Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Monday, November 24, 2008

A few things to note on this rainy day...

1. I have some wonderful quotes floating around my studio and I am happily surprised to run across them now and again:

We take the position that art is not a luxury. Art making is not frivolous. It is critical to sustain one's soul. It's essential to our lives. It informs us about ourselves in ways that words alone can't. -Bay-Nimoy

I believe in this because my struggle as an artist always comes down to the question of this need I feel to express myself and its validity and significance on the grander scale of life. I have to insist that there is not a better use of my time. I think your first blog posting was on this subject of "is art a basic need?" and you presented an interesting anecdote that I am recalling today...

for example, i went up to my boss yesterday and we were talking about how art is or isn't important. he was telling me that after the concentration camps were "ended," when people got to go home, a lot of little notes were found stuck in the walls, in between bricks, with letters and poems and thoughts on them. he was pondering over what courage it took these people, in the middle of concetration camp hell, to scrape a pencil and paper. to risk ur life for something like that, for expressing urself, for art, in a way...

2. Today, Greg was featured in Communication Arts' Fresh Online and there was something he said that made me think...when asked about his cultural influences he said:

Public radio and the New York Times Magazine. I really love the real people stories I hear on public radio: “StoryCorps,” “This American Life” and “Radio Lab” are remarkable. They underscore how necessary it is to see the commonalities of our lives and not get lost in the details.

I read this and felt immediately that I have lost sight of this - the commonalities of our lives - and I have been lost in the details. So I am back where I always am trying to figure out how to stay grounded, more rational, less emotional...because right now I am somewhere above my head and the sky and I feel I keep floating further and further away from reality. I just read some of your old posts I had missed and realized you have so much wisdom in your almost 30-years. I will take heed because I feel like it's time to come up for air and observe my own life from a bird's eye perspective as sometimes I do in my dreams. Somehow I feel I have become so narrow minded and obsessive-compulsive in attaching myself to some idea of who I want to be and what I want to do that in doing so have forgotten some essential facts. I know this is really vague.

But there it is. My two cents today.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Alabama Chanin

I had to share! I'm so excited. My mom finally taught me how to use my grandmother's sewing machine!

I have been asking her to teach me for months and I was truly inspired to learn after I went to a holiday bazaar where Natalie Chanin had a booth with her book Alabama Stitch on sale.
She had these handmade quilts hanging up with embroideries of the stories behind them sewn onto them. Her story about her work and how it comes out of such a history and craft and love of handmade things...so good. I have always wanted to make a quilt and already have the fabrics for one. So voila, my first attempt at the machine with a combo of hand stitching and this is what I made...


I think I'll be squirreled away with my new toy for days!Link

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

EYE ADORE: handmade edition of 31





Happy vacation to you. Can't wait for your correspondence. I'm not sure if these were the photos I sent you already. I am trying to get the pdf of the spreads up on www.page31.net. Soon when I'm not so frustrated at the computer I'll figure it out. I am really happy with how it turned out for such a short design time. I folded them and painstakingly perfect bound every single one of them. I hope you will do some drawings for the next one when there is a next one. Talk soon.