Art group

I've been meaning to take some pictures of our art group in the beautiful space at McGuffey. It has been open to anyone interested, but every week its all women. Sometimes we talk about dark things, some times we giggle, sometimes it is silent. It is all allowed.

Here are some camera phone shots from last Saturday.

Jimmy Danko

I started this blog at work with the idea of drawing together art, mental wellness and activism....because in a round about way that is what I do for a living (plus empty the recycling, track payroll, order take-out for long meetings). Sometimes I fantasize about who I will be in my next life, when I really hit my stride. Maybe I could move to Argentina and forget about winter, keep an illustrated journal, paint giant Bob Dylan and Frankenstein, explore abandoned carnivals, sport a soul patch...........but there is no point, because Jimmy Danko beat me to it!

http://www.jimmydanko.com/

Jorge Rodriguez Gerada

The street art of Samuel Francois

http://www.samuelfrancois.com/scales-of-the-universe-the,242.html
Maybe I should not move out of my crazy shack, I should just decorate more with the junk, glam it up a bit and get over the long drive to town and relative isolation?

They say good art inspires....

Vic Chesnutt - I Ain't Crazy Enough

Vic Chesnutt - I Ain't Crazy Enough

MURALS

http://www.gualicho.cc/html/walls.htm

These murals are in Cuba.

Actually, Cuba, poor as it is, has a good bit of street art, even though a lot of it is Castro and Che. But there are the brightly painted houses and decaying dance halls and amazing artists. Cuban people are art, actually.

I would really like to go back there.

Dexter

I watched a documentary called "Two Headed Cow" that my father taped and brought along on a visit from Detroit. It is about Dexter Romweber of The Flat Duo Jets, a band that I adored for their zeal and "spinning out of control and looking bad-ass while doing it" style. In all honesty, I ran away from home at 16 and moved to Athens, GA thinking maybe we could be best friends. It didn't pan out. When we did meet and I told him this anecdote he told me, "Well girly, sometimes shit don't turn out like you plan." Then he downed his whiskey and got on stage.

Now he is calmed way down and medicated. He is medicated because it hurt to be so loose and open. But gone too is that hot spark that drove the people wild.

It has been asked, "If Van Gogh was medicated, would he have painted Sunflowers?" And of course the answer is, probably not. And he may not have cut off his ear either.

I guess it just brought up a lot of emotion in me, knowing that wave that is incredible and creative and destructive and painful all at once. And you know, what do you do with that? We each choose. And I recognized that I liked him better wild because it saves me the trouble of living it myself. I want to watch and be inspired, but I'm not the one cutting myself open wide on stage. Ya know what I mean?

Maybe everyone already knows this?

This Monday morning, my first task of the day, was to clean out a big closet. I needed something to entertain me and egg me on, so I listened to two episodes (it was a big closet)

Here is the link:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Archive.aspx

in case you have anything to clean today.

Renovated gas station

Via MAKE:

"Tired of seeing the abandoned eyesore on a daily basis, artist Jennifer Marsh decided to cover this old gas station in 5,000 square feet of fabric.

With the help of professional and amateur artists from 15 countries and more than 2,500 grade-school students in 29 states, Marsh covered the 50-year-old former Citgo station — pumps, light stands, signs and all — with more than 3,000 fiber panels that are crocheted, knitted, quilted or stitched together."

I am impressed with a lot about this, but the sheer SCALE of it. Wow.

Say what you will

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.