Fibers in Fine Art - unexpected intricacies

When I hear the word fiber I used to think digestion.  But not this week. Two different shows - one local, one vicarious - have pointed me toward its capacity for beauty.

The local show is at Art and Frame in Danbury (Rte 6 near Camomile).  These pics don't do it justice as each has so many subtleties and such understated nuance. The artist name is Paula Renee and she combines weaving and knotting, applied color and collaged papers (I am guessing here) with wonderful sense of color. She's won two awards: One from the Society for Creative Arts of Newtown for best in show (a silk "stiching" called Red Trees Lakeside, and another from The New Canaan Society for the Arts for a mixed media work called Brain Storming.. The photos here are not very good.

Her stuff is only up until tomorrow so get out this weekend and see this free exhibit. You might take one home even - as there are many small sized, matted items with good prices!

The vicarious show - well that is an online article about artist Lauren DiCioccio's gorgeous  hand embriodered issues of the New York Times. This is not your momma's embroidery. It is MOMA's kind of embroidery though. Check out Katie Hosner's great article at http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/lauren-dicioccio-sewnnews

Supposedly enlightened closet chauvinist

Last week I had very unfortunate series of electronic exchanges with a senior citizen who runs some sort of poetry/jazz/improv open mic over in Westchester County, New York.

This man was berating a friend of mine on her Facebook page for her involvement with slam poetry and with her boy friend who is also involved in it. She asked me to look at the posts which she thought were a bit creepy. And wow, he'd said some pretty gross things on her pages. Later - he more or less excused it all, saying enlightened people are never wrong. ( How 'bout that! )

He had taken the position that slam is "evil." He said he knew two women with tragic lives he was trying to "help" who left off consulting or consorting with him and turned to male slam poets instead, and they had come to no good ends. he said. Now, one of those people was someone I knew who'd had a whole constellation of problems not one of which stemmed from slam. The things he said about her were just wrong. Yet he thought he knew better, than anyone else, as a paternalistic "enlightened" male guru just trying to guide a few poor confused women.... (grrr)

Essentially he was saying that because some men involved in slam hurt some women who were involved - we should ban slam. This seems pretty self-serving for someone who runs a series that competes with local slams for venues, funding and community involvement and of course, women poets.... And by this logic we should ban men because sometimes they hurt women. And the opposite could be said as well. It's all pretty silly. And the self-declared "enlightened" seem to be an catastrophically unreliable source for life guidance. More like a fount of bad advice.

Happy 4th to all, everywhere

Heat, sunshine, shade, AC, PC, cat, (and cat hair), raspberries, lime-ginger pasta salad, distant barking of fireworks somewhere.... Someone is drawing. Someone is doing a crossword puzzle.

We are so lucky to be alive. To have food, quiet, electricity enough for now.

Thankful to everyone and to no one in particular for this day - to history, fate, and especially to those who have endeavored over the years, to keep separate religious dictates and political power in this country.

Ubiquitous entropy

Summer seems an odd backdrop for thinking about fall, but entropy is on my mind today. Ordered systems tend toward disarray. Everything that grows also harbors a limit of time, energy, health, of life itself. Nature ferments a slow cycle of wax and wane. These days, this is is not a popular thought. Yet, everything is cyclic, planets, plants, even people and ways of thinking about the world. All things bloom and wither. Things change in the world and in us. The interior world does not follow a smooth logical trajectory upward anymore than the exterior world does. Oceans rise. Rivers dry up. Things that are whole fall into parts. Things that have grown crumble into compost. That which crumbles doesn't permanently return. Something new might grow. And even in barren dry soil, a desert might offer it's subtle beauties. Selah.

The above picture I made in an online browser program. I was thinking about fall.

A view of land, water, sky

This new work was created entirely in browser-based programs, including DeviantArt Muro and Google+ Creative Kit. This work was inspired by a landscape workshop I went to last night. It was given at SCAN by James Grabowski - whose playful nonchalant approach prompted me to experiment more freely with color in the context of this landscape. All rights reserved.

Emerging from something or other

This morning's doodling. Made using Pixlr.com then finessed using the creative kit on Google+

CL&P not to blame - CT A.G. Jepsen is wrong

GET OVER YOURSELF CONNECTICUT

I am not a corporate shill, nor am I even a corporate enthusiast.
And our new CT Attorney General Jepsen is wrong wrong wrong on this issue~

What issue? Blaming them for the damn weather and for our own negligence in not allowing tree trimming. Ask any tree warden in Fairfield County. They have to practically plead with homeowners to remove even diseased and dying trees.

Connecticut's tree-loving "Don't touch my trees" nature lovers must acknowledge that their stance gravely increased the severity of power outages during last august's bone-crusher storm which struck when the leaves were in full leaf, bringing down hundreds of trees across the state culminating in on of the longest power-outages in recent history.  And - which the whole state seems to want to blame on CL&P.

There are lots of things on might legitimately blame them for. Not this though. Punishing the corporation by imposing penalties, as Jepsen calls for - penalties which the rate payers will ultimately shoulder - is just counter-productive. We did this to ourselves. 

I am a tree lover, I am a tree hugger in fact. If I can say it, so can you.

Contributing to the chaos was the blind arrogance of wealthy ME-FIRST towns who thought their power restoration was more important that other areas of the state -  and who complained unceasingly, and yet refused to stay off the roads where powerlines lay live under tree limbs they refused to have trimmed earlier in the year. 

If you want a real issue - let's concentrate on THE OVER FILLED SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL POOLS right here in CT which I'd bet still hold every fuel rod ever used in the state.   No it doesn't go away.