Day 2

Hotwire is my friend. The Hyatt Place was clean, beautiful and the help was gracious last night.

Hwy driving. Memphis.

Green hwy is better.



I know it's just wrong, but I couldn't help myself. I've added a new color to my bubba keg collection. It has a new lid design--perhaps they've resolved the dribble factor. Rational is I use my bubba's as a refiller (tea; no vodka or coffee please), not only saving me money, but I am not throwing away a kazillion cups and lids per day.



Road closed. Really? Yup both ways. They were demo-ing an old bridge.




Lines of trucks as far as the eye could see.


And touch down for a power lunch with Korie and Kirk.

And then off to see my bro and Shelley near Oakridge, where they try to find a balance between nature and nuclear.



The drive to his house. Dang a beater trailer house! Bro what were you thinking???



Typical backwoods Tennessee. Oops this is a temp while he is doing this...






Cool! His own personal sawmill. I won't remind him that he is an Aggie.

Here are his logs he moves about and stacks. Wait. How does my bro do that? Does he have special powers or just understands simple machines and physics (well he better under stand physics since he is a nuclear engineer).



And his backyard while he explains to me how he moves these logs by his lonesome.




Using his super mental powers to move a log. Or simply explaining the process? Your call.

Long drive but family and friend visits awesome.

Day 1

Madisonville, TX

Pretty drive into Crocket, TX

Ummmm a stop in Crocket--my bad! Yes the door was as gooey to the touch as it was dirty to behold. Aaaagh. Dang!

Totally forgot what Cajun hwys are like with their concrete laid with a railroad track rhythm. Fortunately i have not seen any signs that indicate substandard surface as i witnessed almost two decades ago.

Now for lunch in Minden, LA. The choice was crawfish or fastfood. So I decided to stop and get messy. Oops I may have order too much.


Then onward via back roads to Memphis. Hwy 20 is just so hwy that I've opted for slower but more interesting route.

Making a turner in Homer and up into Arkansas. State changes are instantly recognizable by the marked shift in road surface, color, texture, and sound.

More back roads through Humphrey, Arkansas.

And then finally popped out on hwy 40 heading into Memphis with nothing but lines of 18 wheelers.

Am closing out my day of passing through four states by blowing out my sodium intake with some szechwan (sp?) dumplings. Yum!

Sleep.

Then tomorrow off to Nashville to have lunch with Korie Turner Vakey. Sunday a visit with Tessa Wilkin.

A weird but wonderful side effect of my art travels is the joy of visiting with beautiful, smart, interesting women I knew when they were mere girls--Katherine, a newscaster in Vegas but now in Houston, Rachel, or should I say Dr while show her my ears, nose and throat, in San Antonio for install, exhibition, deinstall, Anneke and Annetta in Austin for my women and their work show. And now Korie, Mrs Dr, in Nashville, Tessa, CPA in DC area, Jenny, a future CEO in Connecticut...I obviously need to give the ny actresses, Ann and Amy, a call as well as Alicia and Amanda.

May not get everyone in on this trip. Might need to have exhibition in NYC just for an excuse to see these amazingly wonderful women.

Northward

The journey begins

Northward bound

And today! I wonder if the heat of the summer will kill em

Nine hours later they start to bloom

I

It's kind of interesting. They were trash I had collected after a freeze--they'd simply fallen off the main body. I tossed them in the back of my truck; then in a hurry instead of planting them I literally tossed them in a heap on top of a pile of old inner tubes. After a month or so I noticed they had started to curl upward, then new cactus dohickees started growing along the up turned edges. Last week I began noticing budding and this afternooning they began flowering. I find this amazing. There isn't even a remote hint of soil, they aren't attached to the tubes at all. They seem to get everything they need from the air and sun. Amazing! Now if I can just make this so in my Own life--flower with simply breath and light.

Still growing in a pile of tubes

Mom gets trophy for fewest caught fish

That's no fish story. She was thrilled to receive her trophy.

And personally I must say if you must do a nursing home, I am impressed with the care shown my mom and her peers at Crestview in Bryan, TX. It's kind of an old crappy looking building but the caregivers, nurses and management are sunshine in my mom and dad's life. My mom smiles a lot now and that makes my dad smile too. Nursing homes are dang expensive even in crappy buildings but if your mom experiences joy there, enjoying her peers, nurses, aids and such, and gets the medical care needed, it is worth it!

Way to have a great attitude mom! You are a great role model.

Way to go Crestview crew! You are appreciated.

Thank you!

The unsmushed element of tire squash.

The details and intricacies are amazing

poem by a friend and another

My life cracks open.

I stand in it,
careful not to run.

-Jerry Webber

-----------------------------------

Listen -- are you breathing just a little
and calling it a life?

 -Mary Oliver

The parental units--a very good set

Excerpt from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey

Holding the Cup

We all must hold the cups of our lives. As we grow older and become more fully aware of the many sorrows of life - personal failures, family conflicts, disappointments in work and social life, and the many pains surrounding us on the national and international scene - everything within and around us conspires to make us ignore, avoid, suppress, or simply deny these sorrows. "Look at the sunny side of life and make the best of it," we say to ourselves and hear others say to us. But when we want to drink the cups of our lives, we need first to hold them, to fully acknowledge what we are living, trusting that by not avoiding but befriending our sorrows we will discover the true joy we are looking for right in the midst of our sorrows.

These reflections are taken from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey. Www.HenriNouwen.org

i-park artist environmental residency

YES! I am headed to Connecticut for a month for an artist residency. Though i will still be sewing tire tubes most likely integrated into the tree canopies, i will most definitely be responding to the beautiful habitat, walking the grounds, and responding to the peaceful solitude. i am so looking forward to a month of nothing but making, writing, walking, and observing. The timing couldn't be better. I plan this week, pack next and hit the road.

i-park
The Artists’ Enclave at I-Park is a multi-disciplinary, international residency program for artists looking for time and space to conceive and execute new ideas and to work on existing projects. The quiet, retreat-like environment at I-Park is intended to be conducive to the creative process and the program is designed to foster a collegial atmosphere and sense of community among the participating artists. The rich natural environment often tempts artists to consider site-specific responses to their surroundings.

A morning with mom

And a stroll through her gardens.

Join me for the WASH student exhibition
Tuesday, May 11, 2010, 5 to 7 pm
WASH House, Huntsville, TX

Students have been busy preparing. Come and see.


The W.A.S.H. (Workshop in Art Studio and History) program is a unique opportunity for Sam Houston State University art students to participate in an experimental studio environment, exploring contemporary issues surrounding the visual arts.

The only program of its kind in Texas, the students explore various aspects of contemporary art in both theory and practice. A two-part program including both a studio and lecture component. It is designed to be a thorough introduction into both Art, and the visual arts program at Sam Houston State University. This program maintains its own facility known as the WASH house, a studio dedicated to this program and the students involved in it. The students going through the program will attain a sense camaraderie with one another, establishing bonds that will follow them throughout their academic careers at Sam Houston State University.

When coming north on 45, take first exit after Sam Houston Statue
travel along 75 ~1 to 2 miles. The WASH house is on the left.
If you get to McCoys, you passed it.

Parking is at a premium, carpool if possible.
Speed limit along hwy 75 is 50 mph so please be careful pulling in and out of the parking lot.

They really are growing on top of a stack of nonfunctional inner tubes--no dirt, just old tubes.

Trying to reduce courtyard foot print or in this case tire tread

By lining up ~6' tire tube nipples along fence. Hmmm. What will the
neigbhors say! Oh my!

"Our metaphors go on ahead of us, they know before we do. And thank goodness for that, for if I were dependent on other ways of coming to knowledge I think I'd be a very slow study. I need something to serve as a container for emotion and idea, a vessel that can hold what's too slippery or charged or difficult to touch. Will doesn't have much to do with this; I can't choose what's going to serve as a compelling image for me. But I've learned to trust that part of my imagination that gropes forward, feeling its way toward what it needs; to watch for the signs of fascination, the sense of compelled attention (Look at me, something seems to say, closely) that indicates that there's something I need to attend to. Sometimes it seems to me as if metaphor were the advance guard of the mind; something in us reaches out, into the landscape in front of us, looking for the right vessel, the right vehicle, for whatever will serve."
- Mark Doty

this seems to be so both with the physical making and the writing...though i tend to still be a slow study. this has proven true over the course of this year, i am a slow study, slow to believe in what i have denied

as with a magnifying glass, the intensity of focused light on that which withers will burn!

What happens emotionally and behaviorally between partners during the dissolution, the death, of their relationship is a direct magnification of the patterns of behavioral and emotional interaction that were the historical rhythms of the partnership--style of communication, conflict resolution or lack of, forgiveness or lack of, approaches to healing, defense mechanisms, underlying beliefs about the self and the partner, ability to trust, ability to give and receive acts of love, ability to take responsibility for one's own actions or blame, need to control or be controlled, handling of painful emotions of anger, grief, rage, dissociative habits, and the transference of others identities from one's childhood and their woundings onto the partner. The divorce process magnifies the problematic areas of each partners relational habits. This is important for the healing process if one chooses to evaluate their own actions, attitudes, and feelings. This horrifically intense magnifying glass is an opportunity to see where one has been blind to one's own actions and inactions. One must, or i choose to, look for goodness in spite of tragedy. And Yes, the interaction between the partners needs evaluated but more in terms of forgiveness for the self and the partner and for healing.

why is it fuzzy?