The Poet Who Is Either Silenced Or Speaking Fire

It is the kinda day to pick up your cross and bear it.

I'm not saying I'm wishing you a Good Friday, exactly. Actually this drawing was drawn a month ago and I just finished it tonight and took a photograph under daylight bulbs.

'The Poet Who Is Either Silenced Or Speaking Fire,' 2013, Brenda Clews, 8.5" x 11", mixed media on 130lb archival paper.

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Poets Series: Joani Paige at HOWL

Joani Paige at Nik Beat's HOWL at Q Space on March 24, 2013. A little sketch that I haven't touched, only photographed. There was a mic in front of her the whole time, and, since I didn't want to draw it, I had to imagine where it hid her beautiful face. Lol. Joani was wonderful, and it was wonderful to re-connect with her!

I once did a video of her, a few years back. She told me last Sunday that she had only recently watched the whole video, that she finds it really hard to watch videos of herself performing, and that she really liked what I did! Wild how it works, huh.


Joani Paige, singing "So Fine," with Willie Anicic on harmonica near the end, and Pat Kelly on percussion (not in camera range) at Free Times Cafe on September 16, 2011.

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Nik Beat @Videofag

direct link: Nik Beat @Videofag

A clip of Nik Beat performing a poem at Videofag in Kensington Market in Toronto on March 16, 2013. A live performance. Videoed and edited by Brenda Clews.

This one is a complete enough poem that I added it to my videopoetry playlist at YouTube, and am tagging it as a videopoem.

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Jacqueline Valencia @Videofag

direct link: Jacqueline Valencia @Videofag

...another of my clips from the poetry reading I went to on Saturday night. Jacqueline Valencia performs at Videofag in Kensington Market in Toronto on March 19, 2013. Half a Mohawk, and a green ponytail, and a mask, irresistible. Enjoy the clip!

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Brandon Pitts @ Videofag in Toronto

direct link: Brandon Pitts @ Videofag March 2013

I did some of the sort of filming that interests me last night at a poetry reading at Videofag in Toronto. This snippet isn't fully 'worked out' but it's getting there, and I'm okay with posting it.

I'm also learning new video editing software, so creating this video took awhile. Be gentle, folks. Also, I follow my rhythms, my aesthetic, in videoing and editing rather than trying to produce a facsimile for the performers (there were other video cameras running anyhow). So, with the authors' permission, I took ...liberties. Enjoy!

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A New Art Website!

Yesterday, in a matter of hours, I put up a new art website where you can most of my paintings and drawings. It was incredible how fast, easy and streamlined the process was.

I've called it Poem Paintings and Drawings:

http://brendaclews-poempaintings.blogspot.ca/

Because I have a show coming up, I knew I had to create a more easily accessible site. After a short research, I decided to use Blogger. It seems an art website becomes obsolete in 4-5 years, mostly because whatever site I set up could not handle my burgeoning work, and also because art website styles change. My first art website was in 2004 with Sitebuilder, and it was a fine beginning. Then in 2008 I created over 3 weeks of 18 hour days an art site nearly from scratch with Google Sites, which you can access through the footer below, or the sidebar of my blog. I learnt a lot of html making that site.

The latest site was very easy in comparison to the previous two. I created a new blog, gave it a name, picked a black template, posted an 'events' post about my forthcoming chap book, the luminist poems, to be published by LyricalMyrical Press in May and a solo art show I will have at Q Space for the month of May, and then created a series of pages which I filled with my paintings and drawings.

Other than some fussy html with the post to make its page sand colour and text black, which Blogger kept closing off half way after the image, but I figured a way around the glitch, the whole thing was super easy with posting images from Picasa, and even a videopoem page with YouTube and Vimeo videos.

I also have an idea for how to create a banner for the site, which the new Blogger, or at least this template, doesn't support. I'll let you know if it works or not.

I suppose it gets easier the more sites you create.

My only frustration has been that I have not, so far, been able to redirect my domain name, brendaclews.com, to the new site. Though the domain name re-direct has been cancelled at Google Sites, and that site should revert back to the original Google Sites url, and cancelled the Sites re-direct at my Google Administration site, thus far the re-direct has not taken.

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Poets Series: Cabaret Noir in March 2013

Jean-Paul Mullet at Lizzie Violet's 'Cabaret Noir' on 10 MAR 2013, 11" x 8.5", Pentalic archival 25% cotton 130lb paper.

A charcoal and conte sketch, untouched. He's not as scary as he looks here - Jean-Paul, after all, is a vegan zombie clown! A great costume and make-up, and the sort of strange and funny performance you'd be inclined to expect from a hobbit-like zombie clown with moss growing on his cheeks and forehead. Also he was born and died maybe 2 centuries ago.

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A Smorgasbord of Images

Yayha! What a mess! No slideshow option for Blogger/Blogspot users in the 'new' Picasa, I'm afraid. But we can get a smorgasbord! Hint: if you'd like to attempt this, do it via the HTML option through the little picky pic of the landscape that Picasa offers as entry into your Picasa albums.

I'm almost done, just the green shadow-shape next to her is going to have to be painted out again and re-painted. The colours are a bit brighter than the photo shows if the painting is properly lit (which it wasn't when I took this pic).

 

The 'new' Picasa is not so good yet

You probably won't be able to see this image. So I'm thinking there's no point trying to say anything about it.

The 'new' Picasa will not let me make a newly created album 'Public' without posting it publicly on G+, something I am NOT willing to do right now.

Nor is there any option to embed a slideshow in your Blogger blog. I sent complaint through. So far, the Picasa changes rate a mark of D-.

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The Walking Dead is not 'about' gore

I wonder why people think the popularity of The Walking Dead is because people love gore? That is such a strange notion and entirely not the point of The Walking Dead. I think someone in the media, who hadn't watched the series, made the comment and it got spread and spread. Actually, we feel sorry for the zombies, they could be us, a pandemic virus, it's painful for the main characters, their personal losses, and what has to be done is repulsive, and no-one likes it. Where the main characters get their physical strength to keep going is remarkable, and then of course humans are fighting humans, which makes the tragedy worse. The acting is superb, the story is top notch, the whole scope of this series opens up much speculation on the human condition.


(No, she isn't a zombie, but she is called, Skinbones, and I drew her in my first Moleskine sketchbook maybe a year or so back, and she's the most appropriate image for this post.)

A little post on a social media site, but I like to keep tid bits here that I may further develop later on (those social sites make finding an old post virtually impossible, as most of you likely know).

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Poets Series: HOWL in February 2013

Poet Alana P. Cook @ HOWL @ Q Space in Toronto on 24 Feb 2013. 8.5" x 11", Staedtler marsgraphic brush pens, 80lb archival paper. The drawing taken in sunlight, and the colours are accurate; the detail was taken indoors with cloudy light from a window and a daylight bulb shining on it. (You can see the full spectrum of colours is more evident in the photo taken in direct sun, including the colour of the paper.)

Meghan Morrison performing @ HOWL @ Q Space in Toronto on 24 Feb 2013. 8.5" x 11", Staedtler marsgraphic and Prismacolor premier brush pens, 80lb archival paper. My focus was on her hand, such an exquisite, delicate, graceful hand plucking the strings as she sang in her exquisite, beautiful voice... and then I added a blue background.

And I might as well include this already posted sketch in this post. I probably will work on it a little more sometime this week.

...my *untouched* drawing of the performance poet, Liz Worth. I had put my art supplies away, when Liz ripped off her top and proceeded to spread blood over her belly, neck, chin, her hands covered, an organ, viscera in one hand, so out charcoal and red chaulk paper came, and I drew as fast as I could. You don't get a sense of Liz's physical beauty here (she's a knockout), but perhaps some of the strangeness and deep power of her unexpected performance.

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She, transparent to the sun (finished)

'She, transparent to the sun,' 8.5" x 11", conte, chalk, pastel, art pen on Pentalic neutral pH 25% cotton 130 lb drawing paper.

This drawing is finished. The poem written into the drawing was recorded over a mix of sounds, with a slight theatrical flavour. Both the drawing and the poem refer to something specific. Do you see it?


direct link: She, transparent to the sun.

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Charcoal Poems near completion

Some other notes, this on getting started:

Too fricken busy!! Phone call with an old friend who's in town, arrangements, dogs out twice, a sunny day so photos of some of my poets drawings, breakfast followed immediately by lunch because I was still hungry, lol. I did start filling in more of the green but ran out of the mixture, which was from last September in a small plastic Sushi container for ginger, and so have to re-mix. But, first, tea! Lol. Lol!

Some many hours later, well into the evening:

It's gone back to where it was, after a lot of rubbing with an old, wet tea towel.

And, finally:

The shadow beside her is back, though. I've struggled with it. Shadows in the sense of the unacknowledged repressed hidden sides of us are like that. They can't be painted green. Scribbled in charcoal only.

So it doesn't look like the image posted below. Now I'm thinking to get some fresh Gesso and work it so that there is a green base and then scribble the charcoal over that.

I began this painting a few weeks after my mother's death last September. There is a lot of grief in it. It's not a happy, giddy circus and while greening the shadow makes for a more pleasing painting, that's not the point. The problematic scribble of charcoal beside her is part of the composition of the painting. Charcoal Poems will find its viewers.

The painting is also a calligraphy and maintaining the stroke of the charcoal, a type of poetry itself, an illegible dream writing, perhaps the compositions of loss, the scribble the speaks of the disjunctures, expresses it in incoherent terms, and so has to remain, however I finally work it.

Where it's at after last night's paint-a-thon. Below, where it was just before that.



With a solo show in early May at Q Space in Toronto, I need to get this finished so the oils will be dry! (I use water-soluble oil paints, so it should be ok.) Today was the day. Get down to it, I told myself. And somehow I did. Likely I'll tinker for a few more days, but time has run out.

I'm thinking that big black shape next to her - it's lovely willow charcoal set with a fixative, and where I began this painting - has to be dealt with. Or not. (At this moment it's not working for me, but that can change in an hour, or a day.)

Charcoal Poems, near completion, 2013, 5' x 5', willow charcoal, India ink, oils on double primed canvas.

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