No. 54 – The Monster is Hangry
and a blast from the past
Welcome to the latest issue of Feed the Monster: a monthly art journal for creative, curious, imperfect and sometimes disheveled humans.
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This post is an “archive dive” back to September 2019. It’s called Souvenirs du Jour, and it goes something like this:
This is a cloth doll I bought on Main Street when I first moved to Vancouver in 1981. Main Street was not hip at the time, but was lined with assorted junk and thrift stores that would get my heart racing with the thrill of the hunt.
I was a rank idiot at the time. I was staying with a cousin and her husband tiI I moved in with my friend Neil, and while dancing alone in their living room like the hippy fool I was, I knocked a ceramic piece off the mantel, smashing it. I put the pieces in a paper bag and left it on the mantel for them to find, whether from embarrassment or because I simply forgot I don't remember. Eventually my cousin mentioned it: the ceramic piece had been an anniversary present with sentimental value. Ouch. I still feel the shame of that youthful boner move.
The doll is nestled in a faded, once-red muslin scarf that I brought home from Morocco for Neil in 1983, and which he wore around his neck for years and years. Possibly until the day he died, but I couldn't say for sure because even the most important details start to disappear when you reach a certain age and your brain begins to over-flow from too many memories. I only know that far from being "mere", objects like this scarf hold deep significance—I touched that scarf just now and tears rose to my eyes. Neil is in there. I seem to remember that he liked this doll of mine, too.
A certain pre-teen told me not long ago that "her mother did important work", and I can’t stop thinking about it. Firstly because I'm pretty sure she didn't come up with that on her own—her mother has surely made it clear that she does important work. Secondly because it begs the question, what is "important work"?
—I was a retail clerk the better part of my adult life... not very important.
—The artwork I produce does not exactly have a global reach... not very important.
—I run the office and do the bookkeeping for my husband's house-painting company... not very important.
I should probably be put down... I'm not doing anything important, and I'm not helping anyone in any practical way.
AM I RIGHT?
Yet I usually feel okay about myself... barring those days when I don't. Over-all I feel that I have the right to be here. That I have value, and have something to offer. That I’m important at least to some. I feel in fact that learning to understand, accept and openly reveal exactly who I am—in all my unimportant imperfection—can potentially give the green light to those around me that they can do the same. It might be the most important work I can do.
Addendum to the archive dive: Wow, I didn’t realize what an ongoing theme this has been… this business of wantonly revealing my imperfection. I guess I’ve really been leaning into it! When I came to write this post I saw I’d recently changed my one-line description to “Welcome to the latest issue of Feed the Monster, a monthly art practice journal for imperfect humans” (adding the “imperfect humans” part)… I don’t remember doing that. Perhaps I doth protest too much? Perhaps what this really means is that I am, in fact, perfect? Food for thought…
David M., 2019
Here’s a portrait of a lively young fellow I got to hang out with (along with his parents) in Amsterdam last year. It was painted in ink on glossy photo paper, which accounts for both the crazy effects and the impossibility of total control of the results. I usually like having both when painting portraits—lack of control where it "doesn't matter" and I can have fun, but control in the face so I can lose my mind attempting to capture an exact likeness. That wasn't 100% possible here, which I think was the point in using photo paper—ink is pretty hard to manage on the slippery surface. It forces me out of my obsessiveness… it forces me to let go before I lose my mind.
Thanks for reading my old, used words! It’s been a wacky, intense summer. My show Life’s Work: A Visual Memoir at the Victoria Arts Council opened in June, fourteen wonderful Danish relatives visited in July along with my daughter and her boyfriend, and some significant restructuring in our small business has us on our toes. I haven’t made any artwork since early May, which is starting to feel downright unhealthy. The Monster needs feeding something awful.
Long live the Monster!
All to say that I wasn’t able to attend to Feed the Monster this month, which is why you’re getting this blast from the past. Please find it in your heart to forgive.
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…except I find your work important. It’s important to me.
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No words. Just amazing.
Xo SR