american cardboard idol

a few of the top contenders (photos shot by lee and krystal)



Katy (source object: drink umbrella)


Tony tests the functionality of the cardboard umbrella

 
Zach (source object: magnolia seed)

 
Danielle (source object: magnolia seed)


Kevin (source object: starfish) photo by Geoffrey Rascher

  
Jeremy (source object: starfish)

 
Sarah  (source object: contact lens case)

 
Sarah  (source object: contact lens case)


Krystal (source object: door knob) photo by Geoffrey Rascher

students present their first WASHer 3D project. we ran the crit like American idol with three professors as the judge. i was definitely NOT simon. each student walked the stage fashion showish and performatively. then they had to stand there in front of 50 or so of their new best friends and be crit by the judges (one - performance, two - craftsmanship, three - relationship of object to body).

 
Bryttani (source object: seed pod)

 
Emily  (source object: cap of acorn)


Allison  (source object: magnolia seed)


Shelbey  (source object: cap of acorn)

they had guts to stand their. i went all codependent and totally uncomfortably crit them, ouch, HONESTly. normally in small group crits hard truths can be buffered in discourse. body language says it best. as much as i knew my body was doing this for the life of me i couldn't make it stop closing up. i suppose i could have gotten a little smaller if i'd curled up on the floor in the fetal position. it wasn't an option.





there are definitely pros and cons to doing it this way. i think i had to go home and cry in the shower afterward. obviously this wouldn't have been a problem if all the projects had been awesome.

don't try this sarah! really.i don't look at camera or i would crash.

sunset camera phone anomaly

a little freezer burn

but the arugula is a tuff little bugger with not even a tinged leaf edge.

repetition and rhythm

my students' are starting to post up (on their blogs) on a little home photo project

these are by Krystal

way flatter than I ever want to be!

Yipee!

only in the south do they cancel school for one inch of snow. well it is that icy, crunchy, kind of snow and we would so totally crash as we tailgated and texted our way to school on that slick stuff! we've no experience on it and it would compound our bad driving habits.

yipee i don't have to give my 3 hour lecture on inspiration and creativity this morning...ask me how i really feel!

tickle tickle clang clang

I get this daily email from a Christian organization that is suppose to help me through this transition. Much of it is very helpful and timely. I am grateful for the service and have found it immensely helpful. But parts of it I can't decide whether to think it's funny or just sick. The current topic is on forgiveness, yes they promote it, but not in a way that reflects God's example of forgiveness or Christ's life as recorded/displayed in the Bible. But it is aligned with some (not all) of the common psycho babble that is easier to swallow. what they describe is not forgiveness but the preparation fir forgiveness. But in our wounded areas, it is what we want to hear. I read their email and my ears hear the "tickle, tickle" and "clang clang" of the empty cymbals and i am saddened for I know many will live with it's permission (authority?) in a stunted deformed forgiveness. Gosh if God's forgiveness was like what they describe, we'd all be hosed.

God's example of forgiveness is very hard work, infinitely risky yet has the potential to be life giving, breathing, for the giver, the receiver and the web of living relationships they are connected to...it is hard to practice God's kind of forgiveness when it is such a foreign concept...even in the church.

I continue to prepare my own ground.

Here is another email I get regularly from a different group.

HOW MEN CHANGE
We operate with the assumption that giving people new ideas changes people. It doesn’t. Believing ideas is, in fact, a way of not having to change in any significant way, especially if you can argue about them. Ideas become defenses.

If you have the right words, you are considered an orthodox and law-abiding Christian. We burned people at the stake for not having the right words, but never to my knowledge for failing to love or forgive, or to care for the poor. Religion has had a love affair with words and correct ideas, whereas Jesus loved people, who are always imperfect.

You do not have to substantially change to think some new ideas. You always have to change to love and forgive ordinary people. We love any religion that asks us to change other people. We avoid any religion that keeps telling us to change.

Adapted from How Men Change: A Thin Time (CD, DVD, MP3)

Starter prayer: Teach me about letting go, surrender, and trust.--Richard Rohr 2010 Center for Action and Contemplation
1705 Five Points Rd SW, Albuquerque, NM 87105

www.kathrynkelley.blogspot.com

OMGosh BAM

Before I even open the WASH studio door this morning, I can see Nic's ring made from cardboard because it will barely fit out of a supersized garage door. It still needs work, but, dang it all, good for Nic on ambition.

Then at lunch time Alexandra hands me this. BAM OMGosh WOW. No it is not the approximate size of a basketball, it is precisely. She studied the half geodomes online and decided to use this system and then designed her triangles each with a slide slit and created a slightly angled a joint piece. ummmm and she had to break out some of her understanding of geometry and such to calculate sizes and angles and excellence in cardboard crafts{wo}manship. BAM you go! She'd like to be an animator. I can see her ability to imagine and construct objects in space using geometry and such will definitely be an asset to one who wants to animate in cyberspace! I didn't happen to snap a shot YET of her other two spheres...one skeletal and one emphasizing surface/skin. They definitely put a smile on my face for craft and ambitious scale.

today's arugula harvest

and another

another full load for my WASH

I've presoaked them with nightmares, fantasies, dots, spheres, sound performances and human tableaus all in just two studio days! no one has cried uncle yet!

 

they created three kinds of spheres without guidance other than go do it--sphere one was to be created considering surface/skin, sphere two was about internal structure, kind of architectural, sphere three was simply defined as no glue or adhering devices or substances.

 

crispy again

textabating

new word (perhaps it is already in use).

textabating is when you reach with both hands under the table as to service your... phone, with the illusion that this self stimulating lap moment of self edification is private and goes unnoticed. textabating in public is always noticed and considered somewhat rude and self serving. will I get credit for the creation through hybridization the term textabating. I hope so. never textabate in class. never textabate at the dinner table. etc it is rude to virtually stimulate yourself in the presences of actual human companions.

ninety nine percent of us that know how to text, have done it. the other one percent are liars.

prepped for faculty show.

opens on Thursday, January 27
Artist talk (me) 5:00 room 108e
Sam Houston State University

crispy evening

like driving into dream worlds

I hate hematomas on my tibialis anterior. ouch!

I over work my art; I over work my body; ouch. rough cut 4x4 oak hurts when it bounces to the ground grazing my shin. I have never figured out how it is my jeans don't rip but what is beneath...ouchy!

I tried to make a small piece for faculty exhibition...is 6' deep x ~5' wide x 8.75' tall count as small. dang it all, I did try!

I was thinking a little about Judd gone wrong when I was framing this out.

And I ended my day stumbling onto my dad's love letters to my mom (this set he wrote to her after they were married not the usual before--I especially liked where he called her "my princess!"--to heck with liberation, I like that.) I didn't read the rest of it, thought it too invasive since they are both still alive. will read someday. then I found a series of report card from both my great great great grand father dating 1879 and his future wife. :)

meant to sew a tire nipple but

instead ended up with a male body part. hmmm, how did that happen? dang. hope it isnt offensive since it's headed for an AIDS fundraiser.



http://www.aidshelp.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AFH_event_list

Art4Life
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Celebrate Art4Life featuring internationally and nationally acclaimed artists in a curated silent auction with entertainment and fabulous cocktails & food by Blue Apron Caters. When the auction closes the dancing begins!

Featured Artists
Rupert Garcis · Joe Havel · Donald Lipski · Joe Mancuso · Mie Olise.

Nearly 50 renowned artists have donated exquisite artwork to create a unique collection for this very special evening.

spectacular

i feel like a rat to the glittery!

my mom's antique (great?) grandmother's junk, oops, I mean fine costume, jewelry, that, I really like. I've always been an unjewelry person, but I really like all these glitteries. I can't decide if it is the ancestral emotional umbilical cord that links me to the "stuff" or just the glitteries. perhaps it is because it is like my art materials, harvested junk with a naturally aged and worn patina. though unlike my tire tubes these glitters may or may not have the monetary value of junk, so I am unsure as to whether to wear it or not since loosing a stone or chunk of glass is a serious possibility. the dirt is so thick upon this one, I can't even begin to guess, glass or cut stone. glitter, glitter, I feel like a rat.

grungy potential glitter view

only later did I realize my mom had spent the late afternoon crying. ooooh. she'd asked me to help her go through one of her dressers to separate the precious memory linked objects from stuff more just trinket-hoodish (to give away). it's something I witness people do as they age or begin winding down--the de-cluttering and hoarding of "stuff." each object whether linked to a strong memory or trinket-hood had an associated story to go with it. I did this with my grandmother in 2007 and now do it with my mother here in 2011. I enjoy the stories but catch myself becoming short in waiting on the tales associated with even cheap plastics from the mid 70s. I have to re-orient myself to focus on being present with my mom and her associations and not rush forward with my own. it is hard to remain open, patient, and present. though I worked on being present with her all afternoon, i discovered later that as she scooted back and forth in her motorized chair when all had been put away that I failed to notice her tears. I am so sorry I mentally went away when I thought we'd finished. I didn't really consider what this process must be like for her, this strange winding down and de-stuffing. I wish I had known how to remain more present with her. ouch for both of us for totally different reasons. ouchy.

and then on top of that I had a little too much wine, as I prepared our dinner, to drive her back to the nursing home. she really wanted me to come even if I didn't drive. but I am tired and didn't go with her and my dad. this really hurt her feelings even though I said I would be the one to take her back tomorrow.

i understand that there is this weird specialness the elderly derive from having their loved ones seen by their peers in the nursing home. it makes them feel loved and special; it makes all the losses associated with living there just a little more tolerable. and my mom so makes the best of it that I hate to disappoint her. but in some weird way I need to assert my me-ness. (notice how much if you say that aloud it sounds like meanness.) agggh no more wine while I cook or writing blogs in the aftermath--makes me too selfish.

hmmm. cough. blah.

when you finally, after looking at the house warming gift your mom has had sitting on the kitchen counter for a little over a decade, decide to open it and cook its contents, hmm, well cough, blah, hack. so I unwrapped the cellophane from the prettily arranged gingerbread man cookie kit, read the directions, mixed the decade old ingredients per instruction with fresh eggs, decorated each pressed out cookie with sparkles and such taken from the cabinet shelf from over the stove housing leftover birthday stuff from my childhood, slid the resulting items into and then back out of the oven, allowed them to just cool on the special rack designed for the task, AND then bit into one with hopes remembered....hack, blah, umm cough only to discover that the shelf life of a gingerbread cookie kit may only be one year, not one decade. hmmmm so I now have a plate filled with gingerbread men that upon the tongue have the texture of crumpled dried dirt and the flavor or lack thereof of cardboard or a communion wafer!!

DECEMBER 30, 2010
OMG!
I just arrived at the parental units and the cookies are still on the kitchen counter BUT SOME ARE MISSING. OMG! I inquired with great fear for my mom and dad. To my relief, my dad let me know he'd been feeding the "cookies" to the birds and squirrels in the backyard. Thank God!

stuff dating back to 1796 found in my gram's collection of things

Found in family bible my gram had that she received from previous generations, bible dating 1858.

 

that was a lot of pampering

in my little BOXed box planter garden to produce my six little butternuts. though I can't keep up with the arugula. I think I harvest 1-2 gallons every other day or so. my cherry tomato bush is still cranking out tomatoes in thick all most like grape clusters. they seem to take turns in turning red, single file, one at a time. my most peaceful moments are the twenty or thirty minutes of harvesting my arugula a blade/leaf at a time.

BOXed full moon