Starting Again

Trauma Impinges From Every Direction ...

There was an eBloggy disaster and my entire Fall term Creative Pulse journal went up into the netherworld of the internet .....

Every other eBloggy user was in same dire state. I am awaiting the news from their administrator if, and when they can restore our former blogs. In meantime, I am taking their advice and starting a new one to, as they said ...

Carry On.

I wish I could say this is the worst trauma facing me. This is one that there is hope of reconciliation and recovery. My father is facing the loss of part of one of his legs due to advancing effects of diabetes. It is likely that tonight is the last night we will have before that possibility is decided for sure.

AT the point in the mask project process that I am not where I would want to be at this point, and a lot of the time just wish I was in an alternate universe without the deadline hanging over my head.

The work itself however is going well enough. I have been quite in good luck in having so much of the untried processes work out nearly exactly like I had planned.

However, I have encountered that usual fit of creative exploration that leads one to evolve shapes in the direction that they seem to want to go and then come back and realize that some other parts were supposed to fit on to them and now that is impossible.

HOwever sometime between last night late and this afternoon I worked out a solution of how to attach and iron-on item to an edge that rises to a knife point edge. Obviously one has to iron it on to something else and then attache the two somethings together.

When I'm actually at the work I feel good. When I am away from it doing all those other necessary things I feel dread.
Le plus ca change, le plus c'est la meme chose.

Poets.org Academy of American Poets web site

Poetry Archives at eMule.com
This is a classical poetry archive though

Poetry Daily The urge to "tie the poem to a chair with a rope and torture a confession out of it*" lessens when poetry arises freshly each day
*from Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

Poetry 180 Library of Congress site - A Poem a Day for American High Schools

Poetry 4 Kids Ken Nesbitt's site for the "funniest poetry for children on the internet". Kids can publish their own poems here, and there are rhyming and other resources for poets

it is only a few degrees cooler in Missoula at the moment .... feels like 49 deg F there and feels like 51 deg here, according to weather.com.

I have taken bets on which city gets accumulation of snow first.

I am not meeting my goal of Blogging at least every other day ... I have certainly been thinking about it but I haven't been writing .

eeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhh aaaahhhhhhhhh.
(air letting out of soul)

et laissez la folie nerveuse commencer ...

This is a new challenge - to have to select vendors, get prices for a check to buy materials, even before I have a clear idea of what I want to do ........

It is quite a challenge to go out buying stuff when you don't know what you really plan to do, and then taking it back, and then submitting for final reimbursement after the work is finalized.

This project I essentially have to buy before I've even had a chance to design .....Add to this the fact I have to submit info next Monday to have check by Friday to buy stuff to begin work December 20.

This is near craziness ... and the brain=spinning began in earnest last night.

Ay caramba! to change up the vernacular ...

It seems practical to make project more scalable, to be approached in stages. If I can figure out the base and get the big piece constructed .... then I can figure out how to finish the piece in January and get more checks then.

Whew - this is not a particularly hard or unfamiliar job - it is just the time-space constraints that are so challenging. What is really missing is the added "brain burst" from all that collaborative wrangling I experienced in our Art Book groups. As messy as that type of work can be, I am realizing how much the combined mindpower of a group can be much more than the simple sum of the whole when properly harnessed. I have even toyed with the idea of calling up Julie Radke, Steph B-P, and the others just to get their spin .... sounds like a plan.
I need a LOT of ideas in about 48 hours .......

Lucky for me once again the spontenaity of doodling on paper has saved my butt in one sense. I am thinking of making Mask Books for the mobile pieces. These are stationary partially open books with the covers in mask themes, and shapes related to traditional Commedia characters, and the "inside" is to teach the folks who come to the Mardi Gras about these characters. I could calligraph the condensed version of my character summaries on one "page" , find a good illustration like Picasso's Harlequin, for another page, use huge text for titles in one Flyleaf, and am toying with a "mirror" like effect for the remaining page, so someone would be looking into an illustration of the costume and see their face inside.

[insert sketch idea here]

[think think - jigsaw luan or other stiff material, paint, laminate, ....... it might be do-able]

I like the book idea because it is a theatrical form of teaching that the idea could be reinstalled without the big mask in other contexts - like my field project report for example. It also could be used in future in teaching kids. Or I could develop a paper product ...... or redo the mask-books in a better form after Feb. 5 Mardi Gras.

Harlequin and Columbine are probably two of the most familiar characters of the Commedia Dell'Arte. Certainly to those raised in the classical ballet and all holiday theater-goers, they are characters of Drosselmeyer's toys that magically come to life at the Christmas Eve party at Grandma's house. The characters are in I Pagliacci, the opera, and numerous novels and plays.

Italian name for Harlequin was Arlecchino, and he was the sidekick servant of Pantalone, the merchant. However, as the role of the sidekick is often more playful than the "straight man", just like in TV sitcoms, the range of possiblilites for Arlecchino/Harlequin was nearly endless. He is the trickster. He is always agile, and moves through scenes as gymnastically as possible. I think of Seinfeld's Kramer as the Harlequin of that ensemble. His costume was always motley, and over time evolved to the signature diamond multicolor patterns of red, blue,and green surrounded by gold braid trim. Often in his tradiational cosutme, he wears the jester's hat with the many horns and bells.

Columbine is the servant of the Inamorata, sometimes called Isabella. She is in love with Arlecchino. She is the only female zanni, or clown, in the traditional Commedia Dell'Arte. She sings and dances, and generally tries to keep him from getting into trouble by following his misheivious nature. In the English Pantomime, all of the male characters are enamoured of her, as she is the epitome of feminine grace and beauty.



During the time of King James I the Commedia Dell'Arte came to the England, although some sources place the first performance at court in the time of Charles I. However, unlike the Italian troupes with there plethora of characters, the English variation developed into the grand tradition of pantomime, with Harlequin (Arlechinno) being the clown "prince" of the troupe. In the English incarnation, he is more than the clowning servant, he is imbued with magical qualities, being able to change shape as well as perform sleight-of-hand. His traditional black mask became a signal - when up he is able to be seen, when down he is invisible. The scenes of comic sketches in the English pantomime tradition bear his name: "Harlequinades"



Antique French Jumping Jacks
Dover Publications
ISBN: 0486237125
http://store.yahoo.com/doverpublications/0486237125.html

Harlequin and Columbine by Booth Tarkington
A short novel about the production of a play where the lives of the actors mirror the script and sometimes insisting that the script mirror life, and the vanities of actors in the dramatic process. Read it online at the Gutenburg project: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/6401

Painting
Harlequin and Columbine (Voulez-vous triompher des Belles?)
Jean-Antoine Watteau
Circa 1717 Oak Panel
http://www.wallacecollection.org/c/w_a/p_w_d/f/p/p387.htm


Harlequin Valentine - a comic Book
Writer: Neil Gaiman
Artist: John Bolton
Publisher: Titan Books (ISBN 1-84023-411-3)