Online dating serves many purposes. I can’t say much for it’s ability to find me a lady, but I did learn a lot about myself and how to interact with total strangers. (As I’m typing this, I can’t help but feel like I’m in an episode of Doogie Howser M.D.) In the course of about two years I corresponded with over 300 women, went out on easily 80+ dates, and actually considered 3 of them girlfriends. Prior to interweb lady finders my stats were as followed: Ages 0-29, Women known, approximately 30, Dates, 8? Actual Girlfriends, 2 1/2. (Half being, I thought that she was my girlfriend and she did not) Through this battlefield of digital connections I was able to take a crash course in social interactions and unsurprisingly started to meet people in the analog world with ease. One of the interesting side effects of the numeric dating pool is meeting the friends of your “left-click”romance. After dating a few really nice girls for a stint and meeting their peers, even after the romance fizzled, many of these new acquaintances stuck around and were upgraded to friend status. Which brings me to the point of my post, Lisa Nguyen. I met Lisa through one of the romances I downloaded from such sites as “Okstupid” and “Patch.com” and because of similar art related interests our paths crossed many times. One day I woke to a phone call from a mutual friend who had the terrible job of telling me that Lisa life was ended tragically at the age of 27. Because Lisa had so many friends and was so involved in the art community, an art benefit held in her memory. All of the art work was made by friends and displayed some of Lisa’s own work. The money raised was donated to a scholarship at Cal State long Beach in her name. I made two new prints for the event. Each one in is a 3 layer silkscreen print in an edition of 27. It’s an odd thing that the internet has simultaneously made the world much smaller and in a completely different way infinitely bigger. Lisa will be missed tremendously.
“Till We Meet Again”
“Stay Gold”
Hold fast true-believers and check in next week for: Year of the Rabbit