Monday, January 30

Kung Hei Fat Choi!


Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Feng Shui experts say that 2006, the Year of the Fire/Red Dog, is a time for great changes. Let's all take advantage of this auspicious period and dare to sail uncharted waters! Do things you've never done before. Listen and let unfamiliar possibilities surface. Remember, you can't invite new things into your life without letting go of old ones. May we all have the courage to take that first step toward our adventure.

Full speed ahead. HAPPY NEW YEAR! (from me and my friend Burgoo, that cute, tiny mutt in the pic)

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"I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark in the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friday, January 27

Broken Flowers

I would like to see "Broken Flowers" by Jim Jarmusch. I’ve only seen two of his films so far, but I’m becoming a big fan of his work. I saw "Coffee and Cigarettes" last year. Most of my friends begged me to watch it because, well, I WAS coffee and cigarettes. Thank God I gave in. It was amusing to see Iggy Pop and Tom Waits together. And Cate Blanchet. And Steve Buscemi (Mr. Pink!).

(BTW, I've got a couple of strange Steve Buscemi anecdotes—One of my good friends LOVES Steve. I mean really, really IN LOVE with him. I’ve been told that she gasped with excitement when she saw the trailer of "The Island" when it first came out, and it wasn’t because of Sean Bean or Ewan McGregor. And then, I have another good friend, a woman, who once dated a guy who said that she looked like Buscemi in Con Air. Wasn’t he a child molester in that one? He couldn’t remember his name at first so we thought he was referring to John Malkovich. Hmmm... both male (and convicts in that movie, I might add) but at least they are great actors. She didn’t stick around long enough to find out if he was a fan or not. Love may be blind but I think it’s better not to find out that you can be mistaken for a man when you are out on a date. Maybe these two ladies should meet; they will probably have a lot of things to talk about.)

Back to Jim Jarmusch. Yes, I ended up loving "Coffee and Cigarettes." It was dark and surreal and different. Nothing really happened (no CGIs nor million dollar sets), but I felt, for a couple of hours, as if I was there hanging out with the stars. Actually, more like getting high on coffee and cigarettes with my weird, manic friends. That could have been us discussing the pros and cons of looking like Steve Buscemi. Bill Murray was also there. Which makes me want to see "Broken Flowers." It got luke-warm reviews from the critics, but I’m still curious to see it. I heard it’s already out on DVD. I’ll hunt for a copy along with other Jarmusch films.

Monday, January 23

A little batty

Yahoo! Avatars

The heat is driving me crazy. It's boiling me from the inside out; I can feel my body turn to mush. I miss the rain and windy, dark days. I really don't see the attraction in living in a tropical country. I really don't. Frizzy hair, heavy air, warm, blistering sun. Can you hear me breathe through that despotic glare?

Did you know that bats can eat their full body weight in insects? Imagine doing that, stuffing yourself with 100++ pounds of chocolate. Yu-um. They navigate in the dark using high-frequency sounds. The only mammals that can fly and they do it with their eyes closed. Such faith. They pollinate plants, flowers, trees, and they devour those nasty, disease-bloated mosquitoes. They're quite clean though despite their horrid diet. Such happy, little helpers and they get bad rap for living in dark, dank caves and squatting in cavernous churches.

I like them though... with the funky ears, fine-edged teeth, leaf nose and all. I just feel bad when I have to use their name in vain when I am a bit loopy. I don't know... maybe being batty isn't such a bad thing.

Saturday, January 21

Caught in Louise's spider web


I took this photo almost a year ago. That was the first time I saw a Louise Bourgeois up close. I had never even heard of her until I attended art school in 2003. Before then I was only familiar with the "popular" artists—Picasso, Van Gogh, Warhol, Da Vinci, and Pollock—the ones whose works are compiled in a calendar you can buy for $12.99 at the local bookstore or had their biographies turned into award winning Hollywood films. I was a repressed artist and was only interested in painting, which, in my mind, was the only valid form of art. I never gave sculpture much thought. Aren’t monuments for dead heroes and conceited millionaires?

I finally discovered Bourgeois through a professor. She was a self-confessed feminist and raved endlessly about female artists. I should look her up, she suggested, if I wanted to study sculpture seriously. Since I was making a lot of disembodied figures for my works she thought I could learn a trick or two from Ms. Bourgeois. I was up to my elbows in plaster everyday, enjoying my time isolated in the studio, so, naturally, I refused to lift a finger to open a book. I was tired of reading or hearing about other people making art; I wanted to spend every minute I had making mine. "You are walking around with blinders on," my rabid professor egged on. I had to know my roots, my ancestors. There’s a long history and tradition of sculptors and, like it or not, I should study it so I could ground myself better in its world. It’s much like knowing your family history. If you acknowledge it, you could learn from your grandmother’s or uncle’s mistakes or build on what they’ve done. In the end you could take it or leave it, but you have to be aware of it first before you can decide.

Like I said, I really didn’t want to spend my precious time reading art history. I had already wasted so much of it doing other things before deciding to go back to school for a formal training in art. I just wanted to create something. Besides, I didn’t want to subconsciously copy or integrate other people’s vision in my stuff. I’ve seen other people do it and I didn’t want to go down that road. If there was one thing I always believed in, it was that one has to tell their own truth in their own voice. Can people just leave me alone and let me do my thing?

But, alas, my professor won in the end (she would have resorted to black mail if I hadn’t given in) and I grudgingly took out a book about Louise Bourgeois and started to read. I was totally blown away! I initially flipped through the pages and just scanned the photos. Wow, her works were fierce. As we say in Tagalog, "Ang taray!" They made my stomach churn in discomfort and drained the blood from my legs. Sculpture and installations are really powerful in the hands of a genius.

I wanted to get to know this woman and began reading her biography. I was surprised to find out that she was still alive and was ancient. I mean really ancient. She was born in Paris in 1911. She went to Sorbonne to study Mathematics (say what?!?), got married when she was in her 20’s, then moved to the States with her American husband. There were several pictures of her in the book and in each one she had a mischievous glint in her eyes and a beguiling demeanor about her. I couldn’t help but admire and envy her at the same time. Almost a century old, had survived two world wars, but this woman had more spunk than a normal 12-year-old and looked more alive than I ever did. I was a third of her age and I felt more over the hill and washed out than her. Something was definitely not right. She must know something I don’t.

I read on and from what I’d gathered, she was not the type to produce works day in and day out. Yes, she would constantly draw and create something, but she didn’t have an exhibit one after the other. She would go on hiatus after a period of producing and exhibiting a series and would stay away from the public eye for a long time. That probably accounts for her longevity in the business. Her works have been described as sensual and erotic. She seemed to channel her unresolved conflicts and ambiguous memories from childhood into her work. Her family (her father really) owned a tapestry restoration business. She saw her mother as the protective parent and her father the authoritarian figure. At some point, he took on a lover, of all people, the family's tutor. Bastard.

Her story reads like a script from a Venezuelan telenovela, which makes her works even more fascinating. Yes, I am guilty of feasting on someone else’s dirty laundry. I do get curious of other people’s lives especially when they are successful artists who can produce such an impressive portfolio. I put on my glasses, relax into a leather armchair, and go into my Jung-wannabee mode. I have probably jumped into many conclusions by reading too much into the forms and colors that she has used—and I apologize for all of them—but I still can’t help relating much of what she does to her personal life. Not that I really know her… I only get stuff from what I see in the books or what I’ve Googled. God knows how accurate they are, right?


But still. She herself has mentioned the connection of her works to her relationship with her family, especially with her father. Come on, she made an installation called "Destruction of the Father." As for her giant spiders series, she has been quoted to have said that unlike her father's business of mending tapestries, a spider weaves its own web. The gigantic spider represents labor, of giving, protection and foresight. We could see it as something that nurtures, but there is always the possibility that we could get tangled in its web as if we were prey. Hello, visions of Shelob and Frodo.

Alright, alright, I personally don’t like it when people psychoanalyze me when they see my work. You can tell your story through your sculptures or novels, but it doesn’t mean they are direct translations of it. It’s never as simple as that. I guess what I am trying to say here is that I enjoy reading about Bourgeois’s life as much as I take pleasure in looking at her works not because I am a snoop, but because I would like to comprehend the way her mind works, what her creative process is, and figure out where she gets her ideas. I guess I want to know because I am still deciphering the source of mine.

Sigh. So my profesora was right—you could learn a lot from studying other artists’ stories and familiarizing yourself with their works. You just have to know that that is their way of telling it and that you have your own way of expressing yourself. You can also say that there is always room for the viewer to make their own interpretations of the artist’s work… but then, good artworks should be clear, right? I’ll leave that thought for another day.

I still have a lot to learn and I still can’t name-drop to save my life. I can never remember the names of the artworks, when they were made, in which movement the artist was part of, the –isms, and what-have-yous. And I definitely can’t imagine myself getting into long conversations and debates about the contribution of Duchamp’s "Fountain" to the post-post-POST modern contemporary multi-culturalism third millennium art. En fin. I still have a long way to go, baby, but I am learning.

Wednesday, January 11

GARGH. ACK. UGH. UFF. BLECH.

I spoke too soon. Talk about jumping the gun, counting your eggs before they hatch, and all the other clichés you can think of. Just when I thought I was virus-free, I wake up, excited to see another day, try to hum "it’s a lovely eleven morning" from Sesame Street, and is greeted by a gravelly voice reverberating from my throat. Oh shit. It’s as if a grouchy old toad just lodged itself in there overnight.

Snort. I deflate as I exhale loudly through my nostrils and peer through the slits of my puffy, sleep-laden eyes. I feel like King Kong. Why can’t those damn planes just leave me alone!?! I’ve tried swatting my effing cold with the Dynamic Duo called Dayquil & Nyquil, and just when I thought it was safe to come out and slip and slide on the ice, I get clobbered again and shot in the back.

Snort.

I must admit that I really feel disappointed right now. I’ve spent the first two weeks of the new year trying to get rid of all this phlegm. Ugh. Not pretty, not pretty. And to think I had a lot of things lined-up for this month! I had a list. I wanted to be good and get organized and start the year on the right foot. Things to do. Things to scratch off the list. But then the sniffles came, then the steady pain in my head that dulled my eyes, then the cotton ball for ears, and now the scary raspy voice and the hacking cough.

Snort.

A friend pointed out to me the other day that maybe I should just lie down and let the virus do its thing. It’s bound to leave if I stop squiggling about. She added that maybe the real reason why they haven’t found the cure for the common cold is because it’s not supposed to be cured. Maybe we were supposed to get this thing to slow us down and keep us thinking about things. Maybe it’s a good time to really reflect on my plans for the year.

Hmmm… Snort.

Alright, alright. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I’m getting carried away again by all the possibilities of the new year. Too many things to do + too much expectations + too little time = another pressure-filled, crash and burn year.

‘RAF! WOOF! RUFF! EHEH!’, said Steph. Excuse me while I ponder on that and cough my lungs out.

Friday, January 6

Hallelujah

My ear just popped! Yes, only one ear, but at least now I can hear better. My throat is still raw and itchy but I think my head is slowly being vacated by the cold virus and/or my allergies. I feel less like a phlegm factory as well. At last I can get off the Tylenol! I still have that nagging headache though... but it's always been there anyway. Heh. I’m already starting to feel lucid. And my appetite is coming back along with my fully-functioning taste buds. HAHA! Now where did I put that Meiji dark chocolate bar…? Sigh. The little joys in life.

Tuesday, January 3

Holiday Excess

People tend to go overboard during the holidays and, unfortunately, I am not immune to this deadly habit. Stressful as it is, I find myself testing (yet again!) the limits of my body—from downing 10 different types of liquors in one night, eating fatty food till I get dizzy, to staying up till 9AM after coming home from a party because I forget I have a deadline to meet. So here I am, during the first week of the new year, with my sinuses clogged, nursing a headache, and running a slight fever. Nothing is impossible, but it is true that you can’t (or it’s really hard to) teach an old dog new tricks.

Balance was never really my thing. I’ve always been driven to excess. I like contrasts. I’ve been known to hibernate after a period of constant socializing. I’m am a workaholic, but I also like to sleep and do nothing when I do not have a project. I used to practice yoga daily for an hour and a half for fourteen solid months, then did nothing the following year. Psychologists and behaviorists can offer their theories about this comportment but I personally like blaming it on the stars. I am a Leo, with an ascendant in Aquarius, and moon in Sagittarius. These aspects mixed together make up an interesting and volatile brew.


Allow me to explain: Your sun sign determines your method of self-expression and basic approach to life. Your ascendant (or rising sign) describes the surface of your personality and the impression you give people. Your moon dictates the way you react to people and events. Leos are spirited and strong willed. They live for drama. They are also social creatures, seen as warm and friendly. Aquarians, ruled by the opposing sign of Leo, are cool and detached. Although they are also determined and quite stubborn when it comes to their ideas, they go about their business in solitude (unlike Leos). Think of the snooty intellectuals hiding away in their ivory towers. They are often unconventional, independent, rebellious, and eccentric. Sagittarians are divided—one part longs to party into the night and the other wants to expand his mind and explore his spirituality. They are free-spirits, philosophers, and wanderers. Leo and Sagittarius are fire signs, while Aquarius is air.

Like I said, a combination of these three creates a curious and mercurial personality. Schizophrenia, anyone?

Okay, okay, I am not washing my hands altogether here and pointing the entire blame on my astrological chart. I know enough to see that real life cannot be filed and boxed neatly. And that no one else is responsible for your life but you. I am the way I am because of an unlimited combination and permutations of events, experiences, people, emotions, and chemicals (ingested and naturally produced). I do, however, get a kick out of reading my chart, confirming and seeing the source of my freakishness on paper. It’s like going to the doctor for a check-up when you already know you just have a headache from eating an entire two pound turtle cake in one sitting and not have a brain tumor. The prescription for Advil in your hand quiets you because sometimes it’s easier to accept things for the way they are when it is handed to you in a concise and precise note. It’s silly but astrology calms my stomach and keeps the lid on the lunatic, nervous, paranoid, homicidal maniac running around the basement in my brain.

I write this under the influence of Maximum Strength Tylenol Sinus (Night). My heart is palpitating like Sara Baras’s feet during a flamenco performance and I think (no, I swear) that I don’t want a repetition of last month’s frenzy in the coming months. So, in honor of the new year (and in accordance with the spirit of resolution-making prevalent this time of year), I am officially adding "cultivating balance and becoming a master of maintaining my equilibrium" to my list of goals for 2006. Very ambitious, I know, but what do you expect from a Leo-Aquarian-Sagittarian?

Monday, January 2

HO-HO-HO



I never got around to making my own Christmas cards this year. Around mid-October I usually leave post-it notes around the house reminding me that Christmas is around the corner so I should start making studies for my cards. It would infinitely be more interesting to create one than getting a pack from the store. I don't know about you, but I find it extremely difficult to find one that says what is really on my mind. Blank cards are okay, but I still worry about finding the right photo or illustration, color, paper, etc, etc.

Anyway, Christmas 2005 has come and gone and I didn't even get a chance to lift my pen for this task. Tsk, tsk, tsk. And worse, I did not send out a card at all. Thank god for text messaging and email. Typical Steph… it's always all or nothing. Picky, picky, picky. Maybe this year.

I want to make up for my lack of enthusiasm for spreading holiday cheer by posting an excerpt from Neil Gaiman's collection of short stories, "Smoke and Mirrors." I wish I had written this myself!!! He wrote this bit years ago for his Christmas card. It was calligraphed by Dave McKean. Sigh. I need to add this for my list of goals for 2006.



Nicholas was…

Older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die.

The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.

Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves' invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen in time.

He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas. His punishment was harsher.

Ho.

Ho.

Ho.

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PS. I found the photo online. It’s not from Neil Gaiman or Dave McKean.







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All images and content, unless otherwise noted, belong to and are the property of Stephanie Palallos. I’m just an artist doing my best to create. Please don’t steal my work! :)