I have a copy of this book by Joe Fig that I like to thumb through when I'm stuck. He has published a collection of interviews and photographs of artists he has interviewed in their studio, "-from a 2003 interview with Dana Schultz to the one with the eighty-four year old veteran Philip Pearlstein." I like to look through it because I get sucked in instantly to part of an interview with someone, and when I realized I've finished the interview, I get the feeling that I just received a painting pep talk. I also like to look at their spaces, to see how they arrange items in their studios and to be reassured about my own disaster area.

The summer before this past one, I attended the a summer painting program Tyler and there was a girl there named Baylee who was making ptgs about chemically manipulating acrylic paint. She would make puddles with water and add salt, ink, rubbing alcohol, etc to the paint and they would push and pull against each other and crystalize and bead up differently on the types of paper she'd use... I'm thinking about this because it reminds me of my experiments in watercolor monoprints and dyeing paper with food dye in the last print class I took, and I think I'd like to try to expand on them.

Also last summer, my Daddy and I were working on my car, and trying to fix some minor problems with found objects - it was a complete bust, in case your curious. At any rate, he was telling me how during the Depression, my Grandad needed a two car garage, but could only afford a one car garage. "So he bought the one car garage, cut it in half, walked the two halves away from each other until he had a footprint for a two car garage, and put a roof over the space in between." That pretty much blew me away. I've always admired my Daddy for being able to build and fix and problem solve and invent his way out of problems, but I remember he made the joke, "What would Grandad do?" to say that this is where he gets his inspiration.