spooks

Today was one of those days I wished I had a camera everywhere I went. A great fog has settled on and around Boise creating such beautiful scenes everywhere. I got to drive out to a nearby city to teach art for the last time and the fog had engulfed all the fields, abandoned houses, and leafless trees; it was amazing. I felt like I was in an eerie ghostworld. Fog is so full of mystery and secrets--I've never liked it before but today I sort of fell in love with it.

I wish I had a picture of it so I'll just say it was like this but at least 10 times better. At least.

new year

read this yesterday:

"art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced"

-Tolstoy

It tore away all the apprehension and self-doubt my last semester of oil painting seemed to instill in me. My professor taught me all the ways you should paint, all the traditional methods and what "looks good" and little by little my yearning to express myself seemed to get tied up, bound and gagged, lef to hang somewhere in my soul.

Since graduation I've been in such a weird way; unsure and not feeling the liberation I thought would have come. I think I'm relearning to breathe. Funny how the right words can make all that difference.

Maybe I'm starting my new year now and skipping Christmas because reading Tolstoy's words and rediscovering my passions feels more like Christmas than the played-out carols on the radio.

Luff

I have recently become re-obsessed with Annie Hall. I love Diane Keaton in it; how squirrely and uncertain she is in the beginning but how at the same time she knows exactly what she wants and goes for it albeit rather bashfully. I love watching her confidence and awareness evolve and develop throughout the film--not in a gradual, linear way but through the timely flashbacks and storytelling of Woody Allen. Comparing her first time singing in a night club to the last shown exudes such beauty and confidence it's hard not to want that sort of unmistakable aura for oneself.

It makes me think of formative relationships I've had; the beginnings, middles and ends of them. I can't help but analyze my past and see where I'm at now in relation to only five years ago and ask myself if I'm where I want to be. I guess I don't really know how to answer that question though because where I am was never where I had anticipated I'd be. BUT I like where I am and I'm working on getting to loving where I am.

I finished reading Brave New World a couple weeks ago and I really enjoyed it. There was a character in it, Bernard, who had all of this potential to be great, take action, be an individual; but, when the moment demanded it he kept faltering back and forth between what he knew he wanted and what he knew was expected. In the end he really didn't do anything and I ended up really despising him I think because I see those traits in myself. I hope I really strive for what I know I want and what I know will make me happy rather than bowing down to the pressures of what I think others may be thinking/expecting. It's hard. I think everyone struggles with it to an extent.

Anyway.

I love Annie Hall. I want some lobster, her whole wardrobe, and black soap.

Bah Humbug

Sorry Christmas. I'm just not that into you this year.

I really hate being cold.

and I really just want to ride my bike.

Maybe it'll hit me in a week or so...

I am working on it. I've been listening to this nonstop and it's starting to help.

Plus I'm making lots of presents so that should help too right?

Geez

I’m in love with the Gee’s Bend quiltmakers. I’ve been to so many museums and looked at modern art thinking this is cool but…so what? So much art produced these days (these postmodern days) seems to fall flat because usually the concepts are so convoluted (lots of big words that when you really think about them are a lot of words for “I really don’t know what this is so you take what you want to from it”). I don’t know—I just can’t connect with any of it. I want to but…it just ends up being a whole lot of trying too hard.

Gee’s Bend on the other hand is something tangible. These quilts truly are pieces of art. Many people have compared them to modernist artists trying to make connections with Mondrian, Rothko, etc. but these women never saw any of these artist’s works; they just quilted what they wanted and it’s beautiful in so many ways. You can feel their stories seep through from the corduroys, jeans, floral fabrics. Gee’s Bend is a community in Alabama rich with its own history and these quilts are embedded with their stories. The women still seem uneasy with the title of “artist” because quilting is just what they do and create. One woman, Louisiana Bendolph (Lou), said when introducing herself that she’s a homemaker with four daughters and when she decides that she’s an artist she’ll let you know.

I got the opportunity to meet with two of these artists, hear their stories, see them work. I cannot even begin to express how amazing it was. Not only do these women quilt but they sing—like angels. Lou said that “singing is like quilting; we do it because it keeps us warm…We sang to have faith; faith to find one more rag, one more piece of fabric to be able to make our quilts.” China Pettway (the other artist) was so full of soul—I don’t know any other way to explain it. When we asked her a question she said, “I just want to sing. Do you know ‘Swing Low’?” We all nodded and she started in with her rich and melodious voice us trailing behind barely echoing her notes. Oh to sing with a black woman. Everyone needs to do it at least once. (I got to twice tonight and I can’t even sing).

I really want to start quilting now. (If it could turn out like this)

All that David Copperfield crap

1. Sorry I've been lacking in blog posts...still getting used to exposing my narcissist side

2. October was amazing

3. I now have a TENTATIVE 4(?) year plan...yikes

4. I was a skeleton for halloween

5. I watched the Exorcist for the first time. It was good.

6. I'm finally selling some stuff

Also: I'm really liking Barb Campbell's work; we sell it in the art museum store. Every time I look at it I want to have a tea party in Wonderland.

The Power of a Fifth Grader

I'm training to be an art teacher for the Boise Art Museum which means I travel out to elementary schools that are too far away to visit the museum and bring slides and art projects to them. Yesterday I went to my first training (consisting of me sitting in the back of the class, staring at the backs of ten-year-old heads, and watching while one of the trained teachers gave the lesson). I wrote lots of notes, smiled whenever they turned around to sneak a look at me and cleaned up their markers.

While talking about procedures in the parking lot with the other art teacher the words "HI LINDSAY!!" come bouncing over. Initially I thought they were kids calling to a friend of theirs (I mean Lindsay is a common name and I only said my name once to the class). Just in case I look over and standing there--to my surprise--is a group of three or four girls standing at the edge of the playground smiling and waving at me. I almost looked behind me to see if they were calling to someone else but I smiled and waved back to which they grinned even wider, turned around, and ran/bounced back to the other kids. I think my heart melted.

Maybe it was the inner-loner child in me rearing its docile head. A group of fifth-grade girls said "Hi" to me. A group of popular fifth-grade girls. Well, maybe they weren't popular, maybe they were just normal. But for me, in my mind, they were the cool, skinny, hot-lunch-eating, baggy-jean-wearing, TLC-listening girls from my Joplin Elementary. Finally, I was validated. I was cool.

So what if my job is part-time? So what if it doesn't pay well? So what if it's going to make taxes not-so-dreamy come next year? I will take that validation of the popular girls and feed my inner anxiety-ridden fifth-grader. So what if it took thirteen years...I'm cool now.

I don't want no abba-zabba

Because yesterday's post was a little heavy...

here's a picture of the man I'm in love with.

If you haven't watched one of his Odyssey films you must. I can't stop thinking of traveling and adventuring now. His passion for the sea is kind of indescribable. In his words: "Some people attack the sea; I make love to it." Oh Cousteau, you have my heart.

AND

I can't stop listening to this. (I'm also a little bit in love with Tom Waits--but maybe it's just his voice)

can't get that monster out of my head

I’ve been mulling over how to write this post for a while now. Sometimes a writer strikes me so precisely and perfectly I get the shivers and I know I have to say something about it but I just don’t know what.

About a year ago I bought Joan Didion’s book Slouching Towards Bethlehem. It’s a collection of essays she’s written spanning a variety of topics but mostly encompassing her native California land in the 1960s. It was mesmerizing to read something written so boldly about an era which has since become so romanticized beyond belief that the reality of what it really was has been lost. She threw herself into the fabled Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco and vividly captured the reality of what the hippie lifestyle had succumbed to. I remember reading over the lines nearing the end of her essay where she’s invited to an apartment to look at something. On the floor is a 5-year-old girl licking her lips and wearing white lipstick. Didion is informed that this girl lives with her mom and some of her mother’s friends who give her acid and peyote. The little girl belongs to—what the mother’s call—“High Kindergarten.” I couldn’t get the image out of my mind; this was real. Didion presents the situation with just the facts letting the situation speak for itself and it is chilling.

I picked the book up again a couple of weeks ago to reread some essays. I couldn’t believe how striking they were the second time around. I kept having to remind myself that these were all published in the late 60s and that “No, Joan Didion did not read your mind. You didn’t even exist then.” Her “Personals” section I think hits home most for me. It’s beautiful and almost uncomfortable for me to read because I feel like she’s exposing the parts of me I try to hide so well.

I think what strikes me most about her writing is how pertinent it still is in today’s world. The poem “The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats, found at the preface of this collection of essays, strikes well to the heart of the emptiness and dread we sometimes feel in the fast-paced world today. I find myself looking at black and white photos of Native Americans—men like Sitting Bull and Geronimo—and see the intense burning in their eyes. A strong knowing of the self, their heritage, their land; a connection to the world they live in and fought for. I can’t help but wonder where that fire burned to; where that passion stolen from them went. Did it dissipate into the air lost amidst the toll booths and highways, along the barbed wire fences along the plains, and dead train tracks zigzagged across America? Is it cradled in us at birth and slowly stomped out by man?

I think there is still hope. In fact, I think it’s in a lot of us. There’s a longing to dig into the earth with the palms, feel the rain in the creases of the skin, drink deep the pines, taste the honey of life. I’m not trying to euphemize and turn my feelings into a cliché but I want to feel that hope can be nourished. I don’t want the passion for life to die. And I don’t think we should think we’re the first generation to feel this way.

BAM

So I have a pretty great job. Well, I technically don't have a job because it's just volunteering but you have to tell people something when they ask you what you're doing with your life (since saying "I don't have a job" turns you into a non-person and suddenly no one takes you seriously) SO I work at the Art Museum which means:

1. I get to read books all day since not too many people care about art in Boise (unless it deals with BSU football...go broncos)
2. The people that do visit are usually older, out-of-towners, and are fascinated by this little gem Boise, Idaho and ask questions like "So, should we visit Meridian?" (This is probably only funny if you live here)
3. I sit next to this huge window by the park which makes me even more excited for autumn because I'll get to see all the leaves change.
4. Old ladies offer me homemade gingersnaps (and if you know me you know how much I LOVE cookies)
5. I have a box of freshly sharpened pencils within arm's length at all times (and if you know me even better you know I love sharpened pencils almost more than cookies)
6. Did I mention I get to read books ALL DAY?

One of our featured artists right now (whose work I've fallen in love with): Devorah Sperber. Check her out; her stuff is so overwhelming in person and kind of makes me mad I didn't think of it first.

She takes images of famous paintings and makes them super-pixelated. Then she takes all different colored spools of thread to represent each pixel and strings them on aluminum strands to hang from the ceiling making a larger-than-life, upside-down image fo the painting with each spool corresponding to each pixel. Then she puts a lens on a stand in front of the massive spool masterpiece and suddenly you have a mini image of the painting right side up. Clever.

It's super hard to explain so you should probably just look.

Not Phony

Hi, my name is Lindsay. I think too much. Talk too little. And whatever I can’t write down I try to paint.

I feel like you’re supposed to have pictures on a blog. Here’s a chair I like. It’s in a museum in Oxford so you’re not supposed to sit in it. Sometimes I hate museums for that but mostly I love them for it (Caulfield moment). And yes, I work in a museum—but you can sit in our chairs.