Welcome Back

So Uncle F. and I got back last night, tired, homely, quaking like jelly. Woke up and went down to the shack for an hour or two, just to remember who I am before the duties of the weekend conspire against me and my liver. Ok. Here's what happened. I sit down on my futon. This is my futon from 1994. It has seen many homes in both Philadelphia and NY and finally found purchase in the shack a few years ago. It is very uncomfortable, forcing one to sit upright, which is not fun for one if one has ever tried it. (I am more of a huncher but I digress). HERE IS WHAT HAPPENED:

I am sitting there thinking, Jesus I am a shitty painter, then I thought wow it smells like cow in here. I mean really. I smell cow. I didn't smell cow when I walked in and didn't notice it right away but there it was. Was it b.o.? My brand new pants? What? I sniff and sniff. Did I step in dog whatnot? No. Nothing. No sign. I hallucinate that maybe my pants were in a box near a pile of dogshit for weeks before they are taken out and put on the rack. Some weird coincidence of poo. Huh. How could the employees not notice a pile of dog doo in their stockroom? How could I not notice the smell when I tried these pants on yesterday? Why is there no stain? I quickly sit up. Revelation. I pull back the blanket I have been sitting on for several minutes. Underneath is a squished dead mouse. A mouse. Yes. I have been sitting on a mouse corpse. It smells real real real grody. I almost cry. I scream. I puke a little. I make believe I am someone else who is more adept at mouse disposal it gets disposed of. I leave shack. I go home. I take taxi. Taxi driver asks me if I would like to go to a club with him on New Year's, he is looking for companionship. He asks me also to accompany him to San Juan, Puerto Rico in February, tells me all about the roads there. High quality, no bumps. As I exit the cab, he hands me his phone number. He tells me to meet him at the club at 1 am on New Year's, I am to dress Goth. I tell him definitely I will be there. On the scrap where he has written his phone number and name (name is unintelligible, written in Arabic, I think) he has written "Karma." By this time I am somewhat freaked out.

I just wanted you to know. Thanks for your time.

Handlebar Hamburger

On the ride home yesterday I sampled a hamburger from a rest stop food purveyor. This hamburger felt lukewarm through the foil, still I purchased it. I opened up the foil to find an ancient burger, heatlamped beyond recognition - but my hunger ushered the dry patty to my mouth anyway. I took a bite, felt strange, looked at the inside of the grey lumpy mass. For some reason I thought I tasted handlebars. Not newfangled handlebars but the old kind, the curving kind from the 70's, initially black but now grey and tattered from overuse. I ate the entire burger and felt unique for the whole rest of the way home.

Do you not think that food criticism is in my future? I may have found a new passion.

Gnar

Ffffffffffttt. Ffffffftttttt. That is the sound a fanged tapeworm makes. This is the disguise of the tapeworm who comes to bite and deplete your gut. Fffffffftttt. Ffffffffftttttt. It is yellow inside. Going crazy, harming things. Tomorrow I come home. Tonight we had a party at my parents'. I guess it was ok. Lots of food. Only 2 Republicans. Could have been way worse. The food was good. Nothing canned. It is lucky. But. Still. I ache to come home. See you soon.

Post Porcutongue

Hi! I am sitting on a tree trunk with a larger tree trunk as my desk. I have wireless in the woods, near the mountain shack that is not my home. Actually I am in a bed with pink sheets and a dust ruffle but it's an act of will on the part of my mental state to pretend I am elseworthy - somewhere weedy.

This Christmas has been about downloading and appreciating the new musics. I am also compiling a list of resolutions for the coming year. Does anyone else do this:

1. Waste less product packaging (swear)
2. Eat less ham (lie)
3. Go to the pain arena every day
4. Appreciate music more, more varieties
5. Join Audible.com and listen to books going hither and thither in the urban cakehole
6. Drink more water and less wine, despite what Jesus says
7. Learn Bluegrass and Gypsy music on the violin (I used to play violin and it languishes in the corner, guiltily unused)
8. Rid mid-section of spare-tire type gut

What are yours?

There are forms grasping into the witless shelves of mental space: leaning proto-figural elongated monolith blobs which encroach upon and sometimes wind around each other. I CANNOT WAIT TO GET HOME AND GET BACK IN THE SHACK!!!!!!!!! We are back on the 29th. At least they like us, our families, it could be worse and they could hate us.

I am soaking my hands in pickle brine, readying myself for a meeting with my new friend. We will mime and stare at each other, attempting to move in unison, his hands dirty with gefilte nonsense and mine stinky with garlic dills. We are attempting to bring the way of the Jews to Baby Jesus.

Merry What-Not

Can you believe these are porcupine quills? They are. I was as shocked as you.

Well, it is time to depart for the caravan of kinship. There will be no negativity, no undermining, just a surrendering to the wills of our tribesmen. I have already lost my appetite. I hope for delight in the day and night for all of you. Thank you for your time and and attention to these matters of the blog. I don't know what I am and I am sure you don't know what you are, but at least we are part-human and it is time to attempt not to triage.

I have love in my gut, it trembles inside me and gives beyond-intangible pats on the fur of my chums.

Happy Post-Everything.

I Just Have One Question

How are people expected to WALK to work from Brooklyn if it is 22 degrees out? I am wondering what my friends in Brooklyn will be doing today. What are you expected to do? Are your places of providing transport? Are you carpooling or something? This is f*cked.

A Short Stay

I am sequestered here but unjuried, there are no peers to speak of, only thoughts of my own divining and pearls of wisdom from the Lord of Hamburgers. I perpetrated badly on the record albums of the 70's collection of my uncle jo-jo and now he is forced to wear gold chains in the night and the day. I am tied up with licorice and smiling from enforced play.

Good night until tomorrow. Trust me I remain a girl, half-jewish, unrepentent, a whore, un-american, size c-cup teat, vicious, animal, a paint-out mucker of the vilest brand.

Delight in the night is what I wish for all of you. Smooches.

MM

The Truth

This picture represents the truth which is forthcoming now and over the next few days. What I would like to start with is that I feel constrained by my very own blog, by the form I created in part for myself. Sometimes I hate the character I have invented for myself and no longer feel free to be you and me even though I still like Mountain Men. But listen. I am not a man. I am part girl, but with a severe case of BDD, as was mentioned in the last post, and therefore feel relief when thinking of myself as a man even though I am not one. I have distant early memories of myself as a three year old dancing on my bed under the lavendar top sheet like a ghost, swaying, arms out, with an invisible other, singing quietly "I'm a man, I'm a man," in a faux-blues melody, even though IN NO WAY did I act or feel like a man. Or even a boy. I am not really masculine so much, in all honesty. However, I would just wonder, what is it like, being a man?

So. That's all for now. I feel full and drunk from teat milk. I saw many friends this evening: Sloth, HFP, HP, Damian, FB, Arthur, Lupus...it was nice. We went to an opening of a group show I am in and also Uncle Fritz is in but he was out of town. Sadly. Uncle Fritz is named for his real life uncle who is actually a very unpleasant and horrible man. I have often wondered why he decided to pick this name for himself, in wondering it makes me love him more. Uncle Fritz is a good man and I miss him. Kudos to you UF. I am ready for curdled slumber, and tomorrow, it's time for the Swedish Calisthenic Squat method.

Disorders that I think I have

Both ADD and BDD. Can you believe it? Now will someone give me some heroin?

I am here in my studio and am unable to focus at the tasks at hand. Get to it MM, STOP YOUR DAWDLING YOU FOOL!!!!!!!! This public admission is meant to spur me on. Come on. Paint you damn turd. Do it!!!!! Stop checking your email and all the blogs. QUIT. Stop checking the corners for mouse poo. Stop picking your eyebrow hairs. Stop wishing you were one of those kids from Laguna Beach, the Real OC, one of those clean blonde tan children with bright futures and lots of disposable income. You can't go back, you can only go forward, accepting yourself for who you are in the moment. Forgetting your many flaws in order to make some (semi) compelling or something pictures. GET TO IT.

Skunks

Skunks came to lick my eyes in the night. Small black birds feasted on my guts. There is someone named Bobby-Lucy who is entering this quadrant, claiming to be my advice guide of the moment. She is not. There is a boil on my cheek, it's ok, it's purple.

Today is for inside/outside living, achieving something with yaps and small brushes and returning without really returning to the ideas in my junkyard. Painting has been virtually non-existent for weeks and even drawing has seemed unusually hard. Where is the porpoise of truth, not in liquid or dry formats, not in gesture or spills, not in patterns or squeaky bits. Resolution anticipates coming in January. I am trying hard not to buy heroin for the holidays. I have many many families to visit. If anyone has heroin please call me.

HEYHEYHEYHEYHEY!!!!!!!

I am home from 2 killer days in Philthadelphia teaching the kiddies. I AM DONE!!!!!! It was team teaching all day both days. I AM DONE!!!!!!!! I am so happy I had to tell the blog. I am so dead freakin' tired, it's time for pizza and beer and bed. And guess what else? I actually read my student evaluations and they were not just good but excellent. I almost cried. I am so relieved to be done and I can't believe I did ok. My independent study student told me today that the word on the street was that people heart me. She used the word heart. Sorry to boast but for those of you who knew how deep the suffering ran, like daggers into the withering veins, you will know how much this means to me.

Thanks be and glory be. It's a Christmas Miracle from the olden days.

Be back tomorrow.

Love,

MM

Gary Petersen

Dig it! Are you the most optimistic painter on the planet? I was just reading Peter Schjeldahl's article on Gerhard Richter and the end of the following quote made me think of Gary:

"American painting by such artists as Pollock and Warhol showed [Richter's] generation how to begin again, though in a void of meaning. The German response to Pop art, Capital Realism...was brilliant but sepulchral, about loss...You don't have to agree with his pessimism. (To be an American, even in disastrous times, is to be hardwired against such an attitude, I think.)"

I agree. I was thinking about this yesterday - that there is so much joyous, inspired, colorful, dreamy, twisted, ridiculous painting being made - that it struck me that it can function as a respite from all the shit on the news, the harsh horrendous reality of the times we live in. Artists are allowed to react in whatever way they want. Escapism, the sanctuary of mental space, the satisfaction taken in color and shapes are just as valid a response to contemporary life as the most conceptual political art. FREE TO BE YOU AND ME. That is my motto for the day.

Ellen Altfest

Tumbleweed, I see into your twiggy infinity and want to merge into the empty spaces, be surrounded by scratchy pricks. You are a knotty tangle which is one my greatest loves and desires. Thank you for taking the time to articulate each brownish, beigish line - close up, this painting is a wonder, a place to get lost in.

Hitting the Chelsea Forest with FB

Andre Ethier. This show was good that we laughed our way through the whole thing. He seems to be having so much fun making these paintings, it's infectious. I predict many imitators will be spawned in the coming months. We felt strongly that Derek Eller should open an Andre Ethier museum on his premises so his paintings could be on view permanently. What is it about dirty pirates, shrunken noses, strippers and Jews that work so well together?

Runner-up: Andrezej Zielinski

He had a small room at Nicole Klagsbrun and had been in the Greater NY show at PS1 earlier this year. He paints ATM machines and computers in a colorful funhouse way. Buttons become relief elements, there are mounds and spills and pastey goo. Technology reduced to Play Doh. We like.

Hello Sunday

Here is a group show I am excited to be in, it opens next Saturday. Wanna come? I hope some of you nice people will come. Mean people are allowed too, it's ok.

Hello Sunday
Curated by: Holly Coulis

Katherine Bernhardt, Benjamin Butler, Maureen Cavanaugh, Jennifer Coates, Matthew Fisher, Portia Hein, Ridley Howard, David Humphrey, Brad Kahlhamer, Dave Miko, Brad Phillips, Bettina Sellmann.

December 17 – January 28, 2006
Opening: Saturday, December 17, 6-8


Hello Sunday will be on view from December 15 thorough January 28, 2006. Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, from 11:00A.M. to 6:00P.M. For further information please contact Claire Lemetais or Ron Segev at 212.967.2260.

www.sixtysevengallery.com

My Friend Pippin

He has a bad problem with a bisected stomach. Forget about taking him to the beach. What can we suggest to help Pippin's tummy turn back to one unit? Please advise.

I have a son

I got up real early, farm-like, at 4 a.m., woke up my son (my new son!!!) that I grew overnight in a terrarium. We made this bread bear together and are eating it with loads of jam. I love my new son! He looks just like me and is so well-behaved.

In other news, I must report that I am in total complete belief that even if I do not sell my relics I am still a great great artist for the world of my mind. It is ok. I will plod ahead, the delusion quotient is ever so high. Today I will venture back in the studio - I am thinking of ancient tortures performed in the primeval woods, in hopes that my landscapes will become more menacing. Or more hallucinatory. Or just basically better and more exciting. YEAH!!! And then I will try again to make other people love them. If they do not or will not due to 1. they don't like my work, that's all or 2. they don't like the way I smell and it carries over to their feelings about my work, it doesn't matter, I will forge ahead.

Also I must find some more teaching jobs. If anyone is looking for a competent and "quirky" 7 ft. she-male with skin disorders to teach art to college students please give me a call.

Poofy

It is time to take a moment to be soothed by the kitty of poof. His big eyes watch over us. Hi Poofy. Are you like Jesus?

Thinking about Miami

Wondering about my little babies at Pulse. Reading blogs obsessively - not healthy, not healthy. The problem is that if you didn't sell you will most likely find out by hearing nothing, which only reveals itself to you slowly, over the course of days wherein you are not contacted by the witch/wizard revealing your wares...However, I read the following on "I Get My Show on the Road!" at rubberbandlazer.blogspot.com.

"Today was fantastic! It was out of control crowded during preview this morning and people were in a buying frenzy. We did above & beyond what we expected and so did nearly every dealer there that we spoke with. It was all so overwhelming but in a really good way.

My favorite thing was hearing from numerous art world folks that they liked Pulse much more than NADA. Word."

Let's hope that sentiment rubs itself all around. That would be special.

MM is hoping for the best. I pray to Steve Perry each morning, noon and night.