By Nadia Labib, printed in Opulence: CRAP PO BOX 2071 Wilmington, NC 28402-2071 One Path... When I was a child, I created. While I colored and painted and played with clay like all other children, most of my creations ran around in my head. I was an only child, but never lonely. I would play for hours in tent cities I built in the living room, dining room and down the hall into my bedroom. Annabelle, my faithful, if a bit reluctant, kitty sidekick loved to hide in the corners of my domain. I would bring a flashlight and books into my tent, curl up with the cat, and transport myself into different worlds. I never had any trouble putting myself in the shoes of characters in by books. I dreamt fantastic dreams, remembered them when I awoke, and carried them with me into the day, never quite sure what was real and what came from my night imagination. But some where between four and fourteen, I lost my creativity. I became self-conscious and avoided the arts. After years of studying the recorder and flute, I couldn't manage to shed my fear of being seen and heard. In chorus, my mouth moved along with the music, but what came out was never more than a whisper. That was when I started cutting myself down. I laughed and said that I was so bad at drawing that my stick figures didn't even look right. I was embarassed by my parents' desire for me to perform for them. They were always supportive, loved everything I did without reserve, and encouraged me to try new things. Looking back now, it doesn't make sense that I developed disgust for my artistic efforts. Maybe it was because my best friend, Mary, was a brilliant artist and in my eyes my work never measured up to hers. Maybe it was tied into the drop in self-esteem that many girls go through in adolescence. Maybe the art I knew just didn't click for me anymore. Whatever the case was, it was gone. So I cast myself as an art lover. Someone who couldn't create but could appreciate what others did. I was my friends' biggest supporter. I listened to music, admired paintings, and poured over poems and short stories. I dated a musician more because he could write and perform music than because I cared for him. I was in awe of the artist. I learned how to run a sound board and to connect the cables for live shows. I carried amps and drum kits and microphone stands....just to be a part of it. Later on, I began doing publicity. I wrote press releases, called radio stations, delivered promo kits to freelance writers, set up shows. I took pride in the small role I played in helping these musicians get a little further along the road. Still, I was a helper, a facilitator. I smoothed the way for the artists. I was not one myself. Three years ago a bolt of lightening struck my subconscious. On a whim, I took a basic jewelry making class at a local store. Little did I know that "Intro to Beading" was going to open wide a door in my soul. All of a sudden, something just clicked in my head and my heart. I began expanding beyond the simple stuff taught in the class and I couldn't stop. I had to know more, try more. Some days I was enchanted by color, other days what mattered was shape and texture. I became a mad woman, buying beads, sneaking them into the house, gloating over them, packing them away in safe places. My stash is huge now. I have beads I bought two years ago because they were perfect...I wasn't sure WHAT they were perfect for, but I knew I'd figure it out. Just the other day I used some of my older beads. I was in a store, saw an amazing colored bead and instantly knew it would go perfectly with some I'd stashed years before. It was glorious, affirming. I was giddy. So now I'm a little bit creative and a little bit crazy. I think they go well together. My nuttiness allows me to step outside the confines of the 9-5 world. I can come home from the office and spread my beads all over the table and revel in them. True, some days it's frustrating when I'm missing the right bead for a design, but mostly it's pure joy.

That's just beautiful. Any way we can get her to come here, do you think? I really think we can all relate to that tale. I mean, why do we become self-conscious over our art when we grow up? Why are we so eager to please others and not ourselves? I did just the same thing, and wasted years, probably twelve or more YEARS on anger instead of creativity.

mori phantasmagory by Tom Wolf Miko No Inori 1996 Miko No Inori 1996 Burning Desire 1996-98 from Nirvana Entropy of Love 1996 from Nirvana Mirror of Water 1996-98 from Nirvana Birth of a Star 1996 Nirvana 1996-97 Nirvana 1996-97 Mariko Mori, May 21 - Aug. 10, 1998, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Ca. From all indications Mariko Mori looms on the horizon as a major international art star of the millennium. The Japanese-born artist, who has studios in Tokyo and New York and who is known for self-portrait photographs in chic, futuristic costumes, has recently had several museum shows -- at the Serpentine Gallery in London, at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and currently at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, where it's on view until Mar. 14, 1999. I caught the LACMA show this summer. The four-gallery survey opened with a video projection, Miko no Inori (1996), that took up a complete wall in a darkened room. The video shows the artist wearing metallic space alien garb and playing with a glass sphere the size of a baseball. The tape was shot in Osaka Airport, which gives it a dramatic sense of randomness. Tourists walk through the background while the artist ritualistically massages the glistening orb, traditional symbol of the universe. Mori wears mirrored contact lenses, which give her eyes a silver cast, like a visionary visitor from another planet. The show's remaining three galleries housed the Nirvana project, a work that combines religious imagery with high-tech computer imaging and up-to-the-minute fabrication techniques. In one gallery were three 10 x 20 ft. photographs. Each immense photograph took up an entire wall, and showed multiple images of the artist in a dramatic landscape setting. In Burning Desire (1996-98), for example, Mori is transformed into a four-armed Buddhist deity, sitting in the lotus position in China's Gobi Desert, encircled by a multicolored halo. She floats above four more images of herself seated amidst blazing flames. The photograph consists of five vertical panels beautifully displayed between two sheets of glass, which in turn are supported by metal runners cantilevered out from the wall at top and bottom -- unobtrusive, costly framing. The dramatic imagery and huge scale is effectively mystical. And Mori, the 31 year-old ex-professional model who attended art schools in Japan, London and New York, is an appealing subject. The third gallery devoted to Nirvana housed an extraordinary 3-D video installation. Viewers wore special glasses to watch the seven-minute video, which begins and ends with swirling, nebula-like forms suggestive of the creation of the cosmos. The central part of the video features Mori dressed as a bodhissatva, one of the disciples of the Buddha. She floats while singing in a high-pitched tone, gracefully using her hands to shape some of the symbolic mudras of traditional Buddhist art. For much of the tape she is surrounded by six cartoonish figures -- part alien, part Teletubby -- accompanying her with musical instruments. At the climax of the piece, 3-D musicians seem to fly out into our space and swirl around our heads while she levitates calmly behind them. Her eyes seem to stare sightlessly, like those of a statue of a Buddhist devotional figure come to life. The tape is a tour-de-force, rich in multiple references to Hollywood as well as Pacific Rim culture. The fourth and final room of the exhibition held a single sculpture, a five-foot wide lotus flower -- the traditional Buddhist symbol of purity -- made of delicately tinted, transparent plastic. The edge of each petal glowed a different color, as it was lit by fiberoptic light from a Himawari filter on the roof of the museum. The lighting system, according to the exhibition's catalogue, was invented by Mori's father. It required a thick black cord to descend from the roof to the lotus, which was visually dissonant to the glistening transparencies of the flower. Unfortunately, technology won out over esthetics. The piece also suffered a bit from Mori's absence -- but it was the exception in the remarkable exhibition. Using herself as the central figure in her work, Mori continues the performance-based photographic practice of Cindy Sherman and Yasumasa Morimura. But her appropriations of traditional imagery have a different tone than Sherman's sardonic caricatures of Old Masters or Morimura's tortured recreations of Renaissance crucifixions. There is a serene sweetness in Mori's work, which suggests that she genuinely wants to convey a spiritual message. But casting herself as the Buddha strikes a feminist note, and the gender-bending revision of traditional sacred imagery may not go over so well with the more conservative members of her audience in Japan. Interweaving performance art with the extravagances of the movie business -- lavish production values and a seemingly unlimited travel budget -- Mori's work is certainly a technologically precocious feast for the eyes. Few artists are able to mesh glamour, technology and theory as well as Mori, and she just may become the cyber-goddess of the 21st century. The exhibition began at LACMA, and toured as follows: Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, (Jun. 20-Sept. 13, 1998); Serpentine Gallery, London, (Jun. 30-Aug. 9, 1998); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Oct. 10-Mar. 14, 1999. TOM WOLF teaches at Bard College.

too cool...

Wow!

Where do I get mine? Usually from someone I love deeply or admire greatly or from something which affects me profoundly. Then it becomes too personal to put to paper so it dwells inside of me needing an outlet and not being able to find one...

it's exactly like standing naked in a public place with no where to hide. marcia you should post your artwork, i know i'd love to see it!

My "art" is words or things I make (knit, crochet, invent,) out of whatever there is. I do have a picture of some incredibly clever bookmarks I invented that were scanned for me...I'll hunt for them!

Oh, and yes, it is like standing naked in public and waiting for negative criticism but hoping desperately for a kind word. My only experience with having a character take over my head and write for me was a profoundly moving experience, and though what I (he) wrote was short it took a few hours to get him back out of my head. It was quite disquieting, and understood why some must not let the muse into their heads for their own sanity. When I did post it (in Drool) I did it most timidly and waited with ut breathing till someone said something. Everyone was terribly kind, and I could have wept. If I had not had that experience I would understand so little of what genius it takes to create things out of one's mind and put it on display, and I would be much the poorer.

muses can be terribly frightening and i think it's because they touch on those things that you keep hidden (like your bum) and so to bring those things out and to expose them (as it were) is terribly intimate. i was always afraid to share my poetry (not to mention my artwork) because i was sure someone would find me crazy or otherwise "not right". and our own eyes are our worst critics. my stuff looks like kids work to me. (not seeking praise by saying that). but once the door is open and you find an audience, it's easier to post things even though you're afraid they might not like the new stuff you give them. the insecurity is still there. boy am i glad i'm not an actress in hollywood, i'd go nuts with the tabloids and stuff!

I know that feeling. I think the more truly artistic (and not just impressed with ourselves) we are, the more insecure we are. Just like Olivier having stage fright (yes, he did, by his own admission.) I could not do it except in a loving and accepting environment! I crumble very easily, I'm afraid...!

Join the club - I love being creative ,but feel very insecure about showing the results! However, one of my new year resolutions is to try and be creative at least once a week. Often my paints, card making materials etc stay in the drawer for months on end.

Good for you...I believe I shall do the same...and I think we will have a place for display if you think it does not fit here. Wolf and I are asking Terry for an Crafts conference!!!

That sounds like a nice idea.

Now, Terry just has to get time to do it or get one of his volunteer "geeks" to do it for us...I'm not holding my breath, but it will happen when time permits.

and speaking of, terry, i mean, not geeks *grin*, how's things going for you? please take your time in responding to our requests, we can wait. just take care of yourself and let us know if we can do anything to help you out.

Yup! Terry, do as Wolfie says...(I think she outranks you!) Take your time and we will remind you should you forget...*hugs* to flu-bound Wolfie, and *preventative hugs* to all of the cyber wizards connected to Spring. We love you!

My mom died this morning about 10 am so it's been a hard day, my sister called with the news this morning. We'd been expecting it but not quite this soon. She died peacefully in her Walnut Creek, CA home.

Terry, My sympathies. Please take care...we care!

Terry, I'm very sorry for you. I'm glad she went peacefully at home, it must be the best way.

i'm very sorry terry. let us know if we can do anything for you *hugs*

I put this in aesthetics of earth, but i think it fits here too. MY PICTURE I have a small canvas of mine that is the family 'treasure', it goes wherever we are. It is my soul in paint, and reminds me everyday day of where I've been and where I'm going and speaks to me of growth and movement, yet there is a dark heart of unknowing. It's not a true landscape in that it was sparked by some wood and developed as a sort of journey in paint. Everytime I look at it I can trace the journey. I guess it's a bit like an australian aboriginal dreaming picture, a songline. I painted it in anguish at 17 on unprimed canvas stretched over an old picture frame. It is oils and polyfilla. It's there one the wall for people to see, still unframed after all these years, but, just like 'me', the meaning is hidden unless you look with different eyes.

Will You Photograph or Paint? In 1839, Louis Daguerre captured reality and presented it to an awestruck world on a silver plated, copper plate. Thirty years later, it was the rising popularity of this "photography" that moved Claude Monet to strike back with his own counterblow; a daring expansion of reality in blazing colors; a painting called Impression Sunrise. It soon became the stated goal of Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cezanne, Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas "to capture an image that the camera could not." The art world responded by calling their works "the art of lunatics and maniacs." In reviewing an Impressionist exhibition in 1871, the art critic for Le Patrie wrote, "In seeing the lot you burst out laughing, but with the last ones you finally get angry. And you are sorry you did not give the franc you paid to get in to some poor beggar." Speaking of these same paintings today, art appraiser Lance Hermus tells us, "These works fetch, by far, the highest prices in the market. Even works of lesser quality sell in the millions." It is profoundly sad to note that there was never an American Impressionist; not a single, solitary one. We Americans, you see, tend to stick to the facts. Following his visit to America in 1882, Oscar Wilde wrote, "The male American is the most abnormally serious creature who ever existed. He talks of Europe as being old; but it is he, himself who has never been young... He has always been prudent, always practical, and pays a heavy penalty for having committed no mistakes. It is only fair to admit that he can exaggerate; but even his exaggeration has a rational bias. It is not founded on wit or fancy; it does not spring from any poetic imagination." Would Oscar Wilde have said what he did, had he met you? In your descriptions, are you of the school of Daguerre, or are you of the school of Monet? Do you merely capture reality with your words, or do you expand upon it with the boldness of a maniac? I'll let Joseph Brodsky illustrate: "I was born and grew up in Baltic marshland by zinc-grey breakers that always marched on in twos. Hence all rhymes, hence that wan flat voice that ripples between them like hair still moist, if it ripples at all. Propped on a pallid elbow, the helix picks out of them no sea rumble but a clap of canvas, of shutters, of hands, a kettle on the burner, boiling. Lastly, the seagull's metal cry." I think Oscar Wilde would have approved of Joseph Brodsky and I believe that Claude Monet would definitely have seen in him a brother of his own soul. So what do you think? Did Brodsky expand your imagination just now, or did he waste 17 seconds of your time? Roy H. Williams MMMemo@wizardofads.com