"How fine you look when dressed in rage. Your enemies are fortunate your condition is not permanent. You're lucky, too. Red eyes suit so few. " Cheshire Cat 2.1. Ink on tracing paper. June 30, 2010
From Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951).
Cheshire Cat: Oh, by the way, if you’d really like to know, he went that way.
Alice: Who did?
Cheshire Cat: The White Rabbit.
Alice: He did?
Cheshire Cat: He did what?
Alice: Went that way.
Cheshire Cat: Who did?
Alice: The White Rabbit.
Cheshire Cat: What rabbit?
Alice: But didn’t you just say – I mean – Oh, dear.
Cheshire Cat: Can you stand on your head?
Alice: Oh!
It must be Halloween in July (seriously, wasn’t it Christmas?).
I have material for three new posts and some serious retroactive editing to do; have been drawing, reading short fiction, poetry, and fascinating stories about forensic art curating- all of which I will share with related art. But let me start with saying that at times intense reading (input) for the ambitious –or obsession-prone– designer/visual artist can be considered a passive-aggressive behavior, when so much needs to be in output mode, expressed, exorcised. Indeed, Julia Cameron in her Artist’s Way asks us to refrain from reading for one week, as we need to temporarily pause others’ voices and opinions to recognize and strengthen our own.
Lately my work, alas, has been hindered: I had to hunt (and was haunted[1] by) a ghost with sixty-four teeth. The wheels of karma turned and I , who once called someone-undeservedly- a ghost, have had to suffer one.
Hello, setbacks.
So for today’s art, folks, this page is my canvas and my collage. This is where the work is done.
Let me tell you about the Cheshire cat. He appears to di-sappear only to re-appear!
All this to say (and yes, Art is process, it is a filter, it exorcises…it is a strainer, a sieve. She is a savior):
- Ink on Paper and digital collage. June 29, 2010
I have been walking under a black cloud for three months
Holding my breath
Only it was not a cloud
-though it hung like a pale, hungry moon-
It was the Cheshire smile of a ghost
Useless, hideous ghost that would not go away
Spoke maddening riddles, multiplied hydra-like,
Says I…. I….I….
That single grin is fading again
Waning
And I, tethered, am starting to exhale.
Thank you. How about how good it feels to finally forget forgive you.
[1] Definitions from The Free Dictionary:
haunt // (hônt, h
nt)
v. haunt·ed, haunt·ing, haunts
v.tr. 1. To inhabit, visit, or appear to in the form of a ghost or other supernatural being.
2. To visit often; frequent: haunted the movie theaters.3. To come to the mind of continually; obsess: a riddle that haunted me all morning.4. To be continually present in; pervade: the melancholy that haunts the composer’s music.
v.intr. To recur or visit often, especially as a ghost.
haunt
vb 1. (Myth & Legend / European Myth & Legend) to visit (a person or place) in the form of a ghost
2. (tr) to intrude upon or recur to (the memory, thoughts, etc.) he was haunted by the fear of insanity3. to visit (a place) frequently4. to associate with (someone) frequently
n 1. (often plural) a place visited frequently an old haunt of hers.
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