Breathe to Paint. Paint to Breathe: April 2010

To do:

Watch

and

Could you ask for two more opposite movies? Sometimes I enjoy being a walking contradiction so I am feeling ok with this craving.

Should I find it strange that the noodles at the bottom of my pasta bowl made a face that mimiced my mood? I love strange coincidences.

As I sat on my my bed researching artists the very same hour, I came across this quote by artist Amy Stillman that also mimicked my mood and started a stream of creative thoughts. How marvelous is our language but isn't it more amazing how so much of our communication doesn't come through words? What are you saying with your thoughts, your mood, heart, energy and body?

"Every day I welcome the raw, the goofy, the urgent, the eccentric, the disrupting, the associative and dissociative, the distracted, the embarrassing, the transient, the interesting, and the fearsome into my life, and language is the welcome mat, the first translation device from the body of sensate cues I intuit. Painting is a physical thinking process to continue an interior dialogue, way to engage in a kind of internal discourse, or sub-language, mumbling, rambling, a stream of thought, murmuring, thinking out loud, naming, uttering, a voice in your head. So language is not just a cognitive device, a ground of critique, a pedagogical mechanism, a negotiable social structure."

I have found this to be so true. Language is not my strong point, but I am able to delve deep into my soul through a different medium, the medium that wakes me up in the morning saying, " You get to create today!" His name is paint.

This is what paint has been allowing me to create lately. It is the beginning of a new series, which I will later reveal when I feel I have a better grasp on the concept.

I think Amy Sillman best describes my passion with paint and my gratitude for allowing me to explore life's occurrences through it.

"Here's the big difference, for me: while language is a chronological system going only forward in time, like the voice-over to your home movie, painting allows for a revision of time itself through editing, erasure, compression, simultaneity. In painting you can wipe out, cover up, remake your body, re-envision your dream, imagine and then protect yourself,in fact, painting is a protective, tender gesture in a way that language as I practice it is not j'accuse!"

-Amy Sillman

This is why I love my roommates

This is Allison. I admire her for many reasons, but today my ode to her concerns her dedication to her heritage. EVERY DAY without fail she will venture over the the fridge, pull out her tortillas and cheese and make a quesadilla. It is a quite the task, a struggle some may say, but from the bottom of my heart, thank you for holding on to what is dear to you.

In all honesty though, I love people's attachments to strange cultural traditions. Lately I have been aching to go to Ireland and see the green my ancestors once saw. I am amazed by the diversity we are surrounded with throughout the world! It has become a new goal of mine to raise my children out of the country for a few years so they can taste of different cultures. But for now, I will settle for my banjo music and come to terms with my own hick, American, back woods heritage.

Easter Celebrations of different households

Home, oh home, let me come home. Home is wherever I am with you.

Luckily in our homesickness, Gretchen let us venture to her lovely home to enjoy Easter dinner with her family.

What a beautiful house. It is a mix of everything I love; art, cultural treasures, victorian window seats with lush cushions and full curtains, french style wall paper, colored walls, squishy sofas, loving family, laughter and good food. It sounds cliche I know, but when you are away from all of these senses and visual luxuries, they seem so much more overwhelmingly exciting .

Gretchen's mom made a cookie station for the kids. I think we had more fun than they did.

Who says art can't be in cookie form!

A dozen cookies later, we decided to share the station with the children.

April April April!

For April's birthday, the twelve of us went to her water-polo game. At one point, I looked down the line and saw skirts, purple tights, canvas bags and a sewing basket. Needless to say, we did not look like the typical sports fans. Oh how I love artists.

We Shot the Moon!

What an amazing show. Wow. The opening band All the Day Holiday was just as good, if not better. In fact, I may be in love with them. They were the embodiment of their music and as a fellow artist, it was so refreshing to see honesty in a creative form. Thank you my musician friends, I am inspired by your passion. I hope people feel as inspired to create when looking at my art as I did listening to them.

At the opening of our show Inheritance. Art groupies?

My beautiful half made a piece about her dads hands. What a passionate human being.

Title: The Webs We Weave.

This piece is about my beautiful lovely momma. Ask me about it and I will explain it. Just like my mom, it is simple, yet complex and requires a lot of explaining.