A Day In the Life

This is my first attempt at Blogging...I am a public school teacher, artist, mother and I write from perspectives as all three to things that seem compelling....with a hope it creates community and cross-communication in a busy world and life. I value human connectivity greatly. Please feel free to comment and say hello.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Eat A Peach





Our peaches are coming in. Great little tree we have.
We canned some today. More to do this week and I think I'll get some more jars, smaller.
and I'm thinking of just buying a flat or two of raspberries and strawberries and canning those too. It's satisfying on some level.

Peach Preserves

4 full cups peaches
7 and 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup lemon (juice)
Certo package
Place all ingredients in a large heavy stainless steel or enamel kettle; stir to mix. Then let stand at room temperature for 1 hour. Set kettle over moderately high heat and boil, stirring constantly, for 20 minutes. If you use a tablespoon of butter it rids you of the foam.

Skim froth from preserves. Then pour into hot sterilized half pint jars, filling to within 1/8-inch of the tops. Then put in a water bath.

Remove, cool. They seal. It's cool.








See my jars, lovely let me tell you.



My fruit.
My art from two years ago with my fruit then...







And now..
a favorite..

Sunday, July 06, 2008

A Duck Lover....and a Lonely Heart

I went down to the Elkhorn Slough with my kids and it was rough going cause I'm not supposed to be doing this, or lifting at all, recovering, but I wanted to see what was nesting now. I'm not much for following orders, actually paying for it, I'm dizzy. (Going to faint right as I blog but I'm dedicated....I think just in awhile get to it.)
But as I sit have to share some short videos.
I have to spoil my surprise by showing the most amazing thing first. After this long hard slosh down the sand maybe a half mile feeling like three, wading in sand, I got to the part of the area where there is water, sand a rather lush preserve. After watching the Avocets nesting I went to sit down and make sets of short clips with my camera on the sand but getting up was hard so Luca, my son, puled me saying, "Mom, Mom, look over here." And I was about a foot from sitting on a mallard nest just hatching a set of ducklings. They would not let me take them home. No adult ducks to be seen.

I still cannot believe this.


video


video

I have a lot of these. It was just so hard to be made to leave them. I wanted to take them. I know what to do to raise them. I'm hoping they were not eaten. It opened my eyes.
Nevermind.


video

I will put two more and let it go for now...fun to go and see the birds today even if I am dizzy.

video


video

Four O'Clocks and an Afternoon

video

I made a video of something interesting. It's behind our house.
I kept hearing this calling hawk.
Pretty cool.

I went back to try to get pictures of my little nesting birds.
They are Cliff Swallows and as always Cornell has terrific resources so they can be learned about, an excellent resource for classrooms if you are allowed to use technology, deemed "there yet" and are supported by your school. I love that you can hear their wonderful song. All summer my house is filled living where we do with bird song and chatter.
»listen to songs of this species
Here is the Cliff Swallow link.

And my new pictures include these:








While there I caught a few other pictures that I really like.




It's such a nice campus to find wildlife. My friend in teaching calls where I work like a prison and as I interact in a healthier environment I'm in agreement. Unable to model a space made to teach with,, teach nature, plant, life, health that decides by hacking trees and cementing to minimize work and sits in ugly space.....it is hard to go into spaces so full of the things not only kids need, I need.
But all of these shots of the school are lovely. Fun to go see the wildlife there. They have bunnies too!











Nice four o clocks...I'm off to the beach.....

Bird Brain


Did I ever tell you about the peacock that we kept?
This is not necessarily the best backyard choice.
WASTE FREE WILD BIRD SEED 10 LBS.

WASTE FREE WILD BIRD SEED 10 LBS.
I've been feeding birds since I could stand up, being the daughter of a Mom and Dad who liked to watch our back east West Virginia birds. My favorites there were cardinals, indigo buntings, grosbeaks, bluebirds(rare indeed), chickadees, wrens, scarlet tanagers and the lovely orioles and I even miss the rather harsh blue jays. Now I live in Oxnard, CA with a feeder outback and this particular mix of seed seems to best address the needs of the neighborhood birds. I'm not in the gorgeous variety I once knew, mostly finches, morning doves come calling, some sparrows at times a wren, I'm challenged to ID what is out there, a canary being the most fascinating so far.
Close to the ocean I slip over to the shore in the AM to watch the most marvelous of sights. There we have the glory sightings of water birds.

I call this my heron, he visits us and nests every year, ok, that would be a she....

This seed mix has shelled out sunflower seeds and produces less waste. I just noticed experimenting with different brands and types this went very fast and clearly was the preference.It's an easy enough thing to do and I know this sounds silly but if we all remembered it would be a good thing.

I'm an elementary teacher and next year planning three different bird feeder projects with my class. One will be a feeder we locate at the school and watch, fill and record what we observe with digital pics and journals. Easy and probably getting kids into good habits.I keep spice finches and parakeets for the class too. I'm currently housing these in my house, waiting for next year.

That's Kiwi and Skye

Second I'm ( they) going to make a recycled feeder from a large plastic soda bottle, found a good pattern ( see here too, and here, Recycled Craft Projects, How to make a birdfeeder with a plastic soda bottle - by Roan ...,Hanging Birdfeeder | Scholastic.com , ) and then will send that home filled with this seed. 1st graders will enjoy this. (I'm also doing a ship in a bottle project with a recycled bottle or a terrarium.) (At my centers.) The next bird feeder will require a bit of scrap lumber. I'm (they) are going to build feeders. Well, actually no, I'm going to get kits together so that they can build feeders while I help with the hammers and nails. I'm convinced the lack of doing things like this has seriously hurt our kids.



I learned something. A very close friend has a daughter who is 5, she has been watching birds closely awhile, binoculars, books, the works. She's an active, cheerful, excited and lovely learner. Miss Kimmie has some nice things here to watch, a Cooper's hawk, Red Tailed hawks, water birds like herons that are close to us, swallows plaguing her mom at the house,and these smaller land birds. Now her working vocabulary includes discussions
of native versus non-native, flight, shape of beak, nesting habits, wing shape, aero-dynamics, uplift....it goes on and on. Now I'm watching that as a teacher thinking, how can I build observation, interest, inquiry and the kinds of vocabulary and especially understandings of classification, a bridge into science. And there is Miss Bird woman right before my eyes. A class set of binoculars is not too expensive. In fact they are remarkably affordable. Good identification guides for birds, also affordable. Projects to build bird feeders and to establish a place to feed birds in the school grounds and at homes, easily done. And then the oportunity to grow language, enthusiasm, natural connection to this kind of interface will help my inner city kids to connect.

So this said, I do buy this particular seed mix. It serves me well. I do not like huge bags of seed, though cheaper it hurts my back to lift. I'm recovering from a "procedure" in my tummy and I can't lift so I need something reasonable to deal with as I totter out. I'm sure that others in different areas like other kinds.So it helps to experiment with your population. I found out something I especially enjoy. When my feeder runs out they actually kind of tell me off about it. I was greeterd yesterday up on my roof out front ( feeder out back) by a particularly indignant fellow. He was shrill and angry so I went out back, sure enough the feeder was empty. And don't forget to put out a bit of water.

Great seed. You can find seed very reasonably in your grocery or pet store, in drug stores...dollar stores usually. So go and watch as they gather to eat, great to see.

All of this by way of wanting to show off my newest bird pictures. I'm going over today to get better shots...






Slow Down You Move Too Fast...


Two kinds of light....shine on........


I'm starting to enjoy sewing with my daughter. She is learning to sew because I think she'd like to learn how to do clothing design. We started playing around and I decided to make ABC banners. Wall hangings. I have 25 letters to go but here is the start. A for Anaconda one of my wise acre kids says.....my project of the moment.

Then I went over to my husband's school to visit their greenhouse, one of his projects. It is beautiful. We have nothing remotely like this where I work, nor is it remotely possible where I work. His custodian built the kit, cost around $3,000 and put inthe shelves and lovely plywood flooring. Where he is there is such pride in doing things well. Children there compost too, and in this summer program are planting, charting observing, data collecting planting a variety of crops and moving them to outside garden boxes. Lovely today, but it gets very warm in the greenhouse. Far off in the distance is the ocean.



I grew up with a father trained in Ag. Economics. He had a wonderful garden, flowers, fields of dahlias, glads, tomatoes, blueberries, black raspberries, strawberries, fruit orchards, well, things I realize now to be wonderful luxury despite all the work it takes. We'd go in spring to the greenhouses for things but the university also had them. Later in my teens I drew there the plants and flowers. So I have a thing about the value they bring to a child. My church is a greenhouse. I actually do believe that in my neighborhood, where I teach, a greenhouse would be completely vandalized and destroyed if you had a greenhouse. I don't believe they'd ever have them, but then there would be the theft. Maybe if it were right inside the quad, but even then it would be taken. So a bit out as he is, with the daily rigor he has in being there all the time and highly involved in science work, it seems to work out.
I do have to pause to wonder why this is so hard, why anyone vandalizes..grrr.



The summer school kids have these all numbered and labeled with recorded data sets inside.



The radishes peek up.






Then we saw a few things around about where the plants go, garden boxes.



At his school all the walls welcome you with murals. Essential to the tone and value of the experience.




I was really delighted to see all they had going on.
But why I went was to see these nests my daughter told me about.
It was incredible. I'm not even sure the birds. I thought they'd be swallows but one person told me no...not sure. I just know that they are in the doorway driving him crazy and utterly fantastic to see.






So pretty cool afternoon.

Friday, July 04, 2008

Teaching A Daughter To Sew




This is a design my daughter made from fabric, we are making fabric banners perhaps, or pillows. I once made quite a few pillows. She is learning to use my sewing machine. So I thought that a good place to start was going around the fabric shapes, edging them. There is a stitch on my machine that does this nicely and it is a great way to practice. I'll need to get her a good machine, Sophia has a lovely start to her design. Made a nice way to spend the 4th.



This is mine I had to do one too so I could demonstrate things.


We have the lovely fabrics a gift from my father's third wife.
Janet Jo McIntosh of Morgantown
“Janet Jo’s Flowers”
I think my dad helped a bit with this one, but I may be wrong, both of these were state award winners. She was a ballet dancer in New York, a dancer teacher in my town, then started maybe in her 40's quilting, first one gets state champion awards. She is so exceptionally talented.
a lovely woman. I miss her.
http://www.wvculture.org/agency/images/dance_of_leaves.jpg
She is an award winning quilter. Big time. She sent this to my class, tons of fabric, they have used this to quilt but also to make dolls, so on. If you have a good eye you'll see in her quilt the very fabrics we are using in our project. It amazes me but I see it, clear as day. Cool. She sent to me the pieces this is clear. When I do set up my room again I will just set the machine into it I think so I can sew a bit at lunch. I need to do something sometimes over thinking or running papers or talking.



Here I've edged some of it, to be ironed tomorrow and then we may back these and hang them from dowels, or make a few pillows, depending on her thoughts. I'd actually enjoy making a quilt. I might start making squares in a more designed free form way.

We went out quickly to sit on the highway and look at the fireworks but...it wasn't that great this year , very smoky from the awful fires in Santa Barbara and...we should have gone down to sit at the beach.
Somehow this 4th has just come so fast. You can see the smoke a rather sorry bunch of photos..



Happy 4th

One Woman, One Vote
One Woman, One Vote (1996)

Ultimately the biggest thing that faces our American nation to me is the proposition that "all men" are created equal, and for a tiny bit over half of us the problem facing facts versus myths is that within our creeds we have lots to fix, yet.... including some editorial insertions of the word "persons." Women still have too many barriers and a long way to go.
It's bound within our ideas of women as "object d'arte" within sexuality, desire, money, beauty, power...encoded into our language... within the fact that women have a place at the table, they certainly get to set and clear it, but not an equality there.
Thinking roles nationally are still pioneering places for a woman to claim right to hold.

It's the 4th, my daughter is home from Caltech where I'm ambivalent. Again wondering as I was with her choice. I, myself, am proud. But I know something else too; she's got a lot on her shoulders. And they are still to me a child's set.
She's one of about a third of her class in woman's gender, going into a field male dominated, a field I still struggle with in how it has expressed its work in the last 50 years of developing the atom, physics, she's there.... and she's nervous, hard working, pressured....into a school where the teachers don't even have a third in women. They have a drop of them in a big male pool.

After looking at data tables for her Caltech and MIT staff, those HIRED, you begin to see we are still in a dark age of discrimination against women. Period. Or if you prefer to hear it from MIT listen to their own information of this incredible difference in gender in hires:

"Given the tiny number of women faculty and the fact that they are essentially irreplaceable, one would have assumed that all tenured women would be treated exceptionally well-pampered, overpaid, indulged. Instead, they proved to be underpaid, to have unequal access to the resources of MIT, to be excluded from any substantive power within the University. How did this surprising state of affairs come about?

First and foremost it is essential to set aside the issue of whether these women were badly treated because they were simply not good enough. It must be understood that for these particular women the opposite was undeniably true. Despite discrimination, most of these women achieved at an outstanding level within their professions. Forty percent of the tenured women faculty are members of the National Academy of Sciences and/or the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Only people above the average MIT faculty could have succeeded at this level despite the many obstacles the senior women faculty encountered in their careers. Indeed, it should be almost obvious that the first women, the first blacks, the pioneers who break through despite enormous barriers must be exceptional. Once and for all we must recognize that the heart and soul of discrimination, the last refuge of the bigot, is to say that those who are discriminated against deserve it because they are less good. While the term "affirmative action" is sometimes used to mean letting people in simply because they are women, minorities, that is the opposite of what affirmative action means at MIT and most emphatically, to women faculty at MIT. The tenured women faculty in Science are interested only in equity for women who are at least as good as their male colleagues, and, as the Committee learned, women are often the harshest critics of other women they deem less than better than most faculty for fear that they will reflect badly on all women.

How else might we explain what happened to the senior women faculty in Science? While the reasons for discrimination are complex, a critical part of the explanation lies in our collective ignorance. We must accept that what happened to the tenured women faculty in the School of Science is what discrimination is. It defines discrimination in the period from the 1970s up till today. But we, including for a long time the women faculty themselves, were slow to recognize and understand this for several reasons. First, it did not look like what we thought discrimination looked like. Most of us thought that the Civil Rights laws and Affirmative Action had solved gender "discrimination". But gender discrimination turns out to take many forms and many of these are not simple to recognize. Women faculty who lived the experience came to see the pattern of difference in how their male and female colleagues were treated and gradually they realized that this was discrimination. But when they spoke up, no one heard them, believing that each problem could be explained alternatively by its "special circumstances". Only when the women came together and shared their knowledge, only when the data were looked at through this knowledge and across departments, were the patterns irrefutable."
How about that....and the AAUW put this forward:
From their AAUW website this quote from the press release accompanying this included this:

Washington – New research released today by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation shows that just one year out of college, women working full time already earn less than their male colleagues, even when they work in the same field. Ten years after graduation, the pay gap widens.

In the report, Behind the Pay Gap, the AAUW Educational Foundation found that just one year after college graduation, women earn only 80 percent of what their male counterparts earn. Ten years after graduation, women fall further behind, earning only 69 percent of what men earn. Even after controlling for hours, occupation, parenthood, and other factors known to affect earnings, the research indicates that one-quarter of the pay gap remains unexplained and is likely due to sex discrimination. Over time, the unexplained portion of the pay gap grows.

The research also shows that ten years after graduation, college-educated men working full time have more authority in the workplace than do their female counterparts. Men are more likely to be involved in hiring and firing, supervising others, and setting pay.

"By looking at earnings just one year out of college, you have as level a playing field as possible," said AAUW Director of Research Catherine Hill. "These employees don’t have a lot of experience and, for the most part, don’t have care-giving obligations, so you’d expect there to be very little difference in the wages of men and women. But surprisingly, and unfortunately, we find that women already earn less — even when they have the same major and occupation as their male counterparts."

The AAUW research also shows that this pay gap exists despite the fact that women outperform men in school – earning slightly higher GPAs than men in every college major, including science and mathematics.

"The persistence of the pay gap among young, college-educated, full-time workers suggests that educational achievement alone will not close the pay gap," Hill said. "We need to make workplaces more family-friendly, reduce sex segregation in education and in the workplace, and combat discrimination that continues to hold women back in the workplace."



And Syl sends me this as answer to my request for data:
Women professors at caltech: http://diversity.caltech.edu/status_of_women.html (scroll down for graph)

The same for MIT: http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html (scroll down for table)

Various graphs:
Interesting, if slightly outdated, % women degrees in science: http://www.serve.com/awis/statistics/women_degrees.jpg
Fields and their percentages: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/2006-12/figd-1.htm
More specific fields: http://www.godunov.com/gallery/women-in-science.jpg

Whatever this is..is depressing.
And yes this is old but good info.
Read Hilary Lips.
Weird article about something some guy said with some graphs in it: http://www.hwaethwugu.com/blog/archives/2005/01/index

There are numbers buried in the fluffy "oh harvard has such hard math classes" of this article: http://www.american.com/archive/2008/march-april-magazine-contents/why-can2019t-a-woman-be-more-like-a-man Pfft. We have a class like that but it's bloody mandatory is what it is.


YOU MUST READ THAT LAST LINK, really.

And then I read a male today I once admired unconditionally, but now he's clothed in his let the women fight for me fox-suit taunting me in metaphor over his being admired by palgals, talking of boobs bouncing on a beach where he's taking in a great deal of sun apparently on vacation in the fun. Whenever it gets to these kinds of taunts I kind of lose my tolerances and am left with my disappointment in someone. But you look around and realize bringing women into real intellectual equality, or maintaining too much of it generally, seems subject to the possibility some would say, " Not to worry, but babe can you get me some ice in my glass."

So this said, I think the problem is in education. And this film was a worthy place to start getting some. My girls and son said they enjoyed it.
It's about......
Voting. We are getting ready to vote here soon in a decision I suspect will really matter. Should matter, the last go round convinces me that voting, its privacy, the right itself, the privilege, the ability for me as a woman to get to do it.... rests on the work of some amazing people. Watch to learn who and how and learn your own her-story. Do this for your mom.

From the times of my great and grand parents I sat on the shoulders of giants.. As I sat thinking to define the 4th this year for me the thought VOTE-ing rights came to mind, how hard won, how essential. And then I recalled learning a great deal about that in this Sarandon narrated piece. Actually learning it this late in my days....

So I have a vote, a mind, well, yeah a blog, have the need to hear the facts and figures of leadership change in my lifetime so that a woman might be a President, look at data on women and opportunity, is a woman as likely as a man to be "expert" in any situation? Sure, uh, huh.

Oh let me share something.... I read a Newsweek yesterday on Cindy McCain. Now there is quite a bit with this piece to digest. She married him very young, he was already married proposing, her parents moneyed and in an industry heavily lobbying Congress-yeah okay there is something there... she was largely left to raise her family, if I had to define something heard over and over it was guess who wasn't helping her much.... and guess who seems to me to be really caddish-but you might argue he had his priorities/duty, she had a stroke and it appears here left to deal with it( 1st wife apparently left after crippling car wreck, pattern/ hum) , if you read the piece you see in her the very things I think have yet to be addressed about women in our times. She clearly is a very, very capable woman, and she's dressed like a pink Barbie and answering to her choice of a recipe. And she took a whale of a lot of meds after a disk issue and apparently a spouse that re-defines notions of support by not knowing...just the same if you read this, you have insights into areas that women deal with, being valued, the highest value when young and attractive, the standards applied to their behavior, what marriage and mothering roles impose, Cindy McCain suffers a stroke in a restaurant and her main thought, her first thought is that people will think she is drunk and thus she'll hurt her husband. If I were him, hearing that, I'd quit any job that kept me from her side, first, and possibly shoot myself.
Her life has so little meaning that the most frightening of things, losing walking, speech, feeling.... in a restaurant... is replaced by a desperate desire NOT TO EMBARRASS him and worry about how one is SEEN.
That to me says so much about women today. So sad.

And to hit this over the head this AM editing I'm saying do you live on a planet where say, if , let's say Bill Clinton were having a stroke his first thought, stated back later to press, would be that he feared others would see him as drunk and there by hurt his wife's career in some way. Ok, maybe not the best example. Fill in, say George Bush or if there is one Mr. Barbara Boxer. No...I think not....not on this planet. Stroke/bad, worrying during it over damaging your mate by how you look/way worse, females 100% carry this......sorry. I'll make this PINK for effect.


So yes, this is about the movie tangentially. Sorry. This film for me is an excellent place to start on a 4th re-introducing ones self to voting, the fundamental American right, what it took to bring the right to women. It might be a great place to start if you are a father of young girls, the teacher of girls, the husband of a woman, or in a relationship or friendship with a woman that shares mind, heart and hopefully their value with you.

And then, by all means, go vote this time around. Enjoy the 4th for what it really is, and get out some data and look at what women are paid, what jobs they hold, the "progress" of our times and what they probably stoically face everyday as they beautify and have to buff and botox to be seen as equal.

Thursday, July 03, 2008

"Broadly" speaking...antidada-dote




Well on my birthday I wanted to go out to see some art.

I trained in art, have a master's, so of course I like to look at it.
Chicago at the moment my current favorite place to see it. Well, next to France.
Especially in gigantic rooms of contemporary works with big white walls and if possible in the hands of Alan Bates ( yes, I know he's gone) with An Unmarried Woman playing in my mind.
I might say in the "studio" of that Alan Bates as his model or something equally ridiculous.
But fantasies, they exist. (see 2nd sentence)
That is my movie favorite, with the Silver Streak and Spinal Tap, Groundhog Day and a few others like Roman Holiday and these delightful ones too much to name.....ok ...all Woody Allen except the one he cussed was that "Deconstructing Harry leaving Sarah in earmuffs"? I think so.

It was my birthday so a decidedly unAlan Bates spouse decided on going into LA and to the new Broad endowed Contemporary building at LACMA at 5PM on a Tuesday you get in FREE,
("Sarah," said spouse says so happy "It's after 5 PM, after 5 it's free, so I tipped them 20, and that's great and we'll be doing that this summer for sure.....remember that") .....and it was essentially empty. Of people. So that was IDEAL.



When I first came to LA, unlike the now, I'd go to LACMA almost everyday (ok exaggeration)...well all the time until I wore out the rugs and welcome. It wasn't like the East coast for sure. It was kind of like trolling grandma's old closets down in Florida. A pox on here actually in a way, that small cities back east have stunning museums in comparison, I clung to it because I missed the art of youth. Frankly.
I drew there in 85-86 and sat, met, talked. I saw Steve Martin looking so cultured, and talked to him as he put in his art...anyway loved the Japanese Pavillion. I liked the recorder player that would sit in this one space outside and play classical pieces. I didn't particularly like the smell of tar in the pits. I didn't like it say like the Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, but it made me feel better.


So we went and the first thing I need YOU to know is that they built a really big thing and transformed LACMA. It's amazing. Wow. I did love the building itself, the massive escalator alone was impressive. Built by Renzo Piano. It's a pretty cool, darn cool building. I have no photos of the parts I want to share because of their "RULES." I don't like this. I couldn't take that. Enough said I will return to it....


Here was the first thing....I was shocked by the art.
For me to get shocked, that's new. Or news.
I'm going again ASAP to deal with a jumble of feelings.


The most challenging pieces for me were enormous beautiful works made from dead butterflies as cathedral windows so huge and immense...and iridescent and so full of color. I was captivated in my youth by drawers of butterflies in Pittsburgh and in New York in collections, even an expansive collection in Monterey in the Butterfly Museum. Dead butterflies as this art however rode an edge for me. Sophia says, "It was creepy."
So go to actually see this , click here and scroll till you see the butterfly work. Go on now..
Damien Hirst

I knew of Hirst from the lamb, as "Charles Saatchi's barrel-organ monkey," but this was not work I knew entirely so that was great. Right away I knew that Broad, his money, his collection were going to challenge me in some fundamental ways. Big enormous money does this. I'm reading a book called The Edifice Complex : How the Rich and Powerful Shape the World

The Edifice Complex : How the Rich and Powerful Shape the World

by Deyan Sudjic
I think it'll help me talk to my feelings about this experience.

The unbearable Lightness of Being, another butterfly work in this exhibit was in essence so profoundly harmonious, breathtaking, horrifying, almost as hot nerve pain feels-of course I'm in unbearable hot searing nerve pain right now so...it might color my impressions, the work depends on light as it reflects from the wings of the butterfly. It's a work I'd like to photograph a thousand times.
I'm hoping this links you to it.
My daughter Sylvia noted to me in no way did the butterfly death thing bother her but it was a "seriously bad day" for the butterflies. We should call this the altar to our relationship to nature I said to her, she replied back, "think of how many people will look at this." The lovely female guard and I talked on about this piece. Life is fleeting and then there is the reverence, remembrance and living on..... sealed by polyurethane polymers. Mao got sealed up rather like the lamb of this exhibit. Frankly this artist got inside my definitions of art, event, life, ethics, profane, beauty.
Pretty cool I suppose.

Suppose torture is on your mind...over romances.... and who you wish was walking with you or thinking of you isn't good to think about...or over say, your self indulgences. Well then one can look at Broad's collection of giant works by Leon Golub.
Click there to see. He's an artist I've known a longgggg time. My husband once doing works that remind me of his.
After a bit with these pieces I felt...diminished as this part of man does to us all. A speck of dirt really. His portraits were amazing. In his words:
  • (June 2001) Too many people have a sort of protective attitude about art. You know, Don't touch. It's valuable. I'm trying to be more in your face, like when you walk down the street and suddenly you encounter a situation. I'm trying to invite you into scenes where you might not want to be invited in.
  • (2000) If I had to give a description of my work I would say it's a definition of how power is demonstrated through the body and in human actions, and in our time, how power and stress and political and industrial powers are shown.
That's going to be challenging to see. It was in my younger days, it still is. Read about Leon Golub here.


So moving on...I love to see Jean-Michel Basquiat
Don't know exactly why, but his work is lighter, why that is I do not know, as the imagery isn't. But it is like scribbling for me.
Click above and look. Here is something on him as artist.
  • "I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is."
There are a lot of people refining those critical skills. There was a beautiful painting by an artist I like. Cy Twombly
in fact I rather adore his scratches. There is a great story about a woman I would fit within her if I might, not as chubby me (but as fantasy Marilyn not me) to give his work a kiss.
On July 19, 2007, police arrested artist Rindy Sam after she kissed one panel of Twombly's triptych Phaedrus. The panel was an all-white canvas, and was smudged by Sam's red lipstick. She is to be tried in a court in Avignon in October for "voluntary degradation of a work of art". Sam defended her gesture to the court: "J'ai fait juste un bisou. C'est un geste d'amour, quand je l'ai embrassé, je n'ai pas réfléchi, je pensais que l'artiste, il aurait compris... Ce geste était un acte artistique provoqué par le pouvoir de l'art" ("It was just a kiss, a loving gesture. I kissed it without thinking; I thought the artist would understand... It was an artistic act provoked by the power of Art"). The prosecution calls it "A sort of cannibalism, or parasitism", while admitting that she is "visibly not conscious of what she has done"; asks that she be fined 4500 euros, compelled to an assorted penalty, and to attend citizenship classes. The artwork, which is worth an estimated $2 million, was on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon.
So I looked at his beautiful light turquoise work entitled, Untitled 2003 and thought it was a bit like candy, a bit decadent, a bit like a paintball and entirely lovely in the space of this museum.

What I'm ashamed I like is easy.

The humor and the commerciality and the silliness of a balloon dog bigger than my house. Yes that Jeff Koons, I'm almost ashamed to talk to it. I laughed a long time over his pieces. My second son, sans actually being my son Pepe, touched his pieces. Watching the guards go nasty and watching him do this was fascination itself. He saw the work completely as toys.
See read this from wiki:

Koons has received extreme reactions to his work. Supporters claim (for Balloon Dog) "an awesome presence... a massive durable monument" (Amy Dempsey, ed. Styles, Schools and Movements, 2002, Thames & Hudson), and for other work that it is possible to be "wowed by the technical virtuosity and eye-popping visual blast" (Jerry Saltz, art critic) [4]

However, Mark Stevens of The New Republic dismissed him as a "decadent artist [who] lacks the imaginative will to do more than trivialize and italicise his themes and the tradition in which he works... He is another of those who serve the tacky rich." Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times saw "one last, pathetic gasp of the sort of self-promoting hype and sensationalism that characterized the worst of the 1980s" and threw in for good measure "artificial," "cheap" and "unabashedly cynical."

Whether Koons will be seen in time as a critical commentator in the tradition of the Dadaists and a genuine leader in the controversial tradition of the avant-garde, or merely as a fashionable purveyor of meaninglessness and banality, remains to be seen.

And I like Balloon dog, like my very own...puppy. Dada? Well maybe billion dollar Dada and I THINK that's a paradox.....paradox critic talk.wow....wow....and wow.......He's another kind of edge, the kind of Louis the 14. The kind of how much is that doggie in the window. Where art MEETS BROAD. Did you realize this is the place some feel art died? Was I also in a kind of tomb on my birthday?
Very likely. As art becomes industry and the plaything and toy of the very wealthy.
That was an overwhelming part of the experience. And I like the balloon dog, but I know he's an art porn kind of guy so I try to look away and carry this as a "need to work on it" reaction. Like restricting carbs. On Koons. (If you read the link out on the child support you'll see the thing I'm speaking to....) dada, that makes me laugh.....

I'm coming to the belief that for the super wealthy the artist is the court jester, invited and touted as the best one's MONEY can get, there as perhaps Shakespeare once was, serving their need to contextualize that they can get a pass on this serious discrepancy of have ( they too, see truth and laugh at themselves being laughed at) they are "bringing art to others" putting them "on the patron history map," preserving them and their art in their public memory tomb, just cause it's them.....we gotta know they purchase, therefore they are.
And actually, it appears this is a function within civilizations.
That we have artists collected, million dollars built into public places as Broad seeks to do insert culture into the LA so devoid of it, apparently, it is all about that jester role now isn't it?
The "I can admit my foibles" super rich-man built a house.
Well, perhaps, I saw this relationship in the work of some few of the contemporary sellers of art there. Held by the expectations of big dollars.

I liked getting under the biggest table I've ever seen. It was by Robert Therrien

Robert Therrien,



You can read about this work here.

He reminds me of Peter Charles, one of my teachers. He lived above Freda Vandervort on Euclid Ave. once in Morgantown, WV and had adorable kids. Moppets. I suspect fully grown ones now. Scale and the ordinary thrust into grand scale.... then..... was something he taught us to realize. Peter Charles was my teacher. Opps said that. One of several and a fairly important one for me. I kind of knew him a bit...more than...you might as a student. In my hometown that as I look is now not a part of his vita at all, but he taught at WVU for awhile.
Take a look at his TV .......well his concept TV. But you have to be kind of rich to get this. Oh that's art.
I'd like to encourage looking at his links to the Irvine show.

But back to the museum.
I can't show my pictures until the hardrive is figured out. Boo.
I can't delete all my photos but need to move them, my start up disk is "full" Soo...I'm forced to do this linking to Broad's web site, which is, of course beautiful.

I didn't intend to talk to every artist...but I saw a Richard Artschwager I liked. I don't know him that well but the pieces I saw were beautiful to me.
And Keith Haring...ooh...I loved him too. What great pieces he got. There is a wonderful kid's book you just must get for your kids by Haring...you MUST...

Nina's Books of Little Things (Art & Design)

Nina's Books of Little Things

by Keith Haring (Author)

So I'll stop, lots challenged me, contemporary art often feels wrong. Like new foods as a kid you get strange tastes or it takes awhile to warm up. The relationship now to sponsor, ever the issue in the making of art...screams at me. CSREAMS....and in this way for me public art so often becomes a cultural artifact about the way the rich see their power , their purchasing, their role in bringing "culture" to those like me. I get to looking from my places upward in this museum like Alice as her sizes shifted....tiny as the mouse in the big house. Feel my inadequacies, my poverties, my lesserness. It is a house that money built, now decorated.

And as jester this work is talking to our meanings.......in this way I'm re-defining what brought me to art long ago and what keeps me in this dysfunctional relationship. The symbiotic single-simpleton voice to the giant. I see this museum as climbing the beanstalk and facing the giant. Trying to get away with a gilded egg....as the speck of sand speaking and observing the ocean wave. I'll grind your bones to make my bread....fee fi ...fo....

I see art this way, this felt this way, this day in my life.


Here are the artist works I saw that I myself, the PUBLIC it was "for", was not allowed to photograph in the house of Broad's great shiny toys.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Tea Set

I found I lost...here is something to listen to again, a birthday gift.The Art of Tea

The Art of Tea Michael Franks



I think sometimes men pose in ballads sung to lady fair the question spoken roughly here perhaps, "Do you think you'll ever understand how you hurt me?" Will you ever know?
I'm positing this as being utterly imperceptible to me on the other side of then when, no, I didn't really understand, here in now....perhaps.
But anyway, I've been thinking it's an under current of some fine music lyrics from my life.
This comes up because last night on my 49th birthday , as it spun into my first new day trip around the sun, I found this present from then to now and unwrapped and listened. A surprise utterly. Can I believe something like this? Times arrow reversing as gift.

My first thought was of how I had this album in my life then, in 70's, functioning as this cool thing I listened to, sang to myself and indeed, listening from this present it is a beautiful caring light sliding into my saying, "You know I never wanted it to be like this." You know I don't, you know I didn't.

I was the kind of girl that in those years would have such a tender hearted guy that simply was able to sing Popsickle Toes to you unashamed, be so sincerely hand-holding through days and then I would go out and leave him, well it looked more like running clearly, into the company of someone hearing this very song would cause him to say it was my crappy saccharine junk and tease "my taste" with it over many years as I locked my tastes away feeding at my doing ugly over clean, the kind of girl more comfortable with accepting that pessimistic narcissistic servitude, finding it more possible that was true for me..... that being dismissed or insulted or more likely just unnoticed felt that as comfort zone in work and in play..... over this lovely heartfelt Franks listening tenderness love. Yeah, well I was in my early twenties and I left that on the floor of my life as a mess to look at now with you. But I know it. I see this as bones remaining that I must bury here for you. That love never dies I hold out frankly, true to the pun there....... as well as to the hope you still understand me.

So if you get this you find a terrific set of musicians ( yeah Joni Mitchell good) supporting him, a mellow and charming singer.
I can go on but I'm actually just through cutting some chicken here off this carcass for my one remaining cat, oh this is an ordeal in the middle of a review about a romantic set of songs. Plus this cat will leave before I get this done so that I get he's not that desperate....well these songs are light, they float as little intimate pieces,heard sparkling poems. Maybe more poem than song. It always struck me then that they spoke of love but in a way they are speaking of how it can be elusive, blue, the risks and the delights. I had an evening last night of feeling them again, trust me, at 49 you finally get that you left some of these trails. He does heavy so very light.


Would you like this? Are you a woman in her late 40's lover of Steely Dan, West Coast Jazz, cool, reader of Ferlinghetti, poor speeller, searching, artist, virtuostically unclear, do you like cezanne/chagall in a refrain, would you save the shipping label of a gift of say, this CD, the rest of your life, have you got in your things a jewelry box with little jewelery there but strange things like an old 'ball in the hole bb toy' a guy gave you one night, a gold purse from a pier, a little man made from a Brazil nut, an old corsage? Well then you might like this very much. Especially since it let you slide back into it, not like an old pair of jeans you can't fit or outgrew, but rather like the arms of an old friend you can't find and need to feel again.

Franks has beautiful meanings. This was my favorite, it seemed so like this time in my life when I was out in love blooming. I should have kept him playing, but the person sending this to me has given me back a wonderful thing. Music of love in life.
Thank you.