newest neighbors

Some of my new neighbors who have been visiting with me in the backyard recently:

from left, the Western Mockingbird, Cactus Wren, and the House Finch.

V O T E

Today's the most politically important day of my life so far.

livin' Sononoran style

I'm a little late in making this post, but moving is quite the distraction isn't it? We moved to Arizona almost 2 weeks ago and we're living at Taliesin in a lovely apartment in the Crescent. Here are some photos of the joint:

We're here because Christian is managing the Mod Fab house on site here. Begun last winter, the goal is to finish it before January. Collaborating with other students, namely Nick Mancusi, and Michael P. Johnson, architect, the project is slated to be a real beauty!

Meanwhile, I'm working on the felt birds, collaboration with Anila Rubiku, help for Saskia Jorda's next show (Nov. 7), and starting a new drawing series. More later...

I'm busy. gah!
It's a beautiful here too. There are many new birds to see and hear. The sky is blue every day! Back door view:

Albania Italy USA

Tuesdays, collaborating with Anila Rubiku.

Anila is visiting Arizona State University Art Museum as part of an exchange program between E. European and American Artists. Originally from Albania, she now lives in Milan, Italy. She's working on a quilt of sorts for which she needs many hands to help stitch drawings on to leather sections.
I went to a talk by Anila about a week ago shortly after arriving in Arizona. Anila produces work that regards our notions of home, privacy, the outward v/s inward look and experience of cities, neighborhoods, homes. She uses stitches to create drawings on paper, fabric, and 3D paper structures, literally stitching together private with public notions. My most favorite of her work, not readily documented yet, is a collection of stitched drawings of aerial views of cities with overlayed stitched drawings of couples in different sex positions. The reason for the city's existance and size: procreation, yet sex is behind closed doors, behind the buildings' facades. Here they are surfaced together, one because of the other because of the other.

So, she's working Tuesdays through Fridays through Oct. 17 and I'm going each Tuesday to put my sewing skills to work! Here's me and the crew last Tuesday (you can see the swatches of leather and thread ready to be stitched):
An example of Anila's previous work. You can see that she not only sews into the paper's surface, she also punctures designs into the paper and often lights from behind (or within, if a 3D form).

partner participation

approach from path

Congratulations is in order for Mr. Michael Desbarres and Mr. Christian Butler for their outstanding design and building of a shelter, one of the first in Wisconsin, for the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture's shelter program.
Entry and view from right of entry

I was fortunate enough to help in the final phase of their work - painting! Apart from that, I'm fortunate enough to call them both my friends and colleagues and I look forward to our well designed future together. Opposite of Entry

To well finished projects: Cheers!

IdN

BREATHING ROOM

Breathing Room is an installation of 3 or more 6'x6' canvases. Here installed at Taliesin (Spring Green, WI) sewn end to end to make an 18' "scroll" script for breathing. This work originated from my own practice of tactile meditation. I started with simple mark-making on small squares of paper and also thinking of my work as part of my meditation practice. I have trained in breathing and walking meditation, but realized that the tactile quality of art process, usually repetitive for me, is naturally repairing and restive in my life. These posts from November are specifically about that beginning : Sound of Breathing and Assignment. I began to make the large, white gesso and graphite paintings by directly transcribing the letters and syllables of my breathing sound as literally as possible. I planned to make more than one, enough to represent each in a group of people, and to use them as an environmental place setting. Altogether, placed flat on the ground or floor, hung together as walls, or attached end to end as a sort of current or continuum, these paintings are to be installed to create and symbolize a space for rest and freedom from constraint. The idea of "breathing room" as spaciousness, simplicity, and brightness offered to the inhabitant of the space. As much as this work was meditative in process, it has become, in product, a script and a texture for meditation.
Here is a short slide show of the images in the upper room of the tower.