Instant Elixir: A Surrealist Journal

Media!

2010-03-31T21:03:00.001-04:00

The Boston Arts Examiner features the upcoming "Black & White" Members Show at the Brickbottom Gallery:

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-1370-Boston-Arts-Examiner~y2010m3d31-Members-show-at-Brickbottom-Gallery

Remember: The Brickbottom Gallery, Somervile, MA, April 18 - May 22, 2010.

No Excuses!

2010-03-27T11:10:00.000-04:00

My new hero is Robert Harrison of West Yorkshire, UK, because of his Icarus Project.

A helium balloon, a used digital camera, a GPS, a launch clearance, and a bunch of duct tape, and we see how the middle of the road is just not good enough. Good things happen when billion-dollar, high-tech, publicly-funded R&D meets hundred-dollar, low-tech, privately-run, improvisational experiments. All that middling, corporatized crap that we wait for and pay for from outfits like Apple and Microsoft really don't get us anywhere.

But this guy, with his "Hm, I wonder what would happen if I did this..." approach, he is advancing our story, showing us how access to knowledge really is opened up by new technologies, and how initial investments in R&D lead to much lower costs in real life application.

So while we, on the one hand, stop haggling and complaining about the costs of public programs like NASA and new fuel development, etc., because they really are worth the effort (Mr. Harrison stated on MSNBC this morning that, without the billions spent to develop GPS, he would not be able to do his $700 launches), let us also stop making excuses for not chasing our own visions as well. Not having funding, not having connections, not having credentials, are no longer any reason not to do things, because the tools are in our hands.

All we have to do is try, to see what is possible.

Hell, that even must apply to getting permission. The only part of all this that I haven't seen and really want to is the pitch he made to the UK government to get the permission to send up his balloons. It must have been a good one.

The sky's the limit.

The Arting Life: Moment of Geek

2010-03-23T21:21:00.000-04:00

A Look Inside:

Sometimes, you meet your inner geek coming down the road towards you.

Mine showed up recently, bearing the 1995 paper "18th and 19th Century European and American Paper Binding Structures: A Case Study of Paper Bindings in the American Museum of Natural History Library", presented by Barbara Rhodes, Conservator at the entitled institution, in the Book and Paper Group Annual of the American Institute for Conservation via the site Conservation Online.

It's amazing the things Google will bring one, ain't it? Truly, there is no excuse for ignorance anymore, no matter how obscure the subject.

Yeah, right, like you don't have things you geek out over. Pfft. Please.

I found this gem in one of my frequent searches for paper and/or non-adhesive book bindings. I like to know what's going on in the book world, and with this article, I was excited to find good descriptions of old binding styles so stable that the author suggests their use as conservation bindings. The antique books, even in their worn and damaged conditions, built out of waste paper and spare bits, have exactly the look I want for my own books.

Examining the up-close photos and detailed drawings of the article's examples launched me into book-geek orbit. All the hidden treasures and secret compartments. The improvised constructions and deceptively simple function. The stories layered into the structure of the book itself. Rapture. Swoon.

Right after the new collage for the "Black and White" show is finished, it will be book models time. Yay.

Black & White at the Brickbottom Gallery

2010-03-20T22:40:00.002-04:00

Brickbottom Artists Association Members Show 2010. Print or save this image as a reminder and to share with all your friends.

In Progress:

2010-03-09T22:06:00.000-05:00

New projects...

Brickbottom Artists Association Members' Show "Black and White," running from April 18 to May 22, 2010, with extended gallery hours during Somerville Open Studios, May 1 and 2. I'm doing a new work for "Black and White," something spun off of this photo taken in my studio recently:

That's the raw photo, un-retouched, etc., one of a set. I'm not sure what I'll do with it yet. Something layered and noir. That's the first George figure that I built for the "Afternoon with George at the Dog Park" installation with Riki Moss, years ago.

The story of the emerging artist George Marcelovitch continues all this time later.

Meanwhile, the development of a book binding style proceeds. I found a fascinating, in a totally nerd way, article about 18th century paper bindings which I'll post in my next entry. Also, I have streamlined the Ordinary notebooks even further, and will post photos when they are ready for the shops.

The Lost World

2010-02-24T19:31:00.000-05:00

Aaagh! The Olympics ate my life! 2010 Vancouver has everything -- profound tragedy; soaring elation; wild excitement; the hands of the gods jerking people around like puppets by the strings of hubris, vainglory, and carelessness.

Can't! Stop! Watching!

Drama!

Style!

Horrifying Monsters!

PANTS!

And that's how come I haven't been posting. Yeah, that's my excuse, and I'm sticking with it. Gotta go watch some skiing.

The Arting Life: More is More

2010-01-29T00:38:00.001-05:00

Rare Bird of Fashion: The Irreverent Iris Apfel. A traveling museum exhibition made from raiding the closet of ultra-hip New Yorker, Iris Apfel. I want to be her when I grow up. I saw the show at Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, and my head exploded.

Elements of Style According to Iris Apfel:

1. Never take yourself or an outfit too seriously.
2. Visit the animal kingdom.
3. Consider the clergy.
4. Travel widely.
5. Go high and low.
6. Don't fret about your age.
7. Don't be afraid to stop traffic.

Do yourselves a favor and see this if/when it comes to a museum near you. Trust me.

Facebook!

Fast away the old year passes...

2009-12-15T23:51:00.000-05:00

Hail the new, ye lads and lasses! Falalala-la...

It's turnaround time, when the wheel of the year ticks over to 1 again. After the Solstice on Monday, the days will start getting longer again. Christmas renews and refreshes our relationships. And on New Year's night, the winter constellations will begin to yield to the stars of spring, and we will all embark on a new path forward.

I guess I'm an optimist underneath it all (way underneath), because, while I often look back on the old year frustrated at things I did not accomplish, I always look forward to the new year, eager to get crackin' on those goals.

Good omens are rising. My newspaper horoscopes have been encouraging. Obstacles are resolving themselves spontaneously (the rare and precious "it'll all work out" effect). The design process has been slow but productive. My favorite holiday gift so far is an unexpected vacation from Christmas to after New Year's, time I can spend rebuilding my studio and working like a mad thing. Hooray for a day job at a university where, apparently, they have this magic thing called "intersession" which is a break in the middle of winter! Who saw that coming, eh?

So, I look forward to starting 2010 with a new studio, new art, new stationery, and a game or toy. I might even do a little writing, if I can. Time -- the most precious thing in the world, and I just got some as a present from strangers. Joy!

So...I wish you all joyous holidays and a happy and prosperous new year. Let's have faith in life and the universe, see beauty where we look, and find what really makes us happy.

'Tis the season to be jolly...

Snowy trees outside my studio

By the Way...

2009-12-09T00:31:00.000-05:00

It's winter. Maybe you heard. Someone up in the sky flipped the switch, and Massachusetts went from record highs near 70 degrees to this:

The view from my studio.

Over night. Joy.

The Arting Life: On Being Open

2009-12-08T22:06:00.001-05:00

Last month, the Brickbottom Artists Association. of which I am a member, held their annual Open Studios event, in conjunction with Joy Street Studios, just up the street. As always, it was a swingin' shindig with two days worth of free art for the viewing and buying, artists to meet and greet, demos, classes, and performances.

Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell documented the event for us. The photos in this piece are by him. Thank, Jon! *wave* Congratulations to all the participating artists on another stellar November.

I did not show this year at Open Studios. I'll try to act cool about it. Not showing gave me the chance to tour and connect with my colleagues, which I don't get to do when I am showing. Watching from the sidelines made me realize that, like everything else in life, there are tricks to getting the most out of events like this.

Open studios events are great markets where fans of art can buy original works direct from the artists who make them, sometimes at a discount. Many artists rely on open studios events for direct sales. Most of my own sales since moving to Massachusetts have been through such events. But the art market is unstable, with people sometimes eager to buy something special and, other times, reluctant to commit. Also, some artists are better suited to this kind of exhibiting than others.

As Laurence Sterne put it, "Each man will report the fair as his own market has gone in it." The contrast between good years and bad years, between artists whose work moves and others who make few sales, is, I think, why there is constant debate among artists about whether events like open studios are worth the cost of participating in them. It is all too common for an artist to lose money on open studios.

"Who is George Marcelovitch?" -
one of my past BAA Open Studios participatory projects.

I say open studios are absolutely worth the cost, time and effort, and every working artist should do them at least once in a while. But not necessarily for making sales. Rather, I, and many others, see open studios events as prime marketing moments. It's my belief that nobody can sell an artist better than the artist him- or herself. People like to meet artists, to talk to the people behind the works. They like to see the process in action, via demonstrations, presentations, classes. If there is something interactive they can participate in, even better.

I learned that while working a couple of summers at Shelburne Museum in Vermont. It was one thing to stand around the galleries and wait for someone to ask a question. It was a whole different game to staff the demonstration buildings and spend the day doing blacksmithing and weaving and running the printing presses, giving away souvenir s-hooks and nails, or picking some embarrassed but eager kid to play the printer's devil and help run the hand press, or let some amazed visitor try their hand at spinning and gasp at the thread coming out of their fingers though they couldn't figure out how it was happening.

The flow of visitors through the exhibition galleries tended to be pretty constant from what I saw, but one senior staffer told me that a good demonstrator at one of the interactive buildings could create a bottleneck of visitors lingering in the site for thirty to forty minutes, with good retention of what they saw and did there.

I do the Brickbottom Open Studios for the chance to connect with the public and put my name in their minds, my card in their pockets, their names on my email list.

Being big at Pauline Lim's place.

I try to run my space like one of the demonstration buildings at the museum, with plenty to look at, plenty to buy, and, most important of all, something fun to do. I'll present an interactive art installation, or I'll make the art I am offering for sale right there in front of the visitors.

This past November, the artists who did that sort of thing seemed to have the most interested and attentive crowds in their spaces. The portrait artist who had a model sitting during the open hours. The glass makers who gave demos and tutorials. The photographers who told the stories of their images and explained their processes (and who had to give those in-depth presentations over and over during the two-day event).

Machine sculptor Gina Kamentsky, who filled her space with her wind-up and motorized objects and would set them in motion all around her visitors.

Gina Kamentsky winds up her
mechanial confections for a visitor.

Calligrapher and graphic artist Pier Gustafson demonstrating his art by gorgeously dashing off visitors names on souvenir envelopes -- I wished I'd had a freshly forged s-hook to trade with him.

Magician Pier Gustafson
makes me seem elegant.

I will be doing the Brickbottom's Open Studios next year. I'm looking forward to inventing an amazing new project for people to play with, one that will put my card in their pockets, their names on my email list, and maybe even prompt enough sales to pay for the weekend. But with or without sales, open studios events are money well spent for an artist's career.

-- Jen

Scrolls!

2009-12-07T00:40:00.000-05:00

Finally, the Exquisite Corpse scrolls are finished. Behold!

The idea is that you use the scrolls to play the game, folding the sheet as you go along. When your Exquisite Corpse is finished, you display and admire your group creativity. Then roll up the scroll, tag it with a printed form tag listing the participants and other information, and then keep it, give it as a gift to some lucky other party, squirrel it away in a bank or time capsule, etc., as you see fit.

They can be used for other things, too. Art. Poetry. Short stories (short enough to fit into the 6 inch by 23 inch size). Letters. Magic spells and invocations of personal gods. And so forth.

I'm rather pleased with them, if I do say so myself. They look spiffing in a glass on a desk. A drawer filled with them would be a pleasantly intriguing mystery, I'm sure.

In the Weeds

2009-11-29T23:09:00.000-05:00

Oops, it's been a week already! Sorry for the silence, beloved readers, but I got lost in the good weeds/bad weeds weed patch.

The Brickbottom Artists Open Studios was grand and caused my Life Wish List to grow a bit. Thoughts about the event are yet to come.

I was offered a day job which will pay only enough to slow the bleeding out of my bank accounts, but not actually stop it. Still, slow is better than fast when it comes to going broke right? With a little finesse, it might even pay for some new studio equipment that would otherwise come out of either my food budget or my non-existent budget. It starts tomorrow. I feel nervous.

The design of the Exquisite Corpse scrolls is nearly done. The last details of paper decoration were finalized today, but how I wished I had finished and photographed them last week, while I was still "unemployed" and had daylight hours to work in. I feel happy and sad at the same time.

On top of all of that, I am fast on my way to failing to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Yes, I took the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge again and, though I will need a blip in the space-time continuum to win it, I have already achieved a personal best of 30,349 words, with one more evening left to go. I feel mildly frustrated at having to stop, though my brain will appreciate the cool down time. Someday I will finish this book, and then I'll illustrate it, and then I'll publish it. Just see if I don't. Providing I manage that part about finishing it.

Typing! Art! Commuting! Woo-hoo! It's been quite a November.

To honor all those who choose to take on more difficult challenges when they are already overloaded with work and have the holidays looming, and for the amusement of all kinds of work-nerds, please enjoy the NaNoWriMo Song.

That's going to be my new anthem for a lot of things, I think. I exit dancing.

-- Jen.

Brickbottom Open Studios 2009, November 21-22

2009-11-15T11:21:00.000-05:00

Next weekend is the 22nd Annual Brickbottom Open Studios event, November 21-22, from noon to six.

The Brickbottom Artists Association of Somerville, Mass., has been dedicated to advancing the arts in Somerville and the metro-Boston area for over two decades. The group's open studios, in which participating artists open their work spaces and their homes to the art-loving public, is a major event in the local arts scene. Nearly 80 artists opened their studios last year and are expected to do so again.

Sadly, though a member, I won't be showing this year, as I'm too wrapped up in the new books project.

BUT!! Hordes of talented and exciting artists will be exhibiting, and the event is not to be missed. You can view original artwork in the studios where it is created. Talk with the artists, learn about their creative processes, observe demonstrations of their work. All media are represented from painting and sculpture to photography, digital art and environmental and performance art. Glass blowing, ceramics, printmaking, animation, sound, theatre and music will round out the multi-media event. Genres range from abstract to realistic and everything in between.

Of course, much of the work will be available for sale, including many affordable works ideal for that unique holiday gift.

The event is free. It's indoors. Parking and snacks are available. Take a refreshing break from Thanksgiving preparations and spend an afternoon or two immersed in the vibrant, contemporary art scene of Somerville.

Click the links for more info, and remember:

Brickbottom Artists Open Studios 2009
1 Fitchburg Street
Somerville, MA 02143

Click this for directions.

Click this to view samples of this year's participating artists.

Also, just two blocks away, are the Joy Street Studios which will open more than 50 of their studios on the same weekend.

I will take advantage of not being a participant to be a visitor, catch up with my colleagues and their work, and report on the event here.

The Arting Life: Experiencing Technical Difficulties

2009-11-13T15:48:00.000-05:00

Just a quick mini-rant.

I'm working on my Ghosts experiments, and these little things happen that just interfere with my work. They have nothing to do with my work. They have no justification for even being in my reality, let alone interfering with my work. They are the products of some nameless, faceless Idiot thinking they know how to do something -- anything -- right. And they just screw up what should be the simplest things and send my blood pressure skyrocketing.

Things like these affect us all, and all our blood pressure readings, every day in the modern world.

Today's culprits are:

1. Hewlett Packard, whose Photosmart C3180 All-in-One Printer/Copier/Scanner is, apparently, tragically blind. Yes, I realize it's an old model. It seems, as it ages, the vision is the first thing to go (though actually, it has always been a pain). I just spent two hours trying to scan a piece of blotted writing to show an example of paper effects, and this insane old box of wires and plastic bits has given me images of only half the blot or of the blank paper next to it, ten times so far. I'm close to introducing this "smart" appliance to Mr. Hammer, who, simple though he is, truly understands the concept of frustration.

And

2. Staples, whose store at Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass., sells fountain pen ink but not the fountain pens that go with it. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over? Seriously? Really? I asked the poor slob who worked there why, in that case, they bothered to stock erasers to go with the pencils or envelopes for the stationery. I think he was only pretending to understand what I meant.

Scanners that cannot scan. Shops that sell ink with no pen to put it in. How happen such things? Easily. We live in a stupid, stupid world. A world where the makers of scanners think a machine that can get confused qualifies as advanced. A world where it never occurs to the buyer of a stationery store that people who buy ink cartridges might also buy a pen to put them in. A world where so many of the people who make things, sell things, provide us with things, never actually use those things themselves and nor have any idea how they are supposed to work.

If you want to know why I'm trying to start my own publishing company with which I can produce my own books, stationery and other items, this is your answer, right here:

You want a job done right, do it your-freakin'-self.

Hopefully, today's Ghosts update post will be ready this weekend. (I'm so annoyed.)

The Arting Life: Just Who Do We Think We Are, Anyway?

2009-11-08T21:47:00.000-05:00

Today, I attended day two of the Creative Massachusetts: The Artists Conference 2009 seminar, presented by the Massachusetts Artists Leaders Coalition, at the beautiful Boston Public Library. The program was most informative -- expert panel discussions of various marketing and contractual issues, the nuts and bolts, behind-the-scenes stuff of the arts. Everyone was handing around business cards like their livelihoods depend on those snips of paper. As they often do.

I realized as I was handing around my business card, that I had done a strange thing. I had redesigned my card and printed a pocketful of new ones this morning over breakfast, just for this event. I realized for the first time that I do this habitually. There are a lot of my cards floating around, but few of them are exactly alike.

Other people's cards are these gorgeous, stiff, slick things (ooh, sexy) with colors and photos. Their owners generously clue me to the excellent deals they got from this or that printer on a thousand cards for $100, and so forth. I tell myself I should get such deals, too.

Experts warn us of the dangers of not having a memorable, amusing, seductive business card. The mantra of Identity-Brand-Image is drilled into us -- and for good reason. We want to be remembered fondly. Why else do we bother with cards at all?

By all tried and true wisdom, a card that keeps changing, that looks like it was printed up quick this morning, is anathema to the professional artist.

But I can't help it.

I keep changing. The card has to change with me. What alternative do I have? Should I bind myself to the card, rather than it to me? Should it be the leader, or should I?

Further, I feel compelled to customize my card for the people receiving it and what aspect of my career I want to steer them towards. For every event, I suss who I will meet, and I make a fresh, new Jen Fries business card just for them, referencing precisely what I hope we talked about in person.

The question is: Am I doing everything horribly, horribly wrong, or am I onto something?

The messages from the experts today were mixed. On the one hand, we were urged repeatedly to maintain and guard our public images like they are pure gold. We must make sure our identities are always unmistakably clear.

On the other hand, we were advised that a directed message is better than a generic one. When we contact someone, we should address them, talk to them, not to some faceless "To whom it may concern" or "Dear Sir/Madam." We were told that presenting ourselves in a context of specific interest to the person we are talking to is an excellent way to get the attention of curators, buyers, newspaper editors, etc.

Clearly, marketing for artists -- and all small entrepreneurs, really -- is a balancing act between consistency and customization. How should we achieve that?

I have decided to experiment with the new. The new technology that makes it so easy for me to whip up customized cards and other materials at a moment's notice. The new media hungry for fresh nibbles. All the instant tools that let me put in front of people just what I want them to see and think about at any moment. And I will apply to this new stuff the very old adage:

All roads lead to Rome.

In with The New. Come find me on Face Book.

I'm still afraid of Twitter, though.

The Big Experiment: Ghosts & Cadavers

2009-11-04T13:38:00.000-05:00

My, surrealism is kind of gruesome, isn't it?

Anyway... Update

I am working on the design for a Ghosts of My Friends ink blot autographs book. However, writing instruments and, especially, habits have changed a lot over the past hundred years, so the project is not so simple, especially regarding making the idea accessible and user friendly.

I'm also working on an item for another surrealist game, the Exquisite Corpse (or Cadaver). This is a well known collaborative game, played with words, pictures, or both, in which each player writes a few words or draws something, folds the paper to hide most of what they did, then passes the paper to the next player to write or draw, and so on, until everyone has had their turn. Then the paper is unfolded to see what the group created together accidentally. The game is named for it's classic first result:

The exquisite corpse will drink new wine.

And here is a graphical Exquisite Corpse by Yves Tanguy, Man Ray, Max Morise, and Joan Miró, 1926.

The Exquisite Corpse project needs to work a certain way but does not need any special papers or tools to use, so it is coming along faster.

I'll post pictures of prototypes in the coming days.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to enjoy more Exquisite Corpses, while you wait for me to provide you with containers for your own, check out JA/BC Studio's collaborative EC panels. Very impressive, large artworks.

And see what the Library of Congress has for us! The Exquisite Corpse Adventure. I am very excited about this ongoing collaborative kid's lit serial project, which I just found today. Three episodes have been written so far and can be read at the linked Read.gov site. Episode 4 is due this Friday, November 6. Bookmark it!

More to come,

-- Jen.

A Night to Conjure

2009-10-30T23:34:00.000-04:00

It's Halloween, boys and girls. My favorite holiday, full of horror and charm. My black cat sleeps beside my desk. A jack-o-lantern casts a fiery glow over the room. And I write tonight about automatism and messages from beyond. Yes, I'm talkin' Ouija Boards.

Now, now, don't panic. This isn't The Exorcist's deleted scenes blog. Just pop some candy corn and relax.

Talking boards, as they are generically known, get a bad rap from the jittery classes these days. Some people have the notion that these mass-produced printed alphabet boards have the magical power to open doors through which nothing good will ever come, which idea itself is rather mystifying, and I could go on and on about it, but whatever.

There is another, and in my opinion, far more interesting use for these boards -- as a game of surrealist automatism, the practice of drawing creativity straight from the unconscious mind. There are lots of such "automatic" pastimes which stimulate the mind to break logical barriers, to find order in chaos, to make connections between ideas, many of which may have been stolen by art from the occult, or vice versa.

Automatic writing and drawing. Talking boards. Coulage (molten wax, lead, chocolate, etc. dripped into cold water to make shapes) and other liquid arts. Bibliomancy. Even Tristan Tzara's Cut-Up dada poetry technique (keep scrolling down that link till you find it), which works remarkably like a kind of casting of the runes.

Such things which frighten those who somehow manage to be over- and under-imaginative at the same time, are basic tools of the arts, the gymnasium training machines of creative minds.

So, to help you overcome your fear of the unknown this All Hallow's Eve, here are a few tricks to treat yourself with:

Play with Brainjar.com's virtual Ouija board, which has already assured me with a definite YES that there are spirits on the web waiting to answer your questions.

Just try not to ask anything dumb, says paranormal researcher, Stephen Wagner, in his About.com article on how to Use A Ouija Board. And in his article answering the question Is It Really Evil? (and who has not asked that about, oh, any number of things?), Mr. Wagner will explain all that to you, too.

Finally, if trademarked commercial toys are not your preferred avenue to the beyond within, knock your brains out with the random generators of WatchOut4Snakes, to which I just got addicted but good. Behold!

The random word generator wrote a poem:

She burked the raucous slaughterhouse
amid a disrupted paradigm.

The random sentence generator informed me that:

The wonderful music beats the feat over the obliging evidence, [and that]
A turned success dogs the witty midnight.

And the random paragraph generator, working only with the primary and secondary concepts of "surrealism" and "Ouija boards" realized:

The deprived affair catalogs surrealism next to the inconvenient muddle. Above, Ouija boards puzzle the token. Ouija boards wash an indirect novel over a differing search. Why can't the worship breathe outside a mass riot? Ouija boards degrade the unbelievable office.

Oh, I'm going to have fun with that site.

So, don't be afraid. Tonight is the night when shadows walk (actually, they always do that, don't they?), when dreams look back at you from the mirror (if you say their names three times), and when you know perfectly well you are going to watch movies full of gore and terror, and dress up as the dead, and feed candy eyeballs to your children. You may as well break out the old Ouija, too.

You might even conjure the ghost of Sigmund Freud.

Boo!

-- Jen

(note: images of talking boards and toys are from the Museum of Talking Boards, linked; Ouija is a proprietary trademark, but a Google search left me unsure whose.)

The Arting Life: The Slave Boasts of the Master

2009-10-28T17:26:00.000-04:00

While I was researching The Ghosts of My Friends, I came across the blog How Now Brown Pau, whose author chronicles, among other things, the lounging habits of his cat, recorded photographically.

I admit, the image of that big white fur-ball splayed over all and sundry in that human's house aroused a competitive spirit in me. I am proud to declare myself a cat fancier, and even prouder to declare that no cat -- NO cat, I say, is more pampered, more honored, or better spoiled than my cat, Mr. Gomez Addams, the Astonishing Talking Cat of World Renown, pictured.

Note the fur. The ears. The whiskers. Those shocking chartreuse eyes. Note the lounging in the sun while still being indoors. He is velvet and knife blades. His purr is the voice of authority dictating my day to me, confident of obedience -- and with good reason.

I love cats because I love my home and after a while they become its visible soul. ~Jean Cocteau

Cats are dada. They are to surrealism as dada was to the poetic egotists of the early surrealist movement -- a condemnation of the middle-class complacency that haunted their salons and happenings like their own warped shadows.

So too, a cat in the studio destroys the artist's delusion that she is not wasting her time. Like the belligerent nonsense of dada, cats destroy pretension and create laughter. What manages to get past them and out of the studio has been put through a rigorous test of the artist's vision and determination. A worth-the-effort screening.

A surrealist who has no cat, is not challenging herself.

I'm just saying.

There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person. ~Dan Greenberg

-- J.

Ghosts of My Friends

2009-10-24T22:24:00.000-04:00

Games and toys are an integral part of surrealism. As the artform that confirms rationality by shattering the rational, surrealism depends on the implicit and explicit perversities of play to open paths of expression. Thus, the tradition of surrealist pastimes.

One of the most charming, in my opinion, is The Ghosts of My Friends. A hybrid of keepsake and amusement, The Ghosts of My Friends produces distinctive and instinctive abstract inkblot images out of handwriting. One's friend writes his or her signature in a liquid ink, and the paper is folded over before the ink dries, revealing a psychologically suggestive "ghost" of the writer's personality in the blotted form.

I first came across The Ghosts of My Friends in A Book of Surrealist Games, Alistair Brotchie. Recently I learned that, in the early 20th century, the Frederick A. Stokes Company of New York produced a book especially for this game, a kind of diary of ghostly autographs. Copies of the book, usually partially filled, occasionally pop up at estate sales in Europe and are, apparently, prized collector's items. Design Sponge last year caused a bit of a fan-fluffle by posting an example.

See also this more recent posting from How Now Brown Pau, who offers some excellent photos and whose fat white cat is not as handsome as my fat black cat, and probably not so well and properly spoiled, either. I mean...jean shorts? Really?

Anyway, the point of bringing all this up, is that I'm making Ghost of My Friends books of my own this week. I have such fondness for the Ghosts that I want to encourage revival of the game, but there are technical challenges to address.

Obviously, first there is the question of blot-able ink. Modern inks, both for writing and drawing, typically have more efficient drying agents in them, making it difficult to get good blots. Members of the Fountain Pen Network discussed this very problem in response to Design Sponge's article in 2008.

Like them, in experimenting -- see sample of my signature, above -- I found that I got better results using a heavily loaded dip pen and calligraphy ink, but there is a fine line between enough ink and too much. To make the game accessible and user friendly, the old book's instructions will have to be rewritten to include how to use unfamiliar writing instruments and recommended techniques.

Next, is the issue of paper. As users of liquid ink pens or markers will know, many modern writing papers are rather absorbent, which is fine for fast drying inks, but causes bleed through and feathering with wetter inks. In regards to the Ghosts, the more absorbent the paper, the less of the ink will sit on the surface for blotting. In my experiments, I found that even calligraphy ink could become un-blot-able within a couple of seconds, just in the time it took to lay down the pen and fold the sheet.

So we want a less absorbent paper, but one that is not so stiff or brittle that it won't work with the binding I have in mind. An art paper will do the trick but I will need to experiment with weights.

I have my work cut out for me this weekend, and I guess I just gave a big hint of what everyone on my list will be getting for Christmas this year.

-- Jen.

PS: More on the subject of cats later.

The Arting Life: See it, Pinch it, Spend it (#1)

2009-10-18T21:21:00.000-04:00

Inspiration is where you find it.

This past Saturday, I was walking down Cambridge Street in, appropriately, Cambridge, Mass., when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a box of discarded books by the curbside, and right on top, a damaged but complete copy of The Successful Stockman and Manual of Husbandry, circa 1899-1900, King-Richardson Co., Springfield, Mass.

A quick leaf-through on the street was all I needed to recognize the treasure. This handy guide is all-encompassing in its practical helpfulness, full of charts, formulas, engravings and -- best of all -- multi-layered, full-color "mannikins" of livestock anatomy. The covers of this copy are rotted, the spine exposed, the stitching loose, and the pages badly aged, but there is something rich and warm and aesthetically suggestive in both the book and its contents. I had found a relic from another life and another time, and there was no way I was not bringing it back to my studio.

Naturally, I also Googled this unusual find. I admit I was surprised to learn that The Successful Stockman was such a standard that it seems to be in the library of every college or university in the US that has ever offered any kind of agricultural or veterinary program. For example, I took special note of this mention in a 2001 article of the Fresno State News regarding the Fresno State University Library's one millionth acquisition:

"From the first book ever acquired for the Library, a 1900 copy of Andrew Gardenier's The Successful Stockman and Manual of Husbandry to the latest books on Internet commerce, materials collected for the Library have always mirrored the subjects taught in the classroom."

Google Books offers some excerpts from The Stockman, if you're curious to see what I'm so worked up about, though it barely scratches the surface. I am definitely going to have to copy the whole chapter on "Standard Receipts" before I make any art out of it, especially the recipes for pastes and glues.

As beaten up as this copy is, The Successful Stockman has yet successes to achieve, and I am looking forward to seeing if an artist at the start of the 21st century can make as much of it as a farmer at the start of the 20th.

Dear Readers, I will keep you posted.

-- Jen

PS: Thanks to GnI for the Arting Life's motto.

Instant Elixir Cures All!

2009-10-16T19:47:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Instant Elixir, a (hopefully) regular account of the goings on in and around the surrealist studio of me, Jen Fries.

I’ve been building collages and constructions for nearly 30 years. I make art about and out of the way people relate to their world. I like to twist and tweak and challenge those relationships. Blur the boundaries between inner and outer worlds, between creativity and commerce, decoration and function, art and literature, etc., etc., etc.

Now I’ve decided to launch a Big New Experiment -- an artisan publishing company specializing in books of art, books as art, artists’ books. Also, stationery, games, and other things a publishing company might produce, especially a surrealist one. The goal is to promote a new way to bring art to the public by merging the methods of art and literature.

I have a list of book projects in development, about $75.00 in start-up capital, and the worst global recession of my life in which to work. Optimism!

With two or three posts per week (hopefully), Instant Elixir will give progress reports on the Big New Experiment, and cover other projects, such as:

new artworks, exhibitions, and even the blog itself
how-to’s of book binding, collage, construction, etc.
surrealist issues in storytelling, games, lifestyles
commentary on books, art, society, and the profession
interesting things, people, and happenings
interactions, conversations, maybe even arguments in response to your remarks, suggestions, objections, etc.

I hope this blog will amuse readers interested in surrealism, in books, in starting a small business, in being a professional artist in today’s world, or in looking at life through a prism of questions. Don’t hold back -- speak, question, criticize! Leave comments or email me. Encourage or predict disaster.

Maybe the Big New Experiment will go nowhere. Maybe it will crash and burn spectacularly. Maybe I’ll actually end up making something out of it.

Come along to see what happens.