Small fish, smaller ponds.

I have been struggling these past few months. That much might be obvious to those of you who know me, or an inferred fact due to my lack of posting blogs, progress on my book, or updates to any forums/art sites/etc that I frequent. Part of it is personal problems, some of it is creative blocks and the like. But like any of the millions of bulbs in my neighborhood forcing their way up through the cold, wet ground into the clean, sharp air, I'm starting to emerge from my crisis mode into something more manageable, and hopefully, more productive.

However, when out with my friend Heather yesterday, I saw something that summed up a problem with Portland (and its art scene) that I didn't even realize I had. Something dimly lurking in the back of my mind that had existed for a while but was finally making itself known. A strange feeling that this "West Coast city" in which I had picked to live the rest of my foreseeable future was not a City, per se, but a town. And not a particularly large town at that.

Perhaps that's what I liked about it at first. I remember wanting to go to RISD at seventeen over Parsons or the Art Institute of Boston because Providence was smaller, more manageable, more like the tiny Portland Maine that had raised me and spit me out when I came of age. Fortunately RISD offered me no money, unlike Parsons, which floated half of its insane tuition and allowed me to work part of the rest off for $5.25/hr over the course of four years in its Records Office. Thus, little scared bird lands herself in NYC, the great metropolis - the wilds of urbanity, where she never would have migrated on her own. And it changed me for the better. It was the best decision out of what was offered. Cut ahead to the early 2000s, faced with an even more limitless choice - I had $1500 in the bank and wanted to cut out of New England forever - and saddled only with my cat herd and my zine collection, I picked Portland Oregon and set out. Portland felt like "home." But now I'm wondering.

Cut forward to yesterday, walking along Alberta. Coffee shop A was out of the question, having failed to hire Heather and thus ending on her permanent shit list. Coffee shop B had a wait list. C was closing as we entered. So I chose option D, not my favorite but with empty tables and low music. While waiting at the counter, I checked out the art on the walls. Usually this particular place had a decent display up - perhaps the best I'd seen on Alberta. But this month... EPIC FAIL. I leaned over to Heather and whispered "Worst... art show... ever!" She agreed.

Forty or fifty "pieces" hung on the walls. I use quotes even though "piece" might be the best term to describe the unframed, thumbtacked scraps of randomly-sized paper bits festooned randomly over the tables. Each was a simple pencil drawing of a skull. The same skull. Sometimes there was a little more, a little less, but nothing so skilled or ambitious as a background entered the scene - the most was an occasional figure added to the Skull. It looked like a metalhead's notebook in detention. I wish I was exaggerating. Perhaps most telling of all was the artist's statement, printed out as a banner twice as large than any of the other "works." The lack of craft, senseless repetition and unfinished, lazy, sub-amateur messiness struck me. If THIS guy could get a show, why the fuck was I bothering?

If I put my mind to it, I could rotate my work through a different coffee shop or gallery space every month. I get invited to shows here and there and usually try to put something together for it. This means selecting work that I spent more than five minutes shitting out, going to Michael's and selecting frames, sitting down to mat and frame the work, then laying it out on the wall with some sort of aesthetic idea of the presentation and display. My name is attached to that work. I have no idea who might see it. But if something, good or bad, is coming back to me from the show, I want to be able to stand by it and feel proud of what I've done. Does Skull-sketcher feel the same way? What sort of thought went into this "collection" before vomiting it up on the wall? And why does so much of Portland support "shows" like this?

Ugh. I'm pushing my own elitist buttons by typing this, and I'm sorry if I've lost you. But come the fuck on. If you were there I think you'd be with me. Why push for a 10 when a 2.5 will get you in the door?