THE BACKYARD

Granderizing

I've been making trees out of paper. Trees from the inside envelopes of my bank statements. Trees from collected tree sections from any book you can imagine. GRANGERIZING. like exquisite corpses. knights hanging from the tree tops. animals living below. Abstracted minimal forests from wood found out on the trails at Crag Lake...propped up skid style. against a wall. leaning.
i come from loggers.

The bird. I couldn't resist 'sticking a bird on it'...or putting a bird on it. it's an ezra jack keats' bird. i love him.

this is all part of a larger whole and just a fraction of the work i produced at the retreat.

this includes: a (two?) new 'selves-type' book(s), a boxed zine series (half-done? three quarters? hard to say. there is so much tricky poetry that needs much work. that could last years).....an angora quilt from the scraps of bunnies (so far looking like satellite photo of landmass/continents. tone on tone on tone), carefully collected fur scraps (from the tannery) and antique textiles. also. a painting series. forgot about that. some inspired by 'the joy of sex'. have u looked at that book? it's quite messed but the drawings/illustrations are beautiful. the text is demented. that book may have caused some damage? dont quote me on that.

things go into projects/sections or it will decided if it all gets mashed together and made sense of.
hard to say. may not see the light of day.

i havent made work at this volume in fifteen years.

Amy Sedaris

We share some initials. 

Here we are. That's me, Lisa Smolkin, a Chapters employee, a bunny, a book(s), some guy, a bottle of water and Amy Sedaris
That was something else.
(12.2010)

IT'S ALIVE!

That's my aluminum foil ball. I've been working on it for three years. it may not look like much but it is dense.
I started with nothing.
and went from there.

The big news is the Sobey Art Award nomination. We share some initials. I'm so thrilled about this long list.

I intend on posting images from the Ted Harrison Artists' Retreat that i just finished up. That was something.

Mr. Mojo Rising

This guy is heading back to Singapore shortly. I've been re-doing his original cape. A puppy mauled the first one. Here he is hanging out in the Yukon woods back in the fall. (and he is so not singing 'All By Myself' to himself. Not).
M named him 'Mojo'.

I watched an Emily Carr documentary tonight  'Winds Of  Heaven' @ the film festival. That was very great. So much good footage. All I want to do now is make a totem pole. I've been thinking about it for awhile now.

btw. That Joan Rivers' PIECE OF WORK documentary is excellent. Highly recommended. My jaw dropped on 2 or 3 times. I couldn't believe the stuff she was saying. She is merciless. And amazing. 75! Unstoppable. 

"Never Let Me Go"

I'm on a Carey Mulligan jag so i got 'Never Let Me Go' and 'The Greatest' out of the friendly neighborhood movie rental joint Up Here in Whitehorse. (CM makes good choices. i like to watch shtars rise 2 fame, fame. GO CM).

NEVER LET ME GO (a 2010 British dystopian drama film based on the 2005 novel of the same name written by Kazuo Ishiguro) is so, so, so good. It is My Kind Of Movie. I'm 3/4s the way through because i was watching it so late last night and weeping willow and had to 'pause it' for 24 hrs so that i may collect myself for the final 1/4 heartbreaker.

It is about eternal love and clones. In England.

It's weird that i would 'advertise' a movie but I'm only trying to let you know it's so good & WATCH IT. cos when we tell each other these things we are really only talking about ourselves.
it's a human condition.
to talk about things this way. 

And besides. Next time we see each other we will have something to talk about.

I'm also on my omnipresent 'the EXORCIST' jag (research for a project) and found this great image above which fits (dovetails) nicely with the lisa germano album art for 'lullabye for liquid pig. In classic Ahlers form, i still havent listened to the album.  In other classic Ahlers form, i've probably already 'blogged' this image but.  There Is No Time Like the Present).

right.

THERE IS ONLY ONE STORY is a poem by Erica Jong

(thank you L.S)

what's this business?

NicksBucks and Room With A View. Once Helena Bonham Carter guest starred in an episode of Miami Vice...as Sonny's girlfriend! What a shock that was.