Never EVER use UPS …
if you are in a big hurry.
Pittsburgh’s UPS decided to CLOSE yesterday, Dec. 30th, around 8 or 9 a.m. and will not deliver packages. Yes. It’s true.The UPS rep told Amazon the same thing I heard, “we’re closed until Monday”. Wow.
I want my Kindle.
SKETBE, an open letter to the Greek Ministry of Culture
To: The Greek Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of Thessaloniki
Recently the roof of the building of the Visual Artists Association of Northern Greece (SKETBE ) was burned away. The offices which housed the Association on Gorgon Street in the Upper Old Town in Thessaloniki no longer exist (the site was granted by the Greek Ministry of Culture).
In this office area, SKETBE planned and performed exhibitions and activities, operating management and had workshops with primary and secondary schoolchildren.
The problem must be addressed as quickly as possible and effectively. We require the support of all in our effort to highlight the problem and to concede to SKETBE a new site, which will act as a “ House of Culture”.
SKETBE is willing and able to play an important role in art education and artistic and visual enhancement in Northern Greece. This petition would empower SKETBE to provide a cultural environment to the public of all ages. We ask your support in this our aim.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
Thoughts occurring during the quiet before Christmas.
None of us will really go gracefully into that dark night. You should know we will kick and scream and try to stop death. You should know it’s not always visible — the struggle and yearning to stay right here in this very moment. It’s hidden sometimes, just behind the eyes, the fight to remain in this stage and not to transition to the next.
You should know how to tell someone it’s alright to leave. How to say you’ll be fine. How to say good-bye.
Momma used to tell me, “I plan on sticking around a while.” In the darkest of hours, she would massage my neck with fingers made strong from needlepoint and winding woolen thread around spools, sorting it by color and strands. “I’m not going anywhere, Val. Relax… Give yourself a break. Bob will still be there when I get there. He was a patient man.”
She would tell me to close my eyes. “Envision a sheet. A white sheet. Hanging on a clothes line on a still afternoon. No breeze. Think of absolutely nothing else.” The trick, she told me, is to keep the sheet white, not to let anything else onto the sheet. And she would shush my questions with “tsh tsh, keep the sheet white” …
What I couldn’t ask her then is what I can’t ask her now. How do I live without your poetry? And what is Christmas without the stories?
She stayed here with me to stop the silence from covering the house with a deafening shroud, thick and strong, opaque enough to let in sunlight but woven tightly to keep out the noise — of her unsteady footsteps, of her opening a box of cereal, upside down, of her wispy night breaths while she slept a shallow sleep filled with dreams of my brother and father.
You should know there are three dogs here now. Scrambling and barking, wrestling… panting… and challenging each other for top pillow position on the couch nearby. The television gives me Cary Grant, the stereo in the kitchen mumbles Public Radio news, tinny sounds of Andrew Bird come from earphones of an iPod charging, plugged into a laptop chiming with email sounds, the cell phone beeps as a text message arrives, a microwave oven hums as it warms my coffee while the ice maker crashes two dozen cubes into the bin, the washing machine and dryer chug along with domestic efficiency, the dishwasher churns, one neighbor uses a leaf blower while the other mows her lawn, cars drive by, there’s a bi-plane following the Pamlico River, and a pile driver two blocks away slams pylons into the marsh as a new generation replaces a CCC-built bridge over the creek nearby.
And the silence is deafening.
Mail Art Becomes Me
As part of the Colbert Nation, I’m obviously a speed skating fan. But a new nation is beginning to form, an anonymous nation filled with ephemera and ink – the Richard Canard Nation. It’s no Illusion. Canard is spreading his invitations to citizenship throughout the world-wide real, not the world wide web.
IUOMA citizens rejoice. Mr. Canard accepts all nationalities to his nation.
Seriously folks, those who live in the Ass End of Some Great Dismal Swamp truly appreciate the pitter patter of little mailmen feet on the front porch. And Mail MAN (eg MEN) is appropriate here on account of the Mail Woman, Maggie, delivers to the neighborhood just north of here. We have the Men of the Historic District depositing Mr. Canard’s canards into our boxes. Mail Art generates much joy when it is in the hands of our mail MEN. The POstCarD ARt delivers a message to those who carry it as well as those who receive it.
Thanks to Mr. Canard AND of course to my dear Katerina Nikoltsou in Greece, and to all the other ships at sea, for my cards and letters. I feel as if the outside world is listening and … shhhhhhhh …. I hear the cries of stamps, the Forever Stamps, in my desk drawer, beseeching me to MAIL MAIL MAIL.
Bricolage – The Reality of What I Do
While researching and reading Levi Strauss, having a little of The Savage Mind here and there in my evening dialog with self, I came to realize the term “bricolage” should be applied to much of my work. Rather than my main concept of assemblage, where perhaps disparate objects exist adjacent to or upon each other, modified and yet remaining individual and unique,
bricolage
would be a term more representative of my artistic actions. Just as the play fort I built for the grandpunks with an old quilt and my studio table, so are my objects combined from multiples into a distinct other. A whole from many wholes. Not parts or the sum of the parts but still parts and participles. One intriguing possibility is in the nomenclature of the article and those who create it or them. The bricoleur. Amazing word, is it not?
As we must use whatever resources necessary to survive (wouldn’t you say Levi Strauss would tell us that is true) we must utilize whatever resources necessary to survive the artistic process and to create
ART.
Obviously this must be discussed more fully, perhaps at a time of either induced mental aberrations, ie: caffeine consumption or likewise pharmaceutical implementation of necessary quantities, and the philosophical discussion ensues. What this means, is, I think… that as philosophical discussion and discourse always occupies the majority of my mental processes, now I must apply more of the philosophical to the artistic. And admit it.
loudly
that I am
indeed
a
bricoleur.
So was MacIver. So is a banana and thusly, so, my friend, are you when you make a sandwich or a bed.
In all truth, the research originally engaged herein was of Maria Montessori and how to teach them little ‘uns what doesn’t want to learn. From Maria to Levi and then, not to blue jeans but instead to bricolage - the ultimate assemblage.
*a bricolage layer once worked for my father. a mason he was not.