Wow, it's been awhile since I posted anything here, hasn't it? The past two years were strange. I was so intent on moving to Ohio and disappointed that Johnny was so unhappy there; there were so many good qualities there but not the right good qualities: friends, a community, kindness. And being near my family, the original reason for moving up there, turned out to be just stressful for me when I couldn't help them (you can't fix people's lives!). So after much talk and planning we left on a cross-country motorcycle trip, had an awesome time for about two weeks, then broke down here in New Mexico. Back in Albuquerque! I suppose it's the best place it could have happened. It's such a relief to have friends who know us and really care for us, to have the understanding art community, and even just to be out of that midwestern buggy humidity. The desert is more home now than my hometown (though I do get sly joy from rocking the Gummo shirt for a sort of perverse hometown pride). We've been doing some of the most involved art pieces of the past several years: Johnny has a series of black cyborgish sculptural pieces and I've got a mermaid painting on a found table top that I'm raffling off at the Blown Motor Art Fair on the 29th to pay for our bike repairs, not to mention that I'm organizing the fair! It's difficult to do all this stuff without any transportation or regular cash. We've sold several paintings since we arrived but the money just serves to sustain us and it becomes a drag to never get ahead after awhile. I'm considering getting a job, though I really wanted to try to get by on art and ingenuity; it's just become too tiring to struggle like this, and to watch Johnny be miserable all the time.
Right now I'm listening to podcast by my cousin. She's eleven years older than me so we've never been very close; we saw each other a few times a year (Christmas, 4th of July, weddings, and baby showers) and I knew she was the only other member of my family that could be called "alternative," (by that I mean she was into things that most people in Ohio were not even aware of). I left the area when I turned eighteen; she had kids and went to school and stayed in the area. A couple years ago she published a book. It's amazing to me that someone I know has published a book. I know a lot of people who have written zines or who show art or make crafts that are sold around town, but not one other person who's done something like this. She recently found me on facebook and said that she thinks we have a lot of things in common so today I googled her name and found youtube videos of her burlesque performance, profiles of her on half a dozen pages, her blog, and ...
P.S. If anyone is interested in the art fair, here's a link to the events page for it: https://www.facebook.com/events/399174330198282/?ref=2
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