margaret kilgallen

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.
-gilda radner



i came across an, apparently old, episode of art:21 tonight. this was a clip on two artists whom i had never heard of and decided to watch. barry mcgee and margaret kilgallen, two san francisco based artists, who i later learned were married. both have a sense of folk art, and claim this to be their greatest influence, though from two different times. margaret is heavily moved by traditional folk art. art that doesn't know itself as such. hand painted signs, typography, advertisements. barry is a graffiti artist. the modern folk art. i call it folk art because it serves the purpose of public viewing. sure, it is seen as an eyesore to most people, and is illegal in all fifty states, but it is still the most vibrant art form alive today. there is no payment for it's work, there are stiff penalties for it's implication, and modern ad agencies exploit the shit out of it as a way to reach the youth of today.

entrepreneur

criminal



so to the point of this spillage of thought: margaret kilgallen.
she is brilliant in the video, skilled with ingenuity. she is clearly going to become a great artist someday. she is dead. she died a couple of weeks after the birth of her daughter, from complications of breast cancer. this fucked me up.

now, death is something i have come to know intimately in my life. a lot of my friends and family have died, some of "natural" deaths and some of drug overdoses or violence. i accept death and in fact herald it as a beautiful part of life. i usually don't mourn in the traditional since but celebrate the life. then i read that a woman i do not even know, would never have known, died so young and it fucked me up. she just seemed so alive in the video. so maybe the thing fucking me up is that she is so vibrant, and now dead, and there are so many who are alive and will be alive for a very long time that never grace upon that level of living. i question myself and my own life. am i living it.

here i am at 2 am, typing a fucking blog entry with a studio full of paint and canvas and i am here, typing. not that this isn't somehow a creative endeavor, but seriously, i am staring at pixels, watching a life on youtube, and there goes another rubber tree plant.