All work and no play makes Darla a crankie girl...

past work

I came across this card I made for my mom. I'm always fascinated by the shit kids come up with. I think it speaks for itself.

Grown Men And Women Playing With Dolls.

I feel like the idea of virtual people has come up a lot this week.  Da, Aubrie and I were talking about Madame Tussauds and the idea of Darla working as a sculptor of wax people (well, that was my assertion).  Ah, the oddness of celebrity in the media age.  These people in our culture who are so revered that we build wax idols of them and pay to visit, have our photo taken with, and in a strange sense, worship.  I remember going to Madame Tussauds as a child and being completely enraptured by the life-like appearance of the figures.  It seemed like magic that there were artisans who could create such beings.

The topic of artificial people came up again in an email from Da.  She, Justin and Aubrie had been watching videos about “Real Dolls”, the incredibly realistic silicone sex dolls.  The video I had seen on these dolls had centered on an interview with a Japanese man who had amassed a collection of nearly a hundred of them.  When he walked into his apartment, the lights came on to illuminate the 90 plus dolls arranged on couches and chairs around the living room.  The theory of uncanny valley comes to mind.  The presentation was a dense array of female virtual creatures, a forest of glabrous limbs, 90 plus shocks of glossy dark hair.  They were well cared for and loved.  They can’t cheat on you or betray you.  He said, “They belong to me one hundred percent”.  His story resembles a modern retelling of Pygmalion.  

The final, and for me most compelling brush I’ve had with virtual people came in the form of another online video.  “Living Doll|My Fake Baby” it’s called.  The video opens on the artist who creates the dolls as she carries what looks like a real baby into a supermarket.  The downy hair and puckered face is reproduced so faithfully that it’s difficult to differentiate from a live baby except for its silence.  The reactions of the people in the clip vary from awe and excitement, to near disgust.

I’m not sure what my strong attraction is to these unreal people.  Artifice is an interesting draw.  I think what initially drew me to the medium of photography was it’s ability to weave such a convincing lie.  Story telling, role playing, lying to ourselves or to the world.  I admit my initial reaction was to judge people in the world of real dolls, but I think we all have the same void based on fear- fear of rejection, fear of loneliness, fear of death.  Fear- that has been a key word lately.  Fear and finding ways of overcoming it and feeling whole.  In a sense I think we are these dolls- submerged in a role. Inanimate isolated and lifeless- or at least unconnected to ‘life’ or a greater energy source in a broader sense. I think my art used to be dark for the sake of being dark.  Unconscious I guess.  But my increasing hope is to be able to make art consciously.  I want to create a positive impact on the collective consciousness, even if it’s immeasurably small.  I guess I was wondering if these virtual people are contributing in a positive way or a negative way to the collective psyche.  I think the initial reaction is that it is a negative one.  But what if they’re just a bridge?  Can we see them as a reflection of ourselves?  Can they be used consciously to heal and move beyond, or do they inhibit people from moving forward?  Everything can be part of human evolution I suppose.   Maybe we have to look at everything as a bridge. I don’t know.  Just thinking.

Grosses bises,

La

P.S.- You can see the videos here if you want:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU33HLj1CWU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klmhNSu2ZbY&feature=fvw

Dear Juliet, will you marry me?

I was walking in West Philadelphia last week when I heard my name called out. I turned to find one of my most admired BFF crushes, Juliet Wayne, screwdriver-filled McDonald's mug in hand. We have been acquaintances for years and have a great appreciation for each other's artwork. Every time we cross paths, we vow to make portraits of one another. The time is now!


Anyway, we talked for a while about portraiture and how people are sometimes bothered that what is intended as a portrait of the sitter more closely resembles the artist. Bullshit, we say! Why wouldn't it look like the artist? When is art ever really about anything else? In this case, though, I am going to try to make a portrait of her, and her new M.O. - she's "just not taking it anymore." The part that seems simplest to explain is having a job in order to make money. She's so over that. Now she's trash-picking items to sell at yard sales, supplemented by tarot card readings and Otter Pop sales. My favorite part of her explaining this newfound philosophy -- "So today I felt hungry and I was thinking 'what am I going to eat?' and then I said 'no, Juliet, it's not gonna be like that anymore!'" So, so good.

I have always been envious of Juliet's work. Video, paintings, drawings, collage, puppets, storytelling... and that's not even half of it. If you're my friend on facebook, become hers - there's a bunch of photos of her art. And she has the funniest status updates ever. If you're not my friend on facebook, you should be, just so she can make you laugh. Oh, and her next project? A board game that combines Memory and fortune telling... I can't wait. I'm going to try to track her down to see if she has a website I can post a link to, but in the meantime, her's a little drawing about working at the art museum that I stole from her profile:

Real talk with Dad, Faking it, Making it, "Me" time, Suicidio, and the challenges of being a young woman.

It's crazy...
What you ask..
everything.
Somehow all these things relate.

From my ongoing photography series about my Dad.
we sit and chat here...

I had one of those talks with my father tonight, after work. We sanded and routed a dozen pieces of oak today. I wouldn't say I'm a Daddy's girl, honestly that phrase has never sit well with me, but I will say that I have always felt strangely connected to my father and his way of thinking. I'm a divorce kid. I always had this weird way of being über conscious of his emotions, and I would fixate on his every word. I still fixate on his every word. He used to joke sometimes, "I'm gonna kill myself." As a kid, for years, I never picked up on the joke part, and used to worry like mad that he's was actually going to. I told him this tonight. After a few drinks, two beers on my part, Grand Marnier on his, we had one of those convos that we've had, occasionally, before. Where he talks about his colorful past and I can't help but compare my tame existence with his wild one. After telling me of his affairs, his one million girlfriends, and apartments, his el camino, his leather pants, trips to Cafe' Elan and Bleeps, marriages, partying every night, he then reminded me of the dark parts, the somberly colored roots of his childhood. He experienced a lot of scarring from his dysfunctional upbringing, and, later, lots of stress from his relationships with women. He used to say "I'm gonna kill myself." But he never did. Now I say it sometimes, in passing, how I wanna kill myself cause this is so annoying or that is all f-ed up, blah, blah, blah. But in his quirky way over a cigarette he tells me, "hey, hang tight...you'll be aight."
Well now I'm ready to try it. The fear does hover over my head a lot though... It's good to talk to him, a survivor of sorts. Sometimes it's hard to hear the stories, sometimes it brings up my scars. Tonight, in a kind of joking manner I told him that the anxiety makes me sometimes wanna fuckin' kill myself.
He told me not to.

Darla says fake it 'til you make it. Well that's exactly what my father did at 24. And still does at 54. And I'm gonna try it now. I'll have to train that part of my head to buy into that idea, faking it until making it. What can I say? I'm thick-headed, a product of my parents. ..Maybe I just need some "me" time..

I was watching the eleven o'clock news. This lady in the suburbs killed herself and her young son at home. Her husband came home and found their bodies. Neighbors said she was sweet but off. The news report said that she was battling depression... Then, a 22 year old, riding on the el with her infant baby, was held at knife point in her seat and sexually assaulted by a man. They said that people around her didn't know it was happening because she didn't scream. He fondled her while her baby was on her lap.

I did a phone interview this week, yesterday actually, for a website. I was asked questions about my work, what inspires me, what it's about, etc., and I said something about a particular thing that's always inspired me in a way I have never said before. I told her that I am inspired by the contemplations of women and how I felt that all women share on some level a constant and, at times, common state of contemplation, dynamic, abuzz and alive. The ignition, the starting spark in the thought machine of the female mind, the seasoned thoughts, these things differ from female to female. But that linking thread is there...I watched the news tonight and something about what I had said earlier during my interview clicked with these two tales of misfortune.


My dad and I said tonight that we're going to get tattoos that read "such is life"...

buona.
xo ac

Fake it 'til you Make it

All this talk of greatness and wanderlust on here and various other things going on outside of "blogland" (I just threw up in my mouth a little from saying that word) has me thinking...I mean I'm always thinking about something but it makes me wonder why I'm thinking so much and so hard all the time...I like to think of myself as one of those people who needs to make art no matter what....that if I lived in a cave in the backwoods of nowhere that I would just keep making and making and making, even if no one ever saw the work, ever. I like to think that...but sometimes wonder if I were ever just to stop planning and just wait and see what happens next...what would happen? Would that drive be there? Would I just have to make art because something inside me would freak out if I wasn't? Or would I fall perfectly into the life of someone who goes out every night and spends their time and money on drinks in bars, fancy outfits and new electronic devices, instead of art supplies, websites and postcards...Would my house be clean and finished if I weren't an artist? Would my brain not worry as much over the insanitites that it does worry about constantly? Would I have another interest or would I just float around aimlessly? Would I care way less about social stereotypes than I do now, or more? Do people who aren't artists feel like something is missing? I can't help but feel like there would be a huge gaping hole in my life and that I would be more miserable than ever before if I didn't make art...La once called art "painful masturbation" and that seems to be a pretty great comparision...It hurts sometimes, it makes you crazy, but after all that work you feel so insanely wonderful...even if only for a moment, before you start all over again...What keeps us coming back, even though sometimes (most times) we torture ourselves during the process? Is it all for that moment of feeling really really good? Or are we just some crazy art version of masochists, where its the pain and the feeling crazy that makes us keep at it?...
I don't know...I am going to try not to think about it too much...I am just going to keep planning and doing and making and freaking out and making some more...because I don't know the answer, I don't know what would happen...no one does...and if I worry too much does then it become a self fulfilling prophecy?...see what I mean, too much thinking just adds to the freaking out...Someone that I used to work for once said to me "Fake it 'til you make it" and I've always thought that to be good advice...I think I'll just continue to prescribe to that mindset...making it up as I go, with some random planning along the way....I also think that I will start to flip off anyone that gives me the "Oh....you're having a baby, there goes your art life..." look...Sounds like a plan to me...
til next thursday...
xo D

Wanderlust

Flipping through some old photos of  a trip to Cameroon... God, I want to go on an adventure...

La

Jumping Waves

on the bus to Venice, Venice Biennale 2007

"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clearing, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in the abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace."

from The Awakening by Kate Chopin. I read this in high school. It was my favorite book in AP English. I think it may have influenced my work.

I jumped into the crisp and cold Atlantic on Friday in New Jersey far from the city. I had to dance around at the water's edge before racing into the waves. I took the plunge, head-butting a wave at about thigh's height. It shocked me. So much that after a short soak, I slowly trudged out of the water towards the shore. I told Darla on the sand that it was like being in battle, a phrase I stole from my father, mouthed when a situation gets rough. It was hard to jump into that cold body of water alone. When you're young standing at the water's edge you have a hand holding yours. You know that that grown-up hand won't let go of your small one and you can simply look forward to doing what you came here for, the only activity in your mind worth doing standing at that foamy part of the water, jumping the waves. And if that hand holding yours belongs to someone of great strength or great fun, you may not even have to jump at all. You may be carried over each wave with both arms by two big grown up hands..

I come to you from West Philadelphia. I'm in my panties and boots drinking red wine in a cup. And I'm just going to write.

Laura Graham said potential... we talked about it over Yuengling in Brooklyn. So did my best friend and I over the phone in regard to our futures, both immediate and distant. I think about it a lot. I think of the little girl I once was wearing a red sequined beret, twirling around in spin-around dresses and charming strangers everywhere my mother would take me. I wanted to be a star. This is what I think about when I think about potential. The potential to be great...oh how gauging greatness changes as we age. To be great at age six was to be a star. To be great now...how to be great now...this is the thing that keeps me up until the wee hours of the night.

I want to be great. To be great is to be fearless and sexy and confident. And alone and accompanied only be choice not necessity. To be full. To be eager. To be experimental. To be open to change. To love not hate. To get off a lot. To laugh and cry no holds barred. To be brave enough to scream, when scared, when mad, when having an orgasm, when in labor, when laboring. To not apologize blindly. To not forgive blindly. To forget when it's poisoning your head. To feel pain. To get out of bed. To get up in the morning. To write. To draw. To Paint. To be ballsy like Sophie Calle and Tracey Emin and Candy Depew. To make and not give a fuck what others think. To not give a fuck and do it. To do something. To do anything and not feel bad for not doing something else. To jump in and stay there. To jump in. To not be terrified. To be terrified and do it anyway because if you don't you're being untrue. To be honest and jump in and jump waves all by yourself and love it because you finally did it. To finally do and be. To jump in. To jump waves. They never do stop coming at you when you're standing at the water's edge.

We've talked and jokingly said that we're either gonna end up killing ourselves or start over in completely different lives...

from the Letters to Past Boys series

oh how beautiful and pertinent this line is from a book I loved at age 17..

"She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again."

Kate Chopin

Oh Edna Pontellier.


I dream to be great...buona sera

xo ac

telephone pictionary

Back in art school, we played and made up a bunch of games involving drawing, but this one really takes the cake. I was introduced to it last weekend when I had several friends at my house. Sitting around my dining room table, Lisa taught us to play a game called telephone pictionary. Your sense of humor counts for at least as much as your draftsmanship skills.

I would recommend playing with no less than four people, with 5-8 being optimal.

Game play is simple:

1. Gather up a bunch of small pieces of paper (we ended up playing with pieces that were approximately 4" x 2.5" -- but use whatever you will feel comfortable with). For each round, every player will get a stack of papers equal to the number of players in the game. In this case, we had eight players, so we needed 64 sheets per round.

2. Distribute the papers to each player. Number the pages (in this case, 1-8).

3. For the first turn, each player writes a phrase on sheet 1. It can be anything, and any number of words. It doesn't have to be a person, place, thing, or quote - make up whatever you want.

4. Each player passes their stack of papers to their left, with 1 on top.

5. When you receive your stack, look at the phrase on sheet 1, put it in the back of the stack, and draw the phrase on sheet 2. No words, of course!

6. Pass the stack to your left.

7. When you receive the stack, look at the drawing on sheet 2, put it to the back, and write on sheet 3 a phrase which best describes the drawing from sheet 2. Most important rule here - no peeking at sheet 1!

8. Pass the stack to your left. Look at sheet 3, put it to the back, draw on sheet 4 your best representation of the phrase from sheet 3.

Game play continues this way (alternating between drawing and writing, only looking at the top sheet) until all of the papers have been used and the stack is returned to the person who wrote the first phrase on page 1. Everyone reviews the results.

...Enjoy!!!

I don't sleep, I dream....

I am an Aquarius, and I believe that's part of what makes me the super-charged nut-case that I am when it comes to ideas I'm excited about, specifically those that are art related. The other ladies of the collective have been many a time subjected to the crazy that is a Darla idea...(though part of why I love them all so much is that we're all each our own special brand of crazy and tend to balance each other out a bit....) Anyway, here's another idea ladies, should you choose to accept it...
Yesterday, I randomly remembered a book that Justin saw and was going to get for me a while back. He showed it to me, I loved it and I'm pretty sure its on his list of things to get me one day, but me being far too impatient for that, just ordered it for myself. (Damn this world of instant gratification that we live in!) Problem was that I couldn't remember the name of it for about 45 minutes and kept thinking it was "White Hot Black Magic" and Amazon kept turning up all these voodoo books (another time, ladies, another time). Finally I typed something else (what it was I don't remember) in the Google search and found it, somehow, someway, and ordered it. Then I was remembering all the weird, twisted art that is in it and got all excited to see it again, and, in the true spirit of instant gratification, found shots of some pages from the book online to look at.
Sidebar, I'm currently in the process of updating photos of my work and plan to put together another book of my work. (I did one in 2007 that came out really well.) This fact and looking at the pages of this book, I was like "Hell, why don't WE do a book...?!?!?!?" I feel like this has maybe been tossed around a couple of times before but I mean for real...this could be an amazing project that could be used for both individual and collective promotion, fund raising (ladies gotta eat, you know) and I think would be a fabulous end product (see....my crazy is very practical....). The magic that is Photoshop combined with the wonders of the online book publishing world could allow us to put together a bangin' piece worthy of many a fancy lady's (or man's) coffee table/art book shelf/under their pillow while they're sleeping area cause its so awesome they want to dream about it every night.....you catch my drift. Anyway, this is whats in my head this week...I leave you with a few images from "Black Magic, White Noise" to inspire you...
xo
D

The things it loves.

"The mind plays with the object it loves"... I was thinking of this quote by Jung today.  I thought perhaps writing a list of loves would be a good starting point in the creative process to garner ideas.  I have to say, I wasn't very good at thinking of physical objects I love, but I suppose the quote could be extended to include concepts as well...

Here's what I've come up with so far...

1. The anonymity, excitement and mystery of traveling to a new and distant city.

2 The nostalgia of returning to a city that I've already experienced.

3. Thinking of something hard enough to make it true.

4. Strange words in strange languages.

5. A warm, melty, flaky pain au chocolat.  Bacon chocolate.  Truffle oil.  Pork buns.  Um... food.

6. The exhausted feeling of euphoria after a run.

7. Utter decisiveness.  

8. Dogs and their every wag, wiggle and lick.

9. The word and meaning of "oneiric".

10. Something old made new.

11. Masks.

12. Potential.

À bientôt,

La

Summer, Sparklers, Friends, Solitude, Philadelphia, New Jersey, The Places between, Working, Cigarettes, Sadness, Exploration, Existentialism, Hope

No words just pictures.
xo ac

oh, and
theartblog+hollaAtchagirl
"it offends the men and delights the ladies," she said.

Take a chance...

As I'm sure most artists do, I get an idea that's "IT"! "THE IDEA!" "I AM GOING TO MAKE THIS NOW!" and then change my mind 500 times and have 499 other varieties of the "IT" idea to further confuse myself with ("Now which one was better....idea 387 or idea 493????")
I've been feeling a bit that way over an upcoming show...I had the idea set, changed my mind a million times and then was left hemming and hawing between 2 "final" ideas. Funny thing is that you can mention these ideas to someone and they're like "Well what about (insert another good idea here)"...normally this sends me into a tizzy of reworking and re-evaluating but last night it was what clicked everything in place. Thank you Ms. Aubrie for unlocking the craziness that is my brain and helping me lock down on what is to come... "What did I do?" you might be asking yourself but sometimes its just as simple as that...I mean how many times has someone said the tiniest of things that made you want to race home to make art...? (It's not often or ever that I've actually done the racing home part...usually I just try not to forget what they said until I can write it down somewhere...) Anyway, specifically I was wrestling with two ideas: one involving animals and the use of boardwalk chance games and the other which will remain a secret until I get around to making it...one thing at a time, for fear I will whip myself into another art idea frenzy at the mere mention of another idea (I am so dramatic today...)....So anyway, I've been trying to decide how the animals make sense in this situation blah blah blah and Aubrie says "well, what happens next to the baby rabbits in the last piece you did?" BINGO! Insert baby rabbits into boardwalk style chance games....Huh? You might be saying but here's how it goes: As you and any reader of the Philadelphia Weekly and City Paper know, I am currently knocked up. Bun in the oven. The stork has my address....however you wanna say it, there's a baby on the way. This is by far the biggest risk, leap, chance I've EVER taken in my life, so I figure Hey! Let's put little baby bunnies into these boardwalk games in a way that it looks like it could go horribly wrong. What the hell am I talking about? Picture a baby bun hanging among balloons that people are about the aim darts at... Another atop a Milk Bottle pyramid that is about to be toppled over with a ball...baby bunnies in dunk tanks and so on. I figure I will be scared about the baby getting hurt everyday once its here so maybe I can get some of the worry out of my system by making this work....maybe...we'll see....
More on this later...
xo D

alike but not the same

In thinking about what to write for my maiden post, I settled on Pedro Almodovar's celebration of women in his films. And then, just this afternoon, I got an e-mail from my mother containing a link to this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUDIoN-_Hxs

At first glance, I found it a bit gauche, but within seconds I was mesmerized. For such a simple idea, it made me think so much about portraiture throughout art history.

Much has been said about Mona Lisa's smile, but in seeing the portrayals of these many and varied women, one into the next, the eyes have it for me. I have been thinking lately about how it is possible to depict pathos with a minimum of "expression" in the face, for lack of a better word. We pick up on it in each other's faces every day, but how do you capture it as an artist? How do you communicate sadness without a frown, or show defeat while staring straight out at the viewer?

In almost every case, there is a story to read in these women's faces. Not necessarily a specific story, but one that the viewer can imagine, and often relate to their own lives. And to get really out-there for just a moment, I also see in these portraits a more universal thread, having to do with the "beauty and sadness" present in women's lives [to borrow a phrase from the collective].

With all of the variation in costuming, hairstyle, facial structure, and pose, there is a strong and persistent element shared by these women that makes them all appear similar. In many, I see a strength born of pain. In some, a guarded reluctance, and in others, a flirty invitation. In these faces I see my friends, my mother, and myself -- and they are all beautiful.

Hula hoops, food and NYC.

I am fortunate enough to represent the NYC branch of The Other Woman Collective.  I have to admit, I’m with Aubrie in feeling that the idea of writing a blog is very foreign!  So, to start off simply, I am posting 3 photos I’ve taken in the last 3 days.  To elaborate, I’ve decided that because I do so much of my work in a studio setting, I would like to try to take my camera out with me more often as a way to loosen up and get ideas. 

This photo was taken on the 4^th of July at Rockaway Beach in NY.  My friend Ceci is an avid hula hooper, and I have to admit, when she met me in the subway lugging along her big ol’ black and silver hoop, I was a bit of a naysayer.  I was so very wrong.  These things are fantastic!  I’m quickly becoming addicted and realizing there is a lot more to hooping than a quick twirl around the waist.  Here are a couple of sites I’ve been recommended to see more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0aUr_7DBJQ&feature=related

http://groovehoops.com/

I made this photo while being lucky enough to enjoy the most amazing dim sum of my life at Dim Sum Go Go on East Broadway.   We ordered a lot of food, so I kind of lost track, but I’m pretty sure these crispy, toasty little buggers were the Sesame Balls.  Pure heaven.  And the Pork Buns?  Orgasmic.

My last little photo was taken in the late afternoon on Monday, around the time people were scrambling to get home from work and enjoy the last few hours of sunshine before the gloaming.  I think it snatched one of the facets of NYC.  Industrious worker bees rushing from place to place.  A moment of bustling frozen.  The sense of constantly being surrounded by people but not knowing their story and often only catching a glimpse of them before they disappear into the crowd. 

That’s all I have to say for today, Lovelies.  

À bientôt,

La

Hey Pretty. Don't you wanna take a ride with me?

How you doin' Da? Thanks for the unbelievable intro luv.
Darla's work is ambitious and creepy.
With her little created scenarios, I find myself wanting to know, "what happened here?" and wanting to hug vulnerable baby animals as their parents lie dead in front of them. The creepier Da's work, the better. As her studiomate I want to be disturbed when I walk into our studio...

Okay weird cyber world.. I am, very hesitantly and officially, a BLOGGER. ew. Sorry to all you intense and awesome bloggers out there. But you may slowly but surely come to know that I am freaked out by computers and my fellow associates had to very gently devirginize me (how they doin'?) as one who blogs. Actually, I really feel like I cannot call it blogging. I'm just going to have to list things that I like right now, combine it with the word blog and go from there..

Things I like as of 7/3:
The Piazza
TOW
skirts
summer boots
outdoor drinking
Patron

Okay, since summer bootlogging sounds bad, I shall call my weekly words...patronogging. Hopefully as the summer progresses I will be drinking Patron while blogging. I mean patronogging.

Laura Graham and I went to The New Museum on 6/25 and caught the Younger Than Jesus Exhibit.
I think she will agree with me that the best thing there was the OMG obelisk. It was very witty and of-the-times and ominous and sad. Because, OMFG what is going on anyway? I also loved the piece done by a Japanese artist who bought everything off the bodies of three young people in Japan and displayed each person's belongings on three tabletops. It was simple and complex all at once, a very interesting glimpse into the lives of three young people. How similar we all are, the things we carry, the clothes we wear. There was also an Asian artist who had female volunteers sleep in a big white bed in the middle of a gallery space with the assistance of sleeping pills during gallery hours. I connected with this piece. It was weird and voyeuristic and the fact that all sleeping beauties were female was poignant. Tracey Emin-esque. Also, I am an insomniac so it clicked with something in my head.
I loved the "Myspace introductions" piece by an artist my age. I think it's important to talk about the shit that has blasted into our lives in the last couple years like wildfire. Like Social networking sites.. how off they can feel.
There was a lot to see. A lot of interesting things and it was really something that all the artists were so young. Some of it I didn't connect with immediately but I got the direction of the show. Weird, technological, 80s, hip hop, apocalyptic, confused, sad, bizarre, youtubed, myspacefacebooktwittered, tired, lost, wet, nostalgic, hopeful, drained, young, energetic, bombarded people making things about the times and the past...

Also that day strolling through Manhattan I was texted by my best friend from NC that Michael Jackson died. Immediately afterwards the streets of NYC were filled with passing words said on cell phones about the loss.
It is the end of an era. And his death brought out a strange unity among people in Philadelphia. Dance parties and sing alongs. And me singing P.Y.T. and Dirty Diana in my car (affectionately known as Star Jones) the loudest and most passionately I have ever sang them. I fucking love Michael. My family does. And everyone's rediscovered and renewed appreciation for his banging soulful music now is honestly really awesome.

It needs to be explored in more detail by an introspective eloquent writer the symbolism of MJ's death to people of my generation and the one before in the current times. I can't put it into words but I can see and feel it.

I believe that is all for now. Please check out Summer In The City at Projects Gallery on N. 2nd Street and see my piece "Holla atcha Girl" among other cool works.

You can read an opinion of it at www.colored-thread.blogspot.com.
^(Thank you so much for the words! Really awesome)

Alright lovers. Until next week, I bid you adieu. XO AC

And here we go...

The Other Woman Collective has decided to dive headfirst into a new project...a blog. So to start it off real proper-like, I thought I might introduce us...

To keep it consistent, we'll each post 1 day per week, Monday through Thursday (this means you'll just have to be sad Fridays through Sundays without us, but on the bright side it will make Mondays that much better....)

First up, on Mondays, the fabulous Ms. Aubrie Costello - www.aubriecostello.com

Holla Atcha Girl, wall installation with summer clothes and two paintings, 2009

Aubrie has a way of making the most (pardon my french) fucked up things look beautiful. Her drawings and installations all manage to be raw yet refined, which would seem to be a contradiction but that girl has the eye and the balls to make it all work. How she doin'?

Tuesdays bring us the lovely Ms. Laura Graham - www.lauragrahamart.com

To the Sea, tintype, 2008

Laura Graham could take a photograph of the most boring thing you could imagine and somehow would manage to turn it into the most interesting and mysterious thing you've ever seen. Thing is, she never takes photos of anything boring so her work is even better than you just imagined it to be. Her carefully set scenarios, the secrets of her photographic processes and the sharpness of her eye all add up to a knockout combination...either that or its some kind of secret magic she knows and just isn't telling anyone about. Either way, I'll take it.

On Wednesdays, we'll hear from the saucy Ms. Laura McKinley - www.lauramckinley.typepad.com

Shilly - Shally, oil on canvas, 2009

Laura McKinley's paintings, to me, are each a carefully preserved moment in life, as if she just took that moment and put it in her pocket to show you later (except that she really made it into a big painting that wouldn't really fit in her pocket, but you know what I mean). And despite these moments being snips from her life, I feel like they speak more widely than that...like each piece is a bit of a story that you can imagine yourself in it. I am always so excited to know what's happening next in this story...! And formally speaking, this girl can work color or a pattern like its her job!

And on Thursdays, it will be lil' ol' me, Ms. Darla Jackson - www.darlajacksonsculpture.com

Vessel, gypsum cement, wood, ribbon, 2009

Me? I make strange sculptures of animals, which are based on human emotions, where the animals are kind of stand-ins for figures. I realized a while ago that this is what seemed to get more people to relate to the work, oddly enough. Maybe people feel more empathy toward animals? Maybe they subconsciously relate to the symbolism? Maybe it's easier to see what the piece is about when you're not worrying who it's about? I have no idea...but for some reason it works out.

So that's us...according to me anyway. Hope you enjoy all that is to come...I'm excited to see what craziness ensues...

'Til Monday...xoxo Darla