productivity = fail

There's nothing like underwear and elephants to brighten up a gloomy day. And to help you avoid responsibility.

With so much to do for this last week, I probably should get started, but...

sometimes you need to stare at something as pure and beautiful as Chinatsu Ban's Elephant Underpants to help you get through the day.

some of her art works

tiny tiny tiny tiny

I’m becoming really interested in art as nostalgia and escape, looking a lot at artists like Amy Sol whose works are subtle and touching, never negative but not sweet and saccharine either. I’ve never really made stuffed animals as art before this class and I’m learning that I can’t treat them the same way I do my paintings – in both, I’m very concerned with deception but due to the nature of the stuffed animals, in process and the finished object, I’m not nearly as effective in pointing this out as I do in my paintings. There’s a sense that I feel in making the animals that the deception can be healed, and that it’s okay to recognize that some things in this world aren’t misleading and won’t betray us, like the tiny tiny dog in the above picture. This is Lucy, my boyfriend’s five-pound Chihuahua who contains all the happiness in the world inside her Tupperware-sized body. Seeing her get up on her tiny toes and flapping her tiny arms at you in excitement is an instant antidote for any negativity. In my art I am more concerned with getting to the root of these negative feelings and helping to cure them rather than just forgetting about them through cute!puppiness but it helps to remember that there is so much good within something so small and fragile and shaky.

Because anger and shame doesn’t get us anywhere. The point is to care about each other, to help each other enjoy this life to the best of our abilities, whether this is through dramatic change or just by enlightening someone to the adorable pitter-patter of your tiny dog’s feet (thank you Evan).

silent balloons

Sometimes there is no way to say the things that we really need to say. They stay with us at the base of our spine and we think that someday they will all come spurting out, travel up through our backs and over our neck, to the tip of our tongue to be revealed by our lips, but sometimes they are homebodies and never leave. The world does not wait for them to renew their passport and get the hell out of there, and before long it is too late. But there is a difference between the things we do not say and the things that we cannot say. The latter are stubborn, more powerful than our screams and our tears and they mock us when we try to speak their message, transforming into "blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah" and turning back as soon as the mouth is closed. I want to tell you but there is no way. The words have colonized the bottom of my spine and that is where they will stay.

Does anyone else, when they see an incredibly deflated balloon, have the urge to jump on and pop it, but refrain from doing so because you feel like you'd be destroying something somehow? It seems like so much fun and it's not every day that you see a deflated balloon just hanging around but I still can't bring myself to do it.

The following is a (extremely non-discriptive and poorly scanned) study for my next project -- I definitely have other ideas for it beyond what is here but this is the basic surface sketch of the animal. I want to experiment more with materials, especially cellophane and gauze. Any other ideas?

sugar bombs

There was something endearing about the way he called me a fat whore in the grocery store, in front of the balding man trying to decide on a cereal. He didn’t mean it, but he said it like he did so that everyone would think that he meant it, everyone except just us two and it was our little secret. Not that he actually thought about it that way at all, not that it was anything but funny to him to watch Bald Cereal Guy’s reaction to that phrase directed toward a small, innocent, 85-pound frame, but I, always oversensitive and overreacting, thought it was funny too, actually was able to let go of my preconceived ideas of hatred and wrongness and affection. We would sit on his bed and watch Planet Earth and I would eat Taco Bell and chocolate cake and he would poke me and say, “Fatty fatty fat fat,” and I would respond with “I love you” and he would smile and say “I love you, too.” I think he was telling me that I was beautiful. He’d tell me that plainly, just “You Are Beautiful” like no one had before him, but it didn’t carry as much adoration as the insult. And sometimes I wondered if that was true or if I just thought it was and then I wondered why because I wonder too much, but at some point I would stop caring because he thought something of this really short, kinda white little girl and that was worth all the chocolate cake in the world. I would give anything for someone who would watch turtles all day with me. For someone who could alter my obsessions for the better rather than towards thoughtlessness. He told me once, when I was practically a stranger, that when he was a kid he used to have this fear that he wasn’t wearing any pants. He’d look down and see himself fully covered, denim superbly forming a fortress around his lower half, but anxiety told him was all an illusion, that the reality was Oops, No Pants. I think I fell in love right then. I won him over three days later when my narcoleptic habits caused me to fall asleep on top of him for two hours. I must have adhered myself like a leech in my sleep and never let go. Sometimes when I am trying to decide on a cereal I think to myself, “You Are A Fat Whore” as a statement of dignity. Somebody loves me. They are just words and their dictionary meanings are poles away. Bald Cereal Guy may never understand, but we do.

It is 6:20 and I am awake and he is asleep on my arm. His 160 pounds are not heavy.