Julia Barello is an artist I came across while looking up an old drawing professor from Las Cruces, Jacklyn ST Aubyn, who makes paintings of dolls. Barello makes beautiful installations from old x-ray and MRI films. I could see making something like this given the materials. I'll have to see what I can get from the radiology dept in Iowa once I get there.

New doll photos from this week.

Working on images with wounds using silk yarns and knitting ribbons. The operating metaphor is still healing. I have been sorting through books for good images to work with and even using some of my old drawings and prints as backdrops. Here are pictures of the flat images.

Healing metaphors

One of the things I learned in medical school that struck me to the core was the difference between healing and regeneration. Regeneration is when your body returns seamlessly to its preinjury state. By just looking at someone you can't tell anything happened. A bit of skin scraped off your knee will regenerate. But scar formation is another matter. Scars are a new tissue formed when injury is too substantial for regeneration. Another fact: scars require constant energy and nutrients to be maintained. This explains why Vitamin C deficiency causes old wounds to open up. At sea without fresh food the wounds of sailors would open up and terrify the afflicted as well as those who watched. It must have seemed a judgement from on high--a living hell revisiting all old wounds at once.

The images here are about healing, how we might think about creating something new to fill in an injured place. They are about making do and celebrating what is. They are about what Rumi says in his poem, Childhood Friends:
"Don't turn your head. Keep looking
at the bandaged place. That's were
the light enters you."

I have started writing on the walls of my house. Because the pipe burst over Christmas and the wallpaper had to be stripped, I thought it might be time to experiment on the walls. The contractor is mostly finished preping to paint, and now I've put him off so that I can play for a week. Here's a couple of pictures from the hallway going up to the attic. I just know he's going to hate me when he sees what I've done. I just couldn't help myself. The plaster that he's put down and partially sanded is so smooth, it's lovely to write on it. I haven't used charcoal in ages. It was Irving's poem from our book, And Beyond Laughter, that I wrote on the wall. Then I put up blurry pictures form my mother's photo box of her and Peter, and me, blurry too, in my pink tutu and my green skating outfit. Maine, Monterrey, Houston. Now, here, Syraucuse. The span of time. It's accelerating.

Southside photos for talk at Delevan. I'm working on my photography for the Delevan Gallery talk. Here are two pictures I took a couple of years ago when I first upgraded to a good digital camera and a tripod. After I started carrying a tripod people thought I was a photographer and sometimes, like these folks, they asked me to take their picture. I tried to find them, but so far, no luck. I really like the hands in the first photo, the blur of motion.

More books.
http://richardbbc.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/small-folded-books-jo-ainley-1.jpg
and more and more from Lil Fish Studio News

Linsey Obermeyer work has been an inspiration for some time. Her newest project is based on attachment. Check out the very interesting articles of clothing in the photos and how they demonstrate this concept. Very fun and honest too. It's not always easy being attached. http://www.lbostudio.com/attach/index.html

Purkinje Fibers. Of all the neurons these have my favorite shape. This image is on wikipedia from the meseo Cajal.

Even more amazing books. Lucile Moroni and Nicholas Jones, book sculptor. Mr. Jones has also done some folding, but I think his sculpted books offer another way to alter books.

More collages in process.

Working on Calvin's Quilt

Elijah Gowin's photos of this Maggie. I love these paper orbs that she plays with her in her backyard. Link to artist statement.

More ideas for collage with the old medical school text books. The background images are from a pair of texts, one on endocrinology and one on obstetrics.

New Pictures of Blue man and Little Asian Blue Man. The wooden-block cell phone by kids. Whose? Mine, maybe. Someone elseses, maybe. Never will know. Love it, either way.

Here's a book I'm working on with some objects inserted, including a wishbone--for my friend Jess, who doesn't know what to wish for, but one day will. And here's a view of another one that I'm making out of a coffee table book of National Geographic nature illustrations. It makes for a colorful display.

More amazing books. The one in the glass jar is by Georgia Russell. The wall of books is by..The diamond back one came from this website. The box of books came from here. I love these and can't wait to do the installation in June at the Upstate Library.

Jennifer Steinkamp: Dervish, 2004, 2005 This is the artist whose work I first saw at the Cleveland Clinic on interview day. It's really stunning. Unfortunately the architecture at the Clinic is so large scale it doesn't have inviting spaces to sit, rest and take in the art they have displayed. But from wherever you are looking at this, I bet you can appreciate how beautiful the pieces are to watch.

Here is a new collage I'm working on. This is a combination of three picture, one of the Syracuse sky, one an angiogram of the kidney, and the third a reflected branch on the pond in the Adirondacks. I like the distinct frames which feel like words in a sentence.

Family portraiture has not really been my thing over the years. But I took a stab at it last summer after seeing the photos of Doug Dubois, a famous local photographer who took up photographing his family in the 1990's. I also like the photos of Sally Mann or http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mann/index.html Here is a photograph of my cousin Margaret that I had fun taking when last she visited.