25.100 (satellites surround us)

19.100 (thank you)

I've been thinking a lot lately about what art is. Not so much its textbook definition as what qualifies out here in the real world. Can I take a picture of something boring and create a digital collage of it to call it my own creation? I've done this, and I'm pretty sure I'll do it again. I don't know if it's right, but there it is all the same.

I have this stack of stuff--old books, pretty papers, little tids and bits I've saved for one reason or 20 others--and I've been itching to use it. To turn it into something, anything than what it already is.

And so I've started making something, anything. Art books or journals or garbage, I suppose some might label this project. Judge for yourself, or save that judgment for a rainy day. I've sent two of these out into the world, which is to say I've given them to a couple friends to whom I owe a lot of love. This is just the beginning.

Art book #1, for Toni S. (Tucson)

* * *

Art Book #2, for Sunny B. (Australia)

17.100 (south by southwest)

Come July, that south/southwestern sky will be filled with a thousand clouds, easily and quickly swollen, rolling through with but one agenda: lose weight now.

"wait," she interjected

This task, this 100 arts in 100 days, let me just take a moment and say this is nearly impossible. Add the expletive of your choosing. I'm actually mostly accomplishing the art of it, but haven't been able to do any posting lately. And I find myself without any valid excuse. Well perhaps they're valid, but also unoriginal. I'll be catching up by trodding along. Trodding can't be right. Trudging, perhaps.

Don't give up. That advice could be directed out or inwardly.

16.100: la pesanteur... (l'escaliers)

...es la meme ici, ou la, non?

15.100: once when we were trees (message)

watercolor on paper, 6x8"

(i drifted away from the group, just a smidge...i found myself wanting to play with my regular sort of themes rather than pinging off the group. i'm sure i'll drift back soon.)

14.100: lemon jelly (great moments in cinema, #61)

watercolor & ink on layered vellum, 5.5x8.5"

(i drifted away from the group, just a smidge...i found myself wanting to play with my regular sort of themes rather than pinging off the group. i'm sure i'll drift back soon.)

13.100

it's difficult to explain
really, i shouldn't try. too hard.

imagine a dress, no,
a prison, or trash swimming through
sunlight streaming down
across between around
the bars holding you from it,
back away until the dress
feels less like an anchor,
but your skin, finally.

11.100 (linear convergence)

". . . these lines, when extended, will all converge at one single point somewhere in space. . ."

12.100 / twos

looping back to 6.100: shopping for the impossible

is this the droid you're looking for?

detail, the fallen & the forgotten

I may not be there just yet with this one.

7.100: good times, good times

Summer vacation,
my first day. I slept in. Late.
Spent the rest watching

girl cousins play Wii,
share inside jokes, jump around,
collapse with laughter.

6.100

Stay tuned...
(Have an idea, can't quite execute it, so I'll keep playing with it and see where I land.)

5.100: how not to get lost

I tried to explain
what lost might look like
to him, how he couldn't
just turn around,
walk home.

"The trees look different,"
I told him, "backwards."

"So I'll walk backwards."
The duh was implied.

4.100: plasticity

plasticity
watercolor on paper, 9x12"

Today's theme is change. Well. Okay, not change. Same. As in process, or action, or ritual.
If you know me, you know that human anatomy fascinates me. The brain in particular, ironically, takes up a hefty amount of this fascination. Neural connections, synapses, data organization, muscle memory, plasticity. The grooves left behind by repeated thought patterns. The new grooves etched into place each time I handle a new task, take a different route to work, solve a problem. I have no idea if I have captured any of that in this painting, but it gave me a couple hours to sit and ponder.

I think the only way you can change the world is to change yourself, one thought at a time.

3.100: anchored between the known and the unknown

anchored between the known and the unknown

larger view here

I wonder how often, in this project in particular, I'll experience this sort of unexpected synchroncity. I realize that sounds silly. Synchronicity by definition should be unexpected, and if you show me any two happenings, chances are good I'll be able to draw more similarities between the two than not. Still, the 3rd video installment of this summer, entitled sky | road | sky, seems comfortable and familiar either through movement or linearity or whathaveyou. Shrug.

I found this scene on Saturday while I was out & about. I did not have my camera with me and told myself the next time I swung by I'd check and see if the flags were still a-flyin'. Lots of thoughts flapped in the wind along with the snapping of all these plastic points. New Orleans and the people there, art and all that entails, the desire for so much that I am beginning to doubt I'll be able to pull it all together in time. But I'll keep pushing for it, for all of it.

2.100: borrowed fictions

borrowed fictions **
ephemera, acrylic & ink, 6x7"
the poem pictured:

pursedlips
betweenus
tangleof
pink
tapped

(go here for larger glimpse)

other words in this piece:

jagged bits framing locked
stare listen flakes ten
brass judge [blank] velvet
constellation upwardthru keys face
thigh peak bobbypin marvel

if you'd like to see your pane poem revealed, send it to me and i'll arrange and photograph it and either send it to you or post if for everyone to see.

A few of the word-based entries from day 1 really struck me, and I found those words swimming through my thoughts yesterday. I knew I was headed in the right direction after watching John's entry for day 2.

Last fall, I fell in love with Austin Kleon's "Newspaper Blackout" poetry. And I like the idea of interactive poetry or something like post-publication collaboration. Expect to see more in this vein as the summer steams ever onward...and likely beyond.

** The words selected to appear as panes in this piece were culled from Steve's fiction "On Precision," Stormy E's poem "The Unthinkable," Kendra Bartell's poem "a tangle," Cathryn Esten's poem "Icy Hand," Neha Bawa's "when?," and words that came to mind while I viewed John's video "face." The feed for Kendra's piece displays her poem as one run-on moment and splices together several words without spaces in between them. I loved reading it that way and was surprised to see "proper" spacing & line breaks at her site. I included the spliced words in my Bingo version.

Post Script
It didn't strike me until just now, but I likely channeled the inspiration for this piece in part from a poet who served as my mentor for 2 undergrad courses. He has spun a new journal called Spiral Orb.

1.100: didn't we come through here already?

And so it begins. John posted his kick-it-off video and it is beautiful in every way. It got me thinking not just about snow, but how reality is so relative. I had several immediate gut reactions and duly journaled them. I have more to say, but it just feels like jibberjabber and so I'll keep it mum for now. Please be sure to make the rounds to the other collaborators' works!

didn't we come through here already?
watercolor on canvas panel 6x8"

tick tock ticktock

We're within grasp.
I'm excited. I've been reading all the artists' statements and recent posts et cetera. Perhaps this summer will spark a new trajectory.

Well, no "perhaps" about it. Something will happen.

a few words about moi

I spend my days, most of them anyhow, teaching elementary art at a small charter school on the seedy side of town. Actually, it isn't nearly as seedy as it used to be, but its reputation carries ever-onward. I'm still surprised that I landed this job at all--I don't have the pedigree usually associated with elementary art teachers, or teachers, or artists really. It was one of those right place, right time sort of moments. As I type this, what's mostly on my mind is that I have 8 days of teaching left in my second year. Plus another day to clean my room. Then a week or so of relative freedom before jumping into an abbreviated summer school session.

I'm rather new to thinking of myself as an artist, and it's a title/adjective that still surprises me. I enjoy painting (sumi-e, abstracts, experimental) and lately I've been into taking a mixed media approach. I've been writing poetry for many years, and in the last couple of them I've been a tad more serious about it...which is to say the poems have moved away from scraps of paper to notebooks, and I've taken quite a few workshops/seminars in that same time. I've been taking pictures for many years as well and have quite a range of subjects that interest me. I tend to shoot color for its own sake. I like unusual portraits. And I try to capture moments that most people miss while they blink.

I like to explore that place where language and visual art intersects. In fact that idea, intersection, has been a big them for me lately. So has "shift."

And now I think you're all caught up. Happy 100 Days to you and you and you!

a new endeavor, as if i needed one

Having read about this 100 Days project a week ago (thanks Claudine!), here I am rarin' to go with my own version. I think it's just the thing I need this summer to distract me from tonsils and sunburns and worrying about the economic state of this state where I dwell.