Journey to the Inside.... a 'road trip' through the art of Yona C. Riel

    Since posting my road trip in April and my 2 week excursion to San Fransisco in June, it is now time to do a different kind of trip.  Instead of talking about everybody else's art I am going to talk about my own, in preparation for my first solo show in a long time on the 27th of August at 'The Voyeur' a new gallery located on Blair between 5th and 6th.
    Going through my art of the last few decades has been like reading a visual autobiography.  Despite my diminished brain capacity I remember precisely what I was thinking/feeling while making most of it and the messages lay there on their substrates whispering secrets to me.  Perhaps this is because the art has not had a chance to 'speak' to anyone else (being locked in a closet for the last few years while I have been recovering from a traumatic brain injury (TBI)).   Hopefully the show will change all that and the art will morph into it's next life.     
   My intent for this 'journey to the inside' is to post not only pictures of the work in the upcoming show but what was going on for me when I made it.  Also I will attempt to make it linear dividing the art into pre-TBI and post-TBI because it seems to make sense that way.  I want to review one piece a day unless I run out of time, in which case you'll just have to come to the show.
   The first piece was made from a red electrical box found in the debris of a burnt house in Glenwood, Oregon.  I was there with a friend who, like myself, was attracted to the remnants after a fire.  

   Much of my work is untitled as is this piece.  (perhaps my readers will suggest one to me in the comments).   There is a broken bridge (the golden gate) in the lower right hand corner and footsteps walking away from the break.  Two entities are exchanging energy, one named e-yo and one with the word 'spirit' on her forehead.  The inside of the box has been fitted with cedar inserts painted a lime green.  For the outside of the box I sanded out most of the red and painted it black.  Then I went back in with stamps and covered the surface with white and red letters and question marks.
   In the upper left hand corner there is a scribble of confusion.  The singular spring (cut from the box spring of a couch found in the debris) serves to warp the three lines of communication between the two entities further by spiraling through them.
   At the time I made the piece I was feeling distant from myself.  So much so that I really couldn't even hear what the spirit part of me had to say.  This is the first of several pieces made during the months leading up to my injury that represent (for me) the beginning of my confused state.  I think this piece was completed about 8 months prior to 'the TBI event'.  It measures approximately 5" deep by 10" wide and 12" tall.  If you want to see it 'live' come to my show at The Voyeur on Blair St. the last Friday in August.  If you want to help me name it leave a comment here on the blog.  Thanks for reading.  Yona C. Riel

the Minimalist Blog entry.. 'The Sea Purple'

   Last night I saw the movie entitled 'The Sea Purple' at the Castro Theater.  The movie was based on a true story of a (another) young woman, Angela, who refuses to marry, only this time it takes place in the 1800s in Sicily. 
   Her father is a powerful (and abusive) man and at first tries to force her into submission by physically abusing her then locking her in a cellar.  When nothing works (and his wife brings up the issue of the priest molesting their other daughter) he finally gives in but only if Angela agrees to become a man. The small town is unwilling to accept Angela as Angelo but because her father is the quarry-master (and the most powerful man on the island) and Angelo has taken over his position they are forced to do so.  Angelo also marries her best friend Sara, who initially is shunned while attending church and asked by her mother in a poignant scene "What did you expect?"
   I did not get any screen shots of this movie but it was beautifully shot on the coast in Italy.  Even so the movie itself did not hold together well enough to be one of my favorites.  (I got spoiled by the opening night movie The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister and the documentary of Anne Lister the next day).
   It makes me wonder (again) just how many women's lives were subverted, buried and concealed due to a naturally occurring rebellious nature.   It also brings up my relationship with my father and our inability to find a way to coexist.  Was I a rebellious girl?  Indeed!  And thank the gauds (after I got out of that house) I live in a place and a time where I do not have to suffer the abuses that those before me did.  Thanks for reading...  yona c. riel
PS: tonight with the festivities beginning in the city I will be posting mostly pictures with a few blurbs interspersed...stay tuned...

Off World

    'Off World' is a movie set in 'Smokey Mountain', a notorious slum in Manila.   A few minutes into the movie we are told 30 years ago it was a small fishing village and now it is 2 million tons of garbage.  It is named 'Smokey Mountain' due to the continuous flow of methane gases that leak out of the 12 story pile of trash.  Children, 5 and 6 yrs old, and adults endlessly search through the pile looking for plastic and other saleable items for a few pesos a day. 

   Lucky, born in these slums but adopted by Canadian parents, has returned after many years to search for his kin.  He has contacted one person, Julia, who knows where he can find his brother. 
   Julia introduces Lucky to his brother Mamacita, an effeminate gay hustler who turns tricks to survive.  Keeping their connection a secret Lucky decides to crash in Mamacita's place presumably to get closer to 'her' and keep his distance at the same time. 

    Lucky falls into desolation wondering why his mother gave him away and kept Mamacita.  He wanders through the squalor in Smokey Mountain, the visuals of the slum mirroring the emptiness he feels inside, till one night he just lays down, presumably to die.  Then Julia saves him in one of the more beautiful and poignant scenes of the movie.  The plastic bags are hanging all around them like white surrender flags.  

    After Julia nurses him back to health he reveals his identity to his brother as they are walking together on Smokey Mountain.   Again, the cinematography steals the scene...

    

   By the end of the movie Lucky has re-connected with himself, his brother and his mother, fallen for Julia and we are to believe that he has found what he was looking for. 
    For me, I got so engrossed with the amazing images that the storyline lost it's momentum and I found myself confused but haunted. 
   While I was cleaning up the theater I asked a friend what he thought of the movie and he said 'I think it was just a way to show how those people were living in that slum and they could have said that in 15 minutes'.   I have to agree that the storyline felt like it was there to serve the larger purpose of educating the viewer about the conditions in the Smokey Mountain slums and yet I am still haunted by some of the most striking cinematography I have seen in a movie. 
  Thanks for reading and as always your comments are welcome..  yona c. riel

William Burroughs, The Man Within

   Last night I saw a documentary about the life of William S. Burroughs who was famous for all the things one should not be famous for; he shot his wife, he was queer and he spent most of his life addicted to heroin.  He also wrote several books and along with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac birthed the famed and subversive beat poet movement.
 

     William Burroughs was born in 1914.  He came from a wealthy family (his grandfather invented the adding machine) and spent most of his life living on a stipend.  Burroughs had a Harvard education and as John Waters said it is often the people with the most privileges who become the most subversive. 

    In 1951 after being busted a second time for narcotics he and his wife moved to Mexico City.  It was there that Burroughs, in a drunken game of William Tell, accidently shot and killed his wife.   Not one to express emotion Burroughs exiled himself to Morocco and spent till 1959 writing the book "Naked Lunch".  Filled with scenes of male prostitutes, strangulation during sex and ejaculating penises it was banned in the United States until it was heard by the Supreme Court in a famous first amendment trial in 1966.  After winning the trial the book was widely published and made William Burroughs an instant cult hero.  

    What made this documentary about Burroughs interesting to me is the film maker tried to get to what was inside of the man.  Though he was revered by Patti Smith and others as the godfather of punk music scene he never identified as such.  He was also revered by John Waters and others as the person who began the queer rights movement but again he never identified as queer.  Burroughs was ultimately a man unto himself and we are lead by the film maker to believe he suffered considerable remorse, not only for killing his wife but for the premature death of his only son who in order to be acknowledged by Burroughs emulated him (drinking too much and using drugs) and died of liver failure at the age of 32. 
   Many people will remember that one of Burroughs methods for writing was the use of cutting up segments and then re-forming them into poetry.  Later in life he developed another technique that wasn't so successful or known.   Out in his yard he would place a can of spray paint in front of a canvas then step back several feet and shoot a hole in the can releasing the paint onto the canvas.  Apparently Burroughs always had a great love of guns...

   Towards the end of the movie John Waters said 'for misfits Burroughs was almost a religious figure'.  Patti Smith said 'in his last year of life he became lovable', though earlier in the movie she professed to have always been madly in love with him.  William Burroughs died 6 months after Allen Ginsberg in 1997 and it was widely believed they were not only best of friends, cohorts with a lifelong shared past but soul mates. 
  In the final scene of the movie there is a note written by Burroughs simply saying "Love - the most natural painkiller there is". 
   Thanks for reading...  Yona C. Riel
  

The Real Anne Lister

  My cousin was recently, after her return from Czech Republic and Slovakia, drilling her blog readers asking where are all the industrious, creative, enterprising women in Eastern European history.  If eastern europe is anything like England, women who lived outside the boundaries of a normal life were buried, either by the changing of facts or in the case of Anne Lister in the walls of the mansion owned by her family.  In her lifetime Anne Lister wrote more than 4 million words, all in a code she invented based on Greek letters and algebra.

 
    Lister's diaries were first discovered a hundred years after they were buried by her relative John Lister while remodeling.  He had them decoded in the late 1890's by his friend Arther Bourroughs.  Both were shocked that Anne wrote so freely about her homoerotic daillances with several women during her short 46 year lifetime.  John, also a homosexual, became paranoid and pleaded with Arther to destroy the diaries.  Fortunately he did not.  But John did succeed in preventing the diaries from being published. 
   The next time someone would try to publish the diaries was in the 1960's when a woman named Muriel Green found them locked deep in the library in the city of Halifax, England.  The library (who for whatever reason had the rights to the diaries) refused claiming they would tarnish the good reputation of the town.
   It wasn't until 1988 that Helena Whitbread, after 7 years of painstaking research, that the diaries were finally published.
  During her lifetime Anne Lister was not only a lesbian (she discovered this at 13 years old) but a landowner, an industialist, a coal miner, and the writer of 4 million words, all things that were unheard of for women during the Regency period in England (the 1800s).  On top of all that she married and lived with her female companion most of her adult life and died when they were touring Europe together after she was bitten by an infected tick.   It took her wife 6 months to get Anne's body back to her home in Halifax England where both she and her diaries were buried.
    I am not the least bit shocked it took over 200 yrs to get Anne Lister's story out of the closet.   Part of what I love about this film festival is that stories like this are unveiled.  I am eager to continue to go to the LGBT film festival in the years to come to see what other gems, lives and secrets surface.   Thanks for reading....  tomorrow I review an interesting 'gender-bending' brazilian film call Elvis and Madonna.  Yona c. riel

The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister....

  ... was the opening night film for the SF LGBT film festival this year and it did not disappoint.  The photography brought me right to England with a dark blue sky and several scenes taking place in a vast of greenery, including the first sex scene.  The clothing, empire waists for the women and britches with knee-highs boots for the men, apparently popular in the early 1800's was also flawless.  But what really made the movie work was the story of a hard-headed woman who fought against all odds for what she believed in and the right to be with the woman she loved long before the word feminist had ever been uttered.

    Anne Lister was born into a wealthy family and coal was discovered on the land she inherited.  Instead of giving in to her neighbor (who also became a fierce competitor after she refused to marry him) she went into the coal mining business though she knew nothing about it.  This allowed her an economic independence unknown to women in that time period.  Also despite advise from her aunt and uncle against it, she 'married' a female companion.  This in a time when one could be burnt at the stake for less.
   When the director was on stage introducing the film he told a story about a young woman who after seeing "The Diaries of Anne Lister" became brave enough to come out to her family.  I too feel brave after seeing it, and privileged to live in a time where we almost have the right to marry.
   The movie was produced by the BBC and came about because a librarian in the 1970's 'decoded' the diaries kept by Anne Lister.  If you are interested in seeing it you may be able to find it on the BBC channel or order it from Frameline.org.
   This morning we are seeing a documentary called "The real Anne Lister".  I do hope it tells the story of the librarian.   I'll have an update for you later..  Thanks for reading.  yona c. riel

Day one, LGBT film festival....

  Tonight is opening night for the LGBT film festival in San Fransisco and this year the first movie is 'The secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister'.  Based on a real life Anne Lister, a gentle-woman who lived during the early 19th century (born in 1791) and preferred the 'fairer sex' the film documents her conquests of which she wrote about in a coded diary.

   Produced by the BBS (always a good sign) and reminiscent of a Sarah Waters book  (The Fingersmith, Tipping the Velvet and Affinity, all meticulously researched novels about lesbians in the early 19th century) The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister promises to be a great movie.
  Just in case it gets sold out and I don't get to watch the movie I am working a film tomorrow morning called 'The Real Anne Lister".  So either way I will have a little update for you then...
    Okay, off I go for a waltz through my favorite parts of San Francisco...  yona c. riel