Life Play

Ching Ching Cheng

We’re not all actors, not because we’re not beautiful or tall or funny. We simply don’t have the skill. It takes work, it’s a job and a serious business. So to assume we can play roles in our daily lives and get away with it without falling flat is delusional. Just as insane as expecting to win an Oscar never having appeared on screen.

We shouldn’t attempt predictable, scripted roles in our daily lives because when we get exactly what we think we want and eventual find we’re unhappy. Reading a script in real life, instead of listening to our inner voice will make us dull and sad. We compound discontent with the feeling that we can’t possibly share this with anyone because the we’ve set the scene, the lights are bright and we look so good hitting our marks.

The answer is simple. We can just start doing the things we want and stop doing the things we don’t. We spend so much of our time doing what we think others want us to do so we’ll be a good friend, spouse, parent, colleague, or customer. We say “yes” to things we’d rather not do only because we don’t want to seem inappropriate or mean. Our time and our life is our own and we ought to live it the way we want. Make decisions and stick to them, others will see we are resolute and ultimately have respect for us.

Start small.

If you’d rather stay home and wash your hair instead of going to dinner with a friend then say, “some other time.” Take a bath and soak up the time to yourself. So “no” more often to small things and replace the activities with little rewards for yourself; instead of guilt ridden thoughts of what other people think of you. Move on to the big stuff when you get comfy with the small.

Don’t play the roles in life just be yourself in every situation. Lights, camera, action!

Today I visited the Arts Rental and Sales Gallery Winter Exhibit at LACMA and fell in love with Ching Ching Cheng. His work seems autobiographical and I can’t wait to meet him in person. I’m planning on attending the opening of the new exhibit March 26th which will feature Chris Trueman, Raul De la Torres, and Peter Holden.

Strength Incredible

Treiops Treyfid

We are brimming until overflow yet fulfillment eludes us. Filling ourselves from the outside in with relationships, shopping, flattery, or job satisfaction we can meet a dimension of happiness, however, over time we realize this is an illusion.

Yet to seek anything beyond what is right in front of us seems incredible. It’s not credible that we should want more when we are so blessed in the material and traditional sense. Isn’t this all we are supposed to desire?

Seeking more takes strength and the right perspective on desire. It takes surrender to not knowing what we want in life and honesty with ourselves. It takes trust in other human beings even if we are opening ourselves up to pain. We can only achieve the “more” if we are vulnerable to the world around us.

Treiops Treyfid

Vulnerability is as simple as looking at situations from other’s perspectives and listening instead of talking. Strength is believing in yourself enough to trust your inner voice and shutting up the shouts of the masses. The world seems less scary when you are a part of it, not stomping all over it. When we see each other as part of ourselves then it’s difficult to put up walls and defenses that keep us apart and unhappy.

We walk around as vessels full of junk, instead we could approach the world empty with potential for connection and incredible strength.

Watch Treiops Treyfid’s video to experience his work and hear him speak about it and read his blog about his latest art crawls here in LA. I’m excited to see your comments; he’s one of the artists I represent with BLEICHER/GOLIGHTLY.

March on Valentine’s

Meeting Joella March during preparation for the ICONOCLASSIC show that opened over the holiday weekend at Bleicher/Golightly set the stage for my experience with her work. Her authentic, stream of consciousness conversations matched her avant guard master pieces. Her creations are bold and enthusiastic and her choice in artists to inhabit the show were spot on.

Joella March

March’s “Waterfiles” is a concept not easily forgotten as it invokes all the senses while viewing. The flow of colored water and reflective surfaces throughout the cabinet gives the feeling of life inside an otherwise ignored object. As I stood in front of the it, smelling the wet metal, I began to understand what pica feels like as I had a sudden urge to taste the piece as part of my experience. Thank goodness for the “Do Not Touch” reminder.

The three-dimensional show was a seamless interactive experience. Each artist’s medium was unique, however the process behind the work felt similarly complex and personal. The work urged me to consider what processes and experiences led them to these destinations.

In my conversation with Michael Giancristiano we visited the desert. He explained his transition from the virgin wood pieces hanging in the show to his newer work which is highly manipulated. As I understood him, the pieces on the walls at Bliecher/Golightly represent a vacuous state of mind in which we all feel our problems are uniquely our own. Alternatively, his newer work includes mirror images. The center representing a life shattering experience and the identical sides represent the choices we can make as a result.

Michael Giancristiano

I pondered for a while how we often think our problems are unique like those pieces of wood, but this separation only exists in our minds. All humans have largely the same problems, we just don’t share them openly so we are mentally isolated from others. When we are honest about what’s inside, we find much more connection in the world around us.

Stephen Anderson‘s work is the sort you can literally study for hours. Full of the tiniest

Stephen Anderson

details, you can hold an intricate conversation with each piece full of laughter and solemn debate. I spoke to him about one piece that he says represents the phases in a relationship; a universal relationship and his specifically. He shared that he sometimes takes years with his work and it shows. The pieces are reflective of working through the human condition.

I only spoke briefly with Melissa Meier but her personality felt as romantic as her work.

Melissa Meier

Something about the antique feeling of the subjects mixed with the modern construction of the pieces draws you in and makes you want to kiss them.

The show is brilliantly completed by the works of David Brokaw, Dianna Cohen, Joy Shannon, Mee Kung Shim and Lacey Terrell.

What’s best about an opening is beautiful art and people. I met plenty of both at the gallery which felt more like a family than a place of business.

Selfish Missing Behavior

Over a relaxing meal with friend and author, Valorie Burton, we came to a point in our conversation where she asked me simply, “So what’s missing?” A seven-month pregnant pause sat between us. I scanned my brain for the obvious clues but came up blank. Then words fell out of my mouth involuntarily, “I’m missing.”

Cornelia Hediger

Selfish behavior has such a negative connotation that it’s easy to live in the service of others; family, society, work or a combination. This is what responsible “adults” do. Our identity becomes so tightly wound around these selfless acts and their positive associations that we are not even aware of a need to develop our passions. In fact, the word “passion” can seem a foreign, flaky, meaningless ideal when first pondered.

Responsible “adults” are not selfish. Responsible adults are people. People are selfish in the beginning and taught this is bad and it’s good to care for others and be responsible.

Our first responsibility is to ourselves. We can’t be anything for anyone if we aren’t everything to ourselves. It’s like what they tell us on the airplane, “Put your gas mask on first.”

Actively engaging my passion makes me present in my life. Showing up as myself and engaging others at this basic human level is love. Selfish is not miss behaving, selfless is missing in action.

Corneloa Hediger is the featured photographer who explores fear, hope, joy, despair and destruction in her work. In this series she performance a psychological struggle with her ghostly double.

Post Control

Powerless Structures, Fig. 11 (1997)

Surrendering control is a precarious act. If handled incorrectly we perceive it as a sign of weakness in ourselves and others. In fact, this is the greatest place of power.

Inhabiting a mindset that we have no control over our lives is simply accepting that there is a greater plan for our lives. We are empty to all possibilities instead of approaching opportunities filled with answers.

Our intelligence keeps us in control of situations but separates us from optimal possibilities. Curbing the urge to battle and adopting an attitude of acceptance is the difference between a graceful dive and a fatal fall.

Consuming Escape

Lost in a sea of tasks it’s easy to ignore all that is pressing and pulling at our mind. Essential to ignorance is avoidance of real feeling and emotion, so burying ourselves among a mount of busy is a natural reaction to the rude awakening of life.

Dianna Cohen - Plastic Bags

We can neatly place all feelings and ideas in a plastic bag to suffocate and save for some undetermined later. Except the plastic only perfectly preserves them in an unexamined state.

Balance, not escape, takes courage. Something that is easy to verbalize but illusive in practice. Balance is a universal struggle between forward motion and stagnation; moving through pain and not covering over it.

Society teaches us to busy ourselves, pacify our pain, mute our feelings so we escape into our plastic bags of bliss until we emerge pale and gasping for fulfillment.

Embrace Expectations

Carol Powell

Silence is golden except when it’s spun into chains that burden others around us. Circumstances can lead to dark spaces, in which case we can choose from any array of tools to manage our way through. The sharpest of these are the people who support us.

Internal processing is key to personal salvation.

Simultaneously embracing our responsibility to respect others during a selfish time is growth and powerful. Expanding the mind beyond oneself during a time of self-indulgence can create abundance and turn gold chains into platinum.

Carol Powell explores unexpected circumstances, humor and tragedy in her work. She’s one of the artists I’ll be working with at AIROM BLEICHER.

Win Won One

Love Streams

“You give away enough of what people need and you get what you want in life.” I don’t know who said it first but I’m not taking credit for it. Since I started this journey of “listening in slow motion” I’ve been content to discover every day what makes me excited and joyful. Guided by the whispers and shouts I’ve found solace in art and the people who make it.

Like a child with her head pressed against the display windows on New York’s 5th Avenue, I’ve been yelling and pointing, “mommy I want that!” Peering at art online, in galleries and stalking any artist who would talk to me.

As Tina Fey would say, “I want to go to there.” I want in on the whole experience.

Art inspires me to write what I know and feel, it helps me express how I think and process what comes next. The consultant in me yearned to climb inside this world and see what makes it go, but one thing my place in the social media revolution is teaching me; give first.

So I’m taking an apprenticeship with a local artist/gallery owner here in Santa Monica. I’m excited and terrified by the opportunity. I’ll be able to offer what I know in the way of marketing and social media and plan to absorb as much as possible about the art world in the process. I’ve found a key to open the lock on mommy’s purse strings, so to speak.

Tomorrow feels a bit like the first day of school. A new class, new students, a whole new environment. But it’s much the same as back in my old consulting days starting a new project at the bottom of the learning curve. You have to climb one foot in front of the other like anyone else.

On my journey of doing what I love to get what I need, I’d say I’m still rounding the bend, a long way from the straight away, but the breeze feels good on my face.