Sunday, April 24, 2011

herds of wind harvesting turbines

gracefully arcing across the plains as far as the eye can see

and six hours past herds in the full onset of total numb bum!!!!

that is hilarious


I have ultimate flat tire and a truck bed load of unusable tubes. that is very funny to me. fortunately I heard the thump thump thump of the big metal object that impaled my tire before it went flat. the loud hiss was also bad sign. so I u-turned and headed back toward Lubbock with walmart tire repair in mind for a plug. then I heard the big clunk of object breaking free and knew I had to pull over. went straight to 100% flat.

hey toyota, redesign mechanism for releasing spare. I could change my tire; I just can't release the dang spare. so thank goodness for USAA roadside assistance I have. let the experts pop that spare off. :)

bummer. tire is trashed and Wally world is open, amen, but have to get two new tires and they don't have consumer report's recommended tires. eeek decisions. got to get tires since I still have 8 hours to go. can't risk no spare in boonies. dang.

so much for new key this month. tires or key; tires or key?? tires wins.

omg-osh! awesome

Saturday, April 16, 2011

a bit much, but yum

Walter Benjamin would frown

on getting lost in a city with an iPhone and it's gps. pretty sure.

experience isn't even remotely similar to getting lost in paris' historic district for eight hours a day for a week. my high point then was stumbling upon the Picasso museum and the tiny cafes where I could have hot tea and a real croissant. though no free refills on tea was a shock to my Americanized system. didn't even know Picasso made assemblages until that day. it was a good day, a good week.

today is beautiful. though it is quite different--the city is much smaller and my native tongue is spoken.

I dissolve my fabricated chairs

I have this table
bare laid built of soul
one where I repeatedly
in my recesses
draw those I love

I have them here
against their spoken wills
as I awaken I latch on to their stay
naked in heart speaking pleading
I hear my own whines

they pushed back a bit ago
not righting their chairs
nor to draw up again
yet their memory flattened
I strap upon these seatings not their own

this morning with usual effort
i dissolve these fabricated chair seatings
with straps of intimate mind musings

i set afresh the table
spilling it with sun risen scents
of just turned soils
i glide my hands
furrowing rich long runners
center points of this table within
where water from spilled crystal seeps still
and the sun's glance splinters gracefully
across the richness piled warmth

i flare my nostrils
with the fertile ripeness
await in acceptance of unacceptance
listening even now again
for the ever drifting sounds
of the emergent

i dissolve these fabricated chair seatings
with my hands deep amide turned soil
again

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

the mat

as I was revisiting the story of the man who'd sat at the healing pool for decades whom Christ asked, "do you want to get well?", it was suggested to explore who you are in the story. my head just screamed, "you are the mat!" you have been the mat for a very long time. not a door mat, but i have been the mat for whom i thought needed healed. why have I assumed this role? why? I think because I could see what appeared to be wounds and hoped for healing and so I waited and matted. but I am learning I cannot fix or heal another and my waiting mattedness does not either. it is not my role or job to fix or heal anyone else. help if they ask for it. am trying to learn loving presence vs making better. will this help me to stop assuming this mat position literally and in my thinking? and then there is my historically lived concept of submission which only leads me back to the matting. I would rather continue learning to honor differences and lean into and back and forth according to one another's strengths not some arbitrary penis/vagina submission external or internal rule. it's interesting that I have laughed at the word submission because at a fundamental level am lead internally by this penis/vagina submission compulsion? i still seek permission from various males to do what i do well, am gifted at, and even what i was hired for. so again, for me, the way i live submission leads me back to the matting. why? what position should I take?

no position at all, but instead recognize and accept and trust my strengths and weakness and honor those of other. perhaps this will help me stop matting. will it take me long to learn? to change long-term ingrained habits? maybe a lifetime--time well spent no matter the outcome.

side note: it is amazing how much arugula one caterpillar can eat in a day! wiggly vermit!!!







Location:Villa De Matel Rd,Houston,United States

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Transformation vs change

"There’s a difference between change and transformation. Change happens when something old dies and something new begins. Transformation happens when we personally change in the process of outer change. Did you know that planned change is even more troublesome to the ego than unplanned change? Just watch how we love to hate all authorities who legislate for us. The ego wants to find a way to avoid changing if at all possible, but most especially if another ego is commanding it.

God usually has to demand change of us. In fact, we call some unavoidable changes “acts of God,” and those often elicit actual transformation more than anything else."


From On the Threshold of Transformation: Daily Meditations for Men
Loyola Press

yes I can see how these are different, that change does not require transformation and that it is transformation we really desire. change is more surface, transformation is at the core. yes.

The transformed speaks only to relinquishers.
All holders-on are stranglers.
Rilke

Location:Jamail Dr,Houston,United States

Saturday, April 09, 2011

didn't expect this in my eastend backyard

discovered it when i decided this morning i just had to go walk even if it was urban walking and not drive to a park! michael showed me something like this but required a short drive to get to it. this is an extension of what michael found but walking access within a couple of blocks from the box. finally finally discovered some green space. amen for that. i've been missing walking terribly. thank goodness for tree hugger and bayou green space development promoters!



i have really needed this and all the things i can stumble upon--bird sounds (no dove that i noted), birds standing utterly still, silently in the water balanced atop their spindle like legs, a 3 foot snake slithering across the surface (yuk!), a baby turtle the size of dog pooh on the sidewalk (almost didn't even look as i navigated the possible sidewalk landmine--then somehow it seemed different so i looked--unfortunately it was a desiccated dead baby turtle--i can't recall the last time i saw a baby turtle)




the smell of honey suckle was drifting across the air, black berries amidst the poison ivy(?), only downside is the hum of i-45 in the background. and then running through my head is how can i have had poison ivy pointed out to me so many times and still be unsure if i am looking at an ivy or the poison kind. needless to say after one 5th grade experience with the wrong kind as toilet paper, i just avoid any risk.





still trying to learn how to play and not experience shame for play based expenditures. not there yet. but did scope out kayak rentals yesterday afternoon through rec program for dirt cheap. need to test difference between sit in vs sit on top. want to be able to paddle locally up bayous and then back. want one for summer to
use daily between bayous and on big ventures stuff on bay side in Galveston. didn't get to it last summer cause I was away.


Friday, April 08, 2011

a few of my students' work
following my feminist art lecture

Here are a few IDENTITY ESSENTIALS (student assignment sheet) produced by my students this past week. They were considering the use of the body as a vehicle to communicate, using it as art. the feminist artists of the 70s often used their own bodies to express deeply personal experiences as a woman, to reclaim how their bodies, define their identity based on themselves and not from the "male gaze."  The work from that period ranges from sensual seduction, beauty, quiet rage, simply acknowledgment of what has been and is to down right screaming. My students, under the influence of exposure to first generation feminist art, created a series of 5 images--you may see the rest on their blogs via access from our class blog.


Body as a site of conflict
  Chinny. The cutting off of the face yet revealing the expression of the mouth reveals the actual emotion/attitude/statement that lies behind her question.


Body as landscape
Emily H has created a nice cohesive series

Janna

Body [metaphor] as essence of  gender
Jackie

Katy combined essence of gender, body as landscape and
used Georgia O'Keefe's work to determine color palette.

Essence of gender (metaphor/humor)
Maggi and she shot these in the grocery story (guts for breaking social mores/norms)

Monday, April 04, 2011

install for tx biennial

what under structure looks like sans the tubes
the piece is composed of fleshy/hide like tubes used repetitively at primary threshold with five doors slamming closed or being flung open, and a hallway passage leading into/out of the primary doored portal which is composed of door frame header boards, so that each step requires one to pass another threshold of sorts; this passage is skewed and unnavigatable.

Title: without your forgiveness I am still bound to what happened between us. only you can set me free

2011 Texas Biennial Calendar:
Exhibition Dates: April 9 - May 14, 2011

Friday, April 15
Individual Austin venues host openings and special artist performances,
with a suggested itinerary moving from downtown to East Austin.
5-8 pm
Downtown 816 Congress Avenue, Austin, TXdirectly across the street from the Austin Museum of Art

An installation of my work, without your forgiveness, i am bound to what happened between us,
is located in a suite on the 5th floor of 816 Congress Avenue. See you there!

Women &Their Work
1710 Lavaca Street

The Visual Arts Center (VAC)
Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin
23rd Street and Trinity Street
7-10 pm
East Austin 1319 Rosewood Avenue
1319 Rosewood Avenue
7 pm performance by Ryder Jon Piotrs Nomadic Gallery
8 pm performance by TX★11 artist Brad Tucker aka Bad Trucker @ Trailer Space, across the street at 1401 Rosewood Avenue

Big Medium
5305 Bolm Road, #12

Pump Project Art Complex
702 Shady Lane
9 pm performance by Ryder Jon Piotrs Nomadic Gallery

Saturday, April 16
2-4:30pm
Like a Whole Other Country? The State of Contemporary Art in Texas
A public panel at Blanton Museum of Art
co-presented by the Texas Biennial, Blanton and Art Lies.
Panelists include artist Margarita Cabrera; Curator of Contemporary Art and Special Projects at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Alison de Lima Greene; artist Trenton Doyle Hancock; contemporary art critic for the Los Angeles Times, David Pagel; and Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art History at UT Austin, Richard Shiff; moderated by Texas Biennial Curator Virginia Rutledge.

5-8pm Mexico Abre la Boca
Special installation by artist Margarita Cabrera in the parking lot on the southeast corner of 7th Street and Congress Avenue

5-10pm Special Video Screening: 2011 Texas Biennial at TX★11 participating organization Arthouse at the Jones Center

7-10pm Celebrate! Party at Arthouse at the Jones Center in honor of all Biennial artists, venues and participating organizations statewide!
8pm performance by TX★11 artist Dion Laurent
(ticketed admission -- details at www.texasbiennial.eventbrite.com)

Throughout the opening weekend, the Community Room at Austin Museum of Art, downtown at 823 Congress Avenue, will serve as Texas Biennial information headquarters. View a slide show of participating organizations, and pick up venue maps.
http://www.texasbiennial.org/

Sunday, April 03, 2011

I am the old woman

I find I am the old woman
with a loosening of my hands
I sense and recognize the rocks there in each
I've been slowly plucking my collection free
from my swollen knobby rock worn pockets
I intimately attend to why each was
gathered, stored, held, and on occasion hurled
closing my eyes,
I feel the where and the why
from which they came
some I understand
some are still lost to me
but they are from my pockets my collections
one by one as I am able
I lay them down in a quieted silence
I step forward
making room to release more behind me
as my lined path becomes evident

on an occasion I still catch myself hurling

just yesterday
her name not even known
I threw one at a "primadona"
when she stepped away 
she would not know it was me
when she felt its blunt thud
but the person who stood by me
watched my arm with its force
perhaps they now are afraid
I have a stone for them as well
I can not get my stone back
I cannot erase the view
or the minds re-call
this time though I instantly recognized
my unexpected hurl for what it was
not soon enough to catch myself
before my fingers released
so now instead I gently look at the internal need
from which my action sprang
awe, my heaved stone
had nothing to do with the "primadona" primadona-ing
and everything to do with my own insecurity
about being labeled "man hater"
I gave a lecture on 1970s feminist art movement
oh I was feeling unsettled, less than,
i have been working hard on not having relational hurts
transfer as gender generic land mines
working so hard to let relational hurts be
just what they are and
between only those which they lay between
so in my hypersensitivity to a phrase such as "man hater"
I heaved a stone simply to say
dang it feel better kathy for at the least
you're better than her and her "primadona-ing"

I would like to see feel recognize the propulsion
for my stone collecting and throwing
before I collect before I throw
I don't want to collect or throw, hurl or even toss
my collection and hurling is a kind of unliving
so as in my art
where sensitivity and working with not against
my materials is important, a type of inward listening
I move toward being sensitive to and
working with the material and identity of soul,
and gently I bend and set down another stone
with hopes to not pick it up again
I really am the old woman
with a loosening of my hands
I still sense and recognize the rocks there in each
and slowly I lay one down
living a little more deeply, listening and awakened

and i see that the name he'd written
there in the sand by my bared feet is my own
it is still whispered
living even in the breath of the wind
my Beloved

my butter leaf lettuce is beautiful

though I am going to have to pull some cause I planted them too closely. but they sure are pretty.

Friday, April 01, 2011

edamame!!

gotta make some more planters!

arugula, butter leaf lettuce, tomatoes and purple onions are absolutely flourishing! I also picked up a raspberry thingy. trying to decide best place for it. tempted to pull out the two 12 foot halves of my rebar spheres left over from a suckling artifact and grow the stuff up it like lattice. but I've also thought about just using courtyard fence. neighborhood has a large pedestrian traffic and if grow raspberries on the fence, they could pick as they go by!!! I like that idea

bonnets and what is under the hood.


ones/fives

it is dang pretty outside and green and sunny and my arugula and tomatoes are doing their thing! pretty pretty focus.

tomorrow i am off to finish installing a piece for the texas biennial...maybe that is why i keep looking under the hood in my head?!? dang.