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was at an estate sale this weekend, said i was looking at a box of old photographs. just looking. woman running the sale walks over, all friendly, says "oh those are nice, you could cut them up and make something pretty." i stood there holding a picture of someones grandmother and felt genuinely sick for a second. like no, margaret, actually you cant. that's somebody's whole face. that's somebody's whole life in a cardboard box for 3 dollars and i'm supposed to be the one who makes it palatable. she saw my face and laughed. "or not! whatever you artists do." i bought them anyway. all of them. box was 12 bucks. they're on my kitchen table now and i can't touch one without feeling like i owe them something. which is probably why i'm an artist and she sells dead people's lampshades. nothing wrong with that. but don't tell me what to do with a stranger's face like it's craft supplies.

Picked up a landscape at an estate sale last weekend for $12. Frame was ugly, paint was muddy, but something about the sky felt off, like it was doing more work than it should. Took a scraper to a corner tonight just to see and there's a whole family portrait under it. Three people, dog, someone's hands folded in their lap. I don't know why I'm so moved by it. Somebody painted over their own family. Or somebody else's. Either way they wanted it gone and it wouldn't stay gone. Gonna try to lift the top layer carefully. If I ruin both paintings so be it, but I want to see the faces.

found this solid oak side table at an estate sale yesterday. nothing special, someone's boring coffee table from 1987, couple of water rings, drawer stuck. fifty bucks. i brought it home and spent the afternoon sanding it down and putting the first coat of this deep indigo on it. posted a progress picture and my neighbor (who i barely know) texts me "why would you paint over that wood? you're ruining it." like. it's a mass-produced table from sears. it's not a heirloom. it had a sticker on the bottom. i'm not ruining anything, i'm making it not ugly. and even if it was a nice piece, it's mine? i can do what i want with my own stuff? this weird reverence for raw wood drives me insane. not everything has to stay the color god made it. sometimes things look better with paint on them.

found a box of 1970s nursing textbooks at a sale last weekend. paid $8 for them. they're sitting on my studio floor and i keep picking one up and flipping through it instead of working. all these diagrams of the human body labeled in tiny cursive. i don't know what i'm going to do with them. cut them up probably. but right now i just like having them around. i do this constantly. old photo albums, someone's tax records from 1982, a set of dentures once (left those behind). i think i'm looking for something specific but i don't know what it is. evidence that people were here.

A small gallery I've been talking to finally offered me a solo show for next spring. I was buzzing about it for like a day. Then they said the budget for materials is $200. I don't think they're trying to screw me. They're tiny. But $200 barely covers the paper and panel for one large piece, let alone the paint, the medium, the charcoal, the adhesive, the found materials I buy from estate sales. I'd be eating the rest myself and I already have a day job I hate. I said yes because the opportunity is real and I've been wanting this. But I'm already doing the math in my head and it's not great. I have about 8 months. I'm trying to figure out if I can pull this off without it costing me more than whatever I might sell. Anyone else done a show where the "support" was basically symbolic? How did you handle the gap without looking ungrateful?

bought a box of photos at an estate sale in some suburb off the highway, 40 bucks for maybe 200 of them, mostly blurry birthday parties. one has a note on the back in ballpoint, "lake, aug, don't forget the sandwiches." been sitting at the light table with a scalpel trying to lift that paper off without taking the emulsion with it. three hours. got about a half inch. the thing is i don't even know what i'm going to do with it yet. i just know i can't put it in the piece with the ink still on it, it'd read as a prop. and i can't scan and reprint it, that feels like lying. so i'm sitting here picking at paper like it's a scab. anyway the light table's been on since 8 and my back is wrecked and i'll probably just glue it down as is tomorrow.

Found a painting of someone's dachshund from 1983 yesterday. Terrible painting. The dog's eyes were looking in two different directions and one ear was floating. Frame was trashed, matting was that pilled velvet stuff. Bought it anyway. Took the painting out, put it in a drawer. I don't know why I do this. I have a stack of bad pet portraits now and no use for them. But throwing someone's dog away felt wrong. Same thing happens with photographs. Estate sales, flea markets. I've got a shoebox full of people I don't know. Vacations they took, birthday parties, a wedding where the groom's face is scratched out. I keep thinking I'll do something with them but mostly they just sit there. Maybe it's just cheaper than therapy. Or a different kind of hoarding.

Nine months on this piece. Torn paper and a 1962 photo of a gas station I found in a box at an estate sale. Kept putting the same corner in and taking it out. My studio mate would come by and go "oh, it's that one again" and I'd want to throw it at her head. Yesterday I flipped the damn gas station upside down. Just to see. And that was it. The whole thing fell open like it was waiting for me to stop being precious about it. I don't know why it took that long. I think I was attached to what the photo was instead of what it could do. Anyway. It's done. Frame's too small now but I'll deal with that later. Sometimes the work just needs you to be wrong about it for a while.

I noticed last week that I only actually start working once the radiator starts ticking. Same time every morning, that knocking-into-rhythm thing they do. Before that I'm just moving paper around the table, pretending. And now I've started timing things to it. Which is insane. I'm not a person who counts, I've never counted anything in my life, and suddenly I'm laying down charcoal on the off-beat because the radiator told me to. My brother used to tap his pen on everything, dining table, steering wheel, my shoulder in the car. Annoying as hell. I didn't realize until this week that I'd been working in the quiet for years and it never sat right. Anyway the piece is getting worse before it gets better, which I keep telling myself is what always happens. It's a photograph of a doorway I found in a box lot at an estate sale on Vitosha, water damage ate the top left corner, and I'm building the wash around the damage instead of over it. Half the studio floor is scraped-off grey at this point, I gave up sweeping. Not sure the radiator thing is a habit or a symptom.