Dios de los Muertos

     Perhaps because I lived in San Francisco for so many years with it's enormous hispanic community my version of Halloween in much more akin to Dios de los Muertos; a celebration of those who have died.
     Every year on November 1st and 2nd all over Mexico people 'celebrate' the lives of their beloved dead ones.   Lovers, brothers, mothers and sisters not to mention 1st and 2nd cousins and anyone else deemed important.  Little skeletons of these special people are made, often doing what the person being honored used to do.  In my collection of 'skeletons' one is a camping scene.  Two skeletons with yellow hats are sitting under a full moon playing music as they lean up against a Joshua tree.  Laying at their feet, is a sleepy eyed dog, just waiting for the next adventure.  The most recent addition to my 'skeleton family' is a sexy woman in a red dress showing just a bit of leg.  I love the playful nature of Dios de los Muertos which is why I have been wanting to go to Mexico during the holiday for over a decade to celebrate.
     I am so happy to say this is the year.  Because (due to my own recent near death experience) I couldn't possibly go alone I am going with Michael deMeng (google him, he's fab)  and a group of a dozen or so others.   Michael is an awesome assemblage artist who I met several years ago at Artfest.  He was teaching a class on using old polaroids as mini canvases.  The end product was a 3 dimensional piece that you looked into as if it was a little world inside a 3" x 3" frame.   I would have dig around really deep in my old files to find the pictures.  So you will just have to trust me on this one when i say they were 'fricken awesome'.

  


    It's occurring to me as i write this that both of my most recent pieces have had a distinctly hispanic edge to them.  In my piece called 'the resurrection of Yo' she looks to me like she was born and raised in Oaxaca.  The piece I did at Art and Soul begins with a drawing of a skeleton's head with a blood red path that flows from the area where the doctors drilled into my head.  No wonder the minute I saw the drawing I knew I had to work with it.  (There's a small picture below... before I worked with it and another one after.  I am aware that many might see it as a tortured soul sort of piece.   Especially if you don't notice all the music that frames the collage.  But it was really done in the spirit of Dios de los Muertos; a tribute to my previous self and to the new person I hope to become.

      Nothing like a 'near death experience' to turn one's life around.  And I am so looking forward to this trip to Oaxaca, Mexico and all the transformations it promises to bring. Many, many pictures when I get back, I promise.

Art and Soul and community...

     I am sitting here in my living room, pellet stove putting out the heat, music singing in the background and I can't help but to reflect on the many incredible moments I experienced during the brief 4 days that was Art and Soul 2009.  It is held every year in various parts of the country but generally hits Portland sometime in early October. 
     Just last night Mija, Christina, Helga and I were laughing so hard we could barely stop ourselves from wetting our pants.  We had gotten together after dinner in our hotel room to share our 'finds' and show each other the art we made in class.  It was already 9:00pm by the time we got up to the room. After all the excitement of our little "Show and Tell" wore off, the wine and the chocolate helped loosen our lips and soon we were telling our secret pasts lives to each other.  One person's included tales of being a proprietor of LSD during the Haight-Ashbury days.   Another's including stories of illegitimate sons.  But soon the wine had us entertaining thoughts of the absurd.  Someone mentioned suppositories and suddenly the idea surfaced 'next art challenge: things you last put up your butt'.  Howling with laughter our imaginations brought us to ever more absurd places until around 11pm we were suddenly too tired to continue. 
    After everyone was gone I lay in bed pondering the conversations of the day.  Aside from making some amazing art and some even more amazing new friends I suddenly realized my 'artist construct' had dramatically changed.
     I, like many of my generation was taught that artists were tortured souls who had no other means to connect with people.  Jackson Polluck got himself so drunk that he killed himself in a car crash, Van Gogh spent too much time alone and ended up cutting off his ear.  Seraphine made her own wine and though she sold a few paintings in her lifetime, died in an insane asylum.  The list is so long that many of us have been convinced one must be crazy to be an artist.  Although I have disagreed with this construct for many years it wasn't until this weekend that I reaffirmed the importance of community.  Artistic community.   Making art with other people and sharing it.  When creatives get together an 'energy' bounces between them in an almost manic manner.  Call it what you like but it is so robust I can almost see it's presence.  And it is this 'energy' that keeps me coming back year after year to artist retreats like Art and Soul.  That, the laughter, the crude jokes and the secrets too.  Tonight, I am in love with almost everyone.

Blabbing on about Rob again and the meaning of love...

Every week Rob Brezsky puts out a little column of jewels (in the form of words).  Last week i wrote a bit about his new book but i find myself wanting to write about him again this week.  Am I in love?? you may ask.  Probably in some form or another.  I like peeps who say things that help me to feel good.  Share the love as some would say.
So this week what caught my eye the most was this little shpeal...

'"I may not love you," wrote R. R. Doister, "but I can certainly love my fantasy about you." Personally, I've been guilty of embodying that attitude toward certain people in my life. There have also been allies to whom I could have said, "I do love you, although I love my fantasy about you a little more." And it has even been the case on numerous occasions that I've been proud to declare, "I love you even more than I love my fantasy about you." What about you? Where do you stand on the issue? This is an excellent time to get on the righteous side of the great divide, which is to say: Adore your special people for who they really are more than for your fantasies about them."

For my own 'bit' i seem to be struggling with falling in love with the image of something or someone.  I have more often than I would like to admit fallen for the way a woman looks or the way she moves or the sound of her voice as opposed to what she is really saying.  Lately I have been falling for the excitement of a bigger city (portland) and a living situation in which i can fire up the chop saw in my living room and no one will have a problem with it.  Is this somehow a 'low-level' search for my union with my gaud?  or is it my firey desire to create whenever i feel like it?  Who knows.... but at least I am thinking about stuff before making life altering decisions.
PS.  i am listening to 'the black heart procession' this week especially their nuevo tango jaunts like 'voiture en rouge' and 'tropics of love'.  If your into accordians and waltz-like music check em out...*

Rob's new book

This week, with the failure of my computer and other unsettling mini dramas I did not get to do my blog post.  But, I do have something to share.  Rob Brezsny who does the Free Will astrology column has expanded his book Pronoia.  Do you remember when Ram Dass wrote 'Be Here Now'?  I was dazzled by all the wonderful drawings and sideline distractions.  Rob's book is much the same, a wonderful right brain journey for those of you who are into it...
     On a side note this week in his free will column Rob got waaaaaaay political.  here's an excerpt:   

'During the dialog about health care in the U.S., certain highly relevant facts are never discussed. For example, it's ludicrous for right-wingers to fear that a government-run health system would freshly infect our capitalist system with the stain of socialism. The truth is, America has long had the biggest socialist enterprise in the world: its sprawling military establishment, which is completely paid for by
taxpayer dollars and run by the government! Another unacknowledged fact in the dialog about health care is this: The single smartest strategy for financing a new health care system (as well as dramatically improving the economy as a whole) would be to reduce military expenditures.  Americans don't seem to realize that their monstrously huge military empire is a case of supreme overkill: It girdles the globe in ways that are unprecedented in the history of civilization. We have 761 military sites in over 100 countries! I bring this to your attention to illustrate the way that a seemingly serious discussion can be thrown off course and rendered unproductive when it ignores critical information. Please make sure nothing like that happens in your personal sphere in the coming weeks'.    The link for Rob's revised book is http://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253901312&sr=8-1  and at a mere 14 dollars even I with no job can afford it... 

Artist Trading Cards and Candy Boxes

Every month on the last Saturday we hold an Artist trading Card party at MECCA. Although I am currently working on a few larger pieces I love taking a little break to make up some ATCs for the trade.  It is like having a wild fling in the middle of a serious relationship (without all the complications of course).  This month my love affair came in the form of these strange little candy boxes from china that someone donated.  They are too small to work as ATCs on their own so i cut down some Tarot cards that I found to 'frame' them.  You can still open the little boxes so inside I put several bits of miniature ephemera; plastic numbers, fortunes from cookies, old stamps, chinese game cards, letters, stickers and whatever else i could fit into the little boxes.  If you live somewhere near eugene oregon and are available Saturday, September 26th from 11am til 12:30, come by MECCA with a few of your own cards to trade.  It's a fun easy way to have a little creative exchange in your life.  And, if you don't live near and want to trade with me, just send me a message via facebook and we can work out the details in private emails. 

Purple Velvet Dream

  Volunteering at MECCA is an unusual adventure, especially if you like to dig through the remnants of someone else’s life.  People come in and donate anything from bottle caps to costume jewelry, old art supplies and sometimes even unfinished creations.
     Tuesday was like any other day, sorting through boxes and boxes of  junk.  It’s a mind absorbing process for anyone... (what is this?, where should i put it?, and do we keep this or give it to st vinnies?), but for me with the damage to my right frontal lobe I can only do it for an hour or two before i have to run outside and listen to some music.
   It was some time around three (which is when we close the doors) that  debbie’s daughter said “Hey mom, look what I found.” 
     Being exhausted and needing a break I dropped my sorting process and went over to examine the find. (Treasures are one of my main sources of entertainment and what keeps me coming back day after day.)  It was a piece of paper that had been folded and unfolded so many times that it tore but instead of throwing it away the person had taped it back together, continuing to fold and unfold for what I imagine to be several more years.  On it was written a love poem.  “Plastic bags float down the street, I let myself wander into you, and it’s like a purple velvet dream....”.  It continues on in this vain till we get to the last line which reads ‘and you laugh, laugh and laugh and as you laugh i heal, i heal and heal for who i love you heal me”.
   Or at least that is what I think it says.  It is items like this that command my brain to make up stories for.  Could a guy really write this or was it a woman?  How old was this person and how old were they when they finally decided to give up the love letter?  Or had they simply lost it, leaving it perhaps in a journal or a book only for Debbie’s daughter to find it? 
     What is so attractive to me about this ugly little piece of paper is the that it was kept (folded in a pocket?) over such a long period of time and that it had been read and reread so many times that it had begun to actually disintegrate.  In other words it was something worth believing in.  And the person believed in these scrawled words over a long period of time.
   Is it only first loves that we do this with or is it obsessive loves that we do this with?   One thing is certain; there are more than just one of us carrying around scrawled love poems.
 

Object Afterlife Art challenge

I know i have been blabbing on about this show but today i just got a look at the poster.... (hopefully it gets bigger when you click on it so you can actually read it... ).  I am so excited to see what 38 different people did with 38 different 'weird things' and to read about their process.  The show will be as varied as the artists involved and i am sure will be a worthwhile stop on your first friday walkabout.  And if you miss that show during the eugene celebration it will be continuing in our new space at 449 Williamette st.  The opening reception for that show is sept 12th.  I hope to see all your sweet faces out and about.  And if you see me out there be sure to say hi (there's nothing like real face time). xxxyo