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Pfaffdom

2010-03-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

Judy PFAFFFFFF!

All year long we've been hearing about how Judy Pfaff would be visiting the school this spring. She's a big name and so there was a correspondingly large build-up. We had a lottery for individual critiques and I was one of the eight lucky peeps who got to meet with Judy for half an hour.She was a delightful, and warm, guest who managed to inspire *and* frighten me.

We spent a little while talking about Pilchuck, where she has spent some time, and a bit longer talking about the central California coast and the mysticism of the Northwest. However, the first questions she asked me, right off the bat, were about my birthmark. What is it? Where did it come from? Do I know how special it is?

Then we looked at my work. We spent the most time talking about my photos and one of my new prints. "Your work lives in a place where the wind blows." She mentioned memory and romance "but not in the icky way." She was attracted to many of the same things that most people are attracted to in my work - the unexplained spaces, the strangeness, the things I don't know how to talk about. I don't always know how to make these pieces, but I always know when I've made one.

It was an intense half hour. She would interrupt me in a sly way and ask me disarmingly tangential questions: Are you married? Do you have kids? "You seem to be taking time to learn things you didn't get the chance to learn."

She stayed longer than she planned to and then when she left she blew me a kiss from the doorway.

Pfaff also gave a lecture while she was here. Her lecture was casual and sweet. She didn't use the mic "oh this is awful, can I take it off?" or laser pointer (she just walked up to the images and pointed.) I've never had the chance to see her installations in person but each image of her 3D work flattened into a beautiful painting or drawing when shown as a slide. This Flusso and Riflusso was my favorite.

Here's what she talked about that frightened and inspired me - she's never sold a single installation. She was in huge debt before she won the Macarthur fellowship and none of her installations survive intact. "Don't do that to yourself" she said. I'm afraid of more debt. I'm afraid of investing in work on that scale. BUT, I had a quick chat with Chris Barnard about my fear and he mentioned that grad school and the debt we incur here is part of how things are different for our generation of artists. SO I guess I'm already investing in work on that scale. On with the show.

The other night I re-watched the Art:21 episode that features Judy Pfaff and her work. It's the Romance episode.

2010-03-17T11:26:00.000-07:00

"Your ideas are not weaker for being subject to change" - Kiki Smith via Jen Graves

Lithography is Fun

2010-03-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

Here are some more photos and notes from Jack Damer's visit to Indiana University:

Kelly and Andrew drying the stone

Color, color, color.

We mixed color inks with magnesium carb and 25% transparent on the stone, if we were going to use a photo plate then mag carb and #7 or 8 varnish was suggested. For our stone, we transfered a Xerox collage to the stone with wintergreen oil and then added and subtracted to the image with hand work.

Notes on printing color reduction - roll up with black and then roll up with color, print first color then roll up with black again. Dry, rosin, talc, rub with clean rag and gum the stone then reduce. We used a variety of reduction tools to scrape away the image: razor blade, sandpaper, litho stone chip with carborundum and water, exato, etc. Re etch with 12 drops acid to 2oz gum, paint on and mush around. Then wet whole stone with gum and leave on for a good while (30 min?). Wipe with cheese cloth, buff, wash out with lithotine and roll up with second color.

Jack and Ed roll up the second color.

Jerome Witkin

2010-03-04T18:34:00.000-08:00

Last week Jerome Witkin spoke at IU. It was a Friday night after a long, rich, day of lithography and so I have to admit that I nodded off for maybe 7 of the 120 minute talk in the daaaarrrrrk, comfortable seat filled, auditorium. BUT, I thoroughly enjoyed Jerome's thoughts on being an artist.

He grew up as a painting prodigy and went to the Skowhegan School in his teens. He is a direct artistic descendant of Western Europe. His monumental figurative paintings often address cruelty, war, and trauma. Sometimes he paints simple portraits of friends, but everything is painted with a lush weight. Amazingly, his twin brother is photographer Joel Peter Witkin.

Favorite quote of the night - "It is a privilege to paint such difficult things."

programmer or artist?

2010-03-03T22:22:00.000-08:00

Rhizome posted an interview with the architect of OpenProcessing. They discuss some interesting questions that I was mulling over with a friend... :

With digital works, where is the line between programmer and artists?

How does access to open source code change the perception of digital artworks?

Does the fact that you can endlessly replicate or appropriate parts of the original devalue the art? Ahhh... endless replication... what does that remind me of? oh right, printmaking.

Jack Damer's Visit

2010-03-02T08:12:00.000-08:00

Jack Damer teaches at University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is an expert lithographer and came down to B-town last week to teach us some stone-cold awesome litho tricks. The first day we discussed the history of lithography and viewed some of the hundreds of prints that Jack brought. Then we all bundled into the car and carpooled to Thai buffet for lunch.

At lunch we talked about movies, the proliferation of visual culture and the self consciousness of making art for artists. There is a general sense that some art is so coded and steeped in references that only other artists will understand the full impact of the work. Some people worry that this devalues the experience of art; if viewers can't understand the full meaning of the work then why make such complex, nuanced work? I see it another way - If I value the creation of my art and the complex thoughts that inspire it then it can never be undervalued. Even if I were to make simple explicit, didactic art I still can't be guaranteed that viewer will read my every intended meaning. But if one person takes something away from the experience of seeing my art then I've accomplished my goal. WE PROVOKE, we converse, we send forth our ideas and someone will listen. We just have to believe in the power of our voice.

After lunch we went back to the studio and processed a stone and I got a talking-to about my sponging technique. Jack is a very solid, knowledgeable teacher. He has the relaxed demeanor that comes with confidence. I took many, many notes and am excited to get to work using them!

Here are a few of the prints that Jack brought, all lithographs.

artdaily - distraction

2010-03-01T14:09:00.000-08:00

Lovely image from artdaily.com - (pleasant distraction on the left)

Visiting Artists

2010-02-28T18:46:00.000-08:00

We've had four visiting artists this semester: Deb Oden, Adriane Herman, Tanja Softic,
and just this past week, Jack Damer. I wish I had taken more notes. I always wish I could take more notes. There is some solace in the fact that I just purchased a new camera and so had the opportunity to take a lot of photos during Jack's visit. All of the visiting artists were genuine, generous people who took a great interest in us and offered us a great deal of their time. I'm very grateful to have met them all. With each visitor I feel like I know more and more about what is going on in Printmaking in places outside of sweet, wee, Bloomington. Here's a bit of their work.

Jack Damer

Tanja Softic

Adriane Herman

Deb Oden

Breaking the Bubble

2008-07-22T23:30:00.000-07:00

There is a bubble surrounding the place where I live. This place was designed to focus inward, direct your gaze to the things and people that you share this place with. The sense that there is nothing to the world around us, everything that is happening is happening here. I haven't allowed myself to buy into the bubble 100%. I'm trying to keep my world global, well at least a little perspective on the world at large. There are a few things that are keeping me feeling grounded in the outside world; NPR, yoga...

...this place...

...canning season...

...the islands......and this girl.

What I'm Making of my Time

2008-07-20T21:37:00.000-07:00

There's an exhibit that I saw in NYC in May that my mind keeps coming back to revisit, Paul Chan's The 7 ~~Lights~~. There was one piece that I just can't stop thinking about, it was based on a Caravaggio still life (see above). A projected video, vignetted to make it look like a film, the piece was a brightly colored crude representation of a basket of fruit. As the piece progressed, the fruit floated up, shivered and slowly separated itself from the others and floated away. I've been ruminating on it for a few months now and am getting started on a few still images of objects that are floating, based on the Paul Chan piece and my previous still lifes of market vegetables. They will eventually be large scale cyanotypes and I'm excited about the results.

In the print shop I've been experimenting with more silography (waterless litho) and combining it with sand blasted intaglios and monotype. More and more my work is evolving to include multiple methods of printing. I've been examining all of my past work and discovering an ongoing theme of isolation. I enjoy isolation and I'm trying to come up with a good way of talking about it without sounding creepy. There is a sense of fear of surrounding isolation but I find it fascinating, almost thrive on the existence of space in my life. I'm guessing that this is an inherent trait of introverts; I enjoy my alone time and can't really be happy without it. How do I articulate this without sounding...mmm...lonely. It's the balance of connection and disconnect that propels a lot of my life. My friend Kelly referred to this part of my persona as 'anthropological observer'. That I sit back and observe interactions; I pull myself out of situations, sometimes while I'm still in their midst. I can't stop my mind from working this way but understand that it very effectually separates me from others. I explore this phenomenon in my visual work.

Currently I'm making a series of prints that illustrate the separation that occurs between the tangible and virtual worlds, the mental and physical spaces. I recorded the gestures that my hand makes with the computer mouse when I'm at my day job. I then played these movements back in Illustrator creating lines for each of the gestures; a kind of automated drawing. These images are then printed over hand drawn images of bodies and hands. The last layer is a monotype that brings another element of the hand back into the piece. Automatic and intended line come together to complete the print.

Art Camp Catch-up

2008-06-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

I'm spending my days in the lush green confines of a 54 acre compound. I'm staying on campus for the summer and am having a great time trying to maintain a balanced life in the center of a place designed to over stimulate the senses. The school I work for is world renowned for...well... a lot of things.. but mostly it's world renowned as the place to go to learn about creating art with glass.

My life up here is bucolic and chill. I have a pretty sweet situation, and I'm grateful for it. Most days speed by in a mixture of work and fun with only occasional stress. I live in a staff cabin that is probably 16' by 12', just enough room for a bed, a desk and me. My commute consists of a seven minute walk down the meadow to my office.

I chose to work on campus this summer in the hopes of shaking my life up a bit. Change is so good for the mind and soul. In the last two months things have definitely shaken. I've met some really sweet amazing people and had the opportunity to absorb a lot of new printing techniques. Mostly I'm reminded of the intense potential for happiness that comes from getting to do what you love every day.

I'm reinvigorated, and can't wait to see what happens next.

This blows my mind

2007-12-17T13:30:00.000-08:00

It's all of the problems of the future in one incident -
copyright protection, secure encryptions, mob dynamics, chaos theory, user driven content, and there's even art in there somewhere (graphical representation of an 'illegal number')

Totally sci-fi.

Where the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks Have Ya Been?

2007-12-09T21:00:00.000-08:00

Sorry to be so MIA.

Super duper busy and no internet at the new house. (talk about culture shock) The neighbors have wireless but I'm a little wary of using it unless I have to.

So let me recap some of the last month or so - Auction - It's over, we grossed 1.4 mil and net about 1 mil. It was a really amazing evening, a little on the debaucherous side. I played it pretty low key what with the huge amounts of stress and new sobriety and all. But I looked fantastic, if I may say so myself, striking. And I got to spend some time in the Presidential suite of The Westin, (hotel where the auction is) and the room was about the size of my parent's house. (picture is at the preview)

Then the next two days were spend emptying, patching and painting my apartment. Very. Sad. I will really miss my downtown life and that apartment was pretty special to me, but on to bigger and better things like a debt free life. Four days after the auction was my last day in my apartment, the day before I left for Hawaii and the week that my dear friend Joe moved to New York, it was a lot of emotions to juggle.

Then I went to Hawaii, a dreamy place where I got to be mostly to all naked most of the time. Love the warm climates. Polly was working most of the time so I did a lot of hiking on my own, which I found really soothing. I slept on the porch and so was witness to more then one magenta sunrise. I reconnected with my best friend from grade school who lives on Maui and who I hadn't spent any time with in about 7 years. The whole trip was a blessing and it put a lot of my dreams and fears into perspective. Then I came back to Seattle and have been spending some time trying to get accustomed to my new living situation.

I'm obsessed with Cormac McCarthy. Read No Country and The Road in one week. Chilling.

I'm a movin'

2007-09-20T21:30:00.000-07:00

Yup, it's time, my two years in one place timer has gone off and I'm packin' up this joint and movin'...5 miles north of here. This is odd, I don't often move homes an stay in the same state, usually if I'm going to go through the upheaval of moving I do it up right and get the hell out of Dodge. I love it here, Seattle really suits me, and so I'm not planning to leave the area any time soon. In fact, this move is happening because I'm flirting with the idea of spending a bit more quality time in Seattle, where the housing market defies gravity, 'look it floats, even without a bubble." I like peeps I work for and the peeps I hang with and so I'm thinking it might be nice to be able to keep those things and also afford to buy a place of my own someday, or at least have the option of purchasing in the near-ish future.
I'm going to house sit for 6 months and then well, then, I'm not really sure yet, but those 6 months of no rent should give me a good footing for the next 'thing'.
SO, in honor of my current yet soon to be former apartment, I'm going to share some of the wonderful things in my neighbor hood, in my neighboorhood, in my neighhhboooorhoood. (Sesame Street song)

I live in Pioneer Square, the location of the second Euro-American settlement in Seattle. The first was Alki beach, but the settlers decided that this side of the bay was way cooler, well warmer that is, more sheltered from storms and deeper moorage for boats. Pioneer Square is home of the 'First Everything' in Seattle: first meeting hall, first house, steam mill etc. Seattle was built up pretty swiftly because of the trees ie. timber in the area, and then it burned. It burned to the ground, in 1889 when a glue pot boiled over. After the fire, they rebuilt the city right on top of the rubble. I live on the 3rd floor of my building but there is another story complete with another set of sidewalks, a good ten feet below today's sidewalks.

Now a days, Pioneer Square has become this fascinating melange of tourists, here to see the history, homeless, here for the fabulous services, and people like me who love living in the high ceiling ed lofty studio apartments. Here's a taste of my home village, check it out.

A Tale of Two Sleeping Bags

2007-08-17T20:50:00.000-07:00

My mantle is shifting. I bought a bike last week, many thanks to Tom for doing most (all) of the leg work on that one. I've started riding the bike to work each day and am learning a lot in a little space of time. I've kinda thrown myself into the fire of downtown rush-hour traffic. It's thrilling.

I'm rolling the right leg of my pants up and trying to not rear-end a taxi. You can get going at pretty swift little clip barreling south on 2nd street, and well, even though there is a bike lane, taxis and parked cars don't always remember to look for cyclists. Actually no one ever really remembers to look for cyclists and if they do see me they always assume that they have time to pull out in front of me 'cause, you know, bikes are slow. Wrong. Bikes are fast and light and terribly nimble, remember that the next time you see me approaching. Nimble.

Gear comes with bikes, well, the need for gear. I've been haunting the bargain basement of REI for the last few weeks, I work two blocks away, and so I can stalk some of the things I need, waiting patiently until some person returns a fender or bike lock or head lamp. With gear and a general acceptance of the scrappiness of my true self I've been slowly but surely remembering how very much I love little daily adventures and so I finally purchased something I should have bought years ago - A sleeping bag.

The only sleeping bag I've owned is the one that I've owned for at least 25 years, if not 27. It is my Hulk. Covered with Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, and Spiderman my blue flannel lined sleeping bag just doesn't cut it on camping trips. For the life of me I can't remember what sleeping bag I used when I was camping in high school or for the summer I worked for the Forest Service, must have been one I borrowed. Now with my super tight new, birthday present from the parents, sleeping bag I can plan to sleep away more. I can pack up and move out, move on.

Other exciting news - I wrote a grant for the non-profit I volunteer for and we got it! Our first grant, it will provide funding to teach book-making classes in Seattle Public Libraries. Little pat on the back for me and many thanks to the peeps who helped out on that project.

My computer has kicked the proverbial bucket and is going to the doctor this weekend. If it can't recover I'll be coughing up the dough for a new one but I have high hopes for my current beast. It's been with me for years and is built for strength so I'm sure things will be fine. In the meantime I'm using my crap-top and while it doesn't have all of its marbles, as I type this the mouse cursor is randomly cruising around the screen, it will suffice.

Big weekend ahead, Blue Scholars and Cloud Cult in concert, tomatoes to be canned, zucchinis to be pickled and art to be made ...... contentment.

How to watch Baseball

2007-08-02T22:15:00.000-07:00

My cousin is moving to Hong Kong, he's one of those teachin' fools, the ones who go from country to country teaching kids to speak the English. He and his wife Heather have worked in Poland and Korea (south) and now after a year(?) hiatus in the states they're headed back out there, to be foreigners again. They leave in September, assuming the visas all check out, but in the meantime we've got them for another month. I set a goal with Kevin for the month; go an M's game for each home stand till they leave. That's only like, what, two games a week, tops? Totally achievable.

I love Baseball.

If you don't already know this about me you probably should, (one more confession this week). I love live baseball. I can listen to it on the radio with relative attentiveness or I can nap to it while it plays on the TV, but watching, live, that's where it's at.

The Mariner's came to Seattle the same year I did, 1977, a good year. I don't remember when I saw my first game, (family any guesses?) but I do remember a few key firsts connected with the Mariners. -

The first time I realized I needed glasses.

"Hey Dad, what's the score?"
"What you're saying you can't see the score board?"

Sixth grade and my sister had just been to the eye doctor to get her first pair of glasses, so naturally my parents thought I was exaggerating my difficulty. I don't blame them, I was always coming up with some new story. Like the one where I told my family that I had already had kids and a husband, and was living my life in reverse (grade school). But it turned out that my eyes were worse than my sister's and I've had corrected eyes ever since. Ha! Take that parents!

Last night however, I had two firsts.

1) I finally mastered the art of sunflower seed consumption. Well kinda mastered, I managed to accidentally spit a bit of seed on the person sitting below me, but what you don't know...A great activity for the fidgety; you pack a cheek with seeds and then shell and disassemble them inside your mouth. The salty seeds create a lot of spit so you have to finesse the shell out of your mouth without drooling and without dislodging the hard won tasty seed. From the look on Greg's face I'm pretty sure I looked like an earnest squirrel. What does an earnest squirrel look like? Puffy cheeks, eyes squinting with concentration and tiny furrowed brow.

2) Then there was the 8-1DP, Ichiro caught the pop-up fly all the way out in center and lasered it right to Hernandez who tagged the runner out at home. Everyone lost it, jumping up and yelling and yelling and then I fainted. Seriously. My first faint. I'm not a fainter, not much of a blushing flower but apparently I'm no match for gravity and low blood sugar. We won by the way, in extra innings but we won.

More baseball tom morrow, the idiot Red Sox are in town, I'll try to stay fully conscious this time.

Pretty Things

2007-07-30T23:35:00.000-07:00

After camping came 5 full days of making things, pretty things. I'm revisiting the instant gratification of cyanotypes, a contact printing method that was one of the first techniques I learned way back in my artistic infancy. To increase the immediacy of the prints I've discovered how to print digital negatives. It can be tricky to maintain gray tones with digital negatives but I think I've finally got the hang of it and so am churning out the images. I've had a bit of a hard time getting back into the swing of going to the office each day when there are so many pretty things to make at home. Evan called it a vacation hangover.

Regardless, if I'm going to have a job the one I have is pretty spectacular. I recognize how special it is to get to have a say in your job description. Plus occasionally, like today, I get to say... juggle bags of m&m's in the supply store and no one looks at me like I'm crazy, they just get up and join in the play.

On Lopez

2007-07-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

I've known for a while now that there was one thing I wanted to do to celebrate my 30th birthday. I wanted to revisit the San Juan Islands. My first thought was to rent a cabin for a weekend in September with some friends and sit about for a few days just drinking wine, playing cards and generally enjoying each other's company. I had some difficulty motivating the troops to plan that far in advance, September is still over a month away. Then life sort of paused for a month or so, there were so many more important things to think about and feel from April to June. When the dust started to settle from the upheaval of life, I started to think again of the islands and of vacation.

This trip came together easily, Tom did most of the reservation work and he and Erin packed up all of the gear we would need. Sunday morning at 6am I met up with Becca, my old chum from high school, as well as Erin and Tom. We strapped the bikes to the roof of the car and caravaned up to catch the ferry from Anacortes. I rode up with Becca and we caught each other up on the comings and goings of life, stopping only for a momentary doughnut/coffee break.

Sky densely gray, the islands looked a deep velvety evergreen from the docks. Frances and Ian met up with us in line and we managed to cram everyone's gear into the one car. The rest of the morning was spent going and getting and upgrading sites and unpacking and setting up. We set out on our bikes at about noon and headed straight for Tom's favorite spot on Lopez, Shark reef.

The ride was challenging, but only a challenge, not a heart breaker. Lopez is 'the flat island' with gently rolling hills and what I like to think of as a Prairie Landscape. There are rolls of hay, sheep, cows, gentle farms, quiet roads and modest homes (mostly owned by the very wealthy). Oh and bunnies, lots of bunnies.

At shark reef, which has neither sharks nor reef by the way, but it does have a rocky shelf. The shelf is ten to twenty feet below the surface of the water and so on a gray day with no reflection from the water you can see straight to the bottom. The shelf drops off into a bull-kelp forest, an entire vast habitat of sea life. We watched as harbor seals swam in and out of the kelp, gracefully and intently chasing fish. One seal chased an entire school to the surface, his wide pink mouth fiercely breaking the surface as an explosion of silver fishes leaping out of the water ringing his head.

We ate and slept and read and biked and biked. Tom began to teach me the finer points of shifting gears and my legs, my legs screamed about the hills. I got to be reacquainted with all the reasons I'm good at camping - don't mind not showering for days on end, can sleep anywhere and through anything, really like fire, can plan an entire meal using only one dish, and just like working my way through life.

When we left the island the sun had finally returned and I hung out on the back deck of the ferry watching the water slide back into our wake. There were porpoises and even more striking there was a humming-bird flitting about on deck. He appeared from across the water, the nearest island was at least a mile away. It was amazing to see something so small knowing it had come so far.

Summer Classes at Seattle Center for Book Arts

2007-07-17T22:24:00.000-07:00

You can find more info on these great classes here

"Book in a Box" Workshop with David Francis
Date: Saturday and Sunday, August 4 & 5
Time: 10 am – 4 pm (with a break for lunch)
Location: 2100 Building, 2100 24th Ave. S. (in Rainier Valley), Seattle, WA
Cost: $140 + $15 materials fee

Bringing Book Arts to the Classroom: K-12 Teachers' Workshop
Date: Saturday, August 18
Time: 9 am – 12 pm
Location: 2100 Building, 2100 24th Ave. S. (in Rainier Valley), Seattle, WA
Cost: $50 + $10 materials fee

Letterpress Postcard Workshop
Date: Saturday & Sunday, August 25 & 26
Time: 10 am – 3 pm
Location: Cornish College of the Arts, 1000 Lenora Street, Seattle, WA [map]
Cost: $150 + $25 materials fee (Special student rate of $75 + $25 materials fee)

Smote - The Bottom of a Glass

2007-06-25T00:36:00.000-07:00

Soo... yeah... its been a while... and well... some things have changed, as well they should, from time to time. Lately, I've had the opportunity to enjoy the process of getting to know my brain. I've delved deeply into the oh so interesting world of sober self analysis. It's a blast.

My goal is to be as aware and present as possible for every moment in my life. I'm accomplishing this through a challenging cocktail of sobriety (no drugs or alcohol), daily yoga, and meditation. The most challenging part of all of this is hanging out with myself all the time. When I'm chillin' by my self my brain tends to run around poking it's nose in all my bizness. It's like spending a lot of time with a close -talker or with a person who has no sense of personal space... something is just a little over aggressive and discomforting. I'm told that the yoga and meditation will start to teach my mind some boundaries, that disciplining it will become effortless with time.

When my sister an I were growing up my mom would occasionally get fed up with our constant questions. "How do I...?" "where is the ...?" and eventually she would distract and enable us by saying "I don't know, what would you do if I wasn't here?"

So now, after years of being an absentee parent to my precocious mind... I've got to teach it about boundaries, and about hot burners and that sometimes mom needs some quiet time. Goodness.

Like Butta

2007-06-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

Well Worth the Effort

2007-06-19T20:45:00.001-07:00

Moister than Most

2007-06-15T23:39:00.000-07:00

There are a few words in the English language that cause me to cringe whenever I hear them used in casual, daily conversation and 'Moist' is one of them. I conjures a unique tacky sense of humidity to mind, and reminds me of many a moldy shower curtain. Having an awareness of this word, as I do, it tends to jump out at me whenever I'm in its presence - here are just a few of the places I've run into it in the last year.

SUPER Not FUN!

Not once but twice the dank lemon scented freshness.

and last but not least, the super moist book about moistness...what is that on the cover an arm? So.. a book about super moist underarm? Thanks Mark 'my publisher told me my name was really boring so I also use my middle name' Haskell Smith

Fresh from the Market

2007-06-14T00:03:00.000-07:00

Silence and Slowness: a movie worth chaining yourself to a couch for

2007-04-10T21:54:00.000-07:00

When I was in college my dear friend Annie suggested that I take a class with her. I was majoring in Art History while she wasn't an Art History major there was one class she was interested in, a study of the Japanese Tea Ceremony. I read the class description, but had no true sense of what I was getting myself into.

We spent a few days in the classroom looking at slides in a darkened room, I did in fact succumb to the nod of sleep on more than one occasion. I saw this as one more class in a series of Art History classes that I had experienced over the last few years, someone talking at us about art, how we were supposed to view it and what the artist was thinking when they created the art. As if any of those people really know what artists are thinking about when they create, laundry and lovers is my opinion.

I learned a few interesting facts about tea and the culture that surrounded the genesis of the Buddhist tea ceremony. Tea changed the world. Not the leaves alone, but the water. For the first time in human history people were boiling their water before they drank it, of course they felt better! They were sterilizing their water, tea saved and enhanced life by making it safer.

We spent a few classes in the classroom and then after a while we started visiting the tea house on Wednesday afternoons. The tea rooms were in a residential house that had been converted to house three separate tea rooms. Every part of your interaction with these rooms is proscribed, you walk across tatami mats in a certain way and you sit, eat and drink in carefully choreographed sequences.

Before we began our ceremonial practice each day we spent time kneeling and meditating to quiet our minds. Remember, we were college students, white ones, sitting in a tea room learning how to quiet our minds while incense curled around us. I was out of my element, but I loved it. I had been raised on cacophonous mind, silence in Church was to be filled with the pleadings, and confessions of the prayerful mind. This was the first time I had ever been challenged with the concept of clearing thought, releasing time. I wasn't so good at it at first as I struggled against coughing, and my ankles yelled their discomfort.

But at some point the silence began to grow, I learned to stop chasing it and simply wait for the slow silence to catch up with me. I began to feel the refreshed freedom of the quiet mind. I carry my silence with me, in my backpack of useful things. I break it out in airports, the studio, Friday nights at home and then also, I found myself rocking in it while watching 'Into Great Silence' last Wednesday.

Dan and I had eaten Indian food right before we walked into the movie, and again I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. He had suggested it, and I went along knowing little about the film but that it was a documentary about monks in France. I like monks, I like documentaries, France? well, I like France. Sure.

'Into Great Silence' is two hours and forty-five minutes that perfectly conveys the cadence of a life lived in silent contemplation. We see men working: washing their dishes, cutting cloth, gardening. We see the cove of mountain that they live in, the way the clouds twist in an updraft, and the cats that hide in the barn. The only time there is dialog is when the men gather for prayers, or walk on Sunday afternoons.

I spent the first ten minutes watching, the next ten nodding off in a post dinner coma, and then after the adrenaline burst of recovery after a full-on head nod, fussed for a good hour. I crossed my legs and un-crossed my legs, shifted hips, crossed arms and watched the silhouetted head of the audience. Is this really going to last almost three hours? Then an hour in, I found my silence, I sat straighter, relaxed into it and traveled with the film as it lightly brushed the face of their lives. There was chopping of wood and shoveling of snow. I was hooked. By the end, I could feel the grandeur of the men's small lives, silence and slowness, the spirituality that cradles them.

I recommend this film but only if you promise to see it in a theater, if you attempt to watch it at home you will inevitably detach, distracted and restless before the silence can really seep in. Well, if you must see it at home, be sure that you first chain yourself to the couch and give the key to someone, (someone you trust) with the instructions to only release you when the movie is finished. Sounds like a barrel of fun huh? Really, I promise, it will be worth it. Really.

2007-03-27T19:27:00.001-07:00

I'm reading 'The Devil in the White' city right now and it's intriguing, but a little awkward at times. It details the entirety of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and its many accomplishments, failures and crimes.

The man who built a wheel large enough to rival the accomplish Mr. Eiffel's tower in Paris? George Ferris, whose first Ferris Wheel held approx. 2000 people at any one time.

In all the gatekeepers recorded 27.5 million visitors, at a time when the country's entire population was 65 million

The beer that won Blue Ribbon at the fair? Pabst... (that's where they got the blue ribbon part of their name)

Home Sweet Home

2007-03-27T19:12:00.000-07:00

So I was supposed to go out of town last weekend. The idea was to fly stand-by to NC and spend some quality time with my 'old school' peeps. The problem was with the stand-by, I stood-by and watched as passengers loaded onto an over sold plane, then I went back home. I was really aching for some vacation time in the sweet dense air of Appalachia and so was more than a little disappointed as I tried to find my way back out of Sea-Tac.

My disappointment was soothed by the beautiful man who drove the cab I hailed home. He shared his strategies for staying awake, "stay hungry, it works better than coffee" and his opinion of America, "America is heaven, but I understand why Americans get frustrated by it sometimes. It's like how you were saying about the four seasons, 'how do you know to like summer if you don't have the winter?'"

After some hemming and hawing about how I wanted to spend my five vacation days (all at home or one at home, two on planes and two in NC) I decided to vacation in my own everyday life. I slept in, read lots, introduced a friend to the wonders of seaweed and chitons, had a beer with my Dad and ate a flipin' fantastic burger. In other words, I did all the things I normally do on a weekend, but there was more breathing room; I allowed myself to just enjoy the things I enjoy without any 'have to' looming. It's been great.

Regionalism, Nationalism, and Globalism at the OK Coral

2007-03-11T12:52:00.000-07:00

There's been a bit of a school yard fight brewing in the Seattle art world for the last couple weeks.

Jen Graves, cat-eyed art critic; a young hipster-ish, establishment questioning art writer started it. She asked a question about another critic's ethics; Matthew Kangas, who was previously protected from the stones of others by immensely thick glasses and 25 years of dependable critical chops. Jen raised some valid questions about critical ethics. Namely, should an established art citric dare to write about art that they hold in their personal collections?

The accusatory tone seeped from the Seattle media and threatened to overshadow the completely art-geek enthusiasm of the Tacoma Art Museum's speaker's forum last Saturday. I'd been looking forward to Saturday's program for about a month... it's such an interesting subject; where does the previously provincial Northwest fit into the art world at large. Having been gone for a while and then steeped in artiness for the last year, I was looking forward to obtaining some context.

First the curators spoke; Hushka actually spoke on the show at hand, dude from the Whitney told amusing (to him) anecdotes about how he (ha, ha) was the successful purchaser of this print or that print, and the Dudette from TX (don't mess with) misunderstood the assignment. She didn't realize that the listeners in Seattle weren't there to hear a regurgitated slide show of the book/collection she curated, but were expecting actual insight to the subject that was posed.

The art critics really stole the show. They maturely stayed reellllatively on topic, Graves sounding a bit flatulent by over questioning the mere existence of a biennial and suggesting instead that the museum offer smaller more focused in content shows twice a year and then reversing on herself and demanding that this one show be the "it" show for the northwest, the codifying one. Regina Hacket defied expectations, she stood and paced the room like a preacher, artfully expounding on art in the Northwest. She spouted apropos quotes and spoke with the cadence of a preacher. She outed the Northwest's true wish to just not pry into any one's business and pinned that cultural qwerk on the Midwestern (scandis) and Asians that comprised the majority of the immigrant culture here until the 80's.

I'll have more on this soon.

a long un-fulfilled promise

2007-03-07T23:59:00.000-08:00

Kelly wrote this for the currently on hiatus 226 newsletter... the one that was going to come out about a year ago... this will have to suffice for the time being.

Last year, I sat down to watch the first film in the Martin Scorcese series, The Blues. After the homogeneity of Ken Burns’ Jazz, I was skeptical about this new generation of music documentaries. Suddenly, I was captivated by a black woman joyfully playing a large guitar in the opening montage. Although I could not hear her song, I could tell she was playing loud and full from the way she struck the strings. Her whole body moved with the motion of thumping that guitar, making it rock and ring in rhythm with the voice rising out of her body. A smile stretching across her face, she shone like a light and rang like a church bell. This woman was Sister Rosetta Tharpe, gospel artist and guitar slinger.
Much has been said of her presence as a performer. Having been raised on the church and revival circuit accompanying her mother, she grew up playing in front of crowds. As a gospel singer, her playing and movements served to express the spirit within her. While she was a talented, innovative guitar player, it is the sincerity and exuberance of her performance that is most captivating to me. Her joy in playing was evident in the smile that graced her photographs and performances. She was a real musical force, a strong black female presence in the music of the time. She projected this presence literally at her third wedding, a public ceremony for 25,000 paying guests which concluded with a 20-foot image in fireworks of Sister Tharpe playing her guitar.
The fireworks faded from view and sadly so did she. Until recently, she received scant attention in survey texts for her role in popularizing gospel and blending it with other roots music like blues and jazz. She seems to have burst back up into our lives with a recent flurry of scholarly attention. Two female scholars, Jerma Jackson and Gayle Wald, have begun to explore her life and influence in a dissertation and a book pending publication. In addition, two of the filmmakers in Scorcese’s series point to her as an influence in their films.
She was born in Arkansas circa 1915 to Katie Bell Nubin, a regionally known musician, who placed a guitar in Rosetta’s hands at a young age. She grew up performing in revivals and churches under the umbrella of the lively Church of God in Christ. She graduated from the church circuit and signed to Decca records in 1938 in the newly coined gospel genre. She continued to perform in churches but also began touring concert halls and music clubs. In these performances and in recordings she worked with a variety of musicians in swing, jazz, and blues. This led her to blend other sounds and songs into her repertoire, blurring her role as a purely gospel artist.
I do not share Tharpe’s religious tradition. My Sunday morning ritual is listening to the radio show “Preaching the Blues.” However, like the gospel tunes I hear on Sundays, Tharpe’s music speaks to me. There is a sincerity to the faith expressed in her music that broadens my perspective on the church. I find this to be true of more recent mainstream artists who have drawn influence from gospel music. I got hooked on Johnny Cash a few years ago listening to his version of the Depeche Mode song, “My Own Personal Jesus.” Sensing his own experience of darkness in his weathered voice as he sang those words, I really heard the song for the first time. Listening to his music and reading about his life, I am struck by his humility in the face of God and by the daily guidance he sought from religion in the face of constant addictive urges. It just seemed right that, according to daughter Roseanne, Johnny’s favorite singer was Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
I hear the same sincere spirituality in the music and performances of U2. Their music seeks not to condemn or convert but to expresses their own deep faith and how it guides their musical and personal lives. Through the energy and physicality of their music and concerts, they reach a wider audience with their spiritual message than strictly “Christian rock” groups. Their shows are full and intense, from the pounding beat of the drums to the wall of sound that the Edge creates with his guitar to the gospel frenzy of Bono’s singing and movements. Fifty-foot screens project views of the band members during the concert, recalling Tharpe’s giant firework image. While Tharpe was at the forefront of the gospel crossover movement at a time when spiritual and secular music was thought to be clearly separate, U2 inherited the music that came from the blend of those musical genres.
A great place to start with Rosetta Tharpe is the album, The Gospel of the Blues, which encompasses her gospel and blues work from her most popular period, 1938-1948. The most compelling song to me is the traditional tune, “What is the Soul of Man?” While it is not one of Tharpe’s compositions, as many of the songs on the album are, it speaks of her journey as a musician and as a Christian. The chorus goes:

I want somebody to tell me
Oh, tell me, please tell me right.
I want somebody to tell me
just what is the soul of man.

She is searching for an answer to this question, for another person to reinforce her faith with certainty. She seeks the map to man’s soul, the place where he connects to God. In two verses, she speaks of searching in “places,” different locations that might provide the answer. The first time, she pleads, “I often read the scriptures/read it in different places.” At first listen, she is reading various parts of the Bible, searching for the answer in different verses. But it also could be interpreted as reading the Bible in different places geographically, as if being in the right place while reading the verse can unlock the mystery. The latter reference to places reinforces this geographic search, linking her travel as an entertainer to a spiritual quest for knowledge: “I traveled through this country/traveled through different places.” Again, she mentions that no man, no person has provided the answer, has been able to give to her the faith that must come from within. That makes gospel singer an interesting career choice. Maybe she chose this song to say that she is not the answer, just a conduit to faith for her audience.
The idea of traveling to places in search of faith is what begins U2’s song, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” Bono has “climbed highest mountains, . . . run through the fields” and then “scaled these city walls only to be with you,” evoking a sense of place. Perhaps God exists in physical form to be discovered by those willing to “run” and “crawl” to the ends of the earth. The refrain, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for,” echoes Tharpe’s lament that “I found nobody yet to tell me.” Like Sister Tharpe, Bono is looking for that proof in the physical world, in the places where man is not. He closes the song with his poetic creed:

I believe in the Kingdom Come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
But, yes, I’m still running

He retains his faith even in the face of an endless search for proof. It is one of many U2 songs with gospel undertones, but this one returns to its roots in the live recording done with the Harlem gospel choir New Voices of Freedom in 1987 on the Rattle and Hum tour. The footage shows the band facing the enrobed choir in a church not far from where Tharpe sang to an all-white audience at the Cotton Club. U2 begins a spare version of the song which fills out when the choir rings in their response to Bono’s call. Both sides are visibly connected to the song, heads and hands upward in praise as Bono so often does in his stadium shows. It is rock music brought back to gospel, and the impact is the same in an arena or in a church.
We may not be able to find the soul of man or what we are looking for. However, we can count our blessings that we have rediscovered Sister Rosetta Tharpe, locating her in history in both the churches and clubs and exploring how she performed in both. Modern groups like U2 can turn a stadium into a church precisely because she dared to bring the energy and sincerity of the gospel praise service out of the church and into the wider world.

2007-03-07T23:55:00.000-08:00

Over-intellectual hipsters reveling in the wonder of the ordinary

2007-03-07T23:02:00.000-08:00

I went to see a live taping of This American Life at the Paramount theater tonight. I am what you might refer to as a This American Life 'super fan'. These are my people, I think of them as friends. I own the comic book and the dvd. I've been to see them live before, and I once applied to be an intern on the show, never mind the fact that I know nothing about radio beyond how to listen avidly.
Tonight was delightful, there was a Chris Ware animation, Mates of State played my favorite Nico song and Dan Savage voted against the viaduct rebuild live and in-person. But what I enjoyed the most, was that even though we sat in row 'Z' (literally) I could revel in the wash of wickedly funny and insightful writing.

This American Life was why I started writing in the first place; I like to hear my stories read by others (check out 17 min. 50 sec into the show). More importantly, I understand more by sharing with others.