Summer Reading

One thing I like to do once summer starts up is get reading on some stuff that I wouldn't have time or the mental stamina for during classes. This summer I've got a few things on the table. First I've various poetry books that I'm leafing through (it's a bit hard to sit down and try to absorb a lot of poetry at once, each poem really usually deserves at least half an hour's thought or so) and I'm trying also to get through Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! The first time I tried reading it I was in high school and though I could digest The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, for some reason I couldn't make it one hundred pages in this book. But last semester in my American lit 1914-45 class I read and wrote an essay on his short story Barn Burning which completely reminded me why I loved Faulkner in the first place so I think I'm going to give another go. It's already going much better than last time, I think. It helps that I have more education to put it in more context, in particular the Bible as Lit class I took sophomore year. I'm also reading Victoria Finlay's book on color, Color. It's basically a history of color pigments and all the scraps humanity has gotten itself into on account of ochre and lapis lazuli and such. It's pretty interesting so far. Right now I'm reading about the graphite mines in england. Apparently in the '60's America spent millions trying to find a writing utensil that would work in zero gravity for space missions. They asked the Russians, "What do you use?" The stared at them blankly for moment and then replied, "A pencil." Hohoho, how stupid are we?

I walked to Allerton park yesterday morning as dawn was breaking again. I've decided to steer clear of campus because campus is kind of gross. Plus Allerton park is a really nice big park.




Photos! It turns out that walking towards downtown Champaign has a much better view of the sunrise, as well. Dawn and dusk are my favorite times of the day. They have the most beautiful light.

Finally, a poem:

Scheherazade

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget that they are horses.
It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it's more like a song on a policeman's radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means
we're inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.

--Richard Siken

Future Projects

It's no secret that I've been leaning away from traditional oil painting over the last year. Well, when I unpacked and moved my whole studio I sent all my oil paintings and paint supplies back with my father. Because that's it. I've decided to take an indefinite hiatus on oil painting. It was decided after I hit a wall with the Joan of Arc painting which I did not chronicle on here because I'm a lazy ass, but involved a lot desire to defenestrate the offending object. Anyway, I've been looking at new projects to pursue over the summer. For one, I'm going to entirely figure out the text in my book. If I can figure out how to put the text on AND the imagery for the remaining pages, there is a huge chance I will complete it 3/4 of the way through next semester like I want to.

I've decided to try out the huge world of experimental and alternative photography. I'm going to start off with simple van dyke and cyanotypes and pair the imagery with watercolor and gouache in collage form. I took black & white old school darkroom photography freshman year and HATED it, but I think that had a lot to do with the process of developing the film (one glint of light and you would get clear negatives) which took eons and was BORING as well as the fact that my teacher had a huge stick up his ass and wouldn't let us talk or listen to music in the dark room which made for many dull hours. Anyhoo, the reason alternative photography would be great for me is because you can use a digital negative . . . you just print it out onto a transparency in the size you want and you take it out into the sun to expose it rather than dipping sheets of paper in chemicals for eons in what looks like the inner working of a soviet submarine. I've gotten this amazing book, The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes by Christopher James. It goes really in depth, explains the processes and how to do them and variations of them as well as the history of them and their relation to new digital processes that can help them.


Plus the dog is cute.

I've also been checking out various artists who use alternative photographic processes. One of my favorites that I've found so far is Dan Estabrook. I in particular liked his series Nine Symptoms, which is supposed to illustrate symptoms of falling in love.

Shortness of Breath

Loss of Appetite

Weakness

Heart Rate Increase

Chills

Fever

Delirium

Sleeplessness

Euphoria

They are simple, monochromatic, but this is what makes them work. They are like pages out of an old medical book trying illustrate something abstract so that you can consult these and know that that is your illness. The idea of love as a disease is not new; Gabriel Garcia Marquez basically wrote a treatise on it in Love in the Time of Cholera. But the visual nature of these images feels fresh to me despite their aged look. The ones for Shortness of Breath, Weakness, and Euphoria in particular kill me. I would love to see an entire medical journal of prints like these of transcendental emotional states. An abstract idea, word becoming specific. Yet none of these are too literal.

I think I shall try some collaging out tomorrow, though I can't do the photo processes yet because I've had to order the chemicals and they won't be here for bit as they've come from New York. I mean, seriously, what town DOESN'T have a local shop to buy photo process chemicals in these days.

On a final note, here's a photo from a while ago of working on invitations late at night in my apartment.

Ta!

New Morning

I went on a walk this morning just as dawn was brimming over the horizon. It's really on these walks that I totally realize what a disgusting area I live in. You can't escape the beer cans and mud and patchy grass. It makes me sad. I walked all the way from my apartment to the Krannert Center for Performing Arts because I knew that I could climb up to the roof there and all the buildings kept interfering with with my view of the sun. All I could see was a golden haze obscuring tree leaves. Campus was empty, only three or four people dotted the sidewalks and they walked with a purpose, most likely work. By the time I got to the roof of the Krannert, the sun was a huge blinding orb in the middle of the sky. I had missed it. I was still early and lovely, but the moment of it cooly arching itself over the tip of the treeline had passed. I suddenly realized that there was no way I would ever be able to make it by myself--walking alone when it is still dark that late holds danger on an abandoned campus, and I would have to start twenty minutes or so before dawn to witness it.

Perhaps I will find someone to go with me.


I picked two dandelions. When I smelled my hands after I went back to when I used to crush them when they were yellow into a paste while I was playing house. This was at Littlejohn Elementary, in the old rotting wooden playground equipment that they've since replaced with hard primary colored plastic.

Prairie

ii. She Knows

Brown waves of dirt lurch and toss; the farmers
plant crops in long, parallel trenches. Her curtains’
green vine blue paisley print winds, reminds
her of water and flood, which is where she treads
each morning when she sends loose a shimmering
pair of pigeons to roll and return by dusk, a descent
reminiscent of all these flown depths.

--Laura Koritz

I am a midwestern girl who grew up on flat fields and flat ground. I know the starkness of a bare tree alone on a field of dust and snow in midwinter. I know rusty chain link fences, the vastness of a frothing sky, and the slight dips of ditches before tall golden corn. I am grateful for this simplicity. Even when I move to Maine in six months I will be grateful for it. And in Maine I will be grateful for the indigo deep ocean, the jagged high rocks and the moments on the side of the road that pass by so quick you miss them if you're not paying attention.


I am grateful that I am able to find the sublime in these moments.

OMG Are you still obsessed with blue and yellow??

A thousand times yes. I don't know when this gold/yellow/blue/purple thing is going to be over for me, but it's been going on for over a year now. I can't help it. I makes my eye area happy. To go along with this: Invitations!






I find it pretty difficult to work at home these days seeing as I'm not here enough (maybe twice a semester?) to warrant taking over a whole work space anymore, but if my mother's wild eyes when she found out I hadn't finished all the invites for my brother's wedding (what? yes he is getting married. Yes he is only three years older than me. No I haven't met his fiancee yet. Yest it weird) were any indication, I knew I'd better carve out a temporary area. Apparently I work at the kitchen table now. Anyway, they are stamps of hydrangeas that I got at Michaels that I worked back into with watercolor. Then I printed off the info onto vellum and ripped it to size and glued it on the back. The ribbon is the coolest, snazziest ribbon in the world: herringbone. I will never use anything else ever. Anyway, it was fun to do these and I have loads of paper and stationary left over so I think I'll just make some extras in other colors over the summer and sell them on etsy. Apparently I have to buy a plane ticket to England later on and I'm almost puking myself at the costs of everything.

Also, sorry for the blurring out on the second pic, but US Weekly says there are bad people on the internets.

More Poetry

I've been feeling pretty inspired towards poetry lately. It's actually a great format for me, particularly if I wanted to do visual books because of the brevity allowed. I read Natasha Trethewey's entire Pulitzer Prize winning book, Native Guard tonight on the train to Chicago and there were parts of it that really struck me.

What is Evidence

Not the fleeting bruises she'd cover
with makeup, a dark patch as if imprint
of a scope she'd pressed her eye too close to,
looking for a way out , nor the quiver
in the voice she'd steady, leaning
into a pot of bones on the stove, Not
the teeth she wore in place of her own, or
the official document-- its seal
and smeared signature-- fading already,
the edges wearing. Not the tiny marker
with its dates, her name, abstract as history.
Only the landscape of her body--splintered
clavicle, pierced temporal-- her thin bones
settling a bit each day, the way all things do.

--Natasha Trethewey

I've been very interested in poets and artists who deal with race and gender. Another I've been struck by is Kara Walker. (click on it to read it)


I love this imagery of these girls leaving a man tied, a man changed by the body, the body he claimed to hate.

So here's something I've written. I think Jordan, my friend who deals with male mythology and interaction in his paintings, would like this.

Snakes

The men shake
the snakes that float
like gauze on their faces. Rough

holey gauze is sewn
into their skin so they are
careful with them, careful to let

them follow wherever they go,
to not slam them in doors or thrust
them in fires. These nerveless filmy

snakes won’t feel the sudden
squash of door and jamb as they swing
together, won’t sweat as white flames
blossom into their tails. But the bodies
follow, they will shrill when they try to move, they
will fever as flames flower them over—Hard

though it is to know the snakes, to care
for the snakes as one would care for anything
stitched to their face, it is harder still

to leave the chin bare, to feel a smooth cheek,
to acknowledge the delicately drawn jaw
line the pencil
left no hard edges no rough &

ragged lines, it’s all dove gray and white, pristine
and pretty. Don’t worry—they’ve heard don’t worry about that.
But they do and the snakes on the face, the ones that don’t feel
a thing give mettle to the snakes in the trousers, the robust ones,
the ones (tw)itching with life.

--Sophie Loubere, 2008