New month, new year, new update. Here comes a big ol' long blog post for your casual reading enjoyment.
Summary: I'll be leading up a works-in-progress series at
Someday Lounge this spring called
Public Works… Clare Carpenter and I are putting out
my first book… Women Take Back the Noise continues to make waves,
radio and otherwise… the
Johnny Cash book still isn't out… plus some
thoughts about where I've ended up this year, artistically and personally.
I close a year of personal and artistic struggle with feelings of optimism. With encouragement and support from my faculty advisers and student community at
Goddard College, where I'm earning my MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts, and from friends, family, and especially my partner, I've
stepped away from familiar territory and into the sorts of
murky depths that can lead to deeper work, "realer" work, or to complete insanity, depending how it all shakes out. It's been
scary and
frustrating at times,
exhilarating and
illuminating at others. The risks have included using media with which I am undeniably incompetent (including video), spending more time working and contemplating on a solo rather than collaborative/community basis, developing my relationship to the performance artist's inevitable documentation process, working with the intersection of personal
trauma and healing artistic practices, and delving into dark and contradictory concepts--as manifests both in actual creative work and in the
dogged, insistent mental
clamour that is my intellect at work. I'm feeling both exhausted and a little more grounded after a year of that, and plan to combine that
risk-taking with a few structured projects that put me back in
collaborative and public contexts more often.
"A Compendium of Miniatures," my first book, will be published this year by 2GQ as a limited edition artist's book in collaboration with Clare Carpenter. We'll be presenting various readings and discussions about the collaborative process at Powell's Downtown, PNCA (Pacific Northwest College of Art), Pacific University's MFA in Creative Writing residency, Clackamas Community College's sustainability conference, and Borders Books. The book itself will be letterpressed, hardcover, case-bound by the artist. All copies in this extremely limited edition will be signed by artist and author.
If you'd like to reserve one, please email me or 2GQ.Details about the Public Works series can be found at 2GQ as well. Hope you'll come by and see the artists and writers at work. And be nice! Buy us a drink! You'll be getting in free. And it takes guts to bring unrefined, unfinished work before a random happy hour audience in Old Town.
The
Women Take Back the Noise four-CD compilation continues to make waves, with shows, media coverage, and radio play. A big shootout, er, shout-out as the kids say, to white-hot DJ Ricardo Wang at
KPSU in Portland for selecting my track from the compilation for his retrospective of 2006's experimental, noise, drone, and eclectic music. If you missed the "What's This Called" show live on 1450 AM or 98.3 FM, you can
download the show here. Most of my music the last few years is released under the name
Passiflora, and some of it is available for your downloading pleasure at
corporatecollapse.com. (I recommend the
Slumber group of songs, a collaboration with Derek Ecklund/Mesmer. Best to download them all, then listen all in a row. That's how they work properly on your brain.)
I continue working on projects and actions relating to walking, healing, trees, stumps, logging, home, trauma, catharsis, ritual, cemeteries, words, sidewalks, furtive art, ephemerality, life, death, and writing. At some point, I expect it will all reveal the secret of life, which is probably something like "
Live a life you love, use a god you trust, and don't take it all too seriously." Meantime, it's interesting and relentless,
muddy and
sticky territory to
explore.
As for my personal life: my partner and I had a great Hannukah season in Guatemala, a fabulous Thanksgiving on the Oregon Coast, a lovely family Christmas in Central Oregon, and a smashing New Year's Eve in our new/old home in Portland. Jessica led the traditional broom-sweeping out of that hectic, nasty old year; we all chased it out of the house with screams, hollers, and the clanging of pots & pans. We welcomed 2007 with fireworks, fake avant improv free jazz played on cardboard toot horns, and Veuve Clicquot. May you all have a brilliant new year! I plan to.
PS: I have no idea when the Johnny Cash book will actually, really be available. I'll let you know when it does and you can buy it and read my nice little story.
