Stuff and Things » Amy O'Neill

Rules To Live By

I have been doing a lot of writing as of late about my work and my teaching style, and I came up with a good list of rules for artists. If one follows them with some dedication, one’s career should be long and fruitful. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Always look at art.

2. Always read about art.

3. Maintain a close circle of creative friends.

4. Stay in the studio.

5. Keep painting.

6. Make as much work as possible.

7. Draw everyday. Write everyday.

8. Spend your spare money on travel.

9. Read everything: blogs, reviews, The New York Times, art magazines, foreign presses.

10. Build and maintain a solid web presence.

11. Understand how to operate power tools.

12. Enter shows. Submit your work.

13. Be nice to everyone.

14. Be prepared to work for free or cheap a lot, especially in the beginning.

15. Save your receipts, and make friends with an accountant. Understand self-employment tax codes.

16. Have a point of view or something to paint about.

17. Don’t abuse your body. Be mindful of the fitness of your hands, arms, back, and eyes.

18. Spend money on supplies; you don’t need a car or cable or a totally killer apartment.

19. There are no shortcuts. Painting takes time, and that’s its beauty.

20. Be a good citizen. (Duh.)

These are the three books you need to be a painter.

I Was A Good Citizen.

I’m sure everyone by now has seen or heard the story of sweet little Avalanna Routh, the Massachusetts girl with a rare form of brain cancer. She is the most charming kid I’ve ever seen. I’m fairly certain that everyone who sees her or reads her story falls in love with her.

Today I sent her a few of my “Rhymes With Fever” Justin Bieber-themed coloring books. I hope she likes them. Cancer treatment sucks; it’s gotta be a million times worse for a kid. She deserves a little joy.

For information on AT/RT and how to donate to treatment research, please visit their website at www.cureatrt.org.

And get out and be a good citizen.

HUGE Bit Of Bragging Time!

My favorite photographer and yours, Sara Stathas, spent the weekend chronicling the opening day of sturgeon fishing season on Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin for none other than Reuters! Her photos have been picked up worldwide. Not only that, she wrote a blog post for “Photographer’s Blog” on the Reuters website! I am so proud of her.

The other day, Sara was texting me all these ideas for next year’s opening day that she’s planning for me and her. She’s going to get us a shack, some beer, and fishing licenses. Not many people know that Sara has a weird fascination/phobia regarding fish. (Sorry dude for outing you.) I think this is a big breakthrough for her. To think that someday she’s going to sit on a block of ice, spearing a dinosaur fish, and cooking it up in a pan. To dream, to dream.

Congratulations, friend!

Oh Whitney.

Goodness me. I was surprisingly overcome with emotion after learning at dinner on Saturday night that Whitney Houston died. I gasped in the middle of the restaurant, and was more surprised that other people weren’t as upset. I remember buying her first album on tape. I burned a hole in that tape from playing it so much. Misia and I spent the weekend belting out her songs like we were getting paid. Top of our lungs.

I think the reason why people like Whitney have such predictably tragic endings is that we as humans are not yet equipped to handle that kind of stratospheric fame. Whitney Houston’s talent was so great that she seemed to change gravity. A certain level of self-medication is understood, almost encouraged to some respect to deal with that level of giftedness. Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain: all of them felt the pressure of their greatness. We like to see people fly to the sun and are unsurprised when they burn up.

But I can’t help but be broken up about Whitney. Hands down the best voice ever.

Top Ten of 2011

2011 was a heckuva year! It was my year, the Year of the Rabbit. We’ve done some great work this year as a people. And some stinkers, to be sure, but let’s forget all the bad things and concentrate on the sparkle times. Everyone loves a year-in-review list, and here’s mine in no particular order:

1. “The Clock” by Christian Marclay. I saw four or so hours of this 24 hour masterpiece at the Paula Cooper Gallery this February. I wrote about it here, and I’m sure I’m not the only person to put it on their top 10 things of 2011. Hell, it should go down as one of the top 10 amazing things ever. It’s a celebration of film and culture, but also of viewership and consumerism. It’s a 24 hour love letter to the movies.

2. “Love Is What You Want” by Tracey Emin at the Hayward Gallery. One of my undergraduate professors taught us that you can’t spend more than three hours in a museum and expect to retain anything that you saw. Emin’s show was one of the most comprehensive retrospectives I’ve ever seen, and to really absorb everything, you need to spend nearly three hours in the gallery. The result is triumphantly consuming. It was a great journey back through her work and also back through my memories of being an art student (a link back to my original write-up is here.)

3. Just Kids/The Chelsea Hotel. Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids was an incredible read. Her writing at times little embarrassing, using words like “chalks” instead of pencils (her crush on French poets is at high school tragedy level), but its heart and spirit are deeply moving. We all have a bit of Patti in us, or should anyways, and I was surprised by her lucidity. So much of the book is centered at or around The Chelsea Hotel that I couldn’t separate the two. The last time I stayed there was right after I read the book. It’s closed while it undergoes renovation, and none of us will ever go back to the Chelsea that was in the book. Shame.

4. Podcasts. I need people to read to me or talk to me for hours on end every day while I sit in my studio. Podcasts aren’t linked to 2011 in any tangible way, but there were a bunch of really good ones that I added to my stable of voices this year. Two of my favorites are “WTF” and “Walking The Room.” I listened/still sometimes listen to the Nerdist podcast, but I get super annoyed by the way Chris Hardwick steps on everyone’s speech. Plus, you get the sense that he’s a nerd that really wants to be a cool kid, rather than a nerd that says “fuck those cool kids.” So yeah, podcasts.

5. London’s Free Museums. This is the way museum experiences are supposed to be. Not the way they usually are, where you pay $20 and then race through everything trying to get your money’s worth. There is a relaxing of the shoulders, a slowing of the pace in the museums of London. If you don’t see everything one day, you know you can come back the next. You can linger at one painting and walk past another without a second thought. It’s civilized. One can look at art on one’s natural body clock.

6. The Los Angeles Subway System. It’s a marvel, really. It’s a subway in an earthquake zone in the largest square-mile city in America. It has about 14 total stops. And yet, the stations are so elegant. So huge, so artfully decorated. It’s an ode to the 20th century. Bradford and I walked from the Arclight at Hollywood and Vine up to the Metro stop at Hollywood and Highland simply to ride the subway back to the Arclight. Los Angeles: where everyone seems high and time is always on your side.

7. Protests. The Occupy Wall Street protests are grabbing all the current ink, but what I’m referring to are the protests in Wisconsin this year. The governor is a complete fuckwit and has no business managing a Fleet Farm, let alone a state. And he finally pushed the good people of Wisconsin out of the bars and into the streets. Wisconsinites are a proud, keep-to-yourself kind of folks, but they got back to their Socialists roots and demanded respect and representation. I may live in Massachusetts, but I am a Wisconsin citizen at my core. You, rah-rah.

8. Technology. The iPhone 4S is a marvel. The camera in it is worth the price alone. It’s so pretty and perfect. Its made me think about how we’re in the middle of a quantum leap of sorts, akin to that of the Industrial Revolution. Our notions of connectivity and access are changing before our eyes, and the dust has not settled. It’s exciting, it’s slightly disconcerting, and our lives will never be the same again.

9. Melancholia by Lars von Trier. I love movies that make you shake with uncertainty at their end, because you’re not sure how you’re supposed to react. I burst out laughing when the credits rolled. It’s like my body didn’t know what else to do. It was the best kind of unsettling. I had similar experiences with Black Swan and Synechode, New York. All great films, depending on who you ask.

10. Chopin. Again, this is not a 2011-specific inclusion. But we all need to listen to him more. His is not just classical music, but rather it’s the soul of mankind music. And it’s so current. He’s my go-to guy in the studio, in the same way Tom Waits and Sarah Vaughn are my go-to guys. Whether I need to focus or need to clear my head, Chopin is it. I’m listening to him right now in fact.

And there you have it, the best of 2011. I hope you have a great holiday season with your families and friends, and I will write again in 2012. Merry Merry, everyone. Keep working.

Me, right now, as I write this blog post.

Graffiti Words Move Fast!

Bradford sent me a link this morning to Melrose & Fairfax, a celebration of street art in Los Angeles. And they featured my Kim Deal stencil! What a great way to start the post-Irene yard cleanup. Thanks, internet!

Art Crimes

I’ve left LA, babe, on a jet plane. Don’t know when I’ll be back again, though i’m guessing sooner than later. I’m coming back to Boston just in time to watch the hurricane, because who doesn’t love when weather goes bonkers? I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love that.

I had a bee in my bonnet the other day to make a stencil from a facebook status update I wrote which read “Kim Deal is my spirit animal.” I only (allegedly) did a few stencil tags around Hollywood (if you’re on Melrose, you may want to keep an eye out. Or not, whatever.) I’m not big on minor law infractions, but sometimes it’s good to be a little rock and roll about things. Petty art crimes are often pretty art crimes, and I did my part to keep it interesting.

Bradford and I got down to business on our graphic novel, and I’ll post when I can about it. I plan on erring on this side of caution since these drawings and stories will one day be published, and I don’t want our product floating around the dark corners of the ‘net before they’re meant to be seen. But I hope to see what I can do about things.

I’m en route to Boston just in time to see the hurricane, or what’s left of it. It will either be totally major, or exactly like the recent earthquake. Either way, I’m ready for a show.

Hola from Los Angeles

I’m in LA for a week or so to hang out with Bradford and Charlie. Brad and I have a new project that we’re working on, but truth be told, most of our time will be spent puttering and fussing about the house, playing guitars and banjos, and making Polish lady lunch plates every day. This afternoon, Bradford made ice cream from scratch as well as blueberry cornbread muffins. That’s what Los Angeles is all about: prairie livin’.

This Is Our Present

Misia and I took an afternoon break to see Midnight In Paris, the new Woody Allen movie. Which, by the way, does everything that Inception tried to do but with a 20th of the budget and is a good movie rather than a bad movie (like Inception.) Sorry, fans-of-things-that-we-wanted-to-be-good-but-actually-suck-when-we-really-think-about-it.

I’m not going to spoil Midnight In Paris if you haven’t seen it, mainly because I didn’t know anything about the story line and it was delightful to watch the magic roll out. But, it did articulate something I’ve felt since graduate school, and that is this: whatever you take as inspiration, be it writing or film or dance or painting, you need to think of all of the work that came before you as contemporary. If we think of art history as history, it dampens its impact on our understanding of its importance. BUT! If you view art history as all present tense, as work made by fellow artists, it helps to strengthen the notion that all art made is a part of a larger continuum. There is no difference between paintings made 500 years ago and paintings made yesterday. Good work takes hard work, and those that rise above the fray are all good in the same way. Great work has magic to it, and that magic-making hasn’t changed in forever.

So. We were at The Louvre looking at Tintoretto’s self-portrait (pictured above) hanging next to Titian’s own self-portrait. The tension on the wall is palpable, even 450 years later. They each had their own swagger, their own magic. It was always my feeling that Tintoretto is every artist’s choice between the two, though no one will ever deny Titian’s talent. It’s Letterman and Leno, and while Leno gets the ratings, Letterman gets the respect.

The day after we went to The Louvre, we saw the Manet retrospective at the Musée d’Orsay. I fell in love with Manet in grad school when I formulated the theory that he and Tintoretto have the same swagger, the same magical love of painting. They wink, they pull pranks, they love painting above all else. These are my kinda guys, I thought to myself. THEN, as I was walking through the gallery, I saw a painting of Manet’s that I had never seen before:

Holy. Shit. The sonofabitch did it! He believed the same thing I do, that he and Tintoretto are on the same wavelength! This moment for me was a total face melt on so many levels. Manet is doing a shout-out across the centuries to Tintoretto that essentially says, “we’re all present tense.” Great artists look at art. They look at a lot of art. Manet, with this painting, tells everyone before him and everyone after that this is how it’s done. To be great, we do our homework, kids. Do yours and not only will you have a chance to be great, but you’ll also be a part of the club.

This was the greatest present that Paris gave me. To re-affirm vis-à-vis my two favorite boyfriends that there is only the present.

Notes From Paris

Our vacation was magical, and as you might expect, we saw a tremendous amount of art. Seriously, I saw nearly every artwork that has graced all of my art history books from childhood to today. London and Paris have a lot of history, but they were also quite clever about stealing the best paintings and sculptures known to humanity. Huzzah to them, I guess. This (mainly pictorial) post is all about Paris; I’ll write a London wrap-up very soon.

This is the view from The Pompidou Center, which is a weird and wonderful place. Built ostensibly as a salute to French ingenuity, the most memorable feature of this building was a sound installation piece that echoed throughout the Habitrail-like escalator enclosures of Sacred Chants of the Gyuto Monks Tantric Choir. I highly recommend clicking on the link and listening to it. Mesmerizing, as well as an enjoyable walk down a Pompidou hallway.

This is The Luxembourg Gardens. I’ve included this photo because I took it with my iPhone. Can you believe phones? (Note: I took all these photos with my phone, but this one is particularly postcard-esque.)

Here are some Space Invader tags we found around Paris. We also saw a few in London.

Because we’re in Paris.

The top of the tower was magical, but the best part of the day was lounging in the park afterwards. I drew the tower while Misia alternately napped and took photos of cute Parisian kids playing soccer. Oh, and we had hot dogs and beer.

How pretty are the Metro stops?

I laid a flower at Chopin’s grave in Père-Lachaise Cemetary. I also said a silent word or two at Seurat’s family plot.

Of course we went to The Louvre.

Staircase at The Louvre. The French know how to do majestic.

We passed this little gem, and I couldn’t believe no one was around. here is essentially a holding pen for art that is usually stored in the basement. These sculptures were moved in anticipation of flooding (or renovations, I can’t remember) and they looked magnificent. So spooky, so pretty.

Venus. My tattoo.

The most annoying painting in art history. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the room:

Is there anything more vulgar than this? I mean, seriously. This painting is more infamous than good. It’s behind bulletproof glass. You can’t get closer than 12 feet from it. And what on earth are people going to do with all those photos of this painting? And the kicker of this room (roughly the size of a high school gymnasium) is that some of the best paintings in the world line the walls. No one is paying any attention to them! Which is good for someone like me, but I mean really. You’re at The Louvre! Get your 15 euros worth! Look around! To wit: look at the paintings in the background. Do you see what’s happening?

That’s Titian on the left and Tintoretto on the right. Two of my biggest influences, hanging next to each other. And they hated each other! It’d be like if in 400 years, the Red Sox and the Yankees were hung next to each other on a wall somewhere. But there they are. Fucking amazing.

At The Musée d’Orsay, they had a Manet retrospective. Manet changed my life, so despite the crowds, I needed to spend a lot of time in this gallery. Afterwards, I couldn’t even look at anything else. I have a maximum memory capacity when it comes to museums, and once I’ve had my fill, I can’t spoil it with other stuff. I will argue, until the day I die, that Manet’s work will always look just as current and just as exciting as anything made right now. His stuff is magical.

Sneaky pic of the Musée d’Orsay.

And that’s my wrap up of Paris! I’m not going to bore you with our fun vacation-ey photos. But I do add this one, because it’s from the famed Café de Flore in the St. Germain district. If you want an eight Euro cappuccino in the same cafe that Sartre, Picasso, Camus, and Gertrude Stein held court, this is your place. But for real, what price to sit on the most beautiful corner in Paris, thinking your thoughts, existing in the world, would be too much to pay?