giant steps

I knew an art teacher when I was sixteen, named Mr. Mulford.
He wasn't really my art teacher, but most of my friends took his classes, so I spent a lot of unaccounted-for time in his room during my Junior year.  He was already an older man by the time I met him, somewhere in his sixties, and had an air of knowing about him, like he came from way outside of the world we knew him within.  He had pieces in art books that also contained the work of notable artists, like Rauschenberg and Johns.  This was very impressive to the likes of us Art Room teens, who had the bare minimum of disdain for our immediate surroundings and soaked up every bit of Different we could get our grubby, acrylic paint-stained hands on.  

Mulford took a special interest in me, and was constantly slipping me brochures to art colleges, like Massachusetts College of Art, or Rhode Island School of Design, when my friends weren't looking.  I would laugh and take them, and they'd live at the bottom of my bag for the next six months.   I didn't understand it.  I was a musician.  I came from a long line of musicians, and there was nothing more to say about it.  Art was a whole other planet, which I admired from afar.  He'd call me up to the front of his classroom, with a big, angry voice that was heavily soaked in humor, by saying, "Lady Miss Buick, GIANT STEPS".  And he would ask about whether or not I'd looked at the pamphlets about art school.

I didn't go to college right away. I took two years off after high school, to figure it all out.  I lived with my brother, and we started a band called 33 Slade with our pal Levi.  I started school when I was twenty, at Massachusetts College of Art (aka "Mass Art"). He was right, I did have it in me.  How he saw it, I'll never really know.  For as musical as I've always been, the visually creative part of me is just as present.  If I hadn't gone to art school, I would have become a very different person.  Today, I make concept albums, with strong themes in both the music and the accompanying visuals.   I'm asked about my work all the time, especially now, with the release of Family Album so close, and I know how to speak about my work... Because I went to art school.

In the immediate reality, I am spending this week working on all of my current projects.  The layout for Family Album is in it's final stages of tweaks and microscopic adjustments.  I can't wait for you all to see it.   My friend Ric Simenson has taken such care with it, you would think that it was his own family in the photos.  Absolutely beautiful.  We have one more tiny thing to add to the front cover, and some dull things like bar codes and label logos for the back yet, but, we're close.  

The website is in formative stages, and I have been hustling to provide all of the relevant content to the very talented woman who is building it. That is no joke, website building.  Yikes.  It's all I can to do keep up.  

Lastly, covered in polka-dots and gum drops: The Video.  I just spent a week in New York, and had the great pleasure of meeting up with the Gang of Awesome that I'm working with on that venture.  They had some great ideas, I threw my notes in, and we made a plan.  We're shooting in Nashville the last weekend in February, at a bunch of locations that are near and dear to my heart.  I'm trying to round up as much of The Family as I can, as it's their album.  I was just the vehicle.  We need to raise some very real money for the project, and will be doing so through the website kickstarter.com, as well as some shows and other creative outlets.  I will post it all here as soon as we get the pitch video for the website made.  It's in process as I write this, thanks to Jennifer Moore at ByrdBarlage.

So here it is, where the wheels meet the road.
I'm operating from a series of lists that are all part of a larger list, and though it makes me lose my breath and get on my knees once in a while, I really am amazed and grateful.  I've been busy for 25 years... But, right now, I'm busy with my own art, and trying to match the pace of the gifted and generous folks who seem to believe in it as much as I do.  When it seems bigger than me, or too fast to run alongside, I hear Mulford saying, "GIANT STEPS", and I get it together.  He was right back then, and he's right today.  I don't know everything about who I am and what I will do.  It's unfolding as I go, and I get to learn along the way.  It's a wonderful thing.
 
Thanks for listening.
xo, bu