devil boy


angel boy

Here's some more doodles I did...

Red Heart Lady



Blue Heart

white cat/red cat/black cat




My dream two nights ago...

I was stuck in the middle of a brawl between a white cat, a red cat and a black cat. They were screeching and sratching and I just kept trying to push them away and not get scratched. I attribute it to the fact that we slept with our windows open and our neighbor's cat must be in heat, because it wails all night long.

Today I splurged on new school/fall clothes. I got some stuff I really needed (good fitting jeans) but also bought a couple of too-cute-to-pass-up dresses and a pair of yellow shoes (yellow shoes are replacing my obsession with red shoes lately). I always feel guilty when I spend money on clothes, or money on anything really when I should be saving or spending it on school stuff but I'm too weak to say no. I've actually been really good all summer long about money, so I decided to treat myself.

Grad school starts on Monday. I'm apprehensive and have even had a few weird dreams about class--showing up late, getting lost, being in the wrong class--but for the most part, I'm so ready for it and can't wait to get my fingers dirty, so to speak. This will mean, sadly, that my blog posting will be more scarce but hopefully I'll have a lot more to say when I do post and might even be able to share some of my projects now and again. So if you're not a design nerd (which I'm sure to become) sorry!

Ma Vie en Vert








Hello. Long time, no write. Apologies. B and I are in the process of painting our bedroom an deep, rich emerald green color. At first, I was a little apprehensive about such a bold color but so far, it looks great. It reminds me of the color of a private library with old wooden furniture and lush oil paintings with ornate golden frames. I have a few gold frames I picked up at the thrift store, so I'm on a search to find the perfect pictures/paintings to go inside them to top off our decor. Check out this pic of the Green Room in the White House. I had no idea they even had a green room. Our room is a little darker green than this, more the color of grass.




This is what I'm picturing for our bedroom (a lot more subdued and wholly supplied by the thrift store, of course).

We were going to get our paint/supplies at Home Depot like the rest of the world, but instead we went to this really old, cluttered hardware shop across the street on Western Ave. It was stuffed full of tools, paint, boxes and boxes of whoknowswhat stacked willy-nilly everywhere. I even saw a random red tea kettle tossed on its side in a pile of junk. The owner had to be at least 85 and has probably been working there for 40 years or more. They didn't have a huge selection of paint but he gave us a pretty good deal on rollers, paint, tarps, etc. It was sort of like that scene in Harry Potter when he goes into that magician's shop for his magic wand and gets lost in a heap of magic junk--just like that except it was just the regular kind of junk, none of it magic (I don't think).

B suggested that when the winter comes and we can't find the tiniest speck of green anywhere in the city, our bedroom will be like a spring pasture, bursting with green. How lovely!

I am obsessed with color. Lately I've been thinking what a cool job it would be to just be an expert on color. Can you do that? I read this book over the winter called Color: A Natural History of the Palette. It's about the history of natural pigments and their origins. It also goes into the history of trade and the societal reprucussions of finding and producing these pigments for artists. Some colors were so rare that artists would purposely not use them in their paintings, and others were so poisonous that artists would get ill or even die from using them. Still others were made from beetles, minerals, saffron, and complex boiling practices.

LITMUS TEST
steak silkwaterfall blue balls
sunny bloodocean popsicle
corpuscle toenailsmoon lips
bittersweet miscarriagevelvet veins
bloodshot wineshady factory worker
brick blushsmutty eyeball
cardinal licoricewicked bruise
cherry fleshazure peacoat
beef needlecobalt monkeybite
crimson annienavy pants
sore point heartroyal drink
flaming pimplesthe deep dead
flushed gutsdignified black eye
fuchsia tamponboo-boo dungarees
garnet hot dogsmopey superman
glowing rosejoyless blemish
ruby soresultramarine sea
terra cotta meatballgloomy soap
copper pennytranslucent skin




Yup, you guessed it. Today's word is litmus. I'm thinking of going back and making beefedup vignettes out of all of these word smash-ups. I just love throwing words together to create new ideas. Maybe tomorrow they'll all get fleshedout.

a boy and a girl


and a bottle of wine

Broken hearts, bones and homes

Some really good friends of mine had a fire in their apartment yesterday morning and lost everything, even their cat Graffin. Luckily, neither of them were hurt. They've been going through some really hard times recently (actually, I lot of my friends have). My other friend Lady M hit by a car on her bike this weekend. She's a bit banged up, but OK too. Just makes you realize how breakable everything is--our bodies, homes, pets, belongings, relationships, lives. I don't want to get too heavy but it's been on my mind all day. If you could keep all of them in your thoughts or (if you pray) prayers, it would be much appreciated.

When I was 12, the apartment my family lived in had a fire and we lost a lot, mostly to water rather than fire damage from the hoses. We were jolted out of sleep by the sound of neighbors banging at our doors and screaming for us to get out (my brother had a friend spending the night, unfortunate for him). I ignored the screaming for awhile, drifting in and out of sleep, assuming it was the neighbors fighting or some drunk disturbance in the neighborhood). My mom's boyfriend rushed into my room and told me to get out. We ran out the door so fast that I didn't even have time to grab anything or register what was really happening. As soon as I hit the street and looked back at my house, it all hit me at once and I started crying (I never cried in front of my family after the age of 10 or so, so it was very awkward). I cried for about two minutes and then became numb and it felt like I was outside of myself in a way, like a movie was being shot about my life and my family.

My mom held on to my shoulder and tried to calm me but I'm sure she was just as shaken as I was. We spent the rest of the night at the neighbor woman's house. She gave my brother and I snacks and put on Lady and the Tramp to distract us, but it didn't really work. The next morning, we hopped in the car and headed over to my grandmother's house and declared we were moving in. Two of my aunts still lived at home at that point, so there were 8 people and a dog living together on good old Newburg St. My brother and I spent all that Sunday jumping on my grandmother's bed and pretending to be superheroes, hoping, hoping that my mom and her boyfriend wouldn't make us go to school on Monday. They did anyway.

This was at the height of puberty for me and being without my favorite clothes, makeup and hair spray was devastating (sorry, all 12 year olds are assholes). Later on in the week, we went back to the apartment to salvage anything we could. All of the mattresses were soaked and sagging from hose water and everything in the place stunk of stale smoke and soot--a smell I'll never forget, it's inseparable from my memories of this time. The Red Cross told us specifically not to use any makeup we found in the house, as it was contaminated with smoke, but I pocketed a couple of my favorites anyway (kiwi strawberry and butterscotch lip gloss that I couldn't live without).

And we were all fine. Everyone in the building was fine. The Russian family that lived upstairs who were our landlords rebuilt the place and got new tenants and we all moved on, relatively unscathed--except for the constant feeling I have that keeps telling me nothing is permanent and to never get too comfortable. But that feeling will pass. Right, guys??? Right???

On Friday, strangely enough, I was feeling very uninspired (well, that's not strange but what I'm about to tell you) and I decided to go back to the ol' dictionary and pick a word. The word I picked was Joshua, no lyin'. I happen to have a friend named Joshua who lives right down the street from me and also works with me. I decided to just throw five words at Josh (he's a creative fellow) and see what he comes up with. His five words were: anti-art, invention, support, unsound and lethal gene. Here's the result of this madness. Thanks to Joshua, friend and neighbor.

p.s. the dictionary definition of Joshua was 1. the divinely commissioned successor of moses and military leader of the israelites during the conquest of canaan according to the account in the book of joshua. 2. a mainly narrative book of canonical jewish and christian scripture--in case you were curious.

It's not that I am anti-art per se. It's just that so much art these days buys into the philosophy of postmodernism which is an invention of academic elites and their followers who look to make a name for themselves by pure word play, contradictory and unsound theories, and a mess of writing that lends itself to nothing but the support of their own kind with the complete neglect of class struggle or any kind of praxis that could help foster change in the capitalist world. With that said, postmodern art is usually as delusional as postmodern theory (are they not one and the same?) and thus creates a world within a world that is only known to those within this elitist world which rests like storm clouds above mankind. Therefore I support real art, real theory and real practice that has the aim of speaking to the people and not raining/reigning above them. And, thus, I must declare that the lethal gene of the 21st century is undoubtedly postmodernism. If the likes of Foccault and Derrida were still around I would kick them in the balls. Or as Marx used to say, "bash their ears in." My name is Joshua and I am an independent socialist. Thank you for your time.