The Texture & Specificity of Life

City Roots: Empire, graphite on maple, 10.5 x 18 inches, for sale  

This blog used to be called "Labor Interests: Notes on a Process".  It was a document recording my naive, absurd, beautifully desperate attempt to move to the city and be an artist.  That experiment coincided gorgeously with the great recession and though sales were brisk at first, prices were low, rent was high, I worked in the trades to pay he bills as a carpenter and handyman, and by 2011 I was so thoroughly wiped out from working sixty + hour weeks, 40 doing construction and 20-40 in studio/office/freelance/showings that I decided to fold up shop and beat a retreat back down to the Central California Coast, where my mother's people are from.  About that time I changed the name of this blog to "Trying to be a Tree". Art/Life In February of 2012 I ruptured two discs in my lower back.  In the 18 months since I have done the best I could to stay productive while dealing with crippling pain on a daily basis. I am thirty two years old and live on my grandmother...