an elusive silver

When my mother died, most of her art supplies and tools found a new home in my studio. Among the pencil stubs, pastels, paper and jewelry tools was a jar of graphite powder. Its presence deeply comforted me. Some of my earliest memories of toddling around my mother's studio were of the little plates of powder set on her worktable just at my eye level and the stern admonishment to keep away from them. When she sharpened her drawing pencils she'd save the graphite scrapings and use it and the jarred stuff to brush soft veils of grey onto her detailed drawings. My current work uses lots of graphite, but my mother's jar is unusual. The powder within reflects a silver gray rather than the velvety black found in my own jars.

The silver tantalizes me in the same way certain shades of blue found in the sky do. My eyes are simultaneously hungry and full.

Despite the draw for this particular shade of gray, I've been unable to bring myself to use it beyond a tiny bit of experimentation without knowing I can find it elsewhere and let this particular jar stick around. Yes, I'm a sentimentalist. Is it truly Sennelier graphite as the label suggests or a rarer shade of thousands of pencil shavings? I've looked a bit from time to time without luck for the same shade of silvered grey, until a few weeks ago when an artist I spoke to mentioned Kremer's Pigments carried powdered graphite of differing shades. They do have something labeled silver graphite and it's on its way here. Perhaps it's what I'm looking for.

Body Lines

Been attending Saturday morning figure drawing at the local massage school for the last three weeks. They are the same Saturday sessions my mom used to attend 20 years ago when I was little girl left at home. In going I connect to her; our life strands crossing (weaving) as I sit in the same room and follow the same complicated dance with my(her) left hand echoing the lines and shadows found in other bodies.

There is a reconnection to my own practice as well. Anxious and scattered at the beginning of the session, my hands fumble with pencils and sharpener, but halfway through the first or second drawing I find focus [the angle is here and just so] and by end of the three hours my mind is quiet and refreshed wishing for more. The best part? Coming home with drawings I like. . .
A few of my favorites:
small scanner + big paper= weird light)

more here

I remember clearly:
weeping alone in my house
aching eyes staring
out that giant window
wanting to find it ugly,
instead it was golden green and heartbreakingly beautiful
perverse and alive.


miss you mom. there's so much you should see.

Rusulka

(re)calling, graphite and gesso, 15" x 6"

This past weekend I heard a radio program that touched me very deeply. The segment was about a Ukrainian songcatcher who records the stories women tell her through song. Some of the songs can be very old or the singers may tell their own personal stories into song weaving in metaphor, myth, and magic to relate the depth of their feelings. The periods of singing could last for hours and hours. Over time some of the spirits that dwell within the culture were sung about, one kind were the domovi house spirits, and another being the Rusalka, the spirits of women who died unjustly or very young, perhaps, unmarried women, women who died in childbirth or drowned. They are sort of nature spirits which can be benevolent or malicious, and one week a year women conduct rituals to appease the rusalki and to avoid natural disasters. Part of the week includes visiting the graves of family members and singing songs to them giving news of the present and and reminiscing about the past. Each woman in the procession has her own melody so the sound becomes a crowd of individual stories some filled with the poignant new grief of recent loss, or occasionally with the bitter words of a widow married to a long dead abusive husband.

As the Ukraine modernizes and the new generation turns to the radio for it's music, this practice is swiftly disappearing. It doesn't help that some of the some of the women interviewed were survivors of Chernobyl, a place that had a history rich with stories of rusulka and as a result these women are unable to perform the rusalki rituals in the place of their ancestors. The loss of a place once again marks the beginning of a loss of the culture.

Mariana the songcatcher also mentions that in the Ukraine the best singers are witches or fortunetellers. The word for witch meaning "the one who knows" how to heal and protect. She tells how at the age of nineteen when she traveled about listening to the songs of women, and one woman sang about Mariana, capturing her essence in song.

I am deeply interested the the ideas of women's personal stories told through song, and then mixed with ideas about reading one's essence, magic, and spirits, I am giddy. This tradition has such resonance for me as I used to sing in the woods that I explored as a child, sometimes my own heartaches, sometimes in nonsensical words, and then it has a connection to the work I've been making all along but especially to the drawings I made after my mom died. The drawing at the top is one of a series of bird drawings I began after my mom died. They all sing telling the stories I couldn't find the words for.

The program is about an hour long, but I highly recommend you to listen to it at thestory.org. The research led to a group based in San Francisco Kitka to make a CD based on these musical traditions. You can listen to two songs here. I am still absorbing the information, researching Russian folk spirits and trying to figure out what it means to me today.

Thinking of Durga

chalk on black Rives, 30"x 40"

Durga.
After a number of years, owning my scanner it wasn't until today that I finally figured out how to scan slides, I just assumed it was an awful, horrible scanner that lied on the box, but in fact it does quite an nice job, sorry scanner. Sometimes I wonder about my intelligence. It still takes awhile because I have to correct them in Photoshop, but anyway I've been scanning old work. Here is an old drawing from my first year in college. This drawing made my mom cry with pride, so it holds a special place in my heart. . .

Day of the Dead

A modified version of Dios de los Muertos was celebrated in my house this year. I am not Hispanic, or Native American (that I know of), but the holiday makes a certain amount of sense, a holiday for the spirits revolving, as all good holidays do, around food and crafts. What spirit wouldn't love a party thrown in their honor? My mom was always fascinated with the work of Frida Kahlo and the idea of the spirit world, though I'm not certain she believed in it herself, I still think she would have approved. Preparations included making some of the dishes from the messiest pages of my mom's cookbooks: Tuscan Chicken, polenta, beet and beet greens with balsamic vinaigrette, and bread pudding. So utterly delicious and filled with such bright memories of my childhood. And then as part of the festivities, I included a little more traditional bits of the holiday with a little altar of "mom" things: flowers, art tools, bread, brie, wine, and then made sugar skulls. How happy was I to find a new material! Sugar skulls are made with a mixture of sugar, meringue powder, and water pressed into a mold and inverted on cardboard to dry. I bought a skull mold and meringue powder from a local store, but you can find them (along with various saints) online here. I took photos for a short tutorial but the one on the site is more than adequate, so I'll leave them out.

Making bunches of the skulls was so meditative, mix, scoop, press, smooth, invert, dry, scoop out the innards and glue sides together. Visions of molded sugar artworks as part of art opening fare danced through my head. We decorated them at the party, such a colorful mess. . .mine turned out very minimalist in color, but still quite intricate. Here's a snapshot of one of my mom's pieces, sorry it's a not great quality image, but you get the idea. . .

charcoal on paper
30" x 40"