Fragile Industries

Artsy Ants in my Pants

This may not rate up there with Hitchcockian suspense for you, but I haven't been so antsy in ages.

Today the Minneapolis Public Library, in conjunction with the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, announces the exhibitors in their big altered book show opening soon.  What's an altered book?  Example of entry here and explanation here.

It's my first formal exhibit entry.  The big lure was being able to attend the opening in balmy Minneapolis in January.  What's that?  Minnesota is NOT in the Caribbean?  Average January temperature is WHAT?

I was temporarily stumped when they asked for an "artist's statement" and the "artist's CV."  Um, I'm not even comfortable calling myself the "a"-word.  I decided to forgo artsy-fartsy buzz words, not try to be anything I'm not, and simply tell the truth.  I'm a raw newbie.  Untrained.  I do this because it's fun.  I've done other stuff for a living all my life.  And this is why it's such a cool rush to do this now.

My experience with Minnesota arts and artists has been welcoming.  Knowledgeable, top-notch, sophisticated in their perceptions, but without the preening attitude found on the Left and Right coasts.  I'm hoping that some of that Midwestern hospitality extends to the humble beginners like me. 

Excuse me, I gotta go check my e-mail for the 2047th time today ...

PS: Update: 11/15 -- finally heard, I didn't make it.  Oh well.  I'm less crushed than I expected.  During my poetry years, I got quite philosophical about rejection slips.  Now I can start my art rejection slip collection.  I'll keep trying.

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.

Ramblin', Ramblin', Ramblin'

Here's Another Fine Mess I've Gotten Myself Into . . .

My last seven days have been a blur as I assembled my application for UC Santa Barbara, Fall '07.  Just what I need.  Another BA degree.

Bear with me, though.  UCSB has the only state-school issued degree for Book Arts in California (and one of the few in any school in the US).   Assuming my lower division core requirements are transferrable, I only need to take the arts classes. The campus is relatively close, a pleasant commute if not during rush hours, the department looks excellent, and, well, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel of my reasoning process, here's my application essay on the topic, with editorial comments:

    This application’s dry recital of my past leads to a reasonable question: why would a middle-aged ex-lawyer (no doubt painfully analytical) [see: dweeb]seek immersion in the subjective field of art? Why book arts?

    The first book I remember holding was the classic "Pat the Bunny" – a wonderfully interactive text urging me to feel softness and smile at the mirror’s reflection. Not surprisingly, this iconic experience [hey, like the "iconic"? sounds academic, huh?] brought me full circle to participation with the physicality of books.

    Naturally, I moved on to word content. Reading as my childhood drug of choice. I escaped eagerly into the magic of Narnia and the Manhattan of Harriet the Spy. Still, there was comfort in the book itself, the paper's smell, its weight propped against my knees. I collected (and still do) old books for their beautiful bindings and endpapers. Books were ubiquitous in my home, school, and eventually, my career where words are quite literally law.

    Art, on the other hand, was where I escaped from my primary escape. My iconic [maybe I'm overdoing the icon thing . . .] “art moment” was staring, entranced, at a life-sized reproduction of “Starry Night” as my mother explained that this mad Dutchman painted what he felt, not what others saw. To him, stars whirled, cold glitters against midnight. I got it. I got it. If I had known the word “Eureka” I'd have shouted it!

   Yet grade-school art curriculum convinced me that I definitely wasn't an artist. I couldn’t for the life of me draw a recognizable portrayal of anything. Swirling stars?  Not allowed. Fortunately, I thrived in free-form extra-curricular classes. In one summer program, I steered away from the crayons and paper, knowing I was a failure in that department. I picked up a scrap of board with a curved border like an ocean wave, a big lump of cool, smooth clay, and a fistful of pebbles, toothpicks, straw. I unplugged my brain and played. Within a few days, the board was deep blue, and the clay had morphed into a detailed, miniature tropical island. The piece was selected for a children’s art exhibit touring the country. [This is a true story and why I can honestly, if pathetically, claim to be a "nationally exhibited artist" on my website.] The attention was pleasant, but puzzling. This wasn’t Real Art. I couldn’t draw.

    So on to my left-brain world and career for the next 30-plus years. I did “crafts” in my spare time, relishing the sensuality of the materials. My mind slipped sideways and time disappeared as I turned out odd, paper-collaged furniture and suspended peculiar assortments of objects from the ceiling. In 1989, while working on a routine scrapbook of my travels to Israel, a light bulb appeared over my head. Why not use a real book – better yet, change it into a mock publication to suit my theme? Thus emerged a very funny pseudo-Biblical text: “And lo, it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and not a taxi was seen.” [God hasn't hit me with lightning yet for this heresy.] Taking off from there, I focused on altered books and assemblage, ignorant that these were recognized themes.

    When I retired in 2002, I devoted more time and attention to doing what I loved, read extensively, and took local classes. I realized that not only did others share my delight, but that they had dignity and respect – my work might even, someday, be Real Art. I launched my online studio earlier this year (http://www.fragileindustries.com) and found joy in creating altered and/or handmade books and assemblage shrines on commission. Selling things I make with my own hands has given me the confidence to honor my right brain and my enthusiasm for what I call “participatory art” – grown-up "Pat the Bunny."  My stars can swirl.

    I could continue as a self-taught pseudo-folk-artist, but that can be another way of saying "dilletante."  I learned from experts in my other pursuits, and sincerely hope to do the same with this passion. [Pretension concludes here.]

I also sincerely hope that essay convinces them that, to paraphrase the Elephant Man, "I am not a dweeb!  I am a human being!"  One with a right brain as well as a left.  I've been asking for a lot of spiritual help lately, but at the risk of turning my Devoted Readers into my own Private Prayer Circle, please point your mojo towards Santa Barbara.  I really want this.

So now I'm scrambling to come up with a respectable, or at least not embarassing, portfolio.  My relatively new, idiot-proof point-and-shoot digital is not up to the task of macro shots, needed for some of my mini altered books.   I can't get closer than about 30 inches from an object or it turns fuzzy.  I've researched and think I want the Canon SD700 IS.  It is not insanely expensive or complex, does macro but still has an "auto" setting, gets good reviews, and most importantly, has an image stablizer to counteract my shaky paws.  (Thanks to my meds of yore, I have a slight residual tremor.  Just enough for old-timers at AA meetings to ask me if I've just come off a bender. Fun.)

If anyone out there has a better suggestion, let me know ASAP.  I'm going to Costco to get it in a couple of days.

Year-End Roundup: Books

Here's Steven King's List of Top 10 Best Fiction of 2005.  No, that's not a typo, I meant 2005, not 2006.  I'm too cheap to buy fiction in hardcover unless it's Harry Potter (he shows up in the list, BTW).  So most of these are in paper by now, and I've read three on the list.  I agree with SK about those three, so I'm running out to get the rest.

Laugh if you will about SK, the guy knows his stuff.  He (and the books he recommends) are only occasionally literature, but they are always good reads. 

I've read a lot of good non-fiction this year, and mentioned most of it, but I must note one more: What Jesus Meant by Gary Wills.  Wills is no ideologue [I'm using that word a lot lately, like "icon" -- looks like I've been going through my thesaurus alphabetically] ranting about the end times.  He's a Pulitzer-Prize winning historian and Greek scholar.  His translation of the Gospels are based on innovative but sound interpretation.  The introduction convincingly explains better than I can that the Greek of the source manuscripts needs to be read as it was used in Judea of the 1st Century.  The result blows away the candy-ass capitalist Jesus the Christian Right is feeding us.  This Jesus rocks. There's no need to be a Christian to enjoy Wills' book.

However, off topic, I must admit: between this book, Anne Rice's Christ The Lord, and this year's C.S. Lewis reading, I am reluctantly, hesitantly, and quite intellectually reapproaching Christianity.  Never to the point of exclusivity, never to deny the viability of other paths, but perhaps to the point of saying that Jesus's message really works best for me.  Stop me before I start wearing tinfoil hats.

Here It Is, Your Moment Of Zen

http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/

Life, And Other Petty Afflictions

Life goes on.  There's a reason for truisms: they're true.

Thanks

My gratitude goes out to all who commented or contacted me about Rupert's illness and death.  You know what that kind of support means if you've ever had a loss or heartbreak.  If you haven't, you weren't paying attention.

I'm out of serious grieving now.  It seems that the most painful and enduring catastrophes (no pun intended) in life are those where one harbors secret self-blame.  Divorce, addiction, mental illness, death of someone estranged or neglected -- that pain lingers because one wishes that one could have acted differently.  Someone fairly smart once said something like (if anyone knows the source and actual quote, please let me know, Google and Wikiquote have been of no help): "The first step in healing is sincerely letting go of the wish that the past were different."  There is nothing I would change for Rupert's life, except the ending of it, and immortality is the most futile wish of all.  So I have the ache of missing him, but no grief.  Here's a picture sent by Kerry of his sweet face:

Another apropos quote I can attribute:

"What's gone and what's past help should be past grief." William Shakespeare, "The Winter's Tale", Act 3 scene ii.

Courtesy Wikiquote.

Current Cat Conditions

The household cat dynamics are shifting in Rupert's absence.  Max, my mom's highly neurotic burly boy, has decided he is not completely terrified of the new cats in his house.  In fact, he has started flirting with Peabody with a typically oddball tactic by watching him constantly from a distance then running past him while doing something strange (either biting Pea's neck or a characteristic head-roll the meaning of which I cannot decipher), then hiding, only to repeat the process a few minutes later.  Max is extremely wary of everything and everyone, darts around sneakily, hides his bulk behind objects far too small to conceal him, and has no idea of affection and trust, but seems to want to give it.  He's endearing in a damaged, dysfunctional way.  Peabody must be, in feline terms, The Sexiest Cat Alive to other boy cats.  First Rupert, now Max.  Pea ignores Max utterly, to the point of smug insult.  It's going to be interesting.

We've All Worked At This Office:

Courtesy of Best of Craigslist

And Now, A Bitter Political Rant

Our Nation's Biggest Asshole President has made a recess appointment (i.e., one which does not need Congressional approval and thus no check or balance) to head the federal government's family planning office. The astonishing choice of Eric Keroack to oversee $283 million in annual Department of Health and Human Service grants is a slap in the face to the electorate.  The recent overwhelming rejection of all of Bush's extremism, stubborn ignorance, and move towards a fascist theocracy has not led him to governing "in a more bipartisan fashion," as he promised after the electoral drubbing.  Instead, he has started naming kooky ideologues to key posts, a classic "nyah, nyah, nyah, I'm still President and you're not," which is to be expected from an immature, politically tone-deaf zealot.

Keroack's responsibility as head of family planning, officially, is to supervise the disbursement of funds for providing access to family planning education and contraceptives "to all who want and need them."  His resume gives a clear idea of how effective he will be in this post:

• As medical director of A Woman's Concern, a small chain of nonprofit pregnancy counseling clinics that offer no information on birth control, Keroack has agitated against abortion and even contraception -- including for married women.
• The organization continues to push the discredited nonsense that abortion increases a woman's chances of breast cancer and is more dangerous during the first eight weeks of pregnancy (when in fact, the risk of complication is actually at its lowest).
• Birth control, according to Keroack's tortured logic, is somehow "demeaning to women."
• Keroack has argued that women who have sex with multiple partners alter their brain chemistry in the process, making it harder for them to form close relationships.

This is an extremist so out of line with scientific and objective reasoning that it is difficult to describe his views without laughing, if he wasn't so scary in this key job.

And this from an administration still wasting $158 million a year on abstinence-only education programs that the GAO concluded this month have not been shown to have any effect and at times put forth misleading information about condoms and AIDS.  The electorate has spoken decisively on these issues. On November 7, efforts to limit women's reproductive rights by initiative, legislation and court decision were soundly defeated by the voters in California, Oregon and even true-red South Dakota and Kansas.

Keroack does not need Senate confirmation, so there is little Congress can do about a president who continues to select anti-scientific ideology over basic competence, other than to echo Joseph Welch's anguished cry to Senator McCarthy during the anti-communist pogroms of the '50's:  "Sir, have you no sense of decency?"

Speak out, be heard, stand up and be counted.  Bush is giving us a frat-boy mooning, and the sight of his stringy butt is not pleasant.  This link takes you to an easy way to protest (and hopefully reverse) this asinine and dangerous appointment.

Here It Is, Your Moment of Zen

http://www.spilsbury.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CatalogSearchResultView?ref=cpc_inktomi&storeId=10001&catalogId=30001&langId=-1&pageSize=9&beginIndex=0&sType=SimpleSearch&resultType=2&searchTerm=22050&x=8&y=15

Make Big Money! Be An Artist!

I have a new customer.  She actually found my website via Google.  That search engine optimization stuff must do some good, tiresome as it is. 

She wants an altered book.  Because I prefer to work with the recipient in mind (that's why I subtitle my site "participatory altered art," a term I made up my own self) I asked her to toss out a few themes or images that had personal meaning.  She sent back pages of information, a blessing and a curse.  I work best under limitations.  So I'm noodling around for a theme.

I have no idea what to charge.  My books tend to be massive, lengthy undertakings.  The best limitation here would be brevity for the sake of both of us.  A necessary limitation is that I will have my studio packed and moving for the next ____________ (fill in the blank with a now uncertain period of time).  I'm going to separate out a selection of materials and work within those constraints, too.  Perhaps I should title this "Working Outside The Box", if that wasn't such a cliche.  "Out of The Suitcase?"

Pictures as it progresses.

I've Been A Bad Little Blogger

I've had nothing to say here lately.  We all have our dry spells.  I've been caught up with improving my website, digging out from under my STUFF (actually, spending lots more time being depressed about the task than actually doing anything), and the arcane vagaries of search engine optimization.

After hours and hours and hours of consulting experts, using websearch keyword development tools, and trying to insert resulting keywords into my site and tags while still remaining syntactical, I've decided there is no search term for what I do.  "Madwoman Pseudo-Artist With Delusions of Grandeur And A Filthy, Cat-Riddled Studio" seems to fit best.   There's a blog meme for you, under what Google search do you most and least want to rank first?

The organization and sorting and dumping is exceedingly taxing.  I don't know why, but it really sends me into the blues just thinking about it, and my energy for it seems to wane after an hour or two.  I've called in a professional organizer -- she's a really wonderful woman with a great bedside manner and VERY effective when she's there to walk you through it.  If you're near My Little Town and need her services, I will send you her info with HIGH recommendations.  Without her, though, I'm nearly helpless.

Also, I'm discovering that as much as the true picture of my future residence is rosy and wonderful, there is a voice in my head saying, "She's 50 and living with her mother."  In snide tones.  Snarky, in fact.  It's not where I thought I'd be.  I hope this is the right move.  The key is to get that voice out of my head.  Hammers, drills, and other surgical instruments seem a little, oh, crude.  Suggestions?

So... no more big news.  Back to toiling on keywords and imagining the wonders I will create if and when I ever get my studio cleaned up.

BTW: There's been a rush of interest in this image, posted ages ago here, according to my stats.  Must be a bad month for marriage.

My Latest Commission, Complete, Sort Of

I am now an official, working, paid, artiste.

My art website  generated an actual commission about a month ago to create a wedding shrine for a delightful young couple in Oregon.  Their wedding is one part Burning Man, one part Renaissance Fair, and the rest is all theirs.  Their ceremony, which has Asian and Indian (the country, not Native American) influences, is being held next Saturday in a huge open field with a pond, a bridge, a stage, and lush greenery.  The celebration lasts all weekend, with camping, performances, wandering philosophers, and, I believe, a marching band.  Here's their invitation (with names redacted).  Isn't it lovely?

The bride asked for a partially completed shrine, with embellishments packed separately, so that she, her groom, and all the guests could participate in its completion.  She perfectly understood what I meant when I describe my work as "participatory," and I'm honored to contribute.  The piece started with the ugliest base I've ever worked with, but with its Duncan Phyfe shape and tropical palm tree carving, it had the right "bones" for a celebration she described as "Asian, Pacific Islander, Indian, and just a little 19th Century American."   

Isn't it ghastly?

A little paint, collage, and gold leaf went a long way in transforming this ugly duckling into a semi-completed swan.

I shipped it out this morning with all sorts of embellishments and suggestions.  A great feeling of accomplishment washed over me as I saw the package carried away, out of all proportion to the actual achievement.  I have all my life wanted to sell something I made with my own hands and imagination, and now I've done it.  The couple, to whom I sent pictures to make sure it met their specifications, were wildly enthusiastic and plan to include it as a major feature of the event.  What a thrill to make people happy, to give them something personally meaningful, that involves them and their loved ones in the process.

The full story, with more pictures, is presented on my art blog (yes, Devoted Readers, I have been unfaithful and have another, even more infinitessimal readership, but only to spare you my blathering on about semi-artistic matters).  Here's one view of the shrine as I sent it out.  I can't wait to see the final product.

Hermes Update: No news is not necessarily good news.  The story in the NY Post about Hermes, in which I was mentioned as a potential adoptive human, was pushed out at the last minute in favor of a story about Christie Brinkley's marital woes.  This is to be expected from the Post, where celebrity scandal beats kitty schmaltz every time.  It may run in the future.  In the meantime, the shelter has yet to make a decision.  I think they are holding on to the hope that if the story runs, it will prompt a local adoption.  I am about to withdraw my offer, not that I love the big lug any less, but the reality is that in a few months, after some remodeling to the Castle By The Sea, I am about to cohabit with my mother, which will make for a 4-cat household.  One more, and the neighbors will sic the county health department on us, I fear.  It's a huge house, but five cats is about 15 too many.  Sigh.

Me and the Collyer Brothers

Homer Lusk Collyer (November 1881- March 21, 1947) and Langley Collyer (October 1885 -March 1947) were two brothers who became famous because of their reclusiveness, filth and compulsive hoarding.. The brothers are often cited as a paradigmatic example of compulsive hoarding associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well as disposophobia,  or Collyer Brothers Syndrome, a fear of throwing anything away. For decades, neighborhood rumors swirled around the rarely-seen, unemployed men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street), in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected newspapers, books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items, with booby-traps set up in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders. Both were eventually found dead in the Harlem brownstone where they had lived as hermits, surrounded by over one hundred tons of junk that they had amassed over several decades.  That's one of their more navigable rooms pictured to the left.

In total, police and workmen took 103 tons of garbage out of the house. What was salvageable from it fetched less than $2,000 at auction; the cumulative estate of the Collyer brothers was valued at $91,000, of which $20,000 worth was in the form of personal property (jewelry, cash, securities and the like). Eventually the house was torn down as a fire hazard.

On April 8, 1947 (15 days after the search and excavation of the house began), workman Artie Matthews found the dead body of Langley Collyer just ten feet from where Homer had died. A suitcase and three huge bundles of newspapers covered his body. Langley had been crawling through their newspaper tunnel to bring food to his paralyzed brother when one of his own booby traps fell down and crushed him. Homer, blind and paralyzed, starved to death several days later.

The foregoing are selections from the disturbing full story at Wikipedia.

The Collyer boys have been on my mind for the past few days.  I have a tendency to be a bit of a packrat, and not the best housekeeper on the block.  Since I started my latest mania I haven't done a thing to my condo in the way of cleaning.  It's not yet a Superfund site, nor are Haz-Mat spacesuits necessary to enter.  The cat box is cleaned scrupulously (because if I don't, they tend to express their displeasure in the most obvious way on the carpet), the trash is taken out, and I've stopped my subscription to the newspaper, so no towers of newsprint threaten me.  Dishes aren't a problem, because I've temporarily abandoned cooking anything more complex than a microwave diet dinner or a sandwich, and I'm using paper plates.  I'm at least that realistic about my inaction on the Good Housekeeping Seal Approval front.  Still, no dusting, no vaccuming, no straightening, the pile of mail on my dining room table is taking on the appearance of a scale model of Everest, and my laundry has been limited to picking one load at a time out of the hamper (and the pile next to it) to get me to the next week.  The worst example is my craft/computer room, where I've been spending most of my time lately.

I have been filling in the gaps of my necessary (if only in my diseased mind) supplies to becoming an online art entrepreneur.  I do love shopping.  Especially online.  I posted about this earlier.  Between eBay, other mail-order purchases, and the occasional trip to a thrift or craft store, and my lack of attention to keeping things perfectly organized even before I started the website, the room was starting to look a bit Collyer-esque.  Added to the art supplies are organizational purchases from Office Depot and elsewhere to get the room in order -- files, craft storage boxes with little compartments, etc.  Yesterday I had a burst of energy, rolled up my sleeves and started in.  Armed with my label-maker, I began at the bookshelf and armoire, containing books for reference, books for altering, books for ripping stuff out of.  Also there are scrapbooks, completed and in progress, a bazillion photos -- both mine and family inheritances, paper goods and miscellaneous embellishments.  I intend to set up a system that I can keep up to date and that will make my creative process smooth. 

The process of organization starts with sorting stuff into categories.  And subcategories.  The heirarchical decisions are endless -- does this Christmas card vintage image of cats frolicking in the snow belong in the Christmas pile, the animal pile, or the vintage pile, of loose collage images I'm filing by theme?  After a few hours, I made a serious vow never to buy anything again.  A few hours after that, I nearly threw a lit match on all the little piles just to be done with it.  Today, refreshed, I'm digging in again.  There's an amazing amount of crap.  That's the danger of collage/altered/assemblage/found art.  Anything and everything is, in theory, useable.  I am so accquisitive that I take home every rusty bottlecap and magazine clipping.  In time, unchecked, I would be found in a few years, crushed under a pile of "art" supplies.  With the Collyer Brothers as a cautionary tale, I really, really, really, intend to get this under control.  Now.

Evidence of the work in progress:

sorting ephemera, photos, images

destinations for said junk:

Light a candle, say a prayer.  I haven't even gotten to the new shipment of acrylic paint.

Fragile Industries' Second Favorite Poem By Fragile Industries (And The One That Nearly Killed Me)

Background to Poem:

To left: The Fox Woman Kuzunoha Leaving Her Child (Yoshitoshi, from the "36 Ghosts" series):

One day when he was out walking, Abe no Yasuna saved a fox from hunters. Not long after, he met and married a beautiful girl named Kuzunoha. (Kuzunoha means "kudzu leaf"; the flowering vine appears in the foreground of the print.) She bore him a son and they lived happily together for three years. However, she eventually had to leave him and her son because Yasuna discovered her true nature. She left behind a poem written on a sliding screen: "If you think of me, love, come seek me in the forests of Shinoda, and you will find a kudzu leaf." Kuzunoha's true form appears in the shadow on the sliding screen; it was thought that reflections in water and mirrors, as well as shadows, revealed the true form of supernatural beings who were pretending to be human.

Look closely at the shadow on the screen, and the child clinging to her hem.  It's heartbreaking.

I saw this in an exhibit of Japanese woodcuts in Kansas City.  I was in Kansas City with my father for his mother's funeral, which is a story worth a post all its own.  My dad was many things, but I never thought of him as a connoisseur of art.  Yet he surprised me, sometimes.  He wept like a child at Puccini operas, thrilled to his core.  He was in Japan several times, first when posted there with the army of occupation after WWII, and apparently came to appreciate much of the Japanese culture.  So he was enthusiastic when I suggested going to the exhibit as a break from the Sturm und Drang of Grandma's very Italian (as in The Sopranos-Italian) funeral planning.  We were both struck by this image, as much as my Absolute Favorite, which is listed (plug, plug) in my new list to the left, Shameless Exhibitionism.  I read the story of the woodcut, posted in the gallery more or less as above.

Years passed, and the details of the story became fuzzy, including the spelling of the name Kuzunoha.  I wrote the following, based on my faulty memory.  We should never trust memory to be factual, but it is always interesting how the mind processes and transforms facts into memories, a notion I explore in the poem, as it turns out.  Wouldn't a human-turned-animal now process the human memories in a form accessible to the animal? 

Poem:

KUDUNOHA

In this Japanese folktale, an unfaithful wife and mother turns into a badger after she is evicted from the family home.

A silken kimono rustles down the hall,

then the click of claws on the porch.

Is she cursed with memory?

Kinder if she feels only a moment’s confusion

before she looks for soft earth

to turn up a grub.

But that’s no punishment.

No the moral force of the story requires

penance.  Little fires under her heart,

a burning in eyes that cannot weep.

Badgers carry sadness deep in their wide bodies.

She misses the children, the smell of their necks,

their clumsy fingers like tubers, most of all

the nestling and crooning before naptime.

Mysteries even to her, mysteries from her body.

The enormity of this loss leaves little grief

for her wronged husband.  He’s no marvel.

Under her new and bristling pelt, she thinks of him

rarely, of her lover, not at all.  With her perfect recall,

she still can’t distinguish human men

one from the other or from the violent, snarling tumbles

in the dens.  The white badge on her forehead remains

impassive, like her face

when she wore the good wife’s mask.

Sometimes in sleep her paw flutters

as if waving a fan.

1996

Aftermath of Poem:

I wrote the poem in a rush, a few hours one evening, tinkered a tiny bit the next day, and that was it.  A few months later, I submitted it to a poetry contest run by the SF Guardian.  I ended up winning and being the SF Guardian Poet of the year.  It was initially a hugely giddy process, with interviews, press, much wider publication and publicity for my poetry, and culminated in a huge poetry festival in a SF nightclub attended by Everyone On Earth, or so it seemed, where I read the poem after all the runners up, the top billing. The crowd's reaction was muted, understandably, because it was a young, poetry slam kind of audience.  The thing is, this is not an "out loud" poem.  This is a "read it to yourself, someplace quiet" kind of poem.

The totality of all the fuss and furor was that I developed a poetry writer's block that remains to this day.  I continued to write poetry for several years, but in my mind, and in fact, it was inferior work.  So I stopped, and write maybe three poems a year, mostly dreck but just to do it.  That distressed me terribly for years.  I'm OK with it now.  I have other creative outlets.  Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.  If it comes back, I'd be delighted, but it's not My Life's Work anymore.

The block is actually common to writers (and other artists) who achieve sudden recognition.  My fervent hope is that my new creative passion does not achieve Fame And Fortune, but that I can poke along having fun, and maybe make a few people happy with what I make.  So even though I'm trying to make The Greatest Art In The World, and The Most Beautiful Website, and achieve Search Engine Optimal Nirvana, please god don't let me win any prizes.

Oh, and what's my favorite, if this is my second favorite?  Wait and see.  It's Houston's favorite, too.

Christmas In June

It's a sad fact, but I love online shopping.  This may have something to do with my newest venture into becoming an online entrepeneur czarina.  Not only can you always find "it" on eBay, there are a billion online stores selling whatever your heart desires.  I have gone cold turkey from the shopping TV channels.  Don't even miss it.  Just a few clicks, Paypal preferred.  I had a bad experience once with my Amazon account when my credit card info was stored in a one-click shopping mode.  Advice?  Just say no.  I do trust Pay Pal -- they seem to have the most secure system, and are motivated to do so as part of eBay.  The UPS and mail guys know me by first name.

Anyway, I've been stocking up on some obscure materials for altered art.  I like to get most raw materials from thrift stores and garage sales.  I even draw stares when I pick up flotsam from the street -- rusty bottle caps are a current favorite, in fact rusty anything can be enticing.  But some stuff must be found in commercial form.  I found a great online artist supply store with good prices on the Golden's line of acrylics and glazes, The Italian Art Store.  Golden's is an excellent medium, smooth, good colors, and the glazes can be layered for dimension and depth.  I had too many craft acrylics, which are inferior, so I went on a blitz and ordered a bunch in my favorite colors.  They arrived today. 

I also like to incorporate those magnetic poetry words into collage and othere altered art.  I had a vast supply, but they've disappeared for months.  Though I'm pretty sure an all-out search would reveal them, I found "it" on eBay, all varieties, including "geek" and "bitch" sets.  Some came to me today, and I'm having great fun running them through my fingers.  Finally, a long-delayed shipment from India of yummy bits, papers and little indian disks. 

An unrelated rant of little interest to non-altered art enthusiasts:  There is a current fad that nearly all altered art crafters have adopted.  In some fashion, a vintage image of a person is incorporated, butterfly or angel wings are attached, and a crown or dunce cap is placed on the head.  Most of the altered art magazines, zines, and online groups have a huge proportion of these.  See Somerset Studios, one of the largest such magazines. They are so derivative.  Basquiat used crowns in the '80's as his primary image and signature. Robert Rauchenburg was putting wings on assemblage in the '50's.  If I see another one of these, by a current artist, I'm gonna puke.  I do like putting religious classical art in my collages, which may include angels, but a Michelangelo angel is a lot different from these crude pastiches.  I never know what to say when a hopeful altered art practicioner shows me yet another cliche.  "Jesus, get your own style!" seems a bit harsh, but accurate.

Feh.

Below: Rauschenburg, Coca Cola, 1958; Basquiat detail, early '80s; two Somerset magazine features, 2006.  I may bow to pressure and make a few such dreckishness, for sale as embellishments, but I'll feel like a hack.