Cats don't have to go to school

It may be the Valentine's Day fever talking, but I'm in love with this little comic by Anna Claire Bongiovanni on Flickr. Sometimes I wish my mind worked in a more logically narrative way. I've been feeling the urge to make a little story, but when I sit down to write...POOF, my mind buzzes blank and I end up drawing a big cat or something.

Speaking of cats, I wish I was one. Felines don't have to go to work or fret over empty bank accounts. Bleugh.

Luke, you were right. You were right about me.

Curled up watching Star Wars: Episode VI because I'm secretly a 12-year-old boy. Of course I can't just watch, I have to obsessively screen cap. But, come on! Look how beautiful this is! How am I just now getting into Star Wars? Who has been keeping this from me? I demand a pillow stuffed with Wookie hair.

I wanna' be the girl with the most cake

"I decided if I was going to be exploited, then I would do the exploiting myself."

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I've had some kind of evil stomach virus for the past few days, and as a result I'm feeling a little frail today. Somehow collecting music videos from some of the wonderfully brilliant and/or bizarre women I've admired (or have been strangely fascinated by) has helped me buck up a little.

Goodbye Sorrow

Installation shot of my thesis project. I decided to put the video online because I really want it to have a life after the exhibition is taken down. To watch it in its entirety, click here or just read through to the bottom of this entry.


I couldn't have dreamed of a better opening. The night was a blur -- smiling faces, hugs from all sides, my innards vibrating with the wings of a thousand butterflies... Thank you to everyone who came. I can't even begin to tell you how unbelievably magical I felt in that gallery surrounded by people who really think I'm worth a damn. The truth is, most of the time I doubt my worth-a-damness, but I'm working on letting the love inside!

The piece I made for the show is an animation which came to be known as Goodbye Sorrow. I began making it one morning after a peculiar incident involving the making of tea. I stood at the counter in my kitchen, a cup of hot water before me, dunking my tea bag in and out while absentmindedly worrying about life the way we do sometimes, and I realized something: All I wanted to do was stand there and continue to steep my tea forever. I couldn't bear to stop, not if it meant I had to eventually put on shoes, walk outside and face the day. I suppose this is called unhappiness, but it felt more cavernous, and much more abstract at the time.

But I digress, the animation itself does not have anything to do with tea. The fact is, existence is very difficult. As simple and possibly naive as that sounds, it was really all I was conscious of thinking while I made the work. I think Goodbye Sorrow does more than drag its feet around in sadness though, somehow. There is a kind of searching or longing that is not extinguished by the end of it, I hope.

The soundtrack is a cover I made of the Europop song, Blue (Da Ba Dee) by one-hit-wonders Eiffel 65. I have a habit of making strange, sad covers of pop songs. It can really only be described as an attempt to find and reveal some kind of humanness in even the most seemingly soulless, irritatingly formulaic cultural garbage. It's funny, the Wikipedia entry for the song claims that the subject, "blue" was picked at random, and that the lyrics were written to be more or less nonsensical or irrelevant. It's strange how much the song changes and how meaningful the words become, just by singing it a little slower and juxtaposing it with different imagery.

The animation was created using hundreds of tiny ink drawings and watercolor paintings which I scanned, one by one into the computer and animated with Flash. For the installation, the video was projected into a corner of the gallery. Beside it, I attached every drawing used to create the animation in hopes that showing the process would add a richness of understanding to the piece.

Here are a few more installation shots for you to peruse:



















And now, internet, I give you Goodbye Sorrow. Share it with those that you hold most dear!

I've got the shakes

Damn, Married To The Sea always get's it right.

Tonight is the night, friends. Da/Sein is opening, and there's no going back. I suppose I've got to just trust that I've made something worthwhile and hope for the best.

Installation shots and video will be posted within the next couple days. I'm still debating whether or not to put the full animation online, but I'm leaning towards yes. More on that later!

My favorite feeling.

Charlies belly makes the world a livable place.

And I eat men like air

I just had to re-blog these quotes from An Interview With Marguerite Duras by Susan Husserl-Kapit, 1975:

"I think feminine literature is an organic, translated writing...translated from blackness, from darkness. Women have been in darkness for centuries. They don't know themselves. Or only poorly. And when women write, they translate this darkness."

"Do you know the thesis by Michelet about witches? It's admirable. (By the way, I think, and many people think, on the basis of letters and journals, that Michelet did not have a normal sex life -- which is certainly in his favor.) He says that in the Middle Ages, when the lords went off to war or on the Crusades, when the women stayed alone for months at a time on the farms, in the middle of the fields, hungry and lonely, then they simply started talking. To whatever was 'round them: trees, animals, forests, rivers... Perhaps to break the boredom, to forget the hunger and loneliness.
The men burned them. That's how witches came into being. Men said, 'They're in collusion with nature,' and they burned them. That's how the reign of witches began.
I add, personally, that what they did, in effect, was punish those women because they turned a little away from them and became less available to them. The women who began to come into contact with nature, as if by osmosis, took part of themselves away from men. So men killed them to punish them. And that madness -- talking to animals, trees, that part of themselves which suffocates and explodes, that transference -- you find it in all women, including women in the middle class. It's what I call their neurosis. Neurosis in women is so ancient, thousands of years old -- all women are neurotic in my opinion -- that people are used to their behavior. And much female behavior that one finds normal would be considered neurotic if exhibited by males. Of course women express this neurosis differently in our day. They no longer talk to animals or trees, because apparently they aren't alone. In fact, however, they are completely alone in their millions, in their poverty, in their comfort, and in their slums, in all their completely functional marriages -- whether rich or poor.
They are as alone as before. And everywhere. Madness has found other expressions, but it is still there. It is still the same madness."

Marguerite Duras is a terribly interesting character, no? I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a little mad today. It's day 2 of installing the Da/Sein show, but I haven't gotten out of bed yet. I need to get myself downtown and finish the surprisingly grueling process of attaching hundreds of tiny pieces of paper to the gallery wall. I should have been there an hour ago! I blame the last stanza of Lady Lazarus. For some reason, I just can't stop repeating it in my mind, and this repetition has sort of trapped me under all my blankets. Oh Sylvia, I thought I was over you, but somehow you will always make me feel like my angsty, 15-year-old self.


Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.


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