Rock n Roll Bead Patrol

A Nudge (and maybe even a Wink) in the Right Direction

2012-02-08T19:32:00.000-08:00

I know better. I know I should know better. My better self knows better. Yet I listen to the doubter---until someone reminds me of what I know.

Why do I have to remind myself that conventional wisdom is an oxymoron? Because the doubter is a seductive mofo. It snakes its way in when my work gets turned down for an exhibit, when my bank balance is a single digit, when getting three things done means that I have ten things left to do. Should I make things that are more "affordable"? Should I get a JOB?

Artists who have day jobs battle for time to create. Strategies abound. The chapter "Generating Income: Alternatives to Driving a Cab" in "How To Survive and Prosper as an Artist" has more cautionary tales than anything else. The blogosphere's arteries are clogged with advice-givers preying on people hoping to swap a put-up-with-it/stable-paycheck job for a work-I-love/someday-I'll-get-paid job (see "Caveat Vendor" below).

Artists who don't have day jobs battle for time to create. Guess what happens before your devoted clients snap up every painting/book/performance the moment your earnest, authenticity-soaked, excellent product emerges? You find out the hard way that the electric company isn't into barter. Think all you have to do is snag a sugar daddy? How much time will you have for art-making when s/he gets Altzheimer's?

Enter more specific types of advice-givers, namely:

1. People who have never had any source of income outside of their parents and their steady job (useless but mean well)

2. People who have tried to make it in your field and failed (avoid 'em---guess whose ego will be crushed further if you succeed?)

I'm getting to the uplifting part right now, I promise.

Enter a lady I met last Friday, a friend of a friend who quickly called bulls#it on my attempt to make "affordable" artworks. She praised the open-weave foot-high 'towers' pictured below, and we discussed ways to make them fit on your coffee table without tipping over.

Until she saw the pieces pictured below and forgot all about the others. She didn't really call me out on the pieces above. All she did was look me in the eye and say, "You have to keep making things like this." The scary part is, these are a lot less affordable than the ones above. The un-scary part is, I've sold three of them.

So I'm reminding myself (and encouraging you) to battle on, even though in my case it means creating things that no one in their right mind would try to make, much less sell. That might sound counterintutive, but every time I've tried to produce accessible/affordable things, it's fallen flatter than a pancake. So I have to go back out into the unknown.

"Sure" things keep people putting up with what they hate. The final stages of hypothermia are just as seductive. "Wake up and smell the pavement," I used to hear back in the punk day. Better to wake up and smell the pavement than to sleep forever.

Beads and Wheels

2011-08-28T13:37:00.000-07:00

Anything with a hole in it is a bead. A wheel is a bead. A skull is a bead. Anything that can be pierced can become a bead.

Records are beads, with that hole in the center. Maybe that's why vinyl records still sound better than mp3s. Yeah, I'll get to the point real soon. Keep your shirt on (shirts have holes, too...)

I visited the Detroit area last week to teach beadweaving workshops for the Great Lakes Beadworkers Guild (a group of incredibly talented and imaginative artists), which turned out to be another incredible confluence of things with holes: beads, records, righteous motor vehicles, and abandoned houses. All of these can communicate beauty, individuality, political statements, and discussions.

Kim Werker, a much more devoted blogger than me, has a great post about ways people approach their creativity.

http://www.kimwerker.com/2011/08/24/dear-crafts-can-we-see-other-people/

Some take a more mechanical/rote approach, to make something that satisfies, with others the medium is only a vehicle for the idea. The way content interacts with the medium intrigues me. Do you want to make 100 pairs of identical earrings? More power to ya! Do you want to make something that makes people stare at you? I dare ya! Do you want a car that can get you from point A to point B? A car that can make a loud noise and a funny smell when you do a burnout? Do you want your song to give a lonely adolescent something to relate to?

By the way, thanks to Rhonda Gross, who let me have her old records before they went to the thrift store, and took me to the Woodward Dream Cruise, and Gail Foster, who took me back to the Dream Cruise and regaled me with tales of growing up in the Detroit suburbs.

http://womc.radio.com/shows/woodward-dream-cruise-2/

Now, making housing seems pretty rote---get permits, round up a bunch of people who know what they're doing, buy lumber, drywall, pipes, dig a hole, etc. But ever step inside a 100- or 200-year old house? One with a ghost or two? How'd all that mojo get in there?

Using abandoned houses for artistic, cultural, and political discourse takes a lot of committment, time, and in Tyree Guyton's case, persistence (his artworks have been bulldozed by officials twice in the last 25 years). That didn't stop him; he's not only got a non-profit group that benefits his neighborhood and schoolkids from all over, he's been awarded an artist residency in Switzerland. His artwork is incredible and his people skills are world-class.

Many thanks to Linda Darmes, who took me to visit Tyree Guyton's Heidelberg Project (http://www.heidelbergproject.org/ ---named after the street he lives on) as well as the Detroit Institute of the Arts.

So I see holes as opportunities, and whether you use these opportunities to make something that quietly gets you from point A to point B, that goes with the color of your neice's eyes, that shelters someone, that calls for a solution to something that bums everyone out, or that makes funny noises and moves real fast, the coolest part is that it came from something very intangible, the imagination. The imagination has an unmatched power-to-weight ratio!

So Beautiful It's Spooky, Even in Broad Daylight

2011-04-16T21:09:00.000-07:00

A few months ago we drove part way up the Hood Canal to buy a used drum set, and on the way we copped an incredible view of the Cushman Hydroelectric Power Station built in 1930. At the time it was dark and foggy, so it looked like something out of the movie Metropolis.

So my very significant other and I took advantage of a non-rainy day to go back. A good omen for the trip was spotting a righteous 1964 Pontiac on the way there. It took us enough time to pass it for me to notice a badge on it that said "pmd6". More on that part later.

This is why you can't drive from Hoodsport (on the Hood Canal) to Forks (on the Pacific Ocean) without hugging the coastline. These are in the 7,000-foot range.

It looked like it hadn't changed much since the 1920s when my Grandma lived there. It's not easy to reach from Seattle and the terrain is too rugged for anything too far beyond digging clams.

A bald eagle, ready to relieve itself on the head of anyone who dares use its image for phony political props.

A former burger stand that does J.G. Ballard proud. It might sound like hipster-creep to a local, but un-gentrified areas like this thrill my soul.

This building looks like it was built around the same time as the power station.

Now I have to go back to capture pictures of the radly painted fireworks stands with names like "IllEagle" and "BadAzz"...

So what's an old Pontiac got to do with all this natural beauty? I'll spare you the discussion about the difference in the use of natural resources in buying a new car every 4 years vs. keeping the same car running for 47 years and link to this article about the rare engine belonging to the "pmd6"-labeled cars (scroll down to the part describing the "pushrod 215" heading) and this picture of another 1964 Pontiac and this Popular Mechanics review of the 1963 model (these were considered compact cars and could get 24 mpg). Vrrrrrooooom!

Got Leftovers? Make Soup!

2011-03-29T19:05:00.000-07:00

I'm not the most uptight bead artist, but too much stuff on the work table leads to a stuck feeling. Having some pre-threaded needles left over from a workshop finally got to me and I decided to use them.

The wide range of thread colors at first threw me. I decided to disregard the usual color-coordinating niceties and just mess around and try odd things. I used mostly translucent beads, so I could see what effect the thread color had on the pieces.

To live up to my reputation as someone who digresses, here's a digression about my workspace.

Unlike many beadweaving artists, I use a white ceramic plate (I like my beads to mix and I like to see them). The little blue rectangles are elbow rests I cut out from a mouse pad. The bead needles are stuck to magnetic business cards (the ones that you see on the phone book). The plate sits on a small box, so I don't hunch over the work (preventing neck strain is 99% of the cure). The stereo is not in the picture but it's nearby.

Freed from any notion of purpose, usefulness or immediate saleability, you can develop ideas that are purposeful, useful and even saleable...

The piece above is woven with aqua colored thread; the one below is woven with orange thread. Makes a difference when you use translucent (see-through) beads, even in such a strong color.

The red piece is woven with dark blue thread (see what it does to the beads compared with those in the image above?) and the gold with purple. The gold is not translucent, so the color isn't affected---except at the ends of the fringe pieces, where the thread is exposed.

I saved the thread that I could use for a "real" project for last. I came up with the cone shapes while messing around, of course.

I've kept a pen and pencil and paper by the bed for years, on the advice of none other than science fiction writer A. E. Van Vogt. What happens is that by bedtime, as your mind relaxes, ideas about what to do with all this nutty stuff bubble up. About 20 - 30% of what's written down might be useful.

It's daunting to invest time in just messing around in such an intricate medium, so I'll be launching a tutorial (maybe a series of 'em) called Guided Improvisation on http://www.craftedu.com/. It'll be kind of like Hansel and Gretel leaving bread crumbs behind them so they don't get lost... except that the bread crumbs don't get eaten... and there's no witch...

Full Circle: You CAN Have It Both Ways... from one work of art to another

2010-08-26T21:55:00.000-07:00

I use found materials in my work. "Found object" is really just a fancy, generic name for non-traditional components used in a piece of art. Most of the raw materials I use are glass beads, which can take lots of different forms, but if you expand the notion of "bead" to include anything with a hole in it, this form can take you far and wide.

When creating hanging collages for the "Station Identification" exhibit last year, I strung together 29-cent bead and sequin packages, game pieces, and other things that poke fun at some craft artists' attempts at elitism and fine-art-world-acceptance. Each corner of the exhibition space had a theme, the black-and-white theme being the either/or attitudes that begat the "this is art/that's not art" silliness.

I used an old on/off switch that I'd found at a garage sale to finish off the bottom of the hanging collage. How much more either/or can you get than an on/off switch?

Last year when I was sorting through my beads-and-wacky objects stash for this piece, my very significant other George spotted the switch and wanted to commandeer it for his music gear stash. It's a good switch, nice and snappy; bad ones get wiggly and can go to the other position when you don't want them to. Being the one who found it, though, I called dibs on it and used it to wire the "Gleem" silver ribbon spool positioned under the rubber shrunken head.

"Station Identification" installation view

It traveled with the rest of "Station Identification" to Mesa Arts Center in Arizona last January (http://www.mesaartscenter.com/), came back to Portland and then visited Guardino Gallery in July (sans the Fruit Chew corner, which found a new home), and came to rest back in my basement. It's still in the basement, but it underwent a transformation two nights ago.

Rear view of Traynor amplifier, new home for the on/off switch

Two nights ago George was fixing some funny-noise problems with our righteous Traynor amplifier, a magnificent piece of vacuum-tube-powered equipment that we've been playing bass through since 1985. It was not new then; it's from about late 1967. He replaced the big tubes, then the little tubes. You know how when you clean one thing, suddenly something nearby begins to look filthy? That happens with cars, and music thangs too. In the course of all this revamping he noticed that the "on" light flickered off... never a good thing. That would be a problem with the switch. After 43 years and thousands of on/off-ings it was flaking out. You want your audience to do the wiggling, not the switch. So when he announced he was off to the store for a new one I remembered the switch...

This is why I usually don't use glue to assemble artwork. Better to weave it with thread or link it with telephone wire. All I had to do was clip the wires connecting the switch to the hanging collage, and it was freed up for use as... a switch! Full circle, from on/off switch to art back to on/off switch. Out with the old, in with the, er, old-but-functional!

Traynor stack in all its powerfully loud glory

And now a public service announcement: Don't Do This At Home! Taking apart or poking about in amplifiers of any kind can electrocute you. If they're open in the back don't reach in, even when they're not plugged in. There are capacitors in there that store very large amounts of current that are just as jumpy when unplugged as they are when they're plugged in and turned on. Don't be a fry-baby!

Sure sounds great now... I was inspired enough to play bass through it for the first time in waaaaay too long. It felt incredibly good to feel the sound hitting my chest as I played (the whole thing comes up to my chin).

P.S. Back before we bought this amplifier, someone had taken some white paint and carefully inked in the number "11" on every knob... At 130 watts (a conservative estimate), it's plenty loud for basement fun at "3"... Traynors are made in Toronto and along with Sunn, Hiwatt, and of course Marshall, are well loved. I consider them works of art (with point-to-point soldering, not a printed circuit board, etc), so this on/off switch kind of went from one type of art to another.

Caveat Vendor

2010-06-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

Lotta people giving advice out there, in cyberspace and in your hometown---life coaches, launch coaches, how-to-do, how-to-be, how-not-to-freak-out, how-do-what-you-love-without-taking-alotta-crap. Conquer the world! Learn how not to pick up the phone every time mom calls! Buy my e-book! Sell your e-book!

Give me a second for my head to stop swirling, ok?

The good news: there are plenty of more-than-credible advice-givers out there. The first one that comes to mind is Diane Gilleland of http://www.craftypod.com/, and there are many more. The great part is that many if not most of these folks will provide plenty of advice for free before even thinking of asking you to buy anything---and better yet, they really do know what they're talking about and can back it up with experience and facts.

Hooray for these folks! They work their butts off doing all this.

Okay, now it's time to turn on your bulls#it detector, starjets! Turn it up to 11.

Question: Are they making more money giving advice about, say, selling your artwork than they ever did selling their artwork? (Fill in your own more relevant question here).

One career coach held several "try me out" group sessions a few years ago. She was encouraging, engaging and provided good food for thought. All for free! I emailed her to find out how much it cost for her to coach me personally. $5,000 over a 6-month period. Hoot mon! Time to reflect! Then I remembered something she said: when she was an artist, she made beautiful masks and sold them to clients on a regular basis, but she found that when she needed to raise her prices she had a much harder time selling them. Okay... so she couldn't communicate convincingly enough with her clients to make a living from sales of her artwork... but she wants to teach me how to make a living from sales of my artwork...

Another coach gives excellent advice in his free e-books and weekly emails; he tweets links to other inspirational articles, and although he gears his advice more to an audience of tech creatives, authors, and other would-be coaches, his wise thoughts apply to artists. He has a fun punch-the-camera headshot, is flippant, irreverent, honest, and willing to share his vulnerabilities so you too can quit that day job... and, guess what? He recently announced that he was just about to quit his day job!

I love ya, pal, but I quit my day job nearly three years ago.

Bottom line: many of these people are nothing short of great. The credible ones will give you lots of opportunities to sample their wares prior to purchase. It's up to you to sort them out.

I'll repeat three little words from the last sentence---okay, four:

It's Up To You.

When it comes down to it, no one can actually lay the groundwork for you, no matter how much money you pay them. No one can decide for you what your priorities are, what product will transport you into a world of fame and/or fortune, or what is genuine to you. They can give you great questions to ask yourself, but you have to answer those questions.

Still, don't be shy about sharing your questions and your answers with others---your insights are valuable too, and they may benefit not only you, but a neighbor, a friend, a client... I love living in a world populated by other people with vastly differing experiences, opinions and types of wisdom. I'd get bored pretty fast if everyone was just like me!

So, am I a complete nutter, or have you had experiences like this? Have you given out advice? Had to re-orient good but general advice to your own situation?

Photo notes
Top: "Daring" by Teresa Sullivan. Photo by Teresa Sullivan
Middle and bottom: "The Turtle" and "The Pirate" by Teresa Sullivan. Photos by Dan Kvitka.

Ozzy, Prince of Peace...

2010-04-22T17:41:00.000-07:00

How does Ozzy bring world peace? I found out at an Anvil concert a couple of months ago. Anvil was SUPERGREAT, decent beer was available at the bar, and there was a good crowd of interesting people there. A friend of ours was there wearing his West Ham United scarf (this is a London football team that we learned about & started digging, from being fans of the Cockney Rejects), and after the concert when the lights went back on and we were finishing our beers, I noticed a guy kind of rubbernecking us---actually rubbernecking Steve, our friend with the scarf. After approaching us from a couple different angles, he finally said something. Turns out Steve flushed out the one visiting British Millwall fan in Portland that night! Millwall and WestHam are hardcore rivals, but when he saw my significant other George's Black Sabbath t-shirt, he thought we might be all right after all! We had a friendly chat, and he made me promise not to reveal his identity, as he wouldn't be caught dead speaking civilly to a WestHam fan... What happens in Portland stays in Portland, pal! Thank you, Ozzy and Black Sabbath, for preventing bloodshed, or at least some sillyassed dirty looks. I'll post some relevant pictures (no, not of this mysterious, remarkably open-minded Millwall fan) soon.

Genericity/Generosity

2010-04-10T21:06:00.000-07:00

Several years ago it was really hitting me that on the surface, our surroundings are incredibly bland, other-directed and harsh. If you stop watching TV for a year or two and go back to watching it, you might notice how casually crass it seems. If you drive, bus, bike or walk down one of the major streets in Portland that function as surface freeways you'll see the same fast "food" places, automalls, big box stores and "Joe's primitive bar" (like Rob Tyner sings in "American Ruse"), as you would on any one of the other major freeway-type streets---in Portland, or somewhere in Utah, or Minnesota, or wherever. It's just as unreal and in your face there as here.

So what do we do to keep ourselves from getting overwhelmed by all this crass, generic whitewash? Act like real live human beings, I suppose. Look people in the eye. Engage in conversation when appropriate. Quit looking at everyone as a potential customer.

You can do this without making yourself vulnerable to "agressive panhandlers", as business owners like to call them, or child molesters, or scary schizoids. Be aware of your surroundings. Yank the ipod earbuds out. Put your thumbs away and quit texting. Like William Burroughs says, see them before they see you. Then decide whether to engage.

When I saw a bunch of rad glass-and-enamel beads my friend James Jones of Bullfrog Beads made, they reminded me of the movie Metropolis and the Art Deco style. He actually gave me one of the beads, and I just began grouping other smaller beads with it by color. I had the idea of making a neckpiece that illustrated the staying-sane-in-generic-surroundings idea, but didn't have any concrete ideas formed yet.

Then my sig other George got a call from an old friend, Gary. The conversation turned to the crazy prices paid for collectable records and Gary related a story that illustrated the notion of being non-generic beautifully:

Gary was living in Seattle in about 1980. He had a ton of records, thousands, that he'd been buying since he was a teenager in the 1960s. It was about this time that the collector value of the MC5's first record, "Kick Out the Jams" was going up up up. This is not the reprint, it was the original, uncensored version that was yanked out of stores in a hurry. Idealist Gary was most heinously offended that such a freedom-loving slab of vinyl should be hived away for fetishistic collector types and not disseminated to the masses as originally intended. (Besides, only a few years before, you could find this and many other great records in the 29-cent cut-out bin).

So did Gary start crying about it? No, he went home and got one of the two copies he had of this record and gave it away to the next stranger he encountered on the street (or bar). He had no idea whether the recipient would like it, he just wanted someone, anyone to have it and maybe get inspired by it.

A few weeks later he did happen to run into this guy again, and dude was flipping out on how great it was: he's a musician, it changed his life, can't thank him enough, etc. Now, Gary is no philanthropist, and he could seriously use the money this record would bring. But the few drinks it would buy him would have been pissed away long ago; instead, there is another human on the planet who has had the pleasure of hearing "Kick Out the Jams, Motherfucker!!!" and other inspiring tunes.

When I heard about all this I knew it had to be commemorated. It's obvious what the big yellow hand is about. The netting at left is about the veils we put up between us and the outside; there's a little face at the top of that part, hiding behing the netting. The 3-D grid shape at right, along with two other rectangular pieces adjacent to it symbolize city office highrises; there's another face at top with a bar code where the eyes would go. There's also a little trail of hands spiraling up from the big hand (little things count, folks!).

The piece is all doubled thread and beads. I had a general idea of what I wanted to create when I began, and sketched out some forms, but pretty much ditched them as I worked. The piece tends to morph as the work progresses. The hand was made in freeform peyote stitch, without an armature. I stuffed it when it was almost ready to close up, but it's the beads themselves that determine the shape of it. To figure out how and when to shape it, I held the piece-in-progress up about 6 inches in front of my right hand (is it time to widen out for the thumb yet? etc.).

In March 2009 I had the privilege of giving a talk and several days of workshops for the Great Lakes Beadworkers Guild in the Detroit area, where the MC5 are from. Besides being a super great bunch of people individually, many of these nice ladies have personal connections to the Detroit rock scene of the 1960s. One lady's sister was the drummer for an all-woman group called the Pleasure Seekers (Suzi Quatro's first band), another lady is a professional bass player, both acoustic and electric; another lady (Diane Pettis)'s husband (Frank Pettis) was a rock photographer whose picture of Alice Cooper was published in CREEM magazine when it was done on newsprint.

Diane was kind enough to cook up a righteous lasagne dinner and invite photographer Leni Sinclair over (while recuperating from heart surgery---her heart is BIG), and I got to tell them the story of the neckpiece pictured above. Plus I got to try not to drool too profusely over her photos, Frank's photos, and pretend to drink from an original can of CREEM's famous "Boy Howdy" beer. In case you haven't already ascertained that I'm a rocknroll fangal, here's a hint: I correctly identified all but one the 8 x 10 glossies Frank had collected over the years picturing Aerosmith, KISS, Chuck Berry, and about 57 more. Diane and Leni are amazingly sweet, Frank is a sweet, unique tripper. Thanks to GLGB program chair Joanne Goldberg and Frank I got to go record shopping TWICE while in the Detroit area, as well as visit Detroit's CPop Gallery before it met its demise. Frank and Leni are featured massively in a book called Motor City Rock and Roll, which features excellent pictures from the 1960s and 1970s Detroit rock and roll scenes. Believe me, if Frank and Leni had enough money to process all their film, the world would be a better place.

So, here's to people who reach out to others. You know who you are!

Lines, Circles, and Bubbles That May Burst

2010-04-08T17:33:00.000-07:00

A blog I read today at http://www.themiddlefingerproject.org/18-ways-to-avoid-becoming-a-human-robot-and-why-circles-are-better-than-lines/ fired up my brain action. I've read uplifting and inspiring things on this blog before, and this is no exception. It began by making an analogy between a line on a sheet of paper and the divisions people make between their characteristics and those of others; how the author didn't like drawing lines as a kid and would rather draw swirly circles. It went on to discuss how limiting it is to let these divisions rule our lives and how great it is to erase those lines through personal interaction with people.

(This is a great point. I created a neckpiece based on this theme called Genericity/Generosity, asking:  How do we stay sane in such generic surroundings? We reach out to people! I'll discuss it in the next piece I write; it's a long story.  Hope it contributes to the excellent recent discussions of "Free" at http://www.craftypod.com/ and http://www.makeandmeaning.com/).

Back to the 18 Ways blog post.  Next come some helpful examples of ways we can "at the very least, start turning them [the aforementioned limiting lines] into dotted lines." Many of these examples are top-notch, and I applaud her encouragement and the url links that can connect the reader to the International Rescue Committe (www.theirc.org/volunteer), Plant a Row (http://gardenwriters.org/gwa.php?p=par/index.html), http://www.familytofamily.org/, and other neat neat neat things.

In a few examples though, I see, oddly enough, new lines---less visible, perhaps more deeply rooted, and worth outing:

"After work, invite one of the cleaning staff to happy hour."
"Purchase a hot dog and go find a homeless person to give it to."
"Bring ice teas out to the people landscaping your yard."
"Be kind to telemarketers."

Time for a deep breath. Mmmmmm inhale... whooooooohhhaaaahhhh exhale.  Much as I appreciate the author's intent, I gotta say something. It's in the interest of human progress and world peace.  I especially don't want a single one of her readers to have a bad experience that makes them give up on reaching out.

Ever do something nice to someone who looks like they need your help, only to get the sense that you just insulted them? Or they didn't seem grateful? Or they actually expressed resentment? I hope not, but just in case, here are some things to keep in mind:

Why are you reaching out to this person? Is it to bolster your sense of how nice you can be, or is it because they interest you?  Have you considered whether they are interested in you? Do they need you to talk to them?

Assuming you work in a place that has a "cleaning staff", can they afford the time and/or money it takes to go to happy hour with you? Does happy hour happen when they are still at work? Do they have to pay a late fee if they don't pick up their kid from daycare on time? Have you ascertained whether alcohol is a problem for them? What would you do if one of the "cleaning staff" asked you to happy hour?

Does that homeless person eat hot dogs, or are they vegan/wheat-allergic/etc.? What will you do after they eat the hot dog and you've had a nice chat? (One of my co-workers became homeless, and stayed that way while working full time. He had two kids; his wife was an alcoholic and "lost" money regularly. He would throw that hot dog right back in your f^c#in' face, except that he died of cancer years ago).  I'm sorry to lay it out like this, but I don't want this to happen to you, disappoint you, cause you to doubt yourself, and then flip out and attend the next teabagger rallly.

Landscapers are paid by the job, not by the hour. Don't be offended if they're reluctant to lounge around on their own unpaid time acting nice to the lady of the house. They might want to finish the job and get home before sunset to have a nice cold beer with their spouse instead. No offense, but maybe the spouse finally got the night off.

Telemarketers: From a telemarketer's point of view, you are the enemy, whether you "TD" (turn down) politely, "TD" rudely, or even buy the product or give to the charity. You're an idiot for doing it (buying/donating), you're an ass#ole for not doing it. The telemarketer feels like an idiot for being in the business at all, but your sympathy is not going to get him off that phone.

If this frustrates you and makes you mad, I can see why. It doesn't make sense, right? There are hurting people out there, and you are just trying to reach out and make life a little more cheery! Keep up the cheer. Don't give up.

Just be real with people. I've heard first hand from a person of color that he would rather deal with a person who declares themself a racist than someone who is racist but doesn't realize it. Would you rather be told that there's a minefield nearby, or be told about the beautiful meadow with flowers and butterflies and then find out the hard way that it's a minefield? People can smell fake a mile away, more so in person than on a blog.

Please note that these are only four out of 18 ideas, and they and the rest of the list are great ideas when handled well. The only other "line" I still see that underlies the article are the implied characteristics of the people it urges away from robotdom. When you read the article, do you picture an African-American cello player/teacher reading it? A 22-year old Caucasian factory worker with a bad back who happens to be the biggest Ozzy fan in the hemisphere? A retail clerk with a 2-year old and an abusive boyfriend? Would they take you to happy hour? Would you accept?

There are plenty of people who, I'll freely admit, I wouldn't knowingly get within half a mile of. I also freely admit that this group of people will shrink, grow, shrink again, and change as I gather up new experiences. For example, at one point in my life, my mom was one of those people. Now she's not. Mom 1986 was toxic to me at the time; Mom 2010 is much less toxic. Teresa 2010 is a different person than Teresa 1986 (pardon the third-person thing).

In any case, read this: It busts a lot of myths and explains a lot of things, such as why poor people so often vote against their own interests: http://exiledonline.com/elite-versus-elitny/

Choose your tribe well, and don't think you're stuck with it! Thanks to Ashley Ambirge, who created the original thought-provoking article.

Craft as Anarchy/Collective Responsibility/Pirate Lifestyle

2010-03-15T18:12:00.000-07:00

This morning I learned that New Model Army, is not only the name of a great band, but was a real army that could not be counted upon to follow orders. Unlike Blackwater or Xe's mercenary army, an army that... well, look it up in wikipedia, I'm too lazy to respew the whole story.

We keep some decent reading material in the bathroom, and after months of enjoying and re-enjoying "Great Bikes of the '70s", "Cheap Date" (find it right now, it's a great compilation of a killer British zine from the '90s), a compendium of all the #1 hits from 1955 - 1988, and assorted mid-'70s National Lampoon magazines, I began adding some of the huge stacks of issues of "Craft" magazine (British) from the '70s and '80s that I found at an estate sale last weekend.

Among the sometimes painfully tasteful items in the March/April 1977 issue is an article titled "Masterless Men", about the historic origins of craftspeoples' independence. "Independence has always been more important to the craftsman than even his second Rolls Royce," author John Fletcher asserts. Back in the day (the day being the late medieval times), they organized their own communities, governed themselves, bartered with each other, farmed their own plots, grazed their own animals, helped out smugglers if they lived within 50 miles of the sea, partied hard, and when the going got rough, put together groups of travelling morris dancers to raise funds. One interesting thing as well is that they educated themselves, "on a level comparable with any present [1977] university, and that bit more fresh and vital because it was disscovered as a result of interest rather than imposition, and could be evaluated 'alongside work and the occasions of humanity'." They often, notably "self-educated craftsman William Blake", held empowering views of religion, despite some of their number being burned at the stake by their more fearful, hierarchical countrymen.

Lots of spicy, wild history here, hopefully enough to inspire you to look these rebels up yourself. The icing on the cake for me was "St. Monday", an icon of their self-determined schedule. Their work hard/play hard schedule would make any present-day macho wannabe pee his pants, I imagine. "In a craftsman's cottage, work would usually cease on a Saturday afternoon. The night would be spent in boozing, the Sunday would be spent at church - usually non-conformist - and attending to family and community matters, the Monday, or Saint Monday as it was universally known, was not a working day, but traditionally a time for the whole working population to drink and make merry. Tuesday, or Saint Tuesday, was a day of national recovery from Monday, and a day on which a tentative start to work was made. Gradually through the week the momentum and rhythm of work would build up in the craftsman's cottage, until by Friday night things were usually going so fast, that the whole family would work right through Friday night into Saturday." Keep in mind this pre-dates the industrial age.

As someone who punched a time clock at the same factory for ten years (name withheld to protect the guilty, namely me for putting up with it that long), I had a great time transiting into a part time job, then to full-time work at home in my own studio. It took some time and self-observation, but I did find my own working rhythm. Or am I just putting off doing my taxes and getting back on the beadwork-creation train by doing this blog post? Ha!

My rationale for doing this (supposedly quick) blog post is that Kim Werker just interviewed me and posted it on her website http://www.kimwerker.com/. I read it, then realized that if she's posting this blog address, I'd better get y'all something to read! So, welcome to this blog, I know you're new to it because I just began doing it. By the way, Kim is great with her 5 interview questions format. Alice Velasquez, aka Alice Bag of the legendary original punk band the Bags, also has a grrrreat, thoughtful blog http://www.alicebag.blogspot.com/ and a website http://www.alicebag.com/ that has a ton of 8-question-format interviews with other great original punk women.

Happy Saint Monday!

They Couldn't Take It With Them, So Here You Are

2010-03-07T12:49:00.000-08:00

When you go to a garage sale, you sort through a neighbor's unwanted and surplus stuff; obsolete electronics, outgrown toys & clothes, strewn over a lawn, piled up on card tables. Estate sales, though, if they really are estate sales, involve dead people. Someone's Dad died ten years ago, and when Mom died last year they had to deal with what they left behind. Sounds crass, doesn't it?

That's probably why the kids usually hire other people to conduct the sale. Who wants to witness the antique dealing sharks descend upon things that hold memories, make snarky comments and try to nickel and dime the sellers to death (enough death, already)! Likewise, shoppers don't really want to connect to the death part, the still-grieving relatives, etc.

This weekend I went to two estate sales that compelled me to think about the dead person who left the goodies behind. In the first one I saw a picture of an elderly lady in a frame right on the card table where you laid your money down for the goodies. The seller looked just like her, so I had to ask if it was her Mom. Yes it was. She told me the item I was buying belonged to her grandmother, and I think her mom lived to about 100. I thought it was cool that she had her mom's picture right there. I didn't get creeped out until she started talking about Teresa being a good Catholic name (I didn't volunteer that as the offspring of a parent who obtained an annulment, I can't take the sacraments; but considering only one of my parents did this, does this make me half a bastardess? Can I just take a smaller sip of wine and half a host? I digress). Anyway, thanks to this lady for selling me a 10-foot long piece of beautiful, intact, Victorian-era passementerie!

The other sale I visited was that of a really neat lady whom I met about a year ago through the Portland Bead Society. She traveled the world and offered selections from her collection to the public for sale when she was still alive. I vividly recall her post card ad showing her immersed in beads in her bathtub. What a woman! But (to be crass), now dead. One of her close friends was shopping at the sale, mentioned how odd she felt. She said she invoked her dead friend on her way over to the sale, for moral support.

Please note that the bead-woven piece with the swastika is from India, probably Gujarat state, and has nothing to do with nazi madness. For more information about non-nazi swastikas, please visit www.manwoman.net and also look it up on wikipedia before you freak out!

One sale, from which I mananged to find a cool artifact for twenty-five cents (a clean empty wig/fall box, bright orange textured plastic, with clear window on top, with label reading "wigs by Garymartin Made in America by Americans), was administered by the daughter of the deceased, who operated a beauty parlor in her basement since the 1950s. Note to all future estate sale conductors: I know you loved your mom very dearly and that she left behind some unique vintage items, but purty-please: throw the partially used douche bottle in the trash, where it should have been thrown 35 years ago...

Note that I'm using the term "dead" instead of "passed on" and other euphemisms. I grew up hearing euphemisms and this is part of my effort to be more accurate in the way I communicate.

All this makes me think: I'll start having to keep making younger friends as I grow older, so that they can have a field day with all the crazy stuff I've left behind. I vow to make it worthwhile and not gross ya out. And someone had better keep a working stereo with a turntable for all the great music!

Mow the lawn!

2010-03-05T12:22:00.000-08:00

If my loved one and the neighbor have mowed the lawn today it means spring. That and all the killer flowers. That means I have to get up off my ch-ch-chair and add a bunch of links to this blog, namely the members of the MC5 that are still alive and telling their truths/stories/thangs. Stay alive with the Five! Even the dead ones (Rob Tyner and Fred Smith) still live on in the hearts and minds of many people. www.machinegunthompson.com, www.michaeldavis.blogspot.com. Note that the only machine gun Dennis Thompson plays is his drum kit. Unless you're a phony, then he plays his drums twice as hard!

Oh, yeah, I bet you can post pictures to this blog, huh? Beadwork pictures coming soon.