Yes, I had a subscription to "Scientific American"

Just stumbled upon my Dec 1999 copy of "Scientific American" featuring on its cover: "what science will know in 2050." If I am hanging around in 2050, I will do a thorough check to see how our scientists have fared in building knowledge. Yay for nerding out in nursing home in the future and yay for unpacking fun in the present!

(Addendum on 05/28/13: Yes, I do acknowledge that the kind of reasoning I employed above is a apt example of how I talk myself into NEVER THROWING ANYTHING OUT, like fucking EVER. I do recognize this is a problem. I admit I need help, but first I will try being superbly organized and fitting everything into a tiny space. No, it does not help that I have a passion for packing.)

Currently reading...

If on a winter's night
A traveler
By italo calvino

And I feel delightfully dizzy.

my pencils

After two years of drawing, I have amassed a graveyard of pencils:

  

To my delight, however, I realized I now possess the awesome pencil sharpening abilities that will allow me to make more use out of these pencils. I can now go halfway into the black tip on those Steadtler pencils. It’s like discovering a hundred dollar bill under the mattress… oh so much uncovered graphite!

What the heck, here are more assemblages of my pencils…

my portable pencil case, always with me:

My back up pencil case I use to change from soft to hard or hard to soft pencils depending on what the drawing demands:

 

And finally, my treasured graphite set:

The whirlpool world perturbs me not as long as I have stocked up on sharp-able pencils.

Poems and loss

I sat in the back with a real attitude in AP English Lit my senior year of high school. I refused to learn the mechanics of poetry: oh all those devices! Getting me to participate in class discussion must have been like scraping melted rubber off the floor.

But poems are insiduous. And I spent the next decade buttressed by them. One in particular, I forget and remember as needed: "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop. Since "so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost," a person has no choice but to master "the art of losing." As I am losing a mentor who taught me a different art ("None of these will bring disaster"), I want to go find Mr. Gern and thank him for sending in his army of poems.

Happy poetry month everyone!

A city reader…

Don’t pity me for my daily New Yorker commute: it is a blessing. I see people, very annoying aggressive people, and somehow I suspect this is a good thing. I am also glad for the time held hostage on an MTA car. I can’t paint, but this is the only time when I can read. So this time is sacrosanct. Without the trains and the buses, I would never read.

But there came an email. It was a one liner. It was enough to remind me of what’s been bugging me all weekend. I cling to the book, so battered from being jammed into my bag full of art supplies, so neglected while I tend to my insidious distractions that keep me from reading even on a train.

But I believe a painter will paint and a reader will read. I will find a way.

Physical books

I go to the strand to see, read, buy books, but primarily, I realized, to touch books. Since reading involves engaging and imagining, it is an activity that engages multiple senses. We see the words, the parade of ink patterns to make sense of, but also touch and smell the books in our palms. Papers of different quality, age, and material smell different. The combination of paper and ink creates variable smells, some musty, some chemical, some floral. The aesthetics of the font contributes to the overall smell of the book. Then there are the issues of the sense of touch. Does the paper feel rough, bumpy, or glossy? Is the spine hard and reliable or soft and delicate, like a baby or a lover to coax and take care of? Does the book feel docile,the kind that will obey you into your bag and get along with all the contents already there... or will it resist then dominate the ecosystem with its size and strength? Is the paper blinding white or warm yellow? Will the paper crumble in your hand or give you a paper cut? I go to the strand to touch and smell books because I love them. Perhaps I love books more than actually reading them, which became apparent when it took a while for me to realize that the Caravaggio book I was falling in love with was written in Italian. I was tempted to buy a used copy of "Art and Illusion" simply because I liked the cover in this older edition and the paper that aged with dignity. I resented a nice portable cheap copy of "Middlemarch" that hid from me when I desperately sought out a copy. Books are physical. My collage and assemblege teacher feels our paintings before giving a crit. He seems to say, "how do you know a painting without touching it?" Well, how do you know a book without touching it?

life is a collage

Started reading "the forest for the trees: an editor's advice to writers" by Betsy Keener in order to prepare for a project.. or maybe I just missed writing ... What a tiring self I am living with who needs a reason for everything? Anyway, I am shocked at how much this book can apply to visual artists as much as writers. This can attest to a common foundation in all creative work. Or maybe I just see art everywhere now. My collage and assemblege instructor says the job of the artist, among many things, is to see connections between seemingly unrelated things because in the end everything is somehow related. "Life is a collage anyway," he says... he also says "collage is a painting." So life is a collage; life is a painting. What a terrifying thought.

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