Ohio Lonely Art Hop @ FIRE in Kalamazoo, Michigan …
Please come by between 6:00 and 8:00 for art and refreshments (adult beverages also, yes).
My Latest Visit
This Andrew Wyeth painting greatly resembles one of the houses I visit on my Upper World journeys. My wisdom teacher is my Aunt Shirley who had a farmhouse and then a cabin during her life. When I was a little girl, I looked forward to going to her farm: the room full of dolls, her artwork, and once a month her cutting my bangs that usually ended up looking like jagged saw blades threatening my eyes. But she was the only one I trusted with scissors so close to the vitals of my brain and eyes.
This painting looks very much like the farmhouse. And when I visit the Upper World, I find my aunt in one of these two places. On my last visit a very short time ago, I needed to speak to her about certain critical issues that were beginning to put me in a bad spot when I have been doing so well. I was very fearful of my soul part leaving again …
She was not in the farmhouse, so I went to the cabin. When I walked in, it was my aunt looking to be my age. Seated in the main room I saw myself sewing intently. I asked what was going on and my aunt said to look. I was sewing a heart together with embroidery thread. My aunt said, You need to do this too. A simple but sturdy stitch will do. It seems that much of what she says to me rhymes.
More was said that is also quite unnerving but the main lesson was a constant consciousness of when things need mending; knowing when to mend. The symbolism of this to me is not only mending something not broken, but loosened and weakened, but also the sewing almost implying to me a closing of the heart. In a previous journey, she told me to close my heart well and let my mind swell. And I listened, but a kindness of a certain one with soft hands opened it and it has been opened since. Nothing has happened to make me want to close it again. I want it to be open like the sea, like a window as hers always were, the chiffon curtains looking like hair.
July 11th Art Hop, Kalamazoo, MI
During my Upper World journey, I found that my Wisdom Teacher was my Aunt Shirley McGath-McCurdy. Our connection when she was alive was eerily uncanny. I was a little girl, then a teenager, then she was dead when I was 15. With her death came what seemed to be a transmigration, our likenesses gathering strength in look, mind, and heart as I got older.
My Ohio Lonely exhibit at the Art hop at FIRE in Kalamazoo, Michigan on Friday, July 11th, are collages and photographs that are genealogical in nature. These are an extension of the meditative study I have been in while writing the poems that accompany the artwork. This particular piece is a study of the connection I have with my aunt, as well as a symbolic representation of our shared illness.
For more info on the exhibit and the Art Hop, please visit my website: www.carriemcgath.com
Temporary Technical Difficulties …
My website, www.carriemcgath.com is currently down … but will be up very very soon!
hey ladies … make your muscles tingle and let the rest jingle
Since beginning to explore many different ways I may express myself artistically, I realized dance was an art form I had woefully neglected since my little girl dancing days of tutus and tap shoes. Once puberty hit, my ballerina body was quickly replaced with one that only made ballet more, shall we say, difficult. Bellydancing is not only great exercise, but a wonderful means to bond with other women, and perhaps most importantly, let it jingle and the more it does, the better you are doing in your dance of the seven veils. And you are learning a language really like no other — the ultimate body language.
The music isn’t bad either … this is all so joyous and will set you a-tingle.
Interested women should contact FIRE in Kalamazoo, Michigan via their website: www.thisisfire.com.
See you there, ladies!
I am calling her Mades …
This is my new possesion and it already on its way to possessing my heart. The feelings and emotions this brings is already quite amazing. The first song I will learn will be Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” — likely one of the best songs ever ever made.
Listen to this wondrous song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aRKZFR5imM
Happy Birthday, My Sweet!
June 13th is Fernando Pessoa’s birthday! Yes, he’s six feet under but still alive in his wondrous personalities and writings of delight, despair, and great philosophy. And my dear Dove, if you’re reading this … I realize you got a Pessoa thing going (minus the zebra boots and Nudie suit!) … the resemblance is truly amazing! That’s just even more goody goody for me!
Anyway, I am celebrating with pints and prizes for my Pessoa-lovin’ buddies this week!
And just to make the pot a little sweeter for all of you, my fellow Pessoa-lovers … you will receive your very own magnetic Pessoa (see one of my homemade Pessoas) — magnetic both in personality(ies) AND functionality! Pessoa writings, Pessoa paper dolls, and door prizes … and PINTS!
Happy Birthday, my Sweet!
Beachy Peachy Bliss
Beach bliss is officially here … though it was too cold for swimming, sitting in the sand and just listening is as blissful as being surrounded by the water lapping your skin. I couldn’t resist but to get my feet wet and the leftover winter coolness was pure and a titillating shock. This was another step toward something good. My fears subside more every day, subsides with every kind look of my companion.
I am free of the elephant terrorizing the corridors of my heart.
Now it is just a kind and shocking peacock in white finery walking about wholly inside me on its ugly feet.
A white peacock showing me the way through clayed cliffs and Midwest sands.
The one now beside me, with hands soft and comforting, kind and severe like quick-witted cats running through our aortic cellars grand, getting to know my soul like a bad habit.
These are goodly habits … like the habit of water moving and acquainting itself with everything.
His soul, I know, is grand and ivory.
I can see a dove circling him like an armed guard.
grandfather no. 1
Yesterday, I received a great gift from my parents — old family photographs and 2 “photos” of my father’s heart — one before the stint, one after. I am currently putting together a series of collages about my family. I think sometimes when you’re the furthest one away in your family, even if you;re not that far, it intensifies one’s loneliness in the world really. I sit here now, typing this, the glue still fresh on my fingertips for creating my version of my grandfather Mc., I sit here hours away from family and even many friends …
I am happy now … happier than I have been in a long time … but that longing for that blood / DNA / one’s penchant for some obscure family trait still seems unreachable. These collages as well as my series of genealogical poems, Ohio Lonely (which was to originally be a collection of poems about children’s author, Dare Wright but took on something else altogether) make sense of connections, disconnections, estrangement, loneliness, and genetic disease. At least this is my hope.
This series will be in an art show at the Library where I work this fall. My website will give the details of it as September draws near.
This collage speaks to my young memories of my grandfather … the first things I thought of … in this he “borrows” his son’s heart x-ray and sharing the space are the three things that occupied him heart and mind as I remember … Connie Frances, cigarettes, and his wife (my grandmother), Lillian Foley.
All really so hard to get …
But there is more that was so hard to get … hence “grandfather no. 2.”
