tense back muscles

perhaps it is the last days drive from dc, new jersey turn pike, ny city via George Washington bridge then up toward new London = solid traffic almost whole way. not bad actually but the high volume and low familiarity = tensed up back muscles...but worth it to arrive here at I-park.

probably should be, but not on the lady room doors in TX

i am good with that

Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body
I would break
Into blossom.

James Wright

last evening stroll with the Dopt

before I disappear for 5 weeks. I like to think she'll miss me, but I am pretty sure she'll just be loving on my puppy sitter!

what's a hobby? may I have one please.

a fellow artist who was chatting with some of my WASHers (students), told them to get a hobby because their art is not a hobby. I've known this to be true for quite sometime, but I simply haven't found a way to squeeze one in to my work/art/reno/build new network schedule--even a lot of that is falling through the cracks of my time and frame. I had hoped to be kayaking regularly by now, but haven't managed to shuffle my schedule or funds to accommodate that. I do walk, perhaps that is my hobby; I do write, not as much as I'd like, perhaps that to is my hobby. though both I do as a survival technique; I require them for hopes of sound or sounder mind yet my brain yammers on. does that make these a hobby? I think the pushing, pulling amidst gliding of slicing a blade through a small body of the hydrosphere would be soothing. yet I look to my fall (bahahaaaa. oh the ambiguity of language) and again find it already filled with assembling a body of work for a new years exhibition, prepping packets for the hoops of public servanthood job life cycle for the state, potential alternatives to cover my ass that requires food and shelter. hobby. I would like a hobby. I must learn how to pry open crevasses of time to slip a boat into the waters that lay a mere nine minutes away.

thumbing and small screens do not lend to proof reading, so I shall not.

go finish packing kathy! ok!

it is not cost effective but it is life effective

running off for 5 weeks to an artist residency is cost effective for some--beautiful room, highly functional studio, drop dead gorgeous environment, chef, comradery, and so much more provided! the poets haul their laptops and journals, painters, paints and canvas, media based, their recording devices and digital appliances, musicians may get by on digital hardware, each can pop on a plane or subway and jaunt on over to the upper east coast, but the freaking tubist (sculptress of sewn nonfunctional inner tubes) must haul 5-600 pounds of supplies with her making planes and trains nonoptional. the biggest debate this trip is whether to haul a trailer 3400 miles or just rent one for route home (1700). for safety reasons, I decided to rent as needed to haul home finished works for August exhibition. is this cost effective? absolutely not! is it life effective? most definitely! either way I will be my normal dirty self as I am today no matter the local or cost.

no! no! no! don't leave me behind

aaaawwe. she's getting clingy as I pack truck for residency. yup she's right, I am leaving for a good bit. I promise to come back, Dopty. I've made wonderful arrangements for you here at the hermitage. but my chest aches at leaving you. I will miss you my Dopty.

sounds about right

sounds about right
"when you take a risk you may lose, when you don't take a risk you always lose." -- movie, queens to play

wrestling with god, gravity and blame!

ok so you helped me get these two up without my flesh going squish squash maimed or dead...

I mean, I like being a girl and all, but couldn't you have given me a bit more strength...

really!!! sheesh...

pleeeaasse help it magically lift up because after dropping and rolling it my chica muscles are spent...

pleeeaasse with the most sincerest of whines!! and really we desperately needed the rain but what's up with the invention of these leg biting creatures! oh whine double whine. and fix my attitude while you are waving that magic wand (and i hope its not really the rod of correction. smite that!)

flat on my back

flat on my back
with the rich blueness ebbing in
out I roll
curled inward
with the scents of morn floating over
under I stretch
upright in motion
with the salts of work flowing
trickling, clinging
down I bend

in my flattened ebbing, curled floating,
uprighted flowing, trickling, clinging
bended i gently undulate with the waves of my internal workings
in a wrestling of unacceptance
outside of my touch, my sway

I hunt the splintering horizon of tomorrows
building on forward rocky steps
hindered by yesterday's tethers
or balanced

gnaw that!

we've been through several pine cones, a dog brush, lava soap dispenser, breakfast, and now a stick all on the new deck. it is one of those days.

a revisiting of my mfa design grad thesis (not boring)

really surprisingly not a boring thesis. much of it already exists in various forms on the initial portions of this blog (back track to 2006). it reminds me both of where i've been and that it is time to more fully embrace where it will lead me.

a gurney! my new best friend

it matches trailer height. OMGosh heavenly deinstallation. I need a gurney!!!

what a mess

she's dark and digs
dusted with dirt
I am pale and sew trash and renovate the hermitage
darkened with grim

she abounds with energy
and wiggles like one big giggle
I work up to the move
and slide slowly into a tentative smile

a definite ying and yang pair

stargazing platform almost complete an edge worth falling off (well not if it'll hurt)

twelve by sixteen add on. need to trim edges then she's ready for a some kicked back late night stargazing! I may be a smidgen earthy but I really don't want to lay in the grass with the bugs skittering across me in the dark to watch the stars! railing option (well eventually required as I have a high degree of dork factor and could easily fall off the edge). definitely a hermitage upgrade.

the joy of apple nibbling

my previous red pup, devoured apples in about a minute. the Dopt nibbles at them almost human like, savoring it for up to ten minutes or so. :)

wondering from edge to edge

smart dog.

naturally one board shy

and, conjoined with the naturally deep sigh (secretly a break), the boards are from lowes in college station not huntsville home depot. they differ a smidgen in size, treatment coloring, and edge cut (rounded corners vs crisp angle). o_O

umm road trip for one more board. dang though I am not wanting to take the trailer (oh internal debate). make list. what else do I need. mmmmmmm.

straighten that!

I thought the top would be the quickest part, slap it down and bang bang with my sweet new nail gun but it seems each board must be pulled or pried as I work my way down each 16 foot stretch. better to put it down straight and take my time then have skewed boards bugging me in the year or decade(s) to come. so I shall push and pry my way to completion and then while I am at an artist residency, i'll draft up my final thoughts on rail/seating system that doesn't obscure the view. really I am just thumbing my phone in the shade as an excuse of a board straightening break.

deck that! safely of course with my big hold "don't put out my eye with a ricocheted nail spit from my gun" glasses! styling!

early morning flop down mid walk.

coloring between the lines has not been a functional advantage

in exploring cultural production or in art foundations for as long as i can remember (ok well that is not all that long) except within environments that primarily emphasize compliance, though I do recommend driving between the lines (compliance in this case is about survival).

the lines should be recognized, understood in terms of their function, even used as needed, but futures lay at and over these edges, in the borderlands of production.

"an ongoing attempt to get the students to learn from each other, to decenter the power in the classroom (studio), to challenge disciplinary borders, to create a borderland where new hybridized identities might emerge, to take up in a problematic way the relationship between language and experience, and to appropriate knowledge as part of a broader effort at self-definition and ethical responsibility. border writing (production--art) in this case became a type of hybridized, border literacy, a form of cultural production and pedagogical practice where otherness becomes comprehensible, collective memory rewrites the narratives of insurgent social movements, and students travel between diverse theoretical and cultural zones of difference, and in doing so, generate a space where new intersections between identity and culture emerge." -- giroux's border practice

"while the anti disciplinary actively challenges the taxonomic effort to organize, categorize, and delimit knowledge into discrete, sanctioned modes of inquiry, the post-disciplinary (trans) functions as if those discrete modes no longer matter."

the emerging trend in art foundations is trans-disciplinary--facilitating process, thinking, collaborating, and meaning making with intent to explore the borderlands of cultural production. what are the implications for what is happening in the studio environment of academia?

just reading and thinking and naturally reading texts that feed my own paradigm. human nature.

I'd say I was projecting, buuutt

Dopty literally ran donuts as fast as she could throughout my dad's house including dashing across the tops of beds in the process. I think perhaps she was glad I returned!! relieved I am not alone in the bond. am a little worried about leaving her for 5 weeks for an artist residency.

making space for the unruly, the resistant, and the radical

"in a hostile academic environment that seems often devoted to the goal of composing students through a disciplinary curriculum that renders them docile, we hope that this volume encourages the process of de-composing composition itself, making space for the unruly, the resistant, and the radical." -- randi gray kristensen + ryan claycomb

even in an environment were the intent is to cross the disciplinary boundaries, to not strap ourselves so tightly to "the way it is or was," and explore the borderlands of meaning and making, we so often fall back in the disciplinary model in which we were trained. suddenly I find an inadvertent external strapping and pressure to emphasize a "can they mix tints and shades and select color schemes" vs facilitating their process of deconstructing and reconstructing meaning through explorations in selection and sequencing along with discovering the discrepancies between their intent and reception, and a space where color along with tints and shades are simply vehicles to enhance meaning and not an end in themselves.

it will just be one more place to dig and sleep

I am sure she's looking forward to my completing the deck for her just so that she can have even more space for digging and dirty covered snooZing.

C & S

I would eat chips and salsa with you (plus a margarita on the rocks or a huge ice tea) but I am a bit stinky and the gulf between is too far for me to even begin to know how to cross. random. I know.

always be especially kind

to a woman with her new nail gun even if she is stinky!

oh my pretty little spacer boards and new framing gun, you rock!

you make it all so structural and so prettily aligned! oh yes, though I gnarly like sew tire tubes and call it art, I do require craft where appropriate! this rocks and I am tired (and stink)!

lustful envy

received a lot of envious stares today at lowes. though it was the box they were looking at not the 50 year old build. bahahaaaa. :)

oh the joist of it

a few more to heavy hoe into place, then I'll add spacers and pick up surface decking. deal with railing another week since neither the Dopt nor I have fallen off the edge to date. the real reason men should definitely consider a sculptress or a use whatever medium artist for a partner--she has power tools + she increases the value of the hermitage. downside--she collects weird things, needs a lot of physical space, will actually need you from time to time to do real man sweat work + sees world a whole lot differently than you. deck that!

spot on relative to gravity

smidgen of bow (though base of posts are in alignment). time for my lag bolts and to throw up my joists. such girl work. ok well maybe not the lifting of the 16'x12" crossbeam thingies. but I rigged a little system so I could do chica solo. it worked:)