non-flammable flux remover in stock
Mom talked to me today. I know, she’s dead. The empty chair in the kitchen reminds me. Today when my arthritis got the better of me, I began to despair of ever having a normal day, a regular day without the requisite two hours of waking up my bones. Lumbar fusion with screws and rods over 20 years ago — my spine began […]
Grandson Oliver (age 5) and I are creating tattoos today. At least that’s what he calls them. We’re scanning old documents, printing the scan on a laser printer, covering the printed piece of paper with clear contact paper, and then — we use the handle of a spatula to rub and rub the ink into the contact paper. Then! We […]

Using a folding technique I picked up online (like a tramp during fleet week, the template screamed at me from across the dock), new books spring forth (not fall back) from the studio. Acquired a 1938 sixth grade geography book “The New World Past and Present” and after reading all about the South after the Civil War which wasn’t […]

I stumbled into an amazing cacaphony of matchbooks about three years ago. Michael Cable’s Woodside Antiques, an auction house in Farmville North Carolina, offered box loads of stuff at the end of a large estate sale. Cable is a marvelous auctioneer who inserts bits of trivia with every round of bidding. I hesitate to admit how much of […]

I got all happy-grab and committed to five (5) canvases for the Beaufort County Art Show fundraiser. See here for details. Joey Toler, neighbor and head o’the arts council, was inspired by similar fundraisers held by similar arts councils, knew he had a great conflagration of artistical people within hollering distance of downtown. When I delivered my […]

Welsh artist Sonja Benskin Mesher is creating an installment of the international “A Book About Death” series. The link is for the Call for Submissions page. Deadline is March 16, 2010 for .jpgs of artist’s submissions for this segment of the International Exhibition. Obviously this is an abbreviated post — much more shall be said regarded this […]

I am reinstating my Society for the Preservation of Southern Vernacular. [that’s not a link, okay, so don’t mouse over it hoping for a surprise or for clarification of any sort] It’s time to preserve… and reflect. The Kindle contribution to my internal knowledge base included last Sunday’s (02÷28÷10) article on Race in the South. Naturally, I thought the […]

I was a one-girl band in the mid-1960s. My parents somehow procured an entire “band” which could be strapped to one’s chest and hung over shoulders. The front contained a washboard with a scrub brush, a floogle horn-type assemblage, lots of cymbals, , a bicycle horn, spoons and the rear assembly could be activated with a lever. I don’t remember what all […]

It’s a book by Richard Bönner, published in 1929 by M. A. Donohue & Company. The chapter titles clue us in to the drama to come: A Marine Game of Blind-Man’s Bluff Ned Bangs’ Story The Chadwick Gas Guns Drawing a Rascal’s Fangs Herrera Is Not Caught Napping “It’s Death To Remain Here!” Dad! — It’s Jack! and the ever wonderful […]

Well, the rodeo won out, with Shelter Island viewing coming in on Monday instead of today. We’re going to the Bob Martin Agri Center and I’m hoping the sights and scenes will provide much artistic fodder. Artists and writers must get out of the studio and observe, duh… of course you know that, but for […]

Growing up, our house was filled with scraps of paper. Notes from people, newspaper clippings, ideas jotted on the backs of envelopes. An ephemera house. Stuck in between the pages of books, like little truth or fiction bonuses — notes of the day, newspaper clippings, bookmarks made by preschoolers, lists of all kinds. I remember finding a faded newspaper […]

I recently discovered, via a Facebook friend, UbuWeb.com and Henri Chopin’s poetry. This discussion, quoted from ubuweb, just thrills me. You can listen to Chopin by clicking here. go ahead, do it… listen to a Cantata for Two Farts The poem is a liquid fluxus, a microscopic biological reality, rise and decadence of cellular structures, a pulp, a «voice from the whole […]
Being sick sure has its drawbacks. Not only am I too easily fatigued to begin any new projects, my mail art is way far behind. All these wonderful folks send me art… and what do I do? Appreciate but not reciprocate — and that is not the Artist Way. I hereby delcare: New Art Will Be Traveling To Your […]
Lately I’ve found myself searching for the correct machinery in which to complete my daily activities. Having the flu or some similar affliction has greatly diminished my capacity for enjoyment, nay I say entertainment, of any moment. I find perusing the far reaches of print gives me some respite. Then I discovered Dr. Grordbort’s book, which I shall order […]

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 decades of […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

How can I make my fingers yell at you? Why won’t you listen to my hands? The keyboard taps and raps… little background tippy tippy, not even musical like the typewriter used to be. WRITING IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IS RUDE. But if that’s true… then how do you scream at strangers? Here, anonymously… through the Power of […]

Are we ever really finished uploading the celestial orb? Can life become so ornately disorganized that we forget to download our distress and trust in the almighty — the leftover Thanksgiving, fight for it, wake up in the middle of the night and find it, warm it for one minute in the microwave, get me some vanilla […]

So is the mass a prayerful object of “happening” historical OR is it a volume, a spatial, reference? And what of this New New Fluxus? It is sublime. It is critical to the on-going idea that is Fluxus. Yes, it may be dead but Fluxus doesn’t die anymore than Van Gogh is dead because if you leave your […]

Do you ISO or do I? Found out something truly fascinating today when I perused a knowledge lidbit (which is slightly more than a tidbit) concerning what the dimensions of a piece A4 paper is. Come to find out, standard paper sizes are based on a single aspect ratio of the square root of 2 or [√2 = 1:1.4142] The way to figure […]
