Merry Portland Christmas!

Immediate family only (+ spouses/in-laws + children) and we still numbered 17. The beginning! All my Christmas crackers in my packed luggage were (reasonably) confiscated as explosives at Heathrow. As they were expensive M&S crackers, and as after I offered them to the security guards for their Christmas instead they said they couldn't accept them under Heathrow regulations and would have to destroy them, I cannibalised them so that I could take the innards with me. Several English grandmas were stopped at the same time, but they were not as frugal. I laughed and so did security throughout the entire surgical operation and so did the grandmamas. A four-year-old complained on my behalf to her mother as it wasn't fair to me as I was missing the best part of pulling the crackers.

Here is a little Portland snow (now melted) with me, my dad and my nieces and a (also now melted) "snowgal".

Cutie nephew

Like Father, like Son. Actually my brother David is sporting a specialised form of body modification here instead of Mardi Gras beads.

I made limencello - technically not limoncello, since I used both limes and lemons

Finished limencello

Oh yeah, I have red hair now

The present un-wrapping commences

Cute sinister nieces

The present aftermath

My brother-in-law is a big Pokemon fan. With new nephew Flynn!

No Evil in Oz (2011)

Joanna Southcott's Tree No. 2 (2012)

The Drama Club

NB - sorry, have deleted this one.

2009, 2010, 2011 Paintings

Paintings from Summer 2009 onwards that I never downloaded off my phone until tonight. Will probably update eventually with photos as and when bluetoothed. Real goal is to clear up space on my phone to take images for a project here on the blog.


2012 June, Stag and Hare (photography)



2012 June Stagtree (pewter casting)



2012 June, Holy Ground


2011 August, Burst for Ali


2011 July, Anteater


2007/2011 Autumn, St. Penelope Pongo


2011 Autumn, Enter the Magician (Deus Ex Machina)


2010 Autumn, My PhD


2010 July, Cherries


2009 June, The Man Who Wasn't There

(Images from Ape Emotions and Intelligence by N. Ladygin-Kohts, 1935)



"Moments of learning are moments of joy."

- The Redstone Book of the Eye


There is a Quaker phrase I really love in terms of imagery (amongst many others such as holding people in the light, and the idea of divine being in everyone - all so simple and perhaps easily dismissed if you hear them too often, and yet very piercing and beautiful when you consider such phraseology more deeply), and that is the idea of a Meeting for Learning. I can still remember the exact moment when I learned things that shifted paradigms for me - the exact moment when everything shifted when I learned to read music at 10; when I was told that plants were male and female at 7; when I learned to properly read at 6, when I first read about "pre-men" and evolution in an educational graphic novel at 9; when I realised sexuality was along a spectrum and not binarised at 22 - and later too, recently, discovering that even within pain there is learning. There is joy in that. My experience so far is that Life's greatest joys come through surprise - not when things turn out the way I have expected them to, but when they haven't.

This is such a justification for equality and educational parity on sociopolitical scales, because without safety and access, there can be little time left for such costless joy. Free joy.

My First Butterfly-Related Post!

Butterfly image - vector clip art online, royalty free & public domain

I am not sure whether it is good news. When my Grandma Desmond died in 2005, I was ambiguously happy to have thrust upon me a wooden serving tray of hers - small, Japanese - just the right size for someone to bring you tea upon, or breakfast in bed. No one else wanted it; it was one of the items left at the end of the day that no one wanted to leave behind because it was very "Grandma", but also no one else really wanted as it was at the same time a tray morbidly decorated with a gorgeous under-glass arrangement of wings of blue/purple iridescent butterflies and I guess my various cousins/siblings/aunts/uncles/parents thought - and I understand this - that it was just too emblematic of the fact that the butterflies had been killed to make something beautiful. I admitted to the same misgivings but in the end I guess I justified that because it was SO lovely and glamorous and the butterflies had been dead since at least 1937 then I might as well enjoy their shimmery blue beauty. It is basically a meat-eater's or vintage-fur wearer's argument and I am aware of this and I am aware of my hypocrisy.

However, I think the glass cracked even in the first post-funeral drive up from Long Beach, CA to Portland and the butterflies themselves were so old they were already crumbling to dust, though they were still so gorgeous blue. I researched stuff online yesterday when I was unpacking the tray, and I decided to "fix" it. The solution seemed to be epoxy resin, which would glassify over the pretty yet disintegrating wings and preserve them.

An hour ago, I picked out all the pieces of broken glass. I had to hold my breath and then turn away and breathe, because every time I exhaled I would blow away a blue wing; that is how delicate the wings were. I managed to keep the original arrangment (again morbidly, it had been fashioned to have a "butterfly" in the middle). Then I poured the resin over the tray.

It all turned brown as soon as the resin hit it! My gorgeous blue wings! Truly the prettiest blue colour I have ever seen - now brown! It was like a mummy was crumbling away when its bandages hit the sunlight. Er, bad simile.

Anyway, I am now waiting for the resin to dry and see whether it was just an effect of moisture or whether I now have a still-interesting but not-as-beautiful tray of dead brown butterfly wings. I have the slight rectifying sense that it would serve the humans right if the butterfly wings turned brown in long-delayed revenge (served VERY cold). I personally in the future likely will have less guilt when I'm served cups of tea on my pretty ill-gotten tray. Updates soon.

UPDATE 02.06.2012:

The wings stayed brown. I then had another inspiration and decided to paint the brown wings with iridescent blue, purple and green nail polish. A risky choice, but let's face it, authenticity isn't really an issue when you're dealing with an object that already involved butterfly murder and the "re-fashioning" of cruelty as objets d'art. The resultant wings look all right. Lovely, not as lovely as before the initial brownifying. I re-glassified the tray yet again and the second coat of resin is setting.



UPDATE 02.06.2012 - AFTERNOON

The butterflies in question are Morphea or Karner Blue.

Totally unrelated #1, I was enchanted by this commercial several years ago, which involves, appropriately enough for a sleeping pill, what I think is a Morphea - apparently there are many parody videos out there since I was not the only one obsessed with what some called the Butterfly of Death (No....!).



Totally unrelated #2, THIS is an Onion article that concerns Karner Blue butterflies. It's very wrong. I laugh every time I read it, so this is how I know that I am very wrong too. Okay, I seem to be having some synchronicity in my life concerning mysterious and possibly menacing blue-green butterflies...

Yep, this will probably be the last "butterfly" post I do for quite some time.

AAPA 2012

So it was wonderful to see my family (alas no photos yet of them) and a very lovely time in Portland at the AAPA as well; photos put up primarily for above-mentioned family to see, in fact. Pictures courtesy of Gemma and Anna (better photographers than I ever will be).

Me, extraordinarily happy to be in an American diner

Dad and Mom!

Voodoo Doughnut

Sign in gift shop

Laydeez of the Aiello Lab

Another poster in a gift shop

Keep Portland Weird

Anna doing her best to keep Portland weird

Me by my conference poster

Modern humans and skulls

Skulls

Santeria Mexican restaurant

Meet the ancestors

My Pretty Portland

I have hit a beautiful point in my studies. I have it clear what I want to do, and it is under the framework of applied anthropology, and it is really why I wanted to do a PhD in the first place, and what I am going to do has to do with equality and prejudice. Specifically. I'm not going to write any more about here or anywhere else probably for at least a year, but if you know me personally, then feel free to ask me and I am sure I will talk your ear off. I don't know if I am going to be able to pull it off, and it is going to be so hard, but it has real meaning (maybe for other people too). I have struggled with the usefulness/frivolousness of indulging in advanced studies in terms of ethics/morality (I have also always tussled with this issue as an artist). But this changes things... It makes me feel hopeful, VERY optimistic! The subject is optimistic too, about engendering real change.

My oldest friend Alanna (well, she is not that old, but we have known each other since we were 3) sent me this image today. It is apt for the study stuff (Sophia in a tree, I think), but it's very peculiar, because being an un-classically schooled type I did not know of this Sophia myth... and yet the specific imagery I have used in my writing... Damn! I love this painting so much!

The woman in a many-fruited tree, she is triumphant in fire, the twelve stars at her feet - there is even a monkey! And a sun and a moon. A phoenix? Is this one of Hildegard von Bingen's?

Alaska

"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature." - Frank Lloyd Wright

Dungeness

(all photos (c) Jessica Cheeseman)