Mad Hungry Mind

Amy Lowell Greets the Spring

Guarded within the old red wall's embrace,
Marshalled like soldiers in gay company,
The tulips stand arrayed. Here infantry
Wheels out into the sunlight.
- A Tulip Garden

Urban Tulipscape, near Soho, May 2008

Hm, Maybe I Will Pick Up the Duster After All

A creative meditation on house cleaning.A

Eye Candy for Bookworms

Sylvia at Classical Bookworm has a saliva-inducing photo of Alberto Manguel's library on her blog. Take a look.

What is it about a room full of books that transports me to such ecstatic heights? I have enough books in my own home to be buried alive beneath them, yet still my eyes are drawn inevitably toward the next full shelf.

Here's my contribution to Bookworm's Eye Candy:

The Friends of the San Francisco Public Library Bookstore.

Teaching and Teachers: Sara Lamb at Woven Thoughts

Sara Lamb, a wonderful fiber arts teacher, has written a very thoughtful post about establishing a reputation as a teacher.

After the boom in knitting interest in the early 2000s, there is now an upsurge in handspinners. Case in point: for the first time ever, I am wait-listed for the workshop atSOAR 2008. Granted, I submitted my registration on the last day, but in previous years the organizers have collected all the registration forms first, then assigned workshops after the registration deadline. Anyway, the workshop filled up within a week. That's how many new handspinners, weavers, felters, and other fiber artists there are out there.

Sara writes about how we need more teachers to meet the needs of learners. The problem is that most people choose to take classes with teachers whose reputations are already well-established. There are a lot of stars in the fiber arts community: Judith MacKenzie McCuin, Deb Menz, Sharon Costello, Nancy Bush, Maggie Casey, Rudy Amann, Carol Rhoades, Sara herself. The list goes on. Naturally, new spinners and weavers want to study with the best teachers, but limited class size and teaching schedules will mean fewer chances for these newbies to study with big-name instructors.

Is this a bad thing? No, it is an opportunity. Sara rightly points out that SOAR is creating opportunities for new teachers to demonstrate their gifts in an established forum. Abby Franquemont will be leading her first workshop there, having been a scholarship recipient last year. I got to sit next to Abby in Judith MacKenzie McCuin's workshop and I can testify to her masterly spinning skills and hilarious sense of humor. I suspect she will be a leader in the teaching community in the years to come.

Teaching and learning. Novices become apprentices, apprentices become teachers, teachers become masters. Some of us will stop off along the way (I consider myself a lifelong novice), but others will continue down the path to mastery. This is the excitement as the field of fiber arts gathers new followers.

iMix: Paw-Tappin' Jazz

A secret about me: I imagine cats dancing, and this is the music I hear when they dance. Check out samples in the iTunes store.

Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson at MoMA

New York's MoMA is an overwhelming experience, especially on a Saturday morning when, it seems, everyone in Manhattan goes out to get a little culture. My preference is to see a limited number of exhibits but to experience them deeply, so my mother and I concentrated on the Book/Shelf exhibit and an extraordinary passage of discovery that is Olafur Eliasson's Take Your Time.

Eliasson has described the viewer's experience of his artwork as "seeing yourself seeing." This statement captures my own impression perfectly; I did not look at the exhibit as much as I inhabited it. For example, in the work entitled I only see things when they move, an elaborate light-refracting mechanism occupied the center of a room, casting prismatic panes of light around the room, against which the silhouettes of museum spectators were cast in sharp outline. For example, here are my mother and myself:

Outside on the third-floor landing, another work entitled Room for One Colour involved the installation of a huge number of monochromatic yellow lights, which created a sharply-defined visual field reminiscent of sepia photographs. In fact, the light was perfect for taking photos, so I shot one of my mom:

Occupying Eliasson's works compelled me to take photographs, and this is what makes his "seeing yourself seeing" characterization so apt; his work requires you to participate, not merely to stand and view. A truly remarkable experience, if you get to be in New York while Take Your Time is on exhibit, go and put yourself in the picture, too.

Other resources:

A video overview:

YouTube playlist of videos about Olafur Eliasson

1001 Journals

One of my favorite books about creative journaling is 1000 Journals. For this project, an artist named Someguy mailed 1000 blank journals to friends and strangers and asked them to write/draw/create an entry, then mail the journal on to another friend or stranger. It was an elaborate chain-letter, I suppose, but without the bad-luck consequences. The book shows facsimile pages from some of the journals, some written, some elaborately drawn or collaged. It is an instant creative kick-in-the-pants for sluggards like me.

Now Tea With McNair has informed me that there will soon be 1001 blank journals circulating around the world. You can go to the 1001 journals site to sign up to participate in the new project.

Approaches to Playgoing

Lately I've been struck by different approaches to playgoing:

• Entertainment: Some people go to plays the way they go to movies--to view a spectacle, have a few laughs, or shed a few tears. This is an easygoing, recreational approach to attending the theater.
• Performance: Others are drawn to the theater as a showcase for actors. The play is secondary, although without it there would be no opportunity for an actor to display his ability.
• Textual: Still others are interested in the play as a text--the words are important here, and their vocalization onstage is one of many permutations in the experience of the playwright's intention.
• Scholarship: This is related to the Textual approach, but doesn't suffer from all the postmodernist baggage. I think of the Scholarship approach as encompassing an interest not only in the play, but its theatrical history and literary/historical context.

My approach is primarily Scholastic. When I make plans to attend a play, I usually prepare by doing the following:

1. Read the play. Sometimes I skip this step, especially for contemporary works. I spoiled my experience of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women by reading the play in advance, so the moment of transformation in that play was not the surprise it could have been. However, I always read Shakespeare in advance; the complexities of his language demand preparation.
2. Watch previous productions on DVD. Again, this usually applies to Shakespeare rather than contemporary plays, which might not even have been produced for film or TV. These media are not the same as a theatrical production, obviously, but often make reference to theatrical staging. I think watching DVDs is most helpful at helping me understand character development within the play. For example, I watched two video productions of Macbeth before seeing the play in New York, which informed my understanding of Lady Macbeth's character immensely.
3. Read supporting material. I read theater reviews and playwright profiles wherever they are available. I try not to let reviews inform my own opinion of the play when I see it, although I'm not going to try to deny that they make an impact. I am very interested in a playwright's creative process, so profiles in American Theater are always of interest to me. Finally, if a play references a specific era in history, I try to read up on it; this was especially important when I was getting ready for the Royal Shakespeare Company's Histories Cycle ; I read several books about the Wars of the Roses and Shakespeare's historical sources for the plays.

I certainly don't think my way of approaching theater-going is the right way, but it works for me. Maybe this is because I'm interested in thought processes and creative discovery more than I am interested in entertainment and performance alone.

Anyone else out there have a different approach to the theater?

Duke Ellington's Advice to the Downtrodden

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

Inspiration: The Strand Bookstore

What is it about a roomful of books that opens the mind to possibilities?
The Strand Bookstore, NYC--18 miles of books!