Artists:
mia nolting, illustrator
scott poole, poet
rachel gorenstein, fashion designer
colin farstad, photographer/writer
ameena lacey & john jenne, musicians/songwriters
michael sage ricci, interdisciplinary artist
cheryl strayed, writer
greg day, filmmaker/poet
returning SHARE artists: lorna nakell, painter; margaret malone, writer; kathleen lane, writer
Mia Nolting's Secrets, a book inspired by the idea of stolen glances.
The Butter Knife Fist
Scott PooleI want to sculpt Stolen,
so I can hold onto it for awhile.
I think Stolen would have to look something like a hand
a hand holding a steely knife,
I mean it's Stolen.
You got to have a little hint of violence
but not too much,
perhaps just a dull butter knife
with some chunks out of the handle
like it was used to pry open an elevator door,
but not held by a young fist
belonging to a miscreant in his early twenties
but an old wizened fist
like that of your Grandma,
because she knows how to get shit done.
I think a couple of the knuckles on the hand
have to be bleeding.
That seems required.
Anyone who would go into a fight with a butter knife
would be infinitely scarier than someone
who would go into a fight with a razor sharp blade of death, don’t you think?
I'm way more scared of someone with nothing but a butter knife
coming after me
especially if it's someone's incensed
grandma wearing a scowl and a floral print dress.
I think the hand should be gold,
the butter knife silver.
The juxtaposition would be nice don't you think?
Let's put some diamonds in the knuckles.
Do people do that, embed diamonds in their knuckles?
Is that a statement of fashion?
And I feel I want to draw feathers at this point
but I'm not sure where I should put those.
Anyone who would attack you with a feather in one hand
and a butter knife in the other,
anyone with bloody bedazzled knuckles of diamond
that's a scary motherfucker
especially when you look at the mark it made on your forehead
and you realize the diamonds were actually sequins,
but still diamonds
diamonds shaped as sequins.
That is scary.
But wait, there's more.
What if the fore knuckles of the fist
contained a video screen, a video screen divided upon
three of the fingers and upon the video screen
was a shot of your reaction as you were getting punched
you're very idea of safety being stolen from you forever?
But don't worry, it's a statue, so instead if would just be
a shot of you looking at the fist
like how you look up at the top of your head
that view you never get anywhere else
when you walk through the door at Walgreens.
You wouldn't look scared, just stupid.
So once you steal this amazing fist I just
made up, I just chalked onto the curved folds
of your forehead,
once you have this golden treasure
in your meaty possession,
what the hell are you going to do with it?
How do you sell a stolen fist?
I suppose you have to buy a booth at the Saturday Market.
I think that costs like 600 dollars a day.
And you can't just have the fist,
the booth would looks so bare
and you need some cheaper items for the casual shopper
so you macramé some owls and some monster faces
and some teddy bears and some hello kitties
you know for the kids
and wouldn't you know it
macramé is fun.
You stop going to work,
you start missing meals
you are determined that you're going to bring macramé
into the realm of serious art
just because Picasso didn't macramé' doesn't mean
you can't.
You start doing spontaneous street macramé'
involving 50 strangers. It actually takes choreography
and a musical score. That means you need to learn music
and opera and directing. So you do that,
but you do it in a macramé' way.
In fact, that becomes your motto, the macramé' way.
You macramé yourself a t-shirt that proudly announces your saying to the world.
You think this possibly could be the first macramé' t-shirt.
You hope to God you didn't steal that idea.
You start making your own yarns, learning dyes,
you take several trips around the world to learn more about yarn
you are almost killed in Calcutta trying to witness the ultimate sienna.
You think that if you could macramé' a woman
you would marry her. So you do that.
But then decide you are not ready for marriage.
Then one day, when you haven't eaten in three days
and you're wild eyed and pushing macramé to its ultimate destiny,
and you are drooling and swearing uncontrollably
wearing only a macramé' condom and macramé moccasins
blood dripping from your overworked fingers
you think Macramé' Food! Yes. The pretzel. Such a simple idea.
The braided donut, a delightful tease.
Why not feed the world with giant Macramé' food? That's brilliant!
So one Saturday morning after a good rest
you decide to macramé yourself
with pretzel dough
and invite all your friends over for dinner
so when they come over that night
and you answer the door in the world's first pretzel cocoon
your genius will rush out upon the world
when you break from your doughy chrysalises
and do a ballet of your devising
with a baguette extended from each palm
like a Pillsbury helicopter
and announce your plans for a bakery that
will change the course of human history.
All goes well until you rest by the window
to take a breather and rise too much in the morning sun
and suffocate in your sleep from yeast asphyxiation.
Later, your friends clutch each other in grief
in the apartment as the paramedics carry you away.
As you pass by, quietly, your friends steal some
of the bread off your body and pause not sure
if they should eat from your body.
As luck would have it,
that's when the most beautiful man or woman in the world
walks from the kitchen like an angel
with a tub of butter in one hand
and the butter knife fist in the other.
Stolen Glamour, Rachel Gorenstein
Rachel: Ahead of time, I had decided that I would use the prompt word (whatever it may be) as an opportunity to inspire my Spring 2011 collection.
I quickly made the connection to films that feature high styled beautiful protagonists that were jewelry thieves, cat burglars and bank robbers. Thomas Crown Affair, Bonnie and Clyde, To Catch a Thief.
I came to SHARE with film stills, scissors, sketch pad and fabric swatches.
Once there I created a mood/inspiration boards. I then matched fabrics to the stills and began to sketch. It was an incredible burst of focused creativity that will now guide me through the next 4 months of the design process.
Ameena: Participating in SHARE was a wonderful experience for us, and a welcomed challenge. The first thing thatcame to my mind off the prompt of Stolen was the loss of innocence, of time. The song went on to become an homage to one’s first love, and the resulting nostalgia as time passes.
Stolen
words by Ameena Lacey, music by John Jenne
You stole my days
My time away
A loss, an innocence
A youth, it's gone
Those days
They're gone
Stolen Away
There were days
I cried
I thought I'd never
Make it through
Those days
They're gone
Stolen Away
We took that time
We spent it wise
Though we never
Realized
A loss of innocence
A youth, it's gone
A day is over
Lorna: Based on the prompt, Stolen, it is inspired by the idea behind the "persistance of memory" (a concept made famous in the art world by Salvador Dali). Persistance of memory is like when you have a memory from your childhood that you are always able to play back on call - rewind and play back. But, new scientific research (listen to Radiolab's episode, "Memory and Forgetting" or read In Search of Memory by Eric R. Kandel) proves that each time you recall that memory it becomes altered because your brain actually has to recreate the memory. So, things from the memory change and can become totally different.
The idea of stolen memories reminded me of my grandmother who ended up having alzheimers toward the end of her life. For the project, I used a family photo of my grandmother, mother and me - when I was a baby - and created a series of paintings as imagined from my grandmother's perspective. The memory starts with all three of us focused on a flower, then my grandma becomes my mother and her image fades away, then the whole memory is reduced to just her and the flower. The writing in the background is how I imagine she would recall the memory.
Places We've Never Been
Places We've Never Been
Author’s Note: I’ve been working off and on for the past year on a very long personal essay called “Places We’ve Never Been,” which chronicles a trip I took in the American Southwest when I was twenty-four. I went there on a writing grant to do research about US atomic history and communities that live downwind of the bombs that were tested at the Nevada Test Site and at what’s now the White Sands Missile Range. I planned to write a novel using my research, but I never did. Instead, I’m finally writing an essay about this material and the extraordinary experiences I had on that trip. When I got the prompt “stolen,” from the SHARE organizers, I knew I wanted to I write a new section of the essay. This is an excerpt of what I wrote during those two hours.
Before long other people arrive. Other people who are against the testing of nuclear bombs. We crowd into a conference room and sit in a circle and someone strums a guitar and sings about peace and then there is a long moment of silence and an Indian chief arrives, the leader of the Western Shoshone Nation. He is the reason we have gathered. He’s a big man with a dark braid, dressed in feathers and leather and beads. He burns sage and says a prayer with his eyes clenched shut in a language I don’t understand then he opens his eyes and speaks in English in a mighty voice. Your people stole our land, he thunders, but you are my friends.
I cannot help but let the tears fall down my face. I cannot help but bow my head.
When he is done speaking, he comes to us one by one and gives us each a piece of paper that he has personally signed. They are certificates from the Western Shoshone Nation, granting us permission to walk into the desert at the Nevada Test Site on the land the US government claims to own, but doesn’t because they stole it from the Western Shoshone. He tells me to walk upright. He tells me to walk proud. He tells me there is no such thing as the Nevada Test Site and to remember that when I go. To remember it is Western Shoshone Nation land.
In the morning I rise at dawn and drive sixty miles from Las Vegas. The Nevada Test Site begins as a small building near the side of the road and this is where I park my truck. Behind it, is a barbed wire fence with DO NOT TRESPASS BY ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT signs posted every several hundred yards and behind that miles and miles of barren desert land where they test the bombs.
I get out of my truck and walk along the barbed wire fence. The wind is so fierce I have to push my body against it, my long hair blowing behind me in a mad swirl. I come to a small gathering of people sitting in a circle who are also preparing to enter the test site—three old women wearing actual bonnets that tie under the chin and a man and his teenage son. The teenage son has Down Syndrome.
“Join us,” says the man, in a prayerful voice and I do. I sit in the dirt and think.
“We come in peace,” says the man, looking skyward. “We come in love.”
The wind is spectacular. It is a great, relentless force.
“Stop!” the teenage boy shrieks and throws himself face down onto the dirt and pounds it with his fists. “No more bombs!” he sobs and his father rubs his back and then he sobs louder. He sobs louder than anyone I have ever witnessed sob. He sobs harder than my mom did when she understood she was going to die. Watching him is like watching an animal being skinned alive.
I look away. I stand up. I walk to the barbed wire fence and squat and push my way onto the stolen desert land.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY9f7K8a0aQ
ReplyDeleteAmeena and John's performance.