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Three very different things that made me smile (I’m trying to start the day off on a positive note, since I still have my pissed-off author to deal with):
beautiful, beautiful marilyn
From the NYTimes: “There is a sublime silliness to Halsman’s images that can make you laugh or at least smile regardless of how often you see them. They may offer incontrovertible proof of Schiller’s claim that ‘all art is dedicated to joy.’ Evidently the simple act of getting off the ground requires giving in to something like joy. You have to let go. One of the purest examples of this joy is an image of Halsman himself, holding hands with a smiling Marilyn Monroe several feet off the ground. Facing his partner, he seems ecstatic, as if he cannot believe his luck.” Credit: The Estate of Philippe Halsman/Laurence Miller Gallery
Second: this line from Nabokov, which has haunted me since I read it yesterday. “The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.”
And third, one minkey down, one to go:
one minkey down, one to go!
And a bonus thing that made me smile and feel all sorts of things, courtesy of an email from Marnie:
“have you seen marina abramovic’s endurance performance “the artist is present,” where she sits in chair for the entire length of her retrospective. there is a chair opposite her, and visitors sit and look at her and she looks back. the flickr group is so compelling: about 1/4 of the people are in tears.”
Here’s to an interesting Wednesday.
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There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
~~T.S. Eliot, from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
~~T.S. Eliot, from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt—a wind to freeze;
Sad patience—joyous energies;
Humility—yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity—reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel—Art.
~~Herman Melville, Art
OK, it’s imperishable or a world as Will
& Idea, a Hindu illusion that our habits continuously
Create. Whatever I think, it
Keeps changing from bright to dark, from clear
To colored: Thus before I began to think and
So after I’ve stopped, as if it were real & I
Were its illusion
~~Philip Whalen, from The Same Old Jazz
Her pencil poised, she’s ready to create,
Then listens to her mind’s perverse debate
On whether what she does serves any use;
And that is all she needs for an excuse
To spend all afternoon and half the night
Enjoying poems other people write.
~~Leslie Monsour, The Education of a Poet
Flesh of the sky, child of the sky, the mind
Has been obligated from the beginning
To create an ordered universe
As the only possible proof of its own inheritance.
~~Pattiann Rogers, from The Origin of Order
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Back in the years when I was sewing all the time, making my and my kids’ clothes and sewing quilts, that’s what I said. I sew. Yeah, I sew. Now, apparently, I’d refer to myself as a sewist. The first time I read that online, it hit my ear so badly I couldn’t read further. I thought, “sewist? that’s dumb.” But what’s the alternative? Sewer? oops. You’d have to put a hyphen in there so people didn’t think you were describing yourself as a receptacle for human waste. Sew-er. But that just looks dumb.
It’s not dumb, finding a way to transfer something to an identity statement. For physical health, it represents an important psychologist shift to move from “I have diabetes” to “I am a diabetic.” The American Psychological Association requires researchers to name the participants in their experiments as “people with X” so as not to reduce them to a condition. So it’s not dumb! I get it!
But sewist?
And then this morning I read a post on whipup.net that described specific people as makers. “On the front cover appears the work of three makers…” Some of those featured are called stitchers, and of course there are quilters and knitters and artists. The word crafters has something of a shoddy reputation (maybe that’s just me, part of my generation, speaking to glue guns and large plastic canvas stitched with gaudy acrylic yarn fashioned into kleenex box holders hello my dear former mother-in-law).
Which then, inexorably, leads to the debate between art and craft. And by craft, I mean very fine craft, not the plastic canvas craft. Craft as in American Craft. Craft that overlaps quite heavily with art. One of my pet phrases seems to be “overlapping Venn diagrams” — I’ve noticed I say it at least a few times a week, for one reason or another. There is clearly a category of handwork that stays on the crafty side of craft, whose practitioners like to shop at Hobby Lobby or Michael’s, and who undoubtedly get so much pleasure from their handwork….and that’s the point! And there is another clear category of work that stays on the art side of art – work that’s about expressing an idea, presenting a project. Work that can’t exist without highly skilled specific talents, but that is much more about expressing an idea. I adore that category. (And have you seen Art:21 on PBS? YOU SHOULD! Right! Away! You can watch it online, too, for free. I just stumbled upon it last night on streaming Netflix, already in its 5th season.)
And then there’s the larger category of the muddy middle. I adore that category too. The category of breathtaking skill and care. The category that encompasses very fine handwork in quilts, woodworking, needlework, glass, metalwork, printmaking. The category that would include Kellie Wulfsohn‘s quilts:
amazing - double-click to see the detail
The category that would include handmade chairs and tables made with the most incredible attention to detail – I’m blanking on the name of a man who recently died, one of the very best there was. Dang it. Getting old is the pits. The category also includes this: a toilet made of horse dung:
created by Virginia Gardiner
It’s not accidental that she uses poop to make a toilet – it’s part of her project. Is it art? No, but it sure isn’t craft(y) either.
Anyway. Names matter, even if they represent very slippery and porous categories. I have a daughter who is an artist – I’m not an artist. I aspire to Craft. BUT p.s., I am not a sewist. I sew.
To close on a different and hilarious note, this ad from the 1950s:
double-click to see it full size
Here’s what it says in the copy:
Does any man really understand you?
Who knows you as you really are? Does he?
Who knows the secret hopes that warm your heart?
Who knows the dreams you dream, the words you’ve left unspoken?
Who knows the black-lace thoughts you think while shopping in a gingham frock?
Who knows you sometimes long to sleep in pure-silk sheets?
Who knows you’d love to meet a man who’d hold your hand and listen … while you say nothing at all?
Who knows there was a morning when your orange juice sparkled like champagne? [what?]
Who knows the secret, siren side of you that’s female as a silken cat?
WOWIE.
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[via the essential man]
I am among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy (and obviously therefore richer than 75% of the world); I am more blessed than a million people this week; and I am more fortunate than 3 billion people in the world. Lucky much, me?
EDIT: I followed all the retweeting, retumbling, etc., and think I found the originator of the poster, here. She said she didn’t write the piece, she just created the poster. Check her out via the link.
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knitting in croatia
If you met me, you’d see a tall 51-year old woman with a big smile and bad posture. You’d hear my deep Texas accent, which I can’t seem to hide even for delicate New Yorkers’ ears, no matter how hard I try. You’d also hear about all the things I love – my dear husband and our many travels; my oldest daughter and her husband, who live in Austin; my 2nd daughter and her husband, who live in Chicago; my son who lives here in Manhattan and who is a dashing man about town; and my youngest daughter, who is a sophomore in college, far away in Texas. You’d hear about social psychology, since I have a PhD in the subject and until very recently, acquired books in social psychology for a famous university press, the one that published the very first book. Now, I am a writer and editorial consultant, and I assist publishers with market research for online product development.
You’d also hear – of course – about all the creative things I love to do, and have been doing since I was five years old. I started embroidering pillowcases during play periods in pre-school, and graduated to crochet when my Aunt Meecie (Aint Meecie, if you’re from the south) taught me how to chain stitch. I’d chain stitch my way through skein after skein of acrylic yarn, always begging my grandfather Big Daddy to run to Ben Franklin’s for more yarn. He’d grumble, then put in his teeth and make a yarn run. Gradually my handwork and creative outlets became more sophisticated, and I branched out: handwork such as knitting, quilting, spinning, weaving, lacemaking, a bit of crocheting, and sewing; photography; and baking.
Or we could talk about books! I’m always up for a discussion about any books by Rushdie, or Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, anyone? anyone? Bueller?), or Victor Hugo, or Vonnegut, or Robert Solomon, or Moby Dick, or poems by Yeats or Heaney or Milosz. Lots more – I love to read. Or we could talk about movies – I tend not to find blockbusters very interesting, but can talk til the cows come home about “littler” movies.
my other blog
Food is always an easy subject to talk about, since most people like it. My husband and I keep a food blog called Luscious – check it out! I love to bake, though when my kids were at home, I cooked big dinners every night. Now, I’m just the baker, and baking bread is one of my weekly activities, most weeks. See? I haven’t met a recipe I didn’t love to bake. My husband does the cooking for us, and he’s a wonderful natural cook, no recipes for that guy. He has a fantastic taste imagination, and daydreams about what to make us for dinner.
I also really love art of all kinds, especially the art of a young printmaker and book artist based in Chicago whose work can be found here. Check her out, and buy something!
And finally, just so you don’t think I’m all fancy Manhattan-like, my secret shames include America’s Funniest Home Videos, Poptarts, and Cap’n Crunch. I can’t stop laughing at the first one, and could eat the last two until the end of my days.
I adore your comments, and try to answer every single one. But if you want to talk off-line (well, off-blog-line anyway), feel free to email me; I also have a little business making mastheads for blogs and websites, so you can write me about that too! The icon below is a clickable link to my email address:
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