first of all, doesn’t this look like a drawing by amy wilson?

ha!

no really, this was on my exam today (and i totally rocked the answer, by the way, so what’s up now). but seriously, this object has some severe anti-semitism attached to it.

the host itself was originally given by Pope Eugenius IV to Philip the Good in 1433 as a gift of gratitude, and it was housed in Sainte-Chapelle. this image is actually an addition to the Book of Hours of Mary of Burgundy, ca. 1505-an illustration of the actual thing.

the text beside it in Mary’s book tells of a story of a Jew, dubbed a “non-believer”, striking the host and causing it to “bleed profusely”. a reinaction of the crucifixtion, kind of. this sort of emphasized the split between old religion and new (Christianity and Judaism) and serves as evidence of the reports of supposed brutality and agression from the Jews towards Christians and their objects.

not to bore everyone, but i keep staring at this thing. i mean, i can’t really imagine having this added to my prayer book after having it for twenty years, and really believing that a Jewish person manhandled it and caused it to bleed the blood of Christ. the power of images is much different now, obviously. but what a creepy way of reminding yourself that Jewish people are supposedly out to get your religion.

please, i’m not judging, i’m only stunned. the fifteenth century mind worked so differently, at least in the spiritual sense, than mine. after i finished my answer, i stared at my blue book for a second, then at the screen, and temporarily left my academic realm of memorized dates and practiced answers and was like, “what the fuck?” i thought of other pictures that i’ve seen recently, pertaining to modern unrest in the Holy Land, and saw a disheartening, less beautiful continuation.

i’m not going to cite the page i found these on; i’m not trying to be a plaigerist, it’s that the site has a ton of really gruesome photos and i also don’t want to be misread as promoting it. i don’t think i can really feel one way or the other about it, 100%, because i have no involvement in it and no experience, and therefore find it really problematic to claim my position in the matter. my purpose here is to comment on the way the propaghanda has developed.

think: host vs structure

obviously: blood, bleeding.

ok,  no more grim posts for a while.

i think it has to do with all the crucifixtion wounds and flagellations and church divisions i’ve been reading about all semester.

hey, at least i’m not  drawing bloody-eyed self-portraits or anything.

so i had this crazy dream last night that carlos built me these handlebars for my bike that made absolutely no sense. the best part was they were so comfortable, and had actually been my design. i was killing these big hills, and as i passed people by, whether they were standing on the sidewalk, driving a car, or on a bike, everyone asked me about them. and i just continued up the hills, waving, and saying “yes, they’re my design, custom built, designed for speed and tough inclines. the simplest idea, i’m amazed i’m the first to think of it.”

but really, they were weird. instead of regular bars, a single hook was attached to the stem. it was lateral and positioned to be parallel with my front wheel. and, of course, it was powedercoated white. i could either ride upright, holding onto it with one hand to give my arms and back a break, or i could be aerodynamic and hunched over, holding it with both hands, elbows bent. then, much lower, by the steer tube, i had racing drops. see, this all comes from a type of bike carlos told me about during our valentine’s dinner date last night. i forget what it’s called so i couldn’t find the exact model, but it is something really close to this. so i drew a quick pic of my crazy dream bike. it was supposed to be my pink bike, but for some reason it was blue in my dream.

the set up made for a really awkward hand position.

and i also wanted to add, i made a few of my “biographical analysis” books into a different kind of book. i am just having trouble figuring out what kind of slip cover i want them to slide into, cause they need something extra to a) boost the presentation and b) make the act of opening it more exciting. here’s what i have so far:

if you have any ideas, let me in on them!

oh, and i jst wanted to share this pic from my last vacation. i was reminded of it after reading the dog show reveiw on POSTSKUNK. (see blogroll).

this is true animal lover amazingness.

i know my birthday was over a month ago (and i realize it’s been 2.5 weeks since my last post. i’m not slacking, i just didn’t have too much to put up here) but i just found the pics i took of the vegan tank cake she made me for my party. it’s honestly theone of the most amazing things anyone has ever made me, and i will remember it forever.

nicole and stephen give tank cake a serious thumb’s up

there were all kinds of little plastic figurines, like pirate birds and smurfs, on the cake and on the cardboard plate, either firing the tank or getting run over.

and yes, those are mike and  ike’s for the roller chains. cutting that thing was one of the hardest things i’ve ever done.

as i write this post, i’m desperatley trying to train my dog to not writhe on the couch and chew on my hands while i try to do something other than play with him. i think he is turning into an attention fiend.

i started writing a small comic about our cat, yusef. i know, it’s weird. like Mutts or Get Fuzzy or worse, Garfield.

no, i’m going to just throw it out there now that my comic is not a strip, it’s more like narrative of Yusef’s life with some crazy quick drawings loosely illustrating particular scenes. the first one i made is only six pages long, but it starts out the story when Yusef meets Small, who, as some of you already know, is a cat that i outright stole from her irresponsible, unworthy owner. don’t frown at me, either, cause the psycho never even called me. i’m pretty sure she had nowhere to keep her and was counting on someone at the house wanting her as their own. either that or she just felt guilty for dumping this cat off at a house she she spent two nights at over a period of four months and never bought even a bag of catfood to leave in her abscense.

so, to clarify, i’m not a crazy cat lady who is going to draw pictures of overfed cats sputtering and dribbling out Cathy-esque dialougue. i just feel like i’ve been making a lot of serious drawings for a long time (well, serious according to me, but ther e’s always those awkward moments when someone will look at one of my drawings for a long time and laugh. sometimes i think it’s what people do when they are confronted with something that they don’t connect with at all but don’t want to crate an awkward situation by not saying anything or critiquing it. i think? i’m not entirely sure, i usually just laugh with them, and act like they got some huge joke i wrote in there that no one else got) and making this little comic that i can continue on my own schedule seemed like something fun to do.

plus, since we adopted this dog, i haven’t been able to spend as much time with the cats because they are too preoccupied with hiding from him. small is often on top of the bathroom and yusef hides in the crawlspace under our kitchen cabinets, and refuses to sit on my lap. i’ve been feeling really guilty about the whole situation (because what i do, generally, is find things to feel guilty about) so i thought that making these little narratives would make me feel better.

so here is the first one (i haven’t made a cover yet):

and it’s not something that i spend a lot of time on, either. the quickness of it kind of turns into a style different than how i usually work. there’s ink splotches where some of the words smeared, and if i ever print these i’ll definately have to fix that.

while we’re on the subject of animals, and whatnot, i’m making a mural in our bedroom based off a sketch i did of a robotic bird a few months ago. what sucks is that i went over to my work area the other day, and i guess i left a half-full cup of coffee nearby, and one of the animals knocked it over onto some things- like the original drawing. which, unfortunatly, i never backed up. my fault. anyway, it’s weird to paint really large, on a wall, with acrylic, especially when the original drawing was in watercolor and ink and pretty small, like about 4″ x 5″.

here is the original drawing, complete with coffee stains:

and the text here is muddled, so i’ll reiterate here:

“i’ve come to realize that a common visual language no longer exists in the paintings of my lifetime. i don’t think one has existed for a long time. i’d like to think it’s because we’re past that now; no need for coding; freedom of expression. but for the worse, i believe it is because no one could arrive at a shared language and there is no desire for a communicative connection with one another. instead everyone is shouting from opposite directions, and everything is muffled together and incoherent.”

and at the top it says

“no one can understand anything in result”

maybe one of my more preachy in-drawing texts, but it just sort of came out while i was working on a power point presentation for a medieval art history class whose topic was iconography that represented courtly love, according to this author whose name i can’t remember. or i may have created a mental block because i couldn’t stand his writing. anyway, this bird looked like a falcon to me, which was one of the symbols of my presentation, so i made him holding a sweetmeat, or bechin, which was one of the early representations of the heart in connection with romantic love. the whole project, along with other classes heavy in renaissance/medieval iconography, made me really nostalgic for that type of communication. i feel as though now, when artists use those icons in their work to make some sort of reference or comparision, it is appreciated by few (obviously, most people aren’t art historians) and initiates a lot of eye-rolling. like “how academic. can you be more edgy, please?” and maybe this is a result of there being no shared iconography in modern art that i can think of.

ok, this arguement can get really problematic, and i don’t have it in me to answer these questions. what is considered iconography in modern art can be argeuable, and also the fact that i’mreferring largely to american art can also be problematic because the history of american art is much shorter than european, african and asian art. we haven’t had the same long history of didactic and devotional art so maybe this arguement doesn’t hold court. regardless, being very far removed from that era of explicit symbolism, i sort of find it ideal. i think it is because sometimes, when i pick up an issue of artforum or art in america or any other contemporary art rag, i feel lost.

and then i look at the other end of the spectrum, like an issue of juxtapoze (or however they spell it) and i cringe.

yes, it’s been really irritating. i’ve made a bunch of books in this style, and have never had any difficulty folding them up and getting the pages to turn correctly. i actually designed this book like this because of the simplicity of the fold and the cost efficiency of printing a single, colorful page. i measured everything, and i cannot for the life of me get it to work. i spent like $15 making copies that went to waste. and the format of the drawings is so small that i can’t figure out how to redesign it for printing. well, cost-efficient printing. so for now, it’s destined for a digital life. i saved the last two images wrong, so see the bottom of the layout for page 3 and the front and back cover (i know, confusing, but i don’t have photoshop at home to fix it).

this is one of the opening pages from a collaborative journal that i made with my friend alexis, who lives in california. yes, we do the cute snail-mailing back and forth. seriously, opening this package every few weeks and looking at her new drawings was like christmas.

it was also like having a drawn-out (ha ha pun!) conversation, one that just isn’t possible via phone or internet. i originally started a blog on blogger that was to be dedicated just to these drawings. then i could never get the formatting right, and our second (and current) journal is coming about more slowly, so i figured i’d just include it in this blog as we get it scanned.
‘m not going to put up any of her pages here, unless i get her permission-but they are truly beautiful. plus, she’s getting her master’s in poetry, so, you know, her stuff is eloquent and shit.

and another

…

IMG_0437

Originally uploaded by avuocolo

making this was kind of an experience. watercolor and ink pen on gesso on canvas. i really love how weird the imagery got on this one. the weird tentacled torso, somehow attached to the hovering outlet, is holding a gun that is shooting goldfish back into the pond. the goldfish are being greeted by tadpoles, which are hanging out next to a lilypad with a mournful frog sitting on it in the most impossible way. and there is a plug mixed up in the petals.

it sounds like a donovan or melanie song or something. where was i in the late sixties?

IMG_0434

Originally uploaded by avuocolo

i found an old photograph in Time magazine of these little girls in “red riding caps” standing in a street in Germany, all sort of huddled together. there was a paragraph written about them, and it’s been a while since i’ve read it, but it made some claim that these outfits were in some French and German versions of Little Red Riding Hood (e.g. Le Petit Chaperon Rouge). i noticed the photograph because the girls were all huddled together-some looked really nervous, some looked like they were joking around, and there was just one who looked at the camera.

if you read deconstructions of Little Red Riding Hood, you’ll find a lot of feminist theory and imposed sexual symbolism and interpretation. it’s funny, because i drew the vagina in there way before i read any of this stuff. it sort of just came out. i was thinking about WWII, which was around the time this photograph was taken. hence the claustrophobic room with the abstract-expressionist wall.

the text, which is impossible to read, is this:

“during daylight hours, they could see the men hiding in the trenches. (whether or not they can see the teeth, they are still there). and in their house they saw no sun. saturday came and the girls dressed and tied their riding caps on tight. even though it was raining artillery fire, far off, they still went out to play. their mother had always said to make at least one public appearance a week, otherwise their beauty would be wasted on their living room walls.”

“and then who would remember them”

it feels strange for me to be making this text legible, because i usually purposely make my handwriting difficult to read, and kind of cringe at the idea of someone reading it. i’m trying to get over that, though, because text is meant to be read.

hickorybud

Originally uploaded by avuocolo

i’ve been drawing- a lot- in the past two years. most of my drawings end up in my journals, on scraps of watercolor or various other thick papers, or i give them away. as was the case with this drawing. but, i shouldn’t complain, because i began this drawing with the intention of giving it away.

i just kind of miss it.

it’s small, postcard size. i’ve started working bigger with watercolor, and i sort of like it, but i end up mixing acrylic in it because i find my control of the medium is better in smaller compositions.