Tv and breadbox

Crappy photos of a recent piece

Crochet, spray-paint, and screenprint.

BEAUTIFUL SKETCHBOOK PAGES BY MY WONDERFUL FRIEND :

Melinda Laszczynski 

WE ARE BOTH PUTTING TOGETHER A COLLABORATIVE FEMINIST ZINE, AND THIS IS HER MOST RECENT CONTIBUTION:

                                                   

also check out her website. Lots of different stuff - you wont be disappointed !  

Notebook doodles and some sketchbooks

Take a page out-a my book!

But there was a time when you and I were friends

It happened again. I confused lust for love again. I confused comfort for trust again... I'm wiser now, but the world is still spinning around me faster than I can find the ground again. It's true what they say about finding your footing, and where you might get swept of to if you can't keep your feet. Light is suddenly being brought to all these old cliche's that seemed stuffy before I had the age. I think I relied on so much external satisfaction before this year of my life. I realize now that needing your loved ones, and banking on, and feeling hungry for the approval of others from the outside are two very different things. The managed to melt into one so easily before now. Trusting my intuition and my sense are paramount. I look back now and think of all the times, even just over the past year, that things felt so wrong. I remembered how I pushed, thinking if only I could show you all of me, that I would finally feel loved. What I never realized before is who fundamentally rooted in the self that love is. You can't change, or trick people into loving you. I think we all primarily know this from the get go. however, our own actions, and the actions of others trick us into believing otherwise. I have learned so much about cruelty and carelessness over the past weeks. I have learned so much about love, support, and genuine behavior. I was forced into a place of understanding that I may not have gotten to otherwise, but for all its pain I am grateful. Never again will I waste my time on something so hollow and self serving. Never again will I question my better judgement. Never again will I allow myself to make time for an extreme narcissist, who is only interested in others for the way they make him feel about himself. Never again will I willingly lay down may heart and my body to someone so careless and incapable of empathizing with another human being. Never again will I devalue myself so strongly that I would except the compartmentalizing of one's worlds, and settle for everything less than I deserve. I am an always have been an open book of mindfulness and emotion. I offer that to any true love, whatever the measure of the honest relationship, and I except and demand that back in return. This is the year of the dragon, and so am I. I appreciate and accept the challenges that have been laid before me, and I know now that I will rise above them, heal, and be better for it.

New musings from the studio:

Sketch for tornado painting

large tornado painting

(oil on panel)

detail

slow beginnings

Summer is fading fast as it often does. The swell of the cicadas has been rolling out and back for weeks now.  I am filled with a plethora of tumultuous thoughts and emotions. I am beginning to realize that this is somehow always the case, and that I am doing my best to make some peace with all those things. Today I am finally working. Small sketch for a new painting. The smell of oils and fresh brewed coffee instantaneously make my soul feel a little lighter. 

...

I wish I could listen to the wise, rational logic provided by the mature understanding of my brain - but instead I keep listening to my fucking heart, which turns out to be some kind of asshole.

SCREEN PRINTING SUMMER SESSION

For any University of Delaware undergrads that might happen upon this blog, I am teaching a summer class this coming session and I would love for you to join! I really need this class to fill up, and we're gunna be learning a really AWESOME, versatile, and across the board VALUBLE technique! Can be used from fine art to design and anywhere outside and in between! Register for the corse today!

1988 - present

Embracing my nostalgic melodrama today. He's just not that into you.

the roar of burning paper

I've got a serious case of the blues today, and they're no one else's but my own. It's been a hard weekend, and the sense I thought I'd found is floating away all to quickly.

I will be participating in this event on Friday March 9th. Hope you all can come out! http://www.inwilmingtonde.com/events/event.php?e=2269

Artemis! Friday Night (March 9th) - 7:00 to 11:00 PM

Peruse (and even purchase) artworks from local female artists while listening to a few acoustic sets from some of the best bands Delaware has to offer. Fifty percent of the proceeds from this night will be donated to Mom's House, an organization "committed to providing a safe, loving environment where both parent and child can grow and learn."

Oh me oh my oh... look at miss Ohio.

Working on a series of Cleveland, Ohio themed screen prints. A fleshing out of the preview from my last post. I've got some on fabric that I'm embroidering back into that are coming soon! Eyes peeled my lovelies :) !

small screens and logs

Little things. I leave Cleveland, but I can never really get out of Cleveland :) Investigations in identity through the obsession of being from somewhere...

Ira Glass & Dan Savage Love Cast

This American Life and The Savage Love Cast collide! My two favorite podcasts in one, anyone that has not heard it needs to dial up now. Sooooo much goodness, one of the best podcasts I have had in a long time! The intellectual musings meets brash honesty in a way it should much more often! A breath of "fresh air" (pun %100 intended!)

"We're fooling ourselves, we don't have sex - sex has us. Who are we kidding?" - Dan Savage

http://www.thestranger.com/SavageLovePodcast/archives/2012/01/31/savage-love-episode-276

GET INTO IT!

Revisions of thought.

I think that there's merit in it, and I think it hurts because it's supposed to. I think all the tiny pieces that have broken off and buried themselves in my heart have made their way there for a purpose. I know that I am supposed to learn from them and take my own advice. I recently came to understand that Walter Benjamin quote I posted a few weeks back a little better, or at least just on a different level. The other meaning is still there, I've just found a new one hiding out. "The only way of truly knowing a person is to love them without hope". At first I saw the obvious read, 'let it go - what's meant to be will be. I still believe that, and take comfort in the idea of it. The other meaning that I stumbled upon, or just figured out, or maybe made up - who knows (and I don't think it really matters, because it helps me and that's what's truly important here...) is that knowing someone, really knowing them and having them know you (and I mean REALLY know you. Not just the kind of knowing that's based on mannerisms, or subjective familiarity) is not feeling "what will be will be", but knowing what you have. It's about something unrequited, that you don't have to hope for or feel awkward about. It's about loving someone without hope, because when it's real and reciprocated you don't have to hope. You know you already have it.

"And the embers never fade in your city by the lake"

Here's lookin' at you Cleveland.

I don't Believe anyone that says: "I lost my virginity to this song."

They are always lying.

In progress Painting

Just wanted to throw up and image of an oil painting I'm currently working on. I've come to a bit of a stand still on it over the holidays, but will be returning to it as soon as I tie up a few other loose ends.

Walter Benjamin, among other thinkers...

He happens to be a pretty interesting guy. I've really only read one of his essays over and over (Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction ). I am largely unfamiliar with the rest of his work, although several of his readings have been suggested to me over time. Today I was rather unexpectedly moved by a few fragments of his. I found them in a small magazine, out of date, and stowed out of sight in a dear old friends family bathroom. They also reminded me of a few other sentiments I've come across lately. So today we will have a quotes entry. Nothing original, at least not from my end, but then again things rarely (if ever) are:

“To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.” - W.B.

“The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.” - W.B.

(this one is my personal favorite of the moment.)

"Shyness is turning your head away from something you want." - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

"There were things I wanted to tell him, but I knew they would hurt him. So instead I buried them, and let them hurt me." - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

"You cannot protect yourself from sadness without also protecting yourself from happiness. I spent my life learning to feel less." - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

"I have talked myself out of happiness a hundred times, but never once into it." - Extremely Loud & and Incredibly Close

"Objects are imbued with the essence of you but I sense that it's false." - K. Flay Danger Starts

"Oh C.C. Rider, see what you've gone done. You made me love you and now your 'man' done come." - Old Crow Medicine Show C.C. Rider

Back on the road to DE tomorrow, hopefully full of confidence and my own advice.

<3 Sandi