three letter word for art

I just got back from the Bay Area, where I visited my friend Chris Turbuck and saw the sights (and drew them).  Chris is in the middle of an artist-in-residency program at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, CA so I thought I'd come out to see what he's been up to.  We went into San Fransisco, went to SFMOMA and saw a Bill Kentridge exhibit (and the man himself) and walked around.  We ate some great food, saw some cool stuff, walked through an empty mall, etc.  An all-around great time.   Here are some sketches I did during (and in preparation) for my little road trip. This is the waiting room where I sat while getting new tires for my truck. An MSU art history student recognized me here as "the guy who draws downtown Bozeman." at the Express Lube in Bozeman for an oil change the Orpheum Theater in downtown Twin Falls, Idaho. I like their downtown, but their traffic is out of control. My room at the Motel 6 in Twin Falls. some San Francisco street scenes on the BART s...

Something I've come back to repeatedly in my drawing and painting is the self-portrait, and I am certainly not alone among artists when it comes to autoritratti.   I think about this ritual a lot.  Why a "self" portrait?  Maybe the answers are obvious-- I'm a free (or at least cheap) and always available model.  I (possibly like most artists) am obsessively self-absorbed.  Am I a narcissist, or do I just want to know more about me?  I hope the answer is the latter, but always fear it's the former.  I don't like the way I look, but maybe it's that I like that I don't like the way I look, so I do  like the way I look.  (Critical thinking starts to fold in on itself here, and I often find myself getting nowhere).    Because I use a mirror to do self-portraits most of the time, my process is often present in the work-- a glimpse of a sketchbook, the scrutinizing posture, etc.  This contextualizes the portrait as a part of art-making--is it me, or is it ...