overdue

today, i picked apples and ate 4 donuts. i pasted paper clippings onto bristol board and let my hands remember making. i read bits of poems. i played at teacher. my mind is probably like this collage right now:



this collage is in progress. not sure what direction i plan to take it in yet. but i want to incorporate something hand drawn...perhaps a portrait of some sort?



finished this summer. just now posting it.

tomorrow is a day for writing, reading, churching, eating.

hello change.

Summer = love and puppies.

This is my 100th post.

New goodies just in from Cinematheque Press!

This is the fun package I arrived home to on my dining room table yesterday:



Please visit the CP website and check it out. These are lovely little books and you really should add them to your collection.

Thanks Nate!

i think of summer days again

today has been especially lovely. tonight i will sit on my porch, maybe have a popsicle. work on a collage. enjoy my ian. hold the moments.

An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he--for some reason--thinks it would be a good idea to give them.

--Andy Warhol

MCBA Prize

I loved wandering through the Minnesota Center for Book Arts when I was living in Minneapolis. They've just published the results of a juried contest. The finalists are wonderful of course, but they've also posted all of the contestants entries. It's lovely to see the variation and the interesting approaches. Please check it out!

MCBA PRIZE

Ceramics by skinnylaminx

Mountain Garden sideplate6, originally uploaded by skinnylaminx.

I am in love with these ceramic plates. I love the use of line and the simple translation of life objects. I'd love a set of these!

self portrait in blue

There are a lot of things in the works right now, but most of them haven't made it out of my head. Leafing through textile printing books, drinking up drawings, taking it all in.

Thinking about installations.

I mentioned this post in a recent blog, but I wanted to show some great pictures. I think the way art is displayed can be almost as important as the content because it creates a context for it and helps the viewer enter the dialogue.




I really enjoy portraiture, especially some artists working in that medium today. Artists like ashleyg make a stale portrait fresh again. I have always been drawn to the human figure in my own work, and especially the face.

Custom Portrait, originally uploaded by ashleyg.

I would really like to get back into drawing the figure, but I much prefer drawing from life and my subjects are few (I think husbands are harder to draw than friends). The best thing about art school is having friends who understand that you need them to pose for you and that you'll do the same for them if they can just stay still long enough.

One of my favorite portraits was incised directly onto a copper plate and etched.



I like the original line drawing best, but I don't have a scan of that right now.

My goal is to draw more from life, and to draw frequently. I think the hardest part of drawing from life is allowing the people you are drawing to know they are drawing you. It insights vulnerability on both ends. Working from photos is easier (and I do enjoy it), but working from photos makes me feel like I am drawing ghosts.

poetry goodies

For your delectation, check out Cinamatheque Press the sexy brainchild of my friend, Nate Slawson. A couple titles hot off the press:




And while you're at it, check out the latest issue of Diode featuring some of Nate's poetry. My belief is any poet who quotes All The Real Girls has to be awesome.

See for yourself.

Nous Vous Collective

DSC01803, originally uploaded by analoguebooks.

One of my favorite groups of artists just had an installation show. I really love the way these are hung and seem to come alive in the installation.

Martiza Davila on Live From Memphis

My professor from undergrad is featured on Arts Memphis TV. She taught me a lot and encouraged me to pursue printmaking.

love note from Natasha V

Her emails always make my day:

Good day, gentleman

...everyone desires something, and someone, we just need to find that someone.
We all know what, but not who we desire. o smth about me. I’m am very positive
person. I take things as they come, caring, and enjoy having good times and
meeting people. I have had good times and bad times just like everybody else
but time for more good times as I’m also very energetic and want to use that
energy with that some one special. I’m very honest and loving love cuddling
and sharing feelings as I believe to be up front from the start, no point
lying about anything as it doesn’t get you any where. I would like to meet
some one with same attitude as me and just wants to enjoy life.
Take a look at me http://romantic-lovegirls.com/romanceyou/

Warm hugs
Nastyusha V.

Too bad I'm taken.

Life is full of waiting these days.

newz

Today I watched the same dog sent to his death 4 times (in the movie Of Mice and Men).

I had a job interview.

And, my artwork is up at Dear Camera Magazine. You can click each section of the image to view it larger and individually. I'd love to hear your thoughts!


This is just a sample, so click on over for great poems and my art!

California dreaming lots lately.

After the blur of a week spent in Chicago for AWP, I am grateful for days like today. I am the only one home except for Johnny & Baby, the dog and cat we are watching for the week. I started my morning with a glass of orange juice by the fireplace (where Johnny decided he'd like to sit too and so only left me with a sliver).

I've been working on a few collages lately. Some on found paper like the one below, others in Photoshop and Illustrator. It's interesting collaging digitally because it frees up the hand even more than "traditional" collage and allows you to play with many possibilities at once. I find I can work longer and more steadily this way, maybe just because I am so used to sitting in front of a computer. However, the choosing of materials and even the source of some images still involves the hand, so it's never a completely automated process, and I wouldn't want it to be.

Writing wise, I almost never compose my poems on the computer screen, and do not type them until further in the revision stage. This is partly out of stubbornness but also because part of what I so enjoy about writing is the physical act; the scratch of the pencil on paper, the thick atmosphere of pauses and thought.



This collage has been sitting in my studio for a few weeks now. If anyone out there has some suggestions for how to resolve it, I would love to hear them. I think something is happening in the top half, but the bottom needs more working.

I will leave you with some pictures of Johnny and Baby and I will get to making.

art/work

In my language encoding lab class, we often performed or read our work, which was a mixture of computer code and poetry (and the lines between the two). Sometimes a performance would consist mostly of a person clicking words on a screen or hunched, typing while we watched on. The act of work became art, and certainly this is even more true when it comes to the place where an artist works. Even missing the actual act, the evidence of creation is compelling.

Memphis artist, Hamlett Dobbins has a website full of interesting paintings and other works, but I am most interested in his studio shots. He seems to update it regularly and we are allowed glimpses of his working life. Books piled on a bench, changing sketchbook pages, the shifting and rearranging of the studio's contents.





(all images from hamlettdobbins.com)

I suppose part of it is thinking that if we can observe someone else's creative process, we might unlike the key to creativity itself. If nothing else, it inspires and causes us to examine our own actions.

An interview with Zachary Schomburg in the Oregon Live. It's always nice to hear a poet talk about his or her work and what inspired it. I really like was ZS says about writing itself:

The poems I write are the poems I most want to read. Ultimately, I'm a slow and inspired and confused reader while I write. It's the best kind of reading I think, writing is.

I think part of my difficulty is that I am not always sure which poems I really want to read. So I've been doing more actual reading and less of the reading-writing. Things are slowly surfacing, coming to light. Still, there is a lack of definition in my sight, waiting for things to come into clearer focus. The same is true for my visual art right now, but working in one way often illuminates the other.

For now, it is okay.

Check out dear camera magazine for your reading and visual pleasure (and check back in some weeks to see some of my artwork in the mix).

Currently: substitute teaching, wintering, creating. More updates soon.

to do lists

goodwill: selected works

As I get back into the swing of reading, writing, and making I've been trying to decide how to divide my time, the best order to attempt things, if it is necessary to have a strict schedule at all (for me, I think having a schedule regardless of whether I stick to it helps me to keep some semblance of discipline).

Ada Limon posted a blog on Harriet today that focuses on the "practicing poet." Though the micro-essay is geared towards poets/writers, I think it can apply to anyone trying to work creatively. You can read it here. It is good to learn about the habits of others as we cultivate our own; another blog Daily Routines chronicles the rituals of famous writers, musicians, and other people of interest.

My greatest goal right now is to maintain a high level of observance. It's very easy for me to get stuck inside myself but it is important to absorb life. My highest levels of creativity come when I am frantically scribbling down thoughts inspired by something I overhear or a conversation I have or by seeing something and taking note.