Everyone We Know: Mammal

I am working on the sketchbook project 3 with the ArtHouse Co Op. I didn't know that, and for the rest of you who might not either, the two guys who started this are fellow SCAD students. They do different projects, all of which I love the convenience of. I am in love with the simplicity behind the whole scheme, in fact. If you're interested: arthousecoop.blogspot.com. I encourage you to try out one of the projects. Some of us are experiencing true winters for the first times in our lives, and this is a wonderful way to avoid idle hands, and sleeping for more than 12 hours a night, more than 3 times a week.

I am anticipating new direction; this means I am not making books. I want to focus on color, line, and economy with one medium, on a small, sweet scale. I want to draw, but I want thread to be my tool, focusing on the ways to use color theory in this medium, and the gestures required in making a picture.

The name of the ArtHouse project is Everyone We Know. I am sketching with thread, and there will be text involved (typewritten, not thread). The deadline for the project is February 15. So, until then, you will be seeing my relatively unedited thoughts on anthropomorphisms: human projection onto the categorization of biology, or personifications in nature

If i started from the beginning it would be

Specimen 1: The Mammal

Everyone we know can be qualified by one word.

a proposal

The Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York, has a grant for book artists. The deadline was for Nov. 15 and I sent in my proposal. It included a written proposal, budget, and mock up for the intended book. Here's what I did from October to November.

Guess who's back:

This is the mock up, and includes illustrations of the pages in photoshop,

layout for the printed layers, and fabric swatches.

This Little Skeleton might just seem like more of the same, but it is something that I feel needs the chance to be produced on a larger scale. I would also love the opportunity to incorporate old books and linens, since this is the direction my other work is heading. There are just so many materials already at our disposal...and we treat that literally. We waste so much. I don't want to make a huge statement. I don't think sustainability has the novel luxury of statement making, anymore. Our new evolution is inherently regarding a resource as its life span and resting place. The artistic process can be beautifully adapted to making old things new-process in place of processing and discarding. We give so little thought to where everything and everyone goes at its end- from wastefulness to our morbid interpretations of memorials as headlines-I don't want to get too universal. (I hear myself making everything the same, too often). But, at the least, everything and everyone deserves the same consideration and respect, including the future that we have no tangible rights to.

I hear back by February 1st.

Proximity is Sustainable

I miss my family.

meetings as memory and snow flakes

I played games as a child, where I was moving without touching the ground. We drove around in cars made from the tops of gift boxes, and we built bridges from books so that we could cross the hot lava without losing a limb. I don't know how we rationalized what 'counted' as safe ground, and what didn't. I just know that there was always a we, because these games were not fun without one, and you can't decide what really 'counts' without one. The rules seem permanent when there's a consensus.
I have just been thinking about staying in touch, and the impossibility of truly remaining there. People are splinters, aside from the words we use, and the sentimentality we prescribe to every person we make love to, or eat lunch with.
So here is to a good first impression, repeated like pi, or ground hog's day, to time spent reborn as memory, and to our mind's arbitrary reflexes:




"How many of these exquisitely constructed jewels do we heedlessly crush and shatter unconsciously during a brief walk in the snow and how crude and imperfect seem the productions of human minds and hands when compared to those formed by the blind forces of nature."
-Jean M. Thompson

The Compound Umbel Looks Like a Leaky Umbrella

When the stalks all arise at the same level, the inflorescence is an umbel. An umbel is compound when it is repeatedly branched.

This book is coptic bound, and approximately 4x5". It's a blank book, inside, and was altered from less than one cover of a reader's digest book, some packing materials for a multi-tool, tracing paper, plant diagrams, and stamped text. Happy Birthday to Melinda, a bit late.

"Multi-tasking is the name of your generation."

One of the most serendipitous events of my life just occurred over a couple hour phone conversation with someone I am very excited to work for. I don't usually make these posts about personal events, but this is the point in my life where the conversation converges with the craft...and it is the most exciting thing in the world. I am afraid to address this new treasure in my life in too much detail...and I will leave it at that, and close by saying that book binding will be involved, but so will many things.



March Already, I Must Give A Party
from Cocktails With Brueghel at the Museum Cafe by Sandra Stone

There's a reason for the house to resonate like this,
like a catacomb. Company's due.

I don't need an excuse to doll myself in clothes of the deceased,
to implant a vase with green lilies.

Mirthlessly now, the chime, the assembly, totemic on the doorstep,
the porch light's blaze, an inverted horn.

Shall we begin with the salver heaped with place cards,
our names impaled on a pin? A refuge, the niceties.

Please be so kind, would you be so kind
as to sink completely into the plumped sofas,

the scintillants over there. Tell me about your children
and lives, the one, so demonstrable.

I love the sycophantic murmur at the table,
the tyrannical eye of the connoisseur

fresh from the auction, don't you?
-the baffle of curators, conservators, aestheticians,

the eminence grise, that tenant with his salient wit,
the complement of picks and tongs,

bon mot and bon bons, salts in their cellars,
the ceaseless ping of crystal, don't you?

The banality of candles. Also, the flame that gutters,
globules that wax the limbs of inherited candlesticks,

that clog shallow pocks bored by artisans
to create an impression of worms,

where real mites are interred.
They nibble inaudibly, they impinge on my nerves.

A rote welcome to all.
A merciless Chin Chin.

Adaptations of Birds: On Winged Things and Others in the Sky

I am disappointed in the quality of these, the only photos I have, of this book. I was meeting a deadline of sorts, and sacrificed documentation for detail. Left is before, right is after. The inside pages are collages, paintings, and blank pages paying homage to the beautiful things in the sky. I'm happy that my work is taking direction again. I moved across the country, and for the time before, and a little after the move, I was all over the place. This book took shape in a way that I am familiar with, but found me desiring cohesion apart from the context of the owner. Most of my books are gifts, and some of them turn into a more personal documentation of my relationship with the owner.
The inside pages are mostly new to the book, coptic bound, and glued by end pages to the cover. The folios consist of pages from the original book, tracing paper, gouache paintings of walking patterns of birds, pictures from old books, and so on. The cover is altered by an octagonal recess, covered with green graph paper, with a layer of tracing paper on top. On the underside of the tracing paper are penciled diagrams of war planes, and on the upperside is the stamped text of the title.