stuff and things

fooling around

2011-10-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

popping glitter filled balloons, taping magnifying glasses to tripods, watching grasshoppers hop. eating cookies.

Art Farm (long happy sigh continued)

2011-10-01T10:51:00.001-07:00

This barn has no foundation. It floats on supports.
The studio.

These are nice for sitting.

sunrise, the brightest thing I think I have ever seen.

The studio again.

LIGHT and some rain

2011-10-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

oh, this is he badlands by the way, not WY. strange world.

This was a great day. Hiking all the way up one canyon, over the divide and down the other side of the mountain. We were screaming at the top, we swam in freezing holly lake, and found wild huckleberries also.

Yikes.

Lovely cloud shadows. The clouds themselves felt very close, they probably were. we were at about 11,000 feet. and the sun!

Keyhole.

This is the smoke plume that rose for days and days from the fire in the Gros Ventre.

The last poppy left behind the laundry room.

The experience of driving past these mountains is really something. I like looking at them from far away too, and seeing the road on the flat, flat valley beneath, the cars look so so very small, and are often just a glint. Hiking up into them is a whole other story. When the day gets late, they begin to cast their shadow out over the valley, the shadow is cool and dark and slowly sreading, and the light at that time of day, shines through all things, not just on them, and just streams through the canyons. There is a high steep ridge behind the ranch that I would climb, it was always wonderfully windy up there, and one day I realized those beams of light were enormous. The tallest mountain itself is 13,700 some odd feet tall, and the valley below is so wide. One time, I was up on that ridge, seeing a storm move towards me, until I was suddenly in gray light and lots of fine hail, and a single, white puffy seed was floating up into the air, against the cold wet that was hammering down.

Driving from the mountains, to where it is very flat

2011-09-23T19:43:00.000-07:00

those rocks, that were holding in the water, from behind

the water that was held in by rocks. maybe I am the only one astounded by this.

down through rolling grassy hills, where you can see the the road unwinding down in front of you. sailing through a prarie, it felt like a dream really, passing in and out of the shadows of clouds, wind, and sun. i felt slower than i was actually moving. the crickets were louder than my music, so they were a constant sound behind everything. and i rounded a bend and all of a sudden there were wild horses.

before the prarie, were the black hills, with their glittering tunnels, and lakes held in by giant, upright boulders. and mount rushmore. a very odd thing indeed.

and at the end of a day, I got to the Badlands, that look like the moon or mars, the earth looks like clay that simply dried there and could at any time be dissolved by rain. it used the be a rainforest, and is littered with the fossils of creatures that no longer exist. I camped there and woke up to the blinding, rising sun and lots of birds, and a rabbit that hopped past and away into the loud grass.

some more from that big trip I took.

2011-09-22T19:15:00.000-07:00

Blue.
Yellow and orange.

The wall in Xi'an. it looked to expansive, we rode around it at high noon, it was hot and dusty there.
Swirling ribbon fans to keep the flies away.
Muslim quarter is Xi'an. It was also very bright. It rained that night, and we ran around in it. It was very warm. Julianne haggled for some sunglasses, we rode bikes all around, and I destroyed my blue sneakers.
All kinds of things ride on the road, or are pulled, carts and little three-wheeled trucks. donkeys.

More out the bus window.
A house on the way to Tunxi, we passed so many villages that were just falling in.
Riding the cable car the rest of the way after a long hike. We rose to the very top of the mountains, in disbelief.
This street was very lit up, and I remember it had something to do with ghosts.
The Mountains.
Driving to the mountains. these houses look like toys to me.

OH MAN ONE OF THE BEST MEALS OF MY LIFE. At a place called the Grandma's in Shanghai, in a shopping mall. This was a carp's head in spicy broth with noodles and a sort of spicy salsa like thing on top.
The water-town. It was really really old and crumbling, as I said before.

Fruit stand. Very, very bright and shiny.
I don't really know.
Beautiful neon signage.
I just really like giant loads being carried on small vehicles.
Inside. (they were delicious and filled with sesame)
Oustside.
Inside a noodle shop. Oh, they were so good.
We got intense foot massages. one hour for about 7 dollars US. Apparently, one of the only jobs the government will let you have if you are blind, is to be a masseuse.

These fans were everywhere overhead.
Shanghai, and Julianne's hair bow.
The train to Osaka, that we really almost missed. These are some of my last looks at Japan. I guess it is very appropriate that they were rice paddies.
After lots of yakitori. I ate heart, and tongue and fried quail's eggs that night. We had some neighbors wearing orange jump suits that were friendly and entertaining.
delicious, and beautiful! Grilled onigiri. (sp?)
the weird clock in a flower bed in the park near to Julianne's apartment.

Art Farm. (a long, happy sigh)

2011-09-22T19:10:00.000-07:00

Last night we watched For All Mankind, and at the very beginning, a small butterfly, or a moth flew in front of the projector and fluttered about in an RGB strobe of sorts.

and today, I cleaned my studio, and kicked up the dust on the floor, at high noon, and it was beautiful. and so thankfully for a dirty floor, I had a good day of work.

I was sitting in the hovering barn, and thought of a catching fence. I fence that is built to catch things.

And then, I was reminded of the keyhole.

And I get to cook my own meals, and listen to the crickets, and walk past weeds and grass taller than myself.

the things I like and will miss

2011-08-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

because time is going so fast.

watching the poppies outside of the small window in the laundry room.
the tall grass by the clothesline, watching things from faraway.

and some smart, young people.

i thought about the day I walked from one town to another, in Japan, and how I found the huge fields of waving poppies by the sea.the shuddered in one big group.

Yes, I was actually there, and the beginning is at the bottom

2011-07-31T16:32:00.000-07:00

Sake going in the mail. It looks nice bundled up.

This is Busan, I watched him filming the water for a long timeLine of smog or just weather, I don't know. Leaving Beijing in any case.
Our hutong.
Another blue day.
Lights and light.
Local market near the Hutong.
Yellow roof with animals.

This tree was formed into the character for man.

Preparing the red star for flight.

The park outside the Temple of Heaven, there were no children but every person there was dancing or kite flying or yo-yoing or something.
Tai Chi on the sidewalk, to music of course, early morning.
Peking duck! And cooked cucumbers, and braised mushrooms my oh my...

The highway from the Great wall, I like the way in winds.

It goes on and on.
The Great Wall, a very very blue sky that day. We couldn't stop talking about it.
The drive to Jinshanling.
Philly needs this pop-up bike shop.
Water and clouds and stairs.
A bunch of people looking at I don't know what. That happens a lot.
Red and yellow and a little green
Peony
A painted ceiling in the Forbidden City. I believe these colors have meaning.
Sleeping cat back in the Hutong where we stayed. Hutong are crazy networks of alleyways. They are all being demolished for new high rises, a lot of them don't even have modern plumbing. The government spray paints a mark that means pack up and move out.
For the third time, this time with a matching shirt.
Cloud
Tiananmen Square, big and bright and almost unbearably sunny that day. Huge national pride video playing on a loop.

Museum by day, archeological site by night.

Terracotta warrior pits, which themselves, were more interesting than the constructed statues.

Muslim quarter, bread and lamb soup, one of the best things I have ever eaten. People sat for a long time breaking their bread into tiny pieces before the meaty broth was poured over.

Julianne walking after Chickens.

Bird market.

A mop drying in the tree.

Xi'an was dry, dusty and hot

I thought this was very nice, just sitting there.

Chinese tourists.
We rode around the entire wall on bicycles, this is for you, Julianne.

The wall in Xi'an
Trees by the river, with some very beautiful lights strung in them.

We watched an old man closing the wide door to his shop, one panel at a time. We had wonderful milk tea and fried bread dipped in sweetened condensed milk.

A bakery of the Ancient Street in Tunxi. We bought little wooden frog shaped and sounding instruments.
This man asked to take a picture with me.
Couples lock locks to chains at the top of the mountain. They do it so their love will last forever. Men and women also climb to the top on high heels and business suits.
Mountain.
Pink Flowers!
People standing at the edge in the morning.
Julianne watching the cloud sea at sunrise.
This is how everything gets up down and around the mountain. Even people, who can be carried on chairs.
A bamboo forest. The wind blows, and the trunks knock against one another, and all the dry yellow leaves were rustling, it was tall and moving and making sound.

Dragon Heart Pool. We climbed a lot of stairs to get here.
Climbing Huang Shan.
The water town, I have to find the name, old old old and crumbling and increasingly more interesting as we walked. we got hoodwinked at a temple here, and I bought some red shoes.
Moganshan 50, Justin, this wall made me think of you.

We didn't actually eat any strawberries, but they were beautiful and everywhere.
A man pushing a cart of orchids.
Huge loads on small bikes.
The streets.
Docking in Shanghai, a little set of stairs being lowered to the ground. And I just remembered the strange memory, of being videotaped as we disembarked, and then again when we got off the bus at the terminal.
Our second day at sea, the horizon is just a blurry line, I spent much of the day on my tatami mat, being rocked. next to the sleeping woman of course.
The bar on the boat, karaoke, we were begged to sing Country Roads.

the boat deck, going past many tiny islands in the sea of Japan

i haven't been able to catch it yet

2011-07-21T17:56:00.000-07:00

but there are moments when the sun shines through the canyons that are so stunning.

yesterday, I was driving down the highway, and the sun was right behind the grand, at least that's where it was where i was sitting. sitting in my car, and moving. so this moment didn't last too long, but the light was streaming down on either side of the mountain. golden, transparent beams reaching down and illuminating a patches of ground. brilliantly lit patches of green below the big, dark looking mountains.

and then i was going down the drive, watching my dust cloud in the mirror, also illuminated in a beautiful way, because at that time of day, the light, so me is the entire space around us.

i need to get it on camera, i know, but it is not as easy as it sounds, to see the beams of light, and their bright anchoring patches of ground. it is strange to think about the light hitting the ground and being absorbed, and/or reflected back up, to make those parts glow.

this happens around 8:40 pm, mountain time.

i still haven't written much about china. It started with a boat ride, past many tiny islands in the
Sea of Japan. When we woke up the next morning, the sea was gray, and so was the sky, and there was so much mist that there was no horizon. it was wavy, we were just bobbing up and down in this nothing space. the tatami room was small, and each woman was about 5 inches from the their neighbor. my neighbor didn't rise from her tatami mat the entire 2 day journey. I was next to the window on one side, and the laying-down woman on the other.

We got to Shanghai, and we ate noodles that were pulled into form right in front of us and then dropped into a steaming vat of broth and sprinkled with coriander.

We walked the Bund, which oddly shuts down at night. All the lights do away, and you can hear the low chug chug of barges, their low, large dark heaviness moving where lights were floating an hour ago. We wandered the markets, they were selling eyeballs and beautiful blue eggs and cucumbers that must have weighed 10 pounds.

We drove (were driven, rather) the a water town, that was a 1000 year old network of alleyways along a canal. it was crumbling, and we were hustled by people that were at least dressed as monks for money after they told us we were all going to have great luck.

we went to the contemporary art district, Moganshan 50? A bunch of old warehouses turned studio/gallery space. walking up to it, you pass a long wall covered in graffiti, above it identical high rises one after the other, the same smoggy beige color as the sky.

after three days wandering Shanghai, we got on a bus to go to Huang Shan (the Yellow Mountain), tall and cloudy. The bus honked at anything that wasn't going fast enough. Three wheeled mini trucks, horse drawn carts, a man carrying a stick with a bundle tied to the end. A woman, sitting on a heap of garbage on the back of a blue truck.

more tomorrow.

it has

2011-07-01T18:08:00.000-07:00

been so bright here. i watch the dust clouds float and settle as people come down the drive. the mountains look far and hazy. the sky is bright blue, and itself, reflective. the birds shadows, pass over me as i step up onto the porch, harsh, and fast shadows in the bright, bright light.

i have been

2011-06-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

sitting in the grass a lot, and filming it move. the clouds too, watching them shape-shift and drift. the other day was sunny and stormy at the same time, little pockets of ground were isolated by illumination. there was a double rainbow that day.

every night, i take a walk, parallel to the mountains. there are some very very blue birds that sit on the fence that faces the mountains, they dart towards them, a flashing blue, moving low across the sage-brush.

you can always, almost, here the sound of wind, the aspen leaves are always shuddering, twinkling. it is a big sound, the wind, it sounds like it is just coming out of some deep opening, a never stopping, perpetually moving, creating sound. sometimes it sounds like it comes down out of the mountains.

i still cannot stop thinking about summers in connecticut.swimming in the reservoir, and even before that, the quarry, swimming out to the floating dock, trying to catch frogs, looking for ripe raspberries. i remember the yard at the house where i grew up, and time, for me was marked by what was growing or blooming. and the light, and how it changed. the weeds behind the garage that were like a jungle, and the zip line, where i would swing.

i wonder, if i could, out here, reflect the stars.

well

2011-06-16T18:44:00.000-07:00

i'm back in this beautiful landscape. i remember, so well, how amazing i thought it was that all this, was out there, west of the coast where i grew up, just sitting here, all along. mountains, on a plateau, under a sky, sometimes hidden by clouds. i remember how shocking it was that i could see a cloud moving toward me from so far away, and that these mountains, just began out of something so flat. i think it is strange to come back to place that was so shocking the first time around. it is making me worry that i have lost my sense of wonder. is that possible? yesterday, i walked for a long time in the woods. there had been an avalanche. all the trees were sideways. I sat next to the lake, on a giant boulder. the water was lapping the side of the rock, moving towards the edge. the clouds were moving fast above me. the rock and I were the still part. i cold feel some-thing's wings beating behind me. like a thumping in my ear. but the wings, and their body were invisible. some days it still snows, and a creek that has no run for twenty years, is threatening to flood the pasture. i keep setting my alarm to watch the sunrise, and sleeping past it.

i still find it amazing, that these mountains can be made to disappear, by clouds and rain.

i'm sitting in a diner in Jackson

2011-06-07T12:43:00.001-07:00

because the internet at the ranch isn't fast enough to upload any images.because the internet at the ranch isn't fast enough to upload any images. It is still hard for me to describe Japan because the most accurate word I have to describe it is "mysterious." It was peaceful but hidden, full of light and shadow. I liked just riding the trains around Toyama. We would pass through mountains, through pine forests and the sun light inside the car would suddenly become dappled and dazzling. then it would be black again, then we would pass a river. I felt very separate, very on -the-edge-of-something, like i just grazed the lip of each opening I passed. I liked watching people work on their gardens wearing tall plastic boots, and the rice paddies reflecting the sky. The mountains and the ocean, the strange little museums along the shore, one for a buried forest, one for the strange mirages that happen on the horizon. They were going to build a road, but found these ancient tree stumps, so they stopped building the road and built tanks around the tree stumps and pumped in water from deep underground. and there that museum sits. One day I got a little off track and ended up walking from one town to another along the ocean. I walked through rice paddies and stumbled on a few that had been converted into tulip fields. I could see the blocks of color from far away. Tulip paddies next to the ocean. A women moved down the line, deadheading them all. It was a sunny and windy day. I finally made it to another train station that was deserted and desolate. Almost every place I was felt that way. quiet and still. The day I went to Yatsuo, it was the kind of day that changes from sunny to cloudy constantly. The village was full of little canals, and a great, sloped wall that you could wind up to a beautiful ancient street above the river bed. I wish I had gone back to that wall, with a little mirror, and maybe a flashlight and wandered around with my video camera. I got really lost that day too, trying to find the train station. I wandered around down the wall and over a river and finally saw train tracks and followed them until I got to the station. When i got there, it was nice golden afternoon light, that shines through things instead of on them.

the day I walked from one town to another.
the canal near Julianne's house.
Outside a window while the Sakura were in bloom.

someone's garage in Yatsuo. Little potted gardens.

The wall in Yatsuo.
Hanami (cherry blossom viewing) party in Toyama near the canal. I really like the light on the cart, and the little bento boxes waiting on the blue tarp.

Desolate (in a dreamy way, not a scary way) Yatsuo. I walked into one museum, and this sleeping museum attendant was all I found there.
The lights in Yatsuo. And a Building with tarps, and an orange arrow.

Some one else's garage in Yatsuo.

Takaoka. I sat under this cherry tree to eat my lunch.

from a train ride to the mountains. The bridge and its shadow.
Women working in a garden in Kanazawa.

The seats on the trains were brilliant, you could slide the back so you could sit forwards or backwards! we were going through a pine forest, the way the light would change was a wonderful shock.
A marker on the snow wall on Tateyama.
Intense tree support structure.
roadside tulips and marathon runners.
the buried forest museum.

fishtank on the sidewalk.
deer chasing schoolchildren in Nara.
Portable garden!

Still need to figure out what the aprons on stones mean.

Let's start at the very beginning.

2011-04-20T02:43:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Tokyo on April 4--late at night. I thought it was a miracle that I found the hotel. Julianne met me the next morning--we had sashimi for breakfast at the fish market. We got there at 10am, and by that time, its activities had already lulled, but the fish and rice bowl was delicious. And we saw all sorts of things--like squid in plastic bags floating in water, and these strange barrel-on-a-platform-on-wheels things that were driven madly all over the place. It is the most chaos I have seen in Japan.

Tokyo feels like a blur, honestly. That night we went to an onsen theme park, we had our first day of hanami (cherry blossom viewing), went to the national museum where they were showing art that had to do with cherry blossom-viewing, explored the different neighborhoods of the city, tried to find the national Kabuki theater, then realized we had walked past where it once stood like 5 times--it was just knocked down and they are rebuilding it (so sadly no Kabuki). we watched masses of people cross the crosswalks and men and women in business suites and nice shoes biking all over the place, wandered through the department stores, I ate some really strange,slimy yam soup that came with my soba noodle set. We went to the Ghibli museum--it is a museum about Miyazaki's animation studio--they had these wonderful animation models (I think that is a good term for them). They were large, multi-tiered, mechanical animation sculptures where each phase of movement was an individual figurine, and each tier was a different character. The machine would start, a strobe light would begin flashing and each tier would spin and everything would come alive--a little girl jumping rope, a cat-bus crawling along, some strange creature flying, a little girl's hair being swept by the wind. it was very beautiful. At the restaurant you could order things like "the fruit sandwich of your dreams."

After three days in Tokyo, Jules headed north to Toyama and I went east to Kyoto. I sat for a long time on the sidewalk waiting for my bus, I felt the small after shocks of anther earthquake. That was the only thing I had seen so far that reminded me that there was a disaster happening in this country.

I got to Kyoto very early the next morning. I was trying to find somewhere to eat and a Japanese woman drove me to a restaurant in her car. People here are friendly. I had ramen for breakfast. I went into this noodle shop where men wear pale blue uniforms and whenever someone enters or leaves, they all call out the same greeting, i don't know what it is but i like the way it sounds. in the tiny kitchen there is a vat of broth that is just steaming, and someone dips it up into bowls, and adds fresh noodles, pork and vegetables. I walked the philospher's path that day. it was sort of rainy, but that weather made the mossy gardens all sort of glow a little. i like that when you look down the alleyways, you see potted gardens in front of people's houses. this path follows a canal and links two main temples/shrines in Kyoto. When I needed food again, another woman led me to an Udon shop where I had wonderful noodles in a smoky broth, and the most amazing tempura. they gave me some free almond pudding for dessert and kept asking my if everything tasted alright. That day was somewhat disorienting. somewhere between two big and delicious bowls of noodles I had seen bits of Kyoto but it is hard to say much more about it. I got back to Kyoto station so I could make my way to the temple where I was staying (Shunk0-in, it was lovely) the bus ride there was long and crowded and i spent an hour just wandering around the station trying to figure out how to get to the train platform. the arrows seemed to be leading me up and down the stairs and in a giant circle. I got to the temple and felt strange and alone. it was very dark and very quiet and rainy and I had spent most of the day feeling glazed over. It was only 830 but I thought that maybe I would just lie on my futon until I fell asleep. But then I told myself that I was in Japan and should probably go out and walk around. This remains true today--excluding the big sights we saw in Kyoto, everywhere I go seems deserted. I always seem to be the only one going somewhere. That is something erie and new. I have never traveled somewhere, where I so often feel like I am the only one wandering around. I kind of like it. everything feels hushed and poised and serene. It might have something to do with the earthquakes, but the emptiness is not foreboding. it is serene. it is like I am existing on one side of a veil that had dropped down into the world. I don't know what Japan in like when it isn't cherry blossom season, and it isn't in the wake of a national disaster, but I feel like this quiet happens no matter what. I walked alone in the rain and got to a local restaurant. the hand-drawn map that I was given at the temple had it marked. I walked past and there was just a guy inside watching tv. I almost didn't go in but at that point I was pretty rain-soaked, so I opened the door, the man switched off the tv, switched on some music and cooked a meal for me on the spot. it felt cozy. I couldn't read the menu so the man who hangs out there/cooks just asked me what i liked and i told him that i wasn't a picky eater. I sat at the bar, facing the kitchen while he started assembling my food bit by bit. he put a plate in front of me, made some tea, and started placing little piles of food here and there. It was the best meal I had, and it made me feel like I could wake up the next day and see things. If i could, I would go back to Kyoto before I left just to have dinner there again. The next morning, I borrowed one of the temple bicycles and began riding around the section of the city that I was in. it was a little remote, but it was one of my favorite days so far. I felt better on a bicycle. I could actually follow the map and i felt like i could really see things. I saw two more temples, the Golden Pavillion and Ryoan-ji (a famous zen garden, later i learned that a lot of the popular tourist attractions glue the pebbles in place. a bird land in a rock garden and not a single stone moved). then i wound all the way around town. it was sort of overcast and breezy, i felt like i was actually seeing Japan. I went to a pickle shop and tried to have lunch, but they were booked, so they brought me a cup of tea and let me sample all their pickles. I bought spices from an old man that wore a checkered wool jacket and hat, who ground a mixture of dried scallions, chilis and sesame in a mortar and pestle and packed them for me in a little tin. i had some delicious sweets--mochi filled with red bean and a surprise fresh strawberry, and another sakura flavored one wrapped in a savory pickled perilla leaf. I wandered around a temple that I didn't have to pay to see, it was full of mossy crooked trees. I sat in a cafe for a while and then went to a small onsen. I ended the night at a bar--an old sake brewery where everyone sits on barrels on the stone floor. a japanese girl sat next to me pretended to read the paper until her friend came over and told me that she wanted to talk. I said that I was the one that was too shy to say hello, they made a list of thing i should see in Japan. Jules got to Kyoto the next morning. I remember thinking that it was impossible that I had been in Japan for less than a week at that point. We had a great lunch in Gion, a very picturesque part of the city. we had sakura mousse for dessert, it was heavenly. we followed the crowd to kiomizu temple. A large temple that is built on stilts. Then we had sake and a few snacks under the cherry blossoms. It was actually a magical thing to do.

riding my bike

2010-09-21T17:56:00.000-07:00

i passed a noisy tree.

it was singing, with many birds. all the other trees had no bird sounds.

the graduation of the horizon

2010-08-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

moving downwards going west.

and then rising again, at times, when we headed north.

and looking up into the sky and seeing two planes move away from one another, as if they just missed colliding--moving out from that corner of potential meeting.

this will become lights on wheels. that move away from one another.

and balloons that i will not let touch the ground.

dropping a balloon out of a window

2010-08-08T11:40:00.000-07:00

building up blue

2010-08-02T18:54:00.001-07:00

this was meant for hauendae beach, but it is happening in philadelphia instead.

more of what went on in korea, everything i add first you see last, so the order could be strange

2010-07-21T11:02:00.000-07:00

what i see ends up in the studio somehow (i swear)

do you like short cut or overgrown astro turf?
at the palace on a hot day. koreans kick off their shoes (im sure there is a reason beyond comfort) and rest, kind of just hanging out around the old buildings where they offer shade.

her apron matches her fish
supporting these graceful old trees (and the clapping man outside of the secret garden)

there is a kite man in heaundae that releases this extremely long string of kites into the sky above beach, and it it so long you cannot even see where it ends, he reels them in an out on giant spools that are anchored into the sand.
bringing the tripods down to the beach, and the horizon

green tea fields, mountians terraced bright green, i like the tree sort of peacefully disturbing the order. it was a rainy day and from above and below you could watch peoples bright umbrellas floating through the rows of green.

ferry ride to jagalchi, so many boats in the water. boats are so much stranger than planes. watching them float is so eerie and wonderful to me.

a cloud hanging off of a mountain
bags of pigment. thinking about color a lot after wandering through the markets. draping a space with it's colors, building up its density.

a whole lot of watermelon
one of the shops where why sew giant masses of this nylon material, sort of like tents or the soft sides of trucks. there is a man in the back, where it is dark at a sewing machine, working on this mass that is spilling out of the shop into the alley.

some very nicely displayed lettuce.

the potential for sound being held up over the lake

i had the length of string for the balloons wrapped around two rocks, when i let them unwind the balloons just swept away from me out into the hazysoft blue sky, until they got as far as they could. i do not know at what point the next day they dissappeared, and/or the bell sank into the water.

they use giant balloons to hold up messages here, on banners that flap in the wind.

behind, again

2010-07-10T14:25:00.000-07:00

i like how the poppies have bowed little heads

and lady's mantel when it rains

so a lot more to come soon.

the flight back was another long trip of almost constant light. and keyholes.

the building with all the crashing down inside, rice paddies (that as you drive by them seem solid and green and then suddenly begin to become transparent and reflective. you can see the sky in them one minute, and intense thick green the next), the density of color and my parents backyard.

i have been enjoying the last two weeks at my parents house. my mom's garden is especially wonderful this year. it has been hot, and humid and one day last week I was laying down on our family room while my dad was outside mowing the grass and the fresh cut smell of it came in the room with the fluttering curtains. it was an overcast afternoon. it is peaceful here. after two months in a strange city it was nice to come home to the backyard and the garden and my dad mowing the lawn.

i have to see about getting some pots so i can at least plant some herbs.

weight squeezing out cracks of light

2010-06-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

the sun and its shadow

clapping outside the door to the secret garden

bee buzzing, plane flying

2010-06-02T07:40:00.000-07:00

this is a little garden that seemed to spring out of nowhere next to the clay studio. things like this are everywhere.

today i learned that 20 years ago Gangnam was all rice paddies. how odd to think of that now. something sort of still and flat is now tall and shiny.

the area down by the lake has changed a lot in a few weeks. it it getting all dug up, there are more fences, and amongst all these piles of dirt someone has planted a small rectangular garden.

korea=color

and how do you keep a wave upon the sand.

you can print a pot with a computer these days

2010-05-21T01:09:00.000-07:00

field trip to nam june paik art center lead to a nighttime walk along the han river from one family mart to the next, carrying a boom box playing extinct korean bird noises from the 1980s and seting off fireworks.

met another artist that is trying to launch his own satellite into the atmosphere--as a controllable shooting star. i would like to see everyone looking up at once.

i went to sit and of course picked the broken chair and someone said "so you are going to be that person that holds up the broken chair all night." so one day, i think i will.

seoul was hazy
and hot today. it's buddha's birthday.

the other day when i went exploring dongdaemun market i stopped at a paris croissant cafe and managed to order a coffee-shaved-ice thing as large as my head.

ufo pastries, bread with a very long hotdog inside.

you can buy wonderful fireworks here in 7-11 that shoot out a burst of light every few seconds before they die. i need to go get some more.

there are lots of tiny areas of land that are used to grow food. land next to the highways, in between roads.

the market is an amazing place. here in the grocery stores there are people shouting and shouting--like this talking watermelon truck, and at the markets men are carrying huge loads on their backs--or loaded onto motorcycles--they move around huge amounts of material at once. this place is so full of objects.

there are alos elections going on. i got off a bus somewhere and there was a long line of people in blue suits wearing white gloves and sashes with the candidate's face in it.

i heard the current mayor swam across the river to prove the water was safe.

what a pot is not. there is a lot of potential here.

2010-05-18T05:34:00.001-07:00

a wonderful chart made by one of the grad students here

oh and happy birthday kyung hee university. school has kind of stopped and lit up tents have popped up everywhere--to celebrate the school's birthday. it reminds me of the hill in paris where julianne and i ate mussels. although it is strange that school is suspended for its birthday, there is a nice lively atmosphere about. bright tents glowing in dark rain, full of eating drinking and laughing. doesn't really remind me of school. and it's tuesday.

you can get take out delivered to a picnic table here.

last week was teacher's day, they take that pretty seriously too. all the students gathered in one room ans sang to the teachers. and i totally unaware, was brought into this room and had to sit up front while it all happened. then we went downstairs and had cake and juice boxes.

anton got some socks, and some vitamin c candies for his health.

yesterday matt gave a great talk (art=life) at Silla University in Busan. it felt very different there from kyung hee. they were also having a ruku festival. which appeared to me to be a sort of delightfully frantic process--and a bunch of the students were wearing hats made out of newspaper. then we rode the ktx back to busan. lots of mountains and greenhouses. very organized land.

in the dorm, all the other women line up their shoes outside their doors, and today the hallways are also full of drying umbrellas.

there are groups of students that gather and play traditional drum music. they sort of walk very heavily, very assertively putting one foot an front of the other and beat their drums. the part i actually like is that one person wears this hat that has this ribbon-dancer part and the long ribbon whips around their head.

everyone like to stand under the cherry trees and shake the petals down.

and out on the lake are lots of little floating houses. i do not know if they are for fishing, living or both, but i like them.

ok a lot at once, it has been building up

2010-05-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

i was sort of remembering last summer--i think because i was thinking about where i was now--so of course i started thinking about where i used to be.

we were wandering around old faithful and a girl wearing a very stuffed backpack ran past us shouting the beehive's indicator is on! so of course we followed her and it turned out that a not so often geyser was about to go off. we got soaked.

and we hiked up to a glacier. i don't really know why this has anything to do with being in korea. maybe it is because i am thinking about seeing things from far away, like when you are in a plane and then seeing them up close.

when i flew here, there was daylight happening the entire time. intense bright light. we flew north and eventua

lly sort of snaking waterways and pockets of snow gave way to the frozen hudson bay. it looked very cold and i felt like everything down there was moving so very slowly, while we moved above it so quickly--i mean as slow as possible, frozen, it was very beautiful. and very flat. i remember hiking up into the mountains last summer and looking down over lakes--where the wind would move the water and make it look smudged. when we eventually flew between russia and japan all i could see was ocean, and every now and then a crisp, very white smudge, or a boat. there were ots of mountains when we flew over russia--and eventually just vast blue, flat ocean, that met the sky in a blurry line. at some point after the hudson, everyone closed their little window shades. i was a little upset because i could have passed the entire flight looking out the window, into the brightness and at whatever was below. but everyone was trying to sleep so i closed mine too. then i decided those windows are keyholes. the cabin was dark, and pretty quiet because most people were resting. i sort drifted in and out of sleep myself--but every now and then someone, somewhere in the plane would open their window shade just a bit, and not only was the light pouring in visually noticeable because the cabin was and felt very dim--but even if my eyes were closed i could sort of feel it. the small sliding sound and the total but short change in the inside of the plane. it sounds strange. the darkness of eyes being closed would get lighter--as that happens when light changes.

i opened mine a little too a few times--and the slice of light that came in was blindingly bright. once when i looked out we were above a soft plain of clouds.

so the windows are keyholes. during the constant darkness/brightness of my flight from new york to tokyo.

now here are my experiments about creating a horizon, building a sky (i see the ground as being something reflective) and using tripods to support--clouds, or these sort of delicate pairings (the ocean is below). here are some trees down by the lake--being grown straight with tripods.

a level of sky. clay is what is here. it's the easiest thing to get a hold of. and i see tripods everywhere.

i know it is a lot at once but i am going to keep going. this is wondering what is the smallest shift you can make to change an outcome--the sequencing of events that lead so some sort of end.

i like sort of smooshing these dry forms together. on instance, their grouping stops an action (the objects being stopped by themselves) another set is being blocked by a pile of fluff, and in another one is being removed. also--the resting place, the pause in action, the preservation of location/situation.

spent the weekend in busan--wandered around nampo-dong (the market area in busan) and waded around an this sandbar all day. watched the lighthouses at night-now i am thinking about them, and wanted to get out the balloons again--weighting them down in water and trying to left a concrete block. i remembered how when i was a kid thinking a was really light- so it was totally possible for me to jump off of the garage roof holding a plastic grocery bag above my head, i could jump off ad just float down. remembering all sorts of things like flattening pennies on the train tracks. i think maybe i will get out the bike i rode when i was little and drive it around town.
seeing this reminded of when i saw some construction in philly. a building was bring restored and the only thing left was the facade. it was held up by all sorts of scaffolding and rebuilt from the face backwards.

I have also thought of a solution for the giant cloud-fabric forms--a cloud zip line of course. i had a zipline that my dad put up in the backyard i spent hours and hours on it. it was on the side of the house where there wasn't much grass but a lot of moss and i really liked that.

and sorry to say i have to photos, but we went in the toya ceramix center, and there above a lake was a banner-message being held up by six giant balloons.

and now I am in Suwon

2010-05-07T19:31:00.000-07:00

a little outside seoul.

i have been searching for the keyhole here. look here http://brittanydenigris.wordpress.com/

brought this slab out to the dry ground around the lake. i don't know what is going to happen with that.keyhole.sinkholethese are clouds on top of mountains, but since then i have turned them into these little domino tiles. i want to interfere with their way of falling on one another--sort of disable their system.

i went down to the lake and began wrapping this mound with string. then i wanted to tether it to a rock that was lying next to it on the ground, then across a puddle to a clump if grass and finally to s small twig sticking up out of another mound of dirt. i would like to think that if i picked up the rock next to the mound that the plants and twig would be unearthed. the area was empty, and then a van started driving towards me and two men got out and began building a fence. they hammered poles into the ground and strung rope in between them. i do not know why they were dividing this empty place. they came over to me and started inspecting the string, with their hands on their chins. eventually they laughed and just kept walking around and around the string and then they went back to stretching rope between the poles. it was kind of a nice set of activities happening at the same time.

trying to bring the sky downwards. there is a lake, and around that is a very dry expansive area of dirt--land behind readies for construction of some sort. that place is going to be useful.

I looked towards the window in the studio and this was happening. it tends to be windy here.

and now that i am in South Korea

2010-05-07T18:51:00.000-07:00

I started in Busan. this is a huge sloping, eroded rock at a temple. i like that is also a shelf for small rocks and statues, offerings I suppose

very strange; this tube was tied to a fence and leads out into the ocean

this was just sort of a beautiful drawing that happened when someone left this lying around.

here are some women moving sand around.

and an exercise park.

things i saw before i left

2010-05-07T08:40:00.000-07:00

the vines behind the fence

i see so much in philadelphia.

one night i was walking home, on 12th off of broad and i heard a strange humming coming from the park and i saw the silhouette of a person following this hovering bright blue light. it was a remote controlled helicopter, and they were flying it in the darkness. it was strange that he was driving it and following it.

and then there were many sort of stormy, windy cherry blossom days and i watched a woman sweep the pink petals off of the sidewalk into a dustbin with her broom.

and i am sure there is more, but that notebook is in another country now.

i was happy i decided to lay on the couch that afternoon after

this is the humming blue light

this is the link, where you can find the boat, and the keyhole and lots of things that have already happened

2010-01-19T18:51:00.000-08:00

while er are here have i ever talked about vehicles, and how being in one is this trance where you both still and moving? it is weird how they crawl all over the world with us inside of them and how they place us where we otherwise could not be. like in the sky. and travelling across america--what did we do before the highways--there is all this land in the middle that just exists and is so vast.

etc.

2009-03-26T20:32:00.001-07:00

disconnected and disoriented.

i'm trying to learn from it.

and i miss reading books.

spring/break

2009-03-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

landscapes on sponges have become vehicles that take me places that become photographs that are projected over toy cars connected to computer chips/fans/lightbulbs.

if I take a slice, or a bar of time and insert it where it does not belong then am I creating a new space in/of time? what about the blank spot that is left behind.

if I command z then can I move forward, or what if I did and then I had to watch the moment before that action over and over again.

When you smell something it is really your physical environment penetrating your body.

I have no food.

I want to shut myself in a room somewhere and make things.

and what about tethering. and a screen of balloons that detach and float away one at a time.

I still have a box of geodes that I have to crack.

I am feeling stuck as usual. or incompetent, or behind or that my approach is wrong. I have been having trouble remembering things and I think it is because so much is locked up inside of my head. I don't even understand the lists that I make. and I am afraid that I have squandered the opportunity to just make without any consequences.

If spring break was actually a time machine.

i am home

2008-12-19T21:56:00.000-08:00

the great red tilting boat is no longer teetering on the sidewalk, slumping in the mist.

it must have floated away, or rolled down the street, or been bought, maybe even renamed, even if that is bad luck?

at dusk the light is so blue, blue cellophane wrapped sun, or sky, or eyeballs. inside our yellow kitchen the big window is a big blue square that I can see my face in.

while it snowed all day long, while this event took place i was wrapped up in the smell of caramel and orange peel and chocolate and butter. Right when the snow began I was outside picking up sticks--for kindling--for my dad to make fires. one summer I conned my parents into paying me a dollar for every basket of twigs I picked up--and did nothing but that for a week and they owed me over 100 dollars. then another year, after all those sticks has finally all been made into the beginnings of fires, I gave my dad a little card promising to pick up tons and tons of kindling--FOR FREE and I drew flames on it. after he made his fire today he went outside to admire the snow before the sand trucks came around and turned the snow from some sort of perfect, glittering event into somesort of nuisance. He wanted to smell the fire in the air also, the smell of wood burning that sits heavily in the clean cut cold air--musky--warm--metallic--ashy.

outside my window there is one little light that sticks in the ground on the path up to the porch. it is lit up and under a cap of snow, a little mound higher than the rest that is illuminates, like a beacon, or an egg. a little moon that does not move.

when I shut out my lights the ice creeping up my window sparkles. (I cannot help that I think sparkly things are so beautiful). A little colony growing, sliding, building up ever so slowly .

it is very quiet and I am thankful for that, no one banging on doors or walls. snow makes things seems more quiet. I know tomorrow there will be deer tracks and little bird feet scattered, out there they are silently moving, navigating the slippery/soft/glittery ground that is softened and curved by the thick falling of snow. Everything is paired down, every slope is more gentle, everything a rolling singular plane. except for the trees that seem very steady the way they do not in the summer.

run with it

2008-12-03T20:55:00.000-08:00

I realized today that all my dissatisfaction is because I am not making things, and haven't been since I began fretting about this winter.

no what you want it to be, what it is

2008-11-21T18:58:00.001-08:00

if you suspend something in space can you also suspend it in time?

bags of water suspended in a doorway, if this create such a specific, distorted image, along with the meaning of water that usually moves, measures time and motion...a snapshot of something in time/motion distorted by the trapping of time and motion.

today the snow looked like a recycled, sifting, maybe vibrating curtain, like everything was coming up from the ground, down from the sky, meeting in the middle and hovering there

it's not just old, it's really weird.

i wrote this down thinking it would lead me back to a train of thought but it didn't. where did those things end up?

i feel this constant pull of push (dissatisfaction) really never satiated by one decision or another
balancing the mind with everything else?

ah I think I remember, whirlwind art history talk, artists like Manet that I never really looked back to but I'm starting to want to brush up on all that...like that picnic with the giant woman in the background, all of this information is more valuable than I counted it for. I think I'm going to get my old books out again, plus I have to place myself within the context of other artists for class.

so it's been all about the senses

2008-11-12T07:39:00.000-08:00

the senses are basically communication/relationships.

we've been navigating a stage set with hugely magnified eyes, and drawing the space between myself and another with string then we pulled and pushed and stretched and finally released ourselves as the supports of a tangled bridge.

Then emily traced my eyeballs moving with shadows and crayons onto the wall, a giant hand clouding my face then revealing a scrawled map.

a room became an experience of physical sensations. it made everyone laugh and smile which i thought was kind of incredible. i know what it is like to sit in a vessel full of tiny static, moving particles. the static electricity made amazing thing happen--floating,flying through the sir climbing up walls sticking to posts crawling over arms and legs

2008-10-16T18:22:00.001-07:00

square which becomes blobby

time capsule/plastic cloud

2008-10-16T18:16:00.000-07:00

square which turns blobby

2008-10-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

I am for an art that is scrapped together, blob-stick constructed. An art that sifts quietly down, parades clamorously between skyscrapers. An art that reflects, records, re-records and re-records and.

I am for an art that goes forwards and backwards. An art that travels in both directions and talks to people on either sides and in between. An art that is sinking, rising, stinking, sloping. And art that you sink into and rise out of with static cling stuck all over. Bathtub art.

Window art, cave art, compartment art, on the road art. Centipedes crawling over maps art. Zipline catapult slingshot art. Floating bird house art, feather grass art

Balloon encased falling down hills art, shifting screen art that detaches and disperses taking a piece up and out.

Cracking rocks art. Nut-shell art. Blops-in-cabinets art. When are you coming home art, beckoning lights art.

Big art, round art, yellow art, red art, climb-in art globe patterned art, tethered art.

I am for an art that is proof of existence, seen through a screen art, a double or triple screen. I am for a backwards art, taking time and sounds and making them go back then come back.

Talking coffee pot art, talking toaster art, talking bread box art, talking tea kettle art, talking tiny pot art, talking flower vase art, talking strange red pot art, talking flour jar art.
A kitchen having a conversation art. Remembering art, sarcastic art, frightened art, forgetting art, disaster art, sounds that have conversations art. Which is like mylar balloons reflecting someone reading letters in a mailbox.

Echoing through tunnel art, that also jives down the street art at nighttime when it is empty.

I am for an art that is buried in small holes dug in the ground. Soft squishy, perpetual motion magnetic machine art.

Tall rippling grass art, which is like a landscape model or a playmobile pirate ship, colorshifting, shade moving strobing light wind-blown art.

Train ride art, car ride art, bus ride art, aeroplane ride art, hot air balloon ride art, boat ride art, ferry ride art.

Wating rooms stuffed with fake flowers art.

OH Fiddly-dee, the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain and in Hartford Hereford and Hampshire hurricanes hardly ever happen.

One eye closed, streaming in through a window art, sun flapping umbrella art, feet being dragged under sand art.

I am for an art that is pressed up against time, like a boat on a sidewalk strangely tilting art.

who said bomb

2008-09-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlJWIKvapzA&feature=related

if everything always exists

2008-09-23T14:37:00.000-07:00

if everything always exists, your past and future selves and every event and every thing is happening and living all the time continually than what does time mean. Is it a way of communicating with a specific self or action. This is how time works as a continuous, simultaneously events that can perhaps begin but never end.

Lucretius says that every entity is constantly shedding a super thin, almost weightless sheath of itself, and these images of things are flying about all the time.

And babies can see things that are no longer alive because their eyes pick up different kinds of energy.

So there is a continuum, and if we made a room that was self maintaining, and everything cold be copied of millions of times it would be like those sheaths flying about that we could see.

we can communicate forwards and backwards with a time capsule. If it flies, the space it flies through may not have any specific time. And if I dig a hole and bury something it will inevitable be found. maybe not until the future when there will be no ground left? One day, someone will find our landfills. We already mine them for aluminum.

I'm going to record myself doing several actions.
digging holes and burying things
letting balloons go
cracking geodes

maybe
wheeling around an empty cart
changing my clothes

on a completely opposite notes we are almost ready for our objects to have conversations. Nonverbal communication conversations of sounds. The teapot, the coffee pot, the toaster and the lamp are talking. It's a little bit like the brave little toaster, a little. A kitchen that has conversations about forgetting sounds, frightened sounds, sarcastic sounds, waking sounds, disaster sounds. It's the intonation in our voices, these what could be automate responses. how we communicate with our bodies and faces removed. disembodies reactions and noises of wondering and shock!

some things one of them i made backwards

2008-09-11T08:22:00.000-07:00

nature/technology

2008-09-08T14:34:00.000-07:00

something emily said in class today reminded me of some thoughts I had earlier in the summer. When I was at the science museum, they had all these space pods and such i may have written about this already, but they had drawings and diagrams of them and to me, with tier large bodies and little feet they resembled viruses or cells really closely, and I thought about how we make things sort of in our image in a way, or how we believe parts of ourselves or things in nature look we mirror in the things we make. interstingly this was a device for transportation. it was a pod that looks like some sort of cellular transportation device.

more on time capsules

2008-09-08T14:09:00.000-07:00

i saw a kite stuck in a tree, and in Germany, I passed by a wedding that was taking place in the town square, and everyone let a balloon go with a good wish.

on time

2008-09-04T18:26:00.000-07:00

i recently re read slaughter house five, and was thinking a lot about time, and how everything is always happening, and how an event would be backwards, or a catastrophic event backwards, like the bombs being sucked back into the planes.

stange

2008-09-04T18:22:00.000-07:00

on the grassy hill at penland there was a real, shaggy llama eating grass next to a newspaper fake llama that kind of looked like a pinata. it stood on very stiff legs on top of the hill.

I was thinking a lot about being home, and how every time I come home my dad washes my sheets and makes my bed for me, and inevitably I get a phone call from someone warning me that due to this project or that there will be piles of stuff in my room. so it never looks the same, but my bed is always made.

a familiar drive

2008-09-04T09:27:00.000-07:00

I was thinking a lot about home a familiarity. I recorded the drive from my house to anton's. my favorite part is where there is this giant red boat parked on the sidewalk, a gas station on either side of the street, both looking worn. The boat is tilted on the uneven ground, and is just this giant beached vessel, balancing its weight on the concrete sidewalk. at night is is usually a little foggy and the yellow lights from the street lamps make it look really beautiful. it always looks so big and so solitary, but also really strange that a giant red boat is parked on the sidewalk. it's for sale.

I was telling everyone about the blop in the cabinet. when you bake something and it overflows and there are funny shaped blops of cake or whatnot on the side. when we were in germany, auntie evelin baked a cake and i went into the cabinet to look for something and the blop was sitting there on a plate, saved for something, and it stayed there all week. it might still be there.

at a reststop in virginia a boy is shooting at the highway

2008-09-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

a worm on my table

2008-09-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

the drive to nc, somewhere in the shenendoah valley, reedeem your worship coins here

2008-09-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

a day on martha's vineyard

2008-09-03T06:49:00.000-07:00

i dug through the sand and found things, but then i deleted the video
and somebody lost their keys
the moon from the ferry

some things i remembered

2008-08-10T10:25:00.000-07:00

I didn't make this, it was just here on a walking bridge where they were working on a building to the left.

the lake in Hyde Park that has become the home to probably hundreds of birds. geese, swans, little black birds with very orange feet, ducks. there were two duck nests, one was floating-bobbing-tilting near the shore, it was built upon a piece of broken off old wooden door. the grass was really just feathers and human beings set their chairs down in the feathers and huge white swans sat there among them like they were sitting among trees or something, totally normal. some children played with them, but they were monsterously huge birds. some were sleeping with their necks and heads tucked under one wing, a closed up egg sitting on the feather grass. the entered and existed the water, gliding over and breaking the surface of the water with a spray up and out each side making waves, but they lumbered out akwardly raising onehalf of their weight and then the other onto the foamy concrete shoreline. ruffled feathers, stuck-out feathers going in wrong directions. tails up diving under for whatever else lived in the water. i know that ducks will die if they don't touch water in the first few days of life. their oil glands won't develop and they will freeze to death. these ducks turned slick and shiny in the water. in the spring a family of ducks lived outside my moms window. eleven eggs that the mother turned everyday. an animal came in the night though and ate all but two, there were bloody smears all over the grass. my mom took the eggs and hatched them and they followed around everywhere. when she brought them to a duck rehabilitator the woman told her by saving the eggs she had committed a federal offense and now the woman would have to lie on her federal form and say my mother found the orphaned baby ducks on the side of the road. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HATCHED THEM?!

Then in Germany, Berlin exactly the sky was sort of rainy, sunny puffy cloud light streaked blue and a ,ass of tiny black vibrating birds swirled between the Dome and that big Radio/communication tower. the value of black in the sky, (ink spot) changed as the birds vibrated in and away from eachother spreading out and then sucking back inwards around around and out out out.

I saw a pice of animation where a salt shaker told a pepper shaker she liked her dress and vice versa.

the video that i wish went on forever, riding the ICE from Berlin to Hanover

2008-07-31T18:06:00.000-07:00

summing up the UK research

2008-07-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

There were a lot of unexpected results from researching in this way. Some of the things that I find most interesting as I reflect back on that part of my work are the research threads that I sort of found along the way. I went with a plan, but as I worked and saw was taken in a lot of different directions and found things I never would have simply by looking and reading. The way things connected and lead me from place to place helped me develop a clearer understanding of how to even investigate women artists. I talked to one person, who lead me to something else, which lead me somewhere else completely new. Being in London, and being in the mindset to go anywhere helped too. At an exhibition at the RCA I found a grad student is is researching the exact same thing, but she framed her questions around the idea of a role model, which is an interesting approach in questioning women in design. She talked to many of the people I did, and produced books on the subject. That was another thing, women artists/designers looked at this issue from every possible lens, and used their own sort of passions to investigate women in the field. The Grad student who created stock project was clearly very typographically driven, so she used that method to explore women in design and then designed books with her findings as the content. Teal Triggs, who came to London and got swept up in the 80s punk scene, and who avidly collects fanzines uses ephemeral bits of pop culture and these gritty handmade books to research and comment on women in art and design. The avenues through which these questions can be explored is limitless, and can be understood and seen in almost any capacity. That show a the RCA was also the best showcase of women's art that I had seen while I was there. And yes, while there were more women doing textiles and animation and less doing architecture, automobiles and technologically driven design, the work they were doing was incredible. I don't think the discipline matters, the presence of talented women is surely strong in schools. Obviously, many women have different viewpoints and all answer the same questions differently, but they are using all sorts of interests and vehicles to explore women in art. I saw a lot of work that centers around women in strange ways. The Viktor and Rolf Fashion Shows, all of their work is for the women's body, and as theatrical as it was it was meant to comment of the fashion world, and in a way certainly comments on the image of women.It explores the personalities of women as well. Personally during the trip I really grew as an artist. Several women commented on a lack of confidence affecting women's statues in the field. This is something that I have personally struggled with, feeling confident in my ideas and the making of things and being able to work freely of self judgment. Also I really felt like I was living there as an artist or maker, and I was constantly in that frame of mind, and FINALLY understand the importance of that. I looked and experienced everything with these central questions and investigations in my head and that helped me really be extra observant, and I applied my research to everything I did, and that resulted in such a crazy, wide pool of answers to my questions. I think honestly the project could go on forever. But experiencing the city as a maker, and a researcher helped me absorb things and questions things and react to things.

back from the land of no internet

2008-07-28T15:11:00.001-07:00

going back to the last week in London,

I made a trip down to Goldsmith's University to research at the MAKE women's art library. Althea Greenan, the Librarian in charge of the collection toured my through and then let me work through the TONS of information. The MAKE library was started by a bunch of women, or rather a small group of women artists that wanted to provide awareness about women artists. The magazine grew from just a simple leaflet, and isn't being published any longer but it's a really interesting collection on women's art. Women artists were asked to submit slides of their work, and over time some artists continues to submit work, so their whole practice is catalogued. The original goal of MAKE was to create a slide library but the collection contains books, press clippings, you name it...
I think it's interesting because there was no requirement or screening process for who was allowed to be part of this libary, the definition of a woman artist is huge within this library. Women had an easy, and seemingly comfortable place to share their work. The collection commissioned a press clipper at one point, and since they got paid for every women in the arts related article in the UK they clipped literally everything! There are teeny articles from tiny newspapers from small towns all over the place advertising a local woman showing her paintings at the community church. The collection is very homespun sort of, and nothing was turned away. At the same time, Artists like Audrey Flack had big boxes of clippings, catalogues and work. That really interested me, how women define themselves as an artists, and how their greater communities define women artists.
It was also interesting to look through the first editions of the MAKE magazine, a single 11x17 sheet folded in half, black and white, discussing the groups struggle for funding, womens' experiences during residencies and then how it grew into a large, color printed magazine all about women artists. Althea was generous enough to give me a whole stack to take back. She also gave me a contact at Rutgers, which apparently has a very extensive collection also.
She ans I had a really interesting conversation before I left about her involvement in the collection. She is an American living in London, and she came to Goldsmith's specifically for the MAKE collection. She did some writing and editing for the magazine along the way also. After looking through the materials she pulled, I mentioned to her about how I really felt the collection gave the impression that the women within in balanced being artists with other things. That was a main topic of discussion with many of the women designers I spoke to. The MAKE collection really encompassed every definition out there of a "woman artist." There was one artist's book I looked at that a women had made about conversation she had with her two small sons.

On Halloween my son (age nine) says, "Don't you have any lipstick in the house?"
Mom: "No, I don't wear lipstick."
Son: "You have to admit that it's unusual for a woman around 40 not to have any lipstick."
Mom: "Some women don't wear lipstick."
Son: "but it's unusual."

My nine year old son says:
"I want my girlfriend or wife to be pretty, nice, thin, with blue eyes and golden hair, good skin, nice makeup and finger nails that are cut straight across like a razor. She will also be rich."
Mom says, "The only important quality you mentioned is that she should be nice."

Song (age 5): There are more black people in the world than anybody else.
Mother: I think there are more Asians than anybody else.
Son: That means there are more brown people than anybody else.
Mother: No, in terms of color Asians are considered yellow
Son: Oh! Bart Simpson is Asian!
Mother: No
Son: But Bart is Yellow

Other highlights from some of the early magazines:

SCUB (society for cutting up boxes)

Sweatshop, a Womsn's guide to self employment.
The sweatshop pack helps women to become self employed. It allows you to increase your life chances, control your finances and work to your strengths. The pack has been compiled by women who are self employed.

One of the early issues describes an English woman's residency at the Kansas City Art Institute. She felt America was more receptive to women, artists and that the faculty were actually interested in her work. She felt the recession in the US positively effected marginal subcultures (women and artists) and compared students between the two countries:

"the average student is less verbally literate that her British counterpart, although I noticed to real difference in visual literacy."

Clare Rendell, Editorial issue N.13

Paris!

2008-07-09T03:45:00.000-07:00

We arrived at Gare du Nord very excited to see Paris, until we realized that the ticket machines for the metro would not accept any of our credit cards. So, we began wandering through the streets, all the way up by Montmartre, not sure how we were going to make it all the way because we were having a really hard time navigating. We came upon another metro station, but again our credit cards didn't work and no one was working at the booth, so we had no choice but to enjoy Mcdonalds as our first snack in Paris. However, we got 50 euro bills from the ATM, and my 95 cent fries were sort of a hassle to get change from. We went back down into the metro and someone was at the booth finally! So we didn't need our change but got hassled again by the man working there. It wasn't in a mean way, but he let us struggle with our French until after about 3 minutes he told us he spoke English. In any case we made it onto a train, which are very strange very tall square things that sort of sway along. And finally to the hotel, where we could see the top of the Eiffel Tower from our window! We dropped off our bags and headed out to see it all lit up. It was exciting to be there for our first night, it was really beautiful, bright blue with all these sparkling white lights.

several accidents happened under the Eiffel Tower. One being that while I was eating a chestnut crepe, my wallet disappeared. The next day after a lot of frantic running around, someone called and said they had found it on the ground, and EVERYTHING was in it except my credit card. c'est bizare!

my theory is that because I lit a candle at Notre Dame (in front of Joan d'Arc) I got it back. I'm not a religious person but I was there so I figured why not, hm. The man who gave it back to me said he was Arab, and it proves that Arabs are good men.

Back to Notre Dame it was beautiful, and there was a service going on, and the music sounded amazing in the Cathedral. When we go back outside, there was an amazing windstorm, and a girl stopped us on the street to tell us that she would be famous in 4 months time and we would see her on TV.

We also went to Jardin de Luxembourg, which really wasn't my kind of park. they have strange square trees and you can't lay in the grass, but I did have some yummy fig and violet gelato.

For dinner we had a picnic under the tour Eiffel.

Every morning we went across the street to Poilane, an amazing patisserie. The croissants, pain aux chocolat everything was amazing, so flaky and buttery! sadly, our last day there was a Monday, almost everything was closed and we tried a boulangerie for our breakfast and it was the worst chocolate croissant I've ever had!

On the second day we went to a street market to buy snacks for lunch. One was a Brittany cake that was made of butter and sugar only. I can't really describe how it tasted. nutty, maple-ey, buttery. We ate lunch at a park that was commissioned by Napoleon where all the landforms were man made. a large rocky cliff, waterfalls, caves, stalagtites, winding streams and a lake all man made. I feel like it was a very French thing to do for some reason. Maybe it's because they prune their trees into squares and parks are really fountains, paths and patches of grass you can't sit on. That day was the fourth of July so we went shopping around our hotel for a picnic, we bought a piece of watermelon, a rotisserie chicken, fried whole new potatoes and a really wonderful bottle of wine and sat right along the seine across from the Eiffel Tower and enjoyed our dinner. Everyone riding boats along the river waved at us and took our picture, maybe they thought we were French, or what were were doing was very French?

The next day we stumbled upon Gerard Mulot (?) a choclaterie/patisserie where they have lots of little fancy treats. I bought some raspberry/cream thing and 8 little macaroons. They were beautiful, bright colorful little pillows! my favorites were the chocolate and the lavender/apricot. Then we went to a wine bar called fish la Boissonerie for lunch, it was the best meal we had in Paris. We each got a glass of Champagne, and a buffalo mozarella salad that had flowers in it. I had fish with veggies in broth, everything tasted so fresh and Juls had rabbit, which was so delicious. It came layered between fried potato/parmesan tuilles and mushrooms. It was the most beautiful food I had ever seen.

(can you tell food was the focus of my trip)

then we wandered towards the Centre Pompidou but got sidetracked/sort of couldn't find it and decided to go up to Montmartre instead. The next day we went to Pompidou and it turns out it was behind us the whole time, we just didn't see it. That happened to us a lot there. But Montmartre turned out to be a good choice, it was really bustling at night, all the cafes were it up, we went into the Sacre Coure (I lit another candle, in front of the patron saint of lost things (st. Andrew I think?) and saw an amazing view of the city. Then we walked across to the square where every cafe had a tent set up outside with lights strung up, and waiters in costumes. We had l'escargots, moules (mussels) et frites! it was a really nice, lively dinner.

The next day we set out to see the sights we wanted to get to before we left. Our first stop was the catacombs. It was an amazing deep-underground walk. Apparently, serious illness broke out in Paris, and they believed it was coming from the graveyard, so they exhumed every single body and at night, chanting priests wheeled piled of bones down into these catacombs. The bones actually made the walls around us, huge walls of bones, the skulls arranged in shapes and patterns (we saw a heart) that went on and on! It was damp, and cold, water dripping from the ceiling...it was everything you could want from a huge underground grave.

We also went to that famous cemetery where Oscar Wild and Jim Morrison are buried. I can't quite figure out how he got there, but this place was HUGE and crowded with graves. Most of the graves were actually these tall, narrow buildings, sort of mini altars to light candles on and leave flowers. The only "famous" grave we saw was Chopin's it was covered in flowers. There was a funny group of men that were going in frustrated circles looking for Jim Morison.

We made it back to the Pompidou and had a picnic on the concrete hill in front of it. Baguette, figd and the most amazing chevre and comte! All I wanted to do was eat, I wish I had another stomach. my favorite part of the museum was the escalators going up. The view of the city was incredible! we saw the exhibition on sacred images in art, which I honestly didn't enjoy very much, except for this floor drawing made out of glitter, and a piece that had a zillion colored dice strewn on the floor. The permanent collection was nice though. They had a whole room dedicated to this artist that makes lots of inflatables. (I'll post his name as soon as I find it in my horribly disorganized journal). Then we to the Arc de Triomphe. The Champs Elysses is realyl just a really big street with lots of flags and more square trees, it was a nice arc. Then we went for a seafood dinner. My favorite parts were these little clams we got with out bread, my sardine appetizer and the cherry soup for dessert.

On our last day we intended to go shopping for stuff to bring back, but everything was closed! the cheese shop, the wine shop where the slightly stern man gave us great recommendations, and the women who takes your money at poilane who is very watchful and sort of like a statue! Even the restaurant we wanted to go to was closed, so we found a couscous place, which was pretty good, and our waiter was theatrical. Then we went up to the windy Eiffel Tower, I thought I was going to be blown off. Riding the elevators was kind of scary really.

In the end, we got a snack at a cafe, found a little wine shop and barely made our train to London, where we returned to the rain.

Since last time

2008-07-09T03:34:00.000-07:00

I visited the Hackney City Farm, and saw the largest pigs I have ever seen, they were sleeping nuzzled next to each other, and chickens were wandering around: th take a step forward, scratch through the hay, take a step back and push there faces into the grass looking for food and this is how they wander about. There were two roosters that wouldn't stop crowing.

I spent another afternoon at the mediatech, I watched most of Rebecca.

Saw the Lion King! the sets were incredible, the plants and things were not props, but people in costumes with moving parts, so the whole scene was moving and changing. and the animal costumes were like extensions of the actors bodies/puppets so both their bodies and their costumes moved in very interesting ways. they were all very flexible.

I unsuccessfully haggled for a necklace on Brick Lane, but it was only 2 pounds, so I wasn't that let down.

Richard Kindersley, a stone carver gave us a talk, and we all got to try stone carving so that was fun.

We took a train out to Baseline magazine, where we received a very long detailed talk on the history of the magazine and how it is produced. The magazine seems like their life, their whole environment is built around it.

then onto Paris...

this past week

2008-06-28T13:37:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 24 June

That morning we went to the D&AD exhibition, a rather enormous international student design exhibition. It was a bit overwhelming, and the work wasn't displayed in a way that made me want to interact with it. The work was set up in booths/partitions.

Then Julianne and I derived with the wind. We allowed ourself to get lost depending on where the wind blew our hair or our clothing. Pretty early we stumbled upon a really old cemetery. We first walked in and the place was teeming with little lives--birds and squirrels really. But they had overtaken the place, and were very territorial about it. and there were black crows sitting on he gravestones. Many of the stones were heaved up and crooked, or broken and laid back down into their place. The grass was taller than the stones in some places, and ivy had overgrown in some places that there were only lumps of ivy in the grid of the gravestones. the cemetery went on forever, it was a strange environment in the middle of the city. There was a colonnade that went through part of the cemetery, elevating our view, and making it seem even more expansive. We sat down on a bench to have a rest and a strange man was sitting across from us. He was working on a 6 pack of something. he asked us about president Bush. We derived all the way out to the highway you take to Heathrow, through a lot of residential neighborhoods, some anti-climb paint, we followed a plastic bag, went into a McDonalds, and ended the day at the Harrod's food halls and I ate the most delicious olives in the world. They were beautifully bright green. We sat in Hyde Park and ate them. When we were taking the bus home, we fell for an old man's practical joke and got off before we needed to.

Later that night we went down to canary warf in search of an under-the -thames walking tunnel. After alot of walking/singing/dancing down the street we found it and the echoes were incredible. There was a smashed pomegranate inside the tunnel and the seeds were littered all over the concrete floor and white-tiled walls.

we also found a mass of traffic lights shaped like a tree in the middle of a traffic circle. It was bizarre because we wondered if it was an art object or not (or intended to be) it could be confusing or dangerous, the lights changed so fast.

Wednesday 25 June

letterpress workshop that was low key and fun, inspired by last nights singing, we made a spread about a birthday song. Their shop was great, nice wide presses and wonderful ink colors!

We also went to the Stanley Kubrick archive at the LCC. It was incredible, he saved everything form every project, or hint of a project he ever had. We saw the typewriter pages from the shining, golashes worn by the crew on a rainy set, handwritten screenplays, set design sketches, anything you could imagine....binders upon binders of research! The archive was designed to look like parts of 2001 Space Odyssey.

For dinner we went to Yo!Sushi. It's a conveyor belt Japanese restaurant where little color coded, dome-covered dishes are carried around the bar on a conveyor belt and you just grab what you want. Then we played some pin the tale on the Barbican.

Thursday, 26 June

V&A for the Blood on Paper Exhibition. It explored the meaning of artists books. There were a few really nice pieces. A collaboration between Lichtenstein/Ginsburg. we bomb you we bomb who do we bomb. There was also an exploding book, and the collection of stains that was in the MoMA color exhibition earlier this year. Not a single woman in the show, but it was curated by three women!

Then we spent many hours at the RCA design show, which was really nice, the work was great and the way it was displayed really made it nice to look at. The exhibition was dynamic and interactive. There were a couple really nice books one in which every page was the first sentence of a self help book. Another interesting piece was a map of London Tap water, that promoted district-specific tap water, the elements it contained was based off of the population. Some neighborhoods had great water, where everyone ate organic food, some had tons of drugs in it, like birth control and anti-depressants from peoples waste. Apparently, water filtration systems are not required to clean out pharmaceutical waste. There was a great animation involving finger puppets and salt shakers, and another very sad one about masculinity.

an id student made a record player with 5 arms so different parts played at once.

One students project was all about women in design (jackpot). She produced a book on the subject, and interviewed 2 women I have seen here (Teal Triggs and Catherine Dixon). It was interesting that some of her questions focused on the idea of the role model, and motherhood was a huge part of the discussion. Apparently during the 1990s something called "Lad Culture" popped up. The environment for design was very masculine and the public representation of women was repressed. In schools today about 60% of design students are women, someone wondered where are they all going? Some of the interviews talked about women being afraid to come across as feminist, and role models, who are they, what makes one?

According to the research done for this project 79% of freelance designers are men.
Women begin their own studios just so they have the flexibility to be with their children.
Ageism- the possibility/boldness of being young, once a women ages and/or had a baby the possibilities disappear.
You don't make enough as a freelancer to support a child.
Personality, and the ability to sell your work
your work should stand for itself outside of gender!
The internet was identified as an important tool for women, they can easily show their work without the intimidation of walking into a room full of men

These are a mix of the opinions discussed, and many of them varied. Some women didn't want gender to have to with their work, or how they are perceived by others. They don't believe it should be an issue, or an identifier work should speak for itself, and they want to be judged by work void of gender, (this is a great piece of design, not a great piece of design by a woman). Some thought it was a generational issue, there are many male executives because few women in that stage went to school for design. Others think motherhood has such a huge part in it. The demanding schedule doesn't support motherhood. Some women stated that we just need good designers, no matter what gender they are. Some role models are reole models because they are sticktotheirguns kind of people, others because their work is great.

It was an interesting sort of conversation between several women, who were all asked the same questions. Gender is clearly something that effects this field, but the opinions about how and where it is going are so different. There are so many women studying design today.

That night we went to sing along where a musician played an a rotating 12 foot vinyl record.

Friday 27 June

The rumpus room, interactive design, yet another affirmation that the internet is the new everything. Here we saw the internet being used/designed as a platform to connect people (p2p, facebook...) and advertise subversively at the same time. the rumpus room.

Then we all walked over to Abbey road, which was strange and funny. It's a very busy road, so we all sort of ran across self consciously.

We decided to go to the Hayward afterwards to see Psycho buildings, artists attack architecture. It was a nice, not too big example of how place/space is used in art. A lot of destruction. the first piece was a contained these fragrant nylon sacks within a strange nylon dome, sort of like a giant sack itself, it reminded me of insects. The highlight was a plastic observatory on the roof. It was a clear dome you could sit in, but it had a sort of double layered roof, the layer under the actual roof was a plastic bubble you could crawl around on. The show as a whole was pretty good I thought.

There was also a hyperbolic crochet sea reef. It used all sorts of materials, assorted/banal plastic things, hair ties that sparkled and of course yarn. It was beautiful, the mixture of material and color, and the interaction of the forms. It was made by (women I think) all over the world.

Today we went to Cambridge for the day, and punted down the river. It was a very English seeming thing to do, floating around lazing and eating on a boat. The person punting stood on the broad, flat end of the boat and used a pole to propel movement. It was harder than it looked. Cambridge was in graduation mode, and of course all the buildings were impressive, a rather pristine (almost too) environment. The student housing was pretty cool. Windows with several hundred year old glass, and nice gardens. It might bizarre to spend 4 years there.

Cows were wandering around.

The train was nice, we went by a lot of farmland that was so very green! There were a few neatly sliced tracks through tall fields that rippled as we went by, sort of flashing yellowy, with sudden bright patched of wildflowers, and green hills that were patched depending on what was growing there.

punk

2008-06-23T14:48:00.000-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_grrrl

they made their own fanzines.

On women thus far

2008-06-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

I have lots of things to talk about...like going to the first ever dino park in the world, deriving all over the place and such. But first I'm going to talk about my take on women so far.

So far, on our formal visits we have seen very few women, however, the women we have seen have been doing really great work. Women can certainly be very successful designers/creative executives, but they are few and far between, and it seems to come with a price. Thinking back to Kate Stanners's talk she talked about how she headed up tons of projects, had this crazy life going here and there and everywhere and how much fun she had. She told us a story about when she was pregnant, she went to a meeting (very pregnant) and ended up not doing the job because of it. She also remarked that the only time she had in her schedule was when she was sitting on the loo, and didn't get to spend much time with her son. So, women do have babies, and it is difficult and it clearly effects one's ability/decisions career wise. None of the other women we've seen yet have had children. I wonder if they never wanted them, or was seen as a sacrifice? Do the view the role of a mother differently, do they not care about the societal pressures of motherhood, or do they feel the burden of them? She also admitted to going home at the end of the day, second-guessing herself. This is something I can absolutely relate to, but I don't think I really ever thought of it having to do with gender.
She also mentioned that insecurity drives good work, so is it some kind of crazy balance or gift?

Going back to Pentagram, what really stuck out to me was how the issue of gender was approached by Dominick, and how he seemed to make a point of justifying it. There are two female partners (one of which had just returned from a long maternity leave) but their statement was that there were no women designers out there that they wanted. That's interesting because the other day we met Morag Myerscough (a woman who started her own practice because so few women do) who is full of energy and crazy about working...what? you wouldn't want somebody that dynamic? Granted, she re-did the work for the Barbican that Pentagram had done before hand, so if I were her, I probably wouldn't want to join their old boys club anyhow. I can't see a woman like Morag going home at the end of a day and second guessing herself. She clearly loved what she did, was proud of it, and even took a few opportunities to compliment herself. Is it because of the people she surrounds herself with, the fact that she owns her own practice? I'd like to talk more with her about it.

Looking at some of the student shows has been really interesting because art/design schools here are so international. There are Indians, Muslims, Asians, Europeans, as opposed to the pool of students at Delaware, which is not so diverse. You could see the broad range of cultures as soon as you stepped foot in a gallery. There were so many different cultural ideas, and ways of representing things like gender and religion. In the US, in my experience, creative programs tend to have people that are openly liberal in their opinions about politics and such. And just like at home, there is a huge trend about being green and socially responsible, but here, there is a much broader spectrum of thought. There was was poster by a design student that expressed his pro-choice beliefs and thanked his parents for not killing him in the womb so he could grow up to be a designer. Somehow I can't imagine that at home, I can't see a student bringing that in for critique and not having some sort of consequence. Another thing I noticed is that the projects on show were really full, huge endeavors. Things were actually made and installed, on a huge, or public or permanent scale. I wondered again about the women having confidence issues comment. Students here seem less affected by that perhaps?

Oh, and similarly to home, there are lots of girls in school for art and design.

One other thing is that many student projects reverted to hand-done processes, like sewing, embroidery, scrap-booking...does a trend for hand made immediately spur references to the hand crafts typically associated with women, is it sort of a "feminine" thing? There is absolutely a movement back to such things, there are knitting/crochet groups cropping up all over the city...they advertise in Time Out.

Finding working artists has been a bit more of a challenge. I have been trying to keep track of all the events going on, but nothing to do with women/art has been blaring at me. They are much harder to find.

hm

2008-06-21T14:11:00.000-07:00

is it very bad that when I was looking for galleries to visit I couldn't find any women artists that tempted me to make the journey? I'm going to look harder tomorrow, but I was looking at the gallery listing I had, and most of the things I circled were not female artist, basing it off of description alone.

There is the make library, and some film screenings on women, those are things lined up for the coming week.

Knitting is really big here, lots of stitch and bitch groups.

London is very round I think

2008-06-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

Today was full but relaxing, Juls and I wandered around some galleries, and sort of all over the place. We tried to see a psychadelic movie from the 60s at the BFI but it got cancelled. We did a lot of walking and explored Bethnal Green during daylight.

We went to the Gagosian first, to see Monsters and Things, an exhibition by Tom Friedman. He did all sorts of amazing/meticulous things with collage. He created creatures and lots of energy with very, very carefully cut paper. some sections, and actually a whole piece of very fine, curvey crazy lines. The collages had some recognizable faces and products, so I suppose it was a very funny commentary. He has another collage where there was a life size set of human legs carrying this box stuffed with body parts, elements disconnected from their systems, is the body supposed to be a burden? The whole show really interested me. Playful with meaning, and broad in terms of how he represented his ideas but still cohesive, if that males sense.

The next piece we saw was a sound installation (his name escapes me) but he's all about using obsolete technology. the piece was made up of two rows of old walkmans attached to little speakers, about as wide as a sidewalk. The sounds were all from old relaxation tapes, except the tape part of the tape was unraveled and taken out of the casing and sort of strung up to create this space. the tapes ran along the floor, up to the ceiling and back down, and they moved while the tapes played. It also had time working in several ways, some of the tapes had broken, or players stopped working. it was nice to watch some of the tapes quivering and whirring, and to see the physical space that stores the sound physically moving to create a space for/around the sound.

Lastly we went to an animation show that was ok, illustrator/vector like graphics pulsing. I thought the most interesting part was the presentation, TV sets turned on their sides and such.

then we got fish and chips.

after victory, tigthen you're helmet chord!

2008-06-21T02:04:00.000-07:00

First bus ride on top

I can't quite remember where I left off, But on Thursday we went to the Design Museum. We saw another architecture show, my two favorite things were the Bordeaux Law buildings. They were these gorgeous wooden pods (kind of like giant nuts or seeds) all connected by hallways and glass, it was really beautiful. The other thing, was a conceptual city in Japan that was created to be self sustained, containing and efficient. The cool part was that the model was clear plastic and it lit up to identify the different parts of the city, residential, green space, commercial space etc. It also showed the sun cycle. There was also a really inspiring photo show of Tim Walker's work, mostly for British Vogue I think. The photos played off of childhood stories and fantasy. It was the most interesting photo show I have ever seen, and by far one of my favorite things since I have been here. He makes these huge props for the models to interact with, and every photo was so playful. They also had a little ID show going on, with funny little things, like airline barf bags that doubled as film drop off bags, and portable urinals.

http://www.designmuseum.org/

That night we went to The Barbican (a really interesting place) to see a fashion exhibition of Viktor and Rolf, two crazy dutch designers. They had a giant doll house, and a traditional doll maker make a model of pieces from each of their Haute Couture collections for each of their strange dolls. They were so stiff.
You could also watch each runway show, and see examples from each collection. Thier work is all about reacting and commenting on the fashion world, and I found it to be very thoughtful and beautiful. A few pieces I thought were really nice were these dresses that drew from danish traditions (apparently they do that a lot) paired with a lighting/sound system that was attached to the model and that also held up the dress in a theatrical way around the model's body. They wore these metal structures with lights and speakers around/over their heads and carried their set with them. Another was a coat lavishly embroidered with all sorts of little bells. The runway was dark so you heard her before you saw her. They made a whole collection of blue screen clothing--they used blue screen technology to project onto the clothing, so the models appeared as moving pieces of video, wherever the fabric swished, the image swished. They also had the Babuska Piece. The Flowerbomb show was nice too, because the models danced down the runway. Something I particularly liked across the board was the music they chose. One show has Tori Amos performing live an adaptation of the Song of Solomon, another was Frank Sinatra, some had original music with chants and repetition of phrases paired with strange droning noises, the Beatles, What the World Needs Now...is love sweet love.
http://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=7272&gclid=CNLdn8SdhZQCFRpUEAodezX0Vw

Friday we went to the Tate Modern, which is a really neat building and saw a photo show that was ok...the one at the Design Museum was more interesting to me. This one really looked at the history of photography, the relationship between photographer and subject, and questioned the validity of taking someone's photo. There were some interesting parts, there was a piece by Cindy Sherman (I think) where she took people's photos and then photographed herself as her subjects. I wandered around a bit, but wasn't really able to take a lot in from the other galleries, there wasn't much time, so I'll need to go back
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/

Borough market, raclette smothered potatoes!

In the afternoon we met with Morag Myerscough, and along with the architecture talk, this is one of my favorites. Her personality was great, the talk wasn't overly structured and I find what she does to be really interesting. She is a graphic designer that started her own practice because not many women run their own practice. She takes on work she wants to do, is very hands on and has a lot of confidence. Her studio ranges in numbers, when we saw here, it was her and another women, doing an incredible amount of work. She primarily does exhibition design (she did the new signage for Barbican). I really enjoyed seeing design in 3D, that deals more with space, the senses, objects, information, narrative and sort of planning how people will process and move through the space. I responded to it because I feel like I think better in 3d than 2D and I'm interested in the shift from one perspective to the other. She also gets to work a lot with architects. One of the pieces she showed us was a train car that she turned into a coffee shop. The train was in Deptford, what she described as a sort of depressing, run down area. The train project was created to give the community a lift...and I'm sure it worked because the outside is painted with funny sayings about tea, it seemed like a good gathering place, encouraged conversation...
She really stressed understanding the context of whatever you are doing, and she was very honest and the talk was personal, and less didactic than others which was nice.

In her old house, she had a gallery called "her house", and she had a similar setup her her new building (which was a great space, lots of light) When we were there, she had a show of all her mothers embroidery up. They were really beautiful, and it was interesting to see that sort of background for her life. Embroidery being a sort of traditional craft, coming before Morag's bold designs. Her mother's work was abstract, and full of stories.

The other day we saw the calligrapher Semi Satwinder, I had sort of mixed feelings, and a talk by Wendy Scott, a writer who focuses on fashion/culture, and stressed simplicity. did I already talk about this?

Last night Julianne and I went to another run-riot party...BIRTHDAY PARTY (sort of familiar) there was cake, and a pinata, pass the parcel, party dresses and lots of dancing to oldies. oh, and a dashing lady jumped out of a cake.

Something I really like about here is that you don't have to walk very far to find a park, and people love sitting in parks, did they invent picnics? because they picnic a lot

oh and Nick Bell the other morning was cool. They designed the Churchill museum, which is such a huge amount of information it seems crazy, he documented every part of his life really well. I haven't seen the actual museum yet, but I plan to go before I leave
http://www.nickbelldesign.co.uk/

evey year I travel to the Himalayas and sit on a glacier naked and wait for all the water to melt, and then I collect it, if you can't get that,

2008-06-18T14:16:00.001-07:00

you can use tap water.

AND MORE

2008-06-18T13:57:00.000-07:00

the science museum also had space ships that had actually gone to space! Something I thought, which may be crazy, is that some of these outer space contraptions reminded me of our bodies on a micro scale. one of the Apollo moon landing vessels look like how we depict cellular things. I wonder if without knowing it we replicate nature/ourselves (cellularly).

Above:
here is a seven toed cat
the view from our flat
stockings at Portobello Road Market, also Paella....5 MANGOS A POUND!
making angles in reaction to a measuring statue outside of the British Library
um, and my new British haircut
super communication tower

more more!

2008-06-18T13:42:00.000-07:00

we also stopped into this old church turned salvage yard. Understanding architecture of the past is an interesting thing. I don't think any of what was made reflected ourselves in any way. Every thing there was guilded, carved, marble, reflective...there were creatures and angels and fangs...fairytales, imaginary gardens...all of these things in luxurious materials. were they an attempt at perfection they are utilitarian, but seem so far away from that purpose, they don't sem to reflect life in any way.

We also went to the science museum this past weekend, this is what I look like as a very female version of myself:

they had an exhibit that was all about genetics, human consciousness, what is the difference between men and women, how we develop language and how this simple/extremely difficult task sets us apart. There was also a stuffed seven toed cat.

i enjoy sitting in parks

2008-06-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

today we talked with an architect, Dan Brill http://www.danbrillarchitects.com/
it was one of my favorite talks so far, it was really interesting to see how architects are dealing with current issues of space and material, form and function. One of the projects he worked on was a redesign of public schools. The government commissioned top firms to design templates for schools in different environments across England. This is a 2 billion a year project to revamp schools all over the place. his design included these "strawberry" learning pods, all connected by a plastic covered tunnel/agora that connected all the buildings.

From skin and bones to this talk, I have become increasingly interested in architecture. The way space reflects our ideas of shelter and surroundings. How space is constructed to contain or hide in an environment, how things are built to utilize whats around them, making space and structure work in a sustainable way. Architecture is starting to relate to the body a lot more I think, with organic forms and the way they channel our movement.

Also, one of the pieces in skin and bones reflected ideas about a shrinking world, and movement across large places. http://www.husseinchalayan.com/artprojects.php?id=7
The artist was inspired by his life as a refugee and the need to quickly move with the desire to be able to bring what your possessions with you. The furniture transforms into clothing made of cloth and wood, as suitcases, so someone can bring their life with them.

http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/skinbones/skinbonpes/620.as

more places

2008-06-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.johnsonbanks.co.uk/

http://www.pentagram.com/

http://www.bl.uk/

where i've been

2008-06-18T08:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.satwindersehmi.com/

http://www.saatchi.com/worldwide/index.asp

http://www.bartleboglehegarty.com/

http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1636_chinadesignnow/the-exhibition

other things

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/oct/23/advertising.genderissues

http://youtube.com/watch?v=aHbi8PdowGU&feature=related

hula hoops

2008-06-18T00:47:00.000-07:00

Brittany, if you haven't already, check out the Sunday NYTimes Magazine article about painter Marlene Dumas. there's an interesting if shocking moment in there about whether charges of sexism/chauvanism can be relevant in the 21st century. there is also a ton of blog activity about this issue and Dumas, might be worth tracking that down and seeing what you think. but start here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/magazine/15dumas-t.html

our east Berlin neighborhood, Fredrichshain, appears to be unbelievably fertile. there are pregnant women and babies and toddlers everywhere, all of the women in the residency program have commented on it. I can't tell if the men noticed it before the women mentioned it. Tom and I are wondering if those families will stay here through junior high and high school and then the demographic will completely change---or maybe there's some mysterious urge to move on and their places will be filled with more fertile folk. I think of this because of that great comment you recorded by Kate Stanner.

Germany's current Chancellor is a woman, Angela Merkel, read some facts and ponder how few women still are involved in politics at a high level: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel

The Berlin Biennial had a number of interesting contemporary women artists as well as a small mini-exhibit of works by Polish artist Zofia Stryjeńska (1891-1974).
http://www.forum-polonia-houston.com/Art/Zstryj/zs.htm

I am working rather feverishly in the studio but I plan on providing links to all of the women artists I have seen. both here and in Prague the communist aesthetic meant that public sculpture presents Comrades working together, both men and women strong and powerful in these idealized moments. up above the woman with child on her back is from this wild block of communist era buildings here in east Berlin, the woman with the beehive is from a building in Prague.

on going out

2008-06-17T15:17:00.000-07:00

our first outing was to a health concert at this strange pub off of old street. Old Blue Last. The music was deafening, but when we left to go downstairs, there was a full on dance party with DJs playing old American hits.

second thing was the run-riot performance art party. aside from the hula-hooping extravaganza there was dancing, and two girls that sparred on the dance floor all night. oh, and a man but a woman painted white in a bathrobe that exploded diet coke over everything. it was questionable.

we missed transcendental bingo.

spaces in transition

2008-06-17T14:44:00.000-07:00

After being here a while, I've been taking not of how the city is changing. The second day we were here, we were given a tour showing architecture interacting with type. There is a lot of construction going on, completely transforming King's Cross Station. The old building is a formidable structure, a large singular shape, sort of fortress-like. They are totally changing the building making the back, the new front.

Across the street, is St. Pancras station, a highly ornamented building that recently went under as major renovation. The doorways in the building were originally built according to the size of a barrel of beer, because way back when all the breweries were in the country. The inside of the station in a portal for people in transit and is this sort of glass tunnel that exposes the original features of the building, and dead ends at the st. Pancras Hotel, another ornate red brick building. Under the largest clock in London, is a monstrous statue of a man and woman kissing, signifying that this is meeting place. pretty funny actually.

There is also a lot of construction going on outside my window, and a building draped with plastic.

at the RCA show, a sculpture student made this miniature clay environment that reflected mini construction areas all over the city. It's strange, as I walk along, I see construction men lined up, all sitting against the wooden partition-walls set up on construction sights, and they are sitting talking, smoking or eating sandwiches, but never doing anything. There are also these little construction sights, blocked of, framed with white and orange plastic fencing--inside are piles of dirt and heaved up pieces of road, sometimes tools, but they seem abandoned, they don't change and no one is ever there.

oh, and kings cross is how you get to Hogwarts.

Busty tells us aliens were here.
watch out for dippers and draggers.
today I ate a candy bar that was labeled "not for girls"

Back to architecture, I saw a show on the intersections of architecture. weaving, pleating, creating a form of cover/shelter, a set of clothing that turns a human into a Russian babuska doll, one layet at a time, bloating, distorting, suspending, camo, pattern all related to building and the body.

We also talked about design and music intersecting with Michael Johnson. how music gives designers opportunities fr expression and how the sound changed the aesthetic.

run-riot art/culture/best dance party I have ever been to

2008-06-16T11:08:00.000-07:00

aliens may or may not have been iin involved

2008-06-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

to be honest I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was beautiful, and the rain suited it.

I almost think its awkward.

Saatchi & Saatchi/Kate Stanners

2008-06-16T10:49:00.000-07:00

Today we talked with Kate Stanners, creative director of Saatchi and Sastchi. I asked her to talk a bit about how being a women affected her career. She began by saying she gets asked that a lot (being the only woman creative director around) and that she thought it was a little boring, but she went on with a very animated description...

According to her (specific to advertising):
1.women are too intelligent and sensible for such things
2. 50 percent of students are women, 14 percent are working today
3.women have confidence issues
4. women are not confident in their abilities/personality to make other people laugh
5. women question their abilities and performance, and have a fear of rejection men don't go home at the end of the day and do the same
6. she doesn't use very skinny girls in her work, women don't want to see other women with all the piss taken out of them
7. women have babies and that's really fucking difficult

BBH

2008-06-15T15:26:00.000-07:00

Advertising.

http://www.lynxeffect.com/

We had a talk with BBH, another international super-advertising firm. We were given the talk by a two-man creative team. It's not news that advertising perpetuates negative gender associations, but a large subject of the talk was the future of advertising, and all these new ideas...I wondered if anyone thought over-sexing and objectifying people isn't a an old idea.

Some of their ads for Levi's were funny, and more gender-balanced.

They spoke about viral advertising, where companies pay for events of films, and then get publicity for sponsoring cultural things, rather than just promoting their products. A lot of these films can be seen on youtube--the internet is the biggest portal for subversive advertising. I imagine what could happen if creative people in advertising used these opportunities in a way that could further people's thinking. perhaps that not really possible, the goal is still to sell things, but it's a nice thought.

When we first got here, some of us noticed how we felt women were sort of approached differently- motherhood for instance--I was having lunch in the courtyard of the V&A and several women had young children, one of which was scootering around the pool completely naked, something I thought was that at home this situation would never take place, or seen as quite an annoyance, no one there seemed to mind. Walking home in the afternoon you see men in suits outside every pub drinking beer, but you see women too, which is sort of interesting because they seem like a male oriented atmosphere. I'm not sure how different gender is here than in the states, have a seen enough to know, are these false first impressions, and how this connects to what advertisers do, since they communicate with the masses. It's a bit strange actually, there are sort of differences, but sort of not?

Pentagram demistified

2008-06-15T15:13:00.000-07:00

This international super-design collective has long been criticized on the subject of gender. This sort of elusive design company invited partners to join, and they work across four international offices in all fields of design. it sort of reminded me of some kind of old boys club/secret society, but they had some nice ideas about design. Their take on the collective process, the intersection of different interests/goals among the partners, the idea of what Pentagram is as a design collective where everyone exists to support a company going, and everyone shares the responsibilities/commitment while pursuing their own paths was cool. During the talk, the issue of gender was carefully noted. There are currently two female partners, and the reason there are only two is because there are no other female partners any of the current partners want to bring in. hm. is this a generational thing? 20 years ago were there no female design students? are women designers less developed because of other demands? does Pentagram like to stick with designers who create bold, sort of "masculine" things? I feel their aesthetic sort of enforces ideas of masculinity, or at least as masculinity is portrayed in our culture.

China Design Now

2008-06-15T15:04:00.000-07:00

this show was incredible...the recent history of design in China, and how design communities are isolated and identifiable by region. Designers themselves have created these communities, before the government reforms, there were no designers, only government employed artist workers. Today, design is a huge part of their push forward.

Four Great things in China:
Cell Phones
Televisions
Houses
and what was the last one?

Some very strange things going on architecturally, for instance a housing complex modeled after quaint English neighborhoods, China's own Tudor village.

They did some beautiful things with type, Chinese characters serving as text/image/symbol in a singular form.

Women came into play when the exhibit looked at fashion and art.

Sandwich boxes

2008-06-15T15:03:00.000-07:00

pickle and cheese
bacon and mayonnaise
tuna and sweetcorn
tuna and cucumber
boiled ham an mustard

2008-06-15T14:59:00.000-07:00

I really enjoy the signage here

2008-06-15T14:56:00.001-07:00

First Week in London

2008-06-15T14:40:00.000-07:00

Between jet lag and being so busy the first week has been a very strange block of time. It's almost overwhelming how much information is coming and going. to start, the city itself has a much different feeling than anywhere I've ever been. The landscape, I think related more to our bodies than it does in a place like New York. When you look down the street, you can actually see the sky, and building, lights and signs aren't towering over everything. There is also a really interesting mix of architecture, classical and modern, very formidable stone buildings next reflective glass domes and towers. The city is bustling, but not in an overwhelming way, it is more comfortable and welcoming. I've seen a huge range of things, from the "treasures" of the British Museum/Library and creative directors talking about the future of advertising. It was interesting to start the trip with two places that hold artifacts so significant to human history, our language, assertions of power, and transition to what is going on at the very moment. In one week, I've seen books that were hundred's of years old, these ornate, consuming objects that were intended to make the reader feel small and powerless--a history of design in China (which has only existed for about 30 years, and in which women have only recently been included) and heard talks from two of the largest international design/ad firms. All these things are certainly connected, the past informs the future...

ps we were fighting the elements...that's a good point

2008-05-20T21:37:00.000-07:00

we made a party

2008-05-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

A collaborative piece, and a first attempt at some sort of happening...a lot of nice things happened. So we made a party that was about a birthday party, and a slip n slide out of clay. and it came with all the normal anxieties that having any party does.

It's interesting that it was a completely forced and fabricated event that was totally self-supporting. We set up this sort of controlled environment, and everyone ran with it and discovered all the things we set up for them/situations/opportunities we gave them. I wondered what our guests expectations were before they arrived. They had several actions to participate in--there was eating, singing, game playing, crafting, sliding, and it all went down like any party would. So back to the idea that it was a forced situation that turned into this group effort to keep the situation going.

Something I hadn't expected was the transition from making mode to participation mode. One minute we were preparing this situation and the next it was taking place. speaking of the making, it was a process that also contained a lot of great information. The efforts we went through to create this environment, like moving a big tent, or cutting up a watermelon were nice moments on their own.

I questioned the idea of why/what we were making, how this stands between an art piece or just a party we threw for the heck of it. We created the event with some specific goals in mind, we imagined the image of mud-covered people in this strange birthday party setting, we achieved many of our desired results but also had a lot of nice surprises, it was so much like a real party, even though it was kind of a fake party.

It was nice to see everyone that participated getting excited about it. Everyone was really into being blindfolded and spun around for pin the tail in the donkey/pinata, which was cool because none of us could probably pinpoint the last time we did those things/is it ever nice to be disoriented in front of a laughing crowd? It was funny though.

about a video

2008-05-20T20:48:00.000-07:00

This is a work in progress. It basically started building itself through searching on the internet and documenting those searches, even though I was doing this all for the sake of making this record. I wanted to follow the intuitive process of what would come next, but now I'm wondering what intentions might have been there along the way. looking at it I see patterns things going backwards and forwards...there is a lot of water and space (as in outer) for instance. Things were chosen really for their straight visual appeal. I started with google earth, seeing how the weather, and other information was represented through this interface. Each element I thought was just part of a moving composition. It was constantly changing and becoming more complicated so I was just keeping up with it. From there, the content flowed into other videos on the internet sort of sticking along a theme of strange phenomena, I suppose disaster and place. The connections that were initially visual became overwhelming, frenetic and very sad. Seeing it all together/the creation of this meaning makes me think about how this piece was really made, and how all this was constructed while I thought I was going just with the flow, but maybe not really?

2008-05-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

This installation was created as a reaction/interpretation of another artist's work. I chose Sarah Sze for the way she interprets space, language and narrative through objects. When I see her work/read about it It made me remember how I would organize my things when I was a child--the way I constructed relationships between objects that I felt were necessary , what had to go next to what and what that meant. Those objects had much more meaning however than the objects I used here. Have I made each of these objects very personal to me by organizing them?
At the same time, the temporaryness about how she organized objects appealed to me...a paper cup sitting on the ground that should/would be moved soon? Her pieces contain pathways, stairways etc that often lead up into the air. The building up and trailing off into nothing is a nice moment, and again made me think about childhood/constructing an imaginary space or necessary order. Each object becomes meaningful because of the objects that surround it--they become connectors, support systems or focal points. All at once where things are placed seem important and intentional but also just sort floating. The meaning of each individual object is then shifted to what it means as part of the whole. The objects she/I mostly are utilitarian, ephmerel fairly banal parts of everyday. This allows each individual element not to carry too much existing meaning/metaphor.

I think there are moments of warning, escaping and anchoring. Could it be considered a still life, or sort of the freezing/preserving of a moment in time or some kind of shrine?

http://www.sarahsze.com/