memory lane can be the road to the Present

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spent the whole day behind the hook and am now enjoying an over-poured glass of Auslese.  this is the very definition of a wonderful day off.

and i've needed it.  the passed week or so has been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster.  a huge box arrived unexpectedly containing my mother's collection of family photos, more than 3 1/2 years after her death.  i opened the box only to be sure of what it was and then closed it again.  i wasn't in the mood for that type of upheaval and i wasn't prepared to slice open a cardboard box and be greeted by my mother's face and the dresses she saved that my sister and i wore as little girls in an Olen Mill's portrait so soooooo many years ago.  kelly must've been 4 or 5.  that would have made me 7 or 8.

a few days later, i reached back inside the box and pulled the dresses out.  i remember hating them as a little girl but, now, they look like art pieces.  something possibly akin to the Kiki Smith piece, Sisters, or the twins in The Shining.  ha!

i gazed at them in between rounds of digging through the 7 portfolios that are stored in my bedroom closet.  it was a strange walk down memory lane.  it's amazing what an accurate barometer of emotion art is.  looking at my work from just a few years ago, i relived the pain and confusion and longing i was entrenched in during those days.  and the sheer MASS of my personal collection is astounding! i've thrown away SO MUCH each time i've moved and i still have such an enormous stockpile of work! it was heartrending to go through it all but there were also moments when i smiled.  and smiled wide like a goofy child, at that.  in the middle of a portfolio that largely houses work i did during the last year i lived in Calistoga, i came across a self-portrait i drew when i was 21 years old.  it was made during one of the happiest times in my life DESPITE the fact that i had yet to leave my hated home town.

 

it was drawn during the time Jose and i lived together in my very first apartment.  we were inseparable and i loved being with him.  we smoked way too many cigarettes and drank blended frappaccinos way too often and squeezed our bellies  and called ourselves fat just like two silly teenagers would.  :)  thinking back on all that makes me so happy.  we listened to Bikini Kill and dreamed of New York together.  what's really special is that sometimes we still do.  it's not at all irregular for Jose and i to refer to each other as Rebel Girl more than 10 years later.  :)

all this made somehow brought me to the realization that for the last several years i needed a deep round of PLAY.  it's no secret that life is hard and it's no secret that my life has been hard.  looking at my own work, my own hand smearing charcoal and graphite, the words i'd scrawl sometimes in the margins or on the back of the paper...  i realized that in the span of 3 short years i lost all three parental figures and the person i considered to be the closest member of my immediate family, my partner for 7 years.  with the exception of my siblings, my entire immediate family basically collapsed.   and all the emotion of those days was right there.  right in my hands, in the black and white smears and screams of my drawings.

it was hard to leave the house that day.  i wanted to hide in bed.  i wanted to be dirty and dumb and lounge around in dingy pajamas.  i wanted to not give a fuck about anything and just spend the day drinking.  i wanted to raise a middle finger to the world and cry my eyes out.  sometimes i hear my voice inside my own head and it sounds so small.  so painfully small. so heartbreaking.  i think of my mother and i think of my father and i think of my siblings and what their pain must be and i whisper inside myself, "this isn't fair"...

but looking at the artwork i made during such a tumultuous era allowed me to see that i have, in fact, healed from a great many pains and that i long to return to a certain type of seriousness again, a particular breed of deep introspection and artistic investigation.  basically, it made me want to draw again.  :)

we'll see.  i sure enjoyed laying in bed all day with my crochet hook and black yarn today, that's for sure.



i'm confident the Future is an interesting place.  

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keep a diary

i started reading my January diary from last year.  it is such an odd experience.  i've been meaning to go back for awhile and read what life used to be like but i somehow couldn't stomach actually doing it until now.  there are no real horrors there (none that i remember anyway), simply a need to stay put in the present.  but ever since the calender changed and a new year sat down coolly on the edge of the bed i've felt a need to return to those ink-flooded pages and get an idea of how much life has truly changed during the last 12 months.  and can i just say: holy shit!

looking at words that are most definitely written in my script but espousing beliefs and attractions i no longer hold is straight up fucking weird.  and it isn't that i've changed so drastically so much as i've flowered.  i've become more myself; a deeper, more honest version of myself.  still, i have a great deal in common with the girl i was a year ago. it is painful to read about the dreams i held then and the massive effort it took to keep them alive inside such a degrading, sterile environment.  it's hard to read about the collapse of a friend's marriage but then be reminded of how that event awoke the strength in me to leave a situation that wasn't right for me.  the people i've met since that time all stare at me wide-eyed when i say i've only been single for a year.  "you've come such a long way!" my roommate tells me and i can't help but think i have so much further to go.  for however far i've come, there is a great distance in front of me.  as i leaf through last year's diary, i am struck by the fact that my primary goals at that time were applying to residencies and undertaking ever bolder art practices.  i was thinking of performance, as spurred on by the creation of the Sweaters of Death, and ways to enact my artistic interests on the street.  i was enamoured of Francesca Woodman and David Wojnarowicz.  i began writing on abandoned couches.  i wrote on stickers and put them on the street.  i'd go home and be lectured about my behavior: a clear sign i was in the wrong place. 

it's funny to think that i've looped back around to certain interests and concerns after a year of living and exploring.  writing on the street, installing pieces outside where they might be enjoyed or sabotaged or taken by other people; how fashion operates on the sidewalk, how words inhabit (and create) a/the world.  but more importantly, exploration itself and discovery itself, adventure and bravery were the big goals of mine then.  i wanted passion in my life.  i wanted to be enveloped by it, ensnared in it, covered in its sweat and saliva.  i am glad that i have allowed myself more than one so-called indiscretion during this time.  i am glad to have spent so many nights dancing and drinking.  i am glad to have met new people and followed them down the street.  i have made some very good friends this year whom i absolutely adore.  i am thankful to have actually, finally lived this passed year.  i have no apologies to make and i'm not embarrassed of anything i've done.  if anything, i feel adorned by the experiences i've had.  i feel more alive and more beautiful now than i did without them.  i feel wiser now and that is a spectacular thing for someone who has often been accused of being naive to feel. 

in some ways, i'm doing it all for the photograph that results.  in some ways, i'm doing it all for the poetry that comes flooding out in to my diary.  in most ways, i'm doing it because i can't help it.  but just like last year, i have no clue what is in store for me next, only that i feel such a deep hunger to find the place i truly belong and to do the bold work i long to do.

untitled (beth)
10" x 8"
graphite on paper
2010

me and louise

my buddy rebecca snapped this of me, scruffy and make-up-less, at SFMOMA and i'm so grateful for the token, for the archive of this experience. it serves as a reminder that i truly do need to follow my own heart and do this thing my way, a way that feels right for me.

it's about honesty.

when i look at louise bourgeois' work, her honesty and bravery radiate right of the surface of her objects. it radiates from the core on out. and standing so close to one of her sculptures, i felt the deep buzz of her love for her work and it was very hard not to touch it. in fact, i should have touched it. the only reason i didn't is the security team at SFMOMA are fanatical and watch every move you make so that they can tell you NO PENS ALLOWED! ONLY PENCIL!





and since the beginning of the year, i've been crawling deeper and deeper in to my own values and ethics when it comes to art and life. and the two subjects are so connected that they are basically the same thing. i want to be a smart artist. i want to be a brave artist. and honorable too.

the passed few days i've been trying to photograph finished drawings that have been hiding in one portfolio or another for quite some time. the grunt work of documentation, but also a very necessary step in the process of curation. because i live with the work and it isn't caged away in a separate studio space, i can easily lose track of what i've made. and this experience of going through the work piece by piece, laying it across every inch of my small cottage, crowding myself with all the black and white and nebulous greys is such an inspiring thing. i can see the lines that connect one work to another. i can see how far back these fault lines run. that i've always made portraits of some kind. the only thing that has changed is my idea of what a portrait is.

in a nut shell, each piece of mine is a portrait- of loss, of desire, of anger, confusion, longing, struggle, failure, and love.

the work is personal and the work exposes things that even i am surprised by sometimes. even the work i consider to be not "good enough" for public consumption, has such a steep value to it. the pieces that i struggled hard with, the work that never came easy and never really became what i wanted it to be, is the work that supplied the best learning curve. it's the work that taught me the most, showed me the most, and, like a good teacher, kicked my ass all over the place when i needed it. my Learning is evident in those pieces and, because of that, they are Good.

it's interesting how one's eyes change.

and i feel lucky that those pieces can have a voice every now and then here on the blog. there's really no such thing as "failure". it's a false construct. it's a lie. Learning is not failure.

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.
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i'm learning a lot these days... and sometimes i get tired, sometimes i get mad, sometimes i am totally frustrated and confused. and then the next morning arrives and i scribble away in my notebook and some sort of answer or brightness falls out of my pen and i find a way to proceed. when i feel especially lost, i spend time with the work of artists i admire. louise is at the top of the list. i am currently trying to leech some of her bravery, some of her gnarly french fuck-off attitude. i love the way she lived her life. i love the way she never gave her power away. i love how she stood, secure and strong, on the foundation of her beliefs- the things she believed to be important about art and life. she was unshakable and didn't give a shit if anyone agreed with her.

talk about faith.
talk about courage.

what a gift that woman is.

Ai died and i am broken-hearted.

a powerhouse. a reckoning. she died march 19th. i just found out this morning. my heart got tight as i read the line, the little line, that she had passed. and nothing specific. "62 years old, dies from illness". and my heart breaks. 62 is too young. too too young.

in her honor, one of my favorites...


PROSTITUTE




Husband, for a while, after I shot you,
I don't touch your body,
I just cool it with my paper fan,
the way I used to on hot nights,
as the moon rises, chip of avocado

and finally, too bored to stay any longer,
I search your pockets, finding a few coins.
I slip your hand under my skirt
and rub it against my chili-red skin,
then I put on your black boots.
I stick the gun in my waistband,
two beaded combs in my hair.

I never cost much,
but tonight, with a gun, your boots...






-Ai
from Cruelty

yesterday....

ghosts and grey dresses,
apparitions, the cold breeze...





hint (1 and 2)
10" x 22"
mixed media on paper
angela simione, 2010

something i read yesterday...

"...The description itself does not reproduce the object, it rather helps us to restage and restate the effort to remember what is lost. The description reminds us how loss acquires meaning and generates recovery- not only of and for the object, but for the one who remembers."

from Unmarked by Peggy Phalen, page 147


All these paintings and drawings are descriptions. And just as the above statement asserts, my "description" of, my portrait of Sylvia Likens will not bring her back.

But the act of drawing her, the act of describing her, even partially, is a way to help me remember her even though I didn't know her. It helps me remember what happened. This act of remembering, this seemingly simple act of drawing her likeness of a sheet of paper, is a gesture toward recovery... not only hers, but mine,

ours.

this is what i've been thinking about for 2 years straight. i do not have many answers and maybe i'm just too senstive but i can't get around it...

we know the names of serial killers-

their violence is so inexplicable, so callous, that (as a culture) our stunned reaction to them is one of fascination. just like our fascination with rouge elephants or anything that seems to be so far outside the realm of normal, expected behavior. and it is fascinating. all anomalies are. anything out of the ordinary will draw attention. of course it will. we want to know why and how these things occur.

and i think of the Holocaust. i think of Charlotte Delbo's play "Who Will Carry the Word?" and that this play is also a very literal question. who will carry it? who will be The Witness? who will let the others know what really happened? who will keep the names alive of those who have suffered inexplicably?

the Holocaust will never be forgotten as an historical event... what i mean is... what are all the names involved? not just the names of the perpetrators. not just them.

i think of Sylvia Likens and i think of the 48 (known) victims of the green river killer. why don't we know their names? why aren't their names alive first inside our collected memory? why do we keep the names of those who have caused such suffering but not the names of those who suffered under their hand? it is the spectacle at work. the train-wreck. the twisted metal. the night-stalker smiling in the courtroom at his groupies. but as inexplicable as these horrors are, the way in which the victims die is just as inexplicable. most of us will not die under the hand of a serial killer. most of us will not know what it is to be tortured to death. most of us will not know what it is to be degraded so completely. this is a good thing. my point is, these sensational events extend further than the murderer. there are the people they killed. that circumstance is outside the bounds of the norm too.

and as a member of this culture, i am enraptured by these anomalies as well. i know the names of murderers but not the names of their victims. i too am captivated by the senselessness of atrocity. it isn't necessarily wrong or bad. but after the news break, after acceptance of these hard and sickening events has come, the work should not end. and it should extend beyond trying to figure out how a murderer is born. it should go further than attempting to understanding the inner workings of a psychopath. it should go in the direction of the victim as well. the life that was brought to an inexplicable, unthinkable stop. the real life redaction and dismissal of a human being. the massive, hateful swell of tragedy and pain that extinguished an individual life.

in a strange way, we do a sick honor to the "work" of a serial killer by keeping their name and not those of their victims.

i want to change this about myself. i want to change this about my life and the way i live it, the way i proceed. i want to choose to remember the LaBiancas instead and to think of them FIRST.

who will carry the word? who will remember? who will be a witness? and who will listen to the witness?

i would like to listen.

there are stories in the world that ask nothing of us, except simply to be heard. an end to shame and secrecy and humiliation and the intolerable pain of being made to suffer alone and in silence.

i will never know, from personal experience, what Sylvia Likens went through. i will never know, i hope, what the last moments of JonBenet Ramsey's life was like. i will never know the things that Elsie saw and felt. i hope, beyond all words i hope, to not die in a state of such terror, humiliation, and pain. i do hope to remember the names of those who have.

drawing Sylvia Likens' portrait has brought about a disruption, a shaking down of previous ideas and fears about art and life and hope and what i can do. i can choose to remember the victims and to give their names back to them. if all it is is an utterance, then i will take the time and opportunity to utter, to whisper, and if need be, cry out. i want to return them to their real names, not just whose victim they were.

it is true that the identities of the murderer and their victim are linked. inseparable inside the moment when death was caused. but there was a different identity prior to that moment. the act or moment of death is not the absolute identity of a human.

some ghosts just want to be acknowledged. some pain just wants to be noticed. some wounds will never heal and some horrors are so great that they defy explanation. and these horrors that defy explanation are also, sadly, unpreventable. the people that fell under such atrocity need to be remembered too.

we need to carry the word for them. i do. and maybe that's the shift. maybe that's the turn my practice has taken and has been taking for a long, long time... a way to prepare myself, to become able to carry such a word? whatever it is... i will try my best to find a way to become strong enough to draw their portraits and give their names back to them, no matter how long it takes.

2 things

1. i've been getting so many sweet emails about that print! yay!!!! no fear, we will do it again soon. the more i think about it and what it means and how i'd like the piece to function in the world, i've come to the conclusion that it should always be free. and i mean, completely free: postage paid by me. that being said, whenever i've got cash to burn i will offer it up for consumption. print as needed as i am able.

and to all of you who responded so enthusiastically on round 1, your packages have been shipped! thank you so much!!!

2. thinking of seances and acts of mourning... witnesses, ghosts, memory... collecting the fragments... evidence, ritual, rite.


untitled
40" x 26
gouache on paper
angela simione, 2010

happy birthday...

making moths...

valentines as memento mori on this grey day. :)

death day

today is the anniversary of sylvia plath's death. our fair radish king holds a bake-off every year in her honor on this day where those of us who have been touched by her work can trade recipes and poems and thoughts... a time and place of remembering and appreciating... a work of mourning and respect and joking around.

i thought of sylvia plath a lot this past week. in my sickness i've been cutting out tons of heart-shapes- a personal symbol of plath's. and i have strings of hearts hanging in my bedroom window. silvery and sparkling and dancing slow. they have been cut from "failed" paintings and drawings. i thought... even though the composition was wrong, there was still love in this work. let me at least save that part.

i want to keep that thought in mind today as i remember her... and as i remember her son, nicholas.

-

the first poem in Ariel is written to a child. for a child. it is thick with love, thick with amazement. she was not without love... let's at least save that part. draw a heart on something. cut one out. save it. hang it in your window. this is the new tradition.



MORNING SONG


Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.








october 27, 1932 - february 11, 1963




and here is my poem about her for you... since i can't bake. :)
(click the pictures to enlarge)






you know her
artist book
angela simione, 2009

transcript:

you know her


she wore the white dress and white shoes
snow-white
under the little wire clamps
pale, nondescript
harmless
her hand to her mouth
she'd had such trouble
cutting. Cutting and cutting and cutting.

admiring... and happy...

i've been thinking about sylvia plath a lot lately... not just her work but the small things about her that really warm my heart and make me smile... like the fact that she liked to paint little hearts on everything. it was her symbol, her favorite shape. and apparently they were everywhere inside her home. knowing a little fact like that makes me like her even more. makes her work spin around inside my heart with more ferocity, more angered eloquence than it already did.

last week i remembered her birthday was coming up and then promptly forgot all about it. one of my personal resolutions is to write stuff like that down so i can celebrate the lives of people i admire who are no longer with us. and this morning over at Our Liege the Radish King, i was happy to be reminded- today's the day! and wouldn't you know that for the passed 4 days or so i've been drawing hearts on things. ha! my subconscious kicking in and trying to jog my memory i suppose. i'm even making a curtain for my kitchen rendered entirely in filet crochet that has a huge white heart right in the center of it. and i mean HUGE.

it's windy and cold but that chilly pair has made the brightness of this day even more beautiful. i have the heater on and am getting ready to make another pot of coffee. the house is clean, the dog is sleeping, and it is silent save for the wind over the roof. the day fits her. sylvia. her work. her heart. her hearts. i will make my curtain and hang it up- an ode.

and so today, i'll read my favorite poem of hers and work to commit it to memory- all while making heart shapes, letting the light and wind in, attempting repairs of the broken.



Sheep in Fog



The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

The train leaves a line of breath.
O slow
Horse the color of rust,

Hooves, dolorous bells-
All morning the
Morning has been blackening,

A flower left out.
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.

They threaten
To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water.




-Sylvia Plath, 1963

book reveiw... (not for the faint of heart)

this morning,
already,
i read The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick...
my heart in pieces at the very beginning today but, like i said before, sadness is no reason to run and hide.
not from Art...

and The Holocaust must be remembered...


this little short story and the following novella is one of the most beautiful and painful things i've ever read, ever held in my hands. ever. like a baby almost. like a secret. it smothers and then it softens. the words fly out and stick in you. i tucked a little letter pressed print of a mother holding her infant child into the flap of the front cover. a mother whose face is turned away. her features hidden... and just like in this story, her features aren't the point. they aren't important. her motherhood is what is important. her desire to protect her child, to have her child kept safe... a child that is gone... to watch her daughter learn to dance and maybe paint, maybe write, commit poems to memory, to wear a blue dress with shining black buttons, to butterfly through youth and smile. smile.

it is a tall order when confronted with the past. this past. camps and electrified fences and boiling water and all the horrors devised to save on bullets. and rape.

but we have to listen. we have to remember. we have to at least try to understand. try to see what went on there. try to give rise to a new language that can actually hold these stories... find a new line that is finally strong enough to draw out the map of these grim and gross and horrible things. mussel manner. that's what's left if we don't find the right words. if we ignore the ache to find them. mussel manner. the dead walking around on the sticks of human legs. mussel manner. and all that's required of us, the ones who weren't there and who don't know, is to listen. just listen. not with pity. pity doesn't cut it.

and neither does sympathy.

it has to be deeper than that. sympathy, in the face of this, is laughable. it's a shame. there's no way to do it. you must let your heart break, wide open, be filled with black birds, and prove that you're human. give them honor. sacrifice your happy life, even just for the few hours it takes to read this work, to listen. just listen. listening is where hope grows. it's what we can do to become better than what we are.

make your life deeper.
buy this book.

pink...

i spent all day digging and pulling and looking, rooting through my heavy portfolios, making piles and systems and rituals. my back hurts. damn iffy disk. but progress has been made, even if just a little. and it was sort of romantic... sitting outside in the cool sun with all my portfolios laying open. i remember the day each drawing was made. every single one. they all, no matter how sloppy or misguided, made me smile. wide and warm and full of thanks... like when you watch children playing.

just a small collection of work found in the depths of the art pile...








all works-
angela simione, 2007

arg! lost papers!

when i was in high school, i wrote a short story about a girl who fell down a well. to keep herself company, she scratched portraits in to the rock walls and those were her friends. i've been looking everywhere for the story and i can't find it anywhere. i'm sure my memory of it is a lot better than what it actually is... in fact, i KNOW my memory has cast it in that bright light of divine perfection, convincing me i've misplaced a work of genius. ha! right! the stuff i wrote at 17 was so damn melodramatic that it's pretty embarrassing to go back and read it now. there isn't much i've kept from those days... but i swore i held on to that story. i want it because, in a way, isn't that what i'm doing? making friends on all these canvasses. the story is probably long gone and yeah i could always rewrite it but i wanted the naive, idealistic story... the story i wrote when i had no idea about "bad writing" and was just in love with the action. there's something IN work like that... our young work when we weren't concerned about anything other than saying something... even if what we said was stupid.

maybe one of these days i'll force myself to rewrite it... i was looking at my walls, covered in my faceless portraits and thought it'd make for a super cool artist statement. the roses of my memory making me long for every page my hand ever touched. :)

memory...

there's a preciousness and a longing... an intimacy and a gentleness and a strange nostalgia... because i don't long to see the days of the apron return, not at all. but there's a call in these little drawings... a child's call... when we were little and we all thought our mamas were angels. there's a sad calm that pours out, a tiredness... but also something simple and beautiful...



mama
6" x 6"
water-soluble graphite and acrylic on raw canvas
angela simione, 2009

i'm partial to the drawings on paper but this experiment of drawing on unprimed canvas turned out quite sweetly. i think i'll keep playing with this approach and see where it takes me.