I got distracted. I decided to take photos of all the little things that make me smile hidden in my apartment.

I just came across these old photos I was taking when I first moved to Denver. Medium format Holga shots of hearts, bands and friends. Some of them aren’t too bad. Makes me want to shoot again.

The skies are overcast, a deep purple palate, windy yet strangely warm. The air dry and eggshell broken.

This is what Damarisland looks like today–tomorrow will be nothing of the sort.

Dear Family and Friends and Friends I haven’t yet met. I wish you all the warmest and sweetest of holiday seasons. Just 6 faces left in the 365 Faces project…and here is todays. Thinking of you all. Love, love, love,

DTD

So as I am packing up all my belongings, things are making their way back into my memory stream…I came across this photo shoot I facilitated with a student photographer. It seems to foreshadow my most recent work: “Washwoman’s Blues”. The shoot was back in 2005, the dresses I were sewn from old lady bathrobes and painted with India ink. Dear, dear, dear Scientista agreed to model with me in Smiley’s Laundromat (if any of you have been to this sketchy laundromat you will agree that the Colfax crack-head gathering spot is maybe not the safest of locations). I think we sort of look like zombie-geisha-aliens. The poses are so static and silly, hilarious really…strangely warms my heart.

I came across some old childhood photographs of me and my family…thought they would make a nice reference point for who I am and how I have grown to this point. My father used to lovingly refer to my sister and I as his “Little Monkeys” well “Little Monkinas” actually. The correlation is hilariously obvious.

I am very fond of this Tom Robbins passage. I am currently reading Skinny Legs and All. I feel this quote is a spot-on illumination of my own art. It’s very telling of what I am striving to do; to re-evaluate and redesign reality. As I realize this is the goal for most artists, his words describe it eloquently and simply by likening it to something wholly accessible. I am excited to share.

“Mockingbirds are the true artists of the bird kingdom. Which is to say, although they’re born with a song of their own, an innate riff that happens to be one of the most versatile of all ornithological expressions, mockingbirds aren’t content to merely play the hand that is dealt to them. Like all artists, they are out to rearrange reality. Innovative, willful, daring, not bound by the rules to which others may blindly adhere, the mockingbird collects snatches of birdsong from this tree and that field, appropriates them, places them in new and unexpected contexts, recreates the world from the world. For example, a mockingbird in South Carolina was heard to blend the songs of thirty-two different kinds of birds into a ten-minute performance, a virtuoso display that served no practical purpose, falling, therefore into the realm of pure art.”

-Tim Robbins Skinny Legs and All p.6

03/22/08, 2:12 pm

While talking with a friend the other day I was asked about the in and outs of the “mainer accent”. Growing up in Maine, I have heard many different variations of it. I guess I would have to describe it as an abstracted Boston accent: roughed up and corner-cut. My father carries a slight one but I never took to it. I youtubed the subject and found a short documenting the the Cumberland County Fair. The very fair I went to year after year of my childhood to ride the Gravitron and eat fried dough. The place I swore an oath to be a vegetarian till death. Some things change. Here’s some wicked Maine accent for you, enjoy:

Cumberland County Fair

Yay for a new and glorious website. Thank you to Ryan the Wonderful Wizzard who did all the designing and coding. Check out wonderfulwizzard.com for more of Ryan’s work. I will try to update you all on all my creative endeavors here. Excitement. Yes.