loosidia

why taking the time to test is a good idea

2012-03-18T17:16:00.000-06:00

An artist's cautionary tale:
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was invited to participate in an exhibition for which I would be paired with a local poet. The piece was to include the text of one of the poet's works. I was paired with Charles Trumbull, who is a well-respected and published haiku poet. He sent several to choose from, explaining that what he chose seemed to be related to Santa Fe and the landscape. Here are a few:

on the bronze pate

of Saint Francis of Assisi

houseflies

snow-filled juniper:

a flock of mountain bluebirds …

such a commotion!

flashes of dark and light

through the piñon trunks:

a magpie

piñon smoke

the first snow lingers

on the wooden bridge

high plains dusk:

the blades of the windmill

churn through loneliness

The one I chose was this:

the aspens

and the chamisa agree

on a shade of yellow

For a long time I pondered what to do with it, but I really loved the subject. Autumn here in New Mexico is the most beautiful time, and I've posted before about the exquisite aspens, so it felt like a good fit. At first I thought about using mylar, and cutting the letters out and having gold leaf show through. Then I saw something in a store in Williamsburg that was a ceramic tray, glazed with gold, and I thought about painting the letters on it and hanging it on the wall, or having it sit on a pedestal with a light above it. In hindsight, maybe I should have gone with one of those ideas. But then I got the idea of using old postcards of New Mexico in a large collage, and cutting the letters out from that. There is a woman here who sells all sorts of ephemera, old books, maps, tons of stuff. So I went to see her and sure enough she had some old postcards. Not that many, but I bought some more on ebay.

I certainly didn't want to ruin the precious postcards, which couldn't be replaced if I screwed up, and also wanted to repeat some. So I scanned them all in, and over a period of time taping them in different combinations onto heavy watercolor paper, I got a design that I liked. I used jade glue to glue them onto the paper, which worked fine. After creating the text in Photoshop and blowing it up large, I transferred it to the collage and very carefully cut the letters out of the top layer of the collage, so just the colored part was peeled off. It looked pretty good. But I wasn't quite happy with it and decided to use amber shellac in some places. More experimenting, more taping, more gluing. Now the whole thing was done, but I wanted it to be stiff enough to hang a bit away from the wall. And here is where things went awry.

Note to self: foam-core, no matter how thick, does not like water based glue. I found this out when I pasted the foam-core onto the back of my piece, cut so that the piece was still irregularly shaped, put heavy books on top, and waited till the morning to take the books off and view my masterpiece. And that's how I ended up with a buckled mess that resembled a wrinkled satellite dish.

Now, dear reader, you can only imagine what my state of mind was after all the work I had done. And quite frankly, I was not about to do it all over. I happened to have friends for dinner that night and showed it to them. Lots of ideas bandied about. Ultimately, I redid the arrangement in Photoshop and took it to a digital printer, who printed it and mounted it on Sintra. And though I feel somewhat removed from it, because it's not handmade, it's clean, it's crisp, it does the job. The printer put some furring strips on the back that he said I could attach wire to for hanging, so I did.

I hung it up in the studio. That night, a loud noise, which got the dog barking and me out of bed, but all seemed well. Next morning I discovered the piece on the floor with a bent corner and the furring strip torn off. Back to the printer, who attached more Sintra and the wire differently, and who said it would hold. And I hope it does.

It will be on display at the Community Gallery, downtown Santa Fe, from March 23 to June 8.

a book with no words

2012-02-06T11:14:00.000-07:00

I have mentioned before the book project I'm involved in and now my book is finished, so I'll describe it in more detail. Last February I signed on to be part of a project called An Inventory of al-Mutanabbi Street. This is the street of bookstores in Baghdad, a meeting place for writers and thinkers, a center for those who value the written word. A 2007 car bomb destroyed the street and killed at least 30 people. The project was organized by Beau Beausoleil, who owns The Great Overland Book Company in San Francisco, and Sarah Bodman, a book artist in the UK (you can google Beau's store, but he doesn't have a website as far as I know.) For this part of the project, over 200 book artists will each make an edition of three books- one will be sent to the National Library in Baghdad, and two will travel in group exhibitions. There is a comprehensive website here with images of the wonderful books that have been submitted so far.

We were given one year from when we signed on to complete our books. It took me a while to figure out what I was going to do. I didn't want to offend anyone, since it's a delicate subject and I felt uncomfortable that I'm not more well-versed in Islamic beliefs. Ultimately I decided to make books that referred aesthetically to Islam and that honored those who died that day. I thought of the book as a memorial object but one that would provide a glimmer of hope for renewal. So the book is black, with silkscreened pattern on the covers, and handmade abaca paper inside. Each page is cut in repeating horizontal rectangles as if there was text removed. I had a list of the names of 26 of those who died and I was able to find someone to write them in Arabic; then I carefully painted them onto ribbons with a tiny brush. This took me three days, but I enjoyed the process. And so here is the final result. This shows two books, so I could show the bookcloth as well as the interior. I titled the book Rabii, which means "spring" in Arabic. The transliteration is somewhat different than the Arabic word because of the ending sound, which can't be spelled in English.

Green is considered the traditional color of Islam. From Wikipedia: Green wrist bands, threads and bracelets containing Islamic calligraphy are worn by Muslims in order to identify themselves as Muslim. The green wrist bands and bracelets contain Islamic calligraphy or some are worn as plain green threads.

Interestingly, I didn't know about the wristbands, but am happy about the reference. I was thinking green and Islam, and the Arab spring. Today, news from Syria and Egypt continues to cast a pall over the exuberance of last spring, but one hopes for peace and harmony in the region.

poems

2012-01-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

I'm taking part in an exhibition that pairs artists with poets. More about that after I finish the work. For today I'm posting a lovely Wallace Stevens poem that a friend posted on Facebook. If I understand correctly, it has not been published.

"In a Cloudy Land"

In a cloudy land
There is a moving river
A deep and moving river
Sliding through gray sand

There is no sound there
Except of moving water
Of deep and sliding water
And of restless air

Two flamingoes pass
One then the other flying
Wearily, over-flying
That watery glass

The flamingoes make me think of my roots in Florida- such funny birds, so beautiful in masses. But of course it's not about that. I think the poem is about living, about being in the unknown, but living each day, staying in motion; and every once in a while, something happens, something colorful and fleeting, interrupting the silence and the gray.

Mysticism of Islam

2012-01-04T19:24:00.001-07:00

For years I've been interested in Islamic art forms. I've always thought the Muslim and Hebrew values and traditions to be closely related, and I've spent many hours looking at illuminated texts from both religions. The more I see Islamic art, the more I become aware of its richness, density, and systematic underpinnings that adhere to mystical narrative. For instance, consider this passage from Keith Critchlow's Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach:

Once the enclosing circle is completed, a unity is obtained; this reflects the unity of the original point. The circle is not only the perfect expression of justice—equality in all directions in a finite domain—but also the most beautiful “parent” of all the polygons, both containing and underlying them. Outside the concept of time, the circle has always been regarded as a symbol of eternity, without beginning and without end, just being. As a symbol within the limits of time, or rather subject to that condition of existence, it passes around just as the active compass point returns to its first position it necessarily passes over it and in principle establishes a helix—the expression in time of the circle. The circle expresses “threeness” in itself, i.e. center, domain, periphery; and “fourness” in a manifest context, i.e. center, domain included, boundary, domain excluded.

I've been working with circles within squares in various forms, most obviously in my series Aureola:

I was thinking about crop circles, too. Flying back and forth from east to west, you can't help but be struck by the patterning of circles and squares that stretch across the landscape below.

When I was in New York recently, I visited the Metropolitan Museum's fabulous new Islamic wing, now called Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia. Imagine that on a wall text! Artisans from Fez were brought in to do the carving in a recreation of a Moroccan portico:

The galleries are really exquisite and full of wondrous things. I took a few photos (not enough, I realize now.) I saw a lot of Islamic manuscripts while in New York. There was an exhibition of them at the Morgan Library as well.

This page is at the Met. It illustrates an episode in the mystical Sufi poem, "The Conference of the Birds." Here is the wikipedia synopsis:

The Conference of the Birds (Persian: منطق الطیر, Mantiqu 't-Tayr, 1177) is a book of poems in Persian by Farid ud-Din Attar of approximately 4500 lines. The poem's plot is as follows: the birds of the world gather to decide who is to be their king, as they have none. The hoopoe, the wisest of them all, suggests that they should find the legendary Simorgh, a mythical persian bird roughly equivalent to the western phoenix. It is an allegory of the quest for God (The Simorgh). The hoopoe respresents a sufi master and each of the other birds represents a human fault which prevents man from attaining enlightenment. When the group of thirty birds finally reach the dwelling place of the Simorgh, all they find is a lake in which they see their own reflection.

I took that photo with my phone so it's not the best, but if you check that wikipedia entry there is a better one, though it's not the full page with the beautiful border. You can see the hoopoe on the rock towards the right side. He's not the biggest bird, but he apparently knew how to work a crowd. I never saw a hoopoe and wondered what they look like, so here is a photo of one:

Quite a snappy little fella! I love this story for many reasons, and have a wonderful book of it published in the UK last year. The Sufis believe that the deity is within each of us, and I think that's a great concept. Back in the day I used to go to Kripalu, the yoga retreat. After each yoga class the instructor would make a praying bow to each of us and say, Jai Baghwan. I bow to the light within you.

It's a new year. Let's acknowledge the light within ourselves.

the learning never stops

2011-11-18T12:49:00.000-07:00

So, I changed the subtitle of my blog from "in which a New Yorker learns the ways of the natives," to the present one. I was chided for my earlier subtitle, because "native" is not a word to be used lightly out here. To me, it meant whoever lives here long enough to qualify, as in, "You're a native New Yorker," a line from a song. That is not the way it was understood in an area that has a high percentage of Native Americans, who are referred to as Native. There can be no irony there, however unintended the insult.

I resisted at first because, after all, I didn't mean it that way. But that's no excuse. I won't get into the problems and issues of the Native community, but I'm much more aware of them now. It seems quite often I'm in the car at around 11 AM and the program on KUNM is "Native America Calling," with host Harlan McKosato. I just looked at his photo and I had no idea he was so young and good-looking. He's got one of those radio voices and I gotta say, these people who have issue-based informational shows, like Mary-Charlotte on Santa Fe Radio Cafe, are way impressive. I asked Mary-Charlotte one time if she has researchers, and she laughed. And yet she knows all about her guests, what they've written, what they think. NAC is more about people calling in, it's kind of a forum to give voice to the Native community on different issues, with various guests. If this was carried by a radio station back east, I certainly didn't know about it. Listening to the callers and Harlan's guiding of the conversation is eye-opening.

Then last week I went to a talk by Charlene Teters, who has work in the SITE Santa Fe exhibit Agitated Histories. Her work is all about confronting people with the stereotypes of Native people, and she's been creating this work since the 70's. So I guess all this started to make me think I might use a little more sensitivity, even if my New York cynicism kicks in from time to time, it's not about me. Think about it, Braves fans!

AHA!

2011-10-01T12:36:00.001-06:00

A couple of weeks ago I took part in the AHA festival. AHA stands for After Hours Alliance, which is a group of young people who get together to organize things. At least that's what I think it is. I responded to an open call sent to me by a friend, asking for proposals, so, figuring it would be a good way to meet and greet, I proposed a booth installation/performance.

I bought a couple of hardcover copies of Emily Dickinson's letters, then deconstructed them, chose some favorite snippets from her poems, and wrote this text in lemon juice on the pages. I did a bunch of these beforehand, and at the fair I ironed pages to bring the lemon juice text to the surface as a burn.

I was a little concerned that it would seem underwhelming when I started to see what the other artists were doing. But it ended up being very well-received. The fair was great fun- music, performance, food, art- and a very youthful vibe. I wondered where all these young people hang out the rest of the time.

I met a lot of poets and writers, publishers, and other people who are interested in the written word. I showed some little people how the lemon juice "invisible writing" works.

Here's a video that was produced by Andrew Kastner for santafe.com- I'm about two minutes in.

2011 AHA Progressive Arts & Music Festival Overview from SantaFe.com on Vimeo.

Confusion, astonishment, horror, sadness

2011-09-07T23:09:00.001-06:00

The tenth anniversary of September 11th is this Sunday. I was there then, and I'm not there now. It's an odd feeling.

I was living in a building in Greenpoint, Brooklyn next to the East River, walking my dog Lucy that morning. It was still an industrial neighborhood and two guys were looking toward the river with almost a little amusement. Smoke had started pouring from one of the towers. They thought a plane had accidentally hit the building, like what happened once with the Empire State Building. I walked a little further toward the water so I could see better. By then the flames and the black smoke and the huge gash were apparent. I knew people had already died.

What we didn't know then was how nothing would be the same, how civil liberties would be redefined for anyone who wasn't obviously Us, how we would be constantly reminded to be afraid. I sometimes wonder if we will ever be able to move on.

I quote here from a piece by David Remnick, in this week's New Yorker:

But, for all the recent moments of promise, this tenth anniversary is a marker, not an end. It is a time to commemorate, consider, and reconsider. A decade later, we pay tribute to the resilience of ordinary people in the face of appalling destruction. We remember the dead and, with them, the survivors, the firemen and the police, the nurses and the doctors and the spontaneous, instinctive volunteers, the myriad acts of courage and kindness. A decade later, we also continue to reckon not only with the violence that bin Laden inflicted but with the follies, the misjudgments, and the violence that, directly or indirectly, he provoked—the acts of government deception, illegal domestic surveillance, “extraordinary rendition,” “enhanced interrogation,” waterboarding. The publication of Dick Cheney’s memoirs is the latest instance of Bush Administration veterans serenely insisting that they “got it right,” that the explosion of popular discontent that began in Tunisia last December and spread through the region is the direct result of the American-led invasion and the occupation of Iraq. This is as dubious as it is self-serving. In fact, the Arab Spring was not inspired by the wondrous vision of post-Saddam Iraq. Nor was it the result of Western actions or manipulations; its credibility depended upon the fact that it was unambiguously indigenous and self-propelled. An approach marked by calculation and humility, as well as strength, has served the interests of both freedom and American prestige far better than the theatre of raw power. In Libya, we see that a more supple brand of foreign policy that rejects the swaggering heedlessness of the Bush years need not neglect the imperatives of freedom and human rights. Ten years after the attacks, we are still faced with questions about ourselves—questions about the balance of liberty and security, about the urge to make common cause with liberation movements abroad, and about the countervailing limits. Only absolutists answer these questions absolutely.

Wile E. Coyote

2011-08-13T08:11:00.000-06:00

Up early this morning walking Maya, just as the sun was coming up, a coyote was just outside my neighbor's fence, ambling down to the river.

Looks just like a big dog, right? (By the way, I didn't take this photo. I did not have a phone or camera with me at 6:30 AM.) We stood there and watched him- when he saw us, he turned in the other direction and wandered into the riverbed, then across to the other side. Maya didn't seem at all bothered by him, even though she could be his breakfast if food was scarce. But I imagine the prairie dogs provide coyotes with plenty of meals. I was just very surprised that he'd be in peoples' yards.

Baubles, bangles and beads

2011-08-08T22:25:00.000-06:00

Ever wonder where all those nice turquoise stones came from, the ones everyone around here makes stuff with? I'll tell you. Santa Fe Jewelers Supply.

I love stores like this. Art supply stores, hardware stores, cookware stores, anyplace that has lots of little tools and interesting, useful, yougottahaveone things. I wanted to experiment with mounting a drawing on mylar, to a piece of plexiglas, and then framing it. In order to do this, I needed tiny fasteners. So off I went to SFJS.

I was helped by a very nice woman there who did not blink when I told her what I was trying to do. In fact she had very good ideas and was totally supportive. You'd think that since I was clueless about jewelry supplies, and I wasn't making jewelry at all, she might have scoffed. But she didn't. So I bought these head pins that are used for stacking beads on earrings (I could choose between solid silver, silver plate, and nickel,) a tiny drill bit, an insert for the drill to hold the tiny drill bit, and a pair of needle nose pliers. It cost about $15 altogether.

I was fascinated by all the stuff they had there. You can see in the photo that there were many strings of semi-precious stones, but they also had cases full. They had mother of pearl still on the shell. There were large stones and small ones, and there was someone doing something with stones on a machine, but I didn't ask what he was doing. There was a nice looking man at the counter and I intended to take the photo while he was looking in the case, but he turned just as the phone camera snapped (which as you probably know if you have an iphone, is an eon after you push the button.) I thought he was native American and so I blocked out his face because it seemed wrong to put it on the internets.

This is the kind of thing you can find easily in Santa Fe. But try finding a decent dermatologist.

Uncle Miltie speaks wise

2011-07-27T13:00:00.003-06:00

I came across something on Longreads, which is a great site for interesting articles on the web. I guess Milton Glaser has a website, well of course he would; and one of the things he posted is an excerpt from a talk he gave to AIGA in 2001. The whole thing is fun to read and makes a lot of sense. I always thought Glaser to be a brilliant designer and promoter of his whole brand, so much that we still see around NYC is his work or greatly influenced by it. The I (heart) NY campaign for one.

The piece is worth a read and I'll just quote one paragraph here that I thought was funny.

LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE.
Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening I realised that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless. But it sounds great because it contains within it a paradox that is resistant to understanding. But it simply does not obtain when you think about the visual of the history of the world. If you look at a Persian rug, you cannot say that less is more because you realise that every part of that rug, every change of colour, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success. You cannot prove to me that a solid blue rug is in any way superior. That also goes for the work of Gaudi, Persian miniatures, art nouveau and everything else. However, I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. ‘Just enough is more.’

Who you calling unconscious?

2011-07-21T13:08:00.002-06:00

I moderated the panel "Why do Artists Make Art?" last week. It was crowded, standing room only in fact. I had an interesting group on my panel, painters, a photographer, a printmaker, and a psychiatrist who is now retired and making art. She was a lovely little person, very animated- and had some interesting things to say about her research into where creativity resides in the brain. Her opinion is that some people have no creativity at all, and their brains don't light up in the creativity spot. This area is the same one that causes self-criticism, and one of the audience members asked if there were meds to turn that off. I'm not doing justice to the points she made, but I disagree that some people have no creativity. I think everyone does, but we're not trained to access it because we're taught to follow what has been set out for us and what is the tried and true path. That's why Frost could write "The Road not Taken."

Then there's Joseph Campbell and his ideas about mythology and heroism. I think Rumi and Joseph Campbell are the two most misunderstood, or rather misquoted, writers and thinkers. Campbell is quoted as saying Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls. It's usually shortened to Follow Your Bliss. Lotta people doing that here. I read that Campbell was a little fed up with all the bliss followers and at one point changed the quote to Follow your blisters. That might be apocryphal.

Since the exhibition that I'm in, which prompted the panel, is dedicated to Jung's Red Book, I looked up what he had to say about art and artists. Here is a quote:

The biographies of great artists make it abundantly clear that the creative urge is often so imperious that it battens on their humanity and yokes everything to the service of the work, even at the cost of health and ordinary human happiness. The unborn work in the psyche of the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself, quite regardless of the personal fate of the man who is its vehicle [emphasis mine.]

I don't know what to make of this. That the neurotic, poorly adjusted artist can't help but toil away in the studio, giving the work of art a way out and onto the canvas? It sounds pretty depressing to be a vehicle for something that was going to show up somehow anyway. I really dislike this concept, because for one thing it confirms peoples' opinions that artists are driven and crazed. Well maybe I'm overstating what Jung said. But people still think that art springs from some mysterious inner force, and that only the chosen few can create it. We're in the post-modern, pluralistic 21st century. Those ideas are so old school.

nukes and fire don't mix

2011-06-28T23:09:00.001-06:00

We've got a bunch of wildfires going on around here. On June 18th I had a party to celebrate my one year anniversary in Santa Fe. That afternoon on my way to buy ice, I saw a huge smoke plume in the mountains. This was the start of the Pacheco fire, 2 miles from the Santa Fe ski area. It was, and is, a serious fire, only 15% contained at this point. The road up the mountain has been closed at mile marker 9, and smoke has filled the air. The fire destroyed power lines and threatens the watershed.

I took a photo of the smoke plume on Saturday, a week after it had started. This was taken from the riverwalk that we walk on several times a day. Of course there's no water in the river but that's another story.

Sunday a fire broke out not far from Los Alamos and spread with lightning speed, tripling in size in one night. This fire is called the Las Conchas fire which apparently started on private land, and the size and scale of it are frightening. It's currently over 90 square miles, almost twice as large as a terrible fire that destroyed many homes and forest land in 2000, the Cerro Grande fire. That fire burned 47,000 acres at the Bandelier National Monument, and destroyed 100 buildings including some at the lab complex. The forest still hasn't recovered from that fire, which started with a controlled burn that quickly got out of control.

The town of Los Alamos has been evacuated- 12,000 people. And the nuclear lab in Los Alamos is less than a mile from the fire's edge. So far they've been able to keep the fire from spreading to the labs and burning toxins that are stored there. It's a big story, carried by media all over the world. Just enter Los Alamos fire into google or twitter and see what I mean. These photos are from The Atlantic:

The sunsets we've been having with all this smoke in the air have been both eerie and beautiful. Fortunately for us down here in SF, the smoke and fire are spreading north, but we've still got bad air quality. Today I went to the gym to run instead of doing it outside.

A friend who listens to Amy Goodman (I do sometimes, but find it so depressing) said that today a guy who serves as a watchdog of sorts for the lab was on the show, and he said that if New Mexico seceded from the US, that it would represent the third largest nuclear power in the world. That's how much we've got in nukes around here. Of course, LANL is where the bomb was invented. They still employ thousands of people, toiling away at various ways of hitting atoms together to do stuff, good and bad I suppose, depending on your POV. They developed the metal for Nambe objects there. I don't know what else goes on. It's very very mysterious.

I worry most about the 4th of July coming up. We have fields behind our houses where kids like to set off fireworks, and this year that could be disastrous. Not sure what to do about it. Our esteemed governor says she doesn't have the authority to make fireworks illegal- this has to be a legislative act, and the legislature meets for about three days in May I think.

An unanswerable question

2011-06-13T18:45:00.001-06:00

I'm in a show opening this weekend here in Santa Fe called Mining the Unconscious. Here is the digital invitation.

This was the result of an open call to artists who are working with the idea of the unconscious and is supposed to have something to do with Jung's Red Book, which is an amazing piece of work. There is a new reproduction of it (the original is sort of a sketchbook he created) and it's way expensive, otherwise I'd buy one. The link takes you to Amazon to buy it if you want. It also has some images from it. I decided to enter my burned Freud book pages, since they are his Interpretation of Dreams, and these were accepted for the show.

They've decided to have some panel discussions on the show themes and they asked me to moderate one called "Why do Artists Make Art?" Why DO artists make art? It's a crazy question. I wonder if people really wonder about it. Because artists sure don't. I was telling a friend about the panel and he said artists sell art to buy beer. But not all artists sell their work. In fact I read that only 20% of the people who call themselves artists (this must be on a census or something) make their living from it. I think even that is a high estimate.

I'll have to do some research on theories. I used to live next to a psychoanalyst who had a lot of artist patients and who had written books on this. He said that artists are mastering form to work through past traumas. I do know that for me, just making stuff makes me feel better, even if it doesn't work. And another artist once told me his son was just like him, always "making stuff." So I think my former neighbor has a point, it's about mastering form, but maybe it's about control in general and the feeling of accomplishment when you end up with something fine and interesting.

I may have to post the question on Facebook to see if I get some answers.

procrastination

2011-05-30T18:22:00.002-06:00

I closed up the blog for a while. Reason was, I got a little mired in indecision. And also, I created a blog for my class, and I could barely keep up with that, as my students would attest.

And then there was the matter of my website, which hadn't been redesigned in four years. When I did it back in 2007, I hardly knew what I was doing and I designed it in the clunkiest way imaginable. It drove me crazy to see all those files from divided up slices in Photoshop. No wonder it loaded fairly slowly. So I intended to redo it and the months went by. Basically, over a year went by. Finally I got the newest version of Dreamweaver two weeks ago and set to work.

In the interim, Dreamweaver and web design in general had become far more complex. I won't go into the specifics, but a shortened version is, I didn't understand what "box model" meant. I really struggled with trying to figure it out from reading and experimenting but I finally went out and bought Dreamweaver CS5 for Dummies. I don't love those books but at least it got me to the point that I understood the concepts. And so now, after many many hours, it's finished. And linked to this here blog, so I'll be leaning toward the arty from here on in, though I still am so surprised and amused by life in Santa Fe that I'm sure I'll continue my outsider status for a while.

I got my studio organized, thanks to getting a shed built outside to put the garage type stuff in. Here are two photos:

The light is from two solar tubes that I had put in before I moved, during the renovation. It's nice and bright in there. It's really quite pleasant. Even Maya seems fairly comfortable, after hoovering the floor first. I have to constantly check for pushpins or other sharp objects so she doesn't get them.

Now I'll be heading to Miami for a few days, but when I get back, with the website finished (hoorah) I can get back to work on my NY Times series (see back wall) and my Frieze series.

It's Memorial Day. Think kindly of our men and women in far off wars and hope they come back safely to their loved ones.

Trees of gold

2010-10-14T21:30:00.001-06:00

Of all the beautiful seasons here in Santa Fe, autumn is the most beautiful. Colors seem to distill and increase in saturation- strong contrasts of yellow and dark green, softer palettes of lavender, gold, sage, sienna. Fall colors in New England are beautiful, too- the reds and oranges of the sugar maples reflected in lakes. But fall here is breathtaking. From down here where I live, I can see the wide swatches of aspens in the mountains. At sunset especially, they glow. But to really be surrounded by them, you need to drive up towards the ski area, about 15 miles above the plaza. It's about another 2500 feet up, but it feels like more. The road is long, with switchbacks that take you up and up. I hadn't been up there for many years, not since I used to come up and paint up there, just as many people were doing today. That was maybe 15 years ago. Now the altitude and the windy road are a bit much for me, and happily, my friend Tina offered to drive us up there.

I learned today that the reason there are so many aspens in the sangre de christo's is because of a monumental forest fire that occurred around the turn of the century (the last one.) It burned down the fir trees, and the aspens, loving sun as they do, were the first to come back. Eventually, the firs could take over again. Meanwhile, this is one of the largest groves of aspens in the country. Also, aspens are connected by roots underground, so they keep spreading. I had some in my backyard, but they weren't watered and they died. One "orpan" grew in my next door neighbor's yard. They don't really love it down this far, but they will grow if you baby them.

Photos can't capture what they look like. The small coin-shaped leaves flutter in the slightest breeze. So when you're up there you see this shimmering golden sight. Even Christopher Hitchens might call it God's country.

Gringo excursion

2010-09-26T18:54:00.002-06:00

Normally I don't like to go to artists' studio tours. This might be selfish of me, since I am an artist after all- but I find it awkward sometimes to walk into someone's studio and not see anything of interest, and then I feel obligated to talk to the person and say nice things that I don't really feel. I want all people who make stuff to feel good about what they make, and well, especially here in this neck of the woods, where there are scads of people following their bliss and taking ceramics and printmaking and book arts and glass blowing and on and on, there is just a lot of not very good stuff out there. So I don't go on studio tours except when asked specifically, as I was yesterday, by my friend Lisa (seen in photo.)

We went up to Pecos, about 20 minutes north of Santa Fe, a small town, very cute, surrounded by lovely landscape. The ride up there was beautiful as you go into forested hilly country and then into a valley. Lisa has a painter friend named Richard Sober who lives there, so we went there first. He had a lot of small landscape oils on masonite all around the studio, which was his large garage and which made me wish I had more room in mine. But then, he's in Pecos. Which, by the way, is pronounced PEH-kohs. Not PAY-kohs. If you pronounce it the second way, you are obviously a gringo to be sneered at. I liked Richard's little paintings. They reminded me of how I used to paint when I was doing landscapes. I ended up buying a small gouache that was framed, and I can't believe I spent the money because God knows I need every cent to try to finish furnishing this house, but I felt like it was a "pay it forward" kind of thing because I did sell one piece in the NY show at McKenzie Fine Art.

We went to one other studio but it was kind of -eh- so we went to lunch. We drove into what I suppose you'd call the center of town. There was a general store and a restaurant, Frankie's Casanova. There was no traffic light. It was a four way stop. Now, back when I went to Marfa, Texas in 2000, it was a really small town, but they had one traffic light. Probably more now. I'm anxious to go back there.

We ate an enchilada casserole at the waiter's suggestion. We split it and it was delish, just enough and very fresh tasting. They were closing soon (it was about 1:30) so we scooted out to check out the general store for tzotchkes espanol, but the store had groceries and liquor and useful things. There were two young girls having a little bake sale in the portico in front. We chatted with them a little. Lisa said it must be nice to live somewhere that is so pretty, and the girls had blank expressions of mild tolerance. We bought a delicious coconut chocolate square for one dollar and wished we had more.

Big wide wonderful world of making stuff

2010-07-14T22:23:00.000-06:00

This past weekend was the beginning of what I think of as "Market Santa Fe Summer"- the International Folk Art Market. Two years ago when I was here in July and August I bought a bunch of stuff there- scarves from India that are carefully knotted all over with tiny knots using one string, then dyed, and then the strings removed so that the scarves have hundreds of little white dots in patterns; tchochkes made from recycled materials to give for Christmas gifts, and a few little pieces of jewelry from China. This year I have no disposable funds for such things, after having to (barely) furnish a new house. But I love the market so I went anyway. You can't park up there, you must park in a state lot and take the shuttle bus. I went on Sunday when the admission was lower, $5 instead of $15. I did buy a purse from West Africa made of mudcloth, black and white, very graphic. I love African patterning.

These women were serving some beverage in little cups. When I asked them what it was, they said "Oman." I repeated that, confused. Then a woman who was drinking it said they are from Oman and they were serving coffee with cardamom in it and it was very good. The bowl had a bunch of dates all mushed together. I said okay to the coffee then noticed they were just throwing the little cups in a bowl of water and reusing them. It crossed my mind that this is something I wouldn't dream of doing, drinking from the same cup as scores of people. I could only imagine what was in the water in the bowl, plus I took a fingerful of the smushed dates. So far I'm not suffering ill effects. Funny how all this sanitization has changed our point of view of things. Meanwhile, the women were wearing very heavy makeup- even their skin was covered with heavy pancake makeup which was a shade or two lighter than their actual skin. It had an odd mask-like effect.

Everything at the folk market is handmade, thus $$$. It's worth the money if you have it, but if you go inside the museum gift shop there are a lot of imported things made by who knows what, fairly inexpensive in comparison. I've noticed, by the way, since I've been buying things from Target and World Market and TJ Maxx, that the Chinese make everything now. EVERYTHING. Look for yourself next time you buy something.

My former landlady works in the shop and she was wearing a really cute peasant blouse. When I asked her where she got it, she whispered, "Dillard's, on sale." People dress in peasanty kind of clothes here in general, and especially to the folk art market. It's not that great a look for me I've noticed. I did covet a really incredible white blouse that was hand crocheted- but that description doesn't do it justice. It was tiny lacework, very beautiful. $200 for the tank top. Looking around, seeing people buying expensive stuff, made me wonder why the art world is suffering so much. Do people feel that they are supporting developing countries, so they buy stuff? I guess that could be part of it. I heard on the radio that attendance and sales were up this year. And I definitely noticed that the prices had gone up since I was there two years ago. I missed seeing the Indian people with the knotted and dyed scarves, who did not come for whatever reason.

The not so missing manual

2010-07-03T20:36:00.000-06:00

I had heard that I needed a copy of the "Annual Manual" that the Santa Fe Reporter publishes every year. Subtitled "The Locals' Guide to Living in Santa Fe." Happily, they put that apostrophe in the right place. Can't stop reading things with a professor's critical eye.

I learned a lot reading this today. I learned for instance that the average first frost is on October 10, and the average last frost is on May 1. That's a pretty long winter. Average snowfall is 32 inches, average rainfall 14 inches. I think we had about a third of that last night in a spectacular storm which washed away a lot of my street.

There are a lot of interesting display ads. Ecodiversity.org has educational videos about everything "from beekeeping to using algae for food and fuel." More gardening in the desert, ads for waterwise plant greenhouses, and hydroponic indoor gardens. Ads for clay wall installation, bioshield healthy living products, and of course stone. Under the Health & Wellness section (ampersand used) are ads for a dentist who has a picture of a seated buddha, and the text "Not Dental Chair. Seat of Knowledge." Mercury free dentistry, Rubenfeld Synergy training (what on earth is that?) Herbal Medicine, natural skin care products ("Never put anything on your skin that you wouldn't put in your mouth.") There are 20 public elementary schools, four middle schools, six charter schools, three high schools. Numerous prep and Indian schools. A school called "The Gentle Nudge School" and one called "Academy for the Love of Learning."

In the Media section, 16 publications produced here, newspapers and magazines included. Twenty-six different websites having to do with Santa Fe, including blogs. I will be checking some of these out but most of them seem to be whining about what doesn't work in government here. What else is new. Two women are running for governor to succeed Bill Richardson. Neither one looks too appealing to me.

Sports, transportation, museums, restaurants, places to do and get things, all are in the Annual Manual.

water

2010-06-19T22:12:00.001-06:00

June is the hottest month here. That's what they say. July and August you get the monsoons, but June, just sun, sun, sun. It's been hot, 90-ish some days, like today. In New York 90 is brutal. Here, it's dry heat, but it's still pretty brutal. I heard on the radio the humidity is 5%. It reminded me, oh yeah, we're in the desert. Quite a change to adjust to. It makes sense to do things early in the morning- midday is very quiet. And people get up early here.

I have a swamp cooler and I turn it on usually around 3 or 4 o'clock when the day is as hot as today, which is a thing on the roof that works by pumping water through a fan in some way and blowing it into the house. It's pretty effective, actually. I have to turn it off after a few hours when it gets too cold. Nights are cool and I leave the windows open and hope that I'm not woken up by barking dogs or neighbors getting up at the crack of dawn. Like this morning, there was thumping and conversation at 6:30 AM. I didn't go back to sleep. I thought about how hard it is for me to get up at 6:30 for school- but this morning the sun was streaming in and it hardly seemed early.

Water is the answer to almost anything. When I'm feeling tired or dizzy, I drink water. Staying hydrated. That's the key. When I first got here someone told me to drink and drink and drink. It helped, because I didn't get the usual altitude headache, or at least, not too bad a headache. But I still get lightheaded. You don't realize how parched you are or how hot you are, because you're not really sweating. But you are parched, and you are hot, and the sun is relentless, and so you have to keep drinking water.

When I first got here three weeks ago, there was water in the river and it was beautiful. Now it's dry again and I wish I had taken a photo. It snowed a lot this winter, all the way into April and even early May, so there was a lot of water run-off. They've just about finished the river walkway and I've been running on it in the mornings.

Lots of art world luminaries in town this weekend for the opening of the SITE Santa Fe Biennial. This year the whole show is animation, but they didn't want to call it a show of animation because that sounded like something you'd see on Saturday morning TV. I'll post more about it when I have a chance to spend some time in there. I've been volunteering and last night my job was to keep people from touching the scrims hung throughout the space which hold the screens. It was a cocktail party for the big givers, so no one touched the scrims. I did direct a few people to the restrooms.

I'm pretty sure I saw Shirley MacLaine there.

So long, nightmare highway

2010-05-27T06:32:00.001-06:00

I'm in the throes of packing and my apartment is such a mess that I decided to write a post on my blog before diving in to more work. I had a disastrous day yesterday. It started out fine and I was getting my car ready to be picked up. The trucker, Arthur, who was coming to get it, is the same one who brought it to New Mexico last year and also brought it back here. He lives in Brooklyn and we've kind of gotten to know each other and I trust him, so I've tried to work my schedule around his. He has a new rig and brings cars back and forth between New York and California, back and forth.

I live near a major New York highway, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. It's officially Interstate 278 but everyone calls it the BQE. It is truly the most hideous road ever. Always jammed up, big trucks spewing exhaust, crazy vans cutting in from one lane to the other. It's woefully inadequate for today's traffic, twisting and turning with lanes coming and going, connecting with the Brooklyn Bridge and with the Verrazano to New Jersey. The photos on that page I linked show it probably at four in the morning when there was no traffic. The BQE was one of the projects pushed through by Robert Moses who probably did more damage to the five boroughs than anyone has since the Dutch bought the place from the Native Americans. The highway cut right into Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods with the force of a cosmic cleaver- these neighborhoods have never recovered and have to live with the highway and its noise forever. You can imagine having a giant freeway put in in front of your nice little row house. And to get from one side of the neighborhood to the other you have to walk under this giant monster highway- a psychological barrier that stops a great deal of interaction within the same few blocks. It's interesting that Brooklyn Heights, with its more involved and wealthier residents, managed to get the highway pushed away and under the promenade, leaving the neighborhood intact and lovely.

So Arthur was to meet me right by the BQE, which would be easy for me and I could walk the couple of blocks home. He was to come around 2, but was driving from New Jersey so I told him to call me when he got to our meeting spot. Then I did a stupid thing. I decided to put my printer in the car and I was running late with him coming soon, so I just started pulling plugs out, then took the printer to the car and continued packing without paying much attention to the plugs. But it turned out I had pulled out the plug to the phone. So Arthur, who only had my home number programmed into his phone, called and called and no one answered, and finally left. Around 3 I wondered what happened so I called him and that's when I realized my phone was off. I called on my cell and he asked me had something happened to me because he'd been trying to call and had been parked illegally for 40 minutes trying to get me and now he was on the BQE on his way to somewhere else.

And that's how I found myself, in the midst of everything else I had to do, driving on the dreaded BQE. When he told me where he was going, which was the Mercedes dealer in Bay Ridge, I looked on Mapquest and tears came to my eyes. So very far. I knew it was doable, that I could get there and then take the train home (somehow) but the thought of it almost threw me into a severe panic attack. I grabbed my purse and a bottle of water and jumped in the car and went to meet him.

The other little tidbit of this story is that it was 95 degrees in New York yesterday and on the highway it reached 100 degrees in parts. I watched this on the thermometer on my dashboard. I had to take the BQE to the Belt Parkway which connects with south Brooklyn. It was a 14 mile drive. Actually once I got on the Belt, it was pretty. You go along the water and pass the Verrazano. So I got more philosophical about it. I met up with Arthur and he said Donna how can you make such a mistake on a hot day like this? He got in the car with me to do the paperwork. At this point Arthur once again told me how many times he had called me and showed me on his cell phone all the calls he made. He said he ran down the battery on his phone making calls. Wise guy. Then he asked me if I could give him a little piece of art, something I "might throw away anyway." Because his daughter wants to be an artist (this is a whole other part of the story with Arthur, how I went to his house to get my car last time and met his wife, and looked at his daughter's paintings) and he said he wants something to remember me by although he thinks I'll be calling him again. In my mind, I thought, oy, never again, but you never know, maybe he's right. And I didn't say, Arthur, people pay for my work, you want to give me a discount? But I didn't. I was too worried about how I was going to get home. Which required a very long walk to a very long subway ride, but at least it was airconditioned, and above ground, so I could sightsee some more until after we went over the Manhattan bridge and down into the darkness.

**** or get off the pot

2010-04-25T12:31:00.000-06:00

I had thought I'd only post on this blog while I'm in Santa Fe, so it's been months, during which time I've lived my New York life, teaching up in the 'burbs and navigating the subways. Life here has a choppiness that you just don't get out West. Sometimes it's pleasant, and you get into the rhythm of it, like when you're stopped in your tracks by something crazy or wonderful. Usually there are other people, many other people, watching the same thing. So as a short person, I often have to climb on something to see what the fuss is about. Like the other day, I was walking through Union Square and there was a huge crowd watching a Korean guy do interesting juggling tricks with a soccer ball. You have to give yourself a little extra time here for everything, not only because you never know when the subway will stop and you'll be sitting there for 20 minutes with no way to inform whomever you're meeting that you'll be late, but also because there are always distractions to slow you down. But at the same time, you can't arrive early for things, because that's just not cool and people will be slightly annoyed because they may not be ready.

Anyway, getting to the point, I'll be going back to Santa Fe on May 29th and will be living in my very own little HOUSE! A long boring story on how I found the house and the machinations I went through to get it and to finance it. The owner's name is remarkably and comically close to the two names of Rocky and Bullwinkle. I won't post his name because I don't want it to come up on google searches- you have to be careful about these things. And he seems like a nice guy, if a bit high strung. But the house is really sweet and he landscaped it beautifully, and I'll be enjoying all the nice things he did to it. Here is a photo of the backyard a few weeks ago, taken by my friend Rob:

So, after all these years of saying I was going to move to New Mexico, I'm actually doing it. It's a little scary for a lot of reasons. People say to me, aren't you excited? And I am, but I'm also nervous. I have an option, though, of coming back to teach next spring. It will be interesting to see how things go.

Unfortunately, the last time I went there, on spring break, I stayed in the house with very little furniture except for a bed, and I got very sick and spent the whole week in the bed, in my guest room. I had a TV that could mostly only pick up NBC and Fox. You can probably figure out which channel I watched the whole week. But I couldn't find my favorite daytime shows, the shows I watch when I'm sick- Ellen, or Oprah, or even Dr. Oz. It wasn't a fun week at all. I need to get the bad juju out of the house when I get back, and I think it may be gone anyway because Rob's construction guys worked on the place to do some renovation and get the garage converted for studio use with skylights and stuff, and also painted the inside white so it will be much brighter and cleaner looking. My neighbors on either side are a midwife and a massage therapist. Can't ask for more nurturing types! Dogs are abundant- too much so in the middle of the night I think. No noise regulations there- I don't mind the roosters but I hate the sound of dogs barking endlessly. It's always something.

I haven't made any art for four months and it's amazing how much free time you have when you're not an artist, when you're a normal person who takes time off to do whatever. Yet I was very unproductive, spending far too much time on Facebook and other internet time sucks. I'm feeling antsy to make some stuff and I'll be really happy to have a work space again. As well as being able to bike five minutes to the food co-op or go to the Chavez center.

Twenty ten

2010-01-01T13:35:00.000-07:00

I like the sound of the year 2010. It sounds a little sci-fi, like we're really entering a new age of technological advances and space travel. Except that was really what the last decade was about, even if space travel is not really something that most people think about much. Every once in a while we hear about the space station, or the Hubble telescope, or what's going on on Mars.

And what was the last decade called? Some call it the aughts, but that really means "lack of anything" rather than zeros. The New Yorker has a piece examining this difficulty. A decade is a long time when you think about it. If I say (as I do, but only if I don't care if you know how old I am) that I was born in the 40's, it might suggest that I was around during W.W. II- but actually was born well after that was over. If you're born in the 60's, you could be the same age as our president, or you could be just barely turned 40. You could say you grew up in the 60's, and that might suggest you were born in the 50's. Anyway, it's not particularly important, except that we like to put the decade in a package that is easily described. No problem describing the 50's, 60's, 70's or 80's...but the 90's, the 00's? It's too pluralistic to make those generalizations anymore. Or maybe things just move too quickly nowadays. Maybe we should break it down into groups of five. Or maybe three, or maybe just talk about years individually. What was 2001 like? Well, it wasn't a bad year until September, and the morning of the 11th was a day of blue sky and pleasant weather. Now anything good that happened that year is obliterated by what happened later. Maybe we should just talk about months!

I'm starting the year on an optimistic note. After a slight scare that entailed a biopsy that I much rather would not have had to go through (although, like most things here, it was about as not-unpleasant as it could be) I am living into the 10's (now that does sound ridiculous) with hopefulness and energy. This past week I had a meeting at William Siegal Gallery, and it went very well. They took two pieces, and will see what kind of response they get. So everybody, tell your wealthy art-collecting friends to consider buying one, or both! The gallery, as you'll see if you look at the website, is a little unusual in that they mix ancient artifacts with contemporary work. It's really a gorgeous space, and I thought it would be an interesting context for this new body of work, which was framed beautifully by Beth the mad framer. I had such a nice meeting with the gallery director and her assistant, who is a wonderful artist himself and is a Yale MFA. We talked about the presentation, the imagery, the content, the scale...all things to consider as this work evolves. I'm really happy to get away from the constrictions of the symmetrically patterned pieces, although I may bring some of that back in at some point. For now, I'll be in New York with no studio and four classes a week to teach (involving four days of commuting) so with months of not working on this series, it may change a little when I get back to it.

I was invited to a Buddhist ceremony for New Year's eve, but I decided to go out to dinner with friends (allowed myself a margarita for celebration, and had very good fish tacos and sopapillas) then watched a movie (500 Days of Summer---eh) and fell asleep after my neighbors tooted those awful sounding plastic horns for a few minutes around midnight. My car was picked up this morning to make its journey back east, and my days here are winding down.

The lights of Christmas

2009-12-25T11:21:00.001-07:00

This time of year is all about light, of course- since the nights are so long, and various religions celebrate light in different ways. Here in New Mexico, there is the persistent influence of Hispanic tradition, and Christmas eve is the night that the farolitos and luminarias are everywhere.

I think sometimes they are both used to describe the candle placed in sand inside a paper bag, but I looked it up and the luminaria is actually the bonfire lit outside a home on Christmas Eve. Both are meant to show Jesus where to show up, I guess. Farolitos are everywhere all winter here, in fact there are artificial electrical ones that many people put out, but they, too, are the traditional Christmas Eve decoration. On Canyon Road, where many galleries are, and the streets surrounding it, like Acequia Madre, people decorate with hundreds of farolitos and some also have luminarias burning in front. The bonfires are often of pinon, so they are very fragrant. The whole city shows up to walk around and look at the beautiful patterns of light, stopping at the bonfires to sing carols, stopping in where cider is simmering on the stove, watching "farolito balloons" being launched into the air by candle power. It's way cold, so you have to really bundle up. Luckily last night the wind was pretty still, but I had on a tank top, a thin turtleneck, a heavy sweater, my down coat, and a down vest unattractively zipped on over the coat, plus long johns, jeans, wool socks, waterproof Merrell boots I bought here, hat, neckie thing, heavy gloves. I actually did pretty well with the cold, because most of the time we were walking. It went down into the single digits last night and will for the next few nights, but the sun is out right now.

I would not have been able to take decent photos without a flash and I didn't drag my camera with me so I'm using stuff I found on the internets- and my apologies to their authors, not readily available to identify.

In this photo you can see how people make patterns with the farolitos.

This one was taken on Canyon Road.

I found myself singing rousing versions of Christmas songs, remembering every word from my days of high school choir. Back then, there was no politically correct inclusion of Chanukah songs (which would be pretty lame, anyway) or- what, Kwanzaa? Nobody had heard of that then. So yes, Come all ye faithful and behold Christ the Lord, I'm right in there with you. As a New Yorker, I was pretty amazed at the sense of openness to singing in public. At one point, a woman came over to where we were standing, singing "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me." I only knew that one line from the song, but she kept gesticulating while she was singing, like Join In, and even though I said, I don't know the song, she seemed disappointed, like I was ruining the fun.

It was really beautiful and although there were tons of people out walking around it was all very orderly and celebratory for the most part. Always a few rowdies, but nothing to get all upset about. I wouldn't want to live in that area, beautiful as it is. First of all, it's historic, so there are numerous restrictions of what you can do with your house. And then to know, every year on Christmas eve, you have to be lighting candles and making cider for the city of Santa Fe- what if you Just Weren't In the Mood that night? Oy, I have a ways to go before feeling like I belong here.

Answers on demand

2009-12-21T22:27:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I had a home inspector look at a house I'm considering buying. He was quite thorough, I thought- except for a few comments on the differences between men and women, which sounded kind of homonid-man-ish, I liked him. He sold his house and is currently renting until the right one comes along, which, according to him, will be outside of the county, and a few other things that I don't remember, but I had kind of stopped him by asking how he knows this, and he took out his pendulum.

Now before your mind goes in the gutter, please note the photo:

The description: You can be sure that this pendulum will help you attain a clear mind and obtain a compassionate, loving answer to any questions you may ask.

My home inspector had a quartz pendulum with a big chip broken out of it (apparently that doesn't matter.) And the way it works is, you hold the chain between your thumb and finger, and ask the pendulum a yes or no question. Usually, yes is away and towards you, and no is side to side. I was fascinated by this. Now you can't just order something online or even go to the local new age bookstore to buy one. You have to go to Las Vegas, NM, to buy one from a guy who makes them. And the pendulum chooses you, not the other way around. The way that works is you use a necklace first, and then you take it with you, and then you ask the necklace to help you find your pendulum.

I don't have too many necklaces here, but I do have one that has a hanging thing on a chain, so I tried it at home. But it didn't seem to do much. Then I looked online and discovered that not only does the pendulum choose you, but you have to train it first. I won't go into the process, which is quite detailed. You can look it up under "dowsing." It's just like when people find water with the forked stick. How does it work? I don't know. It might be similar to the Magic Eightball. I find that to be a great source of answers: "ask again later."

High Desert Society

2009-12-15T23:14:00.001-07:00

I was asked to a benefit for Common Cause on Sunday by a person I don't know. This is a long story I don't want to go into. Anyway, it was very interesting in a lot of ways. It was being given at a house up in the hills by a couple who have been active in politics for a while here. I don't know the whole history, but he ran for office at one point and his politics are very progressive.

So I want to describe the scene a little, because I had the distinct feeling I had wandered into a Godfather movie- like at the beginning of the first Godfather, when they were having the party at the western house and the senator was there. It was late afternoon and the sun was setting behind the mountains, which could be seen from the wrap-around windows of the house. The house was pure Santa Fe style. There was art on the walls but it was random stuff, mostly small photos or drawings or watercolors and it was hung higgley piggley. I wanted to take it all down and group them in an interesting way. There was a grand piano and a bunch of chairs set up- the hostess told me she gives piano concerts. She was lovely and natural in the way that many women are here- no makeup, hair undyed in a simple style, wearing some kind of hand-woven vest, looked like it had been made by some native person, South American maybe.

I had worn a long skirt and a red sweater, because I figured even though it was in the afternoon, people would be dressed nicely. I think there was one other woman with a skirt on and she had long hair dyed a vivid red/orange, Indian jewelry, heavy-ish makeup. When she told me her name, I asked if she was related to a crafts center in North Carolina that is quite well-known and she said yes, that the town was named after her family. Other women were wearing pants, vests, maybe a blazer here and there. It was quite a low-key crowd. The host was handsome as some white-haired male politician who are in good shape are. He was passionate when he spoke about how money and corporations are running amok in this country, and how people are being more and more dis-enfranchised by the income disparity. I was rather touched by this noblesse oblige. Well, who else is going to get things done if not the rich? His politics were definitely in the right place and I found that kind of moving.

While I listened to the CEO of Common Cause give a very stirring speech to suggest that perhaps everyone should immediately make out a check which would enable them to hire more computer geeks to work there so they can be viral and utilize Twitter and Facebook to get back on the radar screen (slightly reductive version of his shpiel) I mused upon how I would not be in the company of rich people in New York, and I enjoyed hobnobbing. They had some snacks out, but I noticed NO ONE WAS EATING ANYTHING. I ate a cookie, encouraged by the guy who brung me. It reminded me of a weird thing that happened to me when I first went to the U. of Wisconsin and wanted to pledge a sorority (I was a follower then.) At the sorority I wanted to be invited to (my roommate was a legacy there and she would soon be asked to join) I was given a cupcake to eat, or maybe a tray of cupcakes was offered to me and I took one. But I didn't have time to eat it, because they were talking to me and asking me questions. So I didn't know what to do with the cupcake- it seemed rude to throw it out, so I said I'd just take it and wrap it in a napkin. After all, this is what my grandmother did all the time! But that didn't go over too well. I wasn't asked into that sorority, and the secondary sorority didn't ask me either, because they assumed I'd pledge the other one because of my roommate. I never did join a sorority. That was a defining moment for me. I should have learned to control my sweet tooth from that experience, but I never did. Hence the cookie, one of those butter/caramel crunchy sandwich cookies with chocolate in the middle.

Snow capped mountains at sunset

2009-12-09T17:14:00.002-07:00

Documentation

2009-12-07T23:16:00.001-07:00

It started snowing late this afternoon and I almost decided to stay in and turn on the gas fireplace, but I coaxed myself out to hear Susan Meiselas talk about her work at SFAI. I'm so glad I did, because I wasn't that familiar with all she had done and it was fascinating, disturbing and stimulating all at once. There was a decent size crowd there and I know Lucy Lippard was there because Susan made mention of it. Also Mary Charlotte from KSFR was there with her dog. Anyway I'm getting off the point.

I was astonished at the work she'd done. She's won practically every award a photographer can win, including the MacArthur (seems I'm seeing a lot of MacArthur winners lately.) She spent a great deal of time documenting the insurgency in Nicaragua in the late 70's, and those pictures were very strong and also horrifying in some cases. Then she went back there 10 years later to find those people in the photographs and documented that in a film. Finally she recently did a project with the cultural association in Nicaragua, where she printed the photos digitally on fabric as large murals and placed them where they had originally been taken, so people could respond to them. She talked about the responsibility of the documentary photographer and about memory and how photographs show the passage of time in their breakdown, and how past and present can be brought together by documentation.

She's done other work with the Kurdish people, documenting the genocide that took place under Saddam Hussein. More recently she has created an archive of photos from Kurdistan, making copies of people's personal photos and researching who was in them. Many of this photographic material was hidden away for years. There was a lot to think about. I wondered how she can continue to believe in the inherent goodness of mankind- probably she doesn't. As I was leaving, I was invited to come to the dinner afterwards, but I decided to go home. I wanted to think about what I had seen. Besides, I'm wussy about driving in the snow despite my new tires, which so far are all they are supposed to be.

Living alone

2009-12-06T21:11:00.002-07:00

I want to go off topic tonight to honor a friend who died. Friday morning I got an email from the head of my department at NCC that a dear colleague, Stacy Israel, had passed away the weekend before in her sleep. Stacy was 49. She and I both teach the Creative Voice class, and Stacy had been teaching art appreciation and art history. She got her degree at SUNY Purchase but it wasn't an MFA- I think it was an MA in Art Education, and I think she always felt a little insecure about that. She wasn't a practicing artist, but she made things, drawings and such. When we had our faculty show last year she tacked up a found object and it seemed to resonate nicely with my burn drawing that hung next to it. She was a big fan of my work, and everyone's work, and she was one of the most generous people I know.

Here's an example: I had work in the flatfiles at ArtSPACE New Haven for years, and every year they had a benefit with a silent auction of the flatfile artists' work, and a live auction of more well-established artists' work. I happened to put in some digital prints that year- it was when I was experimenting with printing on Japanese paper, and I had some palm tree photos from Costa Rica. They weren't very interesting, I think, in retrospect. Stacy would usually go to the benefit and we'd hang out and have fun. It's kind of embarrassing when no one bids on your work. The starting bid was $75. Stacy bought the piece and I'm pretty sure she did it out of friendship. Because she came from a fairly wealthy family. Her late father left her a decent trust fund I guess, and she established a foundation at NCC to benefit the art club and the art department. One time she surprised me with a necklace she had made for me out of red glass beads for my birthday.

She had enormous energy and attention to detail. Her assignments for the art appreciation class were always so interesting, and she did them first herself, to show the students what to do. I could never bring myself to put that much energy into teaching. And she always showed up for school looking kind of elegant- always some nice bracelets, black blazer, scarf, and her hair was almost white, blown out straight. I felt like a shlub compared to her.

They said she died of arterial sclerosis. I don't know how that kills you- heart attack? When I got the email, I just stared at it. It just doesn't compute. She smoked and drank, but lots of people do and they're fine. I was sorry I wasn't in Connecticut to attend the memorial. I heard there was a huge turnout, which doesn't surprise me, and I'm sure many tears were shed. It's funny how you take some people for granted. The last few days I've been reminded of her in little ways over and over. We weren't close friends; I don't know who Stacy's close friends were. But I looked forward to seeing her and it makes me terribly sad that she is not of this earth anymore. Not celebrating Christmas, or seeing in the new year, or even finishing her grades. I'll really miss her.

Of course, this is my worst nightmare, that something will happen to me and no one will know. I called my friend Janet in Albuquerque and she said we should email each other every morning. So the next morning I did, and she replied. But then she called me later and she said she didn't want to do it because she didn't think it was healthy to focus on death every day, even if it was the lack thereof. I see her point.

Holiday time

2009-11-30T22:39:00.000-07:00

Full hearts and stomachs

2009-11-27T19:59:00.002-07:00

I spent Thanksgiving at Rob and Gary's and spent the night there. In the photo from the left is Gary, their friend Jack, Rob, and Janet. Rob, Janet and I have known each other since junior high school. That would be something like close to 50 years, although there was a 25 year period that we weren't in touch. But still. That's a long time. It's wonderful hanging around with them, for a lot of reasons, and Rob and Gary's house is over-the-top wonderful. Rob is an architect and designer and loves to shop and travel, so he renovated the house, which is in Nob Hill in Albuquerque, a lovely area atop a hill (duh) near UNM. The house is a deco design, wouldn't be out of place in Miami Beach, and is filled with beautiful objects and art. Gary has worked on the terraced garden and patios outside, and it is gorgeous, plus it faces a view of the mountains. A huge kitchen with tasteful gray cabinets and variegated light green 1" tile backsplash arranged in interesting geometric patterns. So much stuff, everything you can imagine you'd want to cook and to entertain.

There's a beautiful guest room with its own bathroom, and I was snuggled under about 4 down comforters, because it was cold last night. I didn't want to get up but of course I had to, and I decided I wanted to empty the dishwasher before Rob and Gary got up. Faced with the array of cabinets, I puzzled over where things went. Would the little frying pan go in the third drawer down in the fourth bank of drawers, where there were other pots, or would it go under the oven? How about the spatula, and the turkey baster? Utensils drawer # 3 or 4, or in the container on the counter with the wooden spoons and whisks? I did the best I could.

We went for a long walk around the neighborhood, discussing house styles, etc. Then ate a very rich breakfast of leftover stuffing and eggs. Then Rob and I went to his office to hang my work. I had three pieces framed to put up in his office during a gala party he's having Friday night, and because he had used one of my pieces on his holiday card, printed in gold and black duotone. They looked pretty great and I hope they get noticed or even bought. That would be nice.

The next thing I did was go to the Apple store. There is no Apple store in Santa Fe, oddly enough. My bluetooth speakerphone for the car has never worked with my iphone. What a nice experience actually making an appointment with a genius for the same day, getting there and being helped immediately. The store was crowded of course, this being Black Friday and after Apple had sent numerous emails announcing a one day sale event. I lusted over a new 24" iMac. But anyway, the genius fixed the problem fairly quickly (some different way the Jabra thing has to be configured for the iPhone) and was on my way to my next errand, which was 30 miles south.

I make my drawings with a pen type of thing that is attached to a burner apparatus. A woman in Belen, NM is the source of all this stuff and I had spoken to her on the phone several times but I thought, well, I'm within shouting distance, why not go over there and discuss the different points and so forth. As an important aside here, I really need to create an interesting story for how I do the drawings. I've always been honest when people ask: wood burning tool. Oh, they say, slightly let down. I know an artist who claims he makes millions of little burned dots with a stick of incense. Maybe true, who knows. But I need a better story, so I'm asking for suggestions that sound interesting and mysterious but plausible- no journeys to the rain forest to find the proper burning stick, for instance. If I tell people, it's a secret, they get in a huff. You can't win sometimes.

So this woman and her husband live in a development in the middle of nowhere, except it's really not the middle of nowhere, it's in Belen, which she told me is a "blue-collar railroad town," and it developed long ago because the railroads have a switching area there. It's so odd to see these scrunched together residential developments surrounded by vast landscapes, strung along the interstate. They had beautiful views of mountains and their neighbors' back yards. They were lovely people and she and I talked for an hour about dogs (she had two) burning, growing gourds (she uses the tools to burn designs on gourds, grows many of them herself in pots outdoors, but due to the vagaries of growing real flora, the shapes she intends don't always show up) and the lack of town planning. I bought another burning pen with a different point on it and something to clean the shmutz off the points that develops as they burn stuff. They seem to have a nice life there. Ten miles away, in Las Lunas, there's a super-Walmart, a Lowes AND a Home Depot, along with a bunch of other stuff- you know, one of those mega-outdoor-shopping centers. I didn't see a movie theater there, though. That's always my measure of civilization.

another Friday night

2009-11-13T21:36:00.000-07:00

So here's an example of Santa Fe weather. Forecast was cloudy and rain. Around 2 PM it rained for about 10 minutes. Then the sun came out, but the sky was still full of clouds. That's when the best skies happen. I went to an opening at the art institute tonight and on the way in, took this photo:

It's hard to capture what happens when the sun and clouds are out together. It's so magical. Not many people were at the opening. I left to stop at Trader Joe's, mostly to get cash without having to pay a fee, but as usual, buying more stuff than I intended. Actually the only thing I bought that I didn't need was a box of an oreo type cookie mint ice cream sandwich kind of thing. Since I've been here I've gained weight- I don't know exactly how much, maybe 5 pounds. That's a tremendous amount of weight for me. I saw it on myself in the mirror at yoga, or maybe I was just surrounded by very slim people. I don't have a scale here. One thing I always have in the house is an assortment of dessert items.

After TJ's, I stopped in at a Canyon Road gallery where Roz Chast was signing copies of her new books. One was a collection of her cartoons from about a 25 year period and it was a big book. The other was a children's book, slim enough to carry out without backbreaking effort, but that one was completely sold out by the time I got there. I didn't want to be too obvious in taking Ms. Chast's photo, and a sizable line of people waiting for her to sign their books deterred me from leaning in and asking her if she minded, so this photo is taken from a discreet distance. You can see that some people loaded up on books. My own feeling about Roz Chast is that she is close to genius. She should get one of those grants, but she probably makes enough money that she doesn't need to, so I'm glad they award it to other oddball types who are doing more oddball pursuits.

Takin' the train

2009-11-12T21:34:00.001-07:00

Today Tina and I took the train down to Albuquerque. I've been wanting to take the train, especially since I live near the depot, and it looked like fun. The train is relatively new and they don't quite have it worked out. Right now it only goes in the morning and evening, nothing in the middle, nothing late at night- just for commuters, and students, as we found out. So we had to plan our afternoon based on the schedule. It cost $8 round trip to Albuquerque, $6 if you're over 65, but we got charged the regular price because we didn't understand what the ticket person was saying. But we could have bought the tickets on the train for the same price anyway.

The train is called the Railrunner, and has a big cartoony roadrunner painted on it, which I find funny. Tina has seen a roadrunner (the state bird) but I've never seen one. The train comes so close to the traffic when it comes through town, it's a little scary. One time a truck was in front of me and had stopped in the no parking area, and then the gate came down right on top of him, but he couldn't move at that point or he'd cause severe damage.

So as you can see, the train is double decker, and it's very nice and clean and comfortable. Not many people were riding on the way down, but it was maybe half to three-quarters full on the way home. It goes through some really nice scenery, but also goes past some funky housing, mobile homes, vehicles in various stages of rust and disrepair, industrial areas. It takes an hour and a half, almost twice as long as by car, but then it is saving energy. I wonder if it will ever be widely used. When questioned how fast the train was going, a very nice and enthusiastic ticket taker said, "79 mph," with no sense of irony. Mabe it was going that fast for 15 minutes, but more often it was crawling along, and since there's only one track, when the train comes the other day, it has to pull onto a side track for a little bit.

Once we got to Albuquerque we had to take a bus, because we were having lunch with Marge at Tamarind, which is at the UNM campus. Not far from downtown, but definitely not walkable- so the bus was free when you had a train ticket, we hopped on and were there in 10 minutes. But like most buses in cities where people don't use public transportation, there was a pretty down and out group of folks on the bus. One young guy asked us for 35 cents. We said no, but the guy sitting across the aisle gave him his train ticket, which would allow him to ride the bus all day for free.

Life in a bubble

2009-11-08T12:10:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I went up to Dixon with my friends Rob and Gary. Dixon is a small town north of Santa Fe, just off the road up to Taos. It's quite pretty there, and like almost every small town in northern New Mexico, there are a number of artists there, and every year they have an open studio event the first weekend in November.

Rob and Gary know a lot of people up there, so we did a lot of visiting and socializing, and that was fun. We saw some arts and crafts. It was a beautiful day.

There was one artist, a landscape painter, who was wildly popular. We didn't go to his studio, because we ran out of time, but we saw about six of his paintings, three of which had been bought by people who were visiting at the house where R and G's good friend lives. The paintings were framed with gold frames from Mexico. Supposedly the guy produces at least one painting a day and orders the frames by the hundreds. The whole idea of art and who is an artist in New Mexico is testing my judgmental side in a big way. But these paintings were lovely.

Dixon seemed like a throwback to my early hippie days. It felt very much to me like what life was like when I was in my twenties in Tallahassee. I knew people over the years who lived that way, in Cornwall, CT, for instance. It's pleasant, but it's not for me. Even though Santa Fe is hardly a city like New York, it feels urban enough.

Anyway, we visited a family that has a self-supporting household, with a big geodesic dome that is a functioning greenhouse, full of amazing things growing, including a fig tree that produces fruit, melons, all kinds of greens and root vegetables. It was beautiful and lush inside there. They also have chickens and turkeys- one of them a beautiful male turkey who refused to pose for a photo.

Well, since Thanksgiving is right around the corner, I worried that this guy's days were numbered. But no, the husband said they've already killed this year's bird. This guy is NEXT year's meal. Oy.

The low road

2009-10-31T23:33:00.002-06:00

You can either take the high road or the low road to Taos from Santa Fe. The high road goes up through the mountains, through the little town of Chimayo, and up around some beautiful forested areas. The low road goes through more of a canyon, along the Rio Grande for some parts. It's not a very pretty drive except for about 10-15 miles as you go around the curves of the mountains (the part that I get a little dizzy on.)

There was little evidence of the snow that they got in Taos on Thursday. Today got warm and sunny again, but even yesterday when I drove up there the road was completely dry. The landscape in Taos is sort of valley/mountain/mesa kind of thing. I stayed in my friend Lisa's house, and we watched an incredible sunset Friday night from inside her living room.

I can see the attraction to living up there. It's much rougher around the edges, I think of it as a cowboy town. You're living out in the country, not much to do (I don't think they have a movie theater there.) So quiet and still, with the mountains looming. We went to the Harwood Museum Friday afternoon and saw an interesting exhibit about land and earth and water in New Mexico by three European artists. One took photos with a camera attached to a kite, and they were really beautiful. Printed small, for a change, arranged in a frieze around the room. There has been an ongoing theme of Land Art exhibitions in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos since the summer.

This is a wood carving from the 30's, part of the Harwood's collection:

Sunday, November 1st is the Mexican Day of the Dead. I'm going to see what's up with that- people go and have picnics and family gatherings in the cemetery. This piece reminded me of my ex-husband Eric. Not because it looks like him, but because he liked to draw skulls- he called them "smiley boys."

Today I went to visit Alan Powell, who's building his own house in Arroyo Seco. He showed me around where the TV would go, where the one suit would hang, where the guests could do a little work on their computer. He's figured out precisely where the winter sun will shine through the wall of windows on the shortest day of the year. It's quite remarkable all the details he has considered, and the house will be a work in progress for a while.

I stopped in at the Walmart in Taos to get windshield wiper fluid and Halloween candy (and I haven't had a single trick or treater come here.) I would not want to live somewhere where I'd have to shop at Walmart. I hated myself for even going in there. I drove back after that, letting people pass me because I just didn't want to rush. It was another beautiful day. I took this photo along the way.

The Plaza at night

2009-10-29T18:43:00.002-06:00

Four Seasons

2009-10-29T15:34:00.002-06:00

Well, I was wrong to gloat about the weather, because the last two days have been as cold as January in New York. Low twenties last night and tonight is supposed to be colder. And it's still October. Everyone is complaining about it though, so I guess it's unusual. There was supposed to be a lot of snow and there has been a little, but most of it will be further north in the mountains. I'm going to Taos tomorrow and I'm sure there will be snow up there.

The thing is, I have such a hard time with dressing for the weather here. The drop in temperature when you're in the shade, or after the sun goes down, is so extreme that I end up dressing for the cold and am hot. And people say, "layers." But where do you put the extra layers? Do you carry around a small suitcase with a heavy jacket, scarf and hat? So far I've noticed that you can experience all four seasons in one day. So I keep looking around to get clues of how to dress. Right now it's just plain cold so that makes it easier in a way.

It's been a busy week. I can no longer work on the patio so I've been working on a sketchbook for this project. I was sent a moleskin sketchbook with a bar code and my name in it, and a library card. I've made books with moleskin sketchbooks and expected a medium weight paper, but this has a lightweight beige paper and the theme I was assigned is "danger danger." I wanted to change it but can't. I came up with an idea about birds, because I've been making bird drawings lately. Each page will have more and more birds on it until the last page will be almost completely black. Then I came up with the idea to paste in pages from this weird pentecostal hymn book I bought at a tag sale this summer and paint the birds on top of that. There are a lot of pages in this book- 80, I think. It's more work than I expected but I'm not one to drop the ball.

Monday night I heard Rackstraw Downes talk about his work at SFAI. He was quite amazing. All of his work is done on site and if you check that link you'll see that his paintings are very detailed. Someone in the audience asked him about his eyesight, and he said he still has 20/20 vision for distance but he's finally needing reading glasses- which he doesn't wear when he works. He pointed out that most artists' work starts to become softer as they age. Monet, Degas (who had such bad eyesight that he couldn't work outdoors at all,) Rembrandt, for example. A lovely, thoughtful man, who has written extensively about art also, and just won the MacArthur "genius" grant.

Tuesday I went to Site Santa Fe to hear Nancy Holt give a talk. Her partner was Robert Smithson, who designed and constructed Spiral Jetty and was an early pioneer in Earthworks, now called Land Art. He died in a plane crash in the 70's in a small plane while looking for locations for his work. Parenthetically, I have a dear friend from way way back who lived in Salt Lake City for years and never heard of Spiral Jetty. In fairness, it was covered by water for years, but is now visible again. I included links both to the Dia Foundation website, which maintains Spiral Jetty along with many of the other Earthworks, and the Robert Smithson website, which is maintained by the gallery that represents his estate. There was a huge retrospective of his work a couple of years ago...at the Whitney I think.

Nancy Holt lives here and has made her own art over the years, but mostly what she showed and talked about were a series of slides from the 60's of her and Smithson with the artists who became enormously famous: Richard Serra, Carl Andre, Donald Judd, Joan Jonas, Michael Heizer. It was fun and a little depressing to see these artists, many of them gone now, young and excited about rocks and earth. (I didn't bother linking all those names.) She was saying that they all lived in Soho and as soon as they crossed into New Jersey they'd feel happy and free. The art world was so much smaller then. And the West was the frontier. Even if it was only as far west as Jersey- there was a lot of wilderness. I wonder if it's still the same now.

By the way, someone who might actually know (albeit second- or third-hand) told me that Jimmy Hoffa is not buried in the Meadowlands.

The city different evolves

2009-10-24T23:09:00.003-06:00

Last night I went to a really interesting talk about the exhibition Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe at the History Museum. It's a show of photographs starting from early 19th c. ones to contemporary pictures. What I learned was that Santa Fe was really a construct almost from the start- by commercial interests like the railroads and Fred Harvey who established restaurants and later hotels along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railway. Interestingly, when the railroad was extended into New Mexico, it was determined that it was too difficult to go through the mountains into Santa Fe, and the tracks went through Lamy. The style of architecture was a deliberate amalgam of pueblo and Spanish architecture, and there was some reconstruction to bring existing buildings into this new vernacular.

The Palace of the Governors, at one end of the Plaza, which now houses the museum and where Indian artisans sell jewelry each day under its portal, was originally a kind of simple neo-classical building, but was restored to the now familiar style, using adobe and earth tones of the pueblos and vigas, the heavy roof rafters that extend out from the walls, a feature of Spanish architecture.

Before

After

Because of the railroad bypassing the area, city fathers figured out ways to get people to come, by producing different pageants, mostly conquistador kind of stuff. In the 30's they used WPA money to give artists traveling expenses to come to the area. Eventually, the fake pageants became beloved community rituals. Due to political action groups, "Indian Fair" was established in 1922, and now Indian Market is a huge enterprise. It was always the intention to present the area as a layering of three cultures- Hispanic, Native American and Anglo- and I guess what surprised me was that this was such a contrived identity. By the way, I'm oversimplifying the history here. I didn't take notes.

This is a photo in the exhibit, by Norman Mauskopf, from 1992:

Notice the guy in the back with the shorts and tevo's. Reminds me of a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry is sitting next to a guy with shorts on in first class, and tells him he should wear pants, and an argument ensues.

The room was packed for the lecture and unfortunately in the middle of it there was suddenly a weird noise and people started jumping up and calling for a doctor. Then we all waited for the ENT's to come, but there was no drama. The lecture went on.

Mundane details

2009-10-23T16:43:00.004-06:00

A friend asked me today what my days are like here. This week has been pretty lowkey- we had a nasty rain/snow storm on Wednesday which meant both patios filled with leaves, and no working outside those days. Next morning, clouds still filled the sky. I took some photos on my walk.

Notice the artwork on the side of the Boys and Girls Club- the sign spells out "peace" in rocks of various hues. Rocks are embedded in a long wall with a spectacular gate:

This seems to be a residence, or several...I don't know the whole story about it but somehow I think it's linked to the painter of the Our Lady of Guadalupe mural (see earlier post) who happened to be there again today, putting in some details.

Here are some photos of the place I'm living, taken from the stairs leading to the bedroom/bathroom loft:

I've spent a lot of the week at home, working, cleaning, reading, watching movies. Fridays are my yoga day. I'm not really over my surgery and am occasionally reminded by a pain here and there (and weight gain) but I take a gentle yoga class and I'm one of the better students in there, so I like that. It's such a relief to be in a place where older people such as myself are all around. It feels so forgiving.

The class is at a huge community center dedicated to a woman: Genoveva Chavez. I don't know what she did (probably should find out) but there's a cool mosaic of her at the end of the hall, see photo:

I completely love this place. You see the mountains all around. In the photo, you can see the windows for the two swimming pools on the left (one has a huge waterslide) and on the right, downstairs, is an ice skating rink. There are classes, machines, running track, basketball courts. Best part: if you're over 60 it costs $3.00 to get in, and do what you want, classes, machines, swimming, whatever. I think the rink might cost something, and you can rent skates.

I've thought about various things to learn here. A lot of my friends are into tango, so there's that to try (but I would need new shoes, and glasses don't seem to go with tango) but I could also take ice skating, since I've never been very good at it. Soon there will be skiing. And then of course the hiking, doesn't cost anything.

I bought new tires for my car today, slightly larger and better weather-wise than what came on the car. Those were bad tires, meant for mileage not for bad weather and bad roads, and I had to replace two over the years. Nothing like getting a slash in your sidewall and not knowing it until you're going 75 on I-95. So to test out the super duper tires I took a ride up toward the ski basin. It's a windy road and makes me dizzy so I only went about 8 miles. But it was beautiful. The light is so exquisite here. And the snow is starting to accumulate on the mountains.

Domingo musica

2009-10-18T21:37:00.000-06:00

I went to a concert this afternoon at the Lensic auditorium. I got the cheapest seat available ($30), which was pretty high and far back (see photo) but the auditorium isn't that huge and it was very satisfactory. I sat next to a couple from Montreal who were on vacation, and Santa Fe was their last stop before going home- they'd been the Las Vegas because their son worked in Cirque du Soleil, then had seen the Grand Canyon. We talked about how much there was to see and do in Santa Fe and they were having a great time. The weather has still been wonderful, it seems amazing to me, and everyone comments on it. She took photos and I took photos. Then the usher came by and told us to be sure not to take photos during the performance and the Montreal woman said, oh yes of course not, and then made a sarcastic remark under her breath in French.

I love watching orchestras, especially the strings and the percussion. Today's concert was called "The Romantics" and it was Mozart, Mendelsohn, and Brahms. I would definitely like to come back in my next lifetime as a violinist. I was watching one guy in particular- he had a big smile on his face as they all sawed away at high speed on their instruments. I love to watch the cellists and the way their non-bowing hand does that tremolo back and forth thing. All in perfect synchronization with each other. I just think it would be fantastic to be able to play in an orchestra and make those sounds all together. And the conductor- keeping everyone under control, like trying to herd cats. Making sure no one was too loud, or unruly. I got a little hung up on watching the trumpet players and the percussionist during the last movement of the Brahms. They had nothing to do, and I was afraid the young trumpeter was going to whip out her cell phone and start texting, she looked so bored. She fidgeted a lot and then it was over and she was applauding the solo pianist with everyone else.

A little glitz

2009-10-15T21:25:00.000-06:00

The weather has been so nice that I decided to do my burn drawings outside on the patio, which worked out great. I could hear the crickets, even in the daytime, and it sort of set a rhythm for me to make the burn marks. It was really pleasant and I don't have to deal with the smoke in the house. I wonder how long I'll be able to do this.

Here's an example of what I'm doing. This is a drawing I did in NY on a lightweight drawing paper. The paper doesn't take any water-based medium without buckling. I'd like to mount the drawings on black with gold leaf and not have glass over them. So I've started doing them on watercolor paper, which makes a darker burn so it looks different than this. The framing will be important so I think I'm going to go to a framer and get some opinions.

I heard the weather in the east is just horrible. Snow in CT, gray and dark and dreary in NY. I almost feel guilty enjoying the sunshine.

McVitie's

2009-10-13T22:32:00.000-06:00

If, like me, you like chocolate, and if, like me, you concern yourself with daily regularity, you will like McVitie's Digestives. Here is a cookie that combines chocolate, either milk or dark, and a fiber-filled cookie. Now some might say chocolate doesn't belong on a cookie that is related in texture to compressed sawdust, but they would be missing out.

I discovered these cookies when I was in London this past July, purely by accident, when I was looking for something in the expensive little grocery to satisfy my need for something sweet after dinner, and I was totally hooked. So much so that I brought the uneaten ones back with me to New York and then looked in vain to find a store that sold them. Just before I left for Santa Fe I happened upon them at Zabar's. They were 5.98 I think but I bought them anyway. There aren't that many in a package so they're long gone. But today I found them at a store right near me, and they were only 3.99. Cheaper than Zabar's- although the packaging isn't as good (they normally come in a sort of paper tube with a plastic lid that closes them and protects their freshness.)

This same store sells all kinds of arcane international foods- especially heavy on the British. Just blocks away. Almost makes up for the complete lack of a decent bagel here, even at a place called "Bagelmania."

She's everywhere, watching out for us all

2009-10-11T11:54:00.001-06:00

You see a lot of images of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I've always loved that image, all that fire or whatever radiating off of her. This one is painted on the bridge over the river behind my house. There was an old painting of her, and recently a guy painted over it and added the flowers and landscape, and the banner, which memorializes his friend. I stopped to ask him about it when he was painting. He said the friend's mother lives down the road. I live a few blocks from Guadalupe Street and there is a big church on the corner dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe. And there is a huge statue of her, with a lot of gold (see what I mean?) I remember last summer when the statue arrived. It was a very big deal. The photo on the home page that I linked to doesn't do it justice. But you can go to their gallery page and see the process of installation. They are very, very proud of it.

Random musings about being west of the Mississippi

2009-10-08T22:08:00.001-06:00

Not much happened this week except for some frustration at art experiments that didn't work. I saw a lot of gold art when I was here in the summer. And I started thinking about it, thinking how it reflects the extreme light here. It's so bright that when you walk in the sun you're almost blinded. You want to get into the shadow so you can see. I bought a baseball hat just to keep the sun out, so I could see when I walk in the morning- otherwise I can't see the ground from the strong light blinding me.

There are lots of ways to use gold- you can get gold paint of course, but that's cheesy. Then there's powdered gold pigment, and gold leaf. I've been playing around with the pigment and the gold leaf, both of which require adhesive and a sealer afterwards. It looks really cool on black. I got very seduced by it. But I'm still not sure about the cheese factor. I go back and forth between thinking about what I would try to show in New York, and what intrigues me here. It feels very different.

I had dinner with someone I met on Sunday, a doctor. He proceeded to inform me about enneagrams, telling me how Rumi is a type 4, like him. The artistic, melodramatic outsider. There are 9 personality types. I took a test online and it was something like "The Achiever" with a bit of "The Investigator" and some of "The Helper." Nowhere near type 4. I was pretty skeptical, but this man was really into it and kept referring to people in his life as being a type this or a type that- and his own behavior over the years, he was a type 4, so of course he'd be a certain way in a certain situation. I had never heard of the enneagram, but that's only one of many ways that people here seem to like to use to explain the mysteries of the universe.

One thing that throws me a lot is the time difference from the east coast. I have to keep reminding myself that it's two hours earlier- so if I think of calling someone at around 9 PM, it's too late. When I wake up in the morning, my friends and family have been up for two hours or more. First thing I do is check my email. I don't like the feeling of being on a different schedule.

I finally started receiving my NY Times in the morning. It took a week and a half and a lot of phone calls. I figured it would get here eventually, but when I called the Times I guess they called the manager of the newspaper delivery for the district and he called me a few times to ask if I'd gotten the paper. I hadn't. So he thought maybe someone was taking them, but he rode by here himself to see what the situation is. He moved the address sign for the house next door so there wouldn't be confusion. I wonder what they thought of that- they're from Texas and have a big ol' SUV sitting out there. Anyway I started getting the paper, finally. But it's strangely organized. It has about 10 sections, because they're not put together, it's kind of in bunches. No matter, though. I do enjoy reading it and doing the puzzle until Thursday or Friday when I can't do it anymore.

I've been thinking about dogs, too. Lots of dog-walkers behind the house, along the river. I look on the humane society website every few days. I stop myself though. Not time yet, but it would be great to have a little companion here.

The limits of language

2009-10-03T21:48:00.000-06:00

This weekend I'm taking a seminar on Rumi at St. John's College. St. John's is in a lovely spot, above Canyon Road in the hills. It's one of the last of a particular kind of college- committed to the liberal arts and discourse. Not at all what I experienced as an undergrad. I'm not sure I would have been up to it.

I met an artist from Iran this summer and she kindled my interest in Persian poetry, telling me about a poem called The Conference of the Birds. More about this at some point. My friend Dom and I were browsing at the used bookstore here and I found a book on Sufism and a book of some of Rumi's poems- so seeing the seminar on Rumi listed on the St. John's website, I was excited at the opportunity. Because I have to say, Rumi's poems are a little hard for me to relate to. But now I see that it's the translation that is a little opaque to me. And by the way, off-topic, is the Kindle meant to suggest sparking an interest? You can get samples of books before ordering them. But it's a sweet word in a way, isn't it? Kindle. Like kinder (children) it almost seems like a diminutive.

The seminar is for the weekend only- six hours spread over Friday Saturday and Sunday. There's food, and on Friday, there was wine. The food is kind of fancy, like last night it had a Persian theme, and there was a predominance of round balls. Some were beef with spices, some were pistachio/apricot rolled in confectioner's sugar. Then there was hummus and two kinds of home-made pita chips. So of course I had a little wine and then I was sort of sorry I had, because I couldn't think as clearly. And this is a very smart crowd. Almost all are women, different ages; one male poet who is the least talkative, and the "tutor" who is an expert not only in Middle Eastern literature, but Western lit as well; reads Farsi of course, and is very good at framing questions to direct the discussion. He gave us a great deal of material to read, and also to listen to. It was password protected online and I couldn't drag an audio file off to post here. But probably listening to a Rumi poem in Farsi is not what you planned to do with your time.

I will say this, that besides hearing different peoples' responses to the poems, I've become much more familiar with the depth of Rumi's writing, and learned that the most popular and famous of his interpretors, Coleman Barks, has taken tremendous liberties with the text, often draining it of the Islamic, mystical aspects which seem to me to be very important. So seeing several translations together has been really interesting, and makes one wonder what Rumi's intentions were, but in fact, one could ask if that is even relevant, if the poems that result from the interpretations are meaningful in their own way.

Here is an example of four interpretations of the same quatrain:

1. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase, "each other"
doesn't make any sense.

2. Beyond belief and disbelief
lies the vast expanse of ecstasy
where the mystic lays his head
on the cushion of Truth.

3. This valley is different.
Beyond religion and cults.
Here, silently, put your head down
Engulf yourself in the wonder of God.
Here, there's no room for religion or cults.

4. Beyond Islam and unbelief there is a 'desert plain'
For us, there is a 'yearning' in the midst of that expanse.
The knower of God who reaches that plain will prostrate in prayer.
For there is neither Islam nor unbelief, nor any 'where' in that place.

I'll supply a bibliography for anyone who's gotten this far! The first interpretation is Coleman Barks'. I'll bet if you've got a book of Rumi poems, they are translated by him. Tomorrow, our last day, we'll be mostly listening to the poems being read in Farsi. But it's amazing how many ways Rumi's poems have been interpreted musically- from folk/country to Philip Glass to chanting. Our tutor says he is the best selling poet in this country. Could that be true?

Thoughts about Oz

2009-10-01T18:44:00.002-06:00

The wind has been fierce since last night. This morning it was 39 degrees according to my phone, but it felt very cold as I took my morning walk/run. I've posted a photo taken on the path, which today was full of elementary school kids from the school across the street. It runs behind my house as a dirt road, crosses a big street, then goes through fields and a park, alongside the riverbed.

I've started working here, and catching up on my podcasts while I work. Today I listened to the broadcast on Studio 360 about The Wizard of Oz and had an epiphany about how it's possible that this movie had a profound affect on me as a child. I watched it every year without fail. Salman Rushdie wrote a book about it and he talked about how it was really not about coming home, but rather about getting away from home. Scholars talked about how the Baum book was proto-feminist: Dorothy and her little dog, taking off for a place that was so much more beautiful and exciting. Could this be the story of my life?

Fall is all about yellow

2009-09-29T17:47:00.001-06:00

The Book is sealed

2009-09-29T10:37:00.006-06:00

Yesterday I went to Yom Kippur services. This summer I had lunch with a wonderful woman whose partner is a rabbi at a shul, HaMakom, which holds services at a pretty little church in town, so I decided to go there. It's a progressive synagogue, both rabbi and cantor are women, and though I don't know all the history, someone told me it broke off from the larger reform temple here, Beth Sholom.

First thing was, everyone (except for me and a few others) were wearing white, or almost white. In all my years of going to High Holiday services, I knew the rabbi and cantor would always wear white, but never the congregation. No, it was always an event to dress up for, wear new fall clothes and all that. In Miami Beach, it was still sweltering but you wanted to wear a little suit, and when I was a kid, it was unthinkable to wear pants. That has changed, obviously. But here people were wearing white jeans, crocs, and the like, some were dressed beautifully in long flowing garments, many had little yarmulkes pinned on their heads, pretty crocheted ones, even beaded ones. The rabbi invited all of us to put on a talit, the prayer shawl that is usually worn by men. I've never had one on, in my recollection, and it was a nice feeling, to be wrapped up in it. Especially since it was cold in there.

Another thing was, there was a dog there. It had a little outfit saying it was a service dog, but it was a cocker spaniel and the person who brought it was most definitely not blind. Who knows though. It was pretty well behaved but at one point started to bark (it wasn't a particularly loud part of the service, perhaps it saw a vision of some sort.) I thought maybe Lucy would have enjoyed going to services and she was already dressed in white, but maybe she would have been bored. For a portion of the service a beautiful little girl, barefoot, pranced around the synagogue giving hugs to almost anyone. It seemed she knew everyone, and she was quite enjoying herself. Her mother was on the bima and the little girl particularly enjoyed hopping on one foot up and down the aisles. Everyone seemed amused.

I'm making it sound like it was bedlam in there, and it wasn't at all, I just found it refreshingly, but disconcertingly casual. After all, this wasn't some happy holiday- it was the Day of Atonement. I atoned for the snarky remark I made about the dead flies the other day (which I've vacuumed away.) It was a beautiful, moving service. Instead of a sermon, there were three people who are involved in the Judaism course- the teacher (mother of abovementioned child) a woman of 75 who will be Bat Mitzvah in May, and a man of 60-something whose partner is Jewish and who is converting. Their commitment to the religion and their willingness to immerse themselves in theory and ritual was very inspiring. I felt a real sense of community in that room, and a lot of acceptance and love. Most of the congregation (and Santa Fe as a whole) is comprised of somewhat older transplants. The rabbi referred a lot to her sermon of the night before, about "sageing instead of ageing." Something I would like to remember. When I would tell my story, they'd say, you won't want to leave. We'll see. I met some lovely people and it was the first time I've spent the entire day of Yom Kippur at synagogue, culminating in a beautiful pot luck break-fast.

Chapter two- the signs

2009-09-26T09:36:00.007-06:00

Back in Santa Fe, this time for real life- or what passes for real life in my sphere of being these days. I rented a condo for a year and will be here till January, when I need to go back home to teach spring semester. And since I've been talking about moving out west for years, and coming to Santa Fe for at least 15 years, I figured it was as good a time as any to spend more time here.

A friend of a friend was offering this place to rent. It's in a great location near the railyard, where the farmer's market, Site Santa Fe and a number of galleries are. It's also an easy walk to the Plaza. Not sure if I feel okay walking home at night, though- no one else does except the drug dealers. Yes, there are drug dealers in Santa Fe. Anyway, it was being used as an art studio by the owner, but it's really a large 1BR 1.5 Bath apartment with two patios. So I figured I could work and live here. So far, my second day here, I'm far from being settled and organized, but that will come. First I have to clean it better and get rid of the dead flies. I did not leave dead flies in my apartment for my subtenant.

It is so odd the way people show up when you don't expect, and how Santa Fe seems to create a vortex of those experiences. Hours after I arrived, I was getting into my car when a woman walked by with a dog that started barking at me. I looked over and the woman said, "Donna!" It was Eileen Torpey, a woman I know from grad school who lives here, and whom I've been in touch with, but not recently. She happened to be walking along the "river" (it's really just a tiny stream at this point) which is behind my place. I also ran into a woman who owns a gallery in the little town of Madrid in Target- she had been sitting a seat away from me on the flight out here. I was so excited to see someone I knew that I gave her a little hug, and she laughed.

However, last night I went to an opening of a group show because someone I had met at open studios this summer had a piece in it. I talked to him, but didn't see anyone else I know, except for the guy who works at the art supply store. I kept in mind Jackie Battenfield's advice to talk to at least four people at any opening you go to and I forced myself to say a few things to people I was standing next to, looking at the art. But no one continued the conversation. In fact one woman looked at me like I had two heads. Slightly discouraging, but it's early in my stay.

I loved the double rainbow I saw as I came out of (of course) a natural food store. It had just started to rain and I took a few photos with my phone. As I drove, it looked like I would drive right below it, as if it was the St. Louis arch. Could there be a more perfect sign than a rainbow my first day?

at long last

2008-09-03T19:10:00.006-06:00

Something most people don't know about me is that I have two master's degrees. The first one is in Art History, and my thesis was on Marion Mahony Griffin, a woman who was one of the first to finish architecture school, and who worked in Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School studio in the early 20th century. Wright gave her the job of designing motifs for detailing and such, but also she was an exquisite draftsman and my thesis maintained that she did many of the beautiful architectural drawings that are attributed to Wright. I published an article about this back in 1974, and now it's common knowledge that this is true, although many (male) historians of Wright's work don't give her the credit. The Wikipedia entry does point to her important contribution of drawings.

Anyway, I've never been to Wright's Fallingwater, the Kaufmann house in Pennsylvania, and friends in Santa Fe suggested I go, since it wasn't far from Pittsburgh. There comes a time in your life when you start to think, will I ever be here again? And I thought: no. Furthermore, I will not do another cross-country car trip, because while it was fun going out, it was way less fun coming back. I kept imagining that I was having a stroke or something, but it was just headache from muscle stress and tension. I mean, if you're driving in hilly territory and you've got double semis bearing down on you on the downhill, you get a little tense.

So I did go to Fallingwater on my last driving day, and it was well worth the long but beautiful detour on one of Pennsylvania's "scenic auto tour" roads. There were lots of people there and you have to reserve a spot on a tour. On Labor Day they had over 60 separate groups of 10 or 12, but Tuesday was quieter, if still quite briskly busy. The house is wonderful, really interesting and lovely. What a crazy commute it must have been back when the Kaufmanns spent weekends there. It's all open, lots of glass, eclectic furnishings that include the built-ins that Kaufmann the younger designed, as he was an apprentice in Wright's studio; but also Diego Rivera paintings, several Hiroshige prints plus a Hokusai, Southwest stuff, Picasso prints, books galore (I spotted a Vincent Scully, wondering when that would have been added.)

There is often a little waterfall inside the house, but it's been a tad dry, I guess. You can see from the photo that there is a stairway that goes right down to the stream from the living room and of course the sound of rushing water is everywhere. I bought a few gifts, grabbed a sandwich, and left at around 2:15 to continue my drive home.

Construction and road painting in the area caused traffic to stop. Then, I missed an exit, feeling too confident that I knew where I was going, which caused a severe delay as I wended through cornfields, praying that I would once again find the desired route 78. Once I did, I was again delayed as an accident stopped all traffic on the highway. Needless to say, it was ridiculously late by the time I got home, having practically propped my weary eyes open and going around 55 mph in the right hand lane because I couldn't see all that well at night.

And so, dear friends, my blog comes to an end for now. I'm back in Brooklyn, amongst the Poles, hipsters and pizza by the slice. Have I reached the enlightenment I sought? No, not really. But it was a great summer and life has shifted- not sure where, but as Rilke said, "Live the questions and one day you will live into the answer." Or something like that. Thank you to everyone who commented or emailed me to say they enjoyed it. Now we turn to the entertainment that is called electing a president. Check out Huffington and Kos.

And until the next time- Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

okies

2008-08-31T21:40:00.002-06:00

I drove through miles and miles of Oklahoma today, finally reaching Missouri. You want to see red state folks in their element? Pull into a truck stop on a Sunday. Is it rude to keep your cowboy hat on during lunch? I guess not in Oklahoma. The place was packed with families. A parade of moms with babies in carriers and an odd assortment of young and old grizzled cowboys. Why did I stop there, you might wonder? A very sweet old guy, at least in his 80's, suggested it. I had chatted with him outside another truck stop in Texas. He lived in Amarillo and was driving a brand new Prius. He was tickled with it- wanted to retrofit it somehow to plug it in so he'd never have to buy gas. He said he'd been an engineer and thought he could do it if he could get the parts. I said he could probably find the info on the internet. How life has changed. The car of the future, he said.

When you sit at the counter, you hear the wait staff complain to each other. There were some nasty women at the truck stop. One was telling another how when people don't get their check quick enough, they just leave money, and they never count on the tax, so she had to make it up herself (tips aren't even expected, I guess.) The other one said, "oh, I'd never pay it myself, I'd just change the amount on the check." An overweight blonde in a ponytail she was way too old to wear was particularly rude to me, but super friendly to some old coot who came in and ordered soup and a grilled cheese.

Can these people tell I'm from New York? And do they hate us that much? Here's a really weird thing that happened. I pulled into a rest area and was distracted by another Prius in the lot- thus running over a bunch of glass. Shit, I thought, and got on my hands and knees to make sure there wasn't a piece that could be smooshed into the tire. While there, a car pulled in that had a horse trailer behind it. Young-ish guy gets out with his son, motions to him to watch out for the glass, looks over at me, and spits on the ground. SPITS. What am I to make of this? Not one person spoke to me at any of my stops, except to say "excuse me" when opening the ladies room door and almost smacking me, just behind it.

As I have often said, all New Yorkers should have to make a trip cross-country. Big reality check. In my experience, past and present, Texans are rather friendly and helpful. Okies, other than those in Ok City, are useless.

ain't that America

2008-08-30T19:15:00.003-06:00

Oh, what a strange, wonderful country we live in. I say this from a Fairfield Inn room in Amarillo, Texas, after a fairly decent mini-dinner and glass of wine at Olive Garden. I did NOT want to stay in Texas and had a reservation in Oklahoma City. But I had a sleepless night, probably still from altitude sickness, and I'm amazed that I got this far, about 340 miles, compared to the 500 I had intended which would keep me on schedule. But there is NOTHING between here and OK City, and that is 4 hours away. I lost an hour with the central time change and I decided to stay in Amarillo and try to make the time up in the next two days.

Now, Amarillo is hardly an interesting or beautiful city. I-40 runs right through the middle of it and if you want to get to something on the eastbound side, you need to go under the highway to get there from the westbound side. Olive Garden was crowded, since it's Saturday night, but I was able to order (appetizers only) food at the bar. There I met and chatted with Sunny, who has rather tepid dreadlocks (Sunny is a white girl,) a button that reads "One Love" (when asked about this, she pointed to her dreadlocks- Bob Marley fans take note) and an intention to get a PhD in "Positive Psychology." I asked her what that was and she explained that there's only one program, at UPenn, and it was meant to concentrate not on the dysfunction, but on the positive nature of things. That was before I saw the bill that had her name on it, and I said, a little incredulously, "Your name is Sunny?" Sunny also is a poet and told me very animatedly about the poetry slams and how she goes to Albuquerque for culture. Since I had just driven from there and was exhausted, I was surprised at this.

Amarillo has an iconic art piece, Cadillac Ranch. I had wanted to stop and take a pic, but I was distracted and noticed the exit without having enough room to get off the highway. Since I have just passed through the town called "Bushland," (I swear I'm not making that up) and the first car I noticed in the lot has a McCain sticker, I was surprised when I turned on the TV and the show that is on is called "Not Just Another Cable News Show," and is skewering all politicians, particularly W., playing the famous clip of him trying to dance on "Malaria Awareness Day," and the equally wonderful "Fool me once, shame on you....uh...you can't get fooled again" clip.

tape cactus

2008-08-29T23:02:00.003-06:00

It took me hours to take down the wall piece. Each tile had a piece of masking tape looped on the back, so as I was peeling them off and sticking them together in a ball, I decided it might be fun to make a sculpture out of it. I've been thinking about cholla cacti, and a friend here cut a couple of pieces of one for me to take home. He came into the kitchen pulling stickers out of his hand. When they dry, they make a sort of pattern, and I have no idea how long it will take for them to dry. I put them in a bag with my other outdoor treasures- a stone from India (I bought that one) and a pine cone from my hike.

Today Ellen and I went to see Georgia O'Keefe's house. We drove out to Abiquiu and were picked up by a shuttle that takes you to the house, as if we're going to some secret location or something. As it turns out, the house can be seen from the road if you know where to look. You were not allowed to take anything with you except keys and a bottle of water. No purse, camera, pencil and paper to sketch, nothing. It was lovely there, just as I imagined it to be, or as it is seen in photos and films of her. VERY spare. Everywhere there were spectacular views of the valley and mountains, framed by windows and doorways. It really was beautiful. I wish I could post a photo.

Instead, am posting a photo of the landscape in Abiquiu, in the mountains on the way to Ghost Ranch, where O'Keefe had another house, and which is now a conference center.

Tomorrow I am to leave here. Right now I feel dizzy and am hoping it's altitude and anxiety.

farewell lunch

2008-08-29T22:58:00.002-06:00

getting high

2008-08-27T17:32:00.002-06:00

Nope, this post isn't about what you might think from the title. I thought I was used to the altitude, but after hiking up at the ski mountain in Taos (9200 ft at the base) I spent the next day with all the signs of altitude sickness- headache, dizziness, ringing in my ears, general queasiness. Gatorade powder to the rescue, and I drank a bunch of the foul stuff (actually, it tastes like melted jello, sort of) and felt better the next day. We had a New Orleans night on Monday. The writers from there each did a reading, Gabe, the residency director who lived there for a while made gumbo, and there was music and merriment. No alcohol for me that night.

I feel like the reality of my life at home is rapidly seeping into my consciousness. I'm planning my drive, thinking about what I have to do when I get home, and whatever I've accomplished here is fading away. I need to take down the work and pack things up, since I'll be heading out on Saturday.

I've set up a "mobile me" gallery online with jpegs of the work. If it doesn't work, someone email me and tell me. I'll be putting some of this on my website but I have no idea when I'll get to it, so this will be the only place to see the finished work for now. Wael (you remember him, the artist from Egypt) pointed out that I could do the piece with real tile somewhere as a public art installation. Something to think about. Meanwhile am posting my work table, with pieces of work in progress.

More philosophy and existential thoughts to come.

second largest art market in the usa

2008-08-23T22:38:00.002-06:00

Well, I don't know if I believe that particular claim, but yesterday, in the doldrums from open studios being over and not feeling like working, a few of us ventured off to Canyon Road, where most of the galleries are. It was hot, but it was also depressing. So much of the same kind of work, lots of gold leaf, lots of landscapes, which one would expect, lots of color, lots of mixed media, lots of bronze- oh, and horses, horses, horses. Horses without legs. Two headed horses. Rearing horses. And those were just the big bronze ones.

I wanted to see the Judy Pfaff show which was at Bellas Artes. They also represent a Korean photographer, Jungjin Lee, who just had a show here of photographs on Mulberry paper (using liquid light.) The couple who run this gallery are an interesting pair. The Pfaff show was terrific, I thought. But then with all the cutting, burning, paper twisting and shellacking, it's right up my alley and made me wonder why I'm so timid with my work. I need to get in there and mess up a little.

None of the gallery people I invited to open studios showed up, but there were a lot of people there who had nice things to say. I had photographs shot of the installation- I'll post a few next week when I get them from the photographer, Jamie Hart, who's a friend of Jim Prez back in Brooklyn, the curator of the encyclopedia show.

I'm a little at loose ends now. Going up to Taos tomorrow, I'll see what I want to spend the last few days on when I get back.

By the way, I was wrong about Richardson's companion the other night. A friend sent me a photo of him with his wife and she's a blonde. I think it might have been a sister or relative. Certainly wasn't an intern or a "paid escort."

not the next vp

2008-08-21T23:36:00.004-06:00

We went out after open studios tonight to a restaurant near the statehouse and Gov. Richardson was having a party. He goes there a lot, they say.

On the way out, we saw him at his car (Black Cadillac Esplanade- get a hybrid, Bill!) I called out, "Hey Governor!" He smiled and waved. I don't expect him to be named Obama's running mate- for one thing, he wouldn't be hanging around here in town. And what's up with that, anyway? I thought Obama was going to announce it yesterday.

I couldn't take a photo but am posting one. He still has a beard, nicely trimmed. Brown suit, wife by his side. She's a petite dark-haired woman, pleasant looking.

The pol's are swarming in New Mexico. Today John Dean made an appearance at a shopping center. Barack was here the other day, and McCain was in Las Cruces yesterday. Lots of political TV ads, for McCain mostly, but they show only Obama in them. Strange marketing strategy. I have been watching almost no TV- just the Olympics for a few nights.

autumnal spirit

2008-08-18T12:44:00.004-06:00

Last night you could really feel the change of seasons begin, as it's gotten chilly and that feeling you get when summer is over is in the air. The days are a little shorter, too. I've gotten pretty close to finishing the tile piece. Just a bit more on the right side and the top edge and I think it's done.

I'll be spending the next week and a half making some drawings and making more cyanotypes on kozo paper so I can colle them on large white sheets. The image is not too great, as I haven't lit things and the paper is a little warped on the wall (it is SO damp in the studios) but it gives a sense of what they look like. They're very pretty, I think. There's something about that blue. People ask if it's indigo- it has some of that sense of organic pigmentation.

I had a nice weekend with friends from CT. Ed Wright and his son Ben played a guitar concert at a cool little nonprofit performance space. (Click Ben's link for the MySpace page for one of his bands.) So the Rowayton crowd from Taos came down and we all had dinner and enjoyed the show. I lost my keys in the process and when I came back and called the RA, I had to wait for her to drive here from wherever she was, then the master key didn't open my room door. Luckily there was an empty room I could sleep in. I was worried because we have a $150 deposit on the keys (and room damage I suppose) but in the morning I called the restaurant where we had dinner and they had the keys. Small drama ending happily.

sun sets on the city different

2008-08-16T13:42:00.003-06:00

I can't imagine that you'd ever get tired of seeing the sunsets here. Last night, driving back to sfai after a storm, the sky was spectacular. I didn't have a camera with me, so I looked in google images for "santa fe sunset" and found a bunch, but this one came closest to what I saw last night.

I found a few images in an online article called "How a Visit to Santa Fe New Mexico Just Might Change Your Life." Then followed one story after another of people who have found their bliss here. It's becoming a cliche, really. The traffic is horrendous and development spreads further and further, connected by really ugly commercial roads. I don't know how this will continue, as it seems the city is stretching to its limit. When I came back one of the writers from New Orleans was ranting about Santa Fe- he doesn't like it at all, and thinks it's the most racist place he's ever been. White, Native American, Hispanic, each thinks they've got The Answer and looks down on the others.

I've been enjoying it, but the Santa Fe I loved from 20 years ago doesn't exist at all. Every weekend there is another shopping opportunity. This weekend, the ethnographic art fair. Next weekend, the giant Indian Market. Hold onto your cowboy hats.

groundhog day

2008-08-13T16:55:00.003-06:00

The days are starting to feel routine. I get up, maybe go for a run/walk (still haven't quite gotten up to speed on that) eat breakfast, make cyanotypes, work on the computer, cut and paste, maybe make a drawing, read, do a crossword puzzle. I'm getting into a rut. I think I'm almost done with the tile piece. I'm sort of sick of making cyanotypes for now. Maybe a few more.

Each person that looks at the piece comments that the spaces are important. This is a good thing, not only visually and for the strength of the piece, but for my sanity. If I had a few assistants we could cover a wall easily, but if I'm going to enjoy myself, this piece will stay somewhat fragmentary. Which I kind of prefer anyway.

There is a poet here from the UK, Dominic McLoughlin. He has written a bit about art and we've talked about art and literature and how the writers and artists here might interact more. He had some interesting things to say about the tile piece. He saw writing and water, and pointed out that there had just been a review of a biography of Keats, and that his epitaph reads "Here lies one whose name was writ in water...." Keats died so young, age 25. It struck me that a great title for the piece could be "My name is writ in water." People could get the reference, or not. It gives a whole different reading to the piece, because I was ready to call it "Leaving Babylon" (after the Bob Marley song, "Exodus") or possibly just "Babylon." The Rastas view Babylon as a place of sin and idolatry, and the name comes from Babel, as in, Tower of. Illegibility, confusion of language, destruction of the temple, all that is in my mind. But the ephemeral nature of the piece suggests the fragility of life, something that is on my mind now with several friends being ill or their spouses being ill. I liked the elegiac quality of Dominic's suggestion (although he didn't suggest it as a title.)

We projected youtube videos on the wall in the courtyard last night, a la Cinema Paradiso, and laughed our heads off at Monty Python and SNL sketches. (The good ones.)

Here are the words written on Keats' tombstone:
THIS GRAVE CONTAINS
ALL THAT WAS MORTAL OF
A YOUNG ENGLISH POET
WHO
ON HIS DEATH-BED
IN THE BITTERNESS OF HIS HEART
at the malicious power of his enemies
desired these words to be engraved
on his tomstone
"HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME
WAS WRIT IN WATER"
FEB 24 1821

dog hike

2008-08-10T16:14:00.002-06:00

In continuing this day which started on a freaky note, I came across two dogs while hiking, both of which (both of whom? don't know the proper word) had different colored eyes. They weren't border collies, they were Australian Shepherds. While I huffed and puffed and hung onto the switchback path for dear life, chihuahuas, elderly ladies, girls in sundresses, and runners passed me by. I found that a walking stick is essential, especially for those of us with FEAR OF HEIGHTS. It was beautiful today- I could appreciate the scenery while hyperventilating.

When I came back, I passed a policewoman coming out. Turned out a resident's car was stolen last night. I wondered if a Prius can be hotwired, but I don't want to find out if it can. Poor guy. What a nightmare.

to sleep, perchance to dream

2008-08-10T07:50:00.002-06:00

I have very vivid dreams here. I don't always remember them in the morning, but this morning my room phone rang at 6:45 AM. I was in the middle of a dream about some lawyer showing me an eccentric old lady's apartment in a very rundown building that had been an old hotel. It had red trim, and it was crumbling on the outside- inside, it hadn't been cared for for years. I was trying to pushpin something to the wall and it was crumbling plaster. It was a very large 1BR apartment, and I remember thinking that there'd be room for me to put an air mattress down for Lorin to stay over if he visited. The rent was something like $800 and the lawyer told me it was better for me to rent out my apartment and live in this one. Maybe he was an accountant. He had two different colored eyes, but it was sort of attractive in the way it is in a border collie. He took me to dinner and that's when I woke up. I thought, "I don't deserve to live in a crumbling old building."

Now, you may be wondering why my phone rang so early. This has been a regular thing, usually on Sundays. When I first got here, it rang at 7 AM three days in a row. No heavy breathing, but I got a sense of an actual person on the other end before I hung up. I asked them in the office about the phone calls and they said they'd talk to the college switchboard and see if there was a problem. But the other night Jenny from the office told me the whole place is haunted and it was not unusual to have crazy dreams here. There was an army hospital on this land at one time. Maybe someone is calling from the other side.

Back to the dream: it's pretty obvious that I'm starting to see myself as an eccentric old lady, and Lorin is in fact planning a trip to NY. Oh, and there was an old empty swimming pool in the apartment (I commented that it could be filled in and made into a dining room) and there was sort of a communal patio with a bunch of old people sitting around playing cards. So is this my future? Rundown, playing cards, no swimming, border collie? They say when you dream about a home, it's your own body you're dreaming about. It all doesn't surprise me, and the symbolism is right out of Freud. It didn't really weird me out. It was sort of pleasant, actually. I'm off for a hike in the mountains. I need to get out of here for a while.

multiplication

2008-08-08T23:34:00.004-06:00

I'm more than halfway finished with the tile piece- good thing, since we have open studios again in two weeks. I had an unhappy revelation last night when I figured out how far I still had to go, but I can make the cyanotypes pretty quickly now. It's the cutting and arranging that takes time.

I settled on this configuration for the repeating break in the patterning. I don't think it looks like a quilt anymore. One of the new residents saw it and immediately got the tile and mosque reference. There will probably be close to 2000 of the 2" tiles by the time I'm done. It's very specific to that corner, with those angles, but it could be refigured somewhere else. The grid conquers all! It's also about pixellation, about destruction, and even a little about mold.

a treat for the girl-lovers

2008-08-07T21:42:00.004-06:00

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.

the great divide

2008-08-05T16:28:00.006-06:00

They're tearing down the buildings at the Indian school. It's odd the way it's partway done- there's plenty of protest about it, but the school is on Indian land and the city can have no say in what happens there. From what I've read, there's confusion as to why this is happening at all, and it's a big mess over there.

We drove over on Sunday to try to take photos but we got chased away by a very serious looking and burly security guard, so we parked across the street and took some pictures from outside the fence. It's a massive deconstruction and it seems very sad. Also, there's so much construction material just lying in big piles- it's like they just tore into everything all of a sudden. Wrought iron railings, columns, curtains, window screens, tons of brick and concrete in a twisted wreck.

We've had so many residents from New Orleans. Today one of the new residents said he'd lived in 12 places since Katrina, and we watched a rough cut of a film last week that was heartbreaking. It makes the images of the Indian school more affecting somehow- to think this was done on purpose. It seems like they should be able to reclaim more of the material. But maybe I just think of them as being more ecologically aware because that's what I expect of that culture. And as we all know, expectations are dangerous and lead to disillusionment.

Which is a good segue to What I Did Yesterday, which was to go to Feast Day at Santo Domingo pueblo. Thousands, literally, of pueblo residents, probably past and present, doing the corn dance for St. Dominick. It's an interesting mix of Christianity and Native religion. The plaza at the pueblo is quite large- at least the length of a football field (here I'm going out of my experience range somewhat, since I haven't been to a game in many years.) The dancers ranged from about three years old to just below elderly (as in, my age probably.) It was so hot and sunny, and the dancing went on for hours. There were two groups and each danced for over an hour while we were there, and I guess traded off throughout the day.

The men and boys wore a cream colored loin cloth with a fox tail fastened to the back, with a belt of bells and cord, that held pine branches in place. The women wore black dresses with a red belt, and a headdress that was turquoise painted wood that looked like a stepped pyramid. They carried the pine branches and wore either moccasins or were barefoot. A group of maybe 100 men chanted and the dancers hopped from one foot to the other and moved in a line and a formation all around the plaza. Seeing so many of them was quite astonishing. They all wore beautiful jewelry and most of the men (and all of the women) had beautiful long, long hair. There were also a few elders completely covered with white mud, head to toe, with dark mask-like features and a corn headdress. They seemed to keep people in line and help the children when there was a wardrobe malfunction. All were shaking a maracca-like gourd (I have no idea how to spell that) and that plus the drum plus the bells made a pounding rhythm. An interesting thing I noticed is that they all kept their eyes cast downward, or even closed.

Of course you can't take photographs or even sketch. We got a great spot to stand that was shaded and right behind some of the tribal elders, next to the altar of St. Dominick, and all during the dancing women came with food. This was laid on the ground by the altar, which was in a tent that had moose heads (also wearing turquoise jewelry) on the front. I wondered what St. Dominick would do with bottles of Starbuck's frappucinos, but I guess he would distribute it to someone who wants it. He had a lot of food there, that's for sure. Tamales, soups, fruit, sandwiches of all kinds, cake, pastries, and of course bread. All of the pueblo's houses, even the brand new ones in a little subdivision, had outside bread ovens.

The Franciscan monks came along and wished the elders a happy feast day. There were lots of booths with stuff to buy, but they were all people from elsewhere- the people of Santo Domingo were all busy with the real doings of the ceremony.

lucky seven

2008-08-02T21:12:00.005-06:00

Tina and I went to the Biennial today and we were both surprised at how much we enjoyed it. You really have to make the commitment to spend some time, because there is a lot of video showing the artists and their processes, and we came away with the sense that Lance Fung accomplished what he set out to do, which is do a biennial that was inclusionary rather than exclusionary, create a community amongst the artists, and that was very specific to Santa Fe. Some work is far more successful than others. We loved a video that was a diptych of a close-up of a local person talking about their favorite place here and beautifully shot footage of the place, or something having to do with what they were saying.

I found a video of Rose Simpson from the panel I wrote about last month (see "the local and the global" under July postings) It's short, worth watching- especially for those of us who really don't have contact with an indigenous community and only see them when trying to buy stuff from them. I'm thinking of one person in particular, but that person wouldn't be reading my blog anyway. I think you'll see what I was referring to in that post by watching this little piece.

the good the bad and the ugly

2008-08-02T08:38:00.005-06:00

I went to the opera on Wednesday with my dear friends Rob and Gary. We saw a new opera, "Adriana Mater," which was written by a woman, Kaija Saariaho, and I believe she is from one of the Balkan countries. The opera was about civil war in an unnamed place, but the set design suggested the Middle East. Doesn't sound very appealing I suppose, but aren't all operas about some kind of conflict? It was really wonderful, rather minimal, but quite affecting. As it happened, the husband of the woman who plays Adriana was sitting next to me and he gave us some insight into the structure of the music and the text. They are Finnish and the opera was first produced in Helsinki- this was its American debut.

The Santa Fe opera house is beautiful. It's built into the mountains and is mostly open, like an amphitheater, with a semi-circular overhang. The stage faces the sunset and the operas start just before sunset so you get this almost 180% panorama of the sun going down in the mountains and it's just exquisite. I felt a wave of joy to be there and to witness that in the context of wonderful music and theater.

Rob thought my tiles look like a quilt and I don't want that reference. I made some changes but I'll post about that when I take more photos.

Meanwhile, residents have left and new ones have arrived. Mike packed his truck with his assortment of junk and dead animal parts and headed back to Colorado. I can't imagine anyone whose work and process is more different than mine. He would drive out to the countryside and pick up whatever interested him, or buy things from tag sales. Lots of antlers. He also bought from a county sale a bunch of discarded animal parts- skulls with skin and fur still on them, hoofs, things like that. I found it upsetting to look at (and smell, though I suppose that will eventually subside) but that was part of his intention. Putting them together in an interesting way to make something new, and to expose the beauty in what was discarded and dead. I'm just too much an animal lover to connect with that work, although I did spend some time talking to him about it. He apparently never connected with mine, either, as he never said a word to me about what I was doing. Chaque a son gout. He was interested in creating a visceral response- it was very physical, far different from the cerebral and aesthetic nature of my work.

sad news

2008-07-29T11:23:00.003-06:00

I was, and still am, so out of touch with news that I didn't know till yesterday that Bruce Conner had died three weeks ago. Only 74- that seems so young to me now although when my mother died at 72 it didn't seem unreasonably young...

I saw "Gonzo," the movie about Hunter Thompson a couple of weeks ago at the campus movie theater. I thought it was great, and in my mind his life is a little connected to Bruce Conner and all those crazy "beatniks." But Conner's work on paper was so beautiful and spiritual- it revealed something in him that was not self-mocking or nihilistic at all. Anyone familiar with his work and mine would see the influence. He himself claimed some 3000 plus artists who influenced him. But I would stare at those pages of tiny blots in wonder and amazement. I saw a show of them quite recently, and he is in the Carnegie International even now with his "angel" series of photograms.

I saw Dennis Hopper at MoMA last year, being escorted through the galleries. I feel like that generation is disappearing. Ride easy, Bruce and Hunter.

confluences

2008-07-28T22:25:00.004-06:00

I did get a chance to talk to Wael Shawky for a while the day of open studios. He's a very pleasant, open person, with an engaging smile. With all the success he's had in the art world so far (I had not realized he was in the Venice Biennale five years ago, and he's only 36) he doesn't take any shit from anyone, but at the same time, he's quite willing to talk about his life.

We talked about Sufism. This is something I never gave a second thought to- but after he described it to me, it stuck with me a little, because he said it was related to mysticism and Kaballah. Then in Sunday's paper there was one of those Deborah Solomon interviews with Doris Lessing, and she said she practices it. Of course, this was an opportunity for Solomon to pounce on the Islam thing. Wael is very religious. He said it all "makes perfect sense." I would love to go to Egypt and see some of the things he was describing to me. Maybe this will happen. It's so wonderful having this time to experiment- I've got four different things going on and I switch around depending on what interests me that particular day. I can't let go of my hand being in the work, no matter how much it's mediated by computer imaging. I'm learning a lot about what's important to me in my work.

the interview, redux

2008-07-27T17:10:00.001-06:00

I'm not sure if I can upload the shortened interview from santacaferadio to the blog- Alana made an mp3 file with just the three of us on it, but it's still pretty big (maybe I upload as a video?) I'll look into this.

Meanwhile, I posted just my part of it on my website.

2008-07-27T11:47:00.000-06:00

2008-07-27T00:49:00.001-06:00

2008-07-27T00:41:00.000-06:00

around the compound

2008-07-26T15:14:00.002-06:00

Something I notice whenever I'm out doing errands or whatever is that there are a lot of big cars and trucks here, as well as a lot of Prius' like mine. The trucks take up a lot of room in the parking spaces, and I've already gotten a little dent on my car from someone opening a door on it. I do not feel sorry for these people who are moaning about gas prices. You really see the smackdown in communities here. There is so much stuff to buy- today I went over to the Plaza and meandered around the Spanish Art Fair (like the Sono Art Fair in Norwalk, but with 80% of the artisans showing religious art.) But where we are located on campus, we're closer to the Walmart and the Smith's grocery store is indicative of local tastes, not those of the newcomers'.

I'm posting a few photos that I took before open studios of my studio, all cleaned-up like. I can see that requiring artists to take part in the open studios is a major motivator for some, since all of a sudden everyone's studio had finished work in it. The next day the residency director, Gabe, took some photos of me for their files. This weekend there is no hot water and this is the third time it's gone out. We may not get it back till Monday. I'm going to try not to sweat, but a cold shower is better than none.

video killed the radio star

2008-07-25T08:04:00.003-06:00

You can hear the interview on the radio here

I'm going to get one of the residents who has an audio editing program on her computer to cut it down, but for now if you want to hear us, we're in the second half of the show so you have to move the slider down halfway...and I'm at the very end so if you want to skip the rest, move the slider at least 3/4 of the way down. I didn't sound too bad, just a lot of "ums" as I was trying to think- since I had no idea what she was going to ask. I'm sure I do the same thing in my classes as I try to think of a word. For instance, in the interview I started to tell her about when I showed one of my book pieces to Louise Bourgeois. (That link is one of many about her.) So I was saying, "here's a little....." then I stopped, because I wanted to say- what? vignette? anecdote? I settled on "story" which certainly could have popped out of my mouth a lot easier than it did.

one less artist

2008-07-22T22:17:00.003-06:00

I found a dead mouse in the trunk of my car last night. It must have climbed in there before I left and died when the car sat in the sun at the airport. I noticed a horrible smell in the car, but I thought it was my cooler with maybe some old food smell. In fact I said to someone, "my car smells like something died in it." It was an expression! But when the smell didn't go away, I had to look and there was the poor critter in an empty Trader Joe's bag.

While I was away the troublesome artist was asked to leave. I won't go into what pushed the staff (and us) over the edge. We got an email from him that was a lot of "poor me" stuff, and I hope he doesn't cause problems for people here. He was here as a "refugee" artist- sfai offers studio space and a place to live for people who have lost their homes for one reason or another. I was told today that of 140 applicants, 29 visual artists were chosen, and some very interesting people looked at the work, so that made me feel good about getting accepted.

So we now have 7 artists and 4 writers: Adria Pecora, David Bratton, Jen Dohne, Michael Brohman, Jessica Maloney, and Kaili Chun are the artists; Ellen Schnepel, Nikki Louis, Christian Champagne and Alana DiGiacomo are the writers. I notice as I post these links that I'm one of the only people I know who couldn't get my name as my website domain name. And that other Donna Ruff doesn't even use it! (Grr.) It reminds me of Larry Miller, the Fluxus artist. His website is onlyonelarrymiller.com.

The documentary we saw last night was -eh.- It was an interesting subject, the dances of these indigenous people in Mexico, and the most interesting part was when people were interviewed. They are dancers for a period of three years and it's a major commitment to the community to do so. As is the case with Native American ritual dances, there is a lot of repetition of steps. I found myself trying to stay awake but I chalked that up to my vestigial Chicago fatigue. Then today several people said they had dozed off. I felt bad for the artists but really they could have done a more interesting film, it was such a rich subject- but then I think it was the first one they've done, and they did so much good work for the community that I have a lot of respect for them.

This morning three of us were interviewed for a radio program that will be available as a podcast- I will post when I get it. I think I sounded non-idiotic, but when I hear it I'm sure I'll cringe.

Lorin took this photo with his iPhone

2008-07-21T11:26:00.004-06:00

time out

2008-07-21T11:19:00.000-06:00

I was in Chicago this past weekend for my cousin's wedding and came back yesterday in utter exhaustion. I will say this for Albuquerque airport: it's civilized. I parked my car in a long term lot where there is a van that meets you AS YOU ARE PARKING YOUR CAR and a friendly driver who puts your suitcase in the van and takes you immediately to the airport. You are given a card with your space number on it, so when you return you give the driver this card, and the process is reversed. Fee: $4 a day.

We're having open studios Thursday night which has me in a slight panic mode. Everything I've got is in process, the encyclopedia has taken many hours of my time here, so I'm trying to get a lot done in the next three or four days. There's a lecture on campus tonight by some ethno-videographers (I made that word up.)

More c-types, on Japanese paper today just for fun to see how they look.

maybe getting somewhere

2008-07-16T22:41:00.000-06:00

I had an aHa moment when we were at the panel last week. Since I was struggling with the cyanotypes, I decided to cut them up and cover the wall with them as if they are tiles. This kind of builds on something I thought of before coming here, which was to use the cyanotypes like bricks to build something that would be reminiscent of the Gate of Ishtar or one of the many blue mosques.

I've now become pretty adept at making the cyanotypes. I've set up a low-tech darkroom in my bathroom- since I've got the disabled suite (one of two) I don't have a skylight in there and it's very roomy. I brought in a table to coat the paper with chemicals and I can close the door with the vent on inside while they dry. They are not super-light sensitive anyway. I can use a 75 w. bulb in there while I work.

My studio has some angles in it so I'm working from the corner out. It's in very early stages- maybe there will be some dimension to it other than the wall angles. It reminds me of my blot series. The blues are quite beautiful and I'm trying to vary exposure and coating so that different shades result. Conceptually, it's very important that the images are all made by the sun.

I'm also working on my encyclopedia project and some small works on paper with sliced book pages. Today a few of us went to a gallery to see a show by Barry LeVa. The gallery was on an unpaved road in a very industrial area, and it was a wonderful space. The gallerist formerly ran a foundry in the building and did multiples for many blue-chip artists. He very generously showed us his living area and his collection of art. At one point he pointed to a group of very small works on paper that seemed very similar to what I'm doing with the book pages. I had sort of a strong reaction, which kind of amused everyone. Well, not the first time I've seen something that is related to what I'm doing. I loved the LeVa show. The gallery and the gallerist were so different from everything else going on in Santa Fe- it was a great pleasure to talk to him and see the show. He and his wife are hopping in their airstream trailer and going up to the mountains this weekend.

We had a lively game of charades last night. I highly recommend charades for a lot of laughs. Sometimes I think I would do just fine living communally like this. Meanwhile. the heavy rains come and go. We had major leaks in the studio last night.

when the going gets tough the tough go shopping

2008-07-14T10:43:00.000-06:00

Saturday one of the other artists and I went to the Folk Art Market. This takes place every year at Museum Hill, where the Folk Art Museum and several other museums are located. They charge to get in but we managed to sidle along the side at the entrance along with a slew of other people. We spent plenty of $$$ there so we didn't feel at all guilty.

The other artist, Kaili, is from Hawaii and is a native Hawaiian. She was a little irritated at the way artisans from other countries were trotted out to be put on display at their booths. There was beautiful work there, though. I bought a few goodies for Christmas gifts and two scarves from an Indian artisan who ties tiny string knots on silk in a pattern, then dyes the silk and takes out the knots, which are done with one long piece of string.

We ran into the artist I had seen on the panel, Rose Simpson (she is the niece of Nora Naranjo Morse.) I got a little flustered (as I often do) telling her how we enjoyed her talk. She looked bemused. She's a beautiful young woman with a small silver spike going through her nostrils. It's quite striking, but for me, with constant nasal leakage, it would be a nightmare that would result in a lot of shredded tissues.

I wanted to talk to Wael Shawky, the artist from Egypt, who was with Rose and another guy. I've met him a couple of times, since he stayed here and knows Kaili and a writer who has been here for a few months. He's Muslim and did a performance piece once where he read the Koran in a church, so he's thinking about cultural and religious overlap. I'd like to see the Koran read in a synagogue, ha. As if.

I took out my pen and a card to write down my cell phone and the pen started to drip ink all over the place, getting on my shirt, my purse, and the ground. Wael took the pen from me and threw it away. Staples special, they work for a while but this isn't the first one that has leaked. Anyway. Today Wael is supposed to come over here for something, so maybe we can talk for a bit.

2008-07-14T10:41:00.000-06:00

3 AM

2008-07-12T10:33:00.000-06:00

I have a habit of sometimes waking up at 3 AM and not being able to fall back asleep till 6 AM. It's like clockwork. Last night there was a lot of noise outside at 3 AM- like someone vacuuming the entire campus (usually it's very quiet here.) So I decided to go online and poke around.

I googled my name and discovered that the other Donna Ruffs were moving up in the google standings, but my website was still the first listing. I also discovered something really great, this blog entry.

Gotta love the internets!

fauna

2008-07-11T09:25:00.000-06:00

Most mornings I go for a walk around the College of Santa Fe campus, where sfai is located. It's a pretty campus, not in the Princeton ivy kind of way, but it's open and nicely landscaped, with some sculpture scattered here and there. You'd have to like the adobe style architecture to be happy here, because that is all there is. Even new buildings like the one we're in refers to the vernacular, and everything is low-rise.

This morning the clouds are low. They're sitting on the mountains and seem within reach above me. I always see rabbits on my walks, and lots of birds- robins mostly, but also some little wrens (I assume) and big black birds- crows, maybe, or grackles. I've seen one prairie dog so far- they're cute little fellas, bigger than a meercat but in that family. At least I think they're bigger, since I've never seen a meercat.

We were told last night that there were 8 comped tickets to the vernissage of Art Santa Fe, and that there was a dinner, so the 8 visual artists got to go hobnob with the art glitterati of Santa Fe (free food!.) There was no dinner, unless you consider a tray of maybe 20 tiny crostini of various sorts being brought around on a semi-regular basis and a glass of champagne dinner. A few of us decided to loiter where the trays were coming out, but the waiters caught on and started taking a swift turn in the other direction. Not being a regular at these things, I wondered why anyone would pay $75 to go see what they could see for $8 on the following day, but obviously it's not about economy, or I should say it IS about economy, but in a very different way.

the local and the global

2008-07-09T10:45:00.000-06:00

There is so much going on in Santa Fe in the summer. This weekend, for instance, there's the Folk Art Market and Art Santa Fe, an art fair, in which the gallery that I'm in for the summer show will participate (not with my work, though, only their signed on artists.) I haven't even thought about visiting Chimayo, Abiquiu, Bandalier park, or any of the places I've driven through on past visits, nor have I gone to Museum Hill to see the wonderful Folk Art Museum again. If I hadn't been here before, I'd never get a bit of work done.

Last night we went to a panel discussion at Site Santa Fe, where the Biennial is now in progress. It was curated by Lance Fung, whose process was a little different than most Biennials. Read about it here.

The panel was very interesting and inspiring-three artists from Santa Clara pueblo (mother, daughter, and niece, the Naranjo-Morse family) who participated in the Biennial, and an artist from Bulgaria. The discussion was about place, identity, and community. The women were so articulate, thoughtful and aware; not only of their place and function as the "tour guides" in a sense to the artists who came from elsewhere, but aware of the changing nature of indigenous communities, especially in Santa Fe. So many artists live far from where they are from, whether they settle in Berlin, New York, or wherever- but these women have been in the same place for generations, and pointed out that wherever you go, you take your sense of place with you. Their work in the show is a collaborative piece- an adobe "line" that snakes around the city, looping onto buildings, going through trees, being buried, then emerging from the ground. Santa Clara is famous for pottery, yet one of the women said "we don't 'own' clay as a material- many cultures use clay." She talked about how the many stories of her people get "put in a box" for consumption- i.e., Indian Market.

I haven't had a chance to see the exhibition in detail, and a lot of it is off-site, in various locations around the city. My first impression is that it's a mixed result. I'm really glad I went to the panel, because the dialog that took place was so sincere and generous, that it made me glad to be an artist in fellowship with other artists.

I couldn't get any photos off the Site Santa Fe website to post, because it's all Flash animation, but if you're interested in seeing some of the work and the artists, it's at sitesantafe.org

2008-07-08T11:16:00.000-06:00

the group conscience

2008-07-07T09:44:00.000-06:00

It's always a changeable dynamic when you get 12 people (especially creative types) together in a community that isn't self-selected. There's often a scapegoat or an outsider who got that way by being difficult. In our case, there's a guy who has been provocative and argumentative at best, and truly offensive at worst. We're not sure if his CV is fabricated- his work is awful and he doesn't seem to work much anyway. He will be receiving a written warning today- honestly, he scares me a little and his studio is next to mine, all the way in the back.

Our group is a pretty friendly one, very active. I managed to dodge a volleyball game yesterday but I might be pulled in today later on. They don't realize how hideously bad I play volleyball and most other sports that involve contact with a round object.

One thing the difficult man said amused me- they call Santa Fe "City of Enchantment," but he said it was more like "City of Entrapment" because so many people come here for a short stay and then never leave. In my usual way, I peruse the real estate section. Rents here are low. I met a guy in the art supply store (paper department) who came here from San Francisco and said that his rent, internet, cable and phone were $650- about what he paid to park his car in SF. I've already met a number of people who came for a residency and decided to stay.

I worked on my encyclopedia project all day yesterday. I'm cutting the pages and there are over 1000 (but that's only 500 something actual pages) I might not do all the pages, though, because the way I'm cutting them I'll only get about halfway through before I reach the outer edge of the book. I thought at that point I'll start adding to the pages, but I'll decide that when I get there. I just don't want it to look like I was too lazy to do all the pages.

Speaking of pages, there was a nice review of the Philadelphia show in the Inquirer over the weekend.

2008-07-05T12:58:00.000-06:00

2008-07-05T12:48:00.000-06:00

Feeling the space

2008-07-05T12:17:00.000-06:00

I've never blogged before, and I figure there's not much I can say that is worth putting into the blogosphere- but this is a good way to keep track of my progress and let people know what and how I'm doing. That is, if they're interested enough. So here goes.

This is my third day here, not counting Wednesday, when I was completely overwhelmed with the newness of it all. This is a beautiful place, as photos show. The weather is wonderful- sunny, sunny mornings and so far a shower every afternoon. The clouds build up over the mountains in threatening dark masses, then the rain comes, but usually the rain is sporadic and the heat makes the sidewalks dry instantly. We've had a few constant rains- it's what they call the monsoon season here.

Everyone says New Mexico is so dry, and I guess it is, but the swamp cooler in this building keeps things rather damp. It shows in the paper I work with and in my hair, which frizzes like I'm in Florida. It's cool inside, I often need a sweater.

I'm feeling a lack of energy today. I've tried making some cyanotypes with the patterns I use for the burn drawings, but so far I'm not too satisfied that they'll add up to anything interesting. Cyanotypes are a kind of contact photograph that is made with the light of the sun. Because the chemicals cause the image to print in cyan blue, they're called cyanotypes. I've printed out transparencies from the computer to use as "negatives" for the prints. I put them outside on top of the coated paper, then wait 10 or 15 minutes, bring them in and wash them out with water. It's a very simple process. In fact, you can buy "sun print" kits for kids to use.

There are 12 of us here- 8 artists and 4 writers. It's a very mixed group. Last night we had a barbecue and most people were downing margaritas like mad. Those people do not feel well this morning. Anyway, apparently there was an altercation between a writer from New Orleans and an artist from Montana. I'm glad I went to bed earlier and that I didn't drink margaritas.