Click on the image it's so dang big.

SamSamland Welcomes you This Friday!

I'm trying to get back to the place where I didn't have to hate you to get through the day.

Sam Weber and Jillian Tamaki

I cannot stop looking at the art of Sam Weber and his wife, Jillian Tamaki. Below are some of my favorites of Sam's. Aspiring to be this great.

To Create a Thing

Creating

Is being alive

Is placing that all familiar thing:

Hands in the handle of a hammer

Baby-finger grasps on a wand of charcoal

Or oil pastel,

Words in waiting on the tongue like

Pools of water in ready leaves

Shiny and waxen.

Some white hot heat

Warming the soul

At its pouring out

Onto paper or canvas

Or crowds of faces

The air around you

Heavier with the weight of

The uncreated things

That you carry

Waiting for you to be ready for them

And to sing

Nowness.

I am obsessed with this video. Just some stills that really struck me.

http://www.nowness.com/day/2011/2/8/elle-fanning-x-rodarte-by-todd-cole

Abraham, a Promise

I see you in my mind

Standing before me

Immovable

The way you think of stones

As always there and never leaving

Water and earth and plant

Carving and sifting and growing around

The thing that will not change

And you are that,

But you are not a stone.

Stones have not the eyes to see

Nor the ears to hear,

The tongues to speak

Yet you stand before me

Opaque

Phantom thick with darkness

And I listen to everything

That you have to say

And you can only move

Will only leave

If I reach at your base

And claw at the things around you

Loosening the tension

The roots that you have in me

Stone by stone

Moving the mountain.

B-Side

The voice of the LORD was deep and smooth with bass

And the fire crackled like a record

That perfect circle of completion

Black as the pitch of my heart

The face of God like the harmony-laden grooves

Valleys that I could dwell in all my days

Feet naked so as to be as close to feeling

The sound of that voice echoing in the groaning clay

Allow me to stand you up and dust you off

Hallowed and ancient.

Any place the needle hits

Will do

And will echo deep

Mother

Mother used to be wild,

Red hair curling and

Long for us to grab hold of.

And now she is smoothed, shiny bob

Ordinary

Like the glossed image of a magazine

Set dull on the rack.

She used to greet us on the sea shore

Turning up the sand, the shells

The wind in her hair and the sun on her skin

Freckled. Dawning

Clay bead necklaces

Made by our play dough hands.

Now she is all pearls and quiet hues

A defiant repose.

Mother is just a word

And Woman stands in her place

Like Homes become mere Buildings

A murder told in fiction

To save from the tragedy of its far worse fact.

Jones Soda.

My friend Stuart Dum took this picture of me holding a gallery promotion that I'm offering. Go to my Kickstarter page and donate to the project and I'll print custom bottles with a picture and personal message of your choosing that will be offered as a refreshment at the gallery opening. Fun.

Collaboration: Project House

I have been collaborating through email with the lovely Jamie Lew (twitter.com/projecthaus) and this is one of the three costume designs she cooked up for me for the show. These are the witches, designed with powerlines in mind. I would love if this design could be made, but thinking realistically, it might need to be scaled back. Regardless, here she is:

Passage, a Psalm

Do you read it

Or do you cup it in

Your hands

Like water from a cool spring

Pale,

Blue, and

Shining.

A glassy sheet

Reflective,

Knowing,

And yours

If you take it.

Jamie.