foto by smith
real time reality. i woke yesterday knowing we were moving to chicago in 6 weeks. i woke this morning moving to mexico instead. like that 1959 dinah washington song – “what a difference a day makes.”
better mexico city blues than chicago old cold. keep the adventure going. after morocco, chicago won’t do. we’re both happier going south instead of north, to strange instead of same. we’ll be The Lone Estrangers. now, who’s Tonto, and who’s Toto?
Lady K hung her first one-woman show last night. she gathered the trash and objects, carried them from country to country, sought out strange art supply shops in myriad foreign tongues, made the pieces, mailed a lot of them home from behind the old iron curtain, laid out the show, hung it, named and priced em, and documented the lot. lot of folk don’t realize what a show entails. and that’s not including the networking up front to establish contact in the first place. art’s not all tormented romantic miscreants painting nude dwarfs in paris garrets – sometimes it’s mad elves running naked screaming through the mist, sometimes it’s nice talented ladies like lady.
anyway OFFWORLD opens this friday, runs 2 months. it’s 23 assemblages she made in London, France, Croatia, and Cleveland. it’s a good show.
i’ve helped 3 folk through the fine door of art – my dead brother Cat Smith (1957-87), my dead mother Mother Dwarf (1926-2005), and Lady K (1972-whenevertheworldrunsout). fine artists all. i captured them all by showing them how much fun it was – making assemblage art’s really recess for adults, where play is process, process play.
i’ve left art pieces, poems, books, and artists in the world along the way that weren’t there before i ambled by. plus i’ve paid poets, twice – actual real spendable money. that has got to cut some serious slack in purgatory.
i’ve been way wild and wicked too, which may say serious sentence instead. so ‘all that’ minus ‘all this’ equals ‘whatever they want it to be’ – my sentence being the remainder or the reminder, i miss which.
i don’t expect purgatory though, because i agree with the gnostics: hell is this now, our life on earth. which means we’re way past any potential purgatory problem.
CoolCleveland.com was kind enough to propagate this cyber ink:
The Smiths
No, not Morrissey & Co. Favorite local artists Steven B. Smith (poet/writer of Artcrimes) and Kathy Ireland Smith are back in town for a stretch. Fri 10/19 at 6PM, her exhibition OFFWORLD: the art of Kathy Ireland Smith is served up at Brandt Gallery, 1028 Kenilworth Ave. http://www.Brandtgallery.org. The following night Sat 10/20 at 7:30PM, they both close an exhibition by Jeff Chiplis and others with a poetry reading at Arts Collinwood Gallery, 15605 Waterloo Rd. http://www.artscollinwood.org. And they wrap up the weekend Sun 10/21 at 3PM with the “On The Road†City Poetry Contributors Reading hosted by Kathy at Mac’s Backs Bookstore — part of a weekend festival celebrating Jack Kerouac and On the Road. 1820 Coventry Rd. Cle Hts. http://www.macsbacks.com.
foto by smith