I wrote this poem after seeing an African drumming and dance performance my freshman year at UC Berkeley. The women were dressed in bright red dresses, leaping around, and stomping on the stage to the driving beat of drums whose rhythm pulsed right through the air and into my veins. There was so much life being lived on that stage, I wanted to go home and spread the gospel of really LIVING.
Come with Me
Mr. Business Man
Under that suit is a body made from earth–
a product
of ten million years
of tweaking by a Darwin
tuning fork
But down your chest hangs a
Fancy Silver Tie
severing that God-sculpted masterpiece
right in two
like dynamite set by train track men
to blow a mountain straight in
half
Fancy Silver Tie
hanging like a hangman's rope
ready to strangle your soul
and let it sway in the wind bug-eyed
So why aren't you crying then
poor Mr. Business man?
Don't you feel hurt
all sliced down the middle
like that?
You keep on typing
and that phone still sucks on your ear so hungry
like a piglet from its mother's
teet
Come with me
Take off that tie
so your torso can fuse its fibers back
Unstitch your spine from the
scarecrow pole
Throw that posture to the wind!
It's okay to flop down all messy-like
down in a heap of straw
Breathe in sky as the drum beat pounds in your thundering thighs,
it's called music and it'll do you good
Now shake that belly like it's
strawberry jelly
Spread your sweetness on the
toasty ground
Do it just like I saw those
Mozambique girls do, all covered in red
and jumpin' through the air like
rose petals in
wind
When I rub this warm, orange mud
on your scrubbed and disinfected flesh,
you'll remember that you are Man
and I am Woman
and this land was made for dancing
My smile will arch up like the hull of a sailboat
I will have done what I aimed to do:
helped you find your Life that
got lost along the way
laying wasted and strewn on
the rotting corpse of
civilization
for all these
years
Joyful Dancer, 2010. Acrylic on canvas. 24" x 30". Sold.
I was looking through a binder of my old college poetry the other day and was struck by the similarity in imagery between one of my poems and my drawing, "Bottom of the Sea." It's been 9 years since I wrote that poem, and I definitely wasn't thinking about it when I drew this drawing, which makes me wonder if this imagery speaks to an aspect of my subconscious.
Here is the poem.
Bottom of the Sea, 2009. Pastel on Paper. 21" x 28"
Goodbye
A boat passes by
Ah, your hand on my waist!
An animal cries somewhere in the
salty air
It is a Moment!
But it vanishes quick like warm breath in the Arctic
I think it slipped through the cracks in the wood
You are thinking of her, aren't you?
Hush.
Don't hush me you know it is true
My heart and I can leave you
two alone
We can jump off this pier
and sink slow like
pebbles dropped
Don't worry about us
we will be just fine
My heart and I can find some quiet cave
to hide with the sea urchins and spiny things
Eventually, the oxygen will disappear
along with my strangled, unbeating heart
leaving you
up above
with her
Crouched like a crab and
peering up
Your embrace wears the obscuring veil of
watery miles
Your love looks like waking from a sleep–
diaphanous forms, enmeshed in rippled sparkle,
arm fusing into forehead like
honey poured in milk
That's your love:
Luminous, foggy, blurry, bright
the way the world looks through a post-dream
watery eyeball
That's your love and that's your dream
but merely bubbles from my silent scream
I was born to make this sacrifice
I was born to die this way
with amoebas and microbes
at the bottom of the sea
She was born to have the moon
Quiet!
I will sink slowly soon
Many people are quite confused when I explain the process for my photographic weavings. The explanation that I give is, in a nutshell, taking two large photographs of the same size, cutting them into vertical & horizontal strips, and weaving them together. Simple enough, right?
However, the conversation typically goes something like this:
Them: " So you weave the freeway photos with actual circuit boards?"
Me: " No. With pictures of circuit boards. They're just two pictures woven together"
Them: " Do you make a painting of the freeway overpass and weave that?"
Me: " No. It's a picture. Aerial photography"
Them: " Are your weavings three dimensional?"
Me: " No. THEY'RE TWO PICTURES WOVEN TOGETHER!"
Them: " Huh. I still don't get it"
Me: " (sigh) I'll email you a picture"
Maybe it's my lack of clear verbal skills, or maybe it's the dizzying mental barage of freeways, circuit boards, weavings (oh my!) that gets people in a head scratching frenzy. Understandable. My conclusion is that it simply needs to be seen to be understood, so I've decided to chronicle my process, start to finish, below.
DAY 1
After pinpointing my next freeway victim on Google Earth, I go to the U.S. Geological Survey website to download the aerial photography. These images are in the public domain, paid for by our tax dollars. Thank you government. This image is of the "Distribution Structure" in Oakland/Emeryville, CA, just before getting on the San Francisco Bay Bridge from the East Bay.
The aerial photography files are very large and are, therefore, usually sent in sections. The interchange was downloaded in 4 sections which I then had to puzzle together in Photoshop so it would appear as one seamless image.
In Photoshop I fuse together the four images, determine the size, composition, and do some minor color correction. Since it's too expensive for me to get large prints made, I have found a cheaper alternative: I divide the image into a grid of 8" x 10" sections, get the 8" x 10" sections printed, and then puzzle them together to form one big picture. The poor man's print.
This initial stage of working out the images is the hardest part for me because it takes a lot of brain power, computer power, and decision making. From here on out it's all about patience and becoming one with the mind numbing and back breaking monotony (ahem...I mean the process).
Day 2
Back at home with my prints and now it's time to glue. I brush acid free glue on the back of each photo and use a roller to fasten them securely to the paper (which is acid free as well, archival all the way baby).
And voila! My two images! They look so peaceful before they're all sliced up and forced into their over-under mating dance of woven chaos.
Now it's time to flip these bad boys over and start measuring the strips. I measure the freeway overpass into horizontal strips and the circuit board into vertical strips.
One hundred and twelve strips to cut for the circuit board image. My hands are hurting just looking at it. I number the strips for the vertically cut image (the circuit board one) because the strips are free floating and if I don't number them I can easily get the order messed up. The horizontally cut image (the freeway one) is held together by a strip of paper that I leave uncut so no need to number the strips on that one.
I take frequent breaks during the cutting process or else my hands light up in an electrical storm of carpal tunnel nerve twinges. People ask me why I use scissors instead of box cutters or an Exacto knife. I feel like I have more control with scissors.
The beast waits to be tamed, her tentacles lay washed up on my kitchen floor until I awake rested in the morning. Tomorrow we weave! A productive day, I'd say.
Day 3
I spent a good 3+ hours cutting the circuit board image into strips. I was now officially ready to begin weaving. After two hours of weaving I had woven 20 strips. Only 92 more to go!
Weaving the circuit board image into the aerial photography image. This is after 2 hours of weaving.
These two hour sessions are typically followed by a series of neck, back, knee, and ankle stretches. Weaving is very hard on my body, I had trouble sleeping last night because my back hurt so much. If my weavings were a tad smaller I could fit them onto my drafting table which would be much more comfortable.
Day 5
Today, I spent another 7 hours weaving, and finally, I was finished. But I still wasn't FINISHED finished. After the weaving is done, I need to glue down all of the strips so that none of them slide around and fall out of place. However, I've done enough work today, the gluing will have to wait until tomorrow.
Day 6
After 5 hours of gluing, the weaving is now very secure and flat, almost like a mat. I can pick up the weaving and transport it without worrying about it falling apart.
FINISHED AT LAST!
"Distribution Structure", 2011. Photographic Weaving. 31" x 33". CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE.
CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE.
The big building with the yellow trim is the Ikea in Emeryville. CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE.
CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE
CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE
CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE
Time-Lapse Video
I set up a video camera on a tripod while I worked and programmed the camera to take .5 seconds of video at 5 minute intervals. In this time-lapse video, 9 hours of weaving are condensed down to 40 seconds.
