Sunday, January 24, 2010
House of Monsters
I had a lovely Sunday: brunch in the Pike/Pine area followed by coffee and a pink-frosted cupcake (sitting in Pepto Bismol chairs, listening to the Pixies and Radiohead) and stumbling through the rain into random shops. One shop on Pike, Snowmonkey's House of Monsters, tucked away above an ice cream and sandwich spot, is full of odd little toys, books, and art. Currently in the shop is the art of Xavier Lopez Jr, whose illustrations of toothy-grinned, bulgy-eyed children made my afternoon. Now to round out the day with some Kiss of the Spider Woman.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Not If, But When
My parents are visiting. We went to the Henry Art Gallery yesterday, the oldest art museum in Washington State and also currently my favorite. It seemed similar to (though a smidgen smaller than) the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which is sort of funny (but not really) in that the founder was an art collector from Minneapolis (more funny huh than funny ha ha, I suppose). Currently on until Jan. 31, 2010 are two photography exhibits: Mappelthorpe's early polaroids, and Eirik Johnson's large-scale photographs of northwest logging, fisheries, and the like. One piece from the permanent collection that has stuck in my mind is a 1990 sculpture entitled "Not If But When": four gray cuckoo clocks with no numbers or hands each ticking away as below them hefty hammers and sickles swing frantically.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Ebb and Flow
The Fall 2009 issue of Yellow Medicine Review is now available: a hefty 350+ page book of stories, essays, and poems, including an opening essay by Andrei Codrescu exploring the four visits he made back to Romania since the fall of communism. Also, my story "Ebb and Flow" is tucked away in there. This themed issue has got me thinking about a number of stories that are now in various larval states.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Castalia
A week from tonight, I'll be reading at the Castalia reading series, at Hugo House. The readings feature UW MFA faculty, students, and alumni. Fun!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Middle of Nowhere
A very short story of mine appears in The Middle of Nowhere: Horror in Rural America, an anthology out from Pill Hill Press this month.
In other news, M. and I have explored and fallen in love with Georgetown, an artsy former industrial area south of downtown, chock full of studios in rickety old brick buildings (former bottling plants, iron and brass works). It felt like a combination of the Wild West and Red Hook. Their Art Attack (when studios are open to the wandering public) is every second Saturday of the month.
In other news, M. and I have explored and fallen in love with Georgetown, an artsy former industrial area south of downtown, chock full of studios in rickety old brick buildings (former bottling plants, iron and brass works). It felt like a combination of the Wild West and Red Hook. Their Art Attack (when studios are open to the wandering public) is every second Saturday of the month.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Helga and Nectarines
I see people walking down Bellevue, dressed for work. On sunnier, warmer days, back in August, I saw them bounding down the avenue to catch their bus. Today, cool and gray, mist hiding the mountains and the water, they walk rather grimly, knowing that their idyllic blackberry summer is coming to an end. No more sea kayaking. No more hiking in the Olympic peninsula or on Mt. Rainier (yesterday, Labor Day: saw Imogen Cunningham's nude husband wandering in the milky sunshine atop the latter at the Seattle Art Museum). We're getting used to venturing to the farmers' market with plastic hoods against plops of rain. M. found a vendor with the most real-tasting nectarines we've ever had: more than flavorful, juicy, aromatic. Never have I eaten such a joyous fruit. The vendor, too, is a wonder. Tell her you want some fruit to eat today and some fruit to eat in a couple of days, and she dandles her fingers over the rows of nectarines, sniffs each fruit at the stem and tells you (to the minute!) when the fruit will be most delicious.
But I mentioned SAM. What else did we see? Cunningham was great: innards of flowers with enormous precision; a self-portrait reflected in a Danish lingerie shop; a fun house portrait of loopyily stretched grand kids; gap-toothed smiling children staring voraciously into her lens, eager to be captured on film.
And Wyeth. Only seven paintings, but by far the most crowded exhibit. Like Cunningham's nudes, there's a sort of milky luminance to his Helga, but less dreamy than Cunningham, sort of hyper real. As if he sees her more clearly than one can ever see anything. If that makes sense. He wrote that a really good painting will be mostly memory. I like that idea.
The most heavily advertised temporary exhibit was Target Practice: Art Under Attack, 1949-1978, an international survey of post World War II art trying to subvert, to do something else. A 1960s French artist shot paint at her canvas with a rifle; an Italian artist and a Japanese artist began stabbing their canvases around the same time period without knowing about each other; canvases were taken off their stretchers and crumpled into forms; canvases were gouged, drawn and quartered; latex paints were poured on the floor; paintings without paint or a canvas were contemplated, concocted. My favorite piece (though I'll admit this was my least favorite exhibit) was Andy Warhol's oxidized squares, at the end of the exhibit. He and his assistants urinated onto copper-based paint, allowing an oxidization process to create a rather lovely dappled patina. For all the violence and aggression of the show, it was a rather pretty piece.
But I mentioned SAM. What else did we see? Cunningham was great: innards of flowers with enormous precision; a self-portrait reflected in a Danish lingerie shop; a fun house portrait of loopyily stretched grand kids; gap-toothed smiling children staring voraciously into her lens, eager to be captured on film.
And Wyeth. Only seven paintings, but by far the most crowded exhibit. Like Cunningham's nudes, there's a sort of milky luminance to his Helga, but less dreamy than Cunningham, sort of hyper real. As if he sees her more clearly than one can ever see anything. If that makes sense. He wrote that a really good painting will be mostly memory. I like that idea.
The most heavily advertised temporary exhibit was Target Practice: Art Under Attack, 1949-1978, an international survey of post World War II art trying to subvert, to do something else. A 1960s French artist shot paint at her canvas with a rifle; an Italian artist and a Japanese artist began stabbing their canvases around the same time period without knowing about each other; canvases were taken off their stretchers and crumpled into forms; canvases were gouged, drawn and quartered; latex paints were poured on the floor; paintings without paint or a canvas were contemplated, concocted. My favorite piece (though I'll admit this was my least favorite exhibit) was Andy Warhol's oxidized squares, at the end of the exhibit. He and his assistants urinated onto copper-based paint, allowing an oxidization process to create a rather lovely dappled patina. For all the violence and aggression of the show, it was a rather pretty piece.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Cross-Country Drive
Eschewing sentences, paragraphs, and chronology, I’ve assembled a discombobulated list of lists. Like Gertrude Stein. But not.
Mileage: Approximately 3200
Days: 7 (5 driving)
Start Point: Brooklyn, NY
End Point: Seattle, WA
Parting Image of New York City: A fish-netted rump, bent over the entrance to the Holland Tunnel (a Jumbotron advertisement for Chicago)
A propos song accompaniment to parting image: Sir Mix A Lot’s “Baby Got Back” (nice coincidence: Sir Mix A Lot hails from Seattle)
Cities Stopped in to eat and/or sleep: Clarion, PA; Chicago, IL; Madison, WI; Twin Cities, MN; Sioux Falls, SD; Rapid City, SD; Gillette, WY; Sheridan, WY; Billings, MT; Bozeman, MT; Missoula, MT; Coeur D’Alene, ID
Detours: Corn Palace; Badlands National Park; Mount Rushmore; the Berkeley Pit of Butte, MT
Planned Detour, Skipped: Milwaukee, WI
Parting Image of Pennsylvania: An Amish man rifling through the woods behind a diesel station.
Parting Image of Ohio: a rest stop’s large rack of Amish and Mennonite-themed romance fiction
Most Displaced-Seeming Image: A tumble weed rolling down the street in Madison, Wisconsin.
Weird Recurrent Theme: Scarred Arms. Slashes on the man who picked up our old bed in Brooklyn; accidents and operations (including bolts) on a waitress in Gillette; purposeful horizontal lines on a waitress in our new favorite neighborhood bar.
Best Contemporary Art: Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. See esp. Tomás Saraceno’s bucky balls of moss, black webbing, and PVC pillows.
Best Architecture: Renzo Piano’s Modern Wing for the Art Institute of Chicago. The main hall is light, airy, soaring, and with a vista winking at Gehry’s bandshell in Millennium Park.
Wildlife spotted: Hawks, buzzards, robin redbreasts, eagles, grasshoppers, one rabbit, one fox, and multiple “Beware of Rattlesnakes” signs. One little brown dot in a Badlands canyon purporting to be bison (sadly, no binoculars).
Most Surprising, Spectacular and Varied Landscape: South Dakota, especially catching sunset in the Badlands.
Colors of the Rocks in the Badlands: Stripes of yellow, gray, and rust.
Most Pervasive Sound in the Badlands: Rattling (M: “Those are insects, not snakes.” Me: “Then why all the warning signs for snakes? Why all the rattling?” Debate on the difference between rattling sounds and buzzing sounds ensues.)
Number of Hitchhikers Seen: 2
Number of Religious Billboards: 6, 3 of which were anti-abortion, mostly in South Dakota (perhaps refer back to religious-experience sunset over the Badlands for partial explanation)
Most Jarring Billboard (non-religious): [Picture of a filthy public toilet] “No one imagines losing their virginity here. Meth can change that.” (in Montana)
Most Public Service Announcements Regarding Meth: Montana
Most Bleak, Monotonous and Post-Apocalyptical Landscape: northeastern Wyoming (brown hills, black shrubs, mining pits, oil derricks). Closely followed by eastern Washington (a vast desert of dull blue shrubs and dry fields, mini-tornados of dust on either side of the interstate; placards for peach and cherry orchards seemed like perverse lies)
Most Welcome Body of Water: Moses Lake, Washington, after which the desert of eastern Washington gradually turns into Cascade National Forest and we fear not opening the car window again.
Most Acidic Body of Water: Gathering ground water inside the Berkeley Pit of Butte, Montana. Popular myth has it that water fowl landing on the water die instantly. The newsletter given with admission to view the pit tries to debunk that myth. Also discussed in the newsletter: the curious iron-feeding algae thriving in the vinegar-like water.
Most Disappointed Tourists: The Corn Palace (South Dakota)
Most Frightening Industrial Complexes: The Exxon-Mobil and Philips Conoco plants (refineries?) of Billings, Montana
Most Disdainful & Smug Starbucks Employee: Inside the Crowne Plaza of Billings, Montana
My best driving: southern Minnesota (straight, flat, empty)
My worst driving: forgetting to take my foot off the gas entering a gas station in Bozeman, Montana (not to worry, nothing happened)
Worst Smelling City: Gary, Indiana (Gowanus Canal is beaten by Wolf Lake, which can be sniffed from 10 miles away)
Best Smelling City: Bozeman, Montana
Felt Most Out of Place In: Lulabell’s Café, beside the freight trains hauling coal out of Gillette, Wyoming.
Overheard Conversation at Lulabell’s: How to win a lawsuit in which defendant broke plaintiff’s ribs after plaintiff insisted on hitting on defendant’s 15- year-old niece in a bar (defendant himself brought niece into said bar). Speakers (both in cowboy hats and both with booming voices) were on side of defendant. Strategy: demand a jury trial and get at least two jurors with teenage daughters.
Most flavorful (and most expensive) burger: Ted’s (e.g. Turner) Montana Grill in Bozeman
Biggest Attempt at Appearing Green: Ted’s (recycled paper mats, 80% paper straws, claim that their cow and bison live happy lives)
Overheard Conversation at Ted’s: Favorite American sculptor, living or dead
Most Well-Travelled Orange: Bought in Sheridan, Wyoming, apparently shipped from Australia, and eaten in Seattle.
First Memorable Experience in Seattle: After arriving in town on an uncharacteristically hot day and schlepping boxes and luggage up three flights of stairs, falling victim to a drive-by water gunning on the corner of Harvard and Harrison.
Strange bookends to our journey: Watching the first half of There Will Be Blood in Brooklyn surrounded by our packed up boxes and finishing it in Seattle in the chaos of unpacking. Simplified take-away from the film: greed and religion go hand-in-hand until greed bludgeons religion to death with a bowling pin. Mm. Welcome home!
Mileage: Approximately 3200
Days: 7 (5 driving)
Start Point: Brooklyn, NY
End Point: Seattle, WA
Parting Image of New York City: A fish-netted rump, bent over the entrance to the Holland Tunnel (a Jumbotron advertisement for Chicago)
A propos song accompaniment to parting image: Sir Mix A Lot’s “Baby Got Back” (nice coincidence: Sir Mix A Lot hails from Seattle)
Cities Stopped in to eat and/or sleep: Clarion, PA; Chicago, IL; Madison, WI; Twin Cities, MN; Sioux Falls, SD; Rapid City, SD; Gillette, WY; Sheridan, WY; Billings, MT; Bozeman, MT; Missoula, MT; Coeur D’Alene, ID
Detours: Corn Palace; Badlands National Park; Mount Rushmore; the Berkeley Pit of Butte, MT
Planned Detour, Skipped: Milwaukee, WI
Parting Image of Pennsylvania: An Amish man rifling through the woods behind a diesel station.
Parting Image of Ohio: a rest stop’s large rack of Amish and Mennonite-themed romance fiction
Most Displaced-Seeming Image: A tumble weed rolling down the street in Madison, Wisconsin.
Weird Recurrent Theme: Scarred Arms. Slashes on the man who picked up our old bed in Brooklyn; accidents and operations (including bolts) on a waitress in Gillette; purposeful horizontal lines on a waitress in our new favorite neighborhood bar.
Best Contemporary Art: Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. See esp. Tomás Saraceno’s bucky balls of moss, black webbing, and PVC pillows.
Best Architecture: Renzo Piano’s Modern Wing for the Art Institute of Chicago. The main hall is light, airy, soaring, and with a vista winking at Gehry’s bandshell in Millennium Park.
Wildlife spotted: Hawks, buzzards, robin redbreasts, eagles, grasshoppers, one rabbit, one fox, and multiple “Beware of Rattlesnakes” signs. One little brown dot in a Badlands canyon purporting to be bison (sadly, no binoculars).
Most Surprising, Spectacular and Varied Landscape: South Dakota, especially catching sunset in the Badlands.
Colors of the Rocks in the Badlands: Stripes of yellow, gray, and rust.
Most Pervasive Sound in the Badlands: Rattling (M: “Those are insects, not snakes.” Me: “Then why all the warning signs for snakes? Why all the rattling?” Debate on the difference between rattling sounds and buzzing sounds ensues.)
Number of Hitchhikers Seen: 2
Number of Religious Billboards: 6, 3 of which were anti-abortion, mostly in South Dakota (perhaps refer back to religious-experience sunset over the Badlands for partial explanation)
Most Jarring Billboard (non-religious): [Picture of a filthy public toilet] “No one imagines losing their virginity here. Meth can change that.” (in Montana)
Most Public Service Announcements Regarding Meth: Montana
Most Bleak, Monotonous and Post-Apocalyptical Landscape: northeastern Wyoming (brown hills, black shrubs, mining pits, oil derricks). Closely followed by eastern Washington (a vast desert of dull blue shrubs and dry fields, mini-tornados of dust on either side of the interstate; placards for peach and cherry orchards seemed like perverse lies)
Most Welcome Body of Water: Moses Lake, Washington, after which the desert of eastern Washington gradually turns into Cascade National Forest and we fear not opening the car window again.
Most Acidic Body of Water: Gathering ground water inside the Berkeley Pit of Butte, Montana. Popular myth has it that water fowl landing on the water die instantly. The newsletter given with admission to view the pit tries to debunk that myth. Also discussed in the newsletter: the curious iron-feeding algae thriving in the vinegar-like water.
Most Disappointed Tourists: The Corn Palace (South Dakota)
Most Frightening Industrial Complexes: The Exxon-Mobil and Philips Conoco plants (refineries?) of Billings, Montana
Most Disdainful & Smug Starbucks Employee: Inside the Crowne Plaza of Billings, Montana
My best driving: southern Minnesota (straight, flat, empty)
My worst driving: forgetting to take my foot off the gas entering a gas station in Bozeman, Montana (not to worry, nothing happened)
Worst Smelling City: Gary, Indiana (Gowanus Canal is beaten by Wolf Lake, which can be sniffed from 10 miles away)
Best Smelling City: Bozeman, Montana
Felt Most Out of Place In: Lulabell’s Café, beside the freight trains hauling coal out of Gillette, Wyoming.
Overheard Conversation at Lulabell’s: How to win a lawsuit in which defendant broke plaintiff’s ribs after plaintiff insisted on hitting on defendant’s 15- year-old niece in a bar (defendant himself brought niece into said bar). Speakers (both in cowboy hats and both with booming voices) were on side of defendant. Strategy: demand a jury trial and get at least two jurors with teenage daughters.
Most flavorful (and most expensive) burger: Ted’s (e.g. Turner) Montana Grill in Bozeman
Biggest Attempt at Appearing Green: Ted’s (recycled paper mats, 80% paper straws, claim that their cow and bison live happy lives)
Overheard Conversation at Ted’s: Favorite American sculptor, living or dead
Most Well-Travelled Orange: Bought in Sheridan, Wyoming, apparently shipped from Australia, and eaten in Seattle.
First Memorable Experience in Seattle: After arriving in town on an uncharacteristically hot day and schlepping boxes and luggage up three flights of stairs, falling victim to a drive-by water gunning on the corner of Harvard and Harrison.
Strange bookends to our journey: Watching the first half of There Will Be Blood in Brooklyn surrounded by our packed up boxes and finishing it in Seattle in the chaos of unpacking. Simplified take-away from the film: greed and religion go hand-in-hand until greed bludgeons religion to death with a bowling pin. Mm. Welcome home!
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