Art Archives - Page 7 of 7

23 Aug 2013

Rejected.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art | 72

This post is for my quilters. My homies.

I whipped up a baby quilt top for the magazine to show in a Quilty magazine tutorial. “Whipped up” is a kind way to put it. “Threw it together on my way out the door” is a better way to put it. And I made some errors. No, really. Look:

I taped it up in a box, mailed it to Iowa. A week or so later, I got this email from the Quilty managing editor, whom I adore:

“Hi Mary — We were getting ready for photography, and we noticed there were several places in the baby quilt top that you sent us that the seams don’t match up. While we are not trying to be the quilt police, we thought it was important to address this. We need to do very detailed shots of the quilt top and we can’t photograph it without showing the places that are not aligning. I can send it back to you if you are going to use it, just let me know.”

Oh yeah.

Here are a few things I think we can all take from this course of events.

1. Quilty (and all Fons & Porter titles) have high standards.
2. Just because you’ve made a passel of quilts, it doesn’t mean you don’t make mistakes.
3. Slow down, cowgirl.
4. COWGIRL! I SAID SLOW DOWN!
5. Be kind to yourself.
6. Were you drinking?

I’d like to expand on #5 for a moment. When this happened, I had a mini-meltdown. It wasn’t a crying, kicking, screaming meltdown, I just had a horrified look on my face, silently wept for about 3 minutes, and felt like an utter and complete failure. Too much? Well, considering it was my birthday and considering the fact that I teach quilting on national television, I think I reacted appropriately.

But after that, I couldn’t let it go of how dumb I felt. That seam? That’s like, really off. It wasn’t the only one. And I didn’t even notice. Sure, I had ninety things to do, but so does everyone else, and besides: I had that particular thing to do and I didn’t do it too well, did I? I felt like a sham. I felt like a fraud.

Several days later, when I was still hearing the word “fraud” in my head over and over, I finally did stop myself and say, “Self, this has gone on long enough. ‘Fraud’? No. Hasty? Absolutely. In need of some perspective? Without question.” It wasn’t an immediate turnaround, but over the course of the next few days, the stung subsided, mostly because I vowed to be nice to myself.

This post is not about vindicating my rejected baby quilt top. It absolutely should have been rejected. This post about vindicating yours.

I’m a writer/editor working in the quilt industry: I see a lot of quilts. I see quilts with problems, both in terms of workmanship and design. I see quilts that are technically flawless but utterly lack soul. I see quilts that would never make it onto the pages of a quilt magazine in a thousand years because frankly, they’re quilts only a mother (or a child) could want. These quilts are all made for a reason. Sometimes that reason is for fame and fortune, sometimes it’s for fun, and the majority of the time, it’s for love.

Look, I read the blogs. I watch the tempests swirl about modern vs. traditional, this sewlebrity vs. that one, the fans vs. the naysayers of the latest trend, latest winningest quilt. I most definitely see people going back and forth about technique. You’d think it was their very soul at stake, sometimes, and all anyone said was “squaring off.”

Release yourself.

If you’re going for publication or a job-job in the quilt industry, yes, you need to bring an A-game. But regardless of whether that’s a goal of yours, take the pressure off of yourself to be all things to all people, all the time. Maybe you’re more of a designer, not a blue-ribbon winner. Maybe every fabric combination you choose looks like the dog’s vomit, but MAN are you a crackerjack machine quilter. Can’t turn a binding that doesn’t look like it was chewed by your toddler? Well, fine, but your knack for solving Susie’s (and Joan’s and Polly’s) contrast problems make you the #1 go-to for such things while everyone else is scratching their heads.

Learn the craft. It’s more fun when you know how to do stuff well. Smart quilters say that again and again. I say it. But for heaven’s sake, be nice to yourself. I spent far, far too many hours in the dumps because I made one mistake and of course, I can’t make mistakes. Ever. Lemme tell you, learning to sew on national television was not easy and I thought I could weather any storm after that, but apparently, I can still be felled. And if the editor of a national quilting magazine can be rejected from time to time, you better not feel too bad about it, either, L’il Miss.

By the way, I just finished my latest top. 🙂

Love,
Mar

23 Aug 2013

I Was A Dancer All Along.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art, Family | 6

I’m misunderstood, you know. Really, I’m a dancer.

I never told anyone, never dared to admit it even to myself. I took dance classes at Debbie’s School of Dance as a kid, but those classes weren’t fun so I wasn’t particularly good at them. That made it seem that I was only an okay dancer, not a gifted one.

Now wait, wait: I’m no dance genius. Have you been to any city ballet company performance recently? watched a Beyonce video? Dancers are artists and they train their whole lives to be professionals. I wouldn’t insult them by saying I have some divine knowledge of their craft. But if you’re talking passion and creativity, I can say with conviction: I’m a dancin’-dancin’-dancin’-dancin’ machine that can match the best of ’em.

You know how I know? It’s because there is no other state in which I am more baseline happy than when I am dancing. Look how happy I am:

I'm the short one. The tall one is my sister Nan. — I’m the short one.

I’m dancing, as evidenced by the right foot step forward, there. My sister Nan is mugging for the camera and she’s clearly freaking adorable, but I’m actually not mugging. I’m just caught in a moment.

When I’m dancing (and I prefer good, crunchy remixes to pop music) and in the zone (which most assuredly does exist, a place between intense focus and stream-of-consciousness) I’m alive. I feel my vitality. It’s said that we don’t “have” a body, we are a body. When I’m dancing, I know this and embracing it feels as good as it felt to be with my sister back in that room on the farm in Iowa that day.

How about you? What do you love the most?

18 Aug 2013

The Preposterously True Tale of Pru Huntington’s Pineapple: Part I

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art, Poetry | 3

I’m writing a series of poems about fruit. Each poem focuses on a single fruit, each written in a different style. Some are almost childishly simple — there are those among you who may remember Cantaloupe In Chorus — while others are more thinky, e.g., Pomergran, a commentary on faith vs. reason modeled after Lewis’ Jabberwocky. I’ll post that one day, too.

Right now, I’m working on a piece about pineapple and I am enjoying the heck out of this one. I’ve titled it The Preposterously True Tale of Pru Huntington’s Pineapple and as you read the first half of it, I recommend doing so aloud to get the meter right. Remember: there is a “grace note” of sorts that one can exploit in these things; I assure you, my meter has been tested and retested for accuracy.

ED. NOTE: Damn! My formatting didn’t make it into the WordPress quotation template. Forgive me; I know it’s wonky.

Oh, and one other thing: the second half takes a wild, utterly unexpected turn. It involves a song — not sung by any human…

“The pineapple’s here!” she cried, “Be a dear, Louisa, and go to the door?”
Pru stood, quite amazed, at the window and gazed at the fruit
She’d been waiting for.

Huge, golden yellow — the fruit service fellow had trouble just lifting it up;
“A centerpiece for the century,” Pru mused, “All the gentry
Will scarcely believe their good luck.”

The deliveryman soon was to stand in the foyer of Huntington House;
He was swiftly paid and excused by the maid, Louisa,
Who wore a silk blouse.

The party that night was the unmatched delight of the
in-the-know every December;
A-listers all fought to be given a spot:
On the guest list of VIP members.

The house was festooned (be-ribboned!) and bloomed with bouquets
stacked floor to the ceiling;
They spared no expense, decorating like this;
(The party, it gave Pru’s life meaning.)

Are you in the mood to hear of the food that awaited each last sparkly guest?
Delights for the eyes and stomach, no surprise,
(Worth making dear Prudence so stressed.)

Piled high on the tables inside the great room, the dishes,
they steamed and they bubbled;
Whatever you please, there were tureens of these,
A spread of deliciousness, doubled.

Racked lamb and partridge and baked ham to boot,
the butcher’s best efforts in meat,
Chicken with waffles, deep-fried falafels;
A trip ’round the world you could eat!

Dessert was a feat of sugar and cake, so heavy the table would droop;
Ice cream? Oh, please! There were dozens of these,
Get a bowl, get a spoon, get a scoop!

But in all of this bounty, a royal spot saved — centerstage,
surrounded by flowers —
It was for the pineapple — Pru’s precious pineapple!
No other food had the fruit’s powers.

Hospitality emblem, oh lighthouse of grace, rough from the stem to the stalk;
Its sweet, fleshy inner was relished at dinner
Throughout the grand Belle Époque.

Let’s turn to Pru, our esteemed hostess who,
at this moment was placing her prize
High on its stage, a fruit for the age,
The Missus had pride in her eyes.

At a quarter to eight, the guests had arrived
and swiftly bestowed with Champagne;
They drank up the stars as valets parked men’s cars,
And hung furs for Anne, for Elaine.

Mingling done, Pru and Barry appeared at the top of an ornate staircase;
And a “Hip-hip Hooray!” for King and Queen of the day,
He donned tuxedo, She — lace.

“Thank you, comrades,” Barry boomed from his post,
Pru so glad she could cry;
“And now let us dine and drink casks of good wine,
To the great room, for dinner is nigh.”

The oak doors were opened, the guests “Ooh’ed” and “Ahh-ed,”
“Tally ho! You’ve outdone yourselves,”
Said Silas The Barrister, then to Pru, to embarrass her:
“Did you hire an army of elves??”

Before they could eat, Pru had a brief speech
which she gave at the party each year;
She stood at the center, Pineapple Presenter,
Elocution loud enough they might hear:

“A pineapple means welcome, and hospitality, too; truly the Huntington way;
We wish you prosperity vis a vis this fruit rarity,
Now let’s all dine and be gay!”

Fair reader, I beg you: believe what I say just then, the party plot thickened —

This is when it gets really good. Keep watching…

9 Aug 2013

Meet Philip Larkin.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art, Philip Larkin | 3

I found a photograph of a little doggie at a flea market. Wanna see him? Okay, here he is:

I got him for $25 dollars. As you can see, he was irresistible. The cock of the head, the sparkly eyes. He had to be mine. I thought for a second he might’ve been that famous 1930’s Hollywood dog, Asta. But he’s not. He’s just a little dog. What’s neat is that his picture was taken by a Chicago photography studio that no longer exists, somewhere up north. The name was stamped on the back. Abbot Photography, I think?

I spared no expense with the frame. I went to a trusted frame shop and did him right. I feel like I rescued him, which of course makes him “a rescue.” Now he’s home. He’s warm and dry, beloved and safe. Safe in the home of a woman who really needs him.

I named him after my favorite poet: Philip Larkin.

8 Aug 2013

On Orwell, On Money: Salonathon Piece, August 2013

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art, Plays | 5

There’s a performance series in Chicago called “Salonathon.” It was founded several years ago by my friend Jane. She and I met at the University of Iowa and I will never forget the night we really became friends. We went to The Foxhead, a cozy Iowa City bar with a lot of small taxidermy and one large jukebox, and we drank some beers. I remember how the bond felt as it formed. It felt great; I knew I’d know Jane for a long time.

Jane curates Salonathon every other week. There are musicians, dancers, poets, comedians, performance artists, writers, and acts non-categorizable. I have had the pleasure of performing in the series numerous times. Each show has a theme, and this week, the theme was “Money.” I did a piece that went over quite well, so I thought I’d post it. If you’ve ever wanted to be a better writer and/or suffer less in regard to money, you’ll like it. I edited for language a bit; Salonathon is raucous; this blog, decorous.

Thanks, Jane, for the beers and the life.

On Orwell, On Money (Sounds Hot)
By Mary Fons for SALONATHON
© August 2013

(MARY stands at a microphone. She has Orwell’s rules written on big placards. When she gets to a new rule, she reveals the next placard. MARY may or may not be drinking Tanqueray as she performs this piece.)

I divide my life in two: the time before I discovered George Orwell’s six rules for effective, honest writing, and my life after.

Orwell’s rules work for speaking just as well as for writing, and the theme at Salonathon tonight is “money,” so this brief address is about money and how to better speak (or talk) about it.

Orwell says in his rules and elsewhere, that language matters. It doesn’t matter in the way the Grammar Police say it matters; “ain’t” is a word and has been a word for long time so ignore them; he means that when we write and when we speak, we make seismic choices that shape our faces and our days. And as we make and spend money, we make the same kinds of choices. So when we speak about money? Double whammy.

Orwell’s first rule:

i. “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.”

Here is what you are not allowed to say and never allowed to write, ever, ever again: money doesn’t grow on trees; money is the root of all evil; money isn’t everything; the best things in life are free; you can’t take it with you.

Let’s pull one of those out: “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” We know what the point is. The point, is that to survive in the jungle, even though it looks like a fairly cushy jungle when you’re raised like most of us here tonight were raised, the earth is a vicious animal. You take away the skyscrapers and the iPhones and the streetlights and you’ve got a thankless prairie under your feet and some hardscrabbling to do, comrades.

We have to eek out a living while we’re alive. We gotta eat. We have to find shelter. It’s deadly serious. Plus, we’re wired to make more of our species. These are our charges as humans. So when you’re headed to work and you hate your work, rather than making it worse by muttering the phrase, “Welp, money doesn’t grow on trees,” say – or just think – “I am earning a living. I gotta eat. I need shelter.” And maybe work will seem more important, less magically crappy than when you say tired, cliched phrases over and over. They don’t help you.

ii. “Never use a long word where a short one will do.”

“The members of the Board of Governors and the Reserve Bank presidents foresee an implicit strengthening of activity after the current rebalancing is over, although the central tendency of their individual forecasts for real GDP still shows a substantial slowdown, on balance, for the year as a whole.”

That gush of Fedspeak comes courtesy of Alan Greenspan, during some godawful testimony from some Fed monetary policy report to Congress in 2001.

It means nothing. Language like that is engineered to mean nothing. It’s a card trick. Words and phrases like foresee implicit strengthening and central tendency of individual forecasts, these are the hand you’re watching here while the other hand takes your wallet over there and yes, that’s literal. Taxes come out of your wallet; Greenspan was talking, ultimately, about how much of the money you made today will be removed from your wallet. Reject this language. Do a close read, if you can stay awake — you must fight to stay awake! — and translate. It’s very hard to tell what he meant. But I think that phrase meant: “The money forecasters say the GDP is still bad, but after the budget is balanced, it will get better.”

iii. “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”

Let’s say [SELECTED AUDIENCE MEMBER] here is going to have trouble paying her rent this month. She’s got two ways to handle the call to her management company/landlord.

Option 1:
“Hi, um, I’m calling to, well, it’s… It’s kind of a, an uncomfortable thing, but I am in a bind with my car. It is in need of some really crazy expensive repairs and without it, I can’t get to work because I can’t take the bus to work, because I work in the burbs three days a week. And I need to have the car repaired before Monday – it’s in the shop now – and for rent this month, I can pay it, but I can’t pay it till I know how much the car will be, the repairs. So it might not be that much, but it might be, I don’t know. So I’m hoping, I mean, if it’s okay, that I can pay my rent by the middle of the month? I know, I know, there’s a fee, it’s not the best, but I kind of can’t… You know, I don’t see… You know, it’s just, well, it’s just hard to see how I can do both and I need to like, figure that out.

Option 2:
“Hello, this [AUDIENCE MEMBER]. My rent will be late. I’ll include the $25.00 late fee when I drop it off. Thank you, goodbye.”

Dignity. Dignity, [AUDIENCE MEMBER]! It’s your money. It’s your language.

iv. “Never use the passive where you can use the active.”

What’s interesting about [AUD. MEMB] is that she lied about the car. When she gets off the phone with the management company, we hear the truth. And Orwell doesn’t say anything about not lying, so it must be okay as long as its in the active voice. Instead of saying to her roommate,

“I have spent all my money because I have gone shoe shopping.”

say:

“The money is gone. I spent it on shoes.”

And then get on with your life. Enjoy the shoes. They’re fabulous!

v. “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”

News anchors, “financial correspondents,” and radio talk show hosts like foreign phrases because they sound fancy, but they are rarely used for any reason other than to make the news anchor or “financial correspondent” sound fancy or to avoid facing the truth. Example:

“The work was done pro bono.”

No, the work was done for free. Ah, but “free” scares people. You’re a lawyer who does something pro bono, you’re still kind of a scary lawyer. You’re a lawyer who admits to doing something for “free” and watch your email box erupt with people who want free legal advice. We hide behind foreign words ad nauseum. See what I did there?

I give you another (quick) example of this foreign phrasing that is garbage: caveat emptor, “let the buyer beware.”

“This drug is not tested.”
“This toy has caused choking death in fourteen infants.”
“Our lemonade is made with organic cow pee.”

Caveat emptor? Perhaps “run” is more to the point.

* * *

I hope I haven’t sounded pedantic.

The day I read Orwell’s rules, my life changed because my language changed. I’ve spent a good deal of time over the past few years not just “trying to earn a living,” but trying to earn a living that I love. Since the kind of living I love takes a fair amount of money – I’m a shoe person, too, [AUD. MEMB] — I have made choices that have led me to increased income and I continue to make those choices. I have important contract business beginning soon that will span the next few months and all this begins on Monday, when two Important People people will fly into Chicago to for a marathon meeting with me. Briefcases will be involved. There’s a lot to talk about.

Look, the language that I use in that meeting will either a) benefit my livelihood b) keep me where I am, or c) cost me. Any tools of language that I posses must be primed and ready so that I can deploy them when I need to. My language will make all the difference.

Your language is your gun. Your language is your livelihood. Your language is your sex, it can be a drug, it is an integral part of the rock n’ roll we all love. Don’t get lazy. Make more good language and you will make more money.

Ah. Orwell’s final rule:

vi. “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Hey, [AUD. MEMB]. Give me all your money.

CURTAIN.

3 Aug 2013

The Most Beautiful Thing I Have Ever Seen.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art | 2

A few months ago (in Las Vegas of all places) I saw the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

Now, I’ve received a lover’s gaze, I’ve seen a child take his first, wobbly steps toward mom, and I’ve seen a miniature Golden Doodle puppy run across a lawn. Today, I’m speaking of the art visual, observation as opposed to interaction. And I can say that on its face, the most beautiful thing I have seen ever in my life was the Michael Jackson hologram in the Cirque du Soleil show, “One.”

I beg you: allow me to attempt, however feebly, to describe it.

I had never seen a Cirque du Soleil show before and I did not feel sad about this. I knew the performers were talented and I had respect for the whole operation, but trapezes aren’t a selling point for me, especially if part of the spectacle involves a small man in a lizard leotard climbing over me and sticking a forked tongue in my face. Wasn’t that Cirque du Soleil’s whole schtick?

I was in Vegas on business. Cirque’s Michael Jackson show was in previews. I had a last-minute opportunity to go, and I jumped at it. I bailed on Penn & Teller ticket I had purchased already and ate the cost, even. I wouldn’t miss Michael for anything. I had no idea how smart my decision was when I took my seat.

From the time the lights went down, I was transfixed. I sat straight up in my chair like I was an 8-year-old at, you know, the circus. The dancers were astonishing. They have rubber bodies! And if a dancer has a rubber body and can bounce off a damned wall and do a spin in mid-air, you can bet your sparkly glove they can moonwalk, breakdance, and destroy any hip hop move you can throw at them. Man, were they good. I was chair-dancing, boogie-ing as much as possible without actually standing up because there wasn’t room to do so. Michael Jackson’s music is just so good, you guys. It’s made for joy and dancing, for fun and for life. I love his music, always have.

And it’s painful, because we killed him. We did. The star-maker machine, the press. Pop life, the cult of celebrity; it was a homicide. I believe with grave sincerity we all have Michael Jackson’s blood on our hands. You can exempt yourself if you like — it’s not polite of me to say so, having never met most of you — but that man was a fragile person with a one-in-a-billion gift and as a culture, we crushed it into bone powder, slopped it with a mop, and smeared the slurry till it squished under our feet. And Michael still made great music, still kept living when he was deadened by the crush of the crowd on the streets, in the news, and in his head.

So there I am, I’m grinning from ear to ear while watching the show and in the back of my mind I’m deeply sad, too, thinking about Michael and how this genius in our time died so painfully. It was bitter and it was sweet, the worst kind of bitter, the best kind of sweet.

And then it happened.

The theater goes totally dark. Then: stars. Twinkling stars wink, wink, winking across us, all the way from the back of the house to high up in the grid. Woosh… Woosh… Golden stars twinkling, spinning, starting to pick up speed as they collect and move, impossibly, as a group, like a school of fish! Everyone is craning their heads around, a full theater of adults like children, looking here and there and back again at this crazy cloud of stars and the strains of music begin. One couldn’t tell exactly what it was, though it sounded familiar…

The stars floated to the stage. The stars whirled around each other like glowing hummingbirds, faster and around and then, just as it hit you that the music was “Man In the Mirror,” there he was: Michael Jackson. The stars made Michael Jackson. They made a hologram of him. I gasped. Everyone did. This was alchemy.

As I live and breathe, the man appeared as real and as vital as any flesh and blood person there that night. The effect was incomprehensibly executed, an optical illusion without parallel. Michael Jackson was onstage. Humans haven’t evolved to understand this kind of thing. He is dead, but he was there, he was there, young and talented and he was singing, dancing to “Man In the Mirror,” a song I have long believed must’ve been among his favorites because it simply won’t end. There’s an extended coda to MITM that would be uncomfortable if the song wasn’t so freaking great. After his first “shah-mo” at the final third of the song, you really think it’s going to wrap up but it just keeps going. One gets the feeling Michael wanted that song to go on a long time, maybe forever.

If it would have been appropriate, we all would’ve been clapping, but no one spoke or whooped or did anything. We were all just either crying or holding our breath. The dancers danced with him. They moved as an ensemble with him and it was beautiful. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen because it was human ingenuity that brought it into existence. The work that it must’ve taken to build that effect, the science that went into it, the tweaking, the bug fixes, the failures on the way to the end result. I cried the whole time, from the star cloud to the ending strains when the stars whooshed away into nothingness, partly for Thomas Edison for heaven’s sake: we have him to thank for this, too.

It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen because glowing stars are pretty. And it was the most beautiful because a brilliant entertainer who cared about the world way, way too much to be in his line of work, lived again. And he was doing what he loved the most in a place where he was totally safe and sound: onstage. I don’t believe in ghosts and I don’t believe in heaven. I don’t have to. We have holograms and Thomas Edison, Michael Jackson and airplanes to take us to Las Vegas (and back, thank goodness.)

If you can see that show, you should. Let me know if you do.

31 Jul 2013

The Joel Oppenheimer Gallery, The Peccary, and Me.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art, Uncategorized | 4

John Audubon, Collared Peccary - AUD501 — Plate 31, Collared Peccary, by John J. Audubon. Image: Internet.

I pass by the Joel Oppenheimer Gallery on Michigan Avenue at least a few times a week when I’m home. It’s on the ground floor of the Wrigley Building, and for several years I didn’t go in because it appeared painfully fancy from the outside. The Wrigley Building, referred to as “the jewel of the Mile,” is a two-winged castle, Chicago’s Big Ben, a tribute to human potential and intelligence, it is among our finest hours as a city. A gallery worthy of space on the first floor of a building like this can’t help but be intimidating, but then I reminded myself one afternoon that the whole Wrigley empire was built on chewing gum. That day, I went in.

The Joel Oppenheimer Gallery, which is staffed by a small number of terrifically friendly people (including the handsome Sarah and Mr. Oppenheimer himself, who on the day I met him was wearing a snappy bow-tie I’ll wager is part of his daily ensemble), specializes in John James Audubon prints. Did you have Audubon’s Birds of America in your house as a kid? We did. Kids are nuts about animals and drawings and drawings of animals and I remember poring over the illustrations in that huge book for hours, freaked out by what I considered ugly birds (vultures, and I was right) and delighting in the sweet ones (lo, the tufted titmouse!) All creatures great and small may be wise and wonderful but some are more wonderful than others:

I had my eye on a print in the window for so long and when greeted by the kindly Sarah on the day of a big sale at the gallery, I pulled the trigger. I love my art and I now love the gallery. On their website they say, “Inquiries are received with pleasure.” With pleasure! Note: Sarah’s desk is a bit foreboding when you walk in, all lacquered and finely turned, but her ever-present, generous wine glass of orange juice atop it quells nerves.

There’s one other piece I’m after. Something about life in the last few years has made me more open to a certain strain of ugliness. The jolie-laide is cool with me, surely because I’m more of a realist than I ever was and there is comfort in looking at things the way they are and the way they are is not always soft n’ glossy. While I don’t plan to inquire to Joel or Sarah’s pleasure about any vulture renderings, I have been obsessing slightly about that guy up top. The warthog.

He’s huge. Several feet across and so tall. Where would I put him? The bathroom? Would I get ready faster in the morning? He couldn’t go into my bedroom; I’d scare my guests. Perhaps the hall, but he needs room to breathe. If the price is even within the galaxy of possibility for my budget (doubtful) I’d get him and figure it out later. Maybe he could go in the kitchen. He looks pretty hungry.

I like him because he’s ugly. I like him because he’s so ugly, he magnificent. He didn’t choose not to be a titmouse. He’s just a lil’ peccary, squalling and stomping, feral and powerful enough to go into any building, faster than me.

25 Jul 2013

This Ain’t My First Rodeo.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art, Uncategorized | 7

68297_10151563326855617_627054628_n — She’s a beaut, ain’t she?

I am not new to blogging. From 2006 – 2011 and a little into 2012, I posted to my blog nearly every day. The long-term experiment was called “PaperGirl” and she was among my best of friends. Wanna see what roughly six years of blogging looks like on paper? It looks like that picture up there. As I begin this iteration of my blog, I have this probably unfounded and rather obsessive need to let everyone know that I’m not new to this, that this is like drinking water, that I’m not going to drop of the face of the planet, that you can trust me.

The reasons I stopped PaperGirl (unofficially but clearly, once it had been 6 months since my last post) was simple: life got complicated. My marriage failed. I got slightly famous in a small corner of the world and wasn’t so sure how to navigate the personal and private at first. I became the editor of a magazine, i.e., work heated up. There were reasons to stop blogging and they were all excellent. It was a matter of appropriateness and responsibility, of priorities and timing. I actually prioritize nothing over self-expression, so that didn’t go away: it just went offline. My volumes of journals will bear this out, but you won’t see those. Sorry — aside from being handwritten and hard to read, I think I have a moral turpitude clause in my contract.

It feels so good to be home. I mean, back. I mean home. I mean home.

23 Jul 2013

Touche, Soutache

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art | 3

I cannot be denied: I am a lucky girl.

Several people in totally unrelated situations have said to me relatively recently, “I’d rather be lucky than smart any day.” The first time I heard this, I was appalled. How could anyone wish to be anything but smart? But if you apply it to business at least, it makes perfect sense. All the brains in the world won’t make your business succeed if the economy tanks or someone beats you to the patent punch. Ah, but if you’re lucky. If you’re lucky, there’s a snowstorm the day you debut your new + improved snowshoe and bam! Congratulations, old chap. Lucky trumps smart and you’re laughing all the way to the bank, except that it’s closed due to the snowstorm. It’ll be open tomorrow, don’t worry.

Anyhow, I am lucky to have found my current home when and where I did. It was a steal and it’s 100% perfect for me, not the least because I live close to the Chicago Art Institute. I can’t lean out my window and spit on it, not that I would, but it’s a pleasant 10 minute walk from my building which means that technically, it’s real close.

[Editor’s note: Sorry to digress, but I simply must share with you what I usually call The Chicago Art Institute, how I always see the words in my head: The Art Insta-Toot. It makes me laugh, you see, to call that venerable institution “The ‘Toot.” It’s like calling your beautiful daughter “Squirt” or the Hadron Collider “Binky.”]

I strolled up with a friend to see the latest exhibit, “Impressionism, Fashion, & Modernity,” and the whole thing just rocked my face off. It’s an astonishingly well-designed exhibit and I urge anyone who has it within their power to see it, see it. Please. It approaches life-changing. I took notes. I’ll likely revisit those notes again and again and you’ll have to hear about Manet and plackets and gouache from me, which is a dubious way to spend your time, but these things are up to you. Really, it’s wonderful and I commend the curators.

I learned a new word there at the ‘Toot: soutache. I saw this dress in one of the galleries and thought, “Hey! I know that motif! It’s in quilts!”

impressionism-fashion-and-modernity-metropolitan-museum-of-art-new-york-california-literary-review-1362408763_b — Day Dress, American, 1862–64
White cotton piqué with black soutache
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

On the card next to this stunning garment was a note about how the “soutache embroidery.” I immediately thought of a sort of quilt, which, while it has variations and even different names depending on regions, makers, etc., is called “Lover’s Knot”:

Red and white Lovers Knot — Antique Lover’s Knot quilt
Maker unknown, 1900s.

See what I mean? The motif of interlocking, geometric loop-de-loops is clearly shared. So I thought, “Well heck, maybe soutache is the name for that motif. Maybe that interlocking pattern of lines is called soutache.”

It’s not.

Soutache is “the narrow, flat ornamental braid used to trim garments.” So it’s the trim, not the design of the trim. But that’s okay. I still learned the word. And it got me thinking about all the connections in textiles that exist. We human beings, we just love to make things. And from the prairie wife to the Parisienne, well, we love beauty, too. It was a neat connection to make in my brain and it made me feel so happy to be a person in the world who gets to see all the these beautiful creations mankind has wrested from the earth.

Toot if you love art.

[toot]

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