Tonight I listened to a radio interview with Keri Smith. The interview primarily focuses on Keri's book Wreck This Journal but also talks quite a bit about John Cage as well as Guy Debord and the Situationist movement. His famed book Memoires is almost impossible to find images of, let alone facsimiles of, but I hear tempting mentions in random places, like this radio post. I did a whole collage piece reacting against his book (which I actually love though I've only seen a few spreads) and in the end affirming it. Memoires is actually an anti-book with cut and paste text and even sandpaper covers that slowly destroy the neighboring books that might be shelved next to it. I've read Keri Smith's blog for over a year now, and it always inspires me.

It's finally starting to dawn on me that I will be done with undergrad in one week! I can't really imagine what it will be like and I still refer to my future in terms of semesters. But this will all change soon and I have a whole slew of things I look forward to:

• learning html/code
• making collages (without worrying about concept though I know I will always have ideas I want to express)
• time to read!!!!
• time.
• exploring new cities, taking trips
  
• seeing my boyfriend more

I know this is a pretty silly list, but I could go on and I can't wait for it all to begin. I intend to post much more frequently so please check back often.

BFA_2007 Show

Reliquary for Compacted Distance
intaglio, relief, silkscreen & collage

Remains
handmade accordion fold book with intaglio, relief & silkscreen

in the background where you see two rectangles, those are my other pieces

Artist statement:

There are curious histories of shrouds. This is not all. Memory’s architecture is neither palatial nor theatrical but soft.

—Lisa Robertson

Memories become shrouded, swallowed by the past. In my work I am searching through my own memories and considering collective memory. The juxtaposition of disparate elements causes questions of memory, history, thought and identity to play upon the latent tension in all of us to remember details and solidify our understanding of space and place. Even while the exact meaning of the particular imagery in my work remains unclear, narratives can form in the viewer’s mind.

Old photographs, keepsakes, and other ephemera intrigue me for the sense of the “other” they leave behind. When we look at them or touch them, we are keenly aware of an absence, and question the identity and memory of the people who may have possessed them before us. I am exploring these questions through a visual poetics of memory that can stir questions in the viewer as well. Using printmaking techniques, I can layer transparently and erode the original images to suggest something ethereal, ghostly or faint paired with sharper images to create a tension revolving around the inaccessibility of memory and the anonymity of it.

Expected light

For those of you who use gmail, there is a beta feature called google docs that allows you to upload your documents on the web to share or publish them. You can share editing rights which I could see being useful for collaborative writing experiments and probably a lot of other things as well. For fun, I uploaded my new chapbook. While the formatting is a little off, if you are interested you can view it to at least get an idea of what it is all about. It's as close as I can get to the old live journal cut feature. So for those interested, enjoy!

No fixed position and often misplaced.

I said I’d do this even with the pause in my throat and the holes in the fleshy part of my cheek where hair could creep through. It was dark and she reached out her hand so my fingers could mitten around hers and I didn’t have to worry quite as much. I apologized to the woman and feasted on what was there. I am still empty and my words do not resonate. I’m sure I will learn to draw again. Close laboring and attention will open the door to succinct spreads and late night adrenaline. I’ll say nothing and wonder where the words can be had for the plucking. In sleep the music sounded just like home.

in progress.

in time
we accumulated so many
mirages

in our mouths
shrouds trembled
signs of decay

tips & crooks
of fingers held
each moment
listed off with hands
outstretched

I counted them
saw only emptiness
felt—nothing

(disintegrating into fragments of shards both of us)

like so many mirages

unhinged tight lips scattered
our secrets
then sealed & contained

ashes

why do we speak in
intangibilities?

I hold them all in my fist
these signs of decay

nothing more than stand-ins

only clench tight or
like everything else
scatter

to ashes

the list continues
drifts
in fragments

we’re fading too

(in our mouths shrouds trembled signs of decay)

You vote.

Would you rather see a (okay my) chapbook title like this:

Assay of proof (the secret still secretly
known is secret) while we wandered along
the material side, material structures,
breadth & depth--constantly moving one to
the next, the inner space & expected
light--all the dead long for vision.

or one phrase or word from above text such as:

Expected Light

I'm almost done with the chapbook I have been working on this semester but I am having a hard time deciding on the title. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

More pictures of artwork soon as well as other poetry goodies.

Cold days are meant for two bodies, not one.

I keep trying to situate myself in my surroundings. I can watch them through a kaleidoscope, forget the viewmaster. I have lots of goals, but I have a hard time navigating the present. I'll just float for now.

our dreams are wrapped in a pillowcase of spiderwebs

a thread spindles in the stagnant air of my bedroom
connected to the corner of my grandfather's bed clothes

sometimes when I sleep alone my feet stay
awake and my body's weight is measured by the density
of carpet beneath

around a corner in my mind
(my bedroom to yours)

he naps with his hat below his eyes
so no spiders can get in

Charles Wallace

You've been missing for years and maybe she went to find you.

You have been named and you will be remembered.

sinking

venice
a library in indiana
the words we don't pin down
my memories

when she spoke it was only to mention history
hers and no one elses (she believed in boundaries at the time)
she used clothespins to hold memories in place
when the wind blew thoughts
off the line she collected her history in a bag

to be swallowed later that afternoon

It doesn't leave you.

IMG_7135.JPG, originally uploaded by synaptic.happenings.

a bike for every day, a colorful journey

red is the colour of love and tomatos.

orange is the colour of blushes

green--sometimes hazel

Color Week

Todays findings: blue.

the blue sky swallowed you whole.

i get in free. everyday.

the man on the bike was blue, i promise.

We were always blue.