Portrait by Jennie Ottinger

Shadow Portrait by Jennifer O’Keeffe, Bessma Khalaf, Forest Kelley and Sean McFarland

First Entry

I have decided to take up blogging as a form and formality to define and refine my character and temperament and present it to my known and unknown audience.

It will be an ongoing commentary with regular entries of thoughts and commotions.

YOGA JOKE

Most folks give up on their new years resolutions by February but, because I am a stick-to-it kind of person…when I commit…it is for good. This year I decided it would be the year of the joke,  that by years end I would memorize and enact a standup comic routine. I started out with a bang at the CIIS Breakfast for the Soul, where I told a joke and publicly pronounced my promise.

When I embarked on this project, I had no idea how hard it would be. But, as the year progressed, I realized that I was in over my head. I spent long hours Googling for jokes. I studied philosophy books searching for the deeper meaning of humor.

For our reading group I suggested we read Aristophanes, The Birds, hoping to be inspired by a little ancient humor…in fact, it’s the first comedy ever recorded…

For litquake, popular writers from the San Francisco Chronicle enacted skits and sketches, read short works to an adoring audience at a crowded bar in the Mission District. Don Asmussen told a story about how he frequently received complaints from readers protesting that too often his comic strip characters look too Jewish. As he bantered, he sketched an impromptu torso then had a person from the audience complete the drawing. The obvious, of course, was the addition of a penis. As soon as it was finished, I blurted out…”looks Jewish to me.” It seemed blatantly obvious and even more obvious that I gave out the shout…especially given my growing humor confidence. 

So this morning when Tony described a woman who was recalcitrant about widening her stance when he asked her to stand hip width (she continued to minimizing her perception of the width of her hips). An appropriate joke came to mind and although I was scared, I was compelled with a “now or never” feeling.

The class is always in awe of Tony. I can never remember any student ever telling a joke…although Tony has a continuous line of humorous banter to distract us from the pain of the poses.

“I have a joke,” I proclaimed.

There was a hush, a stunned silence in the room. How could anyone be so impudent as to suggest a joke?

Tony nodded his head permitting me to proceed.

“What did one Chromosome say to the other?

Pause…I look directly into Tony’s eyes…and shrugged.

“Do these jeans make my butt look fat?”

Laughter. There was lots of laughter.

I could not believe my boldness. And, I could not believe that I got it right. Even the pause and the shrug were perfect.

 

Emboldened by my success, I decided to take every appropriate opportunity to tell a joke.

And so….there was the joke for Thanksgiving dinner toast:

“Why did the turkey cross the road?

I don’t remember.

Let’s eat!”

And then the next night, at Walzwerk, for Richard’s 60^th birthday party,

“Since most of you probably don’t remember my joke from last night, I will tell a new one.

When a couple (he is 60, she is almost) was having trouble with their memory, they consulted with their doctor. He suggested that they write everything down. Make a list.

In the night she wakes up and asks him to bring her a bowl of ice cream.

Do you think I should write it down?

No, you should be able to remember that.

He comes back with two eggs over easy.

She asks, ‘Where’s my toast?’ ”

Finally, feeling at wits end, in the last days of the year of the joke, wondering if or how I was going to fulfill my commitment to enact a comedy routine, at the Miami Art Fair, standing in front of a Ronald Davis painting, I told a joke to Shannon from Art Forum magazine. When she laughed, she really laughed, I knew that I had done what I had set out to do… to tell a joke and to have someone laugh. Plus, I gained a double bonus.  I had completed my performance at the Miami Art Fair… I am now a comic AND an artist. 

A struggling artist is finally having a show in a blue chip gallery. He asks the gallery owner if there had been any interest in his work. "I have good news and bad news," the gallerist replied. "The good news is that a collector inquired about your work and wondered if it would appreciate in value after your death. When I told him it would, he bought the entire show."

"That's wonderful," the artist exclaimed. "What's the bad news?"

"The guy was your doctor..."

Pure Puri

 In Tokyo, there are shops where hundreds of trading-card photographs of j-pop “idols” are displayed hung in plastic sleeves. These shops are filled with teen girls searching for images of their favorite group or singular star. The cards are coveted; collected in special scrap books.  

There are huge amusement arcades with computer games and with "Puri-Kura,” computer photo booths, that for 300 yen (@ $3.00), offer sheets of photographs that can be digitally decorated with fancy frames and borders. As you stand in front of a video monitor which shows your face, loud teeny-bob music blares and lights flash while a high pitched female voice calls out. Your portrait can be embellished with a variety of effects: glitter text, cascading hearts, playful kittens, and rainbow colorful backgrounds. Then, in about a minute, the machine prints out a sheet. The small photos are used for personal introductions, posted as surprise impromptu visages on power poles, and eagerly traded.

Marc De Ansar was enthralled by the Puri-Kura and spent many happy hours adding to his repertoire of postures and pronouncements. He liked the idea of the “idol” and thought that he should display himself as such. 

Nine Years, Nine Lives

  

Elements 1 a CalArts alumni exhibition at the Presidio in San Francisco, in an alcove I mounted Nine Years, Nine Lives a pop-up featuring artifacts from Making Marc 1996-2021 an in-process longitudinal portrait study. I presented four painting variations from photo booth pics, a portrait collage composed of beach plastic, my first watercolor portrait, a grouping of Marc postcards, a vitrine with Marc’s boxing jacket and gloves with screen saves from his video Punch Out where, in a gesture to fight the hyperventilated prose of artspeak, he punches out all obtuse villainous phrases: https://youtu.be/Ia07b8TG6TI

To invite visitor participation, a red bench was set with nose and glasses so people could try on the guise. Although the exhibit was small, it was a great way to introduce my project that I had, by then, been working on for 9 years.

Mark Book Marked

The text of Mark Book Marked was extrapolated from ZYZZYVA magazine. Key words from the original text were selected; all others were whited out. The remaining "found" story became the musings of theoretical artist and postmodern alter-ego, Marc De Ansar.

This work was created in a slow and intuitive way. Every day for months, I would focus on a page and wait until the words "spoke" to me. Then, I would carefully and laboriously paint the paper white; leaving the selected words present.

There is a randomness and a resonance with the phrases that became the narrative line. Although there is a sense of a sequence and order, there is no singular meaning. It is to the reader to form an independent interpretation out of the linguistic promiscuousness of the text.

Marc De Ansar is the posied result of my search for an expanded identity. Through his character, I am creating a persona through whom I can write and speak a different voice.