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1973 Walco Do-It-Yourself Beaded Fake Fruit Kit From the 1973-1974 Walco Products Catalog

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DreamCast: Hello Kitty (1999)

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Engravings by Trystan Williams

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screenshots of a couple spreads from the book i’m putting together

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I just called to say that I love you

Where I’m from you could drive for miles and miles bumpy roads and see nothing but decaying farmhouses and cows wandering aimlessly through yellow fields

And people wear cowboy garb unironically

It took me three tries to pass my drivers exam but once I did all I wanted to do was be alone in my mom's old minivan with shitty sad CDs

I cried in that car all the time

My nana is an artist and I think how her life has gone should’ve scared me out of going to art school but I guess it didn’t work

We thought she was going to die but she's in remission now

So why haven’t you been making art?

Because I have cancer.

Your daughter wants you to stop taking the oxycodone? You tell her when she’s the one with cancer she can make that decision.

That's what the nurse told me

Your mother is being just awful

My mom says Nana is on a fentanyl patch now

Sometimes I feel sick and think I’m faking it

I don’t feel good

Where’s all your work?

What's wrong with her?

My grandma on my dad’s side was always sick during the holidays.

I can’t get out of bed

Eat mint chip ice cream, too nauseous for anything else

She always shoved the sticky bowls under her bed when she was done

But my mattress is on the floor and I wouldn’t want my dog to lick the bowl.

Where di all this STUFF come from? Am I like her?

She keeps everything,

When I was young and my grandma was manic she took me to adopt a kitten but when she was sick again she insisted it stay at her house.

We would paint with shaving cream and food coloring on the tiled wall above the bathtub.

I named the kitten Marshmallow.

Around Christmas she would always be sick

My dad would bring me over and try to coax her out of bed, we can decorate cookies!

How about a hot shower?

Shortbread in the shape of stars dipped in dark chocolate

Sprinkled with crushed candy canes, just how you like them

She screamed at the top of her lungs and threw a book at dad’s head

I felt so bad for my dad that day

Raised voices make me sick to my stomach

I don’t think my dad could be a parent to me because he never got to be a kid

He had to take care of his mom because she’s always been sick

Who took care of him?

Now he only knows how to take care of himself.

at times I feel like I’m supposed to

My mom and dad are like two completely different products of the same fucked up experiment.

Sometimes I think you either are the exact opposite of your horrible parent

Or end up exactly the same.

My whole body aches when I think about how lonely my dad must feel.

Then he calls me and speaks as though this is his first day on earth and conversation is something he’s studied but never participated in

and he doesn’t know me at all.

1 new voicemail from Dad:

Hey Stella Bella, I hope everything is going well with school and work. I just called to say that I love you, call me back when you get a chance.

The first time my mom left me home alone with my dad I cried so hard I threw up

One of my first words was ‘thesis’, he was in grad school when I was a baby

We lived in a little house on some farmland but I only remember these things from stories they’ve told me.

I still sleep best next to my mom.

When my mom’s parents got divorced she was the oldest and a freshman in college.

When my dad’s parents got divorced, he was five.

My grandma came to upstate New York to take my dad and his brothers to dinner one night and flew them across the country instead

How can you be kidnapped by your own mother

I saw on an episode of criminal minds that children who are abused often suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder

When my parents tried to salvage their marriage with therapy my senior year of high school

My dad’s mantra became Darin Stringer will never take a pill.

I’m at work with my hands full of empty rocks glasses, my phone buzzes in my pocket and my mom is calling

1 new voicemail:

Hi honey, guess you’re at work, huh? Call me when you’re off, I love you!

Bad feelings follow me around like a dog whose owner doesn’t need to bother with a leash

As a kid I’d ride shotgun in my dad's pickup truck and we would drive out to the badlands of central Oregon past ghost towns and miles and miles of red dust.

I’d watch my dad and an old man named Jim gently slip plastic bands with teeny numbers onto baby birds legs so they could better understand their habits.

When I was a baby my parents dreamed I would become a professional bird watcher, whatever that even means.

For a man of science my dad sure is unreasonable

Jim’s wife whose name I can’t remember took me to observe migrating butterflies in the woods and they’ve been stuck in my head ever since

Actually, her name was Sue

Sometimes I sleep for days and feel no reason to get up except to feed my dog and make sure he has fresh water in his little bowl

Am I ever going to feel normal?

At my mom's house I still have my baby blanket and I slept with it every night the last time I was home

I’m 21 and I think most people would think that’s fucking weird and I wonder if I’ll ever feel grown up

In September my nana told me she related to Greg the most out of her three children,

Greg died when he was 35, living in my Nana’s basement.

There was a lump in his shoulder he ignored for too long.

He was diagnosed with cancer and in three months he was dead.

After he died my mom found out he’d been using heroin

She found a crack pipe and a fentanyl prescription in his things

Everyone’s got a favorite right?

If life is a game I guess I suck as bad at this as I did at tennis and my dad always let me know how bad I did as I sat silently on the drive home but I moved so far away now he can’t point out any mistakes I’m making

I thought I was daydreaming but it turns out I was just dissociating

I quit tennis and he told me I never finish anything and I guess he was right about that

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First semester final review photos

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Stoneware I have been working on, going to be working w the wheel at some point as well but these are all just sculpted by hand

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New found object I’m really excited about!!!! I’m still deciding how I’m going to use it, I’m thinking about pasting drawings in the windows so they show through the glass, or maybe painting directly on the glass, or doing a photo transfer or printed drawings. Anyways, I think the door itself as an object plays well into the themes of domestic nostalgia

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work in progress on rocking horse next to a (probably?) finished piece

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some drawings

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Silkscreen on linen process, I’ve printed the first color, will be finished next week

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Progress on some hangy things

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Still need to paint on these plus a larger canvas

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lil guys, acrylic on canvas