My Aunt Mary and I went to Chicago’s Artropolis – the big exposition of art at the Merchandise Mart – today. It was thousands upon thousands of booths selling work ranging from pricey-big-names, emerging artists locally and abroad, to outsider art. Aunt Mary had some very refreshing comments along the way, “All the artists kinda look like their work, don’t they?”-and-”If I had my tax rebate, I’d buy the smoking dog.”
The highlight of the afternoon was most certainly an exhibit from Walsh Gallery, a Chicago gallery that shows Contemporary Asian Art. A Korean artist, Chang Jiu I believe???, was there taking pictures of patrons’ chests (it was for ladies only-although I saw a man ask if he could participate. The artist offered to capture his buttocks on a t-shirt since that is the area of HIS body that is not usually free in our culture. He declined despite my bystander prodding.)
Anyway, the artist was ironing the prints onto t-shirts right on the spot….ahem, I mean while you wait…I mean, I guess they’re ironed “right on that spot” as well. The idea is that women can not freely expose their upper “naked” torso and are restrained by undergarments due to cultural taboos.
I declined but Aunt Mary had no hesitation after she heard the words: “free t-shirt.” Mary went behind a curtain with one of the assistants for the photograph. We then wandered for a few minutes while they transfered the image to the t-shirt.
Aunt Mary’s response: “I’m 70 and mine look as good as the rest of them!”
So here’s the moment you’ve been waiting for…go to my sloppily rigged podcast on this temporarily generic “big sister” sponsored blog (pardon the cyberdundance)— you’ll hear the fiddle tune: “Chief O’Neill’s Favourite Hornpipe”, Bob’s stories, the wind, among other things. It’s even an “Enhanced Podcast” with an accompanying slideshow. Notice the well thought out zoom-ins!
As planned from my previous entry, I can now present the audio dimension of my expedition to Mt. Olivet Cemetery.
I’d like to give a shout out to my big sister, Theresa, for helping to put my very first podcast up. Just like she’s let me crash on her couch many times, she’s letting me crash my podcast on her site for a little while until I get my cyber-self on its own two podcasting feet.
Theresa is an amazing art teacher who puts clay-mation videos from her 5th graders online! It makes me want to go back to the 5th grade! They’re hilarious little videos that make any self-respecting grown-up say: I, too, can use technology to better the world. Hey Theresa, care to share the link to those clay-mation videos?
It just so happened that my Irish fiddle instructor, Jessica, and I were both working on the South side of Chicago Wednesday afternoon. There’s no better way to take a mid-week break than to stroll through your local graveyard. We decided to meet up in Mount Olivet Cemetery (111th St.) and pay homage to Chief O’Neill, for whom the bar on Elston is named after and for the tune that is still played today. You may know my other mortal expedition to Graceland Cemetery that produced Miss October that graced the 2008 Calendar. See those pics at my flickr page.
Francis O’Neill was an Irish immigrant who became Chief of Police in the early 1900’s and had a great influence on Irish music here in Chicago. I’m a little confused on the history so I hope we’re standing in front of the right monument…the apparently official story from Chief O’Neill’s Pub says he died in 1936. So maybe 1904 was a really big year for him? PBS also did a bit about him a while back…
We took a peak in the side window where glass had broken. Anyone care to shed more light on those urn-like things resting on the opposite windowsill?
While we were admiring this burial site, our new friend, Bob Carten, came walking along and started to chat. He, like Chief O’Neill, is a retired cop. He has an extensive history to share as his life story came literally spilling out of his wallet.
We even got the polka dot car to join in:
I took out my digital recorder for the playing of Chief O’Neill’s Favorite Hornpipe in front of Chief O’Neill’s grave…with Bob’s life stories floating in and out of earshot. When I got home that night, I played back the track and realized that it never stopped recording. I will spare you all five hours of it. I’ve narrowed it down to five fascinating minutes of mostly cemetery wind. You’ll also barely catch snippets of Bob’s stories, Irish fiddle playing, more wind, and at the end you hear me zip up the recorder inside my fiddle case while we’re still talking. Oops!
Bob requested we play some fiddle tunes in front of his father’s grave at some point. That would be an interesting niche market, no? Check your local listings soon…”Tombstone maestro for Hire.” Bob is also looking for a way to share or publish his stories. This blog is a start.
Because I only want to share the perfectly “enhanced podcast” through the best technology available to me, I will post the podcast of our cemetery visit in the next post. Translation: I’m not so tech saavy with zee audio file and still workin’ on it. So, check back soon.
During a few days of every month, there is this “zing” in my veins that says to make something, make it now, make it messy, just do it and ignore everything else. So I do. The result is always something I would never make any other time of the month.
I did a brief Google search on art and menstruation and came across several taboos. There were drawings made with menstrual blood, artists displaying stained underwear, and blood spots chronicling their cycle day by day. The creative work I’m picturing here doesn’t connect to menstruation quite so literally–I used only paint pigment–but it still comes from a wilder creative source.
I think a woman’s brain can do amazing things (well, all month long) but can achieve an even more unique consciousness during menstruation.
I live in a culture that numbs out our cycles or tries to eliminate them entirely. Let me be clear that this “dark” time of the month is full of inconvenience and discomfort, but I still cherish them wholeheartedly, er, and whole-uterinely. Before and during my period, my dreams are more vivid. Strange shapes swoop in and leave just as quickly. The veil between consciousness and dreaming is thinner at this time. I believe in being spacey and menstruation ensures that I set aside time to dream.
Since this is a time to go into the mind’s deep interior, it can often translate into eating chocolate, not answering the phone, and watching embarassingly girly movies. Or it could mean making mandalas! It was very timely that this week’s activity at work was making meditative mandalas…
Here’s to finding a centering and wholeness in our different cycles (of all sorts) and to talking openly and positively about menstruation.
“That is the most Jean Fitzgerald photograph I’ve ever seen….you know, sans Polka-dot car.”-Natasha. This was taken at the Swap-o-rama-rama in good ole Chicago. I arrived Saturday at the event with my dear friend, Liz, pictured to the left of the giant mound of free and amazing clothes:
I did put on a personal small-scale clotheswap in my own home a few weeks ago as featured earlier in this blog but that pales in comparison to this event. This specific Chicago Swap-o-rama-rama -there have been many held in other cities- served as a fundraiser for a newly proposed school called Three Sisters Folk Art School to be located outside Chicago. Their tag line was “Creators not Consumers” and they described the event as “part Project Runway…part clothing swap…learn to turn “fiber trash” into wearable treasure.” I can get into that…old clothes manipulated on the sewing machines and then displayed on the runway in celebration of the thrift.
Here is a quick clip from the founders of the Swap-o-rama-rama:
At that event I learned how to make way cool earrings (tba at a later post), silkscreening techniques, loom demos, and my favorite…the 3 minute scarf!
First, I gathered random shreds of yarn, especially the fluffy, poofy kind. I cut them at unscientific lengths that I thought sufficed. I suppose you could shred a t-shirt or other non-fraying fabric into your desired length as well.
Then I knotted them randomly, I mean, intuitively, together. The more knotting you do, the shorter your scarf length will become.
Presto! A scarf in just minutes from scraps of yarn.
Although, I ‘ve been altering and knotting while at stoplights and in line at the grocery store— I guess it’s the 3-minute scarf that reincarnates.
