hello there, i just thought of this a few minutes ago, but i am already convinced that it could be a good idea.
the background: i have very few attachments or family, and i'm newly separated. i'm in the process of trying to buy a house in STL but i have a hilarious financial side-situation happening involving a car wreck that my spouse was in a few months ago. i don't have a day-job. my job is to go to my studio and try to sell enough art to get by for the month, and i've actually come pretty close my first couple months. i am reading a bio (9th st women) about mid-century painters and i now see this as a very good accomplishment, especially as i am uneducated in the visual arts and am just a fucken fool in general.
what is this post? i need to let the dust settle for a couple months. i want to travel. so i would like to just drive around and camp and sleep in my car and occasionally stay with friends along the way. i very much count ilxors as my friends. that wasn't always the case. i remember hanging out with some of the nyc ilxors in the early 2010s and i made a dumb comment about ilxors vs "friends". i forget what it was. lagoon called me out on it and he was right. nowadays, i think of ilx and ilxors as a kind of persistent glue or bond that ties my life together, even when i move and move and fall in love and divorce and am going to save the world and then fucking hate the world, and now to my time as a painter, feeling that so much 100%, all of the time. so, just sayin', i don't have many "irl" friends that actual gaf about me, and i could really use a place to stay along the way for the next few months. i aim to buy and move into a STL house around november or december - it's ambiguous because someone who is already very wealthy is trying to get as much money as they can from us for a car accident, and although we have --$2340 dollars in net worth, it will take months to resolve.
my aim is to continue my current studio practice, and just do it on the road. i already have a plein air easel (incredibly beat-up -- imagine your friends' first high school bass guitar, incredibly damaged). i am sad to have to leave my chicago studio (although i plan to set-up an even better on in my prospective new STL home), but i also think it would be good to get out of the city and see other things for a while. my world has been very small, for quite a while, even before the pandemic. i need to get out and see the world again. the hiking, the country, the trails by myself, so much, but also other cities, other places, people i recognize and respect but have never met. (if i were a better editor, i would just make this the main paragraph, but instead i currently value honesty so i'm trying to present this as it is)
what do you get? well, first of all, the cool thing about ilx is i bet anyone who even thinks of hosting me for a day or week would expect anything in return. that's why i'm here, in part! but just so you know, i will gladly paint or draw or pastel your home or your surroundings, or just what you care about. i would do it alongside my own work and the things i try to sell to keep this crazy thing going, and it would be as valuable as you value it, basically, but still very real and from me to you. i don't make things that i don't really care about, these days (at least not if they take longer than 5 minutes).
if you or your household can be a waypoint on my travels the next 2 months or so, please let me know! you can email me at tbdzach a@aa@aaa@@aaaa@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ gmailllllllllllllll (hopefully that's enough to spamproof it). i also have a small amount of money that i can contribute, and i have some funny stories