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September 30, 2005
You have entered the culture-free sector
City orders art removed: Controversial 'American sector' sign gone from riverfront, The Windsor Star, Thursday, September 29, 2005, A1The controversial piece of art that informed viewers of their departure from American soil has been taken down -- just days after its installation in Windsor's riverfront sculpture garden.
City workers removed Vancouver artist Ron Terada's 'You have left the American sector' sign Wednesday morning and delivered it to the Art Gallery of Windsor, leaving only wooden posts where it had been placed in the park at the foot of Church Street last week.
"I don't think there are any people on city council who have looked at art," said Robert McKaskell, the independent curator commissioned by the gallery to organize an exhibition of Terada's work.
"There's absolutely nothing anti-American about the sign. It's just a very bland observation of the obvious."
The piece was fabricated at Terada's request in the city's sign department and consisted of an official-looking green sign with white letters bearing the message in English and French.
McKaskell said the work was originally scheduled for display until January, to coincide with the duration of Terada's exhibition at the AGW.
Calling the sign "an integral part" of the exhibition, McKaskell said the piece is "site specific" and will not be shown in the gallery.
McKaskell said his understanding is that city council voted behind closed doors to remove the sign. "This is probably one of the very few cities in Canada that doesn't have a public art policy. So decisions are made in council without consultation."
But Mayor Eddie Francis stressed that the issue wasn't on the agenda for the closed portion of council's meeting on Monday.
"This wasn't done in camera," he said. "One thing to keep in mind is this issue never came to council to begin with. The decision to put up the sign never came to city council."
Francis said an e-mail discussion developed among council members regarding complaints about the sign they were receiving from visitors, residents and local businesses such as the hotel sector.
"It was being perceived by some as a City of Windsor sign," Francis said.
"There was no indication to people that this was an art exhibit.
"There was no indication that this was prepared by an artist. It looked like a city sign, it was made by the city's sign department. People believed it to be the city's position. That's the issue we're dealing with."
Francis said that in order to avoid confusion and to protect the city's interests, it was informally decided that general manager of client services Michael Duben would approach the AGW and request that the sign be moved to gallery property.
But Gilles Hebert, AGW director, was unequivocal about who decided to take down the piece. "It wasn't our decision, it was the city's decision," he said. "We made it clear that we would co-operate, of course."
Hebert said he isn't aware of the gallery receiving any negative feedback about the piece, and added that this situation highlights the need for a forum on public art.
"We had gone through the process, bringing this to all the right parties at the city in the summer. It's not like this just came up last Monday," Hebert said.
"We need to establish a policy around these kinds of projects."
Coun. David Cassivi, who supported the piece's removal, reiterated his concerns regarding its artistic merit."I certainly don't claim to be an art critic. But I know when something is questionable as to its art value," he said.
"Just because someone says it's art doesn't make it so. I can put up anything -- most people would say that's not art."
"If it's construed as art in your mind, then keep it on your property."
Sigi Torinus, an assistant professor of visual arts at the University of Windsor who witnessed the dismantling of Terada's sign, said larger cities would recognize there are institutions that study art on a professional basis.
"It actually makes me think of Windsor as a very provincial place," she said. "You know, small-town thinking. I find it quite amusing, really."
Here is a document from the Art Gallery of Ontario with a little bit of background on Ron Terada's work, and describing the piece at the centre of the controversy, Checkpoint Charlie. Also check out Mita's post on Checkpoint Charlie from last week, before the piece was removed (she's also posted a picture). I was surprised and pleased when I read this post last week, and should have known that it was too good to be true.
And to give you some idea of the sort of public art that the City of Windsor approves of, have a look at some of the works in the Odette Sculpture Park (click on the artists' names to see images of the sculptures; the big white hand holding an apple and adorned with red fingernail polish is a must-see). I find it laughable that this site claims the Sculpture Park has some sort of curatorial "philosophy", when in reality every sculpture in the park is purchased and donated to the city by one wealthy old man named Bud Odette. Our city's public face is determined by one old man, and the city doesn't have to pay for the art.
For extra laughs, check out the works for the Windsor/Detroit "CarTunes on Parade" exhibition, celebrating the rich heritage of music and automobiles in the Motor City (and its feisty little cling-on, Windsor). I've linked you directly to the portfolio of sculptures, to save you the agony of the horrible music on the home page (you should thank me, really). Artists were given a stupid-looking cartoony car form to decorate, which had been carefully designed not to look like any particular car (wouldn't want one of The Big Three to think that the sculptures looked too much like one of the competition's models, and, you know, not donate money). Artists were required to find their own sponsors in order to pay for materials and installation, pretty much ensuring that anything at all critical of the cities or the auto industry would not make the cut. Many of these pieces simply have music notes painted all over them. There is a particularly hideous one near my house, sporting gigantic fuschia and green lilies and three roughly jigsaw-cut plexiglas jazzmen with saxophones sticking up out of the roof, that sadly doesn't seem to be pictured on the website. Maybe I'll try to get a picture of it for you when I'm home, but with any luck it will have been vandalized by then anyway.
Posted by jodi at 09:15 PM | Comments (3) | categories: art stuff : dumbass : true patriot love
September 29, 2005
This just in
Two more finished Mariahs showed up in my inbox this morning, from Goodkarma and Renee, and they look great; go have a look!
Moving on Saturday, whether I can arrange to get the bed right away or not. Right now I think it would be worth it to have to sleep on the floor for a night or two in order to be able to get up on Sunday and walk to the studio, rather than being stuck out on the edge of town with no bus to get me there. No more wasted days.
It's amazing how much of a mess I can make in a month and a half, especially considering I only brought half a vanload of stuff here, and a third of that went to the studio. The floor in my room is already covered in prints, fabric, yarn, papers, pencils, clothes and shoes. And knitting needles. Gah. I bet Peter's got our house all cleared out like the minimalist bachelor pad of his dreams in my absence, but it's comforting to know that it will only take me a few weeks to make it look like a herd of kindergarteners stampeded through.
Here's one for the Making Fun of Americans file: I set up my new account with Georgia Power yesterday, and the lady there asked me, "why don't Canadians have Social Security numbers? How do y'all pay your taxes up there?". Heh. Peter said I should have told her that we don't pay taxes in Canada, that the government makes enough money from operating the moose hatcheries that we don't need to. I wish I had told her that the Governor-General comes around with her fleet of dog sleds once a year and takes a portion of our seal hunt. Damn. I need to learn to think faster.
Posted by jodi at 07:37 AM | Comments (11) | categories: dumbass : knit design
September 28, 2005
Episode 187: births and birthdays
Welcome to the world, little Mats Darwin. Hope you like it here.
Posted by jodi at 08:10 AM | Comments (1) | categories: general
September 27, 2005
Self portrait tuesday - southern refrigeration blues
Everywhere you go here in the south, the buildings are refrigerated. They keep everything so cold that I sometimes have to put a sweater on when I get on the bus, even though it's 40 celcius outside (whatever that is here, I don't know. Bloody hot). I have had to wear work socks in my apartment more than once. In summer. In Georgia.
A note, because I'm feeling a little defensive about my crap photoshopping (I don't know why, it's not like I'm ever embarrassed to show my crappy printmaking to anyone, and printmaking is what I do): one of my favourite ways to draw is to put lots and lots of graphite down on the paper and then draw into it with an eraser to get a rich variation of smudgy greys punctuated by clean white marks. So I thought I'd try the same thing here, drawing into the shadows with the eraser and the dodge tool.
Well. It's not really the same, is it? But I'm going to show it anyway, because I'm always telling students that nobody's a prodigy and art-making is hard work, you're not going to study until you reach some kind of threshhold and then suddenly you're "good" and everything you touch is gold. But hey, if you want to see crappy work I should show you the prints I made last week. Oy vey.
Posted by jodi at 06:41 AM | Comments (3) | categories: art stuff : self portrait tuesday
September 26, 2005
Seek and ye shall find
More misadventures from this week's search query stats:
"uga white slacks with bulldogs all over them": go away. There are enough fashion crimes committed on this campus already, and that is two in one, my friend.
"shaved armpits": sorry, we don't go in for that kind of kink around here. The sex appeal of hairy girl-pits is boundless. I did, however, use a depilatory cream on my legs for the first time ever last week. Not sure if I like it yet, it smelled okay and took out all the hair and didn't sting, but the hair-return factor (both speed and strength) has yet to be determined. I'll be sure to keep y'all posted, because I know the suspense must be keeping you awake at night.
"my roommate is a big fat slut cast": I have no idea what a "slut cast" is. But I'm betting your roommate is not a slut, she's just comfortable with her sexuality. You, on the other hand, may have a problem.
"jodi hates me I was so good to her": dude, what are you, a fucking stalker? Get over it.
"why are school is better than yours wisconsin madison": because at OUR school, we learn how to spell.
"greatest journal chicken pox chubby girls": uh, yeah. No idea. I guess I'm kind of chubby. I had chicken pox when I was 13, and I have a big white scar on my chest from it, right next to a matching white scar from a cigarette burn. I can't even remember which is which anymore, they look exactly the same and it's been twenty years. Oh, and when you get chicken pox, make sure you GET PROOF so that you don't have to pay eighty five dollars later to get immunized against something you're already immune to (no bitterness here).
"sex toy barbage": if barb left any sex toys behind, I haven't found them yet. Unless you count all of the soiled white sports socks left behind by her teenaged sons. Ew.
"a little piece on the side": get in line baby. Everyone is looking for that. Send me a cv, head shot and five-minute video and we'll talk.
"does walking in the yard kill grass?": usually I just jump on the silly or dirty searches and leave the normal ones alone. But the total elimination of all lawn grass everywhere is of such importance to me that I'll make an exception. Walking on the grass takes too long. Do like I did and put tarps all over the yard, or unroll a big roll of tarpaper on the ground. Be sure not to leave any cracks where the sun can get in. Leave it for six months, et voila! Another patch of prime gardenland reclaimed from the evil fescue.
"green lady huron county": the Green Lady of Hay Swamp's reputation is such that I once saw a guy puke all over an arcade floor just because his friends said they had seen her on the way into town. Remember the urban myth about the guy with the hook who kills the kids out screwing in a car in the middle of nowhere? Where I grew up it was the Green Lady who did that, and there wasn't any hook; instead she killed the boy, severed his head and impaled it on the car's radio antenna. Later on my pal D. told me that the Green Lady was actually MaryAnn K.'s grandmother, who used to walk along the side of the roads in Hay Swamp dressed in a green garbage bag, stopping cars and asking the drivers for empty beer bottles. And I don't care if that story is true either, I will repeat it forever because I like it so very much. And if it IS true, it means that there are only two degrees of separation between me and the Green Lady. Hah!
So. Enough of that. I shook off my long and frustrating week with a fine, relaxing weekend; Saturday I went in to the studio and piddled around a little, then Sandy picked me up and I went out to their place for an evening of good conversation, knitting, fine food and lots and lots of Guinness. I stayed overnight, and on Sunday I got to go to Sandy and Bob's oldest son's hockey game before coming home. It's been a long time since I've been in a hockey arena, and man! did I miss that smell. The smell of ice and diesel and sweaty hockey clothes reminds me of the summers of my puberty years, spent freezing in our local arena wearing the sluttiest clothes a small-town 12 year old girl could get away with in 1983, longing for a hockey school boy to pay me some attention. Fortunately, now that I'm old enough to be their mother, the lust for the 15 year old boys on the ice is very much gone.
I had a cup of the hot chocolate just to make the arena-going experience complete, but the hot chocolate was actually kind of yummy instead of watery and gross like I remember it. Probably the fact that it didn't come out of a machine that also sold coffee and soup out the same spout had something to do with it.
Moving right along: last week I got a package from Krista and I forgot to show you the totally fab hair clips she included:
Glitter pvc skull and bones. Too cute. You can get a pair at pixiefashions.com, go there right now and tell her I sent you.
Yes, my hair is almost half yellow and half roots now. That would be why it's been months since you saw a picture of my head. It's just now getting into the really godawful-looking stage of growing out, so I plan to cast on for some hats this week even though I don't think I'm one of those girls who looks cute in hats. I'm actually one of those girls who looks completely stupid in hats, like I'm trying way too hard to look cute. But desperate times call for desperate measures, friends. And surely the Kittyville hat will break my head's apparent hat-curse, because I don't think it could look non-cute on anybody (don't disillusion me, please, I'm clinging to this belief instead of going crazy and chopping my hair back). Shit, here I am blogging about my hair again. Lame.
Posted by jodi at 08:16 PM | Comments (7) | categories: dumbass
September 24, 2005
Studio Saturday: life's too good
Notice I didn't say "litho's too good".
Here's the new image on the stone; I printed the first colour yesterday (about ten prints leaf green and ten prints dirt orange) and it looks like shite, but I'm not too worried. It'll all come together. After I burned a ton of my lovely water wash off with a measly three drops of acid per ounce of gum, Carmon told me that everything etches hotter in this climate than it does in Windsor and I have to adjust for that. Great.
So me and my new squeeze, the Takach press, went on our first date yesterday and I have to say that so far I don't like him as much as my old boyfriend Griffin. He definitely has some traits that bug me, most notably one of those stupid little knobs you have to turn to disengage the bed, when I prefer presses with the big handle underneath so you actually have to pull it and hear it go kachung. We'll be spending the next three years together, so I'm sure he'll grow on me. It's just that Griffin and I knew each other intimately, and he knew how to please me. Takach, he's just a fumbler by comparison.
But I don't really want to talk about the studio today. Because, this just in: the BEST THING that could possibly happen for me and the people I love has happened.
Four years ago Peter and I moved to Windsor when he got his job at the university, which meant that we were not living in the same town as his kids anymore. When we all lived in the same town he would have the kids every other weekend but also see them all the time in between, visiting and going out for supper and taking them to their sports things, and just general dad stuff. Now that we live two hours away he only sees them every other weekend, and it's been really, really hard. This month Pete's son Dylan moved in to our house in order to finish his last year of high school in Windsor, but Claire and her mom are still two hours away in London.
Peter's ex-wife just received her Master of Divinity in the spring and has been waiting to get a placement in a parish, and desperately hoping (we all have) that it would not be any further from Peter than she already is. Well, she got a parish, and it's a half an hour drive from our house. So as of November first Pete will be able to see Claire more often than every two weeks again, and just know that she is closer. Also, Claire has just had her older brother move away from home, and it will be great for her to be closer to him again too. I can't even tell you how ecstatic I am. It's just the best thing that could happen. Congratulations, Loretta.
Posted by jodi at 08:55 AM | Comments (5) | categories: in the studio
September 22, 2005
Frustration and close calls
Yesterday was sort of a low day. My afternoon class was the worst class I've attended in a long time. I won't go into too many details about it because I do like the professor and don't really want to complain about my program on the weblog, but everyone is pretty frustrated with what's going on in the class and yesterday was very, very tense. I made a really shitty drawing that was obviously and embarrassingly half-assed (that definitely has to stop). So. Frustrating.
After class I felt like I needed to do something productive in order not to have wasted an entire day, but didn't feel up to doing any studio work. So I stayed up late and pushed through on the Birthday Sweater, and I got it done. I had pretty much committed myself to having it ready for tomorrow (by making a date with the person who is going to model it for me), but had planned to finish it up tonight at knit night with the girls (you know, of course, that the only reason I submitted this design for publication was to give myself a deadline to work towards. And even then, now that the deadline is looming, I still had to step the deadline up a bit by arranging a photo shoot. Because that is the only way I can get anything done). And here's how much yarn is left:
Talk about tense. I was sweating all over by the end, not sure if I was going to run out. I even had to unravel my swatch, that's how close I was. I'm wearing the last bit of the yarn around my wrist today, just to remind myself of how stupid-lucky I am.
Posted by jodi at 09:40 AM | Comments (9) | categories: knit design : school : sticks and string
September 20, 2005
Self portrait tuesday - in honour of Sofia Loren's 71st birthday
Hairy armpits, the only thing Sofia and I have in common. Which must be the reason why people kept winding up at my website by googling her name when I had never mentioned her name here, ever (I don't get how that works). I think hairy armpits on girls are sexy, don't you?
Yeah, my photoshopping skills are crap. Get over it, it's six in the morning.
Posted by jodi at 06:07 AM | Comments (10) | categories: self portrait tuesday
September 18, 2005
Something I've been meaning to tell you
Several somethings, in fact.
internet fame is mine! mwahahahaha
A few weeks ago I received a "hey there" e-mail from another Jodi Green, inspiring me to Google my name again and have a look. Not only did I discover that I'm now the number one Jodi Green on the internets,
(thank you, thank you so much for this honour; I'd like to thank my parents and my agent, and my web designer Peter, and Martina, my hairstylist, and Sally Ann my wardrobe consultant, and all my internet friends who linked to me, and. . . and Aloys Senefelder, and Mrs. Blackie, and. . . I couldn't have achieved this great honour without all of the little people. . . )
but I also found this blog post in which the blog's author, Arieanna, discusses having been quoted in a Vancouver Sun article without her knowledge. And, lo and behold, I'm in there too, in a reference to my April 23rd entry, Why I love Canada. Huh.
aliens gave me migraines
About seven or eight years ago I had a strange and scary experience; it was my first night home from Pennsic and I'm usually a little disoriented for the first few days after having gotten used to sleeping in a tent with the sound of drums and dancing going on all night. Some time in the middle of the night I sensed a presence in the room and awoke to find a man standing at the foot of my bed, looking down at me. He was wearing some kind of long black coat or cloak and a wide brimmed black hat, and had long dark reddish hair and a beard. I said, loudly, "who are you, and what the fuck are you doing in my tent?". He didn't answer, and I gradually realized that I was not in my tent but back in my bedroom at home. My bedroom in those days was in a walk-in closet, just wide enough to fit a mattress in so that there was a wall on each side of the bed, and I had to reach to the foot of the bed and about four feet up the wall to get to the light switch. I slowly sat up and reached for the light, terrified because I had to get pretty close to the guy in order to do so, and I could see his face now, his eyes; I was close enough to have felt his body heat, if he had had any. Of course, when my hand finally reached the light switch and turned it on, he wasn't there.
The other night Peter sent me a link to a New York Times review of a book which discusses alien abduction experiences. NO, I don't think I was abducted by aliens, nor do I think I saw a ghost. But it definitely wasn't a dream. One of my school chums insisted I'd had a visit from my "guardian angel" but even if I believed in that kind of crap I don't think I'd be too keen on having a guardian angel who looks like the Undertaker (this guy definitely didn't have the flashy belt though). Anyway, just for fun, here's some of my chat conversation with Pete about it:
peter: hey, remember the dream about the guy in your bedroom... the one you thought was really there?
jodi: oh god. yeah. did you see him?
peter: check this: "Dr. Clancy's accounting for abduction memories starts with an odd but not uncommon experience called sleep paralysis. While in light dream-rich REM sleep, people will in rare cases wake up for a few moments and find themselves unable to move. Psychologists estimate that about a fifth of people will have that experience at least once, during which some 5 percent will be bathed in terrifying sensations like buzzing, full-body electrical quivers, a feeling of levitation, at times accompanied by hallucinations of intruders."
jodi: what are you trying to tell me? I wasn't abducted.
peter: it's a nyt book review
peter: the topic is alien abduction, but her analysis isn't entirely limited to that
jodi: crazy
peter: it reminded me of your dream, mainly because of the realistic nature of your experience
peter: i don't know if you had any of those other symptoms
jodi: oh yes, it was real. but i was not paralyzed, i don't think.
jodi: i mean, i was able to sit up and turn on the light, although i was momentarily too paralyzed by fear to do so
peter: well, i don't think it was "real", although i don't doubt you experienced it as real
peter: and perhaps the paralysis actually preceded the fear?
jodi: i am not saying there was a real man in my room.
jodi: or that it was a real ghost
peter: i know
peter: i know
jodi: but something was there and it was real. even if it was just someone else's memory, or a ripple, or something.
jodi: but, i have had some of those other symptoms at other times. specifically the buzzing and full body quavers. a feeling of being close to leaving my body but unable to go all the way
peter: suppose what happened, to an external observer, was that you awoke in a state of sleep paralysis, which included a hallucination of an intruder; you attribute the paralysis to fear because, in your experience, you become aware of the paralysis and the intruder at the same time. The paralysis fades sufficiently that you can move and you immediately throw on the light
jodi: perhaps
peter: and i don't think the paralysis is complete, although i'm not sure about that
jodi: well, i was not abducted by aliens.
peter: i know... but you're not interested in aliens, particularly, or worried about being abducted; traits that abductees typically display before their experience
jodi: i am worried about male intruders in my bedroom!
peter: the author is arguing that these are two factors that make a person prone to an abduction experience
jodi: and i was prone to a man in the bedroom experience
peter: so lots of people are interested in aliens, but only a small percent of people experience sleep paralysis
peter: 5% of the pop at least once in their lives
peter: you also have a very vivid imagination, which i'm sure helps
jodi: i think 5% is kind of a lot.
peter: so it's not uncommon
peter: who knows, of course, if this is exactly what happened to you... but it's consistent
jodi: i believe the temporal lobe stimulation theory whole heartedly. but maybe only because i heard that same ideas program three hallowe'ens in a row
peter: well, the temporal lobe is undoubtedly involved
jodi: hey, is that near where my migraine is?
jodi: oh, it was aliens! aliens abducted me and gave me migraines!
peter: you and the gang of four
jodi: what?
peter: "This heaven gives me migraine"
jodi: oh
peter: only he pronounces it to rhyme with Ygraine
peter: Arthur's mum
jodi: why would he want to sing about Foot's wife?
jodi: i mean, she is a nice lady, but. . .
peter: i told you it was Arthur's mum
peter: and not arthur atkinson de kyrkshawe
jodi: and foot's wife!
jodi: who?
peter: different chick
peter: wayne
jodi: oh yeah. i was racking my brain on the kyrkeshawe, it sounded familiar
jodi: woops, i didn't mean to change the spelling, how medieval of me!
peter: i noticed!
jodi: just trying to be all "period", and such.
peter: what's the connection between migraines and periods?
peter: wayne?
peter: gang of four?
peter: foot?
peter: holy
jodi: are you losing your erection over all this?
peter: nah
Yeah. So it all kind of goes downhill from there. But, have any of you guys ever had an experience like that where you saw someone that wasn't there (professional wrestler look-alike or not)?
Posted by jodi at 10:38 AM | Comments (9) | categories: dumbass
September 17, 2005
Studio Saturday, falsely backdated because that's just the kind of slackass I am
And it's not like I didn't spend all day Saturday in front of the computer and still couldn't be arsed to upload one stinking picture.
Here's the print seen in the rack last week, all pinned together. Sorry about the glare from the fluorescent light, but this thing is hanging pretty close to the ceiling in my studio.
This is just an in-between layer, and will likely be mostly covered up. Right now it's several lithographs covered in a layer of white ink with the figure (linocut) printed on top in yellow. Which was supposed to look sort of beige, like the background in a road map, but guess what? When you mix up an obnoxiously bright opaque yellow and print it on top of mostly green and white, that doesn't make beige. Who knew? (pleasefortheloveofgod don't let them make me teach colour theory next year, because the seat-of-the-pants method is probably not what they want people to learn).
So I don't have a lot else to show; the four woodcut panels are all cut out for the first colour, and I carved off all the background from the Venus Prodigiosa block so that she looks like a cutout doll. I also blew up the self portrait Tuesday image from two weeks ago to about 1.5 times life size and transferred it onto a litho stone but couldn't be bothered to pull a proof from any of those. Yes, the biggest obstacle between me and all my life's dreams is LAZINESS. Could you tell?
Instead here's a very exciting photo of another one of the woodblocks, so remarkably different from the last one you saw. Hah.
Posted by jodi at 11:59 AM | Comments (2) | categories: art stuff : in the studio
September 14, 2005
A little bit cunty (a little bit rock 'n' roll)
Yoni B. Goode. Oh yeah!
The Clorox bleach pen is my new best friend. This worked out so well that now I want to bleach every piece of clothing I own.
(Get a load of the cellulite on that arm. Rrrowr! You know it's sexy).
I finished the bus socks yesterday:
This represents about a week's worth of riding and waiting for the bus. But in that time I also knit the first sock down past the heel turn before realizing it was far too wide, so actually a week on the bus will net two and a half socks. Too bad after I finish the graduation pom squad socks I'm out of good sock yarn, because I still have two more weeks of riding this bus. I might have to break out the ugly-ass Kroy in desperation.
Last night was knit night at Anne Marie's, where I also finished the back of Peter's sweater. Sorry, no pictures (soon! I promise).
Okay now, on to other business:
Fiber has returned from whatever witness protection program she was in, and tagged me for a questionnaire. I usually don't like doing these, because come on! The questions are hard! But for Fiber I'll do it, as long as she promises to not go disappearing without a peep for another three months.
So here goes.
7 things I plan to do before I die
1. finish the damned attic OR sell the house, whichever is easier
2. see above, scratch "attic" and insert "garden"
3. finish school and become a real grown-up (I plan to do this before I'm 40)
4. travel across the continent and crash on the couches of every single blogger and internet friend foolish enough to offer (so watch what you say or I might show up on your doorstep!)
5. get matching tattoos with my brother Dave
6. burn down the malls
7. find more things to aspire to so questions like this aren't so hard
7 things I cannot do
1. whistle
2. dance (well, I can do the Korobushka, but that's not really one you can do at the clubs. . .)
3. sing in public. Now, I heard a rumour that some of my new knitting pals here in Athens love them some karaoke. I just want them to know right now that it ain't happening. I will be happy to attend karaoke and be the designated picture-taker and Guinness-drinker, but that is all. Unless they have Bat out of Hell, and you have bought me much, much Guinness first.
4. use American spellings. It's just lazy, people! It was really, really tough for me to type "Fiber" up there instead of "Fibre", and the only way I can do it is by telling myself it's a name, not a word.
5. do one of these questionnaires without bitching about the questions. Seven is a lot of things! Come to think of it, I can't fill out any kind of form without asking a bunch of dumb questions, or getting help.
6. what I'm told
7. get anything finished without a deadline
7 things that attract me to the opposite sex
1. smell
2. a finely boned wrist. You might be the hottest thing on the planet, but if your wrists are thick like trunks? Don't touch me. God I'm shallow, aren't I?
3. humour
4. a sort of refined sloppiness (not contrived though)
5. I'm attracted to people who think, and who care about ideas. There's nothing worse than being with an otherwise attractive person who has nothing interesting to talk about.
6. guys who think I'm totally sexy? That's a real turn-on for me, I must say (yep, shallow AND vain)
7. there's a certain jawline contour that makes my knees weak when I see it. Maybe it's because when I see other guys who have it, it reminds me of Peter, or maybe it's one of the things that attracted me to Peter in the first place. But it's definitely the reason I like him better without his beard.
7 things I say most often
1. Fuck
2. Jesus Murphy
3. get outta town
4. yay! (oh, that drives Pete nuts)
5. I'm sure
6. harder! harder! (just kidding, Mom)
7. wah-wah (like Pingu)
7 celebrity crushes
Okay, here's where I have to cop out. I just don't have celebrity crushes. I don't really give a rat's ass about celebrities, I mean, it's not like they're real people. But I guess I could think of some artists and writers I sort of have crushes on:
Alice Munro, who is Canada's greatest living writer and would be a strong contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature if only short stories got the same respect that novels do. She is a master of the beautiful turn of phrase that dazzles you and then kicks you in the stomach while you're distracted.
Di Brandt, a fine Canadian poet and fascinating flake. She taught my Canadian literature course in the last semester of my undergrad, and she's just totally fabulous and charming and weird. I hope she doesn't mind that I called her a flake.
Betty Goodwin. I want to be her.
And I guess that Krista will out me if I don't admit that I would like to shag Bob Geldof; also I want to prove to y'all that I don't just get crushes on older women. Or just on Canadians. He's got nice wrists, and the casual disregard for hygeine, coupled with the elegant clothes, mmm.
Also: if cartoon characters count, I totally have a crush on Bobby Hill. "Mine's all sloppy, and no Joe!"
Okay, so that's not seven. But it's the best I can do.
Posted by jodi at 09:05 AM | Comments (22) | categories: dumbass : projects : sticks and string
September 13, 2005
Self portrait tuesday - same shit, different pile
(22 days)
Posted by jodi at 07:32 AM | Comments (6) | categories: projects : self portrait tuesday : self-absorbtion
September 11, 2005
I will miss this
Naughty Trout. See what she's playing with trashing?
A rolled-up sheet of Japanese paper. Good thing for her I don't really care too much if my art gets wrinkled.
I'll miss living with cats. In my entire adult life I've only lived without cats in my home for a month, right after my little Angus ran off to join a circus and before Fat girl's pregnant teenaged slut of a momma Erma moved in (bringing Benny, Bjorn, Agnetha and Frieda along with her, unbeknownst to me at the time). Who is going to annoy me and wreck my stuff when I'm living all by myself in The Shack? Whose poop will I clean up? Who will knock things off tables and make yarn-ball string art all over the house? Anyone got a kitty they can loan me?
Sigh.
Posted by jodi at 11:34 AM | Comments (6) | categories: general
September 10, 2005
I may not have a driver's license, but I can still drive a bandwagon!
Check it out: Studio Saturday at Insubordiknit and Jenny Factory!
I heard a rumour somewhere that NWJR might be joining me too, but I think there's some kind of picture-taking going on today instead. Maybe next week? (yes, I was always the bossy kid in school, how could you tell?)
Posted by jodi at 11:54 PM | Comments (0) | categories: projects
studio saturday: people who don't know how to spell the word "dog", jammed mental jukeboxes, and finally some knitting that isn't secret
Well. It's been quite a week. I'm beginning to think that "grad school" may just be French for "colossal pain in the arse". I have spent an inordinate amount of time this week running around campus trying to pick up paperwork, have paperwork signed, deliver paperwork, jump through hoops and land in a big crunchy pile of incomplete paperwork. . .
It looks like a. . . whole bunch of people! Is there some kind of parade going on, or something?
Today I decided to ignore the good advice of my colleagues and venture onto UGA campus on a home game day. I really needed to get some work done in the studio, and also take some photos, it being Saturday and all. Well. Where I come from people don't make this kind of fuss over football, and I doubt that much money could be made in Canada scalping tickets for a university football game, but here it's big business. The game didn't even start until 5:30 but the tailgate parties had started by ten in the morning. There's no bus service on campus on game days, so I had to walk almost the whole length of campus to get to where I could catch a bus home. There were thousands of people swarming all over the place, and every grassy surface was covered in tents. I should have taken some photos but I was too confounded by the spectacle; it reminded me a bit of Pennsic, except that all the tents here were red and white and said Dawgs all over them. Also, although people were walking the streets drinking, just like at Pennsic, here I doubt it's legal. These people had their barbecues out there, and duelling sound systems, and I saw some with full bars set up under their tents. And everyone was wearing a red shirt, except for the sorority girls in the little black dresses (I'm serious!). It's nice to know that so many people have enough pride in their school team to party down all day long for one football game, but not enough pride in their beautiful campus not to drop their empty beer bottles all over the ground. The whole thing was a nightmare, but also pretty funny to watch. Are all American universities like this about their football, or are these people just totally crazy? The grossest thing I saw was on the way home on the bus, we passed someone who was selling bulldog puppies, real live ones.
studio saturday happened, despite the dawgs
I did manage to get some work done, and since everyone else is smart enough to stay home on game day, I had the shop to myself. First here are some examples of yesterday's press run, a big piece of unravelled knitting inked up in a minty-limey green (I told you I was going to do my first press run in the same colour as my Thai green curry) and printed on top of all those whitewashed prints.
The green looks amazing on this one, which is the only one I covered in red instead of white:
I cut a new linoblock last year, a second life-sized figure (from a photo taken a year later than the one I used for these works; it's a way of keeping track of the changes in my body over time, and in the newer image I'm a little fatter as well as having a new tattoo). I never had a chance to print it, though, so I'm finally doing so now. I printed it in a transparent pale yellow on top of some of the whitewashed prints with the green knitting pattern on them; here's a few drying in the rack:
This week I did the first stage of cutting on one section of my woodcut, just the whitest white parts:
Guess what, I still knit! Really!
Here's proof:
Yes, that is an American flag patch on my quilt. Shut up! That quilt, and the one folded up under the stereo, cost me less than five dollars for the two.
After Peter's sweater got to be too big to bring on the bus, I started something else I can't tell you about, a gift for someone who reads this weblog. Now that's too big for travel too, so I had to start some socks. I haven't made socks in years (I did start the graduation socks, but stalled on them around the heel), but the bog-standard top-down plain sock with a reinforced heel is like a bicycle: you never forget how to ride it. Or something like that. This sock-and-a-half represents about three days of waiting for and riding the bus, including the first half-sock that I had already turned the heel on when I noticed it was way too big and had to frog. Clearly my commute is too long, and my bus too often late. Which brings me to my next bit of news. . .
Your what? Tin roof, rusted!
The commute to and from campus is already becoming way too stressful for me. There are no buses after suppertime or on Sundays, which means I can't work in my studio on campus at those times, because the apartment is way too far to walk to, and the Atlanta highway has no sidewalks anyway. So I found a place closer to campus that I'm going to move to in October. I'm really sorry to have to move out of Jenny's place, because she's a really sweet and fun person, and there are kitties here. But already my work is suffering because I live too far from the studio, and I'm here to work, after all.
The place I found is dirt cheap and truly grotty. It's half of a shack in a little shack-village that one of my colleagues in printmaking lives in, and it's a twenty minute walk from campus. From the outside this place looks like a run-down little shanty, but inside it has hardwood floors and the ceiling is at least ten feet high. And the clawfoot tub is red! I wish I could disconnect it and drag it into the middle of the big bedroom for a photo shoot.
Anyway. Ever since I moved here my mental jukebox has been caught on the same damned B52s song every day (yes, you know which song). Every time I think it might be gone, I go out to catch the bus and head down the Atlanta Highway, and there it is, stuck in my head again. I'd like to think that maybe once I'm not traveling to school that way anymore it will stop, but for the last two days, the part that keeps going around and around in my head is the part where the guy goes "funky little shack! FUNKY little SHACK!". Aaargh.
Peter, write this down
In the background of the sock photo above you can see another project that I did some work on today: when Peter and I were here in June we went to Wuxtry Records, and Peter said that once I started getting paid by the school I had to go there and buy one record every week. We're trying to build our collection a bit, and Peter the librarian geek is putting together a database to keep track of what we have. So here's what I bought today:
I know, it's more than one. But I have absolutely no control in a used record store. I can control myself better in a yarn store, believe it or not. The Cowboy Junkies one we looked at the last time we were there and I would have bought it then but Peter has more self control than me and he insisted we only buy one thing. But they still had it. It was the most expensive of all of these, I guess because it's "imported" (someone brought it down from Canada and traded it in).
Peter's sweater is oh! so! close! to being finished, and I'm going to go work on it now. I have to get it done soon, and there is no way I'm letting myself cast on for this, this, this OR this before his sweater is assembled and blocked.
Posted by jodi at 08:02 PM | Comments (12) | categories: art stuff : school : sticks and string
September 08, 2005
Hypocritical.
I had planned to write about this on Tuesday, but I only had time to throw my self portrait up here before running to catch the morning bus. I've been doing a fair amount of bitching lately about the South, and the racism that is so much a part of life here. The catastrophe that followed Hurricane Katrina really lifted America's carpet to reveal all the filth that has been swept under it, exposing the racism that this country was founded on. But tonight I want to talk about Canada a bit, because we're not all that innocent ourselves.
You see, in Canada we're still living under an apartheid system; it's just not something we talk about too much. We're too polite, I guess. [Other countries mock us for our politeness, so it must be true. My friend Kerri, from Atlanta, used to say to me, "sorry! oh, so sorry! I'm sorry, I apologize! So sorry! I'm working on my Canadian, how'm I doing eh?". Just fine, baby, just throw a few more sorrys in there and you'll be fluent].
So here are the things that until recently we haven't talked much about in Canada: our aboriginal people are treated like second class citizens. They live in segregated communities. When an aboriginal woman is raped and murdered, there isn't as much effort put into finding her killer that there is if the same happens to a non-aboriginal woman. When an aboriginal man is taken to the edge of town by police in the middle of winter and left there to freeze to death, nothing happens to those officers. And when an unarmed aboriginal protestor is gunned down in Ipperwash Provincial Park by police who were ordered by the Premier of Ontario to remove the natives from the park by any means necessary, the shooter goes to jail while the Premier gets off scot-free.
Ipperwash Provincial Park is near where I grew up; all I remember from my childhood visits there is that I didn't like the beach because it was full of pebbles rather than nice, soft sand. The park is situated on land that was appropriated from natives during the Second World War in order to build a military base there. After the war the government promised to give the land back to the people who had lived there, but the land was never given back, and when I was a teenager in the 1980s I had friends who went to cadet camp there. In 1993 the natives quit trying to get their land back through legal means and began squatting in the park, eventually causing the military to leave in September 1995.
On September 6, 1995, Ontario Provincial Police raided the park, and Dudley George was shot and killed. The officers were acting on the orders of then-Premier Mike Harris. There is plenty of evidence of his involvement, but still it took ten years for an inquiry into the shooting to be launched: while Harris was Premier, he refused to call an inquiry, because he had his own precious ass to cover.
I think (hope) we are getting better. There is an inquiry under way into what caused the death of Dudley George. There was also a public inquiry into the death of Neil Stonechild. I hope that we are beginning to be more aware of the iniquities of our justice system. But still I think that Canada needs some Truth and Reconciliation, and that the United States ought to follow suit. For that, I won't be holding my breath.
Posted by jodi at 09:59 PM | Comments (1) | categories: assholes : true patriot love
September 06, 2005
Self portrait tuesday - fixation
It all starts with my belly. Of course.
(29 days)
Posted by jodi at 07:40 AM | Comments (11) | categories: projects : self portrait tuesday : self-absorbtion
September 03, 2005
Introducing. . . studio Saturday
I took some more photos in the studio yesterday, and since I posted studio pictures last Saturday as well, I'm going to try to make it a weekly routine to put up images of the things I've been working on. Would anyone care to join me, and put up photos of whatever's in progress in your studio or work space every Saturday?
Because the studio has always been a place where I go alone, it's the one place where I don't feel Peter's absence constantly. To avoid the desolate feeling I get every night when I get into bed alone, I wish I could sleep at the studio, but sadly I don't have room for a couch. And besides, my studio neighbour said yesterday that he'd seen a "ghost" the night before (or at any rate, an eye peering through the crack between two doors, and when the doors were flung open, no-one was there). So even though I don't believe in ghosts, I'd be too creeped to sleep there.
Here is a view of my new studio, looking in the door:
I haven't even had time to make it messy yet.
A drawing I did last week; it's still in progress, but Peter wanted to see it (and it's about to be totally reworked by someone else, beyond my control) so here it is:
It's graphite on rag paper, maps and some Japanese papers that I ran through the laser printer and printed maps on. I drew the figure in dark, then spent two hours drawing on top of it with an eraser until most of the image was gone. I've been so preoccupied with distance and highway travel lately, and want to explore the idea of the body as topography a little bit; some of you have offered to send me maps, and I'm going to try working them into my figure prints and see what happens. When I was putting the pieces of paper together for this drawing, I stitched random, meandering blue lines all over the surface of the paper, partly to mimic the look of blue lines indicating roads on a map, but I was also thinking of those networks of blue lines on my legs, like little traces of road maps stencilled across my thighs.
There's also a red zigzag stitch line which runs from our house, in the Windsor map at the top, through Detroit and down, bisecting the body as it travels through the maps of Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee. . . and ends at the apartment in Athens at the bottom. I know, I know! It's totally self-indulgent, and kind of cheesy. Deal with it. It's all going to be covered up anyway.
Want to see a detail? Sure you do.
Almost two years ago now, on my first trip to Athens with Peter, while driving home on the I-75 I started thinking about the way that people move on highways, all the weaving in and out, passing and being passed. When you're using cruise control you realize how futile all of that ducking and weaving really is, and that it doesn't really get you anywhere faster. Anyway, I imagined what would happen if each vehicle on the highway had a ribbon tied to its bumper, and what kind of textile would be woven by the movements in and out of the lanes. I'd like to have a video camera on the dashboard the next time we make a trip, then translate those movements into some kind of textile piece later. I meant to look into whether there are any aerial images of moving traffic that I could get my hands on, some government agency that records such things (and would allow it to be used for this type of project). But then I got caught up in the work I was already doing with the female figure, and forgot about it. Perhaps now would be a good time to pick up on that project again and see what I can come up with. Perhaps a knitted cable would work better than weaving; that way the whole piece wouldn't fall apart because of all the times when one strand just goes straight for a long period.
But while that's a project I think I want to get moving on again fairly soon, I also have a lot of printmaking to get done. Here is the image I'll be using for my next large scale print, all transferred onto wood and shellacqued and ready to be cut:
The image is split onto four wood panels, each 24 by 36 inches. The figure itself is at least twice life sized. While I'm used to being surrounded by numerous life sized images of myself, this is kind of a scary thing to have staring at me from the studio wall; my head is so dang big!
32 days.
Posted by jodi at 09:04 PM | Comments (5) | categories: art stuff
September 02, 2005
All the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream, and the steel rails still ain't heard the news
I've been struggling for the last few days with what to say about the tragedy in New Orleans, whether to say anything at all. I just don't have the heart to trot out my growing collection of amusing little Canadian-girl-experiences-Southern-culture-shock stories right now.
Had I been back home in Canada when this happened, it would seem so distant; a tragedy, yes, but I would be watching a tragedy unfold in a city so far away, a city I've never seen. But watching this tragedy from here in the South, I'm surrounded by people who are affected by this in a much more personal way than I. One of our professors went to LSU; one has left to go help his brother in Baton Rouge, because looting has begun there too and he's afraid to leave his house unattended lest it be broken into; one of our professors has his home in New Orleans, and while his wife and child fled to safety before the levees broke, his home and studio may be gone. And yet he is still here, doing his job, visiting our studios and talking to us about our drawings and somehow coping. Had I been at home I would be so much more removed from this, yet I would have felt the aftereffects of the storm pass through; here, so much closer to the disaster, we didn't even have rain.
I'm used to living without television, so even though my roommate has a tv I haven't been watching the news reports this week. Last night for the first time I looked at some photographs and video footage of rescue efforts, and was deeply saddened and angered to see that almost all the faces in those pictures are the same colour. And I have to wonder if the police and the media would be making such a big deal about "looting" if it was white people desperately searching the closed-up stores for food. And if the government would have acted more quickly to get people out of there if the people left behind had been the white people, or the wealthy people. Oh, look, they are acting more quickly to get the rich people out.
I know it's small and mean of me to feel a little twinge of glee on hearing that Trent Lott lost his house. I know that kind of meanness does damage to my soul, but I just can't help it. If you click on that link and read those quotes from Bush, it sounds like he's planning to help his buddy Trent rebuild before he helps the rest of the city. Like Peter said when we chatted earlier tonight, Trent Lott has probably had water and food in the last two days. Doubtless. I'm betting he's sleeping in a nice bed too, with warm dry feet and no decomposing bodies in sight.
Some other questions that are plaguing me: Peter told me that he read that when authorities started knocking on doors and telling people to leave town last week, those who said they preferred to stay were asked to sign a waiver, to facilitate identification of their bloated, drowned bodies later on. If this is true, then why wasn't anything done to help those without cars (or gas money) to get out of town? And why weren't they evacuating hospital patients last week? It seems like the only people given a real chance to get out were the ones capable of climbing in their own SUVs and driving away.
Also: these soldiers being sent to New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders for looters? Is that their top priority, or have they been ordered to help evacuate stranded people first and shoot looters second? Which is more important? Are they going to be able to tell the difference between someone who is crazed and carrying a gun, and someone who is starving and looking for food? Do they care?
And, what exactly has this government done in the last four years to improve the nation's emergency preparedness? Apparently not much, judging from how long it is taking to get people out of there. Guess they must have been spending all their energy convincing Americans that invading Iraq would solve all of America's problems. And while Condoleezza shops for shoes in New York, in New Orleans thousands spend another night hungry, thirsty and wet.
I would rail against the "president", but others have already said it all better than I could. We all know that he is an idiot, so it shouldn't come as a shock to see him behaving like one yet again.
Instead I'll say this: if you're able, please donate some money to the American Red Cross. I know that there is at least one blanket-making project already started amongst my fellow knitting webloggers out there, and while that's commendable and worthwhile, before these people will need blankets, they will need a bottle of water, and breakfast, and a new toothbrush, and medicine. And socks and shoes, because for days now they have been walking in gasoline and shit.
Posted by jodi at 09:56 PM | Comments (4) | categories: general