Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. (Pablo Picasso)
In keeping with the theme of yesterday, I want to show you some pieces Kiki (age 10) made in her pottery class this winter. She inspires me.
Archive for January, 2010
And So Now We Need A Kiln
January 12, 2010
Nina
January 11, 2010You’ve met my friend Nina before, haven’t you?
This is the illustrious Nina:
Nina + crew, tri-x in the mamiya 645af
And Nina’s Palette is her new website.
Nina is my friend Jessica’s sister. You’ve met her before, too. And here she is, headless. Ain’t she purty (despite the dust on this negative scan)?
Jessica and her Yashica. Me, and my tri-x and my Mamiya. Arigato.
And to complicate things, they also have a younger sister who is also gorgeous and fabulous. (And she’s my little brother’s age, so I’m working on a set-up plan, because then we’ll be related. Except she would be all, “Yeah, dude. Get in line,” and he would be all, “whatever.” So forget it. Forget it, already! And anyway, this is all about Nina.)
BECAUSE, LOOK!!! She is featured in OnMilwaukee.com today!
A few weeks ago, Nina and Jessica kidnapped my children and helped them make self-portraits on 16×20 canvas. And besides being blown away by the joy of it (the art, of course, not the missing children), I felt a little inkling of you are on to something here, my friend. It was the collaboration with kids that I sensed, I think, and I knew she was in her element.
Shortly after, she created this beautiful painting with her son, Malachi. When I saw it, I had chills. And also maybe I cried a little. Or a lot. Do you ever get that feeling, when someone you love touches something within themselves that you know is soul, and is purpose, and is divine . . . and then shares it with the world? Oh, it is a really good feeling. An all-is-right-with-the-world feeling.
Go read her story. I think you might just cry. A little.
collaborative acrylic painting by Nina and her son, Malachi
Wanderlust Versus The Hermit
January 9, 2010The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. ~St. Augustine
(and / or )
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. ~Henry David Thoreau, “Solitude,” Walden, 1854
cutest snow-capped sunflower ever, digital
<<<—-Tell me this isn’t the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.
Dead lil’ sunflower, wearing a cap of snow . . .
This particular plant was sowed by the birds at our bird-feeder this summer. Somehow, one flew to the exact location at the back corner of the house that needed a little decoration, and dropped a seed from its beak. We returned from vacation to find a sweet little sunflower plant growing there.
I find this so much more inspiring than landcaping (although I have got high hopes for my magnolia this Spring).
I see this photo as a paradox: wild and free, versus buried in snow. But, Nature herself is a hypocrite. Snow is wildness; it is Nature. So, it’s all good.
(I’m confused.)
Anyway. The point is, I’m currently experiencing this crazy mix of both wanderlust and a desire for hermitage. I feel, comfortably, a bit dead and snow-capped like the flower. And, like her seeds, I’m feeling the distantly approaching Spring like an itch. At the same time, visions of travel are dancing in my head, as I’ve mentioned. I don’t need fancy travel, I just need to roam. I need no souvenirs with which to boast, no intelligent well-traveled conversation material.
JUST GET ME THE HELL OUTTA HERE!!!
Now, wait. Let me defend this spontaneous outburst. I don’t need to flee. I am very adept at fantasy and coffee dates and other diversionary tactics of escapism from this mundane domestic life. Truly, I would be perfectly happy to sit and cozy (as if it were a verb) and read and doodle and veg for days and weeks on end. This wanderlust is not cabin fever.
It’s just an intense desire for the unfamiliar. I cherish the familiar and the ordinary and the everyday. But the feeling of being blindsided by the incomprehensible scale of that mountain, or merging with the warmth and depth of that sandstone canyon wall, or the feeling the strong pull of that ocean current . . . Oh, that. I need me summadat.
And soon.
But, apparently, nobody seems inclined to donate to my wanderlust fund. So, whatever.
Found
January 7, 2010One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries. (A. A. Milne)
kodak nc film in the mamiya c330 tlr. kiki and dimples, 2004-ish
Funny, I found that quote after writing this: One of the benefits of being a total slob moderately disorganized person is the “surprise!” factor. Things pop up out of nowhere—treasures from the depths of the sea of junk. I found this contact roll from five-or-six-ish years ago nestled in a paper bag of irrelevant papers (old soccer schedules, credit card bills, resumes–yes, irrelevant. who gives a shit needs to know about my academic career anymore? *sobbing*).
Hide and seek, at our old house. Immediately I melted, thinking of how that old house was my first cocoon, how goddamned relatively easy it was to have only two children, how fun it was to have a girl that would wear pink dresses. And yummy, those old wood floors.
Speaking of wood floors, we were planning to splurge (thank you, Uncle Sam) on some nice wood floors for our house this Spring. But I’m feeling awfully wanderlusty. I think we may need to trade in nice floors for a trip. Don’t you? Mountains or Ocean. What do you think? I can’t look through pictures of our road trip this Summer and think that we would survive a Summer without sufficient travel . . . ever again.
And speaking of color film, what the hell am I doing not using more color film?
And speaking of “found,” well, nevermind. I’m not telling you yet. I’m a wee bit excited about something, perhaps overly so. But you know, I’ve never really understood the “don’t-get-your-hopes-up” philosophy anyway. My hopes have gotten up, and it’s a nice feeling. So there. And if my hopes are dashed, well, I do so enjoy being all depressed and broody. So it’s a win-win, really.
And speaking of crochet, well we’re not. But will you just look at all this deliciousity?
*edited to add: one of the main reasons i wrote this blog was this next part, which, of course, i forgot: i also found an unredeemed iTunes card. gimme suggestions?*
(Destruction and) Renewal
January 5, 2010
watercolor on arches hot press, destroyed with ink/digital
And so, apparently, my muse is pregnant. And hott. And she wears tube socks. I can’t shake the tube socks. But she is unable to tell me how to stop ruining everything.
I began my routine of late-night art Mondays last night. I developed a crappy roll of film–an entire roll of images I knew I didn’t need to take; began a beautiful ink drawing, but screwed it up by ignoring my intuition to just stop; then made this watercolor and destroyed her, too. This one I “destroyed” by getting crazy with the ink.
What you see here is my desperate attempts on photoshop to cover the ink mess. Desperate attempts=digitally making most of the inky crap black. I think I made it even worse. It looked really good when it was all white. Sort of unfinished, but in a good, wispy way. And then, as I had just done with the ink drawing, I ignored that little voice that said “that is enough,” and assaulted it with black ink.
I am on a “ruin everything” mission, it seems. Yesterday, I forgot to add salt to the bread, and ruined it, which, in turn, ruined the cinnamon rolls I made with the same dough. And there was last night’s mess of an art session. And today I ruined what should have been a really good curry dish for lunch. I mean, Julie ate it. And had seconds. But it was RUINED! RUINED, I TELL YOU!
I’m reading Women Who Run With The Wolves (a title that Hercules had a hard time checking out from the library for me), and I’ve just read a tale about a girl who, essentially, carried a magical doll in her pocket that told her what to do: turn left, turn right, stop talking. I’ve got that magical doll, we all have that intuition. I think my current task is to remember how to listen to her.
I think I get it. I do think I hear her (so many voices up in here). I do think that I can decipher between internal and external. But I tend to disobey.
The Illustration Friday prompt is “Renewal.” I had read that a couple days ago, and remembered it as “Rebirth.” Close enough, right? My intuition tells me “yes.”
name that emotion
January 3, 2010hello.
i am feeling
exceptionally
(fucking)*
crabby
today.
and also sorta like this:
and in the good moments,
more like this:
(*yes, mom. necessary.)
Laisse Tomber Versus A Rock
January 1, 2010Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
~Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet
an "unfinished" watercolor, winged victory of samothrace-inspired.
As the Earth turned at Winter Solstice, and now again as the calendar switches to 2010, I am, like everyone else, feeling old things passing away and beholding all things becoming new. Is it an actual connection to nature? Is it the collective unconscious? Is it the bandwagon? Is it all in my head?
It is a new year, and for whatever reason, I am feeling 2010. The sound bursts out of my mouth and my mind. TWENny TEN! Losing the “thouuusand” feels good. Like shedding skin, and emerging with shiny new scales.
Except maybe shedding skin doesn’t actually feel good? I’m not sure. I was thinking about this skin-shedding, thanks to that Pixie girl, last week-ish. I had said that I would happily let my old 2009 skin fall as it would, laisse tomber*. I was feeling perfectly smug and laisse-tomber-sheddy, then, when I visited a pet store a day or two after the Solstice. Kiki had asked for a lizard for Christmas, and, against my better judgement, I was checking out the possibility (and quickly sqashing her hopes). And there, thrashing around her tank, was a gecko shedding her skin.
The flaky white scales were not actually just falling off. Her old skin stuck out in all directions, looking like dried Elmer’s glue. She was crazed—jittery and writhing against her little fake rock in one moment, still and exhausted in the next. It might not have been painful, but it surely wasn’t easy. And there was epiphany and aha! for the stupid human observer. Of course. Sometimes the old ways of being/thinking/feeling/doing just fall off. And hooray for that. But sometimes, and usually, I suspect, you have to rub yourself up against a damn rock! You have to piss down your leg, play the fool, venture far from shore, live the question, experience The Dip, do the thing, ready or not, in the midst of/despite/because of the chaos. It is a natural process, but it is not a passive one.
And if I have an official resolution this year (or reVolution, as my kids say, appropriately), it is that.
What?
That.
I don’t know. It’s not a word or sentence, I guess, it’s a feeling. It’s that. The lack of an answer to the question, “What is your New Year’s Resolution? Who are you? What are you doing? Is it photography or writing or drawing or mothering or . . . ?” It is the commitment to putting it all out there: the idea, however inarticulate . . . the painting, however unfinished. (Why the concern with finishing, anyway? Finishing is just done. Which is like, dead.) It is the motivation to experiment with that photo project, and follow through, or the self-forgiveness to abandon it if it doesn’t work. And perhaps, more importantly, it is the doing of it. It is the few-weekly scheduled late nights (NaNoWriMo-style) in which I rewrite and edit that damn novel, develop that damn film, ink that damn paper, experiment! The skin that I need to rub off is the stuff that keeps me from the doing.
Not doing this thing is so 2009.
And, I’m telling you. TWENny TEN is so all about the kicking of ass.
And so, let’s.
( *laisse tomber: a French way to say let it go, drop it, fuggedaboutit, let it fall.)