MSAB Awards

Hey! Look at this:

I just found out that I've been awarded a MN State Arts Board grant for my silly vending machines! Hooray!

An Exciting New Bit of Tax Law

Hi everyone. I've completed my coursework, passed my certification test, and have been officially working as a tax preparer since yesterday. Some of the biggest news this year for gay rights is also some of the driest and dullest-looking. Feast your eyes on this amazing new piece of tax law:

Read up on it here.

This means that if you got gay-married in any of the (as of this writing) 17 states that have legalized marriage between same-sex couples, you can file a joint tax return with your spouse no matter where you live in the US. This is huge. This is federal, national-level recognition of the legitimacy of marriages between same-sex couples, along with bestowing all the tax benefits of being able to file jointly with a spouse. Yes!

Flash (Non) Fiction

I am taking a tax prep course this year in order to increase my financial literacy (and eventually take over the world). The first class session was today, and I'm pretty sure I've just located the IRS Publication 17 equivalent of the flash fiction novel commonly attributed to Ernest Hemingway -- For sale: Baby shoes, never worn:

Speaks volumes in just a few words.

The Meat Deal and Meeting Mr. Wonderful

Lately, my journeys home from the studio at the end of the day have been... interesting. Here are two true-life stories that I wish I was creative enough to make up:

The Meat Deal:

This is the result of a Google image search for "Trunk full of meat." This isn't the trunk that I experienced, but it shares a few striking, meaty similarities.  Source: asiawheeling.com

There's no great way to set the stage for this one. I was walking in the Powderhorn neighborhood of Minneapolis, and drew near a man who was leaning down to furtively speak with the driver of a  parked minivan. The Minivan Man, noticing me, looked startled and abruptly tore ass away into the night -- with literal screeching tires. The Sidewalk Man straightened up, walked up the driveway to his own car, and slammed the trunk closed -- not before I had time to see that the trunk of his car was packed with meats of various shapes and sizes. The Sidewalk Man scowled at me.

So, I can only conclude that I interrupted some sort of high-stakes meat deal. Which is like a drug deal, only with meat. 

Meeting Mr. Wonderful:

For our purposes, when you imagine Mr. Wonderful, you can imagine this guy. (Source unknown, my apologies.)

Mr. Wonderful boarded the bus outside of the Downtown Library. He immediately and loudly began telling the woman sitting near him about how he'd just proposed marriage to a girl via Facebook, and that she'd said yes. Now he had to go buy a ring in the morning. He also bragged about belonging to the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and about being Nearly (but not quite) featured as "The Guy in the Speedo" in a VH1 photo recap of some music festival. 

He exchanged phone numbers with the woman he'd been talking to, she disembarked, and he immediately began talking to me. It was a little spectacular to see a guy so actively demanding the attention of every female in his general vicinity. I never felt so lucky to be able to deliver the conversation-ending "I'm an artist. I make art." when asked what I do for a living. Those were some of the most entertainingly stilted, awkward pauses of my life. Then he shook my hand and got off the bus.

But wait a minute, isn't he engaged?

A Summer Anecdote to Share with Loved Ones

This story has some major metaphoric parallels with the way my whole summer has gone (Except for the parts of it that were good.) I'll leave you to wonder what those parallels could possibly even be! Here goes:

It happened in the park on a hot July day. I was leaning toward a public drinking fountain when a man in an inexplicable sweatsuit ran up to me shouting, “Don’t drink from that fountain! People pee in that fountain!” Then he stared at me intently. After a moment of confused silence, I said “Oh, ok.”

Next, the man said, “You know, I just saved your life by warning you about that pee fountain. Now you owe me a minute of your time to conversate with me.”

At this point I turned around and walked away quickly, because things were getting weird.

—

The conclusion of this story probably would’ve been more interesting if I’d stuck it out and actually conversated with that wonderful, considerate, dressed-like-it-was-winter-for-some-reason man. But now we'll never know.

Oh well. Next time.

Summer Camp Recap

The lovely Ms. Denise Polvay, subject of my LBM Summer Camp Slideshow presentation and light of my heart.

August is ending, and now enough digestion time has passed for me to share some of the awesomeness of Summer Camp with you. It isn't even going to be some eloquent reflection, It's just that I've finally stopped wringing my hands and feeling an intense sadness every time I remember that Camp is over. Because it was really something special (Just like Denise up there.)

This July, I was able to participate as a camper at the Little Brown Mushroom Summer Camp for Socially Awkward Storytellers. Here's the group photo of the Campers and Staff that you'll find accompanying nearly all the press surrounding the event:

Look at all these stunningly attractive people.

And here are links to a lot of that press. It's a little overwhelming:
mnartists blog
Knight Arts
MPR News 
BBC News in Pictures
The Star Tribune (Mary Abbe quotes me!)
Camp recaps from Alec and Julian

And finally, the article that was put together by two Japanese journalists who shadowed the Camp for a few days for IMA Magazine. Here's a pdf: [link]

I definitely feel very enriched by, and grateful for, having had the chance to come together with these talented people for a time of officially sanctioned art making and story telling. I don't know if I can articulate the feeling well enough to say more than that, for now.

--

Anyhow, more recap posts are forthcoming, because it's been an eventful summer.

Printeresting!

Printeresting, the go-to blog for printmaking enthusiasts, recently did a write-up of the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. My Jerome work got a tiny little mention (and a photo!): See it here.

Also, I found a strange old drawing from my teenager days. I'm thinking I might use it for something soon. I probably shouldn't tell the details, or you'll all realize how calculating and insidious I actually am. (That is to say, very.)

Cutie!