It’s crept up to 104° outside and I spent my first working day in my new studio, despite the heat (and no central AC there). This is just a brief post to update on my artist life over the last month, though a lot has happened in this time and in some ways these 28 days have indeed felt like an eternity. Anyway, I always feel like I'm hurrying up and not getting much done as an artist, because I keep working towards the very elusive (to me) goal of... getting my work …

That title phrase makes me think of crowds of people chanting… “what do we want?!” and “when do we want it?!”. I went to an art portfolio review hosted by SFAN in May, and one of the reviewers asked me what I wanted out of my work as an artist. How do I convey that I am driven, determined, and relentless but still figuring out what I actually want? I was educated in new genres art making, and that’s still my primary approach to my work. But ten years ago I decided to go old school…

I’m sitting here this morning trying to explain the third descriptor of my project (on stories, storytelling, and storytellers for the American story) and I’m thinking… let’s start with me, the storyteller for this project. Because no matter what story is told or why or how it’s told, there’s always a storyteller, the who and why behind a story…

Now I take a step back to look at how a story is told. A story can be listed as facts or imbued with emotion; form influences the reception of the story. There’s also the visual style of presentation, the context in which it’s shared, the concurrent stories being told, and the accompanying evidence… these influence the story, too.To continue with the example of my dad from the last post, I think about the day of his funeral…

One of the earliest memories I have of a favorite TV show was Reading Rainbow. (Btw, I heard Lavar Burton has a podcast! I gotta check it out.) I remember the theme song and when I hear it, I have a muscle memory of sorts that makes me inhale with anticipation and happiness thinking about new stories I’d hear. And I remember back then feeling the library was a place full of wonder and possibilities, like a world full of worlds…

Before I can attempt to describe what the content of this project will be, before I can know exactly what it will look like, I need to start as close to the beginning as I can. I write this down with the intention of making this as understandable as possible to a first-time visitor to this blog because it’s serving another purpose, too. I need to write this out with clarity to make it make sense to me…

This Fourth of July I’m sharing a project that’s been slowly growing over the past, I dunno, 15 years. Go forth! I tell myself, even if I don't know what the end result will be. My aim is to find the art form that all this needs to take.A key launching point for this will be ideas around what it means to live in the United States, on being an American, and about patriotism, founding principles, that kind of thing…