More student explorations in self and classmate portraits

the ghosting technique is extremely helpful in helping the student find their subject. note melissa's early drawing and then were it is an hour and a half later.


melissa l of melissa v, early in the afternoon


melissa l of melissa v, late afternoon

Contemplating exhibition elements for UTSA GALLERY

Re-purposing 8' diameter megaphone-like structures with additional elements to appear to be squishing out of ceiling and wall.


there is a 14" gap at the top of the wall that leads into an adjacent gallery space, the units will appear to be oozing through this gap and be in both spaces.

Officially deinstalled

Yes. I believe this is so

"Why God chooses to answer some prayers and not others, I do not know. All I know for certain is that it's always right to ask."

A quote from a quote off a friend's blog.

and it's wake pushes forward into the future with ferocity

hurt begets hurt
which in turn begets

hurt

which ripples
linearly and laterally
with a ferocious push out
into the future through
generations, through lifetimes,
through what is forgotten and
yet to be known
clinging to each swell

blame is a fruitless fathoming
leaving the heart empty
in cold abandoned tatters
adrift, unrescued

the only thing that impedes the push
is, as one is able,
to navigate one's own actions and heart,
bestowing acts of mercy and forgiveness*
both inward and outward

all else accelerates the linear and lateral
waves of harm that emanate
as through a portal from each of us.

----------

*bestowing acts of mercy and forgiveness
casts ripples that not only impede those of harm
but redirect them for good

am collecting old belts; will take your old ones off your hands

if you've got some belts you want to dispose of, i'll take them and embed them in an upcoming piece of art i am making.

Drop 'em by my studio at BOX 13 ArtSpace (6700 Harrisburg 77011) or if you see my truck toss them in the back.

"You can never go wrong stopping by an opening party at this scrappy East End artist-run space. "

Box 13 Artspace: The latest round of exhibits kicks off from 7-9:30 p.m. Saturday at 6700 Harrisburg.

WEEKEND PICKS
Weekend events provide options for arts lovers
By DOUGLAS BRITT Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle

Hope to see you guys at the BOX
Saturday, November 14
7-9:30 pm
6700 Harrisburg Blvd (77011)
Parking on Cesar Chavez and Capitol

Hasta La Basura Se Separa [artcrush] is an exhibition curated by the Austin-based group Los Outsiders: Salvador Castillo, Michael Anthony García and Hector Hernandez. Originally presented at the Galleria del Espacio Cultural de la Antigua Aduana in the border town of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, Hasta La Basura Se Separa [artcrush] features the work of 13 contemporary artists from Texas, New York & Utah.

And i would be one of the artists, so come on out this Saturday.

How can my false self lead me to the real Light?

CHOOSE LIFE—CHOOSE DEATH

There is a darkness that we are all led into by our own stupidity, by our own selfishness, blindness, or by just living out of the false self. And there is a darkness that I believe God leads us through for our own enlightenment. In both cases, we have to walk through these dark periods by brutal honesty, confessions, surrenders, letting go, forgiveness, and often by some necessary restitution, apology or healing ritual. I still hear of Vietnam vets who feel they must go back to Vietnam and help some Vietnamese children to be healed.

Different vocabularies would have called these acts of repentance, penance, mortification, dying to self, or ego stripping. By any account it is major surgery and surely feels like dying (although it also feels like immense liberation). We need help and comfort during these times. We must let ourselves be led by God and also by others. But how can we know the light if we’ve never walked through the darkness?

Taken from Hope Against Darkness, pp. 165, 173

Current Mantra:
Lord, teach me to choose life

Thoughts from Fr. Richard Rohr, Fall 2009

Meditations from Richard Rohr
Of Center for Action and Contemplation www.cacradicalgrace.org

Ghosting technique for portraits student explorations

Rachel of Kim


Rachel of Kim

student explorations in portrait

using only straight lines as though they were working a 2 or 3 point perspective (self portraits and portraits of classmates)


Melissa L


Rachel

insanity?

I beat my head on the same wall
still believing that goodness
is more real than malice
more real than historical hurts
more real than secret shadows

i choose to believe
goodness and mercy reside there
as well, in these hiding places

I work to look past the visible;
I continue to move toward walking and gifting
mercy, goodness and forgiveness

So I focus on opening and listening

and what i hear:
it is time, kathy, to gently stand up
stand up, kathy

and i will
as gently as i can
in spite of what i see

in the space of absence installed as part of artCrush at the BOX

Opening Saturday, November 14
7-9:30 pm
BOX 13 ArtSpace

How do my emotions help me to understand more deeply?

We must go through the stages of feeling, not only in the last death of anything but all the earlier little deaths. If we abort these emotional stages by easy answers, all they do is take a deeper form of disguise and come out in another way. So many people learn that the hard way—by getting ulcers, by all kinds of psycho-somatic diseases, depression, chronic irritability, and misdirected anger—because they refuse to let their emotions run their course, honor them consciously, or find some appropriate place to share them.

Emotions are not right or wrong, good or bad. They are merely indicators of what is happening, and must be listened to, usually in the body. People who do not feel deeply finally do not know or love deeply either. It is the price we pay for loving. Like Job we must be willing to feel our emotions and come to grips with the mystery in our head, our heart, and our body. To be honest, that takes years.

From Job and the Mystery of Suffering: Spiritual Reflections, pp.54-55
Richard Rohr

what can't be changed.

texture project experiment

Evangelism on all hallows eve

The Mormon gets the

girl

Fuzzy eggs

Back to "real" drawing. Ok well at least the kind of experimentation that appeals to me.

Here students are playing with 2d texture by drawing with non art objects (like combs, rubberbands, leaves, etc) while drawing eggs.

Did my teaching duty

On teaching perspective.

Keely

N.R. Sued for malpractice

To the tune of two hundred million dollars for alledgedly failing to work in her clients best interest. I assume it is a frivolous case grasping for funds, but none the less it is a case launched out of a sense of perceived failure to accurately and timely communicate with her client, in her clients' best interest.

Reference: Houston chronicle.

The stones

A helpful poem about where you belong.

But interestingly it was the phrase
the stones of your dreams
that jumps off the page for me
I think it is the ambiguity of the word stones--millstones, stones for throwing, Stones that break bones, foundational stones, corner stone, stones that sit in the pit of ones stomach

and the lines
The energy of delight will
carry you home

because they seem so counter to how I have lived yet this delight is throughout the primary text that is significant to me in guiding me on my path.

Smiles are good regardless the age

Celebrating 98 years

Nicole, Troy and Gram

Paul, Cheri, Troy, Nicole

Dad, mom, Troy, and Paul

"barns burnt down...I can see the moon"

sitting out back eating chili and drinking a diet coke in the crisp
early eve.

just some thoughts on some re-reading

sex differences:
do they influence the way you respond
to deep wounding within a partnership?

difference 1
women try to preserve (maybe we can work it out)
men turn and run (don't bother to come back)

difference 2
women get depressed
men get angry

difference 3
women feel inadequate as a companion
men feel inadequate as a lover

difference 4
women obsess
men distract themselves

not my words, simply something i've read and have experienced it to be so on many fronts, not just this painful year but for a long time in many different ways

i can't decide if this is helpful to me or not. perhaps only in knowing i guess things play out in patterns

reference for 1-4 from authors Janis Abrams Spring, phd, with Michael Spring

bone crushing burden of judging

The proBlem with remaining open is that it leAves me vulnerable, it leaves me exposed; but worse, for me, would be to close over and become hard, deaf, mute, and withdrawn. For me openness is what I need no matter others' behaviors. some would say i am hard, deaf, and/or withdrawn, but i have never stopped listening, i have not stopped working through what i heard and hear.

Yet I find when I run into certain people whom judged me harshly from an alienated distance and have advised others in how I should be dealt with, my first reaction is a physical rigidity. I must then work through conscious efforts of my own to release my reactionary judgment of them. It is very hard to remain open and not to protect and respond with reciprocal pecking order judgments of my own.

It is burdensome to judge others, far more so than it is to be judged. I shall try to carry the light load of others judgment on my soul while I set down the bone crushing burdening of judging them in return.

even the light load of judgment tends to be bone crushing when one is on bended knee.

Insanity?

Somethings don't change--I keep believing that others' goodness will out weigh their shadows. And as I do, I beat my head on the same wall, believing that goodness is more real than malice, more real than historical hurts, more real than secret shadows. i choose to believe goodness and mercy reside there as well.

I work to look past the visible; I continue to work at walking and gifting mercy, goodness, and forgiveness. So I focus on opening and listening.

how to hug a tire tube when you're tired (and dirty)

first put your big mama staple gun in your pocket (this requires big pockets as every woman should have) lest the tube flee in fright and then reach and ...




installing the fracture between us yawns as a cavern so wide, i close my eyes to feel the bruise of soul at lonestar college kingwood last week for the exhibition i breathe (or at least i try)
...and then cleaning up a bit







ladder will help give you a sense of scale

pics shot by students of kingwood and stolen from their blog

Stop stepping in it and remember, kathy, you are not a doormat either

...instead, kathy, keep bringing your focus and actions back to mercy, kindness, forgiveness, blessing and being open to God's lead, all else is crap. stop stepping in it and don't be the doormat on which it is wiped either.

Crisp morning sunrise

i hear the words as they are piled on top of me

i hear the words
mounded high on my bones
set aside in silence

they are silently repeated
just in case i cannot feel
their crushing weight

i hear the words echo
i sift them as i can
set aside what i am able
for the distortion
i know them to be

but because i habitually listen
habitually ponder
they climb back on
in their repetitive repetition
and as they were intended
they make their crushing blow and
just in case i had not been
on bended knee from my fall
they shove me down
with their intention

of course i carry these words
words which tell me who i am

they are not new words
strapped upon my back
i have carried their weight
for two decades now
believing them so long and
when i began to see through them
to see them for what
they were and are
they are repeated
lest i forget
who i have been told
i am to be

not new words
not mine
not me

i cannot carry them
bent knee or not
i cannot bear them
i cannot bare them
as you would have of me