More green.

Yours Truly meant to add a really great Accidental Frame from the series but there is either a Java issue - again - as YT upgraded FireFox to the newest miasma, or it's the toxic tech-defying droplets on my fingertips that are keeping this verdant jpeg from appearing as it should be: as verdant as can be in the upper lefthand corner of epinw with a quippy caption basically stating that it's an accidental frame, and that it's verdant.

It was made while in the woods with a guy who I was hired to make portraits of, who is going on some far-flung trek to raise money. It's like an Uta Barth image, made somewhere between what is there and infinity: it shows green layers of new leaves in the early morning before I literally and figuratively was focused on the subject at hand.

Whilst shooting and conversing I asked this photo victim if he had been a camp counselor, and he had. I told him that I'd spent a decade in Maine as a camp counselor, how I can sometimes spot other camp counselors: no matter how much orange-bottled Ben's is sprayed & removed, years passed, or layers of crud added and subtracted, there is a wholesome aura that clings much like those auras of others of similar good intent.

It was in that instant that YT realized just how much I miss Maine, and kayaking, and being outdoors in those cold dark nights in the woods for best dreaming, and pine-stenched days for solid writing and Art.

A dream recently won't leave the other hours, it was so real that it has achieved the rarefied status of only about a few dozen of dreams across this lifetime that remain as real as photographs. Spring is the time of poetry, of memories, of memories of walks at night beginning poems in sketch form, of the turning of a corner and the arresting scents of night-blooming jasmine or hyacinths. Curtains blowing out a window, then into the room as Love looms large.

Love Looming. Love Dreaming.

The Call of the Drawing Board

Accidental Frame Series: Carpet and Black Shoe. 4.27.11

Yet another masterwork crafted - hand-pixelled if You will - by Yours Truly whilst minding my own business yesterday evening mid-gig and talking with two app developers - and brainstorming, as they say in the world of apps and such.
Another of the Accidental Frame Series, I like the subconscious nod to letters and stamps.
Or perhaps You anarchists see a backward American flag.
In that ref you would be far-off from the intent of my subconscious.
YT handed in a blaring/glaring soothful resto review of one of the Middling City's most earnest establishments which will not be named.
As their director (his term) of food (like elsewhere he would be dubbed the manager) and drink was enormous and imposing YT puts this out there so that if I should disappear without any clues on epinw, or FB, or tweets, or texts, or classy note taped to a busy wall of my house, You know that I am wearing concrete loafers at the bottom of the dark and mysterious Lake Erie.
The resto in question liked to use the term hand-whatever'd.
Lots of menu items there are hand-crafted, hand-tossed, hand-fashioned.
I added the latter.
What in h-e-double-hockey-sticks food is not given life by some human hands.
I move along to other matters at hand-craft.
YT is embroiled in Art, more Art, and a smattering of other creative matters.
YT also found herself in the confusing, and China-handed aisles of IKEA yesterday and bought some really swell frames that seemed like they were secretly customized for YT and YT artwork.
Or hand-tousled Art pieces.
YT should like to state thusly: what was remembered as charmingly low-fi in terms of the onsite resto was to YT yesterday rather dumpish.
As is the custom in Canada the creamer for the coffee was stellar.
The meatballs were worthy of Salvatore's Italian Wax Museum, and quite similar in tone. YT did not eat them, only examined them with palpable superiority.
The crepes were lunchable. They had the air of hand-tossing.
Off now to march about and create some fine things for public enjoyment.
Tomorrow YT rises bright and shining to watch those far-off nuptials for some reason.
YT watched the handing over of Hong Kong, and before that that unfortunate alignment of Diana and Whatzizname.
O Trad.

Love of Hand-Crafted Trad.

Perfect Circle.

Yours Truly happily finds herself entrenched in a surprisingly creative, or somewhat (daresaid) inspired moment - post-gig (with sweat drying), in the somewhat silence of the Sanctuary, with one wish that Perfect Circle could stretch into a two-hour tune rather than its just-over-three-minute version to float in the lyrics of this song discovered that one fateful afternoon whilst writing in the meagerly-tatami'd apartment in Itabashi-Ku, Tokyo, when YT played it for hours on a modest tape player while sitting on the tatami and typing some good words.

O, what did those silent neighbors think of the repeats on their sides of the bug-ridden studio walls replete with communal benjo so foul that we oftentimes opted to take nighttime pees in the park just across the walkway rather than use it, wrapped in a nylon winter jacket of a previous tenant, perhaps that verysame tape-leaver. YT does recall how the stench of the benjo would remain in my hair after using it - a cistern, let us not hide behind our Nippon vocab. Our Japanese acquaintances were embarrassed when we told them that we had a place with a benjo, so we stopped saying so. The happiest of discoveries was on a homemade cassette in a left-behind box of tapes of a friend of the tenant, my then-beau. A man whose heart I broke and I am still sorry for that. Not sure if that is sorry, or very sorry. Perhaps it is fleeting-thought sorry.

Then-beaus, beaus, and future beaus is that which springs eternal in thought when it is becoming the fairest of malleable, clime-shifting times of the year. When the Middling City is between gray and green intensities, the air sprung with the scent of warming earth, and moistness in the air from mud, heavy clouds, and emerging.

It is that time to focus on the new work for the next solo marathon, the drawings, and the images that have been sketched and that now need to be made into pixels and so forth.

This show is entitled Lost In It, inspired by Great Lake Swimmers, this time. John has been the inspiration of the last three shows. This is how YT pays deft and silent homage to some of those who engulf.

It was one week ago that YT went to the memorial service for Mary Tomaselli, a pure and dear soul who had an incredible gift of entrepreneurial focus, and one of the most celestial of gifts - hospitality. As expected, Asbury Hall was crowded with those who loved her. I will always be grateful that YT was able to spend amazing time with Mary, and my parents (et al) in Sicily. It was one of those precious moments when in it you realize how precious it is, how the ending is dreaded, how Life is sipped with hunger, with renewed fascination and Joy.

Hopes for more thoughts on fire, crocuses blooming in clumps in the matted grass of last year, more intense moments of face-to-face laughter, of unforgettable touches of fingers, of songs that arrest time, of souls released and floating in that languid whiteness that YT saw that time, more Joy than sorrow, Art that embeds, words that reach into what Love is.

Perfect, Encirclement of Love, Love.

Deluded in the Suburbs

There was Yours Truly minding business.
Whose business, You don't even have to ask.
Mine own business.
As is my wont.
Age-old wont.

Having had brunch in the wizened and woody Roycroft with Annie, decided to take a sunny walk in the East Auroran neighborhood, and head up and over to the wacky Vidler's where one can find do-dads, toys, new things that look age-old, and things that are rather extinct but were in the purses of grandmothers. Like disposable rain helmets, as YT likes to call plastic rain bonnets of yore.

Before Vidler's we fell for an age-old lure for femmes, signage proclaiming a big sale on shoes.
Sixty percent.
Palpitations.
We did the expected and sensible thing and trundled into a shop that was one of those multi-layered and colorful shops that confuse men but make sense to ladies.
Hats, boots, shoes, more accessories, jewelry, signage, fluffy sofa to sit on, curling paths through displays that scream abundance and fun and fashion and party girl.

In the midst of all of this at first glance was a girl who seemed to fit into the scene, in ill-fitting bright pink wig, with cheap faux Ray Bans, in loose track suit over her less-than-lean body.
She was speaking, despite her young age, as if she were a partially-deaf and much older lady so that all in the festive and overly-festooned shoppe could hear it all.

Murmurings of Nikki Minaj, travel floated in the air and apparently the girl was living in the midst of a frustrating whirlwind. People could not be reached. She was on hold. On hold. Thirty more seconds of unavoidable overhearing revealed this young woman to be living in a delusion, a self-produced reality television show.

The harried woman running the shoppe for her boss came up to me when she noted my facial expression, recognizing an empathetic person in her midst. She's (eyes glancing over toward the MTV-ready monologue) been in here since I opened two hours ago, I can't get rid of her.

The delusional and pink-headed one claimed to be the lover of ultra-busty R&B lovely Nikki Minaj, meant perhaps for shock value in this town noted for its conservative mores. She was in this town stopping by, before going up to Niagara Falls (about 35 miles away) to pick up her stuff before jetting off to the Shiney Apple to help Nikki Minaj her lover shop for some clothes.

Make it big, baby, is what I always tell her, said the deluded girl. Then she asked the shopgirl for some papers upon which she could sign her autograph. She posed with two tweens who seemed confused or pleased or perhaps a little frightened of the girl in the pink hair. They were heard to be posing with Nikki's lover, and she asked them to put the image up on Facebook.

As we left the shoppe I glanced down at an autograph in-situ - it was on a scrap of a shopping bag and in one-inch black Sharpie letters I was able to read the word Love.

And later, after a sneezing fit in Vidler's, we passed her on the street as she was half-singing to herself. I asked Annie if we should pretend to recognize her and ask her for her autograph. As we chuckled as we passed she exclaimed Hey ladies keep on smiling, you are so beautiful - do you know how many people a day I make happy.

Delusional Love.

Wilting and Fragrant Pinching

I am in Bergen giving a workshop.
We just wrote an exquisite corpse poem which I will post later.

Hyacinth Juice, Inspiration, Blue

Hyacinth Juice, 2011 ©Nancy J. Parisi

Off to Peep Show, a somewhat-annual fundraising fete, at the big early 20th-century box that appears as if would be at home on the Shiney Apple's Park Avenue instead of the bereft Genesee Street where it is near Jefferson Avenue which is itself devoid of its past, and filling up with new plastic houses which many in the Middling City tout as progress.

As is my wont, YT has created another fun-filled and money-raising instant photo installation - Café Complicated as the theme of this Peep Show is It's Complicated.

I made two oversized to-go paper coffee cups in coffee with creme brown (read: cardboard) and with white tops emulating the toxic white plastic that YT sips from each and every happy day.

sidebar: A friend of YT asked what indeed happened to Stevie Wonder, who was truly wondrous up through the late 70s. 

Paul McCartney, YT stated in assured tones.

For indeed it is the truth.

When McCartney got his lyrics and smarm all over Stevie we see what happened: Ebony and Ivory.

I rest my case.

Onwards.

So Peep Show is about 5 minutes away as is my destination - it was requested of artists to be there for the pre-Peep Peep so it makes for one long night indeed. My helper, Shewwy, will arrive at about 8 and we will sell little wee instant photos (Fuji photos, not Polaroids) for $5 each in adorable little folders.

People/participants/patrons may select from several tags that they will use to tag their cups: things that may define them or their secret selves. 

One fav is one created by Heady: Drunkalatte, sure to be a top seller.

Time to make and do, do, and do.

Creating Love.

Happy Day of One of the Triumvirate of Ultra-Popular Shadowy Figures

Today is, in sooth, vague: Saint Valentine's Day.

 And Love - love is vague at times, a shifting of feelings no matter its target.
And so here is the telling of the myth according to Yours Truly.
This is the recollected feast day of Saint Valentine, as nebulous a figure as, perhaps, Santa, and Christopher Columbus.
And more.
Although some would argue about the latter.
But what is meant is that some holidays are celebrated with very little factual base.
Yours Truly does ever so much Love this inclusive secular holiday, with Saint Valentine its central enigma.
There were several Valentines, martyrs entombed and exhumed and displayed bearing that verysame name.
Valentine was, allegedly, a physician, and he probably treated all sorts of love-related ailments: broken hearts, flushed in-love faces, trembling of certain body parts at different phases of the moon/Love, and venereal diseases.
He may have mis-diagnosed a Roman senator and therefore lost his head.
Whereupon he lost his head not to guillotine but the more savage sword, and it plunked to the ground with a thud, there sprang a cathedral.
Or was it a basilica.

What prevailed was the desire to fete desire.

And mouth to mouth to mouth the story of Valentine who lost his head passed along to today's papery cupids, thematic hearts, and confections.

And all things Red.

And now thoughts meander to recollections of my own tradition, the Red Dinner which has been happening for fourteen years - next year will be the fifteenth anniversary. This is the large, three-dimensional Valentine to some of my favored people with the serving of an all-red menu (or shades thereof), and the opening my house for a sanguine, mid-winter revel.

Now onwards to Santa, who was feted a few months back, at the beginning of winter in what people this season in the Middling City and even in the Shiney Apple decry as an interminable one. YT, for the record, Loves winter, and would prefer a wave of chill to a suffocating hot and humid day.

YT does not recall ever believing in Santa because my older cousin Steve informed me that there was no Santa. I do not recall feeling sad about this, but feeling factual.
And I have always known both that Steve was responsible for my non-Santa childhood beliefs, and that Steve was, in part, the reason for my absolute preference for what is real. Cartoons would be bothersome to me as a child with their unfactual happenstances.

Steve was one of two older boy cousins who stepped in as sort of informal big brothers, who we saw a great deal of on family outings, including the hilarious and legendary family picnics, and Sunday dinners.
The tales of our older cousins' adventures were educational.
As were there album collections.

Steve was a daredevil, in my memory now he seems like he was like a stuntman who seemed to want to push himself to new, frequent stunts by jumping off of roofs, or from moving cars, etc.
Steve is occasionally seen in family photographs with arms in casts. And although I can still hear his uproarious laughter (my mother comments that me, like Steve, and other lively and artful members of the family take after her side of the family - the infamous Jaworski clan) there are very few shots of him smiling.

My last visit with Steve, and the rest of the family who migrated to Texas, seems utterly magical: a fast car we took turns driving in the desert with loud music and the feeling that nothing bad could happen with this familial energy. Big family dinners, much Love.
Steve served in the Marines, and I wrote him letters while he was away at what seemed like prison. He sent one of those stiff Marines portraits to my aunt, and we each got one wallet-sized print.
After returning things didn't seem quite right with Steve, the structure that he had was no longer part of the regimen of life and he seemed to drift away.
No, he absolutely drifted away, to California and all that I saw of him after that were a few photographs.
I would ask my mother several times a year about him, where he was, and always heard the same We don't know.
It was assumed, by YT, and, I assumed by the entire family of Steve's relatives, that he was dead.
About a month ago, as I was crossing Grant Street on a very sunny day, I called my mother to say hello and ask if she'd like anything from the specialty market that I was heading into.
She said Oh honey, I have some very terrible news.
And it was that my cousin Steve was, in actuality, dead.
That he had been alive all these several years in Texas,and she named the small city.
And he had died alone in his apartment after having a surgery at the VA Hospital, bled into himself and died alone.
I was shocked to hear that he had been alive all these years, and then, of course, sad to hear of his sad ending.
My mother would later tell me that Steve had several projects in his apartment that he'd been working on - creative projects of all genres.
I said to my mother at another time how I attribute my quest for real, in part, to Steve.
Our birthdays are three days apart so I always thought of him (will always think of him) on 10/13. 
It's good to know one's sources.

Love of Love - A Mystery.

Zen of Directional Arrows: Or How Subaru Saved My Ass Again

There Yours Truly was, once again, as is my wont, minding my own business whilst behind the wheel of the latest in a long succession of Subaru vehicles.

This being the red one, the one that was one of only four that the expansive dealership had on the lot that was of the non-automatic variety. The one with the sun/moon roof that YT has opened but once, to let Jabsy up out of it for a woot-woot moment as we sped past the Italian Heritage Festival (all in air-quotes) in the Middling City's northern quadrant.

YT was on assignment for the Shiney Happy Mag, to talk flowers and plants and plannings with a couple who live way up in the hills where one, if so called to mind about this area, thinks ski venues, picturesque farms, occasional mercantile and school buildings that are low and dated, and big distances.

There had been, a few weeks back, a situation that only YT could have found herself in: the confusion between a certain French Road, and a North French Road. Thrown off by a client's mention of a certain landmark, North French was clicked into the map app instead of French: a big twenty mile difference. And there were friends awaiting my post-pixel delivery arrival so there was the added pressure of getting there - and then getting there.

So when the nice couple nestled into the hills south of the Middling City were precise about their directions, that included specific mention of a road and a directional arrow, YT was not going to glance poetically about and not pay attention. Eyes riveted to infrequent signs as they loomed closer, even as someone probably heading to their hillside exurban home after a long day of work tolerating/tailgating the obvious tourist up ahead in the red Subaru, the anticipated sign appeared, and then the afore-emailed big dip in the road.

And then the arrow, as promised, was right there on the left side of the road.

So I turned into what was allegedly the driveway. There were two pairs of ruts and YT followed them along into the center of a field, believing that this was going to lead to a house somewhere up ahead. There were more ruts and YT realized that the car was sinking into what is a snowy, fallow field - just as a light indicating that the Subaru was doing something supersonic to keep me from getting stuck. It was then that I noticed the smell of sheep, really the scent of burning hay from the field. The ruts looped around and YT followed them back to the very dark and quiet road. Thought of how long the AAA wait would have been - perhaps months.

When I got back to the road I followed it further along and saw another directional arrow, and next to that a signpost with the address for the house I was looking for - a very obvious landmark. When I was in the house taking off my coat I told them about nearly getting stuck in the field nearby and then they said Oh, right, that sign is for the snowmobilers, sorry.

Sometimes, and here's Your Big Adage, Know when to trust the directions - and the directional arrows.

Directional Love.

Currin Quotable Quote + a Query

YT Night Before DUMBO Show, 12.6.10  Photo: Kunji

The people I paint don’t exist. The only thing that is real is the painting. It’s not like a photograph where there’s another reality that existed at a certain moment in time in the past. The image is only happening right now and this is the only version of it. To me, that’s fascinating. It’s an eternal moment.
--John Currin

Here: a quote about Art and its place in the temporal from primo Currin, who Yours Truly has been following - and admiring - for ages, first seen by YT in our fair Nation's capital a decade or so ago. This quote is like ever so many on the topic, yet Currin slices right to the crux. Crux of the difference between the media, and their ability to document time.

On an unrelated matter, YT was about to think - and is now writing & reporting - how, in this undisclosed luncheon location where YT could easily let fantasy meander to the compact and rockily-substrated isle of Nippon, how wonderful it is to eat Asian as it's free of pesky and hive-raising tomatoes. When, suddenly, YT bit into what was erroneously believed to be a slice of daikon. Wrong. Tomato, sliced paper thin. So perhaps the minimal tomato molecules will whoosh on by without a hive.

What is the age-old dialogue between photographer and painter, You might ask.

It usually begins with a painter in a tinge of disdain stating the obvious difference between the media. But there are those painters of yore who did employ the camera obscura to make copies of work. But each of the media, no matter how painters would like to argue, move simultaneously within and against time.

Onwards.

At my 12/7  DUMBO opening one of the several surprise guests was the mentor of YT, Jim Ramer, of Parsons and beyond. I was thrilled to see him meander as only JR can, into the joint, and it was wonderful to talk with him. Amongst other things discussed was a recollection, by YT, of the moment when YT stood in front of the then Chair of the Photography Department with JR by my side. YT was debating with the Chair over a meager grade as YT was penalized for being a realist. The assignment had been to knowingly, as an exercise, infringe upon a copyright - and to defend our action. It should be mentioned that the Chair was also acquiring her law degree.

Not only did YT receive a good old-fashioned cease and desist letter from a humorless classmate, but the Chair and I scuffled over the concept of infringement for educational purposes, versus what the copyright law is. She was impassable. I was passable, and I did pass. The End.

For the next show thinking of making one-off prints of digital images, along the idea behind the prints on steel that YT made years ago. Have always wanted to print on copper, but also thinking of works on fine paper, and, possibly, duotones. Time to consult with TTreat and Sherven again.

This is a working lunch and now it is time for YT to turn from You, to pixels that need to be pushed and delivered. Of a smiling man who is straddling life between the Middling City, and the Shiney Apple. A situ that YT knows and has known oso very well.

Straddling Love.

The Card, It Came. Holy Shit.

So utterly minding mine own business, as is my customary and usual and hard-learned wont, I went to fetch the mail. And there in the pile of ridiculous holiday-themed catalogs to be recycled without a glance, were the art cards.
The post cards.
The post cards to announce the show, the exhibit, the collection of ten hanging at 68 Jay.
The thing that Yours Truly think about these days and gets that flutter and reflutter.

I chose this image, Hand Made Orchid, for the card, an image that came from the last waning moments of a shoot with model Jeremy, as we talked at the end of a productive few hours with him and Heady, whilst listening to Miles and the sage burned and YT played with some aging white petals, a juniper berry, some wire and fashioned an orchid out of it all.
A triumph.
And it's the lead image this time around, for Only Sky.
The alternate title for the last show, River of Sound.
A title run by, and approved, by DKNY, one of the NJP Sounding Board Members.
She of ever-strong opining in all things art, fashion, food, cocktail.
Speaking of such, last Sunday was thee most Perfect of Sundays whereby YT jetted off to the Shiney Apple with two hand-made (no, not orchids) art cases of the 10 - 4 and 6 face to face, with padded corners and wrapped tightly in plastic before being bound with bright pink and bright blue duct tape.
And there were padded handles.
And all fit into the JetBlue overhead space like a reve - one more mm and there would have been tears, and gate checking.
And then all went lugging off to the AirTrain, the A Train, the bus down Jay, down the block, around the block, up the stairs for a respite until meeting SteveW at 10, and then the depacking, the hanging, the exuberance, the Joy, the completion, the brunch with Justy & Gretch, the OTTO first-foray with DKNY, the celebratory last call, the reves more more more.
The sweet sugar plum Shiney Apple dreams that YT musters over there (pointing).
And now the postcards, the announcement, the opening on December 7th.
Onwards.
The new flip video cam another small triumph as YT had it customized with Lobelia Wire Hand on its face.
The HD and anti-shake a thing of wonder.
For real onwards.

Onwards Love, Onwards.