(Click on image to make it larger)
Birla power
Tata trucks
Leaf plates stitched
Earth swept
sunlit
barefoot
chili
Saris
goats
monkeys and a pig
Dark skin
between
Thursday
wires
dust
electricity
Two bullocks
a Honda bike
and
bangles
men dressed
in white
Darkness falls
headlights
when
An evening lamp
is lit.
Mitered bamboo picks
stitch leaf plate.
The cow is served dinner.
(click on the image to make it bigger)
Brass
nose rings
earrings
fingers and toes
silver pins in her hair
market day
(click on image to make it bigger)
(click on the image to make it bigger)
Behind the Veteran’s Building 2001
Handmade paper using plant life from Napa, CA. pen and ink, watercolor,
Parchment paper, ink jet print, stamps, raffia, plastic
7 x 5 inches
It’s really easy to make your own paper. All you need is some scraps of paper, a blender from the kitchen and a framed screen. You’ll need some felt to sop up the excess water. After collecting leaves and tiny flowers I made the pulp. Before the new piece of paper was dry I inserted straw for a tie. One day when my husband and I went on a hike, I jotted down some notes along the way. When I made this book I just just left the notes the way they were, made the font really tiny and printed it. The grasses and tiny flowers were collected during the hike. This kind of handmade book is called a single signature book, an Artist’s book.
I remember thirty nine forty Maryland Road
where, upstairs, I played my favorite record, “ Fire, fire, fire
put the fire out. Here come the firemen to put the fire out!”
The sweet scent of acacia trees filled my room.
“Thirty nine forty,” where on Sunday morning I’d wake up to Bing,
our canary singing with music coming from the living room,
“Rum and Coca-Cola,” “Deep in the Heart of Texas,”
and “ Cement Mixer Put-Ti, Put-Ti.”
Where Mother Kitty, the homeless neighborhood cat,
wouldn’t let me get into my bed, we moved the newborn kittens
onto some old clothes in my closet, using an eyedropper
I fed the scrawny one. In the backyard, Sweetheart my white swan,
floated in a galvanized washtub. He, or was it a she? kept an eye out
for Bumpie our black cocker spaniel. Wearing a two piece sunsuit,
I was unselfconsciously happy, round and soft like the bunnies
in a wire cage beneath the gnarled apricot tree. I would climb that tree
to pick the sweetest fruit, the taste I have not been able to match.
I wonder if my grandchildren will ever know the taste of a tree ripened apricot
or feel the sticky juice dribble down their chin to land on their bare tummy
warmed by the sun. The Oakland Hills fire took the house, leaving our brick
chimney standing alone except for a white cement front step. A tree is so solid,
so stable, that’s what puzzled me, the trees of my childhood were gone.
(click on drawing)
I love going to Yoshi’s with my son
We listen to jazz while I sketch
in the smoke and cell free zone.
The chairs are so high and small I slip off.
My feet hang.
The man in front of us has a coffee
bean printed on his cap.
The room goes dark as the waitress
brings a beer and a scotch.
Wearing a light weight summer suit
the pianist walks out on stage.
Three other musicians follow.
The pianist begins to play.
Look at the line of the piano.
How tall the string bass is.
The bass player’s fine line
fingers work the strings
into peppermint strokes.
His body moves back and forth
He plucks the strings.
Coffee bean head starts bobbing.
Fingers are tapping. I’m drawing.
The sax player presses the brass
buttons of his saxophone
as he leans into his song.
His body filled with intuitive
spontaneous feeling
moves back and forth
up and down.
A familiar tune is playing.
Wrapped in the rhythm of the moment
I’m in there
dancing alone
in between
inside outside.
Loose ink glides over
the paper.
My eyes, hands and the music are one.
The players pour out their stories
Drums join in.
It gets going
changes direction.
Sounds play off each other.
Now a full easy tune
yellow daffodils become
a thundering herd of mustangs.
Heads are bobbin. Feet are tappin.
Everyone is gone
completely entranced.
Fresh silver stars stretch out.
A meadow of blossoms folds over into peach.
The music textures down to
sunset tones.
Applause follows quiet.
The set is over.
But I sat down only a moment ago.
I understand how I could
learn about the workings of
a computer or build
a painting or dissect a frog but
how to build jazz
I do not know.
Away from jet airplanes,
computers, and CNN
is a garden in Suzhou.
A child waits there,
quiet and pure as a peach.
Alone on the bamboo bridge
hunched over from the weight of her pack,
an old woman layered in rags
wails her story to the trees.
Behind the dense green curtain of bamboo
her audience listens:
fifty thousand stone Buddhas,
donors, and Bodhisattvas,
carved one thousand years ago.
For a moment I leave Dazu thinking
of the opera house back home.
Stacked up inside this pyramid are separate books.
Luxor, Egypt ,Karnak and The Nile
Each book is filled with poems, transfers, rubbings, collage,
drawings and paintings. All drawings were made on site.
Polaroid transfers from slides are included in the pyramid,
so is an accordion book made out of tickets to the various monuments.
The monument tickets have a photo of that particular monument which gets stamped when you go in.
Egypt 2001
9″ x 9″ x 8″ pyramid base, grid paper, polaroid prints, transfers, rubbings, collage,
drawings, paintings, tickets, poems, one polaroid transfer on papyrus.
Bamboo from the garden was used to make this Artist Book cover - Vietnam.
Sometimes the worst experience becomes the most memorable.
Xoi Ga Bun 2001
‘Sticky rice, chicken, round rice noodles‘
Bamboo portfolio
Saunders Waterford, Arches 90wt, bamboo, spirit, rice and other paper from Vietnam, Old Vietnamese book, museum board, watercolor, rubbings, gouache,
Paintings and drawings, old Vietnamese book, Xerox transfers, fan, buffalo stamp, pen and ink, street litter,
Fabric, notepaper, newspaper, ribbon, thread, raffia
Poems by the artist
10 x 7 ¼ inches
