at last my love is here to stay. It is in punks, the steam vari­ety. And one does not become punked, steam­punk is not a verb, it is art. A form, a vari­ety so intensely pro­found and sim­plis­tic in its form — the vir­tual embod­i­ment of Fluxus, the nexus of steam­punk is the sheer futil­ity of inter­na­tional influ­ence to con­dense form […]

Years ago, I down­loaded and saved the fol­low­ing “How To Write a Book Review” and per­haps should share it with my read­ers. Remind­ing myself of the finer points of crit­i­cal analy­sis is always in vogue. If I can’t talk to me, well… who else will lis­ten? The fol­low­ing quote is from a long for­got­ten web­site but I see the Los […]

It’s been far too long between reviews. While assem­blage art and 3D fun take up my stu­dio time, it’s into the book fray I must once again ven­ture. After three months of search­ing for a venue for my genius — I landed upon an oppor­tu­nity at Blog​Crit​ics​.org. Grabbed that puppy up by the scruff of the neck and slammed a quick […]

REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS Fifth and Wal­nut Streets Park­ing Garage Per­cent for Art Project Colum­bia, Mis­souri Open to Artists Resid­ing in the United States Bud­get: $110,000 Dead­line: 10÷1÷09 The City of Colum­bia, Mis­souri, invites artists to apply for a pub­lic art project at the planned Fifth and Wal­nut Streets Park­ing Garage. The City seeks an artist or […]

Fluxus Thoughts on my recent visit to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pitts­burgh: When events occur dur­ing one’s con­scious­ness, said occur­rences become com­mon­place, the every day back­ground influ­ence of the every day. I sus­pect 9⁄11 will become such a phe­nom­e­non. Take World War II, for exam­ple. To my par­ents, the great­est gen­er­a­tion, the War defined the remaining […]

In North Car­olina, we’re com­bin­ing his­tory with art and cre­at­ing delight­ful com­bi­na­tions. Kudos and hats off to Linda Carlisle for her role in this. Per­son­ally, I think the Moon Pie Eat­ing Con­test will high­light our visit, but ya’ll can go and choose your own stel­lar moment. Look for Rob and me, I’ll wear a pink car­na­tion and […]

After a trip to the hin­ter­lands, The Assem­blag­ist doth bloggeth again. A com­plete post shall be endured upon the mor­row… please retour­neth to this place along with us… Wel­come me home, oh loved ones. It has been a Museum Time. Went to the Andy Warhol Museum in the ‘burgh. More on that adven­ture coming soon –

It seems to me, just a lit­tle ol’ assem­blag­ist, that Dorothy and Ruth may have received some instruc­tion from the Irish­man who, in 1954, set a non­stop speak­ing record. When inter­viewed about Mr. Sheehan’s feat, Dorothy replied, “It’s all in the abil­ity to change sub­jects with­out think­ing about the sub­jects and one just keeps on blath­er­ing until […]

British colonel out­waits dead wife’s dying pets The lizard whose name is Timmy leads a lux­u­ri­ous but love­less life. Things were dif­fer­ent for him just after the war when the wife of a British offi­cer, Mrs. Mar­ion Kel­lett, took Timmy and six other lizards from Egypt to their new home in Natal, South Africa. Pay­ing $800 duty on […]

In Shop­ping: Shop only once a week. If small extra items are needed, the hus­band can pick them up on his way home from work. In Enter­tain­ing: Plan din­ners so that most of the work is done before the guests arrive. Set the table and have the din­ner either cook­ing or ready to cook before the company […]

In Bet­ter Homes and Gar­dens (1953) there’s a curi­ous arti­cle by Don­ald G. Cow­ley dis­cussing med­i­cine. The arti­cle, titled “There’s News In Med­i­cine, When Doc­tors Meet to Catch Up With Med­ical Progress”, con­tains some rather inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion. There is not yet a polio vac­cine in 1953. How old are you? Do you know about polio? Do you […]

We’re speak­ing today with myself. The room is dimly lit. Dur­ing the tap­ing of the inter­view, two small dogs snooze in the cor­ner crevice while another larger dog slams its entire body against a nearby exte­rior door. Out­side, a neigh­bor dis­cov­ers ter­mites in her shed and engages the car­pen­try skills of her son-​in-​law to repair the damaged wood. […]

Inter­est­ing (I hope) change of pace — a per­sonal essay pub­lished ear­lier this sum­mer. as pub­lished: Valerie MacE­wan lives in east­ern North Car­olina with her hus­band, a hoard of uncanny dogs, var­i­ous grand­sons, neigh­bor folks, and yard birds. She is the edi­tor and pub­lisher of The Dead Mule School of South­ern Lit­er­a­ture [www​.dead​mule​.com]. Her assem­blage art is cur­rently on […]