Finding Something Unexpected

Sometimes when you are painter

You paint for a while and have to leave

For the drying time or an errand

Later, you come back and see something

You do not recognize.

This is a wonderful moment:

You see part of who you are -

You can change it or keep it.

I'm Sort of Pissed

I’m sort of pissed.

It is hard enough for artists

To receive any understanding

In a capitalistic society

Where praised names like

The Redskins and the Yankees

Are more popular than it’s

Cultural institutions like, say;

The Metropolitan Museum of Art or

The Women’s Museum.

But when all our money

Goes to the rich it becomes

Impossible to even see any

Future for our children who

Would be the future artists.

I’m just saying.

I’m sort of pissed.

Procrastination

I guess the reason I put off cleaning the house is because I really do not enjoy it and I have so many other things to do. In addition, it does not look much better after some effort on my part. I am an artist and there in lies the rub. Paper, storage containers, paint, drawing paraphernalia. Printmaking inks, blocks, screens, squeegees and special papers for printing are stacked up on open shelves. Vertical areas of stretched paintings, blank canvases, and portfolios lean against the wall between the stereo and the bookshelves. In addition, I have taken on restructured clothing. Stacks of clothing to be redesigned are in storage containers under the dining table and other locations. Many are cut apart and neatly stored for their later use. In addition to this, I have started a line of leather bracelets; cuffs, that are particularly appealing and have their designs based on California endangered wildflowers. I have a box full of completed ones that I am marketing and am starting a smaller version of the cuff so I am cutting out leather as well. I guess that is why I keep put off cleaning the house but as people say, it doesn’t clean itself.  

Social Contract

“All Art Comes From a Sense of Outrage”

A thief has abducted America

And she has been taken apart and is locked

In the now - abandoned houses of Main Street.

Like on CSI, or America’s Most Wanted.

She is bruised and battered, close to death.

Some suspects are viciously obvious,

Others more hidden and even more innocuous.

The Bill of Rights has been reversed,

So the corporation has become the public,

And the public of America has been disappeared,

In basic rights, benefits, and in humane affairs,

While representatives stand with hands in pockets,

And I-phones to their ears to hear the latest instructions,

From the lobbyists, and the new Rockefellers and Vanderbilt’s.

Liberty's true representation stands in the harbor,

Arm held high to welcome the broken nations,

Her arms now held high in a hold up -

In the senate, by pharmaceuticals, by the greed

Of those who can’t get enough at others expense,

While time is running out on America.

Glenn Close, actress