Following the initial request I made for them to be sent last Tuesday, the Metrocards finally arrived in the mailbox Monday afternoon. It’s weird, too. As I’ve said, I initially hadn’t planned to participate. JP called a few weekends ago asking if he should send anything, and I pretty much responded with a flat “not interested.” I was a bit more tactful than that, but I believe that’s more or less what he heard. After a months’ long period of steady studio activity last year, it’s been an equally long or longer period of inactivity since, and that’s been okay with me. I haven’t even been thinking about painting, and really, I find that to be a relatively healthy place for me to be a lot of the time, i.e., the place where I can pass by my painting supplies daily, multiple times a day, without feeling the persistent, dull ache of regret.
I don’t know if I can put my finger on what it was that pushed me to recant and ask for the cards in the first place. I still hadn’t really been thinking about painting. I hadn’t suddenly taken up a sketchbook again. My head was not heavy with the weight of images needing to be released into the world. Even as I asked him, I’m not at all sure if I actually wanted JP to send them along, or if I was just saw the request as a friendly gesture (he found my earlier lack of motivation depressing). Still, as the days passed, I found myself growing more and more impatient for their arrival, so much so that I was even a bit distressed when I went to the mailbox on Saturday only to return with two (yes TWO!) Pottery Barn catalogues and nothing else.
In any case, the wait is over. The cards are here. JP sent two last year. This year there are five. It’s a dare. If he were really my friend, I'm not sure he would dare me to do these kinds of things. Anyway, started in on a couple of them yesterday. So far so good. And that's part of what worries me.
More later.
2 comments:
Any advice on how to prime these? I'm trying to decide between a spray plastic primer or gesso. I've heard the gesso may not adhere to this kind of surface though.
Sorry, comments don't show up in my email, so I didn't see this until today. Last year, I went the "traditional" acrylic "gesso" primer (those quotes are for Mark Gottsegen, who was one of my instructors in undergrad and disapproves of calling acrylic primer by the G word). Anyway, this year I went with the spray primer. Both seem to work fine, provided that you give the card a light sand prior to applying the primer. If you don't sand it, you will have trouble getting it to adhere properly.
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