Art Np2

Listen to me.   I am serious.  If you have a foul odor emanating from any part of your body that scrubbing thoroughly and gently with warm soap and water doesn't eliminate, there is no special wash or deodorant that is going to help you with that particular problem.  You need to visit a doctor.  Enough said, stepping down for now .

One of things I am finding I need to do as I get older is slow down, despite all the new technology, and look more closely at everything around me. With this in mind, I have decided to reread some of my favorite stories to hopefully see some of what I missed the time before. This week I read "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker. This short story is a part of the In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women collection originally published in 1973 by Harcourt Bruce Jovanovich Publishers in Orlando Florida.  There is a recent version of this softcover reprinted in 2003 with a new cover.  I own both of them because I love Alice Walker’s work and I get to keep one clean and write all over the other!  The quotes I use in this post are from the pages of the 1973 version. Alice Walker is a brilliant American writer because she can take an extremely complex subject and make it approachable. Her stories have many layers of meaning. I see "Everyday Use" as a story ...

  Isabella Douglas Millholland (Mrs. James Millholland), by Joshua Johnson, c. 1807. Oil on canvas. 30 x 26 1/16 in. (76.2 x 66.2 cm). Maryland Historical Society Joshua Johnson is the first known African American to make a living as a painter.  He lived in Baltimore and was active  from 1789-1832.  http://www.marylandartsource.org/artists/detail_000000091.html "I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't." Marilyn Monroe "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." — Mark Twain

Link  An Interactive Journey - Exhibition Monet, Galeries Nationales, Grand Palais, Paris

There are certain books that those educated in English are expected to read.  You may ask how many have I read? I would answer, "Uhhh. not enough.  I've got some reading to do".  I bolded the ones I have read and left a few stunted comments here and there. American Literature Agee, James A Death in the Family Story of loss and heartbreak felt when a young father dies. Anderson, Sherwood Winesburg, Ohio A collection of short stories lays bare the life of a small town in the Midwest. Baldwin, James Go Tell It On the Mountain Semi-autobiographical novel about a 14-year-old black youth's religious conversion. Bellamy, Edward Looking Backward: 2000-1887 Written in 1887 about a young man who travels in time to a utopian year 2000, where economic security and a healthy moral environment have reduced crime. Bellow, Saul Seize the Day A son grapples with his love and hate for an unworthy father. Bradbury, Ray Fahrenheit 451 Reading is a crime and firemen burn books in this fu...

Thank you Jake for the inspiration.

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway." — Eleanor Roosevelt   Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle." -Plato "Texas Star," 1973 Ella Mae Irby, 1923-2001.  Cotton, corduroy, and cotton blend, 88 x 85 inches. Irby was the daughter of noteworthy quiltmaker Delia Bennett (who also made "Star" quilts).

Indian Author Sarojini Sahoo of the third wave of feminism and American Attorney and activist Sonia Pressman Fuentes of the second wave discuss, compare, and contrast their particular perspectives of Feminism. These two very intelligent women show that there is more than one way of seeing a difficult problem.  Whether you agree with one, or the other, or some of each, they are both awesome.  Thank God for Woman!  They both gave me a lot to think about.  The debate is on Sarojini Sahoo's blog "Sense and Sensuality."   The link is on the right with my list of favorite blogs.  Enjoy.   Image via Wikipedia

Reposting from other page. *Opinion* The Tea Party Bev says that they are quite simply just an "Obama Haters' Organization," and I agree with her assessment, but they do use their anger and resentment to make other changes such as voting out incumbents, which could be a good thing depending on the congressional district. I am such a dreamer and I can't help but wonder what it would be like having a party that represented the beliefs of Americans as a whole. What if the Tea Party: 1. Had not started to form in February 2009 before Obama had the chance to change anything? 2A. Spent more time marching and protesting at the companies who received T.A.R.P. money? 2B. Thought the American people as worthy as Wall Street? Why why was it good for President Bush to raise the national debt for Wall Street and wrong for President Obama to raise it to invest in the American people? 2C. Offered workable alternatives to the Stimulus Plan? 3. Tried to get current laws enforced again...

"Exquisite corpse (also known as exquisite cadaver or rotating corpse) is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. "The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun") or by being allowed to see the end of what the previous person contributed. The technique was invented by Surrealists and is similar to an old parlour game called Consequences in which players write in turn on a sheet of paper, fold it to conceal part of the writing, and then pass it to the next player for a further contribution. Surrealism principal founder André Breton reported that it started in fun, but became playful and eventually enriching. Breton said the diversion started about 1925, but Pierre Reverdy wrote that it started much earlier, at least before 1918.[1][2] In a variant now known as picture consequences, instead of sentences, portions of a person were drawn.[3] Later t...

You may have read a version of this story on another page.  I keep working and changing it. "Badiha" And there came a day in Fallujah when the temperature was below fifty-five celsius and the electricity was working longer than two consecutive hours. When Bahia was twelve years old she sat snipping the ends off green beans on the front steps.  Kathem Al Saher played on the radio as her mother sang along and prepared dinner while full-throated shouts and giggles rang out from their small back yard. Badiha wanted to be back there playing with the rest of them, but she felt at her age she had to start behaving like a sensible woman.  One dreamy eye blinked as she swatted away a fat fly that buzzed too close to her smooth, soft cheeks. No one in the neighborhood paid attention to her anymore. Kids used to call her loppy-loop and Cyclops because of her missing right eye and at one time she had thought she was a monster; she was afraid to look...

 "An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind." — Mahatma Gandhi (An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth) "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." — Anaïs Nin   Portrait of Eva Frederick by Frida Kahlo, 1931

Thank you to everyone who voted for their favorite piece in the Regional Faculty Invitational Exhibition. As the show comes to a close we are happy to announce that the People’s Choice Award goes to Carrie Ohm for “Cloud Circles:Impossibly Large Scaled Down #2”. 2010 Porcelain, Paper The 2010 Regional Art Faculty Invitational is a biennial event for Universities and Colleges in the Chicago Southland and is hosted by the Visual Arts Gallery at Governors State University. This year invitations were sent to Governors State University, Trinity College, Lewis University, Prairie State College, Saint Xavier University, Joliet Junior College, The College of Dupage, South Suburban College, The University of Saint Francis, Olivet Nazarene University, and Kankakee Community College. The artists exhibiting in this year’s show are: Javier Chavira, Christopher Clark, Michael Costanza, Daniel Falco, Eric Gorder, Michael D. Hart, Jane Rhodes Hudak, Jean Janssen, Elise Kendrot, Erik LaGattuta, Joe...

Auspiciously, a few years back, I found a well written, darkly humorous compilation of short stories titled Witches Brew and edited by Yvonne Jocks.  The book contains the work of  Yeats, Ursula Le Guin,  Emily Bronte, Shirley Jackson, Louise Erdich, Ray Bradbury, Dean Koontz, and Anton Chekov, to name a few.  It is divided into three sections: The Wicked Witch, Witchcraft as Empowerment, and The Nature Witch. As I am reading, I see some of myself in those intensely sly and seriously clear eyed characters. Cackle cackle! I know this is off the subject, but some things have gotten so tight around me that I would vote for Christine O'Donnell if she were a good enough witch and I lived in her district.  This world could use some righteous magic.  "I Am Not a Witch..." (psychologytoday.com)  Too bad. What might be be acceptable fun is rereading some good old horror stories such as Bram Stoker's Dracula or Mary Shelly's Frank...

John Kirk Train Varnedoe  (Jan. 18, 1946 – Aug. 15, 2003) was born and raised in Savannah, Georgia and was an  American   art historian  and writer,  a Professor of the History of Art at the  Institute for Advanced Study , Princeton, and a noted curator of painting and sculpture at the  Museum of Modern Art  in New York. He studied at  St. Andrew's School  and  Williams College , where he was a member of The Kappa Alpha Society. After his years at Williams, he went to Paris, where he became expert on  Auguste Rodin 's drawings, and fell in love with French culture and civilization. He returned to America and particularly to New York, where he married the artist Elyn Zimmerman and taught art history, first at  Columbia University , and then at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. He co-curated, with William Rubin, the exhibition "Primitivism: Affinity Between The Tribal and The Modern" at the Museum of Modern Art i...

   I don't like that!   At the college I attended a few years ago as an older student, there was a noticeable, tacit understanding between the students and some professors that the students were competing against one another. I wish the professors had taught us to work together and help one another. I am introverted and do not usually enjoy being part of a team; I need to be able to think and process information before I offer up an opinion, but there were times when I needed to have something explained to me.  I understood substantially more when I discussed a topic with a peer. Professors need to be trained to encourage excellence rather than competition, and to teach their students how to teach one another. And the teachers should be paid more money!  Don't get me started.       That's all I have to say.  I'm  stepping down.  For now.              ...

"Art is an attempt to integrate evil."     Simone de Beauvoir  "Life beats down and crushes your soul; art reminds you that you have one.           Stella Adler Young Women with Peonies.  Painting by Frederic Bazille, 1870.

The advertisement was on the video when I downloaded it.  Judaye

Cover via Amazon "Contempt allows the bully to justify his or her hateful behaviors because of the erroneous belief that they, the bullies, are superior to their victims. Contempt gives the bully a twisted permission slip to dehumanize." Letters to a Bullied Girl by Olivia Gardner with Emily and Sarah Buder. Copyright 2008. Letters of encouragement written to a young woman who was bullied at school.  Softcover, 202 pgs. 978-0-06-54962 0 Olivia Gardner, a fifteen year old girl with epilepsy, was taunted, teased, and physically assaulted by other students after she had a seizure at school. Filled with dread and depressed she stopped attending school.  School officials seemed to have no idea how to protect Olivia. Co-authors Sarah and Emily Budner saw Olivia's story on a local news show and wanted everyone to know that something positive could be done about bullying by the average person. They went to their school and asked if a letter writing campaign c...