I am Kibunwarui

(image is from Inside Out Tees)

I have the swine flu. After dozing in and out of consciousness for 15 hours, I wasn't sure if I was dreaming or hallucinating I was a gorgeous 18 year old Japanese girl. Now that I'm back to reality I'm still deciding whether I'm disappointed because I don't speak fluent Japanese or that I'm not 18 and hot. But I am hot, well, temperature wise.

It's been a rough week or so, my daughter was hit hard with the flu and with multiple bacterial infections that had my husband and I in state of borderline panic. It's pretty lousy to have a kid so sick she's delirious and grabbing fearfully at the pattern on her bed covers. Thankfully she's getting much better and our worst fears didn't materialize. My heart truly goes out to all parents who have to deal with seriously ill children and those with chronic conditions. You deserve every ounce of support from the rest of us.

Because of this #@$%*&@ flu, the controversy regarding vaccinations has reemerged in the media spotlight. There is almost religious like fervor against vaccination that is based IMHO on too much access to information that may have no scientific credibility. A great article from WIRED on the issue. In this information heavy age, we all act like pseudo experts and every issue and concern becomes not more enlightening, but confusing, the more we read.

I just gave my other daughter tamiflu, the anti-viral drug when she began getting sick yesterday. It's free with a prescription to everyone in Canada. I read everything I could, debated whether it was necessary or even a good thing to administer. In the pre-internet age I would have asked the doctor questions but would have given the drug with a clear conscience and without the internal debate. I'm glad information is easily accessible and I believe I've learned somewhat the ability to discern credible research from pure opinion, but in the end, all this knowledge is not a comforting thing.

Now, away from all this seriousness onto silly or at least absurd. Having to deal with about 6 weeks of some sort of infectious thing in this house and becoming paranoid I may not be real, but a fictional character in a Frank McCourt novel, I am ready to be through with battling the microscopic world. Halloween is a week away and hopefully everyone will be well enough to participate in my favourite holiday. In deciding costumes I know for damn sure my kids won't be making the Swine Flu Virus Halloween Costume. From the article:

"For children who don't know what to "be" for Halloween, a flu-themed homemade costume might be just what the doctor ordered. After all, a flu virus is invisible (so nobody really knows what it looks like). It's contagious. So, it's just weird enough that kids can have fun imagining it. Meanwhile, parents and teachers can seize the moment to teach about good hand hygiene and flu prevention, without seeming preachy."

That's just f***ed.

The Anti Sites

I'd thought I'd take a break from my compulsive, borderline creepy stalking of people on facebook and visit here! I haven't forgotten about this blog. NaBloPoMo is coming up, National Blog Posting Month in November and I intend to be a participant. Creative Laundry will awaken from it's dormant state. Any one willing to join in? If you do, you're required to post everyday for the month of November. It's the brainchild of Eden Kennedy, author of Fussy, created as a joke after failing at NaNoWriMo, the November 50,000 word novel writing challenge. If your feeling especially ambitious I've included that link as well.

From being silent here for almost 2 months to daily posts, it's apparent I love extremes. I like oreos and take cream with my coffee. For every light there must be dark, every yin a yang. Two websites I found recently are the antithesis of the popular websites Cute Overload and Etsy - F U Penguin and Regretsy. Baby meerkats and creative crafts are wonderful and all, but sometimes you just need to sit down at your computer with a fifth of bourbon and get a break from all that niceness, these sites hit the spot, they are deliciously funny.

My own cute overload came into our house recently in the form of this:
Meet Tippi,

our new border collie puppy. Since I accidentally deleted over 300 pictures from my camera yesterday, I'm sending you over to my friend Andrea's blog, Colouring Outside the Lines. Being middle aged moms with new dogs, we took our 'babies' out for a run on the beach yesterday. She's the one with the superior camera and photography skills. Just go there anyway for great writing and beautiful art.

Will I regret all this in the morning?

There's no way of writing this without sounding like an whining schmuck. So I'll say it straight. I am so sick of spending all these hot, summer days on beautiful beaches with breathtaking views.

I know, I know, how ungrateful. But balance is the key to life. The doing and the being. I have finely tuned my talent for sitting around and just being. The problem with just being, although peaceful and relaxing in it's early stages, is that it can lead to some self absorbed big thinking. Too much self absorption eventually turns you into a puddle of existential angst, fretting over your life purpose and purpose in general. SO NOT FUN!

Self reflection does have it's benefits. Looking internally if things aren't going the way you want does provide you some insight on what needs changing. I used to thrive on change, but now that I'm a middle aged fart, I want things, well, the good things anyway, to stay exactly the same. When I turn on my computer and a window pops up telling me there's a newer version of Adobe Acrobat Reader, I just get pissed off. The version I have is perfectly fine. More change! why? and stop it already!

Change is the only constant. After a summer of thinking while sitting on all the pretty beaches I need to accept change and admit that what I've been doing isn't what I've been wanting to do. Puttering around the studio, drawing and painting and building little bits of this and that is okay, but something big is missing. If there wasn't, I'd be a lot farther along with my art. How I've been approaching art has been mostly a joyless endeavor for a long, long time.

I thought outside the box and decided to synthesize parts of my life into a creative project that's been on my mind for a few years. With it, I started a new blog under an alias. But I'm not going to tell you what it is, because I need the anonymity to 'get real' and not worry about offending anyone, or disclosing things too personal. Just letting you know what I've been doing, without letting you know what I've been doing. How's that for neurotic? Although, all this could just be a pre-menopausal midlife crisis. Will I regret all this in the morning?

Another neurotic - in song, Neurosis in D
*Warning - mature and not safe for work*

Hi!

"Flow"

I'm not sure how much this piece is a work in progress. I intended to add more dimension (and meaning) to the background with thread, but now I just may tweak it with more paint.

This piece was certainly influenced by watching the documentary Home recently. From Wiki,

"The film is almost entirely composed of aerial shots of various places on earth. The documentary chronicles the present day state of the Earth, its climate and how we as the dominant species have long-term repercussions on its future. A theme expressed throughout the documentary is that of linkage—how all organisms and the Earth are linked in a "delicate but crucial" natural balance with each other, and how no organism can be self-sufficient."

It's a visually stunning and moving film. But you might as well get your apologies over with before you watch it, you'll have free flowing guilt for all your nasty homosapieness. It's likely things are far worse than they appear and may drive you to....... excuse me for a moment while I wipe the vodka dribble from my chin (I really should use a glass) .....drink.

Still, I HIGHLY recommend it. You can watch the entire film in wide screen and high definition here.

Oh and "hi" by the way. You might be wondering where I've been. If you follow quite a few blogs, you may have noticed, posting has dropped off somewhat. Why? Because some of us bloggers have allowed facebook to suck us into it's lazy, user friendly lair. There we can post our art, links we find interesting (that we'd normally save for our blog), make flippant comments about our lives, get immediate feedback and banter back and forth all without the effort it requires to put together one of these babies. And I've become lazy knowing most of you who read this blog are already on my facebook (and if not, come 'friend' me if you like, I think I've finished removing any embarrassing pictures and videos).

Facebook is also giving me material like this, "The 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads of all Time". Shockingly funny. Relating to advertising and media is this hilarious and brilliant post by Donn over at Homo Escapeons. He's a wizard of words and topical eye candy, it's a great blog. Go read it.

Yes, there is such a thing as being a "little" decapitated

Look! a cow about to give birth. Be thankful for my bad photography, it blurs all the icky parts. I took this picture at a local dairy farm on the weekend. Part of me would have liked to have stayed to see the birth, but then this cow was glaring (yes, I'm sure glaring) and mooing loudly at me as if shouting, "DO SOMETHING!".

From my own birth experience that would mean rubbing lavender oil on her hooves, playing her Enya's soothing melodies, and telling her to imagine her body opening up like a rose. I read that last bit in a book about natural childbirth. Not exactly accurate. If they wanted to keep the rose metaphor, they should have written, "imagine a rose tearing into your body with it's acid dripping jagged glass petals while you scream repeatedly for those pain killing drugs you refused to have in your birth plan you misguided hippy mom to be!". And FYI, I can never listen to Enya again without getting crampy.

My daughter and I were alone in the barn when a farm hand came in and laughed, "She sure is agitated! and taking her time, normally they just lie down and out it comes" At that point my daughter was nudging me to leave, whispering, "this is freaky!"

Her comment reminded me there are less than a week until my kids start summer holidays. Dragging them to all the farms I love to visit during the summer months will be nearly impossible. So I've decided everyday, until school is out, to go and do something they'd hate, that I love.

Day 1 was a nature walk with the sole intention of looking closely at plants. An activity that would bore any person under 40 to tears, and probably a good many over 40 as well.

I'm more than halfway through a botanical illustration course and have acquired a naturalist's scientificky interest in plants. I'm feeling all sorts of possibilities for atonement. Me! plant murderer! I will learn and become a nurturer and protector of plants! But... then I ripped a plant out of the ground to bring home and study in detail... meh, whatever.

I recently read online about artists combining walking with outdoor sketching, nothing new, but slapped with a new label - sketchercising. I thought I should go do some plein air sketching too. While I was packing up my pencils and moleskin sketchbook, I realized... uh-uh, not for me.

A bear and her 2 cubs walked across the road not more than 20' from me recently, and the sightings of bear around here are constantly increasing. I'm not exactly afraid of them. What I can imagine is a scene where I'm sitting in the woods, dead quiet, deep in concentration drawing a plant. I'm so still a bear is right behind me eating berries unaware of my presence. I shift, making noise, the bear startles, and has one of those all too human reactions, swats me in surprise. A swat from a bear could result in a little decapitation, and yes, there is such a thing as a being a "little" decapitated. Uh... so no, I'm drawing house plants. Here's a botanical sketch I did of an orchid last week.

The Yin and the Yang

I'm sort of recycling posts here. Here's the popular video, "Where is Matt". If watching this to the end, you feel nothing, I suggest you contact a surgeon and have the cold, dead stone that is your heart replaced by something living. If that's unsuccessful, remain in the dark side and watch the parody, "Where the Hell is Shut-In Matt". Funny.

Where is Matt?

Where the Hell is Shut-In Matt?

Land Art

This picture could easily be interchangeable as an image of my backyard edible landscape project or ...my brain. Either way, neither have a lot going on at the moment.

Now that all the big structural stuff in my yard is done, I walk outside everyday, look around and think, "now what?" I've confused myself by reading too many garden design magazines. I have to shake off the seduction of wanting some expensive outdoor living space. One that will make me forget that I'm in the middle of suburbia, but instead at an English country cottage or maybe a Tuscan villa. It's takes big bucks to create that kind of illusion. I'm also being reminded that it would be impossible to maintain that illusion because right now I'M TRYING TO BLOCK OUT CRAZY GUY WHO IS HAVING HIS DAILY MOANING AND RANTING SESSION.

My original purpose was to really make use of this land; function over form. But I do want to create a beautiful environment as well. Transforming land. I can't think of anything more elemental in human activity. It's what we're about as a species, molding our environments, control and organization. Sadly, the idea of just letting something BE goes against our natures.

An idea for a conceptual art project would be to not touch this space, just see what blows in and grows over the course of ten years, recording the changes and details in various artistic ways. I can pretty much predict what weeds will appear and end up dominating the space, but I might be surprised by some native fern or a few annuals from some other garden finding their way here. Eventually a tree or two would probably grow when I'm old, then dead. Thinking of this reminds me why I'll never be a conceptual artist. I can't see much point. But it does make me think of 2 different large environmental art projects. (To be fair, I have yet to see either one in person, and I'm sure will never see the first, but with conceptual art, well, it's the concept that matters the most, yes?)

Husband and wife team Christo and Jeanne-Claude, best known for draping fabric over, around and through BIG things: bridges, islands, Central Park, the Reichstag, are at it again. For over a decade the Over the River Project has been in the works. In the summer of 2012, 9.4 kilometers of the Arkansas River will have a translucent ceiling of fabric above it for 2 weeks. My first reaction: how stupid and maybe harmful to the environment? I have discovered they do carry out extensive studies as to the environmental impact with their projects (as they must). The results in this case have reported some of the following: some Big Horn sheep could die of stress, eagles might fly into the cables suspending the fabric. On a human scale, traffic will be congested with gawking tourists. Gawking tourists may get bit by the heavy population of rattlesnakes.

I'm more concerned about the sheep.

There isn't some big philosophical point to this art, it really is about spectacle and as for the wastefulness of it, I've softened my stance a bit thinking of these 2 words - Las Vegas. If ever there was an example of wasteful spectacle it'd be building a city full of luxury hotels and swimming pools in the middle of the desert. So Christo's and Jeanne-Claude's big projects do leave me with a little food for thought - the ego of humankind knows no limits and now has the resources to carry out it's whims. Okay, nothing new, but is there ever?

The second art project that I DID warm to was Mark Dion's Neukom Vivarium. An old tree that had fallen naturally and in the process of decay was transported, including the organisms living on it, put in a specially built glass housing. Inside, a carefully controlled environment replicates the conditions of the trees' natural setting. In a way, no different from the Amazon exhibit at a zoo or an aquarium, although in this case, the environment wasn't recreated to mimic a faraway place, but transported relatively intact and sustained. This piece does point to the idea of letting things be and how difficult it is to replace what's lost.

Dion says,

"I think that one of the important things about this work is that it’s really not an intensely positive, back-to-nature kind of experience. In some ways, this project is an abomination. We’re taking a tree that is an ecosystem—a dead tree, but a living system—and we are re-contextualizing it and taking it to another site. We’re putting it in a sort of Sleeping Beauty coffin, a greenhouse we’re building around it. And we’re pumping it up with a life support system—an incredibly complex system of air, humidity, water, and soil enhancement—to keep it going. All those things are substituting what nature does—emphasizing how, once that’s gone, it’s incredibly difficult, expensive, and technological to approximate that system—to take this tree and to build the next generation of forests on it. So this piece is in some way perverse. It shows that, despite all of our technology and money, when we destroy a natural system it’s virtually impossible to get it back. In a sense we’re building a failure."

As I look back to my 66' strip of dirt, along with the vegetables and berries, I know that I'll fill one corner with native plants, a little recreation of what once may have been here. And yet the plants will be bought at a garden centre and were probably imported from another part of the continent. I suppose that's irony.

Getting away from the processed life

Here's my daughter and husband flying a kite at the beach.
This is at least one activity I've been doing while neglecting this blog.

I wish I could excuse my lack of blogging for something impressive. I wish I could say I've been incredibly prolific and created a mind blowing amount of fantastic artwork. I wish I could say I wrote a novel and to celebrate I've been throwing fabulous parties every night with tapas that have garnishes of caviar I squeezed out of a 10' sturgeon I caught with my bare hands as I parasailed along the Fraser River.

But no.

I dunno what the heck I've been doing. Experimenting with art materials that have noxious fumes may be partly to blame for my inability to think of what to write on this blog. Mostly I've been carrying on with the ebb and flow of life.

A friend challenged me to 30 days of shopping for nothing but necessities based on this article she read. No big deal, I hate shopping. I am the antithesis of the girly woman who just has to have those cute pair of shoes. I cut my hair about once every summer Olympics. I buy because I have to with the exception of books, art and art supplies. Those are my little luxuries. So I've taken her on and made it a family affair. No shopping for anything but food and necessities like toilet paper and soap. No snack food, no Starbucks, no food bought that is individually wrapped or processed and ready to eat out of it's container.

Today is day 1. I had to stop myself from getting a latte and sandwich for lunch as I was running around town. I stopped myself from buying crackers while food shopping. As I stood in line at the grocery store checkout, I was pleased by the purity of my goods - apples, lettuce, flour, all the staples, nothing frivolous. I'm committed to making as much as I can from scratch for the next month. Then I spotted the June issue of Chatelaine magazine and I remembered my friend Patricia was featured in an article, so without a second thought, I bought it.

Day 1 and I failed.

Ironically, the article is about how to stop spending money in the recession with a subheading that reads, "The joy of frugality". Ah well. Tomorrow I'll be back on track and if anyone would like to join in the challenge, let me know.

Since I'm on the topic of money and our glorious consumption of stuff, you may remember this post mentioning The Yes Men, activists who upset the status quo, posing as leaders of corporations and world organizations. They're back with a new documentary. It looks like good fun. The kind of laughing in spite of yourself, squirming in your seat fun with the added benefit of making you think. These guys have balls, ovaries, guts, you name it and they feel more relevant today than ever. Here's the trailer....

Kid Stuff

Weaving Intangibles
acrylic, ink, pencil, thread
Ellen Sereda

I never tire of putting my children into my art. I do however have a few half finished portraits of my kids in idyllic settings - the beach, near pretty flowers in the park, all very cliche and certain to never be finished. A camera catches these moments in time better than a brush or a pen. But let me loose with other materials, like thread so I can do some wonky sewing, then add a crow and I'm a happy artist.

I have an astonishingly good memory of childhood. Luckily my childhood was pretty normal and happy, so a good memory isn't a curse. I don't romanticize those years or long for the perceived innocence of them. If you watch children for any length of time, you'll realize naivety is not the same of innocence. An example this past weekend:

Me to my youngest daughter: You need to apologize to your sister for poking her in the eye.

Her: But I didn't mean to poke her eye!

Translation - I meant to hurt her in another part of her face and not get caught

The lecture on my part went on about the importance of taking responsibility for actions and making amends. She then started mumbling under her breath, "I don't know what you mean, I don't know what you're saying". In my frustration I blurted out, "What! are you Billy Bob Thorton?!" I was so pleased with myself for getting in a topical reference even if she didn't know what the hell I was talking about.

Kids at any age are fascinating to watch and listen to. They share some of the qualities of manic depressives. Their highs are really high and their lows are like the end of the world. The key difference of course is everything in childhood is so transient, nothing lingers. Their best friend is their worst enemy until another day passes and it's all reversed. I think what we most treasure about the memory of childhood is not innocence but the intrinsic qualities of children that lead them to explore, imagine and discover.

One of my favourite picture books is Maurice Sendaks', "Where the Wild things Are", a simple book that has just the right balance of excitement and fear. When I heard a movie was being made from it, I thought, NO, not another Cat in the Hat, trying to flesh out a 32 page story into a bad Hollywood moneymaker. But then I saw the trailer. This might be good. An Arcade Fire song in the trailer? I am sold. (I just noticed if you have a 14" computer screen, the trailer will be cut off when you view it. Click on it to get the full widescreen version on YouTube)

**Just a note for those of you who subscribe in a reader. Yesterdays post didn't seem to show up in any feeds. 2 posts in 2 days? Quirky I know, can't imagine it becoming a habit.