Local Politics Meets Art (Kinda)

Tonight the gallery hosted a fundraiser for a Democratic (shock!) political candidate. I'm always a little weirded out by these things. It's hard to be 6'4" in a room full of people and just want to hide (especially if you're wearing 4" heels). I guess THAT'S why my pictures always look like I'm standing on something. But in forcing myself to stay social, I managed to meet a really cool cat whose going to travel to Ecuador and follow in his botanist father's footsteps and also a showgirl in training. I guess politics and art are strange bedfellows, much like my stature and wish to disappear. Moreover, I'm really just glad to have those shoes off.

Pony Up

A string of ponies grazing on the side of the highway that weren't there yesterday? Who wouldn't stop?

I thought this was the most interesting thing I had seen all day.

Until this interloper just joined me in the bedroom.


It's hard to tell, but this creature is the size of my palm. (The Sexy Engineer escorted him out the front door in a crystal bowl.) Giddy up!

Blue Sky Limbo

Waiting to see how a storm is going to interrupt everyday life is never fun. Tonight all of us in my area of the great state of Florida can go to sleep knowing that 1) Damn, if we just lived a few counties south we might be getting a free "day off" to read in bed and 2) With all of the pictures and stories of the Katrina aftermath we've all seen/heard and been reminded of these last few days we're damn lucky to continue our lives unabated.

Abstract, First Draft

The task of documenting the evolution of the self over time has been attempted by women artists throughout the history of art. The practice of this documentation has been greatly enhanced in the last several years by the progression of new technologies for the capture of digital images, the advent of the internet as a common communication device, and the availability of free resources to publish and disseminate the resulting images. Women artists now have the tools needed to document the daily life of the self, and to publish it immediately to an audience. The widely used term for the representation of self through words and images on the internet, is blog - a shortened version of web log, which also denotes the practice of making (writing, coding, posting) the web blog. While there are a variety of these sites dedicated to practically every subject imaginable, there are now thousands of blogs (a figure that climbs with every passing day) authored by women that are devoted solely to the representation and circulation of the image of the self..

Most of the women that are documenting their lives on-line, in real time, do not consider themselves to be artists, and the art world has yet to embrace their practice as artistic activity. These constructions are happening simultaneously inside and outside of art. In addition to containing both verbal and visual elements, these endeavors also incorporate performance. In the study of these web sites over time (1997 – 2006), the resonating and repeated impetuses given for blogging by site authors are consistent with the reasoning behind the production of any art form – an outlet for expression, a tool to find voice/style, practice the elements of a craft, communication and the formation of communities.

In watching these ephemeral displays of the everyday lives of women, it is apparent that these women are operating in a tradition set forth by women artists painting self-portraits in the 16th century that continues into contemporary art practices. This tradition - to define a proper presentation of the self as playing a definite role in society (artist, mother, lover, wife, domestic caretaker, or lady) remains intact in internet exhibitions of self. The form of women’s blogs, the specific artistic expression of performing with words and images and creating viewable documents of domestic life, also incorporates the less artistically accepted modes of production utilized by women album makers in the 19^th century.

The ethereality inherent in the internet as a medium leaves the blogs in a strange, unmarked territory. To frame these works as art perhaps minimizes some of their power. The challenge and the promise is that the journey into the labyrinth of these sites, with all of their varied formations of identity as woman, will provide a document that claims these practices as unique performances of self that exist simultaneously as art and as something that transcends the current boundaries of art itself.

Fuzzy and Furry, with no Fury

Just before bed, and we are all calm. There is the fear that the panic will surface, but on this day, only languid quiche-making, napping and New York Times reading. Bliss. Tomorrow the work begins on the thesis, while we all eye Ernesto.

The View From Here

I find that I feel much better on the days where I have not consumed bottles of wine the previous evening in a futile attempt to assuage my anxiety. Today is one of those days. Yesterday was one of the other kind. I'm glad yesterday is over.

Today I sit in the gallery (which I guess you could call work), looking at my favorite blogs. I am currently writing my master's thesis on blogs as art. So I am working double-time here.

Yes, the blog pictured above (The Girl Who) is one of my fabulous, must have a fix everyday kind of blogs. It is fascinating the way you can become friends with a blog in the same way that you can become friends with an actual person. Either way, real or virtual, you're never sure at what exact moment you become invested in the person. I'm not sure which post of hers, or of the many blogs I read, was what hooked me. Somehow, I saw myself in her, or something I wanted to be. I know what she means about walking her dog and whispering to herself. I wish I had written this (even though I'm not remotely close to being Mormon). I'm crazy about the way she remembers things and puts the gloss of the present on them. When I read this I think I knew already that I would like her. If we had a realationship (my new word) I would have been laughing frantically and maniacally as she imported this tale to me complete with voice inflection and hand gestures.

These blog friendships of mine are currently (I guess for research practices) one-way relationships. I am at the phase where I am going to begin to come out from the darkness of the lurking fringes and engage. I have a lot of "friends" in the blogosphere who see me only as a "visitor" to their lives (their "sites" of life, anyway). My blog forays have been adventures in solitude. I have been watching their lives unfold as my life, mirrored in the monitor, has been unfolding along a parallel course.

Yes, I've been watching, without interacting. And you can do that with art. But not so much with life.

Interior

My panic has been keeping me close to home. So my subjects are what is at hand.

What is it about this quiet life that terrifies me so?

Rapt and Relative

I'm hoping this little orchid will make a go of it.


Out into the sunshine, just like these needy little open-mouthed creatures.

Yeah, I'm an open-mouthed needy little creature too.

Props

I forced myself to stay through Pilates today. Even though I had a little session of panic during the leg lifts. Afterwards, there was a friendly face at the gym with a smile and a hugging greeting that was so sincere it caused me to forget the anxiety and move on with my day.

As a petite reward for my perserverance, I purchased these Gerber daisies. Leaving the protective supports on their stems was somehow important today. Normally I take them off because I just don't like how they look. That wasn't the point today. I don't care how it looks anymore. We'll take all the support we can get. It's not perfect, but there is beauty in that, somehow, anyway.

Delicate Sensibility

There is joy here. And supreme, ridiculous, riddling frustration.

Clearly, there are no easy answers. Just the work.

This unnameable, formidable anger wells up from somewhere that I cannot communicate with. I cannot reason with these things. I know that I cannot focus this anger inward, as I am so adept at doing, but I must take it out and look at it for what it is.

The tricky part is not to take it out on the ones that are closest to me. Or try to sleep, eat, drink or will it all away. My anger and I need to get to know one another so that we can forge an amicable agreement on a disentanglement policy. Welcome to my consciousness, my old friend. Don't get too comfortable. We've been together for a long time, but I don't think things are really working out between us. Frankly, you're just getting in my way.

How can I put this delicately? Get the fuck out. You're ruining my bloom.

Interlaced Subjects

The strands of conversations I have with my confidants are undulating, affirming, and variously prurient. The joy is in the layers of intimacy we have constructed over years of revealing shortcomings, fears and the torrid minutiae of our failures. This candor can often lead to new insights, and to laughter.


The beauty of our continuing conversations is that through these words, and enjoying Thai banana coconut-milk pudding together in the afternoon light, we reinforce a tenuous link between us. I'm tied to someone who's seen who I was, loves who I am and has an optimistic inkling of who I could become.

And to her: I've seen what you've done, loved who you were and I'll just bet I'm going to love this fabulous woman you're always becoming. (I took all these shots when we went to Webster - they remind me of you.)

Some (Same) Summer Moment

When your tree is dead, and all the birds come to roost, will the threat of rain turn into an open sky or will the sun continue to shine?

Pine Island was lovely today in that there are still hippies there with VW buses who can somehow still afford to live on the Gulf. My favorite was the waterfront car repair shop. Or maybe it was the people who lived next to their nursery who paid homage to Andy Goldsworthy with the sculptures on their lawn (their goats grazing by their backyard lagoon were a bonus).

Rain, rain all around, but not a drop fell in my path today.

Home Brew

I feel my most notable moments of bliss and freedom when walking in the morning. This morning's walk was interrupted by the rare sighting of actual people here in the neighborhood. They were congregating about in the ritual that seems to excite the most fevered reactions possible on a Saturday morning in these parts. The Garage Sale. Happening upon it, I didn't dare stop with the dogs in tow. They cared nothing for the large orange treasures that were beckoning from my peripheral vision. It seems they care about nothing except the random creature that scurries through the woods, or the teasing squirrels who have figured out the ratio of leash length to linear feet between themselves and my poor tethered creatures.

My time in proximity of this garage sale was ample enough to allow me to hear a rummager pick up one of the orange beauties and ask "What IS this?" It was as large as her entire torso. I knew I would be returning with cash in hand.

Score. $7. We paid full price; there was no haggling. There was a funky matching bowl (equally orangalicious) that now holds my wayward CDs. What was the orange beauty? An ashtray that is grand enough to have accommodated all the smokers in a small country. What is it now? That remains to be determined.

Building a bridge to this new life has been arduous. In some quick moments, and more lasting states, there is the emergence of "home". That's what the orange beauty became today.

The Sexy Engineer made beer a couple of weeks ago, and tonight we bottled it. Without question, he scampered off with me this morning to acquire orange things urgently from a driveway. The alarm went off tonight at the gallery (eek at 11pm) and he drove 45 minutes (one-way) with me to make sure everything was okay (it was). He smiles at me every morning as soon as he opens his eyes. I have the space and time here to think and to feel wonder again. Who knows how the beer will turn out, but this home brew we're working on is delicious.

The Way You See Me

The Sexy Engineer knows how to look. Sometimes he takes pictures of me when I'm not paying attention. He points his big blue eye through the viewfinder and creates a document, a bit of information that leaves a trace of where his eye had been. The trace remains on me long after his eyes have gone. The insight of a slight caress. Like love.

Beep Beep Symphony

Some days this dog saves my life. All I have to say, not even in real words, is get your beep beep. And this girl will go a-running. To find any of the myriad of plush toys lying about that still has a working musical component. And she will commence immediately to play me a song. Beep beep beeeeeep beep BEEP beep beeeeep beep Beep BEEEEEEEP. She will do it with a joy and abandon. No matter the state of her belly, full or empty, or whether she has had a tough day. These compositions are supremely comforting and full of an elan that can't be faked. She plops down with her instrument and plays it out loud, and in a way that perhaps makes sense only to us, in that moment. Life is a beep-beep flow, and we're in it. Play me another and I will remember the notes, and feel thankful.

Begin the Beginning

This is summer in Florida. It's amazing that any thing or person can thrive in this mind-numbing heat.

In my fitful insomnia last night I thought of this picture. And of all of the things that threaten to die by the light of the 7-11.

The time has come to open this Pandora's Box. To loose the ideations that rack my ease as the red LED of the bedside clock taunts me through the darkest hours.