playground

not sure what I'll be doing here just yet

paper making! with groundcovers ~ lisa and libby

Touching, twirling

Me

Arranging Things: A Rhetoric of Object Placement by Koren

Rhetoric Principles in 3 parts:
1. Physicality -- first impressions, technical aspects of arrangement
2. Abstraction -- associations the arrangement brings up based on cultural knowledge and common sense
3. Integration -- how elements work in relation to each other

PHYSICALITY
1. Hierarchy -- closer vs further in the background -- importance
2. Alignment -- space, relationship, parallel, symmetry, precision, stacking
3. Sensoriality -- characteristics appeal directly to senses to sense-driven emotions. Color, texture, pattern, shape, vividness

ABSTRACTION
4. Metaphor -- transference and transformation of meaning. Ex: sunscreen lotion + smooth rock + conch shell + towel on beige surface = seashore. Allusion -- one thing that refers to another. Similie -- one thing explicitly compared to another. Synedoche -- something stands for the whole thing or vice versa
5. Mystification -- arrangement doesn't make sense, but seems like they should. Ex: fertilizer bottle next to cake ingredients...poisoning?
6. Narrative -- spinning a probable story out of all info provided by considering hierarchy + alignment + sensoriality + metaphor + mystification

INTEGRATION
7. Coherence -- how clear ideas and sensations are, and how they relate -- is dependent on the arranger's adherence to conventions and forms that we -- as a culture or subculture -- implicitly use for our visual communication. Expressed through consistency -- theme, rationality -- natural and logical connections, homogeneity -- sameness between objects, clustering -- how objects physically adhere to each other.
8. Resonance -- how long and deeply an arrangement sustains your interest and the degree of how deep it reverberates in your mind and stimulates new ideas and sensations.

May pink be reserved for my personal notes to self. Reflections. My cultural and historical understandings limit my viewing of artworks in that realm, but may open me to rely on sensations

This viewing exercise is autobiographical: you are describing the way YOU see the world!

Gorjus top from a vendor at the AA art fair. Using yarn and scrap fabric to collage and sew together to make this spider motif. One could say I am quite inspired! Forgot to get this couple's names, but they are based in Staten Island, NY

Atmospheric Architecture: Designing for Air Flow, Light, and Sound by Wayfinder’s Field Notes on Substack.

My reflections: I came from a different essay they had on maternal and protective design, talking about the home / domestic space. Different areas being ones to take off armor from the exterior, build spaces that can hold and support various emotions, not just contain it in isolation. "Emotional microclimates". Beyond what we understand basic needs as, these two articles brought in life forces that I often overlook. I lived in a basement for a year, very little, almost no light. That does something cruel to my spirit, and to the spirit of my friends I lived with. I know it cuz we felt it and we talked about it. Firstly, I don't think people should be living in the basements in the first place. It moreso comes as a result of greedy scumlords and unaffordable housing options. But in this reality and in reflection of this article, I wonder what light catching tools we could wield. Even in my current apartment the sun hits at an awkward angle that doesn't fulfill the same as the light in the living room. It'd also be nice if the way light hits could remind me of routines, rituals, habits I have set myself to do in this phase of my life.

Collage made in Chicago. This weekend I'm been feeling a little weird, a little stuck, a little delayed.

From Lola's insights on reproducing better-but-still-harmful power dynamics through "mutual aid" -- where it's actually more one-sided and burdens are placed unevenly, ppl put themselves up to take more harm for the betterment of others... erases ppls own agency, makes others be infantilized, can't take accountability. What relationships do we actually want to be in? The question is less of What are we willing to let slide? but rather, how do we hold these conversations actually..
Also what I got from what they said...less of the politic/ideology itself but how ppl show up with that politic. We can be challenged and we can be aligned

Making graphs to analyze... grids, diagrams.. intuitive ways of knowing

I accidentally left for work 30 minutes too early, so easily enough to stop by the dispo with my free pre roll card that I got from work. Asked for a drunk-like high. So I'm thinking in the shower now. Moms who figure their value in themselves in how much they are needed, that teaching basic skills like cooking and cleaning are not passed along, for the fear that if the child becomes self sufficient, what worth does the mother have? At ease, you think this is pathetic, why would anyone do this. But I find myself trying to be useful, trying to gauge what people need and what I have to fill that. Being helpful makes me feel needed and worthy, but then again, I place my value on my labor. I wish to seek more pleasure with friends in front of me.
This slops over in my relationship to art too. Feeling needed is easier than wanted because it seems more trappable. Wanting is so unpromised and unfixed. I hope to be a good time

depression

bubbly

child

slut

Dressing myself... #ambivalence

Comment: "In my US history class this semester instead of focusing on learning specific dates and details, for our assignments our professor would either give us or have us create a fictional profile of a person and then analyze how that person would react to various events or subjects in history. Essentially learning history through creating historical fiction, and personally my absolute favorite way I've ever been taught history"

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Maria Tortolero
La Cocina de Patssi
(2018)
National Museum of Mexican Art
Chicago, IL

It is fine to only really be needed in some cases. But you just cannot confuse them for each other.
I am uncomfortable at being worth too much to someone and nothing at all. It's just hard when the work of the relationship is mainly proving to be worth something..that you can't really "be", but always be "doing".

School

2 cool 4

Bartending Diaries..~

My coworker, Stevie, was telling me if I ever wanted to go into hospitality, that I should never take a managerial position bc it required so much more work for not that much of a pay increase. I had never thought of going into hospitality before, nor did I really understand it as a legitimate industry until then (out of touch, I know).

Michael is kind of like a manager. He definitely does a lot more than what I do, and has more power over the bar as a whole and how it operates. While I was still in the training phase, he told me that it is a good practice to keep an eye on the people at the bar, grasp their speed of drinking, and tend to them when they seem to need me.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy talking, but I am a very avoidant person when it comes to interactions where I do not have a script yet made. I stumble on words and speak too fast so I can get it all out. When I bus the tables, it gets really awkward because if the conversation of the party is thriving, I avoid breaking up the flow by not checking in on them. Those that I can't immediately tell are done, I would just walk around. I think this type of rejection avoidance is telling me that this fear runs much deeper than I supposed.

Because of this avoidance, I forget to bus as often as I should/could. Standing behind the bar and washing the cups, staring down or to the TV on the left, where it is stationed against the wall, I don't have to think about how to approach customers while still being "productive".

I say this to say capitalism and individualist American culture destroy the skills of taking care of each other. And I'm saying this in response to a reading from my food systems class that is talking about the shift in local farmer's markets to supermarkets: "Abundance is the first message of the supermarket, which is why more staff are employed keeping all shelves full than looking after customers" (Roberts, Brave New World, 2008). Excess work, hiding behind excess work.

Was approached by the christian group on campus at trotter. what EJ had described was this Word... a godly sense perhaps, that gets shined through broken prisms. The analogy he used was him playing a Bach song on the cello with his 2 years of middle school experience of the violin. If I sat there for 20 minutes listening to that...and his attempt terribly kills the song, it doesn't mean his playing is a true reflection of Bach's masterpiece. And this is like what he explains the Word of god to be.

I'd like to ask Chelsea what she means when she felt like she felt god for real.

its not about YOU.. what's the culture? what's the politics? what's the economy? what's the ecosystem?

process interests: collage,

material interests: fibers, plastics/local scraps (bartending cups),

conceptual interests: queer ecology, history of solidarity,

audience interests:

Diaspora politics
History

Personal Goal Statement:

I want to have an exciting, freeing, fun, sensual, and affectionate life with my loved ones and strangers; making enough money by working with creative thinkers and makers, whose projects improve the quality of life, towards liberation, and can adapt to change.

Personal Goal Statement:

“I want to have a fun and loving life with family and friends; to earn a living that I have passion for and that doesn’t compromise my values of collaboration, a healthy planet, environment, community, and sovereignty. I want to be able to afford to travel/try new activities, not work extremely long hours, have enough money to not worry about it, feel more spiritual, romantic, dancy, and spend more time with loved ones.