Search

Someone on marketplace was giving away a 60s credenza, walnut veneer, one leg busted. Free. I drove 40 minutes in the rain with a tarp and my brother's old ratchet straps still in the trunk, which I don't think about, they're just the straps. Got there and the piece was worse than the photos, water damage all along the bottom, drawer fronts swollen shut. And I stood in this guy's driveway and realized I didn't want the credenza, I wanted the hardware. The little brass pulls, the keyhole escutcheons. So I asked if I could just take those instead of the whole thing and he looked at me like I'd asked to keep his dog. Came home with eleven pulls and a keyhole plate in a ziploc. They're on the work table now. The credenza part of it, the actual furniture, I don't care about at all. I care that a stranger's hand turned these ten thousand times opening a drawer for a pair of scissors or a lighter or whatever was in there, and it polished the brass down to the base metal in one spot. Probably going to end up gluing them to a panel and calling it a piece about small repeated gestures, which is a sentence I'd hate if someone else said it. Anyway the house smells like old brass now.

I was buying a new palette at this little art supply shop downtown, one I've been going to for years, and this guy maybe 60s just watching me pick out colors finally goes "you know, with watercolor, you have to work light to dark." Like I had wandered in off the street and picked up a brush for the first time that morning. And I laughed it off because I'm bad at confrontation but then I spent the whole walk home fuming at myself for not saying anything. I've been painting daily for like a decade. I have a BFA. I taught a workshop last month. But sure, random man at the art store, please explain the most basic principle of my entire medium to me like I'm five. Honestly the thing that gets me is I KNOW he wouldn't have done that to a guy holding an oil palette. Watercolor is "dainty" or "hobbyist" or whatever until you try to actually control it and realize it's the most unforgiving medium there is. One wrong wash and you're done. But okay. Work light to dark. Got it. Thank you so much.

did anyone ever actually get a straight answer after a gallery rejected them? not the "we loved your work, just not for our program right now" form letter, an actual reason. one time i got a no and the owner told me it was because my frames were cheap. called it "hardware insecurity" which honestly still haunts me. bought better frames out of spite. we love growth lol anyone get a rejection that actually taught them something, or was it always just noise?

This cheap desk lamp I got at the hardware store, the one I've had for like, five years, just gave up the ghost. Sparked a little, then nothing. Of course it happened while I was trying to get this really delicate wash of grey just right. Spent twenty minutes fiddling with it, then just gave up and stared at the half-finished canvas like it personally offended me. Now the whole corner is too dark to work in. Guess it's an early night. Great.

swept my studio floor yesterday, first time in months. layers of dust and torn paper scraps and a broken pencil, and under all of it a receipt from a hardware store dated the same week my brother died. i remember buying the screws that day. don't remember what for. i stood there holding it a while. the floor is clean now and honestly the place feels wrong. like i washed off the record of some important week. next time i think i'll just let it build up and call it a piece.

I wrote to a museum in Germany six weeks ago proposing something I've been thinking about for two years. A room built from the contents of a bankrupt hardware store I found outside Leipzig. Shelves, bins, inventory sheets, the whole sad inventory of a business that didn't make it. I sat on the draft for three weeks before sending it. Stupid, at my age, to still be nervous about that. They wrote back yesterday. Want to come see the space in June. I called my son and he said "see, you're not as washed up as you think" which is exactly the kind of thing you need to hear from your kid.

I'll admit mine. First gallery, young me, the director kept saying "we'll figure out the framing together" and never once asked what I wanted. I signed anyway. Then the hanging was a disaster and I spent three months fixing work they'd damaged with bad hardware. I knew, and I signed anyway. Hunger does that. What red flag did you walk into with your eyes open, and did it cost you? Or did it surprise you and turn out fine? I'm curious which ones are worth ignoring.

There's a glue stick that lives on top of the radiator in my studio. It's been there three winters now. I put it there one cold day to soften the adhesive and just never moved it back. Now it's part of the routine. I check it like a plant. If the heating's been on all night it's perfect, peels back smooth. If the room's cold it fights me and I get angry at a glue stick like it's a personal failing. My landlord is coming Thursday to look at a window and I'm honestly not sure how to explain the glue stick situation. It's not even a good glue stick. It's a cheap one from the hardware store with a red cap. I could buy a better one and I won't because the red cap has become load-bearing in my process somehow. Anyway the window's drafty so maybe I'll finally have to move it. Starting to think I should just accept that and mourn quietly.