Fragile Industries

Fun in Minneapolis? You Betcha!

Long absence, well spent time, many stories to tell.

One now:  I find myself in that hotbed of sin, that what-happens-here-stays-here city, that home of Norwegian Farmers' Sons, Minneapolis, Minnesota (say it all together in the local patois: Meen-eh-soh-tah).  Am I having fun?  You betcha, gosh darn it.

All right, we can all put on our "Fargo" accents, but really, it's darn nice here.  I've arrived in May, which I had been advised is the, er, most tolerable month for a California beach girl.  One month earlier and you're still at risk for scraping frost off the windshield and the odd tornado, one month later and it's already lethally humid, hot, and the sky is black with mosquitos.  I do not get along with mosquitos -- the skin has barely closed over the supporating, oozing sores decorating my legs after a mosquito swarm attack two months ago in Sunny So. Cal.  I am THAT allergic to the little bloodsucking bastards. And cold?  I like a cold ocean fog, I left my windows open all winter to the dismay of my mother, but that's mid-coast California.  I remember one short visit to Sioux Falls, SD, in March, crossing a parking lot without a hat, and my ears fell off.  They made a "ping" sound, rather like glass wind chimes, when they hit the asphalt.  So here I am in May, when, according to my friend who has a farm downstate, "it looks like Heaven, the Heaven they told you about in Sunday School."

With that in mind, I scheduled for May14-21 a week of tutorials ending in a weekend intensive class on the art of the book.  Time to stop pussy-footing around.  I don't know that what I do is art -- that's such a loaded word.  But while art depends on inspiration, the judgment of others, the fickle winds of trend,  the craft of what I do requires training.  Book making, book binding, paper making -- these are all trainable skills that will impact whatever I do.  Learning those skills under the auspices of a Book Art center seems the right approach.  I don't want to work for a library conservancy organization repairing important 15th Century incunabula (earliest examples of printed text in book form) although that might have its attractions.  I want to learn these learnable skills and go from there.  I contacted the few major book arts centers in San Francisco, Manhattan, Minnesota, and the University of Alabama ("they call Alabama the Crimson Tide, they call me Deacon Woo" -- Steely Dan) and Iowa.  No response from Manhattan.  Of course.  San Francisco replied that they had many course offerings, and I should simply come to town when something of interest was offered.  Very egalitarian.  U of A and Iowa both sent form letters that set out their University offerings and no more.  I already knew I didn't want another fucking degree -- I wanted to know what they knew without the 3-year investment in time and tuition and beauracratic BS.  Minneapolis, blessed Minneapolis, home of People Pleasing People, sent back a personal e-mail, signed by an ascertainalby real person, asking, "What do you want to know?  We'll teach you."

Better than 3 wishes from a genie.  Imagine that -- a free exchange of knowlege.  It only took the entire continent and the miracles of the internet.  Said ascertainably real person received my effusive reply, and I set up this week.  Real person (aka: Jeff Rathemel) has arranged for four separate book artists to teach me Tues-Friday for several hours a day and the rest of the day I get to play in their fully stocked studio, applying what I've learned.  I'm humbled.  And excited.  For me, this is the golden ticket to the Willy Wonka factory, the key to the FAO Schwartz toy store.

Tomorrow, I learn from a renowned book artist for three one-on-one hours about off-beat book bindings and using found objects in said bindings and books, with an eye to altered art and altered books.  This is my jumping-off-point, because I do altered books and I incorporate all sorts of weirdness into them, but I want to go 3-D -- flat stuff is just a matter of eye and color and glue.  Try to work in a computer motherboard, or driftwood, or a primitive fertility carving, or rusty metal, then I need help.  We are going to her studio for this because this obviously involves

STUFF

which requires storage and transport and hell, Mohammed has to go to the mountain.  I am currently crippled with stuff.  I can't wait to find out how a Real Artist Deals With Stuff.  And, I get to jump into 3-D, which is where I need to be.

That's just tomorrow.  Jeff has built me a week of magic, exactly and intuitively according to my interests, which I described to him over long heartfelt e-mails.

Wednesday: Coptic Binding: one of the most ancient book forms: a stitching of pages into book form that is more of a weaving art than simple page assembly -- so beautiful in its result along the spine that to cover it seems a crime.  One practical advantage of coptic binding is that the pages lay flat at any point in the book.  No swirling pages, a perfect flat relationship from left to right.  I love that.  Hands free.  For a business-related application, think of wedding guest books -- how frustrating to inscribe one's good wishes for the happy (ha-ha: it's marriage, how can that ever happen, never mind me, sorry, the cynic escapes)  couple while wrestling with preceding or following pages.  Or any number of other applications.  It is lovely, a braided macrame (forgive me, I mean that nicely) spine.  It is also mind-numbingly hard to learn just from the book examples -- you really need a hands-on instructor.  And again, I get to play with it for hours afterward in the Book Center Studio.

Thursday:Papermaking with Jeff.  I have a confession.  About 8 years ago, I was asked for my Christmas list.  I held my breath till I turned blue, kicked my tiny heels and threatened a full public hissy fit meltdown unless I got a papermaking kit.  My duly intimidated spouse came through and got me the standard, $30 hobby kit for papermaking.  I was as excited as I could be.  The thing gathered dust untill well after the divorce and last year I finally broke down and used it.  The result was three pages of grey pulpy flat material that disintegrated upon any attempt to manipulate it, nothing stressful, just folding.  I love paper.  Obviously, half my garage is devoted to amazing examples of the paper maker's art.  Maybe I just go for cheap showmanship, but I love paper with inclusions -- flowers, leaves, legible chunks of the original junk paper source material.  When I first moved into my loft in SF, in '93, I decorated the huge walls with the biggest examples of this amazing stuff I could find at Flax Arts (the motherlode of amazing paper).  I thought these 3x4 foot pieces stood by themselves as art pieces, maybe with the mere addition of a swath of threads, stitched randomly, or a single dried rose.  I approach beautiful paper with reverence.  The real practice of this requires overalls, blenders and beaters, a great deal of mudpie mess, and I'm jazzed. 

Friday: Japanese stab binding and other entry-level decorative bindings.  I'm not sure what this involves, although I decided to make a book in '94 and pulled a design out of my head that was in essence a Japanese Stab binding.  I spent days (and nights of creative dreaming) diagramming the threading.  I was, it turned out, reinventing the wheel.  This is the sort of gathering of pages that can use gorgeous fibers in a simple but neatly contoured web that never shoulc be covered. 

Hopefully the forgoing will serve as the intro for the Saturday-Sunday marathon of Bookbinding II, which gets into the technical areas of things that look like what we call regular books: stitching on linen, that lovely bit of embroidery between the spine's leather or bookcloth and the paper, especially the arcane piece that peeks over the back of the gathered pages into a lovely roll.  If you've seen really old books, the leather on the spine is rounded, with bulgy bits, little ridges that stick out.  That's about as formal as I want to get.  And that's the weekend lallapalooza that winds it all up.

So..... that's why I'm in Minneapolis.

There's more of this song to sing, more story of How Our Heroine Becomes Repeatedly Lost en route from airport, The Blood-Curdling Tale Of The Internet Bargain Lodging (bloody Q-Tip encrusted into carpet, etc.), and How To Heal A Lingering Ethical Lapse.  Stay tuned, I'll be checking in over the next week.  Let me just say that many prayers have been answered, the most pressing of which was whether May in Minnesota would cure me of a lifelong affliction.  Short answer: It did, in spades.  Fuck Lourdes, come to Minneapolis.  Gee, it's nice.

Collyer Brothers, Redux

An old post of mine seems to have hit a nerve.  I wrote about the legendary Collyer Brothers here, a while back, and today I received a heartbreaking reply.  Also, someone commented a few months ago about her own Collyeresque tendencies.  I wanted to write back to the most recent correspondent, the son of an OCD disposaphobic.  As I suspected, the e-mail link was false and my reply was not delivered.  I post the following here as an open letter I hope the son receives.

Dear My Dum Luk:

I don't know you, but you couldn't be making this up.  My heart breaks for you.  My post made light of a serious, terrifying condition.  I did so because I saw its seeds in myself.  I'm not there -- but I can see how easily I could, with one tiny change in the mysteries of brain chemistry, arrive there.  Even now, months after that post and a subsequent move, I cannot approach the piles of boxes of my art materials for more than an hour at a time.  Organizing it terrifies me and I don't know why.  I feel, at those times while I am sorting and organizing that I do make some progress, like I'm capable -- but then weeks go by before I can try again.  The chaos is contained in the garage, like a genie in a bottle, so I can get on the rest of my life, for now.  But I really love my art.  I want all that stuff put where I can use it, make art again.  I don't understand this and I am in therapy and all she says is, "keep trying."  I think it will work out and I'll get better but I'm incredibly scared of ending up like your dad.

I reveal this to you to try to speak for your dad.  I am at a midpoint between sanity and not, between you and him.  I don't have any answers.  But I do feel the pain of your side too.  I nursed my own father through Alzheimer's and watched the slow dissolution of his mind.  It was a blessing when he passed away from a massive sudden heart attack before he had forgotten who I was -- but he was far from the man I knew at that point.  He was in assisted living and would not bathe, would not shave, "lost" cash, prized possessions, and blamed me.  Or anyone around.  Or some paranoid conspiracy.  I am now living with my mother who is slipping away with a terminal illness.  My "karma", if you will, seems to require me to fill this role.  I love my parents and as painful as it is, I am grateful to repay the loving care and effort they expended in my own upbringing.

For now, no one thinks I'm OCD.  I am diagnosed bipolar, quite accurately, and I don't need or want another disorder.  I don't dumpster dive but I see its attraction.  There's a reason I'm drawn to assemblage art with "found objects".  There are periods, in hypomania, where I see a hidden connection between miscellaneous, random objects, and when I connect them correctly in accordance with my vision of that connection, I think I have achieved art.  And in the cold light of reality, I believe there is a link between this madness and true art.  I am also a poet -- of some repute and recognition.  I have won prestigious awards and have been published.  I simply make the same manic word connections that I do with objects, unusual connections to the sane but somehow valid.  The point I'm trying to make is that there is a role in society for the cliche of the mad artist.  I am bright enough to step aside from my illness and do research, and find some compensations.  I would recommend to you the book here - it is about how so many artists suffer(ed) from bipolar disorder, but I think the author could have included OCD and other disorders.  It is my comfort when I despair with my mental illness.  Unfortunately, there are those on the spectrum who fail to reach the role of artist and live a tortured life without validating achievement like your dad

Like I said, I don't have answers.  But if it would help to correspond, if I can be a midpoint, a medium, please write back.  Your post was a plea and I hope I can offer some insight.  You are being such a good son -- even if your father doesn't recognize it, is incapable of that recognition, I can see it and I admire you greatly. I hope that in some small way, I could help you with your pain.  My heart goes out to you.  I would be honored to talk to you again.

Best wishes,

Lisa (aka Fragile Industries)