oh thank heaven

For time alone in my studio. And graduate school. I love this studio, and this time, this place. This struggle. Thank God I was allowed this. I wonder sometimes how this all comes about. And then I remind myself that this comes about from hard work.

I come from a working class family. My father just retired from General Motors last year and my mother continues to work for the USPS, where I will be going in Brooklyn to mail off my postcards for my graduate thesis show this Monday.

I have lived in New York for 6 years. I have been able to do this because of my various jobs in the food and beverage service industry, something I am hesitantly grateful for. I was hungry enough to make it work, and stupid enough to not realize the obstacles it was presenting for me. I didn't realize the toll it took on my health and mentality. As long as it paid the bills with a bit left over for my art studio (how did I do that and still have time to use it?) and a bit of food and leisure I was stoked.

I am approaching the end of my graduate school career though, and noticing that I have NOT MISSED serving cocktails to fratty waste-oids on the weekends for change, and that frankly, I am really close to being too old for that noise.

I want to make art as exclusively as possible. I am going to continue to work at my bar job, because I am broke and because it's the best one I've had, and maybe someday I'll be promoted to bartender and only have to work 3 days a week (DREAM). I am also going to be an artist's assistant starting in september for pay, and interning *not for pay* at A.I.R. gallery which I am actually really stoked about because of the learning opportunities it will afford me.

I've had a lot of red wine tonight. I am looking forward (with positive anxiety) to my thesis show and the new experiences laid out for the rest of the year. Wish me well, I wish you the same. Steady along she goes...

p.s. this painting went missing last summer from Pratt Institute's storage at Canoneer Court, if any one knows anything about this, please let me know...I've kinda let it go by this point, but miss it a little when I see it.