I have arrived in New Orleans. Went and saw our site and the crumbling brick walls that we may use. I also visited the one of the last remaining high end fabric stores in the country.

videos/imagery to make for amending :
walls breaking open / tearing down walls
fire, burning, unburning : the veil from the store?
light flickering on and off
cracks and gaps
commercial patterns ?
a needle floating back and forth
repetition in the fabric store -- buttons, thread, ribbons, stackings

Invitation:
Any wall — literal or metaphorical — blocks us from seeing. But we’re always finding those closed borders in each other and in ourselves. What does it look like when a wall is built, broken, and rebuilt? Through projection and sculptural installation, artists Silvie Deutsch and Kira Akerman clothe two brick walls in an empty lot on Oretha Castle with intricate textile structures to reveal the energy of their making.

Amending
Silvie Deutsch & Kira Akerman
October 22, 23 & 24, 8 pm to 10 pm.
Melpomene and Magazine
New Orleans, LA

jorie graham
To a Friend Going Blind

Today, because I couldn’t find the shortcut through,
I had to walk this town’s entire inner
perimeter to find
where the medieval walls break open
in an eighteenth century
arch. The yellow valley flickered on and off
through cracks and the gaps
for guns. Bruna is teaching me
to cut a pattern.
Saturdays we buy the cloth.
She takes it in her hands
like a good idea, feeling
for texture, grain, the built-in
limits. It’s only as an afterthought she asks
and do you think it’s beautiful?
Her measuring tapes hang down, corn-blond and endless,
from her neck.
When I look at her
I think Rapunzel,
how one could climb that measuring,
that love. But I was saying,
I wandered all along the street that hugs the walls,
a needle floating
on its cloth. Once
I shut my eyes and felt my way
along the stone. Outside
is the cashcrop, sunflowers, as far as one can see. Listen,
the wind rattles in them,
a loose worship
seeking an object,
an interruption. Sara,
the walls are beautiful. They block the view.
And it feels rich to be
inside their grasp.
When Bruna finishes her dress
it is the shape of what has come
to rescue her. She puts it on.

ok-

thinking about how to highlight the material traces of making (the seams) on the mutant clothes. As you can see in the hanging dress piece and the mutant shirt on the wall (above), I used ink before the garments were epoxied and it ended up bleeding all over the clothes and not really looking how I wanted it. But i do really want to engage with ink or paint in some way to highlight the seems; I remember Schiff showing me old Japanese tea bowls with cracks mended with gold, I want the cracks, the seams of the garments to be showcased. i feel like that was what i was really going for in my map pieces from school, and then achieved it in a less direct and more formal way in my thesis. i think i am bent on using ink or paint to showcase the seams because of its direct link to drawing -- i want to make a drawing out of the labor enacted on the cloth.

I’ve been bargain barning like crazy and selling things at boutiques and its become a really fun way to make money while I don’t have a job. I love the concept of digging in a pile of crap and finding something that will become special if I deem it so. Its sort of like clothing gentrification. I’m getting a ton of etsy play too, which makes me wanna keep making wearable fashion objects to sell. I just don’t want it to distract me from sculpture, but somehow feed in. on a walk with my dad this morning, we talked a lot about the power of video and how to use a space in the most dramatic and important way that I can. It got me more excited about sculpture and I really want to project unraveling knitting onto bargain barn sweaters in a clothesline. It would be awesome if the show was really dimly lit and there were just little spotlights on certain pieces and then a projection.

tonight i'm going to this show at ben's project space-- 63 bluxome st. san francisco. the totem and the ocean.

To do:
- make a new fibrous stop animation (green mohair???)
- play piano and sing more, write a new instrumental song
- ink/acrylic seams on mutant clothes

{photos: my own mutant clothes, japanese tea bowl mended with gold from this site}