.carolinecblaker.

Volcanoes and the Christmas Spirit

In: Conceptual Art, Studio

Somewhere in this dusty, rocky outcrop of a city, Christmas is finding me, despite myself.

While Christmas is firmly rooted in my upbringing, I left it at home years ago. This was a solution to the stress of the holiday, and in some extreme fashion, an opportunity to reinvent the holiday and other associated events, stresses, opinions, and griefs. It was one of several items like it that was too cloudy to enjoy, too gilded to love, too wonderful to forget. Christmas mostly used to happen at my home in Southport. There was one year where it happened in my loft in St. Louis, but that was two left feet short of a disaster. Some of those weren't perfect either, like the one where the holiday shopping communication had apparently fallen to an all-time low and the gifts were so mis-appropriated that it embarrassed everyone, particularly my lil sister who drew the short end of the stick. In my early years after leaving home, being poor and having a good, hard look at materialism, Christmas and all of its seasonal eccentricities and ridiculous expectations were decidedly OUT. I did not need it, and I would not borrow it from anyone - my family, corporations, and religion all included.

Having no money to …

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Reflections on a Painting

In: Conceptual Art, Conceptual Art Examples, Studio

One sign of up and coming success is watching the earliest and most earnest of work be appreciated with unprecedented focus.

I feel both grateful and melancholy to think about one of my very first babies flying the coop to go back home to St. Louis and live with its very first and most devout fan, a lovely woman who has been tracking it for three years. Since the time of our first communication, I have moved to two different states, learned focus in the studio, and slugged around these huge paintings of my early career with me - changing their dressings periodically (really - the plaster "framing" around the edges) making sure they are always hung straight and look their best. An effort like this is not unlike raising heavy, bulky children with needs for maintenance as well as their creators personal growth and expansion of audience and capability, not to mention the drive to continue and finish and start over each effort without reinforcement from the world and without any good reason to keep going.

The departure of Reflections …

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St.. Albuquerque?

In: Studio

St. Louis peeks at me through Albuquerque's eyes sometimes, and I wonder - is this a second chance?

I caught myself yesterday, suddenly, thinking that Albuquerque should really be the sister-city of St. Louis -well, retrospectively thinking, maybe the “brother city” or the “husband city” for Albuquerque’s distinctive masculine flavor, with its brash heat, strident dry wind, and flora as delicate and colorful as it is guarded and tough to pick. Still, I’m not quite sure what it is, whether it be the tiny downtown with its cluster of high-rise buildings in the distant vista, or the throngs of mediocre vehicles that take to the road at the same time in the late afternoon, the low horizon line, or the cute black guys driving hoopties with pretty wheels. Or maybe it’s just that its the the second “B-rated” city I’ve lived in, and I have unfinished business in such a place.
The experiences of both cities might not be so similar, if my experiences of them had not begun in such similar manners and progressed so closely. I recently arrived from Vail Colorado, where the pervasive elitism of the area could do nothing to keep away individuals with nothing but a desire for gravity snow sports- thus evolving the two dramatically divided populations surviving one on the …

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