The last day of my Rainbo show is this Saturday. I’ll be there 4-7pm. If you come and want one of the remaining pieces, I’ll give it to you straight off the wall to take home.
It’s always a bittersweet thing to take down art off walls after the exhibit’s over. I’ve lost count which number Rainbo show this is, though my first was in 1997 and I didn’t miss too many years. Putting up art at this bar is the longest-standing tradition I have.
Something feels different about this one. Maybe it’s because I started and stopped regularly working as a bartender there during the past year. There’s a feeling of finality about this show. Like maybe it’s the last one.
At the same time, it’s arguably been my most successful. Half the pieces sold and I’ve gotten a ton of compliments from both friends and strangers. Oddly, I don’t remember being as unsatisfied with a body of work as I am with this one. I learned long ago not to really say what I think of my own work, but the disparity between others’ perception and my own is especially stark in this case.
Likely, there’s a more general restlessness and dissatisfaction at play. The world outside is rapidly going down the shitter and I find little to feel any kind of hope about.
My attitude about art sales and how they impact my equilibrium has always been a strange proposition. On the one hand, I’m glad not to have to drag my crap back home; on the other, it feels completely correct, almost to be expected, that people buy the things I make. As such, there’s little satisfaction involved; it’s the way it’s supposed to be after all.
I’ve never made anything in my life that I wanted to keep for myself. That’s not what these things are for. They’re made to communicate to others. Not, usually, in any direct way, but in the oblique language of art. Taking them back home is evidence that they weren’t good enough to connect to anyone else. That they failed.
Back home it’s only a matter of time till these failures get fed back into the meatgrinder. As I type this, on the wall across from me, are five drawings and prints, a couple going back over thirty years, which are now just background decoration for posters made for a forthcoming book event.
I don’t know how others do it. I bet many have a healthier attitude toward their work and toward the world. I only know how to go forward in this way.
I have no idea when or where the next art show will be. I will drive to pick up my books in Michigan from the printer in a couple days. That, and a couple events in August and September is all I know or can fathom.
Perhaps I’ll see you at the Rainbo this Saturday afternoon. You can tell me how to have a better attitude.