Fledged

This is me the day my parents moved out of our family home of 30 years. 

My mother had the ashes of both her parents in two little boxes. Grandpa had his hat on. Grandma had to be dug up having been at least partially assimilated by a flowering shrub in a corner of the garden many years before. 

The moving reminded me of a birth - a long laborious build up followed by lots of emotional turmoil, grunting and sweating, allot of physical pain then release. 

My parents did it all. They completely emptied this beautiful old house that has been a second home to SO so many of my friends...that has facilitated some of the best parties ever, that has expanded to shelter innumerous foreign students, overseas relatives, wayward youth, visiting artists, traveling friends over the years. 

These beds have seen allot of action.

 When the glow of the sunset had dissipated, when you could no longer see the ridges on the islands and the lights went on in the seminary tower there was this light. With a stiff and loud click of a switch it has illuminated love and madness, the best conversations, escape and capture.

We have all been captured and escaped only to be captured again. Our family home is gone. Release or capture?

This is the beginning of something else.

Ectoplasmic oooze

I can't say that I'm entirely sure if these latest creations are more diatom or radiolarian, zooplankton or phytoplankton. Without a doubt they are 100% found beach debris (99% plastic, 1% aluminum can) and an extremely satisfying continuation of my found beach plastic series.

Inspired by the drawings of scientific illustrator Ernst Haeckel, this series began because of an invitation fellow artist and marine debris connoisseur Laura Lynch and I had to show our work in conjunction with a screening of the film Waste Land at the Carsey Wolf Center at UCSB.

You should check out the film if you haven't seen it, and the Carsey Wolf Center (CWC) if you don't know what it is. They will be having more public events in their Pollock Theater and I have so enjoyed meeting and working with all the people that direct and run it: Richard Hutton, Constance Penley, LeeAnn French, Natalie Fawcett and Matt. 

Oooh honey cake...

A few months back I started making shaped pancakes for the girls. To start with it was hedgehogs, mice and  meercats...most had grotesque bulbs or abnormalities attached to some part of their anatomy, but they were marveled at any ways.

My favorite was the mud-flap-jack...aka the mudflap girl made in pancake batter. I made it for my boyfriend, not the girls, just to be clear. It was funny and I was proud even if her chest was literally the size of a chest and her little legs snapped when I flipped her. 

That was the problem - I had no control with the batter until 2 days ago when I eyed a honey bear upside-down and nearly empty. 

Suddenly a whole new world opened up to me of long curly tails and finely crafted battery creations with next to perfect parts, almost all of which were actually recognizable.

I figure I'm just behind the curve in a huge way, but am putting this out there for everyone else who is sadly uninformed and needing to make their pancakes into the shape of the Eiffel tower or the Jackson 5 or a passion flower or a pair of roller-skates. 

Use a honey bear.

Split

Painting. Squishy messy throw the tube down in the grass without it's lid and not care. Use 57 different brushes and stick to them - stick to everything. One small spot of thalo blue spreads like a fungus from handle, sleeve, arm, face, skirt, furniture, glasses.  Uncomfortable fingers and endangered clothes, hunger, stubbed toes and sunburnt arms, fruit flies sticking to the surface and dying like it were the LaBrea Tar Pits. Small oak balls pop and  cover the surface, the wind takes it down and nearly punctures it on a corner of some garden furniture. The taggers miss it 3 nights in the front yard. It goes 50 on the top of my car, still wet - fibrillating as the brand new mercedes tails me impatiently. 

But...but...what does that/this have to do with anything?

You. Me. You. Me. You. Me.

Them. Another other. Another one of the many.

With chocolate sauce and a little whipped cream and no nuts.  Your concoctions are spectacular.

On your trips back and forth between them there you are...wildless and reckless and full of audacity and pleasure behind the steely doors of your little craft...traversing their bodies in your own way.

Take that rocket ship somewhere good.

That's part of the story. 

You, me and then...(m)

In the next two days I need to produce a painting. The canvas is 5x5...feet.  I've been thinking about it for ages now - and like most things which I sit on like this...my vision for it has changed.

The show that I'm producing this painting for is called Earth From Space and will be artists reactions to the famous photo taken in 1968 of the earth from the moon. 

I was born in 1968, several days after this photo was taken.

This picture makes me think of partners, friends, couples and the way we see each other and then how that seeing of the other, and that being viewed forms and transforms us.

I often photograph details of the beds I sleep in. The folds and peaks of crumpled bed sheets remind me of things I want to be reminded of: shared sleep, bodies, home...a place I want to be, camaraderie, love, existence (I know - I read allot into a little rumple). So does the photo of the earth from the moon. 

I thought it would be super satisfying to do a giant juicy painting of our sheets in contemplation of this image. I was sure of my vision and path until yesterday when my gorgeous boyfriend's daughter put together the most audacious banana split - and now there is no question, I need to paint that instead. 

I'm thinking - first it is about me and you - about the beauty of becoming more beautiful in relation to a partner, by way of someone else's eyes, but THEN...you take it one step further and there's 'them' - offspring - the thing that grows between you...that somewhat audacious response to that 'becoming' and the love you've created gets directed into the gorgeous sticky gooey mess life becomes next . (The concept has certainly helped form this description....)  

The morning after. The synthesis. The unpredictability of creating something new and what it takes to do that. You, me and them. Oh yea - that's what I want to paint.

Shrews News

Here is the beginning of a story of a 'family' of shrews. These shrews are not related by blood, but they have chosen to be together and take care of each other and they love each other very much. This, they consider family, more so than some of the blood 'relatives' to whom they are more genetically connected. 

 They live together in a cardboard house in a little girls room on a hill with two cats and the little girls dad. 

Let me introduce you...

French Clown Shrew arrived mysteriously from Paris in the middle of a heat wave two years ago. He still doesn't speak English but somehow gets by, is adored by the girls and idolized by Anarchist shrew who would love to get to Paris one day.

Anarchist shrew, loves this family and stumbled upon it by accident after hitching a ride in some persons pocket from the streets of Seattle after the WTO protest in '99. He ended up in the laundry and was saved by a cat who noticed the little fellow during the spin cycle.

Although he dons the black hoodie and can of spray paint, Anarchist shrew is much more a socialist than individual anarchist, and his 'work' (aka street art) reflects this. More about that later.

The Dutch shrew is all about flowers. She is a bit silly, but loves gardening and tends to the flowering trees and beds of sunflowers at the Shrew House.

No one really remembers where she came from or when she showed up, including her. There is some suspicion that she may have been dropped by a bird from a great hight.

This is French Maid shrew. She is well...a french maid and keeps the house in order. If anyone needs some ironing done, or a spanking, or some extra help finding their keys or a good scrub...she's on the job. 'Thank you French Maid Shrew!'

Glam Rock Shrew has a green and blue eye just like his idol David Bowie. Unfortunately he's an arachnaphobe in the extreme, having been attacked by a tarantula in his bed when just a tiny shrew, and can barely bring himself to utter 'spiders' from mars, which causes him much grief. 

The Queen of Hearts Shrew is constantly trying to foist tarts and custards on to everyone and is subsequently she is quite popular. Her fervor does somewhat resembles an obsession, and there is suspicion that she spent some time in jail for providing the ammunition for the very public pie-ing of a famous health food guru...but this can not be confirmed. 

Painter shrew is always painting when he's not fiddling with his mustache,

and the Flower Queen shrew pretty much hangs out with the flower shrew and the queen of hearts but she's got a huge crush on the clown...although he doesn't know it. 

As we know, shrew's are known for their snorkeling abilities...here, Snorkel shrew has just caught dinner from a lake the little girls of the house had made earlier that day. Somehow, those spontaneous lakes were always full of fish.

...to say

I'm afraid that we're dead.

(When you touch me I become that sublime expanse. Don't ever stop.)

I'm afraid that we've made a terrible mistake.

(Open now like anemones in the fog waiting...)

I'm afraid you are not who I thought you were, that you've buried yourself forever in someone else's tears.

(In those transgressions, under those blankets we explode)

I'm afraid of stupidity. I'm afraid of your scabs. I'm afraid of the things you don't see.

(There is new skin...In the opening where we brake)

We are male. We are female.

(but what are we together?)

Fearful. Isolated. Lonely. Say something for gods sake. Let me in. Tell me you see me before I am drowned in this desert.

(Fill me with everything you are. I adore you and the taste of your absence feels like death.)

I'm afraid. I'm in love.