Art
Today I'm revisiting the Suburban Housewife series. I've been scouring the web for images of women from the 50s and 60s posed in the middle of mundane chores. I've been looking for very specific poses - ones that are (of course) interesting and offer obvious tasks, but that are ambiguous enough that they could be suggestive of something less ordinary. Once I have an image that interests me, I turn the woman into a silhouette, the act of which is in itself very intriguing to me: casting her into shadow, removing all detail so that she becomes a shell. This afternoon I'll place these silhouetted women into new environments and will become the basis for new paintings and vintage transfers.
Music
I often listen to music or the news while I work. Today it's music and I put together a random playlist which includes a Tom Waits album which lays often neglected in my collection titled Real Gone. I'm so glad I played it today. On it is a song called Trampled Rose. It sounded incredibly familiar and I quickly realized that's because that same song is on the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss album Raising Sand. Both songs are great, but I'm easily pulled into the gravel-grit quality of Waits voice. I also made the connection between Wait's Circus and Ani DiFranco's Parameters. She is definitely borrowing some of his style in that song.
Book
During my breaks from the studio I'm reading one of my favorite authors: John Irving. I'm not sure what it is about his books but for some reason I always discover them in charity shops, which is where I picked up the novel I'm currently reading: The World According to Garp. I first discovered this particular novel in a book of disregarded junk in my parent's house when I was a teenager. And from my first read I fell in love. And since then - I find his books in the most unexpected (to me) of places. And that makes me smile. I'm nearly at the end of Garp - so I've been reading it more slowly, savoring it like a piece of sharp, dark chocolate.
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