Artomatic 2008

Last night I went to Artomatic 2008.  Artomatic (tagline: by artists, for everyone) is a cross-section of artists from all over the DC-metropolitan area.  It features photography, ceramics, sculptures, paintings, crafts, sketch-comedy, cabaret and even a tattoo parlour.  I went because some former coworkers of mine, Jim Tretick (Jim's site is down, otherwise I'd link) and Matthew Dailey, were exhibiting.  

Most of the art is modern or pop, so other than the photography and ceramics (which I just love in general), there wasn't that much I really liked.  I think the exhibit that affected me the most was actually Caitlin Phillips' Rebound Designs.  Ms. Phillips takes the covers of old books and turns them into handbags.  Given my reverence for books, even old, decrepit ones, I'm not sure if this is the most awesome idea I've ever seen or sacrilege.  

Still, it was an enjoyable evening, with plenty to see.  Last night we watched a sketch comedy group perform, and checked out the finalists of the second annual Sunday Source Peeps Diorama Contest.  

More importantly, I think, is the sympathetic environment and helping hand Artomatic extends to local artists.  Artomatic is growing in renown in the DC area, and thus attracts an audience full of potential buyers.  In addition to giving them a gallery venue in which to display their art (many of these artists do not have their own shops, or even work full time as artists), Artomatic artists and members give tips and pointers to new artists (including how to set up an affecting (and effective) display).  From talking to Jim, I got the impression that Artomatic is a big family - extraordinarily welcoming of new faces, but also very close.  Artists look out for each other, answer questions about their friends' and neighbors' work

I'm not sure how likely it is that DC will ever have a big art scene, but Artomatic seems like a good start.  Definitely make the time to visit before it closes on June 15.

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I Write Because

I write to alleviate tumultuously bereaved humanity;
impregnate optimistic beams of hope in the lives of
all those miserably divested,

.......

I write to wholesomely free the innocuously
impeccable; from chains of barbaric slavery; and
insanely tyrannical incarceration,

........

I write to wholeheartedly divulge the innermost of my
feelings to this unending planet; walk shoulder to
shoulder and with profound equanimity lingering in my
crystalline eyes; abreast my comrades marching towards
irrefutable righteousness,

.......

I write to incessantly broaden my perspective about
this enthralling earth; enshroud each iota of my
bedraggled demeanor; with the everlasting spirit of
timelessness,

.......

Most importantly; I write because my heart wants me
to; astoundingly proliferating into a mountain of
tantalizing seduction; even as hell rained down from
sky to forever lick the earth.

- Nikhil Parekh,
I Write Because
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A Poem for Thursday

An Echo from Willow-Wood
Christina Rossetti, ca. 1870

Two gazed into a pool, he gazed and she,
Not hand in hand, yet heart in heart, I think,
Pale and reluctant on the water's brink,
As on the brink of parting must be,
Each eyed the other's aspect, she and he,
Each felt one hungering heart leap up and sink,
Each teated bitterness which both must drink,
There on the brink of life's dividing sea.
Lilies upon the surface, deep below
Two wistful faces craving for each,
Resolute and reluctant without speech: -
A sudden ripple made the faces flow,
One moment joined, to vanish out of reach:
So those hearts joined, and ah were parted so.

Reproduced in Thomas C. Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor

- M

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The Magic Kingdom

From last week's New Yorker.


- M


The Magic Kingdom
by Kathleen Graber February 11, 2008

And as in the daily casualties of life every man is, as it were, threatened with numberless deaths, so long as it remains uncertain which of them is his fate, I would ask whether it is not better to suffer one and die, than to live in fear of all? —St. Augustine, “City of God.”

This morning, I found on a slip of paper tucked into a book
a list of questions I’d written down years ago to ask the doctor.
What if it has spread? Is it possible I’m crazy? I’ve just returned
from Florida, from visiting my mother’s last sister, who is eighty
& doing fine. At the airport, my flight grounded by a storm,
I bought a magazine, which fell open to a photograph
of three roseate spoonbills tossing down their elegant shadows
on a chartreuse field of fertilizer-production waste.
Two little girls emptied their Ziplocs of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish
onto the carpet & picked them up, one by one, with great delicacy,
before popping them into their mouths. Their mother, outside
smoking, kept an eye on them through the glass. After my cousin died,
my father died & then my brother. Next, my father’s older brother
& his wife. And, finally, after my mother died, I expected
to die myself. And because this happened very quickly
& because these were, really, almost all the people I knew,
I spent each day smashing dishes with one of my uncle’s hammers
& gluing them back together in new ways. It was strange work
& dangerous, even though I tried to protect myself—
wearing a quilted bathrobe & goggles & leather work gloves
& opening all the windows, even in snow, against the vapors
of the industrial adhesives. Most days now I get up late
& brew coffee & the smell rises from the old enamel pot
I’ve had to balance under the dark drip ever since the carafe
that came with the machine shattered in the dishwasher last month.

One morning I found a lump in my breast & my vision narrowed
to a small dot & I began to sweat. My legs & arms felt weak,
& my heart thrashed behind its bars. We were not written
to be safe. In the old tales, the woodcutter’s daughter’s path
takes her, each time, through the dark forest. There are new words
for all of this: a shot of panic becomes the rustle of glucocorticoid
signalling the sympathetic nervous system into a response
regulated by the sensitivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.
And, as I go along, these freshly minted charms clatter together
in the tender doeskin of the throat as though the larynx
were nothing if not a sack of amulets tied with a cord & worn
around the neck. But I tell you I sat on the bathroom floor for hours,
trembling. And I can tell you this because the lump was just a lump
& some days now I don’t even dread the end although I know
it will arrive. The garage is filled with buckets of broken china.
The girls chased each other & waved their arms, casting spells,
the trim of their matching gingham dresses the electric pink
of the birds’ wings. They turned each other into princesses
& super-girls & then they pretended to change back.
Oh, no. You forgot to say forever—they took turns repeating
with dramatic dismay, melting into puddles of themselves,
their sandals & sunburned knees vanishing beneath their hems.
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