psst

Some newish work posted at the oldish website...

what faith is, when lying as still as possible

I was trying to get my oldest child to sleep (why do PBS kids shows consistently address monsters as a topic, when the coverage ironically plants a fear that might not have existed?), and gazed out into the night sky to see a plane's blinking lights cruising across the border of the window. I found myself thinking of the people who were definitely inside that aircraft--one at least, the pilot-- and it seemed so so bizarre to believe that a flesh-and-blood person was the one determining the movement of this little blip of light that I could track with my humble retina. I know this is another one of those stoner-ish epiphanies (no, if you're wondering), but bear with me. I believe many things along these same premises... based on previous experience and what I deem to be trustworthy hearsay. And, rather than being discouraged, I was buoyed up in the realization that some things that might seem far-fetched in the light of psychological distance (that anyone, God or man, could hear your thoughts, for example) are quite easily possible. Things that seem, at moments, to be inconceivable, are as common as the regular woman flying the plane, who, after steering that very inhuman-feeling light, will later brush her teeth and spit minty saliva down the drain and fall asleep thinking about her tax return. I told God in college that I would believe in him if he showed me a ghost (weird, true), and shortly thereafter, at a Halloween party (of all days!) I saw a flash of light throw CDs off of a speaker and turn off a stereo. Many other things threw me over to the theist perspective, but that was one of the kickers. About as lame as a blinking plane light, but timed perfectly, as if someone knew me in all my foolishness and still had the tenderness to play my game.

yes!

A few posts back, I was racking my brains for a word. The word is, weirdly enough, matrix. I think I had a block against it, because of the film, the long leather jackets, the dead serious comic-book delivery. Don't get me wrong-- I enjoyed watching the sequence, but I had to dodge my own cringes (picture my cringes as bullets that move in slow mo through gelly water, while I do a back bend and my black leather jacket makes a graceful arc around me). I think mnemonic is actually a better word for the concept I was fishing for... thank you Shannon and Lee!

where earth meets sky

{Image from Walker Art Center, Minneapolis: "Whitney Garner, our Teen Programs Intern, permanently solidified her devotion to Kiki Smith’s Born."}

I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that I've done almost all of my artwork during my boys' naps for the last three years or so. Literally, between that and some evenings, most of my drawing and painting has been in short bursts, under the pressure of limited time. So these last few weeks have been an amazing transition; Zack has graduated with his MFA and we're between school years, cobbling together a living from freelance, shows and odd jobs. Which means that Zack stays with the boys often and I get to go to school for chunks of hours and work. This is an incredible luxury after the juggling method, but it also presents old familiar challenges. When you HAVE time, it's easier to dawdle, doodle and dabble. Some of this is totally necessary. You can't work at full speed all the time, and the contemplative side of the practice has been lacking in my life. But I'm surprised at how the quantity hasn't changed drastically, as now I allow for time to stand back from the pieces and mull them over rather than shuffling them back into a drawer at the sound of a cry. It'll be interesting to see if the work blossoms or suffers under the new arrangement. For my psyche, though, it's AWESOME.

One thought I'm having as I contemplate the current location and direction of the paintings is that there's an element of earthiness-- soiliness-- that I haven't been employing the way I have for more of my life's work. The stuff I'm doing now is very watery and airy. It has a light touch and a practiced hand, and more control. When I see things like those made by Anselm Kiefer, Antoni Tapies, Kiki Smith, Jannis Kounellis, etc. there's something in the work of these artists that I respond to year after year in a really strong way. I'm not ready to start collaging again, or smearing, but it's an interesting branch of engaging tactility and missing preciosity that I think I'll walk down again before too long.

rooting around

Help!

There's a word on the tip of my tongue and I can't find it. It's something like paradigm or diagram-- and it means, vaguely, a mental model to help you think of something (ironic, isn't it?). Other wrong words that are coming into my mind instead are parallax and proxy, which makes me think it might have a p and an x? Man. I had this same thing happen the other day... I was picturing an art historical drawing (that I still can't find) of two men bowing painfully low, and couldn't think of the word sycophant, and then it appeared days later as a title of a friend's painting. I do really like all these words that are hyperlinked; they all have a picture-of-a-picture elegance and complexity, but I'll be indebted to you if you can help me find the one that eludes me.

Signed,

Your word nerd

P.S. If anyone can think of the drawing that I thought was called "The Sycophants" that'd be awesome too. My poor shrunken brain.

when it crosses over

E coming from a nap: "The giraffe in my room got green, and there was a pink cloud!"
us: "Oh, that was a dream, Ezra..."
E: "No, it was real! Look outside with me-- there's a pink cloud!"
E shows us and explains that the leaves in the window made the giraffe look green, and then there was a pink cloud, but now it's gone.

beverage schedule

{this should be a twitter post, but I'm not on that network}

There's a point every day that I stop craving coffee and start craving a glass of wine. I'm not so bad with moderation on both fronts, but I clearly associate beverages with the ascent and descent of each day.

just like the one-winged dove sings a song sounds like she's singing

What do you want to talk about? Stevie Nicks, riding the bus or dreams?

*Stevie Nicks: how can someone that sings about lace and doves, black widows, dragons and, you know... crystal visions, pull it off so that I can take it? And love it? I think it's her commitment to a certain flavor of victorian hippie witchiness, her gung-ho scarf-draped microphone stand, her petticoats and leather gloves. Oh-- and her freaking awesome voice. Brother to Stevie, in my book, is Prince. Just as many cliche poetic devices and over-dramatic performances, and I'll eat that with a spoon as well, please.

*Riding the bus: Is there a better place for a mother of toddlers to sit by herself with no obligation to any other task? Even going for a walk or a sit-by-the-water contains a decision about how long you allow yourself to be away. (We're in a high-demand period with our youngest boy, and I'm feeling like a parenting weakling... in case you'd like to know.) A busride has a beginning and an end; no assertive driving needed, and plenty of casual people watching at hand. And where else do you get to meditate on phenomena like Stevie Nicks?

*Dreams: When the dream well is dry, I forget about the pulsing vibrant world beneath the surface. But, Lord Almighty, how I love when they come back and storm my world. Better than any film, because they're so much more immersive. I wonder how many of my painting ideas are connected in some way to a dream I've been given. Lots.

'nother little art bite

Jean-Michel Othoniel
I love the energy of his work, and seeing glass used so masculinely (for lack of a better word, off the top of my head).

sneak peek

It's not a super-sneak-peak, since it's up on Asthmatic Kitty too, but this is part of a painting for an album cover for Castanets-- release date set for October. There was also a little follow-up to our gallery camp out on the label site. I'm very honored when we get to work with them...

{Crab Nebula as seen by the Hubble telescope: Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll}

A break from social figuring-- which is important at our scale, but can be eclipsing of bigger (and smaller) pictures...

I was listening to the radio last night on a quick trip to the video store and the subject was The Big Bang. I love when something like that shakes and flips your whole mind into wonder at the crazy world that we nonchalantly live inside. A very centrally agreed-upon concept, cosmologically, is that the universe that we know started from a single dense dense dense (I'm so scientific) point. Instantaneously, at one moment, there was an enormous explosion. You all know this, but just think of it! Look around at the wild diversity of objects and materials and communication and and and (ad infinitum) imagine that it all advanced from a SINGLE moment-- all energy contained within that one blast, and now we see energy transferred in endless ways, making and breaking and being remade to become the planet and solar system and galaxy and universe that we call "home." That we can call anything by any name is ridiculously miraculous.

and so it goes

I'm the first to say that I love living in Seattle. It's so full of go-getters who are doing interesting things on every front, and I totally love living in a place with so much geographic drama. But since returning from Mexico, where the warmth and eye-contact between people is so much more vibrant against Seattle's practiced reserve (read: social distance), I've been inwardly seething at some of the gross interactions I've had with people here. Seattle is as famous for a certain brand of passive/aggressive smugness as it is for espresso, but I've been happy to discover many, many exceptions to this rule. This week, though, maybe (again), as a comparison to tropical dwellers, it's been more apparent than ever. I won't go into detail. But just picture trying to smile genuinely at people you pass and having person after person either frown back or give a weird, tight-lipped "what're you so perky about?" feigned grin. Add to that some instructive self-righteousness. Yuck!

So anyway, today I was at a playground with my boys and there was an older kid who was dominating a little water/sand contraption and who was getting annoyed at my toddlers' tries at helping. This was frustrating, especially since he was using our buckets and the toy was made for smaller kids (Can you see where this is going? Can you already sense my ridiculousness?) I finally got exasperated, and, with no decorum, lifted my boys and the buckets from the scene. "I'm taking this bucket." No niceties, no communication with a kid that was maybe eight. Hear my confession, brothers and sisters. I was embarrassed at myself for my own version of weird passive/aggressive behavior, remembering that SO often the things that are the most vexing to me are traits that I myself carry. I internally admitted and asked forgiveness for my complicity, and on the way home, we ended up running into a woman who lives down the street, whose entire family has repeatedly defied all the stereotypes aforementioned. And she was, as always, friendly and genuine. In a nutshell, I'm humbled.

morning discovery

hmmm.... nice. Jen Tong.

our bravest faces

{Sergio Bustamante's "In Search of Reason" a sculpture on the Malecon (boardwalk) of Puerto Vallarta's Banderas Bay. We took a few shots of it, but didn't get a good one. Photo, thus, from here}

We just returned from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico... our first vacation without our kids since.... well... since we've had kids. We've sneaked a night or two here and there, but this was a true getaway. As I go through pictures and post them on flickr and such, I'm thinking about how we like to present a particular picture to the public (and to ourselves, actually) about what we've seen and who we are. I'm not feeling over dramatic about it, like I would have at 18 years old, when I'd probably throw my arm over my face and write a bad poem about masks. I'm just curious about how we can edit and arrange until our story reads clearly, cleanly, evenly, and with a rational arc of narrative. I didn't take pictures of the little bundles of trash that line the streets in PV because I didn't want to include that part. We took some pictures of un-picturesque things, yes, but only because they were odd or funny. And I didn't post the pictures of me that look sweaty and awkward (of which there were plenty, since it's the rainy season, and the humidity was swimmable). Anyway, I'm looking around my house, which is painfully, transitionally cluttery, and thinking of how most moments of time actually lived are very strange combinations of slipped desire and structural groping to make sense of the chaotic pattern of what-gets-thrown-at-us. The reason I don't feel especially dramatic about it is that I think it is actually one of the beauties of being human, this retelling of a story, making links to the patterns that seem the most significant. We all have to choose-- word by word-- what we say to each other, and our spinning of yarns is the thought-food of life. We've all experienced the presentation of a persona that is fully fabricated-- or dressed up crudely to impress (see posts a few back)-- and this is disheartening. But I love being around storytellers who elucidate something about who they/we are in ways that a straight retelling of the facts would never encompass. Is anyone with me on this?

writeups and wrapups

The "Home on the Range" show comes down in a few days-- almost as quickly as it came! If you're in the area, this is your last chance; the gallery is open this Saturday and Sunday from 12-5. If you're not in the area, peek at some of the videos on Vimeo. There are also two articles in Seattle-based newspapers: The Stranger and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Both, interestingly, compare once-Seattleite Tim Roda to Zack, because they're both photographers who work with their children.

three sided coin, and counting

Yes, so, there are more sides to this i-word coin (see previous post). I've been thinking on it again... again during the times when I should be sleeping. First-- I like to picture the version of two people inspiring one another-- it's very give-and-take-- almost romantic, in a big picture sense. Like Inuit throat singers, who have to be face to face, and who complete the song only with one another. A picture of two people impressing one another is a farce-- a series of poses, and all of it remaining pretty safe-unto-thyself. But the other side of this coin (or the shape that a three-sided coin would become- a parabolic pyramid) is introspection. I honestly can't really move ahead for very long as an artist if I think TOO much about audience while I'm working. Sure-- the thoughts come in like thread into a fabric. "I wonder what so-and-so would think of this?" "Would so-and-so find this trite?" "So-and-so will love this." But ultimately, the work is only satisfying when it satisfies an inner hunger to see something emerge that I've never seen before. To tell a piece of the story that I haven't heard quite this way... and that part of it, for me, is pretty mysterious. The reason it's always compelling is that it's elusive. I say this because I think that work with a clear audience agenda at the helm is extraordinarily difficult to carry off with grace, whether it's political, religious or moralistic-- work, in other words, designed to inspire. Not impossible, but very difficult.

it's funny, and sad, and it's true...

{image: "Silence" Odilon Redon, 1911}

A recent conversation with a friend has left me pondering the difference between impressing people and inspiring them. The word "inspiration" has become hackneyed by stinky marketing, but at its base, it's a matter of *breathing into* (related, as it is, to respiration, etc... and spirit itself, if you want to keep the chain moving). Compare that to impress, which has a more rigid effect, being derived from the actual physical act of stamping a hard surface into a soft one. One is an act of filling, and the other of forcing (to some degree). In art, as with all aspects of life, these desires really do live in tension with one another. I volley them daily, hourly. The one I truly want to engage in is the breathing version. I've been impressed plenty of times by artists, but the times when I've been given new breath are the times that stay with me. Ann Hamilton inspires me. So does Anselm Kiefer...Andy Goldsworthy...Ross Bleckner...Lenore Tawney...Fra Angelico...Odilon Redon...Louise Bourgeois...to name only a quick handful of people who have pointed to something larger than themselves and have shared some oxygen with me (I also started to name friends in that list, but have realized the danger of personal blog-listing; suffice it to say that friends and contemporary acquaintances have inspired me as well as these more famous, well-established artists). Anyway, anyway. I have insomnia and was rumbling these things around.

{The title of this post is from a Kristin Hersh song that I've had in my head all day: "It's funny, and sad, and it's true: I'm aching, aching for you."}

beefeaters on sea safari

Both New Years that I've lived in Seattle, I've made the resolution of eating more seafood. Having been born and raised in the landlocked Midwest, my diet has been far more fowl than fin, when eating meat. Fish tacos or tuna steaks were easy favorites, while I felt like a pretty big wuss with many other sea-spawn. But how could I live just up the street from Fisherman's Terminal in the old Scandinavian-American fishing village of Ballard without dedicating myself to learning more about how to prepare seafood? At this point, I'm relatively brave with sushi, and my three-year-old knows how to peel shrimp. But tonight marks a new frontier for my household. A few months ago, a friend came over and grilled oysters. It was getting late, and we rushed the process, so the end result was more like the raw slurping that I usually associate with oysters, and I didn't feel up to having more than a couple, dipped liberally in lemon butter. Today, down at the Market, we bought a dozen, feeling brave and maritime. We grilled these heavy rock-like paws until they sprayed and popped, and then Zack tucked butter and fennel and garlic inside. With childlike delight, we sat at table and pulled them off their shells onto some grilled pieces of wheat baguette. The aesthetics got us through the first few, and then we started to admit to one another that we were losing steam. The unfamiliar texture, the pockets of olive-green mystery matter, the slug-like shape. But I persevered through four and a half jumbo oyster meats, enjoying it mostly. And that's the victory, I guess. A favorite book of mine contains the challenging line: ...all heroes are bold toward food. A small step, these oysters, but a refreshing shift from our usual.

back home from the range

Well, we did it. All four of us for four days, living and working at the gallery. Zack made a home for us; he built a platform on wheels that we eventually covered with a cross between a blanket fort and a modern tent. And then we painted and performed for the camera, completing three video pieces on site (will post a link when we get them up on Vimeo).

The boys, for the most part, loved it. The courtyard alone was an adventure... it's fenced in, so they had more freedom even than our yard at home, though a brush with urban wilderness came in the form of a decomposing bird that slid out of an upturned bucket of rainwater-- ugh! But this was utterly appropriate to the themes we were playing with-- the crossovers between civilization and wilderness, choosing to "rough it" as an antidote to too much control, etcetera.

I'll post again with more finished product shots...

and we're off...

Everything's packed (I hope) and Daddy-o awaits us at the gallery with something like a covered wagon. Yikes! Will report back.

shaken free

If a propeller plane goes by, the far-off doppler sound of it loosens the fabric of my well-woven place in space and time. Instantly, I could be at any spot on the planet; I could be any age. I'm not sure who I know or what my name is. This is a phenomenon that has haunted me (deliciously, really) for as long as I can remember. Why this sound? Why this effect? The same loosening happens at other moments, less predictably... the sense that all the coordinates that keep me fastened to a particular time and space are giving way for a moment, and everything is both brand new and utterly old. I used to crave it and try to find it, now I just welcome it when it comes. Does it sound strange to like the sensation of being lost? Does anyone else have things like this?

link happy

{image: Keita Sugiura, from latest ArtKrush... appeals to the latent bookmaker in me}

And now for a few unrelated thoughts:

*The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Why not Morse code? (spoiler alert: if you haven't seen the film, don't click this link)
*Reading versus television: Why does the brainless one so often win out when we know that books actually seem to add something to us? And even more pressing-- why is it such an easy babysitter, and why do I give in to PBS kids on a daily basis?
*Walled gardens: Is there any idea more comforting?
*Summer in the Northwest: What's that? For a born-and-bred Midwestern girl, this is my second sloooooow ascent to summer, and it's very strange.
*Microwaving vegetables: Oops! All the nutrients are zapped, tapped? Maybe, and maybe not.

welcome, little one!

Presenting my brand new niece, Heron Selah! Look at that sleep smile.

P.S. I've tried to have designated journals over the years... one just for quotes that catch my eye while I'm reading, one just for lists, one just for painting experiments, another for private thoughts, another for ideas for paintings or projects, a prayer book, a poem book, etc, etc. But they ALWAYS cross over each other. I end up writing grocery lists in the corner of a journal page for "private thoughts".. ha!... or writing an art review in a sketchbook meant for painting ideas. It's a more accurate picture of my loose-bordered brain and life. Likewise, this blog is a smattering of family news, art happenings and thoughts about patterning in nature (again, etc, etc). I know that the majority of people that stop by here are not family, but I had to post that sweet little face!

roughing it

{image: Ullmayer Sylvester Architects: summer house for family of four*}

"STUDIO INTENSIVE RESIDENCY!
Crawl Space is pleased to announce this year's Resident artist ZACK BENT right here from Seattle. Zack's work in photography and video is often in collaboration with his wife and children who will be accompanying him during the last half of his lock-in week. Visitation by any member of the public who may wish to witness the mayhem will be permitted at 6pm on Wednesday 18 June and at 11am on Thursday 19 June. The Studio Residency Exhibition will open 6-9pm on Saturday 21 June."

Wife and children = me and the boys! Yes, yes, y'all. We're roughing it in a gallery in order to explore the ideas of displacement of a family structure, whether chosen or enforced. I'm thinking... camping, refugees, boy scouts, the wild west, simplification a la Thoreau, simplification a la Andrea Zittel, war victims, relocation projects, hurricanes and floods, the frontier. I'm thinking... "Don't forget to pack the..."

I just told a colleague about the project and she referred me to Shed, based out of Seattle. I don't think Zack will make anything THIS* clean and modern, but it's an interesting simplification strategy trend in architecture.

the wind and an armful of books

{Eastman Johnson's "The Girl I Left Behind Me" Civil War era}

man of the land

Zack and I just had our 7-year anniversary. I happen to really love the number seven, and am filled, besides, with deep gratitude and appreciation for this inimitable friend and partner. As the past few posts relate, I've been thinking a lot about animals, and food, and animals as food. So Zack and I were talking the other day about our childhoods, and I was so fascinated to hear him retell the things that I knew about his past, but all in the light of food. He grew up in the country, fishing, raising chickens, foraging for berries and mushrooms and persimmons, working in his parents' and grandparents' prodigious gardens. Watching his grandpa skin a rabbit, carve a turtle. Splitting a side of beef with another family. In the light of these earthy connections to food, both vegetal and meaty, his extraordinary sense of beauty and intuition with food makes even more sense. I can't tell you how many times love has been given to me in the form of food that Zack makes. In an essay I was reading recently, a writer talked about the lovely forms and colors and textures that pass through your hands when you cook from scratch. And someone who really notices those things (like Z does) is also able to capitalize on each item's peculiar character and shape. He's taught me that the way something is sliced affects your experience of it, even if the same amount is used. He's taught me about timing and tasting and looking and feeling. About how to follow certain parts of a recipe closely, and where there's room for experimentation. This love language was already part of my family's history, but it's been (pardon the figures of speech) seasoned and honed from the first weeks of knowing Zack. (Years ago, I tasted his black bean hummus at a vegetarian potluck before I ever met him formally. It was really good.)

pop music tells it like it is

"Meet me, meet me, meet the perfect me" Deerhoof

How often is it more life-affirming to admit your weaknesses than to put your best foot forward? Probably most often. Build bridges, build bridges, even if your clothes get dirty.

"Because you can't, you won't and you don't stop." Beastie Boys

(Both of these quotables streamed to me through Jango, my latest online music addiction-- a nice customized radio station to listen to as I work on design stuff. You know, just another version of Pandora.)

our counterparts

I just glanced at a pajama top this morning with a cute appliqued cartoon raccoon stitched onto it, and it struck me as especially odd, considering the wildlife drama at our house during the past week. We've had squirrels burrowing into our overhang, and they sounded like they were trying to scratch into our house, so I called our landlady and she sent Critter Control out to set traps. The first mother-pain was seeing two squirrels caught right away, with a smaller squirrel running circles around them. Oh, man. To think of the process of mothering, no matter the species, this is dramatic and sad. So. I tried to imagine that the humane process promised by the trappers (that they catch them live and release them farther away from residential areas) would unbelievably work like this: Mom (and Dad?) get caught the first night, are taken away to new land. The next night, son or daughter gets caught and the trappers set him-her free in the same spot. The family catches scent of one another and is joyfully reunited, running spirals up and down mossy tree trunks and squeaking thankfully. It was the only way I could feel okay about the night approaching, with the little guys pressing their eyes and teeth against metal. Oh, man. In the middle of the night, the sound of a heavy body thudding repeatedly woke me from sleep. In the dark, I saw a big raccoon body-checking the cages, heard frightened animal screams and scowls, and my blood ran cold. The long and short of it is that it wrested one cage free, sending it tumbling to the yard. And that, we thought, was that. Three hours later, the raccoon reappeared to get the second one. The same blood-chilling sounds of struggle and fear. This one made it through the night, doubtless with the memory of his companion's wild demise. But the other cage was gone, leaving only tufts of fur in the yard. And, well... a tail. So much for my dreams of familial reunion. Oh, man, indeed. And woman... the human-animal dilemma.

So this all feeds into my thoughts lately about animals in general... how close and far they are to us humans. We personify and relate to them in every way, but still love their otherness, and we have such an intricate relationship to them-- as damaged as all of our relationships seem to be on this earth, and as lovely. Pattiann Rogers says it so much more elegantly than I could in her poem "The Human Heart in Conflict with Itself" (this is an excerpt...click for the full version):

We use their heads and their bladders
for balls, their guts and their hides and their bones
to make music. We skin them and wear them for coats,
their scalps for hats. We rob them, their milk
and their honey, their feathers and their eggs.
We make money from them.

We make money from them.We construct icons of them.
We make images of them and put their images on our clothes
and on our necklaces and rings and on our walls
and in our religious places. We preserve their dead
bodies and parts of their dead bodies and display
them in our homes and buildings.

elasticity

Wish I could go to NYC's MOMA and see "Design and the Elastic Mind," for myself, after hearing Paola Antonelli interviewed by Charlie Rose. She has a way with elegant synthesis. For a good time, turn it on while you cook dinner, and begin to think of all of the designed objects that you're using.

after the deluge

{image: Sean Caulfield}

A continuing meditation on water... It's always been really fascinating to me that our bodies function as conduits for water every day. The obvious drink-urinate cycle is there-- and it's fun to connect that process with the modern devices of plumbing-- pipes into your house, pipes out, making yourself the middle, walking pipe section. And then you can feed it into all your other body systems, since they're all made up of water, too. Today I've been thinking about the way that when you're the most emotionally vulnerable, you pour water (saline, even-- like seawater) out of your eyes. I cried today three times-- first, for the weirdest reason (watching a video of French b-boys), then an appropriate one (reading my sister-in-law's memorial speech about her dad) and finally an understandable one (after a long day of watching kids, being alone while each of them stayed up hours past their usual bedtime). Aesthetic movement, sympathetic grief, frustrated exhaustion... just a handful of reasons to turn the faucets on.