undercurrents

Day of the Dead Open Studio

2011-10-18T13:21:00.000-07:00

A Deva Luna Open Studio in celebration of the the Day of the Dead and Honoring the Ancestors during this crossroads of the season. Paintings, prints, cards, stickers, small works on canvas, altars and artifacts, gifties, folk magic miscellanea and curiosities to pique interest and inspire! Nibbles, spirits and sippables will be on hand to sustain and refresh. All with la Dia de los Muertos flavor in the mix. Get a jump on holiday shopping and support a small local artista-owned business! One day only, Sunday October 30 from 11am to 6pm in the SRJC neighborhood, Santa Rosa at the back of 907 McConnell Avenue (Entrance on Beaver Street). Hope to see you there!

Moon Woman Rising Interview Part 2

2011-07-29T08:56:00.000-07:00

Part 2 of my interview with Aja Blanc on her Moon Woman Rising blog can now be read here in the Arts section. I am really honored to be featured on such a beautiful site created "to nourish the feminine spirit".

Moon Woman Rising Interview

2011-07-27T09:59:00.001-07:00

Moon Woman Rising is a beautiful blog honoring the sacred feminine written by Aja Blanc. She recently invited me to speak with her and you can read Part 1 of our 2 part interview under the Arts section here.

Deva Luna Open StudioSolstice 2010

2010-12-01T14:48:00.000-08:00

Stoking the fire and breaking out the spirits and nibbles. All are invited to come hang out and poke about. New works large and small. Lots of giftie items: canvases, prints, cards, stickers, magnets, altars and painted artifacts. Also various magickal miscellanea will be on offer: petition and blessing candles inscribed and dressed, spell boxes, elixirs and custom sigils. LOCATION: 907 McConnell Avenue in the JC neighborhood in Santa Rosa. It's a corner address and the entrance is on Beaver St. Look for signage!

Moon Poem

2010-02-22T22:17:00.001-08:00

I've been so low and dissolved, waiting for the latent to surge...feeling downright lunar.

My moon poem:

Over her
ancient face
of milk light
and rime,
shadows in flux
pulse time
and trace
the estuary shallows
pushed in
from the deep.

Small child
she dogs
sees a boat
glow above
the tree,
revealing
the weight
of gravity.
Hide and seeking

in thickets,
unraveling tangled
willow switches,
she plays out
the game,
riding dark waves
in a storied wind.

Illumination,
astride the night,
submerging
to burgeon
again
and again.

Shining through
the wax and melt
of millenniums,
she heard
the first voices
intuit her whisper
rippled over
the surface,
a pull to
knowing.

She has spoken
through waters
and risen saps,
through shoots
and lunacy.
Wizened thin
to a sickle
or dissolved
into black,
her touch
a tug of fingers
felt upon the weft
and root.

Blown full
in atmospheres
of dusk,
she stirs the
heart cup
to a blood spiral
and eggs break
into flower.
Her spell is
wide cast,
a slip silver ocean,
to catch fast
the sensitive
and hold still
reflections
of mirrored
change in
her silent ring
of snake song.

Solar plate etching "Iowa Moonlight" by Nancy Lindsay.

Solstice Open Studio

2009-12-04T09:22:00.000-08:00

I am having another Open Studio and everyone's invited to come soak up some holiday cheer, cast trouble in the fire, eat, drink and be merry when I open the studio up for two days in December. The 12th and 13th from 11am until 4 pm.

A warm refuge from winter weather, a place to peruse and poke about and perhaps find the perfect gift for that particular person, the open studio will have new small worx. prints, cards and canvases, small giftie items and various painted tidbits on offer. As usual, sippable liquids, spirits and savory nibbles will be on hand to sustain those who drop by. If you're lucky, the cob oven may even be in operation, weather permitting. Hope to see you there!

Reading at Kaldi's

2009-12-01T10:05:00.000-08:00

Published at last!

Many of you know that local poet Amy Trussell and I have been working for a few years now on a collaborative project of poetry and paintings. The Painted Tongue Flowers has finally hit the press! Deva Luna Press has published it's first book, an elegant volume of voluptuous poetry and vibrant color images.

We are launching our book on Friday, December 11th at Kaldi's Pearl Tea and Coffee from 5:30 to 6:30 pm in east Santa Rosa out on Hwy 12 in the Skyhawk Market center. Everyone's invited to come hear Amy read selections from the book and get your first copy. The 100 page book of 28 poems and full color images with be available for $15 and each will be signed by the artistas themselves.

What a lovely holiday gift!

TO PURCHASE ONLINE VISIT HERE

Hope to see you there.

Green Witch

2009-11-06T21:30:00.000-08:00

Well, I have to say my crunching and grinding and painting like a fiend for weeks on end actually bore some beautiful fruit. Yes, my Seeds and Shadows Open Studio was a surprising success, feeding me once again on so many levels. Of course, some credit falls to the gorgeous fall sunshine and my dad's cob oven fired up to full. I think he personally formed, slathered and garnished, slid in and turned so carefully over twenty pizzas all told. I had many new pieces leave to new homes, "licensed" a multitude (you know who you are), had many enlightening conversations and enjoyed the kinetic energy of a full house every hour I was open. Splendidly gratifying. I am always overcome by the appreciation directed my way when I venture to open up. Deep thanks to all!

My latest work "Green Witch" sold hot off the easel. I have lots of prints of this one which was inspired by my latest obsession with art deco/art nouveau shapes as well as my desire to just paint a witch. She is gathering her power and datura dew. Now in the private collection of Nancy Campbell, Sebastopol, CA

Seeds and Shadows Open Studio

2009-10-15T08:08:00.001-07:00

I love and observe the Day of the Dead, building an ancestor altar each year laden with offerings and actively feeding the memories of those who have passed over. In the spirit of celebrating this seasonal crossroads, I'm opening up my studio for two days at the end of this month with a show of paintings both bright and dark. I will have lots of new small worx as well as larger pieces, plenty of prints, cards and curiosities with an el Dia de los Muertos flavor thrown in the mix. As usual, I will have sippable liquids and nibbles to sustain those who drop by. I know it'll be a buuusy couple of days with Halloween Samhain falling on the weekend but I hope to see some of you there!

Date and Time: October 31-November 1 from 11-4
Location: Beaver Street at McConnell in the JC neighborhood Santa Rosa. Look for signage.

Uncreating the Monster

2009-09-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

The issue of corporate personhood has been a pet interest of mine for many years (see my previous blog entry Corporate Beastie). The reality of big business being granted human rights has deeply bothered me and I recognize it as a major taproot underpinning and feeding much of what ails this modern world. The potential for far reaching change if this insidious cord could be cleanly cut is staggering. So much ugly reality would wither, finally clearing ground for the truly nourishing innovation and vital repair that needs to happen on this planet.

So, I when Stephen Colbert highlights this very issue in his segment The Word (Let Freedom Ka-Ching) on his show, The Colbert Report....I take notice. And when new Justice Sonia Sotomayor makes a "provocative statement" in her first Supreme Court session to the effect that perhaps the 19th century rulings on this matter should be revisited, well, I am downright excited.

Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics." Wow, am I dreaming? That pesky "court error" has sure wrought some havoc. I'm feeling just a little bit hopeful.

Still a long haul, no doubt. But the glimmerings are beginning.

Picture gleaned from Albo Jeavons' www.disincorporated.org.

Into Light

2009-08-14T11:15:00.000-07:00

Dear friend and great being, Tofah Eileen, slipped into the other realm yesterday after a courageous dance with cancer. Her life love, Jay, wrote so eloquently every step of their shared experience and for that I am so grateful. His intimate stories revealed the piercing beauty of their time together and let us all feel nearer to them. For me, Eileen will be remembered as a Sufi priestess, a smiling shaman of radiant power and a laughing goddess of enlightening. She ran deep but had a brilliant cackle, like an ancient body of water that is tickled by every skipper ripple at the surface. An irresistible star, she drew so naturally a constellation of loving community around her and burned so brightly in her last days that her physicalness became incidental. She approached the crossing and literally became the Light that is her name.

You are loved and missed, Eileen.

Moving Work of Art

2009-07-02T10:06:00.001-07:00

Ukraine's Got Talent. This is a brilliant narrative piece about Ukraine during WWII by sand artist Kseniya Simonova. She has a stunning mastery of her medium and a strong expression. Appearing on Ukraine's version of Britain's Got Talent, her dramatic performance goes far beyond a Susan Boyle talent act. She brought the audience both to tears and to their feet. Poignant and powerful.

Revolution Revelation-Lifting the Veil

2009-06-28T17:21:00.000-07:00

This sweltering heat wave puts my head in a simmer and my thoughts bubble against the hard edge of the world. Summer has hit at last, the tomatoes will finally redden and the gardenias are popping with perfumed abandon in the lusty atmosphere. But the tender greens are scorching, the nasturtiums are crisply brown on their edges and our skin is burning beneath the SPF 30 sunblock. We're all wilted, housebound and draped over the furniture, panting and out of production. The face of global warming emerges. The House just passed the Climate Bill but will the Senate rise to the occasion? And is it enough and in time? So many "chaos points" arising. Now or never moments in history when we collectively decide, will we let it break down or will we find a breakthrough. Beneath the thin flashy veneer of sensationalistic news stories, scandal and celebrity, are the real cruxes and crossroads. The ACESA Clean Energy bill. The rare chance to have real insurance of health care in America (H.R. 676) and most riveting of all, the revolution taking place in Iran. I've been following closely the widening gyre of dissent that began when the election in Iran went sour. Ahmadinejad's "landslide victory" was declared before the polls closed and the "official" numbers were beyond belief. It was the proverbial straw hitting the camel's back. For Iranians living for decades with a government that professed "the participation of the entire people in determining their political, economic, social and cultural destiny" (article 3.8 of the Iranian constitution) and yet voting meant choosing one of a handful of candidates selected by the Supreme Leader, the country's religious authority. It must have felt like a mask finally being torn away when the government began beating old people in the street and shooting young women through the heart. People surged in protest and outrage at the unequivocal revelation that their vote was an empty exercise and their "democracy" a sham. After weeks of relentless demonstrations in the streets of the larger cities and despite a brutal and bloody crackdown on the "rioters", an air of determination persists. There is no turning back. Something's cracked, fallen away, a veil lifted, a sense that the wheel is turning. 70 percent of Iran's population is under the age of 30, most of them urban dwellers. A demographic that is most definitely tuned to the future and they want change.

(It has been illuminating seeing the photos and videos leaking out of the cracks in the communication lockdown. I saw a country I didn't recognize. A fresh impression of "the other" that exposed fragile threads of connection and kinship with these Muslim brothers and sisters caught up in this human drama. My thoughts are with them.)

Painting: Eye of Khaos-A New Green World by moi. Painted while the economy was crashing earlier this year.

A Beautiful Bed Ad

2009-04-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

It is amazing and heartening to me to come across this Spanish ad for a bed featuring a peaceful powerful home birth. How potent advertising can be when advocating something truly worthwhile. Too much ingenuity is wasted on pushing corn syrup sodas and gas guzzlers.

Making Waves

2009-04-14T11:49:00.000-07:00

Same Planet, Different Worlds

2009-03-24T13:12:00.000-07:00

Oh, the crazy imbalances on this planet just tears me up. I know there are endless plights of woe crying for attention but this got to me. When I was first pregnant and wanted to have my baby at home, the challenge of being female in a modern world became a medical issue. Living in a society where technological innovation is the guiding star and our connection to the natural world is pinched off at the root, I had to work my ass off to keep my body and baby from "medical intervention". The key unspoken word here being unnecessary. For those uncommon life-threatening situations that can occur despite careful prenatal care and screening, living in a developed nation is an unequivocal blessing. But I wanted to start out trusting, expecting the best and allowing Nature to do her thing unencumbered. For me that meant saying no to many well meant but overused medical trends.

No artificial induction. No Pitocin drip to jumpstart contractions, relentless against an unripe cervix, perhaps causing fetal distress and thus requiring, voila...an emergency cesarean! An all too common scenario. No demeaning shave/enema, no hookups to machines that restrain free movement, no laboring prone, no drugs to cloud my experience and my baby's brain, no routine episiotomy, no separation of mama and baby, no formula, no bottles. None of that. This translated for me as no hospital. I wanted to walk through the tall grass in the orchard while laboring and give birth on my own bed, quietly, in the natural light with the windows open. Insisting, intuiting, educating myself, choosing wise support in an experienced midwife, staying grounded and vigilantly slipping out of the grip of cultural fear was a full time effort. I ultimately had my daughter (both of them) naturally and safely at home but as a white American woman of the industrialized West it strikes me as deeply ironic that I felt compelled to resist the medical service that is a symbol of my privileged life. What I saw as meddling in my healthy process could have been a godsend to a women living in desperate conditions halfway around the globe. And that gets to me.

I recently stumbled on a hauntingly poignant documentary that moved me to action. Nova's A Walk To Beautiful deals with the devastating reality of obstetric fistula in Third World countries. If it's not enough being born a woman in a place where hard physical labor is your childhood duty, food is scanty, marriage comes early and childbirth too soon, add another brutal layer to the mix. Physical injury and damage from obstructed labor is common in countries where women are undernourished and thus stunted, their pelvic bones too small to allow the birth of their babies. So not only are their babies often stillborn but the physical outcome is often obstetric fistula, a deterioration or hole between the birth passage and internal organs (often those of elimination) resulting in permanent incontinence of urine or feces. It is an epidemic and literally millions (WHO estimates 2 million) women worldwide, primarily throughout Africa and Asia, suffer from this. Shunned by their husbands, families and communities only because of their foul smell, most exist in heartbreaking isolation, living in tiny makeshift huts or begging on the street. They suffer terrible depression and a debilitating sense of worthlessness. Not surprisingly, many commit suicide. Absolutely tragic.

All the more so because this condition can be remedied in most cases by simply stitching closed the fistula. A $300 medical procedure. The film focuses on the work of Dr. Catherine Hamlin, an Australian woman who in 1974 co-founded Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia, the world's only hospital exclusively dedicated to offering free treatment to poor women suffering from childbirth injuries. The camera offers an agonizingly intimate view into the lives of a few of these young women as they struggle with utter despair, then discover that thread of hope and follow it (sometimes hundreds of miles) to this hospital haven at the heart of Ethiopia, burgeoning with flowers, bright spaces, clean linens, accepting faces and kindred sufferers. Both harrowing and buoyantly joyful, the film is a beautiful invitation to help our less privileged sisters. I was moved to contribute money to The Fistula Foundation and am now inspired to tithe a percentage of the proceeds from the sale of my artwork to further this needed work.

The film can be viewed in chapters at the PBS site here.

Photo: Wubete, one of the young women in the documentary.

Two Bees

2009-03-07T15:04:00.001-08:00

Or not two bees, that was the question. (Sorry, couldn't resist). Nevertheless, this was the case. Last year I painted a wee juicy bee that attracted a little buzz. Even after the original sold, the image held its allure and I considered painting more eye/heart/bees. Last week I committed to the contemplated continuum and produced two more in the series. Bee 2 and Bee 3. Each now has a home but there are more in the works.

Blurry shot: two 6 x 6 canvases, Bee #3 and Bee #2

Happy Birthday, Theodor Geisel

2009-03-02T20:07:00.000-08:00

Old Stories New

2009-02-03T23:02:00.000-08:00

I've heard my brother say more than once that years ago he had intentionally sat down with my grandpa, tape recorder in hand, and interviewed him about his early years and our family roots. The tape was subsequently lost in the shuffle of multiple moves and I never heard it. Until today. Jonathan came in from an afternoon out with a strange look on his face. Guess what I found? We popped it in an old player and sat back to listen. It was eerie to hear his good-natured voice from years ago, before the stroke that changed him so dramatically and those last difficult months before he died. Thus was the Grandpa of my childhood: easy-going, always amused and a little distant, like he was resigned to being a bit bored with the goings-on around him, contentedly eyeing some distant horizon. An inventor, an artist and self-made man, he must have always been thinking, wondering, working things out. So here he was, game to the questions and telling his story so matter-of-factly. "Hello, my name is Albert Scott..." We learned that his oldest sister, the pretty Miriam Ruth, died at age 20, not of consumption but of a thyroid disease, wasting away suddenly within six months and that had plunged my great grandfather into a deep depression just as the world was entering its. Grandpa had worked beside his father in the sign-painting business for years. Their place was located literally blocks from where we were sitting listening to his voice tell about it. His older brother, my great Uncle Byron, was a boxer during the Depression, even working the carnival at one point taking on "comers". We heard how Grandpa had actually enjoyed boot camp, that it was "kinda fun" because he was "strong and light on my feet". He'd gotten his pilot's license as a young man out of casual curiousity but had better things to do than fly planes which he admitted was "kind of boring". He wanted to tell about his grandparents, his (great?) Grandpa Flint, a successful business man who had bought abandoned ships out of the SF Bay during the Gold Rush for pennies on the dollar. His great grandmother, who was a Tyler, related somehow to the tenth US President of that name. It was a relatively short tape, thirty minutes all told but full of intriguing threads leading off into the mist of forgotten stories. It made me realize how much is lost when an ancestor crosses over. We take too much for granted and don't realize how rare the familiar things around us are. When Laurie Andersen whispers in her song "When my father died it was like a whole library had burned down. World without end remember me," I understand.

Photo: President John Tyler, 1845 by Brady

A New Day

2009-01-20T11:35:00.000-08:00

"Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen."

Amen.

The words of Reverend Joseph E. Lowery in his delivery of the benediction at the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama, the 44th President of our United States of America.

(AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq) A US soldier observes a moment of silence during the inauguration of Barack Obama, at the US camp Phoenix base in Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday Jan. 20, 2009.

Grief and Beauty

2009-01-18T07:44:00.000-08:00

Strange days these. Sifting through the weeks since the Election, I cannot put my finger on this mood that has settled on me. It's a loose-lashed assembly. The final dregs of my despair at the wreckage of the world, the ashes of our collective bankruptcy, all the shards of annihilation pieced together into an empty bowl, open to any sweetness, buoyed up and riding an illogical elation and hopefulness. After the climax of Obama's win, I haven't wanted to keep my head in politics at all lately. The fine-toothed speculations, endless doubts and dire predictions, the picking of nits. The last machinations of business as usual. It all exhausts me. I'm wrung out and fragile and too spent to keep my vigilance. So I've abandoned it. I've become the empty pieced-together bowl. Hungry for life, beauty, warmth, vitality, sap, joy. Tomorrow begins a fresh page, a new leaf, turning, accumulating, dancing together, a multitude, like a forest of trees...and I want to say yes for a change.

Photo: Combust by Binh Danh- chlorophyll print and resin- from his current show at Haines Gallery The Eclipse of Angkor.

Harper and Scout

2008-12-14T10:39:00.001-08:00

Just finished reading Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird" and I enjoyed it so much that I'm baffled why it took me decades to get around to it. As a kid, I loved the black and white film when it aired on some rare Saturday via cable TV. The box of finds from the tree hole. The mad dog. Calpurnia. The trial. Racial tensions. Small town taboos and traditions. Boo Radley. I always watched it. Since I generally tend to opt for non-fiction when I read, it's not too surprising. When I do pick fiction, I want real. I'll read to feel steeped in an atmosphere, a place or a moment in history which is why I love Willa Cather, who wove stories out of threads of her own life, peopled with characters who seemed to have actually existed. Now, like thousands of readers before me I'm sure, I am fascinated with this book's reclusive author, Harper Lee. I wonder about her life story. Is she Scout? Did she know an Atticus? How much of the picture she painted grew out of her own experience? In the book store yesterday I saw a hardcover the words "I Am Scout" blazoned across it. There's an answer. A biographic work about Lee by Charles J. Shields written with young people in mind. I think I'll have to read it or his "adult" version "Mockingbird".

Goddess Faire

2008-12-09T09:36:00.000-08:00

Herbs, tinctures, soaps and lotions, cordials and elixirs, amulets and talismans, bee sweets and candles, velvets and soft galactic armor, beautiful medicine, powerful prayers, sensual dancers, strong-throated singers, maids, mamas and crones, goddesses and their lovers...all shimmering under one roof. There is really nothing like the annual Goddess Faire in Sebastopol. Nourishing on many levels. I haven't done it for a few years and didn't know what to expect with the ailing economy but I was surprisingly overwhelmed by the deep appreciation and support of my work. It was a pleasure to share with kindred souls. Eden and her friend Zoe premiered their Bollywood dancing on stage before a loving audience and performed with grace and aplomb despite a mixup with the music. Countless prints, several small canvases and a large giclee found new homes. I did my part as well to keep the wheels of commerce humming, which is easy to do when there are so many seductive offerings. A born patron of beauty, I want to buy it all! But I was moderate (for me) and contented myself with small plums and generous trades. The best was a tiny bottle of rosolio d'amore from Luna Fina...an oil infused with Cecile Brunner roses, my totem flower, a drop of which Annabella rubbed into the skin over my heart. Hello! (Dab the soles of the feet before bed and sleep like a baby-which I did) Copper hoops, honey truffles, jasmine cream, cacao cordial, vintage rhinestone earrings...sigh. So, my dry well was filled. Thank you all kind and generous beauties. You satiate me.

Photo: Young Goddesses: Eden, Zoe and Paisley.

Black Eagles and Angels

2008-12-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

I am publishing here, with permission, two poems by my collaborator and creative cohort, Amy Trussell. We were fellow travelers on our recent trip to New Orleans where she was runner up for the Faulkner Society literary prize for poetry. Glimmers of our experience thread throughout both of these and I am flattered that one of them, Erzulie's Protégé, was written for me (!)

Black Eagles and Angels

Their throats always remain open once they decide to come forth-
The angels' trumpets that graced our door,
Our temporary holding place, halfway boarded up
When last we dipped into New Orleans.
These white ones are kin to the more state-altering blooms
that hold their seductive skirts and quilled pods
in vales of the Wild West.
Plots are there for the untameable and the cultivated too.
Even if you are in a place with opaque windows,
say in a dive waiting for Mardi Gras Indians to practice,
or a house that almost succumbed to hurricanes,
you can sense what is out there anyway, blue police light,
people on the streetcar full of desires, thinly veiled,
people making love and dying all over town.
This essence is what we drop under the tongue
when someone is going over the threshold to the other world.
It helps them row the light-flooded water back.
The African seer had told me there are ancestors
waiting to drum you into the other side.
So when you hear the Black Eagles call Indian Red,
you understand that this is the energy that could take you
over the edge, out past the bayous to heaven
where the shell games are played.
But it's also that which might bring you back,
down the funnel of the channeled flower, as deep
as night is long, waiting to turn itself out.
Some tribes say that zero is magic, the place to start over.
So if you get there and find yourself lost in a shotgun
apartment, you must turn to the creamy perfume
of the death-easers, then go inside, down the dark hall,
though your reptilian brain wants to flee your own grief
and the grief of the village too.
Pick up the dead lizard and wrap it in the kerchief for the altar.
Then twist on the water and let the sadness pour from
all that had begun to kink up the smooth muscle of the heart.
Cover your wounds in red earth and smother your pulse
points with come-to-me oil.
Blow out the candle, the hawk rests in a yard tree,
another refugee from the vortex.
I don't know what would happen if you dropped angels'
remedy beneath the roof of your mouth and kissed someone.
Are you willing to give yourself over that much?
After you make your X, will you stand in a crumbling cemetery
with arms outstretched, waiting for one or the other to set you free?

Amy Trussell, November 2008

Photo: A white Angels' Trumpet outside our "temporary holding place" in New Orleans.

Erzulie's Protégé

2008-12-03T09:28:00.000-08:00

Erzulie's Protégé

For Krista Lynn Brown

The ritual party tray is out for Dia de los Muertes
with love potion and heart opener cordials.
We drink some of both, and the rims of
our glasses pulse in the black light glow of the dance parlor.
Historians say that Marie Antoinette had a mold
of her breasts cast then made into wine cups.
The royal glass blower tonged them out of fire
then held the curved vessels up like a satisfied God
placing two moons in the pitch night.
My sister would take a lantern and find her way to the barn
to milk the goats before dawn arched across the horizon.
When she got high enough, Sally Ride could see meteorites
burning out below them and now there’s ninety percent proof
that once there were bayous on Mars, warm and moist.
Looking at her lunar paintings of jungles and the women
that dwell there, it seems that she has been a cosmonaut too.
Or has at least seen a crash site retrieval conference,
launching crafts from her drawing pad.
Whenever you are down she will morph into "Space Girl"
and hit you with a love ray.
It’s two a.m. and she sits at a black canvass, wells of paint
before her at the left hand, brush loaded with burnt sienna.
Earth opens to the ink of heaven pouring in.
This is the season when Persephone fell into the opening
to come up later, stealing away pomegranate
seeds from near the molten core.
Venus rises in the skylight of her studio,
illuminated too with candlelight from her altar where
photos of her grandfather, Frida Kahlo, & her outbound cat
open the gates and keep the pulse.
She leans in, unafraid to travel the trenches, the ruins,
to be there on location spelling out the names of the
beloved dead with a sparkler.
If you write it backwards it will come out forward
to the Heyokas galloping by on their dark horses.
All night she dips into the face of lunar deities, her eyes
searching the craters for the unseen ones.
What ferments in the caves can be good, and shows up at
the reception, a vision of Erzulie with a catfish,
wines from the Valley of The Moon, wheels of pungent cheese.
Whoever said white Russians, paint and magic
can’t issue from the same hand at once?

Thanks to Melissa Weaver for the sparklers.

Amy Trussell, November 2008

Photo par moi: Altar to Erzulie. French Quarter, New Orleans

Peace Y'all

2008-11-28T21:25:00.000-08:00

Back home from the Big Easy, weary and full. So many experiences pressed through a window of time that words can catch only a fraction. Here's my long streaming stutter of highlight fragments in various tenses…Dusk over a crimson horizon, the Mississippi a snake of fire. No lights on the runway. Circle off to Baton Rouge under Jupiter and Venus, eyes of good omen. Test of nerves, tired and done, waiting. Touch down at last. Greeted by Dennis, friend poet sprite. Avenues graced with magnificent homes. Over arched with oaks, taken by vines. Home base near Magazine Street. Angel Trumpet flowers at the porch. Datura air. Slow churn and stop streetcar each day. St. Charles to Canal Street. Reading faces and tuning to the lilting drawls and brown skin. Monteleone Hotel in the French Quarter for the Faulkner Society conference. On my own for hours at a time. Galleries. Peter Max originals. Royal Street musicians. Ragged jug bands. Sleeping dogs. Horn players. Blues guitar. Harmonica. Stogies smoldering in the Begonias. A man painted gold. Diamonds and dripping chandeliers in the window glass. Antique stores and cafes. Beignets and café au laits. Triple story balconied facades laced with iron filigree, burgeoning with ferns. Gaslights burn perpetually. Clopping horses pulling carriages toward Jackson Square. St. Louis cathedral, the Cabildo, the Presbytere. Surrounded by history. Looking toward the river in the midst of card readers, painters, jugglers, tourists, a trombonist. Find Pirate’s Alley, Faulkner House, browse the books. City of Refuge. Relentless line of stuffed souvenir stops along Decatur, source of those cheap shiny strands of Mardi Gras beads that dangle from trees throughout the city and break apart into bits like colored dew. Pilgrimage to the voodoo shop. Not VooDoo Mart or the Disneyesque stops with shivering plastic skeletons but Voodou Authentica. Gris gris supplies for the practitioner, illuminations from Louis Martine and altars to the loa. I covet a Haitian metalwork veve to Erzulie Freda and make an offering at Marie Laveau’s altar and then Erzulie’s, laden with pink soaps, perfume bottles and jewelry (she’s akin to Venus). “Perfect success for The Painted Tongue Flowers”. Walk to the brown Mississippi. See the steamboats. Lunch and Literature with the writers from the conference at Muriel’s. White linen and china. Turtle soup, puppy drum with greens, chocolate mousse and three glasses of chardonnay. Moved by the speakers on the importance of place. Julie Reed, Tom Piazza and Ken Wells, warm with a twinkle. Funny and articulate. Left laughing. Hazy afternoon alone and wandering. Feeling game and open. Find myself in another voodoo store lured in by masks, bones and violet oil. Accepting an invitation from a South African woman to have my cards read. Predominately positive spread about victory and fruition with flickers of temptation and warnings about staying vigilant and grounded. “Make contracts.” she said and “Grow a backbone!” The Devil appeared and the Hierophant. Understood both profoundly. Poetry reading in Slidell. Over Lake Pontchartrain. Amy’s heart-catching words about Katrina. Seeing the high water mark. Night spent at Patricia and Dennis’ home. Kindness, marigolds and a hot shower. Bitter wind. Not enough clothes. Strategizing against the sharp cold slicing in from the river. Buying a black wool scarf and hugging the sunniest walls. Holed up in various shops. Hot coffee. Feeling gutted, tired from hauling my satchel, heavy with indispensables. Reading about Katrina in the bookstore, adding to the weight. Dark thread that stitched so many together. Refuge in the sumptuous Monteleone lobby. Hungry for something regional and full of pepper. Settling for quiche and onion soup. Sifting through trays of strange treasure, jewelry and snuff boxes at Joan Good’s. Pirate plunder. Buying a pair of Afghanistan silver shoulder dusters for a song. Shaped like poppy heads with tiny bells ringing. Walking along Bourbon Street in daylight, admiring handsome African smiles flashing out of bar doorways. Starving. Evening reconvening. In Pat O’ Brian’s, mesmerized by the fountains on fire. Devouring crawfish etouffee, red beans and rice washed down with hot toddies. Bourbon Street in full swing. Pounding music, neon flashing persuasion, throngs of rowdy revelers with huge drinks. A streetlong party for the world. Sex shops plastered with fleshy photos and flashing girls in red lights giving way to full throttle Karaoke dance parties and further on to gaping bars with thrumming interiors where ladies are pressed with free shots to encourage abandon. City of sin, yes. To Frenchmen Street for good music. At d.b.a dancing furiously to a Cajun band into the night, fueled by Abita Amber on tap. Spurning pick-ups. Sweet encounter with Matt from Chicago who sells pharmaceutical equipment but harbors a fine-grained poet's heart. A gentle new friend who reminded me of a dear old one. Talking reincarnation with the taxi driver. Gratitude for thick down covers and dreaming of hot water and coats. Double espressos. Long talks with Rob. Meeting with Gordon Walmsley, editor of the Copenhagen Review, about our book. Astute observations and helpful feedback although I quietly disagreed with him about “flamingo expectancy”. Sensitive to our project. Encouragement to self publish, which we will. Lunch at Arnaud’s. Oysters in variety on a bed of salt. We save our shells. Shop for boots for Amy of the broken shoe. Afternoon panel at the conference. The Aesthetics of Literature: Reality vs. Imagination with Jason Peter, Tom Piazza and everyone’s fave Tony O’Neill (Down and Out on Murder Mile) who is a delight to listen to. Sounds like Bobby Kennedy, looks like a heartbreaker and talks about his underbelly past as a heroin addict with easy humor. Stepped out early to get to the Louisiana Music Factory to catch The Iguanas live. Head for “home” to get ready for the evening Gala. Run, run, run to catch the streetcar…going the wrong direction. Back finally, exhausted. Washing hair, preening, black velvet and suede, tired tears of overwhelm, powdered noses and hollow cores using the last juice to get back to center. Late arriving. Everyone seated and satiated, dinner being cleared away. We stand there awkward. We need a gracious integration. Jose of the Keys to the rescue. Agent of Legbe the gatekeeper? Brings us red wine and stays to talk. Joan with the Pink Rose steps in to ask “Are you girls here to crash this party?” We assure her we are and she scouts out two seats for us. We get the last two plates of food in the place and eat voraciously as Ted Turner talks at the podium. I don’t remember what was said. No dessert for us and the music ends too soon. We stay just long enough to get bored and then dash away. Out onto the streets, Royal to Bourbon in our long skirts, clutching the fat roses we rescued from the gala. Meander up to Lafitte’s, the oldest tavern in the Quarter where Jean Lafitte reputedly once stashed his pirate booty. Now it is a dark bar with a constellation of low burning candles throughout and a big black piano deep inside being played diabolically by a man with a whiskey voice. We sit right at his elbow. A new world experience for me, leaning into an instrument as it vibrates right into the belly and bones. In a trance for hours that culminates in a kiss from the devil himself. Sunday dawns warmer. To St. Louis Cemetery to make an offering at Marie Laveau’s grave. Gates locked so we knock thrice and leave our rose woven into the bars. Up Rampart to the Voodoo Temple to meet Priestess Miriam whom Amy knows. She leads us back through her gris gris kitchen of jars and herbs to the temple festooned floor to the ceiling with icons and offerings. Loa visages erected and draped , laden with gifts of money bills, candles, cigarettes, flowers fresh and old. A feast for the eyes. Three chairs before a low table. We sit and listen as she slips into the other realm, words spilling from her like so many silver fishes. We catch what we can with inadequate nets. Laughing and nodding when we make the connections. I give her three pictures to add to the profusion. Later we emerge on the sidewalk, smiling and chatting. Saying goodbye, we jump in a cab. Our driver talks southern cooking all the way home. The secret to red beans. Frying green tomatoes. Smothering meats. He’s making ten ‘can pies (pecan) for Thanksgiving. He likes telling these recipes so much he wants to take us to the airport the next day so he can share some more. His card says Fear No Evil. We take note. Dennis scoops us up for the reading at the Maple Leaf bar to be held in the eye of the second annual Po'Boy Festival. Last year 10,000 folks attended said festival. Needless to say, no poetry was spoken in that throng. If Amy had read one poem she could have claimed it the best-attended poetry reading in history. We had a beer instead. Later Dennis took us out to Central City's YIP to watch the Black Eagles Mardi Gras Indian "practice". Like nothing else I've ever seen. Empty at first. We sit and sip, then dance quietly. Sucking on free cherry bombs. Folks arrive. Some good dancing unfolds. Then an all girl brass marching band complete with tuba gets everyone really moving in the small space. Then more men arrive. Drums and more drums. Pretty lady with a tamborine. Damn good dancers. Kids shaking it. Dapper older gentlemen. Families. The energy begins to build. Circling, dancing, singing, call and response, call and response, layer upon layer. The energy shifts and circles as groups of spectacular black men move in dancing, singing, calling out, challenging. The circle splits and dips and then a group leaves suddenly and new faces step in. An eruption of cultural richness from this place of urban decay. I am blown away. The energy waxes, swirls and finally peaks. It's over and Dennis says "Hey, it's 8 o'clock. Let's get something to eat!" and all I could think was "Eight in the morning??! My God!" It felt like hours had transpired but it was still early. We went for a plate of jambalaya, red beans and a bowl of gumbo. All done before 9 o'clock. Saying goodbyes. Last night dreaming in New Orleans. Morning browsing the shops along Magazine Street peering out brightly from a general dilapidation. One catfish and one grilled shrimp po'boy with fried green tomatoes and remoulade . And iced tea. Ballast for the flight home. Buying french pastries and wee pecan pies for home. Taxi to the airport. Boarded. It begins to rain. Homeward bound.

President Elect!

2008-11-05T09:25:00.001-08:00

Oh, what a contrast to (S)election 2004! Tears of elation, shouts of joy and, I admit, swells of good old-fashioned patriotic pride. Yes, I was moved. By the faces of young black people crying and smiling. The cracking voices of news anchors. Wet eyes in old faces. By the power of our collective voice. By the sheer historic significance of this shift in the tide. All signs point toward a world I want to live in. It's the end of, as Paul Krugman called them this morning, "the monster years". Well, the beginning of the end, at least. There is a hell of a lot of damage to heal and it won't be a cakewalk but if any one can bridge the divides and galvanize a united effort, it's "That One".

Vote!

2008-11-04T12:27:00.001-08:00

Poster by Shepard Fairey

Marigolds

2008-10-29T15:04:00.001-07:00

Chiliquin (Chili Cat) 1989-2008

2008-10-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

Dear furry friend and familiar, Chili Mama, slipped free of her body this morning and went to frolic in kitty heaven, where I hope the mice abound in tall grasses and the air smells like tuna. It's been a long time coming but we knew this day was close at hand. She'd been getting more and more physically frail and was obviously extremely uncomfortable in her body but we kept putting off the hard thing. It's a deep knife to the heart deciding to put down a loved one. Chili's been with us a long time. Nineteen years ago I picked her from a batch of cardboard-box kitties outside a Safeway in a moment of weakness. She sat up on my pregnant belly all the way home, looking out through the steering wheel. I snuck her into the house under my shirt because Rob and I hadn't talked about any plans for another cat but she charmed him right off by standing up on her hind legs for a full minute looking about with intense curiosity. So she slipped into our life and hearts. She became my snuggle baby during the final weeks of my pregnancy and she curled quietly on the bed for the whole labor and birth of India. Things got a bit touchy then, when she realized her prima status had been ursurped by this new kid in town . She broke alot of nice stuff and made herself a nuisance for some months as she worked out her jealous feelings but she never scratched India and was surprisingly tolerant of being tugged and bopped by a baby. She's been through alot with us. Interstate moves, illnesses, other kitties, another baby. She's had a long life full of nuzzles and coos, wild romps and explorations. I like to think she had it good and was happy. Finally, the decision was made and we called our long time vet Sandy Nelson who has served us so well all these years. She makes house calls and came out this morning after the kids said their goodbye and were dropped off at Grandma and Grandpa's. We spent the last hour holding and comforting her. Sandy arrived. A sedative, a delicate needle and she was gone. Goodbye, sweet Chiliquin. You are loved.

Top Photo: Chili's grave with marigolds. Buried under the tree we were married beneath in Crane Creek Park.

Photo: Me and Chili, Summer 1989

Altared Space

2008-10-27T10:33:00.000-07:00

After an insanely ambitious push this past week to finish my list of just-not-humanly-possible projects for Open Studio, I had to admit I am not a super being and must cut my losses. I am always dismayed by the discrepancy between my creative ideas and my energy to realize them. My physical focus and stamina never seem to be enough to bear the fruit I want. I was unusually tenacious this time and got tantalizingly close to making it all happen but dangerously close to illness, too. Luckily, I came to my senses in time but spent most of Saturday really wrung out. Nonetheless, the studio looked great and people showed up which made it all worth while. I built my artistic ancestor altar upon the teak Indian temple window gifted to us. (Thank you, Thalia! You must come pick out a piece of art). I felted and formed my Mictecasihuatl (Queen of the Dead) doll out of wool and paperclay for the altar, though her bony forearms weren't finished and attached until Sunday. (She's pictured here sans hands). I did get a small batch of elxirs done, labeled on Saturday and the little elixir bar assembled on Sunday. My dad, true to form, was culinarily inspired and made two beautiful loaves of Pan de Muertos (bread of the dead) and traditional pumpkin candy for the table. We had sweets and nibbles set out on the altar for the beloved departed and also for general consumption. The kids plundered the ofrendas early on and had to be reined in. Various friends and fans dropped by from far and wide and some twinkly folks wandered in from the nooks of our wonderfully ecletic neighborhood including some fellow artists, Sunday meanderers and a particular elderly gentleman who shared a story about the mythic Catfish and gave me a very fine compliment. Various bold and curious children lead their adults in for a closer look, including a Bible-toting family who admired the work and sampled the fare. (Kids are some of my fave critics. My own 5 year-old nephew, Zephyr, pronounced me a "big" artist. It doen't get any better than that!) So, there was atmosphere, people enjoyed it, strange paths of conversation were followed through some diverse territory and I sold a tidy bit, too. Always important. So, I didn't finish all the new small paintings I'd started and the several dolls in the works lay unfinished. I want to offer more large prints than I currently have, as well, but I am excited about paperclay sculpture, painted forms and abstract colorplays. Now I just have to decide if I can rejuice my battery enough to make it real. Will I have another open studio in December? Hmmm...that's a wait and see.

Seeds and Shadows

2008-10-20T12:52:00.001-07:00

This weekend, October 25 and 26, I'm opening my studio from 10-5 both days. I'm calling it Seeds and Shadows, partly to celebrate the Day of the Dead, which has grown into a deeply meaningful holiday for me but also to honor the confluence of opposites that naturally emerges at this time of year...bright/dark, growing/waning, living/dying. There is a reflection as well on the palpable transformational spirit of these times....change, the turning wheel, the swinging pendulum, the fleeting shadows, seeds of hope for the future. I will have new paintings hung, both large and small, as well as prints, cards, altars and, of course, there will be magical atmosphere, sweets, savories and sippables of various kinds. I hope I see some of you there.

Bimbo's

2008-10-16T14:33:00.001-07:00

Jolie Evening

2008-10-16T13:56:00.001-07:00

Went down to San Francisco last night to see one of my favorite artists, the deliciously inscrutable Jolie Holland, perform at Bimbo's 365 in North Beach. The club's posh vintage atmosphere was the perfect setting with it's moody interior of red plush and deep shadows flecked with flickering candles and glittery edges. The humorously dark but energetic French duo, Herman Dune, opened the show. Jolie finally emerged, backed by a new band in her latest venture into rock territory, a departure from her earlier work which varies widely from traditional folk tunes to haunting improvisations and soulful jazz laments. All her work is distinguished by her seductively malleable vocals, the flame at the center that keeps even the most loosely-stitched of her pieces together. I found that got lost a bit in the tumult of her newest songs. The bass and guitar were overbearing, submerging her eloquent voice and overwhelming the nuance of her vintage-amped guitar but I really enjoyed the energy when it did come together. She sang some of her older songs, too, beloved by the audience. Seeing her looking so happy, crow feather and spoon silver in her hair, singing her heart was worth the trip. She ended the show with her unique rendition of the old ballad Mad Tom o' Bedlam. Just her, her box fiddle and that golden throat.

Refreshing Perspective

2008-10-14T11:29:00.000-07:00

Some clear good sense via CNN's Campbell Brown.

NOLA Bound

2008-10-13T21:04:00.001-07:00

After a few weeks consideration, the way is paved. Today, plane tickets were purchased for two poetic souls on a venture to the Big Easy. My collaborator and creative cohort, Amy Trussell, recently was the first runner up for the 2008 National William Faulkner- William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition for her poem Foreleg Eardrums. Because of this precipitous event, parts of our book, The Painted Tongue Flowers, will be set before the discerning eyes of an editor of significance. She's one of the honored guests to attend the Faulkner Literary Gala in late November and she's persuaded me to tag along. She loves New Orleans and is convinced I will too. I am game to explore the French Quarter and visit Queen of Voudoo Marie Laveau's grave, among other inevitable inspirations.We will also be steeling ourselves for signs of the devastation wrought by Katrina. Amy, having been before, will be strongly touched no doubt.

Oil painting "Marie Laveau" by New Orleans artist Dimitri Fouquet.

Art Afternoon at Ace

2008-10-11T22:28:00.001-07:00

Come spend an afternoon of art this Sunday at Ace in the Hole Cider Pub from 3-6pm in Graton. I will be showing a couple of new large works and various smaller ones. Alongside me will be the work of three other artists: Mariela de la Paz, Suzanne deVeuve and Kat Kraus. With a pinot poured and nibbles at hand, it should be an enjoyable afternoon. The Thugz are playing at 6pm so there may even be dancing. Hope I see some of you there.

The Great Unwind

2008-10-10T09:21:00.000-07:00

In his article The Great Unwind in The Washington Independent, Satyajit Das has a take on the current global financial turmoil that actually makes some sense out of this impenetrable tangle. Seeing this turbulence as a kind of detox rather than a terminal disease adds a new perspective. Like a body bloated on junk food to the point of death now being forced to eat brown rice and vegetables, the economy may eventually get well but the cure is no picnic. When a system is so out of balance, the healing looks like sickness. That I can get my head around and it actually feels hopeful.

Photo: From the online article. By flickr (TW Collins)

Palin Word Cloud

2008-10-03T10:23:00.001-07:00

Here a word cloud of Palin's debate verbage last night, the result of a run through Wordle, the most used words being largest. Some interesting speculation here. Like what's with the word "also" and where the heck is "maverick"? Or "heck" for that matter?

Doggone Freakish Adorable

2008-10-03T09:45:00.001-07:00

Watched the debate last night and almost couldn't take it. What is with that woman's face? It's like a mechanical mask bolted on with a jaw that never quits. Flap, flap, smile, wink, click tongue, snap head. It's freakish. I almost feel sorry for her. Almost. The pressure must have been unedurable. I kept waiting for her program to jam. Malfunction. Malfunction. Mal...Here's a hilarious assessment of Sarah Palin by Erica Jong called You Betcha She's Doggone Cute!

Another Tower Falling

2008-09-29T21:28:00.000-07:00

Or is it? So hard to really know what the hell is going on. I knew that first bailout bill was poison but that doesn't mean something shouldn't be done. Though it might seem healthy to just let the whole sick system detoxify itself, there are innocent folks' homes, businesses and retirements at stake. I thought the revised 100 pager would likely pass but I'm glad it didn't. Now, maybe, some legislation with true function and integrity can be honed to address this debacle with less fear and more intelligence and the stock market will have time to catch its breath. Onward.

White Walls

2008-09-29T13:43:00.001-07:00

For weeks I've been meaning to catch Frida Kahlo at the SFMOMA and this weekend was my last chance so a trip to the City was in order. I looked into getting tickets and, unsurprisingly, the show was sold out. Damn. Instead of kicking myself for being less than vigilant, I let Rob convince me into heading south anyway to check out the Shepard Fairey show at White Walls gallery in the Tenderloin. Shepard is the artist who created the Obama poster (see my previous post) and I was eager to see his work up close.

Being a Saturday, there was more traffic on the streets than our last several trips to SF and that was a headache. It took us considerably longer to navigate the streets and we almost got in a major collision on the way, but we finally made it. White Walls is on Larkin Street a few blocks east of Van Ness in a nondescript building with minimal signage but a vibrant streetside mural by Ron English and a Fairey piece hung behind the smudgy glass of a paneled window. It was clearly the place.

I expected to confront a bank of good-sized silkscreened posters of Fairey's work framed behind glass, the same that I'd previewed online. And indeed there was that. But my first impression was overhwhelmed by a huge piece, a larger version of this, hung prominently and flanked by others of lesser size but equal gravity on either side. I was really floored by the quality of these originals. Strong black stenciled work boldly laid over multi-layers of collaged graphic ephemera with textured varnished surfaces and richly nuanced color on canvas. No fussy glass. I love this stuff. A street art aesthetic giving way to tight graphics and, upon closer scrutiny, fine-grained delicate detail.

A possible cosmic reason for our delay en route to the gallery revealed itself when, upstairs amid multiple smaller works, I was startled by a young guy giving me an unexpected look of "Hey! Krista!" It took me more than a minute to grok that it was my own cousin, James, standing before me, who I hadn't seen in literally years. Strange and cool. He's a digital graphic artist himself and we had a catch up chat before heading out.

So, it was Fairey not Frida this time. No regrets.

Natural Rights

2008-09-24T21:14:00.000-07:00

The shift is happening. This weekend Ecuadorians will vote on whether to approve a new constitution which includes articles that would grant Nature the right to "exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and processes in evolution".

I'm in awe.

Read more at bright green blog. Ecuador is not the only country to grant rights to nonhuman entities. The US, for instance, grants some human rights to corporations (see my old blogpost Corporate Beastie). Why not for trees? Bodies of water? Species? Ecuador has tread the furthest into this realization of Nature's right to be.

Here are the rights to be granted to Pachamama (aka Mother Earth):

Art. 1. Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.

Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.

Art. 2. Nature has the right to an integral restoration. This integral restoration is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people and the collectives that depend on the natural systems.

In the cases of severe or permanent environmental impact, including the ones caused by the exploitation on non renewable natural resources, the State will establish the most efficient mechanisms for the restoration, and will adopt the adequate measures to eliminate or mitigate the harmful environmental consequences.

Art. 3. The State will motivate natural and juridical persons as well as collectives to protect nature; it will promote respect towards all the elements that form an ecosystem.

Art. 4. The State will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles.

The introduction of organisms and organic and inorganic material that can alter in a definitive way the national genetic patrimony is prohibited.

Art. 5. The persons, people, communities and nationalities will have the right to benefit from the environment and form natural wealth that will allow well being.

The environmental services are cannot be appropriated; its production, provision, use and exploitation, will be regulated by the State.

At the cusp of reparation...

Painting by Betty LaDuke "Pachamama"

No Wall Street Bailout

2008-09-23T16:21:00.000-07:00

Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio saying it straight and strong. Powerful! The events unfolding these past few days are spectacular in their surreality. Can this be happening?? This bailout legislation reeks, the worst stink coming from a rotten bit of language that effectively transfers the power of the purse from Congress to the Executive branch. In the hands of this criminal administration that would mean a stake in the heart of anything resembling a democracy here in the US. They are talking about a staggering $700 billion blank check with absolutely no oversight! Write your Congresspeople and tell them NO. The "emergency" has been manufactured. There is time to craft something healthy that will actually address these dire straits. Real Reform or Nothing.

UPDATE: Yet another informative diary on just why we need to say NO.

Fairey Show

2008-09-20T11:08:00.001-07:00

The artist who recently created the wildly successful Obama silkscreen posters, Shepard Fairey, is having a solo show in SF at the White Walls gallery space from September 13 through October 4, titled The Duality of Humanity. I find his work so excellent it gives me pain. A perfect amalgam of conception, aesthetic flavor and political bite. Yow.

Saying His Peace

2008-09-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

"In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace." One wise guy.

Schizophrenic or Shamanic?

2008-09-19T20:59:00.001-07:00

The raw, wise and awesomely psychedelectible teachings of Terence McKenna.

Obamarama

2008-08-29T10:36:00.000-07:00

A crowd of over 84,000 in a stadium built for 76,000. Wow. Electrifying words that had even Pat Buchanan gushing. People are really ready for something different. He's a bridge for sure. New politics. Change coming to Washington.

And Jimi.

2008-08-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

Jimi Hendrix - Hear My Train A Comin' (Acoustic) - Click here for more home videos

Achingly cool.

Sweet Joni

2008-08-20T14:24:00.000-07:00

Post Fair Post

2008-07-21T11:27:00.001-07:00

A strange year. The logistics of preparing for Fair are always challenging but despite major innovations and new laid plans we were still over bled by the end. Our perennial intention is to achieve the perfect distillation of stress easement, strong sales, visual opulence and maximum enjoyment. We packed lighter and tighter. Streamlined products and displays. Pared down gear to the essentials. Organized our camp environment to integrate functionality and aesthetics. This year I felt we made huge strides in achieving our goal.

Our primary good move was staying in a motel in Eugene after a full day on the road in the brutal heat and smoke with no air con. Normally we drive all day, stop in town to pick up provisions and water for the next week then push on out to the fair site where we slather our sticky selves with bug spray and spend the final hours of day assembling the loft and pitching camp before nightfall. No wonder we succumb to exhaustion every year. Instead of the usual death march the alternate scenario this year was: we took hot showers, walked through campus in the twilight, reveled in the fading sun and old trees, helped the kids finish their craft projects while watching Galaxy Quest, mended and ironed (!) a few loose ends, slept in a firm bed and went out for a meal the next morning before heading out to Fair. That did wonders to fill my cup and as it turns out I needed my cup full.

We were indeed in the groove. So much so that we when we went out to the Keystone Cafe the next morning we dovetailed with a convergence of dear friends and got to sit down to a leisurely meal together. Laughing and catching up. Unexpected and lovely. Then we went to the health food store to pick up food and water and it wasn't even noon. We were so ahead of the game!

Then our van died.

Looking at it in retrospect with the rose-colored glasses (as opposed to the shit ones) I could say we were damn lucky it happened in the tiny parking lot of Sundance rather then out front of our booth deep in the Eight. We were stunned at first, sitting there in Big Red unable to grasp the reality that we were supremely stalled. In a daze I got out, compelled to step over to the bulletin board along the store front. There was a small yellow card pinned up quietly proclaiming the services of a "mobile mechanic". Steve Child, miracle guy, wasn't really working that day but generously rode his bike (mobile, yes) over to check out the scene.

So the short version is, while the girls and I distracted our merciful Eugene friend Nancy from her pre-Fair packing, Steve worked all day in the hot sun pulling the steering column, fishing out an errant bit of sheared off steel and showing Rob how to hot wire the engine. (Rob says the technical diagnosis was "snafu"). So instead of noon, we rolled in to the Eight near 9 o'clock under threat of closing gates and rushed to unload quick as lightning. Our edge utterly lost, we just pitched a tent and tossed some bags under the skeeter net to collapse on into welcome sleep.

Could the lesson be as simple as having a better vehicle next year? Because other than that one freak event, Fair was good. Though the days were sweltering the evenings were pleasant, the morning and dusk lights beautiful, appreciation in the air, small serendipities everywhere. Our camp never looked better, the display the best ever, our sleep was deep, we fancied up and tipped cocktails with our Fair family on Friday night and the hardest part really was fighting tiredness in the face of so much fun to be had.

Sales were down a bit but strong enough despite reports that sales were weak for crafters throughout the fair. Abundance was enjoyed. Eden's dolls sold out, Zoe made the big bucks and bought velvets, India sold enough for a velvet skirt but had a refreshing change hooking up with friends from camp, Rob's magnets were hotcakes and even Zephyr was financing his own ice cream with path side lectures about the solar system that won him the respect of many including a very impressed cosmologist. Jonathan was making the most of his time, laughing a lot and taking pride in Zephyr doing so well. Mom came through many times getting the kids food when they bottomed out (as did Steve and Meredith a few times) and selling in the booth which was perfectly graced with the rug she brought us. When Karen wasn't watching over the girls she got to wander the Eight, see some music and even hear her guy Bruce Lipton speak up at the Front Porch. Despite Rob's paring down on frivolities such as his so called "hippie traps" like the glowing Butterfly and electric Ball of Mystery, Dad came through with his own light toys for nighttime. Gang of revelers. We did good.

I was just, once again, too worn out to fully absorb all there was to take in. I can't seem to help going into partial shut down. Getting there is such a herculean effort but being there also takes stamina. I was in the booth more this year and it requires energy to interact with folks brimming with gratitude, enthusiasm and interest for my work. The down side of being an introvert, I suppose. Quiet moments are the best for me. My highlights: showering in the sun at the Ritz, stumbling on the Crow Quill Night Owls, finding a unicorn horn, watching Zak's light forms change color across the river, playing guitar in the loft, tripping with Rob, following Deva out to the funky dance party in the Craft Lot, our cocktail parade, booth front late night laughing, seeing Ayala, bone buttons and black feathers.

A decent fair all in all but still glad to be home.

The World Dances

2008-06-23T09:27:00.000-07:00

This is the latest video from Matt of Where The Hell Is Matt? . Spectacular and uplifting.

O Yeah

2008-06-09T18:51:00.000-07:00

Photo originally posted at Barack Obama Santa Fe Arts District

Can Do It Conduit

2008-06-09T15:10:00.001-07:00

The reality of Obama's nomination has been slowly sinking in, the implication for change almost too much to absorb. Can this be as good as it feels or am I just so tired of the depravity that I'll pin my hopes on the first decent thing that seems to stand a chance? Maybe I'm so sick of war and corruption and despicable actions that a bit of basic decency shines like a beacon. So thirsty for honesty and action and remedy that I'll gulp any promise with the ring of sincerity. Could be but I don't think so. It's more than a desperate grasping. The desolation of these past years is exactly what has made Obama possible. He embodies a new strain of politician, finally unfurling from the last tenacious roots left after heavy hacking, a network grown strong in the hidden crevices of a caustic climate. Honesty and decency didn't die out these last seven years, they just went underground. Obama has an energy around him that transcends politics because he is about more than himself. He is us. Speaking out, healing rifts, building bridges, taking a stand, demanding an end to the madness and doing it with integrity.

I just read Mark Morford's piece "Is Obama An Enlightened Being". He nailed it when he wrote:

"There's a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that's been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama's candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically drawn to him. It's exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better."

Yes.

I watch this video of him speaking to his campaign staffers after the win and I am truly moved. He understands that each of us contributing our best to a common task is the new way, the only way we will make it. He is us, the ones we have been waiting for. We the People.

Photo by Alain Briot

M.C. Escher

2008-06-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

Here's an Escher montage set to anti-folk guy Jeffrey Lewis' hypnotic "Springtime" with some great pictures by the great Maurits Cornelis and various other Escher related stuff. Also check out Jeffrey Lewis video Acid Song. I love his Rules for Tripping. (Thanks, Molly!)

Stroke of Insight

2008-05-30T06:14:00.000-07:00

A scientist touches nirvana. Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor's moving account of her stroke experience.

Sugar Chile Robinson

2008-05-13T11:25:00.001-07:00

This is one cool little cat. Child prodigy form the 1940's, Frankie "Sugar Chile" Robinson bangs away at the piano.

Painting Visionaries

2008-05-11T15:48:00.000-07:00

Saturday night was the opening of the Northern California Visionary Art exhibit at the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah and it was a full spectrum visually stunning show. Fantastically well-attended, the event was stimulating and gave me a chance to more deeply appreciate the work of some pioneers of the genre. "Visionary Art" encompasses a wide variety of styles, subjects and narratives but the common element is a keen focus on expressing the "deeply seen". Whether visions emerge from altered states of mind, mystical or psychedelic experience, dream, trance, intuition or simply strong conviction, articulating the esoteric, the mysterious and what lies beyond the confines of physical sight seems primary. Despite my preference for universal, primitive and naive symbolic forms in my own work, I enjoyed the precision painting techniques and skill for realism that many of the artists excel in. Always a sucker for raw aesthetic appeal, I was especially captivated by this large oil (48 x 60) by Nick Hyde titled Abraxus. Multi-layered and truly fantastic, the piece literally vibrated with swirling filigreed forms and smoke-like lacings rendered in a subdued palette of soft greens, browns and turquoise. Breathtaking. Many of us there talked about the renewed and growing interest in visionary art despite marginalization by the conventional art world and the relevance this work has to the current global predicaments that humanity faces. A deeper way of seeing is being demanded and here in our own golden rolling hills some potent insights were offered. I felt honored to be included.

Kudos to Marvin Schenck, the show's curator, and his assistant, Denver Tuttle, for orchestrating a terrific show.

In The Sky With Diamonds

2008-05-02T09:38:00.001-07:00

RIP: Albert Hofman (January 11, 1906 – April 29, 2008)
I took note when Swiss chemist and the father of LSD passed away a few days ago. I give profound thanks for the ground he broke all those years ago which changed the face of my reality and laid a fertile foundation for the evolution of consciousness in general. That chemical agent of clarity that blows the dust off the old lenses may have been a fluke in the lab but the fruits of his discovery have yet to be fully borne. Hofman once said that LSD "wanted to tell me something. It gave me an inner joy, an open mindedness, a gratefulness, open eyes and an internal sensitivity for the miracles of creation." He considered the hallucinogen to be "medicine for the soul" and lamented the casual recreational use of something he felt should be approached with great reverence. He was also greatly dismayed when it was eventually criminalized as he was convinced that the drug offered the potential to counter psychological problems induced by "materialism, alienation from nature through industrialization and increasing urbanization, lack of satisfaction in professional employment in a mechanized, lifeless working world, ennui and purposelessness in wealthy, saturated society, and lack of a religious, nurturing, and meaningful philosophical foundation of life". Indeed.

From his contemporary, Aldous Huxley , Hofman gleaned an understanding of psychedelic agents as keys to the "new doors of perception", offering an alternative to other "proven but laborious door openers like meditation, solitude, fasting or certain yoga practices." Synthesizing lysergic acid diethylamide in the lab based on a mere hunch, Hofman considered it possible that his discovery of this powerful catalyst of expanded consciousness from a "pharmacologically uninteresting substance" was not mere chance but perhaps "predestined by some higher power to arise precisely at the time when the predominance of materialism with all its consequences over the past 100 years was being understood. LSD as an enlightening psychopharmakon along the path to a new, spiritual age!"

Aldous Huxley impressed Hofman in his consideration of human consciousness as a world resource and considered psychedelics as key to helping develop its potential and tap its power. "A humankind with highly-developed spiritual capacities, with expanded consciousness of the comprehensive wonder of being, would have to be more capable of observing and recognizing also the biological and material bases for its existence on this Earth. The development and unfolding of the ability sensually to experience reality directly, undisguised by words and concepts, would be of evolutionary significance, above all for Occidental humankind with such hypertrophied rationality."

Food for thought.

Quotes from LSD: Completely Personal a speech delivered by Dr. Albert Hofman to the 1996 Worlds of Consciousness Conference in Heidelberg, Germany

Image : Anonymous wood engraving in l'Atmosphere: Meteorologie Populaire by Camille Flammarion 1888

Asawa Shadow

2008-04-28T10:17:00.001-07:00

I couldn't restrain myself from snapping a few illicit photos at the Ruth Asawa show a few weeks ago. Shadow play like this is irresistible. To see her work gracing the spaces inside our own Sonoma County Museum was an unequivocal pleasure. Her work stopped me in my tracks when I first saw it at the De Young in San Francisco last year. Stunning, elegant, organic, fractal beauty.

Won't Watchovia

2008-04-27T17:36:00.000-07:00

This photo captures a compounding of a couple of peeves I have: the vinyl sign and the shady financial institution. I can't resist a rant here.

I'm an aspiring optimist with an distinct aesthetic orientation so I maybe I'm more challenged by the plague that is modern advertising than many. Most of it is oppressive visual garbage to me. A depressing din. I steel myself just to drive around town. In fact, I have such a revulsion for "Buy This!" ploys that I've developed a bit of blindness that actually doesn't serve me when I'm really in the market. So I have this lament about the uglification that happens in a consumer culture. Forget elegant understatement or letting things speak for themselves. These days the cry to consume is mostly a ruthless take-you-by-the-throat affair and I have to stay positive by giving thanks that there aren't ads on the moon...yet.

Everyday the yellow-orange plastic fast-flashing hook-you info cram gets a bit more intense and I find I've developed a new peeve, nagging for attention like a nasty little dog. I must continually and pointedly look away, sighing with irritation but that does nothing to ease the problem I have with this ubiquitous eyesore: the saggy vinyl sign. I suppose the small business needs a cheap sign to make a go of it and maybe I'm the only one who thinks these sad plastic wonders are really suited only to the brand new or the temporary. A grand opening or an event, OK. They shouldn't hang perpetually in every nook and cranny of town, flapping like lame birds.

Here's where I get really riled. These lame birds should NOT be used to entice customers into banking. I have really been bugged by the plethora of banks in town with a wrinkled banner as their main tag. Nothing says fly-by-night like a floppy sheet of landfill hastily lashed to some recently empty building and I just have to shake my head in wonder. That a bank should be housed in a structure of solid foundation, with thick walls and preferably some large columns, is basic. It should exude security. That was focused-grouped like a hundred years ago, right? I am able to let that one go. But at the very least there should be strong permanent signage, securely affixed. Made of gold metal even.

Anyway, a wimpy banner does not bode well for a bank and a sly punny name is worse. When I first caught sight of the Wachovia sign here in town I experienced a slight wave of disgust. How patronizing is that? It came off so flip and condescending. Oh, yeah, we'll watch over ya (snicker). I figured I was just in a mood, reading too much into it. Turns out, my gut reaction was telling. Headline: Feds Look At Watchovia In Drug Money Probe (!) Scamming seniors, accepting unsigned checks and other practices questionable for a large financial institution. Rather disturbing really.

I don't enjoy the feeling I sometimes have that my hometown has morphed into a Pottertown with fast food huts, bong shops, seasonal crapstops and tattoo parlors. (Do we really need one on every corner?) Now questionable banks plastered with cheap vinyl. I pine for the old days when my Grandpa lettered the shop shingles and painted ads for Clover milk on the walls of neighborhood stores, by hand and with skill. When signs really attracted and banks looked like banks to be trusted.

End of rant.

Sound of Rain

2008-04-27T16:23:00.001-07:00

I find this brilliant and beautiful. It appeals to my love of words and forms. Onomatopoeic sculpture by Japanese artist Atsushi Fukunaga who (literally) takes sound effects into the third dimension. It helps that the Japanese characters for giongo are themselves so comely.

From Fukunaga's website:

"I am interested in how to give form to something that is formless. Formless things have many qualities, among them sound, movement, atmosphere, taste, light and shadow, and I am particularly interested in sound, There are many ways to interpret sound, My first step being to translate the sound an onomatopoeic word. My own country of Japan has many onomatopoeic words. Furthermore, the Japanese katakana alphabet is used to communicate foreign words by breaking them down into their constituent syllables. These ‘translated’ foreign words are unique to the Japanese language. I believe there is a universal communicative quality to sound as opposed to language. In Japanese, onomatopoeic words are often used to describe events which have no sound, thereby creating an imaginative link between language and reality. I am interested in investigating ways of communicating to as many people as possible through sound, In the visual language this would be akin to road signs, traffic signals, toilet signs, and hazard patterns. I am also interested in describing sound through visual language. For example, in Japanese manga comics a loud sound is often signified by larger, bolder letters. I am currently exploring this idea further."

Image by Atsushi Fukunaga, Ame no oto (Sound of Rain)

Grace Hudson Museum

2008-04-22T21:15:00.001-07:00

A nice fat stack of these slick mailers just arrived via snail mail announcing the Northern California Visionary Art show that I will part of at the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah, California. I was impressed with the quality and pleased to see Illumination reclining in ease and prominence. (It is originally a tri-fold jobbie that I condensed here for posting) The copy reads:

In the late 1960s the San Francisco Bay Area became the focal point for a new art movement labeled Visionary Art. It materialized against a background of Vietnam War protests, campus riots, a new idealistic counterculture, Far Eastern spiritual influences, underground comics, psychedelic music and poster art. It was a time of mind altering drug experimentation and free love. Massive numbers of youth were fleeing their middle class upbringing to seek other paths of consciousness and utopian dreams. Concepts of ecology and a back to the land movement were beginning to flourish. The first television generation was seeking new realities.

A nucleus of artists developed on this wave of rising consciousness. They were influenced by Surrealism, Jungian universal archetypes, personal dream awareness, ancient art symbols, and non-Western religious philosophies. These Visionary Artists expressed new alternate realities in their detailed dream-like images.

This exhibition germinated from the large number of Visionary Artists who are now located in rural Northern California. This selection of works follows the traditions of personal dreamscape, utopian landscape, spiritual awakening and apocalyptic visions as originally manifested in early California Visionary Art. Both original and recent artworks by some of the founders of this movement are represented. Also included are paintings by artists who have immigrated here from afar or are younger painters who represent a second Visionary Art generation.

It is clear from the powerful artwork that California Visionary Art remains an important contemporary, creative and idealistic force.It continues to offer alternative spiritual realities and serves as an ecological conscience, even a seer
of doom, for the competitive materialistic world. For all, Visionary Art offers a plethora of intriguing epiphanies to ponder.

Marvin Schenck, Curator
Grace Hudson Museum

Spring Meander

2008-03-29T13:07:00.000-07:00

A leisurely stroll through the hills of Sugarloaf Ridge State Park may have to become a Spring tradition. The vistas are bucolic. The colors, intoxicating. Brilliant yellow-greens of the budding leaves. Bright scarlet and yellow wildflowers. Small seas of lupines that the kids couldn't help plundering. Handfuls of dark purple with their grape candy scent. The oaks are just leafing out in tender reddish ruffles. The streams still flash and sing before the heat of the summertime sucks them away. Enjoying it before the dry cicada-hum days of rattlesnake anxiety is the way to go.

Intrepid Quail

2008-03-29T12:44:00.001-07:00

On our fence yesterday morning was a surprise visitor. A quail! I haven't clapped eyes on such a sight in years! And never in a suburban backyard. They seem to be quite rare these days even in the rural areas. The first year we moved to the Sebastopol countryside over ten years ago we would stir up whole frantic families of them when we traipsed through the tall grass in our orchard. Maybe it was increased activity under the trees, cutting the grass or the presence of cats that was to blame but after just one year they had disappeared for good. Strangely though, I never see them anymore even when we go hiking. So where did this intrepid little guy come from? He was in some kind of exchange with a big blue jay and really stuck around long enough for me to go dig out my camera, creep out stealthily onto the deck and model for a few shots before the jay scared him off. Odd.

A Good Friday and A Magical Easter

2008-03-24T17:02:00.001-07:00

Friday seemed strangely auspicious. Besides reportedly being a rare convergence of various holy days, it was also the first full day of Spring after the Vernal Equinox, a full moon and a culmination of weeks of focused work in the studio. My personal day of hanging had arrived, an unambiguous ending of some kind. It was blessedly warm and golden which soothed my jangled nerves. Rob steered me through a mild panic over what seemed like a hundred tiny loose ends conspiring to overwhelm my presence of mind but all were eventually trimmed and forgotten or nicely woven in. Packing and transporting large works and so many was a challenge but we rose to it, with strategic leaning and some gentle rope tying. Hanging the pieces went smoothly and the canvases that had filled the inside of my wee studio were absorbed into the large space with alarming ease. Actually they looked more at home in their new temporary digs. They are more outgoing than me and craved some exposure. The day was rounded out with an evening of jitterbug dancing which I abandoned sooner than I wanted just because of sheer exhaustion.

Saturday was a frantic rummage through the shops collecting shiny bits and candies for the girls' Easter baskets, something I usually do in a casual way over a period of a few weeks. Between Rob and I we assembled an attractive pastel colored mess that was well received on Sunday morning, which began too early for me. The afternoon came on slowly and opened beautifully like poppy buds in a warm room. Mom and Dad hosted lunch and had the family table set out under the wisteria. Dad made what we proclaimed to be the best mac and cheese in the universe with Spring veggies, greens and bread. The meal was exalted by a '96 bottle of Clos du Val Cabernet, Mom's lightly chocolate Pavlova crowned with cream and fruit for dessert and a family meander through the neighborhood under flowering trees. Yes, a really lovely weekend. Now some rest.

Photo: My studio this Spring.

Thus Far

2008-03-15T21:40:00.001-07:00

After developing the circle of figures with opaques and refining details, I finally feel very close but have to set it aside to "set up". Like a jello dessert. The last stage will require a fresh outlook and renewed energies, so I worked on something else for awhile. Clearly this is shaping into some kind of creation and celebration. A breaking and a birthing. A new story.

This photo is an odd angle because the canvas is actually resting vertically against the slider door.

More Color and New Shapes

2008-03-15T21:30:00.003-07:00

I laid in more color and gave the shard shapes a soft dove gray shadowing which makes them recede temporarily. I am bringing them back by buffing in some more white. The outer edges cried out for something and these orbs and seed shapes began to orbit. Now I see planets and eggs and microscopic entities.

First Colors

2008-03-15T21:10:00.001-07:00

The ghosties begin to get their first garments of various hues. At one point I began to almost hear the colors that wanted to be included. Something reminiscent of a dawn or dusk. Blues, golds, soft purples with touches of coral, bronze and pink. I think this image is about a birth of some kind. An ending and a beginning.

Taking Shape

2008-03-15T21:06:00.000-07:00

A bit blurry but more coming through.

Emerging

2008-03-15T20:51:00.001-07:00

Since I've been putting in some serious hours in the studio, I thought I'd post some pictures of my progress. I have several canvases in stages of progress but for this one in particular I have burned the candle to a nub. From a sea of blue an egg emerged. Well, shards of white, cupping some kind of tumult. This is the early stage. Allowing whatever it is to shine out. I used to call this process "ghosting in". Laying down the thinnest of veils until some shape becomes substantial enough to recognize and thus develop. A gentle capturing of the spirit of the thing.

Free Hugs

2008-03-15T16:32:00.000-07:00

I first saw this over a year ago and loved it. I came home from another long day in the studio and found it had been sent my way again by a friend so I thought I'd share it. Sincerity can still shine in a jaded world. I think humanity has a pretty good shot. Creative and uplifting.

Cultural Program Alteration

2008-02-27T20:15:00.000-08:00

Here's quintessential trippy dude Terence McKenna talking about culture as a kind of operating system of the mind that can be overwritten by a deeper, more "vitalistic" program through shamanic practices such as ingesting psychotropic plants. This is akin to my own take on culture, religion, capitalism, evolution, the world...ever since age 19 when a series of temporary mind alterations ("perturbed brain chemistry") wiped clean the old hard drive. To experience stepping off a bus, exhaled into the cityscape like a gush of seawater from a great whale to hear the trees in the park singing my name while they tossed the moon like a ball and the gutters rang with bells...well. I never went back to Kansas. I became the smallest weed cracking through the sidewalk and the farthest star winking in the fog. It flashed through my body: it's all more beautiful, alive, connected and simple then I could know with my head. That's been my stance ever since, seemingly outside the cultural norm but deeper inside something more real. A place where old cliches like "love makes the world go 'round" are reborn to their original radiant profundity. In those days I came upon a shattered store window and plucked a shard from the wreckage. It became an icon for me, a piece of my old world view that showed me where I'd been limited and now had broken free. I still keep that hunk of glass upon an altar of bird nests in my studio and still revel in the beauty of this elegant universe and my place in it.

This clip has some fine far out art by the likes of Alex Grey and Mark Henson, among others, and a rather eerie soundtrack.

Big and Blue

2008-02-18T20:03:00.000-08:00

Gray skies make for good painting conditions in the studio, diffused light and an excuse for a blazing wood fire. I've settled into working on several pieces at once which seems to assuage creeping anxieties about producing enough work. I work with a canvas until I've poured as much juice as I can into it. Then I abandon it for another and then another until eventually I'm back to the first with fresh perspective and invigorated inspiration. And so on. This rotation lets me go with the flow easier. When a piece is really asking to be worked, then I dive in. Like my houseplants when they ask to be watered, it's an almost audible sensation. I've been developing this one image in white on black, veering from liking where it's going to despair that I'm ruining it (standard procedure for me). Finally I let it rest. I was laboring and I'm not keen on that feeling. I prefer ease and excitement. So I lay it aside and face the waiting mob of white before me. I'm surrounded by big blank canvases and if I don't do something, they will bring me down. My favorite remedy for this situation is to play. I either sketch a bunch of loose ideas out on paper or, even better, just fool around with color on these big intimidating hunks of gessoed substrate. I find it supremely relaxing, enjoyable and I think I'm good at it. The results are always satisfying to me, at least. Apple green smudging into citron misted with grey and tinged with brilliant red. Or a warm mottle of tangerine and dark pink struck though with browns. Today I tackled the big kahuna. My four by six footer. I muscled it onto the easel and dug out a pint of ultramarine I plucked from Grandpa's studio detritus when we moved him to the nursing home. I slashed though that cruel white with big globs of brilliant blue. Smearing and blotting and buffing out. It took awhile and as I was working I got to know a whole new Blue. Not at all cold. Exciting. Deep. Radiant. Big and blue, like a new world. I think I like this wide open territory and I am enheartened. All is good.

Garbage Vortex

2008-02-17T12:34:00.001-08:00

Since "feeling like crap" has been the beat at home lately, it's not surprising that this newsy tidbit surfaced on my radar. I wasn't aware until the other day that there is a Garbage Vortex twice the size of the continental United States floating out in the Pacific ocean. Yes, two enormous patches of plastic crap stew, swirling out there on either side of the Hawaiian Islands, held in place by the North Pacific Gyre ocean currents. The world's garbage has always migrated to this coagulation of debris only to eventually biodegrade but the world's plastics do not break down quickly enough so we are left with 100 million tons of flotsam comprised of every plastic doodad manufactured in the last 50 years. No matter the origin, every Happy Meal toy or ballpoint pen or summer flip flop ever made will end up there. It floats underneath the water's surface so it cannot be detected by satellite photos. Lurking like a mythic deep sea creature it roams the waters "like a big animal without a leash" barfing up garbage when it hits land. Another wonderful creation of modern humankind.

Photo of an albatross carcass from Algalita Marine Research Foundation

More haunting photos here.

In Flew Enza

2008-02-17T10:35:00.000-08:00

Gone viral. It has been a trying week dealing with that ancient beast, the Flu. It stampeded through, brutally trampling birthday plans and ruining Valentine's Day. Dad went down first and freaked us all out. Then Mom. Then Eden. Then my brother. Now Rob. Witnessing it firsthand, I can testify. It is bad stuff. Raging fever, bone-crushing pain, torturous headache, tubercular cough, nausea and, scariest for me with Eden, delirium. Looking right through me with these big fevered eyes, jabbering nonsensically. I just hate that. So far I have remained the unscathed nurse feeling my own life expectancy pared down by the blunt edge of worry, garlic-eating like a Sicilian and drinking raw vinegar to stay well. Casa de plague. I wouldn't wish this on anyone. Stay well, everybody.

Picture: Supersaturated superimposition of birds over a microscopic photo of the influenza A virus- by me.

Uncle Don

2008-02-05T20:56:00.000-08:00

My Uncle Don passed away this afternoon. My dad's closest in age brother, he had become somewhat estranged from his family, living for many years in a remote area outside of Spokane near the Idaho border so I don't have any recent memories. He was a more frequent visitor in my childhood and I have vivid recollections of him showing up out of the blue with his guitar and the hours-long playing sessions he and Dad enjoyed. A relentless stream of country and blues filling the house, beer and cigarettes, cousins clamoring around and it always seemed to culminate in a full on barbecue with milkshakes or some other looms-large-in-a-kid's-mind kind of spread. It always seemed like something special when he turned up. So I'm posting this photo of Don here with my aunt and cousin Ray in about 1971 or so. He doesn't have his guitar but this is just like I remember him. Hanging out, thoughtful, a little distant but with lots of music. So long, Uncle Don.

Devoted To Voting

2008-01-30T17:04:00.001-08:00

Even when I have mixed feelings about who and why. When I turned eighteen I was a self-identified anarchist. I chose forthrightly not to "participate in the system". In other words, I didn't vote and spent the next eight years grappling with Reagan reality. After four awful years, I did my civic duty though it made no difference. Even so, I have never failed to vote. Even when my faith in the integrity of our elections was shaken in 2004. This election holds so much weight. Bush almost gone. Almost gone. The nightmare will end but who will be the leader to guide the cutting edge of change? As much as I like the idea of a woman president as a symbol of a new era, I do NOT want an old-school, business-as-usual, wife-of-Bill whose most powerful attribute is her ability to inspire folks to vote against her. (I have actually seen Stop Hillary bumperstickers !) If anyone could mobilize a disillusioned Republican from a sit-it-out mentality, she could. I'm sorry but she is just too Last Century to lead the charge. Early on, I briefly played with the idea of voting for Ron Paul in the primary because I wasn't excited about any of the Dems and I'd love to see the country riding on a choice between two decent candidates. He at least elevates the discourse on the Republican side, a breath of fresh air stirring up the stale flotsam of rhetoric. A committed Constitutionalist, he speaks with sincerity, intelligence and conviction despite some crackpot ideas. His Libertarian leanings conjure my old freedom-loving anarchist "the best government is no government" ideals which I still carry except where it distinctly does not address the elephant in the room: corporatism and its corrosive effect on our democracy. So my serious vote has been veering toward the guy who's been talking straight up about all the stuff I worry about: John Edwards. Even though he's a wealthy Southern white guy whose name will always remind me of the 2004 debacle, he met the pertinent issues head on: break up corporate media, make universal health care a priority, reinvigorate the middle class, support small business, ease poverty and end the damn war. But now he's tossed in the towel and I'm left looking at maybe the only candidate who really has the potential to be the change we need. Young, energetic, black, idealistic and genuinely inspiring when he speaks about "strengthening the pillars of a just society" or "building accountable institutions, strong legislatures, honest police forces, free presses". Potent language. About coming together, building, guiding. Renew our standing in the world. Be the change we want to see. All good stuff. But words alone won't make it happen. Can inspiration? Our good old American tolerance and spirit of goodwill has been frayed under the strain of fear, suspicion and the us versus them fracture so methodically cultivated these last seven years. The time has come to reclaim our ideals as a country and I think Obama has the vision to see it happen. He has my vote.

P.S. 2/1/08 State Representative Mark Cohen, PA summed up my feeling when wrote in his Daily Kos piece The Coming Obama Explosion:

"An Obama victory would re-establish the Horatio Alger inspired myth that any American can grow up to be President. A Clinton victory would offer the more limited lesson for many that any relatively young wealthy former first lady with experience in high elective office can become President.

An Obama victory would be a victory for a fundamental change in direction. A Clinton victory would be a victory for political change when justified by a detailed study of the facts and careful reading of the political winds and the interests of wealthy campaign contributors".

Graphic of silkscreen limited edition print from OBEY Propaganda Engineering.

Full Rotation

2008-01-27T14:00:00.001-08:00

After literally three months of pain and limitation from an inflamed rotator cuff, I am back in full swing. All my angst about "deterioration", "fraying tissue" and "ultimately, surgery may be necessary" has washed away and I am reveling in full mobility. It's been less than 48 hours since I went to see our friend and fabulous bodyworker Susan McDaniel with an office in Sebastopol (susanmcdaniel@yahoo.com). She is an orthopedic massage therapist and knows the human musculature and joint system like a mama knows her baby. She gently rocked my entire shoulder, methodically reawakening every little muscle from it's traumatized trance. The big problemo was actually the very common condition of weak supraspinatus, infraspinatus and teres minor muscles probably exasperated by poor computer posture, painting and relentless guitar playing which led to "impingement" which is just a fancy way of saying hot barbs of nagging pain. She gave me a long stretchy rubberband thingy, called a Thera-Band, and told me just how to pull on it to easily strengthen those little guys. Three movements, five times each. That's all. It actually felt so good to do it the first time that I had to pace myself to keep from overdoing it. By nightfall I was 75 percent improved. Today I feel almost completely free. I am so grateful to Susan for her expertise. Hallelujah! I really don't know why I didn't go to her sooner. Now I can get my new year off to a better start.

Rosette from ancient Roman fragments as depicted in a hand-colored engraving published by Carlo Antonin in 1781.

Open Territory

2008-01-18T13:01:00.001-08:00

I just bought my first BIG canvas. A few, in fact. One of my resolutions this year was to start to work larger. I was researching substrates online and tracked down some biggies for around $130 each (not including shipping). Rob, the ever thrifty, called around town just to compare and on a fluke Riley St. was having a big 50% off sale. So this beauty is a gallery-wrapped whopping 4 feet by 6 feet and I got it for a song. 57 bucks. It was too big to fit in the car and it takes up a big chunk of my studio space. That's a lot of white for me. I've only painted up to 30" x 40". I also got two in a 38" x 48" size. So, my work's cut out for me. Painting new territory. It's giving me some crazy dreams and not a little anxiety but the time is ripe.

Timber!

2008-01-18T12:36:00.000-08:00

After enjoying some extended cheer gazing upon our glittering Christmas tree these past rainy gray weeks, we finally stripped it down a few days ago and toted it outdoors to become fragrant explosive kindling for the studio woodstove. Shhh. Don't tell Eden I posted this, she'd be mortified but it's just so funny. She's in the habit of sketching her feelings out on paper and then leaving the snippets tossed around for parental eyes. I guess she was none too happy about taking the tree down even though we kept it up two weeks into January. (Not an unheard of tradition in some parts of the world...Mexico, for instance). This was before the deed was done and she had me pegged as the likely culprit. Rob actually did the thing. I don't know why I'm wearing my glasses or what the frown means. Focused ill intent? Malevolence? That's our homemade angel looking on, aghast. Probably Eden's stand-in. She's seems to be over it now.

Brochure Torture

2008-01-12T11:08:00.000-08:00

Last Friday I began work on putting together a long overdue new brochure for the biz. For a few years now we have been sending stores a growing collection of product sheets, postcard add ons and desktop printed price lists with order sheets. Very agitating to my aesthetic and professional sensibilities but slick little booklets cost money and we still have lots of the other motley mix so we've put it off. Now that we have some new designs, I set to it with a fresh New Year's goal-busting attitude. I want to streamline. Simplify presentation. Pull it together with a consistency of design. An eight page booklet seemed an easy feat last week but it has waxed into a little hair pulling stress fest. I have decent Photoshop skills but when you are dealing with dozens of images of different dimensions, getting the color right, making sure code numbers are correct, accounting for full bleeds and trim lines, making constant design decisions which may or may not pan out a day later when you bring in another element, well...it can get a bit ugly. Adding to the mix is my shoulder's "stop clicking that mouse" pain nag, general household interruptions and desire to make it look more than just a bunch of stacked rectangles. I am reminded so vividly why I did not stay in the graphic arts field. So, I'm almost done. The brochure is... OK. But, boy, do I appreciate what you pay graphics folks for. I'd almost pay money not to do it. Maybe next time I should.

Body Rhythm Goddess

2008-01-12T10:16:00.000-08:00

I painted this image for the cover of Kris Freewoman's DVD, a "Body Rhythm Goddess-A Dance Ritual for Body and Soul", a different kind of workout incorporating Yoga, African Fusion dance, Pilates and deep relaxation created with the intention to reconnect us with our own inner rhythms and inspire us to step into the "magical circle of joyful fitness". Sounds very juicy. She wanted the four elements active in the image which I think I accomplished without being too contrived. The shapes in the border were also inspired by the elements. More info about the DVD, where to purchase it and all can be found at her website.

The blue border looks curved because I just took a photo of the booklet.

yellow and red

2008-01-12T09:42:00.000-08:00

Thorsten from Germany asked to use one of my images for his CD. He chose to sample an abstract "Realm of Childhood" which I think goes really well with his ambient atmospheric sound, some of which can be heard here.

Camper Van Cracker

2008-01-01T12:57:00.000-08:00

Saturday night Rob and I went down to the Mystic Theater in Petaluma to see an old fave band. Camper Van Beethoven/Cracker is really two bands with some interchangeable members centering around main man, David Lowery. Camper Van's been around since the early Eighties which was when we got to know them. We had an odd mix tape of their stuff and liked their sound so much we wore it out. They're hard to describe. They've called themselves "surrealist absurdist folk" and they do mix it up. Punk, ska, alt rock with a country folk twang. Some high energy violin weaving throughout and occasional accordion flourishes thrown in give a kind of Eastern European flavor. Lowery's got this boyish voice with a nice flat edge perfect for deadpan delivery of dryly goofy lyrics. (Unfortunately, several shows I've seen at the Mystic have had poor sound mixing and the vocals were a bit too receded and fuzzed out for my taste. That's my one complaint). Their songs are funny with dark undertones, political threads and bright flashes of stark beauty. It was like a teenage dream to be at front and center watching music you love breaking over you three feet from your face. Too cool. After a break, they reconvened in a new constellation as Cracker and played a satisfying eclectic set. Highlights included audience faves "Eurotrash Girl" and "Low". These guys together can really build a wall of sound. For the encore they did a hypnotic Brides of Neptune and then segued into an unknown (to me) song that waxed into a sonic juggernaut. I swear, it was like the launching of the mothership. Needless to say my ears were very wacked afterwards despite earplugs but oh so worth it.

Mystic Marquee

2007-12-30T22:11:00.001-08:00

The Mystic Theater in Petaluma, California. A pretty great place to see bands if you want an intimate setting and don't mind blowing your eardrums out. This place used to be The Plaza back in the Seventies and Eighties, a movie house with plush red interior that screened a double feature plus every few days. It was where all us kids would congregate to smuggle in booze, see rockumentaries and thrash in the aisles. It's where I saw Tommy and Quadrophenia. Eraserhead. Freaks. Odorama. Pink Flamingos. The Holy Mountain. All the weirdest films. Classics, too. The burning of Atlanta is something on the big screen. Rob and I saw The Lady Eve with Peter Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck on our second date. You could buy carrot cake and tea instead of popcorn and coke. Now it's a club but still pretty cool. I'm glad it wasn't razed in the foolish years when they set the bulldozers on anything with character, like the old Cal in Santa Rosa. Vintage infrastructure put to new use. It's what we need more of.

Chinatown

2007-12-30T21:59:00.001-08:00

Since we were a block away from Chinatown we walked along Grant for a hour or so, window shopping, eating and embarrassing Eden by taking photos in a blatant manner.

Lucky Pigs

2007-12-30T21:57:00.000-08:00

I am a sucker for store window reflections. I snap them up. Something about an interior and an exterior mixing their colors in light and reflection to make something new, abstract and pleasing to the eye is satisfying.

Cityscape

2007-12-30T21:48:00.001-08:00

Transported

2007-12-30T20:11:00.001-08:00

Friday we drove to San Francisco to deliver a painting. One With The Sweetness, transported. It was strange taking her up into one of the tallest skyscrapers in the City, the sleek brown Bank of America building on California Street with its hushed and gleaming interior. Powering up the elevator pushed all the blood to my toes and made me lightheaded but that was nothing to what was ahead. After we delivered our package we took a moment to glance out of an enormous conference room window at the literally breathtaking view and a deeply familiar vision met my eyes. Stretched out before me was a perfectly vivid scene straight from my dreams. A profound and particular dream actually, one I had six years ago (see my blog post Premonition Recognition). It varied only it that the scene was expanded slightly, the frame enlarged, since I was seeing the TransAmerica pyramid instead of looking out from it, but all other physical elements were in place: being high up, looking out through a wall of glass at the vast San Franciscan cityscape, Coit Tower, the jumble of structures and avenues and a clear long distance view of the bay with Alcatraz Island resting out upon the water. Eerie. Spine tingly. There was an unusual structure adjacent to us that added a new element. The 580 California Street building features an odd mansard roof (think Gothic spooky) embellished with three faceless wraiths or "corporate goddesses" or fates (?). In researching these beauties, I discovered that there are twelve in all but these three look down upon something known as the Banker's Heart, a large abstract sculpture by artist Masayuki Nagare. A heart-shaped hunk of glossy black granite titled "Transcendence" , graces the entrance to the Bank of America center. If I knew this on Friday, I would have made a small pilgrimage (stepping out into the bitter cold courtyard) to see it because the prominent substance in my vision dream was a huge hunk of glossy black obsidian. All this probably may sound like stretching for connections but to me it reads beautifully. It's something wordless and important about the fate of humanity. Any way I look at it it's an interesting view.

Love and Loot

2007-12-26T17:13:00.001-08:00

A sweet and exhausting holiday. Every year I'm either driving the Christmas train or being dragged under its wheels. This year the relentless holiday momentum was pinching at the edges more than I like. I was lacking verve and couldn't quite mastermind the hundred projects I usually can when I'm in top form. Heaps of xmas detritus gathering on every surface in the house, betrayed the general level of disarray. I abandoned any pretense of organization early on and cut myself some slack. The basics got done. A big charmingly encrusted tree, lots of mysterious packages, poorly wrapped but wrapped nonetheless, in a growing pile under its branches. No cards sent but some photos and a few "What We Did This Year" letters (thank you, Rob). It all came together miraculously by the big evening. The house was semi-tidy and I got to the store for eggnog and whip cream. We ended up with a lovely Christmas Eve on our hands. Potato latkes with sour cream and homemade applesauce (thanks Peg and Dave). An impromptu visit from my bro, sappy secular carols ringing out from the kitchen, hot cocoa and eggnog, a small pyramid of sweeties saved for special (thanks, Karen), angelica wine and chocolate cordial. Per tradition, the girls each opened one special gift. India a pair of psychedelic furry slippers. Eden a bento box tucked into a cat-faced furoshiki sack. Then a night walk through the neighborhood to spy out lights. The girls were finally ordered to bed, we did the Santa thing and then slept until almost 7AM! Unheard of. A fun morning tearing at and disemboweling gifts, gorging on chocolate and then subjecting the girls to a high protein breakfast. We made soup and salad later on and took it three blocks over to Mom and Dad's where we sat down and ate it up. Good wine, more gifts, homemade cheesecake and champagne all rounded out with some strong coffee. Lots of laughing and exclamations of how lucky we are. A solid good time in appreciation of the best stuff there is: family, food and fun. Hope everyone had as good a day.

Photo: My loot. Among other things, a book of Leaf Poems by India, a beeswax candle from Eden and a lovely Cosmic Blaster ray gun with "Out Of This World Space Gun Sounds" from Rob (something I saw in Santa Cruz and wanted).

Erzulie Rising

2007-12-09T19:52:00.000-08:00

When I was first introduced to Erzulie, the Haitian Aphrodite, I was smitten. An insatiable Voodoo love goddess of beauty, dancing, jewelry and pretty clothes, fond of luxury and the sensual pleasures, promiscuous and yet demanding faithfulness, fierce protector of children, prone to rages and occasional fits of complaining and all this tempered by her being so deeply burdened with the sorrows of the world that she weeps uncontrollably. Venus, my dearest deity suddenly rounded out into this dark ally, wonderfully complex, contradictory and real.

So, I painted an image of Erzulie inspired by a poem composed by my collaborator, Amy Trussell. Rising up out of a streaming river, crowned with doves and trailing white lace upon the currents, she caught the eye of Jayson Fann, the creative director of the International Arts Festival at Esalen and Visual Arts Director of First Night Monterey who is launching a project called Waters of Life, an emerging international educational effort addressing the issue of global water pollution. He has invited me to allow Erzulie to be one of many water images contributed by artists to be transformed into freestanding murals by schoolchildren and then used to promote "care, respect and practical strategies for protecting our planet's most precious resource". It will eventually be a moving installation that travels the globe. The kickoff is happening on New Year's Eve in Monterey and will feature a performance by Oshun Priestess Luisah Teish.

Erzulie knows where she wants to be.

Heart of Erzulie Painting by moi.

Sweetness In The World

2007-12-09T14:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was surprisingly languid and golden after the biting cold wind on Friday. It made for a good day to slide wide the door at my Open Studio. Many small indulgences. Paint, radiant wood heat, burning candles, good conversation, chocolate, port and winter sunshine. The cherry was meeting a vibrant young couple from the City who are now the new owners of the (coveted by many) painting, One With The Sweetness. I have had countless inquiries about this piece since I painted it and some generous offers to purchase it early on, before I was ready to let go. Just a few weeks ago I made the decision to place this one in the studio. The time was ripe and they were it. Some work feels like progeny. One of my children. Release is twofold. A small wrench but a greater sowing. Casting. Like a light or a seed. Makes for a good day.

One With The Sweetness-Ostapuk private collection, SF

New Babies

2007-12-07T10:34:00.000-08:00

Overdue but looking good with all their fingers and toes. We brought them home last week and had a small pyramid of boxes (18!) in our tiny kitchen for days but Rob consolidated and moved some to the studio where they are now available. Thanx to all who participated in our focus group. Your preferences really did sway the final decision. You may notice one of the designs was not included in the voting. We actually goofed up and forgot to list it with the others but it was a top contender in not only my book but in Rob's and more importantly our rep Ginger's so it was allowed to slip in at the end of the race.

Time Being

2007-12-06T19:01:00.002-08:00

It's been a matter of weeks now that I've been eschewing the computer or at least keeping my hands off the keyboard with the goal of persuading an inflamed rotator cuff to ease up. It's somewhat better but still painful. Ergonomic I have not been so I suffer the consequences. No writing or playing guitar or even painting much. Sigh. In the face of such "freedom", existential angst threatens to set in like rigor mortis and so I am vigilant, steering relentlessly toward any small measure of the sweet and pleasurable. A nectar seeking bee, happy it rained and enjoying the sun.

Ginko Splendor

2007-11-13T09:25:00.001-08:00

Sunday the rain broke and we were looking at a stunning Fall day. The ginko around the corner from our house told us the conditions were perfect for taking a walk over to McDonald Avenue to revel in the falling gold. There are dozens of these trees lining the street and when they turn it is truly magnificent. Especially when the bark is black and wet and the sun catches all the stray raindrops. Lothlorien!

Quiet Endeavor

2007-11-12T17:01:00.001-08:00

I got my first really rainy Open Studio this last Saturday but it felt delicious to be holed up out there in my magical space with the wood stove churning away, radiating to contest the open door and splattery wind. Just sketching, painting, playing guitar and singing to the rain. Since it was so crappy out I wasn't expecting anyone to show and settled into my get-some-work-done mode. I finished my violin case and painted two new smalls. Then I did get visitors and enjoyed some good conversation, catching up and even sent one of my babies off to a new home! A good day.

Painting "Swoon" now in the private collection of Joanna Palmer, one of my angels.

Stand By Me

2007-11-08T20:17:00.000-08:00

I haven't been feel too great these past days. Spending too much time browsing around the web. Found this and just had to put it up. Some damn good guitar playing.

Hilarious Hideousness

2007-11-07T17:52:00.000-08:00

Read a really funny blog entry about a 1977 JC Penney's catalog recently excavated from an attic during a ceiling fan repair. Shocking images with witty commentary. Too good.

Thanx to Neatorama.

This Sends Me

2007-11-07T17:30:00.000-08:00

I've always loved Sam Cooke's voice but never seen him in action. In spite of the lip-syncing and the 50's sentiment, boy is he smooth. Those poor coiffed and crew cut teens in the audience. He must be doing something to their circuitry cuz he sure does something to mine. Oh. My. God.