girl eat machine.

*****

I’ve been chewing over a series of crayon portraits of politicians for a few months now. Over the past two days, I finally took the idea a little further. I’m not entirely sure yet what will become of it/them, but I’m enjoying the work. Crayon (crayola, not conte) is a neat medium; great for building. I’m posting this morning’s round of portraits. It’s a toss up whether I prefer Obama Green or McCain Red (not to ignore The Honorable, of course…).

This post also reminds me of my need to secure a scanner.

Yeah, about that “Dear Sawa”…I’m trying to recycle pages of my art pad. On this particular page there was a half-drawn truck and, apparently, a draft page I used when writing a *giant* letter to my dear friend, Sara. “Sawa” is, of course, Big Stupid Monster from Labyrinth for “Sara.” So, that makes sense. (Ahem.)

Ruth Bader-Ginsberg. Gotta send some love to the third branch. Ruthie’s portrait is not done yet — note the demon eyes (or lack thereof) — but she’s close. She’s currently sharing a page with a rough outline for Hillary Clinton (see yellow stripe, bottom right). You can tell from her eyebrows that she has mixed feelings about it.

John McCain. The campaign trail line-up (+ Justice Bader-Ginsberg and some freak combination of Joe Biden, John McCain, and G. Dub — “Joe John Bush”*) was a bit of an accident…Although I did follow it up by adding a certain ex-governor to an updated portrait of my first crayola president. I’d like to be more creative than using this series/medium to simply rehash the ‘08 Campaign, so consider the above a warm up for a budding project.

More pictures to come.

P.S. You can take a peek at “Joe John”*  in the first image in this post — he’s on the left, winkin’ atcha. Kinda.

…Because I’m unusually prolific tonight (so much for finishing that last Feat) AND because it’s always more interesting to hear someone of note discuss Things rather than, say, me, I’m going to step aside and let Jorge Louis Borges discuss art with you.

So I’m literally up to my elbows in paper when I reach into the bags I’ve stuffed and I can’t help but ask a stupid question: Why?

Why hoard all this Stuff? Sure, insurance statements and pay stubs are important, but why birthday cards? Why notes? Why the images I’ve clipped from newspapers? I’m an on-again, off-again collage artist and a creative recycler convinced that I can reuse everything I touch — remix it, if you will –but when the projects that I save for fail to manifest, I ask again: what am I doing?

I wish I could take these bags and just dump them in the recycling bin…but I’m stuck on another thought: it’s not just paper that I save, it’s images. When something aesthetically strikes a cord, my impulse is to savor then save it. I tell myself it’s because I’m going to find another way to display it, or that it will have some relevance later, but really? I think my behavor’s more like a magpie’s. A desperate, existential-crisis-prone magpie. A sentimental magpie. (Take your pick.)

Is the collection of clippings just a form of hoarding or is it a way of interacting with an image? Can you do anything else with an image besides stare at it? I turn the question to you: What’s the point of “image consumption?” Is it a one-time deal or a long-term relationship? Can I write in vaguer terms and make more generalizations in a paragraph full of questions?

(*Yes.)

This weekend I undertook a Feat, an old school, Greco-Roman (or Celtic, if you’re reading this, Dad), land-a-20 Feat with a capital “f” and a silent “epic”. Mortals call it “spring cleaning,” but I was playing god. This weekend, I realigned the spine of my life.

Everything turned over, cleaned, inspected, weighed, evaluated, commented, fixed, sewn, planted, budgeted, clothed, shod, rearranged, refreshed, restocked, renewed…by Monday morning.

Everything…except for my papers. Squeezed into three over-stuffed NPR tote bags, my “papers” (vague..) have left a stain on the order of my lair. I’m addressing that, even as I type this, but it’s a slow process. There are so many (hilarious) hidden gems in my notes and margins. Doodles literal, descriptive, figurative. Frustrated asides. Over-enthusiastic travel plans. Half-started letters. Postcards. Life goals sketched out last summer. Math. Nonsensical flotsam from past jobs and conferences. I keep these things exactly for a moment like this, where I can sit on the floor of my room and sift through myself, experiencing at once an intimacy (my words, my hand, my state of mind) and distance (all past tense, disconnected, gone) that is palpable.

I thought it would be interesting to share the more…interesting fair. We’ll start with a mind-boggling aside (whose context TOTALLY escapes me…) and see where we go from there.

[EDIT: 10:53 a.m. I have compiled the following view of a random selection of scraps. Bonus points if you can identify my lens cap. Pat on the head if you find the scissors.]

1. Doodle of buses with Swedish vocab drawn while waiting for the metro at Roslyn station (DC). (Bilar = cars.)
2. A BookFace Man. No explanation.
3. The script for a Birthday Party Safari tour of the National Zoo.
4. Birthday cards. The first one shows a man wiggling his hips. (Scandalous!)
5. A bio pic of Mike Musgrove of the Washington Post. The text reads, “The @Play column will return next week.”
6. “You’re In The Top 15 Baby!” a hilarious little poem-in-book-form a friend passed on to me (and many strangers) for Valentines Day 2009. (From Wesleyan.)
7. A St. Patrick’s card I made for my Dad — it’s your day, Pop! — some time last fall and forgot about. Whoops.
8. Random magazine clipping of a woman on a beach.
9. Discarded logo for a discarded blog category from the planning stages of NPR In Other Words.
10.Superman comic ripoff, shows the Man of Steel as Clark Kent talking about free press and then freaking out about a fireball.
11.Karl’s notes about attraction, probably recorded in research following a Radio Lab listening session. (Strange, since we didn’t catch that episode together.) Favorite line, “Vasopressin: during sexual activity, initiates and supports patterns of activity that support violence towards other men.”
12. Interpretations of people I interacted with on the metro between Chinatown and Woodley Park one evening.