itesser ink: progress, uncensored

An odd word for me, but it flew down and alighted on my hands Monday night, rubbing my face with its feathers.

I was in the moment, in the flow of drawing more deeply than I've felt in quite a while. Since then I've experienced the elation a few other times. Painting Tuesday, drawing again last night.

An infinite measure of peacefulness and happiness welled up within me in these moments of rejoicing, and in a letter to Reagan I wrote that my mindset during the first onset of joy was obviously far more than a sum of the evening's parts that I'm sure it came from God.

I felt it again this morning, reading a spare bit of poetry on my blogroll. I don't think the specifics of the verse are important, but the joy came from putting on those familiar reading-shoes (specifically the poetry ones) and wandering the scenic wilderness. The only poetry I've experienced in the past month has been performance poetry, and while I'm glad I discovered it, it will never be as mine as written words.

Labels: drawing, low hanging fruit, poetry, tennessee

I have no specific resolutions for the new year as it's bound to be one full of upheave and tumult.

That sounds gross, doesn't it?

Upheaval. Upheaval and tumult.

But something I am doing is making a journal of "found poetry".

I got a sketchbook for Christmas which was good because my old one was nearly full, but not-so-good because I've become a snob for uniformity and paper quality and this gifted one was not quite up to snuff. BUT I'm making the best of it and copying (by hand) poetry from the web that I like into this sketchbook. With proper credits, of course.

It's more paper for me to haul everywhere, but I'm looking forward to having a physical place to save good poetry from people I mostly read on my computer screen. :)

Labels: bonus post, poetry, projects

Warning: plate of beans ahead.

On the heels of yesterday's post about language not yet catching up with the experiences of the Internet, I'm taking a moment to look inward as I am wont to do after a period of not blogging, however short or long it may be.

As I was starting up the previous post with noise about status updating, I began pondering in the back of my mind what kind of blogger I am, how my style fits in with the "culture" of blogging, and what sort I might like to be.

While I post art, I'm not a sketch-blogger. Most art is vastly overshadowed by words. Words about what? My life, usually. My thought-life, to be specific, as my offline-life is a tad rusty these days (though not for long). I don't do very topical or news-related posts, nor am I at the deep end for any particular hobby, lifestyle, or what-have-you.

The reflective questions boil down to "If this wasn't my blog, would I read it?"

That raises the question "What kind of blogs do I read?". Primary answer right now is "not many". For all the RSS items I clear out these days, they either don't require reading or are saved in open tabs to be consumed at some proper future moment. I muchly enjoy blogs that have a personal mixture of diary, correspondence, and art.

Some periods of time I do a good job of performing the "would I read this?" test in mind as I write a post, other times, not so much. Perhaps that should be something I strive for in the future.

I'm calling this a plate of beans because whatever I decide doesn't truly matter. I'm keeping this blog for myself, and can't foresee this ever becoming a destination so popular that I where I care to cater to my readership. The goal, then, is to cater to the more demanding aspects of myself and try to please my harsh internal critic.

--

Today held the celebrations of my mom's birthday, my immediate family's Christmas, and the Winter Solstice. The only one it actually was was Solstice, which Reagan and I celebrate privately.

We're not pagan or druidic, but I, especially, like taking notice of the moment when the night is longest. Festivities involve cheese, fruit, something tasty to drink, and making a nest of pillows and blankets on the floor to feast by candle light. We use the time sans computer, tv, and other digital interferences to talk about everything and nothing. In the midst of worrying about family this and other family that, it's very nice to devote some quiet time to each other.

I took a moment to think about Hanukkah today, too, while setting fire to the wicks of pine and apple scented tealights.

Between the celebrations of Christmas and Solstice, Reagan and I went to the bookstore where I quickly spent my gift card on poetry books: The McSweeney's Book of Poets Picking Poets and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. I believe both will challenge me and give me a lot to think and write about in the coming months (which is a lot of why I didn't pick up a novel).

I hadn't heard of either book before today, and I haven't heard of most of the poets in either until today. With my limited experience with poetry, both points contribute to my interest in these volumes.

The bookstore trip also made me devastatingly interested in getting a e-Ink eReader. Technology. Wow.

Other, less amazing technology brings you a washed-out scan from my sketchbook, mostly of bunnies. These were practice for pencil sketches that Reagan turned into watercolors, which I turned into frame watercolors, given as gifts to my parents and my brother's family.



And last of all, a small stone of a poem devised as I was falling asleep last night. Oddly enough, it goes to answer the question posed in the title of this post. At least to a small degree.

Who Am I?

As I'm
a poet
my lines
should
be just
long enough to point.

That's your official poem.
Here's the collection of words inspired by writing it:

awake in the wee hours
just light enough to write
a burst of words on a post-it
(thankfully near by)
before more sleep

Merry Solstice. See you in the longer days.

Labels: books, holiday, memories, meta, poem, poetry, scannies, solstice

If I can't manage to get this post to autosave, it may end up being my normal Saturday post (she says at 7am Sunday morning).

First I must pimp a minimal-ish site I found via MetaFilter Projects. ImgFave. ImgFave is responsible, directly, indirectly, or very roundabout-ly, for most other visual-based links in this post. coming soon to a post near this one. Posting the cool stuff after review would dilute both parts, so I'll hold off a bit longer.

While ImgFave is styled like other social image sharing sites (so I'm told), what I really like about it is the utter lack of "social" (see: minimal). It is linked to FriendFeed which I know nothing about, but the most interaction you ca have with another user on ImgFave is subscribing to their posts/adding them to your friends list. On Friends view you see only the favorite images of users you select, instead of the default public view where you see all faved images.

No social means no tagging of images, no talking about images, no commenting on images, no sending messages to other users. And I like it that way. ImgFave serves my needs of introducing me to interesting visuals. Besides the picture, each post includes a link to the page said picture was faved from, and a direct link to the image alone. My only complaint with the programming of the site is that the feed does not include those links to the image and the source, meaning I have to visit the image's post on ImgFave before I can see it full size or in it's natural environment.

The two things that would make my experience better: other users linking to higher quality images when they are available, and linking to the image in context whenever possible. For example, if this drawing of mine was faved from this url (http://www.itesser.com/updates/uploaded_images/cheetaline-777735.jpg) instead of this url (http://www.itesser.com/updates/2008/12/why-oh-why-are-cop-shows-so-pun.html), a user who comes across it would not be able to see more of my work.

I don't mean to apply this in a selfish SEE ME way, but from the side of the user who stumbles across the image. I often want to see more work from the artist or photographer who has been faved, and it's not always possible to track down the source if all I have is a direct link to blogger or flickr servers. Also, the above example does show the image as hosted on my domain (making it easy to find more of my work), but I'm somewhat of an exception. If I ran my blog through blogger, the image URL would be completely anonymous.

It is worth noting, though, that I dig that site because it feeds my creativity. I don't use it to share or store images as much as I use it to find them. I take away or learn something from almost every image I see, and I believe the time I take to study them contributes to my development as an artist.

But now let's talk about my development as a poet.

The base poem is a couple years old. It's hard for me to judge how well it works as a poem because Randy Newman's always singing it in my head, with a feel very similar to this song [youtube]

Parting Ways

Here's your wishes, all wrapped up
and tied with pretty string,
take 'em back to where you came from
and take all your girly things.
I'm all over and done with you now
pack your bags and let me be.
Dreams aren't like no shopping list
and I'm no grocery store, you see.

That day, through a window,
I saw a sorrow just my size
I was young and foolish
much too young to realize
that even if it fit me
if it fit me like a glove
it would give me too much wisdom
and drain my heart of all its love.

Maybe I gave you good times
maybe you gave me a little fun
But when you cry plenty tears for us both
I gotta stop what I begun.
I've been three kinds of crazy
six ways drunk and seven mad
but meeting you's the only
kind of sorry I've ever had.

That was one of the more intensive revamps I've done lately (while still keeping most of the original). Here are some more emo lines that were attached to it, but I don't know why:

All the words, like water, flow too fast
leave me like sand through a fist
but when I burn this notebook
only the paper will be missed.

Now to spend some time drawing. I don't want to do another digital art post.

There was some before, there will be some after (and you'll see that when I get a real scan of this), but I like the density of them nesting so well together.

Labels: linx, poem, poetry, webcam scan

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

Pre-post shout-out to Katie Cook. It's her birthday! Besides being an amazing artist, she's a wonderfully sweet and nerdy gal.

---

After an early morning scare of "can he go tomorrow?"*, I spent the day blissfully escaping into tv, drawing, and Bradbury's quirky prose.

(*the answer was "no, there are still obligations to be concluded)

Yes, I'm 24, a fan of sci-fi and literature, and I've never read Fahrenheit 451 before. If it's any defense, I have read Something Wicked This Way Comes.

As I was taking care of some chores downstairs I was bemoaning (to myself) the fact that I don't have as much time to devote to poetry as I would like. After reading a few of the entries in the Daily Routines blog, I fussed about being keen to master both writing and art, but whenever I devote hours to the former, the back of my mind tells me I could be spending them on the latter. I was specifically thinking about poetry, and how it's been quite a while since I've been inspired enough to have a new poem flow out of me.

Then I made sandwiches, tidied up the kitchen, then came upstairs and fluidly wrote a couple dozen lines. Oh, the gifts of irony.

---

Obligatory paragraph pondering my social relationships. Today is one of the days I feel like an alien when thinking about my friends.

---

For some odd reason I really like the idea of titling poems with days of the week, months of the year, and times of day. Maybe it ties into my tendency to use poetry as a form of diary, but with mood, emotion, events, and details, I like placing them in a chronological context, even if it doesn't tie into an ongoing timeline.

I think it might be similar to this phenomenon: Recently I read or heard someone talking about going to visit a foreign country. (It kills me that I can't remember the source of this anecdote.) Upon their return, friends asked "What is Country X like?" and the traveler would reply "I don't know", as he could only speak to his own experiences in the country, which could not offer a reliable picture of what Country X is like.

The connection is that by titling a poem "Early November" when nothing in the poem explicitly implies early November, I'm casting the contents of the poem in an early-November sort of light. I'm not saying what "early November" is, just my experiences there. Then.

Even though I don't have a deeply personal relationship with seasons, or week-patterns, or even day-patterns, I like using those markers. Mentally, I'm perhaps one step and one leap from developing a concise plan and description for a (chapbook?) project using only hours, days, and months for tiles.

---

I am enamored with the lines inside my tea mug. While they do indicate that it's time for my ceramic chalice to be washed, they're also clues to my drinking habits: evenly spaced rings marking the resting water level between each round of sips. The stains are darker near the top; more heat and resting time when the tea-level is high. When I'm down to the last third, sometimes the tea isn't even lukewarm, and I lose interest.

---

Dammit. Long post. I guess I'm back to normal? Unfortunately the net is not being normal. *is afraid to attempt posting*

Daily poem and art to come in a separate post so I can close firefox to play with digital paints.

Labels: bonus post, details, memo, poetry

This is the last thing I must do today, and there's no particular reason I can't do it now.



Drawing has been really hard today. Sometimes reaching it involves pushing through a wall of stress, but today getting to that place wasn't good enough to dissolve the tension. And ugly output didn't help either. I'm taking the rest of the night off and taking tomorrow to be a day to really sink into my sketchbook and work some kinks out. I'm actually looking forward to it.

The list of things to read won't get any smaller, but it's not so important. They'll still be there Wednesday.

Stress Fracture

This is me
taking my time
This is me
changing my mind
This is me
closing my eyes
This is me
have no surprise.

Self barricaded
against the riot sound
floors and doors and windows
busting open all around
I cannot stop the menace
keep the howling wolves at bay
I won't ever buckle under
but I will run and run and run away

Another old one with some minor tweaks. Like using scotch tape on a broken window mirror. I wish I could imagine a worthy application for these emotive snapshots. All that comes to mind is storyboarding a wordless comic to go underneath, depicting some scenario that would justify this particular brand of melodrama.

Labels: poem, poetry, scannies

Hm, I need to use that title sometime. *makes note that turns into a long detour*

I mentioned IndieFeed a week ago, but today Scott Woods gave my ears a transfusion, so I'd like to give a link-out to the former's feature of the latter that went out today.

The poem being performed at a link from that link is called "Queen Takes Black Knight". It weaves a solid story at the beginning, but what really made an impression was the imagery at the end. Carefully chosen words move the piece from the details of here and now to ideas tinged with fairy tale and archetype, while keeping it grounded.

I may be trading one vice for another when I let my flickr trawling fall to the wayside and subscribe to a dozen more podcasts, but at least when I listen to podcasts I'm free to draw. There's little else I can do! Podcasts and drawing are a good match. Let's wrap up this post so I can get back to it.

Observing

Sometimes in life
my pulse slows

It happened before
and now again
the familiar sensation

my pulse slows
the branch snaps
I carve too deep
more strong, more steady, more slow

I find my robes
layers of comfort
smelling of beast and death
of instinct, survival
and ancestor memories

satisfied, sleepy
nod to the fire
my pulse slows
slows

slows

This has 0% content in common with the poem I picked earlier today. The poem I picked out, one of the earliest I considered salvageable, was a lot worse than I expected once I got it to my workspace. I liked the opening lines and the theme of November being a transitional month, but it was really a shoddy application of language.

"Observing" is brand new, inspired by the inner mood that led me to pick out "A Lady's Song" (the poem you do not see). If I did it right, I shouldn't need to say that inner mood includes things like a heavy sleepiness, being full of tea, and bundled against the relative chill outside.

Labels: poem, poetry, scannies

You see, this post was written and put up about 12 hours late, and this post (the one you're reading now) was written directly after that and will be posted 12 hours later (if the post-scheduling feature goes well).

Normally this space is used to ramble about something on my mind, or the events of the past day. All I could write about Wednesday's events thus far is the stress of needing to get a bunch of things done and wanting to drive down to San Diego as soon as possible. Although taking time to write on any theme right now would be counter-productive.

Nightcap

The ice is in the freezer,
The rum is in the car,
But I'm here with you, baby,
I don't wanna go far.
Your sweet kiss so exciting,
Never flat or stale.
I never want to leave
My dearest ginger ale.

The silly poems are most likely to come out right the first time around, I think. While I probably wrote that while alone in my San Marcos room, it reminds me of something that happened with Reagan, probably within weeks of penning that poem.

He lived in a rather rural area in San Diego county and the most nearby place we could go to get food and hang out was an Indian casino/hotel/resort. We liked that it was open all hours of the night because sometimes I got out of work at 11pm and had to drive nearly an hour to his house.

One day before we were officially dating we bought Thai iced teas at a noodle shop in the casino, and I realized that I had a big bottle of rum in the trunk of my car. We walked out to the parking garage, topped our drinks off with rum, then wandered around the casino for a few hours, slightly tipsy. Sitting on the wet grass by the abandoned pool and talking about life, the universe, and everything is one of my favorite memories from that period of time.

Here, a 10-minute digital speed painting (along side reference photo). Amy took it on a recent trip to Italy. Probably one of my favorites of the 600 pics she and Kazu brought back.



Alright! Should be back to regular late-night posting on Thursday. Lots to catch up on now, and there will be even more then!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Labels: memories, poem, poetry, speed painting

There is no particularly good reason that I've taken so long to do a make-up post this morning. I've been up for at least three hours. I think I'll blame it on staggered muti-tasking.

Posting didn't happen last night because I've been falling asleep unexpectedly early. Perhaps all the sleep lost when I had my cold is catching up with me.

Last night Reagan and I spent some time together at the bookstore. It was almost like a real date. We shared coffee and a brownie, talked about drawing, did sketching from life. Two things I did on my own: look for a recipe for martini cookies and read Poetry East. (No luck with the cookie recipe.)

But the literary magazine was something of a revelation to me. I liked a lot of what I read (flipping through at random), and didn't get annoyed or sick of it before it was time to leave. Granted, it might have only been twenty minutes at the outside, but it was still an experience that made me want to sit down with a notebook and really study the things I enjoyed, making note of the imaginative devices and phrases.

Don't tell Reagan, but when we came home and watched the last bit of No Country For Old Men, I dozed off. Fortunately it's on the Netflix website.

I thought that after a nap I'd be able to get up and do some writing and/or drawing, but that didn't happen. Here are the two very last un-posted scans I have.




And something appropriate for yesterday:

April, 2006

one way ticket to love
the blood through my heart
only has one way to flow
when you look at me
only one place for me to go
I drop everything
and I cry
and I sing
and I buy
my one way ticket to love

Labels: excuses, movie, poem, poetry, snooze sketch

No! Now I want to go back to drawing!

While I didn't pull out any of my workbooks today, I moved closer to being back in the swing of things and moving beyond the comfortable internet triangle of LiveJournal, gMail, and Twitter.

My burgeoning affection for One Night Stanzas encouraged me to visit the site directly and peek at updates before my official post-sickinesss reading of it through my feed reader. (The official reading is when I study a post and make notes about how it influences and inspires me.)

In that cursory reading, I noticed that the most recent featured poet, Simon Freedman (link might be broken?), said in his featured poet interview that he has been writing since February of 2008. He's collected a surprising (to me) number of publications since then and made me think about the beginnings of my own writing. I didn't do it for competitive comparison, of course, just to practice how I'll answer the question when the time comes.

I think maybe this month of revising and reposting archaic works of mine is an attempt to give a concise answer to "when did you start?". I remember writing poetry as long ago as 7th grade (1997), but it was obviously dreck by my current sensibilities. Taking time now, at the beginning of this new attempt at poetry, to revitalize old scraps that have some value to them, is my way of tying up loose ends. By renovating the relics, putting a more mature eye to them, I say "Now is a new age, and you are part of my now."

This isn't simply a matter of spring cleaning and deciding what to keep, what to put in deep storage, and what to sell at the yard sale. I'm coming back to an abandoned home and seeing what can be salvaged after the war, the flood, and the animals that came through and nibbled on things.

Here's something that didn't break down too much. Didn't have too much time to break down. If I ever become a singer/songwriter, this will be among the first songs I work on. In 3/4 time. (First two thirds are revised, last third is all new.)

Today's Kiss-on-the-Wind

It's six in the morning, it's cold and it's raining
I don't want to get up for work or for school.
I reach for my laptop, it needs no explaining
the blogs, the news, and sweet email from you

You've got a star in my gmail inbox
shining away on my internet view
you bring a light to dark, empty hours
days are so long but your words pull me through

Stuck between overdrive and out-of-gas stalling
I stumble around and it's not even noon
The phone is ringing, I ignore the calling
I re-read your letter, can't write back too soon.

You've put a star in my gmail inbox
twinkling there on my internet screen
you bring a light to dark, empty hours
in morning and evening and times in between

Get home late, it's dark out, my dinner is cold
Been days since I've seen you, feels like a full year
Although reading your words will never gets old,
You whispering to me's what I want to hear

You've lit a star in my gmail inbox
It's all I can see on that internet site
you bring a light to dark, empty hours
And If you come over we'll stay up all night!

:)
All of these are at least a month old, but they'll have to do. Hopefully tomorrow will be an amazingly productive day so I can get posts for Wednesday and maybe Thursday ready ahead of time. We'll be out of town visiting family and I won't be taking my laptop.

Labels: mbear, poem, poetry, projects, snooze sketch

I can't tell where I am relative to the beginning or end of my day. Since my last post I...

+ Spent a hectic 30 minutes with about 10 kids from my mom's class. Description and after-thoughts posted here.

+ Thought some about my plan of attack for Thursday's class, crashed around 3pm and got 6 hours of sleep

+ Woke up, spent some time online to catch up with friends I hadn't talked to for a couple days

+ Wrote the first half of the drawing advice I'll be including in the sketchbooks. Devised a drawing-as-your-personal-visual-language metaphor.

+ Tried to sleep more, watched Red Dwarf. o.O

+ Slept about 20 minutes. Woke up and wrote the second half of the drawing advice, including 67 ideas of things to draw.

+ Snuggled with Reagan, dozed more. I feel like I haven't spent time with my husband for ages.

+ Sketched and brushed the dog.

+ Got ready for day 2! (printed things out, gathered more of my sketchbooks for show and tell, etc)

I'm currently remote posting from my dad's computer downstairs to avoid bothering Reagan with my light and noise. He'll be sleeping another 4 hours.

... I just realized that this remote posting means no scans to upload. I'll include some with today's debriefing, as I'm sure I'll want to talk about it and be more alert than I was yesterday.

Busyness and being out of sorts means I haven't gotten time with my poetry. So here's something from high school I really don't understand:

Forgiveness

It doesn't matter the style of your clothes,
Only who designed them, and that they are your own.

It doesn't matter where you got them from,
Only where you wear them and why you go those places.

It doesn't matter how many places you go,
Only that you try not to get stains on yourself.

It doesn't matter that you did mess up those clothes,
Only that you notice and try your hardest to clean them soon.

It doesn't matter where you go to clean you clothes,
Only that you do it yourself and use lots of bleach.

What was I thinking? I think it fits with a quote I found on a sticky note while gathering sketchbooks. If you can't convince them, confuse them. -- Harry Truman I love quotations that encourage absurdity.

To make up for that lameness, I urge you to go listen to Danny Sherrard perform his poem "We Are Prometheus" over at IndieFeed. I caught the podcast of it recently and it blew me away. Incredibly inspiring and incredibly humbling.

I'm off to teach children about drawing! :D

Labels: drawing class, excitement, poem, poetry