My newest wish-list item

SHOES!!!

It’s funny, because I have fought tooth & nail most of my life against being a girly-girl. & I am still very opposed to things like up-dos, rhinestones, push-up bras, & eye shadow. But I have an immense weakness for shoes.

I own three pairs of Toms.

I think I’ve found so much pleasure in trending shoe styles now because, in a way, ugly shoes are in. Not that “girly” strappy sandals & cute heels aren’t still popular, but consider brands like Toms, Sanuk, & even those weird Fila shoes with the “skeletoes.” They might not be what you wear out at night but they’ve started to replace Rainbows (love) & Crocs (hate) as your essential Comfortable Shoes.

Even in shoes outside your (as in my) college-kid shoe budget, chunky, bold, & in a lot of ways ugly shoes are in, on the runway as well as in everyday fashion for more expensive tastes. Dainty straps are out, which comes as a relief for us ungraceful, un-girly types. We clunk around, dainty heels aren’t gonna change that. So, as a fan of thick-strap gladiators & combat boots, I love this recent trend. People who have always worn Dr. Martens are suddenly hip again!

But then, as usual, there are just some I do not understand. Among them are. . .

. . . Whatever.

1. Jack Rogers sandals. Seriously, everyone & her sister had to have these last summer, & now I’m so sick of them! So what if they “go with everything,” they’re so boring. When there are so many interesting sandals out there, why did thousands of affluent white women suddenly decide this was The Shoe? I just don’t get what the big deal is. I got cooler sandals last summer from American Eagle, & for like $15.

Zip 'em up!

2. Shoes with visible zippers. Not that these are extraordinarily popular, as you might imagine, but zippers are for pants & purses. I think there is some sort of myth circulating that zippers are sexy, but I beg to differ. (Ever zipped up a piece of your skin?? Not fun!)

Confused shoe is confused

3. T-strap sandals (& other kinds of sandals) with fabric around the ankle. If there is a technical term for this style I have yet to find it, but it’s like this is a shoe trying to say “I’m a sandal! . . . lol, sorta!” As a lover of leg warmers I thought perhaps this style had a speck of potential, but they just look so. . . awkward. They’re bi-curious shoe-sandal things.

Bleah.

4. Shoes with big buckles. Maybe that’s part of the chunky-clunky trend, but anything other than a teeny little clasp buckle is distracting. Like the zipper thing, it just seems like a lost accessory that has wandered onto shoes with very little rhyme or reason.

Sparkle sparkle

5. And lastly. . . the Toms Glitters. I’m just sort of baffled.

What shoe trends do you love/hate?

As one of those flighty art people, a visually striking movie wins me over easily. The movie, shot in black & white, is characterized by its very long, smooth shots. So long, in fact, that there are only 39 shots that make up nearly two and a half hours (thanks, Wikipedia!). Even when the dramatic pacing picks up, the camera pans liquidly & almost lethargically, which gives it a dreamy or surreal feeling. But it isn’t an airy or light dreaminess at all: for all its steadiness, this effect of methodically paced shots can be disturbing & very disquieting.

Here’s a good youtube clip of the beautiful opening shot/scene. Take a look at what I’m going on & on about.

You could say I like disturbing films (see my entry on Antichrist if you doubt me), & even though this one presents very little that could be seen as offensive or obscene, I’d classify it as a disturbing movie. There is nothing visually upsetting but the Tarr’s overwhelming manipulation of the audience’s emotions through pacing, music, & the confused & sometimes pitiable main character János, the childlike adult whose eyes through which we view the unrest of the fragile Hungarian town.

On a side note: I bought an album by Ólafur Arnalds, an Icelandic musician, that was released about a year ago, titled . . . And They Have Escaped the Weight of Darkness, a line from this opening scene, & Arnalds says the album is inspired by the film. I am a sucker for good album art, & even though this is a very simple album cover (a solar eclipse as described in the first scene), it’s smooth simplicity works well with the meditative, sometimes somber & dark, & overall emotional tone of the music, sharing these moods with the film & its surreal dreaminess that evolves into something of a nightmare.

I was actually into GaGa when she first entered the scene, which isn’t typical of me, but I really liked her fashion (very refreshing after years of crap like this) & her songs were catchy enough. Even if they weren’t masterpieces, “Poker Face” & especially “Bad Romance” were (& still are!) infectiously good, with really solid & original videos like “Bad Romance,”  ”Paparazzi,” & “Telephone.” The videos won me over first, honestly.

Lady GaGa’s newest video, “Born This Way,” might not look a whole lot different from her others at first. A silly intro you’re not sure if you should skip or not, the scantily-clad GaGa surrounded by muscular male dancers, over-the-top artificiality (probably my favorite part of every GaGa video), & some obligatory shock value.

The setting as laid out for us in the first minute of GaGa’s deadpan delivery (not that anything else would have been better, but it was just so ugggh) wasn’t very intriguing, even if “The Mother Monster” is responsible for “the birth of evil.” I sort of follow the “narrative” she’s trying to create, but it’s so thin, & the connection of the birth of evil (may I stifle a giggle?) to being “Born This Way” is really hand-wavy. Not that complete coherence or connective tissue is necessarily needed between the song content & video content, but they hardly made an effort here. There was a real disconnect between the intro & the song, It was like it was trying to put some fantasy-cyberpunk spin on a pretty bland tune, & the song portion of the video was like a regular GaGa video watered down to its least interesting. Where were the funky costumes? the dark humor? ‘Cause it wasn’t that Marilyn Manson/Sylvia Ji stuff.

What I find endlessly more entertaining though is the comments. YouTube comments make me feel a lot less bitchier, and the ones for this video are no exception. Some favorites:

i don’t really know why she wears a bra and panty every video.. she thinks that her breast are big…. MINE ARE TWICE AS BIG!!!! –1101fartygirl (I’m not kidding.)

somehow, this song and the MTV makes me smile :).. i thought i love lady gaga.. now i love her more!… thou is kinda gross, yet its amazing.. specially on the dance number… thank you so much Lady Gaga for that very Nice Message… your right!.. IM ON THE RIGHT TRACT!… and IM BORN THIS WAY! –badrhey (clearly not on the “tract” towards appropriate spelling or punctuation.)

my nipples itch so much –ashleyloveschris2009 (always something like that in there amidst the trolling.)

I guess the diva hype is winding down. Plus, we’re all distracted by Rebecca Black.

My art-making suffered a bit towards the end of the year but since getting back to school I’ve restarted my enthusiasm for art-making & become particularly interested in book arts. I’ve always been a book & journal freak, so much so that I buy strange & beautiful journals to use for mundane things like taking lecture notes & making grocery lists. (Some people think I’m profaning them this way but, whatevs.) As I’ve already described my paper craze as it took the form of nesting paper boxes, I grew from collecting singular bits of paper—a brochure, a card, a tag, a page of a magazine—to whole books, particularly used paperbacks. Just by virtue of being a reader I end up in used book stores all the time, & I found myself looking over a book & thinking, Wow, I want this, even if I’ll never read it. (Because it’s in Chinese, or it’s too warped to read comfortably, or it’s a trash novel, or it’s falling apart.) So after buying up a lot of books I couldn’t read, it just made sense to make my own book out of these remnants. Obviously I am just as interested in text as ever. Text has always been a part of my work in some way, books or not. (Take a closer look by visiting my flickr photostream.)

Speaking of books, I had the privilege of interning at my college’s art gallery & helping curate an exhibit. It was more work than I ever foresaw, but I learned an awful lot, & it didn’t hurt that it was a really awesome exhibit.

The exhibit, A Book About Death: Life, was based on & featured A Book About Death, a 2009 project by the artist Matthew Rose, where hundreds of international artists contributed a postcard-size piece (in 500 reproductions) to the unbound, unordered book. At the original exhibit visitors could collect the postcards, of which there were 486 in the end. Given the reproductions, several “books about death” exist, & we had ours on loan from a private collection. So, in addition to the original book, our gallery made a similar call for entries for our “version,” A Book About Death: Life.

I did some installation work last semester for an exhibit, which was of course good grunt-work experience, but getting to make curating decisions for this exhibit. . . well, it was really cool. Of course I didn’t have anywhere near complete control, but it definitely means more to have prepared something the way you envisioned it, or at least as close as possible! I’d like to think I have an eye for curating & design, & it felt right to be working on this exhibit. I would absolutely love to work in a gallery someday.

With nearly 500 pieces in the original book, about 85 new pieces, & some selected pieces by Ray Johnson, whose work inspired the original, it was a challenge to figure out how best to present hundreds of small pieces in a logical but interesting way. We ended up putting the postcards in plastic & clipping them to wire that was strung around the gallery walls, & wrapped around “floating” walls. It proved to be the best way display them & allow each piece to maintain its singularity but also be seen as a part of a whole.

On a personal note, the curating & just going through these hundreds of pieces dealing with the subject of death was good for me especially after the horrible events of last October & my having to face death for, honestly, the first time in my life. A lot of folks in the art department urged me to “use my art” to come to terms with these things, to express grief &c., but I just felt, initially, like they were being really inconsiderate to my suffering. I don’t doubt that art therapy & art as therapy are powerful things—very soon after the event I went to New York to spend time in the museums & galleries—but I felt & still feel that I need distance between myself as the person who has a personal hell to sort out & myself as the art-maker. I realize I am one person & ultimately a synthesis of what I feel are different personae (I’m not MPD, I swear!), but there are things that take time to converge into the rest of me, & I don’t think I’m alone here. But the art of exhibit was an appropriate distance from my personal life that I could utilize to bring myself closer to place of peace & understanding in the face of incomprehensible things.

Entries to come: I’d like to talk about Louis Zukofsky, fluxus art, book arts (outside my own book-making, that is), & maybe visual poetry. Stay tuned.

Revolving door.

Revolving door. A sequence of objects which to him appears to be a caravan of fellaheen, a circus, begins a slow migration to the right vanishing point on the horizon line.

Revolving door. Fountains of the financial district. Houseboats beached at the point of low tide, only to float again when the sunset is reflected in the water. A sequence of objects which to him appears to be a caravan of fellaheen, a circus, camels pulling wagons of bear cages, tames ostriches in toy hats, begins a slow migration to the right vanishing point of the horizon line.

Revolving door. First flies of summer. Fountains of the financial district spout. She was a unit in a bum space, she was a damaged child. Dark brown houseboats beached at the point of low tide—men atop their cabin roofs, idle, play a Dobro, a jaw’s harp, a 12-string guitar—only to float again when the sunset is reflected in the water. I want the grey-blue grain of western summer. A cardboard box of wool sweaters on top of the bookcase to indicate Home. A sequence of objects, silhouettes, which to him appears to be a caravan of fellaheen, a circus, dromedaries pulling wagons bearing tiger cages, tamed ostriches in toy hats, begins a slow migration to the right vanishing point on the horizon line.

My beau does a lot of gratuitous reading aloud, usually without asking. Actually, he never asks, now that I’m thinking about it. But for once instead of just getting annoyed (“ALLEN I AM PAINTING & I WILL PUT PAINT ON YOU IF YOU DON’T SHUT UP”), the brainwashing worked & I borrowed my beau’s copy of Ron Silliman’s The Age of Huts while I’m at home recovering from a mysterious virus.

"Walking" box by me, singular

As anyone who has ever visited my blog can see, I’ve never been dedicated to one art form over another, especially as the lines have begun to blur in recent decades. While every medium has its natural limitations that define it, I’m always eager to see ideas passing through from one to the other. I’ve had a big soft spot lately for repetition, careful sequencing, & layering, & these ideas are showing up in my own work as well. Silliman intrigued me instantly with the opening stanzas of Ketjak, a four-volume poem begun by Silliman in 1974 with The Age of Huts. The hundred-page first section (“Ketjak”) is a snowballing stanza that doubles each turn, inserting new text into the preceding stanza to double the sentence count. But it isn’t simply an exercise in repetition: the meanings of identical sentences from one stanza to another change, sometimes from humorous to morose or shifting the signifiers with the constant change of context. But most often continuity & context are unemployable terms entirely, & the beauty of the poem is truly the intricate fabric made of recycled pieces alongside new invention, constantly feeding off itself in order to grow. Here are the first sentences of the sixth, seventh, and eighth stanzas: I really enjoyed following the evolution of the text surrounding “Earth science.”

Revolving door. The garbage barge at the bridge. Earth science. Resemblance. . .

Revolving door. How will I know when I make a mistake. The garbage barge at the bridge. The throb in the wrist. Earth science. Their first goal was to separate the workers from their means of production. He bears a resemblance. A drawing of a Balinese spirit with its face in its stomach. . .

Revolving door. Song of the garbage collectors beneath the bedroom window. How will I know when I make a mistake. Soap. The garbage barge at the bridge. The Japanese floor manager. Throb in the wrist. Terms imply domains. Earth science. Steam pours from the alley sewers. Their first goal was to separate the workers form their means of production. No hurry, no hassle. He bears a resemblance to Lee. Clap hands. A drawing of a Balinese spirit with its face in its stomach. This new arc is wider, more gradual. . .

Silliman calls this a Russian-doll structure. Of course that’s simplifying it greatly. Now, like I said before, I am stuck at home for a while & didn’t bring any art supplies home. So I’ve gone back to an abandoned fetish I struck up this summer; nesting paper boxes. The little hobby used to just be something I’d do to relay a note to a friend (or more often boyfriend) in a silly way, usually a very brief message that would take ten or twelve boxes to get to. Then this summer I began collecting paper like mad, maps & magazines & brochures & postcards & posters, almost obsessively, & I started making dozens of these boxes, nesting as well as singular. So I’ve returned to the boxes, with my constant need to produce in some capacity. I’m really not sure if I ought to continue or if they are a dead end, so I’ll just turn this over as I impulsively make more.

Eight nesting "comic" boxes.

"Wittgenstein" box: "The limits of my language are the limits of my world," in English & German.

Five nesting boxes made of fine(r) papers.