It’s crept up to 104° outside and I spent my first working day in my new studio, despite the heat (and no central AC there). This is just a brief post to update on my artist life over the last month, though a lot has happened in this time and in some ways these 28 days have indeed felt like an eternity. Anyway, I always feel like I'm hurrying up and not getting much done as an artist, because I keep working towards the very elusive (to me) goal of... getting my work …

That title phrase makes me think of crowds of people chanting… “what do we want?!” and “when do we want it?!”. I went to an art portfolio review hosted by SFAN in May, and one of the reviewers asked me what I wanted out of my work as an artist. How do I convey that I am driven, determined, and relentless but still figuring out what I actually want? I was educated in new genres art making, and that’s still my primary approach to my work. But ten years ago I decided to go old school…

I’m sitting here this morning trying to explain the third descriptor of my project (on stories, storytelling, and storytellers for the American story) and I’m thinking… let’s start with me, the storyteller for this project. Because no matter what story is told or why or how it’s told, there’s always a storyteller, the who and why behind a story…

Now I take a step back to look at how a story is told. A story can be listed as facts or imbued with emotion; form influences the reception of the story. There’s also the visual style of presentation, the context in which it’s shared, the concurrent stories being told, and the accompanying evidence… these influence the story, too.To continue with the example of my dad from the last post, I think about the day of his funeral…