Day Job — the Apocalypse

Where I make (made) money

Where I am happy

At the end of this month, my day job will come to an end. After over 30 years in the newspaper business, surviving wave after wave of layoffs, I've finally ended up in the crosshairs and my job will be outsourced in February, to "ad centers" in the U.S. and India.

So, no more day job! I can spend all my time in the studio!

**SNAP OUT OF IT!!**  Turns out I'm not close enough to retirement to not make money anymore, and not far enough away (age discrimination being alive and well) to find a job easily in my field, which is all things web.

And then there's healthcare. Thank goodness my state (yea RI!) has set up a health exchange with many options (yea Obamacare!) so I should be able to get coverage, but no health care program is cheap these days.

So, I must make more money than painting sales can provide.

And...

I'm too old to stand for a job that bores me to death.

So here's my plan.

1. Treat my painting more like a business.
The trade off to having no time was the luxury of not worrying too much about selling. Sure, selling was great, but if it didn't pay the rent, that was what the day job was for. Now I will have to make more of an effort to market my work.

2. Become an expert in Social Media Marketing and Analytics. 
Businesses are constantly being told they have to get "out there" but do not have the knowledge or desire to Tweet, Facebook, Link In, Instagram, etc, etc, etc. So I will offer to do it for them, beginning with myself. This will have the dual purpose of helping me promote my work, and giving me a marketable skill to offer small businesses. So if you see me suddenly getting extremely social, it's all in a day's work.

So....
Follow me on Twitter! @KathyHodgeArt
Friend me on Facebook!  http://www.facebook.com/KathyHodgeStudio

Pin me on https://www.pinterest.com/hodgepainting/

3. Design web site for artists
Because they have so much money to spend on web design!

4. Teach small classes. 

5. Apply for grants.

6. Last but not least —Collect unemployment!

Well, according to the social media tips I've been reading, this is longer than the optimal blog length for reader engagement, so I'll en—

Hello? Anyone there?

Tossed out of the rat race...

Slowly but surely I'm finishing work I started in Alaska. This one was done just out of sight of our tent on Harbor Island. While I was working on it one of the Rangers came over to tell me that the rushing sound that I subconsciously attributed to waves was actually a whale spouting. So we ran over the bumpy mossy terrain to the shore, and waited, and waited, and waited and then — I saw my first whale! Or the spout anyway, but I did get a glimpse of tail so I guess that counts!

2015 is looking to be an interesting year, I have two shows of my Alaska work in the fall, and in January I'm going to be exhibiting my Shoemaker paintings at the state airport. So that's "good interesting".

I'm also going to be UNEMPLOYED, come February, for the first time in my life, including college. A victim of the ailing newspaper business. That's just "interesting-interesting". We will see what happens with that. I am looking for work, but there's a good possibility I won't find it, right away at least. Perhaps I can live off my painting? I know, always joking....but if I can meet my studio expenses I can still keep painting.

A break would be kind of wonderful, but no paycheck will be a shocker. Fate (and various HR departments) will decide! Until then, to the studio!

Supermoon

 

Funny, in my two weeks of unexpected time off work with my knee surgery I somehow didn't have the urge to blog much. Was it the lack of coffee shop sitting? The possibility of doing things in three dimensions? Maybe, but I think the real reason was that I didn't find the need to toss out my little messages-in-a-bottle from my upholstered island of a cubicle. I was rowing my own humble boat, bad knee and all... Now I'm back, all too soon, and am scribbling another message by the light of buzzing fluorescents. 

The horseshoe crabs have finished their debauch, leaving the casualties belly up on the shore. I brought a recently expired one back to my house, but not before putting it in the water for a bit and pulling on its legs to make sure it was really dead. I set it up on a low table in my backyard (a dead horseshoe crab is not something that you want indoors) and started a drawing of it. A storm was coming up so I left it to finish the next day but when I went out to finish it, it was gone. After a short search I found it under a bush, legs eaten off. According to google, both raccoons and fox eat horseshoe crabs, and we have both. My husband was kind enough to fetch another one for me, but the drawing never really amounted to much. Hopefully the studying of HC anatomy will help when one inevitably appears in a painting.

It was only at the end of my leave that I could stand for a decent amount of time, but I did manage to finish this painting. It's called Supermoon. Tomorrow I'm off for my second Bioblitz, this time I'm in charge of the art team. Should be interesting (and hopefully not as rainy as last year!)

Howl

 

Just a little lunchtime sketch at the RISD nature lab. 

snailbird

It's snowing again, but unfortunately not enough for a snow day. So I'm at work with the consolation that right now the snow is floating like down feathers outside my window, big flakes against the dark buildings and slushy streets, and it's Friday. The snow won't keep me out of my studio this weekend, but two other things probably will. The first is a Saturday class I'm taking with master woodcut artist Walter Feldman  at the AS220 printshop. We have only 3 classes but after the first I'm already thinking it will take a lot more time to learn even part of what he has to teach. I'll post more about his class soon.

Then it's off to the Newport Art Museum to drop off this painting for the annual member's show.

The other thing that will keep me out of my studio this weekend is a frigid forecast for Sunday (high of 18).  I'm usually pretty content in there when I can get the temperature up to around 50, but it will take so much propane ($$$) to get it that "warm" that I'm better off working in my house. Which is ok, I have to work on developing drawings for my new series of paintings, like the study for snails in snow at top.

The sun just broke through but it's still snowing—sunshine on snowflakes, you don't see that too often.

Shepard Fairey, unedited!

It was fun playing reporter for the Providence Journal, but it stinks getting edited, even if it was (hopefully) just for length. Here's my self-edited and just a tiny bit longer version, which of course, I thought was perfect as submitted.  I'm glad my paintings don't get copy-edited . . . at least not out loud.

Johan Bjurman opens his email to find a digital file, a drawing by artist Shepard Fairey for a 40’x80’ mural in three colors. His mission—translate it to the wall of the Pell-Chafee Performance Center, on budget on and on time. The budget being small, time being 4 weeks.

Which is why AS220 turned to Johan, an artist in his own right and a professional billboard painter. A “walldog” to those in the trade. And it’s why Johan hired E.F. O’Donnell & Sons to make short work of the square footage. And it’s why he looked slightly amused when I pitched the idea of “helping” him. He was gracious enough, though, to let me hang around and watch how it’s done.

I meet Johan at the worn parking lot behind AS220. Two white clad painters, high on a cherry picker, dip rollers into 5 gallon buckets covering the side of the building with a white canvas of paint. Johan goes into a shed and pulls out the plan he has mounted on a 3ft board, the graphic on one side and a map of broad areas of color on the other. He has time now, while he waits for his canvas, to explain how he’s grided the drawing in sections to fit to together “like a swiss watch”.  

When I stop by the next day I see rolls of brown paper, tied with twine and chalked with numbers and arrows, leaning against the shed. Forty 4’x20’  pounces have been prepared in his studio by tracing a projected enlargement using an electrically charged “pencil” that burns tiny holes in the sturdy brown paper.

High above, Johan is silhouetted against the white expanse. Unfurling a roll, he hits it with a cloth bag of powdered charcoal, leaving a wide smudge of black dust which escapes though the holes and imprints on the wall.

By day 5 the painters, following Johan’s charcoal lines, are finishing up huge areas of black, red and cream, creating a lively abstraction. The outline of the Bank of America, better known as the “Superman Building” anchors the center.

Day 7. More pouncing is done, this time for detail. Now it’s up to Johan, alone on the lift, to pull the mural from the abstraction. 30 feet up he is both removed and on display. The mural is starting to attract attention and the occasional Shepard Fairey groupie wondering if it’s Fairey himself up on the lift. Johan keeps his concentration on the wall. Each section has been assigned a fixed numbers of days to complete, with only a few days grace for bad weather.  The unveiling is scheduled for AS200’s Foo Fest on August 14 and he’s right on schedule.

When people speak of this, and they will, they’ll refer to it as the mural artist Shepard Fairey painted. Although Johan often wields his brush as both the artist and the painter, for this project being just the painter is fine with him. It’s good work when you can get it, being a walldog.

 Thanks to Johan Bjurman for being such a good sport and letting me take up his time when he needed to be painting, check out his website when you get a chance.

Here's the version of the video and story that projo ran, maybe it's better and I'm just a jerk!

Blocking out time

Proof that you can do Japanese woodblock printing in your cubicle. On your lunch hour*
*boss disclaimer

Reviewed!

I was happy today to open The Providence Journal and find my show got a positive mention in the weekly art review.  Although I work for the paper, that by no means guarantees a review.  In fact, I think it works against me most times. It's hard to maintain that bohemian artist mystique when you're seen every day trudging up the stairs to your cubicle.

It was even more fun to get a phone call from my mom, who lives in Warwick, that the show got a full page color write up in the Warwick Beacon. It's nice to make the folks proud once in a while. And just think, all the neighbors will see it!

I get a kick out of it too, since The Beacon was my first job after I graduated the Swain School of Design.  It wasn't my first newspaper job, which was typing in stories for the RISD Press, but it was where I learned the trade of newspaper design and production.  A lot has changed in that field, but it still provides me a paycheck, and now supports my painting habit.

And unusual for art reviews in this area — the reviews were published before the show is over.  Yea!

The show is up until February 12 at the Bert Gallery in Providence.

• • •

RIP -  J.D. Salinger. His books helped me survive high school.

Gathering Moss

I bought a little moss garden this weekend to bring into my cubicle for just a BIT of nature. Even though I sit by a window, the horizon and most of the sky is blocked by buildings, the sun is on the other side and the only growing things I can see are six saplings in concrete. So I'm enjoying my little bit of moss and two rocks.
Then a stupid job jacket falls off the cubicle ledge and gouges out a bit of the moss.  I carefully smoothe over the moss and  give it a good water misting to soothe it. So I'm misting away, thinking of the moist forest floor, watching the rocks glisten when I catch a strange smell, sort of antiseptic.  I check the mister.  Argh! I used the HAND SANITIZER spray instead of my nearly identical water spray. So I just dosed my poor moss in god knows what. I hope it survives, but as I well know, between boring tasks and germ-phobia, cubicle life can be deadly. Good luck little garden. Good luck me.

Sketches and seasons

Here's a few more sketches from Great Sand Dunes National Park that I just got around to scanning in. These are postcard sized and were done out in the dunes. If you look close at the larger versions you might still be able to see some grains of sand stuck to the paint.

Since I came back from Colorado it seems the seasons are changing like flip cards. The light is now dim on my morning commute and dark on my way home—I'm remembering how that can interfere with painting progress sometimes. For example, I need to get down to the beach to get some shoreline reference photos for a small painting I'm doing. That should be easy, since I live only a block and a half from the beach, but since I'm in the city during all available daylight hours, it will have to wait until the weekend. It's also hard to think of firing up the studio when I pull into the driveway and see it standing there cold and dark, but I'll just have to adjust..and get back to work!

Back east

I'm back from the Great Sand Dunes, but still shaking the sand out of my sneakers. It was almost 10pm when I finally got home, and it was back to work the next morning, so I'm still not completely unpacked yet, but getting there. I hope to get my journal and photos of the dunes and of my work uploaded soon, I'll post a link when that happens.

Meanwhile, it is nice to be home, nice to breathe the thick moist air of the east coast after the thin dry air of Colorado, although it is beautiful out there. The fall colors of the west can certainly rival New England's. And it was such a luxury to have no obligations for 2 weeks except to hike, sketch and teach 2 classes. I met some great people out there too.

More later as I catch up!

Trying to hang on...

I'm having my first cup of coffee at The Coffee Exchange, while typing up my dune shack journal before heading to work, but I wish I were having it here.

I posted some of my photos in a slideshow at right, or you can link to it on Picasa here.

Mental detox

I'm back from the civilization of sunrises, sunsets, clear water pumped from the sand, silence except for bird cries, surf and wind, wide dunes and sky. Back to the uncivil world.

I survived Hurricane Bill and Danny—the first brought great seal filled waves, the second almost drowned me on my way back home... in between was PEACE. I'll be posting my journal in the next few days, and some photos. Going back to work tomorrow is bound to be harsh, so I'll want to mentally race back to my dune shack whenever possible.

The day job out foxed

I used to be pretty good at my day job. I was the person who could fix the website when all other attempts failed. I could build new things too. I could edit other people's things. I made it look pretty. I actually took some pleasure in it. My co-workers thanked me.

Then, for some reason that made no sense at all, management moved me to another department. I won't whine about it, after all, "I'm lucky I still have a job" but... suffice to say that this job does not play to my strengths.

OK, a little whining...can't help it.

After a frustrating morning yesterday, I went to lunch and read a bit of "The Outermost House" by Henry Beston. He writes (in 1928!),

"The world today is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot."

My soul soared. Then lunch was over and I took myself and my thin blood back to my cubicle, where I found several emails waiting for me pointing out my morning's transgressions ("did not I read the documentation on the proper procedures?!").

I was sick to my thin blood alright. I finally got on my bike for my commute home and by the side of the bike-path I spied (gasp!) a magical red fox, bounding over a bush and flowing into the undergrowth. Like something out of a fairy tale.

And you know, that was the most important thing that happened to me all day.

bad, bad blogger

I know I've been neglecting this blog, but the harsh reality of money-making demanded I put in so much computer time that I got a little burnt out. Hopefully the results will make up for eye strain and back ache, but most of it is out of my control.

I haven't always been such a bad blogger, once upon a time, long ago in the awkward internet age of 2005, I began my first art blog http://www.projo.com/art/blog/ . It was hosted by projo.com and I was surprised during an internet search to find it still exists, unlinked and unloved. It was done in straight html, without blogging software, so was quite work intensive. That, and the shifting environment of the projo website contributed to its downfall.

But looking back, I think it wasn't half bad. Links are apt to be broken by now, but I'm going to resurrect some of the content in this blog, starting with some interesting links. The first one is a cool site called The Cloud Appreciation Society, and here's what I wrote about it.



The Cloud Appreciation Society
The Cloud Appreciation Society is a fun site which celebrates the just how cool clouds can be. They have a Photo gallery by category, (do you fancy a Nimbostratus, or are you more in the mood for a Stratocumulus?) clouds that look like things, and, because they recognize that artists have always appreciated clouds, they have a section of cloud art, you can even upload your own! Now, what are you doing at the computer? Go outside and look up....

Lunchtime with elephants

I had a nice break from my cubicle in the building on the right when I heard of the elephants brunch being served in front of the Civic Center where the circus will perform. I'm not a big fan of circuses, but can't resist seeing the bizarre sight of these very cool animals in the middle of the city. They obviously knew the drill, and ignored all of us as they chose their favorite treats, whole apples eaten like grapes, entire loaves of bread, heads of lettuce eaten in a bite, and for dessert, watermelons which they burst open by stepping on (the kids liked that part).
I did a painting once of the annual elephant parade from the train to the Civic Center...not sure where it is now...

Doors and windows that used to be...

I've been busy these last two weeks with trying to better my 40 hour 9-5 gig. I'd rather spend that time in my studio, but since I can't, maybe I can make the time I spend elsewhere work out better for me. Worth a try anyway...

So not much art has been going on, or blogging for that matter....
I did get out at lunch on this beautiful April day, a day more like spring than Providence usually serves up this time of year. There were no roses to stop and smell, but there was a fabulous wall at the corner of Weybosset and Eddy St.


Unfortunately this photo of a part of it doesn't do it justice, but every time I go by it's like a visit to a museum. It's amazing the history that's written on the surface, uncovered when the building attached to it burned down. They're doing some sort of construction on the building behind it, so I'm sure it will be covered up at some point. I'll miss it when it is.

I just receive an email from the other residency I had applied for this summer, a rejection this time. That's almost good though, I really couldn't have done Great Dunes and San Juan National Forest in the same year. This way I don't have to say no, but I will probably try again, the terrain around the San Juan Mountains is magical.

Up and Down with the Dunes

After my artist residency at Cape Cod National Seashore I became of member of the Peaked Hill Trust, which has worked for many years to save the dune shacks that are nestled in the dunes and have been home to artists and writers since the 1930's. Knowing that the best way to preserve the dune shacks is to keep them lived-in and cared for, they run a lottery each summer for those who support the Trust. I've been throwing my name in every year and was thrilled to find out that not only was I was granted a week in September but it was in my old shack, Margo-Gelb! And it's ironic that this is the same year I was granted a residency at Great Dunes National Park in Colorado, which would happen 2 weeks after the Cape Cod week. It would certainly make for interesting contrasts.

My excitement was short lived though, since when I went into work the next morning, I found that a co-worker had already reserved that week and both of us are not allowed to be out at the same time. That sucks. My co-worker is a great guy and would switch if he could, but he has reservations he can't change so it looks like I'm out of luck. My only hope is if someone with another dune shack week can switch with me, so I haven't quite given up yet. I probably won't be able to get Margo-Gelb though, since most of the time it's reserved for the Artist In Residence. But it might be cool to try another shack, they all have their unique personalities, and they're all good!

Art and taxes

To paraphrase a famous phrase, nothing is certain except art and taxes, and after a fairly good morning of the former, I have to deal with the latter tonight. Which is why I'm procrastinating by sitting in a coffee shop blogging...

I've almost finished compiling my year's receipts, and I'm shocked! shocked! to find I will take a loss again this year, despite having a one person show that I worked 3 years to put together. Usually my tax accountant encourages me to try and declare a profit, no matter how small, for about 3 out of 5 years, to keep the IRS from considering me a "hobbyist". But damn it, this year I'm going to take my loss proudly. With just about every other business crying about losses this year, I don't think I need to pretend I'm profitable. I don't even get the nice bonus checks that the big corporations, including the one I work for, give out to their (mis)managers.

Hmmm, I wonder if I can deduct the cost of the coffee I drink while blogging....

Still employed, thank goodness for lunch...

It looks like I've survived the latest round of layoffs at my job, but 100 of my co-workers didn't, about 20% of the company. I don't know how it's going to go once the dust settles, but I wish everyone who was let go a more interesting future than they would have gotten if they had stayed.

I guess I'm relieved. Money is good to have. Time is better. Money plus time would be the best, but hard to arrange.

So I'm still coming into Providence every day, and still get a lunch hour. I took advantage of it today to mail off a couple of applications for national park residencies and take in RISD's faculty biennial.

I enjoyed the biennial more than previous ones I've been to. The work seemed more interesting, not as sterile or contrived. The extra space is really luxurious too, now that the Chihuly show is down and the full extent of it is visible.

I was immediately taken with a painting by Todd Moore "I Rest on the Way to Church Point". It's a large painting and loses something in the photo, but when you see it in person the space is kind of skewed, the big rock at the top seems to move forward, giving the boulders weight and presence. It has a gritty feel that reminds me of the feel of stones crunching under my feet as I walk the shoreline.


Another piece which I found intriguing was John Supancic's photo of the Johnston Landfill. I recognized his name on the label because he's been a stringer at a few newspapers I've worked at and was also my (excellent) wedding photographer. So I was surprised to see what looked like a painting next to the label. On closer inspection I could see some photographic details, but thought for sure he had overpainted the image. I looked even closer at the "brushstrokes" and was surprised to see that they were actually bulldozer tracks. It's more obviously a photo when it's reduced to the size you see here, but at actual size (about 30"x34") it's beautifully brushy and expressive.

I also liked a video by Dennis Hlynsky that showed birds in on wires and in flight, with motion trails that looked like charcoal drawings.

It's up until March 13 and worth a look.