hallowhat?

I spent this past weekend with family and during our visit I asked my five-year old niece what I should be for Halloween. Twice, actually. The first time she said very seriously that I should just be myself, that adults usually just go as themselves. The second time it came up she offered this suggestion: white dress, white wig, carrying a piece of vanilla cake. What would I be? A lady. But what would I be called? My name, of course.

The reality, sadly, is that I'm not going as anything and I'm not really going anywhere. I had class today and mountains of reading and other stuff to do for my twelve hours of class tomorrow. I'm not a total party-pooper, though. I asked willing volunteers to share their Halloween traditions, plans, costume details, etc., last night before my grad group critique. I don't usually coerce people into participating, but I liked the idea of commemorating an event in this way before it's happened. Here's what they shared:











I'm not even eating candy. I had a can of split pea soup and some wheat thins. Now that's depressing!

Anyway, the weekend was a nice break from the hectic past couple of weeks. I took a break from my problematic works in progress to recycle a series of postcard-sized pieces I screenprinted last semester to include in the grad show at the Mission Hill building, in connection with the Roxbury Open Studios this past weekend.


It's called "everything round invites a caress." The title is from Gaston Bachelard's "Poetics of Space." I was going to call it "the phenomenology of roundness," after his final chapter of the same name, but Neal thought that might come off as a little pretentious. He said a good title should be subjunctive. So I asked him if my alternate title, the one I went with in the end and the one he preferred, was subjunctive and he said no. I'm still trying to figure out what a subjunctive title is. Anyway, each card, printed with graphic representations of objects from my past, some of which repeat, has a vellum overlay with quotes taken from all the chick flicks I watched over the summer months.


The text in this detail reads: "I tried taking pictures, but they were so mediocre. I guess every girl goes through a photography phase. You know, horses... taking pictures of your feet." It's from Sophia Coppola's "Lost in Translation." I like the relationship to photography, which wasn't totally intentional. I like the way the vellum blurs the image underneath, making it appear to be out of focus. Sophia Coppola's movies are really at the heart of what inspires me to make work like this, all pink and girlie and ephemeral. It makes sense, actually, that I would spend some time with dreamy work like this in order to take a break from the reality of all the questions I still need to answer about my other projects. Or, in the words of one of the boys in "Virgin Suicides," "What we have here is a dreamer. Someone completely out of touch with reality." Well, maybe just for a little while...