This morning I received an email from a gallery that one of my boxes, "Dust," was damaged during the show.  As the story goes, an unsupervised child was running around in the gallery and knocked my box off of its perch.  I don't have the box back yet, but I feel sick to my stomach. 

This would be the second box that was damaged in a gallery.  And the kicker is that they are not that delicate. 

I have a studio visit next Saturday with the Wolff Gallery and she is interested in the boxes.  Right now I'm not sure I ever want to show them again.

At what point does a utilitarian object become "art?"

Black and White and Gray all Over

Do you think you’re a “good” person?  I bet you do.  Most folks do.  But when you and I get into an argument and I walk away thinking that you’re an asshole, and you walk away thinking I am...well, who’s the asshole?  I know, I know...THEY are.  But what if they aren’t? 

I began thinking about this last year when I did something in particular and thought to myself, “Wow, ‘good’ people don’t do that kind of shit.”  But I’m a good person, aren’t I?  Well, maybe I’m not...or maybe instead, it’s not useful thinking of people in terms of “good” or “bad.”  Because the fact is, good people do bad things, and bad people do good things.  Smart people do stupid things, and people you think are dumb can be really insightful.  It’s a muddy world out there, and it’s a muddy world in here *taps chest* -if you know what I mean. 

So what's "good," anyway?   Mostly folks agree on the basics, and it’s really not that confusing, is it?  Most of us value the same sorts of things:  loyalty, honesty, kindness, intelligence, and being good in the sack generally rank pretty high on most people’s lists.   OOPS, sorry...that last bit just kinda slipped out there...  :P

But OK, Honesty.  This is a quality that I have wrestled with my whole life.  I believe people should be honest.  But they’re not, and frankly, I’m not.  So for example, in my capacity as a teacher I sometimes tell little fibs.  It goes like this:  I make a JUDGMENT about how a person is doing (emotionally) in their process, and I give them feedback based on a combination of factors....so if x + y + z < 0 I lie.  if x + y + z = 0 I give them a soft truth.  It x + y + z > 0 I give them a hard truth.  Here, x is how long they've been working at it.  Y is how I believe they are feeling.  And z is the quality of the print.  See what I'm saying?

Sometimes, after a person has sweated in the darkroom making multiple prints of the same image trying to perfect it, and they come out feeling proud of themselves for a print that is still slightly blown out in the highlights, and I KNOW that hearing a critical comment from me will squash them, I lie.  I tell them it’s awesome and their grade also reflects the awesomeness.  And MOSTLY it IS awesome....it’s just that one spot, you know?  Or that one quality that could have been a bit more carefully rendered.  Because here’s the thing, if they shuffle off with their print –yes, the one that they were so proud of- feeling defeated and with their tail between their legs, they are less likely to continue doing photography at all.  And as long as they come back, we can work on those little things.  I have had students stay with me for years, who have gone back and looked at the work they did in Photo 1, and then said to me, “Wow...these prints are not so good, huh?”  Because they can see it now, and that is how it’s supposed to be: they are supposed to get good enough to know for themselves when the print still needs attention. 

I guess I would say that I tell them what I believe they need to hear.  Sometimes what is needed is a well-considered fib.  Sorry, just the truth there...because sometimes the actual truth is not useful.  It just isn’t.   Since I’m outing myself on this topic, I should say that I also get people who reeeeeally want the truth and who would prefer a hard truth to a lie, and a hard truth to a soft one.  And I have no problem at all saying what I see. 

Here's another tidbit:   I tell them I always tell the truth.  But that in itself is also a lie. 

One last tidbit:  What I say to them in critique (a public forum) is not the same as what I say to them in person. 

It’s a slippery slope. 

Moving on from the teaching realm (and I saved this for last because nobody is going to read this far) here’s another thing in the truth department...and this is where I went wrong last year.    FACEBOOK.  Omg, with the FB humble-bragging.  I fucking hate it.  My sister said I should really try to get my work out there on FB, and last year I made a valiant attempt.  I tried all kinds of wording, tried the humble-bragging, tried excitement, etc.  but it all just seems like so much self aggrandizement. 

I had (notice the past tense) a friend –and I considered her a friend irl...not just a FB friend.—who was something of a champion at posting her accomplishments on her FB feed.  OK.  That’s her business and her thing –works for her, wouldn’t work for me, but I still couldn’t help having sentiments about it. 

Well, guess what I did.  I composed a letter to my sister, stating my opinions about one of her posts.  I did so in derogatory terms.  And I accidentally sent it to the person I was criticizing.  OMFG...can you say:  Terrible Moment.   Yep, it was a terrible moment.  And it’s a moment I will remember for the rest of my life for so many reasons.  Here are some:

It was a moment of honesty that I would NEVER have shared with anybody but my sister, much less the subject of the criticism.  I really DID believe that this person’s post was horseshit.   And though this ex-friend and I had previously discussed how her FB presence didn’t really match her real life self, I had never stated -nor would I ever have been so specific and harsh in my critique of her posts.  I hurt her feelings.  Like, a lot.  It is the one thing that has continued to be hard for me to swallow.  That I could say something hurt somebody like this. 

This experience also solidified my beliefs about telling the truth.  Some "truths" are just not useful.  But I have been taught, and also on some level believe that the truth is important...that it is somehow "real" and that there is value simply in knowing that reality.  So I want to be honest.  And I was wondering:  if the truth is hard to tell, then maybe there is some way of changing certain kinds of truth.  Subjective truths, truths that are about how something makes you feel... these kinds of subjective "truths" might be mutable.  Meaning:  what if I could change how I feel in the first place?   Alternately, what if I could get into a place of non-judgment about stuff that doesn't matter anyway.

Anyhow, my ex-friend has certainly moved on from this.  However, because I am the perpetrator, I have not been as successful letting go of it.  Many times, this whole affair has made me wonder:  “am I really a ‘good’ person?”   “do ‘good’ people act like I act?”  and you know what?  I think they do.  Because unless we are 2 years old or we are not too swift, we all form opinions about how the world should be, and sometimes the world doesn’t manifest in expected ways, and/or other folks don't see or believe the same things we do.

Seems like the older I get, the grayer the world becomes.  It was so much easier when the whole shebang was black and white.

 

ARGH!  I keep going back and forth on these 2 variations.  Long?  or short?  Short?  or long? 

for the love of Stories

I always found ways of surviving trauma.  When I was little, trauma looked kinda like this:

  • Math class
  • Moving
  • Navigating my way in a foreign country
  • Eating my broccoli
  • What to wear to school
  • My dad’s wrath

And so on...  These days it’s a little more complicated, but not much. 

Right now I’m remembering my youth and what it was like to suffer through math class.   I was attending an international school in München that was teaching something called, “New Math.” 

Topics introduced in the New Math include modular arithmetic, algebraic inequalities, bases other than 10, matrices, symbolic logic, Boolean algebra, and abstract algebra.  All of these topics (with the exception of algebraic inequalities) have been greatly de-emphasized or eliminated in US elementary schools and high schools curricula since the 1960s.

Just to say, this subject made no sense to me at all.  Even my mother, who routinely helped me with my homework, finally threw her hands up in the air and declared that she couldn’t do it either.  I was, forthwith, shuffled off to my bedroom where I was supposed to wrestle with this shit on my own.  K, it sucked.  But here’s the thing...

I had a radio in my bedroom.  And this radio became my best friend every night during my “math studies.”  Most particularly, I found a station that featured mysteries and dramas.  I am not sure of the particularities anymore, but I do remember, specifically, a show called SUSPENSE!

I got totally lost in these stories...I loved them.  And then they disappeared.  And it was years before I really cared very much about radio again.  In 1998 a friend introduced me to Art Bell, and all the old joy of radio flooded back to me...then Art retired, and the world was silent again. 

Last year, by accident, I discovered podcasts!  I had no idea that it was actually radio.  And a whole new world of imagination opened up to me!  Man, I love these things!!  Here are my current favorites...

I'm always looking for new ones.  I like dramas best...stories that unfold and unwind over time.  There are other good shows, like "Lore."   But the extended story is where it's at for me...maybe I need to expand my listening parameters beyond shows with a paranormal bent to them.

At some point last week I realized that I run stories in my head, like, all the time.  I was shopping at an antique store and stumbled into a vendor's booth...they had tons of Victorian lace in little plastic baggies, crocheted doilies, wooden furniture with elaborate scrollwork, and various odd bits and bobs.  I sat in this space for about 45 minutes.  I opened each plastic baggy - noticed that the vendor had folded them with care- to examine the intricate details of each piece of lace.  I could see how each was made, how some of them were put together in little modules, I imagined what kind of dress each piece of lace or trim had been attached to...I wondered what happened to the rest of the dress...I ruminated about the women who actually wore these dresses, what their lives were like... and then I carefully re-folded each piece with care.  I finally arrived at the register and the clerk said, "Ach!  This vendor can't figure out if he is #44 or #47!!"  and I said, "HE?"  And then I thought, good lord, I am SOOOO stereotyping.  But I was also a bit surprised, because I had also unknowingly imagined the vendor.  

And then I thought about every human interaction I have...There is so much that goes into every single meeting.  All our histories (mine and theirs) follow us into each present moment making it difficult to just see the uniqueness of each PERSON in front of us.  How to take each individual I meet without "filling in the gaps?"   Stop, I guess.  Remember to not remember.  Listen.  and know that each person who enters my orbit brings with them an ungraspable complexity that my imagined stories can never do justice to.  

me, at 60. (I know you will fill in the gaps!)

me, at 60. (I know you will fill in the gaps!)

Happy and Fulfilling New Year to All!!

2016

● Discovery Channel - Large Asteroid Impact Simulation (2008). Earth was born as a result of repeated asteroid collisions, the moon was created by a single giant impact event. Then, Earth's size attracted huge meteorites, which slammed into it, causing super-high-temperature rock vapour to cover the entire surface and evaporate all ocean water.

New Box

I'm working on a box that I see as more of a book.  I just completed the chapter on hands.  I am also creating a chapter on "heart" and a chapter on "mind" ...here is one of the small pieces from that box.  The original is 4 x 3.5 inches.  The photos of the little people are from an album of old family photos that a student, Chip, gave me.  The hands belong to my friend, Levi.

Interesting read...

I found Jake Romm's article about the subversive nature of Time Magazine's Trump cover particularly insightful.  of course, I'm talking about this photo:

Nutshell of his points...

1.  That the image is presented in a Kodachrome color palette -not something I would have noticed, btw- causing us to see the photo through whatever notions we have of the 1940's. 

2.  The pose and its relationship to other artworks depicting monarchs and leaders in seated positions.  His analysis of the power between the viewer and the subject of the photo, wherein the leader doesn't rise for the viewer -that the viewer must approach the leader... I also agree that there is a conspiratorial kind of expression generated by the looking-back-at-us body position as opposed to images of other leaders where we see them straight-on.

Romm also talks a bit about the shadow lurking in the background...I don't see any light source on the subject that would've cast that shadow, so adding it was a choice -a statement, if you will.

3.  THE CHAIR.  Which is one of the main things I noticed about the photo.  The back of it looks decayed...then your eyes go around and start noticing other things...like the chips in the paint.  And honestly, like the shadow.  For me, the decay on the back of the chair is so out of place that it causes me to closely observe the rest of the shot. 

Anyhow, worth thinking about.  Man, I love photography!

a part is still partly something that was felt or seen when it was blue or green, or: the dream of the bugs and the airfish

how many years had I walked past that house?
how many lifetimes?
with how many lovers, friends, parents, siblings?
it stood on lill st in chicago, on delaware park in buffalo, mesita in el paso…
it never changes.
flakey-gray clapboard, green gables…i never knew: was the gray really just dingy weathered white? i suppose it doesn’t matter.

i am small. both of my hands are being held…by my mother on one side and my father on the other. and we are gliding down the tree-lined sidewalk. it is spring; short puffy sleeves and patent leather sandals, boys on boards, cats in windows and all of us responding quite nobly to the urge of life, if you will...gliding, gliding…and there, on the corner, gray clapboard and the brush of weeping birch on shingles.
“can we go home now, mom?”
“why of course, dear, where else would we go?”
and we approached the gray clapboard building and glided like so much silk onto the front porch.
“hey!” my father said, “i have an idea!!! let’s act like our neighbors do and go through the front door!” he opened the front door as my mother and i landed with a little “plunk” onto our feet and walked into the wallpapered living room.

i am 13. i have not left the house in 23 years. the boards squeak when i walk…my cat has become so thin; all i can see of her is her shadow. and she hides a lot, right there, between the stove and the fridge. and my father wants to read his letters and i am standing at the dining room table, now collecting them from the vestibule, now bending to remove some he has taped to the underside of the table, now standing on a chair, peeling his letters from the ceiling, when . . .

i am 23 and standing on a chair peeling letters from the ceiling. i have not left the house in 37 years and the wallpaper is dark and blistered. and now…

i am 37. i have not left the house in 20 years. sunshine and dust motes twirling in the air; wilted tulips. the sound of stephen drury’s leather pants squeaking away on a piano bench, of people fucking in the women’s room at limelight & me, too many cocktails later carving yeats onto a cell wall with a safety pin, and now standing on a chair peeling letters from the ceiling, when…

i am 20. and i am standing on a chair peeling my dad’s letters from the ceiling. when…
skrittll-sssskiiit-sss-s—sshussiktip
shissss-shussik-ssss-ss
skutskitssss-sss-sitchshusi
and a throb
and a push
and the stained yuckiness of urine soaked paper and plaster. i peel an envelope from the ceiling and
the sounds
skrittll-sssskiiit-sss-s—sshussiktip
shissss-shussik-ssss-ss
. . . when
a hole opens up in the ceiling, small. but there: the movement of shiny blackness, and a sense of overwhelm as plaster whitens my hair, the hole crumbles on, as thin, black, bodies and feathery articulated legs now emerging, pushing themselves through the hole.
oh fuck.
FUCK.
and i start screaming and yelling and my dad freaking out, thinks i’m hurt, and the weight of the bodies, their blind, instinctive urge to emerge, and the wetness of the plaster, my heart the breeding ground and stable for an infinitude of conflicting beliefs, sensations and emotions, the chair quite rickety, i come crashing to the ground just as the entire ceiling collapses under the weight of 1000’s of enormous, black cockroach-like beetles loading themselves through the hole at the speed of darkness. and i am lying there, panic stricken, screaming, screaming, screaming.
my father.
a tank of green poison.
and a landscape of belly-side-up, legs now helplessly scrunched, bespeckling the squeaky floorboards singly, in pairs & small colonies and i wonder if bugs have families, too.
and dad, my hero, still needs his letters.
and so
i say
how about a glass of water instead?
“ok” he says; he loves me.
and in the kitchen. . .
skrittll-sssskiiit-sss-s—sshussiktip
shissss-shussik-ssss-ss
skutskitssss-sss-sitchshusi
and screaming,
and green tanks,
and more dead bodies.
our house is filled with poison.
our house is filled with poison.
our house is filled with poison.

*** *** ***
i am 37b. i am 23. i am 48; i am a'. i am upstairs, lying on my bed supine. eyes watching, ears listening. and yes, i can hear the sounds of the living and the dead. can see the shimmering energies of earth-bound things and in my mind's eye, bodies boiling in thick green goo downstairs and the bones of my ancestors exhumed now by curious anthropologists . . .they can't help it. . .driven by human frailty on their quest for answers to the mystery of human existence, they dig.
they measure.
they perform multifarious carbon dating procedures on minute shards of pottery.
they study the relation of bodies to artifacts and archeological structures.
elaborate charts and graphs are drawn that have as much to do with existence as about the tartness of cherry pie. and still there are bugs. they press on and on; they are upstairs now. why? because there is no method for control. that's why. hose 'em down with the green stuff in one place, they scatter and multiply in another.
i am afraid of the bugs.
i am afraid of the blisters in the wallpaper.
i am afraid of the bespectacled anthropologists and of the invisibility of my mother.
and
i can't stay in this bed, worn springs, host to hundreds of anonymous couplings eons old, to my grandmother's final dusty gasp, no.
back downstairs...my chair is still in the middle of the dining room, my dad's letters have all surrendered and have dropped from the ceiling, blistered wallpaper has now sweat itself free and underneath i see the wall is plastered with 1000's of statistical charts, graphs, bar and pie diagrams, all squashed together in a sea of nonsensical relations. the radio is playing billie holiday's 'strange fruit,' but both of my parents are missing and i wonder who billie is singing to. the floor looks like a battleground. and me on the chair peering into the hole from which the first onslaught of bugs raged forth. and movement, still.
frightened, i hit the floor running. to return with my dad's green tank in hand, only...no bugs, but large, brown fish floating through the hole and now happily swimming through the air above the dining room table. WOOOOOOOOW! they are so WEIRD!!! so puffy, like brown balloons with fish faces... and i get really close to one, and look at it and realize that the scales are arranged in whorls. and from this distance i also see that it is not just brown, but many shades of brown & rust & metallic copper, here & there the copper gleams green like an oil slick. i wonder if they act like balloons. and i take my hand and gently hit one on the face. and yes, it moves backwards like a balloon, but: horrified expression, and:
"do NOT hit me in the face...in fact, NEVER HIT ME ANYWHERE."
"ooooooh noooooo, i'm so sorry...please forgive; i didn't know you were...um...like, alive."
"are you stupid?"
"maybe. what are you? i mean, i've never seen any of your kind."
"i am an airfish." she said, and she puffed herself up, her scales lifting from her body, and beneath them, silver and copper accentuating the darkness of her scales. "and i am beautiful."
"you were beautiful before you puffed yourself up, you know."
and she smiled broadly.
"so, i have never seen one of your kind either, yet i could sense your beingness (it's why we came out, actually)" and her sisters meandered over in their airfish-swimway, all with different scale arrangements. "...yet, i would never have hit YOU in the face....say, what happened to your wallpaper? we much prefer the floral motif."
and before my eyes, the graphs and charts and diagrams, the statistics & figurings & and very important calculations began to mutate. they grew, they stretched themselves beyond their former incarnation as dissheveled scraps into the unlikliest of ornate floral scrollwork, becoming nonsense entwined with nonsense, entwined with sweat, entwined with tears, entwined here with the cilia of 2 paramecium and there with dust of granite, my walls an ocean of...
"smith?" my airfish wants me.
"yes?"
"i give you three gifts: 1. the gift of this wallpaper. it contains secrets beyond the numbers themselves and beyond their new configurations. the answers lie in their relation: every bit to every bit, every interim to every interim, and every bit to every interim. you are unable to know it; physically, it is too large to be accomodated by the tools you were given in this existence. your friends, the writers and scholars among you will approach the wallpaper with their magnifying glasses extended, and all of them will see a different fragment, magnified...the more any individual knows or purports to know about the minutia of a single locus, the less they know of its meaning in the larger cosmos. you see, each locus is inextricably bound to the interims embedded within it and to the bits and interims in every other speck of the galaxy. know this: all stories are particles of other stories. and be delighted: because, yes...there IS more. don't trust your scholars for they know as much as you do. do not waste time quoting them. do not waste time quoting me. hear the multitude of voices; within it, that of your mother, that of your teacher, that of your student, that of your trees, bushes, giraffes and beagles.
the second two gifts are things your friends will call "faith"
gift #2: know this: you are an airfish, waiting to be born.
gift #3: and this: the bit that goes unnoticed is called the "interim." the interim is NOT an absence.
and with that she brushes herself against my cheek.
"do you want to remember me?"
"yes."
and she presses herself first against my left cheek and then against my right. and then she and her sisters swim into the walls their particles disbursing, now joining with the tendrils and scrollwork of my wallpaper.

Happy thanksgiving!

I am grateful that the sun rises and sets and that I get to be here on this amazing planet, with these particular people and in this particular place.  I'm grateful for my bed mates (CATS!!) -who keep my world bright even on the rainiest days.  But on the top of the gratitude list is my sobriety.  Cuz without that, I wouldn't be sitting here wishing everybody a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

One of my bed mates, Punkin.

One of my bed mates, Punkin.

Thien Nguyen

One of the weirdest pedagogical experiences I get to have:  students who don't believe me.  Who come to me with a question for which I provide an answer, and then tell me I'm wrong.  Just for the record, because I have no problem confessing ignorance when I don't have answers, I am not actually wrong a lot. (LOL!! Don't ask my mom about this!) And since we're "on the record" I should also say that when I recognize that a question appears to require a subjective response I situate my feedback in context.  When these things don't work, I will say something like this:  "Student, pretend I am your client.  I just asked you for 5 widgets.  Give me the widgets or you won't be paid." or "GREAT!  I'm glad you love it printed with the 5 filter; you can put that on your refrigerator and now make one for me."

You might ask:  WTF with all this clap-trap about teaching when I'm posting awesome photos by one of my students?  Um.  Yeah.  Thien's been a pretty tough nut.  From happily stating in critique of others' efforts: "I don't like any of it."  to telling me I'm wrong about what a print should look like, to not getting stuff done on time because it's just his little way...this list could be extended, but you get the idea.  Thing is, he has also been one of the most rewarding students I've had in years.  

The dude is "ON."  Always thinking, always assessing, exploring, trying new things.  He wants to talk about stuff and he likes arguing and being challenged...he is actually looking for answers.  He's got his own style, and his own ideas which are complex and in constant flux.  And yeah, he has been critical of others' photos, but he also turns that critical eye onto his own work, and in my opinion, with really amazing results.  Furthermore, this quarter his prints have been golden, and he is developing his own photographic vision and style...I'm putting some of his work below.  

What I like the best about Thien's photos is that they are peculiar, unnatural somehow, surreal.   His use of fingers and legs as primary touch-points, the shapes he creates with bodies, and what's missing are all features that interest me about the photos and that leave me feeling that I've been allowed a glimpse into a privately coded universe where things are just half-a-bubble off.  I also love his attention to light, and his sense of overall composition.  If you would like to see more of Thien's work, you can check out his Flickr page!

Michael Todea

So last night I wrote that my students were really inspiring me right now.   After creating that post here on Ruminations, I began scanning Michael Todea's photos so that I could show them to future students for the "Image and Text" assignment, and thought it would be great to post my student work here. 

Michael did this incredible series of Macro shots.  One of the things he did that was really awesome, was that below his photos he also pinned a little baggie to the wall that contained all the tiny text scraps he'd shot with.  It was wonderful because it gave a real sense of the degree of magnification.  The asterisk, for example, was so miniscule that I might never have even seen it if it had been just loose somewhere. 

Just in case you can't tell what you're looking at...

The first photo is the surface of a leaf.  The second one down is pretty obvious, I think...note the detail of the water drops!!  The third photo is a single sugar crystal -I love the horizon line and the way the letter recedes into the background.  The fourth photo is not mysterious.

One of the things that I so loved about his project was not just the way the photos look, and the technical sass of them, but I also really liked the ideas about symbols contained in his work. Text and words are just symbols of the things they represent.  What I extract from these photos is something like this:  "L is for Leaf" so the letter L is a symbol of a symbol of the symbol (i.e., the photo is also a symbol) of a leaf.  OK, yes, that does sound confusing, but I think you catch my meaning...maybe.  

If you would like to see more of Michael's photos, you can check out his Facebook page!

Good Week...

While the US political universe seems to implode around me, my personal/private life is going really well. 

On Tuesday I got home from work and discovered this clipped to my mailbox:

I love my mail carrier!!!  Also, right now I've got a wonderful group of students.  Their photos are amazing, and they are really inspiring me!  I have my fingers and toes crossed that many of them return next quarter!!

Then on Thursday I arrived home to an email in my box from Diana Nicholette Jeon...She'd discovered a link to her website in the side bar of this page.  It was great to hear her e-voice, as I don't know her at all!  And Tonight I came home and found an email in my box from a local gallery.  A studio visit may happen.  We'll see. 

I have also had a number of coffee dates lately with good friends.  It's been important for me in this trying time to find respite in my community.  I've built a good one here in Portland over the last 20 years.  I think sometimes of leaving here as the population density climbs, but ???  Maybe I will stay...we'll see.  I don't need to figure that out right now.

I'M LEARNING A NEW MEDIUM!!!  I mean, totally new:  sewing!   I started by doing Tina Givens patterns, now I'm working on a Simplicity pattern.  I also took a 3-session class.  I have no clue what I'm doing, but have lots of grand ideas for wearable and non-wearable items I want to create.  My desires and goals are so much bigger than my skill set is!!  BUT...one step at a time.  I will learn from everything I do, and everything I absorb will apply to something in the future.

Good night world!