I am still working on the alef piece, which isn’t going to be called that. I’ll think of something eventually, but I put a couple more thin layers of white on it before I began to finish stitching it all up.

Through the front…

And then the back.

After I sewed the edges of the patterns (which is where I think we last left off from) and, by the way, there’s quite a bit of waiting time between these layers of oil paint…

I finally started the very basic composition on this with some oil pastels.

From here on out I’ll be painting color and blending — all the funnest parts, and the most crucial parts too. It’s like perfecting mark making. Or trying to anyhow.

And here is the last shot of it from yesterday. I’ll be adding the blues tomorrow.

At the same time, I have been working on rewards. And as I have said before, I have more pieces of art than I have people to reward (some people get multiple things), but I am now glad to say that out of  58 people, I only have 16 more people left to reward. I got a lot done in a couple of months actually.

I am also working on two other paintings. I know I said I would be working on the largest one next, but I just barely started “Tet” – a 20 x 20 inch canvas, and a new abstracted landscape – a 16 x 20 inch canvas: something completely new and experimental for me!

I have absolutely no idea if it will turn out the way I dreamed, but we shall see. I’ll keep you posted, but you can not see it in progress images on it. However, if the experiment works out as planned, then perhaps I’ll let everybody in on the next one. How’s that? Sound like a deal?

I will be taking a few progress shots of the small “tet” piece soon, but we won’t be following it as closely as we have with the alef painting. I don’t want to bore you all. I’ve only slopped some acrylic paint on the 20 inch square canvas, and cut the pattern pieces that will form the letter tet shape.

I cut these patterns with the same shears I used when I worked with my dad back in the day. Then they get notched before the staples come out. After that, they’ll be ready to become Journal drawings.

All that so they can be stuck to the canvas to be mostly covered in paint. Why? Why, oh why?

I guess because of the significance and the fact that I want them to subtly show through, but not so’s you can read or see them exactly. I like that look.

I know, I’m weird. That’s a lot of work for something that’s going to be covered up. I suppose I shouldn’t write anything too serious on them, right? ha!

The thing is though, it’s a good way to bury my secrets into the paintings. It’s my way of putting blood or guts into them and no one knows what in there but me. You might be able to make out a work here and there, but you’d never be able to see the whole thing. They are like whispers from ghosts. A child ghost mostly.

And the main significance. Well, I can tell you. I can tell you the significance to all this if you want, but I am such a big advocate of all of my art being for the viewer’s interpretation. Even this work too. I always feel like if I tell viewers what it all means to me, it’s like taking away their meaning and I don’t want to ever do that. My meaning and your meaning are never in conflict! My art means what you think it means. I’m serious.

It’s just while I’m making it, I have my own relationship with it. When it’s finished, then everyone else has their relationship with it. It’s not really mine anymore.

But anyway, these Hebrew/kabbalah pieces are really about me leaving my past. I want to stop being so affected by my past and just leave it there – and live in the present. That’s truly my exodus.

It was the purpose of my meditation in Joshua Tree, the studying I’ve been doing, the process behind these paintings, and the new compositions on top of the Hebrew letters.

To go on (and on), The Journal pieces that make up the letters on the painting are like my subconscious interpretations that I gleaned from my studies from the letter and what the mystical significance means to me on a personal level. And since they are totally unplanned, a lot of cognitive experiences happen while I’m making them. I never know what I will write or draw on those patterns.

So all of this kabbalah significance has gone into the support of the painting; the foundation for the main composition – which has more to do with my Joshua Tree experience. The compositions, in a nutshell, have to do with the giant rock formations near the National Park.

Maybe it was the meditating, or just where my frame of mind was at the time I was there, but those rocks are so big, and I felt so small in comparison. There was just something about that. Something spiritual and humbling.

In the alef painting, specifically, if you go back to my first day in Joshua Tree, I was studying this letter and I had a lot of realizations about the Firmament as it could be applied to the Exodus with Moses and the burning bush. Maybe it was far fetched, but I have not stopped thinking about it since the first day I was out in the desert.

Anyway, as it applies to the Firmament – this is how I chose my basic palette for the alef painting. I probably could have made the darker water on the bottom instead of the top, but it looked better to have a cobalt blue up top alone with the yellow, and then I’ll be mixing a turquoise blue into the bottom half of the rock formation.

Okay, I just erased about two paragraphs on even MORE significance on this color palette, but it was so biblical that I just couldn’t stand just how biblical it was. So I’m going to end off here before I embarrass myself even further.

Well, yes.

For the next few days while I am at home, I am going to be restudying a few of the letters, Tet being the main one, then Yud, and then I want to re-cap on Chet, before I finally study Kaf.

, , , 

This is while I get my bearings together, see to some pressing personal matters, and just get reorganized, so this Kabbalah will be sporadic over the next week – just warning you.

And to warn you further, I will then be half way finished with the Kabbalah studies at that time. I mean, that’s funny actually because I will never be fully done with these Kabbalah studies – ever! But I will be finished with them as far as how much I’d like to be familiar with them. At least before I go into the new paintings.

I would just like to take a HALF WAY break to work on some rewards!

Remember, I have a LOT of rewards to complete, and most of those I’d like to do before I enter into my painting trance. I really don’t want to be preoccupied with much.

Check this out. Even though I had, what, 58 backers? I have 91 things I have to hand make — in some capacity or another. That might be hard to believe, but it’s true! It’s because some rewards had more than one thing listed in a particular tier.

That being said, one “thing” can be anything from writing a personal post-it note (easy!), to making a custom, hand bound artist book (not so “easy”).

This morning I was stitching the edges of Dan on one of the two Danvites that a couple people chose as their reward. The ones I had left were not finished, which is why they were left blank I suppose. In fact, I was looking for a finished one and I can’t find one! That’s a little alarming to me. It must be in my box of “Show Promo,” or something.

I sent these out to VIPs before my last solo show in 2010, It’s Mostly About Me and Much Less About You that included over 40 paintings. Probably half (or more) were from the Dan series. It’s a calling card of mine, or whatever you call it, to send out something a little “different” to selected people on my snail mail list before one of my solo shows, as well as an invite/postcard in order to get a bit more attention. You know, like a baby. A baby shaking his rattle really hard and screaming his head off. Like that!

“Give to me your attentions! My art is on view! Drop what you are doing! My art is more special than the the other art you have seen!”

Maybe you try to mix a perfect fragrance and line the inside of the envelope with it, hoping it will lure them to your gallery. Kind of like those cartoons where that luminescent, stretchy fragrance snake brings your unwitting prey up from under his nose and floats him back to the source of the smell.

Whatever it takes, right?

I just try to make something the person on the receiving end will notice – that someone may have made it by hand and thought went into it. Maybe they’ll be reluctant to throw it away. I want them to keep it, even if they don’t go to the show. Over the years, I have found that many of them have kept these things. Maybe they will remember my name at least.

Anyway, the rewards… Of the 91, so far I have only made 29. I haven’t sent out most of those 29 yet because I am waiting on the Dan stickers that I decided to give to everyone over the $20 mark. I am just not getting them until the end of next week.

The first rewards I did were obviously the postcards because I had to do them from Joshua Tree, so I hope everyone got them by now – including Quebec? I sure hope so. I think I wrote my best one there. I sent your guys’ wristbands out today and added EsArt stickers at least.

There is obviously – well – I shouldn’t say “obviously.” Maybe it’s not so obvious. How would you guys know it was obvious? Either way, there is going to be at least a three week delay on everybody’s rewards. When I wrote those estimated times for people to receive their rewards, I just wasn’t thinking clearly – like about how I had to wait to get all the funds into my account, ordering times/shipping times for the stickers and bracelets, plus proofing them! (I had to make changes multiple times on Dan’s color, and the Hebrew on the wristbands.) I also wasn’t so sure I was going to Joshua Tree so fast. I just didn’t take a lot of things into account! So please forgive me if you do not get your rewards exactly on time. I would push everything up another month, two if you’re a sweet and understanding individual.

I am also waiting on:

1. The Monographie books – ETA: Next week!
2. À la Dan Kabbalah” letterpress prints – ETA: No Idea!
3. VERY SPECIAL, limited edition “16 Dans” letterpress print – with one hand-painted Dan in the bunch – ETA: Soon!
4. Dan’s 10 Commandments – ETA: Not for a LONG time!

I am really excited about the paintings I am about to make. What’s weird is that you are going to be seeing them unfolding. I don’t even know if I like that part. This will be weird. I’ll be doing a lot of double posting on my esart blog, and please forgive me that these entries are showing up multiple times on Facebook and G+. I have to make my settings square so that they only post once. It’s because I have my Twitter already set from Facebook to post there… but now WordPress is setting to auto tweet… I have to fix all this shit. I apologize.

But what I was saying is that you will see a lot of the preliminary stuff, the notes, some of the sketches, and how I work and I’m sure it will seem really rough and weird, maybe in some people’s eyes too rough, but it’s how I work.

Most of the work really happens in my head, and I will maybe make a few drawings, some rough, some with color, some watercolors, and some may not seem like they relate and I think it’s because I have several directions of where I want to take the concepts in my head. I am exploring how I want to work with them.

Like this… These are essentially the same thing (to me). It’s just the difference in how I want to go about them.

Sorry for the quick and crappy scan, but this above is the same exact concept as this one below.

And I won’t play for very long with the kind of thing in the second one, unless I want to go in that direction.

And let’s say I do.

Then I would simplify that window washer guy until he was well rendered with the least amount of waves/wavy lines (but not angels lines), just less — and I may still do this, I am thinking about it — just so he is recognizable as what he is without him looking “real” or illustrated. So I’d probably fill a small sketchbook until I liked him in a variety of positions.

But let’s say I don’t go with this way. Let’s say I go with the top, which is how I’m actually leaning. In fact, I have practically filled that book since then. You’ll be surprised at what the last sketches actually look like now.

I’m scared to show you. So I’ll show you tomorrow.

Hei! How are you? Pretty crappy, but thanks for asking.

Today I studied the Hei. But maybe instead of getting into that, I’d rather tell you that today was FUCKED!

I’d ask you to excuse my French, but I’m not really that kind of wuss, so please, allow me to go on with my rant about how stupid I am, because I am.

Today, just about everything that could go wrong – did, and all because I wasn’t using my head. Well, some of the reason is due to the fact that I don’t have my own video cam with me. I’m sure I have mentioned this a few times now.

This morning I recorded a long video journal – one where I finally tell the story about my past issues surrounding my video camera. I have mentioned this before as well. I’ve almost disclosed it in fact. Or maybe I have, I really don’t know anymore. But there is a heavy story about how I had a grand plan to create an auto-documentary back in 2007, but that wound up in a suicide attempt.

So, I’m telling this story into the camera today – how my Sony has been sitting in its case for the last seven years, and I get into the part about how seeing my family behind the lens of a camera did something really bizarre to me. I mean, I had no idea the impact it was going to have on me. I couldn’t have guessed it, but it was really profound.

Anyway, I started to cry on video. I wasn’t even expecting to act or feel natural on camera, but the tears just came, and I was like, hey, this might be great footage for the film. Real tears! But in all seriousness, they were real. Still, it was all captured on video and I was glad to have taped it, until…

I hit the playback button.

Oh my God! The microphone was situated near my hair so a couple of my dreads were flopping and dragging across the mic the entire time!

The rest of the week I had been wearing my hair up. Today I had the thought: I should wear my hair down for once so people can really see this mop of dreadlocks.

What an idiot!  And not because I wanted you to see my hair, but because of where I placed my microphone. (I just want to clarify that. I’m not generally an idiot.)

But the sound is unbearable on the entire take. It’s unusable.

And that’s not the only dumb thing I did!

The day before yesterday, I cued up the camera to play back the last video diary, but I forgot that I did that!!! When I came in today, I just hit record!

In other words, I recorded over my last video diary – and it was a good one too! I didn’t do one on Tuesday, so it was extra precious.

After I threw a shit-fit, I calmed down. I have a piece of yarn that is tied around my wrist to remind me to do such things (calm myself down),  and read the camera manual instead. I tried to get to know the cam a little better. I read about how to charge it properly, which I needed to do finally, but when I tried to do that, it wasn’t working, and while it was plugged in, I could not record because there was a buzz on the mic while the camera was plugged in to the wall, which is apparently called a “60 cycle hum.”

After many, many attempts all day today to get that camera working the way I needed it to, and trust me, I tried until it was dark outside, I had to give up on that, and I was in no mood to draw – but I drew a few pictures anyway 😉 I just forgot my digital camera back in the main house, so I didn’t shoot them. Sorry – no pictures tonight.

‘Twas a frustrating day.

However! Something really GREAT transpired out of it all!

I may still be a bit blank on what my new paintings are going to look like, but I now know what my film is going to BE! And the installation too.

These days, for me, making decisions has never been so radiant and strong. I don’t know how else to explain that, but I guess I just did.

More on that later. I have to jot off to bed!