After what I would describe as something of an internal struggle, I have finally finished reading Americana by Don DeLillo.  I have to admit that before picking up his book at the library, I'd not heard of DeLillo.  Not sure if I should have taken this as a good or bad sign; many good artists often go by the wayside and if I'd only ever appreciated works by known artists and authors I would have failed to recognize one of my favourite artists of all time - Ray Johnson.  I have to admit with a hint of shame, that it was the image on the dustcover the first drew me in.  But isn't that always the case, despite the "don't judge a book by its cover" thing, that we are drawn to almost everything by its cover or label?  I do the same thing with wine.  I can't help it.  Imagery is powerful.  Advertising knows this, which is why they're so brilliant at keeping our economy bobbing along, despite the supposed recession. 

But I digress.  Don LeLillo.  Yes, drawn in by the dustcover and hooked with the mini summary outlined on the back.  Yes, I shall give this a shot, I said to myself.  And at first, I thought it was a brilliant piece of literature.  And I think it's still too early in my digestion of its content to say otherwise.  None the less, this novel was a difficult one to get through.  It was kind of like biting into a tough steak - tasty, but full of tightly bound fibers that leave you chewing for ages; so much so, that in the end you swallow the chunk of it, more or less whole, just to be done with it.  And then taking another bite, because you are going with the optimism that maybe, just maybe, the next piece will be better and you keep going this way until your plate is empty.  Leaving you with a big ball of half-chewed gristle in your stomach. 

This is what it felt like to read this novel.  Not that there weren't some brilliant passages.  Like this one: "Then I smiled at her foolishly and she answered with the unembellished look of a feeble nun who has begged successfully for money and found no hand quite willing to touch her own."  A fantastically rendered description - I can actually feel what he's saying there.  And then near the end of the book he offered up this fantastically tasty and easy to chew morsel: "When I came out of it, I was not even amazed at the ease with which I could put aside the previous night.  It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams."  How true.  And DeLillo has this way of referencing pieces of literature of which I'm a huge fan; and I'm not sure if I love that about him or hate it.  I can't decide whether it's a pretentious cop-out and that's where I get stuck on decided whether he's brilliant or just cheap shit.  Because he does it so effortlessly; yet his descriptions are so consistently rich that they almost risk becoming an ongoing string of cliches, which is completely irritating.  But at the same time, I can't decide if the references are vague enough to be a mark of genius, which just makes me angry with myself for being so wishy-washy about declaring a definitive opinion on the matter.  Damn  you, Don DeLillo!  This is what I'm talking about here: "From this window I can see the ocean, far out, rocking in that blank angry sheen which foul weather sets upon all waters.  Later I'll walk on the beach for an hour or so.  If the weather has cleared by then I'll be able to see the coast of Africa, the great brown curve of that equatorial loin.  But right now it is a pleasure to anticipate slipping once again (a paragraph hence) into a much more filmworthy period in my life.  There will be no more fireworks when the century turns.  There will be no agonies in the garden.  Now that night beckons, the first lamp to be lit will belong to that man who leaps from a cliff and learns to fly, who soars to the tropics of the sun and uncurls his hand from his breast to spoon out fire.  The sound of the ocean seems lost in its own exploding passion.  I am wearing white flannel trousers."   He is Prufrock, wondering whether he should part his hair from behind or eat a peach.  And he is also Thompson noting the high water mark left by the 60s, looking into the horizon full of the wretched digression from love and daisies to war and napalm. 

Certainly he encapsulates the feeling of borderline insanity in a fantastically believeable way - enough that it often left me feeling as if I was suffering from a bout of mild vertigo during certain passages.  And like Hunter S. Thompson, he cleverly captured the appalling underbelly of America - the dirty truth beneath the flashy tinsel and tempting plastic that you want so desperately to believe in; that you almost have to believe in, just so you can survive knowing that, despite all the good things about the country, you belong to a country that puts on the face of happy persona to cover up the truth that it is entered into some sort of race, base and human, full of lust to succumb to the most primitive and carnal of desires.   

The day was already shaping up to be a good one.  It was my day off.  I went to yoga for the first time in over a year and had prepared myself for what was likely going to be a crap class, as it was being offered on a Monday morning and in all likelihood would be taught to the gentle level of the pensioners who would undoubtedly be the only attendees, which experience tells me would result in an easy and boring class.  Sometimes I like being proved wrong.  The class was great and it felt so good to be back on the mat in all of those familiar and comforting positions, with the warm smell of incense sliding around the room, dancing around my aura.  The poses were challenging.  The meditation rejuvenating.

Then I came home.  As I opened the door a letter on the floor was evidence that the postman and dropped off our mail.  I picked it up.  Entered the house.  Studied the writing, turning it over a few times.  I didn't recognize the handwriting and I was trying to place who it could be from.  It was from the States.  I was intrigued.  As I pulled it from its cocoon I opened it slowly, with deliberation.  This had to be something good.  Or mildly interesting in the least.

I was so unprepared for what I would find.  I letter from - gasp! - JOHN IRVING!  What?!  Eeekkk and hoorays and smiles bigger than Texas!!  And eeeek again!  Wow.  How does a day get much better than this?  I had written to Mr. Irving (or shall I call him John?  We're probably on a first-name basis by now.) a couple of months ago upon my return from Malta, where my husband and I took a vacation.  During the trip I was reading one of John's more recent novels "Last Night on Twisted River."  In the book is a character named Injun Jane who never fails to wear this Cleveland Indians baseball cap.  This crazy grinning chief is something like a talisman to Injun Jane.  As my husband and I rode through the skinny, winding streets of Malta I saw in the distance a conglomeration of what abandoned buildings - totally devoid of colour and would, in fact, blend in with their surroundings almost perfectly it if weren't for one thing: the big grinning face of the Cleveland Indians mascot.  Now what on earth was that grinning chief doing on the side of a building in Malta, of all places?

 I took this as a sign of course.  See, I've been tossing around the idea for a while now of writing more seriously.  Maybe I'll write a book.  I don't know.  I don't want to proclaim it from the rooftops or anything because I have a lot of ideas that I ponder on obsessively for varying periods of time that I never act upon.  So this could be one of those. I mean I hope it's not one of those things - I don't want it to be.  But no matter what, it's not something I'll be doing anytime soon, but it's a thought.  An idea.  Back the story - so I love coincidences and took this sighting as a sign.  I watched that Indian in the distance with its crooked grin and felt like it was smiling directly at me...like somehow this decently rendered bit of graffiti was able to stare into my soul and say "go on kid, do it!"  At that moment I was filled with such great inspiration and excitement that I wanted to phone my old friend John up and say, "you'll never believe this buddy, but guess what I just saw in Malta?"

I finished his book while I was on vacation.  And as always, the punch was in the ending.  And it left me feeling like I had to wait awhile before I could start readhing anything else.  And in fact, I've been having a difficult time engaging in another book since then.   It was great to be filled with such inspiration on such an amazing trip.  When I got home I just knew I had to write to John.  I felt like the biggest geek in all  of the world - searching for the "official John Irving website" online and trying to find his address.  Found one and thought, "yea, as if this will go anyway.  But shit, man, you never know."  So I wrote him a letter.  Sent it to his PO Box in Vermont.  Admitted in the letter that I felt like an idiot for writing a fan letter.  I mean I'm a 35 year old woman for Christ's sake!  But I did it anyway.  And BOOM!  Got a response.  Yea, it's typed.  And the signature might be from an assistant.  And he probably didn't even type it himself.  But he had to get those words to whoever did type it.  And his response makes me very aware he read my letter.  And that just puts me over the moon.  And further validates my inkling to do a bit of writing.  

Now I am filled with an urge of incredibly intensity to write back and become his best-bud pen pal.  But that would just be crazy.  Just crazy.  But not creepy, right?

So I've got this great little exhibition on at the moment.  I have the opportunity to sit gallery hours for the duration of the show, which is great because it makes me feel like I'm running my own little shop.  Which in essence I am - but it's temporary and not my own space.  But none the less I'm loving every minute.  What really rocks is that I am able to set up a make-shift studio when I'm there.  And I've been busy as a bee creating new works and making new prints.  Here's what I've been up to!

Sometimes an idea comes right out of the sky and hits you on the head like a big, black, iron frying pan.  And that very thing happened to me one day when I was walking the dog.  I was just walking along, enjoying the incredible view from the top of Folly Hill where - on a clear day - you can see the Uffington White Horse.  Anyway, I was just walking along, minding my own business when a vision struck me with amazing clarity - a vision of colourful grenades!  I made my first one at home in the studio just before I opened my show.  I cut the shape of the grenade out of half inch thick MDF board and painted it up.  I think it looks great if I do say so myself. 

As an series addict, I couldn't resist making more miniature grenades in various colours.  They're about the third of the size of the original and only a quarter of an inch thick but they're soooo cute!

After all of the fun of grenade painting, I decided it would be a good idea to make vintage-styled wall hangings from the War Girls series, of which I'd created a square format set.  This came out of my desire to make greeting cards of the series and realizing that working with a rectangular format was going to be a lot of work (not to mention a heck of a lot more expensive) to make than square ones, I improvised.  And I think they turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself!  Today's job: printing the images onto wood.  Yowza!

Tomorrow brings another pretty full day at the gallery and I haven't lined myself up with a project.  I guess that means I'll work on boring stuff - like paperwork and organizing.  Yuck!  So if you're reading this and wondering what you might do with your hump day Wednesday, maybe you should come and visit me to distract me from my un-fun jobs!  (I'll be there from 12-4.30 just in case you decide to come!)

Jan Lee of The Oxford Times wrote a lovely article about my current exhibition at the library in Bampton.  She described me as "a perceptive artist" and my work "thought-provoking."  I'm honoured! 

I've set up a temporary studio in the gallery at Bampton library so I can do a bit of a work whilst sitting gallery hours.  Here's a snapshot of my workspace - for the last several days I've been hand-painting grenades.  They're really cute and a lot of fun.  

In my limited spare time, I've been reading when I can. This usually means I have to read whilst eating my breakfast or dinner and when time is of the essence, I tend to return to The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume Two.  It's a huge book full of excerpts from novels, short stories, and poems.  During one of my breakfast reads, I stumbled upon the Creek Indian poet Joy Harjo.  I was gripped by the first stanza from her poem The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window.  Full of rich description and emotion, I was immediately compelled to create a sketch for what will become a collage and found object filled assemblage.  I look forward to getting back into my normal studio so I can get started.  

I couldn't possibly sign off without sharing an excerpt of this poem with you.  Enjoy!

She is the woman hanging from the 13rd floor