Next?

Next?

Well, Chuck is done. Chuck was the longest and hardest piece I ever made and it is complete and on display. The Magnan opening is over. The show is still up, but I don’t need to do anything more until the closing. I have been so busy with my work for so long now. But now, the hard part is over, leaving a huge void. I have no main projects, just things I was working on before Chuck took over my studio. So the big question is: what’s next?

I have begun to work on older projects again. I have taken out my portrait of Noel Heberling and my portrait of Mary Boone. I would like to finish those, but it is difficult to come back to old work. So much has changed, and I can’t really go back, mentally, to where I was when I was consumed by these pieces.

I have a lot of ideas I would like to create. The difference between a piece like “portrait of Noel Heberling as Zeus” and “Froot Loop Chuck” is one of production. To explain, Froot Loop Chuck had a budget, a timeline of when it needed to be complete, and it was grand in ambition as well as in scale and resource. Portrait of Noel, which will be a wondrous piece when complete, has no budget, can take ten weeks or ten years, and while grand, is not of the same caliber that Chuck is.

There are two projects that I would like to complete that are on the scale of production that Chuck is on. They are both expensive in material and in the level of dedication they would require, but the time to begin these pieces is not now.

What’s next for Crateart is back to the old for a while, at least until the closing of “Binge and Purge”. I am in a strange transition at the moment and I need things to settle before I jump into another huge project. I recently became a “house husband” and the effects of my first Chelsea show are still lingering. Working on a Portrait of Booner or Heberling will be a constructive way to relax until the next giant step. With that said, I am hungry for another large production, and the question is “when”, not “if” the next one will happen. That kind of assignment and that kind of accomplishment is addictive, and it is difficult for me to do less than anything I have done before.