A mask, a song, a book.....

So folks, it's been a long time since I've updated this blog. What have I been up to? The same old-same old really except now both my daughters are in school and doing well there. I have more work as an editor and translator, but am still occasionally teaching and making jewelry. After literally wanting one for years, I finally bought myself a piano, a Roland FP-50 in Liberace-white. I play most nights with the earphones on once the kids are in bed.

Like before, I also have many creative pursuits going on (I asked a student recently if they think there is such a thing as a "hobby person" although I already definitely know the answer to that question!) My latest project is a book on the mask L'Inconnue de la Seine which has inspired me for a long time. Many people find the mask creepy (albeit, it is), but L'Inconnue has also inspired generations of artists, musicians and writers, Nabakov, Rilke and Man Ray among the more famous names. Here's a video I made to promote the project:   

      

That's me singing on the video. I wasn't sure about posting it because my tecnique is definitely not where it should be (years of singing classical make one into quite the perfectionist even if one would rather not be....) But then again, Lieder and art songs were originally composed to also be sung by amateur singers in their homes, so why not? Plus, I was worried I might run into copyright issues if I used Rosa Ponselle's version of Vissi d'Arte like I originally wanted to, something that can be expensive (i.e. hefty fines) in Germany as opposed to a mere slap on the wrist.

To find out more about my book project, click here. Heck, if you feel like, go ahead and pre-order. It's a steal at only $9.99 plus you will only be charged if the book goes into production which, let's face it, is not extremely likely since I'd need to sell a minimum of 750 copies within the next two and a half months. Still, it's worth a try. I've always wanted to write a book. Here's my chance. :)                          

The Escapist

So, I thought about calling this blog post "Dead Girls and Bondage", but then I realized what kind of readers I would attract and how terribly disappointed they would be....

I've been suffering from a vicious bout of insomnia these days. Not that this is anything new. It always takes me a while to fall asleep and I've had insomniac phases on occasion all of my adult life. Torturous, yes, but I've been trying to make the best of it by getting some creative work done instead of sleeping. Not that this actually HELPS me go to sleep. Anyone who does not chronically suffer from insomnia may believe the advice "Drink a cup of hot herbal tea and all will be fine", but it is a big fat lie....The only thing that helps sometimes is reading (but DEFINITELY not t.v. or the internet!!)or changing where you are sleeping, i.e. go lie down on the couch for a while. The problem usually is you have zero desire to do these things. All you want is to sleep and it's the one thing you absolutely can't do....

Anyway, as I said I'm doing the lemonade from lemons approach and working on a lot of new art and jewelry and even some hand-altered clothing. I've been buying vintage photographs on ebay on and off for the past six weeks or so.



Whenever they come in the mail I often find myself deciding to keep them for my collection rather than using them for anything (I've been collecting vintage photographs for over ten years.) Every once in a while, however, I do get one that inspires me. Last night it was the one pictured at the beginning of this post.

A young girl, her dark hair braided, a somewhat pensive look on her face, her hands in her lap. I got out my sewing materials and sat down at the dining room table but then suddenly realized I wasn't interested in stitching the picture. I started thinking about the girl. What hid behind her serious expression? I imagined her, a good girl always doing as she is told, but secretly wishing to run off and join the circus. She wouldn't want to be a trapeze artist is a glittering costume or to ride white horses. She would dream of being an escape artist.

I have to admit this idea may have been planted in my head by Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay which I read about a month ago. One of the main characters trains to be an Houdini style escape artist when he is a boy in Prague. He practices cracking locks and hiding picks inside his cheek. Later, in New York, he creates a sucessful comic book with his cousin called The Escapist. Of course, the idea and longing for escaping is also symbolic in the book (the character is an Eastern European Jew at the beginning of Hitler's tyranny)the stories of escapism and the obsession people have brought to the art really stuck with me.

I started thinking about chains. I put some gold ribbon around her like some bonds that she was dreaming of escaping from. I added some vintage snack skin copper chain (perhaps a snake handler would be another of her dream jobs...)and black lacquer chain to the side.




My husband came and took a look at the photograph sometime before I had done much work on it. "I wonder what they meant by that," he said. He had read the back of the picture which read 28.5.1940- Im Gedanken an Eure Annelie (In Memory of your Annelie.) "It sounds to me like the girl must have died."

It seemed strange, almost spooky, to me to be working on a picture of a girl who died in childhood in 1940. She would be in her 70s now, so of course she could still be living. To know that she probably passed away so long ago made me wonder if I should stop the project. But then again, the show must go on....

As a last touch I added a black glass pendant to her neck. I imagined it was from her beloved uncle Horace, the only adult who understands her. It is a symbol to her to never stop dreaming. When I showed the finished work to my husband he said, "Hmm...Very bondage-like." Not what I had intended, but I can see what he means...

Stormy Weather

I've been busy stitching photos again. Here's another that will soon be part of some new work or another. It's part of a photograph of the gorgeous art deco Anzeiger building in Hannover, Germany. I took the picture four years ago, when I
had a job going around to various cities in Germany and teaching English to the train service employees in order to prepare them for the world cup. The teaching itself was rather tedious, but I got to take around 11 different trips where my hotel and train was covered and the work itself was pretty well paid. One of the places I went several times was Hannover. I'm sorry if any locals read this post, but Hannover just isn't an exciting place. Located in the middle of Germany, there just isn't much about it that is especially interesting. The court house and the lake behind it are pretty and there is a villa district which might be nice to walk through. And, of course, the Anzeiger building is really beautiful. But the city itself is simply boring. There is not even a local accent or dialect (something they are proud of in Hannover)but I think it really says something about the place. Hannover is a city without a face is what my husband says.

Still, one of the times I went there to work it was really inspiring. It must have been in late November or maybe early December. A storm was brewing throughout the day, but somehow the rain never started. Instead there was just this incredible light shining through these dark, gray clouds; truly dramatic and electric. After class I walked around for hours taking pictures. When I got back to my hotel room, my feet sore from all the walking, I took a series of self-portraits called, appropriately enough, 10 Self-Portraits in a Hotel Room in Hannover. Later, I fashioned them together into a book. Hmm....Maybe I should stitch some of them....;) These days, I'm having an obsession with needle and thread. Whatcha gonna do?

Geisha Madness

So I read Memoirs of aGeisha about a month ago and now I'm hooked. I remember that my mom really hated the book because she found it to be a bit of a cheap romance novel. Admittedly, the love story in the book is one of its weaker points, but I found the world of a geisha and all the customs surrounding them to be totally fascinating. Now, I'm not a man so maybe I just don't get it, but I don't especially find them erotic. They seem to me to be something like a made-up, aesthetic, but thoroughly untouchable doll. But that there is a tradition for everything and that they wear these gorgeous kimonos that are worth thousands of dollars and are women of art, all of this is somehow both appealing and scary at the same time. I found a great video about an apprentice geisha on You Tube called Becoming a Geisha.
It follows the story of Youkina as she goes through the training in Kyoto in 2005. Pretty brutal training and she's not allowed to see her family for a year even though she's only 15. I won't tell you if she makes it or not. ;)


A friend of ours works for a photography auction house here in Berlin. Every time they have an auction (about twice a year)she sends us the catalog. Gorgeous books full of the photographs for sale printed beautifully. In one of the catalogs there are some vintage photographs of Geisha that have been hand-tinted. I will probably make copies of them because it would be a shame to mutilate the book, but I really must make some sort of collage or art work from them. We'll see when the inspiration calls....

In the public domain, baby!

I love looking for public domain photographs. For those of you who don't know what that means, it means work that is not under copyright so you can do whatever the heck you want with it. A lot of really famous photographs from Dorothea Lange and others are in the public domain because they were working in the FSA government program.There are also some really beautiful ones by Ansel Adams of Japanese internment camps that I really love.The best place to find them is at the Library of Congress. You can also order prints from there that are supposedly good quality and don't cost very much. A while ago I took some of the images and added text to them, among other things. I'm sure I'll more images again sometime. The possibilities for ideas and inspiration are endless when you have such great material.

The Berlin Winter Blues

I have taught English here in Berlin to students from all over the world. A few times I even had some students from Siberia. A native Californian, I've always had a winter phobia that stretches back to when "winter" meant two months of some rain and a few days under 40 degrees. In the Bay Area, scarves and hats and gloves are fashion accessories rather than means of survival....Anyway, whenever I had a student from one of these far off, distant northern plains I always asked, with fear in my heart, "What is the Winter like there?" Invariably, they always answered, "Not as bad as it is here in Berlin!!" It's not that the days are very cold here compared to, say, Wisconsin. The problem is you never, ever see the sun. Gray day after gray day, the sky a ceiling of slate that feels like it's closing in on you. And though the temperature is far from as low as it would be in Siberia, there they have a dry cold whereas her it is a wet cold. The kind of cold that seeps into your bones. Nothing anyone likes, as you can see from a wan, drawn faces, but especially killer to someone who is from warmer lands. The problem is, I know it can be different. This winter has been especially hard. With two small children (one 20 months, the other 3 months)it is hard to even leave the house. Two snow suits, two sets of mittens, two sets of boots, one child screeching or, if I'm unlucky, two. Now more than ever my creative pursuits are a lifesaver. Not only have I been active "making stuff" I also try and add extra little touches for my own amusement. Like the two necklaces down below. To the one with the pink flower I added an angel prayer coin to the back, giving hope and watching over the wearer. To the other one I added a ten cents (Euro)coin. For those of you who don't know, the Euro is the shared currency of many countries, but the back of each coin is distinct to the country it is from (the fun of it is that the coins get mixed up after a while. It's always cool to see a different back and try and figure out where it is from.) The ten cent coin in Germany has a picture of the Brandenburg Gate on the back, which is what I have showing on the pendant for a bit of hidden local pride....Both of these necklaces will soon be posted in my etsy shop, Rose, red Rose which you can visit by clicking here

Life and the Art of Making Peanut Butter Cookies

Many women say that having children has put a damper on their creativity. Luckily, this hasn't been the case with me. If anything, being a mother has torn down some inner blocks within myself letting me be more free and, dare I say it, action orientated. Since Lilly was born I've made a lot of new collages and jewellry, always humming and singing while I work. A sure sign, my husband says, that I am happy. Yesterday was an interesting case and point. It was a Sunday of a not so easy weekend. My husband worked long hours the week before and I was looking forward to some family time together as well as a break from the babies (or at least shared time). Reality, family style, reared its ugly head when my husband woke up on Saturday with a nasty cold and had to spend all day in bed. Still, I had a pretty ok day, made a new 50s nude ladies collage and worked on some ideas for new necklace designs. Sunday my husband was feeling a bit better but still laid down for most of the morning. I was hanging out with my babies, grooving as we do, but I was at a loss for what to work on. Not in the mood for art or crafting, not in the mood to read, the babies are doing their own thing. And then I was struck with inspiration, a let's-bake-cookies-eureka from the sky. Of course, they had to be peanut butter, a type of cookie that doesn't even exist in Germany except at Barcomi's, a cafe run by a native New Yorker. I used creamy peanut butter and listened to NPR, the babies sitting beside me. Mia and I ate lots of cookie dough and I'm sure my milk had a tinge of peanut buttery goodness for Lilly later. They were delcious!

A shooting session in the graveyard

Winters in Berlin are tough. Grey skies everyday, frozen dog shit all over the street (frozen if you're lucky that is!), grim faces... A native California girl, I've never liked it even before I had kids. Now that I have two young children, the season is basically unbearable. A double stroller, two sets of snowsuits, no car....Cars are expensive to have in Berlin and since we live in a great urban neighborhood we don't really need one (we can borrow my brother-in-law's if need be...) But still, babies, a heavy stroller, a subway system where nearly NO station has an elevator and only sometimes an escalator (very steep stairs in their place)I almost never leave the neighborhood. I've been keeping myself busy with creative projects so I don't go crazy. Jewelry making, collages, etc. for my two etsy shops. Still, there is a problem with light. In order to post the items I have made to offer them for sale in Schaufenster and Rose, red Rose I have to take photographs. Though lovely, our apartment doesn't get very good light. Many an afternoon I've driven myself crazy taken blurry picture after blurry picture. Occasionally I set up things in the courtyard in the back, but it's not really much fun even if the light is better. Yesterday I had a revelation: I need to take photographs and get out of the house a little bit. Why not go to one of the graveyards nearby? There are two really nice ones (including one where Brahms and Schumann are buried.) When Mia was in pre-school I packed up baby Lilly and headed to the one on Bergmannstrasse. The sun was actually shining and I got some great shots of both the necklace and two collages which was great. Photographs plus small winter outing equals sucess. Hooray!

New space for what's important...

Yesterday I emptied out a shelf of teaching materials to make room for my jewelery supplies. It felt so liberating. I've been teaching English as a Foreign Language for nearly ten years now. For a long time I found it really satisfying and fun, but for the past three years or so I've gotten really burned out. Always the same mistakes, always the same uptight, anal attitudes (Northern Germans are NOT very easy to teach, especially for someone from laid back California!!!) Cleaning out a shelf for my supplies was like a breath of fresh air, a statement that I am going in another direction more and more. Now I just need to empty out another shelf for my sewing supplies (all jumbled in a bag behind the bedroom door now) and another for writing notes and the transformation will be more and more complete. Believe and it will happen!

Ain't life grand?

I launched my new etsy shop, Rose, red Rose today. A lot of the ideas and inspiration came from my one month creative hiatus in California. When I was there I made the rose brooch pictured in the slide show below. I loved it so much that I decided I had to keep it, but it made a perfect logo for my new shop (which I named before making it.) So many new ideas, so many new things to make....Ain't life grand?

Downtime

Sometimes the best move for creativity is a little downtime. I've been in the Bay Area now for almost a month visiting my family here with my husband and two daughters. This means a big difference in my daily life in Berlin which usually consists of taking baby number one to pre-school and holding baby number two in my lap while I work on various creative projects. Like I posted before, I have started making a lot of new collages but things are too hectic here for concentrated work. But in my mind I've been expanding. I have many new images collected I'd like to work with as well as ideas for altered clothing (plan to open a new etsy shop for this work when I get back.) I'm also opening a new shop for jewellery which will be called Rose Red Rose. There are so many great vintage and antique pieces to be had in Berlin and I would like to combine them with new materials to make original pieces. Creating is so much fun. In some ways, I am the eternal child, excited about all these new possibilities, all these new projects to throw myself into. With so much to do even the Berlin winter won't be able to get me down.
Besides thinking up future creative projects I've been doing some shopping on etsy (first for gifts then for myself. It can't be helped!!) One of the best people I've bought from recently was Kathleen from Mata Hari Jewellery. A lot of people make jewellery from vintage brass -with a neo-victorian touch, but her pieces are especially beautiful and she also gives a free gift each puchase which is really nice.

Etsy Buy Handmade roseredrose

Taken by surprise.....

What I love most about creativity is how often it takes me by surprise. I have often gone through phases (or rather, bursts)where I made a lot of collages and then other times when I didn't make them at all. It's not something I can force and there are many other things I make or I write or take photographs so when I am not making collages I still am following creative pursuits. But something about collages, creating things from bits and pieces of paper that are arranged without plan or thought, that is especially satisfying. So often the inspiration takes me by surprise. Like the new work I have been doing for the past several weeks. Most have them have been made from books I have had for years but didn't really know why: An old collection of short stories translated into German, a book about Nabokov and folk singers in Russian. The German book I picked up years ago at a flea market here in Berlin, but only because I liked something about it. Generally I don't read literature translated into German, especially if the original was in English, but I still bought the book and kept it around for some reason. The same was true of the Russian books. I bought them when I was in Moscow and then somehow never got rid of them though I have long given up on the rigors of Russian grammar. I am not a person who has a hard time throwing things out. I have moved several times since I first got them and each time I gave away boxes of things, but somehow those books always stayed. Then, three weeks ago or so I took the German book off the bookshelf on a whim. After thumbing through it for a few minutes I suddenly had the impulse to get a razor blade and cut things out of it. I followed that whim and have been making collages from its pages ever since. Now it seems clear why I kept the books around all this time: Someday I was meant to make art with them.

Inspiration on the road...

In 2005-2006 I had the coolest job: I got to go to various cities in Germany (Dresden, Leipzig, Hamburg, Hannover)several times to teach workshops for the Deutsche Bahn (German Railway.) They were preparing for the Soccer World Cup, which was hosted in Berlin, and they wanted to make sure (or at least be able to brag on paper) that their service employees and train announcers could speak passable English. I was sent to each of these cities 3 or 4 times to teach relatively well-paid 3 day workshops and also had my hotel and train expenses covered. The teaching itself was rather tedious. The students all worked at low level service jobs, were mostly middle aged and, although friendly for the most part, were not at all interested in learning English (only a few of them could really speak it passably.) Sometimes it felt more like highly paid babysitting for people thrilled to gossip and take lots of smoke breaks because they weren't technically at work. Still, I got through the days fairly easily and had so much fun in the evenings, roaming the streets of the various cities alone, armed with curiosity and a camera. It's funny how seldom we just wander for hours in the places we live. I remember getting visitors when I lived in the S.F. Bay Area and doing things with them that I simply had never done before: it was always there. I could go tomorrow if I felt like it. And yet, I never really did. Being in another city on business alone is the perfect opportunity for exploration because you have nothing else to do and NOTHING is more boring than sitting in the mid-range hotel room all by your lonesome....Anyway, I took a lot of great photos and am planning on using them for various art projects: collages, digitally enhanced/altered photographs and series of magnets. I already have some of them on offer in Etsy shop and am working on a couple of others. Here is a slide show of the photographs I know I want to do something with at some point. (I have already worked with and altered some which I have on offer in my shop Schaufenster, but the photographs shown here are the originals.) By the way, Hamburg was by far my most favorite of the cities. A big city (at least a million), it has a cool vibe and is really ethnically mixed and of course has its seedy edges with the Reeperbahn, the famous sailor red-light district where the Beatles got there start. Hannover is the least interesting (a city without a face, my husband says)but there was amazing stormy weather one of the times that I was there and the light just blew me away. That's when I took the series of Light and Longing self portraits (see blog below). Leipzig and Dresden are both cool, smaller cities but, except for one self-portrait in Leipzig, they proved uninspiring....Or maybe I forgot my camera when I went to Dresden. I don't remember anymore. Anyway, enjoy the show!