Me and guv’ner

So as soon as I heard that our very own Illinois Gov. Blagojevich was arrested this morning and was being held in a jail cell today, I thought of the card that I had made over the weekend.  Every time I make one of these cards, which is part of a deck that is grown to almost 50 (!), I share it with my card making group, and then I write a whole bunch about it the next day. Here are some kernels of wisdom this particular  card said to me…we always start with the “I am the one who…” phrase:

“I am the one who is inside a thick cushioned snowsuit-muting the outside world, paralyzing movement, getting fat and useless. I am the one who is a beat up car that’s most vital parts are rusting. I am the one whose parts are missing. I am the one who has painted over the same walls with 18 layers of old paint, glossing over history. I am the one who is a thick metal heavy door that hates to be opened and rarely ever does. I am grey matter that is quiet, muted, underground and with no new ideas.”

Man, this card’s a total drag. And it’s been overcast and sleeting all day. I’m sure it’s as sunny outside as it is in Rod Blagojevich’s jail cell today. Now is the Chicago winter of our discontent.

 

Living in a Creative Block!

Quick, send ideas! I’m in a creative block! Just. Plain. Stuck. Help me get over the bridge.

If you read the title differently…I could also be living on a creative block in the city right now…but it’s getting cold and I think everyone walks their dog and then goes inside to watch TV. It’s just feeling like November in Chicago. Sigh. Nope, not in a city block of creativity. My brain is blank.

In the meantime, I will look at the pretty yellow leaves while they’re still there.

 

Absentminded drawing

The dictionary says to doodle is “to draw absentmindedly.” What does it mean to be absentminded? Does this mean I forgot how to draw momentarily? What does it mean to know HOW to draw? This week’s doodling:

 

Laundromat Handwriting

Here is a portion of a handwritten moving sale notice. It was taped to the wall at the laundromat. I tore a portion of the writing while trying to keep the main message in tact. I just needed this little bit. I looked up the strange characters in an old handwriting analysis book. Much like a dream interpretation book, it is full of more generalizations than I am usually comfortable with…at any rate, I looked up this overlapping coiling motion this writer did, particularly in the o’s and d’s. This poor writer is just trying to sell a set of tables and chairs and here I am scrutinizing the shape of their letter d.

Here’s what the book said:

Or maybe it more closely resembled this:

Well, there you go. If you want those table and chairs, you’ll have to live with the fact that the previous owner had  narcissistic tendencies, or maybe extreme autoerotism, and could have been dishonest.

…extra irony points if you connected the keyboard in the background to the handwritten letters in the first picture.

 

Aunt Mary’s Artist Statement

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!”

 

For hire…Irish Grave Maestro

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.

 

Creativity+Menstruation=Mandala

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.

 

3 minute scarf

“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:

and yes that was a cyberdundant move of me…

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.

 

New York Hotel Lobby

A dark corner of the hotel bar is a great place to sketch.

I couldn’t tell if they were having a romantic or purely business conversation.

 

Meet the Jean Fitzgeralds

I was recently contacted by e-mail about possibly “licensing my hilarious dog art.” I knew exactly who they were talking about–like any respectable person of the cyber-age– I googled my own name.

Jean Fitzgerald T-Shirts and Gifts

Related Topics: mirajean, masterpiece dogs, dog breed art, dog lover designs, dog breed gifts, cat gifts, cat art, pet art, purebred, dog gifts, dog art, pet gifts, cat, Dogs, Pets more…

Featured Products

Xmas Magic & 5 Cats Ornament (… $12.99

Santa’s Treat for his Beagle O… $12.99

Please meet Jean B. Fitzgerald: http://www.jeansdogshop.com/bio

She puts dogs inside of famous paintings and makes lots of money and lives happily ever after in Florida. Or meet Jean, the Realtor in Texas:

Jean Fitzgerald NLS Member Since September `05

ROCKWALL, TX

United States

Or how did I miss this scholarship?

Jean Fitzgerald Scholarship

Description: The scholarship is a memorial to Jean Fitzgerald who was a very active participant in the Hawai‘i Pacific Tennis Association. Jean felt it was important for young tennis players to pursue higher education in order to augment their tennis skills and be successful in other arenas besides the tennis court.

Prerequisites: Be an active tennis player; preference may be given to USTA/Hawai‘i Pacific Section members. Be a female. Be an incoming freshman.

Or you can read about the fictitious Jean Fitzgerald in AfterImage by Jay Brandon: pg. 284: “… “Kristen did know me. I had been to her home. She knew me because I was dating her mother. Jean Fitzgerald and I had met at a party and started going out. We were romantically involved. …” Seriously, the books are going for $0.01 on Amazon. I’m that good in this book.

Or check out this painter in Chicago (wink wink):
jeancfitzgerald.com

Okay, gotta go to my gynecology office in Doylestown, PA now.