The Melting World

Same artist as below.

As some of you know, I am a big fan of art brut and outsider art, which to me means any art that comes deep from the heart and had to be done for the maker, and such art doesn’t follow the rules of academic art schools. It is not about money, or approval, or […]

Sarah made this painting based on a story she read about a boy who rode a dragon. She won the All-School Chiba Prefecture Award for this work. I just had to share this because she has such a great eye. Thanks, too, to Sarah’s mom, Frances, for making sure Sarah can be a free bird […]

For the first time in late September I saw a place where hot spring waters are harvested for the many hotels dotting the Mt. Fuji landscape. The scene looked like my Catholic childhood imagination of Hell: yellowy scarred stains next to smoldering thick pools of spoiled oatmeal, yellowish-white fumes twisting and groaning like ghosts, the […]

A small painting of mine with the Chinese character for leaf, pronounced “ha” in Japanese.

A poem card made in my productive maternity year. This is a prayer said by Norwegian immigrants in Minnesota; it serves as an epigraph in my poem, ‘Pelican Lake.

Just a quick message to say that the new job at M. University didn’t pan out, but I sensed it wasn’t the right place when I visited–I mean–my ideals perfectly matched the university’s ideals; yet the realities of the place contradicted our ideals. Make sense? In other words, the university was more closed and conservative […]

I made a very short test film production (a bit over 1 minute) as part of my New Media studies class…check it out: it’s here! Just click on Artest: test production (the bright blue square)… Ciao!

I definitely think both push and pull and blend of the old and new occurs in the world, including art movements. As mentioned elsewhere (God knows where) so far I like Jay Bolter’s idea of remediation (revolt and imitation as interactive forces in change) in his book, Writing Space (2001). Please check out this MUST-SEE […]

R. Mutt was the pseudonym Marcel Duchamp used when exhibiting a porcelain toilet in NY in 1917…unleashing an uproar in the art world with his later written protest to the Society that rejected “R.Mutt”‘s work. This link shows you a picture by Alfred Steiglitz of R. Mutt’s “Fountain.” I like the detail provided here that […]

From my classmate, Bonnie: “Brian Jungen’s Prototype for a New Understanding takes Air Jordans and turns them into masks and sculptures depicting North-West Coastal characters. View the collection here. My comments: Bonnie, Thanks so much for the link. I loved the way this artist turns a popular culture artifact on its head. He, like many […]

It’s found! It’s found! Yes, it’s found! If you recall, a few months ago (uuuuhhh, I don’t know, back in the January entry titled “Lost hat”), I bemoaned the loss of a favored hat in poesy. Well, as I sat chatting to my husband on the cell phone from our car in the faculty parking […]

Below the plane a silver plate begs for coins of constellations, enough to buy feed for the night mare to ride into the forest of glistening eyes and sharpened claws. With blind mutt’s eye, a lake searches its owner by scent and sound. There she is! Wrapped in riveted armor and hidden in ocean-rage boom. […]

(Upon hearing the 2005 State of the Union Address) “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.” –William Blake The fetid pond frightened away most visitors but not the reptiles, who slithered and slipped in the slime with slight chlorophyll grins. The water surrendered to the […]

LOST HAT I dreamt about that hat again although it�s been gone for two months now, slipped from my hood into the deep unplowed snow of the faculty lot. When I retraced my path, it had already vanished into the hands of a student or a professor who must daily marvel at the most curious […]

The poemcard called “A Fable” is written for my friend, the poet Kijima Hajime, who passed away last year. He will be missed! I met him only in words, we never met face to face, but through letters, faxes, postcards and emails, he inspired me with his joy of words, his mixing of drama, music, […]