It’s about 4am and I can’t sleep. I fell asleep earlier, curled up with a dog on the couch, which became me + 2 dogs and 1 cat at one point. Cozy, but after a good long nap I woke up at 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep. I sketched a little, and then walked down the memory lane that is my sketchbook.
I’ve had this same sketchbook for almost 10 years. Sad, to have sketched so little in it, but it tells a story about the last 10 years of my life nonetheless. There are a number of sketches and sculpture ideas about losing myself in the giant telco, like making a self portrait of myself as Pinocchio wrapped mummy-like in telephone wire.
This sketch tells the story of life-in-the-wrong job at a glance:
Self Portrait Crushed by the Boot
That’s me, being crushed under the weight of “The Boot” which was then headquarters. Ah, the good old days of November 2004.
I went from finishing art school in ’96 to full time clerical work, squeezing in studio time at Dynamo Arts, an artist run centre I co-founded with Jody and others. Didn’t take me long to realize my soul was withering at the day job and I began studying the web (was it in 98 ’99?). Eventually I gave up my studio at Dynamo – between school and work there wasn’t the time to run a centre and make art. My art has mostly been the forgotten orphan since then.
Making web sites fills those creative urges well enough that I don’t feel the same pull to the studio that I used to. (I think that will change when my under-construction studio is finished… Yay!) Most of the web work I’ve done is for other people, so I’ve kept this (odd?) separation of my Art Sketchbook from my day-to-day Web note/sketchbooks. So you can see why my art sketchbook would last me over 10 years.
Still, I’m reminded that I actually can draw reasonably well sometimes and I should get back to it. Here’s perhaps my favourite sketch (of mine), ever:
Sketch of a Sculpture of DaVinci
…and, posting that image which is too wide, I’m also reminded how badly I need to update the design on this blog. Cobbler’s shoes and all that. I drew this in a gallery (Victoria?), of a sculpture that was made after a sketch of Leonardo DaVini’s called “Lyre”. It was in a small sketchbook so I ran out of room – I always seem to do that. Lots of my life drawings used to have cut off or deformed limbs from me trying to squeeze that foot into the bottom of the page. Case in point, on this one the poor girl had to reach onto the other page of the book:
After a photo book cover
Speaking of odd finishes, it’s now past 5am and I’d better sleep before I stop making any sense at all. G’night. ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz.
So I want to say thanks for this story, it is really very exiting, I think sometimes pictures can say more, that words and I am convinced in it one more time after reading your article.