create|reveal|redeem

long time no blog

2006-08-28T22:15:00.000-07:00

Summer session skidded to a close. My summer cold turned into full-on bronchitis (including 102 degree fever, chills, and the usual ick). And still, I managed to get out of town on.......

A VACATION!!!!

Not my usual activity. I headed off to Hawaii. Maui, mostly. And I start teaching the fall semester classes tomorrow, at 8 am.

I guess a full-on description will have to wait. Let's just say that I have never been so relaxed in all my life. And I'm still pretty much there.

Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.

Do you feel the thick, hot, moist breeze? Do you feel the salt of the warm ocean crusting on your legs? Can you taste the drinks with the little umbrellas?

end of "semester" crunch

2006-08-04T15:44:00.000-07:00

My miraculous, creative, wonderful students.
Cranking out work round the clock.
Showing up with ingenious final projects, PLUS yummy final party snacks.

The most miraculous thing of all:
The good humor, camaraderie, and sharing among them, especially the night before, 'round midnight (I kid you not). The yahoogroup posts!

I guess our summer school class is more of a digital art boot camp, with fourteen weeks' worth of instruction crammed into six. Naturally everyone gets a bit punchy near the end.

And what were they sharing with each other?
Tips on masking in Corel Painter?
Tips on making patterns in Adobe Illustrator?

Nooooooooo.
YouTube videos of Japanese pranks. Outrageous potty-humor. Pee-in-your-pants hilarious.

with thanks to Laura Ewing
outhouse pranks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJOweEVMjz4&search=japanese%20toilet%20pranks

with thanks to Edward Wu
sauna pranks
http://www.spikedhumor.com/articles/37345/Sauna_Pranks_In_Japan.html

There is much more to say about my students' work and our final conversation. But right now I am sniffling with a summer cold, trying to lie down for yet another nap. And I am still filled with joy at all of yesterday. And I mean ALL of yesterday, beginning with the stream of yahoogroup email posts at 12:41 a.m.). If you know anybody who needs a good laugh, send 'em over. [To the link, NOT necessarily to Japan, since they might end up on the receiving end........]

jolly old Titus Andronicus

2006-07-29T13:46:00.000-07:00

I just saw a Shakespearian gore-fest, performed as ALMOST A COMEDY! ---a black one, with a cruel end. But if you know anything about Titus Andronicus, you probably know that it is not usually performed with happy music, laughs and slapstick.

Well, check out the production at the Old Globe in San Diego's Balboa Park. In the outdoor theater [which SORT OF tries to replicate the Elizabethan Old Globe], young buck maverick Yugoslavian director Darko Tresnjak recasts the Roman brothers competing for the throne as contemporary politicians, served by cell-phoning assistants, note-taking apparatchiks, and dark-suited, dark-shaded CIA-ish operatives. Titus Andronicus, a general returning from decades at war, is "elected (Emperor!) and declines to serve," leading to an escalating series of tragedies that sink Titus into madness, revenge, slaughter and death.

nihilistic
fatalistic
cannibalistic
slapstictic

Broadway and popular songs are interspersed (She Had it Coming from Chicago and I Wanna Hold Your Hand, yes, that hand), simultaneously lightening and darkening the piece. In fact, the first thing we see is police tape, but the first thing we HEAR is the opening number from A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum.

When you go, say "hi" to my buddy Leonard Kelly-Young, who plays the tired General, with a descent into madness that singes (no, Titus doesn't "sing"), and a turn as a celebrity chef that cooks (yes, Leonard is a great cook, although I wouldn't have wanted to attend THAT meal).

The Sensuous Margaret Cho

2006-07-22T10:15:00.000-07:00

If you haven't heard of Margaret Cho, you are in for a shock AND a treat. If you have and you don't like her, you may wish to stop reading. If you are under the age of consent, go away now and look her up in a couple of years.

If you are my mom, hang onto your hat, keep reading, and don't worry too much.

Brilliant and "out there" as an actress, comedienne, political activist and writer, Margaret Cho is, among other things, pro-gay [she laughingly has called herself a "fag hag" for years], pro-free-expression, pro-sensuality, pro-sex, pro-body, pro-acceptance, pro-diversity, pro-self love AND pro-laughing at oneself. Fierce, edgy, hilarious, transgressive, sweet, smart, proud, mouthy, and ultimately transformative. FIERCE. Did I say "fierce?" And last Wednesday she ended a new variety show, The Sensuous Woman, with a powerful dance (NOT comedy).

Artists, liberals, pierced and tattooed hipsters, the gay/ lesbian/ transgender community, and people who create and follow extreme culture (and I'm leaving people out, sorry) adore Margaret. I adore Margaret. She rocks. She writes.

Anyway, Margaret (and a few others?) have spearheaded a series of performances at El Cid, an aging Flamenco restaurant/theater/bar in Silverlake. The series, The Sensuous Woman, features performers of burlesque (did you know there is a full-on burlesque revival going on?), bellydance, comedy, etc. I believe it is the third Wednesday of every month. Margaret emcees, supports the sketch comedy of others, and inserts some comedy bits, and this time did one final, amazing DANCE. The Sensuous Woman has traveled and will travel (to NYC too, soon). Go see it. DON'T bring the little ones.

Several Highlights:
Lisp and Havana (gay and lesbian rappers, incredibly funny, check out the MP3 Sexual Homo and crank it!)
The Wet Spots (transgressive elegant night club singer/songwriter duo: the tasteful Do you Take it in the Ass? is OHMYGOD funny)
Princess Farhana (bellydancer and elegant burlesque artist)
Kelly (alter ego of Liam Sullivan whose performance of songs shoes and txt msg brkup were outrageous)

Biggest Highlight:
Margaret Cho's final, phenomenal dance. Not one to do the expected, Margaret pulled much together, and pulled much off. And yes, here is my take on it.

First, context: Let's not forget that a bunch of the performances were by bump-and-grind pierced and tattooed elegant and naughty hipster burlesque goddesses. AND, I happen to know Margaret not just as a writer and comedienne, but also as a gifted and gorgeous BELLYDANCER. (Another blog, another day.)

It started with sound. The crowd swayed to percussive, invasive, angry and LOUD rap (Eminem's "Lose Yourself"). We knew what was coming and we screamed as Margaret was announced. When Cho stomped in, dressed as a (convincingly male) samurai, the crowd at first laughed and whistled at the sight (and at the contrast with the music). We quieted when our samurai turned to face us, mournful, despairing, holding back tears. (Cho is also a gifted actress, of course.) We watched him. Moving in stylistized squats with the grinding thumping rap, the samurai slowly raised a curved sheath above his head in front of the confused, cheering crowd.

Then he slid out the sword.

I know very little about of hara kiri (ritualized suicide), so I can't comment on the historical accuracy of what followed, but I gasped as our sad samurai acted out a swift self-disembowelment, first thrusting the sword into his belly, and then hurling himself onto the sword, ramming his guts onto it over and over. The movement was male, sexual, violent, and although covered with layers of clothes, a reference to both ritual suicide and sex, even rape. NO there was no blood. The act was all in movement, visual reference, and music.

Thrust after thrust. Then the shocking, shuddering pause.

Then, new movement. The crumpled, eviscerated pile began to undulate. Another Margaret awakened, disheveled, rapturous, body coursing like a bellydancer. She rose, stripping off the kimono to reveal herself, a woman, a goddess. The dragon tattoos on her belly writhed with her as she danced and expanded, triumphant. It is as if our new dancer consisted of serpents that crawled from the massacred bowels of the violent masculine. Unleashed. Free.

Strip tease.
Performance art.
Dance.
Sacred ritual.

I can't stop thinking about it.

Big Brother Birthday

2006-07-18T21:17:00.000-07:00

Bill, my big brother, turned 50. At a small, intimate, family "chocolate party" his wife Bridget got our niece up on a donkey and a horsie, we looked at old family photos, we ate way too much chocolate (including dipping thingies into hot molten chocolate), and I sang.

Sang?

Yes, and it had been a very long time. In another life I probably was a lyricist for Broadway musicals.

For decades I have written parody lyrics to various tunes for various occasions. And this occasion was no different. After all, how often does an annoying, amazing, weird and wonderful man whom you have known since birth have a momentous 50th birthday (or, as Bill would call it, "natal anniversary")?

Anyway, here, for the world to see, are the lyrics I wrote for Brother Bill, lovingly typed up on her own blog by my sister-in-law, Bridget (thanks, Bridget!):

Oh Billy Boy
sung to the tune of Oh Danny Boy

Oh Billy Boy, the sun, the sun is burning
The beagles dig, the chocolate flows and flows
You chose to leave your homeland of Encino (Chicago?)
Although we all have known a dungeon is your home.

You were the first one born to Al & Sheila
And you were destined for UCLA
You were distinguished in the halls of academe
For driving football helmets and things I can't say

Oh Billy Boy, you always made the women cry
Your wife, your girlfriends, mother and your sis
Your complication goes back to your youngest self
Back to Wisconsin, or Chicago, or your Bris.

Now Doctor Bill, the decades have been good to you
Your patients need you , and your friends are true
Your Bonnie Bridget fills your home with love and joy
And cats and dogs and horses, and a donkey too.

My Big Brother
sung to the tune of My Sharona

Billy was the first of us - the first of us
He came before Andi and I - big brother
Billy used to beat on me - make fun of me
When he was a very small fry - big brother

Bill was very smart - very bright
And he loved to have a lot of verbal fun- loved to pun
And annoy with his mi -i - i - i- ind! Why!?
m - m - m - my big brother

Bill has a creative side - a quirky side
Hard to find another such guy - big brother
William loves his history - his fantasy
And he loves to read his Sci Fi - big brother

William is a doc - not a Spock
Unless he is at a conference dressing up
Writing down - on his blog - his whole li - i - i - i - ife
m - m - m - my big brother

William played with Abe and Steve, Abe and Steve
When he was a regular guy - big brother
Then he went to CCO - to CCO
That is where his passion struck wide - big brother

William is my bro - watched me grow
He insults me and makes
Sure that I'm OK
What's to say
I love Bill till I die -ie - ie - ie - ie
m - m - m - my big brother

kitty garage sale

2006-07-18T20:04:00.000-07:00

One night some weeks ago, a dear friend found a little black kitten that had been mauled by a coyote. She brought it inside so that it at least could die in peace. But the kitten lived through night. My friend then decided to do whatever she could to give this little fighter its best chance to survive.

Vet visits ensued. Bills. And alas, despite veterinary science, prayer, and credit cards, the little black kitten, after trying so hard to live, expired.

Leaving my friend with a $350-odd bill.

Several of us offered to kick in a few bucks. And then my girlfriend mentioned that she would maybe have a garage sale to make up the difference.

As it happens, I was getting rid of some nice stuff. So I started a pile.
Another friend was moving. So I picked up a heap.
Another friend was emptying closets and cabinets. Five bags.
Another happened to have a sack of CDs and books.
And so on.

My filthy Subaru became a conveyance for kitty garage sale stuff. People all over heard the story and went through their stuff. I made several trips to my girlfriend's garage. And then, when one of my students (an accomplished potter with an MFA) gave me a box of her own, beautiful handmade ceramics (PLUS a green chair and five boxes of glass dishes), I nearly lost it.

I love this friend. I love all my friends. And right now, I love the generosity of people. And I love how willing people are to share.

As it happens, last Saturday, the hottest day of the year, was the day of the first kitty garage sale. People dribbled in slowly. But, hearing the story, people tended gave my buddy more than she asked for when they bought. At the end of the day she had made $200. Plus she still has a lot of good stuff for a second sale day, when maybe it isn't so excruciatingly hot.

Got stuff?

a farewell to Evidence

2006-07-01T10:09:00.000-07:00

Does it seem like a lot of my posts are melancholic farewells to arts organizations? Unreal. Don't get me started on how Los Angeles, the State of California, and the alleged Richest Country in the World (you know, the good old USA?) don't support the arts. Criminal negligence.

Anyway, another one bites the dust. The Evidence Room is soon to be no longer, more or less due to an internal dispute, but the phenomenally talented uberDirector Bart DeLorenzo is producing his last piece at their wonderful Beverly-near-Alvarado hub. Last night I saw the third-to-the-final night of the Evidence Room's swan song, Chekov's The Cherry Orchard, which Chekov wrote while he was dying, young and worldly-old at age 44.

All about endings. All tragi-comedy, comic tragedy, manic humor veering off into bleak despair and back again.

Who knew that Chekov could sound so much like California, with real estate developers, handsome sexual predators, oversexed underlings, and looking good? Who knew that Chekov could look so much like the United States, bloated and unaware that our butts are being kicked? Who knew that Chekov could hit so close to MY bone, about wasted money and wasted time?

And of course, who knew that Chekov could sound so much like a theater director's accounting for moving on?

Bart and Chekov. What a team. It is ALL it all in there, VERY physical comedy, loveable complex buffoons, tragedy, and leaving the wreckage of one's past. This is not the heavy, lugubrious Chekov we expect. Nor is it "Chekov Lite." This is Chekov presented to us, BY us, FOR us, slamming us with both spectacle and pain.

I wrote about another piece that the Evidence Room had done, on a previous blog:
http://laurelpaley.blogspot.com/2005/11/go-see-theater-ellen-evidence.html

Now I realize it wasn't just the amazing piece of writing. It is the living bodies of committed actors, the extraordinary text, AND the penetrating vision of a director that come together to cause it all. A fragile, nebulous web. A community willing to submit itself to the text AND to the direction.

The Evidence Room location will remain a theater. It is a wonderful space for that. AND Bart DeLorenzo will direct again [taking the name "Evidence Room" with him]. How could he not? But the Evidence Room as we know it has only two more performances left, tonight's and tomorrow night's.

Farewell.

too much time on their hands

2006-07-01T00:48:00.000-07:00

Science in the public interest......
With thanks to that great discoverer David Letterman for making it very virally famous.

http://eepybird.com/dcm1.html#sharethisvideo

new students, new jokes

2006-06-29T23:03:00.000-07:00

When I have my students join a yahoogroup, I ask each of them to send a favorite joke to the yahoogroup. Then, of course, it gets broadcast to all the group members. This summer session group has submitted some fantastic jokes. BOY this is a live bunch. Here are only a few of them:

from Eddie:
A teacher asks her class, ''If there are 5 birds sitting on a fence and you shoot one of them, how many will be left?'' She calls on Johnny. ''None, they all fly away with the first gunshot.''

The teacher replies, ''The correct answer is 4, but I like your thinking.''

Then Johnny says, ''I have a question for YOU. There are three women sitting on a bench having ice cream. One is delicately licking the sides of the triple scoop of ice cream. The second is gobbling down the top and sucking the cone. The third is biting off the top of the ice cream. Which one is married?'' The teacher, blushing a great deal, replies, ''Well I suppose the one that's gobbled down the top and sucked the cone.''

''The correct answer is the one with the wedding ring on...but I like your thinking."

Susan Hsieh:
There was a vampire who got stabbed in the heart and died. He went to heaven and waited in line to reincarnate. When it was his turn, God asked him, "What do you want to reincarnate as?" The vampire replied, "Something blood-sucking". So the vampire was reincarnated into a blood-sucking bat.

But one day the bat was captured and eaten by an eagle. So the vampire died and went to heaven and waited in the reincarnation line again. When it was his turn at the front, God asked, "What do you want to reincarnate as?" The vampire replied, "something blood-sucking." A little annoyed, God turned the vampire into a mosquito.

Later one day (sound effect of a hand slapping on the wrist- PAT!) the mosquito was smooshed by a large hand it was trying to suck the blood out of. The vampire died again and went to heaven. He got in line as before and when it was his turn at the front, God was quite annoyed. God asked him, "what do you want to be this time?" Vampire answered as usual, "something blood-sucking."

God smiled and turned him into a tampon.

Lauren Ewing:
A man who owned a hand-operated rotisserie was barbecuing a chicken in his front yard when a hippie strolled by. The hippie stood and watched for a couple of minutes and then said slowly, "Uh...I don't want to bug you man, but your music stopped, and your monkey's on fire.

Erik:
Relieving Stress in Class
1. Leave permanent markers by the dry-erase board.

2. Ask whether the first chapter will be on the test. If the professor says no, rip the pages out of your textbook.

3. Hold up a piece of paper that says in large letters "CHECK YOUR FLY". (At Least for the Male profs.)

4. Address the professor as "your excellency".

5. When the professor turns on his laser pointer, scream "AAAGH! MY EYES!"

6. Relive your Junior High days by leaving chalk stuffed in the chalkboard erasers.

7. Sit in the front, sniff suspiciously, and ask the professor if he's been drinking.

8. Correct the professor at least ten times on the pronunciation of your name, even it's Smith. Claim that the i is silent.

9. Sit in the front row reading the professor's graduate thesis and snickering.

10. Feign an unintelligible accent and repeatedly ask, "Vet ozzle haffen dee henvay?" Become agitated when the professor can't understand you.

11. Wink at the professor every few minutes. (Hey you might even get a date if he/she is cute.)

12. Every few minutes, take a sheet of notebook paper, write "Signup Sheet #5" at the top, and start passing it around the room.

13. Start a "wave" in a large lecture hall.

Larry Martinez
There once was pirate captain who, whenever it looked like a battle would be imminent would change into a red shirt. After observing this behavior for a few months, one of the crew members asked him what it meant.

"It's in case I get shot. I don't want you crew members to see blood and freak out."

"That's very sensible, sir." At that moment, the crew member spotted eight hostile ships on the horizon. The captain all of a sudden looked very concerned.

"Get my brown pants."

Frederick Cheng
Computer Diagnosis
One day Bill complained to his friend that his elbow really hurt. His friend suggested that he go to a computer at the drug store that can diagnose anything quicker and cheaper than a doctor.

''Simply put in a sample of your urine and the computer will diagnose your problem and tell you what you can do about it. It only costs $10." Bill figured he had nothing to lose, so he filled a jar with a urine sample and went to the drug store. Finding the computer, he poured in the sample and deposited the $10. The computer started making some noise and various lights started flashing. After a brief pause out popped a small slip of paper on which was printed: "You have tennis elbow. Soak your arm in warm water. Avoid heavy lifting. It will be better in two weeks."

Later that evening while thinking how amazing this new technology was and how it would change medical science forever, he began to wonder if this machine could be fooled. He mixed together some tap water, a stool sample from his dog and urine samples from his wife and daughter. To top it off, he masturbated into the concoction. He went back to the drug store, located the machine, poured in the sample and deposited the $10. The computer again made the usual noise and printed out the following message:

"Your tap water is too hard. Get a water softener. Your dog has worms. Get him vitamins. Your daughter is using cocaine. Put her in a rehabilitation clinic. Your wife is pregnant with twin girls. They aren't yours. Get a lawyer. And if you don't stop jerking off, your tennis elbow will never get better."

Laura Grello
WHY PARENTS DRINK:
A boss wondered why one of his most valued employees had not phoned in sick one day. Having an urgent problem with one of the main computers, He dialed the employee's home phone number and was greeted with a child's whisper.

"Hello."
"Is your daddy home?" he asked.
"Yes," whispered the small voice.
"May I talk with him?""
The child whispered, "No."

Surprised and wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, "Is your Mommy there?"
"Yes."
"May I talk with her?"
Again the small voice whispered, No."

Hoping there was somebody with whom he could leave a message, the boss asked, "Is anybody else there?"
"Yes," whispered the child, "a policeman"
Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee's home, the boss asked, "May I speak with the policeman?"
"No, he's busy", whispered the child.
"Busy doing what?"
"Talking to Daddy and Mommy and the Fireman," came the whispered answer.

Growing more worried as he heard what sounded like a helicopter through the earpiece on the phone, the boss asked, "What is that noise?"
"A helicopter" answered the whispering voice.
"What is going on there?" demanded the boss, now truly apprehensive.
Again, whispering, the child answered, "The search team just landed the helicopter."

Alarmed, concerned and a little frustrated the boss asked, "What are they searching for?"
Still whispering, the young voice replied with a muffled giggle: "ME."

rfb&d | this is WAR!

2006-05-31T21:44:00.000-07:00

My cousin Steve Siegel, aside from being a marketing/fundraising guru at Claremont McKenna College, volunteers for the nonprofit RFB&D ("Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic"). For years I only heard about this organization. On Memorial Day I finally attended the big annual fundraising silent auction, which auctions mostly art by Claremont watercolor artists.

When I arrived I saw the gentle giant Michael Woodcock, an old graduate school friend. Little did I know that Herr Doktor Professor (ret. Pitzer College) Woodcock would have one of his artworks on display and up for auction. Not just any one of his pieces, but rather one of my FAVORITE Michael Woodcock pieces of all time.

Well, who knew I could be such an aggressive bitch! I WANTED that piece. I NEEDED that piece. THIS WAS WAR!!!!!

I outbid Walter Ebrahimzadeh, a Claremont gallerist (who showed my work back in the '80s). I outbid my cousin's boss. I hovered. I glared. I bared my teeth.

I won!

Mwaaa ha ha haaaaaaaaa.

being Auntie Laurel

2006-05-31T12:36:00.000-07:00

It was NOT pretty.

Don't get me wrong. I ADORE my nieces and nephew. But all my years of college teaching did NOT prepare me for babysitting four rampaging kids (three related, one sleepover friend). A demanding, pouty six-year-old. Two nine-year-olds (nine, going on sixteen). And the elder statesman at eleven. Three instigators. Four show-offs. Every conversation a negotiation. Every game a mosh pit.

WHOA Nelly!

Anyway, it is a good thing I love them to pieces. Otherwise I might have locked them all in the bathroom for the night.

how to love your life

2006-05-26T12:58:00.000-07:00

How?
Set people up for a future of unbridled creativity and free expression. Show it. Suggest it. Support them.
And then?

And then get out of the way of the inevitable flood.

What I do in life is create, and create/empower creators. That is to say, to empower people to be their fullest, most powerful, most fulfilling expression. I just set my Art 56 students up for their final project. The die is cast.

Final Project
Create an edition (minimum three copies) of an "artist's book." The artist's book must have a strong concept or theme. The binding of the book must relate to that concept or theme. The "book" must include at least three images generated in Painter.

Questions:
What is a book? Why is a book the way it is? What does its actual, physical binding relate to?*

And, what can a book be when an artist starts to tear the form apart and demand that form reflect or contain concept?

I brought tubs of artists' books, some by known artists (Cheri Gaulke, Katherine Ng, Christian Mounger) and most by my former students. First I let my students paw through my personal collection—four tubs of artists' books. Then I pulled a few out for scrutiny and explanation:

Valentine for Newt
Christian Mounger creates a heart-shaped brown-paper-covered book, hanging from chain link, for Newt Gingrich, filled with images of 1950s gay porn. Yay Chris.

Letter to Grandpa
(a student writes a letter in Spanish to her long-dead grandfather expressing her guilt at leaving him to die in El Salvador, in a handmade envelope, overlaying her ten-year-old face on the flag of El Salvador on the front, and her eighteen-year-old face on the flag of the US on the back)

Breast Cancer Barbie
(a student publishes a poem she wrote while enduring her own chemotherapy, about how Barbie would handle chemo—the binding being "Barbie" packaging, complete with cool wigs!, a hospital gown!, large Vicodin!)

Consumer
(a student makes a list for an entire week of everything he has ingested (every single cigarette, all the alcohol, all the drugs, all the food, minute by minute—discovering and facing his level of addiction and lack of control—juxtapposed with images of how it felt to be him, day by day)

Fortunate Me ("Fortune Ate Me")
Katherine Ng's exquisite bakery box of cardboard letterpress "fortune cookies," revealing the artist's thoughts and memories of her father and her own emotional state, with the "fortune" inside each cookie being one of her father's aphorisms.

After two hours of discussion, examination, sharing and listening, my students were completely moved. So I talked to them about the purposes of art.

Some art sells.
Some art guides.
Some art educates.
Some art entertains.

And some art—my favorite art— moves, touches, and transforms people. It shares something about the realities of being human. It expresses, for no other motive than to express. My invitation is always for my students to engage in all of the possibilities, including the latter. I have given myself over mostly to the latter.

This is what I live for. This very conversation. I have been building to this. From wrestling with technological concerns to wrestling with art concerns. From talking about pure form, to talking about what form delivers and how it delivers it, to talking about generating concepts (sketching, analogies, brainstorming, etc. etc. etc.) and winnowing them down.

We made it. We have arrived.

Evidence?
The emails.
The tearful, hushed conversations in the hallway at the break.
The energy and intimacy that is suddenly present.
The red eyes ringing the room as artist's books pass, hand to hand to hand.
Sanctity. Beauty. Humor. Joy. Deliberate tastelessness. Necessary creativity, as necessary as rain.

Now it is easy. I tease out their ideas.
I visit their sketchbooks and challenge their assumptions.

Now I get out of the way.

* We ask and explore. Discuss. think... to discover that the binding of the book is mostly driven by marketplace issues (production, distribution, shelf space, etc.), which itself grew from the history of publishing and book design. The form of a book has nearly NOTHING to do with its ideas or concepts.

MacGathering

2006-05-22T00:00:00.000-07:00

Friday and Saturday were MacGathering days. Deborah Shadovitz, of Mac writing fame (all sorts of Mac magazines, the Adobe GoLive Bible, etc., etc.), has been a friend since we met long ago in the late lamented L.A. Macintosh Group. The LAMG's MacFair was legendary. And Deb has for the last three years been trying to create anew a Southern California Mac gathering with that spirit and energy. This year was year three.

Friday I showed up at 7:45 am to help with setup, registration, and "room guarding" [two sessions taught by the talented Michael Pliskin]. The evening saw a reception and keynote address, given by Jeff Levy, the KNX radio computer guy, who has finally embraced Macintosh computers.

Saturday I was a bit more selfish, attending audio and podcasting seminars (my weakest area on the Mac, outside of straight programming). VERY VERY VERY VERY cool. The lineup of podcasters was impressive, knowledgeable, fun!

a farewell to mo

2006-05-11T17:30:00.000-07:00

Mo Better Meatty Meat Burgers. The best sign in Los Angeles. Arguably the best NAME in Los Angeles. And it stuck out like a sore thumb, clinging to the northeast corner of Pico and Fairfax, white wrought iron and walls, silly neon burger and all. I have passed it a hundred times driving north on Fairfax, often swearing that I was going to bring a camera (or, more recently, a digital camera) and grab an image.

And now Mo Better Meatty Meat Burgers is gone. REALLY gone. Razed to the ground as if it was never ever there.

Did I ever eat there? No. This non-carnivore isn't about to EAT a meatty meatburger, after all. But it was so distinctive. Individual. So NOT McDonalds, NOT Burger King, NOT Carl's Jr.

Bye bye, Mo.

Disney Hall | NOT Hebrew School

2006-05-03T21:36:00.000-07:00

Range, variety, intensity, wit.
Beauty, connectedness, fractal mutation.
Life, the Universe, and Everything.

In my previous post, I wrote about discovering that I was to be sitting alongside my Hebrew School teacher at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. I had rushed out to the Disney Hall to get a seat at the all-Reich concert at Disney Hall, part of the Minimalist Jukebox series. Finding Mrs. Bender was pretty trippy, I grant you.

Some of my readers have been asking me...... "What about THE CONCERT? DID SHE LIKE THE CONCERT?"

Well, first of all, the concert was INCREDIBLE. Superlative. The performances were exquisite. Reich weaves together and overlays repetitive and mutating melodic-percussive phrases and lines, with extraordinary result, but if they are not performed well, they can be a mess. This was not a mess. This was a revelation.

Moreover, the concert hall's acoustics elevated the crispness and clarity of the music.

So NU? How did the Fabulous Four (Mrs. Bender included) like Steven Reich and Minimalism?

They hated it. They HATED it.
"This isn't music! It is all the same!"
"How dare they give such concerts to subscribers?"

At the intermission I actually had to ask the man sitting immediately to my left to stop grousing OUT LOUD during the performance. Mrs. Bender, glaring, DEMANDED to know what I possibly could see and enjoy about this music, how I could even begin to listen to it, let alone TAKE NOTES!!??!! I gave my best art-professor description of the process of confronting an unknown artwork, listening in new ways, for new things, from a different paradigm, from a point of view of inquiry.

Oy.

Hebrew School at Disney Hall

2006-04-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

Some weeks ago I raced over to the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The Minimal Jukebox series of concerts and lectures was in full swing, and there was an all Steven Reich program with the LA Phil. This I HAD to see. Tehillim, my favorite piece of music written in the last 50 years and one of Reich's best, was the last item on the program.

I found myself, with my single ticket, sitting alongside two older couples. Naturally we started to talk. They were subscribers and knew nothing about Reich or Minimalist music. I was pumped! I rattled on and on, that they were in for an incredible treat, that Reich's music was rarely performed and difficult to play, and that the last piece was one of my favorite pieces of music of all time, up there with the Mozart Requium..... And then I sang a few bars.

Hashamayim m'saperet k'vod [k]el
Uma'asei yadav magid larakiyah....

One of the women suddenly sat up straight, looked me in the eye, and began the interrogation (in a clear Israeli accent). "You know Hebrew?" "How do you know Hebrew?" "Where are you from?" "How old are you?" "Oh, my son is two years younger." "Where did you go to school?" "So did my son." "What synagogue did you go to?"

[I love Israelis.]

Anyway, we discovered that she, Adina Bender, had been my Hebrew School teacher at Valley Beth Shalom Hebrew School in the 1960s. And we established that I went to high school with her son.

Now came new questions. "What year?" "Who was in your Hebrew School class?" Names and memories from my distant past came cascading out.

Janet Bain, writer, editor, and Jewish educator.
Sarah Braun, child psychiatrist.
Julie Rosenfeld, violinist.
And on.
And on.

Mrs. Bender's husband said proudly, "My wife has been teaching at VBS for forty years."
{!!!!!!!!!!!!!}

It was my turn now.

"Mrs. Bender," I said, "Here I am, 47 years old, and able to conduct myself in Hebrew. I pretty much have you and my other Hebrew School teachers to thank. But my classmates and I were AWFUL to you! We TORTURED you!!! We ran wild. We were very very VERY bad. And still, you managed, somehow, to give us a Jewish education. So on behalf of all my classmates, I apologize for our horrible behavior, and I thank you for putting up with us, and teaching us despite ourselves, and devoting your career to OUR Jewish education. It was a tough job, and you did it so well, week after week, year after year. Thank you."

Next blog, more on the concert.

Palm Sunday 2006

2006-04-09T23:52:00.000-07:00

Waves upon waves. A sea of humanity gushed all over the streets in downtown L.A. Near Chinatown, along Cesar Chavez Blvd., near El Pueblo ("Olvera Street"). Some white, mostly brown folks. Families. Teenagers. Little kids. Strollers. Blue jeans and party dresses.

Only today, no banners supporting immigrants. No honking cars. No Mexican/Salvadoran/Guatemalan flags.

Every other person or so carried a small cross fashioned from palm fronds. Every tenth person or so carried what to a Jew like me looked like a lulav, a palm branch.

Driving anyplace near Our Lady of the Angels was an ordeal—great for people-watching, but hard to move without harming the people one watched. This went on for blocks and blocks. No right turn, ever. Don't even bother going through your green light. Just wait.

Favorite sight:
Peeking into one of the busses (while I was stuck in traffic perpendicular to it), and seeing a woman in a deep pink dress with flowers all around her neck.

St. Pat Punishment

2006-04-04T17:25:00.000-07:00

I think I am being punished by the Powers that Be, for my rude commentary about Cardinal Mahoney's dispensation for St. Patrick's Day. For the last two weeks my arm has looked like corned beef (or at least corned beef hash). Yes, I am recovering from not only pain in the elbow, but also an infection on my right arm, under the skin.

Oy.

Now all is much better. Thank God for antibiotics. And once again, sorry Mr. Mahoney.

St. Pat revisited

2006-03-21T12:15:00.000-08:00

Oops.

The St. Pat declaration was apparently a WELCOME thing for all the Irish Catholics and a really great and generous move from their point of view. Mat Gleason said that "corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day for Irish Catholics is like matzah on Passover for Jews."

Thanks Mat. I'll be posting more later.

St. Patrick's Day | Mahoney

2006-03-17T10:57:00.000-08:00

St. Patrick's Day, another day in L.A., our majority Latino multicultural megalopolis.

Green Beer day.
Corned Beef and Cabbage day.
Another Excuse To Get Drunk day.

Shamrocks. Leprechauns. Wear-green-or-get-slapped.
Special displays at the grocery stores.
Green frilly tinsel at the bank.

I just heard that [Chief Catholic Mucky-Muck] Cardinal Roger Mahoney (gee I wonder what ethnicity HE is?) issued an edict that it is OK for Southern California Catholics to break their Lenten fast (no meat on Fridays) to eat their corned beef and cabbage today.

Awwww shucks.
What a cool dude.

I can't begin to imagine what would happen if a Rabbi, Rebbe, or other Jewish Mucky-Muck issued a similar edict. Like that it would be OK to have a piece of non-Kosher-for-Passover birthday cake to celebrate someone-or-other during Passover, some Jewish hero or genius.......

HUH??????? ALL JEWISH HELL WOULD BREAK LOOSE.
Pens would scribble!
Tongues would wag!
Righteous rage! Taking sides!

Basically, no can do. Kosher is kosher.

Nice popularity contest, Mister Mahoney, although it does tend to void religious significance. [OOPS! What's THAT?] I guess all those Catholic priests abusing young boys is making you look REALLY bad these days. Keep up the good work. Dumb down your religion. Have a nice day.

ow

2006-03-17T10:49:00.000-08:00

Sore arm. Too much typing. Ow.

This has been going on for weeks. I am in search of a better keyboard, and eventually a better chair. For right now, lots of ibuprofen, icing the elbow and shoulder, and avoiding my emails/blog/laptop..........

Sorry to be NOT blogging.

my funny Valentine | mom joel dad carol

2006-02-25T09:23:00.000-08:00

Unlike my prompt father, I got around to Valentine's Day—that extremely meaningful Jewish holiday—late.

I celebrated last Tuesday by taking my most beloved Valentines—my parents—out for dinner, and then taking my mom to see Ellen Snortland's one-woman show about HER midwestern mom. (For more about that show, see my previous comments at "go see theater.") Ellen was doing a repeat fund-raising performance at the offices of Ms. Magazine, raising money to take her show to the United Nations Conference on Women. This location put us squarely in Beverly Hills.

So where could I take my folks to dine? Nate & Al's, of course.

Not having been to Nate & Al's for 15 years, I was shocked at how good the food really was (their whitefish salad ROCKED, and even their coleslaw!!!). Until then I would have argued that the best Jewish deli in Southern California was Brent's in Northridge. Now Brent's takes a close second.

But I digress.

While we chowed down, who should sit down in the booth directly behind me? Carol Burnett and Joel Grey.

Living in Southern California has meant constant celebrity spottings. After a while, they become a big yawn. But I grew up on a combination of Star Trek and The Carol Burnett Show as a kid, and who wasn't blown away by Joel Grey in Cabaret?

Anyway, I was sitting with my back to two real childhood heroes of mine. If I threw my head backwards, I would knock skulls with Carol Burnett! So I called the waitress over and whispered to her to bring two Doctor Brown's Cream Sodas to the table directly behind me, and put it on my bill.

A few minutes later I hear murmers behind me. "But there must be some mistake.... We didn't order these....."

And a moment after that, Ms. Burnett leans backwards, twists around, and thanks us. To which I replied "Actually, thank you, for all you have ever done all these years."

My funny Valentine.

heart belongs to Daddy

2006-02-18T22:32:00.000-08:00

WHO sent me a card for Valentine's Day?

My Dad, of course.

Naturally, he signed it from mother AND dad, but I know that handwriting. My Dad. My ever-loving Dad.

I have been receiving so much love, and caring, and appreciation these days. My brother, who in his funny, biting, punning, teasing, big-brotherly way reminds me that I am not blogging enough and not resting enough. My CPA brother-in-law, overworked during tax season (i.e. RIGHT NOW), but always able to laugh (or at least smile) with me on the phone. My students, helping me schlep stuff when my arm is about to give out, and working like the heroes they are at making the best art they can make. My friends, filling my email box with e-cards, reminders, invitations, jokes, information, evidence of life lived.

But my consistent, generous, loving Dad will ALWAYS come through with hard copy. None of this electronic stuff. A piece of printed matter. A stamp. A signature.

When I went away to college, my Dad cut out the Doonesbury comic strips EVERY SINGLE DAY. Once a week Dad would send me the stack, along with a newsy letter. My girlfriends would gather around a breakfast table on Tuesday morning and we'd pass around my Dad's Doonesburys. My ever-loving Dad.

Mom rarely wrote. She picked up the phone.
Dad's little ritual taught me more about love than nearly anything else.

I guess I am more like my Mom. I pick up the phone, too. But I really appreciate, more and more, the person that my Dad is. So my heart REALLY belongs to Daddy.

visual elements

2006-01-25T13:31:00.000-08:00

What are the ingredients/elements?
tomatoes
meat
herbs
oil
onions
flour
salt
pepper

What can they make?
Combined differently, they can make

lasagna
burritos
pizza
hamburgers
bourrekas
curry
lo mein

[etc.]
[and I could go on]

What are the ingredients/the VISUAL elements?
line
shape/mass
light/value/tone
color
pattern/texture
space
movement

What can they make?
Combined differently, they can make

EVERYTHING we see

everything
we
SEE

chair
sky
landscape
tv
friends
Romans
countrymen
art
advertising
design
dashboards
deer
detritus
doorways
density
doctors
hospital rooms
health clubs
happy children
hysteria
wisteria
maps

[etc.]
[and I could go on]

Only in the presence of light, of course, but that's another post.

makor / source

2006-01-22T19:28:00.000-08:00

The JAI (Jewish Artists Initiative) is at it again. One show in two RIVALS:

UCLA Hillel Art Gallery and
USC Hillel Art Gallery.

Two opening receptions. Two events. Two long tables covered with humus, baba ganouj, pita bread, fruit..... Hey, when Jews have an art opening, it ain't gonna be cheese and crackers.

[Then again, no ice sculptures of Bruins, Trojans, or OTHER false gods.]
[But I digress.]

No, the Jewish Artists Initiative of Southern California (new-ish group, new website still under construction at jaisocal.org) used this pair of exhibitions to engage in a visible and audible dialog about the sources of its members' art.

The panel discussion at UCLA Hillel was academic, moderated by Lori Starr, the new director of the Skirball Cultural Center. And it included Barbara Drucker, the chair of the fine art department at UCLA, Ruth Weisberg, the dean of the School of Fine Arts at USC, and several additional JAI members. Longtime UCLA Hillel Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller kicked it all off with a few choice words. Questions and answers followed. And then more food.

A couple weeks later at USC Hillel, the "Way of Council" performance, or ceremony, or discussion [led by artist Victor Raphael's brilliant wife and "Way of Council" facilitator, Jane Raphael] covered similar ground far more intimately, with a dynamic, spiralling circle of sharing, by us, one by one.

Each of us posted a statement on the wall next to our work. But speaking in an intimate, ritual circle is different than writing an artist's statement, or participating in a hierarchical panel discussion. Way of Council charges us to listen fully and respectfully, speak leanly and spontaneously, and speak from the heart.

As my turn came, my back was to my artwork, but I was directly facing my parents, the truest sources of who I am, flesh and blood, Jew and daughter, thinker and creator. So naturally, I had to say exactly what was pressing to come out, spontaneously, from the heart, in the moment. And just as naturally, I burst into tears.

Here is what I remember having said. And then afterward I'll add the statement from the gallery wall.

[spoken]
First of all, for me to talk about the source of my art, I have to say that I am so moved that they are right here, my mom and dad. [Tears.] They are always so supportive of me and my art, even when they are worried about what I'm doing. [More tears.] Like when my work gets particularly dark or aggressive, my mom saying, "Honey, are you sure everything is OK?" [Laughter and tears.]

Naturally, my parents have sourced who I am, my growing up Jewish and educated, with Hebrew School, Hebrew High School, and UJ, with absolutely no choice in the matter. [Laughter here, from EVERYONE.] I have always felt rooted to Judaism, loving study, and text, and layers, and discussions. So I make art that reflects that rootedness. No matter what I have chosen to do in my life, I have always done it as a Jew.

Other ways my parents sourced me is in who THEY are. My dad, a retired doctor, always had medical journals lying around the house. So I would look at all those cool pictures of diseases, and tissues, and organs, and x-rays, as a matter of course, even as a little, little girl. From those, and from my own surgeries, I was always amazed that we are bodies, and that we are made of blood, and stuff, and mush, and guts, and liquids. My favorite Hebrew prayer, "asher yatzar," is all about this, and has inspired about ten years so far of my artistic production.

And my mom, always cooking and taking care of us, sourced me to be someone who loves to cook and chop vegetables. So I look at the heaps of kitchen scraps and am present to how much our food sources who and what we are, how we eat it and it transforms and becomes us and sustains us. And I draw, and scan, and photograph, and sketch, and think about, and use these things—my kitchen scraps—as another major source in my work.

Not all the work that is sourced from these things is pretty. The work that I am showing here is from a group of pieces, a series called Bite, nasty, icky charcoal drawings of mutated mouths, gums, jaws, and teeth. This group of pieces grows out of my anger at our consumption as a nation, chewing up and spitting out everything. Everything. Our youth. Our natural resources. Other nations. Other cultures. We consume and excrete. And it definitely isn't pretty.

Anyway, that's why this specific piece, called Clench, is here.

statement posted on the wall
This exhibit has us address the very sources of our work as artists, and the extent to which these sources may be Jewish sources. I am a Jewish artist. Some of my work may look Jewish (in fact, some of it is “Judaica” in the form of ketubot—Jewish marriage contracts), and some of it most certainly doesn’t “look Jewish” (whatever that means). Nonetheless, I know my deepest concerns to be sourced by my past, a Jewish past, filled with a love of study, sacred language, text, and the peeling away of layers of meaning.

Furthermore, much of my recent work derives directly from a specific Jewish source.

My favorite Hebrew prayer is not about Judaism, the Jewish people, history, Shabbat, Israel, or holidays. I am most moved by the prayer we Jews say about the body, “rofeh kol basar.…” This prayer acknowledges the miracle of life as being of flesh itself (of “tubes and openings”). All of the complexity of the hidden mechanics of flesh is miraculous: the pumping of blood through tubes, the structure of bone and cartilage, the sly reference to sexuality—male and female (again, “tubes” and “openings”—easier to see in the original Hebrew).

Blessed are you, Lord, God, Sovereign of the Universe
Who in wisdom created the human being,
Putting inside many many openings (“openings openings”) and many many tubes (“tubes tubes”).

It is completely obvious to You, before the Seat of Your Glory,
That if one of them should shut (when it is supposed to stay open)
Or of one of them should open (when it is supposed to stay shut)
It would be impossible for us to even rise up and stand before You.

Blessed are you, Lord
Who heals all flesh
And makes miracles.

I feel deeply that my purpose as an artist is to make my individual contribution to furthering humanity by spreading art and expression, in service of transformation, ultimately repairing and regenerating our world (“tikkun olam”). I return, again and again, to both the aforementioned prayer and a favorite quote by art critic Jack Burnham, from The Artist as Shaman:

It is precisely those artists involved in the most naked projections of their personalities who will contribute most to society’s comprehension of itself.

what would Freud say?

2006-01-09T21:37:00.000-08:00

It has been YEARS since I touched Jokes and their Relation to the Subconscious. But I digress.

Sometimes when I teach digital art, I have to justify some of the things I ask my students to do. They argue with me about why I insist that they cull examples of vector-based and pixel-based images from the "real world" rather than just printing stuff out "from the net." And so on.

Anyway, today I started teaching a brand-new six-week intensive wintersession in digital drawing and painting. I asked my students to join my Art 56 yahoogroup. I wanted my students each to

(1) JOIN the yahoogroup

and then

(2) EMAIL the yahoogroup, as a test.

Of course, had they joined properly, each person would receive EVERY OTHER PERSON'S EMAIL, such is the nature of a simple yahoogroup. But I wanted those emails at least to be slightly worth reading. So I asked each person to include his/her favorite joke in the email.

Here, then, is a selection.........
(roll over, Sigmund)

Why did the farmer feed his cow money?
So he would get rich milk.

Who invented the first computer in Biblical Times?
Eve -- she had an Apple in one hand and a Wang in the other!

Why did the man lose his finger?
Now, that's no laughing matter.

When is a doctor at his worse?
When he loses his patients.

What is the definition of bravery?
A man with diarrhea chancing a fart.

My little niece loves going to the Web, and she keeps track of her passwords by writing them on Post-it notes. I noticed her Disney password was "GoofyMickeyMinniePluto" and so I asked her why it was so long.
"Because," my niece explained, "they said it had to be at least four characters."

Nurse walks into to a bank to get some checks endorsed. she reaches into her purse and expects to pull out a pen but instead she pulls out a rectal thermometer. Realizing that it is no pen indeed. she says, "perfect, now some @$$hole, has my pen."

Where does a dog go if he loses his tail?
The re-tail store.

There were three tomatoes walking down the street. a Papa tomato, a Mama tomato, and a Baby tomato. The Baby tomato starts lagging behind, so the Papa tomato gets really angry, and walks over to him and squashes him, and says.....
...ketchup!...

HOW DOES A REDNECK TAKE A BUBBLEBATH???
HE FARTS IN A PUDDLE.

new year 2006

2006-01-02T11:57:00.000-08:00

Heaving, pouring rain. Floods up north. Accidents down south. It is a new year.

The famous Rose Parade on flooded streets, with a drenched and shivering audience.
A flash flood warning. Announced at 9:15 am.
A newer "severe thunderstorm warning" for my neighborhood. Just announced.

Maybe the old year is being flushed out.
I hope so.

Runyon Canyon

2005-12-24T00:30:00.000-08:00

I don't have a dog. I am allergic to cats and dogs now (the allergy has come on relatively recently), as well as bunnies and hamsters. This pisses me off. I used to be the only member of the Paley clan who was NOT allergic to animals. No more. I have joined the ranks of the Benadryl carriers, alas.

But I love cats and dogs.

So I take the occasional hike up Runyon Canyon and look at all the doggies (and their owners). Runyon Canyon is an off-leash dog park. Dogs run up to me with balls, check me out, sniffing and deciding.

I usually walk up with my girlfriend Rebecca. I say walk, because Rebecca is the REAL hiker. She takes the difficult climb. I take the easier, paved, less-steep incline. We go up separately, and then we walk back down together.

Anyway, I get my fill of doggies. I get an incredible view of L.A., I get a heart-pumping hike. AND I get to listen to Rebecca holding forth.

Mostly, I love the dogs.

thoughts at 2 am

2005-12-14T01:55:00.000-08:00

I love 2 am. Darkness. Velvety quiet. Moist air muffling the truck sounds just a little bit.

It is hard to believe that it is already December 13 (well, actually December 14! I had promised myself a post per week. Where has this week gone?

To Sylvia.

Sylvia, my fellow artist, confidante, buddy, and Santa Fe Art Colonist, et al, has been editing books (art historical, technical, ) for some time. She had a MAJOR MAJOR deadline on a pair'o' projects. And she found out that *I* used to edit books, too. So she hired me.

Yes, in another life, I used to be an editor. Querying authors. Restructuring flimsy writing. Cataloging and cleaning up errors. Hiring, negotiating, phoning, etc., etc. Macro and micro. WAY big picture and teensy details. Complicated, highly literate, and fun work requiring patience, extraordinary thorough-ness (is there such a word?) (I guess I'm not being paid to look it up right now......), patience, the ability to manage details, patience, and gobs of curiosity.

Almost every day (out of the past ten or so) I have spent ridiculous numbers of hours editing two manuscripts with/for Sylvia. I would take breaks to (a) grade my students' work, (b) sleep, and/or (c) keep up about a third of the things I had previously committed to. I have been cancelling cancelling cancelling soooooo many things. But a deadline is a deadline.

Anyway, Sylvia, the rest of this week is now given over to (a) taking down The Longest Potholder [awwwwwwww} and (b) finals. I can give you no more hours, at least not this week. Best of luck with the insane deadline you are working against.

You are a fantastic boss.

Tai's Cream (scoops)

2005-12-02T14:01:00.000-08:00

Tai Kim is the friendliest, nicest, hippest, and coolest purveyor of gelato and ice cream in Los Angeles. His "ice cream parlor" ("gelateria"?) backs up against Los Angeles City College's perpetually-under-construction student parking lot.

712 North Heliotrope Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90029

Tai is an artist. Went to Cal Arts, BFA in studio art. Then went to the Western Culinary Institute, chef. Then TAUGHT at the Western Culinary Institute, futurechef. THEN......... opened his own digs. Tai has designed perhaps 140 flavors (although he only serves 18 at a time), and adds more to the roster all the time. He scoops up his sinful and not-too-unhealthy delights Monday through Saturday, from noon to 9 pm, a bit later on Friday and Saturday nights. He always has at least two flavors that are non-dairy (rice milk, soy milk, or coconut milk). He always has a sorbet or two or three.

ordinary flavors:
hazelnut
pistachio
chocolate peanut butter
oreo and M&M

EXTRAordinary flavors:
mango
tahini, anise and date
tahini fig
starfruit and lychee
japanese pumpkin
pumpkin eggnog
chocolate habanero
mushroom amaretto
lemon black pepper

I can't begin to list all of the ones I have tasted. Every time Tai makes up a different batch. He plays. He experiments. This man is an ARTIST! Keep him in business. Go visit Tai. Eat Tai's Cream.

comments are back!

2005-11-27T11:01:00.000-08:00

I have finally learned how to delete SPAM-type comments from my blog.

For a while I simply turned OFF the ability of ANYONE to leave comments. Now people can leave comments again, and I can selectively delete the ones that link you to porn, Steuben glass, financial scams, etc.

Back to the TRUE possibility of the internet—INTERACTION.

Comment away!

go see art (Masters!)

2005-11-27T09:44:00.000-08:00

Ambling around the Westside.
Wandering into the Armand Hammer Museum.

oh
my
GOD

How lucky I was to be there the day that the Masters of American Comics opened. Let's hear it for those other "altered states" (as opposed to the ones simultaneously on view at MOCA/Little Tokyo) in Windsor McKay's visionary Little Nemo comic strips. I want to HAUL AND DRAG my drawing students to this exhibit. ("Yes you CAN learn to draw in perspective!")

Bonus:
I got to meet the alive-and-kick-ass graphic novelist Chris Ware. Quite a humble and sweet man. Quite humbling to meet.
How unlike his works of consummate, depressing genius.

Did I tell you I worship Chris Ware?

Only, one annoying thing:
Don't the curators know that there are, in fact, WOMEN comic artists? What about Nicole Hollander and Lynda Barry? (I REALLY worship Nicole Hollander, and I still haven't forgiven the pathetic, pandering Los Angeles Times, for taking that strip off the comic pages.) GIVE ME A BREAK, DUDES. And yes, the curators ARE DUDES.

Why is this OK?
Haven't we learned ANYTHING in the last 40 years?

I also loved Ryoko Aoki's drawings and videos on display in the Hammer's front "project" room. Don't miss them, but get your tushy upstairs to see the phenoms. I loved the Feiningers. I loved the early Popeyes. I loved seeing the development of Charlie Brown's pumpkin head. But as always, Windsor McKay wins, hands-down.

Of course, the Armand Hammer has only half of the Masters of American Comics show. The other half is at MOCA/Grand Avenue, where R. Crumb, Chris Ware, and Art Spiegelman hold forth.

Did I tell you I worship Chris Ware?

go see theater (Ellen, Evidence)

2005-11-26T22:47:00.000-08:00

It can't have been two weeks.
It simply can't.

Have I really been obsessing about, dealing with, hacking away at, resisting, avoiding, etc., [i.e. NOT blogging] for TWO WHOLE WEEKS? What has happened in two weeks?

What indeed.

I saw Ellen Snortland's remarkable one-woman theater piece, Now That She's Gone: Unraveling the Mystery of My Mother, where Ellen plays herself AND her quirky, unresponsive Norwegian parent, coming to understanding and revelation at the end. The piece encompasses every sort of woman, from Eleanor Roosevelt (whom her mother revered), to Lucy Ricardo/Lucille Ball (whom Ellen emulated as a very young child), to Gloria Steinem (whom Ellen continues to revere). It opens up history and reveals secrets [and reminds us to ask for OUR families' stories and secrets]. In some ways, Now That She's Gone reminded me of Lily Tomlin's Signs of Intelligent Life, in revisiting the heady years of second-wave feminism. However, in Snortland's piece, the exhaustion of feminism is nowhere to be found, and I found myself not only moved by Ellen's story, but proud of the movement and cause.

Ellen Snortland is a writer for Ms. Magazine and a columnist for the Pasadena Weekly. I had no idea that she was also an actress, a singer, and a playwright. I can't wait to get her book Beauty Bites Beast. Go Ellen Snortland!

Ahh, but I have been even more spoiled.

A few days before, I went to downtown's Evidence Room to see one of the final performances of David Greenspan's outrageous She Stoops to Comedy, a self-conscious, quasi-postmodern comedy of manners (reviewed here in Daily Variety, and here in the LA Weekly [scroll down!]). Played as if from an early draft filled with errors and contradictions, characters shape-shifted (anthropologist? lighting designer? wildly comedic narcissistic lesbian thespienne?), plot details zigzagged ("It is the 1950s.... uh.... it is the 1990s"), and actors acted AND acted out, alternately exasperated with the text and each other, brittle, confused, and resigned to the whatever-the-hell script. Sometimes with passion and agitation, sometimes with an underhanded wink and nod, characters read off directors' notes.

In this ridiculous mess, John Fleck played a voluble aging lesbian diva cross-dresser drama queen, jealous that her young lover has been called to the countryside to play Rosalind in As You Like It. When Fleck auditions for (and wins the part of) Orlando, the shape-shifting, gender-twisting funhouse begins. Dorie Barton plays our ingenue Rosalind (et al) exquisitely, as did the lighting designer/actress/anthropologist Shannon Holt (who turns it on and off in an instant, as she toggles between shrewish narcissist and warmly authentic buddy. It is especially wild when Holt and Holt come back together, for a conversation that rehashes their love affair past. Most affecting was Tony Abatemarco as the beaten-down, also-ran HIV positive gay actor, whose deeply moving moment in the sun is as negligible to the plot as the character feels in the play (and in life).

Even with all the devices, self consciousness, and deliberately layered levels of affectation, the characters' transformation, both internal and external, is real. What a triumph for the cast. What an outrageous piece. Usually "art about art" and "theater about theater" becomes cliched, tired, and shrilly self-congratulatory. Not here. Not here.

Bravo, David Greenspan. Yay and yay again. Thank you for theater that is contemporary and postmodern and rooted in its characters' and our humanity. Thank you for art that reminds us why art is important.

So I have been on a THEATER HIGH......
And that's not all. More in the next blog.

Good night.

miles of piles

2005-11-12T00:10:00.000-08:00

I am looking at my floor.
Floor?
I can't see my floor.

Filing. Piling. Filing. Piling. WHERE IS MY FLOOR???

I have been having way too much fun these days. Seminars. Plays. Art shows. Meetings. Hikes. Dance classes. Dates. (Yes, the JDate thing has improved mightily since my last post about it.) BUT, due to my flitting around, my favorite place, my studio, has turned into a nag. "Pick me up! Put me away! File me! Put ME away!" "No, ME FIRST!" "Noooo, MEEEEE first." "Me me me me MEEEEE!" "No, Laurel, OVER HERE!!!!"

What to do first?
Run off to Figaro for ANOTHER first date.

Hee hee.

light and shadow | albert

2005-10-31T19:10:00.000-08:00

Light floats through atmosphere, arriving softly, washing over objects.
Revealing. Reflecting. Refracting.

The objects' surfaces drink, the dark ones drinking deeply. Leftover light bounces and scatters. Different surfaces—different reflections.

POLISHED surfaces? DIRECT reflection. Light crashes hard and bounces. Direct. Clean, cold, sharp-edged.

ROUGH surfaces? SCATTERED reflection. Infinitesimal fragments of light tossed off in a myriad of directions, giving the impression of softness, smoothness, matte finish. But the violence of it never occurred to me until now.

Today I sent a harsh email to someone I have never met.
Arretez. Cease and desist. Quit.

Words had coursed through satellites and cables, from his laptop to mine. Words in trickles, gushes and spurts. Cascading rivers of words. Revealing—what? Reflecting little. Refracting much. Mostly deflecting.

From his fingers to my screen. From mine to his. Compliments, accepted. Questions, ignored. [Why?] Play. Urgency. Hints and invitations, ignored. And then, a phrase, only a phrase, yes? A blunt phrase, a phrase that arrived like shrapnel. Humor? Violence?

[What is he? Who is he?]

Different people—different reactions.

Who was the polished one? Who was rough?
Was *I* the direct one, literal? Was *I* clean and hard, cold and sharp-edged? His words seemed to me so rough when I read them, again and again and again. I couldn't bear them. But perhaps I could not see closely enough—were they soft and playful? Was he tossing off infinitesimal bits of thought, a thousand thousand thousand ways, with only one bit lodging in my third eye?

Just a few words, really.
They slipped onscreen silent, like scalpels doing quiet murder.
But only a few words, really.
Every cell in my body screaming.
Shuddering.

Different surfaces—different reflections.

Light softly flows around objects, falling onto and caressing other surfaces. Objects block the light.
Objects touching objects—the shadow careens, slamming against object, knife-edged, dark and hard. But the shadow is nothing. An absence.

Knives can cut. Shadows?

Why am I afraid of words?
Syllables don't murder. Is he a criminal?
How can I trust when my body sends fear into my blood?
There is no wound. But nonetheless I fear. And I regret.

The light cascades past the object. The shadow is cast.
But the edge of the shadow grows dull. It blurs. As it moves along, farther and farther from its source, it softens. It feathers back into warm light. The shadow is a temporary blackness. An absence of the cascade of energy and revelation. A deep thing, sharp and then soft, and then no more.

gourdathon | Orlan

2005-10-22T21:31:00.000-07:00

so much to say
so little time

Purple-haired gourd and glass girl Leigh Adams is an Altadena [California] based everywoman of art and craft. Art as a way to teach science. Art as a way to open up lives. Craft as a community endeavor. This weekend was the Gourd Fair L.A. [the California Gourd Arts Festival at the L.A. Arboretum (the county botanical gardens) in Arcadia, organized by Leigh, a gathering of all things and all people gourd...... Gourd painting for kids. Gourd craft for all. Iron Gourd competitions for professional gourders. (!! gourders !!) And more.

Leigh Adams came to The Longest Potholder and wove. I returned the favor and spent a morning gawking at gourds. Variety! Spectacle!

I bought a fabulous new (to me anyway) glue. I flirted with peacocks and babies. I marvelled at the organic gourd shapes—outrageous, bulbous, phallic, both..... Which was quite the contrast from the night before, when I heard Orlan.

Orlan, famed conceptual and performance artist, gave a talk at Otis Art Institute [now out in Westchester]. She is brilliant, outrageous and outraged, and very very French. It took two translators(and then some) to even begin to give the audience a sense of what she was talking about.

Plus, Orlan speaks in paragraphs.

Most people speak in phrases. Some of us speak in sentences.
Orlan? Que non!

Orlan spoke in complete paragraphs, in exquisite, complicated, art-lingo-inflected French, the two translators gasping to keep up. Et bien, au meme temps, Orlan's computer CD ROM would lock up or crash, over and over and over. [*I* finally popped up and got her monitor on a DIFFERENT computer to work with the projector.] Nonetheless, a great talk. It must have been really tough for people who don't speak French, though.

Orlan's art conversation is staggering. Gutsy. In your face. An early feminist performance artist, Orlan's concerns relate to liberating the hidden, inappropriate, colonized woman's body. Her more recent self portraits merge Precolumbian and African masks to her own face, generating a startling mutation and bringing to light the shifting cultural methods of molding the body.

Leigh Adams, on the other hand, is interested in beauty, texture, depth, and empowerment through art. The gourd has the look of the woman's pregnant belly, of breast, etc. Suggestive, natural, and primal forms, crafted in collaboration with nature.

Vive la difference!

taschlich

2005-10-10T12:44:00.000-07:00

Swans and ducks love Rosh Hashanah.
Fish too, if they can tolerate breadcrumbs.
Bees, not so much.

The Jewish New Year is nothing like the American New Year. Midnight on December 31 in the USA is PARTY TIME!!! Bring in the New Year with a BANG!!! Fireworks, alcohol, music and dancing. Giddy, outrageous, extreme, and a little bit deliberately dangerous.

The Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) is not a blowout celebration. We ask forgiveness and forgive. We see where we have fallen short and recommit to being our best selves. We cast away the sins of the past and pray for a New Year, individually and as a community, of purpose, goodness, peace and (of course) joy. We literally go to the people in our lives whom we have wronged, and ask them to forgive us for our transgressions.

After "cleaning up our act" with our fellow human beings, ten days later on Yom Kippur we fast and pray, asking God to forgive us as well.

This little movie is very much in the spirit of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. QUITE different from the usual American festivities. [And thanks to Barry Simon for sending the link my way.]

After Rosh Hashanah (New Year) services, Jews often go to bodies of water to perform Taschlich (translated from Hebrew as "you will cast off"). Jews toss crumbs of bread into the water, symbolically casting off our sins from the previous year. This year's Taschlich was at Echo Park Lake. After services, the warm day and crystalline blue sky saw a group of too-well-dressed yehudim of all ages standing next to the lake, while the park regulars and ducks watched, confused. After passing around stale challah and bagel chips [from the famous L.A. treasure, Brooklyn Bagel, we sang and prayed and tossed our bagel-chip-laden sins into the water. The ducks swarmed, the children giggled, and we said goodbye to our imperfections, at least for a little while.

If you want to toss your sins away too, my buddy Marion Katz sent me a link for virtual online taschlich. You can do taschlich right in front of your computer screen. At the end you can click on the falling breadcrumbs to see sins that others have typed in. (A bit tricky, since they are in motion.....)

At this time of the year, the ducks and swans and fish get happy, and the Jews free themselves from the past and create themselves anew. We look inside and root out our sins. We pray and mean it. We dip apple slices into honey to usher in a sweet new year.

Sorry, bees. And thanks.

STILL with the numbers!

2005-10-09T19:01:00.000-07:00

Still pulling numbers together for Gary.
OY.

Back to it.

Happy New [year] Potholder

2005-10-05T22:15:00.000-07:00

Finally the Potholder is up. Looks amazing.
Finally the Jewish New Year has been celebrated. Was amazing.

And yet, why oh why am I still carrying the detritus from the previous year around like an albatross?

What detritus?
I haven't done my 2004 taxes.

My poor, long-suffering tax accountant and brother-in-law, who year after year has lovingly (never grumbling) done my taxes. While I was standing at K'nesset Israel, completing the old year and readying myself for the new, I sent several blessings over the airwaves for Gary. Thanks be to Adonai [the Hebrew term for "Our Lord"] for Gary.

Anyway, short post tonight.
I have to pull my numbers together for Gary.

Happy New Year.
Sweet Year.
Filled with love, joy, art, peace, and fulfillment.
And completion.

the potholder rises (Armory)

2005-09-27T21:59:00.000-07:00

A show! A show!
I live for shows. I love shows. Especially when MY work is on display. I am now in the throes of hanging The Longest Potholder in yet another show, readying a space for its Potholder Lengthening Event.

Ah yes, HANGING the potholder. If my nice Jewish parents saw what I had to do to hang at Armory Northwest, they would probably tie me up and shoot me, preempting an inevitable, undignified fall to paralysis and death.

I was never a terribly sportive little girl. I loved music, books, dolls, making doll clothes and puppets. Geek that I was, I even loved school (academics) and Hebrew school. Did I enjoy sports? No. Soccer? Never. Baseball? Haw. Basketball? HAW haw. I threw like a girl. I ran like a klutz. I caught like a, well, I don't think I ever caught anything. Did I ever even clamber up the monkey bars? I doubt it.

In this show, my lovely long potholder is being hung mostly from the ceiling, which soars up to about 20 feet, and probably more. Do you like that "being hung" phrase? That lovely use of passive voice? "Being hung" by whom? I'll give you three guesses.

Which means I get to have the childhood I never had, climbing up and down, up and down, up and down, and up and down the [monkey bars!] moveable scaffolding. A sight that is (as the hipsters say these days) hiiiiiiiigh-larious.

When the preparator ("show hanger") Mike Hernandez showed me how to climb the scaffolding, he scurried up like a squirrel, all speed and grace. "Get inside and underneath." "Climb up to the first scaffold." "Then all the way to the top." Piece of cake.

It sure is if you are Mike Hernandez. Even an actual squirrel couldn't pull this off.

OK, so I'm short, OK? I can't even get to first base without a step stool. But even though I am short, I'm not short ENOUGH to get underneath without a few lumps on my head. When I try to slip gracefully under the x-shaped metal-tube bracing, I knock my head on it about a third of the time. [Or I get my hair caught.] Each time dragging my 30-lb. little red stepping stool/toolkit.

So, from little red, I grasp a bar above my head and find a lower bar for the first footstep. In this single motion I discover that little red is as still and stable, while the scaffolding is, well, not. Yowza. Once on bar #1, I step up about 16 inches to bar #2. Wobbling. I grab the bar above me to get steady, move the dangling other foot up to rest on the same bar. Wobbling. The bars are not a "ladder. There is no slant. They go straight up. So any "jutting protuberances" have to be accomodated. And, as I go higher, I clasp these bars like the lover I wish I had, hanging on for dear life and hauling myself and whatever I am carrying up, up, up.

When I get to "scaffold #1," merely a way station to the top, I twist to slide my tush over it and sit down, feeling (you guessed it) those lovely splinters you-know-where. I swing my legs up and find myself lying down on this wooden platform, white with plaster dust, paint, wood dust, and dust dust. And I am lying in it. Then kneeling. Then, while standing up, I repeat the earlier procedure (thankfully, no "little red" needed). And find myself, prone, on the top.

Standing up, having nothing to "hold onto," I shuffle around in tiny footsteps (wobble wobble), putting nails into the wooden beams of the ceiling (wobble wobble), trying not to hit my head on the low beams or the large pipes, and trying not to drop my tools accidentally over the edge.

Going v e r y , v e r y s l o w l y .

We open on October 7, from 6 to 10 pm.
Will I be finished?

the longest potholder at PCC

2005-09-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

I am privileged to teach and to have taught art at several colleges and community colleges. And of course, being a faculty member means being invited to participate in the annual "faculty show."

My longest association with any art department is with Pasadena City College's. I started there in January 1990, teaching drawing. Then art appreciation. Printmaking. Digital drawing and painting. Two-dimensional design. Digital photography. And probably more that I can't even remember. Currently I am teaching digital drawing and painting.

I have taught at PCC through most of the major changes in my adult life. Through meeting "the one" and marrying him. Through our painful divorce. Through little art shows and big art shows. Through creative slumps and creative breakthroughs. Throughout I always stayed on as a part-time instructor at PCC.

When PCC's new gallery director Brian Tucker named our most recent faculty show "Where we have put our labor we have put our love," it seemed like a natural space for The Longest Potholder. So I asked him if we could include it (giving him a much smaller alternative piece, just in case the Potholder was way too overwhelming). And he was up for it.

Thus PCC hosted not only The Longest Potholder, but a Potholder Lengthening Event for the PCC community—two days ago, Thursday the 22nd, from noon to 4 pm. Thank God for the fabulous gallery folks (Charles, Jeremy, June), for the students and former students who stepped forward to volunteer, and for the lineup of creative, playful potholder participants.

Now it is Saturday morning, and I am completely exhausted, and grateful, and moved.

Sorry to have "NOTBLOGGED" for such a long time. I'll be back with more words when I have recovered a bit.

the longest potholder

2005-09-16T21:40:00.000-07:00

Single, lonely socks.
How I relate to them, as a single woman.
If the blues singer can sing "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child...,"
I can certainly say "Sometimes I feel like a single sock."

Being unattached in a culture filled with couples and families sometimes feels like being that single sock in the sock drawer, never to be worn again. It has lost its mate to the maw of the clothes drier. It has not been used in years. But it is too lovely to throw away.

This is one of the many thoughts that led me to lead a never-ending series of communal, participatory performance events called The Longest Potholder. The Longest Potholder is simultaneously the silliest and the most profound artwork I have ever [not] made.

Why "not made"? Because I create these events so that OTHERS bring THEIR lonely and unwanted socks and hose (CLEAN!!!) to the gallery. OTHERS sit down in a group, at tables. OTHERS cut the socks crosswise into loops, and weave them into potholders. And OTHERS mesh them onto The Longest Potholder, which is now 114 feet long.

Part ONE of The Longest Potholder
THE WALL OF SOCKS
When was the last time you went to an art museum, brought ANYTHING (let alone an old sock), and pinned it directly to the wall? Imagine an enormous wall (or several) filled with socks. And imagine anyone who wishes to, getting up with pins to move, add, or take down socks?

Part TWO of The Longest Potholder
POTHOLDER LENGTHENING EVENTS
Tables with scissors and looms are brought into the gallery. People take socks off the wall, cut them crosswise into loops, and then weave them into potholders, finishing two parallel sides, and leaving two parallel sides raw. The raw sides then get meshed onto The Longest Potholder. Thus it lengthens.

Part THREE of The Longest Potholder
LIST OF POTHOLDER PARTICIPANTS
Each individual who participates at any level in The Longest Potholder adds her/his name to the list of Potholder Participants. The pages and pages of names are laminated and always exhibited with the piece.

October 7, from 6 to 10 pm, brings The Longest Potholder to the Armory Northwest. This is an enormous honor and acknowledgment.

Start saving those single socks (clean, please!).

art art art

2005-09-12T22:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I ran from art opening to art opening—both shows including my work. Thank God for my car (despite current gasoline prices). I'm in three shows right now, with another one coming up in quick succession. If you'd like to see my work.....

Nature is a show at the Finegood Art Gallery in Woodland Hills. Despite my concerns to the contrary, the show is actually interesting and lovely. Work by Eugene Yelchin, Carol Goldmark, and Josh Abarbanel (and me, of course) were real standouts. The work I showed was from an ongoing series called Nature Morte ("still life," better translated as "dead nature"). The three pieces I showed were very lyrical, spare, and linear, using drawing & painting media and pigment on raw canvas (that one is 32 inches high and 88 inches wide) or mattress ticking (36 inches square or 42 inches square).

Nature
Finegood Art Gallery, Valley Alliance/Jewish Federation
22622 Vanowen Street, West Hills, CA 91307
September 11 - October 23, 2005

Artists Hang Themselves at Mount St. Mary's College's excellent Jose Drudis-Biada Gallery is a big free-for-all blowout fundraiser for the perpetually strapped yet fantastic gallery. Many of us who have shown up at the Mount were happy to have the opportunity to "give back," by showing up to three of our pieces and by paying a fee per piece. I was happy to include three of my large charcoal-on-canvas pieces from a series called "Bite." VERY icky and disturbing mutated gums, jaws, teeth, etc. I am really proud of this series. It really expresses my anger, bitterness, sorrow, and disgust at the behavior of our nation. I also loved Jackie Nach's prints. Yay Jackie! Glad you are back in L.A.!

Artists Hang Themselves
(charming name, don't you think?)

Mt. St. Mary's College, Jose Drudis-Biada Art Gallery
12001 Chalon Road, Los Angeles, CA 90049
September 13 - October 7, 2005
T-Sat noon-5 pm

And I am in the annual faculty show at Pasadena City College, one of the places where I currently teach. I am showing The Longest Potholder, which I will write more about a bit later. It will also be traveling and lengthening soon, at the Armory Center for the Arts Northwest. [Opening there on October 7.] But for right now it is on campus at PCC.....

We put our love where we have put our labor
Pasadena City College Art Gallery
1570 E. Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91106
August 29 - September 23, 2005
M-F noon - 4 pm and
M-Th 6 - 8 pm
Parking in student lots for $1.00

Potholder Lengthening Event on September 22 from noon to 5 pm
Donate those old lonely single socks (clean, please!), old unwanted hose, etc....
and come make them into potholders, to be meshed onto The Longest Potholder.

high school at 47

2005-09-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

Oy. Online dating.

I recently posted a profile on JDate, an online Jewish dating service. Yes, I am single (and Jewish). As wonderful as I am (or at least as wonderful as I *think* I am), somehow there is no lineup of equally wonderful men flinging themselves at me. [Gee. I guess my "social capital" has gone down some since my thirties.] So I have rejoined the site of oh-so-many spoiled, disappointed, trying-to-seem-uppercrust, middle-aged unattached Jews, scowling at one another's profiles, scoping one another out, reading between the lines, and asking themselves the inevitable:

"Is s/he good enough for me?"

And, how very "high school" we become inside the anonymity of the internet!!!! Indirect, inchoate, incomprehensible, and just plain rude. People do or say things they would NEVER NEVER NEVER do or say to another human being face to face. In only several weeks I have had numerous little "non-run-ins." I'll describe several:

THE AUTHOR
One author (whom I met way back in the '80s) contacted me within days of my posting "profile.01." This version had no photographs yet. Said author (whom I really SHOULD out, although "lashon ha-ra" [gossip] is a very bad thing among Jews) and I exchanged several pleasant "J-mails" until he suddenly realized he maybe knew me already. He carefully asked me "didn't I once teach at USC?" "didn't I have a studio downtown?" [etc.] When he asked me my last name and I replied, he stopped contacting me completely. [Plus, he pulled nearly exactly the same stunt three years beforehand, when I had put myself on JDate the first time.]

THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE EXPERT
One man and I had a truly amazing telephone call, which ended with his saying "Will you be around tomorrow night?" That is the last we spoke. Of course, he has my phone number, and I don't have his. Hmmmmmm.

THE MANAGER
One man sent several impatient "J-mails," the first one hours after I posted my unfinished profile. He REALLY wanted to speak on the phone. I was busy each night that week, so I J-mailed that I would like to speak on the phone, but not until AFTER the intense week-and-weekend were over. Once they WERE over, I J-mailed him to thank him for his patience and to let him know I was more available now. He blocked that [plus future] J-mails. [???]

The most "high school" of all, however, is me.

I am the one allowing these non-encounters to get to me. I am the one who knows how imprecise and fraught with disaster any online communication is—very nearly no communication at all. The best communication is in person, face to face. Period. Things get misinterpreted even on the phone. One needs body language. Visual, physical, aural, verbal..... Even though I "understand" all this, I become like a little see-saw. Someone J-mails me? I'm HAPPY!!!! Someone "dumps" me? I'm UPSET!!!!!

HAPPY!!!!! UPSET!!!!!
HAPPY!!!!! UPSET!!!!!
HAPPY!!!!! UPSET!!!!!
HAPPY!!!!! UPSET!!!!!

That's what high school felt like.
What a complete waste of time.

I vastly prefer being an adult, meeting adults, working with adults, and conversing with adults.

serious | un-serious

2005-09-11T20:18:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since I wrote seriously. I have written "un-seriously" for years. The last serious writing I did? Was it in graduate school? Art reviews I wrote? Essays I wrote in college? I know that my radio spots about art were a lot of fun to do, and they brought lots of art and artists to the attention of the general public. But I also know that I am articulate & speak easily. Was I rigorous? No. Did I contradict myself? Probably.

Then again, why is a stream of consciousness "unserious" and rigorously structured, considered, and crafted prose "serious?" (Yeah, who am I kidding here?) Duh.

It is funny. My art straddles representation and abstraction (or/and non-representation). In material, I straddle hands-on and digital. In "painting," I actually straddle drawing and painting. In teaching, I straddle design and fine art. In my life, I feel like I straddle several worlds—the Los Angeles art world, the Jewish art community, the world of my family and friends, the world of Landmark friends.

Straddle straddle.
Straddle straddle.

I never want to pin myself down. I insist on having the freedom to play on both sides of every fence—or perhaps to expose the fence as having a lot of holes and being completely permeable. Where does the fence come from? Who put the fence up?

Two sides of a fence.
Interesting metaphor causing our societal thought processes here.
Hmmmmmm.
(I am reading "Metaphors We Live By," by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Google this baby. It's worth it.)

I guess my writing will straddle "serious and un-serious."

avoiding

2005-09-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

What have I avoided writing about?
What am I afraid to write about?

Hurricane Katrina
Tao Soup (the play itself, not the director)
George W. Bush
my upcoming art shows
the Feisty Bitches
bellydancing
my miles of piles
the new watercolor class I'm teaching

Why am I not writing about these things?

I guess I am afraid of what you will think of me. You probably will have some sort of judgment of me. I am afraid of sounding stupid, sounding like a cliché, and sounding like a fraud. I guess it is time for me to start writing a bit more often, and start covering the things that would be more of a risk. After all, the title of this blog is "create REVEAL redeem"— not "create HIDE redeem."

newbie | BabyGirl Reid

2005-09-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

I was back at Good Samaritan Hospital today.

My dad worked at Good Sam for years. Years and years. YEARS and years and years. And my sister's first husband had a series of surgeries there (before he finally succumbed to his cancer). I rarely see Good Sam any more, unless I spot it as I drive by. But I was back in the 'hood today.

The seedy neighborhood.
The Latino fruit vendor across the street.
The wide, long lobby.
The gift store that always closed too early.
The slow, slow elevators.

On the seventh floor, on the south side, are the newborns. In all the years I would pop in and out of Good Sam, did I ever know anyone who had a baby there? I don't think so. It was either that place where my dad went to work, or that place where Greg got diagnosed. Either an everyday workaday place, or a place of worry and sorrow.

But this time was different. Seven South! Chris and Shannon, my dear buddies, were there with their brand-new daughter, BabyGirl Reid.

BabyGirl Reid was fifteen hours old. Soft whorls of brown were barely there, arching over her dark-blue eyes. Open. Then at half-mast. Half-moon slits. Then open again.

BabyGirl Reid performed her teensy miracle sneezes, and her teensy yawns. She looked around, looked at me. Swaddled and hatted, BabyGirl Reid was only a tiny, fascinating face. Calm. Inquisitive. She liked having her cheek stroked. She blinked oddly when I touched her nose. And she was perturbed when I put her back into her bed (oh that tiny, bright red, screwed-up little pout, and her teensy little upset, barely a cough!). "How DARE you mess with my comfort!?"

Chris, Shannon, PLEASE hurry up and name the baby. I am really liking BabyGirl Reid WAY too much. Or I will give her a name myself. *I* know.....

Newbie!
Little Newbie!

Naw...... I'm sticking with BabyGirl Reid.

art syllabus

2005-08-28T15:30:00.001-07:00

Every semester I do the same thing. I tweak my old syllabus the day before class starts. I run to the all-night Kinko's to duplicate it. And then I blast into class at 8 am to create the new semester.

But I HATE my syllabus.

It lays out all the forms of punishment that my students will endure if they don't live up to the rules or parameters of the course. "Being in class without materials counts as an absence." "Projects will be turned in on time... OR ELSE." I HATE THREATENING MY STUDENTS.

If only I could hand out a syllabus that looks like this:

------------
ART
------------

THE COLLEGE'S OBJECTIVES
• To teach you to use whichever art medium it has hired me to teach you, meeting minimum measureable objectives.
• To have you [warm body that you are] stay in the class and not drop, so that the State of California will continue to give $ to the college.
• To have you NOT SUE THE COLLEGE. (pretty please?)

PALEY'S ACTUAL OBJECTIVES
• To build you up and set you on course to being a creative force in the world.
• To teach you to identify and use the visual field as a tool of persuasion and manipulation. You won't be fooled again.
• To lay the groundwork for you to cause the visionary, problematic, and impossible IN REALITY, not "in your head."
• To give you wild amounts of power (access to creativity, one of the most destabilizing social forces in history).
• To reach deeply into you and yank out that which is uniquely yours, your individual expression, as a gift to the world.
• To teach you to do this for yourself, ongoingly, for the rest of your life, if you choose.
• To transform our society by building our team.

STRUCTURE
Wake up. Stay awake. You snooze, you lose.
You are in training. I am your coach.
Train full out, no matter what.
Do what the coach says. I once where you are now.
I have something I am committed to giving you, and I am doing it the best way I know how.

I don't care if you like it. I don't care if you don't.
I care that you
HEAR/SEE it,
STRUGGLE with it,
GET it, and
MASTER it.

YOU WILL LEARN

You are not your work.
You are not your opinions.
You are mostly what comes out of your mouth, and it is time to get to work on that. In fact, most of your precious opinions will embarrass you later.
Description and observation that leads to evaluation is useful.
Judgment in and of itself is a pathetic, ridiculous, useless waste of time.
For example:

"I like this car"
—opinion. value judgment. baseless useless bullshit
—bound to embarrass you later

"I believe we should only buy American cars"
—danger! danger! BELIEVE????
—not observed or measureable. I am getting a headache.
—the word "should" is a dead giveaway.

"This is how the car works"
—useful and can lead to extraordinary insight, control, and growth
—the mechanics of the visual field can be described, and then assessed

YOU WILL PRACTICE

Speaking. Learning.
Taking risks. Succeeding. Failing.
Being disciplined.
Doing things that are uncomfortable and impossible.
Playing in the visual field, alone and with others.
Tweaking and manipulating the visual field to create more powerfully.
Being intentional.
Giving and receiving critical feedback [again, not opinions or belief].
Being human.

YOU WILL NOT LEARN

To be "the best."
[Time, media, luck, genetics, commitment, curiosity, and never giving up—these help establish greatness.]

How to "make it."
[You might learn things that help you become someone who could "make it," though.]

To make "perfect" art.
[Since when is any human creation or institution "perfect"?]

The Desire for Hermitage

2005-08-26T14:26:00.000-07:00

Catriela Cohen gave a concert last week—an end-of-the-summer vocal recital, hosted (and accompanied on the piano) by Giovanna Imbesi, at Giovanna's amazing TuttoMedia Studio. This was Catriela's last hurrah before starting college next month at Northwestern.

Catriela Cohen made me cry.

Under the practiced, loving, and critical eye of her vocal coach (the also-amazing Kyra Humphrey), surrounded by friends, family, and many strangers, Cat poured out the exquisite. She was a fragile bird. She was a playful vixen. She was a wounded wife. [She was a concerned student.] She was me. She was everyone.

And just how can a joyful, fresh-faced seventeen-year-old step into being the wounded wife?

Then Cat sang a song about wanting to be shut tight and safe in a little cell, alone [from Samuel Barber's Hermit Songs]. Which completely did me in. It wasn't just her craftsmanship, although that helped. I relate to those words. I am those words.

My safe little studio.

process and empathy | Scott Kelman

2005-08-24T21:44:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I promised words about Scott Kelman's piece, Tao Soup. But first, a bit about Scott.

Scott Kelman used to be one of the premier creators of theatrical performance art here in downtown LA. His pieces at the Wallenboyd Theater, Boyd Street Theater, and so on, were legendary, along with the troupe of regulars who worked with him.

Well, when his organization Pipeline folded, Scott picked up and moved to Portland, Oregon, where he has kept on keeping on. Scott continues to spawn, mold, coax, and direct brilliant, tough new work --using improvisational techniques that he calls kelmanworks-- with the Drunken Monkeys of Brooklyn Bay. The Electric Lodge in Venice brought Scott and the troupe back down to the LA area to perform Tao Soup.

So why am I so powerfully moved by Scott's work?

A complete lack of cynicism.
Total integrity inside its process
Commitment to theater that makes a difference
Profundity mixed with goofiness
Generosity, grace
No limits— all can happen

What a privilege to have seen so many of Scott's earlier pieces in the '80s, at the Wallenboyd. That magical space of theater, improvisation, guts and play is now warehousing cheap imported plastic toys from China. And Los Angeles, once the home of extraordinary creative foment [equity-waiver theater EVERYWHERE] seems to suck the life out of its artists.

Scott, we love you. We miss you. We need you.
THANK YOU for never ever ever giving up or selling out.

reveal

2005-08-21T15:07:00.000-07:00

I make art.
I look at art.
I love art. Contemporary art. Contemporary fine art.
But everyone asks me....

What is art, really?

Art is a creation, made by a person or people, for other people, that communicates and reveals something about the human condition NOW.

Creating something that communicates something about the human condition "back then"--- well, that's not contemporary fine art. It might be nostalgia. Kitsch. Craft. Commercial art or design. (And hey, nothing wrong with craft and kitsch...... there is some ROCKIN' kitsch out there! And I love to teach design!)

But I am sorry; there is a distinction.
It is NOT necessarily art.

The act of making art is the act of revealing humanity to itself.

process and inquiry | Tim Hawkinson

2005-08-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

Wide open.
No tricks.
Completely exposed.

Thursday (August 18) was a day to be blown away by the work of two talented men---visual artist Tim Hawkinson, and theater artist Scott Kelman. As I made my way from my studio (downtown), to pick up some art, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to Electric Lodge in Venice, I saw the day build in terms of shimmering brilliance and inspiration. Picking up my work was the least inspiring event of the day.

First Tim Hawkinson.
I was lucky to have seen an installation of Tim Hawkinson's at Mass MOCA in 2000 called Uberorgan, a massive, goofy, jury-rigged reed organ. Inflating and deflating enormous "lungs" filled the cavernous industrial space-turned-gallery. Machinery and mechanics were exposed. [For a look-see, check out this abbreviated description, making sure to scroll down near the bottom of the page.]

At LACMA some of Hawkinson's "greatest hits" were on the walls, although there was not nearly enough space to reprise Uberorgan. Too bad. The "musical" (percussion) piece at the entry, while playful and entertaining, didn't seem to carry out the inquiry I saw in Hawkinson's process. Here is what I think he is up to:

INQUIRY
What am I? --or-- What is that?
How do I function? --or-- How does that function?
How do I see and describe myself? --or--
How do I recreate, imply, and/or explore that (and its implications)?

EXPLORATION
Consider a thing, a form of perception, a mechanical thing, an aspect of the body, etc.
Then create a system and/or a machine to recreate, expose, manipulate and/or explore that thing.

OUTCOME
An artwork.

EXPOSURE
The intelligence, play, obsessiveness, rigor, and complete absence of finish-fetish were amazing. The work was junky. Rough. It set its agenda and followed through. It was not about beauty. It was, oddly, about a form of truth. Nothing unnecessary was added. Everything was stripped down to its essence. Mechanics and motors were visible. Extension cords were part of the installation (and some really good artworks were made of extension cords).

MASTERFUL work.
just a couple of examples----

"Clocks." You would probably walk right by a hairbrush, a manilla envelope, or a Coke can. Each of these was insanely engineered to be a clock. Two tiny hairs on the hairbrush told the time. The two sides of a metal clasp on the envelope also moved around and told the time. The Coke can's pop top. And so on.

"Shorts." Much of Hawkinson's work requires electricity. All the extension cords were exposed and out in the open, moving through the entire show. An orange extension cord crocheted into a pair of shorts? (!!!)

"Signature." A machine cobbled together painstakingly writes Tim Hawkinson's signature and then cuts the paper. A huge heap of these slips of paper with signatures mounds next to the piece. This piece in itself is worth the price of admission.

Tired now
I'll get to Scott tomorrow.

ghost in the machine

2005-08-17T23:06:00.000-07:00

ALL YOUR FONTS ARE BELONG TO US

I start teaching very soon. And the computer labs where I teach have had quite a few changes recently. So I went in today to create a set of preferences for the software I teach: Adobe Illustrator CS2, Corel Painter 9, and (formerly DiamondSoft) FontReserve.

Extensis has bought FontReserve.
Attention Extensis:
HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In our Windows lab (not in our Mac lab, mind you), every time I try to turn on and use a classic Type 1 Postscript font, I constantly have ATM -219 errors. Since the fonts cannot be turned on in FontReserve, they aren't on in Adobe Illustrator or anyplace else.

However, the WEIRDEST THING happened.......
After creating but not being able to turn on the new font folder, I launched Painter.

All those Postscript fonts were........
on.

They were not on in Illustrator.
They were not on in Microsoft Word.
But they were on in Painter.

Odd.

So I exited out of Painter and FontReserve and relauched them. The fonts still worked in Painter, although FontReserve had LOST MY FOLDER, mind you. [Also odd.] This is after quitting, rebooting, etc., etc.! And, of course, as expected, the fonts were not on in Illustrator.

So I shut down the computer and rebooted. And
All those Postscript fonts were.....
ON
in Painter.

Little men. Gremlins. Tiny little vermin. WHO KNOWS what is inhabiting those damn computers!

All I can say is
I LOVE teaching painting and drawing. My pencils and brushes never crash. l never need to defragment my tube of Cadmium Yellow Light. If the electricity goes down, we can draw outside. I never have to worry about compatibility issues between last year's and this year's pads of paper. And a power surge never causes me to "lose" my entire portfolio.

Journal? Landmark?

2005-08-15T15:55:00.000-07:00

Rarely have I kept a journal, and I am new at keeping a weblog. Now, looking back, I wish I had started this long ago. There is something about capturing thoughts and moments with language that is different from taking photographs and making paintings. Naturally, words in a journal would be just my emotions, thoughts, and interpretations, whatever they are worth. But at least the journal would be my "memory keeper," so that I could look back and recall what I really thought about a show, or an event, or an experience at the time, rather than through my faulty recall.

[My memory gets hazier by the month.]

Some of my art instructors used to invite us to get into the discipline of keeping a daily sketchbook/journal. I always resisted. After all, weren't the paintings the most important thing? I wanted to keep my marks fresh for the paintings! So for me it was always "either/or"—either I make fresh marks in the sketchbook, or I make fresh marks on the canvas. Somehow I was so rigid in my thinking that I couldn't play with it in a "both/and" sort of way. Now, looking back on more than 20 years of life and art, I feel like I ripped myself off.

[But hey, I certainly knew better than THEY did, didn't I?]

[And if any of my students and former students read this, well, now you know I used to be: "I-know-better." It's a wonder I listened to anybody or learned anything. And the eternal cosmic joke, now, is that I get to teach adorable versions of "me, revisited," which is to say, YOU!!!]

Looking back, I guess I saw discipline as a burden, rather than as a wonderful new possibility. "I'm an artist! Why do I need discipline? I need freedom and creativity, no?"

[Hogwash.]

My generalized lack of discipline has cost me and others, big time, in countless ways. And it permeates my life and work.
Ouch.

And yet I started a blog.
How odd. Why?

What I am beginning to see is that a weblog has a possibility of being for for others, not just for myself.

And that brings me to Landmark.

I went over the weekend to a very intense course given by Landmark Education. Landmark courses have been profound, not for "changing" and "fixing" my life [although that has definitely been one outcome], but for shifting how I RELATE to my life and everything/everyone in it. These shifts occur EVERYWHERE and they are radical. What we get to do in Landmark programs is to expose our hidden "stops," in areas of life that are deeply important to us. This allows new things to become possible.

Well, what did I get out of the weekend?

I invented the possibility of being YOURS.

This was completely unexpected, and is rocking my world.

My art is YOURS.
My actions are YOURS.
It is much more inspiring for me to create, to generate my website (which I have resisted for YEARS), to do pretty much ANYTHING, if I am yours. It is less isolating. Less lonely. Less about that insufferable know-it-all who is sure you don't want her anyway.

What if all people lived like they were YOURS?
What if you lived like you were OURS?

So, for the first time, I am EXCITED about taking on new disciplines.
Like a weekly weblog.
Like designing and keeping up a website.
Like learning new technologies.
Like finishing unfinished projects.
And so on.
And so on.

After all, I'm yours.
I'm accountable to you.
I'm creating art on your behalf.
I'm teaching art on your behalf.

Who I am is the possibility of being YOURS.

first post | a bit on Alaska

2005-08-09T23:01:00.000-07:00

ALL YOUR ART POST ARE BELONG TO US

A first!
A blog!
After watching the occasional friend and family member get deeply into blogging, I am finally taking the plunge.

Tonight I am unpacking from a family trip--- to Alaska. It was gorgeous, rainy, slippery, vast and magnificent. From jellyfish pumping around, and salmon struggling to get their tushies upstream (and *I* thought dating was difficult for us humans!), to whales blowing white foam out of the ocean, to the bear I saw taking advantage of those poor, sex-starved salmon.... an incredible visual feast.

And the GLACIERS! I could sit all day and stare at (AND LISTEN TO) a glacier.

So, after a week in chilly, moist paradise, I get back to my 90 degree (F) studio, on a truck route, in BEAUTIFUL industrial downtown L.A. Need I say more?

Near Ketchikan I visited the local totem-pole-carving mecca of Saxman Village. [For a description of the carving shed, see this article.] Yes, it was touristy, and yes, the contemporary art conversation would relegate this art form to anthropology or throwback kitsch, but I had a blast chatting up two remarkable carvers (both from the Raven clan). Outside of, or perhaps before, taking up carving totem poles, Nathan Jackson actually taught printmaking, too, and was as wary of me and MY artistic credentials as Mat Gleason was the first time he sized me up. [Hee hee!]

GAWD. Artists worldwide are all the same. (Hey, I'm guilty, too........)

Anyway, he and Bill Pfeifer (did I get that spelling correct, Bill?) work in this large, beautiful space with other totem pole carvers, tolerating the looky-loos from a zillion cruiseships wandering, summer after summer after summer. Could *I* create under those circumstances?

I must say, I was impressed and moved by their work and commitment.