Blog & website

I hope to keep this blog updated but we'll see how I do.
Otherwise check out my website: lexyeich.weebly.com
It's. very pretty.

5 year plan

Since I am about a week away from my BFA show and I am hating art at the moment, my five year plan consists more of taking a break. After I graduate SNC I hope to get a job as some kind of literary review editor. I already have some experience in that area and it was a lot of fun. During or after that I plan to move to one of the Carolinas. I have never been to the east coast and have always planned to move there sometime after I graduation. After I get sick of the east coast and miss my family, roughly five years later, I would move back to the west coast. Hopefully then I will be back in the art-making mode and I will move to San Francisco. There I will attend the University of San Francisco and get my MFA in Creative Writing and will do my other art on the side. 

This may or may not change the week after my BFA show when my brain begins functioning again. 

Artist statements

G: Jared Sprecher: http://www.jeredsprecher.com/index.html

I am a hunter and a gatherer, constantly accumulating images produced by the people and cultures around me. Segments of this collection of images then emerge in my paintings. My work shows images that are revealed as fragments in the midst of change, destruction, redefinition, and restoration. The sources they are drawn from are changing and evolving and the paintings are caught in that “still” moment of change. Today as the exchange of information increases on a daily basis, it becomes more difficult to trace the heredity of images. One is seldom afforded the time to begin to understand what one is viewing before the image has moved on and evolved. It is out of this fast paced exchange that I extract elements that resonate with a sense of vital meaning. I seek to use this wide language of visual marks and notations to describe that which humanity has in common, be it humor, mortality, or yearning to understand what is beyond.

My work is based in an eclectic aesthetic. My paintings extract elements from the high and low of visual culture. This culture and crush of images is in constant flux. My paintings hold no single allegiance, but are constantly shifting from one form of representation to another. The paintings function as sources of both inductive and deductive image making processes. In our day-to-day life, one is seldom afforded the time to comprehend what one is viewing under the barrage of images produced by humankind. I try to grasp a single moment, a glance, a small epiphany. The paintings are haptic documents of everything and nothing.

B: Amy Ellingson: http://amyellingson.com/

My work exaggerates the dichotomy between digital rendering processes and traditional
painting methodologies. All of my imagery, whether geometrically intact or abstracted and
chaotic, is comprised of a vocabulary of very simple forms that are digitally manipulated.
The paintings consist of many interrelated layers of repeating geometric forms–straight
lines and arcs, primarily–that I compose on the computer. I replicate these basic elements
into an increasingly complex field that I then render in discreet layers of oil and encaustic
paint. Using ephemeral, computer-generated images exclusively as my source material, I
create paintings that physically assert themselves through the materiality and permanence
of historical painting media. The translation from the virtual to the real is paramount.

 
My interests lie in the practices of formal repetition, variation and mutation within limited
serial networks. The works are created through a series of steps intended to conflate the
systemic and the gestural. Working within a self-reflexive system–borrowing, distorting,
manipulating, copying and pasting, re-contextualizing–I am able to create a personal lan-
guage that is hermetic, yet flexible and mutable. Digital tools enable me to develop a vo-
cabulary of forms that are used, grabbed, reused, and manipulated beyond recognition,
resulting in a signature vernacular of marks that are predetermined via digital processing.

New poem

I'm taking the hospital and ocean poem out of my show and adding this one instead.


her thighs stick
to the seat
the summer heat
velcro when she
straightens up for you
complimentary smiles 
mask an acute urge
oxygened balloons
behind her teeth
begging for sky
for complimentary introductions


they almost made it
by the way

TLC's Hoarders submission

Kath wanted pictures of my room. I'm sorta messy & can't get rid of anything.

Show poems

Why I Can't Sing to You

they stare forgivingly

growing faint

that feeling you slipped about her

my disposition to nervous laughter

worn-out pages of exhausted excuses

free-falling face down 

the obsession of wordless songs 

and the overwhelming traces of our choices

drowning each lobe

parallel figures white flags 

and she wishes there were lyrics to sing to

[no title]

your eyes can't help but close

they've left us in this room alone

your bed is stiff

don't struggle to move for me; I'll fit

each breath brings 

this overactive nausea

closer to my mouth

I convince myself I smell

your high school cologne

July heated pavements on our backs

a kiss in Zippo-lit garage corners

this time I wish your mom would walk in on us

your words blocked 

by a deafening rattling in your lungs

my words blocked

choking cowardice

so I run most fingertips

back & forth on your knee

hoping it will pinken

ignoring its resemblance to my bent elbow

wake up, wake up

I'm enveloped in lines of panic

trying to make up for the last 1,384 days

and I breath so deeply

I break through all fabricated familiarities

the smell of 

empty Kleenex boxes

monitored room-temperatures

bleach white pillows

enables instant paralysis

I silently plead

wake up, wake up

so I can continue to not say a word to you

Taking Pictures at the Ocean

with each step we take

two to your one

grinding salt and sand

I wonder if you're thinking

about the space between your toes

I try to fill the empty space 

between my first two toes 

clenching them tight 

forcing closure to this humanly void

the first overlapping 

strangling the second

because the phantoms between

remind me too much 

of the lack of us

Wrong Turn

slick fingers 

retreat through yours

to race to her mouth
to tear at the anxiously red bits
of her bottom lip
your questioning fingers are rough
strangling hers again
if those knuckles were necks
they’d go limp
you’re trying to manufacture
a sense of security
she feels your heartbeat against my pinned wrist
You’re feeling my pulse, not my heartbeat. 
her pulse buried itself
behind both eardrums
banging on it
begging to it
spelling out arbitrary words
and she’d choke on her own breath
if it wasn’t holding those words back

Are you sure we’re here? 

Appointments

“She”

the name casually assigned

by your shrink

twice a week

this damaging orange bottle

chemical assurance 

why you've been placed

in this morbidly tidy space

for the last 42 minutes

two undiagnosed 

broken right hands

two unhinged

broken bedroom doors

two less-than mutual

mutual separations 

one bottom-heavy list of

things thrown against a wall

defense mechanisms 

against retaliation

her tears, your targets

and any chance of a clinically

healthy approach at intimacy

for either of you

suffocating under the debris

“She” 

doubles-up on
her daily face

but she doesn't have to come here

Shoot-out

she cries just to calm you down

displacing worry about your grip

that chair clearly aimed for

wreckage or her dropping jaw

she begins to shake

the buckles on her boots echoing her movements

she's wearing weathered cowboy boots

the spurs fall silent

she doesn't shoot

but you fall to the ground

pray you never get your hands on a gun again

[no title]

it lines

her teeth

her mouth

her tongue

tipping the 

crest 

of her 

top lip

when she 

tells you

her name

Lace. Balloon. Vaseline. Wheat Paste.

Lace balloons. They came to me in a dream. True story.

Show card?

Outdoor response shenanigans

For a visiting artist class we were supposed to bring a personal shoe box sized object out to the beach with us. With that object we were supposed to incorporate it into a piece made from nature. Of course I brought my music box.

Make-up painting #1

I've been painting on glass using only make-up donated to me from friends and family. When I paint with their make-up I'm thinking of them but also thinking about myself and women in general. I see the paintings as self-portraits, like my poetry, of myself and how I view "girl culture."

BFA photos

Here are some photos that might be going into my show along with the poetry. The photos speak to the poetry but also experiences attached to the poetry. They're meant to act as my leftover thoughts regarding what is being revealed in the poems or part of their inspiration.

.

Moving my room studio..

..to my actual studio.

Yay art supplies!

Fake Rocks & Botox II

After the show on Thursday, I can honestly say I'm nervous, but relieved about post-undergrad art-making. The work that they have been producing was wonderful. Such a wide range of skill sets were shown. It was the talk that really got my brain going, though. It was nice to hear that the artists had gone in all different directions after graduation. I was intrigued to hear that a couple hadn't even made it to grad school, though they hoped to possibly. I go back and forth on whether or not to pursue grad school so I was relieved to hear that those artists hadn't yet gone back. One of the women who went to grad school was talking about not being able to attend her last month and how much the faculty worked with her to ensure she finished. I guess I always thought teachers cared less once you got to that level so it is reassuring to hear that they still do care.
The part of the talk that made me nervous was that they had trouble finding the time, energy, and money to keep making work.  There seemed to be varying answers for the four present artists. For one, she makes art during "nap-time" and teaches classes in her garage so it seemed as though she fits art in everyday. Babs, on the other hand, struggled to make work. She had only made one sculpture since she graduated in 2010. She also said she was primarily working digitally because  it's cheaper and quicker for her. It seems like it takes time to find that balance needed to make work on a regular basis. I suppose there is a lot more to consider than I realized for post-grad art life.

More work in progress.

Self-portrait.
Painted with make-up.

Work in progress.

Studio assignment.

1. Why do you make art?
I make art because I have always liked being able to express myself with more than just words. Even with my poetry, which is words obviously, it goes beyond just sentences. Art is an escape from the norm.

2. What is the function or role of an artist in today's culture? (This is your personal take on this, it doesn't have to be an "objective" or comprehensive analysis) I think the role of today's artists are to push people further into realizing the potential of their minds. I think being able to interpret and see something in an image is an important skill that everyone should have. I also think that the role of some artists is just to make pretty-looking things, though.

3. Who are three working artists you can think of, who you might contact to interview about their professional lives? You will only be contacting one, but I want you to have a couple fallback options if your first couple choices end up being unavailable. Brian Turner, Eleanor Brennan, and the curator of Artsy Fartsy Gallery (I'm still trying to find his name).