ladders

Playing around with the Hipstamatic while at work, my three rolling ladders: Sly, Slim, and Hurley. I am very fond of them.

movie making

I've been spending way a lot of time making promo videos for Luna's Sea. The show has its own YouTube channel now, Giant Pink Octopus. (I like to pretend I pawn all this work off onto my puppet cast, I feel somehow less overwhelmed!) Here is a new one, much better then the first. I still have a lot to learn, but I'm enjoying figuring these out.

We aren't selling as many tickets as expected, but the reaction from our audience is far beyond what I'd dared hope for. The kids have been completely engaged for all 40 minutes, which I wasn't sure was possible for such a broad age range. I'm getting emails from parents saying their children keep talking about Luna. I'm busting butt to keep this show alive, because I know it's got the wings to fly.

glow

Just after a 2 month crash course in UV effects with fluorescent materials and blackight for Luna's Sea, I was asked by Peaceable Kingdom to make a glow in the dark card. That is so awesome! It's a fairy birthday party of course. I never get tired of the fairies. Rough sketches.

Two-Woman Solo Art Show

A year after that Scion street art showing in front of Koffee on Audubon, I have a show up inside proper. All of the I AM ink on wood paintings are there (thank you Koffee for being cool with breasts!) and some children's book paintings. It's a first time coming together of my two art personalities, Linda and Polly. I titled it Two-Woman Solo Art Show. One of my first hang outs in New Haven, I love this place, so happy to have my work there. It feels like coming full circle somehow.

my kingdom for one horse

I had a weekend full of the most marvelous horses. First, exquisite, massive, glorious horse puppets of the Handspring Puppet Company in Warhorse at Lincoln Center. I've never seen puppets or a show like that. I can't come close to describing it, so you should just go watch the trailer.

Then helping out with my friend's remarkable horse at a historical camping event for three days. My hands and nose were full of horse. It had been a long time. It's hard to get a horse off of you if you dare to let it set in long enough.

Time’s tailor has never made a robe for anyone
without then slashing it to pieces.
See how the million fools of this world
pay heaps of gold for pain.
How can you go on gazing at the body’s dust?
Search out the horseman of the Soul

and see the horseman at the center of this dust storm!

Articulate Hand NYC

The show about hands created and performed by the remarkable Andrew Dawson is coming to the NYC World Science Festival on June 3rd. The stories of people with hand disabilities are performed to their recorded interviews. I shudder to hear my silly voice, but the performance he does with it is marvelous. Tomorrow I'll finally get to see it in person and be on the talk back panel which also includes the guy who does hand transplants!

I met Andrew when I was his driver during last year's International Festival of Arts & Ideas. He was one of the nicest artists I've ever chauffeured in my 5 years there, and his unusual one man performances are stunning. Everyone should go see this tomorrow at Galapogos Art Space in Dumbo. Find tickets through www.worldsciencefestival.com.

reentry

I'm back from the hermit retreat with a full heart, renewed spirit, and a little bit of paradise still on my shoes that I'll keep tracking wherever I go in this fast and noisy regular-world. Wow how fast and noisy!

Life went on here pretty well without me, and I'm catching up by playing with some video clips for a Luna promo. I still can't figure out how to get a nice looking video on youtube, but this gives you an idea what it looks like under Luna's Sea.

silence

In my medieval-obsessed youth I was always most fascinated by the monks who lived in silence, doing things like illuminating manuscripts and growing herbs. I thought that would be an excellent life. But my own life has always been pretty far from that. Especially the last few years. It's been a long, frantic, overly-public, noisy road. Not entirely unwelcomed, but I need a break! Now I'm going westward into the hills to follow my heart's true desire. I'm excited to experience a monastic setting, work in a garden, and live in silence. I'll be back at the end of the month.

In the meantime, I hope all you passers-by are finding your own illuminated road to your own heart's desire. Tally-ho, travelers!

the incomprehensible silence

Oh man am I tired. Getting Luna's Sea up took the energy of a hurricane. I don't have a lot left, and I need the amount it would take to power 3 hurricanes to accomplish all I have to do this summer.

But this week I threw it all to the wind and got back to my ink on wood paintings which I've missed. This is the first sentence in the Nag Hammadi poem, so coincidentally appropriate to this week's Illustration Friday theme "beginner". And because I'm about to go on a 10 day silence retreat in upstate New York, hoping it re-engergizes me for the good work I've got ahead.

These wood panels I paint under the name Polly Sonic will be on view at Koffee on Audubon this June, along with my acrylic illustration work. The show I'm calling a "Two-Woman Solo Art Show". Maybe the only one that's ever been!

Luna!

Yesterday was the second preview show of Luna's Sea, a full stage 40 minute puppet/dance/blacklight show I wrote, built, co-directed with Cornerstone Playhouse in collaboration with the Mystic Aquarium. I'm so lucky that this show came out great because of choreography and performance by the Moon, (otherwise known as Christine Poland), the main character of Luna (Irish step dancing world champion Kaitlyn Kuvalanka), expert direction by Karl Gasteyer, poetic voice over by Keely Baisden, puppet building help by Jen McClure, and 5 incredible young puppeteers, mostly high school students: Weston, Ali, Kim, Felicia and Erica. Just looking at this list of people, plus even more people who helped and donated supplies along the way, (including my mum Judy Wingerter who I worked to the bone, and my friend Harry Johnson who helped with costumes) I'm humbled with immense gratitude. Pictures from dress rehearsal off the Luna blog. We officially open this Saturday, April 30th. I'm ridiculously tired from the months of push it took to get this up, but really happy with how it came out.

Luna

I've been away from Antinomia due to total immersion in a big project. Luna's Sea is a feature length puppet and dance show I'm creating for Cornerstone Theater and the Mystic Aquarium. Luckily, I have some really talented and generous friends helping out, because with this one I'm in way over my head. As in, at the bottom of the ocean! It's great.

Luna has her own blog over here, and a facebook page here.

A photo from rehearsal, with Luna resting after a long session of being tossed by waves.

art show

Jennifer Duff came upon my blog a few months ago when she was looking for information about making braided jean rugs, and it just so happened she is a gallery owner with an interest in children's art, and it just so happened I live about 5 miles from her gallery. I love the internet.

She graciously gave me the opportunity to have a solo show this month at her space, the Davis Gallery. I took full advantage and made it a retrospective with 37 originals from all 7 books, two Cricket Magazine covers, and a few from Peaceable Kingdom cards and posters. Counting up the years in order to properly title the show, "Painted Pages: 15 Years of Children's Book Art" was a little daunting. So was the framing, so I called my mum who cheerfully came down and matted all weekend. We took over pretty much the whole house.

The show is really nice and so is Jennifer's family who helps her run the gallery. My work is up in the main space until April 11, and stays in the second gallery until May.

My mum never lets me take her picture, but Pip does!

sand mandalas

Yesterday I went to a fundraiser at the Unity Church of Great Hartford for the exiled Tibetan monks of the Drepung Gomang monastery in India. I haven't seen the sand mandala touring monks since the event at RISD 17 or so years ago which I blogged about here. I don't know if they were from the same monastery, but I was even more excited to find that they were showing people how to draw with sand, and letting the Unity Church community make 3 mandalas of their own, which they then swept up and poured into the earth (lacking a traditional river). They blessed a mala for me, and participated in a rousing session of "laughter yoga" and one of the Dances of Universal Peace led by my sufi friend Amina, both of which were a first for me too. And as if the day wasn't great enough, I followed it all up by trying a burger off the gluten free menu at the 99 Restaurant. Yes, a gluten free menu at a chain restaurant! What a day!

Photos from the fundraiser including the community made mandalas, and the stacked hats and robes of traveling monks.

I still can't believe my eyes!

The Articulate Hand

I keep having the good fortune of running into people who somehow specialize in hands. This summer, as my fourth year as an Artist Driver for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, one of my favorite people to drive was the extraordinarily lovely Andrew Dawson of Space Panorama who I blogged about before. His newest work is The Articulate Hand, in which he used audio from an interview Tony Baloney and I made about our hands. You can hear me put to original music here on the show's website. But there are other pieces about other people with far more dramatic and inspiring stories about their hands. The performance Andrew did to this track is beautiful. He uses a broken pencil to tell the story of my roller derby injury. I hope it comes to the US!

Photo from Andrew's website.

kid review

Pat Zietlow Miller keeps a blog with book reviews by children, and 9 year old Anneka just reviewed Chiru. I love this picture a lot. Thank you Pat and Anneka!

ringing in the new

I don't wear much jewelry, but since I wore through my Sator Square sundial ring I got for 5 bucks in Rome many years ago, I've been purchasing some small wearable token every couple of years when a new phase is beginning. Usually these are found on drifts, wandering through stores with a vague idea until synchronicity leads me to the thing I know is meant for me. Most I've found at my friend Raphael's mesmerizing Group W Bench in New Haven. This time I had something very specific in mind: a hand made ring with a winged heart. Not finding one in town, I got obsessive on the internet. There were some nice manufactured versions, but none felt authentic enough. Then I found Jen Hilton's website, and there it was, delicate, modest, lovely, in the size I was seeking. Jen makes her jewelry the way I look for jewelry, and it shows. This little ring was made to be on my finger. Thank you, Jen! I've added her to my Makers links on the right.

mermaid reel

And a little promo video for the mermaid:

splash

Matica Arts asked me to provide some living statue entertainment for Hartford First Night. I'd never done a living statue, but I said yes, thinking it would be an opportunity to make some headway on a mermaid vending machine I'd been desiring to build. Of course I found time shorter then expected, and the week before looked at this pile of things from around my house and wondered: can I make myself into a mermaid with this? Well yes, yes I can!

The Zoltar fortune machine from Big has been kicking around in my subconscious for a long time. When I saw this movie I wanted to be the mechanical puppet in the box:

And I've been fascinated by this picture in my costume reference book at work. Why aren't there actual dresses like this around?

So with the idea of a hoop skirt, I started building my tail and rock out of foam and hardware cloth.

In 2 days of frantic non-stop, possessed, furious, bloody, and somewhat divinely fortuitous building, this mermaid came out, and the 4 hours I spent in front of the Old State House in Hartford on New Year's Eve was one of the best performance experiences I've ever had. Hundreds and hundreds of people, all with completely positive reactions and some wonderfully startled encounters. It was heaven, even if it was pretty cold to be standing statue-still all afternoon.

I got on the local news. They captioned me "Polly Sonic, MERMAID".


I made the top front page of the local paper.

And these were some other photos taken by Andrew Hart from the Hartford News.

So she's not a fortune telling vending machine yet, I still have to figure that part out. But she's already booking appearances, next at the Yale Center for British Art in February. I can't wait to take her out again.