Blood on Her Panties

ED, 2008, Crouching, acrylic on canvas, 48X54

When the first smear of blood showed on my panties I had been waiting for it forever. I felt guilty that it came too late. I had great expectations of sex. I was disgusted with my reflection in the mirror. I had huge sexual desires. I had terrible fear of sex. I stained my bottoms. I had jolts in the abdomen every time I accidentally touched a man. I was sickened with adult men. The present was unbearable. The future was great. My face was blushing with acne. My periods were irregular. My PMSs were torturous. My body was long and skinny. My heir was greasy. My chest was flat. I wore my brother’s clothes. People took me for a boy. Boys didn’t take me seriously. I didn’t know who I was.

When the postpartum bleeding gave way to the long periods of menstrual interruption I felt stupid.  I felt overweight. I was consumed with my baby. I was not interested in sex. My breasts were heavy and bursting with milk. My nipples were leaky and sore. I stained my tops. I missed sexual desire. I felt unattractive. I was deprived of sleep. I compensated by eating. I didn’t have time for myself. The present was forever. The future never came. I had bliss from my baby’s physical presence. I craved a moment away from my baby. I reacted to any “ma” sound in the universe. I heard every stir coming from my baby’s cradle. My home was my castle. My home was my prison. My home was my workplace. I got complemented on my children. I didn’t know who I was.

After the last drop of blood faded from my underwear I lost my lust.  Sweat stained my sweaters. I acquired the past. The future became the present. I was liberated from the threat of next pregnancy. Sexual fantasies, awareness of glances in my direction, and glances in my direction never distracting me again. I stopped feeling like my daughter, talking like my daughter, thinking like my daughter, acting like my daughter, and got rid of immortality, negligence towards achievements, and irritation with my family.  I knew who I was. I didn’t know what the shit it meant.

Recycle!

ED, 2012, A Bull, Acrylic on Mylar, 48X30

Bacteria are the source of disease.  Or, rather, bacteria are the carrier of disease, because we know how to kill bacteria, but we cannot kill disease. Disease reappears and mutates in form of other carriers. We may imagine that there is a source of disease like some reproductive code that makes diseases reproduce and mutate in form of bacteria.

The same goes to consciousness, oddly adjacent to the syndrome of self-reflection. Humans are only the carriers of consciousness although for the reason of self-reflection, we associate our death with the death of consciousness. The sight of human corpse makes us forget about more primitive organisms, arresting our ability to realize that consciousness, like disease, reappears in the form of other carriers.

As species, we are ludicrously self-centered. We cannot take eyes away from the mirror to notice that the world doesn’t exist exclusively for us. Even if by now we are logically or scientifically ready for such realization, we act like we never are.

It is evident in our avoidance of death, for instance. Only because we don’t believe in the reproductive code do we marinate the precious quantum of consciousness in deteriorated brains by suspending death like the worst of evils. Whereas if we considered our consciousness as simply one of the manifestations of nature, or one of the forms of universal existence, we would, no doubt, embrace the idea of recycling.   
With our very limited consciousness we foolishly engage in fighting death. 
Why we are so buried in our infinitely limited self-image?  Why cannot we see a bigger picture? Why don’t we want our shit to decompose naturally?

Adam's Misunderstanding

ED. 2008, Point Is, acrylic on canvas, 58X30

Jesus came to lift stigma form old good Serpent, an innocent victim of Adam’s misunderstanding.

Serpent came to visit Eve, when she was alone. It was those times when Eve and Adam lived together still unconsciously and felt like in paradise. Serpent looked like a snake. He showed Eve the tree of knowledge; she bit from the fruit and aroused in consciousness. Still naïve, Eve shared it with Adam. When Adam saw reality he thought it was a punishment. Naturally, he blamed Eve.  Adam’s misunderstanding led him to use consciousness to seek ways to the lost paradise.

Jesus was a revolutionary, who didn’t keep a journal. He liked women’s company and asked disciples to be wise like serpents. He learned it from the Heathens.

Heathens to this day consider Serpents the source of life, but Adam continues to insist on power and logic. Adam uses his freedom to create systems. Serpent, who moves like water, easily escapes labyrinths of any system, and this is what Adam hates. He keeps calling Serpent the devil and every woman the devil’s tool.

Good Taste

ED, 2010, Siblings, acrylic on polymer, 11X9

Art is in losing it. I noticed how effortlessly the guys at the counter were brewing coffee. When I do an operation like that in my kitchen I don’t like to be watched. I always spill coffee grains on the counter spooning it from a grinder to a pot. My guests might think it's cool. I am the only one in town cooking turkish coffee at home.

I leaned over the table and whispered, “ I like it when they are not aware of their style…” Phil smiled and said, “It is a style, ma.”

Shit, nothing is perfect!

One of them popped up at our table and asked. “May I clean these cups for you?” “We are still working on it,” Philip replied. Anna came back with more  pour-over style coffee. She showed us the list of natural flavors like they do for wines. “You might like to know that I heard about your place in Miami,” I said to barista. He cocked his head to the left and shifted his right leg, “Really?” and his eyebrows flew up. Shit! Phil was right. Everything is style.

Style is the language we use when we dig one other. Every day American culture tills new acres of style by commercializing idiosyncratic tastes.

“I dig your style,” I heard on the street. I wore tight dress tied in the nut at the knee length. He wore bare muscles disguised under a purple tank. We may dig each others style without sharing tastes.

Unlike styles, describable and categorized, tastes remain a mystery.

Cutting-edge artists of all countries, please, use safety ropes! Your occupation is dangerous! You conquer inches of undiscovered taste every day!

Style belongs to human culture; taste is in the realm of the universe. Taste is like a thought; no one knows where it  comes from.

How do we now if the taste is good when it is new, when no one taught it in college? How do we know if idea is palpable, if we didn’t try it? People say, “O, but there are those who know… those who can tell.” Maybe, but still…
  
People of all countries, let go! Art is in losing it. We will never find a new expression unless we take a risk to dare. I know a secret. Ideas come from elsewhere, when we lose guard. Loosen up, friends! Art is in loosing shit.

How About a Hike?

Friederike Bear, 2014, Devil's Pool at Wissahickon Park, Philadelphia, PA, Digital Photo

Today I was planning on going on a hike, but decided to check my emails first. The news was bad on unemployment. I got anxious. What if my agency gets closed? No one is protected after all! I almost closed my computer when ads in the right column captured my attention. Meet a Catholic bachelor, buy sexy runway boots, go on a diet, get a new you!

If my company gets out of business how can I afford that?

I was ready to go on a hike but on the bottom of the page I saw an ad on penis enlargement. I am a woman, but what if my man unconsciously suffers? Penis enlargement is a multimillion industry, I heard. Indirectly it keeps people employed, directly it makes them happy, or other way around. The feeling is mutual. We are all in it together.

If I go on a hike, who am I helping?

On the outdoors trail I might lose a few pounds of my precious weight, and feel better about my selfish self without buying a pair of sexy runway boots, or meeting a Catholic bachelor.  I might meet a few dogs with their antisocial owners, but where would we order drinks? I might see a stork flying low in a narrow corridor over a misty creak, but who would I pay for the spectacle? I might work out my muscles without hiring a personal trainer.

We are all in it together. A hike on a trail may be helping anxieties, but not economy.

I get up on my feet and drove to CVS. There, at the drive-through window I picked up an anti-anxiety drug, the remedy for all problems. It would keep me calm and our jobs secure. Millions of people all over the country would wake up tomorrow to go to their work places at doctors’ offices, universities, science labs, pharmaceutical companies, drug warehouses and retail pharmacies locations. Good morning, America! Good shit to keep you running!

Seven Years

ED. 2013, Sad Books, acrylic on Mylar, 48X30

A woman across the table squeezes Elmer’s glue on the grid and picks one colored square from a plate. She stretches it out into my face, “Elena, what color is it? It’s purple, a-a-a-a,” and presses it onto the paper missing the grid, then leaks extra glue from her fingers. “Good job,” I echo.

For years her mom makes her follow the grid employing me to assist her, but I am poorly fit for the job. I question the reasonability of the task and admire the capriciousness of voluntary results. She misses the grid but hits my definition of art. What her mom envisions her doing may also be art. In fact, I would totally look at it as art have I not known her mother. O, my god! What am I saying? I don’t know… Is it not art?

I like this plate on the table. Elmer’s glue smeared over the replicated 19^th century design makes it look like a mistake.

At night, before falling asleep, I see ever-changing images floating in the cups of my eyelids. Mark once said called them hallucinations. I was surprised that he didn’t have them, too, but not all artists do.

To help me, he searches Internet to show me works of portrait painters who have made it. I eagerly examine their work and try to imitate, the exercise inevitably making me feel empty. I cannot be shaped like that. We have very different ways of approaching art. Could it be that we have married by mistake? It only can be bad for him because I like mistakes.

For seven years I have been applying to one established career development nonprofit, piling tons of art production each year. On the first year I showed my melted bottles. On the second year I submitted monochrome paintings marked by unfettered depression.  On the third year I offered genre paintings with moments in lives of people with intellectual disabilities. On the fourth year I applied with paintings based on the dreamt myth of a woman and a bull. On the fifth year I sent colorful portraits of elderly people with butterfly wings. By then my art production multiplied faster than I had chance to submit. I worked on a series of paintings on photo paper based on the snapshots and in the size of snapshots; I also started painting on bed sheets and old ornate scarfs, and at the time of submission I proposed my mixed media layered panels build with old domestic scrap like our kids’ bed sheets and my grandma’s wallpapers. In my project I made painted imitations of family photos once covering the walls of her bedroom. I didn’t even bother to check mail for rejection letters this time busy portraying homeless on the streets, and Jenkintowners in my studio. On the seventh year I submitted nothing. If they were sensitive to art, they might have written me a letter of acceptation since it was as good a shit as any other from the previous years, but seven years may be enough time for me to grow independent.  

      

The Nature of Life

E.D. 2012, A Woman and a Skull, mixed media32X23

One afternoon when I was eleven, I ironed my underwear in the grandma's room. I was simply following Russian rule imposed by people like my parents who lived through the hardships of the WW2. Ironing killed germs. While the stainless boat of electric iron cruised pale underwear, my thoughts sank in painful memory. The day before at school I leaned forward to a girl sitting in front of me and whispered in her ear, “I, too, was at the local theater last night with my parents…” She didn't react, and I tapped her on her shoulder. Her discerning gaze electrocuted me, and I was burning since. My mother entered the room. “At what age children usually stop being ashamed for what they have done yesterday?” I asked. “This is a very grown up question,” she answered.

“Don’t say, don’t look, don’t touch, don’t dare,” still keep me paralyzed. Do I really want them to like me so much? I see them like through a fog. Who are they? What do they care? What if they don’t? This is even a creepier thought. What if no one watches, no one judges, no one orders, no one commissions, no one expects, no one notices? What if I am all on my own doing what I want to do?

I am in a crowded café, and people around me don’t care. The letters I type on my laptop are illuminating on the wall over my head. No one reads. I am locking eyes with a woman, who gives me a polite smile. Others keep chewing. What if a bomb goes off?

When a bomb goes off, a stranger doesn’t smile while others keep chewing. When a though goes off people take away their gaze from the screens. But thinkers are covered better than bombers in healthy societies. For a thought to be noticed, it should be born within a field surveyed by coworkers. Outside professional fields random thoughts primitive like viruses may be contagious. They may circulate effortlessly for a short time to give a way to the next variation. In healthy immune systems viruses pass away within a few weeks, but we don’t risk waiting. We use injections to kill germs without electric irons. It saves us domestic labor and is good for economy since it creates numerous jobs. Domestic labor spreads inequality. A girl standing alone at an ironing board kills germs slowly and ineffectively with the side effect of unchecked thinking unless wearing earphones. A girl stepping out of her grandma’s room with an i-phone next to her ear enters a flow and experiences delirium of global belonging. She acquires a holistic point of view killing germs and circulating effortlessly, changing variations as a flow goes. Everything is interconnected, pain can be numbed, consciousness, too, and the only thing hurting remains unseen.

The nature of life.

Tell me a story, or offer me an explanation. A woman conceives immaculately, and a rich dad gives an education; six cups of water a day keep me healthy as does colonoscopy after fifty, and the only thing to fear is unpredictability. Everything is interconnected, a stationary bike and a heartbeat, the world economy and psychology, my thought process and the mass media. The only thing still out of the loop is the nature of life and we are stuck in a long line to the only exit guaranteed guarded by the end-of-life multibillion-shit industry that keeps us breathing.