A little sad (May 2007)

I released a friend today.
I didn't want to do it,
but the past, it always holds more sway.
So I released a friend today.

I released a friend last night.
We were always civil -
there was no fight.
But I released a friend last night.

I released a friend today.
He was already absent
and no promises were there to betray.
So I released a friend today.

I released a friend last night.
I found him halfway
between darkness and light.
So I released a friend last night.

I released a friend today.
I hope he's not angry.
His course should not stray.
I hope our paths cross again in some way.
But I released a friend today.

Relic

Not too long ago, I worked with a company who specialized in church restoration. It was a great experience. I *quickly* got over a life long fear of heights (or at least faced it from 60' up).

In one church, we removed images of saints who had been painted on canvas and "wallpapered" up - they required cleaning, touch up and to be rearranged to accomodate a larger alter.

Imagine my delight when I found this looking back at me from under the canvas...

Lovely, isn't he.
I love the over-large features and the serenity in the eyes.

Here is what it looked like prior to a repainting that happened around the late 1950s....
photo is circa 1935.


Unfortunately, there had been major water damage to the right portion of the apse, so a whole section of these fellows simply no longer exists. And after conferring with the diosese, it was determined that there was not the time nor the resources to undertake a full resoration.

We did protect them prior to replacing the canvas, just in case there are resources in the coming decades.

But sometimes, late at night, I think of them lying just below the surface...

Why not some art, too?

It needs something in the background... not sure what - too bleak.

An Elegy for an Automobile (March 2006)

it's super smelly in tremont tonight... so here's an elegy to ponder while i inhale microscopic mittal death

Lolita - Beloved car...
Feb'y 1998, Tempe, AZ - March 2006, Cleveland, OH

You were a good car.
A trooper.
Your chassis held true.
You carried me back from Arizona and delivered me into the rolling hills of Vermont.
You squired me to weddings and funerals, anniversaries and birthdays.
Ever vigilent you were.
You rarely broke down (technically only 3 times...4 if you count the time I left the cap off the radiator... sorry about that...).
And you always waited until I was off the highway to really get screwy...

But near the end, your engine ran hot.
You developed a taste for Dex-Cool that could not be quenched.
Your internal combustion became too much and eventually, dear Lo, you hemorraged.

O my dearest darling Lo! How I will miss your dedicated ways.
Your scar from the snowplow.
Your missing lock.
The wound above your windshield - it was so late and we were so stuck in that parking lot... we had no choice but to rev the engine and ram the gate.
You were my chariot and I miss you so.

Decoration Day

I spent the morning in the small town where my family is from and they take Memorial Day VERY seriously. It's a traditional town - rural - full of orchards and farmhouses that hold fourth and fifth generations. It's a lovely escape from all the asphalt and industry I live with daily, but I think my love of the town is anchored firmly in my love of green growing things and personal sentiment.

Last night the town was all birdsong and frog chorus - the occasional sound of a piano being played. But today it was marching bands and gun salutes and orations about God and Country.

God and Country(!) ~ the speaker was on about how divided the country became after WWII and how worrisome it must be to the troops that there is such division in the nation... and then he held up the Declaration of Independence and the Bible and urged us all remember how the former was created with explicit connection to the latter... and some tangent that included a reference to the 2nd amendment... followed by a story of a teacher taking a cross away from child... and how we, as a nation, need to focus on the Bible to better live the Declaration and unite once more as in the time of "The Great War"...

It was a messy and illogical speech, and lazy, because it simply focused on inflammatory touchstones that appeared to center on a theme of: diversity of thought = degradation of a nation.

... and I thought we were there to honor our dead.

Look, I don't want to get all head up about politics here, this site is about artifacts and memories... but I suppose this constitutes a memory newly created and an old perception dashed to bits... but I just keep thinking about his logic and call to arms... that we, as a secular nation, should unite through Christianity.

Religion?

Really...?

One specific brand of religion...?

Is there nothing more divisive, inflammatory, personal and private that we could try to unite through?

Ok. Fine - let's all gather 'round the old spinet and sing old timey hymns in four-part harmony... and THAT will keep the men and women of our military safe, lower gas prices, abolish terrorism, cure cancer and reverse global warming.

Let me know how that works out for you.

Bounty: A Sunday Trip to Unique Thrift (a post for girls or foot fetishists...)

This overcast Sunday brought me a leisurely breakfast at Lucky's (I highly recommend the breakfast burrito... more like fresh breakfast echilada in mole sauce... waffles were good too, but I was more of a savory girl this a.m.) and a trip to Unique Thrift on Lorain.

I haven't been in ages, and was pleasantly surprised to find a wealth of vintage footware in good condition and in my size.




Behold the wedges!... both dress and casual.

Envy the mint condition of the dainty low heeled sandals.

Gawk at the lines of the 1960s poison-dart pump fashioned from the skin of a venomous serpent that will infuse the wearer with the same slithering grace and basilisk glance of its previous inhabitant.



And of course, a fabulous Thai cotton shift for drinking mai-tais alfresco, smoking exotic cigarettes, and listening to beat poets pound their words to the rhythm of a distant bongo drum.

Fallen: Work from another lost artist (Spring 2004)

I was free-lancing at museums prior to returning to school for my masters. As before, there are always artists working there to pay the bills and subsidize their real pursuits.

In spring 2004, I worked with a photographer named April. I loved her work and was totally game when she asked me to participate, esp. since she wanted to evoke broke-down fallen and otherwise disheveled.

My New View

I just accepted a new job downtown.

I have an office.

And a VIEW.

Sunlight simply streams in my window.

I love it.

I can see the Amory, Jacobs Feild, tops of churches in my neighborhood and lots of sky.

I can't wait to watch a storm roll in.

*sigh*

I love my up-high down-town office.

Cat Scan

I was scanning more things today: art, mementos, letters... and Mathilde-kitty is obsessed with the printer-scanner-copier... I think you can deduce what happened next.

My Road Map

Years ago I worked in a museum with a brilliant mountmaker/artist/musician/what-have-you. The details escape me, but I was confused about some decision and after hearing me out, he drew this.

It cuts right through the shit, doesn't it?

That's about the path that things have taken so far... I don't expect it to detangle any time soon.

The Originals Part II (c. 2001-2003)

A Beatific Heart... A Surrealistic Heart...An Amusing Heart (HeArt Deco...?)

Hatching Hearts (May 2007)

The scan is much darker than I anticipated, and doesn't do the imagery justice (I'm quite fond of this one).

I'll see if I can get a better scan or picture...

Ok... guess not.



sorry.

Silhouettes

On June 21, 1953 my grandmother married my grandfather. It was a second marriage for both of them and my model for a working partnership. They took a short first honeymoon in Niagra Falls and the following year, went to Mexico. It was there they had this silhouette done.

My grandmother is recently widowed, and as a way to celebrate their 52 years together, I was asked to design, coordinate and create a family quilt for her. The sticking point had been what to put in the center.... but then I saw the silhouettes in her guest bedroom.

I took it to a friend's studio in the neighborhood, and they scanned, retouched and shaded it into this....



Aren't they GOOD?! I love it when skill and technology meet up.

They printed it on fabric so I can stitch it into the quilt top and get it to the "real" quilter to finish it.

If DaVinci had photographed me.

I worked with a number of excellent and prolific artists when I lived in Arizona. Among them was Julie, who was doing alot of work based on traditional mythologies. Unfortunately, I have lost track of many of these individuals, including her (the state and the line of work were both filled with nomads easily lost).

But I recently came upon this this photo she took. It was sometime in 1998 - taken with a Polaroid instant camera. She was doing a piece that included Lachesis and Atropos and wanted a refererence for flowing hair. So we tried a number of ways to capture hair in motion... swinging my head, hanging the hair downward, lying down with hair spread out... and this was one of the "failures." But the motion created such beautiful abstraction and the chiaroscuro is amazing.

I don't know if the piece was ever finished, or the hair properly captured... but I've always loved this photograph.

Archived Hearts (May 2007)

Please excuse the weird scanner shawdows...

The Originals (c. 2001-2003)

A Suffocated Heart... A Free-Flying Heart... A Well-Traveled Heart...



A Heart Trapped by Tradition

I was just gifted a digital camera (thanks again!) and haven't quite figured out if the focus is anything I have any control over. I took a number of shots... wide angle, far away with zoom... always fuzzy... so I apologize for it and will see if there is anything I can do to to remedy it for future posts.

Come Fly with Me (May 2007)

Double Entendre

Kelleys Island Mini-Golf, August 2005

Ode to a Google (Fall 2006)

O! my dear Google,
with answers you are never frugal.

I give it statements in quotes,
It gives me answers and never gloats.

A sentence I may only have to offer,
But Authors! Dates! Publications! All fill my coffer.

O Google, without your data we'd be lost.
And into the abyss, gracelessly tossed.

It's in my blood

So my dad does art too. Except he would never say he does. He would say he's a craftsman. He has, at various times in his life been a: carpenter, painter, basketweaver, and blacksmith. Metal is still the current medium of choice.

Every year, Eikona Studios in Tremont holds an "Auction for the Artists." They clear out the scaffolding and icons and gather work from local artists for this annual event. I worked with them a couple of years ago, and thought it would be a great way to get my dad to see his art sold as ART. Which happens... every year. But I think he still doubts it... esp. when he sees similar things for sale at Home Depot for less than what it costs him to buy the steel. Anyway, here is a clip of the auction from December, 2006, which happens to be a Polish eagle my dad created based on the crest at Sokolowski's University Inn.



Neighbor Joe is the auctioneer, Neighbor Tim is the guy showing it off.

Hearts Hung Out to Dry (May 2007)

A number of years back, I was exploring an interest in early books on anatomy. I found them lovely (I still do) and quaint in their descriptions. But what I loved most were the illustrations. As an artist in a past life (read: career not Hindu rebirth), I'm always amazed at the way personal perceptions are realized into tangible drawings. Google "anatomical heart" sometime and look at the illustrations - they can be surprising different. But I digress.

Sometime around 2001, I wanted to celebrate Valentine's Day and share a particular favorite lithograph of a heart from an old medical textbook. I'll have to recreate the orginal valentine to share, but it was the heart you see below, with a pixie stick run through at a jaunty angle, a feather glued to one end, and an arrowhead made of silver cardstock on the other. I believe I signed it... "Happy V.D."

They were a hit and I found myself looking for additional uses for the stack of hearts I had meticulously cut out.

At the same time I was creating personalized catholic candles - mostly in a desperate attempt to nudge my life into a direction I deemed more appropriate - and started using the hearts on those. A heart bound up by a snake... a well-traveled heart (covered in old travel stickers)... a heart restricted by Georgian columns...

And then I started my masters program... gone were to hours spent pouring over magazines and books for the perfect statement environment. Gone were the evenings spent with exactos and scissors and sticky glue fingers. Gone was the rush of one good final product among the other three that just didn't work. Admittedly, some were the direct result of boy angst, and with the masters came a decided lack of that motivating factor.

Fast forward to spring 2007 and I am missing the handwork of jobs gone by. And a bit of inspiration flew past my window recently, and I got to thinking about the series once more - but beyond the boy angst-centric models of the past. And the more I think about it, the more I want to do. I have a list of ideas and a number of distinct directions. So I plan on using this medium as a platform to try them out.

Trophy Heart (May 2007)

I started a new series... this is my favorite so far... more about the series later.

The City Through Haiku (May 2003)

The City was grand;
yet a bit overwhelming.
Mem'ry misserved me.

Concrete was too rough.
Neon obscured evening stars.
Spring peepers are missed.

Yet, high energy.
Diversity surrounds me.
I'm in the Machine.

Matisse/Picasso:
They brought us to Queens.
It was beautful.

Then subway ennui -
much too close to your neighbors.
Not much is hidden.

Next day to Brooklyn.
See friends, shopping, and noodles.
It threatened to rain.

Then subway hubris -
"Sorry, but yo' card don't work."
No mercy for me.

The problem is solved.
Meeting Cathy for sushi,
red bean ice cream, mmmmm....

Saturday came quick.
Guggenheim for three hours -
Matthew Barney rocks.

The Met impresses,
I critique artifact mounts.
No one is perfect.

Hot Jazz with dinner.
Cultural elite nod heads
with rhythm - drink wine.

I had to get out.
It's too much affectation.
But the pie was good.

My last night in town.
I'm asleep by eleven.
It's fine to be square.

Sunday, go shopping.
Meet Jude. Museum of Sex.
There's not enough time.

I pack to go home.
Second Ave. to hail a cab.
Adventure is done.

Short flight to Akron.
Can't wait to sleep in my bed.
I miss my backyard.