some things i remembered

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

summing up the UK research

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

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!

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

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

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.