conversation/ Hatch

Image Note: So, I couldn't resist. I found this on my campus walk and well... It really rather does look like an Alien Egg, sitting on a stump just waiting to be hatched.


V. Wow! What a wonderful surprise it will be when it hatches! (Or maybe we don't want to be hanging around?)

J. *sits on the ground in front of it and starts changing* Hatch, Hatch, Hatch, Hatch, Hatch, Hatch...

V. Yes, chant hard... But don't sit too close!

J. I think I shall beat my hands on my knees and make faces at it.

V. Oh! In my crystal ball, I see... an indie film. The Dangerous Pastimes of Weavers... Make sure it doesn't have a mother lurking in the trees.

J. With numerous musical numbers and really bad subtitles as of course the whole thing is in French.

V. Ah, lovely. Sounds like my kind of film, sort of...

J. It has potential but will it be realized or not? That remains to be seen.

V. Maybe someday a movie poster might be made, though...

J. What comes to mind is old school cover art for books or pulp fiction magazines. ^^:

This conversation was carried out via DeviantArt, by my friend vanilla-vanilla and myself. Feel free to browse around this conversation and for others which may or may not appear here at a future date. I hope your day/evening is a good one.

conversation/Human Addiction

V. Something lurking down there, but can't quite tell what it is... Oh, wait! It's moving!

J. Slowly inching it's way beneath the snow.... it's the river monster attempting in vain to escape from the confines of the river, to breath out while there is snow upon the ground because only then can he walk on dry earth. The snow creates a buffer layer between him and the cruel water sucking earth that would normally be fatal!

V. Getting ready to pounce, I'm sure! Or is he just dying for someone to read him a story?

 J. That story was just so good, it made me so hungry that... well, I just couldn't resist a little nibble and after a nibble, well you might as well go for the mouthful.

V. Exactly, that's how monsters succumb to "human addiction".

J. Ah yes the dreaded ''human addiction'', it is afflicting more and more creak monsters of late. Their natural food supply is simply diminishing and the tasty but addictive human's are growing more and more abundant giving the poor creak monster little opption.

V. Another instance of human encroachment on wildlife habitat! Well, at least humans are edible, eh...!? And if they're also addictive, well, that's a great bonus! Helps cut down the human population and feeds the creek monsters...)

J. Only perhaps then we might end up with an over abundance of creak monsters and then were would we be? When their hunger and their addiction gets so bad that they try and creep out of the creaks more? In the winder when it snows enough to allow them to travel farther and farther from the safety of the water? Mmmm and the down fall of the human race has been found.

V. When the city streets and parks are crawling with creek monsters! Aaagh!

J. Lions, Tigers and Creak Monsters! Oh My!

V. :)

This conversation was carried out via DeviantArt, by my friend vanilla-vanilla and myself. Feel free to browse around this conversation and for others which may or may not appear here at a future date. I hope your day/evening is a good one.

conversation/Creak Monster Munch 2

Creak Monster Munch 2

V. There's that river monster again, just below the surface... This one also has a nice mood; I like the almost b/w quality.

J. Ah, but you know now the river monster doesn't feel the need to break free because he can come up and breath whenever he wants to. So he's not as restless as he is when the river is frozen over completely.

V. Tis the season where he loves to stick his neck out and stretch after a winter under the ice...

J. He's like, "MMmm... I can just smell all that freedom and all those tasty hiker toes in their yummy stinky hiking boots... and I can't wait to eats me some of those!"

V. Oh, I have a pair of hiking boots he can have... I'll keep my feet, though!

J. There you go. Fishing for creak monsters by taking off your hiking boots and dangling them in the water instead of your toes. You are definitely one of the smarter hikers around.

V. Hopefully that'll keep me out of the monster's belly for another season.

This conversation was conducted on DeviantArt between my friend vanilla-vanilla and myself krazysidhe. For it and other conversations feel free to hunt around, we hope you’ve enjoyed today’s installment.

A Return To Nashville, 2

Alright, so the opening of the show down in Nashville was Friday. It went quiet well, over all. At least I was impressed with the turn out as compared to last year. Here are some of the over all images I took of the work that went up, mine as well as others.

Over all, we got some really good comments and we saw a few people who weren't out here last year as well as a few people who weren't friends or friends of friends or family, so that was nice. As compared to last year, I also think that over all things look a lot nicer this year... though I have yet to put my finger on why that is.

Alright, so that's it. I hope you have a good day or evening. vanishes

conversation/Creak Monster Munch

V. Nice… It looks very soft and inviting. Maybe go for a swim…

J. It’s warmer in here, come and jump in you know that you want to. That’s the water monster whispering to you, telling you that you really do want to go for a swim. And he wants a snack.

V. Probably wants to nibble my toes…!

J. AH but the problem with a nibble, is that creak water monsters are deceptive. The creak might not be very deep but they are really very big and long because they smoosh down and spread out. So that in the end a nibble for water monster is actually very large bite for you and me.

V. You mean big like no more toes? or off at the knees?

J. Rather somewhere in the middle I think. Rather like off at the ankle but you might not realize it right away because he has very sharp teeth. So, you’d probably be trying to walk away and fall over flat on your face because you don’t have foot that you thought was there, only it wasn’t really there… And then maybe all of you would fall through the ice if you fall hard enough and that’s when he gets those nice big meals that keep him fed throughout the year.

V. OK, I’ll keep the tootsies out of the water!

J. Just dabble them in the edge while you lean over and put the boot in the deeper water. Then you can get your feet wet and not get your toes munched off—though I can’t guarantee your creak monster won’t have bigger teeth and take off your whole arm—and it will be all good. Save for the walking back to the car or trail head without two boots, which could prove problematic depending on what type of trail it is.

V. Yes, I can see myself limping back down the trail with one boot and one arm…

This conversation was conducted on DeviantArt between my friend vanilla-vanilla and myself krazysidhe. For it and other conversations feel free to hunt around, we hope you’ve enjoyed today’s installment.

conversation/What Students Are Drinking

Image Note: Recycling bin at school for drink cans and bottles. Among other things... apparently.

V. Ha hah... What!? Hey, dudes, who's drinking the hydrogen peroxide!

J. Hahaha, that's what I wanted to know. Along with all the alcohol on campus? Though that probably came from an opening event at the gallery down stairs, it still amused me.

V. Mmm, yes. The new martini? 2 oz gin, 1 oz vermouth and a splash of hydrogen peroxide?

J. It's quiet nice, I had one the other night. It has a wonderfully fizzy after taste that kind of lingers in your mouth like rabies. I was quiet sure that Mr. I.P. Freely over there was going to kill over the first time his date started foaming at the mouth, it was really quiet impressive.

V. Wow! "lingers in your mouth like rabies" OK, whew. I had to cover my mouth to keep from spewing tea all over the monitor...

J. *evil grins* I must admit I was rather proud of myself when that line came out. It just worked wonderfully. Just don't ruin your monitor that would be rather sad.

V. Yup, it was a great moment. Almost makes me wish I had been too slow with the hand-mouth coordination so I could have taken a picture of the spewage to post.

J. That would rather be funny in a sad kind of why, I must admit I was drinking coffee when I read that... tough, luckily I didn't get so bad.

V. Yes!

This conversation was conducted on DeviantArt between my friend vanilla-vanilla and myself krazysidhe. For it and other conversations feel free to hunt around, we hope you've enjoyed today's installment.

I Agree...

"I'm really increasingly disheartened by people pretending that digital technology creates real emotions. I'm tired of people saying, 'I have facebook friends.' I have friends." -- Alexie Sherman

Digital tech. has it's uses and its good things. But it becomes nothing more then a crutch. It creates emotions but really they don't last. I've been part of this digital world for over ten years now. I've thought I had good friends and maybe I did at the time. However, there isn't a single person I talk to regularly online any longer that I knew even a year ago, now.

There are two people that I keep in touch with off and one, but it's casual it doesn't really mean a great deal. Where as the people that I've kept in real life that I've become friends with in person, face to face. Some of them I've known for over ten years. They end up being the people that come and go, those that matter return. Now, perhaps this isn't always the case but it does seem to be a trend.

While networking and such online might be a great thing and have it's benefits. Reaching a diverse group of people,  more people around the world and such. However, much of it is changing, fleeting and unstable. It is just as easy to unfriend someone on facebook as it is to friend. After all what in the end does a friendcount mean when you don't even know anything about most of them, you just add them so it looks like you have lots of friends. It's an illusion, like people putting well known books on their book shelves in public rooms in their houses so that visitors think they've read them.

So much is a facade, perhaps even more so online then it is face to face. While, I use facebook and I find it fun at times and no offense to those of you that I enjoy talking with online and there are a couple of you. But I would rather have friends. This is a dichotomy that I become in creasing aware of the older I get. I used to think my online friends would be there forever. However, there comes a time when things change when those friends you thought would always be on the inside of your screen disappear. People do it in real life to, don't get me wrong. But what I have found is that people in real life come back and those who vanish from the ether rarely return and when they do... it's never the same.

Cherish those friends around you, make they last. Talk to people online be friends. But remember it's the people you can see, you can year and you can touch that really matter. The internet is but a crutch that allows us some measure of safety. It allows us not to be forced into the vulnerable situation of social interaction that can tie our stomach in knots and make us want to throw up. Living is tying yourself up in knots, it is throwing up a little, it is getting hurt and it is reaping the rewards for your nerves. vanishes

conversations/ABCD Soup

V. Nice branches... Poor tree!

J. Makes a nice image against the snow though.

V. It does make a good image. Hope the bigger trunk part has some branches, too...

J. I think it's probably dead, poor little thing. That was all of it there was. It's one of those smaller trees in a fairly dense canopied area, that probably will not make it to maturity because it hast to fight too hard to reach up high enough to get to the sunlight through all of the other trees.

V. Too bad, but, it happens...

J. It does and that is why we have cannibalistic trees because they feed off the decaying bodies of the young that have been spawned by themselves and their neighbors... Now there is an interesting theory for how we might cut down on over population. Follow natures example...

V. Ah, yes. It would work very well... Following natures, example, Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal". Scroll down for example to: A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

J. *chuckles* It has possibilities, though I suppose most would resort to cats and dogs first. Mmm Swift, I haven't had to delve into that in a long while.

V. Mmm, we could make a 3-meat stew! I'll bet that would sell.

J. Soup of the day ABCD!
A Baby, Cat and Dog Soup.
Just $2.99 A Bowl.

V. Wow! A bowl of 3-meat soup for under $3! Yay!

J. I know. That's what you get when you use cat and dog, though I suppose baby might up the price some...

V. !! Yes! Maybe that's why it's not $2.95...

J. Yes, those special four pennies added onto the end. Little do people know that they are actually the very secret intermediate that adds magic to our soup. We very carefully take those last four penny's and we add them to the tithe that we pay to hell. The one that allows us to add little baby's and defenseless animals to our soup without fearing four our souls. Instead we just put everyone else in jeopardy but FEEDING it to you. Mwahahaha!

V. Oh, wow! I'm seriously laughing all over... I love it! :rose: (Hmm, maybe someday 3-meat soup will appear in a deviation... "For only four cents, we throw in the baby, and you can take the bath-water home!")

J. It's guaranteed to cure all manor of allurements from the common cold to crabs and maybe even aids. Would you like to try some bath water now? Just remember you can not guarantee that your soul will survive in one piece.

V. Ah, yes...

This conversation in all it's glory and others took place over here, between vanilla-vanilla and myself. It has not in any way been edited for grammar or content but left as it originally appeared.

A Return To Nashville

Alright so last year we did the first annual Textiles Show, out in Nashville (and no, not Nashville, TN). And we decided to go ahead and do it again this year. Here are a few of the images from the show last year, just for the fun of it. ;)

The event takes place in a framing shop down there. It was fun to get out of town and the lady who runs the show is really nice. So it should be a lot of fun. Now, I need to finish up some things for the show. *laughs*

Anyway, the show should be fun. I think we're also going to try and have a few nicnaky things to sell as well. Since part of what the framing shop wants to do is sell things and a lot of our work isn't really the kind of things people out there buy. There was also talk of doing some demonstrations or something, but I'm not exactly sure what is going on with that.

Slide Show Event

So, I've shown you some of what went into putting this project together. Here's some of what went on that night. Most of these images are mine; however, there are a few that were taken by a friend of mine. I'll mark those. ;)

Here's some of the shots I took of the work it's self. Remember, is sort of a collage of memories and a visual representation of the way that we remember things. I've been thinking a lot about how we remember things lately. For example, I'll be talking with a friend about something that happened years ago and what she remembers of the event is completely different from my own memories. So, the idea was to create windows that are windows but overlap and cross over in a way that makes it no longer simply a window. The second and underlying idea was about childhood and reading books beneath blankets at night. So the piece is actually made out of old bedsheets, that are worn to the point of being see through. The slides represent a different sort of window, a visual window. That glimpse into another world that we get through memories and through books.

I'm not and wasn't completely happy with the lighting system for these piece. However, I did what I could with what I had at the time. Which was mainly four clip lights set up behind it. In the future, I think I'd prefer one main light or a more seamless lighting system.

The slide towers were created by Sara and Candace. Sara is the one in the window, Candace isn't in this set of images. They were created out of old slide trays, filled with slides and then lit from the inside and zip tied together. :)

Here's a few shots of people who came to the event, and of the larger space. And below are the images that were taken by my friend Mica (the girl in black in the first frame above in the center).

So my piece decided to fall down about half way through the night. This is me fixing it with the help of my friend Jim and my mom.

And then here are just a few more images, all of which were take by Mica. The first one is me wearing Amy's piece. The second one is Candace and the third one is Amy and Sarah, both wearing bits of Amy's piece. ;)

So, that's the update on that. Enjoy and I hope that your day or evening is a good one. ;)

Slide Show Project

Alright, so a bit late but so it goes. I spent last Thursday finishing up the piece for the 'Slide Show Project'. Here are a few of the work in progress images. I'll post some images from the event later or tomorrow. ;)

So this project has rather been in the pipe all semester, though of course everyone is just now putting things together for it. I guess that's the way things go. *chuckles*

Anyway, it started with the fact that the local university is scanning and decommissioning all of their slides, which they were then putting out on the free table. During the course of a number of conversations we decided it would be interesting to do something with all of these slides. As things progressed we ended up working with the Sculpture department in it as well, so it became a joint show between the textiles department and the sculpture department. :)

As you can see the event actually took place last Friday. ;) All things  considered the event went well. For being the end of the semester, the last day of finals.

Above the Creak Monster

V. You know it's lurking there, ready to grab any stray boots!

J. MUNCH!

V. Aaaagh! My $200 dollar boot! [dives in to retrieve the expensive snack...]

J. Do you make an even more expensive snack? How does your life compare in value to the half of a pair of $200 dollar boots?

V. Ah, OK, it took a couple of days to do the tally, and the verdict is... The boots are the most expensive part!

J. I don't know i would think that the feet are rather more irreplaceable then the boots.

V. Turns out, however, that I have magical feet that keep growing back after being chewed off. Only they always grow back in pairs, so I always have an odd number of feet. This week it's 7. I suppose I could even them out by having two chewed off at once, but that would still be odd.

J. Hahahah! Next time you should try and hand and see what happens with that. You may magically end up with an extra pair of helping hands for the trouble.

V. Ooh! Yes, then I'd have 7 feet and 4 hands, which would be a trifle odd...

J. Aye, it would be rather odd; however, it could be mighty useful as well, or they might just get in the way... I wonder if you could roll around on seven feet instead of walking. You'd probably end up going in circles and looking like a deformed clown balloon.


V. Wow! I'd almost like to try that, but people might be a little hesitant to approach me...

J. Ah but they would be so shocked and amazed by what you can do that their mouths would drop open all the way to the ground and their eyes would get big and round like dinner plates. Then you could roll up to them and go 'Boo' in a very small voice and they would fall over backwards. Thus you could approach them because they'd be in awe and unable to run away.

V. That would be quite a social advantage!

J. Not to mention always having a helping hand when you need it.

V. And helping feet, too. I would be a one-man dance team. Play two pipe organs at once.

J. You'd be a really great tap dancer and just imagine what you could do to the piano. I saw a duet one time that was two guys playing the piano at once, that was really neat.

V. Oh, yeah! Wow, I'd be like Fred Astaire, squared! Oh, and the piano... I'd be able to play all of the Schubert "piano, four hands" literature on my own... [Not sure if you know, but there's a whole genre of piano music for two people at one piano; it was popular in the days when people had pianos in their parlors and everyone knew how to play, so married couples and sweethearts often played such pieces, I think...]

J. I actually didn't know anything about that. But, I found that there was something very moving about watching two people playing together. There was something beautiful about it, even more then the dance piece that was going on--which wasn't overly inspiring.

 This conversation in it's entirety took place here and was conducted by vanilla-vanilla and myself along with a number of others that may eventually find their way here.

Furniture Sex and Fungi

V. A giant comb, and... Ooh, wait! What's that!? One ultra-rare photograph of picnic tables mating... :-) Wow, do they allow this stuff on DA?

J. I don't know. I think might have to put up a mature content warning on this one. I hadn't thought of that until you said something. Amazing, I captured that moment without seeing the obvious... I wonder how big we can blow up the image, print it and plaster it around campus. Everyone will be totally amazed! They won't know what hit them. Heheheheheh!

V. Great idea! Won't the faculty be surprised...

J. Unfortunately, I'm afraid we might have to include diagrams to that people truly understand what is going on. Other wise they just might miss the awesomeness of the moment and that would really be sad.


V. Ah, yes, must include the detailed, educational diagrams without which any discussion of other-species mating rituals is so incomplete.

J. People get so bogged down in the details that they can not truly comprehend... after all most do still firmly believe that such objects are inanimate and thus incapable of such actions. That, I know a great many people when faced with such a truth have not been able to handle it.

V. But now, with your photos and diagrams, and the video out there on the net, they'll just have to believe! It'll open a whole new world.

J. And then no one will ever believe that I managed to do anything else with my life in the future. Because all they will remember is mating pick nick tables.

V. Oh, yes! You do not want to be one of those authors/artists who do one really big thing and then everyone forgets that they ever did anything else. Like Carl Orff. J.D. Salinger. Harper Lee. Pachelbel... ;-) So, I agree. Better to bury the mating tables, and let someone "discover" it after you're gone. Then people will say, "Wow, that J did all of that and this fabulous undiscovered work, too!"

J. Of course then there is the risk that they will somehow try and name this variety of mating pick nick tables after you and that can be a rather scary thought as well.

V. ! :lmao: Oh, yeah! But that could be lovely, couldn't it? Doesn't every woman want to have a species named after her? ;-) (Hmm, OK, you have to wonder about guys who name gross little parasitic worms after their wives and stuff... I mean, a species of flower is one thing, but.)

J. "Honey, I'm home."
Kiss, kiss, "Welcome home, sweatheart. What did you do today?"
"Well... I got a surprise."
"Oh, what is it?"
"Here," Hands a photo.
"Mmmm... and what is this little wormy thing?" Tries to sound polite and interested.
"That my dear, is the new species I named after you today. Isn't it great," Pulls out a wad of papers from his pocket, "See, I have a certificate of authenticity and everything. You my lovely are looking at the new form of fungus, the Mildred. Or as I call her Milly for short."
Btw, on a side note these things are cool [link].

V. Yes! Exactly! The next frame is where she beans him with a frying pan! "Is that all I mean to you?" :crying: "Frank's wife got a new rodent named after her..."
And those fungi! Ooh, they look so incredibly ALIEN! Wow! And to think some of them are only
down the road from Santa Banana. I might be able to see some in real life.

J. Poor Bob, he just couldn't do much to please Mildred... besides it would've served her right to have a rodent named after her. Frank's wife was much to pretty to be named after a rodent but ahhh a fungi. She would make a beautiful one.
I know aren't they.

V. LOL, she would make a beautiful fungus...!

J. Fungi just have so much more class then those stinky pooping and eating little rodents.

V. LOL...!

This conversation in it's entirety took place over here, and it was conducted between vanilla-vanilla and myself.

Bob the Brownie Alien From Outer Space

V. Strange... What is it?

J. It's a little brownie house. Or perhaps it's the little alien's from outer space that just wanted to be left alone. So they came to earth and made themselves a little tiny house out in the middle of no where so that it could be left alone.

V. Very cool. Maybe you can hang around and try to get a photo of the little guys... Probably best not to poke 'em with sticks though... ;-)

J. Yeah they aren't very nice when they get mad. Their jaws elongate and then they have teeth that seem to come out of nowhere and they go ONOMNOMNOM!

V. But all those teeth do have their good points...

J. Aye true, they are very good for munching up limestone rock to get the minerals he's needs and for scaring off annoying woodpeckers that come to bother him. However, at least woodpeckers are as insistent as alien sales men are; all you have to do is show them a little teeth and they don't come back again.

V. I can see him now, baring teeth at the poor woodpeckers!

J. Oh yes, and if the woodpeckers aren't fast enough... well they are at least a mouth full. However he doesn't like the feathers because they get stuck in his teeth and it takes forever to gather each one of them up to bury. Because he can't just go around leaving mounds of feathers all over the place, people would start to wonder and being a recluse he'd rather not draw attention to himself. Besides he's much more a vegetarian most of the time--except when things piss him off and then he forgets how much he hates feathers in his teeth--but his favorite food is pond scum or river weed. It's nice an ripe.

V. Oh, I like this! I think you just about have yourself a once-upon-a-time story going here!

J. *grinz* I'm rather enjoying this. Now he just needs a name, something rather absurd but fun at the same time...

V. Yes, I'm sure you'll come up with a fun name. You're keeping track of all this, right? Maybe you have a smash hit in the making.

J. Lol yeah, keeping track of the comments. Lol not sure what to do with it yet but it's there. *chuckles*

V. Oh, good. Someday it'll all gel and you'll have something fine.

J. lol eventually the pygmy alien and the creak monster will meet and have beautiful children...

V. Oh, I can't wait to see 'em. Maybe I'll have to try drawing one. Oooh, a family tree...

J. Hahha... Would that be a pygmy creak monster? The one that fits in the little creak-lings and thus makes no place on earth truly safe from the creak monsters?

V. Yes! Pygmy creek monster!! LOL...

J. It runs around--because being part pygmy alien it can walk on land at least for a little while--trying to eat birds. Because it has decided that it like it's farther prefers bird to human; however, it's mouth is so small that it can not eat a whole bird.

The actual form of this conversation can be found here and was conducted by vanilla-vanilla, and myself.

Remember, 2010

So, the semester is mostly over now. The Textiles department in tandem with the sculpture department is doing a joint show at the end of the week. Well, this weekend I finally got down to work on the piece that I'm going to show there.

Over the course of the semester the school has been switching over to digital art images and discarded all of their slides. The Slide Show Project, us utilizing all of these discarded slides, and creating art objects that use them in some way.

I went through a fair number of project ideas, in trying to approach this project. Finally I settled with the idea of memory and the way that we remember things. The way that I remember things vs. the way that someone else will remember it and how that can change over time. The idea went with the image of a child reading a book at night under the covers.

Thus this project is made out of old bedsheets that have been sewn together to create a miss-matched window pattern across the surface. The second step is to sew a number of slides onto it. I'm going to go with the smaller sets of four and not the full pages of slides. This last stage is the one that I'm currently working on.

Teleporting and Nose Wiggling

V. The only problem with both of these concerts was the one-hour drive on either end of each concert so, all in all, it was not a very green weekend, and I feel guilty about that, so I'll probably stay around Santa Banana for a while, holding in my carbon emissions.

J. We really must perfect the teleportation device. Or strengthen our minds enough that we can do it with a Ooommm, a blink of the eye and a wiggle of our noses. ^_~

V. Yes! Teleportation! Knowing our universe, however, it would probably be more polluting than oil. Nose-wiggling, however, is probably entropically neutral, so to speak...

J. Physic pollution, everyone popping in and out here and there, falling on top of each other, exploding into each other in mid air. It would be a chaotic mess! And all that nose wiggling, man... people would start developing little twitches and itches that they couldn't control until their noses would start wiggling on their own. Then you'd have people who would start popping in and out of their houses at night while they slept because of their facial twitches. Though I suppose people popping themselves into oblivion is one way to deal with over population.


V. OMG! That really gave me a laugh. Wow, I guess people don't think about how chaotic it would be. Thanks for warning me before I hit the switch to turn on nose-wiggling in your universe!

J. *grins* I guess we'll just have to settle from some other--probably less entertaining--form of chaos.

The entirety of this conversation can be found here, and was carried on by vanilla-vanilla, and myself.