Cheri Ibes

Flotsam Art by John Dahlsen

This guy is making installations and paintings, etc. from found plastic objects and netting. I can't believe it... I should've sold my flotsam sculpture for 8,000 bones instead of hanging it from a damn tree at my school.

Sally Mankus, Installation Artist

http://www.sallymankus.com/installations.html




I've been thinking about another installation project.
Sally Mankus is a great inspiration with the translucence and texture, the old decaying style, creating a home-like environment. I like being able to see her process within her pieces. My project will involve more weaving with fibers, but I feel perhaps more objects, more wood, and more layering is necessary.

"You flower to be chosen,
I fall down to be noticed,
Where do we go from here?"

Blonde Redhead

Patterns from Aunt Bea's fabric store

Feminine Exposure

The only thing you can do in summer heat, is wear your favorite dress.
I have never thought this phrase to be true in the past... in fact, I always felt like a clown wearing a dress before. Recently, I came upon one that feels like it was made for me, and it's vintage floral pattern has sparked a new love for me.
These are from Spoonflower.com -- a website that will print on fabric the pattern of your desire...

My last days in San Francisco

End of semester work

Cocoon- Inner Being

Flotsam Sculpture installation
http://flotsamproject.blogspot.com

Beehive reverse applique

Now it's time to focus on projects long-term, summertime, no schoolwork

Mark Liu

Eco Fashion Designer

Block print patterns on fabric

Peacock blue printmaking ink on blue cotton

forest flotsam

the variations on green.
the curling layers.
the hair-like roots and moss.
I am in love.

dear knitknit

Bloom

My most recent animation.
My illustrations set to the music of Múm.

Bloom from Miel Plume on Vimeo.

treasures from Berkeley botanical garden

Nest in progress

heart speak March 2009

Ernst Haeckel- Art forms from the Ocean

Ernst Haeckel's illustrations are currently a great inspiration to me, concerning forms, patterns, geometric shapes and organic structures.


It's easy to see their potential as sculptural forms, and in my case, fiber sculpture.


I love their elegance, the detail, the complexity and wholeness. Some remind me of lace patterns.

Cocoons

This is the beginning of a sculpture series
about cocoons, nesting, gestation, solitude,
and personal environments constructed with objects
of surrounding environments.

Nest Vessel

Vessel-
basket coiling with white roving, wood, moss and thread.
February 2009
24"x 24" x 2 1/2"

Shibori Samples

Shibori (or resist dying) techniques from class:
Dyed on rayon/cotton blend fabric
with synthetic navy and magenta

Window in our apartment

Ranunculus

Bruce Conner. "Snore" 1960

exhibited in the San Francisco De Young museum-- wood, nylon and metal

Found

Fell from a tree, found treasure

"Horses in dreams
like waves, like the sea
They pull out of of here
they pull, they are free
rode a horse around the world
along the tracks of a train
broke the record found the gold
set myself free again.."

-PJ Harvey

My new film

"EYE"

Thanks to Scott Fetzer for the song, "Sad Mando"


Eye from Miel Plume on Vimeo.

Mona Hatoum

Made by Palestinian artist, Mona Hatoum
"Keffieh" 1993-1999

Jessica Grindstaff

Jessica Grindstaff -- boxes. She also does short-films, art direction for puppet theater, and paintings.

Loom weaving-- discovering pattern

My latest experiences involve much dissection and reconstruction of the ways I view my surroundings. Pattern, colors, balance, contrast of materials and textures. Combined with the urban flotsam gathering, I seem to be discovering patterns everywhere!

Codex Book Fair, Berkeley

Basket Weaving

Coiling method:
"Weave never had it so good"

Twining method

Relief

I'm relieved that I don't have to search anymore.
That this twirling and nesting and fleeing
rests
simply as a beautiful dance
I know the steps
and the music has changed

I'm relieved to fill my lungs completely
knowing there is always more air
to fill and to release
there is always more air

giving life
to words
that know themselves well.

Lost Turtle poster

For Dustin Guy

Céline, Vous m'enchantez.

Fog tumble on the scraper tops
a moistness lingers cold chill
charcoal and humming from the earliest light streams
I call this home
It is still a skeleton
waiting for my recognition to weave such warmth
A hollow hush carries the softness of all those words
difficult to say to reach to remember
Air stirs as much as my body will
the fog could crumble for days
without me needing it to, or not to
give.

Excerpt...

"She stood barefoot, calf-deep in the brush.
She held the loosed stone from the wall.
She dropped it.
The bird died.
The bird had been dying.
She understood: it all happens in one place."

Zanni Schauffler

8

As the leaves fall I
collect them and arrange
a table for us
where we can talk and dine
and press the weight of our pockets
into the open grain.

new work: "Bloom"

...

Already seeming a dream. We are floating.
My legs are a tangled kelp bed.
My arms free, yet cumbersome.
Come along, come home. The mountains were waiting,
to say hello and goodbye at once.
Without gravity, the dreams are ghostly.
And unraveling.

honey

doghouse roof sessions

I hold his heart while we sleep, and I sing to it.
I hold my heart while i wake, and it shivers and squeaks, it doubts and fears, but I rise anyway and the day thanks itself, and I thank the day.
Thank you.

Apprehension

In the faded forest there is a birdcall
which seems meaningless in this faded forest.
And yet the rounded birdcall rests
in this interim that shaped it,
wide as a sky upon the faded forest.
Pliantly everything makes room in the cry;
The whole land seems to lie in it soundlessly,
the great wind seems to nestle up inside,
and the moment, which wants to go on,
has, pale and silent, as if it knew things
for which anyone would have to die,
risen out of it.

_Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Images

Fort Tilden

Ignition

doghouse view

Princess

pimm. miel. eleanor.

True.
The rain fell and dripped into my ears.
All I could do was sing and I no longer cared
who cared. More important to share.
There are people who do (share),
as if it has no limits, no selection.
People who give just because.
They arrive when it rains,
they console the sun,
calm down.
The rooftops here breed new dreams.
The rooftops are the perfect place
to make wishes come true.
Put a tree there, next to the pigeons.
And the walls have a history,
layers exposed, so many languages
bleeding through plaster.

Pour arriver à la maison

ready. going.

The timing is right.
It is time that I understand now, and how to move within it.
A warehouse, with light, and a plate on the fire escape.
we looked out the window together and then looked at each other.
This is real, We will be here.
We have waited for time to agree, that we are meant to be together.
It seemed odd, to be at odds with time, seeming how flexible it is.
"I want you to know I want you"
Then we danced. slowly.
And it was easy.

for aaron & ai

Witches

The recurring dream

Who knows where this goes.
Three songs in, and I wonder if I'll go back to art school.
Aaron reminded me of the power of gratitude.
Wellness returns, love spreads a wild fire.
I am glowing, smoking a trail in the sky.
Let it fly.

My dream recurs four times now:
I am climbing on the top of a water tower in New York.
I slip. i am falling toward the ground, picking up speed, face first.
I can see the street below, the gray, black and yellow streaking the sky.
I keep my eyes open.
My body is limp.
Here I go!
I hit the pavement like a bellyflop, the ground liquifies.
Tar turns clouds of squid ink, and I keep falling through and through.
I swim into the clearing, where I see the lights of an electric city.
I follow, inside, it pulses yellow and red.
heat vents from the floor.
I come to an electric canal, it is pulsing, Justin is there.
He stretches his hand in mine,
says, I'm So Glad You're Home.

India

The lady and I

David Foldvari

I love this guy's work... pretty amazing...

Davor Svetinovic

Swoon

virtual typewriter

I
Mother says my flesh looks ripe.
Crone, how your cheeks sallow,
I crave fermented fruit. Loathe
the pink and bloated shine of mine,
so tight my crown.
Your pulse is thick in your neck,
your chest flattened by deep breathing:
birth. sex. heat. his voice hollowed
your chatter-
I crave your ether.
The well water is so far deep reach,
only night sweats fever me to dream there.
My self and you, sister,
how our letters fade shy of common words.
How we've learned to hold our tongues
while he speaks. Fables. kind. shallow.
no. no. no.
Tonight, she speaks, sister.
Mable, take this feather to light your way.
I had forgotten her voice so soft as it were
an old silver necklace. pendants of pearl.
Was she speaking to me, dear one,
Am I something unique after all?
Twist this lemon into my vein.
Crone is heavy in her silence.
I breathe-- neck so low. My breed so weak
to speak. And she knows. I know.
Bird. Feather. Home.

PJ Harvey- white chalk

Let your beauty manifest itself
without talking and calculation.
You are silent. It says for you: I am.
And comes in meaning thousandfold,
comes at long last over everyone.

_Rainer Maria Rilke.

Céline

Feathers, pods, knives, cigarettes. cappuccinos; little cookies. pursed lips.
How I've watched you grow through this time, into this culture as your own.
I adore your language, and the length of your face.
...

Words of Rumi

...but the man didn't open the door and let the man out
until what needed to be accomplished was accomplished.

What at times seem like great cruelty
is really deep friendship

Some demolitions are really renovations.

Ostrich

I
Where do our hearts lie
In relation to our other
Rational organs,
And how does one measure
Their accounts for truth?
Ancient Egyptians believed
That after life
One would undergo a series of tests
And judgments from Osiris,
To determine eligibility
To join the eternal afterlife.
One of these tests, the final
One, involves weighing
One’s heart on a scale
Against the weight
of an Ostrich feather-
A symbol for Truth.

It seems appropriate to weigh
Truth in delicate and arbitrary measurements.
Its language is strong
In the tones and inflections,
Not in the tongue itself.
This child is also a woman.
Where her hair flows, a trail
Of lavish bees follow.
The hum attracts her, they sing
To the coarseness of her blood.
But in flocks, they feel
like an overwhelming force,
Perhaps even a threat.
What do all these bees want?
Her scent is not honey,
She does not believe she is a blossom.
How could she nourish these attractions
All at once?

II
Where do our hearts lie
In this landscape marked by nests
And migratory patterns?
We flock only to the separate,
And feel velocity in the grace
Of a pulled perspective,
Only to separate
And feel separate
And miniscule in the massiveness of the sky.

Our calls meet in colours.
The wings spread widely are the most visible,
And the most frequently patronized.
Where we have met ourselves
In the grace of this devotion
To fluid solitude,
We have met a considerable mass
Of air,
Wind pockets of doubt,
Moments to glide freely,
Exhilaration of flight.
And where shall we rest
Our gentle heads when we get tired?
How to come back down
To land, to admit our legs
To the stranger landscapes;
Feel the weight of our bellies
On the grass licks?
That is the grace of Earth.

Frankenpuss.

Concerning the spiritual...

Durfee

pictures

new pieces

I haven't had much time to draw and craft since I've been in San Francisco, but these pieces I like-- they're pretty savvy to the aspects of independence and creativity that I'm embracing in my life by being here. (Transient and new-rooting)



My goal is to create a graphic novel before the year of 2008 is over. One year. This may prove a little difficult considering I'm about to go back to school, but uh... that's why I've got a year instead of three months. I'll probably get it all done with the last two weeks of the year anyway. That seems to be the way things work out most of the time.

I have yet to continue my wheat-pasting adventures here, but Benny K and I are certainly sketching out some ideas. I'm enthralled by the liveliness of this city.

three more

Traveling with my family only became challenging the past few years, after everyone seemed to find their mates, and their lives started coming together with children and college degrees and whatnot, and mine seems like it keeps falling apart... But there are many times, especially with the help of my niece Sadie, when I wake up and realize I've been taking everything far too seriously. I feel silly for allowing myself to be distracted from this experience, from learning, and sharing and growing more and more. I'm not sure why, but often times, it seems so incredibly hard to stay open and relaxed.

Anew

It has been ... over a year since I posted anything through this blog. However, I feel that as things continue to occur (an awakening to life and a sense of mystery about it all), it's rather important for me to share...
So here we go... off to Japan.

the varying points

about the vlogs

Ok so um... despite all the buzz about vlogs and videos, and my newfound love for films, I am still about stillness. about one image that moves by itself, based on colour, composition, the energy that pulses through it, whatever. i am still all about picking up a book and holding it to my chest. I am still about wanting to smear things with paint and tear the edges of everything. so I can never fully completely devote myself to film, and in this case i am glad for such a thing.
typewriters. glass. clay. coffee stains. fingerprints. grids. worn edges. big holes. multiple pages. thread.

Tonight i watched stan brekhage. pieces of chaos.

Tonight in couver

( I will tell you what this night is like-- )



Satisfaction brought so simply by homemade sushi, fresh mango, watching the eyes of an Israelian artist light in his own heart thrusting into his work. Let us not forget to mention the absolute whipping bliss of riding downtown after the sun, after a cafe, after hot hot head sweat market blister beat, and I am ahhhhh riding in the middle of the lane down Pender Street, and Jaxon is riding beside, up front, close behind.
and at this point, the city is ruled by bicyclists and the transient folk, who spend the whole night blushing out their meth craze, recycling the whole city system. there is no room to dumpster dive here, it's like walking into someone's house uninvited.
but ohhh a lovely night, the whole house sighs-- the only sounds are of shower drips, clock clicks, and shopping carts rustling around the bamboo bush. all the rest is rest. goodnight!