It is an interesting thing to visit with loved ones whose memory is not what it used to be and they know it.

Do you think it is possible to see death around someone even if they are not very sick?

The Pedal People

a human-powered delivery and hauling service
for the Northampton, Massachusetts area

go here to find out to find out more: http://www.pedalpeople.com/

these lovely people take my houses composting and recycling away on their bikes (well a cart attached to their bikes).

Sometimes it is so nice to read what another person has to say about one's work. I tend to get tangled and strangled by the words I would use to talk about what I am doing. Tonight I read what the folks at THE ART OF THIS GALLERY in Minneapolis wrote about my work and it made me very pleased. I have been feeling really poopy about my work lately but after reading the little blurb they wrote I feel clear about what it is I am currently doing and how some folks perceive it (which helps me think something other than poopy about the work).

Here are the words:

A whimsical installation of play and
discovery and the collective meanings found therein.

Feb 9-Mar 9, Opening 2/9 7pm

Art of This Gallery is pleased to present the work of Angela Zammarelli, a
recent MFA graduate from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She
will exhibit work from her current series “Shut Up Spacemaker, You Talk
Too Much,” a whimsical installation that explores the interplay between
play, discovery and escape and the collective meanings found therein.

This eclectic work often combines not only an array of domestic handmade
objects, such as blankets, dolls and furniture, using colorful textiles,
woods and plastics, but elements of performance and video as well.

Angela’s work, both in craft and content, is tremendously transformative
with its ability to alter the viewer’s perception of the materials found
in the work as well as ask one to question the reality of the unique,
magical environments that she constructs.



Here are their web pages:

http://www.artofthis.net/

http://www.mnartists.org/organizationHome.do?rid=83585

"There is a Story I Forgot to Tell You; Shut Up Spacemaker, You Talk Too Much"

Could you scoot over just a hair for me while I cut a hole in the wall? Isn't that better? Now you can put your legs through it.

I am trying to create something for us.

Well don't assume I want it and pick up those floor boards they are getting in the way.

Breathe in and breath out and breathe in and breathe out.

I can only give you so much and that is as much as I can give you so take it or leave it or take it and leave it. And while you're at it move that chair over towards the door, then you can lay in this spot and I can lay next to you.

What are we using today? A little bit of this and a little bit of that, I see, that should work just fine. One can not afford to be picky. But you seem to always over do it.

Good night, sleep tight.

so-mee

In the later part of the spring of 2007 I was biking on a trail going west in Minneapolis, the one that goes out to St. Louis park and beyond. I was going around a corner when I felt something hop on the back of my bike, it wasn't a very big thing but it startled me a little. I turned my head and so-mee was there. She wrapped her arms around me and we continued going west. I thought maybe she would jump off when I turned around to go back to my apartment, but she didn't. She came home with me and would sit quietly in my room on top of a pile of clothes. We spent a lot of time together looking at books and humming.

my neighbor died and I spent a whole month at my friend Ursula's home because my neighbor died a vicious death and I lived only with so-mee in a basement and didn't feel very safe. There was also a peeper a foot and I felt exposed.

I went to Montanan at the end of that month, as maybe you read.

Then I moved back to Massachusetts.

I haven't seen her since I moved away. I abandoned her, right?

Anyway this is the painting I did of her in June and finished in October.

Jenny Holzer Projections
Spencer Finch's What Time is it on the Sun
Anselm Kiefer: Sculpture and Paintings from The Hall Collection
Fransje Killaars: Installation: Figures, Colors First

Currently at Mass MoCA

http://www.massmoca.org/

A gem in the Berkshires

New Work by:
Amelia Biewald, Ernest Bryant, Ryan Macintyre, Liz Miller, Molly Roth, Larry Schwarm, Aaron van Dyke, Angela Zammarelli

Guest Curator: Thomas Barry, Thomas Barry Fine Arts

Sunday October 13 - Thursday January 10th

Opening Reception:
Saturday, October 13th 5-8 pm

Traffic Zone Open Studios:
Saturday, October 13th 3-5 pm

Gallery Hours:
Monday - Friday 8 am - 5 pm

Traffic Zone Center for Visual Art
250 3rd Avenue North
Minneapolis, MN 55401

If you are in Minneapolis, please check this show out, thank you.

Hmm. I have moved. I am feeling a little more settled. I have lovely housemates (it is good to live with people again). I am framing pictures in New England. How romantic, no? No, I kid. It is the start of fall and the foliage is starting.

Today a little lady/baby came into the world named Isabella. Maybe many an Isabella came into this realm today but this particular one I am talking about sprang from my brother and sister-inlaw (Nick and Naomi). It is very exciting. I am going to meet her on Sunday. Today also happens to be the birthday of three other really special people to me, this I take as a good sign for her.

Happy Birthday emmett, Laura, and Joshua!

Two nights ago I went to see Jessica Stockholder speak at Mt. Holyoke College. I remember leaving feeling really interested in art, which I have to say was nice because many times after going to lectures I want to crawl into a hole and sleep and pretend that I am not involved with art. I wish I had written stuff down that night because now I don't have the words to describe what is going on in my brain in response to the lecture. Grrr, if only I was good at keeping up with this writing business (it is my weakness). Watch the pbs art21 with her talking about her work. I felt like the lecture was similar to this except that the information she was sharing seemed tailored to an educating lecture as opposed to an interview.

One particular part of the lecture that stuck out in my head was when she talked about not being an artist for a little while after grad school and how this let her make whatever she wanted. She worked and puttered.

Here are some links to her work:

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/stockholder/index.html

http://www.oneroom.org/sculptors/stockholder.html

http://www.artnet.com/awc/jessica-stockholder.html

"When I Go Like This, You Will Know it is Time" is opening Sunday September 16 at the Incubator Gallery located in the Southwest Residential area next to Hamden Gallery at Umass Amherst. The opening runs from the 3 - 5 PM and will be up until October 19, 2007. In the main gallery at Hamden will be Paula Hodecker and Brendan Stecchini (there is a stellar drawing of their dog Julio in the show). If you are in Western Massachusetts and can make it to see the work that would be great. I will write more about it later, I am in the midst of moving right now and have to stay focused on packing properly.

Everything I ever needed to know about aesthetics I learned in catholic mass. Well maybe not completely true but partially true none the less. I am at my grandma and parents' home. My grandma watches mass on the catholic cable channel all the mornings she doesn't physically go to church. This morning I sat down at the table with her while she was watching. I haven't seen mass on tv in years and I haven't been to mass in even longer. Seeing it on tv in all its golden glory I can see why I do what I do. I have had this conversation before, stating that my materialistic behavior in my art is based in my little old catholic self's love of relics and statues and pilgrimages. I still am in love the idea of these things. The rituals and the objects and the stained glass and saints and well .... magic, theatre, costumes, transformation, the body and junk.

I was watching the priest clean the chalice out, then fold the fabrics that go on top and then the alter boys came and took it all away, the whole time the priest said words. I was once told that my hands were too busy in a video I did. And watching the priest folding and placing and putting I thought of the video and how that character was doing a similar thing. It may look busy but it is intentional and needs to be done "right" in order for the magic to work.

Superstition.

Packing up.

Today is my last full day in Montana. I am a little sad. I am really nervous. I hope to come back this way sometime.
Tonight Linda and I are going up to Debbie's home to have dinner with her and her family.

Tomorrow I meet up with my parents in Minneapolis for a couple of days. I am super excited to take them to State Fair and see the chickens, and to eat a cider freeze pop and look at the dried ears of corn and seed art, the walls of jam and honey. Yup!

Then I will be ready to head home to Massachusetts. It will be really great to drive with them back east. It will feel good to miss Minneapolis.

Nan's dog came trotting into the apartment today, proceeded to fall over, and ask for a belly scratch. I forgot her name but I feel like I have known her for a long time. Does that makes up for being bad with names? Nan is a painter that lives in town. She has work up at the High Note Cafe. They are these really nice water colors of the north west coast. I am a sucker for water color, did you know that? I am.

Anyway Nan and a bunch of painters in the community (members all the way up to Helena) are have an painting slumber party in some B town in south of here that I have also forgotten, I do know it is not Butte, Billings, or Bozeman. Does that make up for being bad with names? Ahh yes, a painting slumber party! In this case it will be landscapes, pajamas (this I am projecting in), and friends. It is so nice to think of a group going out and painting for the hell of it, well not for the hell of it because they are artists, but choosing to go together and making a production as opposed to just making a day trip by oneself. I don't know what I am talking about, but it sure sounds like fun.

Today I also went to Helena with Linda a new resident, who happened to be also living in Minneapolis/St. Paul for the last couple of years and had Kinji as a teacher too. I had even hung her work for a show at MCAD in January. She just arrived on Saturday. We have been having some very interesting conversations about the land in this part of Montana. She says that it is folded in on itself and that leads to interesting energy in this part of the state. I will say that I agree.

Linda grew up in Libby, Montana. Libby is located in the northwest corner of the state. There was a movie that came out in 2004 called "Libby, Montana". Do a search for Libby and read about its mining legacy.

http://www.highplainsfilms.org/fp_libby.html

co·in·ci·dence [koh-in-si-duhns] –noun
1. a striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance: Our meeting in Venice was pure coincidence.
2. the condition or fact of coinciding.
3. an instance of this.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=coincidence


I was in the midst of reading about stripes in the summer edition of Cabinet and I started looking at the skunk stripes when I noticed a very pungent smell. I thought it was the ink in the magazine or my armpits. I started to sniff the magazine feverishly, then decided that it was my armpits. Meanwhile a very large moth flew past my head, it landed on my fabric pinned to the wall. I couldn't have it eat the fabric so I caught it in a jar and went to let it outside. Outside I discovered that the smell was stronger. Do you know what the smell was? A skunk sprayed outside. So it wasn't my armpits afterall.

The theme of the summer Cabinet is "The Enchanted Season"

ps. thanks to Don Myhre for the Cabinet.

Last night I looked up the names of all the mines officially recorded in Jefferson county, putting a star next to all of those located in Basin. For a small town it sure has many a mine. I have 24 on my list, but I know the name of at least 4 mines that were not on the list. Maybe their common names differ from their official names. I was reading an abstact from a paper online that said there are around 6,000 abandoned mines in Montana (RECLAMATION EFFECTIVENESS AT THREE RECLAIMED,
ABANDONED MINE SITES IN JEFFERSON COUNTY, MONTANA presented by Tara Tafi and Dennis R. Neuman). Yesterday I walked by the Jib mine again and really wanted to see pictures of it in its day. This is what led me to look up mines in Jefferson county. The search produced mainly coordinates no pictures or information. But after looking at several maps and remembering the information Randy told me at the potluck last week I decided to make a trip to a former silica mine site (it has been reclaimed). The site is about two miles from the residency.

I set out down the road. I had a nice time walking on the path that was a former railroad track and by the Boulder River. I found another mine adit across the river. Its opening was maybe 20 feet up the hill from the river and it looked a little grown in. I wanted to get closer but also didn't want to get my feet wet (ha, which is a rare thing). I might try tomorrow. I was looking at my photos from today and noticed something really eerie in the picture I took of its opening. I might not go. Don't hold me to it.

I came to the bridge that one crosses to get to the hill that contains the reclaimed spot. I walked up and up and up and as I neared the top I was thinking that it was going to be nothing extraordinary. It is a filled in mine the mine part is gone, big whoop. I was wrong, so very wrong. For starters the view from the ledge where the mine was is stunning. Turning the corner there a giant deposit of dolomite shimers from the back wall of the hill side (hill might be understating the size of the bump in the Earth, it may very well be classified as a mountain). I felt very small. The depth at which the Earth has been cut into is deep and this is only what remains open. The space was like being in an almost enclosed pit, open where one climbs up. I looked around them headed back down.

My pictures didn't come out so hot today.

A little assignment for you if you are willing. If you would like to email me, I will post your Broc Frock here.

I started constructiing this creature today. It is crude and selfish, but shiny and outgoing. It eats up whatever it wants and shits out sludge. I'm not sure how it is doing as a piece though, but it is really satisfying to play with. I have been putting coats of acrylicpoly and black paint on it all day and boy it is glossy.

And all I can think of is the phrase "war is gross".

George Myers and Emily (I don't know her last name but remember she was wearing the most amazing knitted dress) were making buttons at my old job four years ago, and they gave me a button that said this. I lost the button last year. I think this phrase is really interesting and maybe my favorite in the regards to thinking about wars. It is the kind of thing were it is not saying bad or good (well one could argue that gross is bad, but gross has the potential to be more complex than that). The reader can think about what gross in the context of war means.

This fabric pattern came out during the first Gulf War. It is a type of camouflage. That's why I am thinking about war while making it. It is a really neat pattern and has the look of a cross between and animal and landscape. I kind of think this creature maybe is a spirit of war, if we want to go there. Maybe it is like the slug that Yubaba put in Haku in the movie "Spirited Away". Maybe someone needs to make George Bush (and others in the administration) throw this creature up and squash it.

just a thought, good night

ps. thanks to Karen Wirth who gave me this fabric.