Can You See

The little blue heeler?

The little homunculous?

Happy!

Lackaleeen

Is this not a striking similarity? Lackaleen has been in and out of my artwork for years. I guess I have never told her that she figures into my paragon of an aesthetic show of women's strength.

By the by:

http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=2

Cate?

This one is based on a picture of my cousin Cate outta South Bend, Indiana, based, I say, based, on her, she's a fresh little posie, and this portrait seems like a depiction of a haggard Brittney Spears in 4-5 years. Sorry cuz.

The first doll

This is the first doll I ever made. I had been racking my brain trying to figure out how the whole thing works and then I learned the sew-then-turn-inside-out trick and I was on my way.

On this one, the 11 year-old me used a red nylon that had a run in it for the head, and lots of jazzy, cool fabrics for the costume.

My mother did not like that (#*$&%@) sewing machine, but she showed me the things I needed to know--how to gather, surge, threat the machine, and I am grateful for that. Fabric and thread are mostly harmless materials, yet so dynamic.

Doll. . . (parts)

Dolls: Why? I don’t know. But they are dolls, that’s the name that our history has come up with—a way to call something that looks like a female but 1/8 the size and not alive. . . So many forms: corn cob, fabric, puppets, marionettes (puppet master—why do we want to do a thing like that?) a doll of a twig, or plaster, moving dynamically, pulled to zero velocity—and, these dolls, the ones I make, are a certain thing. For some, they are not important, for others, they are special objects. The latter are the people who buy the dolls. They see her, they want her, they have to be with her. Have to have her be with them.
Imagination was a large contributor to my primitive childhood. Surrounded with blocks and pencils and paints and all of those games that you accrue during the duration, the babies held a more primordial reality suspension for me. Children always play what they imagine adult life to be (Fischer Price cash register, anyone? I didn’t have one, but god what I wouldn’t have given--perhaps as many as five (5) red coin shaped pieces of plastic- so real!), and for me, taking care of the plastic babies seemed important. We had a game where we went around rescuing children from unpleasant circumstances and using toilet paper to cast and recast their broken limbs.
And, memorably, I was once trying to make half a living selling these at craft shows, and I was going to college and living on the cheap so I spent some time making the ancestors of what I make now, and one night at about 12 AM, I had finished yet another doll. I sat back and stretched and looked at the fruit of my labor; row upon row of shiny pretty dollies! All staring at me from between the gaps in the weave of the muslin—an ARMY OF BEAUTIES! My minions!
And anyway, my point is that I love it that sometimes people really love these gals. That is neat—it makes me feel like a hippie. That they are assembled and weigh something, and that they are aesthetically interesting makes them an exceedingly easy pleasure to enjoy for people who are susceptible to sensory information, which we all crave to some degree. But really, type q people don’t givem a second look, type p people drag their whole shopping party down because they just have to look closer.
These, incidentally, are arms and bodies. Hanging out.

Dolls

Back to the Future

Marty's like, "Doc, what's happening, why are there two mes?" and "We have to make my parents get it on so I can exist." And Doc says, "where we're going we don't need roads."

"you must be extremely careful not to run into your other self."

--Doc Brown

PS. Aparently 2015 is going to be hella cool--(hella-ha!) hover cars and boards and jackets that dry themselves off and announce it in a robotic voice.

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Bird Clock

Apparently the Funky Mutt of Asheville, which features my clocks, also veers into bird world. This is definitely a bird on a dog clock, but I think it worked out pretty well. I love that tatted lace. So cool.

Passion Flowers

My passion flower won't bloom. It's not a metaphor for my mental state or love relationship, as in my song, "Thinking about cutting this passion flower down", which actually wasn't a metaphor either, just a proclamation of how poorly the thing was doing at the time, I want flowers from Mars and they just won't bud! And they (the internet) say do nothing, it's a weed, it has its own propagation at the top of its to-do list, but, what? Why? Why won't it turn to flowering?

Also, if you'd like to buy anything at all, send me a comment and I'll try to figure out a way to get in touch. These are all for sale, so step right up. Also, on the topic of copywriting, everything here is copywrit. I. N 2008. Just in case.

Also, it's so nice to see that people actually look at this thing. I got a sitemeter, and it's true--I'm not just out here in the abyss, floating along.

Blueface

Just a little thing. No big deal, just a doodle, like I had some extra paper and thought I'd put it together into something, a face, but just a cartoon, just a little bit of something, just a bite, just a bit, nothing special, just a lullaby of no such thing, merely a gnat, a curio, just a little dash of sompinorother. No biggie, just a little. . . blueface.

Just Funny

Django. With a real lampshade. And a sandwich, his favorite toy.

Work in Progress

Before, and. . .

Cleopatra

And the final product.

You may be thinking that this woman, with the witchy gaze, piercing your soul, cannot be named something as feminine as Cleopatra. That is because, many times, when we think Cleopatra, we inevitably think of that 70’s remake where Cleo is adorned in gold and eyeliner and a slit in her skirt up to the crotch. But, actually Cleopatra, it is said, despite her sheer sexuality, used a snake to kill herself. She picked up a wriggling serpent, and put it’s fangs into her arm—thereby rejecting her fate. That’s not an act for the faint-hearted and I can see the subject of this piece doing the same. So, I think it’s apt. Asp.

Go USA!

Just a reminder:

The Declaration is the document from our history that sets the goal of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" for our nation. It states in part, "When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security."
And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."

And just imagine if old Donny Trump and the tycoons and the throw-away rich mutually pledged to each other their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.
SACRED HONOR?!

Silkworms

The hurt you embrace becomes joy.
Call it to your arms where it can change.

A silkworm eating leaves makes a cacoon.

Each of us weaves a chamber of leaves and sticks.

Silkworms begin to truly exist

as they disappear inside that room.

Without legs, we fly.

When I stop speaking, this poem will close,
and open it's silent wings.

Rumi

Since Feeling is First
E. E. Cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
Will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry

-- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh,leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

.

.

.

Sometimes people think I lack common sense. I simply have no use for it.

Serapha

So, possibly these Beauties are a little predictable, but I was going for continuity. This one is just really beautiful, and I wanted to say, I make dolls and sell them, so if anyone needs a gift for somethingrather, or you just want one yourself, don't be shy, I'll make you one! I made this one for a woman who wanted lush fabrics, brown hair, and a sophisticated yet funky look to her.

Honey-gold Baby

Have you dug the spill
Of Sugar Hill?
Cast your gims
On this sepia thrill:
Brown sugar lassie,
Caramel treat,
Honey-gold baby
Sweet enough to eat.
Peach-skinned girlie,
Coffee and cream,
Chocolate darling
Out of a dream.
Walnut tinted
Or cocoa brown,
Pomegranate-lipped
Pride of the town.
Rich cream-colored
To plum-tinted black,
Feminine sweetness
In Harlem’s no lack.
Glow of the quince
To blush of the rose.
Persimmon bronze
To cinnamon toes.
Blackberry cordial,
Virginia Dare wine—
All those sweet colors
Flavor Harlem of mine!
Walnut or cocoa,
Let me repeat:
Caramel, brown sugar,
A chocolate treat.
Molasses taffy,
Coffee and cream,
Licorice, clove, cinnamon
To a honey-brown dream.
Ginger, wine-gold
Persimmon, blackberry,
All through the spectrum
Harlem girls vary—
So if you want to know beauty’s
Rainbow-sweet thrill
Stroll down luscious,
Delicious, fine Sugar Hill.

-Langston Hughes

Trois

Rhino

what does American mean? I realize I have been awakening to the answer. It occurs to me that today people have so many different perceptions of what’s “significantly American,” because culture, technology, and the range of phenomena that are socially excepted have expanded, leaving citizens of this country confused, unaware, and often disheartened in a fermenting, putrid stew of wondering “who are we?”, and further, “who cares?” Sometimes, these times, America seems like nothing more than a dirty tarp all woven with plastics and sort of blowing across a parking lot. Fortunately, and without meaning to brown-nose, I found that taking American Literature this semester illuminated the past and provided me with a bit of hope that because America was born of great minds and true endeavors, all is not lost. Somehow, somewhere, that spirit lives on, or at least can be found, and by taking those ideas and being transcendent and industrious maybe we can reclaim America for Benjamin Franklin, for Henry David Thoreau, for Ralph Waldo Emerson, and for ourselves—Americans-- who are in serious danger of being swallowed whole by our own degeneration.
“America”—the place, the meaning, is one of newness. This is a common theme and one of true importance. Human beings have so much limitless energy, and each moment that we say yes to life, we say yes to all of creation. As Thoreau says in Walden, Chapter 2, “Morning is when I am awake and there is dawn in me (1855)” metaphorically expressing this newness in terms of the time of day. Later on the same page he says, “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep (1855)”. I feel like this idea is lost to us modern-dayers, who close our curtains hoping that the dawn will never come, that sleep may save the moments and the hours from coming to us with another round of crap—toil, stress, pharmaceuticals, money, video games, school shootings and states of union addresses by the phony prez. Let us embrace the sentiment that “Every morning [is] a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself (1854).” Go right on back to nature—for there’s nothing so sweet and pure, so new and bursting with optimism than every moment in nature.
Maybe nature can save the Americans—even if the Americans cannot seem to save nature, but rather treat it as an enemy. Perhaps the state we have put nature in is corollary to the state of society—often polluted, sealed with cement, unenjoyed, becoming unenjoyable. Yet, as Emerson says in “Nature”, on page 1111 and 1112, in accordance with the resurrecting powers of nature and of newness, that “To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before and which shall never be seen again.” To see the perfection in nature, which seem to be becoming a lost art, affects a human being with spirituality, and perhaps the two are the same. As Emerson says, “The visible world and the relation of its parts, is the dial plate of the invisible”. This goes hand in hand with Thoreau’s sentiment that there is “dawn in me,”—and perhaps if people can imbibe nature, and believe in their own dawning, if they have spirituality, then maybe the rest will fall into place.
What is quintessentially American is, I believe, a mixture of the nature, the spirit, and the perseverance. Industriousness can be found in later writings, but the best example of it is in Benjamin Franklin’s “The Autobiography,” where he actually makes an account of his pursuit to attain moral perfection. His chart shows that he is human; he does not arrive at moral perfection at the end, but the point, the big point, the point that needs to be driven into the hearts of the downcast and corrupt, is that trying is necessary if one is ever to succeed. Never give up, allow ambition and imagination to coincide and bloom exponentially. Don’t be too severe with yourself; child of nature, but keep the wheels turning—try to arrive—that’s all we need to do. I suppose it really all boils down to having faith in something. Today it seems that people have no center, no belief. This dilutes them, makes them susceptible to dissipation and to laziness. We must look to the perfection of nature in providing spirituality, spirituality then makes a person self-possessed and full of hope and therefore driven to be what we hope is truly an American-- more than a leach, more than a boil on the ass of mankind, more than a belligerent mass of bigots and small-minds, bombarding other countries and killing their children, feeding our own our of the charity box at the supermarket. The Americans, I think, were the people and the progeny of people who settled here, who worked hard and prayed hard, and who had to endure. Their moral fervor was the forbearer of a very humanistic bunch of creators, industriously choosing nature, the spirit, and ultimately-- life-- in America.