just the beginning

.

 

over a year in production, The Blanket of DOOM is finally finished.   mostly.  a few small tweaks here and there, a few loose yarn ends to be woven in to the grain of stitches, and a ton of photographs to take before i can legitimately refer to this project as Done.  in fact, it could be quite some time before i see the end of this particular piece.  the photo up top signals what i envision for The Blanket: a life prior to finding itself on display in a gallery.  we'll see where we end up together.  :)

but it is a happy moment to see her in all her good glory.  so many long hours and evening spent hooking away at this piece.  it is an expression of dedication and faith that, even if imperfect, the idea was a good one and to chase it to the end.  there were plenty of times at the very beginning of this massive undertaking that i wanted to give up, unravel the entire thing, and focus on smaller projects.  there were plenty of weeks when i didn't touch her at all.  couldn't.  even hated the idea of working on her.  there were plenty of times when i dreaded the work that needed to be done.  it seemed so endless.  impossible. 

when i finally reached the half-way mark, my hope and strength returned and i felt committed to seeing the project through to the end regardless of how it turned out.  i no longer needed it to be any good and i just wanted to make the blanket for me.  i began to see it as a landscape...  a road...  a way to learn something deeper about who i am and the type of artist and human i want to be.  a poem to wrap myself in.

Lea had said to me once, "your work is so devotional."  her voice came back to me so many times while i worked on The Blanket.  what is Devotion?  what is it to devote oneself to something?  what does it require?  it comes down to an unspeakable trust.  i trust my work with all that i am and all that i've got.  i entrusted my entire life and self to it a long time ago and haven't questioned it since.  my road through this world might very well be different from others but it is a good one and my work has proven itself to be the very best map and guide.

the picture of me laying on top of the Blanket of DOOM was taken this morning in my kitchen.  she takes up the entire floor.   i'm 5'6".  each letter in DIE is taller than i am.   but the work has always been, and always will be, bigger than me and that has nothing to do with physical scale.  :)

 

so happy i could DIE

crochet

kingsize blanket

angela simione, 2013

it has been raining all weekend. i have been worrying too much as a result and spent a bit of time crying and feeling pitiful. i am worried for more reasons than merely the rain.

we talked about moths and mortality and how they do not carry malt-o-meal in tennessee, only cream-of-wheat, and now there is a note on my refrigerator admonishing me to buy malt-o-meal the next time i go to the grocery store. i will put it in a box with some paper moth ornaments i made and ship it off to the Hog and Hominy State (or Volunteer State, if you are a purest). and i was given a passage from psalms for which i extended a passage of Simone Weil's Gravity & Grace... which was very much an act of mirroring. and emotional but very good. necessary... like a window. prayers floating in from the wide, wet world. bits of light, whiffs of home.

this is how i think of moths. i began printing some more after i got off the phone. there is a necessity in the image, in repeating it... like a favorite phrase of music: a hint of what ascension feels like.

this man

when i first cruised through the MOMA's flickr set for the Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present retrospective a few weeks ago, i was so struck by his face. such an awesome beauty. true beauty. this reaching out. his eyes. and the longing to trust so apparent, so honest, made evident. maybe fearful but also courageous. and i'm so glad i'm not the only one who was captivated by his emotion, his openness.

his name is Paco Blancas.

human

it dawned on me yesterday while i was talking about art with my neighbor that i am currently in a phase of tremendous growth and change, and that it is both elating and PAINFUL. patience has become very very very important. because without it, i begin to place demands upon myself and my practice and my life that are not only unrealistic, but have nothing to do with what i truly want for myself.

i think, during times of rapid change and growth, it is very normal to feel that one's life is in a state of upheaval... and so gentleness becomes a mandatory thing. when i feel the chaos of change i begin to look outside for the cure. well, outside is loaded with ageism and sexism and, in this country, a general disdain for artistic, abstract, philosophic leanings and dispositions. most people seem to think that being an artist is just a whole bunch of happy fun play-time. it isn't. caring about the world, life, humanity, rights, wrongs, ethics... it's tiring to say the least. and it takes a lot of work not to become cynical.

but for the first time in years, i'm beginning to feel proud of myself again. i'm learning the hard way that perfection is not the goal and that i am allowed to make mistakes too without fearing that non-perfection means BAD BAD BAD. i am not a machine and shouldn't be expected to function like one. it's my responsibility to set that expectation down and possibly throw up a big fat middle finger to people who expect me to be a machine: no feelings, no offense, no opinion, just GO GO GO and don't you dare fuck up.

hmmmmmmmm. no thanks.

one of the reasons i like drawing and painting so much is that it is accepting and inclusive of (by its very nature) the inherent flaw of the human hand, the embrace of imperfection, the potential for accident and haphazard gestures. in that respect, there is an air of acceptance and forgiveness in art. and that's something everybody needs, including me. and so i will extend that kind of compassion to myself. i am not a genius and sometimes i get it wrong, sometimes i struggle, sometimes i fall short of my aspirations. but i also get back up again and keep trying. the images i'm working on currently and the writing i'm doing doesn't need to be "perfect" because the work itself is not about perfection. it is about respect though.. so as long as i approach my subjects respectfully and deal them the honor they deserve, the work succeeds. i choose to believe (or trust) that other people will see that quality shining through... that i really do care about the work and that i am giving it my all... my very best. and i will never water it down.

feeling thankful for all the writers and artists maintaining blogs and talking about the struggle of this thing we do...

fear, shame, feeling wrong, feeling stupid...

these are the hitches we deal with. all of us. separately, alone, without a rope usually, without any clue of which direction to crawl in. artists and writers.

my sweet and dear friend who is an absolute powerhouse when it comes to writing, sees me struggle to get at whatever it is i'm trying to get at, and suggested i buy "The Triggering Town" by Richard Hugo. it arrived in the mail yesterday. i sat down on my stoop and read the introduction and first chapter right then. then i closed the cover and went inside and worked on a drawing. scratch scratch scratch, wandering with my pencil over the clean white, thinking thinking thinking. (in art school, teachers are told - ORDERED actually - not to yell at a student for doodling during a lecture. it is a way of thinking.) and i thought about how he said, instantly, right there on the first page, that his hope as a teacher is NOT that he can teach you how to write... but to teach you how to teach yourself how to write... that a student must find out how to write like them self.

i thought about this pretty much all day. it's something i already knew but it always helps to be told again. and i thought that it actually comes down to those hitches i wrote up top... finding a way through those things, but also going beyond the therapeutic aspect of writing. this is something i learned how to do when it comes to the creation of images. the therapeutic is often a starting point for my visual practice, but it is not an end. it moves beyond that. it aspires to more than an act of therapy. and this is a good thing! the image retains that part but it gathers other attributes, other aspects, other functions by the time the image is "completed". but i am having a hell of a time applying this know-how to my writing practice. i think sometimes, i luck out. happen to stumble out of the pen of therapy in to the yard next door- the land of art with a capital A. but it is occasional, momentary, unnoticed even. and it comes down to fear. my fear of saying the wrong thing and seeming stupid. hitch.

and then i read this post by our lovely elisabeth and i thought more and more and more about all these things, all these fears and expectations of writing and how they are inexplicably paired with the desire for love, to be a good person, to be understood, to not hurt anybody, to be fair and even and honest. and this struggle to find a true voice... and then the struggle to find the courage to use that voice...

because honesty is not always fair or kind or even.

that fact doesn't sit well with me either.

but i must find a way around it. it is a hitch.

and so i went back to richard hugo, curled up with him in bed and read read read until it was time to fall asleep. all his insights are somewhere in my brain, baking and turning and steaming.

i hear one of my painting professors voice boom in my head. my esteemed Jack, his face a mirror of robert redford's, and how i came to class all bent out of shape by Theory, and he said: don't worry about it. just keep on taking all the ideas in. you don't need to put them in order. keep taking them in and eventually they will find their way back out. their own way.

and so i go back to that day. that beginning. again and again, the beginning. the site of fresh desire, so rife with confusion and fear, is fertile ground. and trust is the sword.

how do i achieve that? how do i get my hands on that sword? how do i learn to use it, wield it, care for it, polish it?

Jack said: just paint. (for now)

Hugo says: just write. (for now)



okay.

call

last night i started reading 'a thousand plateaus' by deleuze and guattari of all things. i've been thinking of the book for weeks, feeling there's information somewhere inside this monster that i can use. especially after accepting the schizophrenic nature of my practice as a whole. the multiple personalities of it. the splintering. the fragments. the shattering that occurs almost daily. and then after reading The Bell Ringer, i saw that the act of sweeping up all the fragments, all the splinters, in to a pile and calling it a human that that is what my art practice is and has always been about. a collection of evidences. the appearance of the images i make only seem disparate. how they are produced - oil, graphite, collage, embroidery - accounts for this difference but they all are hauled up from the same deep well. so i will haul them up and lay them out to dry and work work work and take a peak at all these things in a couple weeks or maybe a couple months and see what i've got staring back at me. i'll see the red thread later when all these images are spread across the living room floor. not a second sooner. for now- just the taking in of ideas and information. deleuze and guattari paired with aase berg and angela pnueman and angela carter and rebecca loudon and hans christian andersen and patti smith and banks violette and ed ruscha and kiki smith and anna gaskel and gerhard richter and alice in wonderland. take it in, take it in, take it in and then go draw. don't worry about it just yet. don't think too hard about it. just draw. the drawing will help me process all these things. it always has if i just let it. i have such a fire of ideas in me right now. such a tremendous and beautiful burn. beyond smoldering. way beyond. i don't need to know where i'm going, i just need to GO! and this morning i stayed in bed for an hour after i woke up just thinking about art and the articles i've read recently and all the poetry and i thought "maybe art is more about noticing things- the connections or discrepancies and anomalies and fissures, not saying something concrete". and that thought felt right and made me feel good. i got out of bed then and poured my coffee and went outside in to this cold sunday, this last day of february, and wrote wrote wrote on my frigid stoop outside the front door.

good morning. :)

process...

i am back with my maids. back in the shadows of aprons. back in the subtle shifts... body language, pose, tilt... all the small corners that belie the little secrets, all the untold things, the history that went unrecorded, unnoticed, not shared, not held, not made warm. all that's been hidden and forgotten. that's why all the black. that's why all the white.

it isn't easy. this work has a weight that i struggle with. but it's so much better than i am that i'm sold on struggling with it for as long as it takes.

my neighbors asked me when i'll stop painting the maids. i said "when they're done with me". they started giving me ideas for new paintings after that... a different subject matter in spite of what i'd just said. suggestions... none of which i want and none of which i need. i wasn't offended. they don't understand. it took me a quite awhile to learn how to respect my practice too... i need to be right where i am. i trust this work and i know others will trust it too. i learned well and good how to trust the work a long time ago. i move in the direction it points. i take the tools i'll use and no more. and when i get tired and beaten, they say "rest". i curl up with my books and crochet hooks and wander off for awhile. i get warm and rested and then i come back.

fixing...

wednesday night is my night.
a night for dark and darker, darker still. my night.
secret meetings where all the unravelling is done. the strings pulled apart.
my tether loosed just a little. just a little, little.

my tears are not ugly.
and not my red face.
no comment about how blue blue eyes get during a good cry. no advice.
(that is not giving.)
no golden intentions, just the case,
the cause we all know, the disturbance
and Our Unexplainable,
the strict perfect chaos, the frozen, the freezing, the aftermath.
and then home.

then home.

to warm, to cool.
home
to home.

i must be vague...

not entirely unexpected... more like ignored. put on the back burner until i became strong enough to look at it...

i am on that horrible cusp of knowing the time has come to make the hard decision, to choose need over desire. my eyes have landed on it and i know what the clock says and what the wind is trying to do and where the seeds will land if i do not intervene. one scared hand must be raised. one small fist must curl around one small falling ember. just one. just one.



and once it is seen, it must remain so. it must. or else. and so i go back to making signs for myself and leaving them were i have to look at them. nudge myself to stop being so afraid, to know the land i stand on and run through; its' scents and hints. the hard time is here. for as much as i want to hide under my quilt and drown out the sounds... i can't. i will put it on the fridge like an "A" on a test and encourage myself to do what is right and good and necessary.



"reminder"
15" x 11"
watercolor on paper
angela simione, 2009

there's just something about black and white...

i know, i know... i'm supposed to be trying for a bit of color inclusion in my work these days but, honestly, i'm getting ready to just scrap that idea completely. at least for now. it's just not the right time. my heart's just not in it and i feel like it's pretty apparent. and one thing is for certain, i never want to fall in to that horrible habit of doing work just to do it or satisfy someone else's desires. the work, at very least, needs to be sincere. good or bad, it doesn't matter as long as sincerity is evident in the work. and that's not something that can be faked.

and at this point, the reason i've not posted any of the more recent oil paintings is because well... there aren't any to show. they are all half-finished, half-hearted attempts to move away from my beloved black and white and i just can't keep moving in that direction. that is a shift that needs to happen naturally in the course of my practice and i'm just not there yet. i am more interested in exploring the subtleties of color, the way a black and white approach can suggest color, than actual using color. i'm sure than sounds a bit strange or nonsensical but it's where i'm at with this work. dealing with the huge issues of loss and trauma, and their influence within the identity project, just feels a bit contrary to color... at least at this stage of the game.

i'm happy with my black ink and black paint. i'm happy with my white thread and white paper. the work has an elegance to it which is a wonderful surprise considering the somewhat sad nature of the ideas being explored. i'm completely satisfied with the works on paper and the redaction pieces and i need to trust the work and follow it's lead.

even something as simple as this piece...


"pictured window"
6" x 3 3/4"
redacted book page
2008

...speaks so beautifully and elegantly about loss (and the poetry that can be found within the event of loss) that i feel compelled to keep up my current approach to exploring these ideas. i feel like i am on the right track here and i'm excited to see where it takes me. process has become an ever-increasingly important aspect of my practice that even the silliest experiments in the studio end up being such a thoughtful and genuine experience that i'm inclined to stop second-guessing my instincts.

p.s. lots of new stuff in the shop these days. everything from doll collections to home invasions to redoute-inspired botanicals. check it out when you've got a few minutes and let me know what you think. thanks!