linds_e

“I wish that albums would be wanted again because I wish peo­ple would want 12 songs and not just two. I wish that peo­ple could have the fun that we had when we would go and buy an album and lay on the floor and lis­ten to it 50 times. And sing along with the words and just be so touched.”

—Ste­vie Nicks

Tonight I dis­cov­ered that a cou­ple of boxes of art sup­plies and art objects in my stu­dio spare bed­room art room were infested with the car­casses of many, many small larvae-type bugs. EW. I thor­oughly grossed myself out pick­ing thru to see what was sal­vage­able. Unfor­tu­nately, a hand-felted wall hang­ing, a felted rock made from my friend’s dog’s fur, and pos­si­bly some wooden boxes were among the objects that were beyond repair. Bugs eat nat­ural fibers, who knew?

This is actu­ally not the first time I’ve had an art bug prob­lem. Let me recount for you the times I should have learned my lesson.

1. Honey is Sweet

In the first assign­ment of the semes­ter for Fiber Arts class, our pro­fes­sor gave us three yards of muslin and instruc­tions to use ONE other mate­r­ial to cre­ate a sculp­ture. I cut my muslin into 5″ squares and chose honey as my sup­ple­men­tary mate­r­ial, stack­ing the fab­ric one piece at a time like a honey-muslin lasagna. It turned out pretty awe­some, but then the honey dripped onto the floor and the local ant pop­u­la­tion moved in.

2. Peter Paul Reubens and The Gath­er­ing of The Beetles

Later in the Fiber Arts class, our pro­fes­sor took us to see the Peter Paul Reubens car­toons at the Rin­gling Museum and asked us to recre­ate an aspect of the  paint­ings out of fiber mate­ri­als. I chose Gath­er­ing of The Manna, recre­at­ing the burlap bag held by the crouch­ing fig­ure at the bot­tom. My twist, though, (and I can’t believe I did this) was to fill the bag with manure that I dug out of the New Col­lege com­post pile. Ahem. Do you know what lives inside manure that has been decom­pos­ing in a com­post pile? Lots and lots of bee­tles and creepy-crawlies.

3. Regina and the Resin

Another artist who shared my stu­dio space was doing awe­some cast­ing work with resin and soaps, embed­ding things like hair and My Lit­tle Pony parts. She had a bunch of pieces cur­ing — or so I thought — near the sink in a tup­per­ware con­tainer, so I lifted the lid to take a peek. The objects which had not fully embed­ded in the resin this time were chicken hearts. Upon expo­sure to light and air, squirmy lit­tle white crea­tures (I will not say the name) that feast on rot­ting, non-fully embed­ded organic mat­ter swarmed out. SHUDDER.

4. Frog Tonics

I did a whole series of small bot­tles with linocut labels. They were filled with var­i­ous odd objects such as teeth, wool, hair, and well, a frog skele­ton I found in the library park­ing lot. Let’s just say there is a rea­son that peo­ple bleach bones before mak­ing art out of them. Luck­ily, this issue was well-contained in the bot­tle, and the bot­tle is now well-interred in a land­fill somewhere.

5. You’re Bring­ing What in Here??

In my New Col­lege senior the­sis show, I used hay bales in lieu of sculp­ture stands to dis­play my work. I remem­ber Gail, my advi­sor with whom I had a love/hate rela­tion­ship, ques­tion­ing me with a frown. “You’re bring­ing what in here??” she asked. Three weeks later, I was bat­tling ant colonies and bee­tles as I cleaned up. (Oh and yes, that is a giant horse hide shown below).

As much as I hate to admit it, Gail’s and oth­ers’ con­cerns about the mate­ri­als I used in my art were war­ranted, and not just from a bug per­spec­tive although that is cer­tainly an issue as I dis­cov­ered today. I have mul­ti­me­dia pieces where I used wood glue to attach mate­ri­als to the sur­face, and the glue has yel­lowed in an unpleas­ant way. I have paint­ings that incor­po­rate latex rub­ber which is now dry and crack­ing. My encaus­tic pieces have suf­fered a good deal of dam­age over the years being moved from one house to another, and while some are repara­ble, oth­ers are not. And some have clouded due to sun exposure.

I don’t know that I would have done it dif­fer­ently, entirely. I embrace the idea that art, like life, is tem­po­rary and fleet­ing and prone to decay. Joseph Beuys, who is my most inspi­ra­tional artist of all time, talked about how his sculp­tures are not fixed and fin­ished such that “every­thing is in a state of change”. I’m not inter­ested in hav­ing a legacy as an artist (so, like, the stuff doesn’t have to hold up until 2179 or any­thing). Part of the rea­son I am no longer much of a prac­tic­ing artist is that I can’t bear to keep bring­ing things into the world and to become respon­si­ble for where they go and how they last. But, in some small way I want to acknowl­edge that Gail was right, and that she was not just pick­ing on me or being mean like I thought at the time. I made that felt piece with my hands, first card­ing the raw wool for hours and hours and then felt­ing it on the dri­ve­way out­side the sculp­ture stu­dio with a hose and a lot of Dr. Bron­ners soap. It had to stop exist­ing at some point, but at the hand (mouths) of bugs? That just kind of sucks.

I am still alive, and still mak­ing comics!

I actu­ally drew most of this one a year ago, but for some rea­son I didn’t fin­ish it in time for the hol­i­days. I’ve been hang­ing onto it until now so I can send it to Mrs. Andrews with her Christ­mas card. Do any of you have any spe­cial teach­ers you still com­mu­ni­cate with as a grownup?

We drove up Boreas Pass with Seth & Holly yes­ter­day to look at the awe­some fall col­ors. I think we were about a week too late for the peak of aspen sea­son but they were pretty great any­ways. I love the smell (eau de rot­ting leaves)…

Also, I edited these pho­tos while lis­ten­ing to “Songs in the Key of Life” on the record player which is prob­a­bly why they look so warm & happy.

Ear­lier today my friend K posted a cou­ple of scanned pho­tos of me from high school on Face­book. I feel like I’m just now able to come to terms with the awk­ward young per­son I was… And so I scanned a few of my own.

I used to cringe about my super androg­y­nous phase. Truth­fully, I think it’s just because it also hap­pens to coin­cide with a time in my life where I wasn’t always very happy. Many of these pho­tos rep­re­sent good times, tho, espe­cially the ones in Ice­land and in Mel­bourne. I think I was actu­ally a pretty cute lit­tle boi­girl most of the time and I made it thru teenage and young adult­hood with­out being sucked into the fem­me­beau­ty­con­sumer­ma­chine, which is kind of neat.

Self Por­trait, 2000.

Elven blurry chil­dren, 1997.

Red Rocks, 1999 or 2000ish.

Ice­land horse trekking, 1999.

Mel­bourne, 1996.

Band photo shoot, 2001. We are try­ing to look very seri­ous here but if I scanned the out­takes (which you could not pay me a mil­lion dol­lars to do!) you could see how much we were goof­ing around.

meet new camp­mates and see their faces on google hang­out and they are all so awe­some
write a let­ter to this year’s vir­gins to be deliv­ered at gate

I think antic­i­pa­tion and excite­ment are two of the best emo­tions. Get­ting excited takes effort, but it makes expe­ri­ence so much sweeter.

Yes­ter­day John, Jenna, and I went on a field trip to Ft. Collins to have brunch at the Rain­bow Cafe and visit the Alley Cat. At the Alley Cat we all got so, so sleepy and I was wor­ried I would pass out in a food coma in the booth. I decided to make a lit­tle mini-comic about it in my mole­sk­ine (co-written with J & J).

Later we went to see Prometheus in Love­land (I give it a B-) and when the movie let out it was rain­ing intensely. It turned out the high­way was flooded and we ended up hav­ing to drive back to Erie on County Road 1.

All in all I real­ize this is not a super excit­ing story, but hey! We were tired! It was fun!

research how to make pan­cake tutus
buy one mil­lion yards of tulle in rain­bow col­ors
comb out my tutu dreads from last year
be excited
inter­rupt john learn­ing david low­ery songs to ask tutu length
order EL wire for bikes

“here i came to the very edge where noth­ing at all needs say­ing… and every day on the bal­cony of the sea open fire is born and every­thing is blue again like morning”

— Pablo Neruda

I made 6 pan­els of a comic tonight but it’s too hot to finish.

Yes­ter­day Mer, J, and I went on a photo expe­di­tion. We also ate brunch at City O City, saw the Yves Saint Lau­rent show at the DAM, had snacks at Sput­nik, went to the Book Empo­rium clos­ing and got a mil­lion mag­a­zines for art projects for 50¢ each, shopped for plants, got a tiny stone don­key, had deli­cious Mex­i­can food at some ran­dom place on far east Col­fax, and chased some geese in City Park. It was a most won­der­ful day with my BFFs.

I was shoot­ing with my Lens­Baby and am fairly excited about some of these pics. I did some of the color cor­rect­ing with Rad­Lab, which I now need to save my pen­nies for because it is SO awe­some for Lens­Baby stuff. I have con­stant prob­lems with under­ex­po­sure with this lens and every­thing is always a bit too blue so pro­cess­ing is always time inten­sive. Rad­Lab made it so much less pain­less. Yay!

Okay, now pics:

my chrome is shin­ing just like an ici­cle
i ride around town on my lowrider bicy­cle <3

When I draw I sit in a spe­cific place in my liv­ing room: against the loveseat on the floor. I just noticed the spot is turn­ing blue from my jeans. Can you see it in this photo?