New works. These are 3-dimensional raku images. Slabs are sculpted from underneath and then carved, this maintains an equal thickness across the whole piece, helping to reduce thermal stress and cracking. These pieces are very personal. The product of turmoil and heartache, these pieces were a refuge for my frailty and vulnerability, when a challenger sought to destroy them. My metamorphosis in clay has brought me closer to my femininity and to the earth.

Who is this cloudy shell? Quick as the setting sun to change her color, I sometimes have no idea what to do or say to tame her into her frame. All these little missteps leave me feeling as inadequate as an unrequited lover. I watch my peers venture off and away on what used to be my dreams, loved ones moving on and around and becoming what they said they'd be. I've said I'd be a lot of things, but none of them have fully come about.

My interests remain varied, each deep into their own resonance, forgetting the vibrations of the others. I have staved off the big break by excusing and procrastinating. What a curse to be so good in a debate I believe in, because as soon as I'm tired of believing in what must be done, a nozzle is switched on and I can justify absolutely anything. I just want to be a little more unseen. I wish no one know my plans, and I could just show up in a few years with or without new pedigrees. Just me, more learned and aware, a few more scars, a few less friends, but content with the journey that is my own.

I guess to be more unseen is a choice. But it is not really what matters here. If it's the opinions of others that intimidates me, then there are two courses of action at hand. One, let them see less of what's planned, let them see more of what's produced. And besides a course of action, really I should just let this made up criticism dissolve.

Now right now, in the quiet dark living room, the air is spiced with lingering aromas of dinner. My glass is now empty and my teeth are purple from a rich Chianti, and I saw my brother today. A dreamer is sleeping in her room, and she keeps me on my toes and saves the skin left on my teeth after my zany antics have left me emaciated and alone. Outside the tropical elegance of southern summer keep my feet bare and my frame hung with loose linens. Is it okay to just want to live for a while, to want to feel what it is to live for the day, the way I'm inclined to? for now, I'll just stay in it. The past cannot be changed and the future is on its way quickly, so now is really all I've got. The opinions of others will not be swirling my dreams once my head hits the pillow. They will not feel the heat as I bloody knuckles to the bone on alternative life pursuits, but I am here, I can feel the sacrifice, and the impending abundance. Head held high, I will keep my eye on the prize. Beacons of light from my head beam signals, spawning cycles of circumstance to swirl back to me my requests. If we can believe in it long enough and work for it diligently, it will come. Now, to begin.

Hallowed be this day

Watching them work methodically, I feel a sense of detachment between their tasks and the intention behind them. My hands have never looked so alive. Deep gold from hours of work in the sun, veins hugging my skeleton like determined vines, my precise little tools have quite the developing repertoire. My medium has been gracious enough to tolerate my experiments, frustrations, and questions. She has taken me in and molded my form.

The possibilities are mounting and I find my dreams flowering in wild new directions. I strive for focus tempered by sweetness, and the blood, sweat, and tears become less a thing to struggle through and more a gift to be savored. I want a hiatus of sorts. I can no longer tolerate the destructive, cyclical patterns of thought force fed from birth in these parts. I can no longer tolerate blindness, deceit, or apathy. Mine eyes have seen the nothing and the everything, I have left my Iago trance, and I cannot go back.

How best to strive for greatness now? Part of me is inclined to give up everything as a testament to my ever new awareness. But as my prized possessions and collections cry to me from moldy walls, it seems they are only in need of a new space. Maybe a change in scenery would better serve my ambitions than potpourri daydreams.

My loved ones have been a total treasure to me through this entire process. They have showered me with patience and encouragement. Each of them have played vital roles in critical moments, and I am very grateful for their continued faith in me.

I would like to sanctify this day as hallowed day of possibility, paradox, and potential. My dearest friend, confidant, starpartner Erin, has let me move in. She is a passionate, awe-inspiring painter and a worthy fellow adventurer. I have a new job downtown, and a new plan for my first real raku line. I hope to move soon, I've gotten rid of 95% if the things that I own. I'm now mobile and flight-ready. All I ask of my new home is that it offer a plethora of natural adventures, and a quiet place for study, experimentation, and meditation. I don't think the answer is in others for me right now, but if there must be others, I hope they are serene and loving. I hope to delve completely into my medium, so that I can be honest in my pursuits.

Someone recently entered my life by coincidence, meeting me at the soul with a gentle hello. Since that moment, somehow he has stayed in my thoughts, in my dreams. It's all beautifully peculiar to me. I'm buzzed with thoughts of star-crossed lovers and the body electric. We are separated by a great distance, iron, and rock, but his vibrations still echo in the hollow of my chest.

Staring at my toes at the end of the tub and they start to look like mountains, reflected at their roots into the barely steady water like the black taj.

I found myself standing in a windowless hall of dark closed doors. As though a wind took with the light and the air to close everthing I could peer into. But then vines cracked the mortar in the floor and extended nimble fingers to reclame the darkened space. I find now the whole labrynth of doors I've been constructing and bloodying my knuckles over is falling to rubble. And through the looking glass I find things to be more translucent.


I recently had my first show. Some saintly folk in Virginia had a marvelous brainchild to inject a real bon temps roulee feel into the Bayou Boogaloo Cajun Arts Festival. They graciously shipped work, provided room, board, and boothspace, and hauled the hallowed bodies of 30 or so New Orleans artists. We all piled on a bus at 9:30 at night in NOLA and set off on our thousand mile journey.


The next morning the big black bus, "I heart NOLA" in gold brandishing from its side, pulled into Hardees. The driver made a bee line for the door and then there was a pause. Moments later a fountain of flowing fabrics, professional cameras, and earthy postures came flowing from the door. The ecclectic crowd dispersed to the edges of the parking lot to examine flowers, take portraits of the clouds, and stir up a little tai chi line dance. The island of misfit toys seemed tumped over into the parking lot.





After being a craft fair waif my entire life, I have found new drive through this validating, inspiring event. Suddenly people who I have observed and admired for years are nestling me warmly under their wings, welcoming me as a peer. The path before me has opened up like the morning horizon. Soon my best friend and career/adventure partner and I will hit the road to find a new home and space to totally immerse ourselves into nature, new culture, and our mediums. It is hard to break away from all my current comforts, and all of my fears and insecurities are blazing in my face. However, the time has come. The nest has gotten too warm.

Thin layers of water cloud my vision as I glance around the room. Feeling my unsteadiness, the space around me waits in apprehension to see my next move. Will I fall now to the floor and kick and scream? Will I denounce the power that has held me for so long? Nope, I'll burn them back down. Like the second shot of liquor, a little sweeter from the action this time. Apparently these days are the learn to live to fight for another days, because every time I think I've learned something, life is there with another bucket of cold water for me. This time to make sure I choke on the pride I was busy swallowing.

There are so many answers, if I only could come to the questions. So many answers, but so many lies, all grinning from every direction. If only I could take these lines and spread em around like a map on the dash. See whats really in between, waiting like a theif. There's an I before an E except after see I told you so. Don't matter, not at all, because what they don't know. Is what they can't see, cause the lights are off, but I can see in the dark and I can see what you won't. What he left out, what she spelled out, and what's spiraling out of control. You wanna blame it on the next best polarity despite the parody on deck to unfold. So don't come to me with some hypocrisy, best foot forward, man who broke the mold. I just want someone to know me. But here I am. Skint one more time, but my arms still feel strong, and I've got streams of words pulling me along. And that makes this a perfect time to say: Thank you to the ones I love for never giving up, and never giving up on me.

blue bird

It's so hard to pull from what seemed empty months ago. How can I feel so tough and determined for part of the day, then full of despair the next. I'm so tired of all of this pseudolove.

Why is it so impossible to be loved and known at the same time? Just when I think it is in my grasp, it wrigles and slips through again. There's only so many routes of escape before the same echoes creep up on me again. There seems a misty sheathe between myself and the girl in the mirror. I watch her walk by in windows and smile in pictures, but I am not a part of the spectacle. I guess my complexities got too entangled to be read, and now all I'm left with is a fuzzy fabric to die, cut, and hem.

There are no windows in this place. Only wood grain and trinkets to stare back at me plainly same as they have for weeks. I can move and polish them, but still somehow they stare. Like bruises the stains on my pillow remind me of all the muffled sniffs and pressurized temples that rocked me into forgotten dreams. Blue is a nice word for it. Really it feels more like brass or puke green or something annoying like that. Maybe if I were blue there would be some solice in the state itself. I feel like my insides are rejecting my outsides. They wish to break out, without knowing what from. Such a sadly familiar sensation. If I were not such a good liar, perhaps I could be more honest with myself now.

How did you learn to reverse your candied shell. Only palatable to yourself while the rest of us pay the cost. I play into your candy, and when I buck it I'm stung. So well trained you have me. But not for long.

sprout

Where go the days and hours so quickly? Why do I keep looking up and realizing that another week is gone? False sensations and overplanning leave my mind skipping and the days also. In attempts to remove routine somehow I managed to develop dependency on the avoided. The avoided stacks up and falls down on the days meant for relaxation. But why relax, not enough time. I have fought to maintain that my path is my own for the making, but I have aquired the losses of a path down wandering. Wandering is overwhelming when the goal is near and yet out of sight. It seems there is so much to discover and to begin to know. How can I seek to know the things which bring me guilty shots from the ones I love? These restless thoughts and wonderings of my continuous failure in approval from others and from my own pride cause the scattering of my last remaining unchallenged beliefs. Recourse and recovery. Diminish the search for the desires and wants of other aesthetic sensabilities and return to what is known to be pleasing to the self.

I miss being outside. The randomness and constant movement of the senses are and should always be remembered to be a vital part of maintaining creative order and balance in the expression of ideas. If we pursue a natural consilience and order, a thoughtful tribute to evolved chaos, then a bubble would only anesthetize the motive. Equally as threatening as a bubble of self-centeredness would be a continuous link with another bubble. Learn from those with much experience yes, but always seek further the relation of your own experience to your path. If it seems too dark in the morning and the pillow seems safer then the door, then try and remember at what point it began? At what points does it occur more often? If we cannot reconcile our actions with what we know to be a good, ethical, fruitful life, then our conscience (if we choose to maintain one) will not allow us to continue towards our own eventual destruction.

Now are times of much contraversy on every front. Many new factions to watch proclaiming that we are doomed if our wrongs against their own sensabilities are not rectified. We all scream in alarm at the first cause which catches our heart strings. We cannot align the misfortune of entire segments of the population with our knowledge that we are here to sustain one another not step on the foreheads of those who are not looking.

But if we all find ourselves screaming at someone, and those someones share a roof, where should our knocks be heard?

Narcissists they call us. But we are not the first. The closed minds of our pitiful state of affairs believe that the progression of the individual only arouses dissention. They believe that a subscription to a seemingly invinsible wisdom of an enduring warish religion and its prescribed ethics will not only relieve them of their burdens in personal responsibility but also ensure their deveopment of a comfortably controllable state of affairs. These fundamentalists ignorami seem harmless care of their wobble back bone and lack of logic and learning, but the problem with sheep...

Although a mobilization would be nightmarish to collaborate and against our main principles, we must at least recognize the mobilized nature of those we truly fight and realize that against them, we can all agree.

In what do you believe? On what do you base your opinion? On friends and family? Puffed up speeches and the flashy marketing of hollow ideology aimed directly at you? Hopefully not. In my opinion, an opinion should be an interpretation of an analysis of fact. Three main principles I base most decisions on are the following. Do we have present?: The progression of the individual, the constant pursuit of the equal, unbiased perveyance of information, and the pursuit of a more fair judiciary. These are primarily domestic principles, a global outlook requires more wideswept thinking. Look to the power of the courts for a theif in the night approach to government. We must be heard before the robes decide. Choose a battery of issues which represent your ideals in fairness and freedom. Speak out. Speak to your friends, educate the up and coming for what they can do to LEARN MORE. I can hear the murmur of huddled intellectual discourse. Branch out. You are founded and you know your justifications. Bring back the power of the liberal intellectual. We cannot fight extremism with more polarity. As the far right distances themselves further from fair reality, open minds and lives with a steady reverberation of logic and truth.