Took my glue stick and i-zone to San Francisco. The girls and I went to Alcatraz and then to the Hard Rock cafe for dinner. A somewhat disturbing contrast I suppose. We had a great day, though. 

I'm trying to do at least one journal page a day--something. Last night I was playing around with one of Philadelphia's "alternative papers for this one. I hate Rick Santorum.  

Heart Limited

For awhile I was all about vintage. Now I'm not so wild about it. This feels OK, but not great. Less energy to it. Something missing. 

Drawing from Life

Darvin always gets me little gifts, a habit that is both endearing and unusual, especially in a man, at least in my experience. Even more unusual is the fact that he usually gets his gifts right. No random card or uninspired flowers from him. He knows me utterly and completely and his gifts are often a testament to that knowing.

Today's was one of the finer examples--Drawing from Life which I've seen on Amazon and had seriously considered buying at one point. I'm obsessed with journaling and it has become a very necessary part of my life. I've already purchased the Moleskine sketchbook that will be accompanying Ali and I (along with some art supplies, a glue stick and the trusty i-Zone) on our trip to San Francisco this week. I plan to capture everything I can, the detrius of our days, and store it in my tiny journal.

At any rate, I'm loving the opportunity to see what other people do in the pages of their journals, especially this wide array of journal types--scientists, writers, artists, "ordinary" people who feel compelled to keep a record of their days on earth and what those days mean. Knowing to get this book for me is one of the many reasons I love this man.  

I'm in the Zone

Um. Did I mention the i-Zone? We had to hit Target and then Best Buy for film, but I'm loving that little camera. Darvin thinks I'm crazy. ("What do you DO with that thing?") but I'm digging it. Of course, it's not very original to take photos of your fiance. And your daughter. And your cat. So I'm gonna have to work on branching out a little. But I'm still digging it. (I love the Polaroid of Jess--her glamorous look. She's at Berkley for the summer and so the guy seemed a particularly appropriate addition. Not that my journal entries make a whole hell of a lot of sense. Ever.)

Ok, seriously. I'm finished now. I have a conference tomorrow and I need to prepare for a day with the bureaucrats by getting some sleep. It does not look good to snore in the middle of the plenary.  

Motel Shock

Today we went to Pearl on South Street because I needed canvas and gel medium. To date, the largest canvas I've purchased is 9x12 because I've been afraid to try to work with a bigger surface. When I showed Darvin the 16x20 canvas I bought he said, "Maybe you ought to plan what you're going to do with that canvas." Yeah. Uh huh.

Unfortunately I do my worst work when I plan it. It feels artificial and inorganic somehow. Motel Shock is something that sort of evolved. I was planning, actually to do something completely different using the picture of the headless gentleman by his car. I went searching for an interesting picture that I could also make "headless" and found the one of the woman with the gun. I had the "Motel" sign lying around and then found "shock" and a collage was born.

What I like the most are the little pieces that add to the story that I hadn't even planned. Like I was playing around with painting squares in different places and drew a square around "wedding ring" without even realizing it. The house in the background is a sort of "broken home" thing that also happened accidentally. I really love when those things happen because that's when something feels the most right to me.
Art
Personal
 

Flying through the air with the greatest of ease. . .

Since I was a little kid I've loved to swing, although I prefer the kind you sit on to the rope version. There was just something so freeing about going high and higher into the air, as close to flying as you could get. I loved the swooping feeling you'd get in your stomach as you hurtled toward the sky. It was a kind of meditation for me, even at 5.

I miss swings and the exhileration of that flight. My girls are older now, too old for parks, so I haven't been on a swing in a few years. Maybe it's time to head to the park again.
 

The Shasta Groene case has been on my mind lately and this afternoon I read excerpts from the blog kept by the man who victimized her and her family so brutally. I didn't intend to do this particular collage, but when I found "This Won't Hurt", the rest of it sort of fell together. I can so identify with what Shasta is going through and I can imagine the lies she was told. "This Won't Hurt," being one I'm sure. It's going to hurt for the rest of her life, I'm afraid. . . .  

The Scissor Sisters or What, Exactly, Are You Trying to Do Here?

Sometime this past winter, I did a post and collage on how artists basically have to get through a lot of crap to get to the "good stuff." That's what's happening tonight.

I tend to only upload the things that I like and think turned out reasonably well and I hide away the work that I hate, even re-working canvasses, painting them over with gesso when they are too terrible. But I realized that I can't only learn from what's good. I also have to accept the "bad" stuff that I produce. I have to accept that I have nights that feel really productive and magical and in the groove and nights where I just want to throw everything out the window. When the images won't go together or everything I do to a piece of work only makes it worse.

The Scissor Sisters is that kind of piece. Too much, too many images fighting for attention, too many things going on. There's nothing cohesive about it--I was just gluing pieces on, gessoing over, using my pastels to try to do SOMETHING. That's why it doesn't work. I had nothing really to say. I wasn't able to dig into myself and nothing was really "speaking" to me tonight.

Darvin asked me to think about what I'm trying to do with my art, a question he asked himself recently about his writing. What is it that I'm trying to accomplish? An interesting question. . .

I started "arting" three years ago during the divorce. A way to deal with really raw feelings that were coming up in therapy and as a supplement to the journal I began to keep. I probably would have stopped if it weren't for Darvin who validated my need to express myself and gave me a model for what it is to have art as a part of your life. At that point I began to see myself as an artist and accepted that maybe I had something to say.

I create art for many reasons at different times. Sometimes it's because I need to deal with something that's eating at me and the only way I can get to it is visually. Sometimes I do it because it calms me, gives my hands and brain something to do and helps me enter into a sort of Zen mode where I can really feel things I don't normally let myself feel. I like the discovery process that seems to be so much of what I create--not so much a deliberate "I want to do X," kind of thing as much as a "let's see what I can uncover as I play around with these colors and images and materials." Sometimes I create art because I DO have something to say. This is particularly true when I work on pieces related to issues of power and sex, issues that I feel least equipped to write about and that I feel most deeply.

Mostly I create art because I want to discover who I am. Through writing and collage, I've found more of ME than in anything else I've done. My day job is an expression of myself, but only in the most right-brained ways. Art lets me meet other pieces of me that I barely know or that I only dimly see through the roles I'm forced to play.

Art is a way to say "I'm here and this is who I am," a way to explore the things that most concern and interest me. My best stuff is the work that says something about me in all my imperfect glory. In that sense, I suppose I should accept The Scissor Sisters as being a success. It represents the chaotic me, the one that flies by the seat of her pants, glueing and painting with no real sense of purpose or design. Sometimes I get clarity in that process and sometimes I don't. But those are still pieces of me and still clues to who I am. So there you go--The Scissor Sisters: A Successful Failure.