Last night I had trouble sleeping so I opened my book and started reading. I could not stop laughing. I absolutely think David Sedaris is a genius. You must check him out if you haven't already. Today I will buy tickets to see him live in November. I can not wait!

This house is amazing!

ASSORTED AMAZING THINGS

Juls!
I found so many wonderful things to share with you the other night while surfing the internet. Here are a few links you must take a look at:
http://blog.mika78.com/


http://jessicahische.com/

http://www.mrianwright.co.uk/


http://www.studioviolet.se/


I love her shoes:


last but not least, an interesting bit of architecture. Divine:

Portfolio

I need to work on my website. But until then my portfolio is up at www.coroflot.com/jgk/
Have I shared that with you?

My love for espresso is expressed back to me.

It is a mutual love.

SISTERS

Olaf Hajek-illustration

This inspires me. www.olafhajek.de

Bottletree Craft Fair Dec 09

Hi Juls!
Craft fairing was excellent this weekend. It really was so much fun to be there and visit with other artists. I am just happy to finally be putting stuff out there. Mostly things no one wants, but hey, you have to start somewhere. Because when someone does appreciate and like something you did solely for yourself and for the sheer purpose of making something beautiful to you, well, that's just a treat and a bonus. I wanted to share the crocheted cat woman hat I got for trade:

And this is my updated inspiration wall. See top left for new drawings I acquired today!

THIS IS JOY!

Words + Images

These were some of my favorites from that site you sent I Can Read.
I too have been thinking of making cards like this from things I feel and
have written down.


In progress, I want to watercolor around the letters.
And I love the Very Very Beautiful Blog as well.
Thanks for the inspiring links Juls!

Shadowbox Series

I've been working on these collages based on maps of cities where good friends live. I seem to work intuitively using the visual vernacular of these places left in my mind's memory from either living there or visiting and also from thinking about the friend who habitats that city. This one is for my friend Ryen who lives in San Francisco. I'm really happy with how it turned out and hope he is too!

Richard Brautigan "It's Raining in Love"

I don't know what it is
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
a lot.

It makes me nervous.
I don't say the right things
or perhaps I start
to examine
evaluate
compute
what I am saying.

If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"
and she says, "I don't know,"
I start thinking: Does she really like me?

In other words
I get a little creepy.

A friend of mine once said,
"It's twenty times better to be friends
with someone
than it is to be in love with them."

I think he's right and besides,
It's raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
That's all taken care of.

BUT
if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
"Do you think it's going to rain?"
and I say, "It beats me,"
and she says, "Oh,"
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think: Thank God, it's you, baby, this time
instead of me.

Emily shared this poem with me today and I fell in love with it.
Favorite line in the whole poem: "I get a little creepy."
We all know how that feels. Don't we?

Book of Ephemera

I don't know if you know this, but among collecting receipts, art and supplies, I have been collecting tickets for the last 13 or so years. Here are my first scans of ticket stubs that I have decided I want to compile into a book. I love looking at the typography and variety of color. I think after I have scanned them all in, I will use as material for mosaic/collage work. I look forward to that day=)

Henrique Oliveira

Thanks Julie for sharing this wonderful artist with me!
I absolutely love his work, both 2d and 3d.
http://www.henriqueoliveira.com/

This is the logo I did for Bridget's (Bridget and friends) Gallery in Brooklyn. Check it out...they have already had some great shows there! www.cleopatras.us I wish I was there to physically show my support. Let alone soak up some interesting art. I'm so amazed at there tenacity and passion.

Nothing is Original

Thanks for sending me this! It's a funny thing because I had seen it posted on Kitsune Noir's blog and thought I should save it. I swear we're on the same wave length. I am always inspired by you, other artists, things that I see, my own experiences. And I like to share when I get some of that good feeling in my gut with others. Much love to you. I got your letter today! Will answer all million questions soon. Beijos.

More from Mary Oliver

I grabbed Yoga Joyful Living Magazine and happened to flip to the last page where there was an excerpt from what looks like a new book by Mary Oliver published in 2008 called Twelve Moons. I wanted to share this passage from one of my favorite nature poets. Beautiful words to start off my morning:

Sleeping in the Forest
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts,
her pockets full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before,
a stone on the riverbed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

~Mary Oliver~

Just beautiful! Happy Morning, Afternoon, and Night to you.

Amazing Poems

Ode to Mary Oliver 2009

Bone
1.
Understand, I am always trying to figure out
what the soul is,
and where hidden,
and what shape –
and so, last week,
when I found on the beach
the ear bone
of a pilot whale that may have died
hundreds of years ago, I thought
maybe I was close
to discovering something –
for the ear bone

2.
is the portion that lasts longest
in any of us, man or whale; shaped
like a squat spoon
with a pink scoop where
once, in the lively swimmer’s head,
it joined its two sisters
in the house of hearing,
it was only
two inches long –
and thought: the soul
might be like this –
so hard, so necessary –

3.
yet almost nothing.
Beside me
the gray sea
was opening and shutting its wave-doors,
unfolding over and over
its time-ridiculing roar;
I looked but I couldn’t see anything
through its dark-knit glare;
yet don’t we all know, the golden sand
is there at the bottom,
though our eyes have never seen it,
nor can our hands ever catch it

4.
lest we would sift it down
into fractions, and facts –
certainties –
and what the soul is, also
I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light.

~ Mary Oliver ~




Ode to Ozymandias 2009

Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley~

The Inauguration of President Obama

My Trip to the Washington Mall to Experience the Inauguration of Pres. Barrack Obama from Dustin Bolton on Vimeo.

On a whim, after, oh maybe 5 minutes of deliberating if I would drive 5 hours from Lil' Cumberland Island to Atlanta or a mere 4 more hours (total about a 9 hour drive) to DC for the Inauguration. It was DC all the way! I called up the first person I thought would be up for a spontaneous trip and after 5 minutes of consideration, he obliged to meet me half way in SC. What an experience to hold on to for the rest of my life. I am thankful to the many things that came together along the way to have made this trip possible and so now I can share this video Dustin made to document this amazing moment in our history.

I would not call myself a "political" person in that I have kind of given up on the fact that I will never know enough to really have an authentic say in political matters. I just always feel mildly informed mostly from the lack of time to read all that I would need to feel informed. I could possibly wish for political movement upwards on my priority list but using my hands or taking a walk seems to trumph political inundation everyday. What I do know is that in the hopes of a new era of peace in our world and positive change in our country's history, I believe in the change that Barack Obama promises to bring and have hope in his leadership to guide us through these next few years.

That's all I've got. Peace and Love.

Ships to sail & shores to lose sight of...

Let go of the shore and trust in the currents of life to take
you where you need to go ---Todd Delaune
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage
to lose sight of the shore ---Andre Gide

FLICKR PHOTOS I CAME ACROSS

I found this great Flickr group called The Center for Vernacular Typography. So inspiring if one is as interested in letterforms as I am...such variety! One of the pool members has some great poloroids and the other photographs on his site such as these holgas are awesome. He goes by OnPaperWings.

Nude Models Protest

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/12/16/bittermann.france.nude.protest.cnn

Clifton Burt

I love this.
I think I have shared his wife's work before as well. Kate Bingaman-Burt has a site called Obsessive Consumption and she draws what she buys everyday...This concept is interesting to me. I love the dedication. Just revisited today and makes me smile to find out that there is going to be a book published of her work in 2010.

Amazing book art

Georgia Russell transforms books, maps, and music scores into these fantastic sculptures with her scalpel. I am so drawn to these objects because of the amount of work and detail that they contain. I love work that immediately conveys dedication to craft and work that is so tedious that that quality -amount of concentration and time working- is palpable. Oooooh, this just makes my palate water it's so delicate and interesting! It reminds me of a book jacket graphic designer I once met who cut out all the lines from the book, My Antonia, and contructed a box or some sort of paper house...I had the same feelings about that piece...it was the tedious, delicate and intricate nature that struck me. And another artist that comes to mind (I'm so terrible with names. They are written down somewhere in one of my notebooks) did a piece where they cut out all the masculine words, pronouns, possessives and all the feminine ones and quantified them in mason jars. It would be more telling if I could remember what book/document/manuscript they were dissecting and commenting on. There is also something about book arts, art made from books, the printed word that engages me, yet I am personally reluctant to tear/cut apart a book. A book is somewhat sacred...I know how to make one, fix one, not take one apart. I have been recently contemplating using my journals and letters and receipts in artwork but the fear that once the objects/paper/books are used, the content, the words on the page will be lost for good! It is what my memory relies on, these saved and horded relics as informing me of my past selves, reminding me of things I need to remember (or do I?). I suppose someone would say to me if I did use them as actual material, that the material, that is the content, would be immortilized in the piece created.
And I ramble...I'm having such an inspired thoughtful morning!!!

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.

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!

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.

Completely Random

PHOTO SERIES 3: 'COLOR STORY'

'color story' 2009

PHOTO SERIES 2: 'SQUARECIRCLERECTANGLE'

'squarecirclerectangle' 2009

PHOTO SERIES 1: 'NIGHT FALLS FAST'

'night falls fast' 2009