My day to day a day
Towards the end of December my friend Kaela (whose very groovy art you can see some of here and here on Saturdays) pointed out this goings on in the local paper. Having recovered from NaBloPoMo and seeing the change of the year ahead of me, I felt ready for a new wave of forced daily creative outpouring and besides, the Artclash Collective’s Fun-a-day project sounded like, well, fun and I thought I would write a scrap of story every day, and that the finished thing would perhaps be a coherent story and perhaps wouldn’t and who would know anyway.
So I did. Then I forgot about handing it in until yesterday when Kaela asked if I would drop off hers and Mike’s as well as mine (and I have to say, that both of theirs make mine look like a junior high school project — like a diorama, only worse — but that’s okay — mine’s about the words, baby, the words). Was I going to hand mine in? Well, hell yes, I wrote the damn thing.
But wait — this is an art show. How do you “show” a story at an art show? I admit, I had had wild ideas about writing it with my mother’s dipping ink pen in a little book, perhaps with little line drawings around the margins and that it would look all, you know, artsy and fun. But I have more work than time, a child with croup and a serious need for more sleep than I get. On the other hand, I wasn’t about to print out three pages and staple ‘em and toss them at a bunch of visual artists, lest they laugh even more hugely at my meagre artistic output.
This was my compromise. The most ambitious thing about it is that I sewed it together sitting in the bathroom with the shower running, keeping Helena company while we steamed her croup. Otherwise, it’s construction paper stolen from the children’s art table, the words cut out and pasted in with watered down Elmer’s. But it’s my own little book, and it’s art.
And if you want to read the story I wrote, it’s here. And if you live in Philadelphia, the Fun A Day show is going to be next Saturday night from 7-11 pm at the Mantis School of Boxing and Kung Fu, 4522 Baltimore Avenue.
It IS art. And I think it’s beautiful.
Nice job.
How beautiful!
Now that you tell your story, I remember being a little girl getting steamed out of croup while my mother did cross-stitch while sitting on the side of the sink….
I like it – very well done. But then, I knew I would like it – I get to read your writing all the time!
Hey! I was wondering about that project. I am so glad you finished it.
I’m going to print it out and enjoy it with a cup of tea when the kids are asleep!
That is wonderful, beautiful little pictures, so sad and dreamlike…it reminds me of something I read years ago and the title escapes me but anyway..Its Fine, and sad and slightly exquisite.