It's supposed to be spring!!

Bad day at work. I'm in this weird stage where I feel like I'm losing interest in what I was initially very intrigued by and I'm struggling against it. Perhaps it was the grayness of today that made me feel so down. Or perhaps I am just being hard on myself but it really matters to me that people don't consider me lazy or ambivalent. I feel like I'm the wicked, duller stepsister.

Time at home makes me very excited. I'm happy with the few hours I get to spend in the privacy of my room making something or reading...it's what got me through this long, awful winter.

Other things that are currently making me feel happy:

Creepy narrative photos involving dolls.
More at http://turquoisechildren.online.fr

Cameo Necklaces with Couples in them.
I know, I know. Fuck you. But how can I resist the cheesy loveliness of this necklace??!! I almost bought one like this with a hand painted portrait of Joel and Clementine.

Obnoxious Ribbon
Yes!

I just learned about this band within the past month. I like the original version of this song but this video has somehow become a subject of intrigue for me. I can't seem to tell if the lead singer is super cute or creepy.

Caged Performance....I have lots of work to do.

I should actually be working on other things but I feel compelled to post, thanks to my lovely art history class.



Today we watched The Couple in the Cage, a video documentation of a collaborative performance involving Guillermo Gomez- Pena and Coco Fusco. It was an obvious satire in which Guillermo and Coco traveled around the globe, decked out in faux Amerindian costumes and posed as "savages" locked up in a cage.The cage was set up in the main lobby of various art and natural history museums, allowing the visitors to interact with the performers. If you payed fifty cents, Guillermo and Coco performed faux tribal traditions. Coco would do a "warrior dance" to a hip hop song while Guillermo told a story about his homeland in a made up tongue while holding a rubber snake. If you went up to their cage and enunciated the word, "P-H-O-T-O", they would even pose so you could take a picture with them.


The performance was very effective in that it had a very sophisticated way of being satirical and that was primarily due to the passive attitudes of the performers...which I totally commended because if someone tried to feed me a banana through a cage, I'd probably spit on them.


The video documentation was interspersed with images of native people being shipped off to Europe and America to be showcased in the circus like freaks. At first, I was irritated with the very didactic comparison but there was a moment when I kind of lost it and got a little emotional. What REALLY effected me was that there were still some people who didn't seem to understand that it was a social commentary. I distinctly remember a sailor from Chicago asking, "Who shaved her legs for her?".

ttp://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$misc?clips/COUPLEINTH.mov
(A small excerpt from the video)

Fun with the drill press and stop motion animation

Worked in Blair's studio today. He was gone most of the time, tending to his sick dogs at home. It felt like me and the other intern were two little girls lost in a forest out of some fairy tale. There were wild masks and props all over and I was having so much sick twisted fun constantly drilling holes using the drill press. I mean, it was fun until I somehow managed to rub one of my knuckles raw and then proceeded to bleed on one of Blair's books. Thankfully, he wasn't mad. He actually thought it was amusing. It was nice to hear him laugh.

I talked to the other intern about various stop motion artists including Christiane Cegavske. She created this wonderful stop motion animation called Blood, Tea, and Red String over the course of 13 years!!! She has since created a creepy live action follow up called The Doll Maker and is working on a related stop motion movie. Some of her work:

Slice and Stitch

I actually saw a similar version of this painting which was actually used in the movie and I liked it better because instead of sewing her vagina shut, they were delicately painting a thin red line down the middle. The fact that they're cutting off her breasts, though does bother me. At first I thought they were just measuring them.

Little Red

I like this one because of it's blatant sexuality and that ALWAYS came to mind when reading about Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. I also recently finished The Book of Lost Things and in it there was this story in which Red Riding Hood seduced the Wolf and that is how Werewolves came to be. Freaky.

There is no time

I haven't been able to decide if she's sadly repairing herself or just making herself a costume. None the less, I love visible stitches. I used to work with this woman who had stitches tattooed along her body and I adored them. Maybe I'll get some tattooed some place discreet.

After watching this, and a lot of Svankmajer, I made this miniature scene based on Alice in Wonderland that has since been destroyed. Too bad I never got to finish it, but a few pictures still remain.

Can't see it too well but it's made out of an old wicker basket, there are hands coming up out of the ground holding a gold key and on the table are three playing cards (from the suit of hearts) and a glass of milk next to a sign that says drink me. Beyond the huge keyhole is a table with a tea set on top of it. I plan to rebuild it someday and add more things...including rabbit tracks. But, I think I'm going to make a pair of earrings first.

This business of Art (History)

I love my Art History class. Alternative Art History 1980-Present with Keller. Take it. I read this article today called "Clash of 85", it's an art critic analyzing her work and how she's changed over the years after she's been fired from her job. Very insightful. She made some interesting points about culture and art.

"Culture, in the full sense, not just the other arts, but the whole fabric, including how we eat and dress and work and make love as well as make art- a general culture in which we are all collaborators, which does not exclude so much as embrace the so-called avant-garde along with many other manifestations." (Lippard, 2)

This quote made me think of Post-Modernist ideals as I learned them in my previous Art History class. I used to be very bothered by the idea that nothing is original, that everything is derivative or a reference to what came before. Now, I don't necessarily think it's a negative concept. Our culture informs us, as we inform each other and that filters down through our work. So it's impossible to seperate your work from the zeigeist of our times, even if you are not making any direct socio-political/cultural statements.

We talked a little bit this situation in which our teacher was speaking to this woman who said she didn't want to be known as a "woman artist but rather an artist that just so happens to be a woman..." I can relate to this because I have similar fears about being pigeonheld as a black artist, woman artist, etc.. On the other hand, these are very importat aspects of my identity and ofcourse, impact how I relate to the world and the work that I produce. Furthermore, I would never want to deny aspects of my "personhood" just so that my work could be seen as something more accessible. Catch 22.

/www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/features/saltz/saltz11-24-98.asp

An article on a Kara Walker exhibit that I found interesting. She's someone I often debate about with myslef. I thought it was weird though that Betye Saar had such a huge issue with her.

back

My break was heavenly. I wish I could have somehow extended it, though I was actually quite relieved to start school again. I spent most of my time hibernating: working on my portfolio, some stuff for Etsy, and killing myself over internships. Luckily I managed to score an internship this semester with Blair Thomas and Company.

Blair Thomas is a visual theater artist that combines puppetry and pageantry with music and folklore. He is also the co founder of Redmoon Theater and I've been eyeballing his company for sometime. Most of the work I will be doing will be mold-making, sewing, and welding. His studio is located in a big warehouse type building in a seedy part of town.

Blair Thomas and Company's Cabaret of Desire

Blair Thomas and Company's The Selfish Giant

Since I've been spending so much time inside lately, I've been thinking a lot about having a studio. I want to live on my own so badly it hurts. I just don't have enough room for all of my stuff anymore and I don't have the peace and quiet I sometimes really need. I feel like Alice after she took a bite from that cookie and grew so huge she got stuck in her house.

Later in life

My live sculpture went very well. I was a live Christmas tree. I wore a green dress and green shoes and stood in a tree stand, while my friend painted me green, strung lights and decorations around me and hung ornaments in my hair. I held myself in that position for about 45 minutes, I could have gone longer but I didn't want to miss the other acts going on. The event was actually quite fun. There was a good turn out but there were more performers than non-performers so it wound up feeling like this event just for us.

I danced, I got to be in a fashion show (my first), I ate a shit-load of sweet potatoes, and I walked around with sick sticky green paint on my body for a while (I still gave out hugs anyway). So YES!! Too bad it was negative three that night.

Anyway, the holidays are troubling me. Only because I get to see all of my family and eat good food, and laugh, and work, and get good sleep and then it all ends and my sister has to go away again and then I get sad. Her flight left at about 6 this morning...

I've been productive. I've been embroidering, crocheting, sewing, writing, and reading like mad. Partly because of my portfolio and the other part because I'm behind on Christmas presents...sorry dudes, you know who you are. I haven't forgotten, I just suck.

I've been on this website religiously for the past three weeks:

http://www.etsy.com/index.php

I've also been reading The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. She's a book and paper artist based out of Chicago. She graduated from SAIC and now teaches at Columbia. Some of her work:

From The Three Incestuous Sisters (one of my favorite books)

Also from The Three Incestuous Sisters

...my mother almost named me Madison

Almost there...

It's about 2 o'clock in the morning and I'm still working out the details of my live sculpture. I'm thinking that it will end up being more along the lines of an actual, proper performance. I'm nervous. It doesn't help that I went back to Redmoon earlier and most of the folks there kept telling me that they couldn't wait to see what I come up with. Eeeep.

What has helped me is this artist named Bea Camacho. She does these wonderful crocheted and knitted sculptural pieces that are about isolation, concealment and self-preservation. She did this 11 hour durational piece called Enclose, in which she crocheted a huge cocoon for herself out of red yarn.

Bea Camacho, Extensions

Bea Camacho, Enclose

I am really tired. I'm going to take a short nap and then get back to work. I learned a lot this semester but obviously not how to manage time.