Hello and how've you been?

Here is a sampling of a few things I've been working on

over the course of the past semester:

"Real Men of Genius":

Mustache and Me

"Fiber Fantasy Forest Frenzy"

Silk screen and embroidery

on craft fest

"Woodgrain" Lap top computer cosy

Silk screen and embroidery

on craft felt

(detail)

"Untitled Screen print #1"

silkscreen on BFK fine art paper

"Untitled screen print #2"

Silk screen on BFK fine art paper

"The Island"

2 ft x 4 ft

graphite and guache on gessoed panel

"A diamond and a Tether"

12" x 18"

graphie and guache on gessoed panel

I can't hear anything anymore. The headphone jack on my ipod broke for the second time several months back. The CD play in my car stopped accepting the pile of flat silver disks that are stacked and stuffed in various cracks and crevices throughout my four door focus. A series of imperative pieces of my tape deck snapped, cracked, and became displaced. Now the sounds that slip from that system are warped and worthless. My record player is the only thing that remains intact, but the issue here isn't quality of sound or even overall functionality. Instead my collection of LPs is minimal, shameful, and far from portable. I can't hear anything substantial anymore and every space is filled with stale silence and restless energy.

Second semester of senior year is closing in and I'm trying to think of anything else while the break lasts. I've been in the worst kind of liminal space lately, and this constant state of being neither here nor there is absolutely unnerving. There isn't a clear path, or single answer anywhere. There's only the degree to focus on and everything else to fear. I can't wait to move out of Cleveland. Starting over somewhere new is going to be nice. I might even welcome -2o below.

Time bent and stood still. It shifted around all of us and made its way from midnight to 7 am in under than two hours. I don't know how it happened, but I believe it did.

This small town is making me crawl out of my skin, and the city just north of here is hardly an escape. I absolutely need to fall in love with an album again and everything I hear these days is letting me down. Where are you "head over heals" and "heartache" ???

Until we meet again... eyes open for sketchbook pages soon...

Sanding the Wood-Work

Break through this morning with Adina. I suppose I really do have a subconscious...

Today I remembered Christopher. I thought of him in much the same way I would have eleven years ago. Not as fact, history, or something past, but rather as the human being he was and would still be. People leave us and we forget. They become memories that slip and fade. We can recall, but soon enough there comes a time when we can no longer connect. I think I've watched that happen to my family since his death. I've experienced it myself. I've let Christopher become a memory, a dream... something fleeting and far away. The truth is that I will always love him. If I concentrate long and hard enough I can remember just how he moved, and also how his lips cracked, parted, and turned upwards to reveal the awkward space between his front teeth. I remember Christopher in quiet moments when I am alone, but I have not shared his story, or the story of that day with anyone in quite sometime. I don't know that I have ever given specific details. I don't think I have ever known what they mean or how significant and responsible that experience has been in defining moments of my life, and creating backwards patterns into which I have fallen helplessly.

Humans are such multifaceted creatures. We are always searching for the answers to our own questions, and to the inquires of those that came before us.

I am trapped here in this moment, contained by the pattern and impartial nature of your reply. There is so much more in every direction and I absolutely hold you responsible for all of it.

reflection

All I can think of lately is the first time I read "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky. It was first semester of my senior year in high school and pretty much everyone I know had heard of it, read it, and had their own opinion. People don't like to admit enjoying anything that's even the least bit popular, so most of these opinions were negative and overtly judgmental, but I decided to pick it up anyway and see what all the hype was about. Truth be told I've never loved a piece of literature more. I've never related to a main character as closely as I did to Charlie, and I have never been impacted as profoundly by any other novel. It's really hard to find the feeling that those letters gave me the first time. It's one of the most specific things I've ever felt, and also one of the greatest. Sometimes I can find it in the company of my dearest friends, or in the high pitched shrieking of freight wheels as they break steadily and pass through the city. Sometimes it is with me under water, or stuck between my toes like sand. Ever so occasionally I will see it in a stranger, or wake up to it in the dark. It is a feeling that I can never keep, I don't think anyone can. It's fleeting nature is part of its wonder. It is there and then it quickly goes. I never see it coming, and I am always startled when it slips away. The best books not only make you feel like part of the story, but cause you to ache for its characters when the are gone. I ache for Charlie with each passing day.

Split Needles

There is willful cruelty in the world, but there is also wonder.

I'm working on getting this poster framed:

You can't so much see the detail, but I picked up a copy when I was working the Waterloo Arts Fest about a month back. It was hiding in a stack by the door. Part of what makes it so great is that on my copy you can see places where the ink didn't take to the page, and someone worked back into the lines with graphite. The whole things just so human, and I love that.

I'm holding a Stitch and Bitch this coming Sunday at Arts Collinwood, where I work. Free beer, snacks, and fiber fun! I would love to have anyone and everyone come visit. There's a really great show in our gallery right now too, called "Latest Additions". It features the work of a group of recent CIA grads that work in different craft areas. Of everything, I am particularly found of Beth Whalley's drawings (http://www.bethwhalley.com). So it will be a really great opportunity to chill in the gallery and check out the show!

We're located at:

15605 Waterloo Rd

Cleveland, OH 44110

I left Medina for Cleveland a few nights back. Dusk was falling and the sun just barely started sinking after I hit 71 North. For the duration of my drive into the city I watched the colour spread like wildfire, twisting as it bled out into the saturated grey of the clouds. Only moments after it ducked bellow the horizon I dropped onto the East Bound bridge and swapped the setting sun for city lights.

I think I needed a reminder of beauty in change, and the worth of all things - no matter how faulty fleeting.

Porch Deprivation

While spending a little time in my home town, keeping an eye on one very ornery siamese cat I spotted this video on TV. It's simple and stunning, one of the best visual adaptations of a song that I have come across in quite sometime. I was thrilled to learn it was fan made, and that Death Cab picked it up as the official video for little bribes. This makes me really want to send them the books I made...haha

I've been dwelling on 2054 E.115th a lot these days. Sometimes I wake up in my bed in my new apartment, and before my eyes can snap open I'm convinced I'm back behind the paper thin walls that held me for just under two years. The house itself was fouler than foul, falling apart in more ways than one. I honestly felt like I would never escape, and that I lived in some sort of waking purgatory. I counted down the days until I would be free from its filth forever, and believe me I am grateful to finally be out. What I do admit to longing after is the most fabulous front porch I've ever owned or experienced. I have yet to find one that matches it or even comes close. All I have here is a shared picnic table in a grassy side yard attached to my apartment complex. My heart aches for all the old houses across the way, and for dawn breaking over the hospital just beyond them. A lot of things happened in that house. Good things grew from mostly bad, and no matter how much I am glad to be rid of it I am also just the slightest bit sad to have seen it pass out from under me. I was a very different person when I unpacked my things and moved into that space at the end of August '07 than I was when I filled the bed of a truck with everything I own and took it all elsewhere only a little over a month ago. Part of me will always be on the porch of that house watching the sun set, or the snow fall to a backdrop of trains slowing to a halt and passing through the city where I live.

(an excerpt from my moleskin.

Copic marker, Le pen, and graphite

(c) Sandi Petrie)

Midsummer

I've been putting off starting things here until I had some charming little work of art to replace the dry, computer generated banner-template..but since that has yet to happen I've decided to dive right in, and apologize up front for the delay and lack of creative energy.

The past couple months have been unlike any I have ever experienced. They've been full of highs and lows, and I'm still not quite sure what to make of my time away from school or my experiences in the "working world". It's ll very strange and surreal. I can admit that I have certainly enjoyed the dimly-lit back office of this tiny gallery on the far East side of Cleveland, but part of me wants to be young and free forever. There's only so much gratification that I feel working for a paycheck (no matter how much you love what you do to get there) can really bring you. Money has made me lose sight of a lot recently, so I'm trying to occupy my mind with other things.

Things I have really been enjoying lately:

-Now We Can See (the new Thermals Album)

-Following Tokyo Police Club's blog space

-Lady GaGa's theatrical/visually stunning music videos

-Great Lakes Grass Roots Ale

-The unusually cool July weather

-My new Kitten, Faye. (she is quite lovely)

Things I am anticipating in the upcoming months:

-Tokyo Police Clubs new album (dear autumn, this means I really encourage you to come quickly)

-Tegan and Sara's next installment

-Knitting needles 

-a studio space

- dedicating myself to making work full time

-cat sitting Leo for a little over a week.

 I would really like to share the following song lyrics with you. It's going to feel like a full-blown Thermals overload here for a while, but I am genuinely in love. So please be patient. Maybe even find a little inspiration in them yourself (which is certainly what I am hoping for here.)

passing the corners we kissed in the rain
passing these old rusted warning signs
what did they say?
I think they said, "run!"

passing the roofs of excuses we made
passing these open windows
what made me turn away?
how did I fight the flat days and the static nights?

-Excerpt from "Saint Rosa and the Swallows" - The Thermals

 I've seen a ceiling of screens

Shaped like clouds in the sky
I saw a wall, it was all between me
And where I'll lie
I laid on a bed with my head
Spinning zero and one into two
Dreaming of you
And how we fade

I laid in a shower of color and numbers
And numbers and words
I opened my eyes and my ears and my eyes
And I saw and I heard
I opened my mouth, nothing came out
Nothing at all I could do
Dreaming of you
And how we fade

I dug a hole
It was only as deep
As the ground I had known
I fell asleep
Just so I wouldn't be left to die all alone
I opened my mouth, hoping to shout
Hoping the words were true

Dreaming of you
Dreaming of you
And how we fade 

-"How We Fade" - The Thermals

The air isn't thin
The air isn't thick
The air isn't anything
It doesn't exist
It's not what we need
At the bottom of the sea

The light is gray
The light is rare
It barely touches us
It's barely there for me
At the bottom of the sea

And I'm barely there for you

I will never come up
I will never compare
Wind to the sand
Water to air
It's not what I want
It's what I need

The love is near
I hear it speak
It's in my sight
But just out of reach
It slips from my hand
Just like it did on the land

And I'm barely there for you

For the air
For the light
For the love
Is barely there for me
At the bottom of the sea
It's not what I want
It's what I need

-"At the Bottom of the Sea" - The Thermals