I'm going to start blogging about my day

I’ve called this blog many things, but it’s just a blog and I like the word blog even though I’m told I should not use the word blog. I’m not supposed to sign my paintings either. Not on the front. Just the back. All these rules that take out the satisfaction. Am I being nostalgic about stupid shit? Eva, did you enjoy your years off from writing? Writing about self-importance, after enjoying reading someone else write about self-importance, might be self-important. A thought.

My desk is heavy brown wood sits perpendicular to an old third-floor window of Parisian charm. But in Brooklyn. I have two mansions, I tell people. for $700 a month. I think I need to stop telling people that because it makes them sad. It’s too dreamy. Well whatever I met a girl who said she pays $250 or $100 or $500 to live in Chinatown with all this studio space and I didn’t roll over and die. I felt like, if such a place exists for her, then such a place must exist for me. And here I am. There I was. There’s I’m going. I’m going to Paris tomorrow. And I’m going to paint in Venice.

I moved here for more space and because it is more affordable. My life is very complicated but I like to keep it simple. I need to. I’m a furnace and I’m a bomb and I have too much life force and I use up a lot of it keeping myself in check and being civilized and not saying what I wish I could say but you just can’t act like that. You need to save it for special occasions when it counts.

Feeling the music

Dear Internet,

Last night I went to a party, and after enough wine and food, improvised jazzy Christmas standards on the host’s piano, because it was a belated Christmas party in March.

But before all that, late in the morning yesterday, I hopped a bus to Guitar Center for a second 1/4 adapter so I could record this bop.

Please enjoy my cover of Carter Vail’s cover of the Arthur theme song, written by Ziggy Marley.

The Accidental MoMA Breakfast Brunch

Dear Internet,

December 2020, I was at the MoMA getting a green, yellow and blue French press for my mother shipped down to Florida.

They applied a discount and shipped it for free because I’m a member. A few months later, unprovoked, they sent her a second one with a blank invoice attached. How does that even happen?

She now has two big yellow and green French presses, so I suggested she take it as a sign and throw a small recurring party called The Accidental MoMA Breakfast Brunch. I flew into town and joined her for the first one.

It was a dynamic gathering and she sold a painting. Thanks MoMA.

All the best, Eva

Dear Internet: Can I Survive As An Artist Off Of Social Media?


Dear Internet,

I just returned home to New York from Florida where I had gone for my step-dad’s memorial which turned out to be a very emotionally charged weekend with my family and the community of St. Pete.

Tonight, blessed with a second day of paid bereavement off of work, I deleted the Instagram app off my phone and deactivated my Facebook account. Despite that, three times I found myself 100% mindlessly, with no conscious thought, going to Facebook and finding myself logged out, a blissful reminder of my free will.

I was curious about Instagram, and after a few hours, logged into Instagram on my desktop. Not to scroll, but to see if I had any notifications or message. Then I clicked out of the tab. I’m not a cold-turkey purist; I’ll ween myself off without sweating unfulfilled curiosity. No point in suffering if I can ween. If you can lean, you can ween.

The point is to develop a greater quality of attention in my present life and disengage myself from the tentacles of my phone’s pull. I admire people like those high schoolers in NYC who formed the Luddite Club and got flip phones instead and meet in the wooded parks to partake in song, writing and drawing. So ’90s (and all of time previous for billions of years).

Anyway, I don’t even care if I survive as an artist off of social media; I’m already feeling more alive.

All the best, Eva

p.s. Addressing the audience as “Internet” comes from my favorite artist youtuber Hennessy Youngman, whose show I got to be a part of in Chelsea, NYC at a gallery called Family Business. I brought him a rose just like he asked, and my piece was Obama on shiny black vinyl with a lightbulb over his head.