it's been a long few months... my sister's wedding and now the reception are behind me... and i feel like things are lightening up time wise... and in other ways too. it's summer again and i am ready for all that means. prepared soak in the sunshine. i have two shows coming up in june and july. i'll have more information on them here in the coming weeks. both are in mpls... in fun locales! 


i enjoy the way browsing back through my photos snapped during the previous months consistently shakes out some sort of "theme" that i wasn't aware was there. i guess it's lights now... 

oh! and i sold this~ that always fuels my excitement for studio time... and i have a lot of ideas bubbling up anyway. it'll be a busy month plus of painting and showing! 

i've grown to hate words... the way they ring in my ears when they feel good or bad... the way i long for them... the way i never have the right ones when i want them... the way they never seem to be enough to describe a feeling or a situation... the way you can never take them back... language in general irks me and yet it's everything

actions speak louder than words, they say... it's so cliche i wish i hadn't written it... and i wish i could understand it. do they? i am a feeler. i feel my way through life. most of what i see and do and express is via images... is that a cop out? i grow increasingly frustrated by this giant gap i find between reality and words. there are too many things that happen without comment. there are too many people that deny reality with a simple sentence or dismissive phrase. this is without considering language barriers or dialects... social discrepancies or standing... even the people we think we know best... when plopped in front of us... will lie... unknowingly with their words... for all the same reasons i mentioned. i wish so badly that there was some way to just mash our brains together... and understand. understand everyone. i wish what was in my head... and my heart... could be in yours... without hours of explaining. 

there are a few people i have met in my lifetime... that could speak to me. some of them with their words... and some of them with their hearts. i can only hope that they understand that... with my pitiful reciprocal language. it seems to me... the people i want to express myself to most... get the worst of me. when everyone else gets my soul. 

i guess all of this stems from my recent trip to jamaica for my sister's wedding. i feel like i was an observer for most of the trip. a fly on the wall... which is odd for me... i know i should be feeling and thinking so many things. but in reality i just filed it all away in a cabinet... to stew... 

most of my thoughts were of the country... the people... their houses... their lives... the vague and vast love of my family and the fact that we had so much time together... my inability to understand fully that my little sister is now an adult... a married woman... my parents... my own existence... it was so much of everything that i can't even digest it just yet... i feel like there are so many words i should have said aloud... and yet... not at all... when i am my most honest... and forthright... people generally just look at me like i am crazy... so i have learned to hold it in. and try to understand it. on my own. 

and i realize that i don't. i don't understand anything at all. and therein lies my frustration... with words

i miss my grandmother

saturday i went to a bridal shower for my sister and her fiance's grandmother was there... after the games and the food she made her way to me... took my face in her hands and pulled my face close to hers... her teeth were black in a way that only a 90 year old woman's can be... i recoiled slightly by accident or by instinct... and if i didn't love the age in her face i might have been a little afraid of her at that moment. she said... ah yes... now i can see you... my eyes are bad... you have been just a shadow. now i see you are jessica's sister... ah yes... and i almost wanted to cry for missing my own grandmother so much at that moment. 

elsie had a spirit that burned like a million stars... this video reminds me of her... because whenever i see old black and whites of people dancing... i have the bitter sweet realization that those people... once so full of energy are either no longer alive or unable to be so zealous... my grandma... never got old... despite her plea to me... "oh jennifer, never get old"... the only thing that slowed her down... was her own mind. the last time i saw her was on her 80th birthday. she's still there... in a nursing home... a body that houses a person i once knew so well... she is the king of the world... if there ever was one. 

i worked on a few things last night... i've been wanting to put color to sketches that i have had sitting by my desk for a couple of weeks... i messed one up pretty good... so that's a "do over" ... but these are the few that are still progressing... i have a collage that i am really liking also but it's not quite ready... i have been thinking a lot lately about people that come in to your life for short periods of time... co-workers, friends, classmates... etc... and how they impact your life in one way at the time they are actually there... and how they impact your life in sometimes an entirely different way in retrospect. it's the vacation effect... you know... how all vacations are waaaaaay more awesome a couple of months or years later... when you look back at all the amazing things you did. and you forget that you had indigestion... and blisters on your feet.... anyway... there are a lot of people that have come into my life in the last few years especially... some of them i still see on the regular... and others i hardly ever see at all... i am happy to have known you all.

and some shoes... that are coming along slowly

random nose-less self portrait