoy the voluptuous lusciousness of certain materials like beeswax and porcelain, and the preciseness of others like pencil and print.
In working with color — usually watercolor or oil or oil pastel – I seek out the hum that can happen on the approach to the magic combination of hues, values, denseness.

The power of a line – drawn or cut – is the heart of my work.

I shot a mostly impromptu video using the contents of an envelope mailed to me from Station 5. I used tape, sunglasses, a seashell, a lighter, and a candle. A myriad of visuals, glasses, and a squinty view. I have been using beeswax, forms, and molds to make candles.

Lately, my materials and process have been based on what needs to be done in a studio vs. what can be done on the go. Some projects are designated to the studio-only process, which involves working with materials that require climate control, specialized tools, and a controlled environment. I also relish creating a travel kit for my mobile projects, allowing me to work on something steadily no matter where I am, which keeps me clearheaded, aka sane 🙂

My process:
Care-taking myself first thing in the day, through artistic processes like journal comics and abstract zen sketching (repetitive mark making) and maybe the odd creative writing whim. Then, whether a project is paid or not, I start thumbnail sketches and putting down my most literal, basic, and derivative ideas first, then getting mad about that, then running away, then coming back, and finding the really inspired stuff flows out in round two or three or fifteen.
I take my cue from Monty Python’s repetitive survival call to “Run Away” (in The Holy Grail). I find that retreating and returning—sometimes at a maddening toggle throughout a given day—allows me to persevere.

I also like to use timers obsessively to make myself do the really intimidating stuff or repellent parts of the process. Sometimes I set a timer and say, ‘Just do this for 5 minutes. What can go terribly wrong in 5 minutes?”

While occasionally I can muster the crystalline focus of an Olympic athlete, (usually as a project is nearing the finish line), I spend most of my days incrementally nudging along a rotating selection of stories, images, explorations, ideas.
I’ll admit, I’m an ardent Incrementalist.

I’m getting better at seeing tools as simply tools, not as any sort of creative crutch. Hammers aren’t very interesting. But what you can do with a hammer is where the potential lies.

Collection
Observation
Combination
Travel
Journal

I make sketches of and take photographs of things that catch my attention. At this point I have categories of things I regularly document, such as old signs, decaying cars, landscapes, plants with anthropomorphic gestural qualities. I then sketch compositions incorporating images I have collected, partly with intention and partly with seeing what comes together and where I could take that. The painting process is pretty straight forward. I worked for 17 years as an illustrator creating sketches to be approved or modified by clients, which is still somewhat embedded in my process. Most of the big decisions are worked out during the sketch phase. Sculpture is fun for me because its much more seat of the pants problem solving with a lot more freedom and unpredictable results.

I have synesthesia, therefore I take materials and processes very serious. Colors, textures and values are important to me. I see with my hands, I feel sounds and I can taste colors.

My relationship with my process
Of art making …is for me to drop away into a meditative state where I disappear. i become only seeing, love & my truest purest self witnessing beauty.
I love photography. I love old school SLR cameras. I love the weight of a camera. I love the way my fingers wrap around the camera from the top. I love film. My favorite sound is the clicking of a shutter.

QUESTIONER: Elisa Keir- recording thoughtful answers to the five questions
RESPONDER: Joel Kuennen
NOTES I: During the phone call, I recorded what I could via my pen, trying to keep up with their words and my “in that moment” comprehension.
NOTES II: Before we discussed the questions, we discussed stained glass, pearlescent shells, lacquer, polish, and resin melted into paper.

Process is based on material empathy (Refer to: Portable Gray VOL.7 NO.2 / FALL 2024 “MATERIAL EMPATHY” Joel Kuennen https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1086/733719)

This means developing an intimate knowledge with materials through historical research, experimentation, and observation as a way to expand and connect our sense of collaboration with material beyond their use, value, and manipulation. We have co-evolved with materials and are in relation with them far beyond these reductive valuations.

My process is first experiential and then documentarian. I use paper for interview notes and type on my laptop.

I usually have a very vivid imagination and will dream up ideas for making pieces. Being I.n a craft store looking at jewelry supplies will inspire ideas too. Sometimes I will get a idea and then start searching for the materials on Etsy or at Michaels.

I use what serves my ends. I use what I want to put my hands in or on or under.

All of my processes for my Sculpture Welding and Land Art are driven by the materials available, whatever scrap metal is in the yard, or whatever natural materials present themselves. Figuring out the wishes each year for my Magic Wish Cards project is a long, meditative process that involves journaling and pondering. My poetry is mostly stream of consciousness, and I always write in the bathtub. 

Cautious: I keep a very firm resolve not to eat any of the paint (no matter how sublimely delicious they look), nor inhale any of the fixatives nor apply resins to my face to highlight the latest age line heading with firm resolution toward my ear, chin…whatever. When a piece of the antique curved glass I often use develops a crack (perhaps from the heat generated by the resin as it cures) I accept this with peace in my heart, and treat it as part of the process and something to incorporate into the overall expression (as opposed to smashing it into a thousand pieces on the floor, tearing out my hair, plucking out my left eyeball and breaking even more glass with the sonic boom of my banshee screaming).

you discuss ions
your hip material tools
and your processes

In 2025, keep an eye out for my upcoming novel, “The Blunt Object.” In the meantime, take the Ghost Town Ghost Tour, a self-guided audio walking tour that details harrowing encounters with the apparitions that continue to haunt the resurrected ghost town of Madrid, New Mexico (available Halloween 2024).

I would like viewers to know only what they would like to know about my work. I don’t run my studio on mystifying my strategies or sources. And I try not to put a lot of time into generalized descriptions of my work. If the viewer is curious, I do my best to make plenty of information available for them to carve their own path of understanding and engagement.

I put great thought and care into my programming. It is an extension of the inner me. A little piece of myself I launch out into the Universe. Who is it for? Who knows. But I love doing it.

The backstories go deep but they can also be satisfying at face value.

1- time
2-skill
3-love
4-intentional
5-quality

I try to be authentic, even though I’m making it up.

I love to do it, and lots of times it’s super fun.

I take the work seriously, and sometimes it’s really hard.

I have made art throughout my adult life, in my home, in the midst of family life.

I’d like viewers to be drawn into what I call cosmic comedy and what it feels like to peer into the spiral of a shell and the listening ear part of a shell which invites a home.

Everything I make has a story, but I’m not attached to telling it or comprehending it. The pieces are physical outputs of the story or research that allow me to have my language in a vast world and pull me forth from my headspace. I want to be seen and heard; that’s important to me…but I only need a little recognition, or I would produce more. In my head, I joke that my audience comprises crickets, birds, and other creatures (can include humans). Art is the language I’ve cultivated the most. I haven’t stopped since I picked up my first crayon. One other thing is I’ve never made anything that didn’t have a bent towards dark humor. I crack myself up effortlessly, and my capacity to take things seriously for a long time diminishes quickly.

I tried writing a Manifesto. I doubt this is final or accurate but I am okay with this being a draft in what is probably a life-long process:

(I also wish other people would write manifestos and I hope we can still have movements which require manifestos but as with many things, I figured it would be important to try this myself)

As a devotee of surrealism and practitioner of sketchbook-therapy, I try to peel back the surface layer of the mundane to find glints of the marvellous. I create comics as a way of paying attention, of wondering, as a wisdom practice of attempting and flailing. An exercise in hunting for awe. Often, in the process, I end up accidentally shrinking my large problems into containers of somewhat smaller problems.

Sometimes these artistic attempts happen in collaboration with other artists and writers and poets—and when the act of generation overlaps with others, I count this as a true joy.

I am attracted to comics for the immersive experience they offer. And especially to nonfiction comics, because of their ability to transmute information into a memorable and compelling form.

Somebody just asked me if I was a photographer. Hell no. Just because I have a camera and take pictures doesn’t make me a photographer. I haven’t paid my dues or been repeatedly recognized by objective third parties. Or gotten paid. You have to put in the time.

Interaction…
Sharing the work in person
Memory of objects and people
Museum
Dream

There is an initial impression the work may make that is important. But it is said that an illustration has 3 seconds to communicate the idea in a magazine, on a billboard, etc. I think this former practice has led to my continuing to have a certain sense of finish to my work that communicates first off. But if you can stay with the work, or come back to it, there are many layers to construct meaning from. There are openings to interpret from your own perspective to participate in constructing meaning.

My artwork combines the classical training with my astral visions and the essence of other dimensions.

I think my work has always been about self discovery and love. My life has lead me on many paths; street photographer, portrait photographer , abstract expressionist, cartoonist, poet, drag king, henna artist, etc…

I’ve traveled, I’ve been a risk taker.
Art has opened many doors for me
Since I was a small child. It has healed me. Given my life purpose.

Depends on the viewers. Depends on the work.

I always wish to convey an elongated sense of time with the work. YOLO (you only live once) can cause our culture to collapse. It provides no longevity beyond the current moment.

Expanding the frames of time we operate in as people will shift our relationship with material and the Earth.

That I try to work in service of artists and want more people to be able enjoy more art by elucidating context.

I want them to celebrate beauty and celebrate nature and creation and thank God for it. I want to love hand made and well crafted items that are fun and elegant and sparkly.

I wish for better skills, like breathing underwater or flying, I guess that is useless, but somehow it feels like it would help my work.

I believe in happy people who are full of magic and magic people who are full of happy. I also believe in Dragons, Faeries, Pixies and Sprites. My art, poetry, and dance are a pure expression of my soul and spirituality. My Magic Wish Cards are designed to bring joy and spread magic through a web of people connected to me.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Wear your symbolic Protective Eyewear because it’s my intention to stick my proverbial finger in your eye—i.e. to induce discomfort, to take you to a place that is awash in angst, to get you all wound up to question the sad, wicked ways of the world, and to prod you into comprehension (and possibly even action). If you spot bunny rabbits in my work they are rendered not as horny Spring Easter frolickers but more in the vein of Donnie Darko.

like viewers to you
what or would you know about
your work or your work

I balance three days of creative writing with three days of work that actually brings in money to live on, and one day off is necessary but not always possible. I start every writing session by listening to “In a Silent Way” by Miles Davis, it helps me slip into the zone.

Yes, and I’ve learned over the years that even rituals that seem unattached to my creative process still fuel my practice. Exercise, nutrition, meditation, down time… it’s all needed for me to create a balanced life. And those are the hardest for me to stay on top of, for some reason.

Yes. Every show I have to find an anchor. Could be a theme. Could be sonic in nature. Could be personal and invisible on the surface, but it’s still there. Some might call it, “Inspiration” but that sounds “corny-corn-cornpone” to my ears. I need something that hooks me, grabs me, something that keeps bubbling up to the surface, something that keeps returning to the forefront, Something that is foundational, sets the tone, marks the spot, makes me want to build on. Hardest thing to do, I find, is to deny myself moving forward until I do find that anchor. Doesn’t happen often, but it sure does heighten tension, raises the stakes. I’ve tried to do it without or convince myself I could do it without, but it just comes off as impersonal, pedestrian and contrived.

Chatting with a bunch of old men (political item collectors). Going places to meet with people and see their collections.

1- variation
2-organic
3-interesting
4-inspired
5-being

I do best with good dance music

This last year I have tried to add a daily practice of making plein-air watercolor
sketches. It has been sporadic but even with interruptions I believe it has informed
these finished works of cut paper, both directly and indirectly.

I am not a water-colorist, which gives me the freedom to “play” and not be tempted
to over-invest in the outcome. This sketching ring-fences time in nature for me –
exercising my eye, hand and touch and enabling me to experience my daily life at a
deeper level.

It has also been a background practice that helped awaken my eye to the kinds of
line-making I was wanting to find in these works of paper and knife.

The rituals of days off from employment really helps give me more energy to dream, plan, explore, and facilitate the dream into firm, i.e. artwork.

Checklist: Music, Beverage, Time, Research & supplies ready, Coveralls on, Ambience set, Attitude set to game on, Bam.

A rigid checklist does not bind my creative process. Sometimes, I crave the chaos and demand loud music and the freedom to make a mess. Other times, I need total silence for hours on end. I allow the poet to guide me, shaping my work in unforeseen ways.

Routines:
Trying to get any semblance of routine, after having 4 months of zero routine while being on the road.

The drinking of a perfect cup of tea in the morning is pretty essential. And reading a book to throw nutrients in the mind, first thing.

Rituals:
Tarot is helpful. I like that it’s visual problem solving, and helps me form threads of connection between the seemingly separate parts of my life.
Walking among trees. Breathing — pranayama practice, inspired by Iyengar’s description in his book, Life On Life.

Conditions:
Inner spaciousness. Access to very quite focused areas (to listen, and execute). Access to noisy distracting and energetic contexts (foraging for ideas in the wild)

The best time is right now. I’m always working to push past laziness or fear or hesitation. Go. Now. Do.

The world is my studio
The going out
The return
The ordering of the chaos
The time capsule

Taking time to wander, notice, document. Visualizing, sketching, brainstorming and lodging possibilities in my brain. Often this seems unproductive. But I find it necessary. Going for walks, driving, working in the yard, doing things that occupy my focus but leave space for my mind to wonder is often where things come together in more unusual ways, more interesting ways that leave room for possibilities not yet considered is often when and where I get that second spark of inspiration that motivates me to take a work forward.

All colors must be aligned in a logical gradient. The space must be tidy and cleaned and reset after each session.

I have finally landed from being unsettled for the past three years. Now I have a place to live, make art, meditate & do yoga.
I am excited to see what happens next in my life.

Rituals that produce a frame of mind for making work. Music, always music. Lots of reading and research, trying to read more fiction but I am always inspired by research papers. A sense of comfortability that induces the creative flow.

Yes. I have to be alone to write, because I am easily distracted. I also leave my drafts at least overnight to marinate.

I pray alot for ideas and concepts and nature gives me ideas. Other forms of art can inspire me to make jewelry inspired by it.

Swaths of open time. Boredom is important…and sometimes misery.

Daily yoga, as much dance as possible, and observing the seasons are very important to me. But one of the most important things is to be as unplugged as possible for long periods of time, so I attend retreats or go to remote locations with spotty cell service to ensure I can unplug and recharge. Without doing this, my creativity suffers, and I get grumpy.

Walking backwards through the entirety of the city on my hands for 3 day…wait…no, I gave that up last year for Lent! Seriously: much of my work begins with a “found object”—e.g. a photograph from the early 20th century—and then waiting…and waiting…and waiting for it to speak to me, to suggest a concept, to surrender to the story that emerges. I’ve learned to approach, retreat, wait, then come back again, extracting suggestions primarily from dreaming. From there it is an immense amount of technical work to bring it into being, and the process of fabricating the piece leads to further realizations and or edits. It’s a give and take adventure.

parts are there in sin
or ritual conditioning
you are nurturing

More space. Living in New York or traveling, I had to go to a coffee shop to write. Now I live in a house so I have a dedicated writing desk (in the laundry room), and can work from home.

I think the biggest realization for me over the years that has changed my process is that my practice isn’t about one artwork or installation or performance. It’s about the continuation. It’s all connected. So I’ve learned to be a little less precious with every little thing (on my good days) and focus on a legacy that inspired people to be curious and live their lives to the fullest on their own terms, not someone else’s.

The “mothership process” never changes, “Listen, Absorb, Radiate, Deplete, Desire, Seek, Gather, Compile, Build, Share, Repeat”.

The Genre, Focus, Style, Medium, Delivery System and Human Condition are ever changing.

I know what I’m looking at more since I have seen so many different designs over the years. I am getting more scrutinizing and even impatient when there are buttons I’ve seen already.

1- proving
2- challenging
3- solving
4- struggling
5- learning

I take myself less seriously.

I see how anything can be a fine mark, it’s just what you do with it. (and also, nothing can happen until you make the first mark). so I’m more willing to just try anything.

My work has always grown from close observation and mark-making and still does.

A cut is just a bold, simple, non-correctible mark. However, replacing traditional
drawing materials with a blade has led to simpler more paired-down imagery.
What has influenced you lately (other artists, landscapes, music etc,)?

These works have been inspired by my friends’ gardens here in Santa Fe.
And I always keep to hand a book of Van Gogh’s drawings, Ellsworth Kelly’s
botanical drawings and Joan Mitchel’s paintings.”

My process has changed over time in rediscovering the processes I have wanted to pursue like nudges of dreams past. Remembering the candles my Grandmother made. Now I am making candles. Always wanted to learn felting now I am weaving fibers with my hands, soap and water and making tapestries and functional goods. Having fun with video making and communications.

The research stage of creating is my anchor, and I give the most time to it because I love it more than the output of a product. This shift in focus has been significant, allowing me to delve deeper into the materials I work with and understand their capabilities. My studio is full of prototypes and tests I do not intend to call art. This research stage is where the magic is conjured and cultivated, and the art is produced as a material byproduct as requested by the learning process.

I don’t know if I can recall! I think I used to be a lot more chaotic about everything. Maybe I am a little less chaotic, more organized, now? More patient?

I’m less hesitant to act. But I’ve got a long way to go.

More time..
More richness
Being really old can be advantageous
Until it isn’t
This moment will never happen again

I’ve been an artist professionally over the entire course of my adult life. First as an illustrator in my 20s and 30s. Ocassionally being asked to, and teaching. I earned an MFA in my early 40s, started showing in galleries and being represented by a gallery in Los Angeles, and started teaching at universities in southern California. For 10 years I was a professor in the art department of Mississippi State University. Each phase required growth adjustment and changes. I opened my own gallery showing my own work in Madrid, New Mexico in July of 2024. I’ve found this to be difficult situation to keep a consistent creative practice within. Or I guess thinking of the gallery has become a large part of my creative practice. There are different ways I can go with it which is occupying my head space. It may become a lab for investigating tourist and leisure culture in America. The idea of selling art within the context of a tourist town has gotten in the way of my usual flow in making work. I need to find a way to get back to a more investigative process.

My process has fluctuated from orderly to chaotic and back to loose. It depends on the day and the weather.

There are times where I am creating and times I am gathering information.i used to worry, when I wasn’t making art. The older I have gotten there is no separation between my life & art.

I’m more trusting with the process.

I used to be an art critic and editor, which was my response to the creative process. This writing practice created a foundation for my visual work, grounding it as a critical, sense-making process that feels additive, interconnected, and essayistic.

Some of the work I produce I don’t consider art but more parts of an essay that make an argument, an extended read, and gives a view that can be seen beyond the obvious. Then it feels like art as it stretches out over time and through other people.

Material choices are purposefully related to the concept and come into critical dialog with the work. This approach is legible, complicated, expansive, and feels right. Knowledge and intuition have to be equally weighted. A good work is one you can always go deeper into. I try to create an easy access point that leads the viewer beyond the surface into embedded layers that can reveal themselves through looking, feeling, and researching.

Conceptually, I don’t know if my art has changed that much. I’m still always surprised that I am making work about the same concepts over and over again. I guess I’ll move on when these issues become resolved for me.

I have become faster and more efficient.

I think I am getting better and there is still more to learn.

I am less materials focused and more focused on ideas. Collaboration with Patty has also opened up a whole new world.

I’ve slowed down; I’m more deliberate and intentional. I ponder longer. I can put things down and not obsess or rush to completion. I’m also pickier about what I do and where I put my energy. I have less tolerance for BS or soulless interactions. However, nothing motivates me like procrastination and a looming deadline. Love that rush!

It has moved away from “knock you back on your heels at first glance” to more of a “knife hidden behind silk”—i.e. more subtlety, perhaps a dominant visual element being quickly establish then, on the 4th or 5th viewing something previously hidden POPS and the overall experience is rejiggered, reconstituted and comes into sharp, undeniable focus…for which I try to have medical emergency teams on standby for those viewers who collapse into a puddle of protoplasmic goo: the window for the regenerative process is very narrow.

has how your rover
over-damaged time changes
sorceresses less

Going for a walk with my dog is the best way to inhabit my body, be in the moment, engage my senses and work through ideas.

Lately it’s been my own interest in sharpening the skills I already have that influences me. As an artist early in my path, I focused a lot on imitation (ie I want to paint like Bridget Riley or I want to play horn like Pharoah Sanders). It is still important to look to the masters for guidance (albeit on process more than aesthetic, lately) put I currently feel like it is most important to investigate and know myself. I nurture this by reading more than looking or listening. This helps me organize my thoughts, figure out what I’m most interested in and set out on a path for exploring.

Beauty from a turn of a phrase, a photograph, the human form, true honest emotion, following another human being sonically, on a mental/spiritual journey via an impersonal medium, a color, clouds, unexpected nonverbal humor, laughing from the gut, silence, expanding into nature’s silence, health, truth, love.

Martin Johnson Heade’s Gremlin in the Studio paintings from the mid 1800s. It has nothing to do with buttons (other than the gremlin is round and looks somewhat like a smiley face button) yet I love the humor paired with what seems to be a traditional landscape painting.

1- quilters
2-musicians
3-politics
4-community
5-ecology

clouds

Through my own difficult experiences recently I notice how most other people struggle with challenges too.

The transient nature of existence is more real.

N/A

Elisa inspired me to send a video. We share memories and memories told. Also E and M shared video calls in other rooms Teleconferencing in Chicago, 20th century I wanted to teleconference a video like a radio message from a distant sphere.

My daily life deeply influences my work, which I see as a form of ‘utilitarian magic ‘. I believe in harnessing the potency of the subconscious mind, using each moment as an opportunity for creative impulse. This approach allows me to be particular with how I spend each day, turning my daily experiences into a true ‘craft’ and practice. Work, play, craft, art, etc., are for weaving.

Example of influences:
Witnessing a bird building its nest and comprehending the evolution and brilliance that led it to that moment; a clerk sharing a story with me in the checkout line and witnessing their deeper realm; Examining the interconnectedness of what crosses my path and seeing everything as a breadcrumb on the trail; Finding a way to have non-transactional encounters while looking for the opportunity of reciprocity and play.

I admire comedians for their willingness to proliferate and then edit heavily. Almost everything ends up on the cutting floor, & the ones who get anywhere seem to have a committed and steady habit of taking notes, observing everything.

Surrealist painters such as Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo.

Music….I had various albums by WOO on heavy rotation this past year.

Bruce Gilden. Ed Templeton. And AI. Soon anyone will be able to create any image using AI. But there will always be a place for truthfully capturing reality.

Continuing influences
Tea ceremony
How to Wrap 5 Eggs
Teaching
Trying to be of Grateful mind

The decay, remnants, and people in an old mining town I moved to at the end of 2023. The ruins of the mid 20th century. What they reveal about American culture, human nature and the changes that have occurred in the past 75 years. A new version of a high desert landscape. An art market in Santa Fe based upon selling decorative art, much of which seems to be devoid of exploring ideas and primarily intended to be home decor for wealthy Texans. (my impression so far) Ideas of community and inter-depenence. Leaving space, openings, encouragement for others to become participants in works of art. Experience. An either stupid, ignorant, or masterfully misled population electing a demented narcissistic physchopath with the mental maturity of an angry toddler in charge of the United States. Climate Change. The stratification of wealth and prosperity. Need vs desire.

I moved to Arizona in 2020 and have been spending time in the northern high plains lately. I try to integrate my understanding of landscape, color and materials to create Wolf Kahn and J. W. Turner style works.

Always, Diane Arbus, Louise Nevelson,
Mapplethorpe & Patty Smith,
Buddhism & Advaita Vedanta ,
Stevie Nicks ,the Beatles
Cat Steven’s,
Most recently, sound healing music.
the New Mexico Sky ,
dropping deeper into my alone time &
Spiritual practice/ self healing.

Scientific research, specifically in geology, exobiology, and physics. Material discoveries always get me going.

Currently reading:
– Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life by Ferris Jabr, Elemental: How Five Elements Changed Earth’s Past and Will Shape Our Future by Stephen Porder, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, Enheduana by Sophus Helle, and Moonstruck: How Lunar Cycles Affect Life by Earnest Naylor.

Curiosity, conversations with poets, artists, and writers. Music gives me endless energy. Love is inspiring but can really rule my moods. Loving materials, surrounding myself with a certain material, waiting for it to inspire a whole idea. Waiting is important. The complexity of the world and relationships.

Enamored with it all.

Performance Art. I used to be interested in video and sculptured but now I am primarily focused on capturing the ephemerality of performance.

I did a lot of pieces based on summer time so now I will start doing pieces inspired by fall and winter colors or other ideas.

I am less materials focused and more focused on ideas. Collaboration with Patty has also opened up a whole new world.

My garden, my relationship with my cats, and the wild animals in my neighborhood. This business oracle deck: https://oracle.simonegraceseol.com/ Hosting a Zozobra backyard party. Using and pondering the future of Artificial Intelligence in our lives. Picking the kind of people I want to have in my life and some weeding out of ones that aren’t right for me.

World politics, specifically with a smoldering anger at the difference in standards applied to different peoples/races/religions; the catastrophic collapse of ecosystems worldwide…and that even with solutions to ALL of these easily available, our enslavement to petrochemical companies, the deliberate destruction of democratic systems and our unwillingness, as individuals, to band together and take effective countermeasures are doing little to slow it all down. My method is not to throw a can of soup on a Van Gogh, but to apply Itching Powder (via my art) that’s neutralized only when the viewer’s resolve transmogrifies into action. Oh, and rewatching old Ren & Stimpy episodes to remember the incredible power of humor and silliness.

influence has set
an art cap on othered lands
scraping late music

why are you answering these questions, please explain
also, hey, why did you answer the previous questions above