Right now I’m feeling Ramdane Touhami and listening to Quantic: I marvel at how something can be so complex yet minimal. Just when you think you’ve classified the genre, it moves on you. Beautiful, really. Also, I’m finished with the dining room (for now), and I’m working on a ring. Yay!
Press play to listen, and to hear more songs go to Quantic’s web site
“San Sebastian Strut”
“Interlude”
Yesterday I went in search of fabric for the dining room chairs. (I’d like to finish my dining room project so I can get back to the studio.) I found my fabric at Stitches, a delightful, indie fabric store in Capitol Hill. The salesperson helped me figure out the yardage and we laughed at my funny way of doing math (I get the righ
t answer, but in a weird, convoluted way.) That small act of laughter set off a series of fortunate events. A fortune so small (yet precious) that, had I been less aware, it would have passed me by.
At some point in the day, I started to become more aware of the small, good things rather than making a mountain out of the small, bad things. This subtle shift turned out to be more significant than I realized. What if, I thought, I kept a daily record of all the good things that happen to me, then replay them in my mind at night. Why, the world will seem to be such a hospitable place. Maybe I drank the koolaide of the delusional. If so, I like the way it tastes.
I hopped a bus, then walked from the bridge home and found another photo for my CiDu project. As I walked home, my high was mellowed a bit by the sight of a honey bee lying dead on the sidewalk. I wonder if we’ve gotten so confused and jaded by the arguments (from both sides) about global warming that all natural disasters on the nightly news accumulate in our minds and convert to the sound of gentle buzzing in our ears.
Last night, on the Grey’s Anatomy season finale, this fabulous, smoky, bluesy song played towards the end of the show. I had to know who the singer was. After brief research, I discovered, on Contactmusic.com, the singer is Bryn Christopher of Birmingham, Alabama. His single, The Quest, is due to be released on June 9, 2008. I just hope, if it’s on iTunes, their servers don’t crash from all the people downloading the song.
I’m taking a little break from the studio to revitalize some wooden chairs I found at the thrift store, and I’m enjoying this song…
This is my current work in progress, a neck ornament made with recycled materials including paper, high-density polyethylene, polymer clay, and scraps of leftover 24 karat gold leaf. More on the ideas behind this piece later, for now it’s time to get back to work.
I know this video is kind of old, but it still makes me smile. I tend to like things because I like them, not because they’re trendy. In fact I like to stay ahead of or behind the trend curve–I’m usually ahead though, only because I’m a futurist who’s a little addicted to advances in technology and transportation, etc. Okay, now I’m way off track. Here’s that Will Ferrell video I love…but I’m not giving up my PC yet…
Postmodernists believe that fine art cannot be pretty. But Gaugin’s delicious color palette, Thiebaud’s creamy brush strokes, Barthé’s mastery of form, and Kiwon Wang’s gorgeous art jewelry–curious juxtapositions of paper and pearls–all lend credibility to the notion that beauty in art is still a relevant pursuit. While I’m deeply interested in aesthetic philosophy, at this particular moment, I am resisting:
At this particular moment, I am attracted to:
(The beads shown are my mixed media Raku beads. I’ve been working on the process for months. It’s an innovative, labor-intensive process that I’m happy with).
Jori Spaa at Galerie Rob Koudis examines the relationship between jewelry, as built environment, and the natural world. Sue Dorman at Freehand Gallery takes ABS plastic to a new level. Sergey Jivetin’s Luthiery Study #1 at Andora Gallery: sublime. Single X Bracelet – Yellow by Joe Wood at Mobilia Gallery is stunning and fresh.
(Image credit: Sue Dorman’s Pearl Cluster Bracelet, via Freehand Gallery).
Last year I went to a workshop where an artist described her art as the process not the product (actually those are my own words, but the artist basically said the same thing, which is why it resonated so deeply with me). I’ve often held that unless you can witness the artist making their work: to be privy to the whole process of thinking, experimenting, discarding, keeping…the whole struggle of pain and fear, frustration and joy that is woven into the process of making art, you haven’t really experienced art–you’ve enjoyed the end product.
Today was my first day back in the studio after a very long hiatus, and it was truly a joy. I’d been working on these Turmeric Spice beads for weeks, so it’s nice to finally get back to work. For this project, I decided to be led by the process rather than beginning with an end product in mind. This intuitive way of art making was familiar to me when my work centered around painting and sculpture, and it is bringing me a great deal of joy now.
I experimented with my Turmeric Spice beads a great deal. They started as recycled paper beads then I mixed a few different colors of polymer clay together and added that to the beads then baked it. Now I’m in the process of drilling the beads and figuring out what comes next. I know that I want to make a necklace. I feel called by the metal gold, driftwood, and poppies. The odd thing is right after I thought about poppies, I saw a news special about the fighting in Afghanistan, how the American marines left a poppy field intact. I feel compelled by the whole thing, so now I’m doing some research around the poppy-opium production cycle. It’s interesting. What’s also interesting is that for days I’d been thinking about somehow incorporating the color red into the design of the necklace. Considering that many of the beads look like the head (or hip) of a closed poppy flower, and that red is a common color of the poppy flower, I think I understand why my conscious was called to the color red.
Well, I am surrounded by creative people, interesting people, people I love and who love me back. The support is overwhelming. Today was a very good day, and now it’s time to rest.
Love Kill Monster is the studio of Alexis Pierre-Louis, and this blog features her studio jewelry in progress, plus news and information about fine art and fine craft events, etc. Thank you for visiting!
