f is for fake

Another post from the phone, I'm afraid. I'm sitting in the pacific northwest national laboratory's theatre waiting for the film to start. As I was driving up I wondered if I ever actually parked here before. The first film I saw here (it's the only active movie theater in Richland, and it's a not for profit at the lab) was an errol flynn movie. Maybe mutiny on the bounty? When I was about 9. My longest standing boyfriend in highschool was basically because he loved to co.e to these odd movies. Anyway, tonite is the original mockumentary, by ordinary wells, chichis promising. Im alone. Id say I'm a minimum of 10 years younger than anyone in the theater.
I just ran into a friend of mine trying to make it on the comedy circuit. What do you say to someone who cracks jokes for a living? Id feel more comfortable cracking jokes with a priest.
Still in tcs. Walking across from the parking lot, once I found it, I was amazed at the grace of this building, across the gazing pond. So that many stars. So lovely here. If only here was somewhere else.

mad skills

I didn't realize that being able to lift a 10 speed into the back of a pick-up truck was a skill until recently. I pick people up, sometimes drunk people, I'll admit, who may or may not have called me to come get them because I have a truck to carry home their bike. So, logically, I assumed that these people couldn't load a bike into the back of a pick-up because they were intoxicated. Even some sober people I know can't load bikes into the backs of trucks. Some of them are much taller than I am, and they still were banging bike bits up against truck bits. I try not to be too annoyed by the fact that they are potentially hurting my lone asset (which isn't even really mine, but my mom's) and just realize this, much like herding chickens and creating sentence fragments, is just one of my mad skills. However, when someone says "It's just a pick-up," that's when it really gets me.

I'm very Jack Sparrow about my mom's truck. It isn't what a truck needs that makes it magic(like a new shiny bumper). It's what a truck is. My truck is freedom! & I'll be damned if people too intoxicated or too clumsy are going to nick or scratch my haul-it-everywhere, through hell or high-water, every-dent-a-story, every scratch a battle wound, vehicle of power!

Sisyphean Tasks.

I've been half-heartedly odd-jobbing it lately. In fact, this month I may have made almost $1000 from removing carpet, vacuuming, hauling and distributing bark dust, painting interiors, &, yesterday, filling a crack in a cement pad with (you guessed it) more cement. In order to do this last task I had to rearrange, individually, about a yard of rocks without a wheel barrow or a shovel. So I sat and hurled rocks from one side of a pile to another. For, cumulatively, about 45 minutes. I got paid about $10 to move small rocks.

Which brings me to the point of this blog post. People would much rather pay me to do easy but slowly back-breaking, mindless work, than accumulate my art. Painted trim is worth more, even to artistically informed people, than a drawing or a sequin covered duck decoy. Yesterday I got called an "Angel" because I had a screw driver to put in a switch plate. No one has ever called me anything pleasant because of what I make.

I use bark dust a parameter of progress. I have yet to have a summer since graduation from undergrad where I didn't have to interact with the stuff. It makes me itchy and sneazy, and generally distressed. To prepare a garden for it you make islands of perennials, and then surround them with the mulched up skins & innards of non-native cedars. My client made the joke (and he was clearly proud to have thought of it) "How many graduate school courses does it take to be able to shovel bark?"

The thing is, I'm not unhappy odd-jobbing. I really like looking back at a task well-done, that makes someone's home more comfortable and beautiful for them. I just don't know how to make that art. For all I know, maybe it is already.

Camping with Hunter.

So, I went camping.

I've been unemployed, almost completely, for almost a year. Mike and I also "broke Up" or he "dumped" me (very hard) just about a year ago. But hey, whadaya know, we find ourselves out in the woods with my dad's gear and my mom's car (and Mike's beer at about 10 am).

Rural Oregon is fantastic. We found the town of Dale on the 395, which I'll be talking more about in my other blog (so stay tuned.... or tune in... or whatever). We had beers bought for us in a way too well-lit bar by a boring man (really- he drills the holes for optic cable. He's a professional borer). We were stopped on the road because of a very small, slow stampede. There were frogs and garter snakes and the wonderful town of Ukiah, with robot windmills and a Motel covered in Antlers.

And, best of all, We found the Wheeler Bear! this is the same bear that was outside my gallery in Wheeler, mysteriously. And, last time I checked, is now chained outside one of the Wheeler antique stores...

Which just goes to show- life is full of the oddest coincidences, and endless possibilities. Of all the bears in all the antique stores in the world...

I don't have any idea what I will be doing this time next year. If I will have income, or lovers, or friends, or fingers. Judging by the last 3 years of my life there is absolutely no way to predict my petty future. But I'm certain I haven't seen the last of these bears.

codgers

Yesterday Ted and I spent a lot of time discussing the future of digital technology. As one can imagine, this meant we spent most of the time cross-referencing Radio Lab and On the Media. Ted and I both live on the fringe outskirts of technology, hesitating to ever stick a toe in those frigid waters. And yet that was most of our day.

Suffice it to say, we are both fairly anxious about the whole ordeal. We talked of stock market crashes and reality, virtual reality and avatars, morality and plurality... it went on and on. And as Ted grew more anxious, I grew more relaxed. My calmness came because, as we discussed it more and more, the more I realized how I was still adept at solving problems without a computer. Here were 2 people, both not very well informed, hashing out many a problem verbally. Often we could see that there were problems solved by computers, but there were still problems we could solve on our own- for instance, the problem of distilling meaning. As Ted worried that meaning would be lost, I watched as we established meaning between the two of us over and over again.

It's such an adventure having old friends. You can learn more about yourself in an afternoon with a great one than you can in a whole week of interacting with newbies. You might learn different things from new people, but once you have gathered their various and sundry impressions it is good to repeat them back to an old friend. They become like a sieve to help you sort the wheat from chaff.

Pretty, but is it Art?

Yesterday I had the opportunity to lay out a corn labyrinth. That's a very nice way of saying I got paid very little to do a lot of shoveling and mulching and planting on a little farm in Newberg. Which, I thoroughly enjoyed- I love working hard as long as it's not raining. But I am beginning to wonder if I will ever feel like I'm really worth more than $12.50 an hour. Even as I'm nursing a very tender feeling back and bicep today.

In other news, I've been watching M*A*S*H. There are jokes about Martinis in nearly every early episode. There's no laugh track. Every character, even the bad guys, are clearly acceptable as human beings- no character is treated as shallow, or superfluous (except maybe the women that Hawkeye messes around with, but even that is debatable). Everyone is treated as a stereotype, but all stereotypes are welcome, accepted and appreciated as fodder for oneliners. & it's great to see the clear development of a character from Groucho to Hawkeye to Gregory House. What a legacy.

Back from Boston!

As it turns out, The Powers that Be actually would like us to keep a separate blog. For that purpose I'm reconstituting "Painter's Victory Garden" Which I believe is paintersvictorious@blogspot, for anyone who wants to continue to read my rants on graduate related reading materials, and artistic developments. I'm not quite sure what that leave's this blog to do, but I'm sure I'll come up with something.

I'n the meantime, I've decided to formally try for the Guiness Book of World Records record for longest ball of fingerknitting. I'll be kickstartering that project probably sometime in the next week, if anyone is interested in kicking me a couple of bucks....

In the meantime, I'm staying at Todd Isaac's lovely abode, surrounded by wooden wonderment. It's so pleasent to get to live around beautiful belongings. Also, I have to say that the bed here is amazingly comfortable compared to the rubber mattress at the MASS ART dormitory. And they have a lovely big computer for me to write my rough drafts of essays on, as well as quickly post pictures. I need to get me one of these.

& on to homosexuals!

Gavin Butt's (nope, ya can't make this stuff up) "the Greatest Homosexual? Camp Pleasure and the performative body of Larry rivers." continues a complete waste of a perfectly good sunny day in Portland.

Larry Rivers could kinda draw. I remember (one of the few things that I remember) from his auto-biography, that when he first started to paint he wanted to be able to "draw like Rembrandt- we all did." Well, isn't that nice?

There was this first wave of what would later be called post-modernism, before it de/evolved into POP, of some marginally talented and not all that witty wannabe raconteurs who happened to include Larry Rivers. A not too great Jazz musician, and an ok, but also not that great painter. What Larry was as an early early adopter of as an art form, and people such as Andy Warhol perfected, was his ability to know what was cool, avant garde, &/or nasty. In other words, he knew how to have bad taste well. That's really all there is to say about Mr. Rivers.

However, I thinkit's funny that a 7 sentence article in Life magazine in 1959 got almost 2 pages of analysis. Same Life article featured the dying of the pop and an article on the first lady, as well as innumerable adds for cars, cigarettes and liquor, all that had more information and were more interesting than the article on Rivers. It's amazing how far just about every aspect of culture has come, even the catholic church, compared to the discourse on art.

"What Did I Do?" Mr Rivers' biography is POrtnoy's Complaint written with a lot more salacious details, and a lot fewer complaints.

& back to the nakedness...

(Channeling a certain sock frog) Why are there so many essays about prostitutes?

Ok, so I know that we call it the world's oldest profession for a reason, but were there really so many more prostitutes in the 1870's than now? To read feminist art criticism you'd think you couldn't walk the streets of Paris without, well, bumping into women who were also, ahem, walking the streets. It's ridiculous! Ok, so there were lots of women who were too busy keeping up appearances to actually enjoy living in a civic atmosphere, and there were also, certainly, people exchanging sex for money, but you are going to have a hard time convincing me that there were not the majority of women in between, much as there are now, and there always have been. Personally, I take a little offense to the conventional wisdom that all barmaids and waitresses of the 1880's were also on the game. How could starving artists afford so much sex they had to pay for, and also pay for their bar tabs and afford a studio? It just doesn't make good economic sense- why pay for sex, not to mention model's fees, when you could probably get away with dating someone who wasn't obsessed with her reputation? Why do we have to assume that there were not social contracts back in the day similar to now? Yes, ok, if you wanted to be married, and you wanted that lifestyle it was something you had to "protect," apparently. But why do scholars so often look down on, or just disregard, the mistresses and kept women? Women choosing not to get married, but to also have the standard of not being exclusively flesh for hire?

I find this idea perpetuated frequently, and it really annoys me (obviously). I mean, think about literature- You have female characters in Dickens, Austen, Hugo, etc. who may be taken advantage of, but are certainly not for sale. The middle class may not be a liberal as today, but there were women who could muddle through being single and not obsessed with their reputations, I'm sure. You can also look at the life of Colette, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colette) and see that some people were able to be quite openly bi-sexual and scandalous and able, oh my goodness! to contribute to the artistic dialog at the same time as making plenty of money!

It seems to be that writers such as Griselda Pollock (did her Daddy give her that name?) want there to have been a boys club that was somehow easier to win your stripes in if you were a man than if you were a woman. And, it's true, the Salon did accept a lot more men than women. But look around now at colleges and grad schools- you'll see that from the top down there is a shift in gender. There are generally a majority of male professors, followed by about equal numbers of men and women in the grad departments, and an overwhelming majority of women undergrads. What happens between those two times? Well, in my informal experience, I would say that the majority of male professors are, not surprisingly, married to women they went to undergrad with. The women are busy taking care of the kids and the house, generally holding down a job, and not making any art work until their kids hit college. Try telling these wives of professors that they aren't artists and you'll get your nose rearranged. It's hard now to have a family and an art career. Imagine how hard it was before birth control!

I find it hard to believe that the women who were the dancers or actresses in these paintings did not think of themselves as artists. Or that these women who modeled did not have an opinion of how they were drawn. Just because none of their thoughts or drawings ended up on display does not mean they didn't contribute to the dialog. They just didn't contribute the same way men did in this particular city in this particular era.

For example (and not harp on this too much) think of the visual effect of the relationship the actress Sarah Bernhardt and Alphone Mucha had, by all reports a non-sexual one. Actually, let's just take Sarah Bernhardt as an example for a second- Daughter of a Jewish courtesan, a courtesan occasionally herself, she went on to become the world's most famous actress. Apparently having a "bad" reputation didn't hold her back- she even mothered an illegitimate prince of Belgium and starred in the title role of Hamlet. I challenge Griselda to name an equally famous french stage actor with anywhere near the fantastic reputation.

Maybe women didn't care about painting quite as much, and found doing other projects more interesting or rewarding. I certainly do the majority of the time, and I'm a modern girl.

I resent that Paris was seen, is seen, as the center of the world at this time. What about the rest of France, where perhaps women were furthering the traditions of pottery, or the culinary arts, or spinning and dying, or weaving, as in Lyon? Who care's that there were a bunch of good ole boys in some city? That does not have to represent the entirety of male/female relations for an entire generation in an entire country.

But the presumably sexist paintings of Degas and the crew remain what people talk about. And they try to compare the relatively clumsy paintings of Cassat as if they were masterful. I do like her more than Renior, but just because all her characters seem to have their clothes on doesn't mean that her work isn't just as sexually charged as her male contemporaries. For example, if "girl in blue armchair" had been painted by a man (or "Psyche," perhaps) it would have been seen as fairly scandalous. The girl looks positively wanton, if you want to look at her that way. But most people don't. I can hazard a guess that a lot of people looking at Degas see a love of women, not an abuse of women.

I've lived with reproductions of Degas somewhere in my home most of my life. I find that the body images he created, those of women bathing, dressing, dancing, and most of all of women waiting to do something, say a lot about female musculature, and therefore strength and poise. I don't care how he got to make those images, or where that particular wash basin was located. What I care about is how beautiful the representations are. I care about the exciting use of color and line, and the amazing understanding of space and form.

Even in our "enlightened" times, women don't like to draw women. As a model, I know women hate to draw women because I watch them fidget for the first half hour. I hate to draw women, too. I don't feel comfortable with a model for a long time, because of how closely they resemble myself. For at least the first half hour I either want to feed them or tell them to go home. But I'm used to getting up on the modeling stand in front of 12 or more men, half of whom will inevitably draw my breasts first. But, really, if they are good drawers, they see me no more lifelike than a bowl of fruit. I suspect that these same men, if confronted with a male model, would more than likely head home. But both genders are more comfortable drawing women naked than men. Male models have to deal with problems of visual arousal, which keeps a lot of them from being able to relax and be good at their jobs. But also, as a woman, I don't freak out when people stare at me. My flight or fight instincts are not triggered by a man looking at me, or even a group of men looking at me. Most of the male models I know actually have to train themselves not to panic the first time they are up on the stand, even if they have their clothes on. To establish a relationship with a male model is harder for both parties, and I think that's probably one of the reasons that fewer men are featured naked after the Grecian era.

But why would I want to not understand the way an artist looks at a woman with desire? Desire is a legitimate way to look at another person. We are not all academics, we artists. Drawing dead bodies is one whole school of study, and I am uncomfortable looking at paintings, such as Francis Bacon's, that show people who look nearly dead. But I wonder why it is unacceptable for Degas to have an intimate relationship, possibly built on mutual respect, if not actual affection, for the naked ladies and young dancers that he drew. The biggest hurdle in this discussion I think, will be the acknowledgment that the relationships artists and models have are often a lot more complex than critics would find convenient, and do not always indicate an exclusively economic exchange.

Nice fishy!

Grad school Break! it's sunny outside!

addendum

Oh, actually the best part of "Believing is Seeing" is when the author reminded us that Picasso managed to work in several different styles, and in every medium he could get his hands on, for most of his life. This, to me, is the sign of a truly successful artist- when they feel like making plates with paintings of goats on them, they do. When they feel like sticking bike seats and handlebars on the wall to make a head with horns, they do. When they want to make an image about peace, or sex, or the carnage of war, they do. Nobody constrained Picasso, no one told him he could only make they same kind of work every day. That's the goal.

1 book, 13 naked ladies.

So, I've been reading "Believing is Seeing" which is the book form of a slide show created by Mary Anne Staniszewski for undergrad students at RISD in the early 90's. Actually, it was a pretty fun read, though it resembles in structure, as well as in content in parts, the far superior John Berger book/ video "Ways of Seeing." I should reread (or watch on You tube) the Berger again soon, for one thing it has a whole helluva lot more naked ladies.

I dutifully dog-eared, because, as I'm finding with all my readings, my retention rate is low (thank god for blogging, or it would all pass in one ear and right out the other.

Firstly, there was an interesting observation that we remember reproductions of art more than the actual art. Remembering a postcard of a Michaelangelo rather that the actual experience of seeing a Michaelangelo. Which, since I grew up with the "Dress Me David" refrigerator magnets I'm prone to agree with. I remember seeing the actual David and being amazed at just how, well, flat it looked in its niche in the gallery. But am I remembering the reproduction aspect or the interaction aspect? I spent hours with the magnets, playing with them, as well as just having them right there in my everyday world.

Which brings me to the second concept- that Art was created sometime in the 18th-19th century, as people began collecting stuff. Before that you had images that you interacted with in church, or the cave, or in your pocket, as objects, not art. Much as I was interacting with my magnets. So, the author is saying that art became something that you only saw in a gallery, and therefore affected very few people, and I'm saying (I think) that with reproductions readily available of the masterpieces now conceived of as art, we are all allowed to interact with a Michaelangelo possibly in a similar way to the a stone-age man and his totemic stone Venus figure.

Then we get into the "why we create art" part of the book. She points out that Leonardo Davinci created drawings and paintings as a way to better understand what he was seeing. She seems to think that this way of painting, or illustrating, was a renaissance phenomenon. Which leads me to think she doesn't draw or paint.

"The term "ART" as we now understand it began to take on its modern meaning in the 18th century; an original creation, produced by an individual gifted by genius... Not solely political propaganda, not a religeous nor sacred object, neither magic nor craft, this thing called Art did not exist before the modern era." So, what do we call the things that are magically crafty, political and/or sacred? What is the original Obama Hope poster if not a fantastic combination of all those things? And Art?

There's a great couple of paragraphs tracing the history of this supposed Art (which, we come to understand really mostly means PAINTING, sculpture, some architecture and some photography)and lumping it together with fencing and optics and mechanics. I especially like this, since so many artists now do things like mechanics or horseback riding under the auspices of art. I mean, surviving in a hotel room with a wolf for a couple of days is art, right?

One thing that was revealed to me by this particular book was perhaps an answer to the question of what feminine art would look like. Apparently, importantly, women's artworks tend to be heavily reliant on concept to rationalize creation. I'm thinking of Mary Kelly's Post-Partum Document, or Cindy Sherman's Film Stills. These ladies are not making art for the pleasure of it, but the purpose. Maybe that's why I've always found them to be tediously unsensual, ugly and pedantic. Give me an ugly DeKooning any day- at least I don't get told by the painting itself what to think of it.

"The commercial counterpart of the gallery and museum is the boutique and the department store." Ah! that's why I love going to Target so much!

Distinct Lack of Naked Ladies!

This is the 3rd time I've purchased "the Anti-Aesthetic, essays on Post-Modern Culture." Each teacher has wanted us to read different essays, though, so I had not read Jameson's "Post-Modernism and Consumer Society." The thing that stood out about it most, upon first reading, was that it didn't contain any naked ladies.

mod·ern·ism/ˈmädərˌnizəm/Noun
1. Modern character or quality of thought, expression, or technique.
2. A style or movement in the arts that aims to break with classical and traditional forms.

post·mod·ern·ism/ noun /pōstˈmädərˌnizəm/

1. A late 20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism that represents a departure from modernism and has at its heart a general distrust of grand theories and ideologies as well as a problematical relationship with any notion of “art.”

So, as a historian (haha) I object to the whole progressive concept of modernism. There were so many breaks from so many different time periods in artistic history I think it's just sort of dumb to think of one of them as being more radical than the others. I don't get how modernism is more modern than, say, impressionism, except for its existance in more "modern" times. It just seems sorta silly to me as a name. So postmodernism seems, well, outright ridiculous. Which I guess is right there in the definition- "a general distrust of theories."

Specifically in this essay Jameson deals with "pastiche" and "schizophrenic" theories in postmodernism. He basically defines pastiche as parody without the comedy, (which sounds tedious), and schizophrenia as being something akin to the experience of Billy Pilgrim's becoming unstuck in time. If I'm understanding him correctly, and I very well may not be, his definition of postmodern art is art which evokes a sense of time (place, action) we can't quite put our finger on, yet we sense it's familiarity. In other words, postmodernism is that creepy sense of de ja vu that apparently occurs more regularly in epileptics. Saturated with time and signifiers but only conscious for, and in, an instant.

I don't understand why these labels and time periods need to be differentiated, or why they couldn't exist contemporary with each other, as schools of thought not periods of time. Actually, I'm quite sure that they did, along with neo-classicism and a whole bunch of other made up genres.

It has been hammered home in all these other naked lady essays that one of the great works of modernism, Demoiselles De Avignon, was an attempt to return to a primal, pre-classical aesthetic. So perhaps postmodernism is really just calling a spade a spade- saying that all works of modernism were indeed, already, postmodern. Wouldn't that be pre-modern? Let's just say it's all garbage and be done with it!

This goes back to the first mini- essay I wrote, where Linda Nochlin observed that the women of different eras were more likely to make work of that era rather than work that was distinctly feminine. It seems to me that one could postulate that artists were almost exclusively, throughout time, making work for the same fundamental reasons- they were capable through access to materials, they were being paid or in some way rewarded for their talents, and the work that they were making interested them. This has never changed, from neadrathal through neo-classical times. Artists will make representations of the fundamental things of importance in their times and space. Sometimes these things will deliberately be nostalgic, sometimes deliberately futuristic, for as long as there is a concept of past and future. Bu they will always be of their time. You can't change a Roman copy into a Greek original.

Exotic Naked Ladies.

Another day, another Nochlin, this one titled "the Imaginary Orient."

I love Oreintalism. It's some of my favorite work, to be quite honest. There is something so NOT real about it. In this regard I completely agree with Ms Nochlin- it's more like a gallery of taxidermy than a trip to the zoo. She calls it (and I like this term) "the apparent absence of art" meaning that there are some, not many, instances, especially within these paintings that tend to be of slave girls in exotic locals, of actual observation without embellishment. Certainly the tile work that is ubiquitous is actually taken from real details.

But here are paintings, especially the Gerome "Slave Markets", where French men are hiring French (or recent immigrant) models (read PROSTITUTES, lest we forget the real vocation of these yummy looking creatures according to most art historians) to pretend to be Persian girls being traded in an open air market. These are fairly accurate and very sexy paintings of hairless white girls being poked and prodded and bid upon by "oriental" (read "Moslem") men. And yet, in this article, we didn't have to talk about male dominance? I guess because it's obvious here, as opposed to being implied by Picasso and the like. Here we have detailed women against detailed backgrounds of exotic locales, and because the objectification is obvious it is not noteworthy. And that is just fine with me!

More Naked Ladies

Hey, this time with Pictures!

So, I've been a figure model since I was 17. I started in a bikini for a highschool class, and have since modeled nude for 13 years. In that time I have seen lots and lots of drawings of myself. Hundreds. Maybe even thousands. Neither of these are of me- both were done by Ted and were featured in the gallery a couple of months back. I love both these drawings. In neither can you see the woman's face, or details of her breasts. In both you can see hands, and in at least one of them, feet. Ted can draw, that much is certain. He has studied figure drawing off and on for more than 10 years, and when he looks at a naked girl (or man, actually, though I seem to have not transferred those images onto my hard drive), low, he seems to see a lot of interesting details to draw. Ted works very hard to attempt to master this very complicated way of seeing. This will be relevant later on, I promise.

In Carol Duncan's (yup, it was a double Duncan day)"Virility and Domination in Early 20th Century Vanguard Painting" essay one of her many assertions indicated that the Fauves (amoung others) were obviously lascivious bastards because they painted reclining women with no heads, hands, or feet. Now, I looked at the xeroxes of the works used to support this claim, by such luminaries as Picasso, Matisse, Munch and others, and here's what I can say about them- they weren't very good drawers, or atleast these weren't very good drawings. And by that I mean that they didn't take a lot of time to see very much to draw, especially of the naked girl. They seem intimidated by feet and hands- if they can put them behind a back, or out of the frame, they do. I've watched hundreds of students use this same technique. The artists seem more interested in the symbol of woman than in the actual woman to hand- if they can place her somewhere, great! Put her on a sofa, bed, in front of a self-portrait, whatever! Just don't have her (as Ted's drawings of the subject seem to do) actually bearing weight in space. Don't give her mass! The exception to this being Matisse's Carmelina, which was by far the most interesting of the paintings.

At the same time that these avant-garde artists were making these floaty lady paintings, photography (not discussed in the article) was making it's first inroads into the art world, and surgery was becoming standardized. It wasn't imperative anymore to be depicting the body accurately- there was another medium and method doing that ever so much more effectively than a bad drawing could. Also, there were amazing commercial figure drawers of that era, most notably Alphonse Mucha. In other words, it was no longer imperative to be good at seeing- instead, I think, we see the switch to "art" being for shock value and profit.

And what was shocking at the time? Art of the mentally deranged, or imported primative works. These are wonderful and compelling aesthetic systems heavily influencing the art world, especially Picasso. I see no evidence, or discussion, of what gender the masks from Demoiselles De Avignon were originally intended for, but quite possibly that was what the painting was supposed to be about- the masks, not the boobies. I dunno, I could be wrong. The boobies are pretty interesting, too.

What is for certain is that these men were making work not to be collected by the upper classes, or the monarchy, or to better display wealth in a church setting as their predecessors had. These were not works to be slaved over in the process of discovering the anatomy or to better depict Jesus and Mary, a tradition of representation that had been perfected by fresco painters 200-400 years before. These were quick, dirty paintings to sell to the middle classes (in this I agree with Ms Duncan). These were to swap with each other, to trade for rent, doodles and not masterpieces, by in large. These are not "studies" these are "paintings" by men who can't draw very well for people who can't afford, or appreciate, the best.

But I resent the claim that the models were somehow degraded by these depictions. Many models, whether or not they are also prostitutes, have been drawn badly. You don't always get to choose how you are drawn. What's for certain is that very rarely is a woman seen cut off as if she is involved in a sexual act at the time of the painting. I know from experience why there are so many reclining women being depicted, as opposed to standing or even seated poses. It's exhausting! I look at a lot of paintings from this era and see tired models, not dominated models. I'm not saying artists of the era weren't just jerks wanting to paint naked ladies- they very well may have been. But I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt. They probably hired these women for an hour, half of which was spent reclining, much as it would be now.

I'm all for a school of criticism for artists by artists. I look at Ted's work, much as I look at Mucha's or Degas', and see people who may have been bastards, but are also interested in the sensuous details of feminine-ness, and are willing to work hard to capture that in a limited time. When Degas drew a prostitutes, as he often did, he drew her very well, very nicely, and it is obvious that she is in motion. These men love women. They love drawing. They have studied long enough to love the details, not just of the carpet, but also of the girl. This, to me, is the most masculine, FUBU sort of drawing- communicating the intimate details of particular models as they have been presented to the viewer. There is just as much ego in a Mucha as a Matisse, one artist puts more merit in intimacy and the other in symbolism. Neither is dominant. They are just ways of seeing some one they are paying to lie on their sofa.

Naked Ladies

So, I read the lovely Art Journal Essay "the MOMA's hot Mommas" by Carol Duncan through twice, and realized what I am going to take away from Graduate school- a gratefulness for not having to discuss art in New York City in the 1980's. I am not going to remember any salient details from these articles- they slip though my mind like sand through the hour glass. I'm writing pages of notes, which I reread and remember just this vague sense on annoyance without substance.

The article discusses the rearrangement of the MoMA circa 1984, focusing specifically on Demoiselles de Avignon by Mr. Picasso and Mr. DeKooning's "Woman 1" (described as the "fus(ion of the) terrible killer-witch with the willing and exhibitionist Whore.") I do agree with Ms. Duncan that "the MOMA remains enormously important for the role it plays in maintaining in the present a particular version of the art historical past." However, since I have never been to the MOMA, and since it no longer exists on it's former floor plan, and has greatly expanded it's collections since this article was written, I don't actually understand the relevancy of the article to my current place and time as a creator or observer. Also, the article tries to discuss femininity in a way I found as outdated as the description of the layout.


My high school art teacher was obsessed with breasts. She was very fond of Mr. DeKooning, and frequently showed us slides of the "Woman" series. I thought at the time that they were clumsy, tedious, bosomy for the sake of being bosomy, inarticulate paintings. But wanting to do well in the class, and following in the many derivative footsteps of other highschool students before me, I dutifully drew women with very large, pronounced breasts, ugly, angry faces, and little, or no, legs. At the time they undoubtedly resembled myself- I was a top-heavy angry person through most of my young adulthood. Maybe because I so thoroughly embraced this character the paintings of DeKooning have never seemed particularly threatening to me. Women are angry and clumsy creatures occasionally, just as men are impotent warmongerers. No big deal- we all have many facets to our personalities, and may we be able to explore them all through art.

Ms. Duncan seemed particularly interested in the gorgon-likeness of the women in the "Woman" series. I have always found that I feel like I more resemble a gorgon than a nymph, and haven't never felt that the depiction of women, by men or women, as such, was threatening to my girly-ness. Women have these capacities, and they have been celebrated through millenia in many forms- from Kali to Medusa. We wouldn't, as a society, choose to remember them if they weren't important, dear to us.

The article concludes with a passage comparing an image from the COVER of Penthouse, advertised on city streets (and "available everywhere") with the pieces in the museum. In it Ms. Duncan describes porn as "images designed... to stimulate desire, primarily in men." The image from the cover is of a woman, seated much like the full frontal seated women of the "Woman" series, fully clad, and not even showing cleavage. Growing up as I have, seeing porn as not limited to stimulating desire specifically in either gender, I also find no offense in the Penthouse cover. Call it DeKooning for the masses, if you will. But I wonder what Ms. Duncan makes of images made by woman in the mainstream now.

Specifically I'm thinking of the Beyone Run The World(Girls) perfomance on at the Billboard awards 2011, and also of the original video. Both depict not only scantilly clad, gyrating women, but are clearly made not only to stimulate desire, sexual and otherwise in both genders, but to intimidate the fuck out of people. The original music video depicts riot cops and exploding cars, Beyonce on a cross, and a woman possibly masterbating in a cage. And is that Lady Gaga walking those hyenas, the symbol of female dominated society? (I don't know, because I don't participate with pop culture frequently) The lyrics are the oddest of all, though I find them strangely empowering, if sorta infantile...
(I'm repping for the girls who taking over the world
Have me raise a glass for the college grads
Anyone rolling I'll let you know what time it is
You can't hold me
I broke my 9 to 5 and copped my cheque
This goes out to all the women getting it in,
Get on your grind
To the other men that respect what I do
Please accept my shine
Boy you know you love it
How we're smart enough to make these millions
Strong enough to bare the children
Then get back to business
See, you better not play me
Don't come here baby
Hope you still like me)

The vidoe and performance depict probably angry women in formation, taking on a mythical male army. But watching both I'm amazed by how much I am supposed to assume that there is a revolution needed, or that somehow men are somehow afraid of, or in-equal to women. I don't think I want girls, especially these girls, to run the world. They seem incapable of re-assesing and recreating a new and better place, and more just bent on destruction using tanks and glitter. Ah well, we can't win 'em all.

hope you still like me, too.

Graduate School (bring on the naked ladies!)

So, I'm now (or sooner or later) expected to start keeping a blog for (around?) my graduate school experience, noting readings, discussing accomplishements, generally proving that I am, indeed, working towards some sort of thesis. So, consider selves forwarned, we are about to enter an abundant, if boring phase of sequinner note writings.

My critical Theory 1 class seems to be a recap of several of my undergrad classes. And what reading do we start with? Linda Nochlin's "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" This is not the first time I've read this 1971 article. Indeed, wikipedia says that the "title posed a question that would spearhead an entire new branch of art history," so I guess it should be considered required reading, especially for female artists.

However, I'm always uncomfortable with this Euro-centric, "Painting and Sculpture are the only forms of art" article. The reason that you don't have Great Female Artists would seem obvious- they were probably busy doing something besides painting and sculpting. You could probably posit the theory that there were very few women that wanted to paint, or who had the desire to make a living at it until the 20th century, by which time not only could women vote and hold property, but also the costs of creating artwork had greatly diminished. In the era of Michaelangelo very few women owned and operated their own businesses doing anything, let alone a business in the trades, like fresco painting was at that time.

The article spent too much time discussing the trouser wearing artist Rosa Bonheur, (whom I had never heard of and was unimpressed by images from), as well as giving the bizarre excuse that possibly there had been no great female artists because in European countries women were denied access to nude models for the study of figure drawing until the late 19th century (because we all know that Giotto, someone sighted in the article as an artistic "Genius" was drawing nudes all the time!).

There were some interesting ideas floated in the beginning of the article. One was that women artists of different eras were more likely to resemble men of the same era, rather than be a subclass of ladies by themselves. "In every instance women artists and writers seem to be closer to other artists and writers of their own period and outlook than they are to each other." Clearly women artists, though few and far between, were more interested in making art than they were in making "feminine" art.
There was no articulation of what "feminine" art would or could have looked like, but certainly it was not to be a "...naive idea that art is the direct personal expression of individual emotional experience, a translation of personal life into visual terms. Art is almost never that, and great art never is....art is... neither a sob story nor a confidential whisper." I love that quote, but I wonder what exactly is supposed to denote "feminine" art besides that a female made it.

Another interesting observation was that women, as well as people of the upper-classes of both genders, are more likely to be encouraged to be generalists. To be a little knowledgeable about most things, instead of isolating themselves by being an expert. In other words, women were not (and I would say are not) encouraged to be geeks. However, it was not necessarily supported that great artists were fixated exclusively on art, so I'm not quite sure how relevant this argument was.

I would say that the same reason that there had been no great female artists by the 1970's would be the same reason why there were more pigeons than women who had recieved the purple heart- Women weren't participating the painting/ sculpting in any significant numbers. The same reason that there have been historically few notably famous women artists is the same reason there were few notable female generals- a lack of participation in the field.

Also, I would say tampons, birth control, and washing machines probably made a bigger difference to whether or not there could be great female artists than anything having to do with male domination.

And then I moved away again...

And so, the Wheeler chapter has almost officially come to a close. I have about 2 &1/2 more weeks of a house sitting here in PDX, then a week at home, and then I head to Boston for Graduate School (more on that in a minute) for about 2 weeks, and then WHO KNOWS! The future beckons like, uhm, a drop off a steep cliff. An option is that I move to NC and into Matt's dad's dilapidated farm house come September for a semester or so, but I'm open to suggestions!

Bunny Love

With Easter on the horizon I thought I'd share this wonder from G&D's house. There, amongst the succulents, modernist furniture, and half dozen kitties is the perfect mug.

Gotta Love That!

Really? I know they need bag stations around here, but for serious? That has to take effort.

Words of wisdom from Brien and Kim

Brien- If you think it might effect your marital bliss it already is effecting your marital bliss.
Kim- Don't break up with your boyfriend's mother's lesbian lover on Christmas.

in addition to being wise, they also cook some mean sausage pasta shit.

i like being a girl.

So, for those who have recently asked, here's Andrew's link http://www.oudevoida.blogspot.com/

Aren't toenails fantastic? Isn't wearing heels great? I'm so glad I've got nice, soft girly parts. I'm sitting and reading a novel, utterly comfortable alone with my sweet, very sexy self. I might not be interesting, but I sure am happy. Happy Oscar Night, everybody!

crush addition

Oh, I forgot another excellent crush incidence, which relates, vaguely, to the post on weed.

Before I knew Andrew very well I got drunk at a work meeting at Kennedy School where he was sitting beside me, laughing his fantastic, much missed laugh. I had ordered a burger, and Andrew is a vegetarian. I believe I was being fairly obnoxious at this meeting, but it was sorta a going away party for me, so I didn't care. Anyway, unlike me, I had left some 1/3 of my burger in the basket, and ever so casually, Andrew scarfed it up, if memory serves in one enormous bite. There have been few moments in the history of history when scrappy, 5 foot 6, vegetarian types have been more adorable. Maybe only when they are offering me cocktails and talking about baseball...

Crushed

I'm a romantic, and I have no trouble admiting it most of the time (see So, I like Hearts). The other night I made one of those frequent Molly comments, blatantly ripped of from Brandon years ago, that I like my beer "bitter like my heart," (works great for coffee, too. And then you get to say "bitter and black like my heart."). But, of course, I'm not really bitter- most of the time I live in hope, mostly just because that's what comes functionally to me. Those who know me well know I've got dark corners, but for the most part sunshine is the best disinfectant. And you don't have to know me very well to know I crush like crazy.

Now, with that said, I like crushes a lot better than relationships, at least at the moment. I like having a good, long standing appreciation of some fantastic person or another. Forays into taking these crushes from a purely puppy phase into something more mature have met with mixed results. However, especially recently, I have begun to enjoy crushes that extend as mostly that- a gentler infatuation tinged with a yummy amount of desire, details, and teasing.

I have had a crush on a friend in L.A. for umpteen years. He's great looking and dresses well and is successful and has fantastic taste in music and in women, especially his most current friend. He has that all important accessory- glasses! He also has one of the best crush devices- a fantastically challenging library. It's the kind of library I look at sideways because it takes up a whole wall and therefore could take up a whole evening. There are books on economics and feminism as well as books I've never heard of and books in other languages. But here's where it goes from admiration to crush- left alone for most of an evening, after falling asleep 2 nights in a row looking at spines aligned, I finally breached the shelves. Thumbing past Infinite Jest and Dangerous Angels (yeah, he has my favorite book from childhood...) I found a complete page a day calendar of George Carlin quotes. And I tucked my feet under my ass and read on the wood floor voraciously through the month of April before he unexpectedly came home.

I kinda hid that I, left to my own devices, had picked this out of everything. We played dominoes and he let me steal his french fries. We drank whiskey. And then, wonderfully then, he brought out the calendar and began to read to me. He has a lovely voice, and wonderful reading style. And best of all, a molasses laugh that has a base you can feel more than hear across the room. This, to me, is the pinnacle of a perfect romance. These sorts of shared moments, more candid than intimate, that do not leave me wanting more, but only wanting that.

More recently there is a crush here, one that sometimes plays ping pong with me, and has recently begun to open up about things closer to his heart. But, really, the ping pong is enough. The slow, delicious learning about another heavenly body in orbit 10 feet away is plenty. It's still, for me, exciting to get an email, or to look at eyes and posture, to watch in action. And, what is best about crushes, at least for me, is I know who is feeling this pleasure. He seems to be great, but I am experiencing my sensational range of emotions, independent of anything he can do. I would hate to ruin that by forcing him to be too aware of my dark corners, or by getting to know him well enough that I knew he had faults besides not liking me as much as I would like him to. I don't need warts right now, and I certainly don't desire exclusivity or even further intimacies. All I need is the wondrous fantasy of proximity and the occasional trouncing using paddles. I'm as happy as a clam with potential adventure- actual adventures will be appreciated in time, I'm sure. Hopefully ones including the kind of paddles you dip in water.

There was to be more, but heaven's, this has gotten long enough. Must away to make things with stuff!

The Weed Thing

Recently it has reared it's ugly head again.
So, I can't smoke. It's not that I wouldn't, it's not that I care if other people do- I just can't. In the past I haven't even been comfortable around it- the smell makes me nauseous, I've been known to break out in hives after making out with people who use it, buying rope can make my palms get itchy. I was recently given a hemp lip balm for Christmas that cracked my lips open severely. At different times it has effected me differently, sometimes less so than others. But, better safe than sorry, I just avoid it. And apparently that makes me a semi-social pariah, and less attractive.
Now, I do tend not to date vegans. I also have had negative experiences with tee-totalers. And religious nuts tend only to be interesting until you realize that they are just nuts. But these are people making a choice, or engaging in a belief system. I'm not doing either. I feel like I'm in the same boat with people who are allergic to peanuts or soy or milk, but somehow it's different. Luckily, there's no anaphalaxis so far. Instead there's this bizarre rejection.
Like all discord, I really want to understand this better, so I've been talking to people about it. One response implied that I was perceived (presumably because I can't smoke) as judgemental. Which actually is funny, cause I tend to love people who love weed. I don't tend to actually vocally encourage their using it, but then I don't tend to tell people to go out and have a cigarette or take their meds either. In other words, I don't tend to encourage people to get buzzed, but I also don't discourage it. I don't know what else, socially, is acceptable. Miss Manners is a little mum on the subject. But if anyone has suggestions, they should put them in the comment box.
Until then I guess I'll just keep dodging out of the room, and hope people can forgive me.

IWSHIWR

Oh my goodness!



So, yesterday I look up from where I was lying on the floor to see a cute, skinny kid with adorable Buddy Holly type glasses haunting the gallery door. He had been lured by the "ping pong" sign. He seemed surprised that there was actually a ping pong table in the gallery, and agreed to a game (all I did yesterday was play ping pong), but first he had to go turn his lights off ON THE WIENERMOBILE! Ok, how cool is that? And for real, there on the 101, in front of the antique's store, was the glorious car itself!

So, Joey and I played some no-score ping pong and shot the shit on all sorts of great stuff. Most notably goofy museums and colleges we'd attended and speculating on the adds that appear adjacent on gmail...& that he used to work at space camp! (and got to wear a fly suit... that sure beats the hell out of any outfit I've gotten to wear to work). We talked about how positive the people in Eugene were about the car (apparently you can be a vegan and still love the wienermobile. Who knew?).

Anyway, the whole thing was just damn cool. I beginning to really love living in Wheeler. At least there are goofy people to play ping pong with. & I have the whistle to prove it!

(second guy from the right... too bad he's not wearing his glasses...)

http://hotdoggerblog.com/hotdoggers/

happy valentine's day!

This is the wall art in the nice, high ceilinged downstairs of my new friends Kim and Brian's house. It's so true! Saloons do need Boys!

Ended up participating in the greatest dance party ever last night. One thing that is truly cool about living on the coast is the range in ages that participate in such things. Of course there was Howard Harris, who must be in his 90's, but there were plenty of other folks over 50 or 60 as well. Some quite happily wearing thong leotards and shakin' it for the whole world to see! I'm not so sure that the self serve wine was truly necessary, but a great time seemed to be had by all.

Relaxing today after such an active weekend.

dressed as the lone ranger...

Ok, so apologies in advance for the variety of misspellings that are due to occur from a costume party in february. Once again composing on the phone from a drinking venue, this time in manzanita. I just scared the living daylights out of a tourist who attended my opening last night- I guess its good to know not everyone recognizes me as a cowgirl.I can still suprise people who don't know me well. But then I guess this is my second night in costume ins way. Last night was so full of love & chatter- today, in contrast, I haven't said a word a word since the last waffle scarring guest left my place. Flying solo now no one except howard acknowleges me with more than a smile. I like these contrasts....

they're everywhere!

they even are manifest as carpet lint!

So, I guess I like hearts.

I'm getting ready for my GRAND opening here in Wheeler, and decided I needed garland. Actually, I should capitalize that, too. NEEDED. Specifically, I needed tar paper heart garland, and something to do with all this left over wax paper, and these cellophane sleeves that the poinsettias I NEEDED a few months ago, and have since died, came in. And so I was cutting out hearts when a new friend decided to swing by the gallery and help me out with a bottle of wine.
The gallery at the moment has definite motifs going on. One is assuredly hearts. There's the resurrected heart wall, the drawings of the resurrection, and a piece involving a heart to advertise the flirtation devices. But when the friend asked me if I liked hearts I responded "I like holidays." What I meant by that, I went on to explain, is that I have a desire to decorate. I separate that from my desire to create things I would classify as "art." Making garland is not art- there is no risk involved. Even the drawings of hearts, to a certain extent, are not exactly artistic to me because they are more like exercises. Practice for some real creation I cna't currently envision.
To use sports as an example- not every run is a race. Most runs are not races. No one would expect an athlete to only run races. Or would they? I'm not sure.
This is something else that has been happening to me. I want to make assertions of what I'm thinking, but what I think may not actually be what I believe. I don't know if I've ever tried to work around that idea before. I think it comes from spending way too much time alone cutting out tar paper hearts and listening to TED lectures.
Anyway, the evening went on, including the midnight eating of day old waffles and the drinking of all of my beer, and me trouncing my new friend at cribbage, at some point I stretched and my belt was revealed. With my belt buckle. Which has a red heart with wings on it. "Ah, so you do like hearts?"
How to dodge it this time? Why was I afraid to say "Yes. This is my symbol. This is a thing I collect, that I look for in puddles and clouds, that I default to for lack of a better object. This is my cultural comforter, the thing I can almost always find and understand. I am a true, passionate lover of my friends and of the earth, and I clasp this thing around my waist almost everyday to prove it."
Yeah- chickened out. I don't even remember what I said in response.

addendum- I later asked this guy what his faults were- he said that he was too vehement. BRING IT!

Intimate Pie.

"There are some people's pie I wish I could have more than just a bite of, that even a big piece leaves me crying for more.
There are pie's that are better to look at than eat.
There are pies you have heard about, or fantasized about, but never had a chance to try.
There are pies that belong to other people.
There are pies you want to steal, and pies you want to know how to make.
There are pies that you start eating and know you can't finish.
And then there are the pies I remember fondly. Ten years ago I really craved Clarissa's pie, but now I don't even like that flavor any more. Then there's Jennifer's pie from last year that I sometimes think I would like some more of, but I have to say "no, I've had enough."
Sometimes people only offer you a little pie, but once you've finished, and appreciated it, they offer you a little more. Then a little more. And that's the pie you keep coming back for.
When you offer someone some pie, they don't necessarily want the whole thing. They might just want a little taste of it. In fact, they might just be taking it to be nice, because how do you say no to pie?
They might only like the crust.
They might eat all the filling out, and just leave the crust sitting there in pieces.
They might take your whole pie, but only offer you a small piece of theirs in return.
Some people have a huge pie, some people have a small pie.
If you ask for more pie, people don't often want to give it to you.
You shouldn't take pie that isn't offered.
You shouldn't clamor for pie.
You shouldn't expect pie just because you like it.
You shouldn't expect compliments on your pie."

By this point my therapist was pretty red in the face. "The sexual overtones of this metaphor are killing me."

Free Write Afternoon

It's so rewarding to remove information.
When I was a freshman in college there was a girl named Terri (probably in her forties, actually- all I remember is that her girlfriend looked like a bunny) who made one of my favorite student pieces of all time using a mountain goat's skeleton painted baby pink, and that green fiberglass roofing stuff. The piece ended up, well, coquetish. ((<---hey Andrew, how do you really spell that word?)) Ever since I've wanted to paint bones. These have been floating around with me since P. Muzzy handed them off a couple years ago.
So, as I started slapping the house paint on these bad boys I wasn't exactly surprised how satisfying it was. All the staining and flaking and minor holes began to fill. Suddenly there were gradual planes and hillocks where there used to be exploded mine fields. Makes me want to paint the whole world baby blue.

Why does pandora insist I should love Oasis?

No, really?

That last post got a little out of hand. Here's what I started out thinking about, which, as soon as I went back to drawing, came back into my mind.

With so many passive seeming people coming into my life lately, "How do you get your ass kicked?" is actually a question I feel like I need to ask. I hang out with my rents, talk to Matt Causey on the telephone, etc. In other words, I'm used to it, I expect and enjoy it. When I'm not getting a healthy amount of it I wither.

There's a specific relationship that I'm in right now where I feel like I'm the wrong person to be presenting obvious challenges (and possible solutions) to someone who readily admits to needing help. In fact is even trying to get help. But I don't want to be the confronter in the situation. I don't even want to be in the situation. I want the person to figure their way out of it on their own, then call me.

But to talk to him you'd think that no one has ever sat him down and said "Hey! It's the (?), stupid!" or whatever. No one has actually had the cahones to push him hard, and therefore pushing himself is sorta sad to watch. Like he doesn't know where his ass is! I don't actually know the person well enough to feel entitled to ask anything besides "How do you get your ass kicked? Whatever it is- go do it. A lot."

I think it's a problem that this one person is just the current example of what seems like a trend. We spent so much time in our youths treating each other with respect, and pumping up our self-esteem, that we can't seem to roll our over-inflated heads past one another.

And, next post will be "What is Beauty for, exactly?"

how do you get your ass kicked?

((this picture has nothing to do with this blog post.))

I grew up with challenging parents. I don't mean that they were excessively hard to please, or abusive, or malicious, those are things my therapist and I can talk about. But they are both, in their own ways, exceptionally challenging folks. They were/are both teachers, and, maybe not connected, perpetually dissatisfied with themselves.
My dad is an athlete, and as such is constantly pushing his limits. He's a great person to discuss fitness goals with because he genuinely believes you can get there. He also is constantly focussed on the next goal, sometimes even before the first goal is met, which can be a little overwhelming. When I started running I wasn't just gonna lose some weight, no, I was going to run marathons (notice the plural. Running is a lifestyle, not an ends to a means). I think he also, not so secretly, hopes I'll run ultras. Right now I'm learning how to swim, and it's not going to be for the pleasure of learning to swim, but so I can do tri-athalons, and eventually Ironmans. I've grown up listening to him harass his cycling buddies, remembering their accomplishments, trash-talking them into trying new sports. When he and his dad hike together the conversations is constantly about who has lost weight, who has gained weight, who is doing well in the group rides, who has fallen off the wagon, etc. This isn't competitive- they genuinely want to be able to congratulate people when they succeed.
Recently my dad was seriously injured. We are talking near death sorts of injuries, which he has recovered from remarkably well (GO DAD!). We just ran a 10k "together" (in costume, another story), and started at the back so he could pass as many people as possible. His rationale for not running at a safe pace on ice and snow with his daughter (who CAN"T get an injury because I don't have health insurance) who had driven 7 hours to run WITH him? The more people he passed the more people would know they could recover from such an injury. He is such a celebrity in our little town I'm sure he was cheering someone on every quickened, slightly stiff step of the way. And if he didn't recognize them from the back, then they were cheering him on as he passed.
And this is how my dad does it. He kicks ass. He has expectations of EVERYONE, not just his daughter. But, though he'll encourage you every step of the way, he is still going to beat you, and beat you good. He'll show you just how it's done- he'll school you. And people LOVE it. He had so many visitors when he was on oxy- and every one he encouraged. He got cards from his riding buddies that said things like "you'll be back hammering us in no time." And he will.
With out my dad I don't know if I would care about fitness. It is a way for me to relate to him, for me to be one of the people he encourages. I run, or try to run, becauseIi want to meet those goals he has for me. And fitness is perfect, because I can reach those goals. It may be hard, and it definitely feels self-indulgent and expensive, but my Dad doesn't care if I get married, or make buckets of money, or if I'm intellectually meeting my full potential. He gauges all of that by whether or not I run. So, I'm doing OK if I can go running. I'm not doing OK if I'm making lots of art work and having lots of sex and learning about new things and not running. Happiness is whether or not I can go hiking this summer. Success is can I keep up with him.

My mom, on the other hand, is constantly changing the rules on what would indicate success. I don't know if this is because she doesn't have the same tunnel vision focus on specific goals that my dad does or not, but it certainly has to do with the fact that she is never completely satisfied with herself. Which is GREAT! She's the least complacent person I know, and one of the most stimulating (stimulated) people I can imagine. Her interests are endless, her inner-dialog spontaneous, her appetites cosmopolitan. She was/ is the kind of teacher that smart kids dream about- always engaged, always ready to encourage flights of intellectual fancy. She never, ever, shuts down- her energy is boundless. She wants to talk about, explore, every topic all the time. She is passionate about so many things that it is hard to keep up if you aren't used to her. And so, my mother is challenging just by being my mother. She could stop right there- just chatter on about whatever and she would be stimulating. But, instead, she has the worlds highest standards for people. Which is GREAT because a lot people do their best to meet them, myself included. I often feel that if i didn't have this high, constantly higher, bar to reach for i would notice that it was a long time ago that my feet left the ground, and soon be in free fall. My mother expects me to be constantly reaching, and therefore I constantly am. Even if I begin to know more about a subject than my mother does, she requires constant updating. She will ask questions, ever more perceptive, and be disappointed if you don't have answers. Which is how she kicks my ass. In advance. Just in case she ever asks, I have to be ready.
But also she and I have a kind of mother/daughter relationship that can border on the "un-healthy." She needs me to be her "play-mate," to help her work through the things that a 60 year old woman works through, probably more conventionally, with a husband. And I need her to support me, both financially sometimes, and metaphysically. So we take on roles for each other that are, by their nature, combative. We are aiding one another in confronting demons! The demons of midlife, the demons of self-discovery. She might not always be right, she might not always understand a situation, but my mom always has an opinion on every aspect of my life. And it's her vocalized opinion, not my assumption of what she might be thinking. I know a lot of women who might think that their mother disapproves of their lifestyle- I'm made very aware when my mother disapproves. She says "I told you so," and loves certain of my ex's more than others (a lot more than others), and threatens to kick me out of the house when I apply to be a bikini barista. She jumped down my throat when I applied to be a brewer at Full Sail, a job I think in retrospect she probably would have been happier if I got. Her high expectations for my lifestyle are amorphous and sometimes strange, but she presents the hardest challenge of them all. She wants me not only to be stable, but to be HAPPY. And what happy "is" changes. So it has to be a variable happy, a happy for all seasons. She'll say things like "I knew you weren't happy when..." When I wasn't listening to the news. When I wasn't cooking. When I wasn't making art. When I was picking up men at bars. Notice, "When I wasn't running" doesn't enter into my mother's rubric.
Side note- I'm funny. I make people laugh. I think a lot about humor and how it works, about jokes and story telling. And my parents require completely different subjects, as well as delivery styles, to make them laugh. My mom was in stitches when I was telling her about the Mad Men party 4-some offer- and my mom doesn't like dirty jokes. My dad is much harder to get to laugh. In fact, even though I know I've done it lately, I can't remember how. But the 4-some offer story bombed, completely. Maybe it's because my mom is more into David Sedaris and my dad watches Nascar.
I have active relationships with my parents. And that's not just because I've been living near them for the last 2 years. I've always maintained very close ties to them BECAUSE they challenge me. I try to challenge myself, and I can do alright for awhile, but nothing gets me motivated like talking to my parents. Nothing that is, except a new, fascinating, preferably sexy, (hate to say it) Man. There have been a few female exceptions to this, but they have been few, far between, and with a very few notable exceptions, crazy.
I'm ashamed to admit it, but it's true. Nothing lights a fire under my ass like trying to present myself to an intellectually challenging, self-assured, appreciative, opinionated penis-wearer. That's why I have such a great, long-standing collaborative relationship with Matt Causey, why I miss A like the dickens, why I have a male therapist (though he's very gentle and a bit of a push-over), and why I adored my older male teachers in High School. But as I'm working my way into my 30's men are suddenly getting not only polite (boring) but also sensitive. They aren't used to having their ass' kicked, and therefore are unwilling to kick mine. I find myself tip-toe-ing around saying anything teasing, or overly personal. I try not to be specific. I find myself agreeing a lot. Which is so tedious. And here I am, miss lay-it-all-out-there-lest-they-find-it-at-an-in-opportune-time, ripe for the ass kicking, and I get nothing! The phrase "Grow Some" has worked it's way into my speech. I'm actually longing for testosterone. Not for cruelty, or judgement, as some of my male relatives are prone, but for worthy challenge.
I hung out with my cousin over Christmas, and he's given me hope. It took him all of 10 minutes get me to tell him my deepest darkest secrets, goofing off about art projects, showing off my newly accumulated TED talk knowledge. And, better yet, he showed off, he opened up, he threw down the gauntlet and forced me to sing karaoke. He put himself out there, the way my dad does physically, or my mom does intellectually to be followed, to be chased. And in a not specifically competitive way he let me know he has expectations for me. And that's great!

Now, how do I get more of that in Wheeler? That really looking, really listening, not just smiling challenge?

from the bar.

So, this is not the first time I've ever blogged at the bar, but it is the first time I've ever blogged at the bar on my phone. Generally at the beach bite I have Maggie & Tina & the bar to myself, but not tonite! Rock Away is an odd little city.
I am forced to watch ESPN info-mercials. Has anyone else noticed that the "Shake Weight" looks like the ultimate training tool for giving handjobs? I never would have thought in that position I'd be building my triceps.
It's times like these when I miss baseball. Recently I was teasing people for being mono-sportists. Im not, but im definitely a summer sportist. Give me cycling over basketball anyday. Those pan overs during the Giro de Italia are a lot more inspiring than half empty stadiums.
Something else I dropped the ball on was explaining why I love pitchers. In a general way I love pitchers because a lot of them fit my sexual ideal- long, gangly graceful animals wearing funny pants & contorting themselves into ptetzel positions that I get to watch. But really, its because throwing a baseball requires attention that I find compelling. It's the stillness of baseball that is exciting. I watch these basketball players, & their eyes are all over the court, they fidget, they take breaks. Pitchers don't take breaks. Pitchers can't take breaks. They don't get to run up & down the feild. They are only there, while they are pitching, to pitch. People who can concentrate, who can recover & refocus like that are incredibly attractive to me.
& I like funny looking folks. That's why Randy Johnson is in my wallet.& he makes my heart go pitter pat.

Gadzooks!

Why do only 1/2 my images show up at a time?

Hand Drawn Hearts

Some of you may remember the heart wall from yellow house. Really, it wasn't a wall, more of a chalk board that Matt Causey had procured me covered in heart related objects. Well, for this valentines I"m recreating the wall!

Sorta. Minus some key objects which have detereorated or disappeared. And I'm creating a supplemental wall of drawings of some of my favorites. Which means I'm spending a lot of time drawing (you can see the massive collection on the floor there...)

The other night some of my neighbors came in to chat while I was finishing up the last of the sequinning on, amongst other birds, G's heron. They were duly impressed by the tedium of my process. Believe me, the patience of sequinning has nothing on the patience of drawing, at least in the way I draw. And, another thing which those who know me know drives me scitzo-nutso is that, when drawing, you have to take breaks. That's what I'm doing right now. I've been drawing for 3 hours so far today. I'm maybe 1/5 of the way done with the larger heart that I'm working on (this one has wings). And I can't "see" it any more. The muscles in my brain that allow for me to translate textures and forms into little lines are exhausted. As I'm typing I'm not looking at the screen, but at my hands, and really not even focusing there. My eyes are dead. And there's nothing I can do about it but wait.

Which leads me to these thoughts- I love the Metro Green Classes on Birding. The guy who teaches them (who I think is named James, should any one be interested in the classes) has a lot of extra energy, and an exceptional passion for the subject. He also gives a great slide show (yes, those old transparent things.) And, for $10 a 3 hour class it's a screaming cheap and great way to spend a Tuesday evening. Anyway, (Let's call him James) James emphasizes that the only way to see birds is to go out and LOOK AT BIRDS. The only way to learn ID's is to actually go on bird walks. It's the same way with drawing, or, indeed, with being an athlete. You have to actually draw a lot in order to draw well or with any level of ease (these 2 things do not correspond).

At Christmas (on Christmas Eve, in fact) we had someone out at the house who sketched a chair to demonstrate something. The sketching was followed up with the comment "I don't draw." I wonder when I stopped saying that. Now I'm more likely to say "I haven't drawn recently" or "I do not draw well." But even though I've worked out more often than not in the last 3 years, I would not really say "I'm an athlete." However, after 3 days of drawing, well, I guess i draw...

Aw, half-finished thoughts...