
Friday, April 28, 2006
Install: end of Day 4

Install: Day 4


Aimee Lee
Hunk, & Dora
Nothing in the entire universe is hidden
--Zen Master Dogen
I grew up hating self-portraits. They seemed to condemn my physical flaws and defects in my creative process. I didn’t understand why it was so hard to draw my face, but so easy to draw a bottle opener. As an overachiever, I was frustrated by how long it took to complete self-portraits; I fell behind for the first time in art class while struggling with one.
This is a self-portrait.
I grew up in brick structures: my home, my schools, places I don’t even recall anymore. I still draw brick walls the way I did as a child, in a running bond. After using covered bricks as weights in bookbinding and reading George Herriman’s Krazy Kat comics about a mouse who throws a brick at a cat’s head, I knew that the brick would be the ideal unit for constructing a physical wall that represented my internal defenses.
To display an interior landscape and mythology, I turned to paper versions of original bricks. They resemble each other: ubiquitous and unassuming, yet extremely labor intensive to lay. Those similarities coupled with their obvious differences help me sit with the fact that what I try to hide is often exactly what I want to expose.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Install: Days 2 & 3


Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Install: Day 1



Monday, April 24, 2006
Not a moment of peace





Friday, April 21, 2006
How lovely you are

I had an incredible meeting last night w/Joan about thesis. I'm going to scrap the entire comic/stand part of the interior and might possibly not perform at all. Who knows. We talked about honey, dogs, my recent dreams, people as empty containers, castles, and generally: am I up to this? I got affirmation on all the doubts and fears I've been having, and now understand WHERE it was all coming from. It's like I knew all along, but I just wasn't letting it be what it was.
She asked if I had any visualizations of the space inside that I might have self-censored. I said that every time I imagine the interior, it's empty, but I know that it can't be. And she said: that's it. So - am I up to it being empty? We'll see. For now, I have to finish up my artist statement, decide if I'm going to yoga (the sciatica is BAD!), hit Home Depot w/Yoonshin and Aerin, and then to the studio. I forgot that I have four feet of wall that I still need to pierce, reinforce, re-pierce, and thread with monofilament. Thank goodness I remembered that last night or I'd be pretty pissed off next week.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
TOO TIRED to function
Nuff said
Monday, April 17, 2006
A Neruda story

Today's menu: steamed collards & red chard sauteed in olive oil, fresh lemon juice, garlic, ginger, sesame seeds, pepper, cayenne, and great northern beans. Quinoa. Tofu stir-fry w/yellow peppers, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, garlic/onion, a huge rainbow of spices, and Bragg's liquid aminos. Homemade ginger tea.
I just finished reading Lewis Hyde's The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property and loved the last story so much I had to share:
Playing in the lot behind the house one day when he was still a little boy, Neruda discovered a hole in a fence board. "I looked through the hole and saw a landscape like that behind our house, uncared for, and wild. I moved back a few steps, because I sensed vaguely that something was about to happen. All of a sudden a hand appeared - a tiny hand of a boy about my own age. By the time I came close again, the hand was gone, and in its place there was a marvellous white toy sheep.
"The sheep's wool was faded. Its wheels had escaped. All of this only made it more authentic. I had never seen such a wonderful sheep. I looked back through the hole but the boy had disappeared. I went into the house and brought out a treasure of my own: a pine cone, opened, full of odor and resin, which I adored. I set it down in the same spot and went off with the sheep.
"I never saw either the hand or the boy again. And I have never seen a sheep like that either. The toy I lost finally in a fire. But even now...whenever I pass a toyshop, I look furtively into the window. It's no use. They don't make sheep like that any more."
"I have been a lucky man. To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvellous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses - that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.
"That exchange brought home to me for the first time a precious idea: that all humanity is somehow together...It won't surprise you then that I have attempted to give something resiny, earthlink, and fragrant in exchange for human brotherhood...
"This is the great lesson I learned in my childhood, in the backyard of a lonely house. Maybe it was nothing but a game two boys played who didn't know each other and wanted to pass to the other some good things of life. Yet maybe this small and mysterious exchange of gifts remained inside me also, deep and indestructible, giving my poetry light."
Sunday, April 16, 2006
I might be a chocolate addict



Saturday, April 08, 2006
Two dinners, two postcards
BEFORE

AFTER

I forgot I had rice and lentils in the chemical fridge today and instead got a prosciutto panini and a rocky road cookie. Then I went to see Oresteia @ Gallery 37's Storefront Theater w/Greg. We left after the first two plays and went to Margie's Candies and I had a grilled cheese sandwich and a brownie a la mode. Yesterday, I got a brownie and two whole wheat chocolate chip cookies from the baseball team bake sale. Geez. I'm balancing my laptop on my magically expanding stomach. So much for working on thesis!
But - I'm determined to start hanging tomorrow. Last night, in my occasional streak of genius, I reached the peak of my procrastination skills, and printed the most brilliant thing I've done in a while. I altered the postcard for our thesis, b/c it's truly awful. It's in a limited, initialed edition of 35 and a good deal are gone already. It took a little while to get the colors just right (I'm a renegade printer, so I mix directly onto the rollers. More like, I'm a lazy printer. It took purple, tulip blue, and burnt sienna), but registration [placing the type onto the postcard in the right place] was pretty easy.
I had another amazing cranio-sacral session today - apparently my psoas is all seized up and glomming together w/my iliacus muscle, so my pelvis was going right and my spine left, which explains a lot of the problems I've been having lately. Bob did some trigger point therapy to deal w/that. Afterwards, I received more meditation instruction. Now I have to up my morning practice to 15 min...we'll see how that goes. I totally had fantasies on the table of ditching my life and just going into healing arts.

AFTER

I forgot I had rice and lentils in the chemical fridge today and instead got a prosciutto panini and a rocky road cookie. Then I went to see Oresteia @ Gallery 37's Storefront Theater w/Greg. We left after the first two plays and went to Margie's Candies and I had a grilled cheese sandwich and a brownie a la mode. Yesterday, I got a brownie and two whole wheat chocolate chip cookies from the baseball team bake sale. Geez. I'm balancing my laptop on my magically expanding stomach. So much for working on thesis!
But - I'm determined to start hanging tomorrow. Last night, in my occasional streak of genius, I reached the peak of my procrastination skills, and printed the most brilliant thing I've done in a while. I altered the postcard for our thesis, b/c it's truly awful. It's in a limited, initialed edition of 35 and a good deal are gone already. It took a little while to get the colors just right (I'm a renegade printer, so I mix directly onto the rollers. More like, I'm a lazy printer. It took purple, tulip blue, and burnt sienna), but registration [placing the type onto the postcard in the right place] was pretty easy.
I had another amazing cranio-sacral session today - apparently my psoas is all seized up and glomming together w/my iliacus muscle, so my pelvis was going right and my spine left, which explains a lot of the problems I've been having lately. Bob did some trigger point therapy to deal w/that. Afterwards, I received more meditation instruction. Now I have to up my morning practice to 15 min...we'll see how that goes. I totally had fantasies on the table of ditching my life and just going into healing arts.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Monday frustrations



This is hard to see, but I fought to hang the template today, and then was so dehydrated that I threw in the towel, got water, and went to therapy. We talked about my insane dreams a bunch, and that made me miss my analyst in NYC, who was the best dream interpreter I have ever met. I built a foot of a shorter wall today but stopped b/c I'm feeling frustrated.
So today's goals are shifted to tomorrow: velcro dots, binder clips, stronger monofilament, fishing weights, and calling the lumber place about longer-than-normal dowels. Other things to stress me: soaking another two batches of brick trimmings, getting doll needles, and figuring out what kind of paper/what size to make for people's feedback during the show.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
March assessment


Hm. I thought I was going to say something positive. [WHOA. Major derail - poor Ashleigh just came in w/a bleeding thumb - she almost cut the whole tip off while working on her installation for thesis. Ay...she insisted on driving herself home and to the hospital. At least the bleeding seemed to have stopped when I bandaged her up to go, but she was really upset. And who wouldn't be?]
Positive: I realized last night, on the last day of March, that I had managed to finish making over 2,000 bricks, date and then not date a guy, go to California, take a bunch of yoga classes, start meditation, build over six feet of brick wall, and apply for at least ten things. Not so bad. I shouldn't be too hard on myself about the wall going slowly. Maybe I'm just having April Anxiety.
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