Life & clinging to my artistic identity

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My latest artwork, at 4 different stages of growth. Taken over the course of 48 hours.

Time looks different for everyone. I’ve noticed lately, that it looks mostly like nothing for me. Sitting on a couch, and then a recliner, and then in bed. My bambino in my arms everywhere. Sitting on my ass, like a modern day human.

Allowing my mind to go to the wind. I know there is a lot to do but I just want to rest and stare at my baby and talk to him and hold him and let my eyes glaze over and become a slave to his growth and well being. Its a very strange and intense feeling and I’ve bent to force myself into self care and making art and doing the bare minimum mentally.

I’m just focusing on rest and rejuvenation.

I want 2019 to be a wonderful, life changing year for me. I am now married, I am committed to my son and my husband and they are permanent fixtures in my life. A life I never felt had permanent fixtures. It’s a beautiful feeling, knowing every day I will have them. It’s a huge responsibility and a beautiful comfort. I feel swollen with desire to be a better person now. I feel like I am in the calm before a storm of personal growth. This is a great time for a nap, and in one week when my maternity leave is over and I return to my computer ready to get work done, I am going to do it well. I am going to sit up straight, type with good posture, drink my water, clear my throat on mute, read books at night again, and I am going to thrive. On the weekends, I am going to paint and spend time with my family and the rest of my life is going to be filled with love and laughter. I am embrace the pains, fighting and discomfort that will inevitably be sprinkled in between, I’m ready for life.

1967 symmetry- quick snapshots as a busy new mom/ artist

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  • fresh flowers
  • 1967 plastic doll / felt butterflies / lace trim

A perfect pile on the counter left there intentionally. Plastic doll, some lace, some, ideas floating around. It serves as a gift, a little reminder. Of all the small, beautiful things that have been and that are to come.

My maternity leave is almost over. I’ve spent the last 3 months struggling with being pregnant, birth and then getting to know the tiny human I created in my body. I still have a lot of “meeting” to do, and that’s fascinating of itself. He’s ever evolving for the entire rest of my life.

I don’t know how I’ll manage having to direct my attention to work and away from him. I am privileged to no end to be able to spend all of my time with him since November 30th without stressing out about bills and finances. I have been blessed with a wonderful company/ product and feel extremely sad that many mothers don’t get to have any time with their little babies without feeling the financial burdens of taking that time off without pay. This event feels so life changing, I don’t truly even feel like the same person anymore and cannot relate to who I was 3 months ago before the gravity of my permanent exhaustion settles in. I’m going to do it anyway, I’ll report back to you soon to let you know how it goes. The way the situation is unraveling, he will have a lot of time to bond with his father. That’s a beautiful thing to me. They look a lot alike. I don’t know if the baby eyes will always be this blue, but watching them blend together with the passing of time will be something of a treat for me to see.

When I look back at my older artwork, my thoughts and personality I no longer identify with. Early to mid twenties, unhinged, creative and perverted. Myself and my art are being forced into an evolution. I’m a mother now, a parent, a wife. I have other duties that will define me, I’m not just an artist. How I am going to reflect these changes artistically, I still don’t know. I’m quite curious to find out.

Nourishment & Pleasure

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My body is a vessel to provide nourishment and pleasure. The bambino is beautiful, perfect, handsome and healthy. My every focus is on being there for the little one. Mind, tired. I’m turning 30 in 2019 and I feel it. New art added to the gallery. Acrylic paintings, all for sale (available)  so please contact me for inquiries! Paypal accepted.

Tiny hands, Big love

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His tiny body wriggles, coos and cries in his rocker. When I picked him up a few hours ago, his crying mouth closed and he fell promptly asleep once his head hit my chest. His little hands clung to the top of my t-shirt. I started to cry because I don’t think I’ve ever loved anything or anyone as much as I love this little baby I created.

🌈

He is so small and entirely reliant on us. Every whimper and cry is a secret code we are left to decipher. Other parents tell me, he will teach you so much about the world and about life. I have loved many things and many people intensely but never as much as this baby boy.

The birth was about a week ago, the same date as my own fathers birthday. A sweet homage- November 30th. I’ve never been in so much pain before, between the pregnancy itself and the end of it. 30 ounces of blood lost, 5 hours of active labor, 4 nights in the hospital, and a vaginal tear later and we are home with our beautiful little human. His eyes dart around, he often is looking around with an air of disapproval. A grumpy little thing. Still so beautiful.

My greatest work of art. I spend a lot of time staring at him. I hope to take this big love and use it to fuel a new generation of creativity, between the lack of sleep, and inspiration in how brand new he is, and the responsibility of molding him into a full grown human.

3 Weeks, 5 Days

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Not that I really consider the E.D.D an exact science or even remotely infallible. It’s just what I have in my mind to consider. This is the gift I have been given since week 12 of my pregnancy. I can’t sleep, my hands , fingers and wrists are so swollen. My belly contains the universe for one little human, waiting for validity and the greetings of the earth. Within my body is another body, another rib cage, another set up legs, a heart beating blood and massive nets of skin. Eyes, a nose, two fists, two arms, a mouth.

To say that I am scared is an understatement. I’ve lost my nerves, I am trying to remain calm but the changes in my life will be unparalleled. The other part of this is excitement, to have my autonomy back and my body back, just mine. I’ll share it on occasion but not 24/7 for nine entire months as I have been. I’m scared of the challenge involved in this, longing for the constant partnership it will take to do this together. I don’t know if I can do it alone. I don’t want to be challenged to find out.

I can’t sleep. I guess I’ll continue to not sleep. Everything is waiting for you, Axel. My Christmas gift this year will be your beautiful little fresh born face. In the meantime, I’ll try to negotiate with the pains that are associated with your in utero growth.

In the meantime, talk soon,

 

ciao.

Stripping away my identity, one day at a time

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That’s what the past 6 months have felt like. My life will soon no longer revolve around me and my own whims and desires. As a self proclaimed wild-card, this is a bit much to accept. I am 29 years old this year and still feel like a kid, stumbling around my life. I could be 24 and tripping in the woods , dipping my toes in the springs and paying close attention to the ripples that start from my toes and end nowhere, around the planet, everywhere.

I like to think the ripples extended themselves all the way to the point in my life where I met my partner in Eugene, to the point when he impregnated me during a cold night in Boise, Idaho, and to the moment right now where I am typing with my laptop propped up against my very large belly. I like to think our son could kick the laptop off my lap in a violent stretching of his tiny legs if he really wanted to, and the fact that he hasn’t or isn’t says something.

I am scared I won’t be Camille anymore. I’ll just become a mother. But I know that’s not true. Something wonderful about my childhood is that we always knew our place. My parents had passions beyond raising us which is a stark difference between what I am displayed through social media in 2018. It’s almost like modern day parents are afraid of the world thinking their child isn’t their 100% highest priority in their life and I sort of think that sucks. For my father, music was his passion. He loved playing guitar more than anything in the world, more than spending time with us, more than anything. He shared his gift and passion with us and with the world and it is beautiful to me. We all knew our dad, Billy Bongster. He loved to play music and he loved to smoke weed and that was fine and it inspired us to find our own passions in life, which for me was always art. My mother was inspired to have fun, if one could ever say that, but she was truly always a free spirit and was always dancing, going on adventures, immersing herself in self love and exploration and had a passion for life.

I was to raise my child in the same way, to know that mommy loves to paint and daddy loves to skate and we love him to the ends of the earth but he cannot believe he is more important than the passions we have harvested throughout our lives. That it’s important to have a passion and that we’re here to help him find his way and learn to navigate the earth and influence it for the better while he’s here.

I get lost thinking about this person, who will be around long before us and long enough to understand how our behaviors today have influenced his world. His life expectancy based on current data projections is 76 years old, and having been born in 2018 he will lie through the year 2094. A child of the future. How much has life changed for us born in the late 80s and early 90s? How much has life changed for our parents and our grandparents? It’s a massive duty to raise a human to love and protect our earth and to understand intimately how our actions drive both positive and negative change.

I don’t know how well we will do as parents, how well the planet will fare based on not just our influence but of the influence of everyone carrying new life right now and those that have birthed in recent years and will in the future. I can only promise him, myself, my partner and the universe this: I will do my best. and I will continue to be myself and project my energies into the world in hopes for a positive change. Lord knows we need it.

A son

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July 24th. A Tuesday. Thats when I went for an anatomical scan to further add more vague traits to the human person character growing in my womb. It’s strange and fascinating to me that while growing in my womb, tumbling and kicking and roaming about in the limited expansive of his own universe, I am out here on earth struggling to sleep, too.

My son.

It’s a nice finishing touch of a thought I’ve had since I found out. What else is there to discover? I have just about 4 months to go before we meet. What a nervous feeling this is. I wonder if you’ll identify with that, I wonder if you’ll be healthy. I wonder what color eyes you’ll have, and if you’ll be as enamored with music and art as I am. I wonder if you’ll share my father’s birthdate, or if you’ll have a sense of humor like your own father.

A sense of athleticism.

I wonder all kinds of things, with each stroke of the paint brush. I’m trying to keep busy inside, at least.

 

 

but the pain kept me home

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I was go display at the Indigo arts festival, but pain kept me home. I used it as an excuse to paint for weeks before the event. “I’ve gotta paint today” I lament to my Fiance, ‘please berate me if I don’t paint”.

He asked me a month after the event, when was that again? I slept in, all day, didn’t go. painted for me, not for anyone else. It’s been like that a lot. I had no idea pregnancy would bring this kind of pain. Crippling pain, I’m the frozen green bean queen with a pack of frozen vegetables on my head to ease the swelling in my brain. These constant migraines are killing me. I guess thats it. The little death. Le petit morte. I’m dying so that I can bring into the world a brand new life.

I’m listening to trip hop lightly on the couch in a cold, cold room with my crown of frozen vegetables trying to avoid light and movement. My vision is blurred, I’m dizzy, I hate this and on top of that I feel guilt. Everyone I know is depressed. Is society ever going to get better? Is it even a fair to invite another human onto the planet in this state? It’s making me feel terrible, and more obligated than ever to try contributing personally to the “good things” you can do as a human to make earth better. How do we as a world abolish scarcity and do better and provide for everyone that exists? Why don’t we all recognize that its the only way for the future?

If nothing else, my child will make me work harder for this. I don’t know how to solve the problem and bring everyone on the same page. People like working, but there’s nothing to do anymore for them.

Jobs nowadays are creating and managing systems, integrating technology into the fabrics of society that have existed for millennia.

These are my thoughts lately. “I’ve never been in this much pain in my life.” “I can’t believe this is really happening in (the United States).” “I feel so in love.”

I’ve been able to make art lately. Check it out at the art page if you please. I’ll update soon, I’m here with passion pit and a migraine until next time, sweet friends. <3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thunder Mountain Suicide

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Frank Van Zant doesn’t sound like the name of a famous Native American

In reality, he was probably just a hippie living on the western US, taking road trips across the country like many Americans of his generation did. He was a WW2 veteran from Oklahoma, and his gift to the world amounts to an array of wild sculptures many drive past through Nevada’s vast nothingness unknowingly. Located between Winnemucca and Lovelock off I-80, about 120 miles east of Reno and very close to the exit for a tiny town named Imlay with a population of less than 200 lies Thunder Mountain.

Somehow, through a late night click-fest on wikipedia, I learned of Thunder Mountain. The idea of it reminded me of a film I’ve loved for years called the Holy Mountain, so I wanted to check it out, being only a rough 5 hours northeast of the junk Mecca.

It was intended to be a shelter for the impending apocalypse after Frank Van Zant, aka Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder had an epiphany in the late 1960s. Made from concrete, old cars, typewriters, bottles, recycled metals and other miscellaneous junk, the monument was originally a series of homes which were created together on five acres off of Interstate 80 in Nevada.

What it looked like in its prime, I can only imagine as years of vandalism, arson, and abuse have tried to shred the beauty of this place away from it until in 1992 it was declared a historic site in Nevada and provided protection.

Thunder Mountain Suicide

In 1989, Frank Van Zant shot himself in the head. His legacy lives in the garden and fascinating “junk castle” dedicated to the life and abuse of Native Americans well into 2018.

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Continue reading ➞ Thunder Mountain Suicide

I suppose..

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When you get so old you start realizing you are putting efforts into the wrong place.

I suppose I read through past posts, the digital footprints I’ve littered across the internet because I’m too conscious to ever litter in the real world. This kind of litter, I guess it’s not that bad compared to a plastic grocery bag a turtle might get caught up in. Or an old Dr. Pepper can of soda that becomes the eventual home to a school of fish larvae in the gulf.

Various moods, visuals, different pains resulted from different situations, romantic partners, goals that swallow me up and spit me back out like I’m constantly treading the deep waves of the east Atlantic ocean.

Hello, I am Camille and I feel sad. Happy. Ecstatic. Terrified. Angry.

I’m feeling all kinds of ways lately. I thought 2014 was as bad as things could get but I didn’t know the capacity for pain life carries with it. I didn’t expect to have to deal with drug addiction in my family, again, with a sibling. I never anticipated a nephew that has to grow up in an environment as colorful and riddled in the stress of being the child of an addict even worse than was the situation for me and my siblings. I never imagined that kind of pain a little boy that survived despite the world working against him from birth would bring me. It drove me away from my home state of which I love. Gosh, it’s cold out here but at least I don’t know anyone and the pain ain’t so close to my heart. I can’t drive up the street and look at it. I don’t need to see those tattoos, those track marks, those rotting teeth looking back at me, asking to borrow money, asking for my forgiveness, saying cruel things.

I didn’t know how largely they could become stressors even from 3,000 miles away, building up at me and eating away at me until I can’t take it anymore and just cry. into my pillows, a strong shoulder, whatever is available. Grow up, be a woman, you’re almost 30 years old. I hate myself for it but it all seems so unfair.

I don’t know who to talk to, who could I talk to? They just say “I’m sorry” and I am sorry too because it’s a problem that can’t be fixed and if ever i had an enemy that situation would be it. I want to shake the world and find peace in the hearts of the people I love but my hand gets bitten, my heart turns cold and it just hurts and hurts and hurts.

Trying to let go is hard. All of the effort put into others was misdirected. Sure, I can proudly say I broke out of my caste system and made something of myself but I feel oh.. i don’t know. Incomplete. Like I left my soul somewhere on the floor and left the room and left the house and left the state and now I don’t have one anymore, it’s become a puddle somewhere that gets stepped on and ignored and is more or less a mess that no one will ever clean up.

Maybe it’s too late to get that soul back but I found a way to build a new one. Stop paying mind to everything that hurts and build a love inside myself. Cells multiplying every day, cells made out of love and maybe some biological material and DNA too but mostly love.

It’s rebuilding my soul, and sure it’s tiring and sometimes I think it’s probably the worst feeling but it’s rebuilding something I lost a long time ago and so the exhaustion, it’s probably worth it to me. It will be my greatest work of art. The building of a brand new soul.