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artpost: a practice fallen from style
Jan. 8th, 2009 01:41 pmMy memory tickled by a conversation I had that mentioned Victorian Memento Mori, I spent a bit of time on Sunday fruitlessly searching for a particularly nice contemporary hair artist I'd found on-line two or three years ago that I intended to post about, but never got around to. Today, oddly, not even a week later, the artist has fallen directly in my lap via my friends over at Ectomo and she's gotten even better:
"Melanie Bilenker makes jewelry from precious metals, resin, wood, and her own hair, arranging the strands into tiny snapshots of everyday life."
chocolate, 2008
brooch, 9.5 x 7 x 1 cm, Gold, ebony, resin, pigment, hair.
From her site:
(I used to do this with Antony in the shower, make tiny, ephemeral pictures of our life together on the tiles of the wall with our shed hair. Our lines were not half so fluid as Melanie Bilenker's, but they were ours and sweet and fun. Every day we would wash them away and draw something new. Now, years later, I should regret I never took a picture, but it is enough for me that they were there.)
chocolate, 2008
brooch, 9.5 x 7 x 1 cm, Gold, ebony, resin, pigment, hair.
From her site:
The Victorians kept lockets of hair and miniature portraits painted with ground hair and pigment to secure the memory of a lost love. In much the same way, I secure my memories through photographic images rendered in lines of my own hair, the physical remnants. I do not reproduce events, but quiet minutes, the mundane, the domestic, the ordinary moments.
(I used to do this with Antony in the shower, make tiny, ephemeral pictures of our life together on the tiles of the wall with our shed hair. Our lines were not half so fluid as Melanie Bilenker's, but they were ours and sweet and fun. Every day we would wash them away and draw something new. Now, years later, I should regret I never took a picture, but it is enough for me that they were there.)
I want an end to my unpredictable crying.
The air is full of tiny birds, wings fluttering too quickly. The tips of them are creaking against the stress like lungs choked with down. A cough and they scatter. There's nothing to show where they were. Wind does not keep drawn lines, the beloved parabola exists only in our minds as a memory.
Unrelated: walking across a field, a thick flock of seagulls let me walk into the middle of them before taking up into flight and circling me perfectly. How callous I am, I thought, that I have too much science in me to experience this as a holy sign. Instead, I understand the way flocks stay together, what leads them, guides them. I know how to spot the lead bird. I'm not fool enough to pray.
Prove Christ exists, judge orders priest.
I didn't sleep from Saturday until noon Sunday. I have done more clever things than argue the socio-technological implications of ancient politics and family units until the sun has risen, it's true, but I was in excellent company and the sun always rises.
Stardust capsule lands with comet dust sample.
Now you're gone, leaving echoes of somewhere I used to feel at home. You walked away and I felt such a pain shoot through me, as if there was no such thing as mercy. I know you're trying and that gladdens me a little, it seems a better place for us than that dire muck of misery that you'd put me in so carefully. I'm scared that when I see her, this her you've written about but carefully did not mention, she'll be wearing something I gave you or I'll have to see you love her. As serious as rain, it's the only thing I can think of that could continue to ruin me. It's stupid because I'm grown enough I should know better. I insist on it. I should be a better stone. You don't know what to do with me. I hand you the pulsing ball that drives my blood and you drop it. I fall apart inside.
Delightfully, I had some especially kind partners on the floor to distract me last night, the sort where we take hands and whirl into something highly inappropriate for industrial music. Liam teaches me swing dances, for example, and Jonathan tangos with me in his kilt and big stompy boots. It's gleeful when he lifts me up above his head and spins. I can feel him laugh through the music. (Note to self, call the man already). See, I'm everything shy of vices, so dancing is one of my only ways to salve this years constant and irritating sense of loss. I feel like I hang myself from my bones and when I move, it might even be with a heavy sort of elegance. Every twist of joint a kindness, a violent whispered argument in the dark behind my closed eyes, sounding like lovers who don't want to wake the neighbors.
Male birth control pill soon a reality.
Course, my body feels like holy retribution today. Everything aches and spasms. Walking without limping has been a proven impossibility that I'm counting on a deadly hot shower to repair. In fact, I think that's the next step. Hooray for adventure.
Warren's graphic novel FELL #1 online for free.
The air is full of tiny birds, wings fluttering too quickly. The tips of them are creaking against the stress like lungs choked with down. A cough and they scatter. There's nothing to show where they were. Wind does not keep drawn lines, the beloved parabola exists only in our minds as a memory.
Unrelated: walking across a field, a thick flock of seagulls let me walk into the middle of them before taking up into flight and circling me perfectly. How callous I am, I thought, that I have too much science in me to experience this as a holy sign. Instead, I understand the way flocks stay together, what leads them, guides them. I know how to spot the lead bird. I'm not fool enough to pray.
I didn't sleep from Saturday until noon Sunday. I have done more clever things than argue the socio-technological implications of ancient politics and family units until the sun has risen, it's true, but I was in excellent company and the sun always rises.
Now you're gone, leaving echoes of somewhere I used to feel at home. You walked away and I felt such a pain shoot through me, as if there was no such thing as mercy. I know you're trying and that gladdens me a little, it seems a better place for us than that dire muck of misery that you'd put me in so carefully. I'm scared that when I see her, this her you've written about but carefully did not mention, she'll be wearing something I gave you or I'll have to see you love her. As serious as rain, it's the only thing I can think of that could continue to ruin me. It's stupid because I'm grown enough I should know better. I insist on it. I should be a better stone. You don't know what to do with me. I hand you the pulsing ball that drives my blood and you drop it. I fall apart inside.
Delightfully, I had some especially kind partners on the floor to distract me last night, the sort where we take hands and whirl into something highly inappropriate for industrial music. Liam teaches me swing dances, for example, and Jonathan tangos with me in his kilt and big stompy boots. It's gleeful when he lifts me up above his head and spins. I can feel him laugh through the music. (Note to self, call the man already). See, I'm everything shy of vices, so dancing is one of my only ways to salve this years constant and irritating sense of loss. I feel like I hang myself from my bones and when I move, it might even be with a heavy sort of elegance. Every twist of joint a kindness, a violent whispered argument in the dark behind my closed eyes, sounding like lovers who don't want to wake the neighbors.
Course, my body feels like holy retribution today. Everything aches and spasms. Walking without limping has been a proven impossibility that I'm counting on a deadly hot shower to repair. In fact, I think that's the next step. Hooray for adventure.
