fly if you are brave

Cool air and ground just dry enough to skateboard to work.  It is mostly down hill.  A skateboard does not quite belong on the sidewalk or the street so I move from one to the other, picking the smoothest route, trying to avoid cars and pedestrians.  What a good feeling it is to be in motion.  To decide your course.  To be alert.  I pause at a cross street and to allow a row of toddlers to cross the street.  They are accompanied by an adult at either end and they all look at me as they pass.  I smile at them and one of them waves.  I felt like telling them that they can roll too if they want to.  Even fly if they are brave.

chaos and idea

Sleep hasn't been coming easy.  I close my eyes and the floodgates open.  Phrases that do not seem to be my own relentlessly voice themselves without permission.  Images of unearthly creatures clearly take shape and then flash by:  Predatory multi-armed stick men wait and leap, a giant lizard creature with flaming nostrils slinks around devouring a coliseum full of people.  I open eyes.  Shift around. Sip some water.  Close my eyes and the line that forms between my lids is like a tightrope above an infinite chasm.

Yesterday I read about the Big Bang theory.  I read about the universe beginning from something called a singularity which was immeasurably small, dense, and hot.  One theory is that a singularity exists at the center of a black hole compressed by gravity into density that we could not even comprehend.  But this is a problem because it is also believed that once there was nothing at all.  No universe.  No singularity.  Just nothing.  Think of that.  I close my eyes and try to imagine nothing but my mind is in a perpetual state of explosion.  Fearful shapes are stepping out of the void.  How far down does that go?  If I keep my eyes closed could I be brave enough to watch?  I close my eyes and my physical being is a very thin blanket shielding me from existence.  Perhaps that is all there is.  A blanket and existence.  Or a blanket and nothing.  Or just nothing.

How far down does that go?  I don't know but I want to find out.  Maybe the roughest waters are on the surface and I am not yet skilled enough to move past them.  Maybe I have to swim through them.  So far it seems that art is the only thing that allows any sort of access into my own mind.  My own singularity.  My own void.  It gives me a certain degree of confidence and strength to close my eyes and proceed.  Or open them and proceed.  To navigate through the chaos that is the birth of an idea.  I close my eyes.  I open my eyes.  I close my eyes.  I open my eyes.  

this was in my handwriting so I must have written it.....

A golden tablet
wrapped in foil
its a new thing
its a new new thing
and it tells me
that youth is currency
it tells me that pleasure
is an allowance of latitude
in the deprivation of necessity
It shows me ideals through a
sealed plastic wrapper
It shows me ideals though
the eye of a needle

Artist Interview: Brooke Weston

You primarily work with taxidermy, what draws you to this medium?

I have always loved taxidermy, I grew up with a lot in my house because my dad was a hunter.  I think more so though I always associated it with a staple in fancy homes and castles.  Its so frivolous and fancy but really kinda morbid.  I have also always collected bones, prosthetics, petrified animals, things like that.  Taxidermy has gotten really popular, I think stemming from sarcasm or kitchiness.  I think some times people like my artwork because it is trendy.  That bums me out, but maybe I am trendier than I want to admit!  People will be over it I suppose when being pseudo white trash goes out of style.

Do you have an interest in taxidermy itself or is that just a starting point? How important is that element?

I am not interested in doing the taxidermy myself.  I don't have the patience.  But I never get sick of using it as the main base of my sculptures.  However, I enjoy working with other objects too:  bones, antiques.....i have been wanting to do a series of dioramas inside fake food and put them on pedestals.  I just love to imagine small worlds in objects, I think that is the most essential part for me.

In a sense you are taking an existing object and turning it into something completely different. Is that idea of transformation important?

I have never looked at it that way.  I do like the cliche idea of taking ordinary crap and turning it into something beautiful.  Appreciating beauty in everything.

Tell me a little about your process. How do you choose an animal to start with? Is it a challenge to find the right materials?

Well, it is mostly cost that effects my animal hunting.  I am always looking for reasonable ways to find decent taxidermy.  I really believe art for me is a process of showing up for life, finding weird shit and putting it together.  When I am checked out not paying attention I lose out on the process. I don't plan ahead very much at all.  I just end up with this or that and it starts to come together.  I find there is a weird synchronicity where I will end up with a whole bunch of one thing and it starts to become an art piece.

Do you feel like you are interacting or relating something to people though your work and ideas?

Man that would be cool.  I am honestly having just so much fun when i make art, its child's play.  No heavy statement at least in my conscious.  I really hope kids like it, I always dreamed of toys and magical dioramas in everything when i was young and was so disappointed that most toys where boring.  Now I get to make all those fun ideas come true, it is probably regression.

A women told me once she thought it was great I had taken a generally male trophy and made it feminine by putting a doll house in it.  I thought shit I got to use that, that is some smart shit.

A lot of your sculptures and assemblages exist in interior settings (like the inside of a deers head). It seems very personal and guarded....does this put the viewer in a sort voyeuristic position?

At times i have felt a really uncomfortable showing work. I do feel very personal with art.  Not in a serious way, but in an embarrassing way.

How do you come up with names for finished pieces? Do they develop a personality?

Oh yeah, they get personalities for sure!  At least to me. The animal usually has an expression or a real presence I will definitely play off of.  The names are pretty silly.  I often name them after the taxidermist if it was singed.  Its usually names like Steve White, Rob Rub, Jones Denver, I love it.!

Or sometimes just little ideas I pick up along the way while making the piece.  The name of a cat at the shop I bought the mount from or the name of one of the paints I used on the piece.

Your work could be perceived in a lot of different ways....some of the settings you create seem to have a sincere charm and comfort but there is also a kind of surreal horror. Do you feel like your work is sort of conceptually open ended?

I do feel it is open ended.  I never see it as morbid really, but I see how people could.  Art for me is puking out pain and life experience the only healthy way I have been able to so I suppose a lot of darkness comes out in my artwork as well as hope and joy.  I also am really amazed when life can be mundane and boring but I can plug away at a piece every day and end up making something really imaginative. Its like a really great surprise.

Hand2Mouth Theatre, "My Mind is Like an Open Meadow"

Thirty minutes have passed.  Maybe a little longer.  I glance to my right and I can see the other members of the audience.  I can see the dark shapes of their heads and think about their individual minds and lives.  I think of their perspectives and of my own.  I think of my family and of myself.  I watch their silhouettes and follow their gaze to the stage as  my attention snaps back on the dialog between sole performer Erin Leddy and the recorded voice of her grandmother, Sarah Braveman, in her piece "My Mind Is Like An Open Meadow".

Overall, this performance is purposeful and sincere, dealing with issues of aging and its surrounding emotions.  Starting at a steady pace and acting almost as a guide to living in a constructive way but slowly wobbling farther and farther between fear and acceptance.  Momentum builds until the tipping point where everything stops and Leddy, with her sharpied on varicose veins and a pair of stockings over her face, stands still for a moment in the center of the stage.  The effect is both striking and sad but somehow seems statuesque and iconic through its silliness and senility.  The image (and the show as a whole) remind me to an extent of the Eugene Delacroix painting "Victory Leading the People", showing bravery and triumph even in moments of loss and desperation. 

After a full year of living with and interviewing her grandmother in preparation, Leddy's project takes a focused and personal form that reflects back on our own lives with themes and questions that are universal and constant.  Themes of youth, old age, and life itself.  These are well worn artistic topics but Leddy finds a tightrope of untrod ground and walks it with skill and originality.  Along with Hand2Mouth Theatre and Sarah Braveman, Erin Leddy has woven together a cohesive and multidimensional performance.

broken button

Today I am wearing my red flannel shirt that has a broken button on the left sleeve.  There is only about 1/4 of it remaining.  It is useless.  Wont stay fastened for crap.  I remember just how it happened.  It was over a year ago.  My button tried to act as a little airbag between my wrist and the concrete.  It tried.  In the emergencey room they asked if they should cut my shirt off or try to take it off like normal.  I decided to save the shirt and someone helped slide it over my mutant broken wrist.  I didnt notice the button for months.  Maybe I will fix it.  Maybe not.

Art and Beauty

What is the responsibility of an artist?  How should they make marks on a page?  Where should the line be drawn between the eyes and the mind?  What's in it for you?  Do you like it?  Yes?  No?  Is it beautiful?  Well, let's get in our boats and drop the nets in the water.  Lets see what we can catch!  And when it emerges gasping and shining and reflecting the light, lets devour it with our eyes and after it beams its brilliant rays into our brains lets devour it with our hands and feet and teeth too.  Oh, beauty.  Now we are left to re-create you.  Now we are left to laminate your remains.  Now we are left with the bones of a saint.  Or did we get ripped off?  Are those just the bones of some small animal?  Oh well, we paid for them either way and goddammit, now they are going up on the wall.
Tell me about beauty.  Tell me about the line between sight and judgment.  Paint and thought. Intent and outcome.  Skill and boredom.  Now and then.  You and me.  Tell me about all of the lines in beauty's face.  Tell me about all of the lines.  What is the responsibility of an artist?  To cross them.