My work is about the failure of the human race to escape itself. Just to restate that one for my benefit. That simple sentence has already opened many doors.

So what happens after chandeliers? What else can you do with that? It should be infinite, right? (I’m not having a wedding, sorry Ash.)

Half of the work of making things the way I do is sitting around staring at stuff until it makes sense. This ever-enlarging pile of crap I’ve got in here is starting to weave itself together. But really, I need to pull everything out and see it and start to organize it into layers. Installing the first one while we were building the ceramics show around it, everyone was kind of like “..what are you doing just sitting there?” in the middle of all the crap I had pulled out of my studio and thrown all over that half of the room. But that’s how it goes, and that’s why it takes a few days. I think if I had to reinstall the one from December I could do it really fast, but the maiden voyage makes sense to take longer with. Maybe it will be a lot faster now that there’s no steel to work around.

Things need to be much denser than they’ve ever been before. I’ve been kind of light with how much stuff makes it into each one, but this time, since there’s no real superstructure, the thing itself becomes the superstructure. So every piece involved in each of the three of these needs to work like the system it’s supposed to be anyway to keep the thing intact. I very much love that and hope I can really do it right; it’s hard to envision. I’m trying to keep everything in mind when I make ceramic pieces, but it’s hard to know how to fit what where when there’s nothing else to go on, and I don’t want to make everything really blatant, i.e. punching holes in everything so I can tie it all together. So it’s a whole new ball game and I’m trying to make lots of small things in order to use them accordingly to make bigger patterns. Most of the ceramic stuff starts as one mundane object, abstracted and repeated a bunch of times. I made lots of very oversized popcorn kernels last week.

Standing at the store yesterday looking at stickers I realized I’m not making fun of anything. I’ve been trying to say that I am for a while now, scathingly (but mmmnope, never), or then that I wasn’t (and that I was actively participating so it’s cool), and that’s been what I thought my big dilemma was, that flip-flop. I was looking for flower stickers to cover this big PVC tube I found in a dumpster last week. But then I also ended up buying stickers for me to use in my sketchbook and it was like “Wait, what?”. Aren’t I here to get stuff for making things that critique the use and very existence of stickers? Now I’m buying them because they’re cute and glittery? Where’s the line?

So, this week, with this experience and Morrissey’s help, I’ve realized that my inner argument was in completely the wrong place, and that I’m the sticker equivalent to all those evangelical homophobes who are then found with the 12 year old Filipino boy in their hotel room. Thank you Target scrapbook aisle.

I’m afraid it’s coming across like I’m kind of holding myself apart from the culture I’m targeting when I think about these things, but no, not at all, despite how much I’ll tell you I hate Glee then turn around and willingly let them manipulate my heartstrings with show tunes. I’m completely and consensually mired in all of it, and I like to think that’s in there somehow, or at least that it will be now that I kind of know what I’m about. Despite what might have been pegged as condescending or bravado in recent posts, every time (not too often) I make that late night french fry run with the top 40 station cranked, I am reminded that being a hypocrite about all of this is not allowed.

This is my favorite thing to read and look at. Multiple amazing posts a week. Feeds my Gilded Age building boner like no other. I’m plugging it because the Beekman Palace post is absolutely incredible and I gaped at it open-mouthed for awhile. I’m never going to live in New York, I think I know that, but it’s nice to pretend I’d be able to stand it for the sake of places like this.