I'm only waiting for like 1,700 dollars...

Everytime I worry about money, I'm surprised when there's a check waiting for me.
It's hard to remember what payments are late and which ones are just on the way when you're running around hustling this hard. My heart goes out to all the people in Detroit that also have to work 3 jobs to make ends meet. I don't know if I'd want it any other way though. Today was pretty great. I ate for free, so it must've been a good time.

But really I think my life breaks down into 4 fairly equal chunks:

1/4 pure art making time
1/4 Rachel time
1/4 working as an educator whether it's DIA, MOCAD or 'other' and otherwise working for Vitamin Water
1/4 of the rest of my time, freaking out and finding new revenue streams / volunteer for whatever I can find to do that week / total loser time.

which looks pretty similar to this other list I have...

would do - time with gf
should do - art
could do - make money
reward - more freedom

Look a new piece!

Cedric Tai starts his own self-made artist residency, again!

So back at Michigan State I asked the program I was in (ROIAL)  if I could start my own artist in residency program because well, I lived in the same place that my classes took place, and I earned myself control and access to the darkroom that was in the basement of where I lived. Therefore I thought, I can teach others to use the darkroom and I can do it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To my surprise at the end of ROIAL, I was handed a certificate that solidified what I had done, it read, Cedric Tai, the inaugural artist-in-residence. It was official, I faked it, and it worked.

I'm stealing this from my friend Quetarshe's blog (her daughter is so professional look at how well designed that website is!):

"Amazingly restored, 71 Garfield apartments and lofts in midtown Detroit has gone through a wonderful transformation – it’s has gone green. This 1920’s historic building in the Sugar Hills Historic art district is comprised of recycled, re-purposed with old and new fixtures, geothermal heating, solar power, and all the things that other buildings green with envy!

Not only has it gone green - local artist were asked to design on the first level an apartment/ loft, their own style, look and feel."


See the PDF invitation here

My 'dream studio'

Ok, so my deal is that I really wanted to make something permanent (like a public work of art) so I designed and installed my own floor! It's a fairly simple design that is kindof like decoding abstract art. Once you see where certain shapes come from (hint hint, where they reflect from) then it makes sense why they are placed the way they are placed and you can imagine a 3 dimensional shape once your brain cracks the code! I was partly inspired by some of the murals in detroit* that are more geometric in nature and conversations with my housemate Corrie about floor installations that Sol Lewitt did. I wanted to have a design that also appeared to unfold... Like if Sol Lewitt were into Transformers?

(blue and green are much more grey than my mockup, also the yellow triangle is supposed represent a projection...)

So my space is meant to be a:

 1. research / brainstorming space (a.k.a. charrette space, to help me with my upcoming show in Sept and my goals!)

 2. collaboration space (hopefully I will be able to bring in other artists who will want to collaborate with me, are YOU interested?)

 3. mini-ted talks space (I'm working on having Dabls from the African Bead Museum give a talk about whatever he wants, because he's awesome)

 4. gallery space (I just want to actually give a couple friends a good local space to do a show and make new work that may or may not have similar goals to those that are being outlined right here.)

 5. clean space (for photographing some of my work)

 6. community space (for bringing in people to use for whatever, doing a film night, staging meetings, brainstorming what we want or what we need)

 7. comfortable space (it has a couch!)

What did I gain, what did I lose?

I had a lot of fun putting this very minimal room together. Surprising enough I had a lot of fun installing the floor and have quite the story to tell. Corrie says I should write a short story about it. Also, my dream shelving has been built, I have no idea why, but all the furniture for kids that Ikea sells are some of my absolute favorite items. Perhaps, I just long for kindergarten. The main table in the room folds up to the wall, but I may remove it in case the wall space is needed for an art show, but I asked for a very high end sink and faucet, and I got it! I am a very happy artist. So far the only things that I've spent 'too much' on since they ran out of money in the very end are extension cables for the projector, a $125 dollar ikea couch and wireless speakers. What I got out of the deal is a sweet dry erase board table, 3 sweet cabinets, and use of a nice white space for 2 months.

As of right now, the last things I did were wax the floor myself, I've also been sanding the grooves of my cabinets so that the drawers slide easier, and I've also been weeding a vinyl sign that will ask people for their spare plexiglas!

The only thing that I think would be cooler would be if I designed my room to look like this:

Oh wait, that's just Mary Heilmann's, All Tomorrow's Parties, Exhibition View, Secession 2003

The last things that still need to be accomplished are: 

1. dropping off the ikea couch that I bought that actually fits in my scion!

2. reformat my computer so that it can be used with the projector, attach the projector shelf to the ceiling and run a power cable from the light bulb in the closet to the projector on the ceiling and also test out my projection and wireless speakers!

3. have the sink installed and test washing a silkscreen in it

4. prepare for visitors which includes putting on a dvd on a loop of me installing the floor, having my book with my work in it out (and a sign that says do not take!), business cards to Re:View gallery, and possibly putting up one of my paintings in the hallway or in the room.

5. replace the wheels on the bottom of my cabinets with ones that don't swivel and cut a corner off so that they can be tilted back and moved around easier.

6. write the goals on the dry-erase board with things that offer interaction with people that will be coming in.

I've been telling people that I haven't been very busy, I don't know if I've been lying to myself or if it's just now starting to get busy and I just can't believe it, or perhaps, I really could be busier but I didn't plan very well ahead so it's past the point of 'getting busy' and now I'm just getting by. Either way, I do hope you stop by to see how well I was able to accomplish my little goals.

My little goals:

1. apply to a juried show sometime this year

2. apply to show work in another country

3. try a new way of framing work

4. create a space for collaborating

5. find people that may enjoy collaborating/using the space

6. make a blog about it, or update thedetroiter.com

7. get someone to help me with my big sculpture for September

8. work as an educator for MOCAD

9. ?

10. PROFIT!

*More inspiration: (from my photo blog on thedetroiter.com)

The book I could write, the iPhone app I want, and my art spliced in between to keep it from being boring

So I'm going to try to put down everything that I think may be helpful to people who just want to know one person's (my) way of how I've been able to seemingly get around and get as far as I've gotten... um... so far.

I don't want to get ahead of myself, get an ego, but hell, I think you'd want to hear what I have to say about getting 25,000 from not much money but a little bit of privilege and strategic planning. I mean it's not like I'm really going to write something about how you can get a million dollars overnight if you study my plan, I just really believe there's a lot of wisdom that i've either stolen or gotten from other people.

Here's the first nuggets of wisdom that I take with me everywhere. If you're not willing to accept all of them, take your own path, you may even wind up getting your own big cash prize doing whatever makes you the happiest, but I'm telling you, this is how I did it, not how everyone should do it.

Things that I believe helped to mentally prepare myself for the Kresge Fellowship:

• do something everyday that is part of your dream job, do it until someone realizes that you're a dedicated person and will hire you for some menial shitty work, remember the bigger picture even when you could just as easily convince yourself that you're going nowhere and eventually you'll find out where you were meant to be. Unless you work really hard at something you won't really know if it was a necessary failure or the first step of many. Not trying very hard doesn't leave you with very much information to go off of whether it was right for you or not.
• find the weirdest, goofiest, honest peers and make friends with them. they won't necessarily be someone that will always fulfill all the different kinds of relationships you need in life, but whenever I've wanted to have a deep conversation about the big questions in life they are wayyy better to talk with than someone who thinks even the littlest bit that they are cool. These people in my life have been technicians at my college, elderly people in my community, my girlfriend, past roommates, but they come from every socio-economic class, really weirdos are everywhere if you know that they important and you need to seek them out.
• give up trying to do the big important thing and just take the pressure off of yourself by thinking about how to live without ever doing or having the big important thing ever, in my case, I gave up on girlfriends and then the next month Rachel asked me out, that's a long story too. It's like giving up looking for something and BAM there it is buddy. Stop looking, it's somewhere that will find you in good time, when IT wants to find you, not when YOU are the most anxious.
• it's usually a good idea to have no expectations or the greatest expectations, it's also good to be skeptical of comfort. On a street smarts level, do you ever wonder why certain people have been mugged and others haven't? Being able to be aware is a skill. It has a lot of complexity. for example, how do you know when you are 'not doing anything' because you are a procrastinating perfectionist and when it's because you need a break and need time to refocus? Many 'successful' people take calculated risks, but I don't know if we really expect that everything is going to work out all of the time. I believe we just work through the discomfort knowing there will be something to be gained even if we don't understand it at the moment and it takes a certain level of awareness to accept and deal with whatever comes.
• live the kind of life that makes you feel ridiculously lucky to be alive here and now, because it's half true, your luck, is another way of saying that you are privileged. It's something that everyone needs to admit, not just because you probably don't realize how your sweet little life is built on the sweat of other people, but maybe it will also give you a good reason to go and volunteer somewhere or do something that means that you are thinking of other people first.
• everything has a balance, if you feel sad, but you're not sad about being sad, then you're secretly content about it because you probably need to feel sad, you were feeling happy yesterday so it would make sense if you weren't happy the next day or the day before that. which also means that if you are about to do something AWESOME you are also on the brink of total collapse and deep personal failure. unless you're not as dramatic as some people, like me.
• less options means greater more efficient creativity, but vast options may mean more diversity in the process

as an aside, this is my STUCK LIST, so when I go into fight/flight mode or something like that, I have something to refer to. Yes, this word for word is actually behind my computer for when I get depressed or don't know what to do with myself.

1. get AWAY from the internet. Away...
2. Pick 1 thing to do in an arranged list of would do, could do and should do (see bottom)
3. Have you checked/made your to-do list for today? (see bottom)
4. Suck it up and just clean up after yourself.
5. Some of your best work comes from wasting time artistically!
6. Make food for the next 2 days
7. Call a friend to hang out (use it as an excuse to dress up)
8. Go somewhere via your bike
9. Write a thank you / a note reminding a friend that it has come to your attention that a mutual forgetfulness about the friendship has occurred and can and needs to be corrected.
10. Go 100% in the wrong direction, hit bottom

I later added this addendum

        11. Caffeine

Stuff that other people told me that are good ideas that I'm sure helped

• know thyself, be true to thyself, accept your fate
• writing down my goals on paper no matter how ridiculous, tell everyone your goals
• fake it until you make it (someone else said there's a better term for it called a 'state of becoming'
• love what you do and try to figure out how to get other people to pay for it
• fear based decisions are usually bad
• trust your instincts
• know your audience

Ok now that you've suffered through reading all of that, here's way more tangible stuff that I did when applying for the kresge fellowship:

•  I took a whole month off to 'freakout' about the application, I went to the FAQ, I went to a free grant writing workshop and I also made a list of who I needed to contact wayyy before I had to think about when I would submit it. I also told everyone that this was my future, and I had no other plans so um... I guess I only took this leap of faith because I knew I had some stuff to fall back on, i.e. teaching certification, working promotions, having parents that wouldn't let me be homeless if it got really bad. 
• experts exist, you're not one of them, but that's totally alright, because you can surround yourself with smart people and that's a smart thing to do! I had 5 different people read my artist narrative (I'm probably going to share it with good friends, not strangers sorry) and made the best of my contacts that I had access to, at the time I was interning at MOCAD so I had a friend who wrote grants take a glance at it even though he really didn't have any time, so I made sure that he'd be the very last person to read it. I technically felt like I had a full finished draft 5 times, completely convinced each time that I was done with it and no more could be altered.
• In order to cheaply find out if my digital colors of my images were correct I uploaded all of my work onto my website and asked people with different monitors, some expensive, some cheap to open up my website so I could see how it looked. I then wrote down notes like not contrasty enough or too blue and would make my image to be in the middle of all of those monitors.
• All grant writing is restating that they are looking for X,Y,Z and you need to just be clear and direct and state how you do X, Y, Z and are the perfect applicant!
• Do an art show before you even apply, that way you can think about all of your work in context of something more specific and really nail your artist statement and NOT do it last.

notes about how I use it (as copied from e-mails sent to other people):

explanation number 1 - first I separate everything i know that need to do into would could should, but it's a good idea to prioritize each list, overall I only expect myself to get 1 item accomplished in each list a day.

secondly I write all the distractions I know I enjoy doing in the rewards section and then figure out if any of them could be an appropriate reward for something I wrote in the Should column, whatever isn't already paired up in the should column, I try to come up with a fitting large enough reward.

explanation number 2 - 

Every morning I print this little dude out and I organize everything I can think of into could do, should do and would do.

If I know I'm going to do it anyways, I put it into would do, If I'm avoiding stuff, that definetely goes into the "should do" and lastly everything in the "could do" is like a brainstorming list for working smarter instead of harder. I prioritize what's the most important in each category, because if you do the list honestly, you should be able to do 1 thing in each category a day and feel pretty damn good about yourself. What helps even more is that each item in the should do list needs to be paired with an equally appropriate reward whether it means taking a walk, calling a friend or treating yourself to a nice meal out in a new restaurant. 

I'm still not sure why everything works so well for me, but I know that I found a system that works for me.

I use it to 

A. help put things in perspective

B. prioritize my time better 

C. keep myself from procrastinating

D. feel accomplished

This form of organization came from 3 combined sources: the creative capital workshops worksheet on rewards, Cezanne Charles' suggestion of would,could,should and advice from a friend to keep a to-do list. It was 'photoshopped' from a very pretty to-do list that I found at the Bureau of Urban Living. I even photoshopped out the quote and put in my own!

(Also this form is what I want to make an app for myself so that I don't have to print one off every day. If anyone knows how to make apps LET ME KNOW!)

Thinking about the power of images today... after a lack of sleep

Ever feel a little loopy on a mere 4 hours of sleep? At the same time does it seem to give a kind of ability to dance on the surface of reality, as if having slightly more perspective on the hard work and lifestyle choice that gave you those mere 4 hours?

Today I was enjoying that encompassing fuzzy feeling and realizing how much I really love when I look at images from the past and think to myself, I have never seen this before. This picture in front of me is completely new to me. Just when I think that I know where I'm going, I realize I still have very little idea about history. Well, maybe this is more novel to me because I have this theory that everything we need to know we already know, we just have to remember.

So specifically what brought me to these revelations of realizing how vast what I don't know is even in such an age of information?

I am not embarrassed to say, Sister Wendy's the history of painting, a picture in the New York Times of the  the Magna Carta and of course any conversation with Rachel pertaining to how much fun she's learning about stuff to teach her kids, errr students.

Like bonobos and their GG rubbing.

Geez, life is weird.

My favorite subject as usual: happiness

I imagine that the work I will be doing in grad school will have a great deal with thinking about happiness, perhaps how it relates to occupations, learning, perhaps how we run public schools, but on the most part, I think I want to be happy while making work that may be about that issue as well. What form does the work take on then?

On NPR, the BBC version I was hearing about the happiness formula and on the whole how being richer doesn't make one closer to happiness and it may have been a mistake to consider GDP and other economic factors as a part of fulfillment. I've always appreciated learning about 'flow' but I also was having some caffeine and realized that that's all I need to at times feel... a lot better.

There were some other striking moments in the happiness special on the radio, one being the origin of the word happiness with it's two meanings, one being contentment, say after a long day of work, and another being related to happenstance, or luck. It went on to describe that particular form of happiness needed an appropriate trigger of risk, and if it worked out, you could be considered happy, and if it didn't, you would be unlucky and unhappy.

It also went into Ben Franklin's 13 virtues which coincidentally went against much of what is considered normal to other Americans my age, be sincere, avoid multitasking, everything in moderation, avoid uncivil tense talk, when you need to work, work... those kinds of things.

The host also brought up some great points as well against the optimist in me, describing how it is usually those with great jobs that seem to find people that find contentment in their menial job however the way that we ask someone in the service of us is entirely patronizing and we are in a great meaningful position to look down from at others doing jobs that are done for other reasons that are not solely in terms of the pursuit of happiness but actually to possibly set a good example for their children or because they are left with no other options.

I was also very interested in how it described how a money = happiness model has turned schools into a bland workforce and how many changes in happiness would require a different kind of togetherness that looked towards our communities strengths as opposed to sitting pretty in our individual homes... I feel like I've always been on to something, but I can't figure out when it occurred to me that the most rewarding life is one where I tire myself out when trying to prove something to myself, surprises along the way of mundane assignments, or the idea that I could learn without being in school and it being an exciting thing to have more there is to learn... If I uncover those stories of mine, I may be a little closer to creating that work I've always been interested in making.