Last night Rulan Tangen performed a dance in the courtyard. She is quite exquisite. The day before, she was rehearsing out there under the shall we say "admiring" eyes of some of the girls here. The female gaze.
The dance was about her battle with cancer and she had decorated the medical mask they had given her when she had radiation. My mother had the same mask, and at the time I thought it would make an interesting art piece somehow, but it was too charged an object for me to do anything with it. I was happy to see it discarded, as for me it stood for illness. But for Rulan, it stood for recovery.
Today was a sad one, very quiet around here, as Kaili left. She had been here three months and had really blossomed. Her work is wonderful and it was great for her to get out of Hawaii for a while, as she's had success there but its isolation kept her from wider exposure- the cages she made said it all very eloquently. She understood where my work is coming from and spoke to me about it with intelligence and grace. She was a party girl for sure, but her smile was always contagious. We will all miss her.
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