Footprints and Words
#121: Here and Now, Art, Jill Paz, Jordan Nassar, Fran Lebowitz, American Artist, Juan Manuel Portillo, Nile Rodgers and Chic, Art Ranger, and Boyce Avenue.
HERE AND NOW
Except for some editing work and this newsletter, I am happy to have nothing on my calendar for today: no meetings (especially no ZOOM), no events, and no doctor appointments. So I’m keeping it simple.
We leave our footprints and our words scattered in the sand. Each day, life comes along and revises them—bit by bit—before the tide comes in and a new story begins.
ART
I was all set to start painting in acrylics again, but my allergies are in overdrive, and my skin seems to have developed a sensitivity to the paint fumes. Who would’ve thunk it? I can barely smell the stuff. But my skin is telling me different. While I figure out what to do next, here are two tiny ink and watercolor drawings on handmade paper.1 The drawing on the left incorporates babayin script as asemics.2
RABBIT HOLE
Jill Paz is a Manila-based artist who studied art in Canada and the United States. She discusses her interior/exterior emotional landscapes on balikbayan cardboard and colors inspired by jet-lagged mornings.
Palestinian artist Jordan Nassar combines landscape and embroidery to explore the “possibilities of Palestine” in the minds of diaspora Palestineans who have never been there.
Sophie Vershbow writes about author “Fran Lebowitz’s Digitally Unbothered Life.”
“American Artist’s ‘Black Gooey Universe’ Decodes the Tech World” (article by Mebrak Tareke in Frieze). See also the Eyebeam Oral Histories interview with American Artist, on PeerTube (a Fediverse alternative to YouTube).
Banksy’s got nothin’ on this guy. Juan Manuel Portillo, poet, performance and “Sidewalk Artist.”
SOUNDINGS
There’s a reason why these songs are still around and making us dance. Funky fun from Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Nile Rodgers with his band, Chic:
From the Art Ranger’s Department of Homeland Inspiration: Part 1 of “My California,” inspired by a life-changing biking adventure across America and a prompt from California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick. And while you’re there, check out Part 2.
Naturally, we gotta end with California Dreamin’ performed by Boyce Avenue (written by John Edmund Andrew Phillips / Michelle Gilliam Phillips):
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Beautiful paper made by Melissa and Jeff Smedley.
Asemics: writing without content. At this point in time, I am unable to read babayin, but I can appreciate it for its aesthetic qualities.