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Marly Beyer

@marlybeyer

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Weird America forever

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An old friend came out of the woodwork and appeared as a temporary cafe full of pots and drawings and real and metaphorical hotdogs in an art school in Portland, OR. I was gonna write something about a particular pot, about law and men, loves and losses, endless embarrassments amid endless good fortunes. But, as I tend to do, I changed my mind. But as I also tend to notice, some things never change. I’ve been a diner my whole life. Thank you to the zillions of old and new friends who came to the restaurant. Thank you to The Restaurant for changing my life and giving me zillions of friends and so much to work with. It’s said often, but service jobs should be mandatory for everyone for at least a moment. This was a beautiful moment in time, part of a longer, more beautiful moment in time. I love seeing people come together. There are too many stories to put into an Instagram, so here’s this Jim Harrison poem that’s part of it all:

Nothing quite so wrenches
the universe like time.
It clings obnoxiously
to every atom, not to speak
of the moon, which it weighs
down with invisible wet dust.
I used to think the problem
was space, the million miles
between me and the pretty waitress
across the counter stretching
to fill the coffee machine with water,
but now I know it’s time
which withers me moment by moment
with her own galactic smile.

Congrats and so much love to the whole class of beautiful geniuses. I’m honored and lucky to be among you. Finally, we are officially artists. Ha. More diners in the future. I hear Ed Ruscha prefers his hotdogs simmered to lukewarm in a borrowed crockpot. 🌭❤️✨ by @marlybeyer

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3 months ago

Hiii. I’ve been pretty over the internet, and I’ve been pretty over myself these days as I close out a deep dive into The Art for The Committee. But hi. The Naked Cowboy rides again. He’s a lot. Ha. He’s rooted in real people, mostly one. He’s the way you can see a world in an expression. He’s intelligence and allure, and he’s emotionally unavailable no matter what he tells you. So he’s sometimes my problematic, frequently embarrassing, history with men. He’s also my own ego and insecurities and brick walls. He’s Sam Shepard, even thought that isn’t where he started, and he’s the piece of writing in the slides that I’ve posted a million times. So, he’s the tendency to believe you’re better off alone. But. You’re not alone, and that’s never been true. So, he’s staring into the windows of a dive bar/diner. Outside is hell, because we’re all gonna go through it at some point or another, but also cuz the Naked Cowboy is America with its poison dick shooting flames wherever it turns. Inside, you (the real you reading this not the “you” I often use for “me, and…”) can come have hotdogs or homemade pie and spend time with friends or strangers. Other people are the reason we are on this planet and the reason we keep living. There has never been a good way to wrap all this up into an Instagram post, but that’s what I’ve got. PORTLAND PEOPLE - MFA thesis show at PNCA opens July 10, 5-8pm. Open studios July 11, 12-4. Come see work by some very lovely people. Come to the bar. Open for service both days. Come see what happens. ❤️‍🔥 by @marlybeyer

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3 months ago

Today, Saturday 6/13, come to @petermendenhallgallery to wish the Bossman well on his next adventure! Peter is closing the gallery and moving to the Eastern Seaboard, and we all gotta show up to celebrate the nicest guy in the art biz. In all seriousness, Peter has changed my life as an artist in ways I never thought would happen. Lucky is not a big enough word to describe how fortunate I am in the support, guidance, and friendship he has provided, and I am certain I’m not the only person who feels that way. As with many endings, I hope this is just a bright and beautiful beginning (even though I totally hate that you’re leaving, Boss. We all love you!) So, put on your best Van Gogh t-shirt and come on out to Pasadena tonight to say bon voyage to Saint Peter as he embarks on his next chapter! Cross your fingers that @edruschaofficial shows up to the party! Ha. Group show! Honored to be here! 6-8pm! by @marlybeyer

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4 months ago

This pot is about the never ending end of the world. It says “no/more” or “no more” or however you’d like to read that. I’m excited about dynamite. It’s also about conversations and misunderstandings and never getting to a resolution. Maybe it’s because of the end of the world, maybe it’s because I had to write a lot about myself for the committees during the end of the world, as if that matters, but I’m outta my old ways of telling you the story. This is really just to say, there’s a dive bar from hell (or is it heaven?) opening soon. Brawny paper towel guy and Mr. Clean were my first boyfriends. Time is a circle. by @marlybeyer

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5 months ago

If I don’t show you my Important Artworks on Instagram, am I even real anymore? Hi. I’ll keep it short, probably. This one says I’M ALSO A NEON ARTIST. I was thinking about exactly that, Bruce Nauman and every other freakin naked cowboy. 75% of something, and being an artist, and having an ego, and I made this before I started but how to write a million word research paper about how you got here without sounding like a real jackass. Not sure I did it, but here we are. Thank you to @jefffmclane for the beautiful pictures. This can be a very cool and crazy world 🥲. Lots of love to the mysterious void from everywhere I’ve been ❤️

Dimensions: pretty big. by @marlybeyer

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5 months ago

There’s this Sam Shepard story called, “Blinking Eye”. It’s about a woman who encounters an injured hawk on the highway as she’s driving her mother’s ashes across the country to the funeral. It feels like it’s about the chaotic space after a death or tragedy where the line between reality and whatever else there might be blurs, strange things happen, and every moment, decision, encounter, etc. feels significant or heightened. A wild space that is somehow very calm and totally irrational. There’s a line after the woman has gotten the hawk in her car that reads, “Her body calms down and she begins to feel a strange tranquillity with the idea that she alone is responsible for the wounded and the dead.” Things explode again almost immediately after that. I read it years before my mom died, and I’ve read it many times since. I made a pot about it once, and I’ve been trying to make a drawing about it forever, and I’m sure I’ll do both again to see if I can ever get it right. Anyway. The story has become one of those touchstones for me. Sometimes, somehow, someone else makes something about your life. Which is pretty much my favorite thing about art and humanity.

As we enter a new year, I’ve heard so many people say that 2025 was the worst of their life. Mine was straddled somewhere between 2022-2024, and as that keeps getting farther away in my rearview mirror, it’s… I don’t know… I’m just thinking about how many folks I know are hugging wounded birds while their mother’s ashes spill across the floorboards and into their mouths somewhere on a desert highway. A year ago tomorrow that it all burned down. There’s never anything to actually say, but I think pretty frequently about this video clip I saw on the internet where Ethan Hawke talks about how people often don’t think about poetry until their dad dies or they lose a kid or they fall in love and they wonder if anyone on earth has ever felt this way before. Love to way too many people and Altadena forever and ever. Here’s another thing that I love and read every new year because it’s also something someone, somehow, wrote about their life and some part of mine. by @marlybeyer

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9 months ago

I told you I don’t keep a journal, but every so often I do. I unpacked a box recently and found a little book with a sporadic few pages straddling this time four years ago and into the next (and sketches from a comic I made when I was 12!). I’ve been alone for a very long time, and I don’t do much to change that, but regardless, it’s been a weird journey because I’m a human being. I’ve definitely grappled with a, “what’s wrong with me?” mentality that I could expound on but won’t because I’m (most of the time) over that shit. Nobody’s perfect. Anyway. It was the year my mom passed away and into the next. That time was full of just a weird amount of personal loss. Lots of untimely death, plus other crap, plus the world, and I was not at my best, but I was trying. A friend and I threw this big Xmas party at my mom’s house, I tried to say yes when I’d normally be more cautious - to situations, people, that came in. I don’t know, just trying to live or whatever when everyone kept dying. Anyway again. I found this journal. It was just a few pages spanning some months of that time, but it was crazy to read. All that, “what’s wrong with me” really hitting the fan as life threw me for total loops. I don’t need to be nice about this, but in some cases the men involved probably didn’t even know what they were doing. I was so worried that I was this inconsiderate monster (looking back I was pretty passive), that I was demanding, selfish, unkind, deeply problematic, or legitimately gross. That I should just be grateful that people had the patience or space to spend time with me and that I should never even hope for even just a little more than that. I know that sounds dramatic, but it’s just what I was wondering to myself at a shitty time, and like I said, I’m (mostly🙃) over a hill that’s been my responsibility to climb. I read the pages in surprised remembrance of a self that might still lurk in the building but, thankfully, feels pretty far away. For whatever reason, maybe just timing, I’ve generally preferred to make work with my eyes on faults (funny or serious) vs strengths. Maybe I think darkness is more interesting. But I read the pages and said, “Wow” out loud ⚡️. by @marlybeyer

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10 months ago

It’s December. So I go in my little closet and put on a little outfit and paint a little self portrait. Happy holidaze! Everything is different again because life goes on. I’m lucky and grateful that my “different” right now is an upswing. But ghosts of low tides remain. I find those ghosts (very uncool anxieties) embarrassing and ridiculous how in how they manifest. To try to say it briefly and probably vaguely, I know something like my earring selection has no impact on a day’s outcome, but my mind can find self-centered rabbit holes leading to the havoc my mundane choices or thoughts might wreak on everything. And that is just to say, I wore this silly little outfit and painted a little Xmas portrait six years ago. Or maybe it’s just that I wore it at this very fun Xmas party where we all sat down together at a big table squished into my little apartment. Either way, it was right before the pandemic began and worlds ended and just kept ending. Right before I became superstitious, but only in the negative, and decided, irrationally, that having fun generally results in some kind of cosmic punishment. I could tell you more about what I’m thinking, shedding, the good things that have happened, continuing to reshape my tiny sphere, getting over my shit again and again and forever, relief, stress and sadness for everything at the continued end of the world, but I’m sure that is what I always say on here. I’m hoping for the same shit, but in a different way than I’ve been able to for years. For better things, little changes, methodical (but chaotic is also fine) moves toward good. Action in the best way possible? Accidental question mark, but it works because I’m not sure how to say it all. I’m thinking about cycles, loving and losing, doing better work, getting a dog again, the extremes of luck, the privilege of aging. For weeks, I’ve been thinking about this thing Gary Panter (sweetest acct) put on the internet. Thinking about art, stupid (in the best way possible) ideas, getting Ed Ruscha to arm wrestle Sam Elliott at an imaginary dive bar. No predictions, no expectations, fingers crossed even if that means nothing (or does it?), lots of love ❤️🌭✨ by @marlybeyer

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10 months ago

It was only relatively recently that I learned (or even considered) that many people don’t see images in their minds. That’s only to say, it’s not big news that I’m a visual thinker. But, what is happening inside my mind more often, all the time, in fact, is a streaming narrative. I guess that’s what to call it. Full on sentences, kind of composed (not saying well!), almost as if written for someone besides myself. And that is only to say, I don’t do much with that. I write my dreams down in the morning, if I remember them. I keep a sketchbook, of course, but it’s just full of question marks, notes to self, or weird phrases for potential Important Artworks™️. Things like “meanwhile in nowhere” or “he was the night manager” (don’t steal my brilliant ideas). The only place I ever write anything beyond that is here on Instagram, a weird hellworld with limitations and little tether to reality. None of that is important, it’s just stuff I’ve been thinking about. Thinking about whatever value I find in words and how that structures into life and artmaking, which is, of course, a way of processing life. Definitely not thinking about becoming a writer or anything. Don’t get any wrong ideas. It can feel very unnecessary to make art at the end of the world. Other people tell me it still matters, but I don’t think a Naked Cowboy is helping anyone. That said, I’m finding a groove again. I’m thinking about Fall, how as the earth goes to sleep, emotions rise to the surface. Every single year. I teared up the other day making this extremely hippie beet salad I used to make with my ex boyfriend, thinking about how (it’s my belief) that we all just want to be known down to our core, despite the walls we hide behind. Thinking about people who have gone, pillars, making clam linguine, grieving forever, even though you find work about grief to be kind of annoying. The pot says, “You Missed” and you can do what you want to with that information. I’m thinking of the validation we get through the ideas of others, Roadhouse (duh), Man’s Search for Meaning, everyone I know having and continuing to find hope, because that is the human thing to do. Education in hotdogs. Lots of love 🌭❤️ by @marlybeyer

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a year ago

We (friends) have been talking about romance. Not really sex or partnership or that kind of romance (but also that.) More the romance of life. There appears to be a general consensus that it’s fading from the arena (especially in the sex and partnership realm.) Do people still want to put their boots on, be elaborate or extra, accept the messes, be challenged, become attached? For real? I was waiting for coffee to boil yesterday, and I was thinking about how my dreams used to be so “romantic”, full of weird, mythic symbolism and intensity. I hope I can reclaim that, somehow. We (a friend and I) watched an old movie, people being messy, longing, confessing, wearing their clothes. It’s no secret if you know me that romance (the sex and partnership kind) has been a frustration, or maybe there’s a better word. This has often made me question myself, wonder what list of things must be so unmentionable that I don’t even warrant conversations. It’s made me wonder if there was something deeply wrong, maybe womanly or humanly off. I’m nowhere near perfect, and I’m still doing a lot of digging, but ultimately, that’s kind of embarrassing and the subject of other Important Artworks. This one is about the powerful, natural romance of (generally, but not exclusively female) friendship. Easy romance. The way people show up for each other. Listen when all the other person wants to do is talk. Remember the drink you like or, somehow, the day your mom died, even though you didn’t tell them. I went through a hard few years. I was a million miles from myself, and I didn’t always like the way I was, but I couldn’t always get out of the hole. The patience and presence of friends eating metaphorical hotdogs and drinking metaphorical Budweiser on the metaphorical desert floor while we all dreamed of theoretical better days probably saved my sanity. I’m thinking about picking flowers for your friends, throwing surprise parties, making elaborate meals and eating them on a cooler behind your apartment, turning a kitchen table into a steakhouse because it’s fun, and the love and calm comfort of women, of friends. Love and thanks to luck in that realm in this very hard and crazy world ❤️. by @marlybeyer

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a year ago

Today is the last official day to see the pots and the drawings at @petermendenhallgallery. This guy is about communication, trying to get clarity, but in the pervasive spirit of misunderstanding, it can be read several ways. Also. Here’s a video of the catalog for the show 🥲. WTF. Thank you, endlessly, to Peter for being such a supporter, guide, Art Boss, etc. Thank you to @keithmayerson for talking with me (❤️❤️❤️). I’m still trying to wrap my brain around what is happening in my life, at least what is happening now. Thanks to all who came to see, thanks to Los Angeles and its beautiful community, thanks again to the gods, ghosts, ions, old songs, the earth, the universe, the many people that have led me anywhere I’ve ever been.

Love from a beautiful morning in Portland where I’m thinking about possibility. The long game getting shorter, wheels of fortune, open doors, maintaining shit like resolve despite what we are all seeing, what we have all already seen. ❤️ by @marlybeyer

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a year ago

This one is hard to read, but it says, “What Now?”

I have too many thoughts, I think, to tell them to you. The show, in addition to whatever I have already said it is about, is about the End of the World, living through it, coming out on the other side.

If you’d like to see, A Lot More Fun Out West is up for a little bit longer out west at @petermendenhallgallery. I’m very, very lucky for all the good in my life. This is one of the things. Thanks to Peter. Thanks to the universe.

Lots of love ⚡️ by @marlybeyer

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a year ago