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Fire Fire!

Continuing with Golden Walker....

caution readers of the book! plot spoilers ahead...

The Visit

Misha in prison, so angry he is "lost"- changed to fire and can't remember how to change back.  Only the old nurse dares to go near the door.
A painting about two different states of mind...

Heart of Fire

Misha escapes, and becomes a raging fire outside the city.  Because he loves her and some part of him recognizes her, Nadia is able to escape the city and walk into the heart of the fire.
This painting is about trust, the ecstasy of being totally surrounded by love, and in the middle of a great big scary passion, finding that you are actually completely safe..

CAUTION: CAT PICTURE AHEAD

I would have made more paintings, but Hazel won't get off the art table.

new work

Summer is over and so is my holiday from this blog.  I took a holiday because it has been a writing summer, finishing up another section of Golden Walker and I simply had nothing left to say on the blog, after writing all day, there were no more words....  Oh well.  That is what summer is for, and now I have the fun of coming back with new enthusiasm...

So Melissa and I are still writing the end and we also have got some altruistic volunteers to read the thing and see if it possibly makes any sense to anyone.  (I already have a request for a map.)

Still doing the illustrations.  Here are some new ones.  (Catuion readers!  Plot spoilers ahead!)

Aya the Only

This painting is about the frenzy of loss.  Aya the Only, the mother of the seven brothers, knows they are gone.  She tears up her room and rips her feather bed, and reaches up into a mysterious and ghostly breeze that now is never absent from the house.

Salix Vs. Misha

This painting is about a clash of anger.  Each brother is trying to overpower the other.

Yeah, I'm not even going to get into the plot as to why.
I think it would just make you scratch your head and feel tired.

Til next time...

Sling Some Ink

Big Star Bar
7:30
Tuesday May 8

I will be reading a story about babysitting at Big Star Bar in the Heights this week!  Do stop by if you are free. It's through the Slinging Ink writing program from Diverseworks.  Here is the link for some more info about the program:

http://diverseworks.org/2012/slinging-ink-big-star-bar-spring-2012/

and  map to Big Star Bar (it's at 1005 West 19th Street, that's kind of west of Durham)

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

new work: rainbows and ramones

Death of Sasha
If you have been following this blog for awhile, you might remember Sasha as the swishy one in fancy clothes (the entry is "Looking for Sasha").  This is his death... Sasha's gift is his all-seeing vision.  He has rainbow colored eyes that can see anything he wishes no matter how far away, and also some clairvoyance.  He was blind for a while which broke his heart.  In death, he can see again.

(detail of Sasha)

Dee Dee
This is a picture from the childhood (or teenager-hood, which to me is still childhood) of the seven children.  Misha, whose gift is turning into fire, used to sneak out to clubs and go dancing. He tried to keep his identity secret by calling himself Dee Dee (I got that from Dee Dee Ramone because I think Misha would have liked the Ramones, if they existed in Fehran...) but his disguise is rather pointless because the habit of turning into fire sort of gives him away.

The blonde girl in the foreground is Noel, Misha's first love.

In the Schoolroom
Another one from the kids' childhood.  Misha, Leila, Ariel, and Salix question their teacher about the faraway city of Iirvska.

detail from In the Schoolroom.
I got Misha's outfit and hair off Ben Wishaw in the movie "I'm not There" because Melissa and I thought he was cool.  Hopefully I will not get sued or anything.

*note of self-praise from Brooke: check out the (relative) lucidity of these pix!  I am learning to photograph art!  yay.

primrose meditation

(I passed these flowers on the walk to Fiesta the other day.  I used to pick them all the time as a child, with my grandma)

your petals are sensitive,
like the pink-veined delicate ears of a cat.
you're teacups of pollen, you are tiny cups of light.
you have spangled yourselves all over the vacant lot,
on my side of the chain-length fence, and the other.
could you care for separations?
you children of light, you cannot even see them
you tiny lights, you are as many
as sparkles on the sea.
does nature ever see things like a chain-length fence?
could I draw a line upon the surface of the sea?

More new work- Seven Brothers

Care for Life
Nadia is a shaman.  Here she holds Leila's spirit (in the form of a little bird) in her hand, watching over it until it is safe to release it back into Leila's body.

Her Father Walks Away
Nadia has a recurring dream about her father, the King of Iirvska.  Over and over, her father walks away from her into Fehran, pausing only to look at her coldly over his shoulder.

(detail) Sometimes I am adding a detail because the faces are hard to see.

Your Words are Killing Me
(the death of Oran)
This is watercolor and tracing paper.  Sorry for the blurriness! better pictures done by a professional coming soon!

(detail)  Some thoughts about this painting... each of the brothers has a magic talent, and Oran is the great listener- he can hear anything he wishes, even sounds miles away.  He is literally killed by words.  His brother Salix speaks the spell that kills him, but the worst words are the ones Salix uses to explain himself and manipulate his brother.  He tries to get power over him, which one of my favorite writers Brene Brown defines in this way:
"I will define who you are and then I'll make you believe that's your own definition."
But Oran will not agree.  He knows who he is.
This painting is about how words spoken by someone who absolutely refuses to see you can harm the spirit and make you disappear.

New Work

Well, we finally decided on a title- the name of the novel is now "Golden Walker."  Melissa has finished six new chapters and working on just a few more, finishing up the ghostly deaths of the seven brothers and Nadia's escape from Paythe.  Here are some illustrations I have finished for that part of the story.

"Salix the Convalesce"
This is Salix, the middle child and the one who was always sick, convalescing in his sickroom.  The monotony of pain.

(This is a close-up of his face in that painting. Sorry for the blurriness.)

 "Mar"
Misha and Sasha watch Mar above them change into water.

 "Death of Ashen"
Ashen, the brother who can turn into plants and growing things.  He is pushed forever into the other world, where he can be only plants, and he can no longer return as a human.

Impressions from Zoe and Juniper

The show that was recently at Diverseworks called  was so “A Crack in Everything” but the company Zoe and Juniper was so amazing that I wanted to write down what affected me so much about it.  It was one of the most powerful works of art I have ever seen.  I have to commemorate this in some way.  I used to write these things in a sort of art journal but now this blog is sort of becoming my art journal.  This is not a review and is just written from the point of view as a spectator who came into Diverseworks knowing nothing about Zoe and Juniper’s show except that people on facebook were saying it was cool.  The worst thing is that the show is over, so I cannot encourage people to go see it, and this blog entry might be extremely annoying if you missed it!  I wish I had seen it every Saturday in February instead of just the last performance, because they say it was different every time.

I enjoy installations. But it’s kind of the same way I enjoy paintings- I am looking into a different world.  I don’t every really experience being part of the space of an installation.  I am physically in it, but I know it’s intentional and I’m not, it’s Art and I’m not, I am usually not supposed to touch it or push stuff around, so it is it’s space and I am my space.  I have to sort of look around and ignore all the annoying people ruining everything by taking pictures with their iphones and talking about their boring jobs or dinner plans.  The installation and I, we don’t really know each other.  Probably because I am too fastidious about how I want to experience it, but that’s just how it is…

 “A Crack in Everything” was incredible because I HAD to be part of the space.

The reason was the dancers were moving in the same space as the people.  Not just not-on-a-stage, but really among us- we were encouraged to walk around the space throughout the performance.  People were milling around in their jeans and t-shirts and bags and iphones, and then this faerie appears- she like an other-worldly being because of the conscious way she is moving- not like us- her movements are so conscious and full of intention and other that she is truly in another dimension.  We look at her, but she looks through us.  She doesn’t see us any more than a ghost does, and she is full of secret intention, and we are just random.  The other people- they were part of the space too, iphones and sneakers and everything.  Nothing could ruin it because there was a place for everything.  And for me, too.

There were times within the performance where I was sitting in front of a screen with projections of dancers.  Behind the screen, I could see the hazy figure of the real dancer, imitating the filmed dancer.  The image of the movie-dancer was more clear to me than the real dancer… how strange!  All the thoughts this one movement touches in me- is a thought of someone more real to me than the person it?  Do I try to behave like an image of myself or someone else?  I don’t know what the dancers intended, those are just my own reactions.  It reminds me of that scene in the film Mulholland Drive (but much less creepy) where a woman is singing, and then drops down- and her voice continues- it is a tape recorder.

There were many times in this performance when I felt empathy and two times where I was even to the point of tearing up. 

There was a video of two people yelling at each other.  Their heads circled like dogs ready to bite, but they never did.  They just bit with words.  Their mouths had some kind of yellow goo dribbling out like the nastiness of some kinds of anger.  They brought their mouths close to each other’s necks to bite or kiss, but never did- their eye contact was mesmerizing- in a way it was thisclose to sexual but not quite- and they were blind to everything else but each other and the fight.  I thought the video was silent.  It was only later I heard the faint sound of barking that I realized they were NOT speaking in muted words, they were barking.  I am rarely really disturbed in “disturbing” art installations because I’ve just seen so many that hit you over the head relentlessly with the same effect (which is not even that different from the media images I see in everyday non-art life).  I am dutifully disturbed in my head when I am there, but then I just leave the art show and get a coffee with friends or something and forget.  However, the anger video in this installation did disturb me and make me uncomfortable because of its truth- that is how I am when I am yelling- also because it was the only thing in an otherwise rather pretty installation that was that jarring to me.

Another sort of emotionally wrenching moment was two dancers facing off, connected to each other by a red yarn, each dancer holding one end of the yarn in her mouth.  The mouth was so intimate a connection that my whole body was in sympathy with this.  More than if the yarn had connected their hands, or genitals, or hearts, or stomachs, or foreheads- I don’t know why the mouth was so affecting.  I think it’s something so subconscious in my body that reacted… one dancer backed away from the other.  The yarn got longer.  The moving-away dancer pulled and breathed and panted with a great effort, and the other dancer was like an indifferent donkey- she only took a step or two forward, glassy-eyed.  I very moved inside because I was reminded of a heart’s extreme connection to people in my life, especially trying and wishing someone would behave in a way I want, or come to me, or respond to me…

Sometime after this (?) there was a release of tension- the dancers now were dancing among a hall of two movie screens and there was a film like snow going upwards like the bubbles in champagne, and Schubert started playing, and the movements were lyrical and the dancers danced together and this was such a release of tension that I cried, but am not consciously sure why.

The space was enclosed and used no natural light, except for a long vertical crack at the very back space.  The light coming out of the crack was coming from some unseen window and was whiter and brighter and fresher and more powerful, as daylight is.  Some dancers were pulling towards it, and one was sitting on the bench like a little girl, her hands in her lap.  A dancer tried to pull the little one to the light, beckoning with great energy, but she would not come.  Then finally, she did stand up and start to walk, and that too erupted a great emotion in me but I don’t know why. 

When they got to the crack, I thought something happy would happen, but they just continued their searching movements.  There was no resolution, catharsis or ending, just continuing.

a mind like grackles

Mind, they told me you are a bird

Because you have such a gift for flying.

I’d like it if you were some great white thing

with wings that spanned the horizon, sea to sea

plunging in and shooting up

to the stars.

But honestly sometimes you are like a grackle

scavenging among things that are dead, like bad memories

picking at trash other people have left on their tables

with a voice like a car alarm, that can only scream something like fear

who stays with the other grackles, all the same, and will not often

go or even wish to go any higher than telephone wires.

I know you can sometimes be a mourning dove

softly crying, the naïve slow one so easily hit by cars

who weeps with joy to hear the morning come

who loves your friends, and every spring

so glad to come home.

Or sometimes, like the mockingbird- small and gray and clean

Alone, and not alone,

watching and listening

singing back in a voice like rain every ugly or beautiful thing you take in.

Blackout

During the storm a few days ago (well, the storm was in the morning and this happened at night) my street got a blackout.  This is a journal entry from that night.

Tonight the light was snatched away.  I left my painting and my preoccupations and was IN this old building.  A neighbor above shouted BLACKOUT! like Happy New Year's.  Neighbors coming outside into the night, laughing.  "So much for dinner!"  "I was cooking too!"  "It's the whole street!"  "Is the bar open?"  "Hell the bar is blackout too prolly."  "If only this had happened at schoo!"  "And Miss Carol's lights too?"

Wait a little while at my desk.  My eyes do have large dark windows for occasions such as this and I am just waiting as they widen, widen, widen before they cast out nets.  And your fingers are smarter than you know.

Light!  Even a little!  I get to the door by my knees and feet with antennae looking for bumps and sharp dangerous things.  My face hates to go forward because it's imagining a thousand ghostly walls to smash it flat.  Screen door, open.  cool night.  Sweet rain.  Patter, wet leaves, a taxi drives by with a light on, their voices ("Dad, the cars still have lights")  the sweet sad wind, the old train voice.  Silver thinned with black in my dim house.  a candle!  Brighter than a star.  I never knew a candle was so bright.  So a candlelit room at night: once I thought of that as a dark room but now I see this as a room where forms can emerge and singing yellow stars restore the world I know.

When the lights came on it was like bleach like chalk and a little sadly I saw myself once more close and lock the outside door.

the body inside the body

A lot of my artwork is about the experience of being in a body because this takes up a huge part of my life.  One of my favorite quotes ever is by one of my favorite inspirational people ever, the Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, who said something like if you want to know yourself you can start by observing everything you can about your own body.

As a child I was gentle and wimpy.  I was always the last one chosen for the kickball team.  At 12 I grew too fast for my bones and my knee got permanently messed up.  It’s been fixed, but still is not normal and one leg is much smaller and weaker than the other because I never do the therapy like I’m supposed to.

At 21 I was like an old woman, always tired.  It’s hard to remember now, but my energy level was listless as rotten flowers.  A model in my art school, an absolutely beautiful dancer named Kendra, invited me to come with her to a Qigong class in the lower east side because she thought I was far too young to have so little energy. 

I did go, and was it a great calming experience that solved my problem?  No it was not.  It was horrible!  It was probably one of the most physically horrible experiences of my life!  We did standing meditation, you just breathe and stand.  You relax your head- then your shoulders- arms- chest- stomach- at this point my body screamed at me that it was going to fly to pieces and I was going to DIE if I relaxed my stomach.  I bravely kept taking deep breaths but my body was not kidding.  I passed out in front of everyone- crash!  My gentle but firm teacher led me to her kitchen and gave me a blanket and water and I finished the class lying down under her kitchen table trembling and curled up into a ball.

She said it meant I was sensitive to Qi and if you have reactions like this, Qigong is the best thing you can do.  It’s healing you.

I did stick Qigong not so much to heal myself but because of the beauty of the movements.  You see it was Soaring Crane Qigong, and I loved to move like that huge and beautiful bird and that feeling of flying. But off and on I did have to deal with cold sweats, terrors, nausea, shaking, and there were more times when I did have to go back under the table. 

Later in my life I did simpler forms of Qigong that were not so difficult and had a good experience with them, but I still find it too powerful an energy rush for me so now I do yoga which seems for me gentler.  But I do meditate (sitting down) each morning, and some of the feelings from that first Qigong lesson I still am dealing with, in sitting meditation.

So meditation is supposed to be really calming, la la la.  Not for me, not usually.  For me it’s like a workout.  My experience with meditation is so visceral and so physical it can be more draining than a visyana yoga class.  And I’m not a beginner beginner, really, it’s been 2 years since I’ve been doing this.  The same nausea and panic.  The same voice that screams if you relax your stomach you will fall into pieces and you are going to DIE.  (But now I know that if you feel like you’re going to pass out, for heaven’s sake STOP!  Lie down!)

But lately, after 2 years, an amazing thing has happened.  First of all these difficult times come around less often.  Secondly when the panic does come, and all the physical unpleasantness, I never fell to pieces and I’m not dead.  The intensity of the feelings lessened, so much.  I am able to ride them out and I can observe them and they do go away.

I find this process very interesting, the process of the movement of energy inside me, like weather, like storms and storms passing.   And I started writing about it to try- can I capture on paper something so subtle, so delicate?  To even perceive it in my body I have to be so still (all these crazy feelings only come when I sit still and breathe, not when I'm walking around doing my day). I have tried to remember this passage of energy in words and in some drawings.  

 It’s a very simple movement of energy I am tracing.  I feel tightness like a black ball of tar in the solar plexus (that’s right under your heart, the area in the triangle of the rib cage.)  Then the tightness dissolves (crying often accompanies this) and a lightness fills me like clear as running water.  That is what I would like to share today. 

The sketches are from a sketchbook and the pencil mark is really tentative, soft.  I had to doctor them up with the contrast in photoshop so you can see them on your computer.

The black ball of tar under the ribcage:

One day as it dissolved it was like a flock of white birds literally flew out of my chest.

 Sometimes, if I don’t get too scared of it, it is a tremendous energy a like gold light

 Some writings from my journal:

Feeling of anxiety:

drawing a soft breath

I can pet the baby animal in my lungs

with a touch.

Between my lungs and under my heart

there is a baby bird

with a tiny heart that beats too fast

*

Feeling of fear:

my stomach is small and black  like a tar ball.

inside there is a hole.

the hole appears to be small

but goes back as far as the universe.

in a place with no ground

I cannot rest

I’ll fall to pieces…

*

Crying again:

tiny bird for a stomach

little claws, for a heart

press behind me

hot, snot, salty

tears press slowly through

if you can’t bear it, who will?

*

How does it feel to cry?

Stomach is red, hard,heavy, black and filled

with something ashy, something hot

tight violin strings.

tears,

I know you’re there.

How does it feel to cry?

Shivers that start on your back

melt stomach

warm eyes

poignant and tart.

Morning is gray like a mockingbird

breath of daylight

my lungs are two white flowers.

Stomach goes soft,

like a limp magnolia,

cool and hollow in the middle,

a goose’s belly,

a baby rabbit,

a breast,

white lemon scent of a star,

this is the fragrance of the moon.

Top row of teeth clench

bottom row of teeth

nickel-plated chain

they are falling open

like the soft decaying petals

of a flower.

a Clear feeling:

With every breath that pushes it out

I make a big red rose in my belly.

My throat is a shaft of sunlight

My head is just a basket for soft green leaves

And my smile is the sun thru rainclouds

Speak

This is another retablo I did because they are really fun.  I had another idea and an extra frame and wanted to try it.

I have always wanted to paint a woman on a wheel.  I have always loved the tarot cards of the Wheel of Fortune, and the Universe with its cosmic dancer.  And I often saw a woman on a wheel when I would hear when I would hear a certain song.

                                

The song is on this old cd I have called “Music of Medieval Love” by New York’s Ensemble for Early Music.  It is a song about St. Katherine.  The voices repeat and blend into each other, over and over and over, like the turning of a wheel.  I used to listen to it a long time ago, walking around New York at night with the neon lights all glowing.  The lights and the turning sounds and the story of a woman on a firecracker wheel- I always wanted to paint this somehow.

                                                                                     

I am not Catholic or anything and do not know much about saints.  But maybe people do and maybe someone would like to sincerely pray to St. Katherine, and this is a retablo and that is what it’s for- praying, I mean.  So I tried not to get all distracted by firecrackers and tarot card and just stick to some classic St. Katherine imagery.  So there needs to be her, and a wheel, and a book, and some spikes.

A book: as it turns out she is the patron saint of learning and students.  She was a brilliant Christian philosopher in Alexandria.  The bad guys tried to best her in religious argument but she beat them.  They got mad.  But the emporer liked her and wanted to marry her on the condition she renounce her religion.  She wouldn’t.  A wheel: they strapped her on a wheel.  Some spikes: the wheel had spikes on it.  It rotated over her and killed her.  Then they cut off her head. 

But then, the turning wheel exploded!  Shards of spikes and gigantic sharp splinters shot out into the crowd and killed everybody.  Then from the sky, Christ whizzed towards her, scooped up her body and took it safe into the desert into the sun, to Mt. Sinai.

I wanted to do this painting because of the visual image of a woman in a circle.  Not because of the story.  This tale, like most tales of medieval saints, was not appealing to me- very bloody and vengeful and all that stuff you try to overcome if you are into peace on earth and everything.  But I was also dealing with some very heavy issues at the time of heartbreak and shame.  You might listen to Patti Smith at a time like this and you might get all into St. Katherine.  I could empathize with what a medieval woman might have seen in that story.  In a world where you couldn’t speak your own mind, of the incredible pain of childbirth, abuse and humiliation, it might have been cathartic to pray to a saint who said anything she wanted to and sent sharp pieces of an exploding wheel into the hearts of her enemies.  That could go for this world too, I think.

Out of the story, what remains precious for me is her courage to speak her truth.

P.S. The words on the painting are hard to read on the computer, so here they are-

Around the frame (taken from “O laudanda Virginitas (Katerina)” New York Ensemble for Early Music

O laudanda virginitas
etas sexus conditio!

passa regalis dignitas
iam regnat a supplicio.

(translation ) O Praiseworthy virginity, youth and the condition of womanhood!

As royal dignity suffers, now she rules free of all humiliation.

Within the picture:

Katerina.  The story of courage tears apart my shame. 

Brooke Houston 2011.

                                                      

                                                      

Life gets in the way

I can’t really write my blog entry because I am not working on art.  I can’t think of anything to show you.  The truth is, Life has gotten in the way of art.

It’s hard to admit this.  But I feel I am not the only one who has gotten in this disagreeable place.

Sometimes keeping art in my life as a living flourishing thing is like trying to keep alive a very delicate flower that needs a certain kind of soil and air temperature and filtered water from a certain spring and I don’t even know what all and it’s hard.

My studio was in my apartment.  But I had to move out of my apartment, and kind of in a hurry.  Because I have no sense of space in the third dimension, I thought that all my stuff would fit into the smaller new apartment.  Wow, it totally doesn’t.

I will have to find studio space outside of the apartment, a big pain in the… no, must try not to be negative on blog.

There’s this part of Patti Smith’s Just Kids that really resonates with me.  There is a point where she and Robert Mapplethorpe are moving from one place to another for like the forty seventh time.  Just seeing their portfolios, pencils, art books, everything- all packed up and ready to be hauled- she gets depressed, defeated feeling.  Just from the physicalness of the STUFF.  (I would quote this for you, but my Just Kids book is packed in one of the boxes and as good as lost at the moment.)  For a moment, she just wants to throw all the damn stuff away and become a busker or something.

I’m a painter so obviously my artworks are physical; a painting is an object.  The space I need to make paintings is very physical- I mean the space matters.  It has to have light.  It has to be clean.  It has to be quiet.  It has to be private.  If even one small thing is out of place that does not belong to that painting’s particular mess, it drives me crazy and I can’t work.

That’s not the same for all painters but for me… Sometimes I envy conceptual artists, and writers.  When I write, it’s different.  The room can be a mess and I wouldn’t even notice.  It could be a lovely quiet room, a library, somebody’s closet, a bus, a coffee shop.  The workspace is far away in the infinite space of my mind and nothing can harm it.

Until things settle, what can I do? 

What about a sketchbook?  Brooke, did you forget being a student and carrying the sketchbook around everywhere, a safe refuge from crowded Brooklyn apartments and art schools with a lockout?

Maybe this is a chance to discover a new way.

Concept of The Frame

So lately I discovered the concept of the Frame.

The reason is the Dia de los Muertos show at Lawndale. They give you a retablo tin upon which to paint. The tin measures 8 by 10 inches, and for me that’s really small. But they let you cheat! As long as you use the tin, you can add stuff. I decided to add a frame because then it would be bigger.

This presented a cool new set of visual problems to solve. 1. The frame is part of the picture and not part of the picture. 2. The frame makes the work…. 3D. As someone whose favorite dimension is definitely the second one, I saw this mad crazy wild stuff.

Traditionally in Mexico retablos seem to portray a disaster or misfortune that was survived by intercession of a saint, Jesus or Mary. I painted a memory of being in New York during September 11, a disaster that was not averted. (Lawndale lets you change the rules a bit).

September 11 was ten years ago. The painting is the event, but the frame is the space of memory, ten years. It is the space where I contemplate that memory. The prayer is taken from a chant from the Greek Orthodox Church. Because my photograph is a bit blurry, I will type the words here:

Who is weak, and I am not weak? Say who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized? Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire? And I am not on fire? And I am not on fire?

Underneath, are two prayers: Christe Eleison is Greek for Christ give me mercy (The Jesus prayer of the heart). Ar-Rahim is one of the 99 names of Allah, it means Allah is merciful.

I think the frame must also represent a space beyond time. The birds escape the picture’s calamity, but the people do not.

A surprise gift the frame gave me was the duality of space: inside, outside. I could really create a strong movement with this, a movement from left to right. You read the words from left to right. The fire pushes to the right. The birds break out of the frame in a diagonal, going faster, free.

The person falls out of that left to right movement. The person drops out of sight.

(Well, that’s how I saw it, anyway…)

Well, do you know what? I had been so excited buying that lovely large frame at Hobby Lobby among the glitter and stickers and beads, I failed to notice the fine print of my Lawndale rules: the entire work can’t exceed 12 by 14 inches. Mine was too big and they couldn’t take it. So I made a new frame really fast before the deadline; it’s a bit smaller and not the one pictured here. I don’t think it’s that different, though.

The Dia de los Muertos show is at Lawndale from October 17 through November 5. I got a sneak peek when I turned my piece in and all the works were so beautiful, I wish I had a million dollars to attend the auction with! For more information on Lawndale and how to get there and stuff, go to www.lawndaleartcenter.org.

Looking for Sasha (part 3)

I went through this same process with all seven brothers, and their sister. Here is the final picture.

PS. AAh! I’m confused! Why does her blog make no sense? Of course you are confused! But it’s not your fault. This blog entry has 3 parts. The best way is to look at the right hand margin. See where it says Blog Archive? Okay now see where it says Looking for Sasha, Part 1? Yep. Start with that one and read them in order, it will make more sense.

Looking for Sasha (part 2)

I took away the flowy pants. I gave Sasha teddy-boy pencil pants and here’s how he came out.

My mom says he is her favorite of all the brothers because he looks like Project Runway. (Sasha would probably be too snobby to watch Project Runway, but better that than bell-bottoms.)

Looking for Sasha (part 1)

I’m illustrating the novel. My story has at its center seven brothers and their sister.

Sometimes the concept of illustrating is kind of hard for me. I went to an art school in New York called the New York Studio School, where pretty much the worst thing you could do was paint something narrative. That was like a dirty word. So was illustrative.

Well, they did have their point. They were trying to teach something very profound. I think they were trying to teach me, in particular, that you can’t get all carried away by your subject’s facial expression before you’ve worked out the formal structure and composition of the work itself. My teachers came from a background of Hans Hoffman, Rothko, Matisse, awesome guys like that. I’m glad I learned that formal lesson and went to that school because that’s how I learned that the language of painting goes much deeper than the surface.

But now I am long out of school and on my own and enjoy getting reacquainted with my narrative streak. The art most dear to my heart is both formally strong but also very narrative. The two can and do co-exist. The Genii scrolls, Henry Darger, Masaccio, Charlotte Salomon, The Bayeux Tapestry Miyazaki’s cartoons, silent films, to name only a few…

Well, so I wanted to do some storytelling with this picture of the seven brothers. I wanted the painting to be about both their essence but also their surface personalities. The ways I would express these things would be: the clothes they wear, their faces and expressions, the way they are standing, and the way their feet relate to the horizon (that means, if one of the guys is floating, you can bet he’s not a very grounded person).

I went through a process new to me in finding all these things out about all these brothers. Writing (and reading) about all seven would take all day, so I will just write about looking for Sasha.

So Sasha, he is a brother somewhere in the middle of the family. He’s about 21 or 22 years old. He has magical eyes that can see anywhere, anything, if he concentrates. He is vivid and theatrical, he dresses very well. He’s witty. He’s beautiful and small, pretty as a girl. He’s also nervous, he has too much energy but, being a fairytale prince, nothing to do. He drinks too much and doesn’t know it. He’s beginning to get cynical. He’s never alone, but he’s lonely.

I don’t know anyone from my actual life who is like Sasha except the younger brother of a high school friend who’s not around so he can’t model for me. But I used my memory of him, a distrustful, intelligent ten year old child with large green eyes by a swimming pool in the summer of 1996. Then I put in the” Sense and Sensibility” movie and sketched Hugh Grant because a big part of imagining boys was imaging their hairstyles, I never appreciate before how many ways boys style their hair and how hard some of them work at it. And then, how would Sasha stand? Sasha stands almost walking forwards, because he is nervous and restless. His ankles are turning a little bit. He’s not the most stable of the seven brothers. He’s walking towards us, away from the horizon, because he wants to interact with you, he goes head on into life.

I always knew the hardest part would be the clothes. I never paid much attention to men’s clothes. I mean, when I played Barbies as a child Ken usually came in a wedding tux or swimming trunks. He didn’t have many options. And most of the actual real-life men in my life have worn T-shirts and jeans.

I thought Sasha would wear something really classy and yet eccentric and so went shopping for him by googling “Comme des Garcons mens.” I mean, if I were a man I would wear nothing but Comme des Garcons! (Well, maybe not, since even as a woman I rarely manage anything but T-shirts and jeans, but you know. In theory.)

The picture above is the picture I found.

I did a test drawing of Sasha in one of these outfits. I was proud. I showed it to my parents and the word “bell-bottoms” was heard. Oh dear. I showed it to my sister Melissa, the co-author of our story who is currently writing Sasha and who knows him very well. “I don’t know,” she said dubiously. “Sasha’s really vain. I don’t think he’d wear loose pants. He’d want to show off his butt.”

Why are Cicadas so Cool?

I love cicadas so much. I think there should be some sort of spiritual festival in August of September called the Festival of the Cicadas. They make the dog days beautiful and mysterious. The days are so tired in this drought. The cicadas sound like a slow sad tambourine or like the long sigh of evening and long hours.

Not always though. Sometimes there are a lot and they sound like urgency. If I didn’t know they were tree-dwelling insects what would I think of that sound? I’d think the trees I pass under were filled with rattlesnakes, or ravens, with a voice like walnut shells, or spirits who speak in tongues. When I walk under a tree with ten thousand cicadas making their gypsy shaking music, I want to belly dance if I knew how.

Here’s a cicada poem.

***

Tree Voices in the morning-

white light spotting

a falling of a waterfall

a foamy gurgle

a silver cat purr.

Tree Voices in the evening-

yellow tambourines round as the sun

tiger growls in my time of great sorrow

rattlesnakes who rattle trees

shamans who Shake, and Stop danger.

sagas

(above: Melissa and I long ago circa 1998 when we first started writing this story)

Not long ago my sister sent me six new chapters of the Fehran story and I was reading them more avidly than I read the last Harry Potter book (which is really saying something as Harry Potter allowed for neither eating nor sleeping). When she finishes this section, we will be almost finished.

Fehran will be a (probably really long) illustrated novel. Missy (actually as she is now a grownup she goes by Melissa calling her that feels weird for me) offers this description of the book:

“Fehran is a dark fairytale about how a broken heart can consume the whole world. It is set in two kingdoms. In one, a tyrant king searches for something to feed his ambitions. In the other, seven magical princes and their sister grow up and nourish the seeds of tensions that will destroy them. The story follows how the two kingdoms crumble the closer they are intertwined, as a great betrayal brings love, escape, revenge, and finally losses that cannot be repaired.”

The story began actually years ago. I was nineteen pretending to work in a temp job in Houston, but as they had actually nothing for me to do, I just stared at the computer screen and imagined a story in my head that played itself out before my eyes without effort, like a secret tv. Missy was sixteen, in high school and a big fan of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” It turned out she too was imagining and dreaming a story. By combining our two stories, we found an excellent form of entertainment.

This was nothing new; we had been inventing stories together our whole lives, the notes of which filled many manila folders and which we called Sagas. Most of the earlier Sagas were about hot tempered brave ladies in Victorian times who fought pirates or something. But this new one was different. We called it Fehran after the world in which it took place. We even started writing it down. After all, the Brontes had written down their Gondal story, the one the children had all imagined long before Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights. We wanted ours to last also. I had to draw pictures of all the characters because I like to know how people look. Soon we were writing a book.

We never finished. I went to New York to study art; Missy went to Rice in Houston to study anthropology, and Fehran went the way of the other childhood sagas. Ten years went by. I don’t really remember why I started writing Fehran again. I was unemployed, always a blessing for artistic endeavors. Soon Missy was writing it again as well. It has changed a lot from its original version, but the characters, like the two wayward princesses, the seven magic brothers, the waifs Eani and Henri, and the tyrant King, have all remained.