rosetung

2011-01-10T10:28:00.000-06:00

Rice

2010-08-05T23:26:00.001-05:00

by Mary Oliver

It grew in the black mud,
It grew under the tiger's orange paws.
Its stems thinner than candles, and as straight.
Its leaves like the feathers of egrets, but green.
The grains cresting, wanting to burst.
O, blood of the tiger.

I don't want you just to sit down at the table.
I don't want you just to eat, and be content.
I want you to walk out into the fields
where the water is shining, and the rice has risen.
I want you to stand there, far from the white tablecloth.
I want you to fill your hands with the mud, like a blessing.

Diving Into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich

2010-08-02T00:03:00.001-05:00

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

Joetta Maue: scars and skin.

2010-07-30T18:59:00.000-05:00

Joetta Maue: scars and skin.: "I am not going to be able to make it to this exhibit as it closes on Sunday but it looks awesome. HIDE: Skin as Material and Metaphor Mar..."

Wow. Just discovered Nadia Myre via Joetta Maue. Way into some of these ideas about scars and forgiveness and healing and cathartic, interactive art projects...

reception tonight

2010-07-26T06:54:00.000-05:00

W. H. Auden quotes

2010-07-14T07:56:00.003-05:00

* Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.

* We would rather be ruined than changed, / We would rather die in our dread / Than climb the cross of the moment / And let our illusions die.

are you gone forever? are you following my tumblr? it's different over there. i can't tell who visits. maybe i'll use this blog for other things. like quotes and recipes or something...

oh, i finished a new version of this sweater. silk now, no cuffs.

big switch

2010-05-28T08:13:00.003-05:00

new beginnings- going for it- moving here- - > http://www.rosetung.tumblr.com/

i think it'll be prettier this way- please join me

school is out

2010-05-27T09:03:00.003-05:00

anyone else seen the bamboo installation on the roof of the Met?

and this is supa comfy suit i made.

thinkin of moving this operation over to my tumblr blog. i'll link you later...

results posted

2010-04-27T19:02:00.003-05:00

my submission will be in the end-of-semester show at school. (mannequins in a gallery, not models on a runway... which is cool. less likely my shit will get damaged.)

2010-04-26T16:00:00.000-05:00

"Poetry makes nothing happen." - W.H. Auden

blooming

2010-04-11T12:30:00.001-05:00

work in progress, excited about it

You Who Never Arrived by Ranier Maria Rilke

2010-03-15T21:13:00.005-05:00

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. All the immense
images in me-- the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected
turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods-
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house--, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,--
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,
gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows?
perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...

HAPPY NEW YEAR

2010-02-13T09:02:00.001-06:00

It's Year of the Tiger!

Cloud scarves on sale in my shop...

3rd

2010-01-24T11:41:00.003-06:00

new, third version of the hat made with square patches. added two bands of ribs. now fits like supa comfy slouchy soft beanie. bottom band flips up cute too. favorite yarn again- the silk, lambswool, cashmere, nylon blend.

+ random shots from desk, pretty things.

+ thank you so much for all the sweet comments

:) !!

bit silly

2010-01-15T14:24:00.006-06:00

this itty bitty body thing is a bit silly. a bit pretty. very nice to touch.

cashmere, silk, cotton, bamboo, steel...

lost in it

2010-01-12T16:31:00.001-06:00

labor day

2009-09-07T06:48:00.004-05:00

...more like labor weekend... book project due on wed. (for school). 23 pages down, 17 to go, + cover + putting it all together... about 2:30 last night, i realized my work was turning quite lazy and weak and it was time to sleep. 6:30am, mind is refreshed, light/sky is lovely, apt is quiet. perfetto.

schoolio

2009-09-05T08:48:00.000-05:00

bye, flowers

2009-08-28T14:34:00.003-05:00

ok just one more shot of the celosia. they just got shoved in the compost bag. bye, flowers...

space

2009-07-11T21:23:00.002-05:00

set up comfortable in new workspace. began crocheting again yesterday. i didn't realize how much i missed it. stitched more today as well. i keep messing with the way things are stored and organized in my new home, as if it'll stay so neat and perfect. who knows.

I live here now,

2009-07-09T10:43:00.003-05:00

sorta between HOTBIRD and HOODRICH

in NY.

I've also moved to http://rosetung.tumblr.com/.

by Osho Ginny Parkum

2009-04-27T11:11:00.000-05:00

feeling okay
not feeling okay
walking the dog, hearing the birds

Freaky Friday

2009-02-13T15:24:00.004-06:00

Happy weekend everyone...

by Emily Dickinson

2009-02-09T17:10:00.004-06:00

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, -
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

Feel

2009-01-26T10:44:00.002-06:00

I didn't know
and I didn't mean
'cause I didn't
know one could
feel this way

music by Flora

Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes

2009-01-19T11:57:00.002-06:00

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Do You Know What I Mean?

2008-12-21T13:34:00.004-06:00

4:02pm

1:40am

1:30pm unraveling

it wasn't that much time put into the section that is not coming out right and getting unraveled here. but it is one of those projects that has me wondering the whole way through- is this going to be something i like? i have so many sweater ideas though. so, this is going to be a common thing. i have to keep trying new things. otherwise, what's there to love?

busy

2008-12-12T17:54:00.008-06:00

thank you dear customers for keeping me...

busy

busybusy!

FINALLY!

2008-12-11T08:36:00.006-06:00

some yarn shipments are arriving. check out this lusciousness-

Bedtime

2008-12-04T01:31:00.001-06:00

bunny wants to keep you company in bed. he'd be very good at it cuz he's the softest thing in the whole world. and so handsome!

A Conceit by Maya Angelou

2008-11-10T13:56:00.007-06:00

Give me your hand

Make room for me
to lead and follow
you
beyond this rage of poetry.

Let others have
the privacy of
touching words
and love of loss
of love.

For me
Give me your hand.

It's a grey and foggy breakfast hat kinda day.

For J Raish by Jenica Szymanski, 2005

2008-09-22T12:06:00.002-05:00

There’s a very long road in Clifton Heights, some of these points are high. We all carry so much on our backs. Our hair is long too. What’s this one, you say. Lena carrying on by the sidewalk. She’s got that point about her – staring off at the windows of the factory she just left. There is yarn inside those walls. That’s what keeps her everyday. It’s orange sometimes, and yet, she dreams of that fragile yarn for decoration. What about the rain? I even see it now outside my windows, touching the concrete just paved in the backyard. So many cracks for ants. They climb up over the walls and into. And our friends here? And what do they say. Sometimes it’s good to be in water. Or air. I prefer breathing when it’s hard to. The ice? Yes, sometimes the ice.

assistant

2008-09-21T13:52:00.000-05:00

friends

2008-09-11T14:03:00.002-05:00

elton the gay lion, stumpy dog, and black pig. (and my beloved chou chou.) the pig is my fave. black with metallic gold sparkle and the picture doesn't do justice to the cuteness.

LIKE ARMOR

2008-08-03T15:23:00.002-05:00

Prose Sonnet by Mark Yakich

2008-07-28T10:17:00.001-05:00

The shirt in the poem was real, the house was not, and the last line was stolen from a philosopher who was in love with a 13-year-old boy. The attic window from which the reader views this alleged failing in love was pentagonal, red and yellow stained glass. Over the years, many neighborhood kids have tried to knock out the window with rocks and baseballs, but it can only be smashed from the inside out.

for real this time

2008-06-20T19:52:00.003-05:00

a while back, i wrote an excited post about this orchid gettin ready to bloom again. maybe i jinxed it cuz the bud dried up and fell off. so sad...

but this time!... isn't it a little bit stunning?!

Prose Sonnet by Mark Yakich

2008-06-16T15:44:00.000-05:00

He will engineer the sunrise, take apart the clouds as if unbuttoning his shirt. On the way to your house, he will bend down, tie his shoes like framing a picture. He will clip flowers, with his teeth, from the neighbor's garden. He will discard them before reaching your house. He will descend the hill pretending not to be watched as you watch him from the smallest attic window.But you will not see him round the final curve. Before letting him in, you will forget to ask him to replace the pebbles he's kept in his hip pocket with the heavy rock near the mailbox. Because you are already in love, "Sit down," you will say, pointing to the chair, "no, don't kiss me, it won't be necessary."

2008-05-04T18:32:00.007-05:00

The Rain by Robert Creeley

2008-04-07T15:28:00.001-05:00

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent—
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

Labor Day by Louise Gluck, 1969

2008-03-24T18:04:00.003-05:00

Requiring something lovely on his arm
Took me to Standford, Connecticut, a quasi-farm,
His family's; later picking up the mammoth
Girlfriend of Charlie, meanwhile trying to pawn me off
On some third guy also up for the weekend.
But Saturday we still were paired; spent
it sprawled across that sprawling acreage
Until the grass grew limp
With damp. Like me. Johnston-baby, I can still see
The pelted clover, burrs' prickle fur and gorged
Pastures spewing infinite tiny bells. You pimp.

Poem to be read at 3am by Donald Justice

2008-03-11T02:41:00.001-05:00

Excepting the diner
On the outskirts.
The town of Ladora
At 3 a.m.
Was dark but
For my headlights
And up in
One second-story room
A single light
Where someone
Was sick or
Perhaps reading
As I drove past
At seventy
Not thinking.
This poem
Is for whoever
Had the light on

new hat

2008-03-10T13:58:00.003-05:00

wink wink

2008-03-04T20:28:00.004-06:00

here i scanned the current project. a little hint for you on whats to come. pretty already, right?!

To the Ladies, by Mary, Lady Chudleigh, 1703

2008-03-03T13:02:00.004-06:00

Wife and servant are the same,
But only differ in the name:
For when that fatal knot is tied,
Which nothing, nothing can divide,
When she the word Obey has said,
And man by law supreme has made,
Then all that's kind is laid aside,
And nothing left but state and pride.
Fierce as an eastern prince he grows,
And all his innate rigor shows:
Then but to look, to laugh, or speak,
Will the nuptial contract break.
Like mutes, she signs alone must make,
And never any freedom take,
but still be governed by a nod,
And fear her husband as her god:
Him still must serve, him still obey,
And nothing act, and nothing say,
But what her haughty lord thinks fit,
Who, with what power, has all the wit.
Then shun, oh! shun that wretched state,
And all the fawning flatterers hate.
Value yourselves, and men despise:
You must be proud, if you'll be wise.

"Did you ever hear that an artist was useful?"

2008-02-27T14:28:00.005-06:00

After a Death by Roo Borson, 1989

2008-02-25T13:56:00.005-06:00

Seeing that there's no other way,
I turn his absence into a chair.
I can sit in it,
gaze out through the window.
I can do what I do best
and then go out into the world.
And I can return then with my useless love,
to rest,
because the chair is there.

Greenfish swap

2008-02-25T10:36:00.011-06:00

Greenfish Watercolors

reeeeally goddam good.

2008-02-23T15:38:00.003-06:00

off to SF-

2008-02-09T12:13:00.000-06:00

golden gate park

!!!!!!!!! H A P P Y M A R D I G R A S !!!!!!!!!!! (i miss you, new orleans)

2008-02-05T12:17:00.000-06:00

another amazing tandem bicycle costume- an elephant!!!

too bad i couldn't get a decent portrait of the animal...

noy and eve, bandit clowns.

rebouche and relle

can you tell- his bike is a silver shoe?

photographs from mardi gras 2007.

Happy Dimanche Gras!

2008-02-03T09:50:00.002-06:00

These photos are actually from Mardi Gras 2006- the big day. My friend built a bi-plane to fit around a tandem bicycle for our costume.

Noy's costume also impressive- her own genius and beautiful design. I can't track down my color photos right now but her mask is fluorescent orange and plastered with googly eyes. Her dress was killer too, and thrown together last minute the day before.

Here's a video of the bi-plane in action, shot by Momo.

Best part of Mardi Gras parades!

2008-01-26T10:56:00.000-06:00

killer high school marching bands and dancers. best spot = under the overpass!

turducken special

2008-01-25T16:59:00.000-06:00

custom for my pal anthony turducken, after his bird drawing.

We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks

2008-01-21T14:22:00.000-06:00

The Pool Players.

Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

little 5x7 acrylics from coupla yrs ago

2008-01-07T18:12:00.000-06:00

The Sick Rose by William Blake (1794)

2007-12-10T16:24:00.000-06:00

O rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his darkest secret love,
Does thy life destroy.

Cat in Hat

2007-11-30T20:20:00.001-06:00

first paragraph of Screwjack by Hunter S. Thompson

2007-11-12T11:21:00.001-06:00

favorite things: the lightning bolt stripe on the side of her face. when she chases the elusive green ball. the two black toes.

friend

2007-11-06T15:30:00.001-06:00

[After great pain, a formal feeling comes--] by Emily Dickinson, ca. 1862

2007-11-05T14:50:00.000-06:00

After great pain, a formal feeling comes--
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs--
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round--
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought--
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone--

This is the Hour of Lead--
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing Persons recollect the Snow--
First--Chill--then Stupor--then the letting go--

2nd rosy original design!

2007-10-19T21:52:00.001-05:00

dooood i'm really happy with this. more of these coming for sure.

The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams (1923)

2007-10-15T20:37:00.001-05:00

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

new blockprint: Barry Yourgrau climbs into a cow

2007-10-15T20:26:00.000-05:00

this is inspired by the Barry Yourgrau short story most memorable to me, entitled Milk. dunno if its my favorite by him (hard to choose) but it was the first one i ever read.

Point Shirley by Sylvia Plath, 1960

2007-10-15T11:14:00.000-05:00

From Water-Tower Hill to the brick prison
The shingle booms, bickering under
The sea's collapse.
Snowcakes break and welter. This year
The gritted wave leaps
The seawall and drops onto a bier
Of quahog chips,
Leaving a salty mash of ice to whiten

In my grandmother's sand yard. She is dead,
Whose laundry snapped and froze here, who
Kept house against
What the sluttish, rutted sea could do.
Squall waves once danced
Ship timbers in through the cellar window;
A thresh-tailed, lanced
Shark littered in the geranium bed--

Such collusion of mulish elements
She wore her broom straws to the nub.
Twenty years out
Of her hand; the house still hugs in each drab
Stucco socket
The purple egg-stones: from Great Head's knob
To the filled-in Gut
The sea in its cold gizzard ground those rounds.

Nobody wintering now behind
The planked-up windows where she set
Her wheat loaves
And apple cakes to cool. What is it
Survives, grieves
So, over this battered, obstinate spit
Of gravel? The waves'
Spewed relics clicker masses in the wind.

Gray waves the stub-necked eiders ride.
A labor of love, and that labor lost.
Steadily the sea
Eats at Point Shirley. She died blessed,
And I come by
Bones, bones only, pawed and tossed,
A dog-faced sea.
The sun sinks under Boston, bloody red.

I would get from these dry-papped stones
The milk your love instilled in them.
The black ducks dive.
And though your graciousness might stream,
And I contrive,
Grandmother, stones are nothing of home
To that spumiest dove.
Against both bar and tower the black sea runs.

prints

2007-09-28T20:19:00.002-05:00

this print is actually 2"x3" so probably shows up larger than life on your computer screen.

these are different versions from one edition of prints. a friend requested i make something from the ultrasound image of his son. that was fun.

rollercoaster

2007-09-28T19:10:00.004-05:00

Annette Messager Knit for Sparrows

2007-08-16T14:46:00.000-05:00

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers by Adrienne Rich (1951)

2007-07-29T15:36:00.001-05:00

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

In My Dreams...

2007-07-17T10:40:00.000-05:00

...I knit like Sandra Backlund.