Cat Sitting

Summer 2009

A few images from Thesis Show, More to come...

Broadcast, oil on canvas, 46 1/2"x 48"

30, oil on canvas with poplar frame, 21 1/2"x 17 1/2"

O Hai-O/Shitstorm, oil on canvas with poplar frame 21 1/2"x 17 1/2"

all images copyright Heather Elizabeth Garland 2010.

Photo Credit Cary Whittier: www.carywhittier.com

Group Show at Arch Collective: Friday May 21st.

Hey all, I'm going to be in a group show at Arch Bushwick this Friday May 21st. Details:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=119935704706553&ref=mf

Happy weekend--

H

Update: Hyperallergic wrote about my piece here: http://hyperallergic.com/6936/bushwick-open-studios-fauvist-tattoo/

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.

Thank you Cyrilla

For bringing this poem to my attention. A few weeks ago our class came to my studio for a visit. One of my paintings made her think of Frank O'Hara's short book of poetry: Lunch Poems. I had this book, so I went home and read a few selections over my lunch break.

I did not, however, read this poem which Cyrilla read in our class a few weeks later in reference to my work. This was a special gift.

Song

Is it dirty

does it look dirty

that's what you think of in the city

does it just seem dirty

that's what you think of in the city

you don't refuse to breathe do you

someone comes along with a very bad character

he seems attractive, is he really. yes. very

he's attractive as his character is bad. is it. yes

that's what you think of in the city

run your finger along your no-moss mind

that's not a thought that's soot

and you take a lot of dirt off someone

is the character less bad. no. it improves constantly

you don't refuse to breathe do you

--Frank O' Hara 1959

Right on Dave Hickey...

"Beyond the hegemony of corporate and institutional consensus, however, beyond the purview of uncannily lifelike blockbusters like Jurassic Park and the Whitney Biennial, everything that grows in the domain of culture, that acquires constituencies and enters the realm of public esteem, does so through the accumulation of participatory investment by people who show up. No painting is ever sold nor essay written nor band booked nor exhibition scheduled that is not the consequence of previous social interaction, of gossip, body language, fashion dish, and telephone chatter--nothing transpires that does not float upon the ephemeral substrata of "word of mouth"--on the validation of schmooze."

--Dave Hickey

"Romancing the Looky-Loos" from AIR GUITAR

Jeffrey Lewis Says Everything Will Be Ok.