Mr. Tolson, I need your help...

I am still trying to "take back and keep my righteous mind".  I have been decluttering since 2016.  Household is pretty much done, except for books.  Remember back in the 70s how paperbacks looked.  They were much smaller than today's books classified as paperbacks.  I really should send them on to Goodwill.  But its hard to part with them for the sole reason they are African American literature and our books are the least to go into reprint or even digital availability.  Also, its hard to part with them for what they represent to me in my development as a teen-ager and young adult who struggled to be aware and conscious or as they young admonish today "stay woke".  That is an emotional attachment.  I will never reread those books (my aged eyes can't handle the print).  My oldest son reads and I have been passing some on to him.  I thought about just giving him most of them and let him pick  and choose what to keep and what to pass on.  That sounds like a sound plan...I think I'll go with it.

A friend who is a volunteer at an Art House in Louisville's West End took some art supplies.  I'm trying to keep a minimum.  Today I returned to the basementm (I had been avoiding the space for month and months), to move some things around.  Oh mercy me! More is more.  If I had my phone down here I would snap a picture and let you see all the stuff that has ended to one side of the room.  I want to go through and make a keep pile and a giveaway pile.  This pile includes more art supplies and art instruction and quilt instruction books.  No, I do not want to have a yard sale, (although, I might do Half-Price books).

The wall next to the pile in the floor is an old Elna system of wire drawers (that I found on CL for 20 bucks!  I was happier than a pig in slop!  I'm channeling my Mother with that one.(  I want to get back to quilting...contemporary and art quilts; but I do not want to keep a large stash.  Not that I have a huge stash, but I still think I can go through what I have and let go.  For contemporary quilting, I want to buy as I make and for my art quilts I want to keep a a couple of different rolls of PFD and paint and dye as I go.  I want to create more slowly and with intent.  Which means my blank art journals are definitely a keeper.  Its better to make crap in a journal then with fabric.  Restarting a journal practice can translate to a masterpiece in cloth.  Right? Just say sure and lets move on.

I want to be a good steward of the spaces I have to create in but to tell you for true, my creativity was higher and more productive when we lived in an apartment where I used the wall in the hallway and the kitchen table and cleared it up daily before my kids came home from school and we ate together as a family.  The next morning after everyone left I hauled my projects back out to the kitchen table and hallway.  To dye fabrics I rented out space 2-3 times a year at Mary Anderson Center (is that now defunct?) for the Arts on the grounds of Mount St. Francis (a peace/piece of heaven on earth).
 in southern Indiana.

But whenever I glance at the chaos on the other side of this room (I'm still in the basement) I envision Mr. Melvin Tolson placing his hands firmly on my shoulders and looking me in the eye and saying with conviction "I'm trying to help you take back and keep your righteous mind".

Until next time, Peace.

Rambling thoughts...

For over a month I've been going to sleep with the thought that tomorrow I'll wake up and get to the garage early and dye or marble on some fabric before the days turn cold.  I have yet to make it.  I haven't dyed, marbled, screen printed, laminated on fabric for 2 years.  All of last year was understandable.  And even some interruptions in this year, but to let the summer completely go by and now Autumn is here, I am not sure if I will or not.  I don't have and haven't had the stamina for it.  The physical stamina hasn't returned.  I have returned to sketching out new quilt ideas but now that I'm faced with wanting to really get going on a new quilt, to really engage the process again, the question of how to get it all completed by hand stitching arises.  What I really want to do is sit and make little hexies and sew them together...little hexies from my own dyed and painted fabrics.  But I have a quilt that needs to be completed by the end of December, so hand work is out of the question.  The part that I'm mostly dragging on is sitting down at the sewing machine.  Also, my mind feels cloudy when I try to approach design on the design board.  Everything feels new like I have never performed any of these tasks before.  So I just keep sitting my happy butt down to crochet or flip through crochet patterns.  I even tried to impose a "learning curriculum" on myself and the one book I keep avoiding is Ruth McDowell's book on piecing because I need to sew.

What is appealing to me about crocheting and making the hexies is not having to tax my soul to create from scratch.  Although deciphering a pattern in crochet and learning to knit has it brain boost challenges, its no where near the same.  It connects back to the stamina.  I am due to start strength training around mid-October.  I can't imagine not hooking and want to add yarn dyeing to what I do.  I already have everything I need to do that so it would be a natural fit. Just need to figure out who I am once again.

If you don't change, life will sure change you.  Peace.

Captured thoughts...

I received the Kentucky State Fair catalog and while flipping through the sections on Craft/Hobby/Fine Art/Antiques...I realized I could submit in all those categories.  I'm going to aim to submit a crochet shawl/scarf, an encaustic piece(s), and a textile art piece.  I might get it together and submit one of my great grandmother's dresses or the one I have that belonged to my great great grandmother.  I need to do something to keep them better, they are beginning to dry rot  .I've thought about putting them in a quilt, a shadow box or in an airtight vacuum bag.

I picked up 3 more birch panels for encaustics and also 3 small bottles of the Golden High Flow acrylics that I'll use for marbling sometime in the next few months.  I decided that I would only work in one size for encaustics, 8"x8" panel with 3/4" or 1" (can't remember) deep.  Did I mention the Shiva sticks play well with the beeswax?  Everything I create will go on a wall here at home until I decide what to do with them...the same with the Morrison quilts.  Don wanted the one I've completed to hang in the gallery.  That didn't feel right...I'm not about production.  I want a group, a body of art, to make a statement...not a quilt one, hang one, quilt one, hang one, etc.

While painting today the ghostly figure with changling blue eyes...I thought of a woman who I knew back in the 80s who thought she appeared white after she sprinkled herself with white baby powder from head to toe.  She wore wigs that were bone straight or bone straight and blonde.  My contact with her was only a few weeks before she returned to prison for prostitution.  I had not read about Post Traumatic Slave Disorder back then, but now, I see her as having a very extreme and severe mental disorder.  What comes of someone, a woman, who is so disconnected from her own story, truth, mind?  It was the quilt for The Bluest Eye.

Thinking stuff over...

Here I am facing the last quarter of the year...assessing my goals and monitoring my body's responses to the change in the season.

I went back to look at my goals for 2013 here.   Where I need to gain strength is completion of quilts, especially the ones for series.  Also, I need to have more defined limits about experimenting...when to start and stop.  The dyeing, marbling, breakdown printing, took over much of the summer months.  It was a journey to get back to quilting which the Mojo series (my paper quilts) was the boat that carried me. 

After going through the Artist2Market program (1 more session left), I am affirmed that wholesaling is not for me!  It doesn't fit into my already given responsibilities or ambitions and dreams.  Being in the co-op  this year has been good for selling my small pieces.  Seeing my larger pieces hanging has helped me identify technical areas I need to address.  I put a lot of time into the Sunflower quilt and because I didn't have a large enough table to properly square it up, it hangs badly.  Also, I'm going to consider metal bars for hanging instead of the plexi-glass or wood slats.

In answering the question of my idea of a successful artist, I think, I'm not an un-successful artist.  I put the time in, the time is about process, other than what I referenced above, it is all good.  Joining the co-op gives my art a place to be when it is complete and that was a goal.  Where I need improvement is submitting to other juried exhibits across the country.  My ultimate is to have a piece in Quilt National or Quilt Visions, but I'm not focused enough yet and am not ready to force that focus. Summing up my idea of a successful artist it would be, "Create, Hang, Submit".

I love love love it when my pieces are purchased and commented on by art lovers...it sends my spirit flying.  Art lovers who purchase and comment get me through the periods of  "why bother".  But I don't have them that often and they have been short lived because I turn my ear back to the first part of the mantra in "Create, Hang, Submit" and that is my healing balm.

2013 has been filled with adjusting to the co-op gallery and being an office holder in the 501(c)3 organization formed by the tenants and artists at Mellwood called AiMave (Artists' Initiative of Mellwood Avenue).  The goal of this group is to pull together our resources for positive marketing, ideas, and events.  The leasing agent and owner are often associated with negative publicity which makes our tasks necessary as we are all there for the same reason, affordability.  I didn't foresee this at the beginning of the year and I think it will be my last year as secretary.  The goal is to write grants to support the artists and involve us in community outreach. 

When I look at the full circle of my life and what I'm responsible for on a daily basis, being a professional artist isn't in the cards for me.  I'm serious about what I do and how often but I think the lack of appeal to embrace my art as a business that I want to depend on to bring in an x amount of $ each month brings that feeling of a size 20 trying to fit into a size 8 dress.  Creating, whether writing or visual has always been about inhabiting a spiritual realm where I can listen to myself feel and think, where I can honor God's presence in my life. 

Showing up...

I showed up today...prepped a few silk screens, was on duty at Kore snd painted yesterday doodle. It kept my hands going while I pondered life over.

August's N*a*k*e*d L*a*d*i*e*s

You know it is August when you see these lovelies!

I just absolutely am intrigued with these flowers!  Although this year they were not as plentiful around town as I've seen in previous years.  A couple of summers ago I planted some that were given to me in my mother's back yard.  They did not come up the following year and she has since moved into her apartment and I find myself each August since wondering if they are up.  The flowers come up over night the end of July, the first week of August and enjoy about 2 weeks of glory before they wilt and fade from the landscape. 

This week in the studio I've been listless.  Those thickened dyes  I was worried about still sit in the fridge...it felt like too much effort, I couldn't even muster interest in my Mojo paper quilts which was the creative life line that got me going last time and the few days in Yellow Springs revved me up the last 2 weeks, but this week, blah.

I attempted to just push the feeling aside and at least do something! So I drew another sketch of America Shannon using crosshatch and made some doodles (see here) that I'll paint with opaque paints tomorrow should the blah-ness continue. 

Loving Life...

The months June and July 2013 will go down in my personal history as an emotional smorgasbord.  I already referenced June in the post about my cousin visiting and selling 2 pieces of art.  (a couple of posts below) 

With my Mother, children and grandchildren, we visited my father's gravesite on the 3rd anniversary of his death.  For me, it was my first visit.  So many thoughts were tied into the visit...looking at a headstone with my Mother's name on it even though she is still with us while being present with my children and grandchildren made me think of hope and dreams, dreams materialized, un-materialized, and dreams on the way of becoming.

Then there was the verdict.  The verdict.  The verdict.  It sits in the stomach. 

The end of the month we took a day trip to the Children's Museum in Indy.  Seven of us, four generations riding in a van. 

Indianapolis Children's Museum

I also married my Partner of 27 years!  I couldn't have done this 25, 20, or even 15 years ago due to my perspective on marriage as an institution combined with my own hypocrisy I experienced from my first marriage at the age of 20.  I think somewhere I read, heard Ms Maya Angelou say, a woman isn't fully grown until she is at least 40.  The last 13 years has been an opening of clarity about what love is and isn't for me.  This was the year the conversation changed for us both...instead of "we'll get around to it" it turned into "let us do this and do it now".  And although I can't name it now, it does feel like we're seeing with new eyes and wearing new skin since we jumped over the broom.

We took a brief getaway to Yellow Springs, Ohio with stops in Athens to see Quilt National 13 and Cincy to Saint Theresa's Textile Trove inside Pendleton Art Center and Krohn's Conservatory, and to the Air Force Museum in Dayton.  The breath of fresh air had me itching to return to my studio. 

National Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio

Krohn's Conservatory in Cincinnati, Ohio

Studio work July/August 2013



Beginning Today

Setting up in the new space has felt like I was working under the evil eye of Evaline...you know, Evaline, from The Wiz, Don't Nobody Bring Me No Bad News Evaline.  Yesterday I threw a bucket of water on her and she is still melting, so I'm just an nth from shedding this skin of drudgery.  I kept getting ahead of myself over what needed to be done now to what I ultimately want to do which made the task even more laborious.

It looks nothing like this now.  Next week, I anticipate being ready to stitch something.  On top of continuing the move, I've dealt with soar throat and chest infection, changing schedule for watching the grandkids, taking Ade to work and picking him up, Peter had another eye surgery, my own health appts., and I've gained weight.  Uneena and Don covered gallery sitting for me at the Kore except for last Saturday.  Being able to sit and read for those couple of hours only interrupted by talking to the occasional visitors was the most amount of calm I had in weeks followed by a quiet Easter Sunday where Peter and I just chilled and caught up with one another's thoughts.  I'll be returning to a conscientious slow down beginning today.

It has something to do with Home.

High winds and rain are predicted to move in around 3:00 am...so possibly, I could find myself in Oz tomorrow looking for the Wizard.  But I'm hoping all will be well and whatever comes will pass through quickly and without any loss of power and life.

I just came in from the studio. When I rough sketched the quilt out I wrote Welcome Home underneath it and tonight while piecing it, I kept thinking "going home", "returning home".  The center fabric represents a passage, an illuminated door. You know by now, I just listen to what comes and at this time I don't know what it means really.  Before I left I cut the right and left side down to bring more focus to the doorway. and some of the top will also get cut down.  The other idea that came was to place a face at the top.

While meditating on it the idea came to me to make it 3-D and I saw a room with about 50 of them varying between 4-6 feet tall.  I don't think I'm going there but I'm noting it here for reference.

Let's Barter...I have this...you have _________

The temperature dropped to 12F 2 nights ago and the high was in the low 20s.  I'm taking it in stride but today, right after I pick up my grandson from school, I'm going to the studio...it is currently 34 degrees.  After the studio, I'm heading to the gym for a mile walk on the treadmill.  Mo, has renewed our membership so I've been going 3 times a week. I lay my portable oxygen on the floor and do a quick start on the treadmill at 0 incline but going from 1.5 to 2.2 on speed...I'm able to get a mile in at 40 minutes or less.  I'm thinking about adding water aerobics in the spring or even yoga. But first I want to keep up this routine of going regularly. 

The Mid-wife didn't get stretched.  I damp stretch my quilts on the carpet in the living room and my grand kids are with us at night and sleep on the pull out couch which prevents me from stretching the quilt and allowing it to dry.  

The other night I was thinking that I never shared how The Mid-Wife quilt came to be.  I will in a few weeks, after I finish it, but I can't right now.  I've put a note to myself to remember to do this mid-February.  

I am finished with Secrets of Digital Quilting by Lura Schwarz Smith and Kerby C. Smith.  Doing the projects in the book didn't interest me.  What I found the most valuable was the digital filing system for working with images and the argument  for shooting photos in RAW format.  The 3 files, original, master, and target are organization tools I'm going to work with from this point forward.  It is too daunting a task to do this to the photo files I already have.  Shooting in RAW captures and retains more of the image in without compressing the image...it takes up more storage but if I have an image I want to continue to work with...because each time an image is opened and saved in jpeg (a compressed file) there is some digital loss in the image...probably not readily apparent to the naked eye but over the long haul it with repeated use, it could make it harder to get a rich image on cloth.  

The images I printed out, I'm wanting to make pillows with them so I've talked to Stephanie who has made pillows with her woven cloth and have of course did the google search.  I haven't ordered any pillow forms yet...and am thinking I just need to do the first few with polyester filled pillows to see how it goes before ordering down/feather forms.  

I printed the bottom on cotton and the top on organza and over laid them.  This will be my first pillow.

Now, let's barter...this year I'm about checking my spending and using the tools I've already invested in and not keeping things I know I'm done with.  Keep in mind, I'm fairly easy,...I'd like to trade Secrets of Digital Quilting along with the Fall issue 2012 of Fiber Art Now.  email me at seamless_skin at yahoo dot com and let me know what you have to exchange.  If you want an idea of things I might like...here ya go...fancy napkins, foam for making stamps, paints, mediums, painting knives, bead storage boxes, other books, silk scraps, adhesives, scrapbooking paper, tissue paper, paint, dye, crayons, a flat griddle, videos...just name it.

slow like molasses

January has been a slow moving month...not that the time has moved slow, but I've been aware that in spite of returning to some regularity with my art, I'm moving slow...steady but slow, slow like molasses slow, but not as sweet.

Mo has been dragging me to the Y and the 40 minutes on the treadmill has me sleeping better but I'm not yet thinking this is going to be a routine and is more than likely her new year resolution that will fade around mid February.

I found my iPod, but the cell phone is still missing and I can't find my point and shoot camera.  The iPod was in my desk drawer...a drawer I open almost daily! What was that about?

I do believe I'll be completely finished with The Mid-Wife and The Jockey (I work on my quilts for a very long time and yesterday self-doubt set in on whether I'll even come close to my creative goals this year). The 23rd of the month is my time frame so that they can be professionally photographed on the 25th.

I'll be back tomorrow night to do a summary of my week in the studio...peace

a ufo from my throw back days

Catching up with myself...

I went through a major rearranging at the studio.  It took me 3 days out of 2 weeks.  Then when I finished I went through a empty spell about creating anything.  After some days of just sitting, looking around, and wondering about nothing in particular, I decided to just do something...so I grabbed up the canvas scraps I graffiti-ed and started bead work on them.  Slow hand work is good for the soul.

I have at least 20 of these graffiti-ed canvas scraps.  It was my intent (there is that word again...intent, sighing) to get them finished for the small art show/everything under 100 at The Kore Gallery.  But if I get 5 of them completed I'll be happy...this is the first one you see above.  After I started beading on the second one, up jumped the mojo, I went to work quilting this...

Between the jockey and my latest music crush, jazz vocalist, Gregory Porter...I was feeling a full immersion art-gasm!  The music is fine! but the lyrics are some of the freshest and energizing I've heard since Lizz Wright!  Go youtube Porter right now then come back and tell me what you think!  I have his Be Good CD and just like I do with Lizz Wright, I want to order all his cds.

I'm also looking for another photo to portray.  After spending the Spring and early Summer drawing the jockey almost every day, it wasn't until I did this real fluid drawing that I found some semblance of style that felt good for me to portray realism in.  I love it and want to do more of it.  I have a photo of my Great Great Grandmother that I'm leaning toward...here it is.

I'm not doing a big Thanksgiving meal this year...just gave myself permission to let go of it a few days ago.  After letting that go I thought about my cousins and my Uncle's wife who is a very proud Wampanoag Indian who has never recognized the holiday as it is celebrated...being Native American, the take on Thanksgiving takes on a different perspective.  To quote a line by poet Margaret Walker..."let a new earth rise, a new world be born".

Taking a mental break with a blog meme

I just read a post on Patricia's blog, My Quilting Adventure!, and she posed these 5 questions she had seen on someone else's blog and well you know how it goes...right?  Here goes (and feel free to do your own either in the comments here or on your own blog)

1. I am.......
2. I wish.....
3. My friends think I'm......
4. Books are......
5. Top or near the top of my Bucket List.......

My anwsers...

I am slow and steady.
I wish I owned a home in the country but just outside the city.
My friends think I'm insightful (ssshhhhh, lets not blow my cover, okay?)
Books are people.  (hey! why not?)
Top or near the top of my Bucket List is to return to the Crow Barn next year for another workshop with Claire and Leslie.

We didn't get to see Beast of the Southern Wild last night due to a storm that wiped out the lights on Bardstown Road (major street) where the theatre is located...I was back in my studio when it moved through only to emerge into a hard rain...became drenched going to the car but not as drenched as I could have been thanks to Jamie who gave me a ride back to the back 40 acres where I was parked.  Mary and I sat and had coffee at Vint (lemon poppy seed muffins are delisimo!)  til around midnight.

Salonpas patches and Aperture

ai yai eyeee...every muscle in my body is hurting...Peter and I cleaned some stuff from the storage unit last Saturday and dropped it off at my studio. It involved moving and rearranging heavy boxes around.  The mission was to bring the sewing desk out and take it over but we ran into a challenge which the details when summed = desk too big for the back of the truck.  I prepared a fairly involved dinner on Sunday and then yesterday did some near major rearranging in the studio to accommodate the stuff from storage.

Peter has some Salonpas patches which I stuck on my lower back and neck shoulder area...too bad the patches don't come in strips that I could wrap myself in fully...I would have slept mummified!  It is 9:30am and I'm undecided if this will be a go or stay day.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around aperture...its that inverse thing that keeps confusing me...the higher the aperture number the lower the depth of field, the lower the aperture number the greater the depth of the field.

Expectations and Gratitude

Not much went as expected this weekend...University of Louisville lost to University of Kentucky.  I didn't make it to Trolley Hop or to the studio yesterday and today.  

The upside of what wasn't expected was meeting my great-nephew, the newest edition to our family, yesterday and my sisters and great-niece converging at my mother's for the basketball game.  None of who live in Louisville.  

Today I've been lazy, napping and snacking, reading and computering most of the day.  As part of finding gratitude everyday through the lense of my camera and using aperture setting, this is today's offerings:

dandelion from Carter

Sucession: September & October 2003, Juanita Yeager that hangs above the couch.

Its obvious I have a lot to learn about aperture...but I have a whole month.

 

 

Counting boats

It takes me on average about 45 minutes to do one boat.  I have around 125 remaining.  I've lost 2 days from the studio due to soar throat and irritated sinuses and upper chest.  The temps have dropped back down highs in the low 40s.  My great grandmother called this pnuemonia weather...when its unseasonably warm with sudden drops in temps.  She believed in dressing for the season with a hat or scarf always covering the head in winter when out and about. 

This Saturday is Demo Day at Mellwood...I'll be in my studio hand embroidering on the boats from 10-noon.  

 

Honoring Valerie & Robert White

Our Police Chief, Robert White, is leaving Louisville for Denver, Colorado.  The 2.5 years before he arrived were horrific ones marked by vigilante police justice and poorly trained officers that resulted in 10-11 deaths of suspects...one while incarcerated, one while already handcuffed with his hands behind his back, one mentally retarded man, and so on.  When I think how I've used my own dogged strength (to reference W.E.B. DuBois) from being torn asunder and that my anger and outrage eventually succumbed to brief periods of feeling like my life, and those of my children, had no value in this city solely based on the fact we were a Black People, I understood once again how those with less resolve and survival skills and consciousness fall prey/victim to enemies and the powerful.  Even as I write this and reflect on those 2.5 years, my stomach has knots and my skin is crawling.  Chief White turned the police department around by holding Accountability, with a capital A, for members who took the oath to serve and protect.  He embraced ALL of the community and updated training and focused on community policing.  Still not a perfect system, but SUBSTANTIAL progress was made and it made a difference.  I can't say I'm not apprehensive about who will replace him.

dignified 

With his leaving, the other loss, is to the artistic community.  Valerie White is married to Robert White.  She is a supremely intelligent and talented and gracious!  She is a blessing not only artistically, but makes me, as a woman, want to nuture the best part of me more than I do.  For that, I know she will always be a part of my soul-circle, but the gift of peeking into her artistic process from time to time will be sorely missed along with her critiques and assistance in my own work.  Valerie has held several shows while here and her imagery and craft never fails to leave me breathless!  No one is doing work like Valerie and it is extremely refreshing!  One of my treasured memories is her riding shotgun to my first time at the Crow Barn where we hooked up with Juanita Yeager, another Louisville artist and treasure who no longer lives here.

story-telling

Valerie and Robert will leave huge holes in the soul of this city...

Sign of the Times :)

It all started due to a mispelled name on a list for the pop-up gallery.  Deborah spelled Uneena's name with one e and 3 n's.  To make up for the innocent mistake, Deborah made Uneena a sign with her studio name engraved in wood...we all oohed and ahhed over and then each day after that whenever she came in I'd see another sign for another studio neighbor...all the while Deborah was just honing her skills for the best one!!!! TA DA!!!!!!!

me in my studio holding my new sign close upme and Uneena goofing around

Thank you Deborah!

My thoughts are quiet these days...

so really not to much new is happening in the studio.  Tomorrow is the last day to see Stanzas: Mixed Media Art Quilts at the Iroquois library branch.  It is my intent to make it back over with the camera tomorrow.  Those of you who are in a constant flux of exhibiting and preparing work to go out, I salute you!  It took quite a lot of focus and energy to get the small exhibit at the library ready.  I had to put aside every thing else to prepare the quilts for hanging/framing.

In all of the above doings, the studio had become a royal mess and I was feeling the emotional need for a complete overhaul, but after putting items back in place,throwing out some stuff, and giving away some stuff, I felt un-burdened again.  

The last 2 days I've spent painting wood signs for sign posts that sit outside in the courtyard intended to let visitors know we're in our studios.  I thought about blinging it out with some fabric but I went for "just get it done and move on".   I hope to be finished with these on Thursday with final coats of poly-acryllic.

I'm reading more these days...my current list:  Joplin's Ghost by Tananarive Due (Kindle for the PC); In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa's Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World by Judith Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff; and The Artist Rule: Nuturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom.  The last thing I do before falling asleep is to grab a poem from Mythium-The Journal of Contemporary Literature and Cultural Voices #3.  

 

When keepin' it real goes right!

Its been a busy exciting and overwhelming week so far.  I'm still riding on cloud nine from hearing one of the best journalist of our time...Amy Goodman!

 She was here for the annual ACLU fund-raising dinner and my daughter said Al Sharpton spoke at St. Stephen Church on Sunday...and Julia Butterfly Hill was here yesterday at Bellarmine University.  When I first heard a radio story on Hill when she was still up in Luna, the tree, I was on my way to work and had to pull over to the side of the road because the story, the dedication and the sacrifice, moved me to ball like a baby.  The other time a radio story had this effect on me was listening to Regina Carter cuts from her cd Paganini: After the Dream.  I didn't hear Sharpton or Hill but the fact all 3 dynamos where in the city so close together, puts some jazzy joy in my heart.

I'm going to hang 3 pieces (Cilium 2, Crowbonics: The Scroll, Crowbonics: The Prayer) in a pop-up group exhibit on Friday for trolley hop and then for the month of November I'll have about 8-10 pieces at the Iroquois branch library.  This coincides with the release of poet Makalani Bandele's debut publication, Hellfightin' (Mud Man, my brother, did the cover).  Bandele will be doing a reading at the branch and myself and one other artist will be present to talk about our art forms afterwards.  I don't know the details really, so I'm rolling with the flow for the most part.  

Wishing you peace and joy, beloved...