To Live On

I always feel a bit of bittersweetness at the close of August. I have a bit of nostalgia concerning shopping for school supplies and returning to classes ( powerful lectures are a favorite). I'll miss riding my bike around out here in the Mid-west, searching for thistle and spider webs, watching for bats and the dark birds that perch on the tall summer grass. I truly enter a weird period of mourning at the close of summer. Despite living in a very dark loft, I love long days of light and nights perfumed by the day's residual sunshine Yet, Autumn is a favorite time, teeming with an unnamable magic. I'm sure some of you may feel this too, even if you are a night crawler as well.

September is the hardest month for me to get through, as it concerns the sea of grief I have carried inside me since 2008 when I lost someone important in my life ( which subsequently, as some of you may know, brought about the birth of BloodMilk).
Which brings me to this series of work, 'To Live On', by Korean born, Berlin based artist Ming Jeong Seo. His work flares with that same electricity of opposites I'm always drawn to; the beautiful and the grotesque shouldering against one another in the same narrative space. Death is being challenged here, perhaps even cheated, for a while anyway.

I was reading an essay in the new issue of 'Creative Non Fiction' by writer Suzanne Roberts, concerning her personal analysis of grief. She likens grief to having the texture of water, describing it as a well that only more grief gets poured on top of, something I've noticed myself when trying to describe it, although as she says, grief seems only fitting for metaphor:

"The way we recognize a musical score-by its scales, the repeating notes-is similar to the way we recall grief. A musical score can transport us to another time and place, as if the music has always lived inside us; in the same way, one grief recalls another"

 I do not like having to carry grief around, or the knowledge that I will be piling other griefs onto this deep one I already have like a black hole inside me. However, as Suzanne mentions, "All life leads to death, so why is it so hard to imagine?."

I think these roses, temporarily suspended between life and death, explain my personal struggle so perfectly. This netherworld, this liminal space, is rife with sorrow and the knowledge of our fragility, but it is also teeming with beauty. Here, death is creeping up those shriveled stems and yet, still hard to imagine when gazing at those waterlogged blood clouds of petals.

*5*

It is hard to believe I have let nearly 2 months go by without checking in here. This silence is a testament to a few things; the summer was particularly tumultuous (both in happy ways, and a few unfortunately gloomy ones as well . . .). I am forever thankful for the growth Blood Milk has been experiencing this year and hope to get back to sharing here more regularly as I learn how to carry on running an independent business on my own.

In lieu of this, today marks a kind of anniversary for my jewels, a kind of endless circle & I wanted to honor this special 'birthday.' Today marks the 5 year anniversary that my father, Richard Schnabel, left this world. 

As a child, I was always attracted to the 'darker' side of life, having gotten glimpses into what I believe can only be described as an 'otherness.' It wasn't however until the sudden passing of my father under tragic circumstances and the subsequent pit of grief that I fell into afterwards that I truly became obsessed. I have often talked about how Blood Milk was born from this dark place, how I needed to find a way to comfort myself. While the intensity of my grief has waned, it is still from this liminal place, that most of my work is created. I am still seeking a way to verify if there is the possibility of an afterlife, if there is a way to more tangibly carry on a relationship with those that have departed our earthly plane.

I could not imagine how, in the last 5 years, making jewelry for myself as a way to cope became something I would be able to do to support and sustain myself. I am grateful to have your support and kindness over the years, I place a lot of value on community and have been awed by how much the one I am involved in has grown. 

Thank you, always, for meeting me here. 

the multiverse part ii.

I posted a couple of years ago about wonderful collage artist Lola Dupré, in relation to new findings on the idea of a multiverse (which still simultaneously snares me as well as makes my skin crawl. have you seen 'Another Earth'?) 

Since then, Lola's work seems to have taken a giant leap into the magical landscape of fellow collage artist Chris Berens (something about their figures feels akin). While these new beauties bare the signature markings of Lola's previous work, ( shattered images oddly reassembled rather than the traditional method of collage: amalgams of multiple existing works to create something both strange and new (MAX ERNST,)) these feel different to me, more mature. The pre-existing images are from photographer Lisa Carlotta & live and breath quite well on their own; but here, they have a more sharpened potency. They are almost inhuman in their exaggerations, images from circus mirrors of ourselves, and carry a quite melancholy in their fractured features. 

My feelings on collage stem from a certain peculiar feeling of deformity I've carried along like a phantom limb for most of my life. When I was just about to enter the teenage wasteland, I had a sizable tumor removed from my sternum. This not only left me with the weird, lingering sensation of 'the medical gaze,' but also left my ribcage and sternum a bit re-arranged. The physical deformity is mostly noticeable to only me, but the psychic landscape of this fracturing has always left me feeling a bit distorted, a bit at odds with the dark terrain of my shape, a bit on edge with those things that are perfect & polished. 

If there is a parallel world or universe, I wonder if my other 'other self' feels the same. I wonder if she knows how to re-assemble. If she knows how to move on, to feel whole, to become new.

the moment before it happens.

lately, i've been having a hard time writing anything that feels good. truly, it has been a few years, but this slow strangle seems to have accelerated recently. it is something i am clawing my way back to. 

in lieu of more wayward words, here is an astonishing short film by christopher frey. 

365.

today marks the one year anniversary of my signing the lease on my beautiful loft. moving out on my own has been life changing & while i'm still transitioning (both in terms of physically setting up this giant space & emotionally; as i lived in my last place for 13 years...) the past 365 days of truly thriving in my own landscape, deciding and directing my own fate, has been so special & important for me.

here is a little image that's of part of my bedroom and includes meaningful treasures from some of my favorite artists:

senace sculpture: jessica dalva

small drawing: amy earles

as well as a collection of special objects below the bell jars, such as a palmistry hand that was given as a  gift the first time i made a big move on my own, a small bee that landed perfectly (& died of natural causes) in my last bedroom several springs ago, a dental casting i picked up on my first trip to SF & small flat stones i collected from the beach in hyeres while i lived there.

scavengers.

there is a strange melancholy to taxidermy that draws me to it though i also feel a bit repelled/unsettled by it, especially in the case of taxidermy birds. last year around this time i visited jones beach in long island and came upon a seagull skeleton (sans head & feet, oddly.) it's wings were spread open, the few remaining feathers swayed with phantom life in the cold wind coming off of the sea. its entire ribcage had been picked clean and rose from the sand like an abandoned cathedral. it was an immense time of uprooting and tumult for me, coupled with the excitement of a new life, & the end of winter, the promise of spring looming like a nearly ungraspable dream.  

there is something about these birds by jane howarth that reminds me of this moment where i crouched in the sand, bundled in winter clothes, examining the remains of something that had once soared. i am interested in how these birds are either "stuffed" with netted sheaths of hair, strands of pearls or curled roses shaped by ribbon, or are completey cloaked, as in this last one, seemingly corseted into what resembles a kind of straight jacket. this juxtaposition of immense beauty and madness embodied by dead, winged vessels, transports me to this time where i stood on the cusp of sea and land on the island where i was born.