I went to the Moma today to see the Brice Marden show. I have a paper due tomorrow on the show. I tend to take a lot of notes and that always makes people curious about what I’m doing. A nice grey bearded man with an eye patch came up to me. “Excuse me, can I ask what you are writing?” “Oh, I am taking notes for a paper I need to write for school.” I told him. He explained that he had just had eye surgery that morning. “What a strange place to go after eye surgery!” I said. He laughed. He wanted to know if all the magical colors and textures he was seeing was a side effect from the surgery or if they were really there. I told him yes. Brice Marden uses beeswax in his earlier colorfield paintings and the thickness and translucency of the wax sort of suspends the pigments from the paint and gives them great luminocity. He said the paintings were magical and thought he was hallucinating. “No” I assured him. “I see it too!” He then went on to ask me what I was studying and what kind of paintings I did. I told him about the computer paintings. He said he knew a woman who designed circuit boards. She had many of her designs displayed in her house as art. He said they were so beautiful. “That’s exactly what I’m interested in.” I said “Humans can design some beautiful things.” It made me realize that I really am so married to this crazy work of mine. I wish I could work on my encaustics at school. It feels terrible to have to put it on hold. His comments gave me a renewed sense of purpose.
The day was just generally very magical. I got dropped off at 10th and Market and decided to walk instead of take the bus. I stopped by Cody’s to check on a book, the help desk guy was really nice to me. I went to Madeline’s for a coffee and to read the directions for this paper. I love that place. They were out of their amazing french pastries but it was ok. I then had my magical time at the Moma. I wasn’t looking forward to this show but ended up really loving it, and it restored my faith in painting, something that’s hard to keep ahold of while in art school. I hopped on a bus and found myself with an empty stomach outside A.K. subs. A half chicken salad sandwich later, I was skipping along on the way to school and ran across this mysterious metal object. It is my new treasure. Now I’ve got a couple hours to work on my paper then time for class. I’m making a poster with crayons tonight so should be a fun class.
