Beginnings of B+W

With home-made pinhole camera. View in the beloved Barney Building. (Right... I like it as a negative.)

35mm. Assignment I: Ugly Photo. They call it a room with a view

35mm. Back-up for the Ugly Photo assignment. Classroom lights... I think

Field Balance

– Got called “a dying breed” + “extinct species” yesterday for being a painter. (?!)

– Welcome, camera mine… her name is Demeter. Indeed she will bear leaves, fruits, branches and ivy, ugly and gnarled or fresh and ripe.

– Plasterwork in relation to Equus. Conceptually, this is tied to the idea of youth, idolatry, and the “calling.”

– Back to Photo: every member of Adam’s class is going somewhere in New York City he/she has never been to– look to Guy Debord’s Derive. All going on anarchist, Maslowesque walks in strange lands and bringing our cameras with us to chronicle the exploration. We threw darts at a subway map, and where yours landed, you go. We all have different destinations. All-day trips.

I’m not telling you where I’m going till Saturday night/Sunday, by which time I will already have gone.

I like this. I’ll keep you in suspense some more.

Let’s just hope I return to you unscathed by the people there!

Yours sincerely,

Grace.

“we got to fly”

Stayingstayingstayingstaying!

Here. In New York. For undergraduate studies!

(EXPPPLLODEE)

Parents were happy to know that I knew what I wanted; still I feel guilty for burdening them with this…

And my mom said, “… so, you want to do art, huh.”

“Sculpture. Yeah. Minoring in lit… but in art, Mom, I’m trying to do other things, too,” I’d heard myself reply. “My GPA better not go below 3.7.”

“That’s fine, Grace… that’s fine.”

With that cloud of indecision scuffed a little aside, I can gladly give my full attention to this semester’s classes. I was incredibly sad to think about going away… it’s haunting stuff, and it frightens me… indecision is indeed not my best color (H) and I started to seriously annoy myself with the vacillation. Hokay: I’m staying here, at least for now. God saved me. I can now work without the lurkin’ maroon.

Procne and Philomela

Declared my Drama Lit minor today. Not only do I still glop myself onto plays, but I also think/hope the particular classes I chose will be beneficial to my artwork. In the end, the “fine arts” and theatreworks aren’t totally separate entities; I especially liken theatre to sculpture… something about the process of “performance” that doesn’t let the artist(s) involved to go back to any previous state of the work at hand. Risky and unforgiving. “Real.”

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Speaking of sculpture, plaster is annoying the fuck out of me, as is Rico’s indecision about when the deadline is (he changed it between Monday and Wednesday about five times). The material is AHH NEWNESS and the teacher’s AHH YOU. I generally don’t dislike people, but Rico’s a piece of artwork himself: I never saw such a mixture of wounded pride, envy, passive aggression and unreliability come together in one earthly form.

(Or have I just become a bitch?) (Hormones?) (Need sleep?) Maybe I should stop reading The Bell Jar.

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ESSAY: Rebecca Solnit & Stacey D’Erasmo. Culture, individual change, uncertainty. That’s my first progression essay, semester two.

SCULPTURE: Plaster, then fabric starting next week.

B+W PHOTO: 7-foot-tall Adam’s okay with abstractions, apparently. Pictures from the jammed camera turned out more experimental than I’d calculated. Happy accidents?

DRAWING: Color theory with gouache. Espero que las clases próximas renueven mi amor para pintar. So far, so good!

ART+CONTEMPORARY CULTURE: Lacan workshop! Atomic much???!!!

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FREELINES: Been writing a lot in whatever free time I have, as well as during the less interesting ACC lectures (usually the ones concerning Mao Zedong and glazed Chinese pottery). My little red book of “prose schmudt” and “play fogs” is growing up!

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Other entertainment… things that have kept me going despite the thick clouds:

Watching a lot of Brakhage.

Clawing at the Stoppards on my shelf once in a while.

Dwelling in the Myth section at St. Marks.

Chamomile + honey.

The Bell Jar.

Patti Smith, David Bowie, Kate Bush, Siouxsie and Massive Attack. Throw in some Cocteau Twins.

BAM Theatre excursions in the springtime?!

Postcards to the lovelies. California Dreamin’. California lovin’. (Californication?)

Scheming for Berlin (Spring 2011) and London (Fall 2012).

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I miss all of you. Yonder peaks.

LOVE,

GRACE.

Fogs

1) Human baby born, real eyes taken out and replaced with cameras Human baby w/camera eyes, recording whole lifetime of real human film. Thunderbolt: unwatchable film due to the length of time (whole lifetime) thus impossible to watch in entirety. The most realistic portrayal of human life (human camera in eyeballs, in eyesockets) impossible to witness. Thunderbolt II: One generation of scientists + anthropologists start the human film off– & almost a century later another generation will have to collect the film from now-dead human body to make it into actual motion picture. New generation (III) has to edit film. Another (IV) to actually screentest. Impossible to finish — impossible film.

2) Stage set with holograms instead of flesh-and-blood- actors. (Last Broadway performance of RENT recorded and sold to masses) If one could record a single, perfect performance by hologram of actors’ movements and sounds then whole performance would be re-playable. Last performance of RENT that night would then NOT be the last performance. (Star Wars hologram of people physically absent from Jedi Council.) Thunderbolt: questions to the genuine performance +  immortality to the actors. Marlon Brando forever as S. Kowalski. Real performance or not? What of phantom stage props, also by hologram? (Dislike the idea)

3a) A blend of stage + human presence ART + THEATRE that is NOT performance art, not theatre   –     perhaps video… Miranda July, Thunderbolt: Chris Burden

3b) A dialogue/play/screenplay NOT meant to be acted out, not meant for stage. Ziggy plane. Was told once “a play not meant for stage is not drama” by definition. Thunderbolt: stage practices + stage expectation + actor expectation + “prose” on paper sold to masses but not acted out (would they question/be confused?) and Thunderbolt II: accusations of being postmodern. HAHA hilarity ensues.

4) Linked to all above: The BULLSHITTERS art movement

Meanwhile, this apple's glaring at me.

Love always. I miss you all. Wish y’all were w/me during this time of thick dark clouds and half-blocked futures. Selfish wish! I’m a witch.

Yours,

Grace.

The Brakhage Afternoon

It’s rather romantic to watch his videos while drinking chamomile tea with honey on an “indoorsy” day. I love the first seven minutes of “Dogstar Man” and almost all of “Mothlight.”  Might be me being a “girl” but I love his serene pictures more than his disturbing ones. Prepossessing. Pure Stan Brakhage.

He and Maya Deren are always worth the watch.

After the chaos that devoured my conscience these last few days, I took the opportunity to rest today.

Read some Rebecca Solnit for Essay class, which I don’t mind since her stories and analogies are satisfying upon absorption;

Chatted online with an old childhood-high school bud;

Got crepe with The GKim, met and talked with her guy and her roommate;

Wrote some really bad prose in my little red book;

And am now addressing this post to you, Yours Sincerely, Grace.

Later I’m supposed to fix my third progression essay (from last semester’s class with Ron) to make it a better submission for the 2011 Mercer Street. I’m also supposed to catch up with some Mao Zedong reading for Art & Contemporary Culture, take some hours on an “edgy self-portrait” (what am I supposed to do? Have one nipple exposed?) and buy some copper wire at ACE Hardware.

But that can all hang suspended for now. Like a grotesque little doll.

So in this humble window of free time I’ve made of this weekend (gosh, it’s still Friday…) I took the opportunity to think things through.

Of course the talklet I had with my friend encouraged me; she’s like that, and I’m utterly lucky to have someone like her and GKim and Silvia (amongst others) in my life lest darker matters capture me whole. So fortunate, actually, that minds change, and people change…

Takes a lot of emotional effort to make such decisions regarding financial and educational circumstances. Glad to have those people.

At the same time, I cannot bring myself to think of anything else. This stuff haunts me in the bathroom mirror. It hangs over my head. Above my bed. Under a chair. In the folds of a winter jacket. I don’t know, in mayhaps even in my eyebrows? Le scary.

I talked a lot to GKim today. She says that with me, she’s the one listening, responding. Extends to her observation of how much I’ve changed over this one semester in New York. And how that change made me shake but was good. And, and, and if I stay here there’ll still be the taste of the other urban world I’ve come to adore.

Brakhage, brakhage, brakhage.

The other hand has softer skin and less arthritis.

Looks like I’ve got a candle that burns at both ends. A lovely light indeed.

Love,

Grace

Who Provides

1. “I’ve got to leave”

and

2. “We’ll talk again in two years.”

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ONE:

Don’t consider it a twelvemonth wasted. No regrets in coming to New York for even just two semesters of schooling. Much has been gained, yes?

Exposure to Sculpture, Video and public galleries. Then to contemporary artists, and crepe, and ramen, and walks in parks.

Also to artist societies, ambitions, conceptual work.

To Patti Smith, quiet and loud bookstores, rambles through the Met, busy streets, cheap Asian food at St. Marks.

Miss the subway underground. Brown and yellow sloshy snow. Admiring men’s trenchcoats.

It’ll all still be there when I return. Hopefully some MFA/work in NYC, right? It’ll still be here.

TWO:

Some like it hot. Others like it clean.

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Worst part is, everything was my misjudgment, mistake and fault. Bad timing, as well: right when I was just starting to reallllly enjoy this place and see the vast opportunities and plan the trips to other NYC destinations (there are countless many) and abroad. It was all my mistake, and it’s a good thing I finally realized it…

My bad. It was alllll my bad.

HEY 1: Won’t waste this second semester till May while still here. No way, not gonna let it pass meaninglessly. And MAN I’m going to have to take full advantage of the sculpture materials and workspace before I fly away.

HEY 2: The second part’s not so regretful! Yaaayyyy.

Both parts aren’t, in retrospect. Good life lessons, I assume.

This is my prayer in the desert
And all that’s within me feels dry
This is my prayer in the hunger in me
My God is a God who provides

"That way."

 

Yours sincerely,

Grace J.

Rabbit Girl

– Waking up at unholy hours. Who in college would be up at 7:30 AM on a Saturday morning?? Days are therefore super looooooong and I actually finish all my work and have NOTHING to do. Suppose I should enjoy it. Not much opportunity to be “bored” in the city.

– Yay! Residence Hall stir-fry!

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Went to the art supply store today to get some Arches Aquarelle ($41.50 for a single pack of 20 sheets of 140 lb. hot-pressed watercolor paper, WTF?), a utility knife (mine got taken away at the airport, what was I gonna do, hijack my flight to Nueva Yorke?), and some gouaches (I didn’t get these yet… lookit their prices, over $7 for a small tube…).

Said hi to my favorite employee there. He’s such an awesome guy.

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Yet another awkward conversation in the elevator.

BOY: Hey. Lips.

GRACE: What?

BOY: Your mouth.

GRACE: (weirded out.. silence)

BOY: (embarrassed) I mean, the color.

GRACE: Huh

BOY: It’s not… right

GRACE: (brings finger up to mouth; takes hand away; blood) Oh. Thanks.

BOY: Sorry, that was really awkward. Um, bye.

I suppose it’s because I started to bite my lip out of habit when I got here. It’s kind of something I do in NY but not at home. Perhaps I’m more anxious here.

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Another awkward happening that some of you have heard about.

– Drawing class = figure drawing, for 3 class days

– Models hired by the University come in to class, pose nude, we sketch in different ways. No biggie.

– First day of figure drawing. Wednesday. GUESS WHO KNEW THE MALE MODEL?

– Sketched the body, found that I had extra time, so moved on to the face… ‘He looks so familiar’

– From the Strand. I’d bumped into him while looking for something to read in the Drama section.

– You know, it actually didn’t worsen my drawing day at all– I had a good time with figure drawing. But it was just my fucking luck that I recognized the guy.

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Random note that’s been bursting inside:

I THINK PEOPLE DISLIKE MATTHEW BARNEY ONLY CUZ THEY’RE JEALOUS OF HIS SUCCESS AND GOOD LOOKS.

A Barney film. Starring Bjork.

There.

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Love you all, miss you all.

– Grace

Royalty

Christina's World, N.C. Wyeth

“I haven’t fucked much with the past, but I’ve fucked plenty with the future.

“Over the skin of silk are scars from the splinters of stations and walls I’ve caressed. A stage is like each bolt of wood, like a log of Helen, is my pleasure. I would measure the success of a night by the way by the way by the amount of piss and seed I could exude over the columns that nestled the P.A.

“Some nights I’d surprise everybody by skipping off with a skirt of green net sewed over with flat metallic circles which dazzled and flashed. The lights were violet and white. I had an ornamental veil, but I couldn’t bear to use it.

“When my hair was cropped, I craved covering, but now my hair itself is a veil, and the scalp inside is a scalp of a crazy and sleepy Comanche lies beneath this netting of the skin.

“I wake up– I am lying peacefully I am lying peacefully and my knees are open to the sun. I desire him, and he is absolutely ready to seize me. In heart I am a Moslem; in heart I am an American; in heart I am Moslem, in heart I’m an American artist, and I have no guilt. I seek pleasure. I seek the nerves under your skin. The narrow archway; the layers; the scroll of ancient lettuce.”

– Patti Smith, “Babelogue”

to live and die like lions

“And if I only could, I’d make a deal with God

And I’d get him to swap our places;

Be running up that road,

Be running up that hill,

With no problems.”

– Kate Bush (“Running Up That Hill”)

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"Nan One Month After Being Battered," 1984. Photo by Nan Goldin, American photographer (b. 1953).

Sometimes I am convinced that there are two Gods.

The one we might be most acquainted with in today’s Darwinistic culture is the one I call the American God: under this being’s hand, we see more cold and consequence than fondness and independence. I see happy NYU and Parsons students around the city, but also many who are homeless, in need, and depressed. The American God shows no mercy towards penniless prostitutes and hard-worn street rats. At the same time, the typical flaneur walking the streets of a snowy Manhattan might think only of his cold feet than of the cozy coat, sweater and scarf he is wearing. In the grasp of the American God is all our ingratitude, ego, judgmentality, and preconceived notion of self-righteousness– our place within the Great Chain of Being is claimed not by Nature, but by our ambition and accomplishments, and those alone.

I feel like fortunate children such as myself grew up with the other God, the Irish God. Irish because of the sense of peace, reverence of land and love for the sweeter aspects of human nature I smell from pages of Irish literature (James Joyce) and plays (J.M. Synge). From this pulp fiction comes a feeling of humility– an appreciation missing in America today. I know I could’ve chosen another country’s name, and that it would suffice, but somehow Ireland suited the image of the need for a peaceful God. Mayhaps it’s the down-to-earth hopeful attitude gained from all the warfare that happened (and is happening) in Ireland; but it’s the land, too. Somehow, despite all the religious strife and alcoholism and God knows that else, that impressive green landscape still seems to stretch to infinity in stories and illustrations.

I was raised firmly believing in the Irish God. Everyone was overall pretty happy, things were sunny and colorful in Palo Alto and the world, according to Grace, was a great place to live in. But what I hadn’t thought about before in my childhood were fading children, hungry people, abused lovers and the loss of innocence.

As younglings we all know the Irish God because our short lives are not as complex, not as intense, not as sad. So it is unfortunate, then, that most children lose contact with the Irish God when reaching adulthood. The American God takes His place and whatever clemency they witnessed with the Irish God is gone from their futures. The Irish God of innocence has passed; with adolescence comes the hard face of the tougher American God.

When I first saw the battered face of Nan Goldin (shown above) in yesterday’s Photo lecture, it got me thinking about different realities. Here is a woman who’s in love with a bloke who beats her until her left eye loses sight. Here is a woman living in an AIDS-infested country (it was the 70s-80s), using her photos to chronicle her dying socialite friends, their passions, beauty, and mere mortality. All she saw around her was the doing of the American God. The world looked ugly. She was sorry.

For these people, how long ago was the Irish God dethroned and American God crowned? How fast was that transformation? Did they feel it happening?

Through her photography Nan Goldin is on her own quest to find the lost Irish God. Under the layers of suffering and rot, under all the cynicism and cultural warfare, there must be a God who forgives. We can relate this to the cliche of “a spark of light in the dark.” The bright Irish God must still exist! Right?

It isn’t a new subject at all. Dark literature, dark music, dark film and other dark stuff– NOIR is beautiful because it contrasts to whatever vision of happiness we keep in our heads. The blacker it is, the brighter the light shines. We all know this. Something lovely like transcendental perseverance is shown in the frustrating Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath; the holiness of motherhood stands out against the sin, rage and regret in Toni Morrison’s Beloved; the desire to create manifests itself within the miscommunications of Huxley’s Crome Yellow (not to mention Fellini’s Eight and A Half, for that matter). Thus the black, the preto, the “darker sides of the moon” ironically illuminate what was and is still virginal in the otherwise scarred and corrupted human life. (What’s with all these adjectives?) So the American God has his uses. Good. GOOD.

GOOD meaning that the American and Irish Gods coexist, yes? They remain dependent on each other in order for the separation of “good” and “bad” to stay. At the same time, what’s brighter seems brighter and what’s darker seems darker; and if Nan Goldin were to ever find the Irish God (I believe she has) she would see the whole majestic spectrum of human emotion and experience.

In a weird way, how can so much meaning have… have meaning?

To know this spectrum, ROYGBIV and back, might be called “fulfilling.” As long as the person feels “fulfilled” then I daresay that this newfound knowledge, this careful balance of the American God and Irish God, won’t hurt but rather widen perspective/lens.

BUT WE CANNOT FORGET THAT THE IRISH GOD EXISTS.

The American God may know your name, but so does the Irish God. Both Gods won’t forget your name, although you might forget the latter’s. If we look carefully, we may see the Irish God in the most unexpected of places, in the jankiest corners of personal cellars, sitting in nightmarish scenes waiting for us to spot Him. If we were to appreciate the doings of the Irish God– that is, be gentler, humbler, more accommodating– while suffering through dark “reality checks” given by the American God, then we would truly live and die like lions.

Another one by Nan Goldin.

Birthday, and the Day Before

Monday, January 24, 2011.

6-20*F outside. Not bad, if dressed appropriately.

During the morning SCULPTURE class Rico asked us, “Heh. Did you miss my humour? Heh…” and we tittered our tired responses.

Upon seeing the circular formation of chairs in the DRAWING classroom later that day, I became excited because one of the seats was occupied by a skull-less skeleton Karsten had brought in for anatomical studies. “Look, guys, it’s the rest of Yorick!” I exclaimed, waving my arms in thrilled emphasis. “What?” was followed by a silence. “You know, from Hamlet? Now there’s no alas, I guess; we can bury him with his head for his own dignity!” Futile. “Haha,” they laughed, “Keep talking, Grace. Haha.” Thanks, oh-so-educated art students.

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January 25, 1992

OMG WHAT IT IS THIS ALIEN????!!!!!!

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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Hehe. One of the most powerful artists of the age, I feel. That good ol' Lion.

 

My new ESSAY teacher is another young man, but very different from Ron. Will is blond, quivery and jittery; he’s passionate about the texts, obviously, but he also seems a little nervous in front of his students. There’s a lot of quick smiling and finger-knotting where Will is involved. The classroom shakes with the growling noises the elevator nearby causes with it’s pulley strings; sounds as if a dragon lies dormant near the Bobst walls. Wellllll. “O-Ren Ishii, you and I have unfinished business.”

I chose BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY for this semester’s media class. Although I harvest some strong attachment to Video and am sad to move onto another medium in formal curriculum, I have to confess that I’m actually quite excited for B+W Photo. Yes, I will be producing some of those N00B photos you laugh at. It’s cool, though– Adam, our youngish near-7-foot-tall teacher full of gay happiness, is gonna teach us some old-timer methods and stuff. We’re making our own pinhole cameras out of cardboard boxes, goddamnit. And we’re using 35mm cameras!

One of our assignments later on includes the reading of Guy Debord’s “Theory of the Derive,” in which modern-to-postmodern humans are described as “drifters” who wander through the complicated city layouts– drifting is important and not contrary to human nature, says Debord, for it smells of excitement an exploration and reeks of that edge of what is new and unfamiliar. In what Adam calls the “Derive” project, we’re supposed to go somewhere in the city and get lost– and to take pictures, for any student would then be surprised by what she’d find in this concrete wilderness. It should be fun, we were assured by this freakishly tall new teacher, “unless you get mobbed or raped or murdered somewhere.” Okay. Let’s go.

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BIRTHDAY!

So, apart from the atomic festivities classes and classwork creates…

– Facebook explosion. How am I to answer y’all individually?

– Snowed like Narnia in the bright grey morning. It was lovely.

– Heart-warming e-mails and letters from some folks back home

– Chamomile tea + Honey

– I cleaned the bathroom! Yaaaay! Clean bathroom!

– Scribbling some [awful] prose on the backs of receipts… a desperate attempt to stay awake during ART & CONTEMP. CULTURE lecture. Luckily for the art student, the backs of receipts allow great space for artwork-planning. Ho ho!

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I wanted to thank you all for wishing me happy birthdays and stuff! You’re all sweet potato pies and SICK INDIVIDUALZ and I will love you as long as you’re honest to me, too. For nothing is better in friendship than integrity and velvet loyalty.

Love,

Grace