I Arted

I realized that I like to blog my art projects. Not to show off or impress my four readers (you are impressed though, aren't you four readers?), really I do it as documentation. I've said a hundred times that process attracts me to art. Even my own process I guess. But really, it's nice to have things all in one place complete with date and time stamp. Suddenly my one project's process becomes one 'previous' from the time before that and the time before that. And then .... well then you have a whole lot more....

So what happens when I can't blog my art, because the projects are for two of my four readers? Well, first I might post my pics on the places I know they will never find... twitter, instagram. Then I hold it in. And die. And hold it in. Until the secret is out.

Story goes - My sister is an indecisive art buyer. She's been looking to pay homage to her Wisconsin roots. Like all of us, the Wisconsin State Hearts floating around have been tempting her for a while. Well, shit. I can do that. But I can Mary that.

My color choices wavered, torn between oranges/browns and blues/silvers. I ended up making both. That's how my other sister ended up with one. Then I made a purple one. I'm not sure if that's for me or not. Who am I kidding? It will inevitably get hung up in my self-indulgent, own-art filled apartment... I just don't know what to do with any of it. Anyway. Here's a photo, or two, or three of me playing with stenciling and decoupage and hometown roots.

There you have it. Wisconsin Love.

Thankful for...

Mid afternoon and I'm sitting on my laptop, alone in my apartment facebooking and passing time.... like it was any other day. But behind my internet browsing, my heart is really sad to spending the time just like this. It's Thanksgiving - a day for thanks, for love, for friends, for family.

It's Thanksgiving and my heart longs to be home in Milwaukee with my family. It feels weird that I won't be able to tell my dad to turn the volumn down on the football game. I won't get the chance to plop the cranberry sauce out of the can and into a sparkling dish just to hear that sucking sound. I won't be eating the world's best Company Potatoes. But worst of all, I won't be bowling a perfect 76 at Pioneer Lanes on Friday with my mother's side of the family.

What I realize, as I sit and feel sad to not take part in the Phelps tradition, is that THAT is what I am thankful for this year. The sadness! I am so glad that I have a family that are also my best friends. I am grateful to be excited to spend any and every minute that I can with them. They are amazing people, and I'm thankful that I love them enough to miss them right now.

Mom, Dad, Erica and Bridget... I love the shit out of you guys.


Oops... I swore... sorry Mom.


I am also thankful that my dad's side of the family is here to take me in for a meal with loved ones tonight.

Be thankful.
Be loved.

Mary

Never Enough

We all do it
We try harder than we should
We stay longer than we ought
We give more than we've got

So...
When we become exhausted...
When we end up broken hearted...
When our dreams have died...

Why can't we walk away?

Instead we
Stay broken hearted
Stay chasing dreams
Stay where we never should be

We stay at the chance
of Hope
of Love Rekindled
of Passions Found
of Dreams Come True

Because... because... walking away... is giving up. Giving up on where it all began.

So I find
myself hanging on to possiblity
myself broken hearted longer than I ought to be
myself choosing pain for it's potential

Enough should probably be enough
But somehow ... it never is

The Blues

framed up and now I'm not sure if I'm done....

Experiments

I feel like I have done nothing and everything tonight...

Fish Belly

In the belly of the whale

I sit shamed like Jonah

Failure to do the teller’s told

In the belly of the whale

I wait,

To be swallowed

Consumed by shame

I wait,

To wait

I wait,

To be spewed

Violently released

I wait

The waiting kills me,

In the belly of the whale

There’s no way out,

Of this belly in the whale

I wait

To wait in the belly of the whale

I wait

Stenciled

Apparently, I am really inspired by unemployment... I'm starting to think TIME really is a crucial part of CREATIVITY.

Started cutting out some stencils today:

Two images:

Layered look like this:

Now it's time for paint!

Something and Nothing

Maybe I'm just looking for a reason to write or maybe an exhibit actually got me....

Beyond knowing that Charles Allis had a factory in Milwaukee and was an art collector, I don't know much.  The mansion, Charles' home for seven years turned library turned museum and historic site, housed a variety of displays - some his, some not. Though his life was brief within these walls, one exhibit trapped him in this time, this place.

His bedroom was dark. The shades drawn on an already cloudy day. Musty as old houses always are. 100 years of smell in one place. A simple, minimally furnished room. The bed. The fireplace. A few steps to the center of the room and I realize there isn't much to look at. In my periphery I catch a change in light within the attached bathroom behind me. I spin. All seems normal. Again, I take to the center of the room and look towards the mantel. It's hardly seconds before I sense movement again in the same place there was nothing. I can feel it behind me. This room is not about what's there, rather what's not. He's here. He never left.

Startled. A crashing tin sounds the empty room. Loud. The sound rings bigger than the room itself. It's behind me again. And I spin to nothing again. No matter where I am there is something and nothing behind me. The sounds bring me to a derelict factory. Perhaps, Charles own plant devastated by modernity. Run down and forgotten as most factories exist today. Between the echoes of clanging metal, in the silence I hear the machines waiting for life.

He's here and he's bothered by what has come of his livelihood. His ghost has seen today. His ghost has brought today to this room. It haunts him while he haunts me. There's a draw to the bathroom tub and I can't help but feel like he died there. I feel like I could die there. Swallowed by the past. My chest is a little tight and reality seems far away.

It doesn't take long to put the exhibit together. Built-in surround system with localized sound effects. The bathroom light mocked by a projector behind frosted glass creating subtle and sudden changes in the environment. Just enough to make you second guess your sanity. Even knowing that though - I had a moment of being caught in the whispers of the past and the promise of an afterlife, and it kinda creeped me out.

More info: Charles Allis Art Museum

Driving Palette

What about driving excuses your palette?

My usual road trip food is Combos. Nacho Cheese. Pretzel shell. I have never purchased Combos anywhere other than small town, highway exit gas stations. And I have never eaten Combos outside of my drivers seat. Call it vehicular comfort food.

I'm certain we all have them.

I deviated on my route to Milwaukee Thursday, strayed, but not far... from the norm of my poor driving palette.

I stuck with the cheese (maybe it's a Wisconsin soil thing? No... I've done Combos beyond our dairy borders...) and added coffee. Yeah, I added a Starbucks Vanilla Frappuchino to my Bucky Badger Triple Mix Popcorn.

Gross.

At the time it was perfect though. Comfort as I cruised through Fort Douglas.

Can I tell you something else? Wisconsin knows how to do cheese popcorn like no other. There's a "Chicago Mix" at the best Candyland store in Minneapolis, old fashion, been doing it right for years, but their cheese can't stand up to Bucky. Not a chance.

This cheese made the kernels almost feel wet with flavor. This cheese still sits in the beds of my fingernails, thumb and pointer on my left hand, still suggesting the blazing orange glory that was. The kind of cheese, that I actually considering what I would do with my mess of a hand if I were to get in an accident while driving.... I knew the cheese would be my last image before impact.

I could go on and on about this cheese.... but this is on TV:

And I'm finding it hard to concentrate. Too Cute! Animal Planet... dammit, you got me....

art feels good

My friend's engagement photo...

so... this is what her wedding present starts out as....

piecing it together....

waiting for it to dry....

finally wrap ready....

A hot day

....and I'm bored....

....really bored....

Peanuts on a Plane

It was a holiday. The kind of holiday that family congregates and reminisces. I realize that could be any holiday and I suppose that’s why I can’t tell you which one and won’t attempt. Memory serves no indication of location or season, so I’m sticking with “It was a holiday”.

As all familial conversations do, the topics circled and circled and finally landed on travel. I’m sure an aunt was nervous about how her stomach would handle her upcoming cruise, which might have led to the conversation about various methods of vacationing. To this day, I have never vacationed on the water. Cruise ship travel is foreign to me. I might have said that aloud. It’s all together possible that my confession caused another aunt to admit to never having boarded a plane.

But here, here is where I remember. I remember that whatever holiday with whichever aunts (there are many!) in whatever roundabout way of conversation led me to telling them all about the first time I was ever on a plane.

My first flight was MKE to Jamaica with a friend’s family when I was a freshman in high school, in a thunderstorm no less, but that was not the story I told them. I told them the story of the first time I was on a plane. A different story all together.

I remembered being at a very young age, I’m talking pre-school young. I remember walking onto the plane and being greeted by friendly flight attendants. I remember fastening my buckle and how big it felt in my tiny child hands. We had peanuts, I definitely remember that. But this is where my memory ends.

Probably at the sound of my voice and the shape of my story, my mother’s ears perked up and she yelled out across the room to call my bluff. You see, my mom knows that we weren’t the kind of family to travel by plane. Ever. To anywhere. We were always a family of five driving a minivan with a pop-up camper in tow. The thing is... I know this fact too, which is why it came out of my own mouth as uncertain memory. It didn’t make sense. I’ll admit that and my mother thought she caught me. I could tell by the gloating excitement nestled under her tone. The words she yelled out, the words I could hear excitement poking through, were “Mary, you were never on a plane when you were little.”

I shook my head, maybe even slapped my knee and insisted that I had. I described again and again how much I remembered but that I didn’t remember going anywhere. It’s not that it was because we went somewhere and I have a failed memory (though this story may not disprove THAT theory), it’s because we really didn’t go anywhere. I remember we boarded, ate our peanuts and left.

I may have been red in the face at this point, persisting with my mother in front of my 900 aunts as they watched in disbelief. After all, mothers would know whether or not their 3 year old was boarding a plane alone. Minutes (feeling like hours) into my insistence, my mother’s face finally went soft. Her eyes sparkled the sparkle of recognition. She then told me about a daycare teacher that used to take us all on really cool field trips. She realized my memory was one of them.

I think about that memory now and it saddens me a bit. How travel has changed in 20 years, there’s no way a three year old today would be able to sit and eat peanuts on a plane to nowhere. More importantly, that a three year old would never have the opportunity twenty years later to disprove their upbringing to their very own mother.

 Today, I also can’t help to think ….. Which old family friend arrived at the airport that day that my daycare provider just had to pick up mid-shift, kids in tow? “Field trip” Right….

A Series of Me

This was also my experience in St. Joseph, MN. The highlight of it actually was playing with this halo.

I don't fancy myself photogenic. And it's hard to see my face as a photo over ... well, my face. But I started applying these filters to the original image and suddenly I loved the series. A series of me.
Weird. Maybe even weirdo.

                                                          

A Culinary Rebellion

I just got back from Saint Joseph, MN.
Aloud, that sentence is always followed by "where's that?"
I spent the last 10 days there and I'm not sure even I know how to answer that.
I mean... geographically, I'd answer "Near St. Cloud".
Then I'd hear, "that's like.... west, right?"
"Yeah, northwest. 75 miles up I-94"
"Oh.... what's in St. Joesph?"
That's where I don't know how to answer.
The College of St. Benedict I suppose.
There's a Taco John's and a Montessori.

I've never lived on campus.
Ever.
Not even during college.
I just did.
I made the right decision to not do that.

For 10 days,  I gained weight on campus dining service food. For a vegetarian that means salad mostly. A ton of salad to gain weight off of. The weight gain, I'm sure, had little to do with the content and more to do with the culinary context. 3 square, scheduled meals a day. Like clockwork... we'd wake, we'd eat, we'd work, we'd eat, we'd work, we'd eat, we'd work, we'd sleep. Meals were at 8am, 12pm, and 5pm on the minute stroke.

I got home and I longed to feel hunger.
I longed for culinary liberties.
To satisfy a craving.
To eat against the norm.

So this morning, waking up in my own bed that smelled only of me.... and then laying in that smell until 11... then showering for 30 minutes in my own bathroom among my own lotions and potions.... I decided today I was going to break all the meal conventions placed upon me the last 10 days. Today, I rebel.

I let myself starve until 1pm.
My 1:10 breakfast was chex mix.
There may have been some chocolate in there.
Who am I kidding?
There was chocolate in there.
And by two o'clock I wanted the ultimate rebellion to all I have eaten since June 8.
I needed the most ridiculous vegetarian meal that St. Joe's has never seen.
Could never even dream.

I wanted marinated tofu.
AND PROTEIN!
Protein of every kind.
Give me BBQ mock duck.
Give me Thai.
Give me Japanese noodles shop.
Give me stinky Greek.

I knew I needed to go big, go extreme. Even extreme for me. To prove to myself why I can never be a small town girl. That simple life can't always satisfy. So I set out.... to confuse my taste buds.


I ended up at Birchwood Cafe.

Looks unassuming. You think you have me pegged... oh veggie burger w/ ketchup.

Nah... I'm way more hardcore than that.

Black Bean Quinoa Burger.
Strawberry-Rhubarb compote.
Bib Lettuce.
Red Onion.
Provolone.
Parsley-Fennel aoili.
On a multi-grain bun.

Compote, you mean - stewed fruit.... on a burger? Yep, this is the weirdo shit I was craving.

The order of ingredients were important. The roof of your mouth hit the compote first. Sweet and tangy, feels like the kind of fruit laden drizzle you'd find on a summer salad. Perhaps with candied nuts and twice baked brie. Your brain stays there as your teeth ripped the bib lettuce. Hmmm... refreshing. Ok, I'll buy it. What hits next is the red onion, with the piercing bite that only raw red onion knows how to deliver. Then you reach patty. Rather smokey in flavor, and the provolone is really just adding the warm gooey texture while letting the smoke of the patty do it's thing. Any other cheese would over power. The bottom of the bun spread lightly with the crisp parsley-fennel aoili, almost acting like a citrus kicker at the end.

A well rounded experience I'd have to say. And satisfying no less. My only critique is the substantial bun in combo with the hearty patty, left a bit of a dry finish at the end. I might even goes as far as suggesting it open faced. Thank goodness for the dill and vinegared cucumber, glad I saved that as my juicy last bite.

In homage of today.... my dad would say.... "And you actually liked that weirdo shit?"

Wait, there's anatomy in my Easter basket

Brought the Bieber

>

I'm glad that even Justin Bieber has a place here. Right in front of Notre-Dame no less. This trio was a rather funny act ... I would consider them hip hop queens. Poppin' n' Lockin' and swishing those hips a little too easily.

Also, does the video work?

He said it

The bells, the bells!

Notre-Dame

Soaring

Lock me up and throw away the key

I should probably google this before I post it.... I'm not sure why but on many bridges there are locks decorating the fences. I like this tradition even though I don't get it. It's beautiful.

UPDATE: They are love locks. Lovers chain them there as a symbol of their devotion and throw away the key. Note to self, remember to look down at the water below. I imagine a wishing well of keys.

Tower Eiffel

Cologne Cathedral

Or should I say... Koln. No, I probably should since I don't know how to get my keyboard to put the right stresses over the o. It's a double dotter.
I had a brief layover in Cologne from my train ride from Paderborn, Germany to Paris. So I stopped to see the church and window shopped a little.

Springtime in Deutschland