gamma ray and atom colliding (animation in progress)

This is early in the animation timeline, after the intro credits, a gamma ray makes contact with an atom:

"Turing Test" short film by Jaylinn Davidson / atoms to the universe

Been up trying to choreograph movement of my awkward, wonky 2d photoshop constructed little oxygen atom (the 2 inner electron orbit rings are hard to see, but yeah..that's what it's supposed to be if you're scientifically minded and pick apart such things). It will be at the beginning of the animation where a gamma ray passes through it and produces a loose electron and positron, which attract and destroy each other in a tiny bit of energy. After I finish that, I can echo some of the visuals in a bigger scale, when I skip to a scene in progress in the end where a universe and antimatter universe come together in a male and female form.

So anyway this is a mini motion test (sans background) for the atom:

Jaylinn Davidson, keyboardist for The Boxing Lesson (I animated two videos for the band several years ago) and Casual Strangers and also a dear, lovely, talented friend of mine has expanded her artistic reach into writing/directing/editing her first solo music video (for C.S.). Featuring Sara Eleta Reid as the robot:

Turing Test

An interview regarding her creative process is found here in The Austin Chronicle . One thing that I particularly connected with was that she discovered a driving concept of the story while deep in the process of editing it. I've tried to plan more work in advance (storyboarding, although mine can look like indeciperable chicken scratch to any other eyes than my own)  when making animations, but I've also found that sometimes the unplanned freeform random moments can lead to discoveries that can dominate and alter the course  of the project for the better.

I'm really proud of you Jaylinn! Hope we can collaborate and explore the universe further together in whatever creative form it can take.

Sixteen Second Story Year 2

Here's the concluding video to comedian (formerly of the Professor Blastoff podcast, now leading his own stellar podcast Space Cave) David Huntsberger's year long 16 Second Story project.  It's a fun, silly, experimental animation and storytelling project expanded in sixteen second increments at David's monthly "Junk Show" variety shows, hosted at the Copper Still in Los Angeles. A person attending the show is selected to make a very short, timed introduction to a random story, which is recorded. David passes the audio to an animator, who interprets it. The audio and video are played together at the next monthly Junk Show, and another person is selected to continue the story, and the cumulative audio and video is passed on to the next animator, and so on..for twelve consecutive months, and music is added in the final presentation (Last year's project, with music by Rob Crow-- is here and my animated contribution is 2:50-3:06) My portion in the embedded video below is from 2:05-2:21. Music by Ryan McWilliams.

Animators, seasoned or even very amateur, if you'd like to play a part in this year's upcoming Sixteen Second Story cycle, get in touch with David through twitter or his website.  As you see, there's a lot of variety in the work in terms of style and technical approaches. If you think you'd like a chance to experiment with it, go for it! The two most important aspects of participating are 1) you could finish 16 seconds of work in a month's time (easy enough) and can be counted on to carry the ball for that month to the due date and 2) Have fun!

Link to video here for smartphones

Animation updates

(Steps out to the quiet inky dark field just past the witching hour, to the sound of crickets....)

Hello.

I've been working on what has turned out to be an unexpectedly long term project for a very short length video. It will clock under two minutes, but is the most elaborate animation I've worked on so far. There's lots of layers of movement in this. Sometimes it took a week for only five seconds in some clips. It will be paired with a song by a favorite musician I've followed for years.

As I had the pleasure of hearing this particular song played live, an idea began to take root, which branched off into more ideas, and I thought damn, now I have to do this. It hasn't been a practical direction to take with my visual art (not that "practical" is or should be linked with art, yet it asserts it's charmless presence too often when I'm trying to enter a creative mindset)  , but it is one that kept me excited and motivated, even if it takes embarrassingly long to do at my skill level. I enjoy the short storytelling visual format that animation allows me.

Part of the story is about the joy and danger of futile pursuits. Another is the attractive pull and destructive force of opposite worlds colliding, and the new creative elements that comes from all that. It starts on a quantum level and pulls out to whole universes, with two fantasy stories of elements from those different universes influencing each other, and making inadvertent and destructive contact.

I've wanted to make a work that isn't bound by deadlines, but to the best of my (admittedly limited) technical abilities with animation at the moment. There's so much to learn, it's overwhelming.

I'm hoping to have it wrapped up by this month. That's the goal, anyway.

Here's a few soundless preview clips:

                                          

                                          

and a few earthlike planets: 

and some stills.......

Update on the David Huntsberger project I contributed to: The DVD has been out and available for purchase, and it is also viewable on Vimeo. I recommend ordering the DVD as you have the viewing option of seeing all the animators work uncut for each standup piece David performed. That said, I also recommend seeing the stage/costume design, the standup and animator work cut and combined for the full collaborative presentation. http://www.davidhuntsberger.com/2015/10/one-headed-beast-available-for-pre-order/

Nightscape and Upcoming Show at Local Colour Gallery

Night Scene, Spring-Behind Apartment

18" x 36" oil on canvas

I'm still  cautious about painting at night , despite my visual preference for it, but this was on my apartment's property from the stairwell. I felt pretty safe. My only regret is I wish I could paint faster for moments that pop up. Night owls like myself occasionally walked up the curved driveway with their dogs and it would have been cool to have captured a dog/human duo. I need to start doing more spontaneous drawing and painting sketches that capture those great unique moments. 

This will be up at Local Colour Boutique for the month of May in Alexandria, along with a small assortment of still life work. I'll be adding this and the others to the sale page on Monday. I'll be adding "dreamscape" work steadily throughout the summer to that page too. 

"Twice Upon A Time" (48 Hour Film Project)

I received a pleasant surprise today: The new and longer edit from my team's entry (Aura Media Productions) to last summer's 48 Hour Film Project competition in Washington, DC.

The film project is part of a worldwide competition. The spirit of this contest is about promoting a sense of can-do urgency in filmmakers.  They are challenged to conceptualize and complete a short feature in an assigned genre, in very limited time frame. From what I had observed, the adventure of submitting an entry by deadline eclipsed any direct competition between teams.

There are a few "catches" in order to prevent filmmakers from jumping ahead of the gun.  There are secret, surprise elements that are revealed to all the teams at the start of the 48 hour filming period. All these elements must be incorporated into the film. Last year they were:

Character	Samuel or Samantha (Sam) Canterbury, Event Planner
Prop	an envelope
Line	"You can trust me."

The director pulls the assigned genre out of a hat:

•    Comedy

•    Dark Comedy

•    Drama

•    Film Noir

•    Film de Femme

•    Fish Out of Water

•    Horror

•    Musical or Western

•    Road Movie

•    Romance

•    Sci Fi

•    Silent Film

•    Thriller/Suspense

•    Time Travel

We got "comedy" with parody as the sub genre. So a parody of a fairly tale was crafted: Twice Upon a Time.

My contribution had a limited but visible role in the longer cut of the film. My artwork was in the background inside of wicked Samantha Canterbury's castle dwelling. In reality, the castle dwelling was the director's condo building party room that can be rented out for resident events. I took down much of the designer match-y art already on the walls and hung as much work as I could bring, mostly on the entertainment shelves for big screen tv watching. (We took down and/or hid all the electronics.)

Veronika Downes as Samantha Canterbury in "Twice Upon a Time" copyright 2014 Aura Media Productions

For this, I was given a Production Design credit. There were other visual artists on this team who shared this credit. They stayed up late creating the pencil portraits and other art in the magic book, and in the background of the final credit roll. 

In the competition, the run of the entries must be capped at seven minutes. A lot of footage gets left behind in editing, and my own art was pretty much a brief blur. I was a little disappointed, but considering the hard rules of the contest. I had figured getting edited out could be a possibility.

No, we didn't win....but I'm glad to see Aura Pro Media took the time to re-edit the footage for the original seven minute entry to a piece (in this cut, seventeen minutes) that better reflects their vision. In this one you can see much more of my artwork, as well as the rest of the crew's contributions, and a more developed storyline. 

I was impressed with the friendly but no-nonsense hard work and cooperation of everyone on set: Director Stephanie Cristancho, Producer James Lewis, the actors, the film crew, the hair and makeup artists, the wardrobe coordinator, the catering, and those who doubled their duties with providing transportation early and late hours to the rest of the cast and crew. My first experience on a film set was a positive one, and I would enjoy more opportunities to contribute my artwork in ways that would be of service. 

Here is the (approximate) seventeen minute version of the short film:

soundless portion preview to comedy bit "Diagnosis: Depression"

EDIT/UPDATE 11/01/2017 soundless no longer! Here's an updated post with audio accompaniment
http://jeannehospod.blogspot.com/2017/10/animated-videos-recent-past-and-more-uh.html

My portion of the animation (sound omitted for the preview) collaboration that will accompany David Huntsberger's Comedy/Animation Stand Up special. The live performance was recorded at the New Movement Theater in Austin, Texas on November 15th, 2014.

(BTW - I had a fabulous time at the live show at The New Movement Theater in Austin, and met so many cool talented people! David, the film crew, the prop artists, and the animation team were a pleasure to work with. I'll follow up with links to the other animators in an upcoming post.)

Curious what all this imagery is about? Want to hear David  Huntsberger's comedy standup? Want to see more of the other amazing animation work by the rest of David's team, (thanks to the supporters of the Kickstarter that made this project possible?) The official DVD and download will be available for sale (approximately) by the summer of 2015.

See www.davidhuntsberger.com  for updates.

Night Scene 2, interrupted & concluded

oil on canvas 20" x 20"

This started as one of several on-scene night landscapes I've been working on lately. My plan was to work on this start to finish from direct observation. Unfortunately, I had a major disruption that kept me from being present on location to complete it. I had to use my backup photos and improvisation to conclude it.

I'm still debating whether to tweak it a bit more or not. The color is a bit much for me, could be toned down For right now, I'm just going to let it be.

I'll describe the disruption, as I've been trying to get the word out for my neighborhood's safety. The usual places that would publish this kind of incident aren't taking much note of it, despite my efforts (so far, anyway).

Here in Shirlington, a small and upscale neighborhood with a village of boutiques, fine dining and bars is considered to be an extremely safe area  in terms of crime stats. For night owls, it is very easy to be comfortable with  late night grocery errands, walking/running/working out on the nearby outdoor trail fitness equipment , and wandering to and from the bar scene. I felt very safe painting some views nearby when the sun went down. I'm fond of the look of artificial light on natural scenery outside. It has a sort of lonely drama to it.

Sometimes I do get interrupted when I work, but mostly just dog walkers and a couple of semi buzzed patrons leaving the village. I'm not crazy about that, but the attention is usually benign. Generally, the most I've had to deal with are unsolicited critiques, or someone who wants to bend my ear about art when I try to show with my body language I really need to focus on my work. 

So I was doing my 3rd session on this scene and it got to a point where the canvas was really saturated with oil and not taking any fresh color without mushing and muddying so I packed it up and thought I'll finish up with a final visit later before the foliage changes.

I was kneeling on the ground  over my bag of paints when I heard a man's voice directly behind me.

"What are you doing?" As I noticed out of the corner of my eye his legs were very close to my back, I felt him touch the back of my upper arm. 

I stood up and whipped around quickly and was about a foot away from a man facing me with a 4"-5" knife held low but pointing at me. He softly said to come with him and "everything will be ok". I glanced and saw a vehicle idling in the street, door open. I was blank, numb and staring, but unfortunately not really taking in his features or what he was driving in much...was focused on the knife.

(This I know: 5'7"-ish, Hispanic, black short hair, clean shaven, medium build, late 20's/early 30's--oh, and the location was Taylor and Arlington Mills Drive, across from Four Mile Run trail and creek This all went down around 1:30am -ish on 10/19)

My mace was well buried in my pocket, in my key chain holster so it wasn't helpful. He repeated to just come with him and there won't be any problems. 

I leaned my body like I was going to go with him, then bolted as in the opposite direction to the 24/7 grocery a few blocks away, screaming "MURDER-RAPE" at the top of my lungs. I didn't turn to see if he was following until I got to a more populated street several blocks later. I didn't see him. From there I jogged to the grocery store up another block and called the police.

I understand I didn't look like a typical Shirlington resident at the time. I'm dressed for work with paint, shabby clothes, dirty hands, etc. The police seemed skeptical and asked me to repeat my story several times stopping at details as if to catch a discrepancy, asked for my ID (which I expected) and then my social security number (which I didn't expect..never had that experience when I had reported apartment neighbors domestic brawling/other criminal disruptions in Austin, TX--maybe it's procedure here in VA? Tell me in the comments if you know). They appeared to have swayed to the notion that I might be credible as I continued with my consistent report. Appeared to.... might be...

I had about 300 bucks worth of oil paint in my art bag, plus painting, easel and cart left behind and I needed to get it. They seemed reluctant to escort me or deal with that inconvenience, but they eventually got a younger officer to retrieve it. I do appreciate that they spared me from having to even consider returning to the scene . I would have had to get a cab to idle there with my sister accompanying me I suppose. Or just let the supplies and work go untill sunrise and risk someone hauling it off.

I was assigned a case number but I have not seen it up on the Arlington police daily crime reports.I passed the word on to my apartment staff so they could get the word out to my neighbors.  I've tweeted info to different Arlington/Shirlington handles and emailed DC metro news agencies and so far, again no response. (UPDATE 10/23- The local DC metro Fox and NBC affiliates got in touch and filmed spots regarding the incident. Also, a detective from Arlington Police department gave me a call earlier this evening.)That bothers me, because especially during this time of year, it would be good to alert fellow Shirlington residents, patrons, and employees not to be lulled into a false sense of security.

Anyone with a large Arlington/Shirlington/DC metro area following please link this story to your followers. Thanks.

Oh, yeah...and I sort of lost my taste for painting outdoor night scenes for the time being. I have a few balcony images I'll still sort out but that's about it. I'll take more advantage of the fall colors in sunlight this season.

Black and White Dreamscape Compilation, Framed

One of the pieces I'll be presenting at Northside Social at the end of the month. This is a collection of older dreamscape work. I thought the images resonate well with each other as a group, and that this presentation has a sort of non-linear anti-comix like narrative.

Total size: 45"long  x 35"wide.

Individual images: 9"long x 7"wide

India ink on acid free paper

White archival ink on black acid free matboard.
white acrylic painted wooden recycled frame
covered with uv acrylic protective "glass"

Self Portrait-Summer into Fall, Near Dusk

oil on canvas 24"x48

(added edit: here's the progression of some of the sessions)

Announcement: Solo Show

I just wanted to mention that I will be having a solo exhibition of my work at Northside Social up at the end of the month (I'll be hanging the work on the 28th, but all pieces should be up by Halloween if not sooner).

It will be a mix of both my observed work in oil: still life, figurative and outdoor paintings, and my "dreamscape" decorative, patterned, symbolic stream of consciousness body of work. They both serve important but usually separate veins of expression. There is actually an experimental work underway that does combine both ways of working (to be posted soon). That said, I'm untroubled if these styles resist overlapping. Those concerns are more about galleries wanting a marketable brand.

Currently, I'm mostly working on the work from observation, but there's a lot of framing of the dreamscape work (mostly ink/watercolor on watercolor paper) to finish up too. For those pieces, the frame becomes an integral extension of the design and concept of the piece. I've found and collected quality vintage frames from thrift stores (and some left over from the family homestead) that I sand and repaint as well as the acid free mat/mounting board, then add a uv acrylic cover (I don't like to use glass for all the risks of damage). Here's a couple of examples of work (painted in 2011-2012/frame & embellishments 2013 that recently were shipped to my fellow friends/collectors back in Austin. (Thanks Terri & Border!)

By November, I'll be putting up a page of what is for sale at Northside, with photos of new work and the newly enhanced older pieces and prices.

Fantasy Portrait for a Young Child - and My Approaches to Portraiture with Infants, Children, and Pets

     A little something on the light and cuter side I had finished earlier this summer

                                             (my twitter followers may have seen this already):

The Bunny Hutch Sleepover

acrylic ink and acrylic paint on stretched canvas

approx 12"x 8"

One of the frequent questions I'm asked by people when they see my work is if I can do a portrait of their infant/young child/pet in a similar approach as I would with a self portrait or other portraiture. The answer is, unfortunately..no! That kind of work requires someone who can commit to a live sitting over several sessions and keeping reasonably still.

I suppose they mean from photographs, but I really hate using them other than for very small reference areas post live sitting. There is so much lost in translation (color, dimension, as well as the vibe and urgency of all the moments of the session distilled into one)  in using photo references as a main source. 

I have painted a few older children directly. They do need to be mature enough to understand what they are committing to, be a willing volunteer (separate from the parent's imposed wishes) and are able to relax into a pose with minimal fidgeting,  I ask that the parent also budgets for and pays the kid for their time as they are working almost as hard on the portrait. I'll bring a roll or two of quarters per session and pile up the earnings for every 15 minutes (after each period I give them a mini break) of keeping still. It also helps to have a favorite movie playing in their line of vision.

I've  also made gestural action sketches from life...the type of drawings that are only minutes long and made in multiples. I would then pick the best out of a group from an afternoon's work for a reasonable compromise with someone who wants an observed interpretation. ( Side note: As far as pets go, cats, with their flexi spines and springy selves are great for this sort of thing. Dogs can get a little weirded out if they are on to the fact you are watching them intently for a period of time..they feel stared at which is a threat to them. They hunch over, lick their nose nervously and sloooowly slink out of the room....) 

The other alternative is to create work based on infants/young children/beloved pets is to approach it with my dreamscape/fantasy kind of work. In the example above I had the mom give me some highlights of the child's loves, quirks, curiosities, anything that captures his attention. I will accept family photos for this, as it's more for a broad cartoon like approach to a likeness. 

The boy pictured was only about a year old. From what the mom told me, he was a pretty chill little kid, friendly, loved cookies, his blanket, and was born in the Year of the Rabbit which she wanted to me to reference in  some way. So I imagined him just a little older with a bunny pal, having his first sleepover get together at his BBF's (bunny best friend) family underground hutch. His own family is comfortingly nearby (used references of the family home) in upper right background.

On an end note: I worked with this family quite a bit in the past. 

I painted his older brother (the zipping by skater pictured above) as an infant in the same approach years ago:

I remember photos of a really cute little baby with huge ears! Fortunately for me, his mother made a point that I capture them. So I played with it by using the shape of a Saturn like planet framing him, the shape furthered echoed with the U.S. Earthmama flying the spaceship he's tethered to.

When he was older, he posed for a live sitting with no small  help of the first Harry Potter Movie playing nearby:

Thought I'd add this too:

Years ago I had also had painted a album cover and graphics for the mom (the originals are in her collection), who is a musician. She wanted themes in reference to her experience of being a first time mother. I see a continuum of motifs in my current dreamscape work..fertility, tendrils of tangled growth, and space.

Mini Landscapes (repaired/reworked)

Here are just two additional pics to add to today's previous post.

These are repaired and reworked previous images.

both 6"x6" acrylic and acrylic ink on canvas

 I've found that acrylic ink is a great portable, fast drying, pigment rich medium for on the go one shot studies.  However, I discovered if the paint is laid on too thick, it can risk cracking shortly after a session. Generally, I have painted in thin layers so it hasn't been a huge issue overall.  I currently bring along a tube of good regular acrylic white and a few other colors, along with gloss medium if I think I might get a little heavy handed, and the result has been stable.

Larger work of more depth in oil will be coming up in a near future post.

Handful of Mini Landscapes

                                   

On a lighter and brighter side, some portable mini studies in acrylic ink 

sizes top to bottom:

5"x7"panel

7"x5"panel

3"x2"on panel and recycled frame

3"x2"on panel and recycled frame

5"x5" on recycled panel with built in frame

approx. 5"x10" on watercolor paper

7"x5" on recycled wood panel with built in frame

Putting the Past to Rest

This piece is the most antithetical to my usual process. My typical approach to work when I'm moving too slow for comfort is to put it on the back burner and pick up another painting in progress, or just start a new one. This was an almost daily building and assembling of smaller pieces. Sometimes it plodded, where I'd spend more time looking than in movement, but it did pick up momentum near the end. I first thought the presentation would be simple, but getting the worlds of the smaller images to relate meant going back into those panels and larger backing plank with more paint, and reminding myself to review and adjust the piece as a larger whole.

The piece is in acrylic inks and paints. Some are metallic so I shot it in different lights to get the different effects. (Size: approximately 40x26 inches, assembled wood panels, stretched canvases, and mini frames)

Since my last post, I had continued to create various paintings in the vein of my interpreted and invented decorative tree studies and other dreamscape work. The approach is the opposite of work from direct observation or impression. (I have also been painting outdoors and will have future posts on that group. ) The invented/interpreted style, which is intuitive, decorative, patterned, more symbolic than observed imagery, and obsessive has been grounding when I've felt anxious or unsettled.  These past several years have been a time of a lot of sad milestones and changes in my life. The work has been a way to stay in motion as I pass through such times.

In summer 2011 until the end of that year, my siblings and I were dealing with mom's cancer, subsequent passing, and the aftermath of our father's care. Up to age 84, Dad had maintained a semblance of physical independence, but his mental health was more fragile. He had long suffered ongoing bouts of severe anxiety. This was compounded by an early but (at the time) undiagnosed stage of dementia. He still managed to present a competent, if somewhat agitated facade to the outside world, and refused residential care or medical treatment for these health issues. It wasn't until he was discovered on his back by the cellar stairs, post-fall (a month after our mother's passing) that he could be removed from the family home for rehabilitative/assisted living.

During Dad's nursing home stay, there was a window of time where my sister and I could mutually communicate with our father with calm and rationality. He had finally been medicated and we could connect with the well-intentioned man behind the static cloud of anxious impulsive outbursts. We wished our father could have accepted this help earlier in his life.

                         

 After this period of some peace and clarity, Dad's health continued to decline.  His suffering of a myriad of digestive problems from a decade's past radiation cancer treatment was compounded by an irrevocable increasing loss of all motor control, leaving him bed-bound and unable to even swallow food.  Dad died this past December, just over a year Mom left us.

Because of our father's service in WWII, we found he and Mom were eligible for the interment of their ashes in a wall at Arlington National Cemetery, just a few miles from where my sister and I currently live. They were on a waiting list, so the service was performed this past June. It was worth the wait. The weather was beautiful, warm but not hot, clear skies and everything green. The ceremony was dramatic, brief, solemn, and silent other than the punctuation of a multi-gun salute.

                     

 


It's a weird feeling to think about the family home. Dad bought the three bedroom stone colonial when mom was very pregnant and near due with me. I was raised there with my brother and sister, then boomeranged back for brief periods during and post-college years, until I left the Philadelphia metro area for good at 25. I needed to make a solid break away from childhood. My parents remained there until Mom was moved to my sister's place for end care, and Dad's accident, so it was the homestead for just over 40 years.

                                 

       

        

 Other than for cobwebs and debris, it's empty now.


As a little kid, I remember me, my brother, sister, and parents crammed into the family Honda, pulling out of the driveway for weekend daylong excursions. Leaving the rows of pretty, tree-lined but cookie-cutter well-maintained homes of Drexel Hill, we would occasionally pass a dilapidated abandoned home at the edge of some farmland or some solitary crumbling brick structure bordering on between a depressed desolate urban and industrial area. Dad would point it out exclaiming,  "There's a dream home!" Being five and not quite hip to the concept of sarcasm, that's what I thought a dream home was: a lonely, dark, ramshackle dwelling. The name made sense as I started to have dreams of being lost in them late at night, with no one around as far as I could see. Sad and scared, not sure how I got there, nor how to get home, I'd awaken in my flowered twin bed next to my sister in the sunshine lighting up our blue bedroom.

The last time I was in the family house was during a brief trip with my sister.  I was to gather any remaining mementos: letters, photographs, and art.  Jan collected important documents and financial records.  The place had already been overhauled by a local so-called Samaritan who offered his services to sell the family furniture, crystal, and other items of value for our father, but then pocketed the proceeds. As a final courtesy to the neighbors, (not being sure when the bank would claim the property) we did a little yard work.

In the dark master bedroom, superimposed on the dusty, strewn, unfurnished, picked over leftover...stuff, I could recall the final version my mom maintained during a previous caregiving visit. Like the rest of the house, it required renovation, and there was some help needed with the housework (I pitched in), but it still had Mom's touch. Up to that time, she had kept the home colorful, comfortable, and reasonably clean as long as she could.  Even when she was too ill to stand, she wanted to be productive, so I'd fetch clean laundry from the dryer in the basement for her to fold in bed, while she watched her tv shows. Junior the cat would be lounging by her hip, gazing besottedly at her all the while (I never met a cat so...fixated on a person than that little fuzzy tuxedoed gentleman), purring.

Her bedroom was the unofficial family gathering area. In the early evenings, we (any number of us: me, my siblings, or even my siblings' friends ) would bring up Ovaltine and snacks hang out on the pushed together twin beds and chat over the primetime lineups or cable movies. Family pets would flank my mom's bed or simply drape themselves around her. Sometimes Dad would be there, but more often he was away working the night shift for IBM fixing computers around town. He later took over other bedrooms as we grew up and out of the home, due to his ingrained sleep schedule.

                  

In the surrounding neighborhood, I had picked up the lifelong habit of long walks. Once, as a hormonal stressed teen, I had impulsively bolted out of the house for a run through the dusk spring night. Never being athletic or even all that physically active, I couldn't go that fast, nor could I keep the pace up for long but I did get the sensation of tightness in my chest loosening. I slowed to a walk and just observed the trees and sky overhead for several mile loops. The anger and anxiety lifted and I felt, (although couldn't really articulate it), a sense of "flow".  I set out again the next night, and it became a regular activity.

The running didn't do well for my shins or ankles (I'm sure my form was shit), so I transitioned to just walking. I'd skip bus rides home in favor of hoofing it. I'd hike in the early evenings after dinner on school nights in all weather and seasons.  Sometimes I enjoyed the company of Mom (she developed endurance and we would walk and talk for miles, a treasured memory) or with a friend, but usually, it was a solitary activity, where I passed through nature and time at a rhythmic steady clip.

That "passing through" is what I think of when painting those symbolic successions of profiles in this piece below. I understand they could be interpreted as ghosts, which can be a fun narrative to creatively play with, but I don't really believe in them, nor an afterlife. The living are haunted with memories of loved ones who can't be reached anymore. Some are deceased, some have permanently split ways as the bonds that were once strong and genuine have withered or been severed.

                

Houses aren't haunted, but they haunt dreams.

A repeated dream: walking at night from 69th Street Terminal to the house like I used to, expecting to see my mom's bedroom light in her window, maybe Buddy the cat on the porch roof peering in and meowing for her to let him in (his own way of coming and going when he was alive). Instead, I arrive at a dark dirty, empty place and I can't find anyone. Only then I notice street lights have gone dark and so have the neighborhood homes. The area is abandoned. The only sign of life are the overgrown trees, shrubs, and unmowed lawns spilling over the sidewalks. I think about turning around and heading to the city, but then suddenly remember that too many from my circle of early adulthood have also passed away recently. I search on my phone for other contacts, but can't find or make a successful connection. There's noise, they talk but can't hear me, or I can't hear them. We drop off.

 I don't know where to go.

I wake up at my sister's apartment in Arlington, relieved to be in my current life and shake off the plaintive, creepy pull of the dream. Sometimes it helps if I imagine a young couple moving in our old residence, making repairs and setting up their new life.

 I wish them the best.