Well this is a drag. My friends over at Bar Max on Colfax in Denver are temporarily closed. For years I’ve been dropping by when I can on Thursday nights for Denver Figure Drawing Club, hosted by the homie Kayla. It is the highlight of my week every time I go. The life drawing group is great. And every other night it is a nice place to get a cocktail and chill, write, draw and chat. Everyone that works there is cool as hell.
They’re having air conditioner issues and it sounds like they are going to take the opportunity to do some other improvements. I am very much hoping that Marshall and the crew are able to reopen soon with no issues. Denver can’t afford to lose a place like Bar Max. It’s a special spot. I’m also hoping that all the great people who work there are getting by okay in the meantime. With luck, we’ll be celebrating their return soon.
Here are some of my drawings from Figure Drawing Club at Bar Max this year…
I took a flower arranging workshop over the weekend with the brilliant and mighty folks at Beet & Yarrow down Baker way in Denver. When I say brilliantā¦Corrine is so good at what she does it is kind of scary. Sheās an incredible designer and an excellent teacher.
Iām really glad I did it and I think you should try it too. Yes, you, specifically.
It was fun and relaxing and I learned stuff. All of my previous attempts at flower arranging have been pretty frustrating and now I know why. Iād look up a YouTube video and follow along. Everything ended up stuffy and suffocated. It wasnāt fun. I was never able to achieve the naturalistic flow we are always searching for in, well, everything.
During the course I heard a thing that made me realize I had probably seen content rooted in traditional French floral arranging – āthe ice cream cone style.ā That clicked and the previous disconnect made sense.
My wonderful and talented partner has worked in fine dining kitchens. They’ve told me stories about fussy chefs torturing employees to emulate stilted French kitchen traditions. As far as I can tell that mostly centers around abuse – cycles of degradation, screaming, and pushing yourself and everyone else to the limit in pursuit of ill-conceived and ill-defined perfectionism. Tortured artist bullshit. Iām too old for that. Iāve also done enough therapy to see it for what it is: debilitating self-doubt and chronic low self-esteem projected onto any poor bastard unlucky enough to be lower in the pecking order.
That doesnāt result in great art in any sustainable way. Pushing yourself is natural to some extent. But in order to make anything of beauty (without giving yourself a stroke) the push has to come from fuel in the tank, not the cracking of a whip.
The point is, donāt be a tortured artist. Donāt push yourself to the brink. Donāt force perfection. Whatever youāre doing will look worse and no one, including yourself, will like working with you. Be like Corinne – try to find what the universe is doing right here, right nowā¦and go with it. If you can. Or at least take a step back, breathe, and be part of it unfolding.
And take a flower arranging class at Beet & Yarrow in Denver. Buy some flowers from them. It will make your life more beautiful. It will make you a better artist. Those things go together, ya know.
