#uncoffeed...

I've known for a long time that it's useless to force creativity:  often the work will have to be done over.  Thanks to discussions peripheral to Gödel, Escher, Bach - an Eternal Golden Braid , I've learned to use math terminology (imperfectly) to further identify aspects of the process. According to me, the difference between one person's brain and the next is the degree of pixelation each can discern.  How fine a grain are you able to manage? I can work with very, very, fine grains; I have challenges taking in the forest.  I see not only the trees but pebbles, lichen, the tiny little things that creep therein .  I can discern minute intervals with alarming (to myself) accuracy, even when I haven't figured out what they are, but I can get lost trying to drive across town. Also, I can see wisteria vines, bats, and birds in the grounds left at the bottom of my coffee, so I'm interpreting that vision in scratchboard. There's a place in every creative ...

Patrice used to take a personal interest in my looks. "You need concilla ," she told me in her South Cackalacky accent.  I made her repeat the word a few times and finally spell it: C-O-N-C-E-A-L-E-R.  She had a point - my dark eyecircles are legendary.  Patrice was a beautiful woman, masterful with fashion, trying to help me out with the obvious.  Over time, though, I found an awkward trend to her advice.  One day she was adamant - adamant - that I should try parting my hair on the side. "Just do it one time. You'll love it," she insisted.  She'd done her hair with a severe side-part . Obviously it would be good for me, too, because she liked me. Understanding her motivation is exactly the kind of thought that plagues me for years, but I think I've finally sorted it:  Patrice felt an elation when she found herself beautiful with side-parted hair.  I think she was trying to recapture that elated feeling by replicating the action on me. ...

pocket-magic I never believe people should ask what the artist was thinking. For one, I want the receiver to preserve the personal experience. I don't want to give the impression anyone was wrong, or actually didn't find a connection with the artist. Also, I'm afraid the truth is going to be disappointing. I'm good at  extrapolating scenarios from very little fact.  I can start with one thing someone says or does and, if my mood is right, build a world around that.  This is where art comes from.  If I am writing or drawing in the first person, so to speak, it would be folly to assume the message is autobiographical. Even if it is about me, it  might not be about just me but my assessment of humanity; prove me wrong.  It might be AlternateTimelineMe, a story about something that never happened but could have had I taken one more or one less step down a given road.  It could be what I think is going on in someone else's mind.  I wrote a s...

My daughter was born the day before my 27-week prenatal check-up.  Her father noticed at 1:00 AM in a hotel room on Airline Highway in New Orleans that I was literally crawling to the bathroom every half hour because, I said, I had to pee. "No, you are not having that baby now," he muttered into his pillow. But I did. I went by ambulance to Charity Hospital , got stuck with a needle, and held the nurse's hand so she could tell me when to push because I was no longer feeling contractions. By 3:00 AM, Baby Yaya slid out and screamed at the world - not fearful, but annoyed. She was cold and wanted people to stop messing with her. She's still that way. I knew she would be okay despite being early; that she was a complete entity of her own, not a part of me. I was just the vessel. There's a moment like that in the creative process, if I'm lucky. Sometimes I'm focusing so hard on the details of my work that I am absolutely dumbfounded by the final p...

Today was our official last discussion on Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - kind of like an Ozzy Farewell Tour, because we've already agreed to go back and discuss sticking points once we've cleansed the palate, so to speak.  Also, we didn't really talk about GEB's content, but about our group.  We talked about talking about GEB. I'm impressed that after spending 2.5 years reading one book we're eager to go on and tackle another one.  This is a great collection of people who digress well. Excellently, even.  We asked our ringleader, Lee, whether her initial vision of the study group matched what actually happened.  Not so much, but she's pleased with the outcome. We brought to the table - literally - the following books: Bacteria to Bach and Back, Daniel Dennett The Mind's I, Hofstadter & Dennett Kant & The Platypus, Umberto Eco Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli The Great Unknown:...

I've come to a crossroads in my creative spurt -  there's a skunk to be drawn on scratchboard.  I have a colored pencil project to finish first, and the ink on canvas will have to wait.  Scratchboard requires me to turn my head completely around. Here's the stuff .  A fine coat of clay is applied to thin cardboard, and then India ink is layered on top of that. The artist uses a stylus  to scrape away the ink and reveal the clay underneath, which is usually white.  I had a tiny artistic tantrum after I accidentally bought a sheaf of rainbow-coloured scratchboard, but I own my mistake.  I did it to myself by not reading carefully. I can use the rainbow to practice without wasting the good black and white board; it's been a while since I worked in this medium. When I took photographs at  The Academy of Advanced Imagery  I focused on light and shadows, the interplay between them.  I'm very figure/ground oriented - I see bot...

Due to...logistics? Technique? My innate laziness?...there does not exist an original of this drawing.  To have it on my wall I had to order it from myself via Zazzle . So this is the first and therefore most valuable copy of Fibonacci Raven. I will try to explain. I started this project on blue grid-lined paper (you know, the one that doesn't really render the lines invisible like they said it would.) In a fit of inspired doodling, I started inking the original sketch.  And then I kept going .  Before I knew it, I had an almost fully-inked drawing on the wrong paper. I decided to try scanning it anyway.  To be honest, I like the gridlines.  They feel architectural, or something. Also, I'm messy.  There was a blob of purple paint on the page, as well as several wrinkles.  And I'm lazy and didn't want to re-ink what already looked pretty damned good.  I did some judicious scissoring; it took a few scans and cuts to excise the blue lines ...

Ali Azmat and Junoon - photo by débora Ewing My brain's tangly. I'm working over a short story which isn't a story, and my writing compatriots have requested I interject synaesthetic impressions throughout. I'm angry that they're so nosy, and yet I can - should - do this. I have to first pin down what synaesthesia means to me and then clean up those little bits of writing so they can be seen for what they are. I honestly didn't know synaesthesia is a thing until a friend explained to me exactly how my brain works. For one, a certain color may trigger a taste in my mouth. Words are tangible in my mind, like I can touch them. I recently learned the word pareidolia and it makes sense to me, too: I find patterns. I can recognize the same pattern visually, aurally, texturally, and apply a music pattern to art, or cooking, or gardening. You know, conceptual skeletons.  People get confused if I tell them the soup needs to be more blue, but if I just make it...

Eventually this is a painting.  My co-worker just showed me a Satanic Vegan Cookbook he found for sale online (not sure it's actually Satanic, but that's an interesting concept.) Instantly my mind went to an horrific thread from a year ago on Facebook - it all started with a doughnut carrying a sign that read, " hey, i'm vegan " Nobody wants to sit next to the guy at the party who tells you all night how he's quit drinking and smoking.  Just enjoy the party, guy. It's a stage in your life-process; we get it. Be here for the reason you're here. That's the message alleged vegan-haters offer: be happy with yourself and we will be happy with you. It's not the vegan-ism that's ostracized, but evangel-ism . Co-worker helped me realize the challenge with making assumptions about evangelism: the guy with the Satanic Vegan Cookbook might be at the party because he likes parties. Because he's selling a book, he may start talkin...

Comet 46P/Wirtanen - art by debora Ewing Humans are pattern extractors - it's what we do. We find familiar intervals everywhere, and we try to rearrange the medium where it doesn't fit a comfortable pattern. We rake the yard because we like wide, flat surfaces. We build fences with uniform pickets to enforce arbitrary boundaries. We strive to make perfect pancakes (don't laugh - it's an inherited gene and a term of endearment in my family.) And this is the point at which I branch off into unequal tangents. Does it help you at all to have advance warning? You hear once in a while about a person who's born with an extra set of teeth . I sometimes think I was born with two full sets of emotions, and I make use of them all. I see faces in trees, c olors in song, paintings in words . - Pareidolia may be a useful term here. I do my best to translate what I see into something you can recognize . The patterns I see are not necessarily useful to you, but mayb...

I'm about to give away secrets I don't usually discuss. This is a gift in return for your friendship - thank you. Today's topic is mechanical but also organic. "Mechanical" implies rigidity, doesn't it? Flowers aren't rigid, and neither is paint. However, there's some formality and structure in the process of capturing the feel - fluid rigidity. So that moment I've been waiting for has finally arrived, and visual art is erupting from my psyche. I am SO HAPPERY. I've started with the picture you see here, which was taken in Seattle on an August day. The sunflowers present to me as utter sexiness in various life stages. That's the process I want to portray:  how reproduction is beautiful, attractive, and present in all things throughout our universe, reduced even to the cellular or paint-stroke level. I'm also going to equate sunflower seeds with Slavic mythology, and name it The Zorya . If your painting is wonky, it's beca...