August 8, 2019

Snapshots

Yep, that's a new yoni, front left. I've committed to another year of yoni, one piece per week for 52 weeks. In my enthusiasm to get started, and remove as many barriers to continuation of the practice, I cut 30 or so base triangles out of the felt I had on hand. Low light, high heat (i.e. sweating profusely), bad eye glasses, and impatience to finish conspired to make the triangles not so great. In my haste, I convinced myself that I found a new, efficient way to cut identical equilateral triangles without the fuss of measuring and marking. Um. Not so much. They are not only not equilateral, they are not remotely identical, and they're not the desired dimensions. Womp womp. Reminder to self: that rule you have about not employing bladed tools in haste nor after enjoying even a single adult beverage? It's a good rule. It prevents wasted material and accidents.

In other studio movement, I bit the bullet and replaced my computer. Yay and boo. Boo because, of course, none of my software is compatible with the new operating system. And none of the software I rely on is available any longer for one time purchase - it's all subscription based. And that doesn't fly with me. So, I am in the self-inflicted morass of learning to use all new (to me) freeware. Yay for freeware. Boo to my plodding learning process. Which means, bad phone photos here until I find and learn a free image editing program that works for me.
What you're looking at above is a squirrel. Or what's left of a squirrel. Fur, bones, and connective tissue. I surprised myself by tamping down my queasiness long enough to peel it off the pavement (wearing gloves!) and bag it. I want those bones. But I have yet to summon the fortitude to complete the decomposition process. It's been sitting in a ziplock on the mudroom floor for weeks now. If you are at all intrigued, I found this (un-illustrated) tutorial for preserving road kill bones informative and entertaining.
pages from This Woman's Work © Julie Delporte, translated from the French by Helge Dascher and Aleshia Jensen
On the book front, I am loving This Woman's Work by Julie Delporte. It's kinda like a sketchbook / personal journal combo. Amongst many delightful insights and ponderings, it's a feminist dive into the messiness of our cultural assumptions and expectations about gender. I picked it up at my favorite bookstore here in Philly, Joseph Fox on Sansom. It's a small shop with a wonderfully curated selection of titles. I indulge myself with a purchase every time I visit. Because: 1. I always discover something that I've never heard of before that looks amazing, and 2. I want the store to stay in business so I can continue to discover new gems. I just began reading Motherhood by Sheila Heti, another book I discovered at Joseph Fox. So far, it reads to me like a window into the narrator's squirrels in the attic regarding the question whether or not to have children within the framework of her life as a professional creative. Squirrels in the attic is the term my friend A. and I use to describe the brain's running commentary, the ego driven crap that trips us up, the second guessing, the not so useful stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. I picked these titles after finishing Ani DiFranco's memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream. I recommend all three titles if you, like me, want to steep in strong feminist artistic creativity. It's divine.

1 comment:

  1. So glad to see you are finding time and place for art in your life again as a piece of enjoyment. I miss that time, maybe soon or maybe not until I move away from teaching 200+ students a day.

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