itesser ink: progress, uncensored

I spent the first part of the day doing one kind of nothing, and the second part of the day doing another. Both of them online, and both of them totally worth it. Despite not being in a poetry-reading mood earlier today, I am now, after having written the following:

In The Empty Hours

I clutch the stubbornness
inside my chest
heft it in my hands
the immense weight
miracle of density
compacted hopes and
driftless dreams
migrated from imagination
doomed to sink
but stubborn, clinging
to my heart
like stalactites
stabbing as I feel
the edges of my stubbornness
its grooves and tumors
metastasized
to obligations
but also to desires
held in stasis as I
trace and squeeze
and curse and finally
meditate
on my stubbornness.

I really like it. (Stubbornly, perhaps.) Maybe I'll feel the same tomorrow, maybe not!

Today I want to set up a crafter's studio that runs like a gym, except instead of weights and treadmills, you pay membership to use space and sewing machines and paper cutters and printers and printmaking stuff*. Ceramics classes instead of cardio, selling specialty paper instead of specialty powders. And have a library of crafting books and magazines.

Another dream I had today was to spend my free 3 months next year focusing on writing (especially poetry) rather than drawing. One thing that keeps me from it, though, is that my husband doesn't get into poetry as much as I do. I'd rather reunite with him and have something I can show that he'll be as enthusiastic about as I am. Is that strange?

I currently have no plans to abandon poetry, just a firm desire to keep it in the Number-Under-Visual-Art spot. (Prose is under no such restriction.)

Dang. 7am. Spent a couple/few hours pushing pixels around and watching Kojak. Still life painting of some things on my desk, tried out a shading method Reagan works with sometimes.



I realize that the background might not make sense (I didn't do a meticulous job), so here's a cell-pic of the set-up. Bluetooth is a beautiful thing.

*and light boxes. and a photo studio. and a darkroom. and a few computers. and light tables. and drafting tables. and spinning wheels. and sergers. and long-arm staplers.

similar things are being done in other places! They're making it work!
IPRC
esty labs
Radius Studio
Stumptown Art Sudio
... but some are less "open house" than others.

and kilns. and field trips. and dressforms. and copiers. and typewriters. and every tool imaginable. and a kitchen. and KNOWLEDGE. and jars and jars and jars of buttons, beads, and ribbons... i should stop thinking about this...

Labels: digital paint, plans, poem, poetry, still life

Today started alright, if a bit late. I had the best intentions of making up for yesterday's epic headache with an early post, some writing, a good bout of drawing, and other productive things.

I ended up spending most of the day chasing my tail. But did do token amounts of writing and drawing.

Here's somethings for yesterday:

Tasteless

Living in a half-baked world
built of gingerbread,
a person only ever finds
an oven for a bed.

Hospitals are bakeries,
they have drives for dough;
when you loose your cookie head,
that is where to go.

Sugar, spice, molasses
make both girls and boys,
frosting is their clothing,
candies are their toys.

We're having Gramps for supper,
'cause Grandma was for tea,
and if you are not tasteful,
that's immortality!

Gingerbread is my traditional holiday treat, passed down from my mother. When I was a kid she had these parties where she would make a gingerbread house for each kid in the neighborhood. All the kids would come over to our house with bags of candy and we'd make a day of decorating them. Now she makes a gingerbread house for each student in her class, and in the good years I mail boxes of cookies to friends. I wrote a storytelling game about gingerbread men, too.



For today, I offer poetry and image combined into one. Pushed some digital paint around with my beloved Kojak for company.

Labels: digital paint, excuses, memories, mini world, poem, scannies