Ditching Dollars: An Emerging Artist’s Journey to Honest Art

I’ve been thinking of you. You and your power to consume my art, once I expose it to you. You have the choice of licking it, exchanging money for it, chucking it. I’ve been hoarding my art for most of my life, I’ve refused to sell it to you for a long, long time. At the same time, my art has tried to please you, begged you to fall in love.

The art is young; it resolved to not poison its growth with thoughts of money. It’s goal is not to grow up as a mountain of cash.

Also, its direction should not be dictated by the art du jour, preferred subject of its audience, curators, critics, collectors for the goal of popularity. It should remain flexible when it comes to exploration, expansion of ideas, and general learning.

To Art:

• Yes, you can be a simple painting on canvas, your forte in the technique, despite the art world’s current fixation on concept, philosophy and process.
• You can be anything you want, just as long as you are true to yourself (as an extension, expression, and/or tool of expression of the artist or whatever it is).

and the journey of learning and art-making continues…

Vancouver East-Side Culture Crawl 2008 – Mimi Li & No Naked Girls

Sticky tack. The traveling artist’s new partner in crime; Stick your paper on the wall – voila! a space-saving easel in a busy hallway at the Vancouver East-Side Culture Crawl this weekend.

You followed the signs: No Naked Girls. Besides the obvious, paintings of non-naked girls on the wall, You might have caught me pen in hand, drawing a monster of colour on the wall at 1000 Parker Studios. Children seemed to be the most captive audience that I have encountered. A sweet girl even requested me to cut out a home-made business card just for her! Their parents stop for their children, who watch the monster grow for several minutes, before they head to the other studios upstairs.

Some of my personal favourites were the woodworks studios, including Greg, who teaches the wood-lathe to make wooden bowls and other beautiful items you’d usually see as pottery. It’s incredible to see diseased wood shown off in such beautiful patterns. A pine-cone like wood-piece, and cherry wood – mmmm! One day I’ll be lucky enough to have time to check out the other studios open to public. Maybe next year!

Some nice students from the UBC newspaper interviewed me and featured my photo and my artwork in this week’s article! The Ubyssey mentions artist Mimi Li at the Vancouver East-Culture Crawl 2008.

By the way, I’ve designed a new website just in time for the Vancouver East-Culture Crawl this year. Ink illustrations, paintings and animations in Vancouver at www.mimi-li.com

R for rotting reliability

Your boss would never fire you, because you’ve never been late a day in your life. In high school, you went to parties with one other person in the room, because the invitation said 7pm. You were born the second the doctor expected you. If you were a plant, you would flower before the groundhog woke up in February.

If my life were you, I would have lost my virginity at sixteen, my mother and father would have been watching me en pointe in my tutu; applauding with the rest of the other mothers and fathers. my body would refuel in consistent streams of nutrients.

east-side culture crawl – guerilla strategy

The hacker stereotype seem to be web-savvy teenage boys, skipping the business suits, sitting behind a screen, discovering top-secret NASA information. Taking inspiration from their strategy, this weekend I was an unofficial fourth-floor artist at this year’s east-side culture crawl. Susan Setz of Wild Rose Tattoo Shirts and her neighbours were kind enough to allow me to take over their hallway walls at Parker Street Studios. Having limited time and money (actually, about fifteen minutes before the festival), I ran home and gathered a year’s worth of passable paintings. Unfortunately they were all on paper– unframed. So, I armed myself with duct tape. I also had no business cards, so I photocopied a strips of paper with my email address on it and plastered it on an illustration. Coming through the door, a surprise gaggle of family flew in, including my super crafty aunty Jean and her young daughter Emily. I employed them as they were drinking soup, to help me cut out all the business cards.

Parker Street Studios was packed to the rafters! I got to my own show about an hour after the festival started, and as people milled about, I duct-taped my paper watercolour paintings to the walls. The contact cards went quickly! I also ran into a lot of friends; mostly musicians and artists from the east-side. I had a few men tell me they blushed when they saw my paintings, and a drunken one got a little riled. Most viewers described them as erotic and incredibly smooth. I believe they meant the blending that watercolour tends to do.

I toured the other studios and I was very impressed with a designer-engineer’s kinetic and magnificently engineered chairs. I can’t even describe it. I brought all my friends to see his chairs and plastic-bottled chandeliers. I forget his name, but his website is www.min3d.com

A big thank you to my family and friends for all their support.