chair

This chair has been with my family for a long time. It was in every room I had when I was growing up and it had gotten very old and worn in my mom's house. She wanted to get rid of it for a new comfortable chair, and I had nowhere for it in my house. Of course I coerced her into keeping it, as is my nature. After a year of argument I accepted her creative compromise. She stripped it down to its skeleton, gave me a piece of the wonderful pink fabric, and we hauled the chair out to the edge of the woods behind her house, to rest between to maples. It looks suitably happy out there, and I'm glad to see it when I visit. 

1929 Singer

Under the beautiful domed wooden case tied with a little key on a rotted cord was this 1929 Singer sewing machine, covered in gold swirly ornament and shiny nickel plates. It's deceptively delicate looking with its wasp waist and voluptuous curves. I know this machine can kick ass with its all-metal parts and exterior motor, but to avoid any risk I took it to Newman's sewing machine repair in Springfield, MA before I even tried plugging it in. They say it's converted to electric from a treadle machine and would last me 100 years. She's still there, I can't wait to get her back to see how she runs. 

I was thinking that any machine I kept would have to be functional, but if this one wasn't I'd have a hard time not keeping it. I am most fond of the grape vine engraved in the nickel plate, as our name Wingerter comes from "vineyard" in German. It's a work of art.

dust

The two most intriguing cases from my grandmother's house. I hadn't looked in them since I found them.

My grandmother and me.

Ann

A prelude to the 6 sewing machines.

This is my father's mother, Ann, from who most of the sewing machines are from. She and my grandfather Bill started off in Roselle Park, New Jersey where they had my dad. They moved to upstate New York where Ann started a business as a dressmaker and seamstress. She seemed to be busy with work and lived a modest life in a small house after her son and husband passed away. It was unexpected money she left me that allowed me to buy my house and try to make it as an artist.

8 years later I'm trying to save this house by selling off some of her things and taking any jobs I can. The two most recent jobs, synchronistically, were stitching jobs, one with ElizaB, another at Yale. And though I am overcome with guilt for not having done better with the generous gift she left me, while I work at making straight stitches I take pleasure in thinking about how she loved sewing as much as I do, and how pleased she'd be about the skills I've learned. 

Pictures of Ann, Bill and my dad in Roselle Park and at the beach. They were a pretty good looking couple, and impeccably stylish. 

deus ex machina

The things I need to clear out of my attic have caused me a lot of anxiety, not the least of which are these 6 sewing machines I inherited from my mother and grandmothers. Nobody needs 6 machines, certainly, and I should get rid of at least half of them. However looking at them all together in a row is like looking at my maternal ancestry. I love them all as if they were my family. And they are such fine and sturdy machines, lost in a time when good plain mechanics and domestic arts are not nearly as valued as they were when these beauties were born. My whole life right now is revolving around these six as I try to determine their pasts and their futures. 

and then...

...poof, it's gone.

To comfort myself through this traumatic event I went to Vermont to stay with my mom for a few days. We walked to the top of Putney Mountain where there was a good view and about a dozen intensely focused people watching the sky for migrating hawks. 

order

I have to largely empty out my famous attic due to readjustments in living spaces. The biggest task yet was getting my long-collected and beloved fabric and sewing notions under control. That meant throwing out half of it, and categorizing the rest into see-thru plastic bins. It is a tremendous difference from what you might remember in previous posts on the ongoing subject of my chaotic attic (below).

Ophelia's dress

There were but a brief few years that I was a full time illustrator. Since 9/11 cut editorial and textbook work short I've always kept part time jobs on the side. One of my latest was assisting the costume designer of the Elm Shakespeare Company, which happened to be ElizaB. There was a lot of hand sewing and measuring of pants, and some more rare experiences, including one night when Alvin Epstein asked me to tie his bow tie for him before the dress rehearsal. Alvin is a most gracious gentleman and a venerated actor. As I was buttoning his collar with great sense of importance, I had a moment of wondering how I came to be here tying the tie of Alvin Epstein. And the answer is: with the same luck and chance as I've come to do all the other wonderful things I've gotten to do, all generated by the annoying fact I haven't been able to make it on children's books alone.

During that job I also got to help ElizaB distress this shiny new red dress of Ophelia's for Hamlet, which was a damn lot of fun. And both Hamlet and Matchmaker which she designed were beautiful. 

A list of jobs I can remember doing, starting at 9  years old:

motel chambermaid
farmhand
Paramount Pictures ticket checker

bed & breakfast waitress
movie theater popcorn seller & janitor
gourmet produce store clerk
stage hand
fleamarket waitress
wedding caterer's waitress & prep cook
photographer's assistant
children's theater camp councilor
historical reenactment supply store clerk
library book shelver
gift store clerk
river boat waitress
restaurant hostess
theater sound & light board operator
set painter
dish washer
theatrical house manager & company manager
artist driver

house & pet sitter
puppeteer
fire dancer

puppet builder

theater usher
assistant stage manager
university puppet teacher
high school circus teacher

head shop clerk
elementary school visiting artist

go go dancer

roller disco dancer
community dance residency project manager
assistant costumer (and bow tie tie-er)

costume shop stitcher

If anyone remembers any more let me know. 

drawing

RISD professor and artist Fritz Drury just published a book on drawing and put in a couple of my student pieces. It's crazy to see these self portraits again so many years later. It makes me remember how much pleasure I could get from drawing just for the sake of drawing.

Fritz can explain light and color and paint better then anyone, he is an incredible teacher, and this big fat excellent book is filled with fascinating drawings from masters to students. 

stillness

“A great master does not move his puppet if there is no reason to do so.”
Japanese Bunraku instruction manual

interlude

I have a thirsty fish in me
that can never find enough
of what it's thirsty for.

Show me the way to the ocean.
Break these half-measures,
these small containers.

Let my house be drowned in the wave
that rose last night out of the courtyard
hidden in the center of my chest.

The harvest I expected was washed away.
But no matter.

A fire has risen above my tombstone hat.
I don't want learning, or dignity,
or respectability.

I want this music and this dawn
and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

The grief-armies assemble,
but I'm not going with them.

This is how it always is
when I finish a poem.

A great silence overcomes me,
and I wonder why I ever thought
to use language.
Rumi

A

Wilson

This is Wilson. He moves very fast all the time and only 2 out of 100 photos of him aren't blurry. He was born about May 29th at Wender Bender's house. He is a nephew to ElizaB's most wonderful cats. I named him Wilson because he looks like a tiny soccer ball when he lies on his back, which he does a lot. He's the most gregarious sort of kitten, and everyone adores him, especially the dogs. Only Mojo, who I brought him home for, is wary. But I think it will pass when the wildness of kittenhood wears off a little. He's got a bad habit of clawing everything, including my body, everywhere. I've been sporting a chelsea grin scar on my face courtesy of Wilson. But his extraordinary charming personality surpasses all his flaws,

interlude

Drumsound rises on the air,
its throb, my heart.

A voice inside the beat says,
"I know you're tired,
but come. This is the way."
Rumi

red panda

Somewhere I just read, Rule #1 of the Independent Woman: Don't Go To Art School. I hope that's not true. 

Just in case it is, here is this photo of a red panda that makes me inexplicably cheerful. 

wheeled prayers

Rollergirls and people in wheelchairs wheeled around the New Haven Green fountain on June 28 as part of the closing ceremonies of the Arts & Ideas Festival. We carried some of the of the prayer ties that had been inscribed by members of the community over months of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's 613 Radical Acts of Prayer residency. Thousands more ties came in with dancers on bamboo walls. Jayne Bondage, Disco Nugget and Andy Chase in the dress rehearsal, below. 

mourning

Last Sunday morning I found my cat Cheesy on my back porch looking very bad. Karl and I rushed him to an emergency vet in Shelton where they told us his odds weren't good. I knew by the way he was looking at me in the car that this was it. It was the first time, in all the dozens upon dozens of horses, cats and dogs my family has had to put down, that I had the courage to be there. I held him during the injection and felt his last struggle (he always hated to be held), then felt his body finally let go.

Karl gave me Cheesy on the day I finished my first professional illustration assignment 11 years ago when we were living in a basement in Lyme. He was with us a long time. Anyone who has been to my house knows he was quite a character. I've still not adjusted to him not being here.

This poem was read in church today.

Curiosity
may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die–
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

Alistair Reid

gold

On Tuesday my friends took me on a night drift through New Haven for my birthday. We were all stopped short by the window of Artspace radiating a gold glow into the darkness of Crown Street.


I was tired and distracted and might not have looked more carefully, but my fascinated friends lingered long enough for me to notice the San Marco Annunciation tucked high in the left corner. I've learned to always pay keen attention whenever that painting shows up.


And upon closer inspection of the window I found these gold scarabs,


and this gold dress,


gold shoes,


and my friends pointed out this dove was only one of 3 or 4 things not gold.



I love this window.

photographs and mountains

Kathleen McTigue gave a moving sermon at USNH this morning.

She told a story about meeting an older woman at the top of Mt Adams, who, upon reaching the peak, hurriedly got out her camera and took a dozen photos while turning 360 degrees. When asked why she said this was her habit: she loved to hike but had become nearly blind and could not see the view. But she would later be able to look at the photos up close and see the beauty of where she'd been.

I'd just seen a tv show about a man who takes blind teenagers mountain climbing. He said you don't need sight to experience the unique awesomeness of being on top of a mountain, that you can feel the elevation, and you can hear the immenseness around you that is unlike anywhere else on earth.

I think sometimes what we are experiencing is so grand that while we are experiencing it we can't see it at all. Some things are too big to see from the inside. Memories and photographs show the details of things we want to identify, but not until after we've come down from the mountain.

While you're up there just pay attention, take some pictures, and trust that you'll be able to name it another time.

It's time to revisit Rilke:

Do not observe yourself too much. Do not draw too hasty conslusions from what happens to you; let it simply happen to you.... Your life...of which I think with so many wishes. Do you remember how that life yearned out of its childhood for the "great"? I see that it is now going on beyond the great to long for greater. For this reason it will not cease to be difficult, but for this reason too it will not cease to grow.

interlude

"...children, do new things!"
- Richard Wagner