Quills and Frills-1/31/2015 Norman Mailer

Aleathia says:

Happy Birthday Norman Mailer who would have been 92 today.  Thank you for writing long books that scare the shit out of me due to sheer size and imagined content.  Someday I will tackle your books, someday.

"I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for."--Norman Mailer

Art Bomb-1/30/2015 Anselm Kiefer and a poem

Aleathia says:

On one of my trips a few summers ago to see some major art museums, I came across this piece by Anselm Kiefer that blew me away.  It inspired a poem out of me.  I think that is one of the best compliments that art can receive is when it builds the desire in another person to create in a reactionary fashion.  I like his work because it has deep meaning and when you see it in person you feel the depth of it with how thick the paint is on the canvas and the sheer enormity of the pieces.  I cried in front of this one.  No one else was there.  I think pieces like this scare people.  They are the ones I am drawn to.

Anselm Kiefer

Innenraum, 1981

Everything is buried here
hope
        imagination
                        wonder
                                  breath
                                           blood.

The killing is orderly
in direction
bone dust and burnt
flesh an amazing cloud
of putrid fallout
rising into the starred
                          scarred
                          barred
                       night.

All roads lead
to the black door.

Aleathia Drehmer 2011

OM-1/25/2015 Time Does Not Heal All Wounds

Aleathia says:

 I wasn't going to blog today because I didn't feel like I had anything to share but the cloud of sadness that has been hovering over me for the last week.  The anniversary of my mother's death is in a few days.  I have been trying to hold strong and not be a blubbering baby, but I must admit that at night, when I am alone, I sit here and cry silently.  I have unanswered questions that will never find relief.  I have a string of regrets sewn together with the tendrils of  the ephemeral why.  There was so much more we had to say to each other now that I had found love and happiness; now that I knew, in essence, who I really was supposed to be.  That was taken away from me.  Some days are better than others.  I'm a sentimental git so the weepy, heartbreaking days are hard to let go of.

Through all of this Michael quietly waits for me to be ok.  Sometimes he hugs me while I'm crying and washing the dishes.  He doesn't have to say anything, because I know what he will say.  I know he understands this pain as we have both lost our mothers at a young age.  Men deal with things differently.  He got angry and drank.  I have been sullen and distant.  Neither of them cure what ails us.  Time doesn't heal the wounds, I have found, but I think somewhere it gives you perspective.  He is almost 4 years out from losing his mom and he only made the turn around last year.  I know there is hope for me yet.  Stay busy.  Don't bury it.  But most of all, keep loving.

I was reading "All The King's Men" this morning and there is a passage I would like to share.  In a round about way it was why I turned the computer on today.  It was a passage about how love changes a person.  After reading it I knew that I had to share it because without love, without how Michael makes me feel about the world, I would not be able to stand up in the face of everything that happens in a day.  I am strong, but he makes me stronger.  For that, I am forever grateful.

"So maybe she was up in the room trying to discover what her new self was, for when you get in love you are made all over again. The person who loves you has picked you out of the great masses of uncreated clay which is humanity to make something out of, and the poor lumpish clay which is you wants to find out what it has been made into.  But at the same time, you, in the act of loving somebody, become real, cease to be a part of the continuum of the uncreated clay and get the breath of life in you and rise up.So you create yourself by creating another person, who, however, has also created you, picked up the you-chunk of clay out of the mass.  So there are two you's, the one you yourself create by loving and the one the beloved creates by loving you. The farther those two you's are apart the more the world grinds and grudges on its axis.  But if you loved and were loved perfectly then there wouldn't be any difference between the two you's or any distance between them. They would coincide perfectly, there would be a perfect focus, as when a stereoscope gets the twin images on the card into perfect alignment."  --Robert Penn Warren

Thank you Michael for finding me; for allowing the life I always dreamed I would have.  You are a fine man and an incredible human being.  I love you.

Quills and Frills-1/24/2015 Shutter, Image Comics

Aleathia says:

Yeah, yeah.  I'm an Image Comics whore.  I just can't help it.  Everything that seems to appeal to me in the comic world is flying off the shelves of Image, Boom! or IDW.  For months I have been eyeballing a comic called Shutter.

The covers kind of made me think it was a cutesy girlie comic about a chick that takes photographs. Having said that I never actually opened the damn comic to read it.  So while waiting for my other half to swarm through the boxes and nooks and crannies of the store I took a peek.

The comic is a bit crazy-all-over-the-place-what-time-and-space-am-I-living in sort of deal.  It opens up in NYC, but there are zoo animals walking around like people with people....and they talk.  There is a lot of adventure in this story.  There are flashbacks and flights to the moon and mystery.  There is a fair amount of violence from the reactionary main character.  There is even a talking cat clock side kick.  What is not to love?

The great thing about this particular comic is that it is only 8 issues in which means you have time to grab the trade paperback and issues 7 and 8 to catch up before the new issue comes out next month!!

The writer, Joe Keatinge,is kind of an all around guy who not only writes comics but has been an editor, colorist, and an artist.  He wears quite a few hats in this biz. He is most noted for writing Hell Yeah, Shutter, and PopGun.

Leila Del Duca is the artist for this fantastic journey and she has a lot of other worldly creatures under her hat to go along with a mix of sci-fi and an endearing leading lady.  Prior to bringing us the world of Shutter she penciled an issue of The Pantheon Project.

Owen Gieni has been around the block doing pencil work for Skullkickers,Glory, and Dead Sonja. He is the colorist for Shutter, but has also worked on Manifest Destiny, Judge Dredd,Glory, and Debris.

Here are a few panels to sink your teeth into and see if you want to pick it up at your local comic store.  As always, thanks to Heroes Your Mom Threw Out comic store for keeping me fixed.

Art Bomb-1/23/2015 Clare Johnson. Henri Matisse

Aleathia says:

Originally I was going to try and profile artists from all the states in a sort of alphabetical order, but that really isn't my gig so I am going to try and hit all the states that I have lived in first and see how it goes.

One of the most influential times in my life, when I found out who I really was, happened in Seattle. It is the classic small town girl goes to big city story.  I had some of the best times of my life there, but in the end came back to the state of my youth to grow my roots.  Seattle was a beautiful garden of art and music and writing.  There was so much to do and see there.  It was hard to cover it all.  Having said that, today's artist is Clare Johnson from Seattle, Washington.

Clare Johnson is from Seattle, WA but obtained her education in many places including Brown University and in London at both the Slade School of Fine Arts and Central St. Martin's College of Art and Design.

Her ink drawings are painstakingly detailed, intricate, and intimate.  They are said to obsessively deal with the lines between solitude and loneliness; the lines between comfort and disconsolation.

This project started as nightly drawings on post-it notes before going to bed and blossomed into a fine collection of black and white snapshots of simple, but eye catching scenes.

Johnson's paintings are usually exhibited on stretched, unframed canvases to confirm to the viewer that something is always missing.

John Says:

I go and see a lot of art. Yet I don’t really know how to write or talk about it. I see these people in galleries or in museums standing in front of the paintings and dissecting them to the point of ridiculousness. At times it’s reached a point where I wonder if these people have come to the museum to look at a van Gogh or an Andre Derain because they like the art, or because they want to hear themselves pontificate on yet another idea that they’ve gotten wrong. I guess these blowhards beat the people who walk up to a painting, snap a photo, and then walk away. To these morons seeing great art is akin to standing in front of a big, famous building, or photographing their shitty lunch. The works of the masters have become yet another notch on their social networking belt.

Anyway since October the MoMA has been putting on a huge retrospective of Henri Matisse’s Cut-Outs. If I may lift or paraphrase from the MoMA’s web site, the Cut-Outs were a series of works that Matisse began doing in the late 1940s once he got too old and senile to paint regular paintings. Essentially the Cut-Outs (should I be capitalizing this?) are painted pieces of paper cut-out in order to form shapes or designs, or in some instances like this one (a personal favorite) made as prep work for a stained glass window:

Matisse used his cut-out scheme for his print book Jazz (1947):

His cut-out work was also featured on the cover of several issues of the French art magazine Verve

Good ol’ Henri even decorated his dining room in his apartment with cut-outs, this one being his famous and not often seen The Swimming Pool:

And who could forget Henri's famous Blue Nudes:

I’m not going to begrudge Matisse his art. No one is above criticism but maybe a guy who gave Picasso a run for his money back in the day gets a pass. Or maybe not. That is to say I was pretty unimpressed by the Matisse Cut-out exhibit. There were over 100 works in the thing (again, I’m pillaging the MoMA web site), and I spent a good hour in there only to walk out and look at my wife and shrug.  I had a much better time looking at the Toulouse-Lautrec and Jean Dubuffet exhibits. It’s hard to admire something that I could do on my own, or even sit down and watch my soon-to-be five year old niece do….although she’s a pretty keen artists. Even psychiatrists get her. I’ve always been more impressed by something like this:

But what do I know? The exhibit is beyond popular right now. You need an appointed time to go in and view it, and then really it’s simply being overwhelmed by the amount of cut-outs hanging on the walls, the crowds trying to talk art, kids bitching about being hungry, teens sitting on the floor texting their friends, or bitching to the guards about how they aren’t allowed to take selfies with the art.

Matisse: The Cut-Outs runs at the MoMA until February 10, 2015

Lit Bits-1/21/2015 Wonderwall, Harvey Pekar

Aleathia says:

I was thinking about what passes for literature and writing the other day.  I think about it everyday since I stopped being very productive in the writing arena.  I think about how we group and separate different types of writing based on whether or not it is literature or non-fiction or poetry.  In the end, it is all a manipulation of words.  Writing is writing.

Each day I try to do a little reading and a little sewing.  During my sewing time I listen to music. Over the last few years I have let Michael be the DJ.  I listen to what he listens to because it is easier. I love some of his music, he has taken over some of mine, and there is music we both agree on. There is something wonderful about being home alone and listening to music and moving around in my own time.  I'm not sure why I stopped doing that.  Yesterday I was listening to Ryan Adams (which I get picked on for listening to) and heard his version of Oasis's "Wonderwall" written by Noel Gallagher.  I owned the Oasis recording, but never really understood or felt the song until Ryan Adams sang it.  It makes my heart clench, sometimes, I cry.

Wonderwall

Today is gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you

By now you should've somehow realized what you gotta do

I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do

About you now

Backbeat the word is on the street that the fire in your heart is out

I'm sure you've heard it all before but you never really had a doubt

I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do

About you now

And all the roads we have to walk are winding

And all the lights that lead us there are blinding

There are many things that I would like to say to you

But I don't know how

Because maybe

You're gonna be the one that saves me

And after all

You're my wonderwall

Today was gonna be the day but they'll never throw it back to you

By now you should've somehow realized what you're not to do

I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do

About you now

And all the roads that lead you there were winding

And all the lights that light the way are blinding

There are many things that I would like to say to you

But I don't know how

I said maybe

You're gonna be the one that saves me

And after all

You're my wonderwall

I said maybe

You're gonna be the one that saves me

And after all

You're my wonderwall

I said maybe

You're gonna be the one that saves me

You're gonna be the one that saves me

You're gonna be the one that saves me


The Oasis Version:

The Ryan Adams Version:

John Says:

I miss Harvey Pekar. Harvey died in 2010 but sometimes I sit back and think about how much the world sucks without Harvey Pekar in it. I’ve been accused of wearing my influences on my sleeve. Editors and other writers like to tag me a lot with the Bukowski, Fante, Kerouac, Ginsberg thing, but if I’ve been influenced more than any of them it's been by the work of Harvey Pekar. The man’s ability to make art out of the mundane has fascinated me from the very first moment that I opened up my first collected edition of American Splendor. Pekar’s work still fascinates me when I come across it today. Also…the man gave me the writing of Italo Svevo.

For those who don’t know Harvey Pekar he was an underground comic book writer best known for his autobiographical comic American Splendor, which began in 1976 and ran until around 2008. American Splendor’s primary source material was Harvey and his life as a file clerk at Cleveland’s Veteran’s Administration Hospital.

 Sprung from the underground comic movement in the 1960s and 1970s, American Splendor was pretty much unlike anything else in its time. I mean here was straight autobiography, about a file clerk of all things, trying to squeeze onto comic book store space with the Batman and Superman comics. Suffice it say American Splendor wasn’t a best-selling comic and Pekar ultimately ended up retiring from his job. But it did garner quite the cult following, enough that in 2003 a film version of American Splendor was released starring Paul Giamatti as Harvey Pekar. The film even featured Harvey in it as himself.

Though not a graphic artist, what Harvey Pekar did was to draw American Splendor using stick figures and most importantly, dialog bubbles to get down his words. These crude drawings were then turned into comic book art by the many collaborators he’s worked with over the years. Some illustrators of note who worked on American Splendor are: Robert Crumb, Joe Sacco, Gary Dumm, Frank Stack, and Dean Haspiel.

The American Splendors have been collected into several comic editions. Aside from them Harvey Pekar published a number of graphic novels including: Our Cancer Year (done in collaboration with his wife, Joyce Brabner), American Splendor: Our Movie Year, The Quitter, Ego & Hubris, Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History, The Beats, and Studs Terkel’s Working: A Graphic Adaptation.

Harvey was also a pretty keen jazz music critic

Let's Go Somewhere-1/20/2015 Pine Creek Gorge (Pennsylvania Grand Canyon)

Aleathia says:

Over the last few years, with Michael here, I have begun to learn the value of exploring the place in which I live.  Our spring and summers consist of finding new places to check out.  Not too far into Pennsylvania lies a nice treasure of outdoor fun that I have known about for most of my life, but have never actually bothered to go to.

The Pine Creek Gorge is lovingly known as the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon.  It is a 47 mile long gorge that follows the Pine Creek River.  It was formed in the last ice age.  It connects into the West Branch of the mighty Susquehanna River.  It is considered a National Landmark and crosses several state parks.

It is said that the local Native Americans used this route for travel near the river and had seasonal hunting grounds near Ansonia.  Later this was the site of a lumbar mill created by Anson Phillips. Since the lumber ear, the trees have grown and many are over 100 years old and the natural animal population that was the hunting grounds previous thrive.

In 1996, Pine Creek Trail was opened.  It runs near the riverbed on what used to be the old NYC railroad that stretches for 64 miles stretching from Tioga County to Lycoming County.  The original railroad track extends to the Jersey Shore.  This is an easy trail to walk or bike and considered one of the best, scenic biking trails in the country.

In the main park there is hiking and waterfalls and places to have picnics.  It sounds like a whole lot of family fun to me.  I hope we can make it in the spring before it gets too hot.  I heard this summer is going to be one of the hottest on record.

Music Monday-1/19/2015 MLK Jr Tribute

Aleathia says:

I am generally not a very political person, at least not outwardly, because I feel more friends are lost on the stance of political beliefs.  It seems odd that we live in a country where we are "free" to believe what we want, yet there is still consequence attached to that freedom.  It may not be as large as in other countries.  We don't get stoned or shot or have our throats cut, but within our family and friend circles hatred and discontent can grow.

Most of my "friends" are very liberal.  I agree with them on some aspects.  I want people to have the freedoms that I have, but I don't want to pay for those not willing to lift themselves up and do hard work to make their own way in life.  I am for sexual, religious, and political freedoms.  I am not for the welfare state. I think it makes us weak as a country, weak as individuals.  I don't like government in all of my pockets telling me what to do.  I guess that makes me a Libertarian.  I am not sure what that means other than I am for personal freedom without heavy government.

Despite what I believe, I am here to honor Martin Luther King Jr for his willingness to stand up for people; to stand up for community and religion and equality.  His time in history of riddled with upheaval, but it was also a time when people were willing to stand up for what they believed in by demonstrating peacefully.  It seems so half hearted these days, so fly by night.  I suppose that is technology at work.  Enjoy this music lined tribute.

Lit Bits-1/14/2015 Robert Penn Warren

Aleathia says:

I am working hard at being able to read more books this year.  Last year was the pits and I aim to make time for reading again....even if it is only for 20 minutes.  Presently I am about one third of the way through Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men".  This was a Pulitzer Prize winning book for him and thus on my list of books to read in my lifetime.

I find these episodes of forced reading interesting.  I would have never picked up this book on my own as it does not fall into the usual type of book I gravitate towards.  Having said that, it is a lovely surprise.  Warren has a masterful vocabulary (I have to hit the dictionary at least every few pages) and is spot on with his narrative that is engaging and detailed but not so much that it is burdensome.  I will admit that the dialogue is harder for me as it is set in the 1930's deep south.  Reading in dialect has never been one of my favorite things because I have to hear it in my head in order for it to compute.  Combine this with very small print and you have a slower moving book than I would have liked.  It is slow moving because of me, not because of the content.

In the wee hours last night, when I couldn't sleep and the house was quiet, I sat in my sewing/reading room layered with blankets in negative weather and read this book.  I came across this quote and it made reading the book worth it:

"They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren't any other people there wouldn't be any you because what you do, which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people."--Robert Penn Warren

I had to stop and read these lines over and over again.  There is so much unwanted truth in these sentences.  We want to think that we are the same person no matter who we are around, but in our heart of hearts we know it isn't true.  I am a different version of myself with my child than I am with my lover.  I am a different version of myself depending on which nurses I work with.  I am different at parties than I am at home.  The people in my life and in my environment change me.  We all want to be accepted in the company we keep even if we pretend we don't care.  It is human nature to want to belong to something greater than yourself.  Why do you think religion has such a strong hold in the world?

I look forward to finishing this book and adding it to my list of Pulitzer's read.  The book is about a man in politics from the view of another man who works closely with him.  It is the unraveling of a life.  It is relationships that fall away and leave the narrator as an island.  At least it is so far.  Pick up the book and see for yourself.

Quills and Frills-1/10/2015 Mel Brooks

Aleathia says:

What better way to start a new year than with a Mel Brooks marathon.  Most of my life I have always identified with slapstick humor and innuendo.  I grew up loving Monty Python, Benny Hill, and anything with Gene Wilder in it.  I loved The Stooges and Laurel & Hardy.  I suppose in the end I just love to laugh.  It is the best medicine.  Whomever said that tapped into the true meaning of life. Having a good belly laugh can turn most bad days around if you let it.

Yesterday Michael was telling me about how different people are when they come in to get their developed photos.  In the pictures, they are laughing and smiling.  When they come in they are miserable, cantankerous, and tight mouthed to the point that he can't tell that they are the same people.  I think this era of living has lost a lot of its ability to laugh.  I think this is pretty damn sad, so in honor of that we will fill our own house with laughter.

On the plate today is a supreme line up to be watched in pajamas while a turkey roasts in the oven:

Art Bomb-1/9/2015 Roger Brown

Aleathia says:

This year I am going to try and represent an artist from each state in America.  I thought it would be fun to do this to learn more about different artists but to also learn more about my country.  It is fun to look at what influences people from different times in history from their part of the country.  This week we are starting with Alabama native Roger Brown.

Roger Brown was born in Hamilton, AL in 1941.  In his early childhood he took art classes during his elementary and high school days.  He was greatly influenced by the deep south, folk art and hand made functional pieces.  He loved comics, theater, architecture and the style of Art Deco.  After graduating high school he enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  It was here that he learned to love the Pre-Renaissance period, Italian art, Surrealism, and American artists Hopper, Wood, and O'Keeffe.

Brown is noted to be associated with the Chicago Imagist School of artists who were known for grotesquerie, surrealism and a complete univolvement with New York art trends.  This group was most prevalent in the mid-1960's to the early 1970's.  This school had three different factions: The Monster Roster, The Hairy Who, and The Chicago Imagists.  Brown was part of the latter.  They were not a formal group of artists but all in this faction were involved in Baum curated shows during the time period.

Roger Brown also loved to travel on road trips across the US and this influenced his work.  He also traveled to Mexico, Europe, Russia, and Asia.