November 14, 2000

Hejira

thinking inside the box

November 14. 2000

random self-portraits:

this photo really scares me. I look like an alien.

very fleshy

Cristina and I went to Jenkintown today to buy some silver for casting at a coin and stamp shop. The pieces they gave us ended up being silver coins with all sorts of designs on them - one was celebrating Apollo 15, some others were bicenntenial commemorations. I had expected they would give us chunks of silver or maybe blank coins, but these were beautiful little works of art, etched with incredibly fine detail and high polished to an almost mirror-like sheen. We sat in the pizza place, mesmerized by them. Even our waitress stopped by to stare at them for a while.

We looked through the Citypaper while we were waiting for our food (the Citypaper is a free newspaper, I think it's pretty much equivalent to the Village Voice), and I found the funniest thing near the back. Apparently there are these free ads you can place addressing anyone for any reason. So you get a great variety of ads:

PHILA ORCHESTRA CONCERT:
10/3: You - sitting in 2nd row, wearing a black/grey ensemble, barrettes, brunette w/blond highlights. Me - seated two seats to your left in jacket, jeans w/short haircut. You were more lovely than the music, and I'm kicking myself for not approaching you!

PEMBERTON:
Bitch, you need to get a life and singing lessons because your ass can't sing. Nobody likes you, but you. So stop telling people how wonderful you are when you're not. Stop putting your big nose in everyone's business. You are the worst bitch in the world. Dick size shouldn't be an issue for you, as long as it's used effectively.

ONE MONTH AGO:
You and your cracked-out hooker friends rear-ended my car. Guess what, hit-and-run cunt, the police gave me your address and it's as suburban as you are. Won't grandma be surprised when her poor car never starts again due to some irreversible malfunctioning? What goes around comes around, much like your skank ass. I'd start looking for public transportation if I were you.

The city of Brotherly Love, indeed.

One thing I love about hanging out with Cristina is we can act like complete dorks together. We laughed at the Citypaper, reading the personal ads and phone sex ads, laughed at the people in the restaurant and threw Mentos at each other. After lunch, we went to a used bookstore, where I was called a perv for wanting to read "Lolita". We finally ended up in an incredibly trendy coffee bar. That's the funny thing about Jenkintown: all businesses can be divided into two groups: incredibly trendy, hip and expensive stores carrying chic clothes and modern furniture, and little greasy hole-in-the-wall joints that don't really seem interested in impressing anyone.

I ended the day in the ceramics studio, where I worked for nearly six hours. I feel like I've been neglecting my ceramics classes, which is terrible, considering it's going to be my major. Metals and painting are just so frustrating and take up so much time that not much is left for me to work with clay.

I asked this girl, Daria, who was working in the studio and I knew to be a metals major, if it was possible and/or healthy to consider double majoring in ceramics and metals. She raised her eyebrows and said dubiously, "Well, anything's possible."

I have been seriously thinking about that very thing. Because I want to combine art forms. I realized this semester that I'm not going to be happy confined to one medium. I want to use metal with ceramics and fibers with ceramics and plastic with ceramics and wood with ceramics.

I also realized today while walking through one of the galleries on campus that I am very object oriented. I've never been particularly excited by huge paintings or large sculptural installations. But the small, well made object, preferably something functional like a pot or a box or a piece of jewelry, is really interesting to me.

Even when I was much younger, I was very interested in contained, functional objects. I'd paint or inlay boxes for my friends and relatives for Christmas, and line them with soft cloth or velvet. And since I've been in college, my sensitivity to complex mixed-media functional pieces has been heightened. I have never been interested in creating pieces that must be only looked at in a gallery from afar, preserved under plexiglass and cordoned off by velvet ropes. I want my art to be picked up, to be worn, to be lived with, because that, to me, is the essence of what art is.

last next

One Year Ago:
"I am one to go in a shop, find what I want, try it on (sometimes not even that) and get out as quickly as possible, and onto more useful and entertaining things. My sister tries everything on in every possible combination, stands in front of a mirror for extended periods of time, consults everyone around her, puts the article of clothing aside, and then the cycle will be repeated many times over until she has made a decision."