writing & art bits | june edition

*This month, I've been rounding out the poet's zodiac poems, which are now complete and ready for some tweaks. I've also been dipping occasionally into the artist statement series, but it's slower going there.  Next week, I'm hoping to fine tune some of the exquisite damage pieces and resubmit the ones that haven't been picked up yet.  I've also a couple ideas for collages in that project that haven't quite taken shape yet I'd love to get to if I have time during the shorter week.

*As mentioned a few posts back, I got some great news about a reading in September (date TBD) at the Field Museum, and get to spend some time amongst the exhibits.  I've been feeling an affinity toward something very eco-gothic and about extinction, so a natural history museum might be the perfect place to begin.

*The Journal, whose editors were working with me on shaping up my very first non-poetry submission did wind up accepting the hunger palace, and it will appear in the next print edition.  I was initally hesitant to send out the fragments of the greater progress, mostly since I felt strange about its therapeuticness.  (I felt like the effort of submission and the possible response was inconsequential to the need for me to write it.)  But after some distance, I decided to try sending out the whole shebang and they took it.  The edits were some ordering changes and some sense making (consistency in tenses and such, some trimming of superfluous poeticisms, but I'm feeling pretty good about it, and maybe that was exactly what it needed.

*Next on the art agenda are some tiki themed collages for our filler exhibit on the first floor.  Lethal Ladies will be going up in September, but this couple months need some replacements as the previous show's artists pick up their work. Since I love the patterns of the fifties, I thought I make work digitally with some of them.  Again, we'll see what I can get to this week before the holiday.

*I've been doing some more studio tidying, with an eye toward opening up the second Friday of July.  I wound up canceling June--too many big chapbook orders all happening at once and I needed my Friday night and the ability to mess things up. Sometimes I feel like I don't have enough in stock to even bother, but then again, I have a lot of prints and originals no matter what, even if there are a hundred or so projects I still mean to.  I even have some of the larger size prints of the hunger palace pieces (see above), as well as some crypto society prints in 11X17.  And of course, a million mini-prints  from various series I've made for a couple tabling events that didn't sell.   The chapbooks & zines are a harder sell when most of the folks are looking for visual art, but I sell some every once in a while,so I need to restock some of those.