I love bad art.

I sent out an email to help ward off the creative block I was in a few weeks ago…

“here’s how it works:
i give you 3 abstract words and 3 concrete words and you make me a piece of art on a postcard size card and mail it to me. you interpret the words however you see fit and with me in mind. you do the same, send me 3 abstract words and 3 concrete words, and your snail mail address!!!, and i’ll mail YOU a postcard with my interpretation of your words and with you in mind.
you don’t have to be good at making art. in fact, i love bad art. yeah, send me bad art.”
…and so now the art is rolling in! and here’s what a sample of my postcards looked like before i sent them out.

 

TV stills

I found an old drawing I did while rummaging through old piles of paper. I forgot all about it! I said to myself, like someone coming out of a long coma: “Oh, right, I draw cartoons!”

I used to sit in front of the television and draw the talk show hosts’ and newscasters’ caricatures. TV is not my favorite sport but it does make me doodle. Youtube has statistically not had the same effects on my doodling. I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m busy clicking away with my mouse and I don’t have idle doodling hands. Can anyone figure out what faces these are? I don’t think the one in the upper left corner is a famous person.

 

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.

 

Face Reflection

Stacie was kind enough to let Morgan pose in the portrait with her.

Just some old fashioned drawing this weekend:

 

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.

 

Imaginary map

 

Portrait of Chelsea

My dear friend/old college roommate, and practically my sister, Chelsea, was in town this week. I’d like to brag about her. She drove from Northern Michigan to Chicago and then flew to Chiapas, Mexico to witness Fair Trade up close in coffee-growing areas. Chelsea is certainly doing her part to “make things”, the theme of this blog. What? This blog has a theme? She is a graphic designer and she does amazing things at The Change, a design strategy company that works with businesses that make the world better. They have their own schnazzy blog, http://taoofchange.com/. I know Chelsea isn’t a big blogger but I hope she sees this. This one’s for you, Chelsea! heartjean

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeanfitz/2283348710/

 

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.

 

The Flu

Like going on a long trip to a foreign country and then trying to tell your friends about it when you get back home, it can be nearly impossible to describe the land of the flu.

You have an altered state of mind that no one will understand when you return. You wake up and forget where you are. Your body thinks it’s night when it’s day and vice versa. Food tastes a little different and you’re not sure what’s going to happen if you put it in your system. People start talking to you and you might as well be underwater. You seek drugs. You gravitate towards really bad American television-even Lindsay Lohan becomes absolutely fascinating. You feel like a helpless kindergartener whose nose has been running longer than you’ve been alive. Why travel the world, you say, when you can experience the luxury of the flu at home?