*

sweet as anything





-the panic first welled up in a train tunnel. i drew a heart-shape on my hand and didn't look at anyone-


when we were little, mama gave us the carrot shaver and we peeled the paper off our crayons in soft, undamaged lengths. we set our nimble papers on the table. we took the naked wax outside.

the curls of their bodies dropped in ribbons, fell sweet as snow as children on a sheet of wax paper held down by our feet. we shaved them down until their thinness made them snap.



-i saw the photograph of her ligature by accident-


-in the photograph, there were bruises everywhere-



periwinkle was my favorite then. burned down to dust-wax clumps on my fingers and dolls. i learned to save it for last. the pointed edge. wished upon waited upon. a star, still possessed of its steeple.



-the skin of her neck, an odd tin blue-



mama laid another sheet of wax paper on top and carried off our anthills to the ironing board.

the iron was ready. you could smell it.

she pressed our curls flat
mottled bleeding blobs, orange flooding green, red
stretching across everything.



-red, stretching across everything-



we couldn't touch them right away. my excitement stippled my pink. burns all over baby fingers. eager as anything.

our curls, ironed out, the wax went hard. we cut out heart shapes. one for you and one for me. these are our pretty things. and mama got out the string.

we put them in the window. mama said kaleidoscope. the shadows centered on our beds. heart shapes scurried from wall to wall to forehead. we held out our hands and grabbed the shadows like butterflies.



-the coroner's report said there was a heart-shape drawn in red ink on the palm of her little hand. she had put it there herself. right in the middle of her left-






-boxes of periwinkle shoved under the bed-







.

partnership

i've been thinking a lot lately about diptychs and triptychs... pairs of images or a small collection of images that, though they might seem disparate, are not. and how the audience, the viewer, is very important is helping create narrative... that maybe i'm more of a guide or suggestive force than an artist who aspires to giving concrete answers. that i could set up an environment, a point A and point B, and then relinquish control; let the viewer "draw" the line between the two points:

sneak peek

66" x 30"

this is only 1/3rd of what the finished size of this piece will end up being. the finished size will be 66" x 90"... maybe more. WALL SIZE! dang!

shaken awake

i was woken by a flash of a nightmare this morning. inga playing up in a tree and the big branch broke and she was there, writhing and making this horrible, low sound. a sound of total pain. and it was this sound, this sight of her writhing that woke me up and i couldn't go back to sleep. too full of that rush of terrified fear. i opened the door and there she was, wagging her tail so hard her whole body swung with it, and squealing with joy for a new day- everyday is the best day ever for a dog. every morning is a joyful, amazing thing. and i was so glad that it was all just a dream but the dream kicked lose some strange memories from my childhood and i've been writing all day so far as a result.

yesterday i started a new huge drawing of a tire swing. jon benet's tire swing. and i've started the second panel of it today already in between all my scribbling in my notebook. it is like this, only BIG! and in the blackest graphite.


Portrait of JonBenet Ramsey
24" x 24"
oil on canvas, 2008

it is an image i keep coming back to. an image that when people read the title they don't want to look at it anymore. and this response twists my heart but it also tells me the job is being done. it flips the switch. it achieves the movement of being "work" to becoming "text". it activates.

and i go back to it and i see myself somewhere in there... which probably sounds very strange... filthy somehow as i am obviously not a murder victim...

but there is something there, in her absence, that sends the shiver through me... like a memory than ran away. something lost. hidden in the fibers of that rope or in the shine of still leaves. i am called back. this images gives me a ground. it is Blackland as well. it is a homeland of a kind.

and it makes me think of charlotte delbo... she became a poet by having survived the camps. this chase to find a language, to find the one right word that would put the world right-side-up again... an image, a reflection by which one could know oneself, know the nature of things... the search for something that can assuage the strange and haunted heaviness of living... the guilt of having survived.




Auschwitz




This city we were passing through
was a strange city.
Women wore hats
perched on curly hair.
They also wore shoes and stockings
as is done in town.
None of the inhabitants of this city
had a face
and in order to hide this
all turned away as we passed
even a child who was carrying in his hand
a milk can as tall as his legs
made of violet enamel
and who fled when he saw us.
We were looking at these faceless beings
and it was we who were amazed.
We were disappointed as well
hoping to see fruits and vegetables in the shops.
Indeed, there were no shops
only display windows
wherein I would have liked to recognize myself
amid the ranks sliding over the glass planes.
I raised an arm
but all the women wished to recognize themselves
all raised an arm
and not one found out which one she was.
The face of the station clock registered the time
we were happy to look at it
it was the real time
and relieved to arrive at the beet silos
where we were taken to work
on the other side of town
we had walked through like a wave of morning sickness.






(from Auschwitz and After)

brewing...

just about 1 in the morning... a pot of coffee brewing and a whole bunch of ideas swirling in my head. i think it's safe to say my health has returned. enough at least to dive back in to my beloved night-owling. i missed my nights of smudging graphite and spilling ink and smearing oil. what's not to love about an art studio? room of one's own, indeed! and i am thankful every day to have it. just sitting in my own space surrounded by my own tools and my own books and my own stupid little nic-naks feels great and precious and miraculous even. and above all else, it is safe. a protected space where i am king. i can do what i want and there's no apologies necessary. it's been a big help the last couple days while i've struggled to get over this sickness and start doing some more hard-hitting, risky work. the drawing i posted last was fairly difficult even though i've had the idea to do it for quite some time. it's hard work to do... to literally tape a small child's mouth shut is no easy task even if it is "just" a drawing...

there have been plenty of images that i feel a bit damaged by, haunted by, sickened by... and i'm not just talking about art. there have been tons of advertisements that have offended me to such a deep degree that sometimes it's taken quite a bit of work (and time) on my part to shake it off and get back to my own life. images have power. and images can do violence. in the case of this last drawing, the role was reversed and i did violence to the image. i spent some time drawing a lovely, academic rendering and then pulled out a roll of duct tape and destroyed it. i shut it up. i made it a victim. not an easy thing to do to the image of a someone who died a horribly violent death. not easy at all and i still feel a bit fucked up by the experience. i wanted to highlight the loss of HER. she was silenced in such a hateful, violent, unspeakable way that i guess that's what i wanted to get at... somehow... the unspeakable loss of her... the quick violence done to something cherished and beautiful and admired... silenced... undone... without all the drama and media frenzy and judgemental spectacle, the sensationalism... just the loss of a child, a daughter... and what a horror it is.

Anonymous Girl 5

15" x 11"
graphite and duct tape on paper
angela simione
2009

it felt violent laying the duct tape down across her mouth. it felt horrible and monstrous and unforgivable... exactly like what was done to her.

proof... (in progress...)

i haven't posted a picture of work in what feels like an extremely long time. i talk and talk and talk about painting but where's the work, right? walk the talk, art jerk! here you go...


(untitled for now because i think it needs more work maybe, possibly, probably)
15" x 11"
graphite, erasure, and acrylic on paper
2009

back on the anonymity trip (as if i ever got off) and am very happy with the results. i'm definitely going to keep working on this one and do a few more drawings like this in order to experiment further with redaction techniques. i bought a roll of black duck tape today to see how that would read rather than the painted stripe across the eyes... plus, duck tape connotes violence and that's pretty much what i'm trying to get at: forced anonymity, robbed identities, stolen lives, victimization, murder... bad stuff.

they call it a "transitional phase"...

well... in the interests of professionalism, i've actually created a website exclusively for artwork. it's got an artist statement and everything! which holds me to a standard somewhat but that's good. not all the work needs to make the cut.

i'll use this blog for what i originally intended it for: talking shop. now that i'm out of school, i'm a bit afraid of losing my awesome art vocabulary if i don't use it. it took me a long time to learn all that jargon and, hopefully, one day i'll be fluent in art-speak. i'll get my practice in here... feel free to correct me when necessary. i'll continue to post new work here for awhile and use this space to talk about my intentions as well as my reservations within my practice.


It's pretty clear to me that the work seems to have moved into a much darker space recently. my work has always been a bit dark and kinda creepy, but over the course of the last few months a certain shift has taken place. color has almost completely left the work (an aspect that many people have commented on) and i've also done a few full-face portraits which is extremely different from the cropped portraits i usually do. my love of minimalism is really starting to show through too (the fence drawings, for example).





i finished this painting about a week ago and, right now, i think it's the best thing i've ever done. in this piece, two bodies of work have finally come together. the girl on the tire swing is Jon Benet Ramsey. she has been a subject of a lot of my paintings.

my desire to paint her has always been an attempt to restore her humanity. i don't care about all the beauty queen stuff, i care that she was a little girl who was assaulted and murdered.

but by looking at the painting, there is really no way to know that it's a painting of Jon Benet Ramsey. it isn't titled that way, the fence obscures her face, and one would have to look back through my work of the last year in order to learn the identity of the "Anonymous Girl"... which is great. the story is much longer and sordid than what i'll write here.

it could be anyone's daughter on that tire swing... and that's exactly how i want these paintings to be read. but it wasn't everyone's daughter, ligatured and body dumped in the corner of that basement. one family suffered this horror.

the fence is my impossible attempt to protect her- not only from her murderer, but from us as well: the watchers. by refusing to paint her the way the media did, by presenting her as exactly what she was - a little girl - i intend to highlight her loss.


above:
Anonymous Girl #3
16" x 12"
oil on canvas
2008

angela simione

Anonymous Girl #2

12" x 89"
oil on canvas
2008

(nine 12" x 9" canvasses, one inch apart)

portrait of jon benet ramsey

24" x 24"
oil on canvas
2008

Little Miss (portrait of Jon Benet Ramsey)

This painting was pretty hard to do. While I worked on it, I dealt with questions of appropriateness and sensitivity to the subject. It is a portrait of Jon Benet Ramsey. I, in no way, am extending judgement or condemnation toward her family. Rather, I wanted merely to remember her. Because of this, I have a hard time saying the painting is finished.
It is a sad story that was recently brought back in to the public eye through the strange and sick fascinations of John Mark Carr. I started thinking about the violence that beauty can provoke, even if that beauty is held by a child. With television shows like "To Catch a Predator", and the seeming rise in pedophilia in this country, I wanted to remember these victims as actual people... children, not a sound bite and piece of tragic entertainment.
As with the other portraits of children I've been working on, there are no eyes... no identity. Jon Benet Ramsey's identity has been robbed from her in more ways than one; and not only by her killer but by the media frenzy that ensued and clouded her little life with controversy, disputes about religion and parenting, and the pursuit of an unattainable ideal of beauty. Because of these things, she has become an icon in popular culture yet has somehow escaped receiving much representation in art. Again, this is an example of how our society does not view children as being "real" people who deserve a voice or even offer much interest in their emotions and inner-lives.


painting is oil on canvas, 12" x 12" 2007