3:47 PM, not Naptime, not Morning Time. It’s Pig Time. Cartoon Time. Jack and Fiona are watching Charlotte’s Web 2, the volume low, the babies quiet. Fed blackberries, turkey and cheese crepes, blueberries, a piece of bran muffin, just as I was writing this there is a scuffle, Fiona is in Jack’s space. I have to tell her to get back in her spot, they each have a table and chair. I bring out more berries, a few crackers and juices in cardboard boxes with the little straws. They are content again, but I’m still not sure how much time I have to write. The dishes need to be done and the dinner cooked. I had some time to paint today. Naptime paintings. The babies had a good long nap, even when I heard one of them wake up crying, I waited till the crying stopped before I went in. Now Jack has moved next to Fiona, which is fine because she’s at a two-person table. They are being very cute right now. “No mine” Fiona says. “No My water” Jack says. “Mama”. Here comes Fiona. Then Jack. Fiona asks for more. “Show me” I say, then open the fridge. She points to several things. “You want this?” “No” then when we get to the cheese, she takes two slices, but it could be because she enjoys separating the cheese from the white paper. Jack takes a piece of crepe, he peels it off the thin plastic sheet, takes a bite, “Mama eat” hands it to me. Now they are both activated, maybe it was the sugar from the juice and berries. They are running around. Fiona is standing up on her little green chair. “Sit down” I say from the kitchen, “no” she says. Now they are watching T.V. again. Peaceful again. The sky is grey, the California Red Bud covered with white blossoms. Time to start dinner, gather the trash, put to the curb, do dishes, and put away clean laundry from the other day. Just as I finish writing I hear a bang, a fall, and my little girl is now in my lap eating a frozen stick of yogurt with a fat bloody lip. It happened from climbing up a step stool I left out so they could reach the books. But they decided to climb higher, to the shelf the TV sits on. The End.
Tag: art
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I’m doing something really bad right now, something that I normally wouldn’t do. It’s naptime, 1:28PM and I just made myself a hot cup of joe and it’s good. I never drink coffee after 10:00AM because of insomnia, but I’m so tired from last night, not sleeping well after the Room Opening I said “what the hell, I’ll take my chances for a soothing cup of coffee in the afternoon, the quiet afternoon. Now I want to go paint, but I need to write. Painting writing painting writing shit. It’s easier to drink coffee when I’m writing. But if I don’t paint and the babies get up from their nap and I have an uncontrollable urge to be creative and I start getting resentful of the babies, wait, calm down, I’ll bring some stuff up here and painting can be our afternoon activity. It’s settled then. Me and myself need to have these conversations, we need to run through all the different scenarios, it’s not sane. I wish I was normal. OK back to why I need to write. I should start off by telling you that nothing in my last post, “Anxiety” that I wrote yesterday prior to the opening, about things that I was worried about were worth worrying about.. But just because I know this doesn’t mean I won’t worry again.
The GAP show at Room Gallery looks amazing, all four of my solo works were chosen to be hung, I try to keep my ego out of stuff but here it is. I wanted to show those paintings badly. I received much interest and positivity about my work, but no sale so far. The other solo work hung, by Carl and Verad looks great too, and the collaborative pieces and Dis/locations Book Collection look great. It all looks great.Great.Great.Great. But something else happened last night, there was real interest in what we were all doing, in us as a group of artists connected and working together and apart. It brought an energy to the gallery. Inquisitiveness, the book collection brought the visitors inside the show. It allowed them to interact with the art. It was really great and broke the ice. Visitor participation. The next opening in April I’m hoping we can do an interactive art piece with the visitors. I can’t believe I just drank that whole cup of coffee. And I used the word great five times in the past three sentences.
Last night we walked in to the gallery a little after six, there were already a lot of people at the show. Jack ran in looking at all the people, some familiar faces, some not. Fiona was more reserved and I wondered if it had to do with her hearing aids, the gallery has high ceilings and the volume of conversation was high. They both looked at the art, especially the Dis/locations book collection. The picture on the front of one of the books is the babies’ grandpa. He was my mom’s dad, he died when I was very young. He was adopted and worked as a car salesman. That’s all I know about him. I found the picture in the box of old photos from my mom’s house that I’ve been using to paint from for years, but never actually used physically in a piece. The day Alvaro, Carl, and I met up to work on some collabs I brought the picture. Carl said he wanted to use the picture in something. I was stoked, I think it’s such a cool picture too. So here it is on the front cover of our collab Gap book “Yellow” displayed in the gallery. This is the kind of information I wish I was able to tell people in the gallery at the opening. I find myself being vague and generalizing when talking about the works to visitors. I see that now. It’s hard under pressure to remember these interesting, personal details. Grab onto something personal. An intimate detail and tell the story. Next time.
The babies, Lindsay, and I had gone out dinner and cocktails before the gallery opening. The babies didn’t have cocktails! There was a table beside us with a lady named Jean from Chicago and her Daughter and son-in-law. Jack was taken by Jean. He noticed her right away and called her grandma. He looked at her and covered his hands over his face. She did the same and they started playing Peek-A-Boo. Her hands were worn with age, her body shrunken, her hair grey, her smile beautiful, her eyes and spirit like the warmest spring day. Jack threw her his Blue Blue, with his little tiny baby hands, and his wet, plump, baby face, and his sparkling eyes. Jack and Jean made a connection. Despite their age difference and unusual meeting place. Later Jean and her daughter and son-in-law stopped by the gallery. I had told them about the opening, that was where we were headed. I started talking to Jean outside the Gallery, we made a connection, she told me all about how her daughter wanted her to move out here to California, and how she didn’t want to leave Chicago. That it was a great city and I had to go. Then she started telling me about the babies she met at the restaurant, I said those are my babies, and we started laughing. She hadn’t recognized me from the restaurant. Which is understandable, it’s dark in there and I was sitting with my back to her back, turning to talk only a few times. It was great (this word again) to get out into the world and socialize and get to have Jack and Fiona experience it with me.
I hear the babies waking up now. They didn’t sleep long. Maybe they’ll go back to sleep? I’ll have to end my post now anyhow. I want to write my proposal for “The Peace Book” a part of the GAP Dis/Locations book project. If you’re an artists and you’re interested in participating in this project let me know! I will post the full concept soon, but my vision is that the book circulates all around the world, drawing attention and support for parts of the world suffering from endless wars.
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“Le Bruit noise with imitative effects, was introduced into art ( in this connection we can hardly speak of individual arts, music, or literature) by Marinetti, who used a chorus of typewriters, kettledrums, rattles and pot-covers to suggest the ” awakening of the capital”; at first it was intended as nothing more than a rather violent reminder of the colorfulness of life. In contrast to the cubists or for that matter the German Expressionists, the futurists regarded themselves as pure activists. While all “abstract artists” maintained the position that a table is not the wood and nails it is made of but the idea of all tables, and forgot that a table could be used to put things on, the futurists wanted to immerse themselves in the “angularity” of things- for them the table signified a utensil for living, and so did everything else.” {Excerpt from Richard Hueslsenbeck: En Avant Dada: A History of Dadaism (1920)}
The idea of all tables. Idea of all paintings, all art, all cups, of a cup of coffee. Try to imagine every cup of coffee being drank right now at this moment all over the world, the different kinds of mugs, types of coffee, settings, different people drinking that cup of coffee, how enjoyable the sips are, think of that moment, now this one, as a collective moment happening to many people at one time all over the world. I take a sip of my water, enjoying my moment, 2:04 PM, Tuesday afternoon. Jack and Fiona sleeping, house quiet. Having a collective moment with all the other moms whose babies are napping right now. The idea of all naps being had right now all over the world. What a wonderful thought, soft relaxed faces, closed eyes, serenity.
I’ve begun reading “The DADA Painters and Poets” An Anthology, Edited by Robert Motherwell. It’s an excellent book. I’m enjoying it, although it’s dense. Lots of ideas, stories, varied; a collection. A collective. A community. A lot of what the DaDa’s talked about was group participation or groups gathering, being united. For example this is #1 under DaDa demands by Hauelsenbeck and Raul Hausemann, “The international revolutionary union of all creative intellectual men and women on the basis of radical communism.” {Pg. 41 Dada Painters and Poets.}
A lot of what the Dadas did and talked about was very political, banging pots and pans to “awaken the capital”. They were participating in the larger world conversation, anti- war, anti- fascism. The question from “Dada Here and Now” Can art successfully challenge a fixed mindset?” Maybe. Participation, by speaking out, voting, standing on the corner with signs, and banging pots and pans, may not change the extreme people, but it might inspire others to take action. The problem with visual art is to change mindsets means people need to see the art. Yes, the answer is yes, but the art needs to be shown, lots of people need to be able to see the art. Not just other artists. And the only way to answer all of the questions posed by “Dada Here and Now” is for the public to see the art. A lot of what Dada artists talked about was this, access to art. Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings opened the Cabaret Voltaire which was a nightclub in Zurich, Switzerland. It opened in 1916 for “Artistic and political purposes.” It was a place for artists and performers to get together, show art, do performances, and talk politics. We need that now, and if there were such places, the general population would be more familiar with art, more artists would connect, more change would be talked about. So it can’t just be art alone that inspires change, it’s the discussion as well.
It is about the discussion, the process, the experience, not the outcome. There may be no solution or answers to any questions. “The Dadaist, as the psychological Man, has brought back his gaze from the distance, and considers it important to have shoes that fit and a suit without holes in it. The Dadaist is an atheist by instinct. He is no longer a metaphysician in the sense of finding a rule for the conduct of life in any theoretical principles, for him there is no longer a “thou Shalt”; For him the cigarette butt and the umbrella are as exalted and as timeless as the “thing in itself.” {Pg.42 Dada Painters and Poets.} There is no obligation for artists to do anything, the present moment is the most important thing. It’s the only way to stay in a creative state, the moment I start worrying about my closet, I need to clean my closet, I am no longer effective in the studio. Or if I worry, I need to be painting, I am no longer effective in cleaning my closet.
Now all I want to do is paint for my remaining thirty minutes of nap time. But I don’t know if I really have time. What would the dada’s say? What would a dada do? Get back to the present.
It’s February 2nd, 2016. It’s cold today, with moments of sunshine. It was bright and I thought of all the beautiful wild flowers that will bloom. The ground is damp and mossy from all the extra rain from El Nino. The deciduous tree branches still bare. Jack and Fiona had there two year doctor visit today, I made it a special day, starting at the indoor mall playground, they were so good, they went crazy for the rides, but I only had a dollar, enough for one ride. They still had fun jumping into all of the rides. I bought them each a stuffed animal, Jack a Panda and Fiona a seal, the kind with those big giant eyes. Jack and Fiona were super excited to see the doctor, but Jack still wouldn’t let her check his ears, mouth, or eyes. He cried, I’m laughing, a big tough boy like he is, Fiona welcomed the doctors examination, She does have an advantage, she’s been going to doctors getting her ears examined on a regular basis since she was three months old. Alan got to leave work early and met us at the doctor. After, we went for Indian , Jack and Fiona’s favorite kind of food. They sat in their boosters and ate basmati rice, spinach, naan bread, and mango lassies. Alan and I were able to eat our entire meal without stressing. It was pretty cool. I am yearning to be creative right now, the babies will be waking up soon and I need to get ready for them! I am collectively getting ready for the evening housewife shuffle with all the other housewives out there at this moment. It’s not just about my moment, it’s about the idea of the moment, the moment of getting dinner ready, getting the children ready for bed. A moment that will never happen again, not the same way.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 