84. Childlike
How we aim to be. Watercolors big, watercolors small. Wrapping up the pentaptych with espresso, winter produce, and a duo of NA martini.
Why is it that all children paint and write and make music and hardly any adults do that? The finger of suspicion has to point to that process of being educated…education taking you away from, I guess, a primitive creativity that everybody possesses. And for some reason for some people it doesn't work, and they become artists, so they stay children, in a sense.
—Rachel Cusk · “Something in the writing process is shameless,” Louisiana Channel
I recently returned from the West Coast, where I met my new niece. The elections here in the U.S. had just, and decisively, come to a close. I was in a different time zone, a different climate, a different house. Everything felt different, because it was. In all this strangeness was a minute being, impossibly silent, only a month old. In her veins and cells a mysterious thread led back to me. She turned her head toward sounds, tiny mouth in moue, eyes inscrutable. Watching her I suddenly felt clear in the head, unfettered in the body.
About town
The latest Substack Best Sellers event was called “A Classic New York Night,” and the atmosphere was distinctly holiday-glam. It was generously hosted by E.A.T. where I met Eli himself, re/connected with fellow writers, and ate a lot of sweet potato chips.
Getting sketched by New Yorker cartoonist
was a cherry on top, and even though my visage didn’t make it into the NY times, I’ll always have this:
In the studio
I’ve been working on a pentaptych of watercolors and am wrapping up an iteration for crit. (Yes, I’m itching to animate again.) Latest process shots follow: miniature color experiments, background painting at scale, quick and dirty wall compositions.
But first, espresso:
It’s always painful returning to work after a break, and this time it took me a few days to get back in groove. Not because the work itself was unpleasant, but because confronting inertia is a terrible and onerous affair.
For one thing, it was so quiet and single-focused with my neice, that coming back to a jumble of questions and plans, sheaves of paper, spatters of paint, the bedlam of me, felt shocking.
Plus, it’s also fall—albeit an unseasonably warm one—and all I want to do is cook, read about cooking, indulge, and sleep.
Still, I finished painting and am onto the next leg of the process: mounting, curing, crit.
My studio hours have been reminiscent of playtime; filled with drawing and painting, making cutouts, fitting pieces together, remixing.
I know I just talked about doubt in a recent issue, but only last week I caught myself feeling self-conscious.
As a digital product designer, I’ve labored on other people’s ideas most of my adult life in “legitimate” environments. There, I engaged in as much play—only, with pixels. I know it’s obvious but it still blows my mind how ingrained it is, to see work as more valid when it’s systematized and commodified.
Provisions
Take in good things to make good things. I’ve pulled this above the paywall again for everyone; enjoy.
Louisiana channel · Provocations
Carson, Cusk, Kang—this content is gold. The museum itself is one of my faves from around the world. Their literary festival in August also sounds amazing.“How to write 10,000 words a day” · Lols
’s Meanwhile.
A three-minute ode to productivity. A 2017 goodie from McSweeney’s viaScene and Substance at New York’s Newest Hot Spot · Drools
Beautiful. The words, not the restaurant (I haven’t been). No one writes about food the way Helen Rosner does; always a joy to read.Between Goodbyes · Tears
A documentary film about the journey toward reconnection between a Korean adoptee raised in the Netherlands, and her birth family. Yep, I cried during the entire film. Stream it until Dec 1 for $15 USD.Tableaux-pièges · Suspensions
The stories that tables tell. Via Hunn Wai, a fellow critic at the recent MFA Design thesis critique at SVA. He passed this along to me when I shared my own dinner table sitch where gold paint lives alongside mustard:
Members, continue below for a closer look at what’s been going on in the studio, with a one-minute process video of me painting large. Plus, two NA martini recipes to close things out.
Everyone else, thanks so much for being here! Hope you enjoyed today’s read.