Advocate Of Magic.

Etsy Shop Open

2011-04-27T10:30:00.005-07:00

I finally opened up an etsy shop. This is what it will look like if you visit it:
I guess I'm really into screen caps lately. You can go here if you'd like.

It's too bad my name is so banal.

2011-04-18T13:38:00.007-07:00

I made a little website for my drawings. Click here to look at it.

I haven't touched this web log in three months. Oops.

Copious: co-pilot = lots of peanuts*

2011-01-18T12:57:00.004-08:00

Indecision at work. Making a thing with pages and a cover. I was seeing what colors might look okay.

*the way my friend, Kelli, remembered the definition for a vocabulary test years and years ago. Her memory trick has been making me laugh while alone as of late. Using it as a title is, really, the sole purpose of this post.

Giving Up

2011-01-09T14:10:00.004-08:00

Enough of the dump. These little guys and ballerinas are hanging in Lille Boutique for the rest of the month. Many thanks to Sarah and Courtney for the help, for the lovely space, for the nice evening, and for the seemingly bottomless flute of Cava. And thanks, too, to those who came, the few, the generous, the indefatigable.

Better Not Tell You Now

2011-01-09T14:09:00.003-08:00

The Craft on Netflix Play It Now kept me company awhile whilst drawing this one. Nostalgia, it reminded me how cool I thought those girls were (still think), the memory of wishing my friends would--just once--take the Ouija board as seriously as I wanted them to. I must have rented that film more than any other from Mr. Movies as tween/teen.

Eff Word

2011-01-09T14:07:00.002-08:00

Broken Hip

2011-01-09T14:06:00.002-08:00

Not crying. Maybe crying.

Weltschmerz

2011-01-09T14:04:00.001-08:00

A False Step.

2011-01-09T13:46:00.003-08:00

4H

2010-12-31T02:52:00.002-08:00

I hope I don't ruin this with pen, but I bet I will.

Art Opening/Pillow Fight.

2010-12-26T14:17:00.003-08:00

Having a little art opening in the new year and am worried there will be approximately six people in attendance. If looking at angsty ballerinas and despondent cats isn't enough for you to leave the house (let's face it), maybe you will be hungry? Or thirsty? Well, there will be snacks! And drinks! For free! And the prettiest lingerie to look at, which costs money but is worth it. And maybe some girls that look like the above having pillow fights. You never know.

Nose freckles for all.

2010-12-19T22:32:00.009-08:00

To divulge a little: For semi-proper anatomy, I take pictures of my body in various positions with Photo Booth to use as reference, which I feel a bit weird about. I think it is most obvious here, the double crossing of the legs, the covering of the face with hands.

No.

2010-12-19T22:27:00.003-08:00

In spite of appearance: No. That is not a croissant in her hair.

Think of Christie.

2010-12-19T22:17:00.003-08:00

I do not have backwards feet. My hands do not dangle like limp jellyfish. Trying to remind myself of these things, but it's not so facile. On an unrelated note, here's another ballerina.

I'm trying, guys.

2010-12-01T15:43:00.003-08:00

Remember a couple years ago when I started an etsy shop with intent to sell those dumb bird nests that I refused to stop wearing on my head? How embarrassing.

Now: I had prints made of some drawings, for which I will start a new etsy shop... sometime soon. Hopefully this will be slightly less embarrassing.

Many thanks to my friend Harlan.

Crying at La Bayadère was embarrassing.

2010-10-22T12:59:00.003-07:00

Head too large, she will never have a perfect Balanchine body.

my density my destiny.*

2010-10-04T00:42:00.005-07:00

Were it not for my friend and female soul mate, Mary, I would have never drawn this. At one point, she was worried this was her future. Assuredly, it is not, so I am claiming it as my own.

*until an actual title presents itself, I am settling on a BACK TO THE FUTURE reference. For some reason (TBS's seemingly constant broadcasting of it when I was young and around television), I have seen that dumb movie many, many times.

all of them rejects.

2010-10-01T23:58:00.002-07:00

Contrary to what the utter silence of this here feeble blog--with which I'm not entirely sure why I bother--might suggest, I have been working on things. Evidemment, cats are involved. Hopefully not in a hackneyed way.

one of them is pawing at your casket.

2010-10-01T23:57:00.001-07:00

Apathy, desperation, melancholy, despondency.

one of them is remorseful.

2010-10-01T23:56:00.002-07:00

Reluctance, remorse {title cat}, inconsolability, zeal.

one of them has a lot on her mind, sad things.

2010-10-01T23:55:00.001-07:00

Sorrow, obedience, bewilderment, conviction.

one of them is looking out the window, hoping to see you.

2010-10-01T23:47:00.003-07:00

Incredulity, ennui, Sehnsucht, suspicion.

death, of the little sort.

2010-08-08T11:23:00.010-07:00

ink.

I've been waiting to post this until I get a nice scan, but I keep not doing that. So... here.

Edit 03 October 2010: Nice scan up there now.

the other morning, in three pictures of my cat or less.

2010-07-28T13:22:00.007-07:00

Who do you wake up to?

The canopy fell.

Searching for comfort in the wrong place.

Okay, you GET IT. I LIKE MY CAT.

anna for alice.

2010-07-27T01:01:00.003-07:00

a commissioned portrait.

evidently, my self-promotion skills leave much to be desired.

2010-07-25T17:50:00.003-07:00

The following is happening in about an hour:

You should (have) come!

Thanks to Suzzette and Akemi Salon, the best salon in Portland. At what other coiffeur palace do you get to listen to Pavement and drink beer and know that no creatures were harmed by the good-smelling stuff being slathered on your head? No where else.

huge manatees.

2010-07-13T23:46:00.005-07:00

ink.

I fear I may be, once again, losing my faith in ~~huge manatees~~ humanity.

just about all you need to know.

2010-07-12T01:16:00.001-07:00

florets, not flowers.

2010-06-30T02:07:00.009-07:00

Cabbage Cabbage is free from her mats. (Her imprisonment was all my fault to begin with.) Meaning: she is shaved. She looks pink, tiny, and darling.

I started a new project. That is the start up there.

minimalizing is not a word, dummie.

2010-06-18T16:53:00.004-07:00

I am not good at cleaning and minimalizing, but it is what I am doing. While sorting through papers, I came across a portfolio with writing from Introduction to Fiction Workshop with Levi Teal, one of the most important classes I took in school, if for no other reason than it is where I met some very lovable and significant people in my life.

For the following assignment, we had to take a cliché as the title and write a story that wasn't a cliché. Mine was a joke. It is very dumb:

But it kind of made me laugh.

I have lots of drawings simmering in my frontal lobes. My closet is looking marvelous.

and somehow there are blackberries.

2010-05-17T14:33:00.011-07:00

Ink, wallpaper, mod podge, & a large chunk of my heart (left atrium, I think).
about 23'' x 36''

found.

2010-04-22T00:32:00.003-07:00

Crooked frame, crooked frame.

Do you think they were going on a date? I bet they liked each other okay. The dog was a witness.

Prince's cellulite, space (fuckin' shooting stars).

2010-04-16T21:08:00.004-07:00

I guess summer must be coming because I made another one of these things. On the real one, there is a be-glittered vellum overlay sewn on that you can lift up or leave down and, when down, the glitter specks look like far away stars. I made it for a friend.

Rice Van keep on rolling, please.

make a kalusha in five easy steps!

2010-03-18T00:24:00.004-07:00

Kelli and Cole, summer 2009, last time I went home to Michigan. We drove to the Copper Country that day. Hadn't gotten these photos developed until now.

Kelli and I were sort of weird children. One of my favorite things she did when she was young was make these things she called, "Kalushas." To make a Kalusha, you will need the following supplies:
water
toilet paper
marker

Make a Kalusha in five easy steps!
1. Put water in a container.
2. Put toilet paper in water so it gets soggy.
3. Put marker in the water until the color bleeds out onto the toilet paper.
4. Put cap on container and put on shelf.
5. Bask in the glory of your beautiful Kalusha.

They are especially beautiful in multiples, scattered like prizes throughout an entire house. If you enjoy Kalushas, you may also enjoy tie dying paper towels with food coloring, but only at Libby's house, not at your own, because her paper towels are nicer and softer and your parents are probably too poor to afford nice paper towels and while you're there you may as well eat one of her bagels because they are better, too, because her family has a toaster oven.

it's only a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea.*

2010-03-12T02:43:00.000-08:00

The new header above is a girl, taken out of context, from a drawing I'm working on. She is also sporting my next hair cut/growth, a bowl-cum-tail thing.

*sang this song all night.

these drawings make sense and cents and scents incense.

2010-03-07T13:42:00.004-08:00

FINISHED! Not really. I have loads of patience for drawing actual pieces, but seem to lack it when it comes to sketching and I mostly plan with words. Or something like the following. The beets!

And this: one line at a time with Joseph.

You can turn it upside down for a different drawing that makes about as much sense as this one.

the things that Arnold Schwarzenegger and sea horses have in common.

2010-02-10T18:23:00.008-08:00

Aside from Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Junior, sea horses are the only species in which the male is pregnant with the young.

When courting, sea horses often grab the same sea grass frond with their tails and dance around it, which is, I think, how Arnold snagged Maria Schriver.

I think that’s all they have in common.

There are sea horses on her dress. I need to make a dress like that. Sea grass arms down to the whale, which is mostly what I was thinking about when I did this drawing. A trip to the coast with a friend, we walked along the shore and came across a beached whale, a young female, whose intestines were spilled onto the sand, her skin scattered in piles around us. The fire & rescue squad were cutting her apart, why, I do not know, taking out her ovaries, her stomach, and putting each organ in a plastic bag. We all stood around her, and some of us took pictures, and some of us felt sad after we took pictures because what right did we have, and would we have done the same thing if she were a young human girl and would we have been able to use the word beautiful in any recollection of the event?

petra. drawings at the red & black cafe.

2010-01-02T18:46:00.004-08:00

ink & wallpaper.

Also, I have artwork up this month at the Red & Black Cafe here in Portland if you care to eat some yummy vegan food and look at the drawings on the walls. Thank you, Red & Black!

lily.

2009-12-30T00:06:00.003-08:00

ink & wallpaper.

Why is it that I always find myself carrying too much? The other day, walking home after a trip to S.C.R.A.P., I had in my arms: three 32" x 40" pieces of mat board, six panels of glass, three frames, a hunk of wood, and my purse (glorified canvas waste basket).

Okay. Going to go listen to "Break-A-Way" by Irma Thomas, furiously dance the twist, and draw some more.

fawn & wednesday.

2009-12-21T13:57:00.005-08:00

ink, wallpaper & angerrr, much of it fueled by the fact that, after sixteen years, the West Memphis Three are still in prison and Damien Echols is still on death row. I've been thinking about that case a lot again lately. It appears there is hope on the horizon.

(fuck the piss shit.)

a few things about cats.

2009-11-17T22:55:00.008-08:00

Steve Perry's legs may not look good in his pants, but his head looks pretty good in cat ears.

I drew this for Liz before her birthday with the intention of actually sending it through the post. Now that it has been nearly two months since then, I'm too embarrassed.

Speaking of cats, I have finally named a feline companion something other than "Kitty." This took about two months for me to accomplish as well. Completely pathetic, but a breakthrough nonetheless. Although I'll probably just continue calling her names such as: Kitty Brains, Kittens, Kitty Face, Little Face, and Muffin, officially, her name is Cabbage Cabbage. It comes from the French term of endearment "mon chou" or "mon chou chou," which, literally translated, is "my cabbage" or "my cabbage cabbage." I didn't want to name her "chou" because it sounds like "shoe." And I didn't want to name her "chou chou" because that sounds like "Xiu Xiu" and, I mean, I like that band but don't want to name my cat after them.

Cabbage Cabbage sleeps with her face by mine every night, which is really cute until she sneezes and even then it's still pretty cute. I sometimes worry about the not-so-far-fetched reality of becoming a cat lady when I'm older, but then remind myself that being a cat lady doesn't mean you have to wear XXL Hanes Beefy Ts that say "Cats are like potato chips--you can't have just one!" There was an amazing editorial by Miles Aldridge in the May 2008 Vogue Italia that says everything I want to say about being a cat lady:

(Click on image to see it without the right side chopped off.)

fairy shrimp & stuff

2009-10-18T16:19:00.015-07:00

Here are some crappy pictures of some things I've been working on:
Ink brush pen, gouache, sumi-e ink, wallpaper, colored pencil. They are too big to scan (the above is about 21" x 21") so here are some detail shots:

Some more. None of these are really finished:
And some completely unrelated text:

I saw the greatest headstones this morning in the cemetery near my apartment. I was searching for one that T-Hog had told me about that has no name on it, just illustrations of various pop culture characters (the talking M&Ms for example) and some Seal lyrics ("Kiss From A Rose," I presume), but instead came upon two that looked like Halloween decorations. From the closed-horseshoe shape to the "RIP" to the haphazard lettering... I think they were homemade and hand-chiseled. They were fantastic.

Prince's cellulite, baby turtle. (for Mary)

2009-08-16T19:15:00.003-07:00

For Mary on her birthday.

A few recent favorite phrases & thoughts:
I liked Kenan and Kel, you know, as human beings.
Cookies = brownies.
Why is maple syrup so racist?

yappy piece of f*ck that looks like a slipper.

2009-07-31T19:54:00.002-07:00

Cynthia's back and she's back AGAIN.

2009-07-22T20:56:00.006-07:00

Working on my first commissioned piece, ahem. It's going to be a portrait of some newlyweds who probably make whoopee in strange places all the time. (ssshhh, Jessica. Don't tell anyone you're the person who commissioned this because I don't think it counts if it's a friend. And I'm sorry I just talked about your friends like that. You can blame Bob Eubanks.) This is not the finished piece. It is just a sketch. But sometimes I like things that are terribly unfinished, just ideas being worked out.

Did anyone else go through a Game Show Network phase? I did in my early teen years when I'd have sleepovers at my Aunt Susan's house. Her family had a lot more television channels than our family, including Game Show Network, so she and I would watch game shows for hours. Then we would play board game versions of game shows, like Password. Even now, when I go home to Michigan, I still spend one night at her house. We talk, she makes me feel better about making decisions with my heart rather than my head, we watch movies, we eat things, we stay up late. Sometimes we still watch game shows and want the contestants to win so badly.

Prince's cellulite, gatorade; or this is not a real one.

2009-07-21T23:52:00.003-07:00

It's time for more of these, no matter if they're getting old, although this is not a real one, just a quick one to include in a letter to a friend, as a supplement to the letter. Did anyone ever read The Jolly Postman? I hope so because it's amazing. You get to open other people's mail! That book should be illegal! Because it's so much fun!

Prince is sweating out Gatorade in the flavors Lemon Lime (1969), Grape (1994, discontinued, replaced by Fierce Grape in 1999), and Frost Glacier Freeze (1997).

Gatorade reminds me of Powerbars, equally unpalatable, and they both remind me of 3-on-3 basketball tournaments. It's called a pick, you bitch! Boy, did our team have some clever names over the years. They included:

Liar, Liar, We're on Fire (rhyme)
B-Ball Bucket Bankers (alliteration)
Strawberry Jam (pun) (I designed a shirt for our team. It had a strawberry going through a basketball hoop on the front. On the back was a jam can with our individual names and numbers on the label.)

The 1996 Superior Slam was particularly brutal, probably because Surge came out that year and everybody drank it during the tournament. One girl was guarding me while constantly rubbing her forearms all over my body really aggressively. I was passive and meek at first, kept running around trying to get away from her, but finally got so annoyed that I yelled, "What are you doing?" And she yelled back, "It's called a pick, you bitch!"

She was wrong. I know what a pick is.

these pussy drinks are bomb!

2009-06-30T14:32:00.004-07:00

The sign we placed by our BFF rummage sale. It may have hurt us more than helped us.

Hot anime girls by Matthew Boyce Postma. Furry by me. I'm not sure who came up with "These pussy drinks are bomb." It was probably a collaborative effort.

I always thought that statistic was sad anyhow.

2009-06-17T11:32:00.001-07:00

Done one line at a time with someone while waiting in the St. Vincent de Paul office, hoping they would pay his rent. There was a sign that said "Help yourself to a bar of soap," but the box was empty.

Steve Perry's legs do not look good in his pants.

2009-06-13T19:41:00.005-07:00

I don't know what's wrong with me.

Prince's cellulite, fireflies.

2009-06-12T00:00:00.002-07:00

Magical insects. So are crickets because they can play their own bodies like violins.

Prince's cellulite, volcano science.

2009-06-10T17:05:00.004-07:00

6.0221415 × 10²³!!!

Prince's cellulite, sports.

2009-06-07T20:03:00.003-07:00

currently reading:

2009-06-04T22:11:00.003-07:00

Time and again, discover the sensuous ecstasy of love with the sexiest man in the world!

"You shame me, Viking!"
"There will never be shame between us, Reyna," Viktor replied fiercely. "I will know your body, and you will know mine, and we will both glory in the intimacy and discovery."

Who knew?

Prince's cellulite, garden gnome.

2009-05-31T23:37:00.004-07:00

The POW shape extends beyond the page in real life.

And I think everyone needs "Dog ate Dan's new heart" in his/her life:

Prince's cellulite, lightning hot dog. (also: RICE POWER)

2009-05-29T23:39:00.003-07:00

I should probably stop posting these.

Also, I want to tell you about Rice Power! Mary and I are, one day, going to buy a work van that's going to be our traveling art exhibition space. We're naming our duo/van Rice Power because we saw this Asian candy recently where "rice power" was listed as the first ingredient and we thought it was really funny. We might put a soiled mattress on the floor and we will definitely string up Christmas lights and then hang art on the walls. The first exhibition will have one wall of Mary's drawings of animals eating things and the other wall will be plastered with Prince. We're so excited about it that we're vomiting up kitties.

Prince's cellulite, cupcake.

2009-05-28T07:52:00.001-07:00

It's going to be a series. It's going to be very serious.

Prince's cellulite

2009-05-26T23:26:00.003-07:00

My most favorite drawing I've done in a while. It's called "Prince's cellulite," because I finished it while super drunk and ended up giving Prince cellulite on accident. And, as Mary pointed out, he also has flippers. I think I want to make a 365-Prince-a-year calendar, except about 359 of those 365 days would be some version of the above.

i will be

2009-04-26T01:09:00.001-07:00

small almost island.

2009-03-29T23:53:00.001-07:00

the tv guide channel.

2009-03-18T22:11:00.002-07:00

we were lucky. we were all by ourselves.

2009-03-11T15:27:00.005-07:00

day off

2009-03-04T13:31:00.001-08:00

day off, originally uploaded by yeahmber.

i like this.

2009-02-25T21:24:00.001-08:00

"We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness."
-Charlie Chaplin

Sixty-nine years later, still so relevant.

more than okay.

2009-02-21T21:32:00.005-08:00

all i saw was you.

2009-02-17T20:07:00.003-08:00

*note: drawing was too large to scan so image quality is not so great. i'm not sure that i'm finished with it and think it might have been better had i left out the people. i think it maybe would have had more mystery and emotion. also, i think i will start writing upside down more often.

thrift store problem

2009-02-05T19:11:00.003-08:00

Walking out of the Salvation Army today, two coats in hand, I realized that I really just might have a thrift store shopping problem. It's not like it costs me a lot of money, and I usually find cool stuff, but still. I have so much stuff. Although I did find a decent camel-colored trench that wasn't too huge, which I've been looking for for years.

I have a major gripe with the Salvation Army here: prices. It's absurd, really. If I wanted to spend twelve dollars on a set of four espresso cups and saucers, I'd go somewhere else. If I wanted to spend eighteen dollars on one tea cup and saucer, I'd certainly go somewhere else. It can be really sad sometimes. There was this neat dog planter (I mean a planter shaped like a dog), but it was eighteen dollars. Of course nothing compares to the top of a prom dress that I once saw there for eighty dollars--80! Who can afford that?

Image unrelated.

if you lived here, you'd be home by now.

2009-01-29T15:21:00.004-08:00

there's no shadow that the fear will wait for.
'cause when it comes, it comes cloaked in light.
there's no shadow your dark eyes belong to,
the dark night on the unlit trail with no moon.
you are full.
there's no shadow.
-no shadow, by mount eerie

it's been a while since i said something about how much i love phil elverum, right? well, i can't stop listening to that song.

if you didn't already know.

2009-01-16T00:29:00.003-08:00

There is a store in my hometown called: And Etc.

things.

2009-01-11T23:01:00.002-08:00

sarah says. some possibilities.

2009-01-07T21:03:00.006-08:00

Aha! Scanner fixed.I think the first one feels more like Sarah because she's wearing plaid and a cardigan.

a fun date idea.

2009-01-04T10:14:00.004-08:00

*I kind of spelled cemetery like "cemetary" at first. Please don't make fun of me.

the neck.

2009-01-03T08:39:00.003-08:00

Thomas has been job searching every day for over a month. We were talking on the phone the other night and came up with some pretty good ideas for how he could get rich:
1. Start body building, but only on one side of his body. Go on the TLC network as "half-man/half-body builder."
1. Start body building, but only his neck. Use "The Neck" as stage name. Go on the TLC network.

funhouse ig n rtoopes

2009-01-02T12:01:00.008-08:00

I started a few text messages and saved them to remember things later. Album titles? Funny things people said? I'm not quite sure:
"Funhouse ig n rtoopes"
"Bookie tank"
"Talk heads id stim nn go" (see above for translation)

"Disintegrat bath suip"

"Ten min undeserved drum solo" (The only one that makes sense.)

off to a good start.

2009-01-01T21:13:00.005-08:00

that's me. sending incomprehensible text messages to cam and sarah.

i just remembered.

2008-12-31T14:03:00.003-08:00

(my zine-self.)

when doves cry

2008-12-29T12:59:00.003-08:00

It's Prince and a falabella, y'know, because they're both short. I was going to draw a dove crying in the upper right, but didn't. I think it looks too caricature-y, and I hate caricatures, but oh well because it's a doodle of Prince and a falabella.

i'm not being ironic.

2008-12-28T13:08:00.003-08:00

I really like Carpenters. (No "the"). It's pretty lucky because I can always find a Carpenters record or tape at thrift stores. I was doodling Karen yesterday, which is why there is absolutely no thought about composition here. Dear Pancake: you remember dancing in my room to "Superstar," right? Yes. In my old room at my old apartment, which I not-so-fondly refer to now as the "Heroin Hut," although it wasn't yet the "Heroin Hut," because that one, that one dude didn't live there yet.

my brother

2008-12-27T15:35:00.004-08:00

I once sort of accidentally stabbed my brother in the thigh with a meter stick. It gashed open and was bleeding, but he was about to beat me up and I didn't know what to do. Our relationship has gotten better in the past couple of years and moved to a more neutral state. He has pretty bad tattooes, lifts a lot of weights so has huge muscles, and loves his two cats, his girlfriend, and video games. I got him a can of Coke from my aunt and uncle's garage on Christmas Eve. I mean, I got up from my seat and walked about ten meters to get it for him. He told me I looked like "a little asian boy." While that's not exactly what I was going for with my 'do, I think it's one of the nicer things he's said to me.

this is really good

2008-12-23T12:49:00.002-08:00

Here's a recipe that I often made during Upper Peninsula winters:

gather snow
put in cup
pour orange juice over it
enjoy

It was like a slushie, but practically free! Delicious!

Happy Birthday to my dear Pancake!

rats

2008-12-10T18:22:00.002-08:00

For a glorious half a day, I had the internet at my apartment. That was yesterday. The person wised up and made it password protected. Rats.

magic & a writing exercise

2008-12-08T16:09:00.007-08:00

Prompt: Write a paragraph in third person limited omniscient that uses objective description, a biased third person, and direct thought. (In short: try to mimic James Joyce.)

They listen to records and she looks at him in the lamplight. Four years. Has it been four years? Richard Simmons sings about loving yourself. Seriously. Richard Simmons has a record and they listen to it because it makes them laugh. She grabs a crayon from the carpet, the pack sprawled like pick-up-sticks, and begins to color in Kirk Hammett’s face with green from his Heavy Metal activity book. What’s the difference between living in Neverland and being a loser who never grew up? She told him she thought magic follows them. The previous day when they were in the store, trying to find groceries for dinner, there was magic there, in the corner of the screen, you know, if they had been on a screen. She draws some pink stars on the bottom of the page. You see? Just a little bit of magic there, following us.

on second thought...

2008-12-05T12:56:00.002-08:00

As it turns out, I don't think our French class's musical is going to be the debacle I thought it would be. And I've been thinking, I kind of wouldn't mind the support of my friends at it. My main solo is on our Saturday production, but I have three other parts each night. So, it's Friday and Saturday at 8:00 pm in the Black Box Theatre in the Atlas building. Yup.

2008-12-03T13:27:00.000-08:00

Well, my daily blog was fun that one week that it lasted.

say this

2008-11-18T14:21:00.004-08:00

It's been too cold for me to go to the park and post here on a daily basis. Not today of course. Lovely. I was going to post one of my French recordings. I had a lot of fun doing it and recorded the three-part harmony in audacity and then changed the pitch so it sounded more like chipmunks. Anyway, I'm too computer illiterate to post it.

I realized yesterday how embarrassing our French play is going to be. The song I'm singing has a totally sweet two-second Phil Collins drum break. Oh god.

A lot of normally extraordinary days lately. Like when Sarah and I took Roxie for a walk and the color of the grass and leaves looked like we were on mushrooms. BAAAHILOVEYOUSOMUCH!!!!

faithful husband; negligent father (part two)

2008-11-12T13:01:00.006-08:00

I had trouble removing the asphaltum and was scrubbing like mad trying to get it off the plate, forgetting that it comes off easily when you ink up. Anyway, I ended up accidentally scrubbing away a lot of the detail so the tones are a lot less delicate, kind of gunky, and the print as a whole is a lot less poignant because you can't tell that the young dik dik is looking at his father who is looking at the newspaper. Also, the wash (on the floor) didn't work at all. And the composition is really awkward. More or less, it's crappy.

dik diks are people, too

2008-11-10T22:11:00.010-08:00

Combatting ADD while drawing more dik diks in the studio. Critique is tomorrow. Woops. I remember Rea telling me and Gabe this summer that we must like pulling all-nighters and we (or at least I) vehemently protested. No I don't!! But the thing is, a part of me thrives on it.

Speaking of this summer, I was thinking how kind of wild it was. I mean, I actually ate things called "Ice Breakers Sours." What's up with that?

3:04 am, EDIT: No I don't!!

4:24 am, EDIT: Finished drawing on the plate, but I don't even like it. Next is the wash, and then processing, and then printing. I'm really good. Almost as good as Harold P. Warren is at making films. The studio is kind of creepy, but, luckily, I have--count 'em--TWO rape whistles.

9:07 am, EDIT: Just finished printing and am not happy with them. I'll post one later and you'll see why.

art show thing

2008-11-09T16:51:00.004-08:00

Aly and I put up some of our prints in Burnt Toast on Saturday. I sold three during brunch today--two undies and one animal legs--which was nice because I'm approximately broke. We think we might have a little party thing, but don't know when yet.

Okay. Neat.

infinite bat

2008-11-04T11:02:00.006-08:00

Here is a very very rough version of a story I'm working on. Um, excuse me if there are rampant typos and know that I'm ashamed of them. I'm not sure why the italics (for species names) disappeared when I copied it in here.

infinite bat

Abigail pinched a grasshopper from her Mason jar, cupped it between her hands, and darted her eyes behind her shoulder. Then she put the grasshopper in her mouth. Its jumping legs skittered against her gums before she crunched it between her molars.

Her mother called to her outside to say that dinner was ready. She walked away from the barn toward the front door, her shoulders curled inward, her arms hugging her frame, clutching the backside of her tiny hipbones. She stomped lightly, hardly making a sound on the gravel.

Years later, Abigail would find herself prostrate on her vinyl kitchen floor, convinced she could hear the ultrasonic mutterings of bats above her head.

During the Mammalia unit in her natural science class, the teacher spent a week teaching the class about the Order: Chiroptera. Her name was Mrs. Blewett, but she was ugly and overweight so everyone called her Miss. It was middle school; each day was served with a side order of cruelty.

The class learned the acronym to remember the classification system. King Philip Came Over For Good Soup: Myotis lucifugus, the Little Brown Bat. In addition to species names, they studied typical bat diets, roosting habits, wing structure, and social and mating patterns. A chorus of snickers and uncomfortable shifts in chairs from boys who couldn’t control their hormones accompanied the latter lesson. Abigail was always most interested in the fun facts that came toward the end of the week, discovering fallacies and animal symbology in folklore. Bats are not blind; in fact, they see very well. Bats do not get caught in people’s hair; rather, if they are trapped inside a house, they may stall in flight when attempting to change directions and appear to dip toward people’s heads below. In rural France, Holland, and England, it was believed that a bat nailed head down above a door protected a household from misfortune. She tucked that fable away as though it were fact.

She continued to learn about bats from books she checked out from the library. The date stamped on the card in one revealed that it hadn’t been borrowed in thirteen years. Because of that date, as old as she was, she imagined the books were waiting to be touched and cracked open. They transformed into hibernating bats, roosting for her lifetime in a cave with low-ceilings and thousands of other books, all of them dormant and waiting to wake from years-long quiescence with caresses to their spines. It was almost as if they could flap their pages and fly up the spiral stairs that lead to the science section in a giant swarm. The sound! she thought. The sound of millions of paper wings flapping like mad.

Abigail’s father had lost his job at the mine after the demand for iron ore decreased. He spent his free time in their barn, sanding and carving wood, making cabinets and chests that he said he’d sell to earn money. Her mother developed multiple sclerosis and slowly began to lose her ability to walk. Her younger brother started smoking cigarettes. Because he was in the fifth grade, everyone thought he was practically suicidal. In actuality, his mischance was a dog mauling that left him with deep bites, which were infected and required expensive doctor visits.

Then there was Abigail, learning about bats, enigmatic creatures that she saw as possessing uncanny amounts of force stowed in the membranes between their fingers, the deceptive sort of strength one can find in frailty, beings tiny enough to be destroyed by a man’s hand, but capable of shielding his home from trouble. On average, most fully grown bats weigh three and a half grams or less, small enough to be sent through the post as a first-class letter. Abigail imagined opening her mailbox to an infinite string of bats covered in stamps, sent to bring her family infinite luck, swarming into the night sky to catch harmful insects, pollinate flowers, and make their gardens fertile.

Then there are things that can be destroyed by words because they can really feel them, feel them in their bones the way people say.

Abigail admired the pictures of different Chiroptera species the way a person often finds beauty in something that mirrors her own flaws and deformities. Instead of scary-looking, her small teeth became precise like those of Hipposideros commersoni gigas, amazing enough to puncture exoskeletons of insects. Her black eyes she imagined with a reflective tapetum, and they became to her more unique than any pretty blue. Her gawky limbs were delicate forearms that lead to wings. Her ears, no longer too prominent on her face, were the graceful flaps of Tadarida molossa. She began to braid her hair into pigtails and then pinned them in coils on the side of her head to look like even bigger ears that she envisaged as devices for echolocation.

Bats use echolocation to hunt their food. They emit ultrasonic waves that reflect off objects as tiny as a human hair, allowing them to calculate the velocity of their prey and catch insects with ease. No man-made system, no great submarine, can recreate the precision and elegance of what a bat does naturally.

Most bats subsist on a diet that consists mainly of insects. Some eat flowers, fruit, and, of course, though rare, the infamous Desmodus rotundus, or Vampire Bat, survives on blood alone. During lunch at school, Abigail sat at a table with the other kids who sat alone. While others consumed turkey sandwiches or giant chocolate chip cookies dipped in nacho cheese from the à la carte line, Abigail rigidly hunched over her lunchbox, sucked her fruit dry, then brought the rest outside to feed the chipmunks.

Kids were very cool at lunch. They did not laugh. They did not mount any tires, pump their legs on any swings, or move at all, really. Mostly, they stood against the brick school walls and rolled their eyes. When Abigail was certain no one was looking, she gathered bugs from the grass and sealed them in a Mason jar.

Family meals at home grew increasingly ascetic as their money dwindled—potatoes in some form, canned vegetables, and milk made from powder, whatever paltry and bruised vegetables her mother picked from the garden or whatever was on sale at the grocery store. Abigail pushed food around on her plate. She lined beans beneath the rim. She spread mashed potatoes into a thin film to appear as though some had made it down her esophagus and into her stomach.

Drink your milk, dolly, her mother would say. It will make your bones strong. Her mother nudged her to eat while her father often gave up and, instead, let his eyes relax into a despondent stare. Her mother moved in slow, deliberate motions, as if she were thinking, Now I will pick up my fork. Her brother was covered in purple scars and indifference. As they ate, the clink of their forks grew into a violent chorus in Abigail’s ears. Her family was like a ragged doll that had been left out in the rain that she wanted to hug without its filth infecting her somehow.

Dinner was hours at the kitchen table. Abigail’s food grew cold and increasingly unappetizing until it revolted her: mashed potatoes became coagulated puss. Soggy green beans reminded her of cadaverous fingers. When her parents grew tired of watching her play with her food, they put on a kitchen timer and went into their bedroom, leaving her with a half hour to finish her meal. While they fought in low voices over the cost of MS treatment, whether or not to sell the barn, or Abigail’s father’s continued unemployment, or their daughter’s worrisome frame, she crept to the window and threw her dinner outside for the birds. She wouldn’t get rid of all of it, because that would be too obvious, but she wouldn’t leave enough that her parents could tell her she wasn’t yet finished.

She went to bed, her stomach burning with hunger, as though she had swallowed a fiery pebble. I’m doing this for you, she thought. Mother, father, brother, this metamorphosis is for you.

Perhaps it was for protection. By becoming small enough, she thought she could become one of them, a bat in the barn, always protecting her family from misfortune. Or maybe she thought she could become so fragile her metacarpals would elongate to dominate the rest of her body, her skin would stretch across her ribs and catch the wind, and she could sprout membranes between her fingers, forearms and legs and escape.

It’s wondered whether bats roost upside-down to make it easier to fly. Unlike birds, who are of the Class: Aves and not closely related to bats like many people think, most bats cannot take flight from the ground. They drop from a height, catch the air to glide, and then gain the momentum to fly. Abigail watched this action at twilight while supine beneath the eave of the barn. It was cold, but it was always cold, and she was invisible beneath the sweaters she piled on when the temperature plummeted. The barn eve was like a giant, silhouetted present and she waited to see the bats emerge like an army of tiny, flying minutemen.

Abigail wanted to practice and linked her legs around the monkey bars at recess and dropped her torso toward the ground, swinging like that with her eyes closed, waiting for a strong gust. She wore a brown turtleneck, brown leggings, and black shoes. She tucked her hands into her sleeves, bunched fabric in her firsts, then extended her arms to make wings. With my braided ears, she thought, I must look so beautiful. Beautiful like Myotis lucifugus, a little brown bat, roosting alone and waiting to be strong enough to fly.

When the girls in Abigail’s class started to develop breasts, they showed them off in the tightest t-shirts their mothers allowed them to wear. They talked about other girls’ bodies as flat, making them feel like less, less of nothing in particular but ashamed for it. Abigail usually conjured whispers behind hands whenever she walked through the hall, but she ignored them and continued to hang upside-down at recess, dressed head-to-toe in one color. Sometimes she wore white and imagined she was the Phyllonycteris aphylla, thought to be exinct, feeding on flowers in Jamaica. Sometimes she imagined herself as small as Musonycteris harrisoni, the banana bat, sitting on the tip of her father’s thumb.

She exhibited a fascination with fragile things from a young age. She’d stand in front of the oven, turn on the light, and watch a shrinky-dink grow smaller inside. Somehow, by being so small, it was like magic; it made her inspect it. But shrinky-dinks moved from her hand to a vast pool of nostalgia where stuffed animals and stick-on earrings and tins filled with birthday poems all floated together, from the time when everything was good and she was invincible—not a woman in age with the body of a child.

Abigail, grounded on the vinyl floor by her desire to fly. No hint of breasts or hips, she was an infertile shell of a woman with sharp canyon creases on her face of skin stretched too tightly. The visible veins of her body formed a web like a road map, useless though in pointing out where her bones finally gave. She was certain she could’ve caught the wind with her delicate skin had she reacted sooner to her fall. Her delicate hands, see-through now, metacarpals pared down to bone, wrists covered in fuzz, she was fragile as a human hair and tiny enough. Eventually, a hip fracture is almost always fatal.

She had never imagined what she was doing to herself as harmful. She wasn’t turning her skeleton into the hollowed shell of a gourd; rather, she imagined her body consumed its own calcium the way Greek architects carefully sculpted great pillars. Inside, she saw birds cutting through the monastic silence deep within her marrow, tiny birds careening above and around the network of miniature columns, flapping paper wings and darting around corners, brushing against the sides and crumbling off more bone dust.

There are those stories of people in trouble, performing amazing feats to save themselves, lifting up cars to save their babies from burning inside. A woman who fractured her hip might very well be able to get up and call for help if she desired it enough. A person wants to perform such a triumph that that desire, an invisible emotion, allows it to happen.

When audible clicks sounded from the attic, Abigail knew she heard a mother bat communicating with her child. A mother bat will nurse her child to health until it’s nearly fully grown, often giving up her own skeleton to build that of her child. Her bones will become terribly fragile as she donates calcium to her pup. During this taxing process, mother bats often develop osteoporosis, the only other member of the Kingdom: Animalia, besides Homo sapiens, that develop the disease. A wing fracture for a bat is fatal. If she can’t fly, she can’t get food. If she can’t get food, she dies. The life of a mammal is often as simple as that.

sometimes i say dumb things.

2008-11-02T15:49:00.003-08:00

my face hurts.

new address

2008-10-27T17:23:00.003-07:00

I changed my blog address. Cam, Christina, Gabe, Liz, Mark, Mary, Sara, Sarah, Scott (my entire readership, in other words...), I hope you find it.

I'm freezing. I'm going home to revise. My thesis is due tomorrow. Eeek.

banana bat

2008-10-25T13:37:00.003-07:00

An adult banana bat weighs three grams. That's three paperclips. So tiny you could send him/her through the mail with just one stamp.

http://yambear.blogspot.com

2008-10-23T13:47:00.005-07:00

Hi. I'm changing the address of my blog to http://yambear.blogspot.com because it's cuter. So, starting Monday, October 27th, that will be my new blog address. If I'm linked on your blog, feel free to update it at that time. Thanks.

faithful husband; negligent father

2008-10-21T13:50:00.002-07:00

With my skeleton key prints, I closed and locked the door on work about my struggle with injuries. Moving away from that topic, I decided to draw things that are important to me in a different way. I’m often compelled to draw animals, not only because they’re cute, but also because I think they are just as human as humans, and more so in some cases. With this next series of prints, I plan to highlight animals and the way certain species either reflect human characteristics or present us with an example of how we should treat each other.

In this edition, I focus on the dik-dik, a small African antelope. Dik-diks are monogamous; however, the male is often not involved in raising the young. I find this fact interesting because it illuminates imperfections and contradictions in us all. It’s a shame that animals are not often treated with the kindness and respect they deserve, and with this series, I want to further demonstrate why these wonderful creatures should be revered and treated with the same gentleness with which we should treat each other.

I had planned on adding text, but left it off. Instead, I plan to do a second edition that better illustrates the negligent father part. Ball-grain plate. Ten prints.

rasputin collection (or, final trip down memory lane)

2008-10-20T22:24:00.005-07:00

Our final collection was a collaboration of nine pieces inspired by a famous person in history. Our group chose Rasputin. I did the mood board and drew the figures. Yuki painted them. Without the flats, it's hard to tell the design in these pieces, but some were pretty neat. Oddly enough, I designed a jacket that was short in the front with coattails in the back and ended up buying one a year later like it in Paris.

Yuki and I were gypsy artists in New York while finishing the figures. We were kicked out of the Parsons building around eleven or so and ended up in various parts of the city. At one point, I was drawing against a pastry display, using it as a light box. It was very memorable.

decade collection

2008-10-19T16:53:00.005-07:00

mood board with fabric swatches

flats

Our second major project at Parsons was a collection based on a decade, then modernizing it. I chose the 1930s--using swimsuits and elements of art deco architecture, which was still influential at the time--because I think it's a beautiful yet often-neglected decade in terms of fashion. There is one very 1930s-esque dress, long and lean, and then some other things I modernized by making shorter, etc. Some of the figures are kind of funky and I did a poor job rendering the brocade on the jacket and skirt, but oh well.

designs i

2008-10-17T17:28:00.004-07:00

Mood board

These are some crappy pictures of the first designs I did while at Parsons's summer intensive studies program three summers ago. Our first project was simple--three dresses (I'm leaving one out), and mine were oriented toward day/career wear. I really didn't know what I was doing, but ended up learning so much over the four weeks. The reason I'm posting these is because of a moment I had earlier this week while alone in my apartment, looking at my mannequin and wanting to go back there so much that it made me cry. I'm devising a plan.

a fig is a flower that grows in on itself.

2008-10-15T10:48:00.008-07:00

This is a rough draft of a story I wrote a couple weeks ago. Please keep in mind: it's fiction. While I am often similar to my characters, I am not my characters. And I've never drawn with bathtub crayons with a significant other, although I think it would be a good time.

a fig is a flower that grows in on itself.

Maybe if I had pressed hard enough into them, curled into an even smaller ball and took up as little room as possible, my sheets would’ve devoured me and I could’ve wasted away into a wisp of cotton. A wispy breeze to rush past him just to see what he was doing and make him think he saw me out of the corner of his eye.

I’d have traveled to the moment when he left a blue line in the wake of his hand.

When I asked him what he was drawing, he told me I’d see.

I dug my hand into an exfoliating mixture I had made that was supposed to put him under a love spell: sea salt, sweet almond oil, and a blend of essential oils, ylang ylang, patchouli, and sweet orange, because the bottles said “sensualizing” or “cheering” and that sounded good to me.

I told him to feel when I rubbed his shoulder blades and he told me it was scratchy.

I asked him if he was drawing an airplane. Was that a commercial, I wondered. Did some kid draw an airplane on a commercial for bathtub crayons that suddenly animated and flew away?

He didn’t know.

Gushers commercials always disappointed me as a child, I told him. They made my expectations too high and I anticipated an explosion, but Gushers were just like the off-brand fun fruits with some goo in the middle.

Fun fruits? he asked.

Fruit snacks, I said.

Doing kid things when we weren’t kids seemed sexy.

I actually thought like this when I still loved him: I thought about opening my window in the morning while wearing a sweet, sexy negligee, wishing he could see me, see me opening the window with my hair like morning and my eyes wretchedly sad, looking like blown pages of a fairytale.

I watched the blue line loop around, head in the other direction, and finish with two circles. He had drawn a penis, as if it were funny or something.

In the last picture I took of him, he was in his underwear after we woke up and he had an erection and it was funny that time because I took a picture. He was really laughing in it and I forgot that I was afraid.

My building wasn’t secure, but I kept my door unlocked in case he came back. In case he came for me in the night, so I was putting deodorant under my armpits and perfume on my neck glands before I went to sleep, the kind that I often wore, because the last thing I wanted was for him to come back and for me to smell bad. He’d miss that smell. I knew he’d remember and miss my smell.

I grabbed the bathtub crayon from him.

You’re so stupid, I laughed.

I drew a turtle with a word bubble that said, Please come inside. I will protect you from whatever’s eating you.

I had two used teacups in my room and lots of soggy tea bags on my dresser. It was true. I drank a lot of tea while alone, but it was dumb because I wanted him to think I drank a lot of tea in my room while I was alone. I wanted him to see the teabags when he came back and think, yes, she must drink tea. She must drink tea while wearing sweet, sexy negligees. She is like that. She is like that and I miss that.

I put teacups on top of books on my bedside table. It was true. I read books and drank tea in bed. But I wanted him to know that. She is like that, he’d think. She washes her face and slips into silky underthings and drinks tea and reads a book and opens her window in the morning.

When I was still in love with him, I thought: If he could see me now, see how he hurt this innocent creature, like he stepped on a turtle while she was trying to wrench off her shell and give it to him. Take it. It will keep you warm and ward off anything that tries to hurt you. Take it. You can use my shell. Let my home be your home. You can live here forever, because, if you don’t, I imagine that the world turns grey and there is simply one object in the entire landscape, something sad like a gas station, maybe, or a tree with too many branches, and one solitary ghost who crosses
the picture like a shadow and the sound of the wind is a sustained violin. Take it!

Crack.

It used to be the leaving, the leaving was the worst. The idea that all the love spells in the world wouldn’t will him back to me, the fact that people we love sometimes leave us and we can’t control it, the idea that, really, turtles can’t even give their shells to others without becoming too vulnerable and easily infected, without dying because it’s a part of them so vital, a place where they can retreat their heads into their spines, completely hidden in their mobile homes.

It was one of the last times I saw him. I cored and sliced an apple and arranged it in a fan, cut wedges of melon, placed figs strategically and scattered blueberries throughout. I sprinkled the fruit with chopped fresh mint. I had thawed the blueberries from frozen and the leftover juice created a deadly stain that I spilled on my shirt and could never get out. He’s deadly the way blueberries are.

He grabbed a fig. They were in-season and plump and the most beautiful deep purple. He ate it as though it were no more precious than Spam.

A fig is a flower that grows in on itself. Did you know that? I asked.

No.

I think that’s interesting.

I guess so.

He grabbed a slice of cantaloupe and bit near the rind where melons aren’t as sweet.

remember summer.

2008-10-14T18:53:00.006-07:00

Chris makes a splash at Creeunk Fest. I finally got these developed. (Film. I realize my own hypocrisy...)

splainin

2008-10-12T20:41:00.003-07:00

I know this past week was a failure in terms of my supposed daily blog. It's a bit difficult when I can't afford to have the internet at my apartment and, instead, use it for free at a nearby park. Sometimes I end up not even touching my computer for the day. I'm thinking I should write posts in the morning when I'm at school so I don't keep missing days. Anyway. Just saying.

In other news, I'd like to take dance classes.

2008-10-09T21:15:00.000-07:00

today i forgot what i did.