Or name the photos.
I call the pair of them “Small Women Plotting World Takeover”
In comments, list your caption, and/or your picks for who we’re looking at. They’re not the same person, although I think they kind of look like it. First names are okay. I have another round for when and where.
Have fun!
I didn’t make room in my April budget for an original piece of art. But I did buy a magnet. It made my day to open the mail on my birthday and find this adorable monster, created by Amy Chini and sold via CafePress. Doesn’t it look nice on our fridge?
Milo doesn’t understand why I keep telling him that the monster was made by Amy, since it doesn’t look like her at all. And he is understandably frustrated that the magnet is too strong for him to pull off the fridge and ferret away underneath the bookcase. Otherwise, we’re satisfied customers.
If you want to check out Amy’s store and buy a magnet for yourself, go here.
Or, even better, if you want to open your own online store so I can buy a magnet from you, too, go here.
I’ve been sitting on a power line lately. Remember the lines of energy that the voodoo nurse talked about in Mary Fengar Gail’s play Devil Dog Six? I mean that kind of power line. I’ve had some special access, or perspective, that makes it possible to see connections where I didn’t see them before. Maybe it’s the pregnancy. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m on a genuine spiritual search. Or maybe I just took the time to let my head clear.
What I do know is that once you open yourself to hearing the truth (and experience the hard knock that probably comes with that), then the truth is exactly what becomes available to you.
At first it felt like luck. A challenging book that I have wanted to read for a long time literally fell off the shelf at the thrift store in Spring Valley, marked $1.95 in red crayon. I finally read it.
As one non-profit delayed and eventually rejected my offer of volunteerism, another made an invitation. And that second organization turns out to be exactly what I didn’t know that I was looking for.
Synchronicity, right? I’m getting used to it. But this next one still blew my mind.
This evening I showed up fifteen minutes late to a $35 Intro to SLR photography class that I’m taking at Santana Adult School. I thought they were going to show me how to use the buttons on the fancy camera that my husband bought me for Christmas. Instead, I got a powerful wake up call as to the nature of art and the function of the artist.
“The only way we grow as a society,” says the teacher, “is to get more artists.”
Woah. That’s a statement I agree with. But I’m in a trailer at Santana High School. Did I come out here to hear that?
Maybe I did.
“The automatic setting is designed to give you average,” he says. ”Average is nothing to aspire to.”
Dude. It’s hot in here, and my baby is due in three weeks, and I just want to take cute pictures of my kids.
He explains to us that the automatic settings reflect what the eye sees, with the intention of reproducing the photographer’s physical limitations. “Beauty,” he says, ” lies outside of our range of vision.” It’s a three hour class, and he doesn’t let up. Have a point of view. Know your message. Practice your craft. Be the artist you are. And don’t bother making excuses.
I’ve been schooled.
As Amy and I do our color work on the final scenic design for The Butcher of Baraboo tomorrow, I may be a little less likely to lift the details directly off of a “Wisconsin kitchen” Flickr search, and a little more likely to own the art.
Have any of you had a teacher or a lesson pop up on you like that? Or been taught something you could have sworn you already knew?
Ladies and gents, I have a new computer, and the delete key works, and the space bar works, so I’m able to sit at the computer again without reaching for the nearest hammer. (Whether for my head or the dysfunctional keyboard, I’m not sure.) So…I’m back.
And today, I’m here to tell you about Dustin Long.
This is Dustin.
He’s our TD. That stands for Technical Director. TD’s are legendary for being grumpy, and I should know, since I’m married to one, but Dustin breaks that particular mold. He’s very, very funny.
And he collects shoes.
I’m not making that up. The subject arose during a production meeting for The Sugar Syndrome, and he admits to having a closet full. Maybe that bit of delicious self-care is the way he avoids the stereotypical grumpies.
When not collecting shoes, Dustin works full time for his family’s cabinet shop, Equity Cabinets. For MOXIE, he is nothing less than an alchemist. He takes a set model and some drawings and a fixed (small) amount of money, and he makes it all into a set.
He might start by making a 3 D computer model like this one.
Then he tells us how much it is going to cost, suggests cuts or adjustments to get the project within budget, and finally builds it. All of it. He hires any crew that he needs (and we can afford) to get the build done on time, and then leads the MOXIE team in assembling it all on site in a few very long, thrilling days just before we open.
And then we all start taking notes. That means Dustin has to keep working, making small adjustments right up until opening.
Most people who do what TD’s do will tell you that nobody really knows what all they do. Honestly, I know that’s true. But I also know that we appreciate it.
Thanks for being a MOXIE, Dustin!
NPR took on one of our favorite subjects this morning. Here’s the tag:
Is the Workplace the New Babies R Us? Parents with newborns often face a stressful situation when it comes to work. For new mothers in particular, returning to work can mean a wrenching decision to leave a new baby in daycare or with friends or family. A small but growing number of companies are allowing – even encouraging – parents to bring their babies to work.
It’s a nice little spotlight on a big, big issue. Thanks, NPR.
But one small question… Why Babies R Us? Is that cute? Is it clever?
I’ll be even happier when a major news outlet can address the issues facing the massive ranks of working parents minus the reductionist headline. Or at least without suggesting to the business world that their offices might get turned into color-coded superstore aisles filled with commerce-crazed moms and their toy-crazed toddlers.
Is that just me?
MOXIE has just been named the La Jolla Playhouse’s Resident Theatre Company for the 2009-10 season. Woo! We’re getting two months of rent-free performance space, and access to the LJP infrastructure for administrative support and publicity. And, in return, they get some MOXIE. Win-Win.
It’s the second year of this program, conceived by LJP artistic director Christopher Ashley, and we’re thrilled. Here’s more.
Date this photo! Or maybe you’d like to caption it. How about… “Smarter than you, and not at all sorry.”
We’re looking for the name of this MOXIE, year the photo was taken, and for extra credit, the location in the continental United States. Put your picks in the comments.
Delicia came over for coffee today. That means that Milo didn’t nap, because, well, we’re loud. At least, we get loud when we talk about gender and politics, which we often do, and not only with each other. I actually managed to engage my chatty seat companion on the plane in a discussion of gender politics…on the red-eye, no less. Yet another advantage to flying without the baby!
The woman I met on the way to Boston is an art teacher, and, although she made it clear to me that she is not a feminist, she does share my alarm at the extreme gender imbalance in the most lucrative and most highly publicized sectors of the visual arts. Furthermore, she confided that it is her personal experience that female artists are poorly represented even in wholly contemporary collections, and that deserving female artists are often left out of the art history curriculum altogether.
I’d tell you her name except I don’t know it. We didn’t talk about anything except art and gender.
Is this an obsession?
Don’t answer that.
While Milo was trying to sleep, Delicia was telling me about an NPR story I missed, in which Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a pioneering black female guitarist whose heyday predates Rosa Parks as well as Chuck Berry, is found to be unfairly forgotten by history and finally gets a headstone some thirty years after her death.
Hmm.
In response I shared my evolving experience of this scarifying book by Kathryn Joyce, which I wanted badly enough to buy in hardcover and am now about a third of the way through.
(I call this photo “Still Life With Biblical Christianity and Nursing Bra.”)
The largely home schooling group of Biblical Christians Joyce studied for her book have an insular publishing industry through which they create their own materials for teaching American history. Why? Because their version of American history is different from most everybody else’s. Oddly enough, seeing that tactic in black and white actually gives credence to what might otherwise be considered an aging or insignificant concern, that history is written by the victors and has been fudged by the sons of the victors and adapted to modernity by the grandsons of the victors. It makes you wonder if even today anybody knows how deep the rabbit hole goes.
But change does occur. Sister Rosetta Tharpe got a headstone.
Delicia tells me that revisionist history reminds her that MOXIE’s mission is important. I don’t think I can accurately quote MOXIE’s mission here, but I know one of the other ladies can. Put it in comments if you’ve got it. I can tell you that we choose plays that “expand our idea of what is feminine.”
If our idea of what is feminine still finds its lineage in a long line of writers without vaginas, then it probably could use some expanding.
Have any of you been taught things that you later learned were inaccurate or heavily weighted towards someone else’s point of view? Any popular myths you feel passionate about debunking?
Because my son is in a learning phase, and because I have my overachiever pants on, I will take almost any opportunity to help him develop his vocabulary. Walking to the car from our apartment door, I stopped to point out the flowers. “Pink flowers,” I said. He repeated it back to me. Since I am late in my pregnancy and was carrying something, I clarified with my foot. “Pink flowers.”
Is it my fault that my son now can’t walk from the door to the car without kicking the flower bed?
