patterns everywhere I look

After a life (half) lived, circumstances and coincidences remind me once again of that which I learned early on in my journey:  

Life is Pattern.  

Now whether we can borrow from math and call human behavior self-similar, I don’t have the perspective to see.  Though since the patterns seem so nauseatingly repetitive, why the fuck not...  Happy New Year

Happy Day, oh beautiful Planet!

O que num mata engorda

...So the other day I was at the dentist, and it turns out I need a tooth implant.  Basically, the dentist screws a titanium screw into my bone and another dentist slaps a crown on it.  It costs a fortune and most insurances pay for none of it, not even the crown, which is exactly like any other crown that they do pay a part of....  But the vagaries of insurance policies is not the main subject of today’s rant.

What insurance policies do pay for, and this really boggles the mind, are elective gastric bypasses.  At some other time in the history of the western world one might have marveled at the insane idea of such a procedure, nowadays, it’s so commonplace that even kids know all about them.

Elective gastric bypasses are major surgeries that people elect to do because they are too weak willed to stop over-consuming bad food. Rather than slowing down their food intake, changing their eating habits, and god forbid, exercising a little, they prefer to pay (or rather, have the insurance pay) a doctor to build a deviation in their body cavity that carries the food they will one day again over-consume around most of their stomachs in order to try to lose weight!  This is whack.

...So, there I was in the waiting room of the dentist’s office, trying damn hard not to pay attention to the big man speaking loudly on his cell phone about this and that medical test.  When he finished his phone conversation, he turned to me and the woman sitting next to me and proudly explained that he was going in for a gastric bypass and that he had been undergoing (insurance-paid) tests since August. 

He proceeded to explain how it was that after several days of an insurance-paid hospital stay, he will not be hungry at all and will have to force himself to eat 5 small meals a day until his new unnaturally reduced stomach gets used to taking in food.  The obvious question here is, “Why not just eat the 5 small meals and forgo the surgery completely in order to lose weight naturally?”  And of course, big mouth that I have, I asked it of him.  He laughed and told me that my suggestion was exactly what his father had told him to do; but that nah, he was going ahead with the bypass.  I sincerely hope that it works for him; but the idea that this man actually prefers to undergo serious, major, unnatural, invasive surgery rather than simply regulating his food intake is, well, whack.

In America, when one wonders whether or not to eat a questionable food item, the saying goes What doesn’t kill you makes you strong. Not dying and getting strong is positive; and the saying speaks to a certain American cultural attitude of yore where strength, physical and of character, was a goal to be achieved.  Under the same circumstances Brazilians say O que num mata engorda, which translates to that which does not kill you makes you fat.  On the surface, becoming fat does not seem like such a “good” until one takes into account that 31% of the Brazilian population lives under the poverty level, thus making gaining weight, something wealthy society might view as bad, a good. 

These days I’m thinking that we need to change our saying and adopt the Brazilian phrase here in the good US of A.  It would be used in a different context of course, one in which obesity runs rampant.  And one where, quite literally, that which does not kill you really makes you just fat and not very strong at all.

Grace Park, "Battling Obesity"

Addendum 1

At the time I met Mr. Gastric Bypass, a student of mine was dealing with the phenomenon of obesity in America in her artwork and  I couldn’t wait to tell her my story.  When I saw her in class again, I told her and she screamed with the kind of glee one feels at encountering common ground.  She proceeded to tell me how two of her mother’s female co-workers had the same thing done (!)  And moreover, how these women gained back all the weight they lost initially because, well, they did not change their lifestyle and eating habits (!) 

How does one justify undergoing an expensive, major, invasive, dangerous surgery that reduces one’s stomach to a tenth of its size, only to make no personal choices at self control after undergoing the procedure?  Double whack! 

 

Heironymus Bosch, Gluttony

Addendum 2

Last week I was changing in the dressing room at the gym where I swim when again I was made aware of the over-use of gastric bypasses to ostensibly solve problems of obesity, and in this case, of religious precepts and moral character as well.  I was not in the best of moods and was deeply engrossed in narcissistic thoughts about how to get in a better one.  Namely, I was involved in thoughts of the logistics of moving away from here.  Did I want to go south towards the warmth or north towards culture...   The conversation that invaded my hearing space at the time was between two women, one that was married to a Baptist pastor and the other that had a Baptist pastor as a cousin.  One of the reasons I hate this place is its zealotry, and at that moment there were two pastors too many in the room making my mood even darker.  Its uncanny how much talk of “church” I hear in that damn dressing room.

After showering and before entering the pool, I heard one of the women saying to the other, “The church made my cousin get a gastric bypass.  He was too fat to be a pastor and gluttony is a sin, so they wanted him to lose weight.”  Heh heh heh heh--- hell, I was in a horrible mood, but I couldn’t help laughing at the irony of what I was hearing.

Now, I really shun organized religion; but I don’t deny that within all scriptures there are good paths that people can truly and honestly follow within an organized church or, better yet, without it.  “Sin” is a big word that means very little to me; but yeah, gluttony is not a good thing.  However, curing gluttony through the expediency of a gastric bypass does not seem to me to actually take care of the root problem, which is one of character and not physics.  It seems to run contrary to what the teachings having to do with sinful behavior are all about. That the elders of this man's church chose to use this solution, ultimately one of marketing, only confirms my utter distrust of organized religion.  Triple whack.

O que não mata engorda. Hail hail to the new normal: a culture of quick fixes and the relinquishing of personal responsibility....

 
Paul Cadmus, Gluttony

Note:

I must admit that Cadmus’ vision of the sin of Gluttony is a little over the top and I’m having serious trouble looking at it.  although I love Paul Cadmus, I truly don’t think I could live in the same house as this picture; thank god MOMA owns it.  That being said, the other day I was listening to “Whad’ya Know?” (December 11, 2^nd hour) on the radio, and Michael opened the phone lines for calls about what could one visualize in order to stop over-eating.  To me, this painting could very well serve as that image....

halelujah

The other day I saw a bumper sticker that said "Believe on the lord Jesus and thou shall be saved".  Now, I am used to and truly sick and tired of people who sport their so-called religious beliefs on their bumpers; but all the bad English on this one, other than absolutely confirming "one more again" that, at the very least, this area of the country has absolutely no chance of "being saved", did tickle my imagination for a few minutes while I waited for the light to change.  

After a moment of reflection on the pretentiousness of using the word "thou" on a bumper sticker (and how, if the point of using it is to pretentiously  prove to the driving community that the owner of the car actually reads the bible, it should be pretentiously paired with the word "shalt"), I started having fantasies about what it might mean to believe "on" Jesus.  After a few moments of  envisioning all the ways in which I could have fun believing "on Jesus", the light turned green and we all moved on with our belief systems intact.  I've gotta move away from here... but I can't afford a space craft quite yet...Merry Christmas... Mr. Lawrence  ...

Our Times

Read a great description of it before it disappears off the web at the end of the month: The Year in Television by John Kelsey 

Indifference

Alcohol Energy Drink: Seriously?

I heard on the news that the FDA is cracking down on manufacturers of “Alcohol Energy Drinks”.  Getting older and resigned to experiencing new mental states that come from the mere passage of time, not to mention having developed a palate for alcohol that has nothing to do with alcoholic content and everything to do with taste (an expensive hobby), I was not in the market for such a thing and thus not aware of such products until recently.  Am I the only one who is having trouble with the combination of the words “Alcohol” and “Energy” in any context other than a car’s gas tank?

In our quest for ever greater levels of dissociation from reality we are surely quickly dissociating from the meaning of words; helped down the road, in this case, by some clever marketing director.  But whatever the gibberish “Four Loko” might conjure up in the minds of those who seek ever higher lows and ever lower highs, the cans of this physical oxymoron sure are “perty”.  ...Clever marketing director once more.

...And I smile... 

I finished painting Suzy's dog

My friend Suzy, long ago, commissioned me to paint a picture of Ziggy.  I finally had time to get to it last month and finished putting the last touches on it early this week.  On Thursday I was overwhelmed by a complete sense of meaninglessness.  The two events were unrelated.

One more letter to NPR

I really should stop wasting my time... the way we do things will really never change--- but I can't help myself (I can't change either):

Dear ATC;

Before your show came on today, I had just listened to Guy Sorman on PRI’s “The World” talk about the need for cutting entitlements in western countries in an efficient and fair manner.  One of his insightful observations was that Western Governments seem to discuss this without any explanation to the public.  I also actually watched the bi-partisan commission discussions about the problem on C-Span.  Again, I heard good and well-reasoned argumentation about the need to cut entitlements and possibilities about how to do it.

As the wife of an economist, I, unlike a great majority of the general public, fully understand the strain western governments are under.  However, your interview with Jan Schakowsky (democratic representative of Illinois) did nothing to enlighten anyone about anything other than to demonstrate, once again, that we are floating up the proverbial creek without a paddle. 

Yes, the two wars we just squandered tax payer money on were and are a big waste of money; but the elephant in the room of massive deficit spending is still entitlements.  Without reforming how those are doled out to an aging population, we can cut off the military entirely and we still won’t markedly change the direction in which our deficits will be going, together with our economy and our future. 

I agree with Guy Sorman that more explanation of the problem to the public is absolutely necessary, and I am hoping that the news media like you might help in this endeavor.  That might mean more research and reporting and fewer interviews with politicians.  Politicians like Schakowsky are interested in only one thing, and that is reelection.  She is most definitely not a voice of reason willing to explain anything to her constituency.  She prefers to just keep doling money out to ensure that she remains in power.  The constituency needs to first be educated about the problem; and then, only then, will politicians do what is necessary to ensure a prosperous future for this country.  A tall order, and one I am not confident about.

Sincerely,

Katya Cohen

small talk

So... I went down to the Dixie Drugstore to get my prescription pills... which I had called in on Sunday for myself and for Mr. Scruffy.

I gave lovely Fiona my name and she picked up the pills in bin C under Cohen.  As she was indicating that I sign the "prescription booklet" that all pharmacies here have us sign for some redundant bureaucratic reason or another, she looked at the scripts and asked, "Are you picking up the pills for your cat as well?"

Strung together thusly, the words do indeed make up a sentence; but the sentence makes no sense.  As I smile instinctively when things twist my mind, I smiled and said, "Sure, why not, he doesn't have time to come over to pick them up today." 

Without smiling, Fiona kept scanning my purchases on the cash register. ... Busy day at the Dixie Drugstore (?)

No Light in Sight

Nikki wins.  My husband keeps telling me that she did not win by a large margin, and he sees it (though I don't) as a sign the state is starting to be populated by thoughtful people... If so, small comfort: barring  Nikki having something like a lover in Argentina to run to in the middle of the legislative year, this means a minimum of 6 more years of darkness for South Carolina endorsed by Sarah fucking Palin.   

Thank god governors have no power in this state; somebody long ago was thinking when they set up our legislature.  ... And hey California: happy 6 more years of bankruptcy to you too... What a bagunça...

Difference and Uniformity

While Californians will go to the polls to vote on an amendment about whether or not to legalize Marijuana, we here in South Carolina get to vote on whether or not we need an amendment protecting the rights of hunters...  On the other hand, both our gubernatorial races seem to embody the same degree of “the ridiculous”; theirs perhaps on a grander scale.... 

Proof Positive of the End of the World

Hieronymous Bosch Christ Carrying the Cross (detail). 1490. Oil on panel. 

I just heard on the news: Evangelicals invade Brazilian Politics. As usual, shenanigans everywhere and both candidates lying to appease a growing evangelical constituency.  Sounds familiar?  Ugh.  ...Where oh where will I be able to live when their rule finally overcomes all rational thought about existence?  ...Christian fanatics here, Muslim fanatics there, Jewish fanatics over yonder... Where did the Enlightenment go?  Did it get so defeated by postmodernist relativism to finally allow the Middle Ages to rear its ugly head again?

Ok, I exaggerate.  The reason for the rise of religious fanaticism has more to do with a marginal global rise in per capita income than with a handful of European intellectuals.  People no longer have to toil continuously in order to just survive; they now have enough leisure time to use in the annoyance (and worse) of others.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the always welcome divided government in Washington.  Here's to giving the godless a fighting chance for a little while longer....

My bad

In Again I called Nikki Haley an air brain for spelling her name as "Nikki".  Today I learned that she is actually South Asian, so spelling her name as Nikki might make sense and I apologize for my premature assumptions about her ethnic background. I just assumed she was American because of all the other stupid things she says that I considered to be the domain of a certain strain of  "pure American knee-jerk stupidity".

a rare moment of optimism

Although I have lived in Clemson way too long, and some days can't wait to leave it, there are things about living in this cultural desert that can't be beat.  Taking a less-than-a-minute drive from my house to a "not a chain" auto parts store where the owners and employees are extra friendly and change your battery in no time flat is certainly one of them.  Another is being in the parking lot of said auto parts store and having my car mechanic drive by and yell to the man taking care of me to take extra good care of me.  Already with a warm feeling in my heart, and after cranking my brand new battery and backing out of my space, I saw a van with a sticker that said Republicans for Sheehan (Sheehan being  "not Nikki Tea Party Haley" and a democrat to boot) on it.  I left the place buoyant and thinking about all the things I like about this  place .

Again

Bend over, it’s vô’tin’ tahm again.  yoohoo.

Last night, for a few seconds I was aware of a Nikki fucking Haley commercial on the fucking tube.  ... What kind of air brain spells Nicky as Nikki anyway ...  

There it was, her silent face looming on our screen; and already I could feel a hand pushing me down.  The image was silent instead of spouting off predictable platitudes only because Curtis mutes all and every commercial.  I looked up from whatever I was doing; and when I saw her face, I was not a believer...  

I told Curt, “There’s our next Governor...”  And Curtis replied with, “I wonder why we even vote in this state,” referring to the fact that no matter who is running in this day and age, the morons of this state will always vote for a republican, no matter how stupid he or she is, or how detrimental his or her stated policies might be to those same morons that vote these clowns into office. If Satan himself were running as a republican in this state, he'd win even if his campaign were to stick his multi-pronged dick up every one of our asses as long as he reduced property taxes for rich property owners, and babbled about family values for the pious poor, while, of course, sticking his multi-pronged dick up our asses or running down to Argentina to stick his dick up his lover’s ass while preaching from the bible..

Why vote indeed...

addendum

In Heartache Allison reminds me that once I used Hidey in one of my pieces--- and so I did, in a block print.  The print was not exactly about Hidey, but about humans' dual (or dueling) tendencies towards Apollonian abstraction and Dionysian instinct... My view being that no matter what amazing things we achieve through our ability to abstract, in the end Nature always wins.   I had been reading Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, and in the introduction she uses cats and their unwavering stare to illustrate a point.  Hidey was just the model for my piece which, in the end, might just be a pretty little picture of a beautiful little cat....

wag-da-dog

Dave Hickey no longer writes a monthly column for Art in America, but thank the gods Peter Plagens still does.  Plagens is an artist, but also one hell of an incisive writer who writes with that sense of irony which makes anything I read these days worth reading.  His almost-monthly columns have a way of clarifying reality, if only for a few minutes before the miasma takes over once more.  Recently he was on a couple of panel discussions; and in this month's issue of AIA he writes about that.  The fog clears for a few moments:

... [to Irving Blum (proprietor of the great Ferus Gallery, site of Andy Warhol's first solo show as a pop artist) and David Deitch, the New York dealer recently appointed director of the Museum of Comtemporary Art in LA] I did however pose a final question: "We're here at a giant art fair, probably the most important one in the world where contemporary art auctions make the news not only in the arts sections of newspapers but in the front pages.  Some dealers-- Larry Gagosian and Eli Broad, for example -- are more famous these days than artists.  Irving, you made history with your life in the art market.  Jeffrey, you got your job at MOCA substantially because of your reputation as a dealer.  so my question is, 'With regards to contemporary art and the contemporary art market, have we come to the point where the tail is wagging the dog?'"

The answers I got were politic...

...I was struck--gobsmacked might be more accurate--- by how, in an art world where 1970's "pluralism" has grown like kudzu into a devouring relativism that has obliterated the contours of "quality", people can still talk with such suave assurance about "good art", "appropriate" prices and "the right things". ...
p. 43, AIA October, 2010

Fall

The Fall Equinox has come and gone and I forgot to mark it.  Well, I did not forget, I was aware of it, got depressed about the end of summer, and just decided not to be OCD about marking the date with a blog this year.   But here I am, a little late.... 

Yesterday, driving home from work and looking at the still beautifully green trees, I was just amazed at how fast these damned seasons go by the older I get.  Will old age, whenever that starts officially, be just one big fast action experience followed by death?  

Heartache

Scruffy and Hidey have lived with us for 17 or more years. That’s a lot of time, not only in cat years.  Scruffy has had a heart murmur from the time we got him.  He now barely has space in the right or left, I don’t remember which, ventricle of his sweet little enlarged heart.  He’s also had allergies since he was a kitten and has horrible coughing spells that seem to coincide with allergic troubles of my own.  He spends his days engaged in very specific routines of his own devising which he follows religiously except when he doesn’t.  But whatever his routine du jour might be, it always involves a lot of sleeping and almost constant purring.  A simple side glance at Scruffy will elicit a purring session.  He’s easy going and pretty much lets me do whatever I want with him, which makes it easy to give him his 6 daily pills.  I don’t know why, but when I look at Scruffy, I think of a cardinal.

Hidey, although his blood sister, is the exact opposite of Scruff.  Where he is long and lanky, she is small and compact.  He is all angles, she is all curves.  He struts, she slinks.  He’s calm, she’s between high strung and wild.  He’s been showing his age, she still looks like a kitten.  He’s an angel with occasional lapses; and she has always been our little devil with an angel face. Hidey is a hummingbird.

Though the vet calls him “the amazing cat” because of his longevity in the face of all his ailments, I’ve always thought we would lose Scruffy before Hidey.  She’s always seemed eternal due to her energy and disregard for others.  Of late she had become more sedentary and was drinking a lot of water, which I attributed to aging but took her to the vet to check out anyway.  It turns out her kidneys are failing, which indeed is a sign of old age; and although a seemingly common ailment in old cats, this fact does nothing to mitigate the pain that comes with the certainty of her imminent death.

Although there is no possibility of a kitty kidney transplant here, we can keep Hidey comfortable for at least two more years by giving her subcutaneous fluids once a week.  For two months this summer that has involved me taking her on a long 17 mile drive to the vet, something she and Scruffy simply abhor: Scruffy more because he despises being confined to a kitty carrier, Hidey because she hates and fears strangers, and to her, everybody is a stranger. 

Catching Hidey to take her to the vet has always involved a battle of wills and games of deception: a pathetic dance between a tiny four legged animal and a two legged ape who dwarfs her and should be able to catch her at will.  Going to the vet is always traumatic for everyone since, at least when she was young, Hidey would not let me near her for three days after that.  Old age has mellowed her a bit and she now speaks to me on the same day. 

To avoid the trips to the vet, Curtis and I have started giving her fluids at home every Wednesday morning.  We figured it would be less traumatic, and it is... a little....  Now the trauma comes in a different form.  I no longer feel guilty for having to deceive her into going to the vet; now the guilt comes from poking her with a needle, not being very good at it, and causing her to yelp occasionally.  That always breaks my heart and makes me want to, no shit, just fucking die, even though I know I am not hurting her that much, and that without this treatment she would really be suffering.  Tuesday nights are a nightmare of anxiety for me; and apparently last Tuesday, as she made it plainly clear (and I will explain shortly), one for Hidey as well. 

One might ask how the hell Hidey knew it was Tuesday night.  Well, she didn’t, not exactly; after all Tuesdays are an entirely human concept, and she is most definitely not one of us.... On Tuesday nights I like to bring the bag of fluids and the stand on which we hang it to the kitchen so we can hydrate her first thing on Wednesday morning and get the nightmare over with.  We’ve been doing this for more than a month now without major incidents.  Last night, thinking nothing of it, I did the same thing.  I brought out the bag of fluids, put it on the counter, put the stand beside it, said good night to the cats and went to sleep.  And as the arrogant human that I am, I forgot that animals live by different cues altogether.  They think and perceive the world differently than we do, and last Tuesday night served as a reminder of that. 

Hidey certainly did not know it was “Tuesday” per se; but as cat, she has an extraordinary sense of smell, and although she could not see the bag of fluids on the kitchen counter, she knew it was there the moment I put it there.  And her brain, though the size of a walnut (and sometimes I wonder if hers is even that big), is sophisticated enough to know exactly what the fact of that bag being on the counter meant.  It meant that she could start worrying about Wednesday, not per se.

She made her worries felt at 3 a.m. when I heard a racket in Curt’s office.  For a moment I thought it was Scruffy playing like he used to do when he was young.  I got up to see.  It was Hidey scratching the sleeping bag that stays on the bed Curt or I use when either of us can’t sleep.  Hidey was single-mindedly, as only cats can do, scratching and lifting the bag.  I thought she was playing and went to see.  She got spooked when she saw me and scampered away.  I went to investigate only to find out that the little devil had peed all over the bed and was trying to “cover it up” with the sleeping bag.  This has always been her favorite means of communication when she is either pissed off or hurting.   She usually uses the bed in our bedroom to communicate her discontent; but this particular night, ours was occupied, so why not use the one in the office to tell us how she felt about “Wednesdays”.  Message transmitted and received Hidey.

Tuesday night approaches once more.  Anxiety, apprehension, guilt and anticipation will again weave their way into my dreams.  But this night, I will keep Hidey’s fluids bag in its cupboard and its stand in the living room behind the stereo speaker.  I will bring them out only on Wednesday morning while already having a firm grip on that little bundle of energy whose life force I will one day sorely miss, piss and all.

Arrogance

An acquaintance of mine has a Brazilian au pair working for her.  I’m not sure what the arrangement is; but if I recall correctly, the young woman can stay here for two years while working as a maid with a fancy French name.  This particular “au pair” has a Brazilian boyfriend. 

This boyfriend happens to be an engineer with a job and family ties in Brazil.  He wanted to come visit her and applied for a tourist visa to do it.  He was denied. Twice. As usual the officials who denied his visa are assuming, based on nothing other than an over-inflated view of this country and a prejudicial one of all of South America, that he will want to stay here illegally. They claim he has no ties to Brazil.
Get real America!  He has a job and he has a family.  If you are an American, that does constitute as ties; but if not, it doesn't. This is a double standard born of arrogance.

Brazil is one of the economies that is actually growing in this recession we started with our failed economic policies and policing.  The boy has a job, and a skilled one, in Brazil.   Why on earth would he want to come here where there are no jobs?  And to be an illegal immigrant to boot?!   And god forbid this skilled young man tries to immigrate here legally; it would be no easier.  Our policies make it no easier for skilled individuals to move here than it makes it for the "great unwashed" we seem so scared of, and that still pour into this country like water through a sieve no matter how many bigoted and misguided policies we put into place.  They keep coming precisely because we like hiring them to do the hard and dirty labor we've long ago gotten too lazy to do well ourselves.

We need more engineers, and every year we produce fewer and fewer on account of the terrible state of our precollege education and of the fact that our people, like all peoples of dying empires, have become just plain old fat, lazy and a little stupid.  Despite the need to revitalize our country by importing skilled labor, we still make it hard for people with skills to come in. 

Our current approach to immigration, like so many things in our government, is totally dysfunctional.  Ours are the misdirected policies of an arrogant country that long ago ceased to have anything to be arrogant about.

Therapy

I've been painting the house and remembering how much I love to be outside in the sun.  Since it has been 40 degrees and 90% humidity until last week, I have jokingly called it a quasi religious experience due to the quasi hallucinatory state one can get in that kind of weather. A good friend, pure of heart, made a good case for my act actually being religion. But what good is a religion of one that is not interested in conquering minds or amassing power?  So yeah, definitely therapy:

...but then if cleanliness is close to godliness... we're soaring  (-;  ...back to work...

pet peeve of the day

assholes, like the two I saw coming out of a pickup this morning at the Lowe's, who park in handicap spaces and are not handicapped- what the fuck is up with that!

Like my swollen figs...

...a marker of the inevitable end of summer...

Thought for the day

These days I often describe myself as crazy. It's so much easier for people to accept "crazy" rather than "different", different tastes, different desires, different views, different opinions.  People accept crazy but they like to argue with different.  When one wants to be left alone, crazy is a hell of a lot easier...

The Evolution of a Joke

photo by Carlyn Tucker
stand by John Foster

I started this piece in response to an irritant and as a tongue in cheek game to dispel personal demons, not as art.  I did a quick and dirty Google search on how to make voodoo dolls, made one, and started impaling her with pins in an orderly fashion. 

I have always loved Lucas Samaras’ work, especially all those pieces in which he obsessively covered and transformed objects of personal significance with pins. The act of repetitively and consciously skewering and transmuting my own object with pins quickly became reflective, and I acquired a haptic sense of appreciation for what Samaras had done so long ago.  Still fun to make, the doll was no longer just a joke.  Altered physically by acquiring heft and an outer shell, it became a fetish embodying characteristics that also had to do with art.

Lucas Samaras

From the beginning, as part of the joke, it was my intention to photograph the doll after each “pinning session” and to download the pictures to a blog I created for that purpose at  http://voodart.blogspot.com/.  In all but the last couple of entries in which the doll’s face is covered and defined by real multicolored pins, I had fun using Photoshop to virtually cover her face with John Baldessari-like face-obliterating shapes.   And as I played with these during the object’s physical transformation from doll to pin cushion, I forgot Baldessari’s and started creating masks of my own. 

John Baldessari

At some point during the process of photographing and blogging, I also decided to compose one picture using the blog entries in order to have it printed on paper, thus effecting one more transubstantiation from virtual into real space as I had done with the use of colored pins on the doll’s face.  What started as a joke acquired a transformative magic all its own; and when Flemming called telling me she had run across my blog and wanted to show the doll and its evolution at Riverworks, the metamorphosis was complete.