Say that Jesseca has sent me a
sculpture to decorate the yard, and I like how it looks in the
sunlight. It makes a nice tableau. So I draw it, enter it in one of
the Gresham art shows, and someone buys it for a few hundred. The
drawing was mine, sure, but the design was Jesseca's and I just
passed it off as my won. What are the legal parameters at work here?
If I snap a pic of a vintage Corvette,
I can sell it with no worries that a lawyer from Chevrolet is going
to come looking for me. You see the question? I don't know where
the difference lies. The Corvette is Americana and my drawing is pop
art.
I have a photo, one I took myself, of a
hanging ornament in my backyard. It is against some vine creepers
and latticework but the central image is the ornament. I don't know
how far up the production line that goes but it's somebody else's art
and I'm going to draw it in watercolor pencils. What are the laws
outlining what I can do with the piece after that?
* * * * * * * * *
Trying to finish that large double
portrait, and it's so much more difficult than anticipated. Jesseca
tells me it's that the photo was taken with a flash, and that's
certainly a major factor. It makes the shading difficult to
calculate, as well as three-dimensionality. Also working on a piece
that is substantially larger than I normally work...I dunno, I've
done one larger portrait before, but not one taken with a flash. My
eyes don't want to focus on the tonal shifts, tracking them makes me
feel almost dizzy. I've printed the faces out again closer to the
size of the drawing, I'm not sure it helps yet. I'm also varying the
0.3mm thickness with a 0.5 as well as using harder lead. The soft
lead will be last, and then a spray with fixative so that it doesn't
smudge or smear.
Because of this I have not been working
on the image of Sharon Mitchell. I hope to do that soon too. Think
maybe I said before, I feel like I need to do side work like that
just to remind myself how to draw – it's that bad, it makes me feel
as if I've totally lost the ability. The double portrait looks good
so far, mind, when I step back from it...but someone else will have
to assess whether it's up to my best. I keep having to redo areas,
and half the time I feel like I'm settling for inferior results.
* * * * * * * * *
(Tuesday, 5:30 AM)
About 90 minutes sleep, awoke from a
dream about a punk wild-child girl who was attracted to me but was
telling me we should have nothing to do with each other. The
attraction was mutual but she was convinced of out mutual
incompatibility: she was an exaggerated bad grrrrl half dedicated to
her life of chaos/crime and half resigned to it, and she thought of
me as...I dunno, vanilla toast. Somebody who's idea of dangerous is
watching Rob Schneider movies. Someone who eats oatmeal but does so
out a neon skk8er themed bowl and thinks it's edgy.. I woke up
thinking:
- “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you...”
- “Check your assumptions. I'm not afraid of how wild you think you are, and who you think I am is kinda fucking insulting.”
- This dream reflects what I'm feeling about Dana.
I have a screencap of her from Pretty
in Pink that I'm developing a sketch from. Won't be a full drawing,
as the details are not as crisp as that would require. Technically
not a screencap, it was taken with a camera aimed at my TV because
my comp still won't play discs. Her eyes in partiular are shaded
enough to require me to figure them out first. This will be in
color. You remember the John Hughes movie? Dana was an extra,
playing a schoolgirl and passing right in front of the camera. Her
hair is , let's say, very 80's (which I like), not punk and not even
Wavo (does anyone else remember 'wavo'?) , just pushed up by a
headband.
It occurred to me that I have reason
not to post it once it's done, but I'm alienated enough and
disheartened that I'm not sure I care anymore. In her silent way,
she has gotten her message through: “Die already.” Maybe what
she feels toward me isn't contempt, maybe it's just utter cold
indifference. Maybe it's the same cowardice as the girl in the
dream, but at least that dream proxy for her had the backbone to say
something.
A girl I liked named Andrea said to me
once "I'm sorry I'm not who you wanted me to be.” I didn't know how to respond to that, but it bothered me in a way that took time to figure out.. She was trying
to be kind, but...I never want to hear that shit from Dana. She has
no fucking right to decide for me who I wanted her to be.
If my own assumptions are wrong, at least I've
been trying to discover whether I'm right or not.
tThe cinema of David Cronenberg has had one central theme, that of identity. There's a scene in A
History of Violence that really resonates with me. It's the concern I'm struggling with here, not just disillusionment with Dana but what if anything I hope to do with these blogs. I'd write up a
review of the movie for my other blog but in all honesty I don't
trust her to get the point, let alone ever read it in the first
place. In the movie, a woman has discovered that her husband is not
who he says was – that he hid from her a criminal life and a
volatile identity. With her he has been a different person entirely,
almost story-book sweet and unblemished. Disney perfect. Until the
recent revelation, she has done her best to put on the same facade
for him, so as not to threaten what they've had together. The betrayal has
been his failure to trust her with his true self. There is a moment
of her entering a doorway and finding him there unexpectedly. The
power of the image isn't in the resentment in her eyes but the fact
that she is half-undressed and refuses to hide her body demurely as she always
has done in the past. That and the obscenity she hurls at him. The gesture fairly yells “Did you think I
was too fucking nice to let me know you? For you to trust
me? Was I so precious that you had to wear a mask and lie to me? Let me show you
just how fucking nice I am.”
Maybe I'm on the wrong track, but
that's how I feel, and in a big way.
There's only one person responsible for
how she is seen and understood, and that's Dana herself. I can't
read her mind. At least one of us has made the attempt to be
understood. Her silence has left me free to believe anything at all.
She was afraid I saw the worst in her based on prejudices that were
never mine...she should give a thought to how I think of her now.
This time she's earned it – hell, this time she chose it.
I want to be known for who I am and not for who someone thinks I am. By her,
preferably, and for better or worse. That was the main reason behind
the two blogs, that through my reviews, the substance of my few posts
on FB, and eventually my work here I would demonstrate my own values
– because they are at odds with the assumptions Dana made of who I
am when she shut me out. It's not just that she was wrong but that
the prejudices she ascribed to me are anathema to me. If she's going
to hate me, I'd rather it be for who I am and not for who she
mistook me to be. I don't know what her values are or whether mine are anything she would respect, but they're out there for anyone to see.
So, honestly, at this point I don't
think either this blog or the other serves a purpose anymore. Not
much of one, anyway. I've told others that I could have been okay
just vanishing from the face of the Earth, from anyone's memory.
That sounds way comfortable right now. But I'll keep both blogs
going anyway. Like Dana, I'm stubborn. It won't reach her, but at
least someone will see me for who I am, and just maybe they'll find something in that they can respect.
* * * * * * * * *
I'd ask her one thing. Was there ever
a night, somewhere in the mid-Nineties, in the middle of the night
when she sat alone in her house, in the living or dining room, at a
table writing a letter...and her hand froze up, just stopped
working so that she was unable to finish the letter? If there was
such a night, she'll know what I'm talking about. I'm not going to
explain it to anyone else.
Probably just a dream, as so many were.
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