Come On Get Crafty: Christmas Card?

I needed to mail a friend something in a larger envelope.  But I was worried that it would get bent in the mail, so I wanted to include a card.  But one can't include a card without decorating it!  So I did a simple design, inspired by this idea. 

I chose a yellow card so that my writing on the back would show up easily.  I chose red as my primary scrap color because it is almost Christmas!

Merry Christmas friend!

Come on Get Crafty: Coffee Rings?

A couple weeks ago I started fooling around with card making again.  I had this sort of idea of circles colliding but also being undefined, so that's what I was pondering while making this one.

Once again I think I over embellished it.  I think the shading on the edges pulls focus from the circles and reduces their prominence, when really I wanted them to stand more starkly alone in space, like planets.  I have got to stop second guessing myself.

Sketch: Billy Burke's face

I am always fascinated by the lines and contours of people's faces. One of my English professors had the most amazing lines and bone structure in her face, I remember spending a lot of time in class trying to sketch her face and capture how the different sections of her face fit together in my mind. (She also was a really good professor, it was one of my favorite college classes and she introduced me to Kate Chopin.)

Haha, this is sounding a little weird and kinda serial killery but I promise I like people's faces the way they are!

As an example of what I'm imagining here is a little sketch I did of Billy Burke's face from one of the many times he was being serious on Revolution. It is really hard get the eyes and his awesome frowny eyebows right so I skipped them on this attempt. His hair is also a bit inaccurate and was not as interesting to me. 

P.S. Yes, I watch Revolution.  No, I'm not proud and I am constantly on the verge of quitting it.

Says the Internet: Do a lot.

Again, I was reading this article (a while ago now) that a friend had been circulating on facebook, advising us creatives to take a look.  The article has some good advice or "survival hints for young creative weirdos."

One of the author's hint made me pause and reflect as again I was made aware of my attitude towards creativity and productivity, and that attitude was challenged:

"Do a lot. This may seem like strange advice, but I mean it — do a lot. Write a lot, paint a lot, shoot a lot of film, take a lot of pictures, dance a lot, sing a lot, whatever the thing you do is, do it a lot. You have to get limber and skilled, so that when you have an idea, you can manipulate it and do the work part of the work. The idea is sort of the balloon in a balloon animal; you have to have it, and it has to be strong, or else there's nothing. But you'll be distinguished more by your handling of it than by the thing itself, and the best way to do that is to do the thing you do a lot."

Growing up with parents that had expectations of excellence in everything their children did, but also a potent, unspoken hierarchy for the which areas of interest took precedence, I always struggled with deciding what exactly to pursue.  As a person naturally interested in a lot of things, I was (and still am) frequently immobilized when faced with the choice of what interest or passion to explore.

The pressure to invest either all or nothing into a select few (productive) interests or activities may have indeed shut down a lot of my creative impulses.  If I wasn't able to or sure I wanted to commit 110% to something, well then, I'd better not bother with it at all (because I clearly wasn't interested enough) and rather focus more on something useful like learning algebra or operating a power drill. (Not that those thing are not important or useful.)  Combined with my natural shyness, I think this pressure drove me to just categorically refuse to engage with things (like dance, art, photography, economics) that peaked my interest but were never given a chance to fully flesh out or dwindle away.

Come On Get Crafty: Card by Gran

I've mentioned in the previous post that my grandmother paints and makes cards.  I've posted one of the cards she's made for me (see here), but I wanted to share one of her watercolors and another of my favorites.

I believe that she copied the design from an image she saw in a magazine.  It is so beautiful, and makes me really want to learn to paint!

In the Papier: Cape May Inns & Landmarks by Alice Steer Wilson

While visiting the Carriage House Tearoom in Cape May, I of course browsed the adjoining gift shop for the Physick Estate.  And of course, I happened upon some stationary (yes, more stationary!) that I couldn't leave without.

The buildings in Cape May are beautiful and these cards (prints of original paintings) really captured their beachy suniness, the delicate and grand architecture, and attractive Victorian aesthetics.  I was really glad to have the likenesses to remember and admire the place.

These paintings were all made by a local artist named Alice Steer Wilson, who painted in Cape May from the late 1960s until 2001.   You can see more of her artwork and learn more about her at the commemorative website www.alicesteerwilson.com.

These paintings also reminded me of the watercolors my grandmother paints, so makes them even more enjoyable for me.

Friends w/ Skillzzz

In my bid to revitalize my blog after neglecting it for two months I am going to cheat and spend a post praising my friends.

I am some friends with some pretty cool skills.  Some of them are wonderful artist, whether professionally or as hobbyists.  Some of them are comedians and actors in plays in NYC and Chicago.  Many of them work behind the scenes on documentaries, films, and webisodes.

Here I will celebrate a few of them whose exploits I happen to have at my finger tips.

1.  My awesome college roommate is an all-together sweet and kind person, fantastico student & friend (who tolerates my wackiness with glorious patience and grace), and is in the process of applying to med school to become a psychiatrist.  But she also dabbles in painting and gave me this groovy, zany, personalized painting-- one of the best presents I've ever received--- for Christmas!  (P.S. I love butterflies!)

2.  I think of my friend Heidi Celeghin as my debonair artist friend.  Because she is super smart, understands WAY more of art theory and technique than I do, and she is making her way as an artist and art instructor--- which is SO COOL!  Here is one of my favorite of her paintings:

She also drew Guy Pearce for Interview Magazine.  So you know she is pretty awesome. (Also check out her writing, especially Fish Food.)

3.  My friend Ania guest posted a while back.  She has some serious photography skills that I wish I had. 

I especially love her nature photography.























Oh yeah, and she also does all this cool photography while doing an MD/PHD. Crazy, amazing gal!

4.  Comedian Zack Mast is a pretty funny guy.  He writes lots of funny stuff but two of my favorites are his review of lobster and his review of Tower Heist (spoiler: he didn't like it).  I also love his more observational pieces (can't find the links at the moment . . . blogger fail.)

5.  One of my friends, Linda, works on this webseries: Dating Rules from My Future Self.  The episodes are only minutes long but still entertaining, funny, and unexpectedly plot-packed!  So no excuse not to check it out.

So yeah, my friends have super skillzzzz.

In the Papier: Very British, Very Fun

I tried to resist this box set from Barnes & Noble (published by teNeues), and I succeeded for a while.  But eventually the world re-aligned and I used my one frivolous stationary purchase/month (one of my New Years Resolutions).





































I love how iconic they are in so many ways.  And full of not-stuffy nostalgia.  And generally, lots of fun.





































These Tula Moon cards feature the work of artist Steph Dekker, a designer and jewellery maker from Liverpool, who loves the colours, patterns, fabrics, quits and crafts from the 50s, 60s, and 70s (according to the box).

In the Papier: Fans Fans Fans

I bought this card for myself.  It is really pretty and I don't want to send it to anyone.  I want it all for myself.

So selfish!

The card is by Sharyn Sowell, for Sunrise Greetings.

Rant: Clothing 'compliments'

This many sound self-indulgent and whiny but I've been in a bit of a conundrum.

While I don't consider myself a fashion adventurer or even a trend-setter by any means, I guess I do dress a little unconventionally.  What I really enjoy doing the most with clothes is celebrating beautiful colors, textures and patterns and seeing which complement each other, and taking conventional rules of dress and seeing how much one can play with them without really transgressing those boundaries.  For example, gotta wear a collared shirt, because that is what is "professional"?  How can I satisfy that requirement but do it in fun way that adds more color and life to my experience and feels right?

So whatever, I end up dressing a bit "unconventionally," but without being too crazy or subversive (as much as I'd really love to), in my opinion.

As a result, I frequently get comments on my outfits, and sometimes my make-up.  It is usually a simple, 'I like your outfit." or "Your top is really pretty."  or "Those shoes are cool, where did you get them?"  Pretty standard fare, polite and small-talky, and easy to respond to.  Although recently a clerk in the grocery store decided it was normal to scream at me from several aisles away: "MISS I LOVE YOUR LIPSTICK!!!!!!! IT IS REALLY PRETTY."  That was a bit disconcerting for me as well as all the other customers who then proceeded to stare at me.

In the Papier: Pigmented Insects

I love stationary.

I love sending letters and notes to people. I love writing addresses on envelopes and sticking on the stamps. But best of all, I LOVE sending people letters and notes that are a visual party. Stationary and note cards feature some really beautiful, funky and creative art, full of cool colors, shapes, images, interpretations and materials. It is so enjoyable to receive provoking visuals in the mail along with the latest news from your pals, and it is so enjoyable to browse the stationary stores and aisles until you find something you think your correspondents will get a kick out of or really really love. I still have many many cards people have sent me over the years either because they are beautiful or because I can tell the person put a lot of thought and effort into picking a card they knew I would really love or would really speak to me.

So much love can go into that simple, little physical packet of paper.

As such, I'm going to start sharing with you some of my finds, starting with these cards featuring insects against some gorgeous colors. I've started to get really into butterflies, so I think that's what drew me to these initially when I picked these up at Michael's off one of those $1 stands. They are a little cheap-looking, but still very pretty.


The orange one is easily my favorite.


These are done under the label "Studio18" by Rachel Tribble, and distributed by International Greetings USA.

Come On Get Crafty: Drop in the Bucket

After doing some work with all the triangles, I wanted to try some curved lines.

I really liked the shape that I cut from Paltrow's picture, especially with such a substantial block of orange to work with.After I finished this one, it really made me think of a regal retinue of fine ladies for some reason. I mean, all these women are like modern-day royals or courtesans, aristos, "ladies," whatnot. The border around them kinda looks like flames or streaks of light, almost as if they had been painted into a retinue of holy people to whom we should pay homage, like queens or saints. And we kinda do act like that towards celebrities.

But then thinking about this, as I started to add the drops of polish--- mostly to experiment with colors initially, I thought to myself: "if these are the queens and courtesans, well, this is just a drop in the bucket." Because there are so many other celebrities and beautiful women we pay attention to!

And to go off on a bit of a tangent, that word "celebrity" sounds so horrible and unromantic the more and more I use it. It gets right down to the bare-bones of the matter: these are people who are celebrate, whose most defining descriptive element is that people pay attention to them. It doesn't allow them any other attributes. The word lacks the descriptive finesse that something like "queen" (connoting power, wisdom, responsibility, divine right) or "courtesan/courtier" (touching on class, relationships, political and cultural status) or even "artist" (highlighting talent, insight, sacrifice, beauty & philosophy)--- which is essentially (arguably) what they are (these ones anyway) or try to be. I wish sometimes we could use other words to distinguish those celebrities celebrated for specific merits from those whom we just consider "famous-people" whose central focus is the mere banality of "fame."

Photogsnazzy: Depression Bread Line, by George Segal

As I've said before, I don't know much about sculpture, but one of my favorite sculptors is George Segal.

He is well-known for his "Depression Bread Line" which just beautifully captures the pathos of 30s poverty.

Pics taken at the Ground for Sculpture.

He is also featured in the wonderful work he did for the FDR memorial in Washington D.C.

I think I feel a kinship with the dash of melancholy and bleak anonymity his style often gives his subjects. There is something very New Jersey (tri-state?) about it to me; Segal lived in New Jersey for 60 years. My writing professor once described my writing as: "You have Beauty & Nature versus, for lack of a better word, New Jersey." That's not exactly how I see it, but there is something of that going on in me, and perhaps in Segal as well.

Photogsnazzy: King Lear, by J. Seward Johnson

I don't know much about sculpture, and this artist had many other, different sculptures around the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ, but I was very taken with this 20ft metal depiction of King Lear. Something about it captures the forlorn, weary despair about the classic character yet retains its regal dignity and moral certainty.

I was very much fascinated by the haunting face and eyes.

Can the Beholder be wrong?

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," we say.  And to at least some extent, this is true.

Once the objet d'art is created and displayed, the artist certain retains little control over its reception, interpretation and perhaps most importantly, its being understood.  We all blithely concede that each person who looks upon a painting with not depart from the viewing with the same impression of the piece or with duplicate feelings and emotions stirring within them.  One onlooker views the Mona Lisa or a Picasso or Warhol or Pollack and thinks it a pleasing enough work of art.  Another finds himself overcome, tears pouring down his face.  A third, while understanding the artistic merit and historical relevance, thinks the entire thing quite ugly and shudders to think of it hanging above her sofa.  [A fourth, perhaps we can imagine, just doesn't 'get' this whole art business and silently contemplates the dullness of this entire outing.]

Now, my dilemma is this: does this apply to the written word and narrative?

Generally speaking, does not an author compose his prose with a certain thesis, theme, exploration, or conclusion in mind, however general?  Is there not always something the reader is meant to realize, do, or understand?  This can be as specific as after reading this essay or watching this documentary one should ban the Twilight series from all school reading lists and libraries, or it might be as general as, after reading this novel or viewing this film, one should be reflecting upon one's attitudes toward love--- but what is fundamental is that this "it" is always there.

Therefore, one can actually leave a work of prose or narrative with an impression or understanding of the work's meaning (purpose, theme, thesis, moral etc.) that is, in fact, wrong.

As an example, I shall recount an event that inspired me upon these reflections:

I recently watched an excellent television miniseries, a costume drama that follows the life of a upper class British family from 1870s until the 1920s.  Presupposing the work's lovely cinematography, dumbfounding,  stunning costuming and cast as a given, what is most extraordinary about this series is its delicate handling of its two central characters: a rich, profoundly repressed, and jealous young man who and the young, beautiful, artistic, poor woman who naively marries him to relieve the temporary financial burdens of her father's death.  As expected the marriage quickly turns sour, fraught the inherent unsuitability of the partners, the husband's fervent but repressed passion for his wife, her deadening depression and unhappiness, the complete inability of either to communicate with the other, complicated by the husband's obsession with viewing their relationship in terms of ownership and rights--- a view that is sanctioned by society's rules, both social and legal.  Both parties do rather horrible things, but with the cards so stacked against her, I think it is fair to say, as one character does, "I rather think she has suffered more."  Regardless, the beauty of the series is its ability to keep the viewer from completely villainizing either character.  Somehow it manages to keep an adulteress and a rapist profoundly sympathetic, and as it took such pains to do so, I assume that one of the main aims of the narrative is to reveal the complexities of a failed marriage, explore the incompatibilities of people with different understandings of love, and the devastating and destructive nature of Victorian views of marriage and wifely obligation and husbands' rights.

So, I was greatly taken with this series, considered it a triumph, a great success, and consequently suggested it to my mother.

One can imagine my astonishment when she reports back to me her complete lack of sympathy for the wife.  She found her completely unsympathetic, and generally, she brings all her suffering upon herself due to her "not trying at all to make her marriage work."  I tried to counter that she does try somewhat, and that as the early months of their marriage is skipped over we can probably assume that she probably tried more and also had to recover the the sheer shock of discovering the true jealous, repressed and misunderstanding nature of her husband, and that she does acknowledge becoming both cold and apathetic but being too depressed to rise to the occasion.  I also pointed out that her husband not only generally smothers her and misunderstands her, but is completely incapable of considering her wants more than superficially (especially as they are usually counter his own), yells at her and berates her, bars her from seeing her friends and plots behind her back to essentially hoard her to himself in a secret house in the country.  My mother's response: well he buys her all those nice things, and he only does those terrible things as a reaction to her apathy and coldness.  She doesn't even try to communicate with him or make him or herself happy.

I am, in short, flabbergasted in that my mother has watched the same miniseries as I and come away with an impression not only completely opposite my own, but completely opposite what I perceived to be the fundamental message and purpose of the narrative itself.  For example, the fact that the husband attempts to win his wife over by showing her with gifts, in my book, cannot be used in his defense because the film uses those very actions to demonstrate his inability to understand her, his inability to express himself outside of the terms of ownership, and his inability to consider her desires above his own.  The man literally rapes his wife (or as he probably understands it, demands his husbandly privileges) and then buys her a ruby necklace in the morning, and cannot understand why this does not remedy their frosty relationship.

My mother's considering the wife not only unsympathetic, but completely at fault for the failed marriage due to her frigidness and lack of wifely effort is not just in opposition to mine, but is actually the incorrect way to interpret the narrative and not what it intends the viewer to conclude.  She is wrong.

But is she?  Can one have an incorrect interpretation?  This returns me to my original concern.  Is beauty in the really eye of the beholder.  My mother and I have found different and opposing 'beauties;' can they coexist?  Or can the beholder view the thing entirely wrong? In some cases of art we seem to say, "Yes of course!  You completely misread that passage!" and other times we seem to say "No, of course not.  It is up to interpretation."  Does the answer to this question lie with the artist's intent?  If the artist intends degrees of interpretation, then interpretation cannot be wrong or incorrect, but if not, and he desperately tries to steer the beholder to see things from a certain vantage point (a practice around which filmmaking and narrative I think revolves and excels in mastery) interpretations based on an extremely distorted point of view can be wrong.  Or do we hold fast to the maxim of beauty-finding being the sole privilege of the beholder?

Or more perplexing even still, if we take a leaf from the book of Oscar Wilde, is all this disagreement really just an expression of some discordant element in the worldviews of my mother and I?  Wilde writes: "It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors."  So, perhaps, neither of us wrong.

Although, I can't help but feeling, as most probably do, that when it comes down to it, I am right and that the makers of the series would agree with me.