Submission record, part II

This may be the cheesiest statement I've ever written. I feel kind of dirty. But here it is:

Artist's Statement: Flood

I grew up thirty minutes away from the ocean. It dominated the landscape. Cardinal directions translated into towards the ocean, or away from it. South meant that the ocean was to my right. When I left the coast for the first time, to move to Iowa, directions no longer made sense to me. What good was East or West, without an ocean for reference? When I was surrounded by thousands of miles of land? There wasn’t a complete lack of water in my new home. We had rivers and lakes. They kept, mostly, out of the way.

Then came the flood. The land gave way to those little, mild-mannered, rivers and lakes that I had dismissed so easily. Towards the river, or away from it meant the difference between destroyed homes and businesses, and safe land. My apartment on the hill became beachfront property. Even after the river returned to its former size, and water relinquished the town, I remained aware of it. Before the flood, I lived in the absence of water. After the flood, it was everywhere I looked. Playgrounds and shops, pastures and cornfields, they were all covered by my memory of water.

In these images, I am re-submerging the landscape by submerging the camera in a bag of water. I give my remembered water a literal form, and allow it to shape the landscape around me.

Sent to http://visualarts.emory.edu/events/prospectus.html for the Picturing Home juried exhibiton at Emery University.

deadline: Nov 3
notifications: Nov 9

in progress: artists statement

Nothing says fun like a midway. Everything comes in candy colors, bright, shining, blinking, glowing, popping, chirping, everyone wins! Even the carnies, dried and brown and tired, they push and prod shy teenagers towards each other like smoke-stained Cupids. Why don’t you win that pretty girl a rose? How can you help but smile? Laugh? Spin and shriek on the rides, get your hands and face sticky with funnel cake and giant hot dogs, win your girl a prize?

My life as a 15-year old.

I said So I was wondering, and he said Yes? What are you wondering? And he pulled away to arms length and grinned at me and I probably blushed. I always blush. I tried to pull him back so I could hide my face in his sweatshirt.

I was wondering if you maybe wanted to be my boyfriend, I said, and he laughed and said Okay. I can pass you notes in class.

And the thing is, I have no idea what I asked for. I have no idea what it means. I don't think he does, either. But I guess I have a boyfriend now.

notes for essay #2

Early sketches, working their way (hopefully) into a experimental sound essay:

Edited 10.27.2009

The spinning wheel is a very simple machine. There are two pedals, which drive the main wheel, which is connected via a looped plastic cord to a smaller wheel, which spins the bobbin. I hold the loose fiber in my fingers and work the pedals with my feet, and the fiber twists up. When I release, the fiber gets pulled in and wound onto the bobbin. Hold and release, hold and release. This time, I am spinning a blend of wool and silk, dyed the kind of green that gets sold with the names seafoam or moss. It is a dull, quiet color.

Wool is such a broad term. It could mean anything. There are the English sheep, with English names: Border Leicester, Derbyshire Gritstone, BFL, which stands for Bluefaced Leicester. Their coats are long and tough, easy to spin but rough on the skin and better suited for coats or rugs. Most American sheep, like everything else here, have roots elsewhere, but some are uniquely American: the Navajo Churro which is coarse and scratchy. Jacob sheep, which can have as many as six horns curling alongside their faces, and the unfortunately named CVM, which stands for California Variegated Mutant. The wool I am spinning now is Merino, from Australia. It is fine and soft. Lofty, but with a tendency to pill when worn.

Silk is a contradiction. It is smooth to the touch. It slides easily through my fingers. But it clings to itself and resists the spinning. It doesn’t want to pull apart. Insects, of course, already know this, but I had to learn myself.

As I hold the wool and silk in my hands, I pull a few strands out, stretching the fiber long and thin until it is almost insubstantial, like pencil strokes. Then the twist from the wheel travels up, and the line of the pencil is inked in, solid and strong. It has acquired substance and meaning.

I will knit a lace shawl with this yarn.

***

I am spinning a blend of cashmere and silk. The cashmere comes from an angora goat, not to be confused with angora, which comes from angora rabbits. Silk is a common material to mix in with other fibers. It adds sheen to otherwise quiet fibers. Cashmere, when blended with silk, becomes more affordable. Wool, when blended with silk, becomes less affordable.

Ranting to random strangers on the internet

'cause I'm awesome like that.












I guess it's technically answering a personal ad. So it goes with the rest.

Looking for Love: Final edit

Final version.  I swear.

.

I am okay tonight. It feels good to say.

this space intentionally left blank

I don't know what to do. I am not okay. I am very quickly loosing functionality. I can't afford to lose functionality. I have an appointment with my shrink in two weeks, and I can't get in to see her any earlier than that. I was thinking of taking two pills a day until then, but my pills are 300mg each, and the maximum daily dose is 450. I also can't cut them in half; they're extended release.

I can't find any mention of ill effects from combining depo and wellbutrin. I don't even know for sure that it is the depo, but it seems like too strange a coincidence to be something else.

Exercise helps, a little, for a little while. Talking helps, but it takes a lot of effort and I have a hard time handling social situations for long. I feel like I should stop being dependent on other people to be happy. I feel like I should learn to manage by myself, and stop self-medicating with my cell phone. But I spent all of last night going from one person to another, saying please just talk to me for a while I can't be alone, until I fell asleep. I hate doing that. I hate feeling needy and clingy. I hate that I called Dan. I'm not his girlfriend, and the good thing about not having a girlfriend is you don't get your girlfriend calling all the time with her problems. But I'll do it again.

A Glitch in the System

I can't stand spending time by myself these days. I stare at my phone. I refresh twitter, facebook, flickr. I even refresh gmail even though it automatically updates by itself.

fig 2.5

I was feeling a little leery of posting illustrations of people mentioned (over and over) in my blog. But Mike said it's okay so I guess it isn't so bad. This is Satanist Dan. I like him!

I am trying to improve my portraits. I need much more practice.

4 1/2 weeks

and I think the crush is fading, finally, although this time it leaves some affection and attraction in its wake. Perhaps I will even find balance this time, between mad obsession and a cold shoulder.

notes for self: submission record

Applied for online:

Rogue Space Chelsea Juried show www.chelseagalleryspace.com (Natural history)

The Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins CO www.c4fap.org
*Elements of Water (underwater photos)
*New Visions (self portraits)

Mpls Photo Center, Minneapolis, MN http://www.mplsphotocenter.com/exhibits/callforentries
(state fair)

Prepped and ready to mail:

Center Gallery, Wichita KS www.centergalleryonline.com (state fair)

Project Basho, Philadelphia PA http://onward.projectbasho.org/ (natural history)

Good news and a dead otter

Maybe it was just my taking my meds yesterday and the day before. Maybe I just needed time to sort out myself with the depo. Maybe it was just a temporary glitch, but I appear to be running normally again. In celebration of not being fucked up, I present you with a pretty picture:

to fill (apologies to Lorrie Moore)

I feel love and affection in the traditional way: expanding the spaces in my chest. Filled to burst, and all that. But desire, fear, and sadness begin in my belly. They pull in, instead of pushing out. They create space. No wonder I self medicate with food. It isn't what I want, but it goes to the right place. It fills something.

theories

I'm sad. Not particularly right now, it's covered up, but I can feel it. As soon as my surface emotion fades, as soon as I am not thinking about anything in particular, underneath is sad. It doesn't come from anything, it isn't directed at anything, it just sits like fog in my belly. It feels like I'm off my meds.

I have a couple possible explanations:

1. I may very well be off my meds. I am sure I took them this morning, and I am 95% sure I took them yesterday. But the day before? And the day before that? I am not so sure. It is entirely possible that I have forgotten them nearly every day for the last week, maybe two. There aren't any immediate and debilitating side effects of forgetting, like there were with the Effexor, so I don't always notice.

2. I started Depo Provera about a week ago. It changes my hormones, which is good for not getting knocked up, but changes in hormones sometimes result in changes in mood. Perhaps I now need a different dose to account for the differences in chemistry.

3. This feels like "off medication" sad, as opposed to "my life is sad." It's there when I wake up, it's there as soon as people leave the room, and I have no idea what is wrong or how to fix it. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is how I'm supposed to feel. Maybe I just need to talk it out, work it out.

Theory 1 is easy to prove. I know I took them today. I will make sure to take them tomorrow, and the next day, and if I start to feel anxious and paranoid then I'll know that I'm introducing meds into my system as opposed to continuing them. This is what I'm hoping for. I'm hoping I just messed up which means I know how to fix it.

If that doesn't work, I talk to my shrink about theory 2 and 3. I have an appointment on the 29th.

In the meanwhile, well, you may see a good deal of moping before this is over.

I kinda wanted to leave the previous post on top for a little while longer

but rules is rules, especially the arbitrary ones I made up. I sent another message. I post it to the blog.

Radio Essay: First Mixdown

Still a work in progress. I have a meeting about this on Tuesday.

I spend too much time analyzing S.D.

I need someone else to think too much about.

3 1/2 weeks

and I still have a crush.

I was going to say more but it got really boring.

for some reason this kind of thing makes me happy

We were talking in class about Allyson's project, which involves people writing down stories about their possessions. (It's actually a bit more complicated than that, but that's okay.) Larry was saying how he really responded to the different stories. One story he identified with, and really liked the narrator. Another story he described as from someone who was like, twelve or something, and was so stupid that someone should take her out and drown her. What he didn't know, because the stories were anonymous, was that it was mine.

So why am I gleeful? I guess I just like having a juicy story more than I mind having my classmate tell me (unknowingly) to my face that I'm too stupid to live. I am such a drama queen.

In Praise of A Gate at the Stairs

A little bit like Lorrie Moore does Joyce Carol Oates, but so much better because it is Lorrie Moore. It made me think about things I don't like to think about, and then it made me cry, and then I remembered to take my drugs today, and I stopped to write this but I am still waiting for resolution.

numbers

There are particular ages that stand out in my memory. Those numbers have an order, a place, a story attached. They are chapter headings. 15, 19, 29. I don't always remember exactly the order of things, so I attach events and people to the nearest chapter and call it good. The numbers in between I lose track of.

The entirety of high school happened at 15. At 15 I had my first boyfriend who gave me my first kiss, and my second boyfriend who fucked me. I have begun to summarize the experience with the phrase, "I didn't lose my virginity voluntarily." Which is both much more and much less than what I remember.

At 15 years old, I was a liar. I lied mostly to my parents, who I believed (as all 15 year olds do) were intolerably strict. Now that I write this I cannot remember any specific instances of lying to someone other than my parents. But I am convinced: I lied. I learned to consider all possible answers to any given question. I am afraid, sometimes, that I have irretrievably lost my sense of truth, that I may be a liar.

I went to college at 19, spent four years there, and left at 19. It was the beginning of my adult life, although I have spent the entire time since then denying all evidence of adulthood. I tell people that at heart I am still 19, on my own for the first time and realizing that I can eat cereal with ice cream for breakfast and no one will stop me.

29 was my ten year mark. At 29 I could start to say that I've been doing something, or not doing something, for ten years. It makes for a clean story. I am still telling it. I am still 29, even though part of the mystique of graduate school was that I would graduate at 30. That isn't the story anymore. I started, I will finish, at 29. I think this may be why I have such a hard time acknowledging my birthday. It's not that I don't want to be 30, but because I am already rounding my experiences to fit the story. I know that when I tell these events later, they will begin with the phrase when I was 29.

Dear (other) Mike,

Thank you for being flattered. Thank you for letting it just be that. I should put you in charge of all my rejections.

Your friend,
Angela

p.s. Since there is already a Mike on this blog, I'm afraid you're stuck with Other Mike. You know how it goes.

I don't mind when you're not around

We'll go out sometime, have a drink. I'll tell you about the crazy crush I have, and maybe you'll say thanks but no thanks, you're incredibly flattered, and I'm amazing but you're just not interested or you don't have the time, you're so busy, you'll sound so sincere and look so disappointed. And I will awkwardly backtrack, it's not that big a deal, don't feel bad.

Or maybe not.

Is that too much to ask?

Friday again

I haven't been to the gym in more than a week. I've been binge eating again. I am behind in my classes. I am tired. I missed application deadlines. My resume sucks. Fuck that, my resume is empty. I start to think about what I need to do and I panic. I shut down. Erin said that it sounded like my life was going really well, and I think yeah. I have rainbow painted nails. The sex is good. I am happy as long as I'm not thinking, and I'm really good at not thinking. So I'm happy.

Obsessive Collection Piece: Now With Added October!