I am really, really pleased

with this photo series I'm working on.

I am doing a whole series of souvenirs, memento mori, ricordi. They're cards. And emotionally a little tough.

Anti(dote)Wedding Exhibition and Performance images up on flickr

The Anti(Dote)Wedding

...was fantastic!

I'll put up a portfolio on flickr now that it's over and I can fully document the show. I had a blast afterward with everyone who came and the work was very well received. I flubbed my own dance a little because I was incredibly nervous, but I think the performance was really wonderful -- and Jimmie and Suze and Jack and Frankie and the little girls were all fantastic.

I do have the best friends in the whole world, since they actually helped clean up before departing in the wee hours. I'm a little worse for the pro secco this morning, but I'll drink a lot of water and should be feeling chipper in just a bit. My house is full of flowers and it smells wonderful. And I have an in-home massage at 3. Yay!

Wow. It's over. I really feel as if I've accomplished something meaningful with this show. And I know without a doubt the work in this show is the very best work of my entire life. And, hopefully, all of it, making the work, mounting the show, creating the performances, conveys the meaning to those who witnessed it that it is critical to use the events of one's own life, the really "stripped bare" stuff, as art supplies. No matter how painful.

ROFLMAO

Ali has done it again: resurrected a 1993 or 1994 "commercial" for Hard Women by Linda Montano.

Unbelievable.

The documentation of one of my most ambitious and largest scale performances, which I have for over a decade believed to be lost, has been, like Lazarus, resurrected by Ali White and all the digital gods and is available for viewing at the link below. "The Death of Orpheus," from Metamorpheus, 1990.

View on ExposureRoom

Bring it on, Mack truck.

(Drawing: My First Tattoo, Age Twenty-One)

Because I have spent the last ten hours documenting and mounting in my web archive every single print, drawing, painting and doll I've ever made that I want preserved there. Hundreds of images, neatly categorized. My whole life's work, back to juvenilia. I am covered in charcoal, pastel and paint, and a white sheet may be ruined, but it's done.

I should feel a huge sense of accomplishment, but there are still all those blasted photos to scan. And scanning is much less enjoyable and more time-consuming than tacking huge drawings up and photographing them. But those will be next. And then, finally, I will be caught up with my own artistic output, except for the performance part of my career.

Now I am going to sit outside and enjoy a well-deserved cup of strong coffee!

I'm touched that people are so kind to me.

I decided, since I was buying groceries anyway, to go ahead and order the cake for the Anti(dote)Wedding today. I explained very briefly to the nice baker that I was doing an exhibition and performance on the day I probably would have been married as a ritual end to this chapter of my life. He was a man in his thirties, and his eyes got moist and he told me how sorry he was and that the cake would be beautiful, he promised. I told him not to be sad, that it was fine, really, that I'm an artist and this is just how I have to process my life. But he was genuinely sympathetic and it was so touching!

Same thing happened when I talked to the florist about the wrist corsage I ordered. She promised me it was going to be exquisite and exactly as I had envisioned originally when X and I were making wedding plans.

And when I told a co-worker about having gone ahead and bought the dress I had picked out and that I'm going to wear it anyway (not just for the show, but afterwards, too), and about "performing" my vows for the witnesses gathered just as I would really have done to X at the wedding, she teared up, too. She's getting a divorce, so, of course, she's probably super-sensitive about affairs of the heart right now.

It's all fine! Really. And I am just fine. In fact, I'm more than fine. Look what a period of creative output my heart-ache has fueled since January. But I am so deeply, deeply moved at how sweet, kind and tender-hearted everyone has been with me as I plan this show. Thank you. Vous êtes très gentilles.

Most of my favorite ghastly dolls...

are now photographed and up on my flickr portfolio.

I love to photograph them in atmospheric light; it's a kind of "playing" with them that I enjoy. And some of them are fairly scary, even if I made them myself.

Now that I have a digital camera and a scanner that works...

I've been spending quality time with my flickr portfolio and my writing archive site on blogger, Somnambulit, for the past couple of evenings. If you're interested, take a look. I've tried to embed slide shows of the photographs and drawings that go along with various written pieces and travelogues.

I'm not there yet, since all the photographs prior to 2006 are prints and will have to be scanned. And we won't even speak of the hundreds of 36" x 28" drawings that must be tacked up outside in natural light to photograph them. Or the lithographs. Or the hundred scary dolls that need special, atmospheric lighting to document.

Bob's death has definitely driven home the lesson that this is the year I must catch up with myself documenting my own work. I resent it, since it takes time away from making new work. But, slowly but surely I will work through the backlogue, and, someday, it will be done.

I must admit it makes me feel a little better about my productivity as an artist to start to see my written and visual archives come together. Once I finish the making of something I'm no longer interested in it and just shelve it or store it as I move "on, on, on to the next one." This archiving process makes it clear to me that I really haven't suffered any long periods without artistic output. While I'm not as productive, say, as Picasso, I have managed to crank out a fair amount of work considering I've always worked full-time and that I raised two children while making the work.

Finished the first doll for the show.

I really like it. But I won't entirely document it until the show. It "does tricks." And it is really, really brutal and scary.

Those German Expressionists should have made dolls. But I guess they were mostly men.

Making a Ghastly Doll.

She has a jaguar mask.

I Planned to Die in the Arms of my Soul-Mate (La Bohème)

The Epilogue series is complete. Twenty-one drawings. The best work of my life.

And now, perhaps, I sleep again.

And travelogues of Dublin and someplace else -- Assissi? up on Somnambulit.

Working on a four-day drawing...

which I hope to finish tonight. Then one last drawing to go, and the series is finished.

I already know what I'll do next: a series based on Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs and on Boito's Senso. I have to re-read both of them to figure out how to integrate the books to do the drawings. But doing so will give me a couple of week's break from incessant drawing and staying up half the night, which I probably need. A change of pace, catching up on my sleep and a battery re-charge is probably a good idea now, and I have out-of-town guests coming until the end of this month.

The Anti(dote)Wedding exhibition and performance plans are coming together really nicely and I'm actually looking forward to performing. Suze's daughter, Frankie, has agreed to accompany me on cello for one piece. It's always natural for me to want to close any cycle with a performative action, a kind of public ritual. And any excuse for a party.

Oh, and just about everything I planned to include in my writing archive is now up at
www.somnambulit.blogspot.com
It may still be a little rough because I haven't given everything a final proofing and polish yet. Desolé.

Somebody said if they owned both Hell and Texas

...they'd move to Hell. And I know why. It's forecast to be above 100 again today. Maybe not as bad as last week's 105. But not less than 100 either. It's unbearable, and I have to set the alarm for the crack of dawn to even get poor Buster any kind of walk at all without risking his life from heat prostration. I guess, starting this week, I just walk alone. I don't think he can take the heat, even in the stroller, when the air temperature is over 100. Which it still is at 7:30 p.m. these days.

I'm working on the second to last drawing of the Epilogue. I should be completely finished with the series by mid-week. Wow. I think there are twenty-two of them, and most are twice the size of the original LTRH suite and all are in full color. The in-house show and no-wedding performances are definitely happening; Suze and Jack were "in" immediately, as is Jimmie. I need this performance ritual to close the circle and this chapter of my life completely. I think I'm going to call it the Anti(dote)Wedding. And August 14 has always been my very favorite day in the year, for reasons I never knew myself, from childhood on. That's the day I would have chosen for the wedding.

Epilogue Frontispiece Finished.

L'épilogue de Dangerose
Dangerose as Carpacci's Lion of St. Mark's Venice

Ti Voglio Bene, Ferret

Riffing, of course, on Leonardo's Lady with Ermine.

Felix, as Dante, Encounters Dangerose, as Beatrice...

Accompanied by Two Spectres

Riffing on a kitsch painting available everywhere in Florence on postcards.

Dangerose's new heraldry: Mélusine with Dog and Sphinx Salient

L'art pour l'art, l'amour fou. (Art for art's sake, crazy love.}

Three-day weekend = more drawing.

The Spoils of Love

Hmmm. Perhaps Hermès should consider this as a scarf design.

Although not figurative, still a three hour drawing.