Wexford Girl

Yoshitomo Nara

I LOVE this Japanese artist. He paints angry little girls and puppies. His style is sweet but menacing; sometimes his girls are smoking, or holding knives, or baring fangs. I think I first encountered his work in a store that stocks his books and toys of his characters, probably Giant Robot or Zinc Details, two wonderful stores I've mentioned before.

It says here in the book of postcards I have that his graphic style is influenced by "Japanese anime, poetry, graffiti, and punk rock."

 

Before Finals

Time for another poem. This one was originally called "Leaving Cert" because that's the exam you take at the end of high school in Ireland. But then I realized that no one over here in the U.S. would know what it meant.

Before Finals

We sit outside at lunchtime, on a square of tarmac,
eat limp sandwiches, and draw on one another’s arms.
Bottlegreen uniforms, red ties, white shirts.
Skirts up, socks down, to pinken our legs in the gusty rays.
Afternoon classrooms, dusty wedges of light from outside
We are floating through the weeks before school ends.

Whine of lawn mowers, and late tennis in the street
Sweaters stretched wrist to wrist on the ground for the net.
Downtown after school, boys in bunches, laughing
one calls out hello and I flush with the pleasure of being known.
The casual way he says my name, my cool “hi” back.

I push my bike home, up Summerhill,
Early summer, birds chatting in the high trees.
Lying on the grass out the back reading Great Expectations
until the air carries a chill of dusk, and the words float together.
Organic chemistry late at night — the elegance of carbon.
In my head before I sleep, the pulse of everything I will forget.

Gocco and Felt

I took a class in Gocco printing at Paper Source a while ago and it was wonderful. Such a tidy little screenprinting device. I promptly came home and purchased one on eBay - which I have yet to use; too much else going on! I made tons of cards in the class. So did everyone else. It was held in the basement of the store and the instructor kept running upstairs and coming back with armfuls of blank cards and paper. I think most people certainly got their money's worth in material alone. We could also use as many screens, bulbs, and ink as we wanted, good deal for a class that cost $65!

Here is a card I did in the class from a Xerox of a tracing I did from a magazine. I glued on pieces of felt. The other card is just felt and black pen.

Walloped Eggs

This is lunch. Looks a bit disgusting but it's filling and very tasty. My grandmother used to make me a walloped egg for teatime when I was small. You take a warm hard-boiled egg (or in this case two because I am no longer five and I'm hungry) and wallop it, i.e., chop it into bits with a spoon, some salt, and a knob of butter.

Yummm! (I stole the mug many years ago from the Max's that used to be on 2nd and Market)

Fay Jones

I stumbled on a Fay Jones exhibition about four years ago in Portland. I think she's based there. I instantly loved her work and bought the book they were selling at the exhibition. She paints a lot of big, spontaneous pieces filled with sailors, donkeys, and dreamy women with big dresses. They are haunting and don't feel quite real. The composition always works beautifully and feels inevitable; I could stare at her work forever.

Here's one of her pieces. I realize I could be trampling on copyright issues, so if someone asks me to take it down I will.

Jim Houser

I find Jim Houser's art so fun, silly, and thought-provoking. He makes me want to run right to my paints and start something new. In fact, I think he was the reason I started doing scalloped edges; he paints them a lot.

He's a well-known artist now and quite expensive. The book I bought of his work however, Babel, was only $25 at Giant Robot in the Haight, which is one of my favorite places to go for cool new art books. It's a small hardback with lots of images of his work, and photos of his installations. There are also photos of him painting the walls for his installations with his friends, playing with a basketball, holding a baby, sitting on the floor. Artists - they're just like us.

Here's a page from the book.

Time for a Poem

I think I'll occasionally post a poem here. I haven't written any new ones for ages, but maybe I'll be inspired by digging up old ones. I wrote this circa 1996. I should mention that I'm originally from Ireland (Wexford) and this is a memory from a summer I spent on my uncle's farm in County Kerry when I was 12.

Heifers

Drizzle settles on my face
and on my bare legs
here at the foot of the hill.
Above, Auntie Margaret lumbers swiftly through the bracken
calling to the heifers.
White arms, turquoise housecoat, gleam against the dark bluff.
Her voice peals through the mist.
Four heifers, left for weeks on the wind-scrubbed hillside,
blinking slowly, eating carefully,
ears twitching at the far below boom of the Atlantic,
until a man from back near Dingle
sends my uncle a check for all four.
I am waiting, at the foot of this hill
to redirect their heavy steaming descent
to the waiting truck.
I was told, “Don’t let them run into the road, girleen,
or go flying over the cliff.”
She still calls to the four, to the cold stones.
I swish a stick through long grass,
watch my breath,
try to ready myself for the four of them
to grow out of the mist
and trample at me in confusion,
the girl blocking their path to the cliff
and to the sea below.

Point Reyes

I wonder what the bonny prince and Camilla thought of Point Reyes. They ate at Manka's in Inverness, and I heard they were also going to eat at the great little breakfast place in Point Reyes Station.

I feel so lucky that such a wonderful place is within an hour of where I live. We love going up there, to take a breathtaking walk around Chimney Rock, or maybe make the hike down and back the hundreds of steps to the lighthouse. We always finish off our trip by picking up some cold beers and sandwiches on crusty bread at the little general store in Marshall, and going to the Hog Island oyster farm to have a picnic with a dozen or so briny oysters and a gorgeous view of Tomales Bay.

Here's a photo Eric took the last time we were up there. It's one of my favorites.

Amy Ruppel Likes to Draw and Paint

One of the best artists I know is my dear friend Amy Ruppel. Ever since I've known her, she has inspired me to create more, and when I'm around her in Portland I always come away feeling more creative and filled with new ideas. She hangs out with other awesome artists, and always knows the best places to visit in Portland (like the adorable Motel).

Get on her email list to be informed of her frequent online art sales, which always sell out in minutes!

Winter is Here

It's rainy and cold. Driving home from work today with Eric, I had the genius idea to pick up pho for dinner. So we stopped and got two steaming pots of it at Americana on Balboa, mixing noodles, fresh basil and parsley, and bean sprouts with the hot salty broth. Delicious!

Before that, we stopped at Albert and Shannon's new maternity store, Due. It's a gorgeous space near Ella's on Presidio. What a job they have done with the inside. The color scheme of pale pink and black and white looks very Parisian. And the clothes! I don't care if I'm not pregnant, I want to shop there. Shannon wants me to paint something in the dressing rooms, so I'll have to think about that. Maybe simple black line drawings would work best, something that wouldn't detract from the stunning floor-sweeping curtains.

Now I am working on a painting and having some pistachio ice cream.