Clear the Aria!

Grunehilda in her Broadway debut: Zing! Went the Rivets of my Breastplate.

Art Unnoticed

It's like that old saying... "You know you work at a contemporary art museum when...
...when a giant 12-foot tall, 10-foot wide winter parka is resting casually over the handrail, and no one notices anything out of the ordinary."
Is it a large-scale replica of a winter coat? Part of avant-garde fashion? Or a jacket for giants?

Hazy Collage

I made a new collage! It's untitled, but the inspiration began with the hazy background squares in the upper left. In a way, the work is also a response to a CD that I've been loving, by the artist M83. I just got the CD for my birthday (thanks, Cassandra!) and I love the autumnal-looking nostalgic photography. The new album is called, appropriately, Saturdays=Youth. This collage reminds me of the cooler, hazier parts of summer, and coincidentally, also of my childhood. As a kid, I would play outside in the woods, finding interesting plants and twigs and making houses under the branches of low trees. We have a creek at home and to this day I find old pieces of bottles and mugs half-buried in the creek bed and I save them. Perhaps that's why the cut-out of the ceramic sieve found its way in there. Or perhaps I just needed something white to balance out that hot pink thing.

Some collages that I make for myself never turn out as good as the things I make for other people. But with this work I was determined to just enjoy whatever became of it. I tried to use both torn papers and cut papers together, in geometric shapes and abstract shapes. I noticed that in previous collages I've really stuck with geometry- squares on squares, straight lines, et cetera. Who doesn't love a good grid? But I think I can do more interesting things when I add strategically-placed blobs, or layers of photographs, and underlying layers. There's also some windshield glass and actual pebbles from Boston Harbor thrown (glued?) in there for good measure.

Mattress Factory

I landed a real job! I am now the Administrative Assistant at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh. And no, we definitely do not sell mattresses, though the building is indeed a converted old mattress factory. I'm excited for the job, which starts on Tuesday, and I'm hoping that I'll settle into it easily and not make too many mistakes. I'm also excited about having health insurance. And dental! Clean teeth are a-comin'. My work hours are the same as business hours, which is good because I can still have weekends and evenings to do my art and music stuff
I'm really hoping that the Port Authority bus system does not go on strike like it is purportedly going to do next week because I'll be one of 600,000 people who needs to take the bus to get to work every day! The commute should be between 40-65 minutes, which is a lot more than I would like, but the transit people tell me there's two ways to get there so I'll see which one is faster and more reliable.
I'm also excited to be a part of this museum because along with their great mission, maximally hip staff, and rotating installations, they also have several permanent works, including this awesome room covered in mirrors, dots, and mannequins that you can walk into (with sock booties on). Why, you ask? Because Yayoi Kusama says so. You've got to see it for yourself.

Goodbye Pencil Sharpener

This weekend my favorite pencil sharpener (Did know you could have a favorite pencil sharpener? Well, you can, so now you know.) broke, and it had been with me, faithfully sharpening #2's since second grade. It was pink. Now the one I'm using is my fifth grade pencil sharpener, which is black, so I hope he's happy now that he's promoted after all these years.
Rest in peace, ol'sharpener! (More like rest in pieces, at the bottom of my trash bin.)

Cartoony Pants- The Sequel

A colleague in the music office liked my collage Cartoony Pants so much that she commissioned me for Cartoony Pants Part Deux! Nothing quite compares to the original, because how can you ever use the same pieces of paper over again when they're all found from magazines and clippings and old books? But I attempted a similar feel, this time with a frame with a depth of about 1.5". I also ran the images over the sides, including a lobster, whose claw you can only see poking out from the left-hand side, and a wierd Hungarian folksong that went something like "if you don't know how fat a mosquito is you are dumb as a horse, dumb as a horse, oh". Snappy tune. I think it turned out pretty great. I love that the pants are leaping over paper clips, and out of its backside comes a giant speech bubble.

As much as feels strange and frustrating to transition out of grad school and into a working world again (though I don't quite know what I'm doing yet) it also feels good to do things other than music all day! I've had more time to read actual books and make collages again. And on Labor Day, I can relax and write this post. I ran into a British man on the street this morning who asked me directions to the coffeeshops near me. He wondered why the streets were so quiet and everything was closed today, and assumed it was a national holiday or something. He doesn't usually get the pleasure of Labor Day, but then again, I don't get the pleasure of Guy Fawkes Night. Or being British, for that matter. Bollocks.